by Chris Ryan
‘Hi,’ I began. ‘It’s me, Geordie.’
‘What’s happened now? Left your head behind?’
‘Listen – I’ve had an idea about a place for you and Susan. You can have my house. It’s going to be empty from the end of the month, for the best part of a year.’
‘Where is it?’
‘Off the Madley road, about four miles out.’
‘How much d’you want for it?’
‘Nothing. I just need to have it looked after.’
‘Well...’
I could practically see her squirming her neat little arse about on her chair.
‘Tell you what – I could pick you up tonight and take you out to have a look. Susan as well; you’d better both see it. It’s pretty much out in the wilds, on its own. What do you think?’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course. I wouldn’t be ringing otherwise.’
‘What time, then?’
‘Wait one. I’ll be back up from LATA about half seven. Say half-eight. What’s your address?’
She gave it, and then said, ‘There’s no strings attached to this, are there?’
‘Of course not.’
I was there five minutes early, showered and changed. Naturally I’d said nothing to the guys on the course, but all day I’d been haunted by a peculiar feeling, half guilt, half anticipation. Was I being disloyal to Kath’s memory? There was no denying that I found Tracy attractive. But then I told myself, hell – I’m just trying to fix up a business arrangement, of mutual benefit.
Or so I thought – until she came flying down the steps of the house, all legs and arms.
‘Where’s Susan?’ I asked.
‘She had a date already. But she likes the idea, and she’s given me power of attorney to do what I think fit. Anyway, her job means she is away a lot, travelling.’
‘Let’s go, then.’
She was wearing a silver-grey track suit, and had a small bag hung over one shoulder. From the scent that wafted off her in the car I didn’t think she’d been running. I had a good look at her profile for the first time, and saw that it matched her manner exactly, being rather pert and perky. On our way out she asked about Tim, and I explained he was with his Gran in Belfast.
‘Is he OK?’
I turned to look at her, and saw her looking steadily, seriously, back at me.
‘I think so. Lucky he’s so young.’
‘That’s right.’
She fell silent for a couple of minutes. But then, as I turned down the lane to the cottage, she exclaimed, ‘Gawd! You said it!’
‘What?’
‘Buried away.’
‘D’you mind that?’
‘I dunno. I’ve never lived in a place like this.’
When we got out of the car she shuddered and said in an aggrieved voice, ‘It’s dark!’
‘What did you expect? It’s night-time.’
‘I mean, there are no lights anywhere.’
‘This is the country. You don’t have lights in the country. Don’t need any. If you eat plenty of carrots, you can see in the dark.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘Honest!’
‘There could be people lurking about out here.’
‘What sort of people?’
‘Rapists. Homicidal maniacs.’
‘There are far more of them in towns. This isn’t the environment for people like that.’
For a few seconds I thought she was going to throw a wobbly, especially when an owl sounded off close by. But in fact things went the other way. Once inside, she responded strongly to the place. She was a city kid all right, but her mind was open, and she was prepared to learn and adapt. She loved the house, saw the mess, gave me a mild bollocking, said she’d take over, and set straight in to clear up the kitchen.
‘Eh,’ I said, ‘You can’t do that.’
‘Stop me.’
‘You’d better have a drink, then. Glass of wine?’
‘Thanks.’
One thing very soon led to another. She offered to cook something for supper. I suggested that we go out to the pub in the village, which served a reasonable evening meal. She said, ‘No, that would be a waste of money.’ Suddenly I heard myself say, ‘You mean the waste of an opportunity?’ The next thing I knew, we were in the bedroom, and I saw an immensely long flash of thigh as she pulled off her jogging pants.
‘Jesus!’ I cried. ‘This is crazy. I haven’t any – er . . .’
‘I have!’ She made a grab for the little bag she’d brought with her. ‘Isn’t that the Boy Scouts’ motto “Be prepared”?’
In the morning, as we sat having a cup of coffee in the kitchen, I said, ‘I should never have brought you here like this.’
‘I’m glad you did.’
‘I feel guilty.’
‘Why? You’re on your own. You’ve no one else.’
‘No – but it’s so soon after Kath.’
‘You never messed about when she was alive.’
‘No.’
‘I’ve been worrying about you for weeks.’
‘You didn’t show it much.’
‘How could I?’
‘I know.’
She shook her head and put her hand over mine. I looked up into her face and said, ‘Somehow, with you, I feel myself. I feel normal – comfortable, like.’
‘Same here.’ She smiled, producing tiny creases down her cheeks.
‘What will people think, though?’ I asked.
‘They won’t think anything. They needn’t know I’ve spent the night here. As long as we don’t walk into work wrapped round each other.’
‘Jesus, no! I’ll run you home round the back way, and go in on my own.’
‘And then –’ Tracy went on with her own line of thought – ‘when Susan and I move in, it’ll look like a straightforward business arrangement.’
‘What about when I come back?’
‘Tonight, you mean?’
‘No, no – from across the water.’
‘I’ll be waiting here for you.’
‘You mean that?’
‘If you want me.’
The course ended with two big exercises, one out in the country and one mainly in town. In the first, we were told that a bomb had been planted in a certain culvert, under a country lane, out in the middle of a large estate. According to the scenario, command wires had been spotted running up a hedge to a firing point in the corner of an old quarry. Good intelligence had been received to the effect that terrorists were coming back at night to detonate the bomb when a vehicle patrol went past. I was detailed to command an operation to take them out.
There was no time for an on-site recce. For an hour we pored over the 1:50,000 map, planning covert approaches to the spot marked as the target. Then, as dark was coming on, we bussed out to a drop-off point, tabbed in across country, over the back of a hill, and prepared to lie up in wait. In the last of the light we found the command wires and traced the top end of them to a drain beside a gate-post, where the fence coming up from the culvert reached one corner of the quarry.
It was a filthy night, pissing with rain. The gate-post was nearly at the summit of the hill, and from it we could look down on the lane, which ran along the contour below us, across our front. Having set the rest of the patrol to cover us, Pat and I worked our way down the command wires, to make sure they were connected to the device. Crafty bastards, the terrorists had coupled them up to the barbed wire, so that for most of the run the fence itself would act as a conductor: that way, no extra wires were needed, and there was nothing unusual to be seen. At the bottom end we picked up the special circuit again and followed it to an old milk churn under the little bridge.
That was good enough. Back near the firing-point, I deployed two pairs of guys left and right, as cut-offs, in case Pat and I – the killer group – missed the players and they tried to run out sideways. Then we settled into a small hollow thirty metres from the gate-post. There were a couple
of more obvious hiding places, closer to the target; but the depression was just deep enough to cover us, especially in the dark, and it wasn’t the kind of feature that would attract anyone’s attention. I set the bipod of the G3 on the front of the dip, and wriggled around until it was at a comfortable height.
As the night wore on our hollow gradually filled with water, until we were lying in a couple of inches of liquid mud. The moon was three-quarters full, but because of the clouds its light was very faint, and I wished we’d had time to set out ambush lights. In the event, I had to keep switching on the kite-sight of my G3 to get a good view of the culvert area. In the grey-green glow of the sight the fence posts along the road showed up clearly, but when I looked with the naked eye I could scarcely make them out.
I was finding it hard to concentrate. Half the time my mind was slipping away to Tracy, and the way she’d wrapped her great long legs round me, first round my waist, then round my neck. What a night! And how fantastic that she was hell-bent on taking root in the cottage. To bring myself back to earth, I tried to imagine that I was no longer in the safe, soft Herefordshire countryside, but in some godforsaken corner of Ulster, with fanatical murderers lurking behind every hedge, and Gary Player himself coming to detonate the bomb.
Our magazines might have been loaded with blanks, but all the other details of the exercise were as real as could be. We knew the Det trainees were out as well, tracking the alleged players, but apart from occasional checks on the comms net, nothing happened until about 2.30 a.m. By then the rain had cleared and the night had gone very quiet. Suddenly, a gun-shot cracked off in the woods on the slopes opposite, and echoes rolled away down the valley to our right.
I had my radio in the special pocket of my ops waistcoat, down the left side of my chest. Two small throat-mikes were held in position either side of my Adam’s apple by a choker of elastic. The pressel-switch, or transmission button, was a small rubber dome clipped on to the front of my windproof smock. If ever I found myself so close to the enemy that I couldn’t speak, Control would interrogate me through my earpiece, and I would answer by using different numbers of presses – one for no, two for yes – which came across at the other end as quick bursts of static.
Now I gave it one blip to alert Control.
‘Zero Alpha,’ came the voice of the boss, who I knew was in a command vehicle a couple of miles down the road.
‘Bravo Five-One,’ I said quietly. ‘There’s been a shot fired approximately five hundred metres north of our location.’
‘Roger. Checking. Wait out.’
Before I could say anything else, two more shots rang out. Pat, a yard to my left, came out with, ‘Fucking hell! It’s Arma-fucking-geddon!’ Then, way off in the distance, torches began to flash. A pair of headlights flicked on, and a vehicle went haring along a woodland ride, the beams whipping wildly up and down. Men shouted, and a big dog, maybe a German Shepherd, barked. The sounds were all faint with distance, but clearly coming towards us.
‘Bravo Five-One to all callsigns,’ I said. ‘I think it’s poachers at the squire’s pheasants. Nothing to do with us. But it could be a come-on. Just sit tight.’
Gradually the commotion died down. The vehicle drove off and silence returned. A few minutes later I picked up some movement below. I nudged Pat and brought the butt of the G3 up to my shoulder. But all the kite-sight revealed was a fox, padding up the hedge towards us. The animal came right to the firing-point, stopped, sniffed and cocked its leg against the gate-post. Then it turned through the gate and disappeared to our left.
‘Well I’m buggered!’ muttered Pat. ‘One fox foxtrot towards target!’
At last, soon after three, the Det came on the air. ‘Two X-rays, foxtrot towards your location, nearing zero six zero,’ said a Scottish voice. ‘Three hundred metres from firing-point.’
‘Bravo Five-One, roger.’
My neck crawled. The baddies were not doing anything as straightforward as coming along the lane to the culvert and up the hedge towards us; rather, they were moving in across country, from behind our left shoulders. The slope of the ground meant that we wouldn’t be able to see them until the last moment.
‘X-rays still foxtrot,’ said the Det Scot. ‘Two hundred metres.’
A couple of minutes ticked by. Then, ‘Zero Alpha,’ came the boss’s voice in my ear. ‘Have you got eyes on the X-rays?’
By then they could have been almost on top of us, too close for me to speak. I gave a single punch on my pressel to signify ‘No.’
I lay like a stone, holding my breath, listening. A minute passed, then another. The boss called again and asked the same question. Again I gave him one press.
Where the hell were they? With the utmost caution I turned my head until it was facing backwards like an owl’s. Nobody in sight. Obviously they were waiting out, somewhere very close. We knew that they were there, and they knew that we were there. They were trying to wind us up and push us into making a mistake.
Sod them. On the net I heard the boss asking the Det to check the bearing-to-target they had given. The answer came back confirming it. Still no movement near us.
Then Pat reached out and touched my left arm.
There they were – two black heads and torsos showing against the sky, a few yards off to our left. The pair moved forward in a crouching attitude, so close I could hear the rustle of their clothes.
Gently I raised the butt of the G3 to my shoulder and looked through the kite-sight. The figures showed up in every detail. One was carrying a weapon, a long, and the other had a box-like object slung from his left hand. As I watched they went to ground by the gate-post.
I gave a touch on the pressel.
‘Zero Alpha,’ said the boss. ‘Have you got X-rays on target?’
Two presses.
‘Are they armed?’
Two presses.
‘How far off are they? Less than thirty metres?’
Two presses.
‘Twenty metres?’
Two presses.
‘Three patrol Charlies mobile, direction target,’ said the Det voice. ‘Have you got eyes on them?’
One press. But a moment later I saw them – three Land Rovers driving on sidelights up the lane. This, for me, was the moment of decision. Yes, I told myself, these two guys were definitely a threat. The patrol was within seconds of passing over the culvert. The terrorists were on the firing-point. If we didn’t drop them immediately they’d detonate their bomb, possibly with disastrous results.
‘Stand by, stand by,’ I whispered to Pat. I sensed, rather than saw, him bring the butt of his weapon up into his shoulder. My own rifle sat steady on its bipod. I pushed the safety catch forward to ‘Automatic’. Then at the top of my voice I yelled, ‘ARMY! ARMY! ARMY! HALT OR I FIRE!’
Instantly the pair split, one running right, one left. At the first movement I let rip at the right-hand figure with three short bursts. Pat did the same at the left (I was aware of flame spurting from the muzzle of his rifle). Both players went down and lay still. I gave mine another burst, on the ground, to make sure of him, waited a few seconds, and got back on the radio.
‘Bravo Five-One. Contact! Two terrorists dead. No casualties ourselves. Checking the area. Wait out.’
We had a quick look round, made sure none of the other guys had seen anyone. Then I reported, ‘No other terrorists on target,’ and asked for the QRF – a green army team – to move up to the prearranged rendezvous. I deputed Pat to meet them and explain exactly what had happened. Then I saw that the rest of my team got the hell out; the instructors had hammered into us the fact that in Northern Ireland a crowd gathers immediately at the scene of any incident, and it is bad news if locals see the faces of members of the special forces.
Soon we were away back to base in a couple of the Land Rovers that had acted as the threatened patrol. Behind, on the ground, the alleged terrorists would still be lying where they had fallen, until a photographer had taken pictures of them. Also on t
he scene would be one of the Regiment acting as the LO (or Liaison Officer) – he’d be directing the QRF, who would cordon off the whole area. Nobody else would be allowed until the arrival of the SOCO, the Scene of Crimes Officer, who was from the RUC. He would measure distances and angles, collect up the cartridge cases and make notes for his report.
After a wash-up, we got our heads down, but not for long, because the exercise continued in the morning with a full-scale inquiry. Not only did a proper judge preside in court, with real-life barristers holding forth; the Regiment brought down about sixty cooks and bottle-washers from the squadron, to act as audience and sit there heckling. We’d been told how easy it would be to let ourselves down by getting details wrong when we gave our accounts of what had happened, or by giving away more information than necessary; so we briefed ourselves carefully beforehand, and in the event got the whole incident well squared away. The best bit of the morning came when one of the cooks, Jimmy Bell, went way over the top. We didn’t know whether he’d had a couple of pints on the way down or what, but he became so obnoxious with his heckling and his shouts of ‘Order! Order!’ that the judge ordered him removed from the court, and it was all we could do to sit there with straight faces.
Maybe because of my upbringing in the country, I felt more at home operating out on farms and in the woods than in towns. But the next event on our programme was a four-day spell in Lydd and Hythe, the mock village on the Kent coast purpose-built for training. That is an eye-opener, because there are video cameras set up on every corner, and after a house assault you could run the tape and see exactly what everyone had done. If someone had behaved like a prat it was useless for him to deny it, because there he was on the video, pissing about for all to see.
Our final exercise – a joint one with the MI5 – was mostly urban. The scenario was that two major players had just come across the water and gone to ground in Birmingham. MI5 trainees followed them to a house in Solihull, where they were supposed to have secreted some weapons in a garage. It fell to Pat and myself to do a CTR, and exercise our newly acquired skills as lockpickers by breaking into the garage at night to verify the information. Sure enough, we found a cache of two dummy AK 47s and some bomb-making equipment. We reported the find and pulled off, taking care to remove all traces of our entry, and left a couple of guys in an OP that covered both house and garage.