Crouching by the west bank of the River Finn, perhaps half a mile south of its confluence with the River Mourne, two men hid amid shrubs and thick bushes that ran right along the bank in an almost unbroken line in that area. Sitting quietly with rifles, binoculars and a hand-held radio, they’d been in that position since well before dawn, waiting for exactly that moment. They were each dressed in ‘ghillie suits’, a distinctive set of camouflage clothing constructed from netting or cloth garments covered in loose burlap, cloth or twine.
First developed as an aid to Scottish gamekeepers, that design had seen its first military use by the Lovat Scouts during the Second Boer War, a Scottish Highland regiment that went on to become the British Army’s first sniper unit. A vital piece of sniper’s kit that was beginning to see widespread use in many of the world’s armed forces, the ghillie was generally coloured to suit the specific environment in which it would be used, the suits often augmented by leaves, twigs and local foliage as an aid to concealment.
Both men were well-trained and not concerned in the slightest regarding detection as they waited patiently to complete their mission. No IRA volunteer knew anything of their existence, with precious few even aware within the Irish government itself. They were professional soldiers – elite members of the Irish Defence Forces – and neither had- nor wanted any association whatsoever with any arm of the Irish Republican Army.
Despite waiting for exactly that signal, both still started slightly as the radio in one man’s hands suddenly burst softly to life and he hurriedly raised it to his ear.
“Henhouse to the chicks: eggs have been delivered… breakfast is ready, over…”
“Ferret acknowledging,” the radioman replied quickly, his response followed by replies from three other teams ranging up and down the river in similar secret locations.
“Here we go then, George,” the man beside him observed excitedly, shifting position and hefting the short, stubby rifle he held in both hands. “Here’s hopin’ it’s us that gets the shot.”
They both heard the sound of the approaching helicopter long before it appeared, giving the spotter with the radio and field glasses ample time to make a quick observation and report back to base just once more.
“This is Ferret reporting, Henhouse…” he advised, speaking quickly and wasting no more time than was absolutely necessary. “Helicopter sighted and inbound on our position, over…”
“Understood, Ferret…” the reply came back immediately. “…You are clear to engage… Other chicks advised to commence egress…”
“Orders acknowledged… Ferret out…”
“Good to go, George?” The rifleman asked for official confirmation despite having heard every word of the exchange.
“Good to go, Alfie,” the spotter replied, turning back to peer once again over the hedgerow and watch the approaching helicopter as his partner snapped back the cocking handle of his M4A1 DeLisle Carbine and slid a huge .375-inch round into the breech.
“She’s a big one…” George observed with a low whistle of appreciation, “…One o’ those twin-rotor, troop-carryin’ buggers. You think you can take her?”
“Good as gold,” Alfie shot back with a nod. “…Be useless on those bloody gunships unless you can put one through the rotor hub or somethin’ vital like that, but those big fuckers mount their engines on their arse-end in bloody great pods… easy to hit and real easy to take down.” He gave a positively evil grin. “Be all the better if a platoon of those German bastards goes down with it…”
The M4A1 was a further development of the original US-designed M1 Carbine. Intended pure and simple for use by Special Forces during covert operations, it was the brainchild of expatriate British engineer William Godfray de Lisle, whose name it had been informally accorded in recognition of his revolutionary silencer design. The weapon appeared identical to the normal M1Carbine from the receiver back to the stock, but moving forward from the breech it was a completely different ‘animal’. The usual 18-inch barrel and wooden hand-rest beneath had been replaced by a thick metal cylinder of similar length and almost two inches in diameter. Only eight inches within was actual rifle barrel, with the rest a dedicated, integral suppressor effective enough to make the rifle basically inaudible beyond fifty yards.
The round it fired was a non-standard, ‘wildcat’ cartridge formed by the use of a standard .30-inch case (the same as that used in all assault rifles and carbines currently in service the US and Commonwealth) that was subsequently necked-out to accept a far larger .375-inch pointed rifle bullet taken from the powerful Holland & Holland Magnum round. The resulting cartridge produced subsonic velocities that were essential for the effective operation of its integral silencer, yet also fired an extremely heavy, tungsten-tipped slug that was capable of quite exceptional accuracy even out to three or four hundred metres. The model the sniper held at that moment had been one of a dozen provided by the American OSS for use in this current operation.
“Here she comes…!” George warned sharply, ducking down below the hedgerow once more and covering his ears in anticipation. In contrast, the sniper beside him, having spent years training in close proximity to loud noises, simply laughed and raised the rifle to his shoulder from a sitting position as the MH-16E howled past overhead at extremely low level.
“Take this one home to yer feckin’ Führer, y’ Nazi bastards…!” He snarled with venom as the helicopter banked sharply around, pulling up short of the river bank by just a few dozen yards and turning onto a northerly heading. Sighting in on the starboard engine nacelle through the low-power scope mounted atop the DeLisle’s receiver, he fired five controlled shots in quick succession, three of which punched straight through the thin aluminium of the pod’s outer fairing and wrought havoc on the engine beneath.
The BMW radial burst into flames almost instantly, black smoke billowing away in clouds as sparks sprayed from the stricken powerplant. Warning lights and alarms burst angrily to life on Böhm’s instrument panel, and his eyes flew wide in disbelief as he felt the aircraft shudder and immediately lose power. In that moment, the nervous pilot had no idea that his aircraft had been fired upon: all he knew was that he had just seconds to decide on a course of action that would also decide the fate of every single man aboard, himself included.
“Engine fire on number two… losing power!” He howled desperately, running his hands quickly across his instruments in an attempt to shut the damaged radial down and avoid the danger of an even worse fire than was already burning. “Full power to number one: I’m going to try to bring her down in those fields…”
He had no chance to say any more as another barrage of .375-caliber slugs tore through the cockpit’s starboard fuselage, shattering glass and instruments in a shower of razor-sharp debris and also ripping through flesh and bone. Brandt died almost instantly, the side of his head blown away behind his right ear, as Böhm felt something smash into his right shoulder that sent a wave of agony surging through him. With his entire right side completely useless and wracked with pain, he found he was no longer able to control the stricken helicopter, and looking down through the glass panels set in the cockpit floor by his feet, the last thing Felix Böhm’s mind registered as he slipped into unconsciousness was the sight of the ground rushing up to meet him at a terrible rate.
Lifford to Castlefin Road
County Donegal, south of Lifford
“You’re taking us to Lifford…” Kelly observed with more than a little suspicion and confusion in his tone. Not having ever been a regular visitor to the area, it had taken him a few moments to work out that the direction they were heading in was taking them back toward the Strabane border crossing and potential danger.
“They’ve split everyone up as a safety precaution,” the front seat passenger, a man who’d introduced himself only as Allan, advised with little emotion and Kelly noted with some interest that the young man seemed to be avoiding his gaze. “Thought it might be safer… just in case, y’know?”
“Whatever it is you’re reachin’ for there where y’ think I can’t see ya, Allan; stop it right now...!” McCaughey snarled angrily, and the men in the front seats simultaneously felt the hardness of cold steel jammed into their backs through the thin rear padding of the front seats as McCaughey and Michaels, on either side of Kelly, instantly leaned forward with pistols in hand.
“Jaysus, McCaughey, we’re on the same feckin’ side...!” Allan protested, too terrified by McCaughey’s well-earned reputation as he instantly lifted his clearly empty hands into the air, acting as if he’d never even considered the thought of reaching for the .32-calibre Browning hidden in his waistband.
“Are we now, fella? That’s what Mister Kelly here keeps tellin’ me, right enough,” McCaughey continued softly through clenched teeth, “but I’m from the other side o’ The Finn there, where we know all about the real Stephen Hayes, and I keep me old Webley close at hand as a result.” As a reminder of what he’d just said. McCaughey prodded him in the back even harder with the muzzle of his huge revolver, eliciting exactly the gasp of pain and fright in response he’d expected.
“Now, the first thing we need to do, fellas, seein’ as we’re on the ‘same side’ and all, is to catch up to our boys up ahead and get ‘em to pull over so we can all have a nice chat about what’s goin’ on here.”
The Ford was only a few dozen yards ahead, both vehicles cruising at a steady, intentionally ‘unhurried’ pace, and as the Hillman’s driver began to accelerate, it quickly started to close the gap between them. The Lifford town centre was now only a quarter-mile away, and the sedans were for the most part now driving past houses and commercial buildings rather than open fields. The faint sounds of a large helicopter could be heard flying about unseen somewhere over the noise of their own engine, but aerial border patrols on the German side weren’t anything unusual and no one paid it any heed.
“Now,” McCaughey continued, the gun never wavering from Allan’s back. “Assuming everyone plays nice once we’ve pulled over, maybe we can-!”
The rest of his sentence was cut off as a line of houses on the eastern side of the road ahead suddenly collapsed and burst apart under the unexpected impact of the Böhm’s stricken MH-16E. Already burning from its rear rotor and leaving a thick trail of black smoke in its wake, the eight-ton helicopter broke in half on impact, a spray of wreckage joining the debris already thrown all about from the flattened houses. Leaving its burning tail section in one of the roadside ruins, the front half continued to slide straight across the path of oncoming traffic, the huge blades of its still-twirling rotors shattering spectacularly as they slashed into the homes on the other side of the road and tore them apart.
The severed rear end of the Mixgerät, carrying most of the aircraft’s fuel, exploded violently in a huge cloud of orange flame and billowing, black smoke, vaporising whatever was left of the ruined house beneath along with the half-dozen troopers that had been left stranded in that section by the crash – those of course who hadn’t already been killed outright by the impact. There was comparatively little fire or damage to the rest of the wreckage, although the disintegrating rotors did manage to slice viciously through sections of the fuselage below, killing or severely maiming more of the passengers within as it finally came to a halt in a spray of dust and house fragments.
The Ford Tudor, lead vehicle of what had now become a tightening formation of three sedans, was no more than a hundred yards from the site of impact as the helicopter struck. To his credit, the driver was able to bring the vehicle to an extremely sudden halt within about half that distance, but that was still far too close under the circumstances. There was barely enough time for the passengers to duck for cover below the level of the windows as a huge piece of broken rotor blade several yards long came scything toward them out of the forward wreckage, slicing off the entire top section of the roof halfway up the window pillars, and cleanly taking off the upper half of the driver’s head in the process.
The explosion struck a split second later, lifting that side of the ruined Ford and tipping it over with the force of the blast as heat washed over and around them like a furnace. Thrown partially clear as the car overturned, Brendan found himself suddenly trapped beneath the inverted right side read door, the weight of the metal sill snapping his lower leg like a twig as what was left of the shattered glass punched through his trousers and cut deeply into the flesh beneath.
He cried out sharply, writhing in agony and pinned where he lay as the rest of those alive and trapped beneath the overturned sedan struggled to free him and themselves. Despite being close behind, the following Hillman had managed to avoid any major damage save for blast-shattered window glass, and as it too came to a sharp and sudden halt, every man within immediately piled out and ran quickly across to the stricken Ford to render assistance.
Between them, they managed to position along the overturned right side and lift it enough for someone to drag the still-screaming Brendan free. The damaged doors on that side were forced open at the same time, allowing the rest of those trapped within – with no small amount of difficulty – to also crawl free, although in the case of the front passenger it had been necessary to first remove the unpleasant obstacle of the driver’s mostly-headless corpse to provide a clear path.
Irish 2nd Division ‘Spearhead’
Mobile HQ, Lifford Road, Lifford
County Donegal, Republic of Ireland
Thirty-eight year old Lieutenant-General Michael Joseph Costello stood up inside the rear passenger bed of his personal Bren Carrier and focussed his binoculars on the Lifford Bridge, facing Strabane across the River Foyle. Tall and stocky, his dark hair was cut military-short and came together in a prominent widow’s peak above his forehead. An intelligence officer with the Old IRA during the War of Independence, he’d joined the Irish National Army in 1922 and had risen quickly through the commissioned ranks since.
A brilliant tactician who’d attended the US Army’s Command and Staff College during the late 1920s, he’d predicted the advent of blitzkrieg tactics prior to the Second World War and had been directly involved in the training and development of the Irish Defence Forces’ current officer cadre. Previously in charge of the Irish 1st Division based on the South Coast, he’d been transferred to the 2nd Division just months earlier and had spent the intervening time training heavily with his new command in order to bring his men up to full defensive readiness.
The opposite end of the bridge was no more than 250 yards away as he looked on, and he could clearly make out the wire cages and barbed wire encasing the gates through to Northern Ireland. Also visible were the pair of concrete bunkers on either side of the bridge approaches, each sporting ex-Mark VI tank turrets whose weapons, he was well aware, could quite easily reach him from that distance should their commanders so desire. He had no doubt they could make exceptionally light work of his vehicle’s thin steel armour.
He now also picked out the squat, decidedly ominous shapes of German tanks and IFVs (Infantry Fighting Vehicles) as a mixed troop of Waffen-SS armour appeared at the far end of Lifford Road and made for the bridge and the river at good speed. He noted the presence of two Panther tanks, a troop of IFVs and at least one command vehicle and it was sobering to think that what he was looking at constituted a larger and far more powerful armoured force than the three light tanks the Irish Defence Forces possessed for defence of the whole country, two of which were currently hidden from view in nearby backstreets.
“Has everyone been evacuated?”
“They’re movin’ the last few ou
t now, sir,” Colonel Dan Bryan replied from the roadside below. Costello’s senior by four years, Bryan had taken over as Irish Defence Forces’ Director of Military Intelligence G2 earlier that year, having already made a name for himself in the tireless pursuit and eventual capture of a number of German spies at large in the Republic of Ireland during the opening phases of the war. Shorter than the general, balding and sporting a moustache, he too was currently staring through binoculars at the other side of the river, although he was not afforded quite as grand a view from his position standing in the middle of the road beside the Bren Carrier.
“You know, Dan, if this all goes to shite, a handful o’ ‘Charlies’ is all we’ve got in our whole arsenal that’ll come even close to penetrating the hulls of those Panthers,” he pointed out slowly, hiding the faint waver in his voice and not lowering the field glassed for a moment.
“Sir, we’re going to make sure that doesn’t happen today: we’ve spent the better part of the last two years since the Brits fell, setting this up, and the Americans have been just as diligent at their end.”
“It had better work…! What we’re seein’ right now is more armour than we can put to field for the entire country, and you know what the bloody Germans are capable of when they’re crossed.”
“It’s exactly that reaction we’re hoping for, sir,” Bryan replied with a grin, mostly feeling as confident as he sounded. “They’re the most powerful nation on Earth right now and no mistake, but a German’s still a German, and all that martial efficiency that makes ‘em so bloody strong as a fighting force also makes ‘em predictable to a fault. All we need to do is pull the right strings and the puppet will dance…”
The Dead Alone (Empires Lost Book 3) Page 14