Recovering Commando Box Set

by Finn Óg

  So far, so unclear. What was it that had caused them to become interested in him? Had he been warm? Like that kid’s game, had he been closer than he realised to the man he was seeking?

  Sam strained to remember the face. They had passed one another, hadn’t they, before the man stared at the sign? Which explained the DET’s sudden interest – they had probably wondered whether they’d made contact, which in turn suggested there was no operative in the cul-de-sac itself. Interesting.

  He needed confirmation. A billboard for a garage lit up the price of its fuel, so he prepared to turn off. He pulled his hat down but dropped the buff for fear of looking like a bank robber and strolled to the newspaper stand. He lifted a bunch of Sunday tabloids and hoped for the best, paying with cash and getting back into the van. He peeled through the rags looking for talk of dissidents or the bombing – growing increasingly despondent as he discarded paper after paper.

  Then, in the Sunday World, he found a headline and a photo of interest.: Lurgan man signs on at cop shop he blew up.

  The image had been taken from a distance, probably on a phone and presumably sold to the newspaper, but it was just about clear enough for Sam to make out the same beige coat of the man he had passed less than an hour before. He lifted the paper to stare closer, becoming increasingly convinced that the person in the image was the man in the estate.

  The story, written in harsh but ballsy journalese, confirmed his suspicions and hurtled him forward by a thousand paces: Former Provo, Kevin “Grim” McGleenon, has been forced to sign his bail at the very police barracks he once helped blow up. The alleged leading dissident was caught on camera entering the heavily fortified Musgrave Police Station in Belfast on Monday. Police sources confirm that McGleenon must prove weekly that he has not done a runner following his arrest in connection with the New IRA bombing of Ballycastle last month. Another man wanted for questioning about the explosion, in which two children and two adults were killed, has absconded across the border. Our camera caught McGleenon entering the base following a meeting with his solicitor. It must have been an embarrassing trip for the former Provo, who, as a 21-year-old was convicted of bombing the same police station in 1988.

  Sam looked up and fell into a thousand-yard stare. So he’d had Grim in his sight. But so did the DET. Removing him without getting caught would be a hell of a challenge.

  “Who is this?”

  The father was not amused at Sam’s refusal to identify himself to his secretary.

  “I need to take you up on that offer – if it still stands.”

  “Oh, hello. Yes, of course. What do you need?”

  “There’s a burner left at reception at the place we last met.”

  “A burner?”

  “A phone. Not registered. Doesn’t matter. When you get it, there’s only one number programmed into it. Call the number and I’ll fill you in then.”

  “Now?”

  “Ideally,” Sam said.

  “Ok,” said the father, and Sam hung up.

  He left the call box and continued his run. The time had come to start training again and his muscle memory wasn’t quite what he had hoped. Four miles into a painful climb, the burner in his own pocket started to chime. The screen confirmed that the father had done as he’d been asked.

  “Bit cloak-and-dagger, is it not?” he began.

  “Not without good reason,” Sam panted.

  “Are you otherwise engaged?” the father asked, a little perturbed.

  “I’m running. It’s not fun.”

  “I don’t imagine it is. What can I do for you, Sam?”

  “I’d be grateful if you could help me with a vehicle. Ideally a small tradesman’s van with shelves and stuff in the back. It will have to have tools and kit in it – and a high-vis vest and a hard hat. It’s an odd ask, I know, but what do you reckon? Can you help with that?”

  “Absolutely, provided I can have it back.”

  “No guarantees, to be totally honest, but that would be my intention, for sure. The van can’t be marked, though – no branding or names up the side or company logos.”

  “Ok. I have a small fleet. When do you want to collect it?”

  “I don’t, John. I want it left in the Quays Shopping Centre in Newry, north of the border. It won’t look out of place if it’s left there during the day – there’s work going on at the moment, so it will fit right in with the southern reg and everything. The key can be left in the exhaust.”

  “Fine, Sam. I had thought you’d want something difficult.”

  “If I come to you in the future with a trickier ask, would you be receptive?”

  “That rather depends on how tricky it is,” the father said.

  “Can you have the van left on Saturday?”

  “Shouldn’t be an issue.”

  “Grateful, John. Be good.”

  The clerk stared at the plastic boxes, each clipped shut with security bindings, and despaired at where to start. Replacement versions had arrived, mysteriously, in Amazon packaging at her home the night before, and she was worried that she might replace them incorrectly.

  The timing of the delivery meant that “they” knew she’d say yes before they’d even approached her. Troubling, because it suggested they had something else up their sleeve if she had refused. As things stood, all they’d had to do was offer her promotion. “Acceleration”, the woman had called it. “Never look back. You’ll be on the fast track, and you’ll be protecting valuable information”.

  The clerk drew the little clippers out of the Amazon box and began snipping the clasps, laying the exact numbered replacements beside each box to ensure there was no risk of being caught. “Only the boxes from England,” she kept saying to herself, referring to the serial numbers of the paper manifest – all twenty-seven of them. She’d be there all night.

  In the corner the photocopier was spitting out sheets by the hundred, reading from the tiny card that had arrived in the Amazon package. She didn’t even have time to look at what the boxes contained, such was the demand to replace the bales of A4 with the warm, fresh pages from the photocopier. Then on with the clasps. Fiddly. And then a mountain of paper to be removed from the building when she got notification that the cameras in the hall and stairs were down.

  She slowed as the night went on and began to wonder if she’d sold her soul for a rung on the ladder.

  “Whatever happens, act with conviction and nobody’ll know any different.”

  Not military advice – that of the priest at Sam and Shannon’s wedding. It had worked as intended. Sam, drill on his belt and toolkit over his shoulder, limped with affect through the gate of one of the most secure police stations in Belfast. The shutters were at least forty feet high; the pedestrian entrance was similarly corrugated and led down a barriered walkway to a security hut twenty metres inside the compound.

  The limp and beard were part of the distraction and a reinforced baseball cap pulled low gave him confidence that overhead cameras wouldn’t be able to pick out his eyes or nose. The van had freshly-pinched plates – liberated from Lisburn park-and-ride, and by the time the southern registration was back on the vehicle it would be safely in the Republic and unlikely to be troubled again.

  Sam reckoned he was about a minute ahead of his mark, which was as much as he should need. Inside the guard hut he waited to be called forward by a member of the unarmed civilian staff.

  “Eh, who are you here for?”

  “Hoping you’d tell me,” Sam grunted, looking around at the screens to determine what the camera angles were like – any lower than he’d anticipated and he’d have to abort. Not an attractive option, especially as Isla was only with her grandparents for a night. He really had to get this done now.

  “Have you no contact inside?” the guard asked.

  “Just told that there’s an issue with the lighting in one of the offices,” Sam said.

  The guard moved to lift the phone, Sam moved with him, clasping his wrist and spinning hi
m so that his legs crossed and the imbalance made him fall backwards allowing the noose of a cable tie to slip easily onto one wrist and then the other. Shouting started and was calmed with a split tennis ball forced into his mouth and a tear of duct tape ripped and bound to hold it in place. Sam bear hugged the man and pulled his arms and chest over the counter, imagining there was an emergency buzzer lurking somewhere out of sight. The man lay on the ground and looked up at Sam, terror in his eyes. Sam didn’t like that and prodded him with the toe of his steel toecap boot, rolling the bloke over. He was young, not fit. The wrong person in the wrong job.

  Sam peered up again at the cameras looking for Grim, looking for the DET op who would be following him and looking at the main police station building in case another civilian guard might emerge. Nothing. He leaned down to the man on the floor.

  “Where’s your jacks?”

  The man’s head jerked forward awkwardly.

  “I’m gonna help you up, then you’re gonna shuffle in there. Make a noise, whatever you might hear, and you’ll meet your maker this day. Understood?”

  The man snorted his agreement like a horse through his nostrils.

  Sam bundled the bloke to his feet and walked him like an upright mermaid through a tiny dark hall. He turned at Sam’s insistence and plonked onto the toilet seat. The door was closed. Six steps back he watched as Grim approached the gate and Sam heard the buzzer sound. He leaned over the counter and reached his gloved hand out to press a green knob, which infuriatingly and worryingly triggered the car barrier to lift behind a closed gate. He hoped nobody noticed and tried an orange button instead, dreading what might elevate next, but the gate pushed open and Grim sauntered towards him. Sam scanned the external cameras and saw a car move slowly on the one-way street, a passenger get out and make her way to a joke shop across the way. The passenger was a fit-looking woman, low, burly – she moved fast and with strength.

  Grim came into the guardroom like he’d done it a million times before. He didn’t even look up at Sam but reached across the counter to lift the sign-in book. He scribbled on it and turned to wait for one of the security staff to emerge. Home from home.

  “Grim,” Sam said, at which the man froze for an instant before looking up at the workman. “Yes or no?” Sam said.

  “No,” Grim said, but Sam didn’t have time for fucking about.

  “Yes, I think.” He was as sure as he could be that he was looking at the right man – he even had the same coat on, but nonetheless Sam glanced at the sign-in book and caught “McGleenon” scrawled on the page. He reached for the hammer on his belt.

  “What the fuck!” Grim started to lift his hands to his face as the clawed curl of the hammer came in an arc towards him, but he’d not been prepared for any such attack – particularly in a police station, and from a person who wasn’t a police officer.

  His eyeball vanished into his skull and Sam left the hammer hanging out of his face as he moved in for information despite the screaming.

  “Who do you report to?”

  The yelling was deafening in the small room, and then the guard in the bogs added to the cacophony by kicking and trying to howl. Grim slumped back against the counter, panting and heaving out noise.

  Sam gave the hammer handle a jiggle. “You’ve still got one eye. Want to lose it too?”

  “Naw, naw!”

  “Who else? Names!” Sam shouted above the noise. He looked up at the cameras to see a car approach the gate. “Names!” he screamed in Grim’s ear.

  But Grim couldn’t articulate anything.

  Sam knew he was out of time, so he had one last go. “Who made the bomb? Who was the organiser?”

  The single eye in Grim’s head rotated to his assailant in shock, and Sam realised he hadn’t been clear enough in his questioning.

  “Who made the bomb?” he shouted, sucking the claw from Grim’s face and brandishing the hammer over his shoulder, readying for another blow.

  “Manager!” Grim shouted.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Organiser,” Grim panted.

  “Where’s he?”

  “Republic.” Grim’s hands were above his head now, fingers outstretched.

  “Where?” Sam screamed.

  The car outside started blowing its horn and a buzzer went off on the counter and a phone started ringing.

  “Fuck you!” Grim gargled, which was a regrettable mistake, and the last words he ever uttered.

  Sam was out of time. The hammer did its work and was wiped on Grim’s shirt. He slipped the surgical gloves into his tool belt, replaced the hammer on its loop and did as a priest had once advised.

  There is only so much flicking a woman can do. The op peeled through catalogue after catalogue pretending to peer at cowgirl and pirate outfits while gazing between wisps of plastic hair dangling from wigs at the window of the fancy dress shop. The view was good – straight at the front gate of the police barracks.

  “Need a hand?” A teenager behind the counter wasn’t impressed at the op’s indecisiveness.

  “No, thanks.” She kept her reply brief, keen to not adopt an accent for longer than was necessary.

  A car approached the station gates but wasn’t permitted access. A horn sounded, and again. Eventually an angry-looking suit climbed out and pressed a buzzer, staring, livid, up at a security camera.

  A burst came over the net. “What’s happening?”

  “Hard to decide,” the op replied slowly, conscious she was within earshot. Libby, at the other end, was wise to the steer and stayed silent. The op continued to stare at the station, turning plastic-coated pages absently.

  The suit then marched to the smaller pedestrian gate and hit a different buzzer. Still, no response.

  “He’s been in there for twenty minutes,” Libby said. “Would like you to move on?”

  The op moved outside and walked ten feet past a boarded up hardware shop and got on the net.

  “Left the premises.”

  Libby was particularly nervous because she’d overruled the opso, who she respected, and while he hadn’t lost his temper, he’d been angry. She could see he felt let down. She was using his team to operate outside their designated area – Belfast fell into a different DET jurisdiction – and any of the Belfast teams could easily pick up on their comms. Her superior had insisted they keep the operation to those who already knew about it, that there was too much to lose by widening the knowledge pool further. She had done as she was told. Then, to make matters worse, the opso arrived into the room and watched her playing with his train set.

  “Are you picking anything up inside the barracks?” the op on the ground inquired.

  Libby, painfully aware of the opso’s presence, nodded at one of his team, directing him to take a look into comms from within the police station.

  “He normally just walks in and signs on. I wonder if they’ve arrested him again?” came over the net.

  The opso watched with curiosity and a sliver of satisfaction that this unauthorised observation was going to hell in a handbasket.

  “If they’ve arrested the mark, then at least we know where he is,” said Libby.

  “I’m pretty exposed here. I can’t really go back into the shop,” came the op over the net.

  The man at the computer bank turned to Libby, conscious of the opso’s presence, and sheepishly addressed the spook rather than his own boss. “There’s nothing to suggest that the mark has been arrested. In fact …”

  “What?” said Libby, increasingly alarmed.

  “I’ve looked at the camera footage inside the compound and I can’t see the mark entering the police station itself.”

  “What?” Libby almost shouted.

  The man just shrugged and Libby got back on the net. “The mark definitely entered the barracks, yes?”

  “Affirmative. Standby.” There was a pause of static. “Pedestrian gate opening, workman emerging. Suit approaching the gate, car still stationary at vehicle entrance.”
>
  “Libby, get her out of there.” The opso’s affection for the young woman eventually overrode his irritation. “Something’s not right, extract her.”

  Libby bristled at the suggestion from an older man in front of others, yet she appreciated the concern in his voice. She pressed the transmitter. “Extract, extract.”

  The man at the screen bank turned with alarm to Libby. “There’s an emergency call for two ambulances.”

  “What?”

  “Someone in the station has requested two ambulances.”

  “Is the call live?”

  The man started tapping a touchscreen, trying to select the right line, then two voices came through a small speaker.

  “Is the casualty breathing?” a woman was asking.

  “No,” came a panicked response. “He’s dead.”

  “Are you sure, sir?”

  “I’m a police officer twenty years,” barked the man on the other end of the line. “He’s fucking dead. He’s missing an eye and there’s a hole in the back of his head!”

  “Ok, sir,” said the calm despatcher. “Can you describe the other casualty for me?”

  “He’s fine. He’s just shocked – he’d been tied up. You know what, just make it one ambulance. This body won’t be fit to be taken away until the SOCO team has been. What a fucking mess.”

  “SOCO, sir?”

  “Scene of crime officers,” the man said. “This body won’t be going anywhere soon.”

  Libby stared at the opso. “What the hell’s going on?”

  “Whatever it is, you need to get my team as far from there as possible and make damn sure nobody knows we were near it,” he growled.

  Only one person in the room looked at the workman who had strolled nonchalantly from the station, apparently without a care in the world.

  How long would it take them to work out what had happened?

  No matter how much planning went into a thing, there was never an occasion when actions hit every beat. Today was no different. Sam’s frustration nearly caused him to eject the hammer out the open window into the River Lagan as he crossed the bridge, but he checked himself and his temper in time to hold on and dispose of it as planned.