by Chris Ryan
‘Safe as Fort Knox,’ I told Mike. ‘We’ll call the place that.’ Then I went through to the desk: ‘Sierra Two, OP established. Going forward to choose site for CTR.’
We peeled off our sniper suits and left everything we didn’t immediately need packed in our bergens, in case anything happened and we had to run for it. The night was reasonably warm, so it was no hardship, and we moved forward wearing only our ops waistcoats and windproofs on top of ordinary DPMs.
The field was so uneven that walking over it in the dark was awkward. We kept stumbling into holes, and we had to take it slowly. A couple of times I heard scuttling noises just in front of us, but I assumed that they were being made by rabbits. A sweep with the kite-sight revealed that the field was full of them.
Remembering the position of the barn door, and the angle I needed, I made a cautious approach to the hedge right opposite the front door of the cottage. A dry ditch, some brambles and the trunks of a couple of ash trees gave us all the cover we needed. With careful movements I cleared a space round us, cutting away any bramble shoots that might snag our clothes, and settled down to wait.
The cottage door was ten metres away, the barn door about thirty. The time was 2130. According to our tout, the delivery of arms was planned for 2300. As close in to the target as that, I didn’t want to speak, so I waited for the desk to come up and ask if we were in position, and replied with a couple of jabs on my pressel.
The minutes ticked slowly past. I heard the reports of the Det guys moving around, but there seemed to be no enemy activity. Then at 2210 Delta Four, who was somewhere down the lanes behind us, came up with, ‘Stand by. There’s a vehicle mobile towards Black Two.’ Soon its headlights appeared, but they went straight past the gates at speed.
A moment later I froze. Until then I had thought the place was deserted. Now, through the kite-sight, I saw a figure standing in the door of the barn. Evidently the man had been alerted by the car; he’d come out, maybe thinking this was his delivery. I was disconcerted to think that he’d been there all the time without my realizing it. Luckily our discipline had been good, and we hadn’t made a sound. I nudged Mike, pointing at the barn. As if reading my thoughts, the desk came up with, ‘Sierra Two, do you have X-rays on target?’ and I gave him another double touch on the pressel.
‘How many? More than one?’
A single press.
The desk began to ask more questions. It was impossible to answer them by buzzes. I reckoned the barn was far enough away for it to be safe to speak softly, so I got my head right down in the ditch and pulled the hood of my windproof round so that it was covering my face. That way, my throat mikes were unimpeded but my voice wouldn’t carry any distance. I explained what was happening, and was told to stand by.
The drop-off time came and went. ‘As usual, the Paddy Factor’s operating,’ Mike whispered.
Yes — the Paddy Factor. The sheer unreliability of the players made our job even more difficult. Clever and cunning as the bastards were, they could also be totally undisciplined. Already, in my short time in the Province, I’d heard of one case in which two men were on their way to murder a policeman, but decided to drop in at a pub for a pint to stiffen their morale. Six pints apiece later they were still in the bar, pissed as owls, their mission forgotten. Another time two fellows heading for a shoot had an argument with each other; they ended up fighting each other to a standstill, and again the mission went by the board. So tonight maybe our crowd wouldn’t come at all.
Well past midnight, the man in the barn emerged for a stroll. He walked right past us, three metres away, and on to the gates, where he took a piss. The night was so still that we could hear every drop falling. Then he fiddled with the padlock — whoever might have put the new lock on, he had the right key — dropped the chain, and pulled the gates open one at a time. Hinges squealed and metal scraped over the gravel of the drive. That done, the man came sauntering back to pass us again and return to the barn. I guessed he was a guard, a kind of dicker, stationed there to make sure nobody else approached the place. I reckoned he was quite dedicated, as he’d been hanging around for hours in the dark, and had never showed so much as a gleam of light.
As if his little promenade had stirred the weather, the wind began to blow, drifting down the hill into our faces, and swirling round the cottage. In a few minutes it had become quite gusty, and I was glad because the noise of it made me feel less exposed.
At last, at about 0130, the Det reported another vehicle heading our way. Again the headlights came up from behind us, but this time they swung in through the gates, illuminating the cottage for a second before the driver snapped them off. He came past us on sidelights only — a van — and rolled on until he was almost inside the barn. Two men jumped out and called a quiet greeting to their waiting colleague. The kite-sight gave me a clear picture of all three.
I gave a jab on the pressel-switch.
‘Zero Alpha. Have you X-rays on target?’
Talking into my hood, I whispered, ‘Sierra Two, affirmative. Two X-rays arrived by van. Just about to unload into the barn. Wait one. Yes — one man has two longs. So has the other. Four longs into the barn. Can’t see much in there. Wait one — better now. They have a torch on in the back right-hand comer. Longs being lowered into hole below ground level. There’s straw round it. All four longs complete in hide… X-rays returning to rear of vehicle. Lifting out a heavy box. Two — two boxes. They look like ammunition, from the weight. Two boxes into barn, into cache. Ammo also complete.’
They didn’t hang about. I saw them lowering some form of lid and raking loose straw back into position; then all three came out and boarded the van. It looked as though there was a partition between front and back, because they had to put one man in through the rear doors and close him in. At the gates, one of them got out to fasten the padlock and chain behind them.
‘X-rays complete in van and mobile northwards,’ I reported. ‘Propose making CTR of barn itself.’
‘Zero Alpha,’ answered the desk. ‘Are you certain it’s clear?’
‘Looks good.’
‘At your discretion, then.’
‘Roger. Wait out.’
‘Did you get a look at any faces?’ I asked Mike.
‘Not really. Not enough light. But I wasn’t expecting anything much from tonight. These guys who move the weapons around are only minor players. It’s the shooters I’d like to see.’
‘Well, hang on here and cover me while I suss out the barn. If anything happens, start putting rounds through the roof. Then RV back at Fort Knox. Switch to the chatter-net for the time being.’
I was pretty confident that everyone had gone, but I took no chances. I stood at the barn door and listened for a while before I went in. Then I switched on my infra-red torch, invisible to the naked eye. Through my passive night goggles the interior of the barn showed up as light as day.
There was a good deal of loose straw piled in the far right-hand corner, and a low stack of bales to the right, only a couple of layers high. From the indentation on top of them, I could see that someone had been sleeping there. The floor was beaten earth. In the middle of it stood a wooden trestle table, with a frying pan and some plates on it, all dirty with old grease. There were also two tin-openers and an intact can of Pal dog-food. Jesus, I thought, these must be some low-level Paddies if that’s what they’re living on. The rest of the stuff in the barn was junk: a pile of old sacks; an ancient hay-cutter, rusted to hell; a couple of buckets, full of holes, with twisted handles; a ruined armchair with springs and stuffing bursting through dark-red upholstery.
I picked up a broken pitch-fork handle and began sounding the floor beneath the straw. At the fourth or fifth prod I got a hollow thump. Down on one knee, I drew the straw aside to reveal a circular sheet of heavy marine plywood, like the end of a beer barrel, with a piece of two-by-two nailed to the middle of it to form a makeshift handle. Fingers under one edge, fiddle around, lift gently. I couldn’t see
or feel any booby-trap device.
Up came the board. Beneath it, the lid of a black plastic dustbin. Up came that too — and there, glinting in the torch-light, were four AK 47s, standing on their butts, muzzles uppermost. Beside them, two black ammunition boxes were stacked end on end. Holding the barrel carefully with a gloved hand, I lifted one of the rifles, and saw it had had plenty of use — the metal was scratched, and the woodwork of the butt and fore-end was chipped and scraped. The PNGs didn’t give enough clarity for me to see fine detail, so I pushed them up on to my forehead, whipped out my pencil torch and shone the fine beam on to the lettering beside the breech. The script was Chinese — no doubt that was where the weapon had come from. I lowered it carefully into place and flipped up the lid of one ammunition box. It was filled to the top with loose live rounds, but through them I saw something green and glinting. A quick rummage revealed two L2 hand-grenades, smooth green spheres about the size of a fist with a yellow band round them, and the inscription L2-A2. How the hell had the bastards got them — standard British Army issue?
Having checked the cache mentally, I replaced the box, the lid, the board, the straw, and withdrew, making sure not to step in any bare patch that might take a footprint. At the door of the barn I searched with my kite-sight for our OP in the ditch, and was glad to find that I couldn’t see any sign of Mike. But he was there all right — and once we’d reported to the desk that the hide was complete, we pulled off to our basha in the field.
* * *
All through the next day we lay low, sharing stags, two hours on and two off. We had the spotter scope trained on the cottage, and at that range the field of view took in the gates as well. Apart from the odd car passing up and down the road, the only event was the arrival of a party of potential buyers to look at the house in the middle of the morning.
Mike was having a kip, but I woke him up. ‘Now,’ I said, ‘watch this. If it was the dickers who put that new lock on the gates, they’ve fucked up. They obviously weren’t expecting any customers.’
A middle-aged gent in a dark suit got out of the car and went to undo the padlock. He tried for a couple of minutes, gave it a big shake, scratched his head, looked back at the car and tried again. Finally he turned and said something through the car window. Out got a young-looking couple, the bird a not-bad-looking blonde in a tight, short skirt. There was no way they could approach the home of their dreams except by climbing over the stone wall beside the gate. Fatty Estate Agent went first, and reached back to give the blonde a hand. Up she came, arse-on to us, with her skirt riding halfway up her kidneys, and displaying a pair of outrageous mauve knickers.
‘Phworrrhh!’ went Mike.
‘What’s the matter? You desperate?’
‘You haven’t been out here for a fucking year, mate.’
The clients straightened themselves out, walked up the drive and in through the front door. As Pat had noticed on our initial recce, it wasn’t locked, and the agent pushed it straight open. The visit wasn’t a success. In about thirty seconds the party was out again and off back towards the car; they never went behind the house or anywhere near the barn. One look at the cottage was enough for them. Then it was back over the wall, a repeat flash of the royal purple, and another dying groan from Mike. ‘Phworrrhh!’ he went again, as if someone had stuck a knife in his guts. The agent took one final, disgusted look at the padlock and drove off.
Somewhere, sometime, I’d seen knickers that colour before. Suddenly I got it: Singapore, on an exercise. We’d done a drop into Changhi airfield, and afterwards we were invited into the RAF officers’ mess for a drink. There in a glass-fronted showcase on the wall was a pair of purple satin pants, exactly the colour of the ones we’d just seen, and underneath, the legend: ‘SUPERSONIC KNICKERS. These knickers were wrested from GLORIA in the JACARANDA NIGHT CLUB on 14 January 1976, and flown at Mach 1.5 in a Mk 3 Phantom of 43 Squadron, by Squadron Leader Jeremy Turner, the following morning. RIP.’
I told Mike the story, and he struck back with one about how a colleague of his in the Det had started going out with this slapper from Belfast. Everyone knew that her brother was in the PIRA, and told him for Christ’s sake to be careful. His only concession was to ask a couple of his mates to follow him in a second vehicle when he went to pick her up. He’d hardly got her on board when they saw something fly out of the passenger’s window. Afterwards, when they asked him what it was, he explained, ‘I said to her, “Ey — last time you weren’t wearing any knickers. What you got some on now for?” Whereupon she made a grab and rrrippp, away they went, and there’s her saying, “Not any more, I haven’t!” ’
Talk of knickers whiled away an enjoyable few minutes, but still we had six more hours of daylight to get through. All day long rain had threatened but held off. It was lucky for us that there were no cattle on the ground, either in our field or in any of the ones adjoining. That meant there was no reason for the local farmer to come out and look around. A shepherd with a collie would have been the worst, but there were no sheep either. With the wind blowing steadily from the cottage and away down the open country behind us, it was safe to have the occasional brew, and to boil up a couple of hot meals. As I’d expected, Mike’s manners in the OP were pretty good; once the stink of his aftershave had worn off — no joke, a potential danger — there wasn’t a lot I could criticize.
As always on that kind of job, the prime enemy was boredom. After a couple of hours with no activity or movement, I was bored out of my mind. My thoughts went round and round in circles, but kept coming back to two subjects. The nice one was Tracy, the less pleasant was the edginess in my mother-in-law’s voice. It wasn’t like her to be as sharp as that.
At least, when Mike and I were both awake, we could chat. As casually as possible, I brought up the subject of Declan Farrell. I’d pretended I’d heard about the chain-saw incident earlier, from someone else, and wondered what sort of a man he might be. ‘He must be a right hard bugger, to do a thing like that.’
‘He is,’ Mike agreed. ‘He’s supposed to have a filthy temper. I don’t know how many people he’s kneecapped.’
‘What drives him? I mean, what makes him do it?’
‘What makes any of them do it? It’s bred into them from infancy. You’ve heard those street kids of three and four effing and blinding. You’ve seen them throwing stones at the patrols. It’s in their blood. They grow up knowing nothing else.’
‘Have you ever seen Farrell?’
‘A couple of times. He’s quite an impressive-looking guy, I have to admit.’
‘But he’d never actually do an operation now? Too senior?’
‘I dunno. They’ve lost a lot of lower-grade operators lately. They may be thin on the ground. Besides, he likes getting involved. Also, he’s that arrogant, he might come out just to show the lads how things should be done. If they’ve fucked up on the last couple of jobs — as they have — he might fancy giving a lead himself.’
‘You don’t think he’ll come tonight?’
‘Could do. Why — you scared?’
I forced myself to laugh. ‘No, just curious.’ Suddenly I realized I’d used that expression before, and disciplined myself never to use it again.
* * *
There was no change of plan during the day. Every time the desk came through the message was the same: ‘NTR — Nothing to Report.’ In the absence of any more news from the touts, we assumed that the shoot would go down at 2200 that night.
On that dull winter afternoon, soon after five, we moved forward again to take up the same position in the ditch. I noticed that the wind was dropping and the temperature falling, but paid no particular attention.
From the net we knew that the babysitting team had stayed in situ, like us, and that the Det were moving out into the country again. So were our intercept cars. Across a wide area of the countryside, the trap was being set.
This time the players were early — and where they came from, nobody could say. We got no wa
rning; somehow, they eluded the Det. Suddenly, at only 2120, there were lights coming up the road from behind us. I managed to put a call through while the vehicle was still at the gate and somebody was undoing the lock, but then, as it cruised in past us, we had to go quiet.
This time it was a car — an old two-litre Rover, superficially similar to our own Interceptor. The driver swung round to the right beside the end of the cottage, then backed out and came forward again, to stop, facing the road, almost in front of us. Close as we were, we couldn’t see the registration number, which looked as if it had been deliberately caked with cowshit. Four men got out and slammed the doors, not bothering to keep the noise down. I guessed they’d all had a couple of pints. Then one opened the boot, lifted out a bundle, and all four walked across to the barn. Seconds later somebody struck a match and a gas pressure-lamp hissed into action.
A harsh yellow glare flooded the inside of the building. One of the men seemed to realize that they were being careless, because he came back to the threshold, looking to right and left, and said loudly, ‘This fecking barn’s supposed to have doors on it, too. Whatever happened to them?’
‘Bollocks to the doors,’ said another voice. ‘Get fecking changed.’