Soldier U: Bandit Country

by Peter Corrigan

  There was no trace left of the clean-cut young officer who had joined the Queen’s Regiment back in 1977, or even of the breezy subaltern who had agonized through SAS selection eight years previously. Turnover of officers among the SAS was much swifter than that of troopers; they rarely served more than five or six years with a Sabre Squadron. Early had come over with Ulster Troop in 1984 and gone undercover two years later. He was an ‘independent’, operating now under the aegis of MI5, but he never forgot where he had come from. If he died here, his name would be inscribed on the Clock Tower in Hereford, where all the dead of the SAS left their names.

  Early sipped his whiskey patiently. He was waiting for a friend.

  James Cordwain came through the door. Early recognized him instantly, though he hadn’t seen him in years. The hair was longer of course – all the SAS seemed to believe that long hair was obligatory when serving in Northern Ireland. But he still had the aristocratic bearing, the finely chiselled jaw and flashing eyes. He looked every inch an officer. Early sighed, ordered another drink and took it into a snug.

  It was ten minutes before Cordwain joined him, smiling.

  ‘You’re not an easy man to get hold of, John.’

  ‘The name is Dominic, Dominic McAteer,’ Early told him sharply. Cordwain winced.

  ‘Why did we have to meet anyway? A phone call could have done it.’

  Cordwain shook his head, regaining his self-assurance quickly. ‘I had to talk to you in person.’

  ‘Talk then.’

  Cordwain looked at him, slightly offended. They had been good friends once, in the Falklands. Early seemed aged, irritable beyond his years. It was undercover work that did it, Cordwain decided.

  ‘I have a Q car down the street. We can talk in there,’ he said. A Q car was the army’s name for an unmarked vehicle.

  ‘Are you mad? Every dicker in the city knows a Q car when he sees one. We’re safe enough here. I know the barman. He thinks I’m just another unemployed navvy and you’re in here about a job.’

  ‘Which, in a way, I am.’

  ‘So tell me about it.’

  Cordwain tried hard not to look smug. ‘It’s on.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘As soon as you can relocate. We have an opening down in Cross. Construction.’

  ‘Not on a fucking army base, I trust.’

  Cordwain grinned. ‘Not likely. No, a local firm, Lavery’s, has been given a contract – new bungalows.’

  Early’s eyes narrowed. ‘It’s a front, is it?’

  ‘Yes and no. The contract is real enough, but our people are the ones behind it, buried three layers deep. Get yourself settled in, and then we’ll start working on a channel of communication.’

  ‘I take it Special Branch came up with fuck-all.’

  ‘They don’t even know you exist.’

  Early nodded. He liked it that way.

  ‘What about our friends the spooks?’ he said, referring to his handlers in the Intelligence Service.

  ‘You’re on leave, seeing a sick auntie. They think you’re back across the water. They’ll be mightily pissed off when the truth comes out though.’

  ‘Fuck them. This is my last caper, James. After this I’m getting out.’

  ‘I’m sorry about Jeff. I take it he’s the reason behind all this.’

  Jeffrey Early had hero-worshipped John and gone into the army as soon as he could, following in his revered older brother’s footsteps. But the Border Fox had killed Jeff three months ago. One bullet, taking off most of his head. Early had not even been able to go to the funeral.

  ‘I want this bastard, James. I really want him.’

  Cordwain nodded. ‘Don’t let hatred cloud your thinking, John. Remember, your job will be identification. I provide the Button Men.

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Charles Boyd for one. You don’t know him, but he’s a good man.’

  ‘I don’t want him tripping over my shadow, James. This South Armagh lot are the most formidable we’ve ever encountered. They sniff the colour green and I’m dead. Tell your man to keep his distance.’

  Cordwain was not happy. ‘They have to provide effective back-up.’

  ‘So long as they don’t compromise me.’

  ‘They won’t. I’ll have a word. Boyd will want to meet you as soon as is practicable.’

  ‘Why, for fuck’s sake?’

  ‘To get a feel of the thing. He wants you to draw him a few pictures.’

  ‘Are you saying he’s still wet behind the ears?’

  Cordwain grinned. ‘A little. He’s out in west Tyrone at the minute, but that op should finish within a day at most.’

  ‘Terrific.’ Early finished his drink and stood up, glancing quickly over the wooden partition of the snug. The bar was still more or less deserted.

  ‘I’ll be in touch.’

  Then he left, exchanging a farewell with the barman as he went. Cordwain lingered a while to leave a gap between them. This had to be the most hare-brained operation he had ever begun. But the men Upstairs had given the go-ahead, and besides, he did not like doing nothing while British soldiers were slaughtered with impunity. Talking once to an officer in the ‘Green Army’, he had been struck by a phase the man had used. ‘We’re just figure 11s, out standing on the streets,’ the officer had said. A ‘figure 11’ was the standard target used on firing ranges. Cordwain did not like the image. It was time the terrorists took a turn at ducking bullets.

  Lieutenant Charles Boyd shifted position minutely to try to get some blood circulating in his cramped and chilled legs. The rain had been pouring down for hours now, reducing visibility and soaking him to the marrow. There were streams of freezing water trickling down the neck of his combat smock and between his buttocks. He was lying in a rapidly deepening puddle with the stock of an Armalite M16 assault rifle close to his cheek. His belt-order dug into his slim waist and his elbows were sinking deeper into peat-black mud.

  ‘July in Tyrone,’ his companion whispered. ‘Jesus fucking Christ. Why didn’t I become a grocer?’

  ‘Shut it, Haymaker.’

  ‘Yes, boss,’ the other man mumbled. The hissing downpour of the rain reduced the chances of their being heard but there was no point in taking risks.

  It was getting on towards evening; the second evening they had spent in the observation post. They were screened by a tangle of alder and willow; behind them a stream gurgled, swollen by the rain. Their camouflaged bergens rested between their ankles.

  They had not moved in thirty-six hours. Boyd began to wonder if the SB had been wrong. He had been tasked to provide a Reactive Observation Post to monitor an arms cache which was to have been visited last night, but no one had shown. The cache was at the base of a tree eighty metres away – they could see it plainly even with the rain. The local ASU, an IRA Active Service Unit of four men, was planning a ‘spectacular’ for the forthcoming Twelfth of July marches. Boyd and his team were to forestall them, and had been discreetly given the go-ahead to use all necessary means to achieve that aim. To Boyd that meant only one thing: any terrorist who approached this cache was going to die. It would give the Unionists something to crow about on their holiday and sweeten relations between them and the Northern Ireland Office. Boyd didn’t give a shit about either, but he wanted to nail this ASU. They had been a thorn in 8 Brigade’s flesh for some months now, though they were not as slick as their colleagues in Armagh.

  Lying beside Boyd was Corporal Kevin ‘Haymaker’ Lewis, so called because of his awesome punch. It was rumoured he had killed an Argie in the Falklands with one blow of his fist. Haymaker was an amiable man, though built like a gorilla. He had the tremendous patience and stamina of the typical SAS trooper, but he loved grousing.

  Hidden some distance to the rear of the pair were Taff Gilmore and Raymond Chandler. All troopers seemed to have some nickname or other. Taff was so called not because he was Welsh but because he had a fine baritone voice which he exercised at every opportun
ity. And Raymond – well, what else could the lads call someone with the surname Chandler? Some of them, though, called him ‘The Big Sleep’ because of his love of his sleeping bag.

  It was unusual for an officer to accompany an op such as this. SAS officers had on the whole stopped accompanying the other ranks into the field since the death of Captain Richard Westmacott in 1980, gunned down by an M60 machine-gun in Belfast’s Antrim Road. But Boyd loved working in the field – not for him the drudgery of the ops room in some security base. He knew that the men called him ‘our young Rupert’ behind his back, but he also knew that they respected him for his decision.

  God, the bloody rain, the bloody mud, the bloody Provos. The players, as the Army termed the key terrorist figures, were probably warm and safe in their houses. Not for them the misery of this long wait in the rain, the pissing and shitting into plastic bags, the cold tinned food.

  Boyd felt Haymaker tense beside him. His mind had been wandering. The big trooper looked his officer in the eye, then nodded out at the waterlogged meadow with its straggling hedgerows. There was movement out there in the rain, a dark flickering of shadow close to the hedge. Immediately Boyd’s boredom and weariness disappeared. The evening was darkening but it was still too light to use Night Vision Goggles, which made the darkest night into daylight. He squinted, his fist tightening round the pistol-grip of the M16. One thumb gently levered off the safety-catch. The weapon had been cocked long ago, the magazine emptied and cleaned twice in the past thirty-six hours. The M16 was a good weapon for a nice heavy rate of fire, but it was notoriously prone to jamming when dirty.

  Boyd’s boot tapped Haymaker on the ankle. He gave the thumbs down, indicating that the enemy was in sight. Haymaker grinned, rain dripping off his massive, camouflaged face, and sighed down the barrel of his own Armalite. Boyd could hear his own heartbeat thumping in his ears.

  Two men were walking warily up the line of the hedge. This had to be it – who else would be tramping the fields on such a shitty evening? Boyd forced himself to remember the mugshots of the key Tyrone players. Would it be Docherty? Or McElwaine?

  The men had stopped. Boyd cursed silently. Had they been compromised? Besides him, Haymaker was like a great, wet statue. The pair of them hardly dared breathe.

  They were moving again, thank Christ. Boyd could see them clearly now, buttoned up in parkas, their trousers soaked by the wet grass. McElwaine and the youngster, Conlan.

  The two IRA men stopped at the tree which marked the cache, looked around again, and then bent to the ground and began rummaging in the grass. One of them produced a handgun with a wet glint of metal. They were pulling up turves, their fingers slipping on the wet earth.

  Should he initiate the ambush now? No. Boyd wanted a ‘clean’ kill – he wanted both terrorists to have weapons in their hands when he opened up. That way there would be no awkward questions asked afterwards. The ‘yellow card’, the little document all soldiers in the Province carried, specified that it was only permitted to open fire without warning if the terrorist was in a position to endanger life, either the firer’s or someone else’s.

  They were hauling things out of the hole now: bin-liner-wrapped shapes.

  ‘I’ll take McElwaine,’ Boyd whispered to Haymaker. He felt a slight tap from the trooper’s boot in agreement.

  There. It looked like a Heckler & Koch G3: a good weapon. McElwaine was cradling the rifle like a new toy, discarding the bin-liner it had been wrapped in.

  Boyd tightened his fist, and the M16 exploded into life. A hot cartridge-case struck his left cheek as Haymaker opened up also, but he hardly felt it. They were both firing bursts of automatic, the heavy, sickly smell of cordite hanging in the air about their heads.

  McElwaine was thrown backwards, the G3 flying from his hands. Boyd saw the parka being shredded, dark pieces of flesh and bone spraying out from the massive exit wounds. Then McElwaine was on the ground, moving feebly. Boyd heard the ‘dead man’s click’ from his weapon and changed magazines swiftly, then opened up again. McElwaine’s body jumped and jerked as the 5.56mm rounds tore in and out of it.

  He was aware that Conlan was down too. Haymaker changed mags also, then continued to fire. When they had emptied two mags each Boyd called a halt. They replenished their weapons and then lay breathing fast, their ears ringing and the adrenalin pumping through their veins like high-octane fuel. Haymaker was struggling not to laugh.

  Boyd pressed the ‘squash’ button on the Landmaster radio to tell Taff and Raymond the mission had been a success. Then he and Haymaker lay motionless, rifles still in the shoulder, looking out on the meadow with its two shattered corpses.

  Ten minutes they lay there, not moving – just watching. Then Boyd nudged Haymaker and the big man took off towards the bodies. Boyd pressed the squash button again, twice. Taff and Raymond would close in now.

  Haymaker examined both bodies, then waved. Boyd grinned, then thumbed the switch on the radio once more.

  ‘Zero, this is Mike One Alpha, message, over.’

  ‘Mike One Alpha, send over.’

  ‘Mike One Alpha, Ampleforth, over.’

  ‘Zero, roger out.’

  Boyd had given the code for a successful operation. In a few minutes a helicopter would arrive to spirit the SAS team away. The Green Army and the police would arrive to wrap up the more mundane details. Boyd ran over to Haymaker. The big trooper was kneeling by the bodies. It was hard to see the expression on his camouflaged face in the gathering twilight.

  ‘Fucking weapons weren’t loaded, boss. The magazines are still in the hole.’

  Boyd shrugged, slipping on a pair of black Northern Ireland-issue gloves.

  ‘That’s not a problem.’

  He reached into the hole and fetched the loaded magazines that the IRA men had not had time to fix to their weapons. Then he carefully loaded the G3 and an Armalite that was still in the cache, and placed them beside the two bodies.

  ‘That’s more fucking like it. No one will whinge about civil liberties now.’

  The two men laughed. The adrenalin was still making them feel a little drunk. They turned at a noise and found Taff and Raymond approaching, grins all over their filthy faces.

  ‘Scratch two more of the bad guys, eh boss?’ Taff said.

  ‘Damn straight.’ Boyd lifted his head. He could hear the thump of the chopper off in the rain-filled sky. They had timed it nicely – there was just enough light for a pick-up.

  ‘Right, let’s clean up this place. I don’t want any kit left lying around for the RUC to sniff over.’ He paused. ‘Well done, lads. This was a good one.’

  ‘Bit of a payback for those poor bastards in Armagh,’ Haymaker said. He nudged one of the broken bodies with his foot.

  ‘You’re playing with the big boys now, Paddy.’

  Chapter 3

  Armagh

  It was good to be out of the city, Early thought. Belfast was a depressing hole at times, as claustrophobic and as deadly as some Stone Age village in a jungle. There were all the little invisible boundaries. One street was safe, the one next to it was not. This was Loyalist, that was Republican. This was a safe pub, that was a death-trap. So much depended on names and nuances, even the way the people spoke, the things they said, the football teams they supported, the sports they played.

  Not that Armagh was any different. He must remember that. But it was good to see green fields, cows grazing, tractors meandering along the quiet roads. Hard to believe these places were battlefields in a vicious little war.

  He took the bus from Armagh city, through Keady and Newtownhamilton, down to Crossmaglen – ‘Cross’ to soldiers and locals alike. Early preferred travelling by bus. It was less risky than using a car, and fitted in with his identity as an unemployed bricklayer.

  The bus was stopped at vehicle checkpoints three times in its journey south, and soldiers who seemed both tense and bored got on to walk up and down the aisle, looking at faces and luggage, and occasionally asking for
ID. At two of the VCPs Early was asked his name, destination and the purpose of his journey. It amused and relieved him that the soldiers seemed to find him a suspicious-looking character. The other passengers stared stonily ahead when the bus was checked, but when the soldiers had left one or two of them smiled at him, commiserating. Early shrugged back at them, smiling in return. His false ID, his accent and his motives for travelling to Crossmaglen were impeccable. He was Dominic McAteer, a bricklayer looking for work with Lavery’s Construction in the town.

  Lavery’s offices were in a small estate called Rathkeelan, to the north-west of Crossmaglen. Early got off the bus and stood looking around, hands in pockets, his duffle bag on his back. He bore no ID, but strapped to the inside of his right ankle was a compact Walther 9mm semiautomatic; not as effective as the Browning High Powers the SAS usually carried, but far more easily concealed. It could fit in his underpants if it had to.

  Early passed beautifully painted murals on the whitewashed walls of the houses, the silhouettes of Balaclava-clad men bearing Armalites, and on one wall the recently repainted tally ‘Provos 9 Brits 0’ and below it the slogan ‘One Shot, One Kill’.

  His jaw tightened with anger for a second. His brother was one of those included in that score.

  Then he recollected himself, and headed for the door of the nearest bar, whistling ‘The Wild Colonial Boy’.

  It was dark inside, as all Irish pubs were. He dumped his duffle bag with a sigh and rubbed the back of his thick neck. A cluster of men sitting and standing with pints in their hands paused in their conversation to look at him. He smiled and nodded. The barman approached, a large, florid man wiping a glass.

  ‘What can I get you?’

  ‘Ach, give us a Guinness and a wee Bush.’

  The barman nodded. The conversations resumed. Good Evening Ulster had just started on the dusty TV that perched on a shelf near the ceiling. Early pretended to watch it, while discreetly clocking the faces of the other customers. No players present. He was glad.