Soldier E: Sniper Fire in Belfast

by Shaun Clarke

  ‘Aye. It’s a PIRA Active Service Unit of four men. Part of the wing I keep the books for. They’re the ones that took out your ten sources before Phillips killed himself. You’ve been wanting them anyway.’

  ‘Damn, yes!’ Cranfield whispered.

  ‘The leader, Michael Quinn, lives right opposite me. He and the others meet reg’larly in his house. When they’re not there, they’re usually in the streets spyin’ an’ accusin’, holdin’ summary trials in back rooms, or personally supervisin’ the punishments. I’ll point them out to ya. Ya can’t take pictures or be seen jottin’ notes, so remember their mugs as best ya can.’

  ‘I want more than that.’

  ‘Yer goin’ t’get it. Just bide yer time.’

  When they stopped at the next traffic lights, O’Leary said: ‘Have a look at that bunch on the corner without makin’ it obvious. D’ya see them?’

  Cranfield turned his head left while ostensibly scratching his right cheek. He saw a bunch of men on the street corner. Four were in their teens, all with short-cropped hair, dressed in the usual scruffy bomber jackets, jeans and big boots, and drinking from cans of extra-strong beer. They were listening intently, nervously, to a man in a soiled gaberdine raincoat. Grey-haired and with a hard, angry face, he was jabbing his forefinger at them as he spoke.

  ‘Yes,’ Cranfield said, ‘I see them.’

  ‘Four kids and an older man, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Ignore the kids – they’re just dickers. The older man is Michael Quinn. He’s the leader of the PIRA unit chosen to take you out – the one who lives opposite me.’ The traffic lights changed to green and they drove on, sticking to a relatively slow, steady pace. ‘We’ll soon be reaching another bookie’s,’ O’Leary said. ‘A few hundred yards up on the left. Don’t slow down – just scan ’im as quickly as possible. He’s called Patrick Mulgrew. He collects the protection money from that bookie’s and he’s there to check people comin’ in an’ out. He’s part of the hit team.’

  Even before the car reached the betting shop, Cranfield saw the man standing outside, hunched against the wind in his gaberdine raincoat and blowing into his frozen hands. As they passed him, Cranfield studied his profile, then his full face – hollow-cheeked, thin-lipped, dark circles under the eyes.

  ‘I’ve got him,’ he said.

  ‘Right,’ O’Leary replied. ‘I live in the next street. Everyone enterin’ or leavin’ is checked by PIRA members workin’ on shifts in four-man teams – two men at each end of the street. Today the men at this end are the other two picked t’hit you. Try t’check them as we turn into the street. Drive slowly and don’t stare. If ya haven’t enough time, turn around and come back out again.’

  ‘OK,’Cranfield said.

  As the car reached the corner, Cranfield saw the two men standing at the far side of the street, both smoking and watching those coming and going. ‘That’s them,’ O’Leary confirmed. Cranfield managed to scan their faces and remember the details before the car straightened out and headed along the street.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Got them.’

  ‘The one on the right – nearest the Falls – was Seamus McGrath. The one on the left, nearest to us, was John Houlihan. Like Quinn, they’re hard men. Very experienced. That’s why they’ve been picked.’ They drove along the street, past rows of two-up, two-down terraced houses. ‘We’ll soon be reachin’ number thirty-seven,’ O’Leary said. ‘That’s the home of Michael Quinn, the leader of the pack. He lives there with ’is missus – his kids are all married – but he sends her t’the bingo when his mates come around. As I said, they meet regular, like – two or three times a week. The house directly opposite, number thirty-eight, is mine.’ Cranfield glanced at both houses as he drove past. ‘As you know,’ O’Leary said when they had passed, ‘I live there alone. So you get the Army to do a sweep of the street as cover while you move some men into m’loft for yer covert OP. While the sweep’s on, ya can bug Quinn’s house and hide anything else yer goin’ t’need. Ya keep tabs on that lot and then move against ’em at yer leisure. Ya have to set it up before I leave. Take ’em out when I’m gone.’

  ‘I will,’ Cranfield said.

  * * *

  Cranfield dropped O’Leary off where he had picked him up, near the Broadway, then drove back to the centre of town to the Europa Hotel. After being thoroughly checked by the private security guards, he was allowed to drive through the electronically controlled gates and park in the part of the forecourt enclosed by heavy-duty wire fencing and used as a car park.

  He went straight to the first-floor lounge bar, where he purchased a Bushmills at the counter. As usual, the bar was busy, mostly with journalists from London, male and female, most of whom smoked like trains, drank like fish, and talked in loud voices on the bar stools or in soft chairs and sofas placed around tables spaced well apart.

  Not wishing to be engaged in conversation, but always keen to listen, Cranfield sat at the bar until an empty table became available. Shortly afterwards, Captain Dubois entered, wearing an immaculate pinstripe suit, a shirt and tie, and highly polished black shoes. Having ordered a whisky at the bar, he sat down facing Cranfield. He did not look too happy.

  ‘Why do you always insist on meeting here?’ he asked. ‘This place is swarming with reporters from London.’

  ‘I’m starved for attractive women,’ Cranfield replied, ‘and Fleet Street has lots of them.’

  Dubois glanced automatically around the packed, smoky bar, taking note of a couple of very appealing ladies, then he turned back to Cranfield.

  ‘Keep your mind on your work,’ he said. ‘So, what’s the business?’

  ‘We kicked up a bit of a dust storm,’ Cranfield said, ‘and the debris is raining down.’

  Dubois glanced right and left, as if nervous about being overhead, then looked directly at Cranfield again. ‘O’Halloran?’ Cranfield nodded assent. ‘So what’s the dust storm?’ When Cranfield related what he had just learnt from O’Leary, Dubois looked even less pleased. ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘As if it wasn’t bad enough with all this flak in the papers about SAS assassinations. I’m beginning to think, Cranfield, that you’re causing me more trouble than you’re worth.’

  ‘The SAS get blamed for a lot of things they’ve never done.’

  ‘We all know who topped O’Halloran.’

  ‘I should remind you that you were present.’

  ‘As for that stone-thrower yesterday …’

  ‘He was about to fire a Webley pistol.’

  ‘Nevertheless, it was your damned SAS man who …’

  ‘Don’t forget,’ Cranfield interjected, enjoying Dubois’ discomfort, ‘that it wasn’t just the SAS involved. The driver, indeed the man in charge of the team, was your own Sergeant Lovelock.’

  Dubois rolled his eyes and glanced across the room, momentarily distracted from his own concerns by the long, shapely legs of a woman smoking and drinking at the bar. Perhaps remembering that she was almost certainly a journalist, Dubois shook his head again and sipped some whisky.

  ‘Am I included in their hit list?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m delighted to hear it. They want only you.’

  ‘That appears to be the case.’

  ‘You don’t appear to be concerned.’

  ‘I’m not. I’m planning to get them first.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I know who they are. O’Leary pointed them out to me. He lives directly opposite the house they meet in, so I’m going to call for a cordon-and-search sweep of the street and plant an OP in O’Leary’s place. The PIRA house will be bugged at the same time. We keep tabs on them and move when we’re good and ready, knowing just where they’ll be.’

  Dubois thought about it. ‘This is getting tricky,’ he said. ‘I’ve a feeling that we’ve stirred up too much with that single cross-border hit.’

  ‘The ones we’ve stirred up are the bastards who took out our ten sources and caus
ed Phillips’s suicide. If we take them out, it’ll look like retaliation, which is the kind of language their mates will understand. It’ll give us the edge and begin the required cleansing of Belfast and, later, south Armagh.’

  Startled, Dubois stared at Cranfield. ‘Is that what you’re after?’

  ‘Yes,’ Cranfield said.

  ‘You’re too ambitious for your own good, Lieutenant.’

  ‘Don’t ever mention rank in this bar.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Cranfield, but the accusation stands.’

  Cranfield grinned. ‘I don’t believe in the concept of too much ambition. I believe in doing what’s necessary. And whatever’s necessary to clean up Northern Ireland, is what I’m willing to do.’

  ‘You’re going against the grain of your own Regiment,’ Dubois said. ‘The Regiment admires initiation, but not big timing – and that’s what you’re starting to do by taking matters, including the law, into your own hands. A certain independence of spirit has always been admired in the Regiment, but you’re wildly overstepping the mark.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have crossed the border without permission, let alone put a stop to someone there.

  ‘Then you shouldn’t have helped me.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘Listen,’ Cranfield said, leaning across the table to place his hand on Dubois’ wrist and gaze intently at him. ‘This bloody business in Northern Ireland has been going on too long, with the whole of the British intelligence and military complex being humiliated by a bunch of former amateurs. Sooner or later this has to be stopped, but it won’t be as long as we abide by the rules while the IRA’s completely disregarding them. There’s no Geneva Convention here. There are no Queensberry rules. We’ve been sent over here to finally clean out the whole area, and if we have to do what they do to succeed, then damn it, let’s do it.’

  ‘Hence O’Halloran and that lad yesterday.’

  ‘O’Halloran was planned, the lad yesterday wasn’t, but the two combined have clearly succeeded in bringing those bastards out of the closet. Now that they’re out, let’s get them and put an end to it.’

  ‘My God!’ Dubois said. ‘You really mean it. You think you can win this whole war.’

  ‘I can certainly try,’ Cranfield said. He sat back in his chair, glanced at the ladies on the bar stools, then returned his steady, hazel-eyed gaze to Dubois. ‘Stop worrying about O’Halloran,’ he said. ‘What we did, did the trick.’

  Dubois sipped some whisky, ran his forefinger around the glass, then shook his head again from side to side.

  ‘Damn it,’ he said bitterly. ‘We shouldn’t have done it. My first instincts were right. Now we’ve got a damned range war on our hands and the blame will lie squarely with the SAS.’

  ‘Or 14 Intelligence Company,’ Cranfield reminded him.

  ‘Even worse,’ Dubois said.

  ‘You see it as wrong; I see it as right,’ Cranfield said. ‘Let’s have a damned range war. Let them come out of the woodwork. We want to break the IRA in south Armagh and this opens that gate. They’re showing their faces at last and we’re going to take them out.’

  ‘We’d better,’ Dubois said.

  Chapter 7

  ‘So what the fuck did you do?’ Gumboot asked Jock McGregor over a beer in the busy NAAFI canteen in Bessbrook. He was sitting at a long table with Jock, Ricketts, Sergeant Lampton, Danny ‘Baby Face’ Porter, ‘Taff’ Burgess, the recently ‘blooded’ Martin, and the British Army sergeant, Ralph Lovelock.

  As usual, Sergeant ‘Dead-eye Dick’ Parker was drinking all alone at the bar, not smiling at anyone.

  ‘You mean apart from topping fucking teenagers and starting the Third World War?’

  ‘That teenager had a Webley pistol and was ready to use it,’ Martin, who was growing bolder, reminded Jock. ‘So Ricketts had no choice.’

  ‘You don’t aim to wound,’ Danny agreed, speaking as quietly, as shyly, as always. ‘Lieutenant Cranfield confirmed that.’

  ‘He would,’ Sergeant Lampton said. ‘Lieutenant Cranfield is a man who likes action and goes looking for it.’

  ‘No bad thing,’ Danny replied.

  ‘It can be,’ Lampton said. ‘This isn’t Oman, where the enemy was clear-cut. It’s a war on British soil and we’re subject to British laws, so certain actions have to be accounted for. If you shoot the wrong man here, you could find yourself on trial with a life sentence hanging over your head. So going to look for action here isn’t a wise thing to do.’

  ‘Right,’ Ricketts said, ‘I agree completely, Frank. I had to shoot that kid – he was getting ready to shoot me – but the local papers, as well as the IRA, are already talking about murderers and demanding justice. You wouldn’t get that in Oman, nor in Malaya. So you don’t go looking for trouble in this place, and, even if you happen to find it, you certainly have to look before you leap.’

  ‘Correct,’ Lampton said, ‘In case you break the law, if nothing else. An awful lot of British soldiers have been put on trial just because they lost their cool and shot the wrong bloody person. That’s why you don’t seek it out.’

  ‘So what did you do, Jock?’ Gumboot repeated. ‘Apart from jacking off to pass the time?’

  ‘Apart from jacking off, the same as you,’ Jock said. ‘We just drove around – me, Danny, Dead-eye Dick, and a sergeant from 14 Intelligence Company.’

  ‘Sergeant Hampton,’ Lovelock informed them.

  ‘Yeah, right,’ Jock agreed. ‘Sergeant Hampton. Good bloke. We saw the sights, took pictures, wrote notes on what we’d seen, and in general got to know the city. What a fucking nightmare! Schoolkids wrecking cars, teenagers grilling you at traffic lights, fat hags spitting at the soldiers and police, all of them acting like they were barefoot on razors. Buildings burnt out, bombed out, boarded up, with their windows, if not smashed, covered in heavy-duty mesh wire. Tanks and armoured pigs. Sniper fire at least once every hour. A maze of backstreets and narrow, dark alleys, perfect for killing. A right piss-hole, in fact.’

  ‘Where on earth did you go?’ Taff asked.

  ‘Andersonstown, Mountpottinger, the Falls, Whiterock, the Ardoyne, that bloody Ballymurphy Bull Ring – when not wanking, of course. We’ve seen it all, Taff, and we’re really looking forward to our stay here.’

  ‘At least we don’t have to deal with flying beetles, hornets, red and black ants, centipedes, camel spiders and scorpions,’ Ricketts said. ‘Like we did in Oman.’

  ‘I preferred it there,’ Lampton said. ‘It wasn’t a rat’s maze of backstreets. It was all out in the open and the enemy couldn’t be mistaken. He might pop up from behind a rock, but you knew you could shoot at him without being grilled by the green slime or the RUC CID.’

  ‘Right,’ Jock said. ‘As our Army sergeant told us, here you’re fighting children, teenagers and screaming women, as well as the IRA. Not good, folks. Not helpful.’

  ‘Still,’ Gumboot said, ‘a man could make a good bit of money on the side here. As Sergeant Lovelock kindly informed us, the whole city’s run on graft and protection rackets, so we could form our own little syndicate.’

  ‘Right,’ Martin said, beginning to enjoy the sort of banter they always referred to as bullshit. ‘We offer protection from the Catholics and the Prods.’

  ‘Arrest them, then ask for a hand-out to let the poor bastards go again. That should rake in the shekels!’

  ‘You think it’s funny,’ Lampton said, ‘but this place can corrupt anyone. When the SAS first came here two of them, obviously thinking the whole place was lawless, attempted to rob a bank in Londonderry.’

  ‘I don’t believe it!’ Taff exclaimed.

  ‘It’s true,’ Ricketts told him. ‘Both of them got six years in prison and the SAS got a reputation it didn’t want.’

  ‘I mean, to attempt to rob a bank and then fail,’ Jock said in disgust. ‘They must have been crap-hats.’

  Young Danny glanced at Dead-eye D
ick, who was silently downing a pint at the bar. ‘He’s really quiet,’ Danny said.

  ‘Just like you,’ Martin said.

  ‘He’s a cold-blooded killer,’ Jock said, ‘who requires a wide berth. You remember that bastard in Oman, Gumboot? He was one weird companion!’

  ‘Right,’ Gumboot replied. ‘Always dressed up in Arab clothes and running around with the firqats. They say he is as good with a knife as he is with his rifle.’

  Danny stared admiringly at Parker, then gave a slight smile. ‘A good soldier,’ he said.

  ‘He is that,’ Ricketts told him, knowing that Danny admired the silent Dead-eye because the youngster, even in Continuation Training, had shown all the hallmarks of being just like him – a natural fighter and possibly a born killer, baby face or not. Ricketts checked his watch. ‘OK, men,’ he said. ‘Time to go. The Head Sheds await us.’

  Some of the men groaned melodramatically, but they finished their drinks, then filed out of the canteen to go to the briefing room.

  While the others were leaving, Danny went up to Dead-eye, tapped him on the shoulder, and spoke to him, telling him that the late-night briefing was about to begin. Dead-eye stared stonily at him, then nodded and waved him away. Danny grinned shyly at Ricketts as he left, then Dead-eye finished his drink, slid off the stool and walked up to Ricketts and Lampton.

  ‘Seems like a good kid,’ he said.

  ‘Not bad,’ Lampton replied.

  Dead-eye just nodded.

  Outside, in the freezing night air, they hurriedly crossed a stretch of wind-blown ground to the Portakabin used as a briefing room. Mercifully, it was bright and warm inside. Most of the men were already seated, so Ricketts and Lampton sat in the back row. The Head Sheds on the dais, in front of the blackboard, were Captain Dubois and Lieutenant Cranfield, both back in uniform. As before, Sergeant Lovelock was sitting at a desk beside them, guarding another pile of manila folders.

  ‘Evening, gentlemen,’ Lieutenant Cranfield said. ‘I trust you’re all in good spirits.’

  ‘We’d feel better if we were back in the bar, boss,’ Jock replied.