Soldier E: Sniper Fire in Belfast

by Shaun Clarke

  ‘When are the ASUs expected to get here?’

  ‘About noon.’

  ‘That gives us plenty of time. Have you come to help out?’

  ‘I’d love to, but I can’t,’ Cranfield said. ‘Unfortunately, this action has to look like self-defence, not something planned, so I can’t be seen to be part of it – and this little visit, incidentally, never happened.’

  ‘What’s the story?’

  ‘Having had Quinn’s cottage under surveillance for some time, you’d seen his men bringing in weapons, ammunition and explosives. You were deciding what to do about it when an ASU hit squad almost took you by surprise. Luckily, you saw them coming and were able to hit them before they hit you. Then you saw another bunch removing the weapons from the cottage, so you went after them as well, to stop them escaping. That’s the story. Stick to it.’

  ‘Will do,’ Dead-eye said.

  ‘Good luck, Sergeant.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Cranfield returned to the Gazelle and climbed back in. The rotors slipped out of neutral, started spinning faster, soon whipping up a minor storm, then lifted the chopper up off the hill. Dead-eye watched it flying off towards Bessbrook, beyond lush hills now visible in morning light, then he glanced flatly at Danny and nodded towards the OP.

  Danny went in first, with Dead-eye following him. Jock was having a breakfast of cheese and biscuits washed down with water. Martin was adjusting the bulky, tripod-mounted, Thorn EMI thermal imager at the viewing hole, but he turned around to face them when they entered.

  ‘Who was it?’ Jock asked.

  ‘Lieutenant Cranfield,’ Dead-eye replied.

  ‘What the fuck did he want?’ Jock asked, with no great respect.

  Dead-eye filled him in on the situation as explained by Lieutenant Cranfield. ‘The ASUs should be here about noon,’ he summarized, ‘and we have to be ready.’

  ‘So what’s the strategy, boss?’ Martin asked, sounding excited.

  Dead-eye stared steadily at him, then turned slightly aside, speaking mainly to Jock. ‘They have an RPG 7 rocket launcher, so my bet is they’ll stop part of the way up the hill to lob one into the OP, thinking we’re in it. Given the elevation requirements of the RPG 7, they’ll have to fire it from near the bottom of the hill, not much higher than the lower slopes, so that’s where we’ll locate – to take them out before they can fire the missile.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ Jock said.

  ‘There’s a hedgerow running down the side of the hill, about fifty yards west of the OP. Three of us will dig in there, near to where it levels out, and wait for the bastards to arrive. The fourth man will remain here on the GPMG to give us cover when the fire-fight commences.’

  ‘If we’re down that low,’ Jock reminded him, ‘we’ll be close to the road, which puts us within range of the fire-power of the ASU team clearing out Quinn’s place.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Dead-eye said. ‘Which gives us a legitimate excuse to attack them as well and get our hands on the incriminating evidence – the weapons, ammo and explosives from Quinn’s cottage.’

  ‘One of Cranfield’s little dodges.’

  ‘Pretty damned good,’ Martin said. ‘He’s a hell of an officer, Lieutenant Cranfield. He knows just what he’s doing.’

  ‘I’ll bet he does,’ Jock said. ‘So who stays in the OP?’

  ‘You,’ Dead-eye told him. ‘Apart from me, you’re the most experienced, so you shouldn’t need supervision. I trust you to use your initiative and not make mistakes.’

  ‘Such as shooting us instead of the ASU team,’ Martin said with a wide grin.

  ‘If I shoot you,’ Jock said, ‘it’ll be intentional. I don’t make mistakes.’

  ‘You two,’ Dead-eye said to Martin and Danny, ‘will come with me and do what I tell you. We’ll need short-handled pickaxes and spades for the scrapes. Attach the M203 grenade launchers to your M16s. At my signal, you’ll lay two grenades down on the ASU. When they explode, Jock’ll take that as the signal to open up with the GPMG. What damage not inflicted by Jock, will be inflicted by us. OK, let’s get going.’

  They’re not coming until noon,’ Martin reminded him.

  ‘You’ve got something better to do up here, Trooper?’ Dead-eye asked.

  ‘No, boss.’

  Then let’s get the fuck down that hill and make sure we’re ready. They might get here before noon.’

  ‘Yes, boss!’ Martin snapped.

  ‘Whatever way it goes,’ Jock said, ‘this OP is finished, so take that thermal imager away and let me put the machine-gun in its place.’

  ‘Right,’ Martin said. ‘But I’ll leave the Nikon with the image intensifier so that you can take photos when they arrive. They’ll be helpful as evidence.’

  Jock glanced at Dead-eye who simply nodded, acknowledging that Martin, though cocky, was right.

  ‘Aye,’ Jock said, ‘you do that.’

  Dead-eye and Danny checked their weapons, ensured that they had a plentiful supply of 30-round magazines, then clipped short-handled spades and pickaxes to their belts. As they were doing so, Jock set up the tripod for the GPMG. Meanwhile, Martin unscrewed the bulky thermal imager from its tripod, then removed it and the tripod from in front of the viewing hole. Martin placed the thermal imager back in its canvas carrier while Jock set the GPMG up on its tripod, with the barrel poking out through the viewing hole, angled down the hill, beside the Nikon with the image intensifier, also mounted on a tripod at the viewing hole. As Jock was feeding the ammunition belt into the GPMG, which normally required a two-man team, Dead-eye slid a spade and a pickaxe towards Martin, saying: ‘Here, clip these to your belt and take as many magazines as you can reasonably carry. Plus fragmentation and buckshot grenades for the M203s. Let’s give them a sore arse.’

  Martin grinned and did as he was told.

  ‘Are you OK, Jock?’ Dead-eye asked.

  Jock, now sitting on a wooden box behind the GPMG, stuck his thumb up in the air. ‘Straight line-of-sight between here and the cottage. Can’t miss, boss.’

  ‘You fire when the grenades go off,’ Dead-eye reminded him. ‘One belt’s all you need.’

  ‘No sweat,’ Jock said.

  ‘OK,’ Dead-eye said to the others. ‘Let’s get the fuck down that hill. See you later, Jock.’

  ‘Right, boss,’ Jock said.

  Holding his 5.56mm Colt Commando in the Belfast Cradle, Dead-eye crawled out, followed by Martin and Danny. Once outside, in the grey light of morning, they straightened up and headed down the hill at a half crouch, zigzagging automatically over the boulder-strewn grass and turf, heading obliquely towards the tall fuchsia hedges that bordered the western side of the field, beyond which was an undulating landscape of green fields and trees. When they had reached the fuchsia hedges, Dead-eye led them further down until they were about fifty metres from the fence separating the hill from the road running across the front of Quinn’s cottage – one way to Belfast, the other to Dublin.

  ‘Our patch,’ Dead-eye said.

  Wearing DPM clothing, and with their weapons wrapped in tape of a similar colouring, they blended into the hedges even before digging out their scrapes. Nevertheless, using their short-handled pickaxes and spades, they made themselves shallow scrapes that extended into the foliage, letting it fall back over them when they crawled in and lay on their bellies. Though not comfortable, they were practically invisible and ready to fire.

  Glancing to his right, downhill, Danny could see the road beyond the fence and, behind that, Quinn’s cottage. It was a nondescript building, with brick walls and slate roof, two storeys high, but set well back from the road, surrounded by high, rolling fields, with no other houses in sight. A modest but very pleasant country retreat, it was now a warehouse packed with weapons, ammunition and explosives.

  Fire a grenade in there, Danny thought, and the whole place will go up in flames. That’s not a house; it’s an arsenal.

  Lying belly down in his shallow scrape, half buried
in the foliage, cradling his M16 with an M203 grenade launcher attached, with Dead-eye on one side of him and Martin Renshaw on the other, Danny suddenly realized that his Selection and Training were over and that this was the real thing.

  He had been in the Army for two years, 3rd Battalion, Light Infantry, but this was the first time he’d been involved in an actual conflict, let alone being out of England. His couple of days in Belfast, doing the ‘tour’ with Sergeant Hampton of 14 Intelligence Company, had presented him with a graphic picture of a city at war with itself. Yet it had not led to actual engagement with the enemy. Now all that was about to change and he wondered how he would deal with it when push came to shove.

  You’ll be OK, he told himself.

  Danny had wanted to be a special kind of soldier since his schooldays – thinking first about the French Foreign Legion, then about becoming a mercenary, but eventually accepting that it had to be legitimate and so deciding on joining the army, in order to serve his requisite two years and then apply for the SAS. Having decided, he had done it and never regretted it, feeling that he was born to be a soldier. Now here he was, about to fire his first shots in anger, thankfully with Dead-eye by his side. That made him feel good.

  After an hour or so of waiting, hearing nothing but the birdsong and the occasional car passing on the road below, Danny had an almost uncontrollable urge to break the silence by asking Dead-eye about the Telok Anson swamp. Unfortunately, though he had managed to screw up the courage, he was too far away to do it without shouting, which he knew would anger the experienced sergeant.

  Dead-eye had placed them about fifteen metres apart, with Martin the highest up, Dead-eye closest to the road, therefore to Quinn’s cottage, and Danny in the middle. This would give them a triangular field of fire homing in on where Dead-eye had calculated the ASU would be compelled to set up the RPG 7 for the required elevation. Clearly, he knew what he was doing, though it did prevent them from passing the time with conversation. Not that Dead-eye ever talked much anyway.

  Frustrated, Danny contented himself by studying the scenery – the tree-lined, bright green, alluvial fields; sunlight glinting off a stretch of sea, glimpsed beyond the distant hills; birds winging through a jigsaw of blue sky and patchy clouds – and by dwelling on how different it was from the bleak, terraced streets of Kingswinford, where he grew up. It was hard to imagine, when you looked at this scenery, that Belfast lay just beyond the hills and its streets were even worse than those in Kingswinford – worse to look at and infinitely more dangerous to live in. It was hard to imagine what was happening here, with the British fighting a mean war on British soil. Of course, the Irish didn’t think it was British soil – which explained the war.

  Danny was almost lost in thoughts of this kind when a red Ford came in sight, from the direction of Belfast, and pulled into a lay-by just around a slow bend in the road. Although he could see the car clearly from his vantage point halfway up the hill, Danny realized that it would be out of sight of the OP. Knowing that this must have been deliberate, he instinctively tensed, preparing himself for action.

  Three men got out of the car, leaving the driver behind the wheel, presumably to do the talking should an Army or RUC patrol come along. The men were wearing normal civilian clothing: corduroy trousers or denims, jackets and open-necked shirts. One of them lay on his belly, groped under the car, and eventually withdrew a long object wrapped in some kind of covering – the RPG 7, Danny surmised. Another leaned back into the rear of the vehicle, as if groping around beneath the seats, and eventually withdrew two more long parcels – probably wrapped rifles or sub-machine-guns. The third man, meanwhile, was leaning into the rear door at the other side. Eventually he straightened up, holding a canvas bag, which Danny assumed was filled with magazines for the weapons.

  After conversing briefly with the driver, the man holding the wrapped RPG 7 led the other two through a gateway in the high fuchsia hedges and wooden fence bordering the road, into the field at a location approximately forty-five degrees east of the line-of-sight of the OP. The men then made their way alongside the road, but were shielded from it by the high hedge. They were also hidden from the OP by an abrupt dip in the ground where the field ran down steeply before levelling out near the fence.

  They were able to clamber a good twenty metres up that steep, lower stretch of the hill while remaining out of view of the OP and without being seen by the few cars passing by. When eventually they chose the spot from which to launch their attack, they were just below Dead-eye, obliquely to the right of Martin and Danny.

  Hidden in the hedge, Danny set the M203 grenade launcher to fire, judged the angle of elevation required, then held the M16 steady.

  The red Ford remained where it was – parked just around the bend in the road, out of sight of the OP.

  The man with the wrapped RPG 7 looked at his watch, then said something to the other two, who immediately began unwrapping the parcels.

  The large parcel was, indeed, a wrapped RPG 7 rocket launcher and the other two were Russian 7.62mm AK-47 automatic rifles, beloved of terrorists everywhere and instantly recognizable, even from this distance, because of the unusually curved 30-round box magazine.

  When the weapons were unwrapped, the man with the canvas bag opened it and started handing out ammunition, including magazines for the AK-47s and a 2.25kg missile for the RPG 7.

  Danny glanced sideways and saw Dead-eye’s hand thrusting out of the hedge, about to give the signal to fire.

  The man with the RPG 7 checked his watch again, then glanced back over his shoulder, down the hill and across the road to Quinn’s cottage. Shaking his head from side to side, as if exasperated, he loaded the 2.25kg missile into the launcher, then glanced back over his shoulder again.

  A grey removal truck came along the road from the direction of the nearby border, and pulled into the driveway. Four men got out, glanced up the hill in the general direction of the covert OP, and waved.

  Obviously knowing that his comrades would be seen by the OP, the man knelt in the firing position and aimed the RPG 7.

  Still looking sideways, Danny saw Dead-eye drop his hand, signalling, ‘Open fire,’ Leaning forward into the stock of his M16, Danny fired the M213 grenade launcher.

  His head was ringing from the noise, his body jolting from the backblast, as the two grenades – one fired by Martin, located higher up the hill – exploded at the same time on either side of the three men, with soil and buckshot spewing up and outwards through boiling columns of black smoke.

  Even as the smoke was still obscuring the men, the shocking roar of the GPMG firing from the OP joined the harsh chatter of the M16s, as well as Dead-eye’s Colt Commando.

  Danny had switched to the M16 automatically, hardly aware that he had done so, and was firing rapidly repeated three-round bursts into the swirling smoke from the buckshot grenades.

  One of the men was already down, bowled sideways by the blast. The other two were dancing wildly in a convulsion of spitting earth created by the combined fire-power of the GPMG and three M16 assault rifles. Taken by surprise, and confused as to where the firing was actually coming from, the remaining two didn’t even have time to fire their weapons before they were cut to shreds and collapsed.

  As the two men fell, the red Ford screeched into life, reversed out of the lay-by, and raced back around the bend, returning to Belfast.

  At the same time, the men in the cottage, seeing what had happened, raced across the driveway to get back into the removal van.

  As Jock’s GPMG trailed off into silence, Dead-eye leapt out of the hedge and raced across the field, his Colt Commando in one hand, a Landmaster III transceiver in the other. As he knelt down to examine the bloody ASU team, speaking into the transceiver at the same time, the removal van lumbered out of Quinn’s driveway. One of the men, however, obviously senseless with anger, bellowed a string of abuse in a broad Ulster accent, then raced across the road and clambered over the fence. He dropped down the other
side, took aim with his pistol, and fired at Dead-eye.

  Stepping out from the hedge, Danny adopted the kneeling position, took aim with his M16 and fired a couple of three-round bursts. The man was punched backwards so hard that he smashed through the fence, falling to the ground.

  ‘Stop that van!’ Dead-eye bellowed, pointing down the hill, then speaking again into the transceiver.

  Danny switched back to the M203 and loaded a grenade while running a few more yards down the hill, followed by Martin, who was holding his M16 in the Belfast Cradle. The removal van had just driven out through the gates of the cottage and was turning into the road, in the direction of the border, when Danny calculated the angle of elevation and fired a fragmentation grenade. The backblast rocked his shoulder and his head rang from the noise. Then the grenade exploded just in front of the truck, practically under the left wheel, shattering the windscreen and lifting the whole vehicle up on to two wheels. It slammed back down again, but careered across the road, bouncing over a ditch, then smashed through the fence and embedded itself deep in the hedgerow.

  Martin was already racing past Danny when first one, then two of the men in the crashed van jumped down to the ground, before straightening up and firing their pistols.

  Martin fired on the run and Danny fired a second later. One of the men jerked spasmodically, dropped his pistol, fell back, and shuddered wildly against the side of the van as more bullets stitched him. He was sliding to the ground, leaving a trail of blood on the side of the van, as the other man backed across the road, firing as he retreated. He had almost reached the fence of the cottage when a combined burst from Martin and Danny nearly cut him in two, then picked him up and slammed him back on to the fence, which immediately buckled under his falling body. Pouring blood from his chest and stomach, the man rocked like a see-saw for a couple of seconds, then slowly fell backwards, into the driveway. Meanwhile, Martin and Danny were racing down the hill to check the dead and the wounded.