Then two loud thuds. The grenades had gone off.
To say there was wholesale panic is a gross understatement. As I anticipated, the crowd dispersed, running in different directions. I moved forward, Browning in my hand, my targets just a few metres ahead and within my sights. A group of young Republicans who were standing on the roof of the brick factory had a clear view of what was happening and began gesturing to the crowd before jumping down. Then part of the crowd turned around. A small group of young male Republicans were standing looking at me, bewildered expressions on their faces.
I wasn’t moving. Adams and McGuinness were going to have to come to me. In my mind’s eye I saw them defending their people. I visualised them charging down the central path, and that’s when I would kill them with clean shots to the head. They would die heroes. They would die protecting their people, and the world’s media was on hand to record the event. But it didn’t happen. McGuinness and Adams failed to appear.
I stood where I was, took out another grenade and ripped out the pin. I had used just four shots. One to kill the moustachioed man and the three that were shot into the air. The Browning held thirteen rounds. I counted each of my shots so that I knew when to reload or change weapons.
I took four paces forward. The panic had eased a little and there was silence. Most of the immediate crowd was huddled behind gravestones. Then the shouting started and missiles began to fall. A small cluster of young men stood facing me, hurling gravel, bit of urns and anything they could get their hands on. They were good shots. It must have been years of practice stoning soldiers and the police. The moment was freeze-framed; the only animate objects were the missiles flying through the air. The men didn’t move, afraid of the gun pointing at them, although they were out of range. I wondered when the IRA men would appear. I knew they were among us and it was only a matter of time before they showed themselves. That’s why I didn’t open fire. The crowd was not my target. I was looking around for known faces.
Then the crowd moved forward. They were shouting sectarian obscenities, like ‘Orange bastard’ and ‘Kill him.’ The operation had degenerated into sectarian taunts and was no longer a military action. I heard myself screaming at the top of my voice, ‘Come on, Gerry, come on, Martin, you Fenian bastards. Show me what you’re made of.’ But the leaders never came forward.
I started walking towards to the motorway. I was still expecting Adams and McGuinness to show. I passed the small van. The passenger door was open and a man I now know to be Thomas McErlean was lying slumped across the seat, one leg out of the door. As I passed him I kept the Browning aimed at his head just in case he was playing possum, but he never moved. Thomas McErlean was dead. His family denied he was an IRA volunteer. I think he was another paramilitary who refused to tell his family he was involved. Meanwhile, Jordan was still in the small van. As I passed him I pointed the gun at him and saw him grip the steering wheel in terror.
The crowd was gathering behind me, throwing missiles from the safety of gravestones. Some were very near the small van and were shouting at Jordan, ‘Use the van, run him over.’ He never took his hands off the wheel, but I noticed him straightening his back. I thought he was a threat, so I aimed and fired. I was just twenty metres away. The windscreen shattered. Jordan had ducked. At my trial he gave evidence and said the shot would have been a bullseye and, had he not dropped his head, he would have been shot ‘right between my eyes’.
The gruesome dance of death had begun behind me. A small group of men were advancing, ducking between gravestones as they lobbed missiles at me. I never returned fire. I could hear the loud cracks of gunfire, but I had no idea where the noise was coming from. It wasn’t a Wild West, bang-bang-bang situation. I didn’t shoot indiscriminately or waste bullets. I didn’t go into Milltown and spray the place. I could have killed hundreds if I had wanted. I didn’t.
I had chosen the grenades to create a diversion and to create panic. I hadn’t picked the grenades to deliberately injure people. The grenades were chosen to do a specific job, to cover my withdrawal from the Republican Plot. But mourners were coming at me from all angles, so I prepared two more grenades and lobbed them left and right to try to stop the crowd from outflanking me. The Transit was still on the hard shoulder and there was still no sign of my getaway car. I had to get to the motorway. I had to take my chances. I took one final look at the crowd and began to make my way to the chain-link fence.
The Transit was gone.
My getaway car, doubtless hovering somewhere nearby, could now pull up. To reach my associates I had to negotiate the bog meadow, the strip of wasteland that separates the cemetery from the motorway. I began to jog looking around to see if anyone was following or catching me up. A small crowd of young men continued their pursuit to the bottom of the cemetery. I shot random rounds in their direction but they were out of range. They kept their heads down and no one was struck, and that’s all I wanted. They weren’t my targets. I just wanted to keep them back. I also saw a man in the middle distance, arms held forward in the firing position. I shot at him, and he too was out of range. I later discovered he was a photographer.
Another man, part of the small group, was nearer than the others. He was perched between two black headstones and was shouting instructions at the others who were a short distance behind him. He was wearing grey trousers. I could clearly hear him giving instructions – ‘Move slowly’, ‘Keep down’, ‘Do this’, ‘Go there’ – accompanied by sweeping arm gestures. When he stood up I shot him in the lower body. It was Kevin Brady. I later found out he was the golden boy of the Stewartstown Road brigade of the IRA who blew up two UDR men at a security barrier in Belfast city centre. Kevin Brady was not my target. I wasn’t after him that day, but he made himself a target by organising his friends.
I continued to watch the crowd, count my rounds and make my way to the hard shoulder. Then my cap came off and I actually bent down to pick it up, still believing I needed to keep my disguise and then I thought, What the fuck are you thinking? The disguise didn’t matter any more. My priority was to get out of Milltown. The RUC never recovered the cap and apparently it is in a glass case in a Republican club somewhere in West Belfast.
I scanned the motorway for my associates in the getaway car. They were nowhere to be seen. I got to the bog meadow with the intention of sprinting across it. As I skirted the edge of the bog, I suddenly sank up to my knees. I lost my balance and fell forward, putting both my hands out to break the fall. I was now on all fours, crawling through the muddy soup. I got to my feet and waded to the high bank running alongside the chain-link fence. The empty Browning in my hand had been submerged in the bog and the working part had been ‘clashed back’ and was open. It was now filled with bracken, mud and water.
I looked behind me. The crowd was still there. They had gained on me. I pulled out a grenade. I wanted to place it in the long grass, primed to explode as the crowd approached it, but it had a nine-second delay and the crowd were a bit further back than nine seconds. Instead I threw it. It landed among the crowd and exploded. They scattered in all directions as tufts of grass and lumps of earth flew into the sky. I continued along the small path that would take me to my pick-up point. All that stood between me and the hard shoulder was a shallow ditch.
The Browning was out of ammunition. I had used the thirteen rounds. The loaded Ruger was still concealed under my arm. The crowd kept coming forward, but they had no gravestones for cover, so I had a clear line of fire if I needed it. I didn’t want them to move further forward, but if they did I would shoot them. I could see a couple of men crossing the bog meadow in pursuit of me, but they were still out of range. I wanted to get out of Milltown alive. I snapped the magazine out of the Browning and threw it to the ground. I quickly inserted a fresh magazine, cocked the weapon, aimed in the direction of the crowd and took several steps forward, believing in the old war adage, ‘The best form of defence is attack.’
I fired two rounds. Then the Browning seize
d. It was a new weapon and I had tested it in my own firing range. This had never happened to me before. I cursed the damned thing. What fucking awful timing. The gun was seized solid, frozen. I aimed again and tried to fire. Nothing happened; just the dull click that told me the weapon was now useless. I tried to release the magazine. It wouldn’t budge. I whacked the Browning against one of the concrete posts that supported the chain-link fence, but it didn’t free it.
Meanwhile the crowd was surging forward, but where the fuck was my getaway car? I was at the exact point I was supposed to be. I had gone over this bit hundreds of times with my two associates. There was no sign of them. I couldn’t even see them on the opposite carriageway or speeding towards me on the city-bound lane. Had they got delayed or arrested? Had they got the time wrong? I remembered the back-up man’s words to me when I told him I didn’t want him in the cemetery. He said he would never forgive me.
A brick bounced off my head. I didn’t know where the young man had come from. He just popped out of nowhere. He was full of rage, shouting, ‘Come on, you Orange bastard.’ I was surprised he was on his own and I think he was genuinely surprised to find himself at that spot without his mates around him when he looked back. He waved to the others, yelling at the top of his voice, ‘Over here, he’s over here, and he’s out of ammo.’ I reached into my coat and pulled out the Ruger. I had never any intention of using it. I pointed it at him and told him to fuck off. He continued to throw bricks. I repeated my request, but he stood his ground. Then suddenly he moved forward. He saw the gun. He challenged me.
I gave him one final opportunity to walk away unhurt. I put the Ruger in the flat of my hand and offered it to him, so he knew I was armed and would open fire. He stopped. He was a slight man, no heavier than ten stone. I said to him, ‘Fuck off right now, just go.’ He stood his ground. This lad had something many Republicans lacked. He had guts. He had more courage than Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness put together. I admired him. He showed his true colours. He gave chase. He charged ahead.
He bent down and picked up another rock. He lifted his arm to throw the brick at me and I shot one round, hitting him once in the neck. I was on the small bank and he was in the bog meadow. I wanted to aim for his right shoulder, but because he was standing on the rough and springy grass he looked like he was balancing on a waterbed. He moved and the bullet entered his neck and travelled through his body, killing him instantly. I kept the gun on him, just in case he was ready to spring on me, but he didn’t move. His name was John ‘Minto’ Murray. I regret shooting him. I had killed three men I had no intention of harming just twenty-four hours earlier.
My getaway car never showed. I had two grenades, a Browning that was jammed and my Ruger with five rounds left. I knew I was going to have to fend for myself and that meant hijacking a car on the motorway. Three hundred metres away I spied a man creeping along a fence that ran through the bog meadow. I took two shots at him but he was well out of range and he stayed down. I took one of the grenades and lobbed it in his direction. It slipped in my muddy, gloved hands and it travelled just twenty feet. It exploded, causing a water jet to spring thirty feet into the air. For a split second there was a rainbow and it was a beautiful thing among the mud, blood and horror. It was a surreal moment. The red-haired guy, who was wearing a green parka, kept his head down.
I was determined to get out of Milltown alive. I knew forcing a car to stop was going to be virtually impossible. They were travelling at speed, up to seventy miles an hour. I made it to the city-bound hard shoulder. I had the two guns, one in each hand, with three rounds left in the Ruger. I got on to the inner lane of the motorway and pointed the two guns at the oncoming traffic. I could feel the cars brush past my legs and looks of amazement on the drivers’ faces. I looked behind me and it was a blizzard of stones, wood and gravel. The missiles were bouncing off the vehicles and I am surprised there wasn’t a serious pile-up as a result of the confusion and panic.
The crowd was now over the chain-link fence and had reached the hard shoulder. I pointed the Ruger at them and fired my final three shots. Then I took out a grenade, pulled the split pin and held it in one hand. It was now live. In my other hand I had the two guns.
A car was slowing down. A young woman was behind the wheel. I eyeballed her and pointed the guns at her windscreen. I will never forget the look of horror on her face as I waved the two guns at her. She had a passenger, a young baby strapped into a carrycot on the back seat. The baby looked the same age as Lucy. I stood back and she sped off. I did not want to cost that woman and her baby their lives and I remember thinking, This is crazy. This is not you.
I knew a hijacked car was out of the question and I still hoped my getaway car would show up, the back-up man would open fire with the AK and we could make our escape. The crowd poured on to the motorway. There was more than a hundred of them and they began trying to force vehicles to stop. I was now on the hard shoulder of the country-bound carriageway, walking towards South Belfast. I looked behind me and saw a wall of Land Rovers and armed cops at the bottom of the motorway. It was a Catch-22. I could run towards the cops, but they would shoot me and I couldn’t face being killed by the security forces.
The crowd was now across all four lanes of the motorway. I had one live grenade left. I knew what I was going to do. An oil tanker was speeding down the city-bound carriageway. I was going to use my last grenade to blow it up and create a massive fireball that would kill the Republican crowd. I would also be killed and so would the motorists unlucky enough to be on the road at that moment.
My throwing range was forty metres and the tanker was no further than ten, but I changed my mind. The tanker was heading towards Belfast, which probably meant he was returning to the oil depots at Sydenham with an empty tank after making his deliveries. It would be a waste of my final grenade. A year later, at my trial, the driver of the tanker stood in the witness box and under oath told how he was returning to Belfast with seventy-five thousand litres of fuel on board. He was on a local delivery loop.
By now Republicans had got to the tanker. They forced it to a standstill and started to swarm over the cab. The driver was wearing blue overalls and looked like he was in his fifties. The mob hauled him out and threw him on the ground. They punched, kicked and slapped him before allowing him to run for his life. One Republican got into the cab and positioned it so that it faced the central reservation. I knew what was coming next. They were aiming the tanker at me and were going to try to run me down. It was chaos on the city-bound side. Cars were screeching to a halt, desperate to avoid the scene. The RUC maintained their position at the end of the motorway.
16
YOU PLAY, YOU PAY
THE OPERATION TO KILL MARTIN MCGUINNESS AND GERRY ADAMS WAS MILITARILY A DISASTER. The crowd wouldn’t give up until they caught me and had lined up three abreast. They marched along the country-bound carriageway, singing in unison, ‘I-I-IRA.’ I smiled back at them. It was a wry smile. I was smiling in the face of adversity.
The Republican mob got to me before the RUC. They hurled bricks and stones, lumps of wood and even a road cone. They rained on my head and bounced off my body. I was walking backwards when I spotted the man in the green parka from earlier. He had managed to outflank me and I could see he was carrying a large piece of wood. I was hoping one of them had a gun and would shoot me on the spot. I didn’t want to be taken away, tortured and chopped into pieces. I wanted a quick death, a soldier’s death. The crowd was several hundred strong, and now part of it broke free and moved nearer to me. As they closed in I threw my two guns down the embankment. I flicked the release pin on the last grenade, the fly-off levers came off, I tucked the grenade under my chin and put my head down. They continued to chant, ‘I-I-IRA, I-I-IRA’ and other sectarian obscenities.
One. Two. I am counting the seconds until the grenade explodes. The crowd moves closer. Three. Four. I feel a massive crack on the back of my neck. The man in the green parka has hit me so hard the lump o
f wood snaps in two and the impact forces the grenade out of my gloved hand. It rolls towards the Republican crowd. Five. Six. One person kicks it away and others jump over the grenade as it lies on the road. They are in for the kill and nothing, not even a grenade, is going to stop them. I curl up in the foetal position and continue counting. Then the kicking begins. I am wearing several layers of clothing, but their boots and fists make an impact on every part of my body. They are even kicking and punching one another in their efforts to get to me.
Seven. Eight. Nine. The grenade explodes.
There was silence for a few seconds, then I heard a voice say, ‘Everyone OK?’ Then feet and fists began attacking me again. I was starting to pass out when they bounced a traffic cone off my head. The sounds coming from the two hundred-strong crowd were frightening. They made indistinguishable guttural noises.
I heard another voice, ‘Stand back, stand back’, and the metallic click-click of a firing pin striking against an empty round and I thought, Fuck, what a way to go, to be shot with your own bloody gun. I knew it was my Ruger. After three or four clicks he knew it was useless to him, so he beat me around the head and face with it. My fear was the Browning, that they could clear the blockage. It still had eleven rounds in it.
Another voice spoke. It was older. The voice said to the mob, ‘All back, all back’, and I was hauled to my feet. Four men dragged me to a car and threw me into the back seat. One sat on my chest and another at my head. The other two were in the passenger and driver seat. The car was a Skoda. I think they had hijacked it, but it didn’t have much engine power and it helped save my life. The mob couldn’t get me off the motorway fast enough.
None Shall Divide Us Page 14