Stand By, Stand By

SEVEN

In the morning I happened to see Pink Mike crossing the warehouse on his way back from the bog. He was looking pleased with himself, as if he’d had a monumental shit. His hair was on the mend, too — it had gone a kind of rich auburn.

‘Hey,’ I called, ‘got a minute?’

‘Sure. What is it?’

‘Have you heard of a player called Declan Farrell?’

‘Christ, have I!’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘It’s like asking if I’ve heard of the Pope. He’s one of the big bastards.’

‘Really! D’you have any info about him?’

‘There’s a bloody great file that lists all his villainies. What do you want to know?’

‘Anything about him — what he looks like, where he hangs out.’

‘What’s your interest?’

‘I heard someone talking about him. He sounds a vicious sod.’

‘He is. I’ll sort you out something. Where will you be?’

‘I’m on standby, so unless something breaks I’ll be around the warehouse. I’m going to the gym now for an hour. Then I’ll be in my cabin.’

‘I’ll be over, then.’

Never had the weights seemed lighter. I suppose it was the flow of adrenalin that pepped me up, but I found myself going through the lifts with incredible ease. It was my day for back and chest. Before the injury to my arm I’d been a member of the 22 °Club, bench-pressing four big 55-lb Olympic discs on the bar — and even though that was no big deal in real weight-lifting terms, I’d only recently climbed back to it. Some days I still found it a strain, but that morning an hour flew past. Then I did twenty minutes on one of the stationary bikes, and after a shower and a dhobi session in the laundromat, I was bouncing around the cabin when Mike reappeared.

Under one arm he was carrying a rolled-up towel, out of which he produced a big brown envelope. ‘For Christ’s sake be careful,’ he said, handing it over. ‘This stuff is highly classified. It’s not supposed to leave our ops room. The most up-to-date sheet is missing, because Box have borrowed it, but everything else is there. I’ll come back for it after lunch.’

With him gone, I closed the door and pushed a wedge under the inside, silently praying that we didn’t get a call-out in the next hour. Then I opened the envelope.

The first things I saw were two photographs, mug-shots, taken with a telephoto lens but well focused — good, clear pictures. I stared at them in consternation. I’d been seeing Gary Player in my mind so clearly that I had his likeness firmly in my head — and this wasn’t him. It took me a few moments to sweep away the figment of my imagination and concentrate on reality.

In place of the scruffy, tousled, sandy-haired fellow I’d invented for myself, here was someone dark and definitely good-looking, in his thirties. Far from having thuggish, Neanderthal features, the face was rather distinguished: high forehead, thick eyebrows, dark hair well cut and neatly brushed back, and a strong, square jaw. The eyes were dark as well, and, even in those unflattering photos, lively. At some stage the nose had been broken and left with a slight flattening at the bridge, but that only added to the appeal of the face.

If the man’s appearance disconcerted me, the notes on his career and character gave me still more of a shock.

I had to read these details several times to make them sink in. No moron, this. On the contrary, he was far better educated than me, with three A levels and a university degree. Bigger, too — an inch taller, and a lot heavier. A physical sort of guy, he’d played rugger almost at university standard. A boxer as well. A big, strong fellow, and aggressive by the sound of it. Sure enough, the accompanying notes described him as ‘aggressive, assertive, likes to throw his weight about. In his youth, much given to fighting in public.’ (In the margin somebody had added in pencil, ‘Still likes a fight. The Black Barrel brawl, 1988’.) He was said to have a sadistic streak, and to favour torturing prisoners. Once, it was reputed, he had tied an enemy up and cut him to pieces with a chain-saw. At home he kept dogs, generally big ones — Rottweilers, Rhodesian Ridge-backs or Pit Bulls.

His career in terrorism was poorly charted, because he had always been too clever to be caught, or even to leave clear traces of his activity. His involvement in incidents was usually recorded as ‘suspected’ rather than ‘confirmed’. For a time he had been active around South Armagh, near the Border, and it seemed that he preferred rural operations to those in towns. But later he had concentrated on Belfast, and now, at the latest entry on the sheets, he was down as the adjutant of the PIRA’s West Belfast Brigade. Although the dossier listed several specific incidents which he was thought to have orchestrated, it did not mention the Queensfield bomb; this, I assumed, was because the incident had taken place after my last sheet had run out, and it would appear on the page which Mike had said was missing. I didn’t stop to think why Box — our name for MI5 — should have borrowed it. I just assumed they were investigating some aspect of Farrell’s career.

Alongside the heading ‘Address’, several lines had been entered and crossed out. Evidently he had moved around a good deal. The latest entry said simply, ‘Ballyconvil’. It looked as though that was where he had last been heard of. Altogether, he seemed to be in the same category as many IRA suspects: the authorities knew who he was, and where he was, but so far hadn’t been able to pin anything major on him. I remembered Chief Superintendent Morrison saying, ‘We know who the feckers are, so we do — if only we could just go and get them.’

Ballyconvil was the only name on any of the sheets that I needed to remember. I made a note of it on a slip of paper, and sat staring at the photograph until the face had burned into my mind. Yes — on more thorough inspection, the mouth was thin and cruel. The eyes could well be the same. But why in hell had a man of such intelligence chosen to become a scumbag? What had turned him into a terrorist?

My study of the dossier left me feeling personally threatened. Inadvertently, I had chosen to take on a hell of an opponent. Farrell sounded a powerful man in all senses of the word. Yet in a way all his attributes only strengthened my feeling of enmity. Before I’d known anything about him I’d hated him. Now I felt jealous of him, too. It was a useful combination.

I got the file back to Mike without incident, and went straight to the big gazetteer in our ops room. It gave several Ballyconvils, but there was one which stood out from all others as the most likely: a village on the back of the hills just to the north of West Belfast. From there anyone could drop on to the motorway, and in less than ten minutes be safe in the Republican fastnesses of the Falls or the Ardoyne.

Before I could do any more research, another operation came up. Once again, through a tout, the Det got wind of an attempt to shoot a prominent Unionist, this one a farmer who served as a part-time volunteer in the Ulster Defence Force. Like Quinlan, he had openly defied the PIRA for years, and lived in his isolated farmhouse with very little security. Now, when the tip-off came, it was clear that he urgently needed a team of babysitters.

At the same time, we got word that the weapons for the shoot would be deposited in a transit hide some ten kilometres from the target. The hide was in an old barn, part of a property that had been on the market for a year or more. Because we didn’t have a precise date or time for the shoot, the head-shed decided to put an OP on the barn, so that we could keep an eye on what was happening, and warn the babysitters when the villains were on their way. There was also the chance that we might catch them in possession of weapons when they returned from their hit.

Guess who was detailed to man the OP? Yours truly. It didn’t worry me, because I enjoy that sort of job. What did worry me a bit was when I heard that I’d got to take a Det guy in with me, because the head-shed wanted some experienced observer to get a good look at this particular bunch of terrorists, to see if he could identify any of them. Some of the Det boys could be real tossers when it came to any sort of hardship, so when I learnt that my companion was to be Mike Grigson I was relieved. Having been in the Paras, he knew how to carry on in an OP, and could look after himself.

At the preliminary briefing, the boss detailed Pat Martin and myself to carry out a preliminary recce of the place. It turned out that the property consisted of a semi-derelict cottage as well as the barn, and ran to some six acres. It was out in the hills south-west of the city, and as we pored over the map on the ops room table, I found myself thinking that a shitehawk could fly over the mountains from there to Ballyconvil in five minutes or less.

‘One pass only,’ the boss was saying. ‘There’s so little traffic down that road it’s not worth risking a second look. There could easily be eyes on. Just a straight drive past. Don’t even slow down.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘What do we know about the house?’

‘It’s up for sale. The agents say it’s empty, but we’re not sure. Somebody could be using it.’

‘If we want to do a thorough recce,’ said Pat, ‘why doesn’t one of us put on a suit and pose as a potential buyer? Get the keys from the agents and go along all pukka?’

‘Good suggestion,’ said the boss, ‘but again, it’s not worth the risk. If there is a player inside, he’ll probably have a video lined up on the entrance. There’s iron gates across the approach, secured with a padlock and chain. While you’re tinkering with that they’ll get a nice film of you, from which they can take mug-shots for their files.’

‘Normal OP, then,’ I said. ‘What’s this? Looks like a wall or hedge round the farmyard.’ I pointed to a faint mark on the 1:25,000 map, a dotted line which seemed to define the property. ‘It could be a ditch as well. The best thing might be to dig in out in the field — here — and then to move in close at night. Where’s the hide supposed to be?’

The boss consulted a note. ‘As you face the barn, in the right-hand back corner. A 45-gallon polythene water-butt has been dug into the ground, top flush with the floor, and covered with straw.’

‘So, to get a view of anyone putting a weapon into it, or taking one out, we’ll need to be about… here.’ I picked a spot in the hedge or ditch that looked as though it should give a view into the barn.

‘That’s right.’ The boss straightened up with a muttered curse. He’d hurt his back parachuting a few months before, and it was still giving him gyp. ‘You’d be very close to the action there — have to take it easy. Well, there’s not much more we can tell from the map. You might as well be on your way.’

‘Fine. We should be back by four.’

Operation Deadlock was under way. Pat and I took the scruffiest, least remarkable of the ops cars, a green Marina covered with dust and grime, and set off by a roundabout route for the high country to the south-west. Our target, Ballyduff, had been advertised by the selling agents as ‘in need of refurbishment’. It sounded just the sort of place that players would use as a transit hide: well isolated and out in the country, yet only twenty minutes from the IRA heartlands of West Belfast.

Pat drove while I read the map. ‘Hang a left here,’ I said as we came over a shallow crest. ‘Then it’s straight down.’

Up there on the hills the farmland was rough as rough could be. The hairy-looking fields sprouted clumps of rushes, and rocks poked up through the coarse grass. In the depths of winter the whole landscape was dun-coloured and dead-looking. Rusty barbed-wire fences sagged, and in the hedgerows a few stunted trees were all bent in the same direction by the prevailing west wind. Puddles of water glistened in every depression of that upland bog. It was the exact equivalent of West Belfast in rural terms — scruffy, clapped out, a shit-heap, ideally matched to the mentality and habits of the PIRA.

‘Glad I’m not a bloody cow up here,’ said Pat.

‘You’d need to be able to live on pure grot. Look out, now — the house’ll be down here on our right.’

We were on a minor road, marked yellow on the map, which ran gently downhill. Though straight as a ruler, it wouldn’t be any use for overtaking in a chase because it was about seven feet wide, with ditches on either side.

‘You’d never get past,’ said Pat, reading my thoughts.

‘Not a chance. Here we are, now. Ease off a touch, but keep rolling.’

For moments like this, when there wasn’t much time, I had trained myself to concentrate intently, so that my mind took a series of snapshots. Now in quick succession I got the following: along the back of the property, a line of bare trees; a long, low, whitewashed bungalow facing away from us, downhill; rusting corrugated iron roof, no windows in the back; beyond it, farther from the road and to our right, a sizeable barn, set at right-angles to the house, corrugated iron walls as well as roof; barn thirty metres from the far end of cottage; front of cottage decrepit, some window panes broken and boarded; pale blue door, same colour as wrought-iron entrance gates; gates chained together — old chain, but shiny new padlock; grounds gone to seed.

Ten metres out from the front of house, and parallel to it, a line of ash trees ran along an overgrown ditch — the feature I’d picked out on the map. Outside the ditch, rough pasture sloped down into the distance. Maybe there was a stream across the bottom.

In four or five seconds we were past.

‘Notice anything particular?’ I asked.

‘Brand-new padlock. I bet they’ve put it on there until they’ve done the job.’

‘Looks like it.’

‘No mains electricity.’

‘I don’t reckon it’s got mains water, either. See that hand-pump outside the door?’

‘Yep. Good place for a CTR, that ditch under the trees.’

‘Perfect. I’ll come in up that field.’

‘The front door of the house wasn’t properly shut,’ Pat added. ‘I reckon someone’s been using it.’ Then he mimicked a la-di-da estate agent’s voice as he quoted derisively, ‘ “In need of refurbishment”. I should fucking well think so! The place’d fall down if you farted.’

Two miles further on we came to a small crossroads and turned right. Already the short winter afternoon was dying, and in the dusk the fields looked even wilder.

‘Anywhere here would do for the drop-off,’ I said. ‘We’ve got a junction coming up, a lane in from the left. Let’s make it there.’ I took a note of the grid reference, and we headed for base.

Back in the warehouse, the babysitting party were getting their kit sorted. They’d done a recce of their own, and had picked a drop-off point from which they could infiltrate over fields and slip into the target’s house through the back garden.

Mike and I had no arguments about what kit we would take. He was well equipped anyway, with his own G3 and kite-sight. The only item he needed to borrow was an all-in-one sniper suit, Goretex-lined and covered in DPM material. Those things are great for keeping you warm and dry; the only trouble is that you can’t run in them. But it didn’t look to me as though we were going to do much running. The important thing was to make sure we had everything we might need for a stay of several days: food, obviously, and water, but also such extras as cling-film to crap into, and plastic bags in which to seal the said crap. Also a spare water bottle for pissing into. You might think that to piss a couple of times in the middle of a boggy field would make no difference, but you’d be surprised how it starts to stink. The point was, nobody could be sure how long we might have to spend in the OP. Also it was vitally important to write WATER clearly on water bottles and PISS clearly on the others.

Apart from those basics, we needed food — mainly boil-in-the-bag rations, which could be eaten cold — spare shirt, sleeping-bag, torch, collapsible shovel, wire netting for the roof of the OP, spotter-scope, and so on. It all made up into a considerable load.

At 1800 we held a final briefing. The Det would be out in force with six or eight cars. Four of our own intercept cars would be deployed, but they would hang well back so as not to arouse suspicion. Our callsigns for the night were all Sierras. Sierra One was the babysitter group, Sierra Two ourselves, and the rest of our cars Sierras with higher numbers. The main locations were designated Black: Black One was the target house, Black Two the hide, Black Three the babysitters’ drop-off point, Black Four ours. The last two doubled as emergency rendezvous points, in case anything went wrong.

Pat drove us out to Black Four. As we approached, he flipped the switch which cut out the brake-lights. At the instant he pulled up for the major road, Mike and I whipped open our doors and slipped out to right and left. The car carried on without stopping, to turn left and disappear over the hill.

We gave it five minutes, listening, watching. The night was soft and still. No other traffic was moving. Reassured, we crossed the road, climbed a barbed-wire fence, and set off uphill across the field on a bearing of 160 mils, moving slowly over the damp grass, with myself in front and Mike watching the rear.

All around us, at ground level, the night was completely dark, not a gleam from house or car. Only in the sky to the north-east was there a faint glow, rising from the lights of Belfast. But as our eyes slowly adjusted to night vision, we could see well enough.

In three-quarters of a mile we crossed six fences or hedges, the last of them on a slight rise. From there, I calculated, the cottage should be in view, across a shallow depression. No problem. The kite-sight picked it out well, the house and barn showing through a line of trees. I waited to check the wind: a breath fanned against our faces, wafting down from the north-east, taking our scent back the way we had come.

My aim was to approach within two hundred metres of the perimeter fence, and establish our OP in a suitable hollow out in the field. Three hundred metres off, I whispered to Mike to wait and cover me while I recced forward. There was no shortage of possible locations. The field was exceedingly rough, and I found plenty of holes three or four feet deep where the peaty soil had been eroded away and rock was showing through. I chose a depression with a front wall of rock some two feet high, topped with peaty soil and tussocks of grass, and went back to bring Mike up. The site was almost a natural slit-trench. Working as silently as we could, we pitched a sloping roof of wire netting, anchored it with pins top and bottom, and covered it with sods of turf sliced out of a nearby hollow. Some handfuls of long dead grass scattered over the top completed our roof, which tapered down almost to ground level at one side, leaving room at the other so that we could roll out sideways. At the top of the front wall, in the centre, I cut out a notch of turf to make a lookout aperture.

‘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 warning; 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.’

From the bundle somebody sorted out long black garments, and all four began to pull them on.

In Mike’s ear I whispered, ‘Recognize anyone?’

He nodded twice, staring intently.

‘Farrell?’

He shook his head.

In a minute or so the four men were encased in black from head to foot. One of them had opened up the hide, and was handing out the rifles and loaded magazines. I heard magazines clicking home.

I felt my heart going like a hammer, and took a couple of deep breaths. Jesus! I had the G3 set on automatic, and levelled at the group, thirty metres off. I could wallop them all.

One man, the shortest in the group, walked round the other three, giving them a cursory inspection. Then he doused the lamp, and all four walked to the car.

The moment they were rolling, I got on the radio. ‘Sierra Two. Four X-rays have collected weapons and ammunition from Black Two. Four AK 47s. Now complete in dark-green Rover 2000. Mobile northwards from my location.’

‘Zero Alpha,’ answered the desk. ‘Roger.’

‘Fuck it!’ I gasped. ‘Why didn’t we drop the bastards?’

‘I know. It drives you up the bloody wall.’

Mike stood up and shook himself, as if to throw off the weight of frustration. Then he called, ‘Delta Eight. Those four X-rays — two unknown to me, but the others are Eamonn O’Reilly and Jonty Best. Over.’

For the next half-hour all we could do was listen as the hit team moved in erratically on its target. We heard the Det cars reporting the Rover forward, from Green Five to Green Four and Green Three. From there it was only four or five hundred metres to the target, but for some reason the players veered off into open country and disappeared for twenty minutes. Then at last they were picked up again, heading back to Green Three. This time we reckoned the raid would go down within the next few seconds. But then came an unexpected twist: instead of stopping at the farmhouse, the assault vehicle went straight past. One of the intercept teams requested permission to take it out, but the head-shed refused. The desk wanted to let things develop and see what was going to happen.

Mike and I waited tensely, wound up on full alert. I imagined all our people being in the same state — some in the farmhouse, as I’d been a few days back, some in an OP outside the house; most in cars, all poised to react. Had something spooked the players? Time and again a job collapsed when they took fright at the last moment. Maybe they’d spotted one of our cars lurking in a strange place. Maybe they’d seen something at the house itself. We listened out, expecting to hear a report from the agency monitoring CB radio, which normally caught what the players were saying to each other.

Half an hour went by. Then suddenly somebody picked up the Rover again, incoming towards the farmhouse, apparently making another run. This time the desk decided on action, and scrambled two intercept teams to take it out before it reached the target. After a quick manoeuvre they trapped it, by the simple expedient of placing one car to block the lane ahead of it, and sending another up behind.

Then came another twist. The trapped Rover wasn’t carrying the hit team. The two men in it were unarmed, dressed in ordinary clothes, and claimed to be on their way home from a session in the pub. A preliminary search of the car revealed no weapons. The vehicle seemed to be completely clean.

Consternation. Was this the hit car, emptied out? Or was it a look-alike decoy? Suddenly, as I listened to the exchanges, I realized that the desk was calling me, asking again if I’d got the number of the car we’d reported.

‘Sierra Two, negative,’ I replied.

The desk ordered the two men to be brought in for questioning, and the car detained for forensic examination. Was that it for the night, then?

Not for us. It was Mike who saw the lights coming at high speed from the north.

‘Look out!’ he said. ‘They’re back.’

The car came screaming down the narrow road. The driver was in either a great hurry or a great rage. He flung the Rover right-handed through the gates, roared past us and scorched to a halt with the nose of the car in the barn doorway and the headlights still on. The illumination was so good that binoculars were more use than kite-sights. The same four men leapt out, all effing and blinding at the tops of their voices, and began to unload their weapons. One kicked the straw away from the top of the hide and lifted the cover, but they were all furious for a few moments and stood arguing.

‘Sierra Two,’ I reported urgently. ‘Four X-rays back at Black Two. They still have their weapons. We could smack them all. Permission to open fire. Over.’

‘Zero Alpha,’ the desk answered. ‘Roger. Wait one.’ Then, ‘Zero Alpha to Sierra Two. Negative — no permission. Don’t do anything. Let them go. Over.’

‘Sierra Two, roger.’

‘Oh for fuck’s sake!’ whispered Mike in my ear.

Such was the commotion that until the very last moment the players didn’t realize another car had arrived. Nor did we. It must have come very quietly, maybe without headlights. All at once it was in through the gate and sliding past us, to stop behind the Rover. Two men got out, leaving the doors open, and strode towards the shemozzle in the barn. Something made me focus on the driver, a big man with a slight limp. As he advanced he called out in a deep voice, ‘What the feck’s going on here? Cunts! Get a hold of yourselves.’

The instant he reached the light and I saw his face, I knew.

So did Mike. ‘Fucking Farrell!’ he exclaimed. ‘There he is!’

‘Sierra Two,’ I called again. ‘Two more X-rays now on location. One is Declan Farrell, repeat Farrell. Request permission to fire. Over.’

Again the answer was negative. I couldn’t believe it. I had the cross-hairs of the sight steady on the side of the bastard’s head. My finger was on the trigger. One touch, and Kath’s death would be avenged. Between the two of us, Mike and I could have dropped all six terrorists where they stood. Not one of them would even have got out of the barn.

Then suddenly we found we had an urgent problem of our own. As I lowered my G3, I noticed Farrell’s car rock on its springs, as if someone was shifting around inside it. The car rocked again. Against the dim light I saw something leap over the back of the front seat, and out of the driver’s door came not another player, but a bloody great dog, a Rotty.

‘Jesus!’ I breathed. ‘Now we’re in it.’

The blessed north wind of the day had died away, and odd puffs were coming from all directions. The dog trotted across to the front of the cottage and lifted his leg against the door-post. Then he began sniffing along the front wall. If we moved we’d be bound to attract his attention, but if we lay still he’d get us anyway. It would only be a matter of seconds before he picked up our scent.

‘Come on,’ I hissed at Mike, ‘we’ve got to pull out.’

Too late. The dog stopped, lifted his head and stood staring in our direction. Then he let fly a volley of barks and lunged forward. We lay flat. He pulled up two feet away, dancing high on his toes, barking and snarling like hell.

‘BUSTER!’ yelled Farrell from the barn. ‘Quiet, you bastard! Come here!’

The dog’s only response was to bark even louder. He began really doing his nut. Gobs of spit were flying out of his chops and landing on us. His barks would have wakened the dead. We were in an impossible position. If we kept still, someone would be over to see what he was going mad about (perhaps even Farrell himself — this at least could provide me with an excuse to take him out). But then again, if we shifted, the dog would go for us.

All this went through my mind in about half a second. I tried to slide my right hand down my side to bring my knife out of its sheath, but even that slight movement was enough to trigger an attack. With a thump like a sack of cement landing, the dog was on top of us, gnashing viciously. His jaws closed on Mike’s right forearm, and he was growling thunderously. Still I wanted to get the knife into him, but the instant I moved he let go and bit again, this time Mike’s shoulder. The dog was bracing his rear legs and twitching his arse about as he got pressure on and tried to drag backwards. There was only one thing for it. I rammed the muzzle of the G3 against the dog’s ribs and put one round through his chest. The report was slightly muffled, but still there was a loud, dull boom.

The impact of the shot lifted the creature clean off us and threw his body on to the bank, where he lay twitching, with a few last noises, half-barks, half-grunts, choking out of his mouth.

‘Run!’ I hissed.

We scrambled backwards out of the ditch and stumbled into the boggy field. For a second the voices in the barn had fallen silent. Then the men began to yell. We ran as best we could, tripping over the tussocks. Through the screen of trees we saw figures pour out of the barn. A moment later there came a rattle of automatic fire, and rounds went cracking over our heads. We dropped into a hole, about fifty metres back from the ditch. In the dark we were reasonably safe. A second rifle opened up. We heard rounds smacking into the ground away to our right. Obviously the players thought we had come in from the road and were going back that way. They fired wildly, whole magazines full, in that direction.

As soon as they stopped, we ran again, aiming for Fort Knox. In the confusion we lost our markers, and had to cast out, right and left, to find it. In the shelter of the rock bank at last, we stopped to get our breath.

‘How’s the arm?’

‘I can feel it’s bleeding, but not too bad. Hand’s working OK.’

‘Sierra Two,’ I called. ‘We’ve been compromised. No casualties, but we need an urgent pick-up. We’ll be at Black-Four-One five minutes from now.’

‘Zero Alpha,’ the desk answered. ‘Roger.’

‘Sierra Two. We’ve stirred up a hornet’s nest at Black Two, so I recommend all units steer clear of it.’

Still the villains were convinced that we’d come in from the road. They were poncing down the drive with flashlights, loosing off into the dark. I thought of the purple knickers going over that wall.

It took us about a minute to collect all our gear and destroy the OP. Once we’d recovered the ground-pegs and dragged off the wire-netting, the turf-and-grass roof collapsed in a heap, leaving little sign that anybody had been there. As a final touch, I kicked away the edges of the observation notch that we’d cut in the bank so that it would look like a natural hollow.

Ten minutes later we were back at our dropping-off point, lurking behind a convenient stone wall. We’d hardly got into position when Pat came up on the radio to say that he was closing on the location. I acknowledged, and we emerged into the road. Almost at once we saw headlights coming up the hill, and within seconds we were safe in the back of the car, heading for home.