Stand By, Stand By

FOUR

There was no question of my quitting the course. On the contrary, I couldn’t wait to rejoin it. Early on Friday morning I nipped into camp and left a message for the adjutant saying I was back on side, then got myself straight down to LATA, determined to make up whatever ground I had lost through being away.

For the first couple of days the guys treated me rather strangely. There was none of the usual banter and piss-taking; instead, their attitude was respectful. Were they anxious not to hurt my feelings? Looking back, I can see that they expected me to be in pieces and were trying to handle me gently. But at the time I found it annoying. Outside the course I had one or two close mates — Tony and John Stone — who knew how hard I had been hit, and I was glad of their help; Pat Martin was another bulwark for me. The rest of the course may well have thought I was an unfeeling bastard, and didn’t care much about what had happened. If that was the score, all the better, because I didn’t want anyone to know what I had in mind. What nobody realized was that the agony of losing Kath had transformed itself into a ferocious desire for revenge. Grief had turned into anger, despair into steely determination. Far from being in distress, I came back on fire with new motivation.

I’d read in some newspaper that the own-goal bomber had been given a full-scale military funeral in West Belfast. Never mind that his incompetence had led to the deaths of five innocent civilians, or that a Protestant riot had broken out while he was being buried, with thousands of pounds’ worth of damage caused. In the twisted minds of the IRA he had died in active service, and was a martyr, a hero. Brilliant!

To focus my animosity, I had given my target a name. Because he was obviously a leading player, I had called him Gary, after Gary Player, the golfer. In my mind’s eye Gary had reddish hair and beard, and sly, pig-like eyes. He was of medium height, and sloppily dressed — altogether a scruffy individual, dirty and slovenly — but cunning, and bigoted as hell, a dirty fighter and a dangerous customer. Trying to work out the position he might occupy in the IRA hierarchy, I had done my best to reconstruct events. The bomber had been an unemployed twenty-two-year-old. No doubt he had been a member of some ASU, which also included a shooter and a driver. Probably the bomber had been given orders to pick up from Point A the device which was to kill him, and deposit it at Point B. But who had given the orders? That was the key question. According to our instructor Reg Brown, who’d already done a tour in Northern Ireland, it would almost certainly have been an ops officer or a quartermaster in the Belfast brigade.

Maybe I was deluding myself, but I felt sure that fate was pointing me in the direction of my enemy. Already we were into August. Provided I got through the rest of the course OK, I would be posted to Belfast in October, only two months off; and then, for a year, I would be on the man’s doorstep, trained, armed, and furnished with every pretext for taking terrorists out. When, in the middle of August, Loyalist gunmen killed seven people in eight days, and the IRA responded in kind, I persuaded myself that nobody would notice one more apparently sectarian killing.

On the domestic front, things were under control, if not great. After a family discussion we had agreed that it would be best for me to leave Tim with his Gran. Meg had pulled up again after her operation, and said she could manage. When I came across in the autumn, at least I’d be able to see something of the kid. In England there was no one to look after him.

At Keeper’s Cottage I’d left Kath’s things exactly as they were — clothes, shoes, hats, a few bits of jewellery. I could have given everything to Oxfam but somehow I didn’t want to, so I shut the wardrobe doors, left her dressing table as it was, and deferred action indefinitely.

At the end of August a 1,0001b bomb went off outside the RUC station at Markethill in County Armagh. Miraculously, no one was hurt, but the explosion further sharpened our eagerness to get across the water. Down at LATA we were into the most fascinating part of the course: surveillance, or the art of following a target, either on foot or by car, without being seen. In this, for the first time, we became fully aware of the role that was going to be played in our lives by the shadowy organization known as the ‘Det’. Short for ‘Detachment’, the name referred to the undercover intelligence-gathering unit that worked alongside our guys across the water. Whereas our role was reactive, theirs was passive: watching, spotting faces, gathering information, learning about the enemy.

The Det was made up of guys drawn from all corners of the forces; within the SAS they were known as ‘Walts’. Some had come from the Regiment, but others were from all sections of the British services, and as far as work went, the whole lot kept themselves very much to themselves. In Belfast our guys shared a canteen and bar with them, and we were told that they were friendly enough off-duty; at LATA, whenever I saw some of them, I noticed how totally unremarkable they looked. I’m sure they’d been picked partly for their anonymous appearance, and for the fact that they had no distinguishing features. They were neither too tall nor too short, neither too fat nor spectacularly thin. None of them was particularly good-looking, but no one was all that ugly either. They all seemed to be uniform and neutral, so that they would blend effortlessly into a crowd anywhere in Northern Europe, and if you saw a couple of them in a car you wouldn’t look twice. But we soon realized that they were highly trained, and an indispensable weapon in the fight against terrorism.

Until we tried it, I don’t think any of us had realized what an elaborate business surveillance was — a team of eight or ten men or women tracking a single target, all in immediate touch with each other by covert radio, all speaking a special language. The radios were secure, and scrambling devices made it impossible for outsiders to listen in. The jargon wasn’t designed to baffle anyone; rather, its aim was to achieve economy and precision — to cut down time on the air and eliminate misunderstandings. Thus ‘Bravo’ was any man, ‘Echo’ any woman, ‘Charlie’ any car. ‘Foxtrot’ meant on the move on foot, ‘Mobile’ in a car. ‘Complete’ signified that a person had gone into a house or a car. ‘Getting a trigger’ meant getting your eyes on the target or the place where he was last seen.

To give us an idea, the instructor set up a scenario on the magic board — the big sheet of white-enamelled metal that covered most of the front wall of the classroom. Switching on a projector, he put a blown-up street-plan on the board and placed a few magnetic counters on it. One was black — the target — and the others white. Also on the plan were some coloured spots — red, green and blue, with numbers on them. Each of these, he explained, was used to identify a particular area. It was far easier and quicker to say ‘Green One’ than ‘The crossroads at the intersection of River Street and Upper Richmond Way,’ or give the place’s grid-reference.

‘Now,’ he began, ‘the most important guy in any surveillance operation is the one running it from the ops room. He’s sat there with all his radios on, a couple of helpers, and a blown-up map of the area you’re in. One big plus about this part of your training is that it gets you shit-hot on the radio. You’ve got to be really slick in reporting the target’s movements. If you’re slow, you’re too late — he’s gone round a corner and you’ve lost him.

‘Now, what happens if the target goes to ground in a house? Well, it’s up to the controller to bring people in to box the site.’ He moved four white counters on to street junctions around the black blob. ‘There you are. You sit on corners, in cafes or bars, waiting for the target to reappear. If you do your job properly, he can’t get out of the box without one of you seeing him.

‘If you think he’s seen you, the golden rule is: peel off. Tell everyone else and get lost. Things go tits-up when somebody thinks he’s OK and carries on. If you do that, all you manage to do is confirm to the target that surveillance is on him, and he may go to ground for weeks. OK, then, listen to this.’

He switched on an audio-tape — a hissing, crackly recording of a live operation. Every time a new voice came in he moved the corresponding white counter, and after every report he shifted the black target to a new position, all the time throwing in explanations of his own.

‘I’ve got the trigger on Bravo One’s house,’ said the first voice. ‘At the moment he’s complete.’

‘In other words, he’s indoors,’ said the instructor.

Then, a moment later, the voice said, ‘Stand by, stand by. The door’s open. Oh no. Nothing. It’s his wife going to the bins.’ Another pause. Then, ‘Stand by, stand by. That’s Bravo One leaving. He’s foxtrot northwards.’

‘He’s walking up this street here,’ the instructor explained, sliding the black counter upwards.

The voice came in again. ‘He’s wearing black on blue. Heading for the Drover’s Arms on the corner. Now he’s turning right…’

Another voice, a Scottish accent: ‘Yeah, I’ve got him. I can take him down Commercial Street. He’s foxtrot eastwards. Now he’s joined up with Bravo Two. They’ve both gone complete in Charlie One, a bronze Escort. Can’t get the number.’

‘Both targets are in the car,’ said the instructor, placing a yellow disc on the board.

A few seconds passed, and the Scots voice returned: ‘Charlie One mobile eastwards towards Green Three.’

Then came another voice, measured, authoritative, the controller: ‘Steve, are you covering Green Three?’

‘On Green Three, facing north.’

‘Prepare to take over Charlie One…’

As I listened, I felt the hairs on my neck rise up. The process was fascinating in itself, but in my mind’s eye I was part of a team in West Belfast, tracking two players through the seedy Nationalist areas — maybe the Falls Road or Andersontown. The guys in the car were leading us towards Gary Player and a major contact. Any moment I might set eyes on my No. 1 enemy.

The soundtrack fell silent. ‘If you’re driving,’ the instructor said, ‘the one place you don’t want to be is in the car behind the target. Keep two or three cars back. If people are doing something they didn’t ought to be doing, they’re forever looking behind them in their mirrors. If you do find yourself behind, for Christ’s sake peel off at the first opportunity and get someone else to take over.’

‘Stop, stop, stop!’ called a new voice from the tape. ‘Charlie One has pulled up in a lay-by at 489346. Bravo Two is foxtrot towards a telephone kiosk…’

The lads were getting excited by the idea of going across the water, and enthusiasm rose still higher whenever guys came back with stories of live operations. Several concerned the ace sniper who was doing shoots in the border area and in Belfast, taking soldiers out with a .50 rifle — a fearsome weapon which could put a round straight through a man’s chest, flak jacket and all, at five or six hundred metres. The sniper was highly skilled and well organized. From the way he operated, the Det concluded that he had been trained in America. He had a lot of dickers — lookouts — who would check that an area was clear before he ventured forth. Then, if all was well, he’d come out and do a shoot on an army patrol. The only man known to have survived an attack from him was a soldier who’d been on patrol in West Belfast. The incoming round hit his SA 80, which he was holding across his chest. The weapon disintegrated, and parts of it (or of the .50 bullet) flew upwards, ripping chunks out of his face; but at least he wasn’t killed.

The Regiment had set out to get the sniper by staging a come-on, posing as a green army patrol. The idea was to egg him on and keep him on the air so that the radio specialists could DF him and find out where he was based. It was dicey as hell, but it nearly worked. A few of the Regiment guys dressed up as ordinary soldiers and went through the motions of mounting a patrol. As they came into the target area, through their earpieces they could hear a dicker commentating on their progress.

‘OK,’ said this Ulster voice, ‘there’s a patrol coming down the road. They’ll be in your field of view in about thirty seconds.’

The sniper did not answer. There was a pause, then a sudden change of emphasis. ‘Jaysus!’ said the Ulster voice. ‘There’s something wrong here. They’ve got the wrong fecking weapons. They’ve got G3s, not SA 80s. The fellers are older, as well. They don’t look like squaddies at all.’

The sniper realized immediately that the patrol was an SAS one. All he said was, ‘I’m pulling off.’ With that he fell silent, and the attempt at DF-ing him failed.

That wasn’t the end of it, though. The Regiment tried again; this time they went to the lengths of taking a black fellow over, to make the patrol look still more realistic. They carried SA 80s, so that everything seemed pukka. It was quite an elaborate operation, with some guys airborne in a chopper and others deployed on the ground around the periphery, to block the sniper in if they got a line on where he was set up.

Again the patrol was listening out as the dickers commentated on their approach, but this time, to their consternation, they heard the shooter say, ‘Right, I’m ready to fire. I’ll take the second fecker from the front.’ At that they did a bomb-burst, and every man hit the deck in a different direction. Then they upped and ran like stags, all over the place. They didn’t collect back at the emergency rendezvous for more than an hour, and by then the gunman had once again melted into the night.

Of all our training, it was the range practices that I enjoyed most. Partly it was because I had become quite good with a pistol; but beyond that, in putting down live rounds I felt I was getting closer to my objective than on any of the rest of our activities, realistic though they were.

For pistol training we’d head out to the range at 0900. A couple of the guys were detailed to collect ammunition from the stores and lug the heavy metal boxes to the range hut. One man would go round putting up the red flags, to show that live firing was in progress, and the rest of us would sort out the targets.

The range had high stop-banks of soil thrown up in a horseshoe shape, so that you could fire at targets round three sides of it. Old railway sleepers were set into the ground, with holes drilled into them so that targets could easily be set up. We’d start by firing off two or three magazines just to get comfortable. Everyone had used pistols earlier in their training, so they all knew which their master eye was and how to take up a proper, easy stance: semi-crouching, with — for a righthander — the left hand cupped round the outside of the right, supporting it.

If rounds started going low, you knew you were snatching at the trigger — and the instructors had a special drill for correcting that fault. One of them would say, ‘Hey, try doing the old ball and dummy with me.’ Then he’d stand behind the shooter and load his pistol for him, sometimes putting live rounds in the magazine, sometimes leaving it empty, so that the man pulling the trigger didn’t know if it was going to go off or not. That way, if he was flinching and snatching, the instructor could see the end of the barrel dip, and try to rectify the fault.

After the guys had sorted themselves out and got their eyes in, everyone would have a brew from the urn by the target shed. Then the instructor would move on to drawing from holsters. He’d line up the lads in front of the targets and call, ‘UP!’ Everyone would draw, fire a quick double-tap, then re-holster the pistol. Then we’d turn through ninety degrees to the right or left, and at the second command we’d draw, swivel and fire. Next we’d turn the other way, shoot from that position, and finally face backwards, so that we had to spin through 180 degrees.

Then we’d do some walking practice — maybe four of us at a time. The aim was to get everybody nice and confident, walking with their hands at their sides, in a relaxed attitude. Then at the command ‘UP!’ we’d stop, draw, whip round and fire, all in a split second. If the targets were numbered, and we were walking in pairs, the instructor might yell ‘ONE AND FOUR!’ whereupon we’d have to engage those two targets. When each practice finished, the instructor would say, ‘OK, guys, paste up,’ and we’d go forward to stick coloured patches over the bullet holes.

At some stage, as we were firing, he’d yell ‘Stoppage!’ and we’d go down on one knee, hitting the release button of the magazine as we went; we’d whip the magazine out, slot another in, and be firing again as we came back up. In a contact, our lives might depend on the speed with which we reacted, and I practised until I could do the change in less than three seconds.

Speed and accuracy were everything. With the Hun’s Head targets — the silhouette of a German soldier’s head and trunk — it was always the head we aimed at, and up to twenty paces I reckoned I could put a double-tap straight through the middle of the forehead ten times out of ten. With the bigger Figure 11 targets we stuck on small white patches to give us precise aiming marks.

I found it odd that the lads who weren’t actually firing would show little interest in what was going on. They’d sit on the bench outside the hut, chit-chatting away — the young ones would be on about the old trout they’d been humping the night before, the older guys about the extensions they were putting on their houses. As for me, I couldn’t get enough of it. I had grown fanatically determined that if ever my chance came across the water, I wasn’t going to flunk it. I’m sure some of the guys thought I was becoming obsessive, and I suppose I was — but only for a reason about which I couldn’t enlighten them.

All our training emphasized the need for restraint and split-second timing. Many times in the past (we heard), our predecessors had had to wait until players were actually levelling weapons in front of them before they themselves could fire; if they’d shot sooner, before they were under immediate threat, they could have ended up in court charged with murder. It seemed ridiculous that the dice should be so heavily loaded in the terrorists’ favour — yet that was the way things stood.

I recalled part of old Morrison’s tirade, in which he had lambasted the excessive restraints under which the security forces had to work: ‘When we’ve brought a murderer into the station,’ he’d said, ‘if I so much as cuff him on the ear, that’ll guarantee to put me in court. If I kick the chair from under him, that’s an assault. Even if I lean over the table to emphasize a point, that’s threatening him, and the interview’s stopped because it’s being monitored by the chief inspector sitting in the back.’

In some irrational way, I felt that the normal restrictions did not apply to me. Gary Player had already committed murder, and that was sufficient justification for my taking him out, never mind any further crimes he might commit. At the back of my mind I realized that in planning a personal vendetta I was stepping out of line. The essence of any SAS operation is teamwork, and here I was, trying to crack something on my own.

Working solo, without mates to cover my movements, would expose me to a far greater risk of getting shot or captured. Normally, working in pairs, you cover each other, and you can shoot your way out of trouble. Alone, without a partner, I could easily end up in the shit. I never really faced up to the thought of what might happen if I was captured. Very few of the guys ever did. Deep down, they knew perfectly well that if the IRA got them, they would be whipped south of the border and would probably never see the light of day again. They would die — but not before they had suffered unspeakable tortures. For this reason, some of them privately admitted that if things looked really bad they’d shoot themselves; but most preferred to believe they would come out fighting. I was one of that majority.

Apart from survival, there was also the little matter of identifying my victim. How in hell was I to find out who he was? And even if I did discover his name, how was I to track him down? Such was the force of my anger that I had no doubt I would find him somehow.

One morning a couple of weeks before the end of the course, I was due to have my arm checked by a specialist in the tri-service hospital at Wroughton. By then I was so hyped up that the thought of losing half a day’s training quite pissed me off — but I scented possible compensation in the fact that Tracy might be on duty when I clocked in at the camp Med Centre to pick up my X-rays.

She was. When I appeared, she was on the phone, but before I’d taken two steps into the room she banged down the receiver with a loud cry of ‘SHIT!’

‘Something the matter?’

‘It’s our effing landlord. He’s throwing us out.’

‘That’s tough. What happened?’

She told me she’d been living with a friend, Susan, in a flat on the outskirts of town. They had no proper security of tenure, and now the owner of the house was going abroad and wanted to let the whole place as a single unit. He had given the girls a fortnight to pack their bags.

Listening to Tracy talk, watching her, I thought she had changed. Her face was lit up with indignation, but she seemed more mature, less wild and tarty than I remembered her. Maybe I was influenced by the fact that she’d been very sweet about Kath the first time I’d seen her after the disaster. In any case, I now felt sorry for her.

Even so, it wasn’t until I was in the minibus, half-way to Wroughton, that the idea hit me. For some time I’d been worrying what would happen to Keeper’s Cottage when I went to Belfast. Tony was about to go off on the jungle phase of his selection course; in any case, he wouldn’t want to live out in the country on his own while I was away. I could simply lock the door and go, but I didn’t want the place to stand empty for months on end.

So why not offer the house to Tracy and Susan? I didn’t know whether or not Susan had a car, but Tracy certainly had one, and could easily commute in and out. As long as being out in the wilds didn’t spook them, they could live in the cottage rent-free, look after things till I got back, and give themselves time to find permanent accommodation elsewhere.

At Wroughton there was the usual delay. A backlog of patients had built up, and I was told I’d have to wait half an hour; so I went down the corridor to the payphone and called the Med Centre’s reception.

‘Hi,’ I began. ‘It’s me, Geordie.’

‘What’s happened now? Left your head behind?’

‘Listen — I’ve had an idea about a place for you and Susan. You can have my house. It’s going to be empty from the end of the month, for the best part of a year.’

‘Where is it?’

‘Off the Madley road, about four miles out.’

‘How much d’you want for it?’

‘Nothing. I just need to have it looked after.’

‘Well…’

I could practically see her squirming her neat little arse about on her chair.

‘Tell you what — I could pick you up tonight and take you out to have a look. Susan as well; you’d better both see it. It’s pretty much out in the wilds, on its own. What do you think?’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course. I wouldn’t be ringing otherwise.’

‘What time, then?’

‘Wait one. I’ll be back up from LATA about half seven. Say half-eight. What’s your address?’

She gave it, and then said, ‘There’s no strings attached to this, are there?’

‘Of course not.’

I was there five minutes early, showered and changed. Naturally I’d said nothing to the guys on the course, but all day I’d been haunted by a peculiar feeling, half guilt, half anticipation. Was I being disloyal to Kath’s memory? There was no denying that I found Tracy attractive. But then I told myself, hell — I’m just trying to fix up a business arrangement, of mutual benefit.

Or so I thought — until she came flying down the steps of the house, all legs and arms.

‘Where’s Susan?’ I asked.

‘She had a date already. But she likes the idea, and she’s given me power of attorney to do what I think fit. Anyway, her job means she is away a lot, travelling.’

‘Let’s go, then.’

She was wearing a silver-grey track suit, and had a small bag hung over one shoulder. From the scent that wafted off her in the car I didn’t think she’d been running. I had a good look at her profile for the first time, and saw that it matched her manner exactly, being rather pert and perky. On our way out she asked about Tim, and I explained he was with his Gran in Belfast.

‘Is he OK?’

I turned to look at her, and saw her looking steadily, seriously, back at me.

‘I think so. Lucky he’s so young.’

‘That’s right.’

She fell silent for a couple of minutes. But then, as I turned down the lane to the cottage, she exclaimed, ‘Gawd! You said it!’

‘What?’

‘Buried away.’

‘D’you mind that?’

‘I dunno. I’ve never lived in a place like this.’

When we got out of the car she shuddered and said in an aggrieved voice, ‘It’s dark!’

‘What did you expect? It’s night-time.’

‘I mean, there are no lights anywhere.’

‘This is the country. You don’t have lights in the country. Don’t need any. If you eat plenty of carrots, you can see in the dark.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘Honest!’

‘There could be people lurking about out here.’

‘What sort of people?’

‘Rapists. Homicidal maniacs.’

‘There are far more of them in towns. This isn’t the environment for people like that.’

For a few seconds I thought she was going to throw a wobbly, especially when an owl sounded off close by. But in fact things went the other way. Once inside, she responded strongly to the place. She was a city kid all right, but her mind was open, and she was prepared to learn and adapt. She loved the house, saw the mess, gave me a mild bollocking, said she’d take over, and set straight in to clear up the kitchen.

‘Eh,’ I said, ‘You can’t do that.’

‘Stop me.’

‘You’d better have a drink, then. Glass of wine?’

‘Thanks.’

One thing very soon led to another. She offered to cook something for supper. I suggested that we go out to the pub in the village, which served a reasonable evening meal. She said, ‘No, that would be a waste of money.’ Suddenly I heard myself say, ‘You mean the waste of an opportunity?’ The next thing I knew, we were in the bedroom, and I saw an immensely long flash of thigh as she pulled off her jogging pants.

‘Jesus!’ I cried. ‘This is crazy. I haven’t any — er…’

‘I have!’ She made a grab for the little bag she’d brought with her. ‘Isn’t that the Boy Scouts’ motto “Be prepared”?’

In the morning, as we sat having a cup of coffee in the kitchen, I said, ‘I should never have brought you here like this.’

‘I’m glad you did.’

‘I feel guilty.’

‘Why? You’re on your own. You’ve no one else.’

‘No — but it’s so soon after Kath.’

‘You never messed about when she was alive.’

‘No.’

‘I’ve been worrying about you for weeks.’

‘You didn’t show it much.’

‘How could I?’

‘I know.’

She shook her head and put her hand over mine. I looked up into her face and said, ‘Somehow, with you, I feel myself. I feel normal — comfortable, like.’

‘Same here.’ She smiled, producing tiny creases down her cheeks.

‘What will people think, though?’ I asked.

‘They won’t think anything. They needn’t know I’ve spent the night here. As long as we don’t walk into work wrapped round each other.’

‘Jesus, no! I’ll run you home round the back way, and go in on my own.’

‘And then —’ Tracy went on with her own line of thought — ‘when Susan and I move in, it’ll look like a straightforward business arrangement.’

‘What about when I come back?’

‘Tonight, you mean?’

‘No, no — from across the water.’

‘I’ll be waiting here for you.’

‘You mean that?’

‘If you want me.’

The course ended with two big exercises, one out in the country and one mainly in town. In the first, we were told that a bomb had been planted in a certain culvert, under a country lane, out in the middle of a large estate. According to the scenario, command wires had been spotted running up a hedge to a firing point in the corner of an old quarry. Good intelligence had been received to the effect that terrorists were coming back at night to detonate the bomb when a vehicle patrol went past. I was detailed to command an operation to take them out.

There was no time for an on-site recce. For an hour we pored over the 1:50,000 map, planning covert approaches to the spot marked as the target. Then, as dark was coming on, we bussed out to a drop-off point, tabbed in across country, over the back of a hill, and prepared to lie up in wait. In the last of the light we found the command wires and traced the top end of them to a drain beside a gate-post, where the fence coming up from the culvert reached one corner of the quarry.

It was a filthy night, pissing with rain. The gate-post was nearly at the summit of the hill, and from it we could look down on the lane, which ran along the contour below us, across our front. Having set the rest of the patrol to cover us, Pat and I worked our way down the command wires, to make sure they were connected to the device. Crafty bastards, the terrorists had coupled them up to the barbed wire, so that for most of the run the fence itself would act as a conductor: that way, no extra wires were needed, and there was nothing unusual to be seen. At the bottom end we picked up the special circuit again and followed it to an old milk churn under the little bridge.

That was good enough. Back near the firing-point, I deployed two pairs of guys left and right, as cut-offs, in case Pat and I — the killer group — missed the players and they tried to run out sideways. Then we settled into a small hollow thirty metres from the gate-post. There were a couple of more obvious hiding places, closer to the target; but the depression was just deep enough to cover us, especially in the dark, and it wasn’t the kind of feature that would attract anyone’s attention. I set the bipod of the G3 on the front of the dip, and wriggled around until it was at a comfortable height.

As the night wore on our hollow gradually filled with water, until we were lying in a couple of inches of liquid mud. The moon was three-quarters full, but because of the clouds its light was very faint, and I wished we’d had time to set out ambush lights. In the event, I had to keep switching on the kite-sight of my G3 to get a good view of the culvert area. In the grey-green glow of the sight the fence posts along the road showed up clearly, but when I looked with the naked eye I could scarcely make them out.

I was finding it hard to concentrate. Half the time my mind was slipping away to Tracy, and the way she’d wrapped her great long legs round me, first round my waist, then round my neck. What a night! And how fantastic that she was hell-bent on taking root in the cottage. To bring myself back to earth, I tried to imagine that I was no longer in the safe, soft Herefordshire countryside, but in some godforsaken corner of Ulster, with fanatical murderers lurking behind every hedge, and Gary Player himself coming to detonate the bomb.

Our magazines might have been loaded with blanks, but all the other details of the exercise were as real as could be. We knew the Det trainees were out as well, tracking the alleged players, but apart from occasional checks on the comms net, nothing happened until about 2.30 a.m. By then the rain had cleared and the night had gone very quiet. Suddenly, a gun-shot cracked off in the woods on the slopes opposite, and echoes rolled away down the valley to our right.

I had my radio in the special pocket of my ops waistcoat, down the left side of my chest. Two small throat-mikes were held in position either side of my Adam’s apple by a choker of elastic. The pressel-switch, or transmission button, was a small rubber dome clipped on to the front of my windproof smock. If ever I found myself so close to the enemy that I couldn’t speak, Control would interrogate me through my earpiece, and I would answer by using different numbers of presses — one for no, two for yes — which came across at the other end as quick bursts of static.

Now I gave it one blip to alert Control.

‘Zero Alpha,’ came the voice of the boss, who I knew was in a command vehicle a couple of miles down the road.

‘Bravo Five-One,’ I said quietly. ‘There’s been a shot fired approximately five hundred metres north of our location.’

‘Roger. Checking. Wait out.’

Before I could say anything else, two more shots rang out. Pat, a yard to my left, came out with, ‘Fucking hell! It’s Arma-fucking-geddon!’ Then, way off in the distance, torches began to flash. A pair of headlights flicked on, and a vehicle went haring along a woodland ride, the beams whipping wildly up and down. Men shouted, and a big dog, maybe a German Shepherd, barked. The sounds were all faint with distance, but clearly coming towards us.

‘Bravo Five-One to all callsigns,’ I said. ‘I think it’s poachers at the squire’s pheasants. Nothing to do with us. But it could be a come-on. Just sit tight.’

Gradually the commotion died down. The vehicle drove off and silence returned. A few minutes later I picked up some movement below. I nudged Pat and brought the butt of the G3 up to my shoulder. But all the kite-sight revealed was a fox, padding up the hedge towards us. The animal came right to the firing-point, stopped, sniffed and cocked its leg against the gate-post. Then it turned through the gate and disappeared to our left.

‘Well I’m buggered!’ muttered Pat. ‘One fox foxtrot towards target!’

At last, soon after three, the Det came on the air. ‘Two X-rays, foxtrot towards your location, nearing zero six zero,’ said a Scottish voice. ‘Three hundred metres from firing-point.’

‘Bravo Five-One, roger.’

My neck crawled. The baddies were not doing anything as straightforward as coming along the lane to the culvert and up the hedge towards us; rather, they were moving in across country, from behind our left shoulders. The slope of the ground meant that we wouldn’t be able to see them until the last moment.

‘X-rays still foxtrot,’ said the Det Scot. ‘Two hundred metres.’

A couple of minutes ticked by. Then, ‘Zero Alpha,’ came the boss’s voice in my ear. ‘Have you got eyes on the X-rays?’

By then they could have been almost on top of us, too close for me to speak. I gave a single punch on my pressel to signify ‘No.’

I lay like a stone, holding my breath, listening. A minute passed, then another. The boss called again and asked the same question. Again I gave him one press.

Where the hell were they? With the utmost caution I turned my head until it was facing backwards like an owl’s. Nobody in sight. Obviously they were waiting out, somewhere very close. We knew that they were there, and they knew that we were there. They were trying to wind us up and push us into making a mistake.

Sod them. On the net I heard the boss asking the Det to check the bearing-to-target they had given. The answer came back confirming it. Still no movement near us.

Then Pat reached out and touched my left arm.

There they were — two black heads and torsos showing against the sky, a few yards off to our left. The pair moved forward in a crouching attitude, so close I could hear the rustle of their clothes.

Gently I raised the butt of the G3 to my shoulder and looked through the kite-sight. The figures showed up in every detail. One was carrying a weapon, a long, and the other had a box-like object slung from his left hand. As I watched they went to ground by the gate-post.

I gave a touch on the pressel.

‘Zero Alpha,’ said the boss. ‘Have you got X-rays on target?’

Two presses.

‘Are they armed?’

Two presses.

‘How far off are they? Less than thirty metres?’

Two presses.

‘Twenty metres?’

Two presses.

‘Three patrol Charlies mobile, direction target,’ said the Det voice. ‘Have you got eyes on them?’

One press. But a moment later I saw them — three Land Rovers driving on sidelights up the lane. This, for me, was the moment of decision. Yes, I told myself, these two guys were definitely a threat. The patrol was within seconds of passing over the culvert. The terrorists were on the firing-point. If we didn’t drop them immediately they’d detonate their bomb, possibly with disastrous results.

‘Stand by, stand by,’ I whispered to Pat. I sensed, rather than saw, him bring the butt of his weapon up into his shoulder. My own rifle sat steady on its bipod. I pushed the safety catch forward to ‘Automatic’. Then at the top of my voice I yelled, ‘ARMY! ARMY! ARMY! HALT OR I FIRE!’

Instantly the pair split, one running right, one left. At the first movement I let rip at the right-hand figure with three short bursts. Pat did the same at the left (I was aware of flame spurting from the muzzle of his rifle). Both players went down and lay still. I gave mine another burst, on the ground, to make sure of him, waited a few seconds, and got back on the radio.

‘Bravo Five-One. Contact! Two terrorists dead. No casualties ourselves. Checking the area. Wait out.’

We had a quick look round, made sure none of the other guys had seen anyone. Then I reported, ‘No other terrorists on target,’ and asked for the QRF — a green army team — to move up to the prearranged rendezvous. I deputed Pat to meet them and explain exactly what had happened. Then I saw that the rest of my team got the hell out; the instructors had hammered into us the fact that in Northern Ireland a crowd gathers immediately at the scene of any incident, and it is bad news if locals see the faces of members of the special forces.

Soon we were away back to base in a couple of the Land Rovers that had acted as the threatened patrol. Behind, on the ground, the alleged terrorists would still be lying where they had fallen, until a photographer had taken pictures of them. Also on the scene would be one of the Regiment acting as the LO (or Liaison Officer) — he’d be directing the QRF, who would cordon off the whole area. Nobody else would be allowed until the arrival of the SOCO, the Scene of Crimes Officer, who was from the RUC. He would measure distances and angles, collect up the cartridge cases and make notes for his report.

After a wash-up, we got our heads down, but not for long, because the exercise continued in the morning with a full-scale inquiry. Not only did a proper judge preside in court, with real-life barristers holding forth; the Regiment brought down about sixty cooks and bottle-washers from the squadron, to act as audience and sit there heckling. We’d been told how easy it would be to let ourselves down by getting details wrong when we gave our accounts of what had happened, or by giving away more information than necessary; so we briefed ourselves carefully beforehand, and in the event got the whole incident well squared away. The best bit of the morning came when one of the cooks, Jimmy Bell, went way over the top. We didn’t know whether he’d had a couple of pints on the way down or what, but he became so obnoxious with his heckling and his shouts of ‘Order! Order!’ that the judge ordered him removed from the court, and it was all we could do to sit there with straight faces.

Maybe because of my upbringing in the country, I felt more at home operating out on farms and in the woods than in towns. But the next event on our programme was a four-day spell in Lydd and Hythe, the mock village on the Kent coast purpose-built for training. That is an eye-opener, because there are video cameras set up on every corner, and after a house assault you could run the tape and see exactly what everyone had done. If someone had behaved like a prat it was useless for him to deny it, because there he was on the video, pissing about for all to see.

Our final exercise — a joint one with the MI5 — was mostly urban. The scenario was that two major players had just come across the water and gone to ground in Birmingham. MI5 trainees followed them to a house in Solihull, where they were supposed to have secreted some weapons in a garage. It fell to Pat and myself to do a CTR, and exercise our newly acquired skills as lockpickers by breaking into the garage at night to verify the information. Sure enough, we found a cache of two dummy AK 47s and some bomb-making equipment. We reported the find and pulled off, taking care to remove all traces of our entry, and left a couple of guys in an OP that covered both house and garage.

MI5, meanwhile, was continuing its own surveillance, boxing the area to make sure that the villains didn’t slip away unobserved. But it was our guys in the OP who saw the players loading their weapons into a car next morning. By then we were all pretty professional at keeping up a running commentary, and this one came over without hesitation: ‘OK. Bravos One and Two are in garage. They’ve got the weapons. Now they’re loading them into Charlie One. Weapons definitely in boot of car. Stand by, stand by. Bravos One and Two mobile towards Blue Three.’

Seconds later the MI5 boys came up with, ‘OK, I have Charlie One at Blue Three mobile towards Blue Two.’

So it went on. Charlie One, a battered old blue Montego estate, was followed to a deserted farmhouse in the hills outside Kidderminster. This was the base from which they were going to mount their operation. Again our troop went in at night to put an OP on the farm, and when the baddies turned up to collect their weapons we ambushed them, in theory killing the lot. In fact (according to the scenario) one escaped, and moved north to join an ASU in Wolverhampton — so the exercise continued in pursuit of him, and the action moved up there.

When the course ended, we had a couple of beers at the bar in LATA, then went back for a Chinese meal in Hereford. After that we felt we’d taken enough fried rice and crispy noodles on board to soak up a few more beers, so we went on to the Falcon, one of the Regiment’s regular haunts. By then we’d all grown our hair fairly long, as part of our preparation for Northern Ireland, but we were all of much the same age, size and physique, and it wasn’t difficult for outsiders to tell where we came from.

As usual we stood around together, occupying what we regarded as our own territory, at one end of the main bar, and before long we began to get aggro from a gang of town lads in the opposite corner. At first they were just making the odd sarcastic remark, more or less loud enough for us to hear. Then one of them, as he came past on his way to the bar, deliberately barged into me with his shoulder. He was quite a big lad, with straw-coloured hair shaved flat at the top to make an Elvis-type quiff.

‘Hey,’ I said. ‘What’s the matter with you? Bog off, before you get hurt.’

He mouthed some obscenity, then turned to the barman. I could see that he was drunk enough to behave stupidly, but not so drunk that he couldn’t do somebody serious damage. When he came back with two pints of lager, I stood well aside. Apart from anything else, Fred, the landlord, had recently installed closed-circuit TV, so that if anything did start he would have the evidence on tape — and in the event of trouble, he’d be straight up the camp next morning.

Nothing more happened for a while; but when I went for a slash, out of the corner of my eye I saw the fellow get up and start after me. Then, as I stood at the communal urinal, he came and took up position right beside me, not having a piss himself, but peering down at my midriff in the most offensive fashion.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘I told you to fuck off.’

‘Not much to bloody write home about, is it?’ he said contemptuously. ‘Can’t think what she sees in it.’

I saw his right hand moving down towards his pocket, so I didn’t wait any longer, but dropped him where he stood. He slid down the enamel face and finished up lying on his left side with his head in the trough. Just the place for him. I made a quick grab into his trouser pocket. Sure enough, he had a flick-knife. In a second I had lifted the lid of the flushing cistern and dropped it in. Maybe in a few years’ time, if rusty water started coming down the system, somebody would have a look and discover its corroded remains.

Back in the bar I muttered, ‘Time to thin out, lads. We could have a problem. I’ll see you.’

‘Where’s your admirer?’ asked Pat.

‘Just having a little nap.’

With that I said good-night to Fred and moved off casually. On the way home I tried to make sense of the yobbo’s aggression. Tracy had said something about recently breaking up with a boyfriend… but no — she would never have been friends with a turd like that. And anyway, how could he possibly associate me with her? She and I had never been seen together in town. I decided that there was no connection; it was just normal jealousy of the Regiment coming out. All the same, the incident made me realize how much the girl was on my mind.