The Tick Tock Man

Prologue

The soldier had died instantly.

A single sniper round had shattered his skull without i warning. One moment he was a bright and friendly nineteen-year-old on his first tour of Belfast, an entire lifetime stretching ahead of him; the next he was a corpse who would never grow old. A crumpled sack of camouflaged combat fatigues, virtually indistinguishable from the weeds and rubbish on the overgrown patch of wasteland. Virtually trapped on the open plot and fearing another unerringly accurate shot, the dead man’s foot patrol had been obliged to seek what little cover they could find for almost ten minutes. They couldn’t fire because there was nothing to shoot at, and they couldn’t manoeuvre because they were sitting ducks.

At last reinforcements of 1 Light Infantry moved in to surround the row of derelict houses from which the shot was believed to have come.

The body of the dead soldier had only just been retrieved when the Ammunition Technical Officer, Captain Tom Harrison, arrived. The two Humber Tigs’ and Saracen of 321 Explosives Ordnance Disposal Squadron, which had been tasked to the incident, pulled in behind the ambulance. Armoured Land-Rovers of the British Army and Royal Ulster Constabulary had already gathered. Harrison jumped down from the cab to be met by the first subaltern to have arrived on the scene. With him was the Light Infantry sergeant who had been leading the patrol.

‘Another shoot, ATO, I’m afraid,’ the infantry officer confirmed. Despite his confident manner, he looked ridiculously young for the job, the down of fair hair above his upper lip hardly looking as though it had need of a razor. ‘Paddy is playing with his new toy again. That’s the third time this month.’

Harrison watched the dead man being zipped into the body bag. ‘The Tikka?’

‘I think so, sir.’ It was the NCO who spoke. Unlike the junior officer by his side, the sergeant looked a decade older than his twenty-five years, an age he shared with Harrison. The eyes amid the cam cream were wary and red-rimmed with fatigue as he introduced himself. ‘Sarn’t Copes, sir. I was leading the patrol when we heard the crack and the thump. Next thing we knew, Bates was down. Poor bleeder didn’t stand a chance. Took half his fucking head off.’

Certainly sounds like the Tikka, Harrison thought.

According to ‘Whiz’, the Weapons Intelligence Section, it had been used in this Ballymurphy ghetto area on the two previous ‘shoots’ that month. A deadly new toy indeed for the terrorists. The Finnish-made bolt-action rifle capable of throwing a hollow point 7mm cartridge five hundred and fifty metres with deadly accuracy. As the veteran sergeant had said, the dead soldier hadn’t stood a chance.

Harrison viewed the stretch of wasteland with its weeds, windstrewn rubbish and abandoned household appliances. Each side of the redevelopment area was flanked by the gable-end walls of terraced housing. They were adorned with elaborate and sinister pro-Republican graffiti. The far side was denoted by the next parallel street and a row of derelict houses like rotten teeth awaiting extraction.

Car bombs and derelicts. They were Harrison’s very private fears. Fears that he never shared with another human soul. And on which he didn’t even allow his own mind to dwell. Yet those fears were always lurking at the back of his mind like the proverbial black dog. Because the truth was that a car or a derelict building was never necessarily what it seemed. Even if a vehicle had been subjected to a controlled explosion, there was never any guarantee that there wasn’t something very nasty lying in wait for the unsuspecting ATO. There were a hundred hidden recesses in which something could be secreted. Likewise with an empty house. Plenty of time for a terrorist to plan his deadly trap and even more places to hide a device.

That’s exactly what had happened after the first sniper shooting. During their attempt to flush out the assassin, an unwary infantryman from the Unit Search Team had tripped a wire in an upstairs room. The blast from the hidden explosive device had taken off his right arm and left him blinded.

But the soldiers had been swift to learn their lesson. After the next sniper killing in similar circumstances, they had radioed ‘Felix’ — call sign of the bomb-disposal team — for an ATO expert to clear the sniper’s eyrie.

Tasked to the scene, that time Harrison had found by a window some hand-rolled cigarette ends and a tin of Golden Virginia tobacco. Inviting inspection.

Harrison had declined the invitation. Having learned that you could never be overcautious, he had fitted a hook and line to the tin before giving it a tug from a safe distance. The tin had only contained an ounce of plastic explosive fitted to a trembler switch, but it would have been enough to destroy eyesight and remove the careless pair of hands that had touched it.

Now here he was again, faced with almost exactly the same scenario. And that black dog was right behind him.

It didn’t help that there was a name being mentioned. Knowing a bomber’s name just made it that much more personal. Harrison’s friend Don Trenchard had told him of the man’s suspected identity a few days earlier.

Harrison had known Trenchard, who was a few years older than himself but didn’t look it, since his Sandhurst days when his friend was lecturing on the role of intelligence in Northern Ireland. Trenchard’s groomed good looks and boyish charm were not what one associated with the murky world of covert warfare, but as a prankster and dedicated womaniser he was a welcome companion. Always to be relied on to bring more than one pretty girl to a party.

Although a major, Trenchard never introduced himself by rank and was rarely to be seen in uniform. Working as he did with Intelligence Company under the Intelligence and Security Group, he was privy to many of the Province’s secrets.

Hughie Dougan, he had told Harrison. That was the name that 14 Int and ‘Whiz’ thought was behind the latest rash of boobytrapped bombings in Belfast. Dougan was a ‘Sixty-niner’ who had joined the IRA after the August riots of that year. As a former REME technician in the British Army, his professional knowledge was soon put to good use by the fledgling Provisionals. He was finally arrested and imprisoned for nine years on a charge of conspiring to cause explosions.

According to Trenchard, Dougan had been released earlier that year before going ‘on the gallop’, in Provisional IRA slang, disappearing over the border to help plan the bombings and make the devices.

Harrison had gone back over the Dougan files from nine years earlier. There were, he had to admit, distinct similarities. The most glaring was the inevitable use of one or more antihandling devices and deliberate ‘come-ons’ to lure troops or ATOs.

After all, Trenchard pointed out, the Provos were currently paying a thirteen thousand-pound bounty to their members for a dead bomb-disposal operator. Thirteen. It had been unlucky for several of Harrison’s oppos. But did it help having a name?

Not really. You still couldn’t take anything for granted. Or assume you knew how the bomber’s mind worked. Familiarity and contempt were dangerous one-way streets. If anything, having a name just added to the tension. Encouraged the black dog.

He became aware that the subaltern was talking: ‘We’ve cordoned off this whole area down to those derelicts and around the back of them. We appear to have identified the building that the sniper used.’

‘Yes?’

The officer shrugged. ‘Three witnesses, kids who were playing behind the derelicts. Swore they saw a man jumping over the back-yard wall and running away. Said he was carrying what looked like a long canvas case.’

Harrison narrowed his eyes. ‘Don’t tell me, the kids were under fourteen?’

The inexperienced officer looked puzzled.

‘Unsafe evidence, sir,’ the sergeant explained with weary patience.

‘Kids in the Ballymurphy aren’t usually that keen to assist the security forces,’ Harrison said. Probably recruited from the Na Fianna Eireann, the Republican boy scout movement, he thought. ‘They’ve been put up to it. My guess is it’s a come-on and we’ll find your sniper actually fired from someplace else.’ He looked up at the shabby concrete monolith beyond the line of derelicts. ‘Maybe that block of flats.’

The officer looked suitably chastened. He’d learn, and fast too, if he wanted to survive for a second tour.

Harrison made two decisions. The first was to wait for another ninety minutes ‘soak time’, as the delays most commonly used by the Provisional IRA were one-or two-hour — although, of course, nothing was ever certain. Only then would he task in a specialist High-Risk Search Team of Royal Engineers to scour all the other derelicts in the row before he alone approached the suspect house.

His second decision was on the siting of the Incident Control Point. ‘I don’t like it here,’ he said. ‘It’s too exposed and overlooked. There could be a command-controlled device anywhere on this wasteland and it would take a month to find it.’ He consulted his large-scale map. ‘I’ll set up the ICP down nearer the derelicts on the next street intersection. We can’t so easily be watched from there.’

The officer nodded, seeing the sense in that.

‘Just one thing, sir,’ the sergeant said. ‘The stairways in those derelicts are very narrow with a tight bend on the landing. So if you need to go up I don’t think you’ll be able to send a Wheelbarrow in.’

Harrison smiled grimly. ‘Anything else I ought to know?’

The sergeant grinned for the first time since the shooting. ‘And I think it’s about to rain.’

He was right on both counts. The Royal Engineers confirmed the restricted access on the stairways as well as the structural unreliability of the upper floors. And when Harrison was finally ready to be fitted with the armoured khaki bombsuit, the air had been filled with a warm drizzle for over an hour. He stood at the new Incident Control Point with his arms outstretched as though beseeching the gods for good fortune as his Number Two — an earnest and moustacheoed corporal called Marsh — expertly strapped together the back of the jacket and slid the Kevlar armour chest and crotch plates into their respective pouches. Now he resembled a rather dowdy medieval knight, an impression completed by the bomb helmet with its thick Plexiglas visor.

A total weight of some seventy pounds reduced Harrison’s forward movement to a waddling gait and turned the slightest action into a sweaty, exhausting effort. But that was the Army rule. Bombsuits to be worn until the threat was evaluated and neutralised unless it was judged directly prejudicial to the operator’s safety.

‘Let’s at least get the Wheelbarrow up outside the house, Corporal,’ Harrison said. ‘See if we can’t get a look-see inside.’

‘Boss,’ Marsh acknowledged. Harrison wasn’t one for formality, but like many soldiers the corporal felt uneasy with undue familiarity. He liked to know exactly where he stood.

Returning to the back of the Pig, Marsh sat opposite the TV monitor which relayed from the video camera on board the little tracked vehicle that resembled a miniature tank some three feet in height. He picked up the separate control console. Then at the press of a button, the Wheelbarrow robot began its familiar defiant whir, trundling down the deserted street with the command-cable playing out from the coils beside the first Pig.

Harrison perched beside the corporal and studied the fuzzy TV picture from the boom-mounted camera. ‘Give the door a miss, Corporal. Let’s see if there’s a way in through the window.’

Marsh nodded, slowing the ‘barrow and executing a neat turn to bring it at right angles to the kerbstone. From that position they had a midget’s eye view of the window. It had been barricaded with a sheet of corrugated iron held in place by crossspars of timber nailed to the rotten frame.

The corporal began extending the telescopic boom to which a small metal attachment was fixed. Known as a ‘door opener’, its usual function was to open the doors or boots of suspect cars. But now, with the front tracks of the ‘barrow jammed against the kerb for leverage. Marsh was hooking the attachment under the crossspars. There was little resistance as the boom retracted, yanking the nails free. Two minutes later the iron sheet flapped and crashed noisily to the pavement, revealing a gaping black hole.

With an energetic wheeze, the tracked robot struggled over the kerbstone and edged closer to the window. Nothing but darkness showed on the screen from the boom camera. Marsh switched on the mini-floodlight and Harrison involuntarily winced. Lightsensitive switches had been used recently to trigger hidden bombs in derelict buildings, just waiting for an unwary ATO to switch on his torch.

But this time nothing happened and the monitor showed only the dusty shell of a building as the circle of light traversed the one-time parlour. Plaster had crumbled from the walls and lay on dried-up yellowing newspapers; a door hung from a single hinge where vandals or vagrants had tried to remove it; festoons of lighting cable protruded from a hole in the ceiling like a hernia.

Harrison made his decision. Til take a look now.’

Marsh avoided his eyes, perhaps not wanting to show that he feared for the officer’s life. ‘What you want to take with you, boss?’

‘Just a Pigstick,’ Harrison replied, smiling with a confidence he didn’t feel. ‘And a Jack-in-a-Box, so you can see what’s going on.’

He didn’t need to add ‘in case things go pear-shaped’. Marsh knew.

While the corporal located the steel carrying case and plugged in the extension cable, Harrison took one last look at the dilapidated and empty street before snapping down his visor.

At once he was alone in another world. Outside sounds became instantly muted and he was aware only of the rasp of his own breathing. Through the thick scratched lens of the visor he could see the Wheelbarrow waiting patiently by the window fifty metres away; Light Infantry soldiers crouched at each end of the wasteland that flanked the left-hand side of the street, ready to retaliate should the sniper still be lying in wait.

Marsh handed over the carrying case and the long walk began.

A mere fifty metres but, as always, it seemed to take for ever.

Each footstep was laboured, his breath harsh in his own ears as he shuffled under the weight of the bombsuit and the portable camera.

He tried not to hold his breath, but that was never easy. However much rational thought reassured him that he was not in danger, the truth was that you could never be sure. Because the only man who knew the truth was the bomber, and he would be the very last person on earth to tell you.

The first few footsteps were the easiest because if a device went off where you expected it to be, then your face and body were well enough protected. But as you began to halve the distance you began to remember previous bomb blasts you had seen and the damage they had inflicted on their victims. The destructive power of explosives on soft body tissue was awesome, especially when nails and shipyard bolts had been added for good measure. At twenty-five metres it was impossible not to feel increasingly vulnerable, aware that the protective suit would probably keep you alive, but that the Shockwave would invariably tear the limbs from your torso. However calm you might appear, you were aware of the increasing tempo of your heartbeat and the hot flush of fear that caused the sweat to gather in the small of your back.

He thought of his wife Pippa then, and her breathless voice on the telephone the previous night. Her hardly suppressed excitement and his impatience as she deliberately taunted him with her news, keeping it to herself for as long as she could before she finally admitted, Yes, she was pregnant. The doctor had confirmed it. About two months gone, so Harrison could expect to be a father before Christmas.

And then the image had flashed unbidden through his mind. Pippa pushing the cripple in the wheelchair. The child staring at the man who could neither see nor hear, who had no hands with which to hold his own child. Harrison paused. The trailing cable from the carrying case had snagged and as he turned in slow motion like an astronaut, Marsh was already jinking it free. Thumbs-up signs were exchanged.

The walk began again.

There are only three types of bomb, Harrison reminded himself, once more going back over his earlier threat assessment in order to quell his unreasoned feeling of panic. To shake off the black dog. There was the time bomb which logic dictated was no longer likely in this situation. Then there was the command-controlled device, perhaps detonated by wire or radio signal. That required an observer and no terrorist who valued his freedom was likely to be hanging around after a snipe; besides which the few occupied buildings that now overlooked him had already been searched by the infantry.

That left the third type of bomb: victim-operated. Cold military parlance for the booby trap.

To an outsider that might seem like a poor comfort. But for Harrison the rerun of his earlier mental process of elimination and his reaffirmation of the nature of the threat steadied his nerves. Whatever might lie in wait for him was not under someone else’s control. Whether he lived of died would be up to him alone. His skill, his decisions, his mind against that of the unknown bomber.

He stopped beside the deactivated Wheelbarrow, feeling calmer now.

Ever aware of the possibility of light-sensitive devices, he extracted an Allen cold lamp from the equipment pouch in the tail of his bombsuit and shone the diffused beam into the dark interior. It gave poor definition but was at least preferable to a surprise explosion.

Inside he could see nothing to arouse his suspicions and, after checking the perimeter of the windowframe for wires, he climbed awkwardly over the sill. With his feet planted firmly on the bare floorboards, he flipped up his visor to improve his vision. If the cool flow of air on his face was welcome, the smell of mildew and dog faeces was not.

It took several minutes of playing the beam around the room before he was satisfied that there were no telltale electrical leads or tripwires.

So far so good. But then he was painfully aware that he couldn’t double-guess everything. Every day more and more electronic sensors of one type or another were coming onto the domestic market. From infrared anti-burglar alarms to acoustic keyrings.

It was only a matter of time before such things were adapted by the bombers. And a derelict like this would be the perfect place to try them out. But at least not, it would seem, today.

Feeling more comfortable, he lowered his visor and edged towards the front door. Nothing appeared to be fixed to it. No wires, nothing.

He crossed the hallway to the foot of the stairs. Before attempting to climb, he tugged through more slack on the portable television cable. Each step creaked unnervingly underfoot. He tested his weight gingerly every time he moved until at last he could view the upper landing.

All the doors were missing here, no doubt taken for secondhand resale by the workers who had boarded up the place. He was thankful for that, because every closed door was a potential deathtrap.

He took another step up, then he saw it. From the top of the stairs he had a clear view across the short landing to where a wedge of daylight filtered through a gap in the boarding of the front bedroom window. It glinted on the half-dozen spent brass cartridge cases lying on the bare boards. Very possibly 7mm rounds.

Suddenly the doubts crowded in on him. Had he been wrong? Had this indeed been the sniper’s nest? Had the Catholic kids really seen the assassin legging it away before the Light Infantry closed their net?

There was a discarded chocolate-bar wrapper and a can of Tango orange drink beneath the window where the gap in the boarding would have been sufficient to view the army patrol.

Carefully he placed the Jack-in-a-Box case on the floor and squeezed the carrying handle so that it opened, the pop-up legs lifting the closed-circuit camera automatically into position. Whatever he did now. Corporal Marsh would be able to observe from the monitors in their vehicle.

He moved forward cautiously, looking around for anything out of the usual, probing with his tripwire feeler. Only when he saw it would he know what he was looking for. A near-invisible length of monofilament wire, some exposed firing cable…?

At the doorway of the bedroom he dropped to a crouch and stared across the bare boards to the collection of cartridge cases. Then suddenly a thought occurred. Only one shot had been fired, that was the name of the sniper’s game. One spent case only, normally retrieved by the sniper as a matter of routine. One, not six. He thrust up his visor and sniffed the musty air. Not a hint of cordite, a smell that normally lingered about in a confined space like this.

Was this a come-on”? Should he exit now, take time to think it over? Hell, no, he’d only have to come back again eventually. So keep going and get it over with.

Once more he played his lamp across the floorboards, the ceiling and along the walls. At the light switch by the door, an edge of floral wallpaper had come adrift from the wall. Damp seeping in from missing roof tiles? Probably, yet there were no telltale watermarks and elsewhere the wallpaper appeared sound., It was nothing, yet somehow it niggled him. A growing sense of edginess prevented him from putting a foot inside the bedroom. Something purely instinctive persuaded him to use the tripwire feeler.

He extended the end of it forward towards the light switch and pulled a length of wallpaper free. As it flapped down he saw the slightly darker patch amid the white friable plaster of the wall.

His heart began to pound; his hand trembled. Another hour or so and the patch would have dried and become virtually indistinguishable. Had something been wired to the light switch? Surely the electricity was cut off to these derelicts? Dammit, he really should have checked that. Stupid! His eyes travelled down to the floorboards. He shone the Allen lamp. It was then he saw that the nails were loose, that there were scratch marks on the old dry timber. Frayed, fibrous scars where something like a screwdriver had been used as a lever.

Extracting a light chisel from his tool pouch, he tackled the board closest to the wall skirting, easing the thin blade into the gap and gently prising it free.

Although he’d been half expecting it, the sight of the white twinflex wire still came as a shock. His mouth was suddenly dry, his heart beginning to palpitate.

Now he knew. He thumbed up his visor to see clearer, the effect of the air on his face helping to clear his brain.

Sitting back on his haunches, he went to work again with his chisel, easing out the two adjoining floorboards.

And there it was, a simple pressure mat. It was old and scuffed and had probably been taken from the front door of a grocer’s shop. But instead of ringing a bell to warn that a customer had entered, it had been connected by a wire channelled into the wall to a home-made directional mine at chest level. The wall had then been thinly replastered and the wallpaper restuck with Copydex adhesive.

Now certain that he wouldn’t be cutting into a collapsing circuit — a favourite Provo trick — he turned back to the wire leading to the mat. Flat twinflex, with positive and negative currents running side by side, could be lethal if carelessly cut. It was so easy for bare strands of copper to touch each other and complete the circuit accidentally. That’s why he always used a small pair of needlepointed garden secateurs, first snipping one line of the double stranded flex with absolute accuracy, then moving an inch farther along before snipping the second half so that there was no possibility of the two arcing together.

That done, he cautiously scraped away the hardening plaster in the wall and removed the detonator from the explosive. It had been placed in a lidless rectangular biscuit tin set on its side, the open top facing into the room with four ounces of Gelamex kept in place by two layers of insulation tape between which was held a row of four-inch galvanised nails.

He felt his stomach turn to liquid and the nauseous bile rise up into his throat causing his eyes to smart.

It had been meant for him. Just like the last two come-ons after a snipe. The PIRA bomber, whoever he was, would be perfectly aware that an ATO would be tasked to clear a suspect house. It would be an ATO who took the first tentative step into the bedroom, momentarily overcome by the sight of the spent cartridges and the opportunity to seize crucial forensic evidence.

Harrison would not be the first bomb-disposal operator to become paranoid. To believe that a bomber was after him and him alone. That he had become a personal target. It had happened to several brave, rational men. They rarely returned for another tour.

Looking down at the pressure mat, he could understand how it could happen, how imagination could start to take over from logical thought.

The feeling of unease was still with him when he emerged from the gloom of the derelict ten minutes later and squinted at the watery sunlight squeezing out from behind the rain clouds.

As he retraced his footsteps towards the ICP, he saw that a few additional and familiar figures had gathered by the ‘bomb wagons’. One was his immediate commander, the Senior Ammunition Technical Officer.

‘Well done, Tom. Heard you had an interesting box of tricks down here. Mind if we have a look over it together when you’re ready?’

‘My pleasure, boss.’

The second onlooker was a fellow EOD operator out of Gird wood Park, Al Pritchard.

A warrant officer first class, Pritchard was a tall man with thinning black hair and a cultivated expression of gloom. Although the two men maintained a professional tolerance of each other, theirs had always been an instinctive mismatch of chemistry. This wasn’t helped by the fact that, as ten years Harrison’s senior, Pritchard had vastly more experience, although in the past Harrison had been required to discipline the older man on two occasions when he had been a senior NCO under his command. And Pritchard’s was not a naturally forgiving nature.

Harrison couldn’t resist a good-natured jibe. ‘Come to see how it’s done, Al?’

For once Pritchard responded with one of his severely rationed sardonic smiles. ‘We were called out on a rubber duck. Thought this shout might be entertaining.’ He indicated the TV monitor at the rear of the Pig. ‘Better than an episode of Coronation Street.’

Harrison knew this was as near to a compliment as he was likely to receive from his rival. ‘That exciting, eh, Al?’

‘Good enough for me, sir.’ Another smile. Was this a record? ‘Another happy little memory for when I’ve got my feet up in London.’

The SATO overheard. ‘What Mr Pritchard means, Tom, is that we’re going to be losing him. Landed himself a cosy little number with the Met’s Explosives Section at twice his army salary.’

So that’s it, you smug bastard, Harrison thought as he offered his hand. ‘I’d like to say how much I’m going to miss you.’

Pritchard’s hooded eyes smouldered back resentfully, unsure how to take the words.

But Harrison only grinned and turned away just as a car pulled up beyond the cordon and he recognised Don Trenchard at the wheel.

‘I understand double congratulations are in order, Tom?’ he said, as he was escorted in by Corporal Marsh. ‘A bun in the oven and a bomb in the bag.’

Harrison laughed, now beginning to enjoy the steady release of tension that was fast becoming a flood of euphoria. ‘Make it a treble, I’ve just heard that Al’s leaving us.’

But Trenchard was clearly in a hurry. ‘Listen, Tom, just popped by on my way to XMG. The Regiment have pulled in a Provo unit crossing the border. One of them was that name I gave you. Hughie Dougan. Probably responsible for that thing you’ve just defused. Thought you’d like to know.’

The news was almost uncanny. The man who had just tried to kill him was already sitting in a cell at Crossmaglen while he had been dismantling the device. ‘I’ll see if I can’t save you a nice set of fingerprints for the trial.’

As Trenchard drove away, Harrison joined Corporal Marsh to be helped in the removal of his bombsuit.

‘By the way, Tom,’ the SATO said. ‘I’ve just had the results of the Pre-Ops course. Three got by on a seventy-five per cent pass, so I can relieve you at the end of the week. How would that suit?’

The perfect end to a perfect task. That Friday — ten years earlier — just couldn’t come damn quick enough.