Bandit Country

‘Just so. I cannot authorize an incursion into the Irish Republic, Charles, and there is no time to refer it to the CLF or to the Secretary of State. Our hands are tied.’

‘So what can we do?’ Boyd asked.

‘Like you, I would dearly love to launch a preemptive strike, but the risk of adverse publicity is too high. There will be hordes of people in Kilmurry once this festival gets under way. There is no question of moving in there – the Provos have planned that part of it well. But I believe they will move north once they have been fully prepped, to launch a strike somewhere in the vicinity of Cross. That we can do something about. Look at the map.’

Boyd joined his superior at the wall and together they stared at the complex pattern of small roads and hills, villages and hamlets, rivers and bogs.

‘See here, this dismantled railway, that more or less follows the line of the Fane?’

Boyd nodded, and Cordwain went on.

‘There are old cuttings all along its length, ideal places to conceal a group of men and form them up for a riving crossing. The Fane is broad, so they’ll need a boat. It’ll be a night operation of course. I think they’ll get themselves ferried across where the cuttings, the river and the border all meet. Here.’ Cordwain’s finger stabbed at a point on the map.

‘Now look north, only half a kilometre. There’s a hill here, with an old ring-fort on top. Drumboy Fort, it’s called; we’ve had OPs on it in the past. There is your ideal spot to wait and intercept them. Good fields of fire in all directions, no civvy houses close by, and a perfect view of the river, and thus the border.’

‘You don’t expect them to be picked up by car, then?’ Boyd asked. Cordwain shook his head.

‘The nearest road is half a kilometre away. They’ll have to move across country to get to it. And we have all the roads down there sewn up tighter than a nun’s knickers. No, my belief is that they’ll yomp it, move across country to some prearranged RV and then perhaps meet up with a few friends north of the border before moving in on their objective.’

‘Which will be?’

Cordwain shrugged. ‘I have no idea, though I have my suspicions. If you extend a line from the Fane up past Drumboy Fort, where does it take you?’

Boyd peered at the map, then burst out: ‘The base! Crossmaglen security base! But that can’t be right.’

‘That’s what I thought. It would be foolhardy, to say the least. But you’ll have to bear in mind, Charles, that these jokers are after something big. Not a mortar – they’ll be travelling too light for that. But an ambush, certainly, perhaps of a foot patrol. I think they intend to wipe out an entire patrol, engage it face to face and then blow it away.’

Boyd whistled softly. ‘What about their strength?’

‘This will be a big operation in their terms, comparable to Loughgall perhaps. I think you can bank on at least ten or twelve of them.’

They turned away from the map and resumed their seats. Another helicopter took off, loaded to the gills with men and equipment. It was a Greenjacket fire team being airlifted out on rural patrol.

‘Fuck,’ Boyd said clearly. ‘This is all surmise though, isn’t it? All we know for sure is that a bunch of players will be at a music festival close to the border.’

‘Indeed, but I’ll bet both our arses they aren’t attending it to sit and fiddle. No, they’ll be moving north – you can count on it.’

Boyd’s eyes shone. If he pulled off a large-scale ambush on a sizeable PIRA force it would be an enormous coup for the Government, the army and the SAS. But also for Lieutenant Charles Boyd.

‘I have four men tied up in the OP in Cross itself, but twelve men available here, a multiple of three bricks. That should do it.’

Cordwain was not so sure.

‘I’d rather fly in some of the Special Projects team from G Squadron in Hereford.’

‘But we haven’t the time. And we don’t have enough evidence to go on. We’ll have egg all over our faces if we get G Squadron all the way over here and then nothing materializes.’

Cordwain paused, clearly uneasy. ‘There is that, of course…’

‘James, twelve SAS troopers will take out anything the Provos can throw at them.’ Boyd appeared invincibly confident. Cordwain studied him for a moment. The young officer clearly still felt himself to be on a roll after the successful Tyrone operation, and wanted to add further lustre to his laurels. That was no bad thing, so long as it did not lead to overconfidence. But his brashness was appealing, and it was true that they had very little to go on. Cordwain did not put a lot of faith in Early’s chances of infiltrating the South Armagh Brigade, but here on a platter was a chance to wipe them out wholesale; the ultimate ‘clean kill’.

‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll make out the necessary orders. But what I’m giving you is a reactive OP, Charles. I’m not giving you licence to run amok through the countryside. I want you to keep that stretch of the Fane under observation and only to react under the most stringent circumstances. The last thing we need is twelve troopers staging a rerun of the OK corral in Armagh. And we will also liaise with Lieutenant Colonel Blair of the Greenjackets. His men will form your back-up – and Early’s – until this op is over. Is that clear?’

‘Perfectly. If you’ll excuse me then, James, I’ll go and give the boys a Warning Order. They’ll be chuffed to fuck.’

Boyd left like a schoolboy let out for the holidays. Cordwain stared at the map thoughtfully for a long time. It was disquieting, to say the least, to be sanctioning an operation with so little intelligence to go on, but then intelligence was so thin on the ground in this part of the world. Not like Tyrone, or Belfast, where there were ‘Freds’, renegade Republicans, aplenty.

If this operation turned out as successfully as he hoped they might even be able to dispense with Early’s services, and that would be another bonus. Early was a hot potato, with his MI5 handlers to be placated and his stubborn bloody-mindedness. Not a team player, but then undercover agents seldom were.

Cordwain shook his head as though a fly buzzed at it, trying to free himself of a sense of unease. He had the strangest feeling that Boyd did not quite know what he was up against, and he had an urge to cancel the whole operation, or at least scale it down. But it was on his plate alone. He could not involve the RUC, because they were not equipped to deal with a face-to-face confrontation with a heavily armed band of terrorists, nor with the covert surveillance that was needed to track them down. No, this was a job for the SAS alone, the sort of mission that they specialized in and relished.

Why then the uneasiness?

He bent over his desk, and began writing the orders that would take Boyd’s command out into Bandit Country.

6 (#u67ef5937-12e6-55a2-912f-ba60479f5c51)

Kilmurry, County Louth

The bar was crowded with people, hot, noisy, hazy with tobacco smoke. In one corner a knot of musicians were playing a frantic, foot-tapping jig and most of the throng were clapping and stamping in time with the music. Pint glasses, empty and full, stood by the hundred on the bar and the tables or were clasped in sweaty hands.

In the upstairs room the hubbub below could be heard as a vague roar of sound echoing up through the floorboards. The long upper room had been booked in the name of Louth Gaelic Football Club. The irritating noise seeping up from the noisy bar below would nullify the effectiveness of any bugs planted in the place.

There were twenty-three men in the room, sitting round a long dining table or lounging against the walls. Heavy duffle bags littered the floor and on the table itself crouched two angular, blanket-draped shapes. The men were smoking rapidly, talking in low voices, chuckling or scowling as the mood took them. They comprised the bulk of two PIRA brigades. Some of them were elated at their numbers, some were nervous.

Eugene Finn entered the room rubbing his hands and smiling his cold smile.

‘Don’t worry, boys. The dickers are all in place and the landlord knows the form. This is a private room. The Gardai will need a warrant to enter it and we happen to know they don’t have one.’