Bandit Country

Brigadier General Whelan, Commander of Land Forces in Northern Ireland, looked at his subordinate warily.

‘I can give you an additional Special Support Unit from 39 Brigade’s patch,’ he replied.

‘RUC cowboys? But sir, I’ve lost four men in four months, all to the same sniper. Morale is rock-bottom, and the local players know it. I’ve already had three complaints this week alone. The boys are taking it out on the population.’

Whelan held up a hand and said: ‘This is a bad time of year, Martin. The marching season is almost upon us. We’re overstretched, and Whitehall won’t hear of us bringing in another battalion.’

‘It’s not another battalion we need. I was thinking of something more compact.’

‘The Intelligence and Security Group?’

‘Yes. To be frank, sir, we’re getting nowhere. Our own Covert Observation Platoon has drawn a series of blanks. I don’t have the resources within my own patch to tackle this problem. We need outside help – and I’m talking help from our own people, not the RUC.’

‘Hasn’t E4 come up with anything?’

‘Special Branch guards its sources like an old maid her virginity. They’re terrified of compromising the few touts they have. No – we need a new approach. This South Armagh Brigade is the tighest-knit we’ve ever encountered. It’s better even than the Mid-Tyrone one was a few years back. The Provos seem to have taken the lessons of Loughgall to heart. They’re very slick, and they’ve recovered amazingly quickly. This Border Fox now has up to three ASUs operating in close support. We need to take out not only him, but at least one of those back-up units.’

‘Take out? You rule out more conventional methods of arrest, then?’

‘I believe it would be too risky. No, this bastard is fighting his own little war down near the border. The South Armagh lot need to have the carpet pulled out from under them.’

‘And your men need a kill.’

Lieutenant Colonel Blair, commanding officer of 1st Battalion the Royal Green jackets, paused.

‘Yes, they do.’ He would not have been so open with any other senior officer, but Whelan was a member of the ‘Black Mafia’ himself – an ex-Greenjacket who had done his stint as CO of a battalion in South Armagh.

‘This is irregular, Martin – you know that. You’re asking me to initiate an operation in a vacuum. Usually it is the Tasking and Coordinating Group that comes to me…’

‘More Special Branch,’ said Blair with a wave of his hand. ‘This is not an RUC problem. It is the Green Army that is taking the casualties, my men that are out there in the bogs day after day and night after night, while the RUC conduct vehicle checkpoints and collar drink-drivers.’

Whelan was silent. It was true that the uniformed ‘Green Army’ had been paying a heavy price lately for the patrolling of the border, or ‘Bandit Country’ as the men on the ground called it. And the Border Fox had made headlines both in the UK and America. He was a hero to the Nationalist population and their sympathizers across the Atlantic. Nine members of the Security Forces had been killed by him in the last eighteen months, the last only a few days ago. All of them had been killed by a single bullet from a high-calibre sniper rifle that had punched through the men’s body armour as though it were cardboard. The capture of that weapon, more importantly, the termination of the Fox’s activities, were obviously desirable.

But Whelan did not like authorizing what were in effect assassinations. He had no moral qualms about the issue – the Fox had to be stopped, and killing him was an effective way of doing that. But he hated giving the Republican Movement yet another martyr. Political consideration had to be taken into account also. If he authorized an op against the Fox he would have to inform the Secretary of State – in guarded terms of course – of what was about to happen.

More importantly, there was the feasibility of the operation. Intelligence in 3 Brigade’s Tactical Area of Responsibility was poor. The IRA brigade in South Armagh seemed very tightly knit and so far all attempts to cultivate informers had failed. It was impossible to proceed without good intelligence, and seemingly impossible to obtain that intelligence. Hence the Security Forces were powerless, for all their helicopters and weapons. And so the Fox continued his killing unhindered, which was why he had Martin Blair in his office, seething with baffled anger.

‘Damn it, Martin, don’t you think I see your point? But how can we proceed with anything when we have nothing to go on? Special Branch has drawn a blank, and your own covert op has turned up nothing.’

‘Then we must create our own intelligence’, Blair said doggedly.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Give me the Int and Sy Group. Let them loose in my patch. They may turn up something.’

‘That’s a hell of a vague notion.’

‘They’re doing bugger-all at the moment except interminable weapons training. I got that from James Cordwain himself. The rest of the Province is as quiet as the grave.’

Whelan winced at his subordinate’s choice of words. Major Cordwain was OC of the combined Intelligence and Security Group and 14 Intelligence Company. ‘Int and Sy’, or more often just ‘The Group’, was another name for Ulster Troop, the only members of the SAS who were based permanently in the Province. Fourteen Intelligence Company was another pseudonym for a crack surveillance unit drawn from all units in the army and trained by the SAS themselves.

‘Int and Sy’s job description does not include charging in like the bloody cavalry, guns blazing.’

Colonel Blair smiled. ‘Tell James Cordwain that.’

‘Indeed.’ Cordwain had taken over the Group less than a year ago. He and his young second in command, Lieutenant Charles Boyd, were a pair of fire-eaters. Cordwain had been with 22 SAS in the Falklands and was an expert in covert surveillance and the tricky business of so-called ‘Reactive Observation Posts’ – known to the rest of the army as Ambushes.

‘You’ve spoken to Cordwain about this, then?’ Whelan asked sharply. He did not like officers, even fellow Greenjackets, who flouted the chain of command.

Blair stiffened. ‘Yes, sir, I did – informally of course.’

‘And what was his reaction?’

‘He thought he might have a way in.’

‘What is it?’

‘An operative of ours, based in Belfast at the moment. He used to be part of Int and Sy but MI5 have become his handlers. Been here for over a year, and has a perfect cover.’

‘His name?’

‘Cordwain wouldn’t say. But he thinks it would be possible to relocate him, weasel him into the South Armagh lot.’

‘He must be an exceptional man.’

‘Actually, Cordwain says he’s one of the best he’s ever seen. Parents were from Ballymena, so he has the perfect accent for starters. They were in the South Atlantic together.’

Whelan got up, crossed the office to the sideboard and the decanter that stood there. He poured out two whiskies into Waterford-crystal tumblers and offered one to Blair.

‘Bushmills – the Irish. Bloody good stuff.’

They drank. Whelan looked out of his office window, past the ranks of Landrovers and Saxon armoured personnel carriers, over to where the perimeter wall rose high with netting and razor-wire; it was supposed to intercept RPG 7 missiles or Mark 12 mortars, the Provos’ current flavour of the month.

‘We are skating on thin ice here, Martin,’ Whelan said.

‘Yes, sir, I know. But my men are dying.’

‘Yes. But MI5, they’re tighter with their operatives than E4 is with its information. They may not want to let us play with this man.’

‘Cordwain thinks it may be possible to bypass MI5, sir.’

Whelan spun round. ‘Does he now? And how would we do that?’

‘This man, he has a personal reason for wanting to see the Border Fox brought in. One of my young subalterns was a relative of his.’

‘Ah yes, I remember. That was tragic, Martin, tragic. So it’s revenge this man wants. That may not make him totally reliable.’

‘Cordwain seems to think he is, sir, and Boyd, his 2IC, is willing to provide back-up.’