Immediate Action Part 35

Just before it was time to leave, Fiona and I had a chat.

"I've got five days off," I said. "Do you fancy getting married?"

"Why not?"

Indeed, why not? We were a family. By now we'd moved house again, into one of the new estates on the edge of Hereford, and everything looked perfect.

Dave, the patrol commander from Keady in my Green jackets days, was best man. He did his duties, then spent the rest of the day trying to seduce the witness, one of Fiona's friends. Kate was the bridesmaid.

It was Kate's very first Christmas. We went to stay at a house on the south coast. Kate wasn't sleeping very well, which I thought was great.

I got the pram out at midnight, wrapped her up well, and we went walking along the coastal path until six in the morning. She fell asleep after the first half an hour, and as I walked, I just looked at her beautiful little face and clucked like a hen.

When we got back, she woke up again, so I put her in the car and we went for a drive. I kept checking over my shoulder to see that she was all right. She had fearsome big blue eyes that stared at me from inside all the wrappings of woolens and a bobble hat. It was a very special time.

In the next two years I would only see her for a total of twelve weeks.

"Jerking," the planting of miniature transmitters inside weapons, more correctly known as technical attack, had started in the late seventies and offered an extra option to the security forces when they found an arms cache.

The idea was that the devices would be activated when the weapon was picked up, and the terrorists' movements could then be monitored.

I'd settled into the Det and was really enjoying it. Eno and I were sent to the same Det, which was working around Derry city and surrounding county. At half past six every night we had "prayers."

All the operators came in, and we ran through administrative and operational points.

It was Easter time. We had a bar in a hut, hundred of cans stacked up and working on a trust system. Everybody was getting a b.o.l.l.o.c.king for a party that had happened the weekend before. The Det had a strong reputation for being outrageous,in the bar, so much so that the windows were detachable for partes There was a strange ritual in the bar for any new member that arrived; everybody saved up his empty cans and the Det O.C would come in and say, "Welcome to the Det.

Here we have a celebratory pint of Guinness." You had to drink it while they pelted you with empty cans. The party was one of these welcoming things for two scaleys that had turned up, but it got totally out of control. One of the blokes had a Duran Duran haircut that he was really proud of; the others held him down and started cutting it; he jumped to his feet and started punching people out. They got two planks of wood and turned it into a cross. They tied him on, hoiked it up, and left him hanging there.

We put into practice all the skills that we had learned during the buildup: covert searches of houses, office blocks, shops to gather information. It was a kick, without a doubt, going into somebody's house, finding information, and getting back out again. In the hard housing estates, places like the Bogside, Shantello, the Creggan, it was no easy operation to get into places, and it would take days, and sometimes weeks, of planning for a job that might take only thirty seconds to carry out.

At the end of the day it was inevitable that the IRA would discover that its weapons were being 'arked.

These people were not idiots; they had scanning devices and all sorts.

We were all playing a game. They knew that the weapons were being tampered with; they knew that their buildings were bugged. They would use countermeasures, which we would then try to countercounter.

Another possibility open to us was to replace bomb-making materials found in the hides.

A novelist wrote a book in which the coffins at an IRA funeral were bugged so that the intelligence services could hear what was being said; from the moment it was published, it became an IRA procedure that every coffin and body were scanned with location devices.

By now it was the summer of 1988 and Fiona was running around looking for a new house. Prices were going bananas, spiraling out of control.

We made an absolute fortune in the s.p.a.ce of a few months; a woman cried on the telephone because she was too late in buying the house.

"We'll now buy the biggest house we can with our money and do it up," I said.

She found us a place while I was away, in a village about six miles from Hereford. The house was bigger but needed some work done to it. It was really exciting.

I came back on five days' leave, and as soon as I got back, we moved in.

We got cracking. We went down to the plant hire place and hired everything from strimmers to chain saws for our five-day blitz.

As soon as it was light, we started on the outside; as soon as it was dark, we started on the inside. At four-thirty one morning I painted the garage door, and at ten at night was stripping wallpaper in the living room. I loved it; it was family life: I now had a three-bedroom detached house, a garage, a couple of trees in the garden. As a young kid I had lived in council houses or my auntie's house, and now I was looking at this wonderful 'lace, and it was mine.

I had a wife, a child, a happy life in a small village, and everything was perfect.

The future looked rosy.

Kate was still in nappies, and just to sit there and hold her was very special. She had my eyes, and I never got tired of looking into them.

We were staking out a bomb factory in an old Victorian house that was halfway through renovation, with whitewashed windows and bare floors. We knew it was a factory because Dave I and I had been in it the night before.

We'd cleared the house, pistols in hand, in a semicrouch. The kitchen was bare concrete. Standing in the middle of the floor was an industrial coffee grinder; there might as well have been a sign up saying BOMB FACTORY. We knew they would be mixing bomb ingredients at some point. From now on we would have to stay It on target," watching as people went in and out of the house. Low explosives don't last that long if not protected from the elements. Once a bomb was made, therefore, they tried to use it as quickly as possible; we had to be there to stop that.

"That's two men, green on blue jeans, brown on black jeans and bald."

"That's them into the house. Over."

"Alpha. Roger."

The stakeout took forever, and we h'ad to walk past the target to try to make out what was going on. Had they finished? Were they still at it?

"That's Delta going Foxtrot [on foot]."

Alpha replied: "Delta's Foxtrot."

I got out of my car. I was wearing a pair of jeans, market trainers, and my blue bomber jacket. My hair looked like an eighteen-year-old football player's-long at the back, with short sides.

It was greasy, and I looked as if I had just got out of bed and was going to sign on.

My car was old and in s.h.i.+t state to go with its owner.

We were in Derry, between the Bogside and Creggan estates. The names suited the area, dark gray and cold, lines of terraced houses going up the hill toward the Greggan. It was winter, and I could smell peat smoke.

Alpha, who was the team leader on the ground, wanted someone to walk the alleyway that was between the back of two rows of houses. I was nearest and hadn't walked past yet.

I clicked my comms: "Delta, check."

"Alpha."

As I got nearer to the alleyway, I noticed two lads on the corner.

They looked more or less the same as me, apart from the cigarettes in their mouths and the rolledup newspapers in their back pockets. They were sitting on a low wall at the entry point to the alleyway. Were they d.i.c.kers? I didn't know.

The weather was cold and damp. This was good; I could get my hands in my jacket pockets and get my head down, walking as if I was going somewhere.

As I turned right into the alley and looked uphill, there was nothing.

The alleyway was just hard mud, filled with old cans and dogs.h.i.+t. The two boys took no notice as I walked past. It seemed they were waiting for the bookies to open.

It was a horrible feeling going up that alleyway, knowing that these people were behind me. I walked with a purpose, not hesitating or looking behind. I kept looking at the ground, as if I was in a bit of a daze. I was a bag of s.h.i.+t, so I walked like a bag of s.h.i.+t.

Tucked in my leans I had my 9MM Browning and plenty of rounds.

If they said anything to me as I went in, I would have to try to avoid answering.

"Alpha, Delta, check?"

They wanted to know how I was doing.

I couldn't talk on my radio; the two boys would hear.

I clicked my pressal b.u.t.ton twice to send two quick bursts of squelch.

"Alpha, roger that."

Everyone now knew things were okay.

The back door was closed, but I could just hear the faint buzz of the coffee grinder in the back of the house; they were still making the bomb.

People were pa.s.sing; I could not talk yet, but I could hear everyone else on the net.

"Alpha, November, going mobile." Eno was off somewhere else.

"Alpha, roger that. Delta, check."

Click. Click.

"Roger that, are you past the house yet?"

Click. Click.

"Is the grinding still going?"

Click. Click.

I went into the corner shop and got a pint of milk and the Sporting Life. Now I would take a walk past the front and see if I could make out anything inside.

"Alpha, Lima, I have Delta walking back to his Charlie."

"Alpha."

Rich had seen me and was telling everyone what was happening. He had been in the Det for years and was an excellent operator. He often had clashes with the head shed as he was a very outspoken person; however, whatever he said made sense.

"Delta's complete [back in the carl."

"Alpha."

I was now in my car, and I drove off.

Nothing happened for about two hours. I was still part of the stakeout but not on top of the target, as I had already been exposed.

This didn't mean that I'd hang slack. There was still a job to do.

Everything that pa.s.sed me I had to check it out. As well as see who was in the area so I could report it to others, I could detect the mood of the place: Does it look any different today? 1-f so, why?

This was not a place that the tourist board would recommend.

There was nothing pa.s.sive about this work.

Only a few months before, an operator was shot near where I was sitting.

He'd been doing exactly the same as I was, parked up and waiting to go and do something.

The players saw him, must have thought there was something wriggly, went and got their weapons, and head-jobbed him.

I was parked in a line of cars outside a row of terraced Victorian houses. I had the newspaper open and was eating a sandwich. In front of me, about a hundred meters away, was the road that the target was on, crossing left to right.

Alpha was talking on the net and organizing things to make sure he had a good tight stakeout when all of a sudden a blue flash went past me, two up (two in the car). I saw a face looking down the road; he was aware.

I tried to cut in on the net. "Stand by, stand by. Charlie One is mobile. That's Charlie One mobile."

I couldn't get in; Alpha was still on the net. I had no choice but to "take" it. "That's Delta mobile."

I carried on talking on the net, burning up the road toward the target car. I wasn't worried about the compromise factor now. It wouldn't matter if I was leaving chaos behind me, as long as the players in front didn't notice anything. The important thing was not to lose that bomb.

If we did, we were talking about a lot of dead people. Pa.s.sing a junction, I looked down left but couldn't see anything. I raced downhill to the right, down toward the Bogside. As I pa.s.sed two junctions, I kept giving a commentary: "Stand by, stand by. Charlie One's mobile. Down towards the Bogside."

At last I got on the net. "That's at the Bogside, still straight, still straight. He's going towards the Little Diamond [an area of the Bogside]."

"Lima's mobile. Lima's trying to back you." Rick was driving fast toward me.

I found the target again just as it went into the Bogside and closed up.

"That's possibly two up, Sierra sixty to sixty-five.

He's moving!"

"Alpha."

"November, Roger that."

The rest of the team were now racing toward the scene. To lose contact with the bomb team could be fatal.

The pa.s.senger was turning around, looking straight at me. I tried to look casual; we had a bit of eye-to-eye contact, and I looked away.

I wanted the bomb to get to its destination, us to find the new hide, get the device, and put a stop to their plans. To have a contact was pointless; we wouldn't know the whole picture then.