Death on Gibraltar

SHAUN CLARKE

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by 22 Books/Bloomsbury Publishing plc 1994

Copyright © Bloomsbury Publishing plc 1994

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2016

Cover Photographs © Nik Keevil/Arcangel Images (man); Ulstein bild/Getty Images (street scene); Shutterstock.com (textures)

Shaun Clarke asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction based on a factual event. The real names of the three IRA terrorists shot dead on Gibraltar on 8 March 1988 have been retained, as have those of the eight IRA men killed at Loughgall, Northern Ireland, on 8 May the previous year. Many events are partially or wholly the work of the author’s imagination; all other names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are wholly the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to other actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008155308

Ebook Edition © December 2015 ISBN: 9780008155315

Version: 2015-10-29

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Prelude

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Postscript

OTHER TITLES IN THE SAS OPERATION SERIES

About the Publisher

Prelude

On the evening of Thursday 7 May 1987 fifteen soldiers from G Squadron, SAS, all dressed in standard DPM windproof, tight-weave cotton trousers and olive-green cotton battle smocks with British Army boots and maroon berets, were driven in four-wheel-drive Bedford lorries from their base at Stirling Lines, Hereford, to RAF Brize Norton, Oxfordshire, where they boarded a Hercules C-130 transport plane.

The men were armed with L7A2 7.62mm general-purpose machine-guns (GPMGs), 7.62mm Heckler & Koch G3-A4K twenty-round assault rifles with LE1-100 laser sights, and 5.56mm M16 thirty-round Armalite rifles. They also had many attachments for the various weapons, including bipods, telescopic sights, night-vision aids, and M203 40mm grenade-launchers. The ubiquitous standard-issue 9mm Browning High Power handgun was holstered at each man’s hip. Their personal kit, including ammunition, water, rations, a medical pack, and spare clothing and batteries, was packed in the square-frame Cyclops bergens on their backs. Finally, they had with them crates filled with various items of high-tech communications and surveillance equipment, including Nikon F-801 35mm SLR cameras with Davies Minimodulux hand-held image intensifiers for night photography, a PRC319 microprocessor-based tactical radio, Pace Communications Ltd Landmaster III hand-held transceivers and Radio Systems Inc. walkie-talkies.

From RAF Brize Norton, the men were flown to RAF Aldergrove in Belfast, where they were transferred with their kit to three unmarked Avis vans and then driven through the rolling green countryside to the Security Forces base built around the old mill in the village of Bessbrook. There they were united with the twenty-four SAS men already serving in Northern Ireland, making a total force of thirty-nine specially trained and experienced counter-terrorist troopers.

The next morning was spent in a draughty lecture hall in the SF base where, with the aid of maps and a scale model of the Royal Ulster Constabulary police station of Loughgall, the combined body of men were given a final briefing on the operation to come.

Early that afternoon, when the RUC had thrown a discreet cordon around the area, diverting traffic and keeping all but local people out, the SAS men, with their weapons and surveillance equipment, were transported in the rented vans to Loughgall. Small and mostly Protestant, Loughgall is surrounded by the rolling green hills and apple trees of the ‘orchard country’ of north Armagh. It is some eight miles from Armagh city, and the road which leads from Armagh slopes down into the village, passing a walled copse on the right. The RUC station is almost opposite, between a row of bungalows, a former Ulster Defence Regiment barracks, the football team’s clubhouse and a small telephone exchange. It is small enough to be run by a sergeant and three or four officers, and unimportant enough to be open only limited hours in the morning and afternoon, always closing completely at 7 p.m.

That day, well before the ‘barracks’, as the RUC station is known locally, was closed, some of the SAS men entered the building to occupy surveillance and firing positions at the rear and front, those at the front keeping well away from one particular side. While they were taking up positions inside, the rest were dividing into separate groups to set up ambushes around the building.

Two GPMG teams moved into the copse overlooking the police station, which enabled them to cover the football pitch facing it on the other side of the Armagh road. Others took up positions closer to and around the building, and behind the blast-proof wall protecting the front door.

Another team took the high ground overlooking the rear of the building. The remainder assumed positions in which they could act as cordon teams staking out the approach road in both directions.

Meanwhile, as members of the RUC’s Headquarters Mobile Support Units were deployed in the vicinity, companies of UDR and British Army soldiers, as well as mobile police squads, were ready to cordon off the area after the operation.

That same afternoon a group of masked men hijacked a blue Toyota Hiace van at gunpoint from a business in Mountjoy Road, Dungannon. Sometime after five o’clock the same group hijacked a mechanical digger from a Dungannon farm, and the vehicle was driven to another farmyard about nine miles north of Loughgall.

With the SAS in position inside the RUC station, the building was locked up at the usual time. The troopers dug in around it had melted into the scenery, and apart from the sound of the wind, there was absolute silence.

Just before seven o’clock that evening, in the farmhouse north of Loughgall, close to the Armagh–Tyrone border and the Republican strongholds of Washing Bay and Coalisland, an IRA ‘bucket bomb’ team carefully loaded a 200lb bomb – designed to be set off by lighting a simple fuse – on to the bucket of the hijacked mechanical digger. Waiting close by, and watching them nervously, was a support team consisting of two Active Service Units of the East Tyrone Brigade of the IRA. Inside their stolen van was a collection of weapons that included three Heckler & Koch G3 7.62mm assault rifles, two 5.56mm FNC rifles, an assault shotgun and a German Ruger revolver taken from one of the reserve constables shot dead during a raid at Ballygawley eighteen months earlier.

Of the three-man bucket bomb team, one was a twenty-one-year-old with five years’ IRA service, including several spells of detention; another had six years in the IRA behind him and had been arrested and interrogated many times because of it; and the third had twelve years’ IRA service and six years’ imprisonment.

The leader of one ASU team was thirty-year-old Patrick Kelly. Though known to be almost rigidly puritanical about his family and religious faith, Kelly was the commander of East Tyrone Provisional IRA units and suspected of murdering two RUC officers. The other ASU team was led by thirty-one-year-old Jim Lynagh, a former Sinn Fein councillor with fifteen years in the IRA and various terms in prison to his name. Though Lynagh, in direct contrast to Kelly, was an extrovert, good-humoured personality, he was suspected of many killings and, though acquitted of assassinating a UDR soldier, was widely believed to have done the deed.

The rest of the ASU teams consisted of a thirty-two-year-old escaper from the Maze Prison with fifteen years’ violent IRA service to his credit; a nineteen-year-old who had been in the IRA for three years and claimed that he had been threatened with assassination by the RUC; and a twenty-five-year-old who had been in the IRA for five years, had been arrested many times and was a veteran of many terrorist operations.

These eight men were hoping to repeat the success of a similar attack they had carried out eighteen months earlier at Ballygawley, when they had shot their way into the police station, killing two officers, and then blown up the building.

This time, however, as they loaded their bomb on to the digger, they were being watched by a police undercover surveillance team, Special Branch’s E4A, which was transmitting reports of their movements to the SAS men located in and around Loughgall RUC station.

The five armed men accompanying the three bombers had initially come along to ensure that no RUC men would escape through the back door of the building, as they had done at Ballygawley. However, just before climbing into their unmarked van, the two team leaders, Kelly and Lynagh, appeared – at least to the distant observers of E4A – to become embroiled in some kind of argument. Though what they said is not known, the argument was later taken by the Security Forces to be a sign of a last-minute confusion that could explain why, by the time the terrorists reached Loughgall in the stolen Toyota, their original plan for covering the back of the RUC police station had been dropped and they prepared to attack only the unguarded side of the building. Ironically, by ignoring the rear of the building, they were repeating the mistake they had made eighteen months earlier.

Their plan was to ignite the fuse on the bomb, then ram the RUC station with the bomb still in the bucket of the digger. They chose the side of the building because of the protection afforded the front entrance by the blast-proof wall. As an alternative to the usual attacks with heavy mortars or RPG7 rockets, this tactic had first been attempted eighteen months earlier at Ballygawley, then again, nine months later, at the Birches, Co. Tyrone, only five miles from Loughgall. Both operations had been successful.

To avoid the Security Forces, the terrorists travelled from the farmyard to Loughgall via the narrow, winding side lanes, rather than taking the main Dungannon-Armagh road. The five-man support team were in the blue van, driven by Seamus Donnelly, with one of the team leaders, Lynagh, in the back and Kelly in the front beside the driver. The van was in the lead to enable Kelly to check that the road ahead was clear. The mechanical digger followed, driven by Declan Arthurs and with Tony Gormley and Gerard O’Callaghan ‘riding shotgun’, though with their weapons concealed. The bucket bomb was hidden under a pile of rubble.

While the terrorists thought they were avoiding the Security Forces, their movements were almost certainly observed at various points along the route by surveillance teams in unmarked ‘Q’ cars or covert observation posts.

The Toyota van passed through Loughgall village at a quarter past seven. SAS men were hiding behind the wall of the church as it drove past them, but they held their fire. They wanted the van and mechanical digger to reach the police station as this would give the SAS men inside an excuse to open fire in ‘self-defence’.

At precisely 7.20 p.m., possibly trying to ascertain if anyone was still in the building, Arthurs drove the mechanical digger to and fro a few times, with Gormley and O’Callaghan now deliberately putting their weapons on view. What happened next is still in dispute.

As the terrorists all knew that the Loughgall RUC station was empty from seven o’clock every evening, their timing of the attack is surely an indication that their purpose was to destroy the building, not take lives. More importantly, it begs the question of why the ASU team leader, Patrick Kelly, a very experienced and normally astute IRA fighter, would do what he is reported to have done.

Though believing that the police station was empty, Kelly climbed out of the cabin of the Toyota van with the driver, Donnelly, and proceeded to open fire with his assault rifle on the front of the building. Donnelly and some of the others then did the same.

Instantly, the SAS ambush party inside the building opened fire with a fearsome combination of 7.62mm Heckler & Koch G3-A4K assault rifles and 5.56mm M16 Armalites, catching the terrorists in a devastating fusillade, perforating the rear and side of the van with bullets and mowing down some of the men even before the 7.62mm GPMGs in the copse had roared into action, peppering the front of the van and catching the remaining terrorists in a deadly crossfire.

Hit several times, Kelly fell close to the cabin of the van with blood spreading out around him from a fatal head wound. Realizing what was happening, the experienced Jim Lynagh and Patrick McKearney scurried back into the van, but died in a hail of bullets that tore through its side panel. Donnelly had scrambled back into the driver’s seat, but was mortally wounded in the same rain of bullets before he could move off. After ramming the mechanical digger into the side of the building, the driver, Arthurs, and another terrorist, Eugene Kelly, died as they tried in vain to take cover behind the bullet-riddled Toyota.

Even as the driver of the mechanical digger was dying in a hail of bullets, O’Callaghan was igniting the fuse of the 200lb bomb with a Zippo lighter. He then took cover beside Gormley.

The roar of the exploding bomb drowned out even the combined din of the GPMGs, assault rifles and Armalites. The spiralling dust and boiling smoke eventually settled down to reveal that the explosion had blown away most of the end of the RUC station nearest the gate, demolished the telephone exchange next door, and showered the football clubhouse with raining masonry. The mechanical digger had been blown to pieces and one of its wheels had flown about forty yards, to smash through a wooden fence and land on the football pitch. Some of the police and SAS men inside the building had been injured by the blast and flying debris.

When the bomb went off, Gormley and O’Callaghan tried to run for cover, but Gormley was cut down by heavy SAS gunfire as he emerged from behind the wall where he had taken cover. O’Callaghan was cut to pieces as he ran across the road from the badly damaged building.

But the IRA men were not the only casualties.

Because the GPMG teams hidden in the copse were targeting a building that stood close to the Armagh road, the oblique direction of fire meant that they also fired many rounds into the football pitch opposite and into parts of the village, including the wall of the church hall, where children were playing at the time. In addition, three civilian cars were passing between the RUC station and the church as the battle commenced.

Driving in a white Citroën past the church and down the hill towards the police station, Oliver Hughes, a thirty-six-year-old father of three, and his brother Anthony heard the thunderclap of the massive bomb, braked to a halt immediately and started to reverse the car. Unfortunately, both men were in overalls similar to those worn by the terrorists, so the SAS soldiers hidden near the church, assuming they were terrorist reinforcements, opened fire, peppering the Citroën with bullets, killing Oliver Hughes outright and badly wounding his brother, who took three rounds in the back and one in the head.

Travelling in the opposite direction, up the hill towards the church, another car, containing a woman and her young daughter, was also sprayed with bullets and screeched to a halt. In this instance, before anyone was killed the commander of one of the SAS groups raced through the hail of bullets to drag the woman and her daughter out of the car to safety. Miraculously, he succeeded.

The third car contained an elderly couple, Mr and Mrs Herbert Buckley. Both jumped out of their car and threw themselves to the ground, to survive unscathed.

Another motorist, a brewery salesman, had stopped his car even closer to the main action – between the IRA’s Toyota and the copse where the two GPMG crews were dug in – and looked on in stunned disbelief as a rain of GPMG bullets hit the blue van. During a lull in the firing, he jumped out of his car and ran to find shelter behind the bungalows next to the police station. He never reached them, for after being rugby-tackled by an SAS trooper, he was held in custody until his identity could be established.

When the firing ceased, all eight of the IRA terrorists were found to be dead. Within thirty minutes, even as British Gazelle reconnaissance helicopters were flying over the area and British Army troops were combing the countryside in the vain pursuit of other terrorists, the SAS men were already being lifted out.

The deaths of the eight terrorists were the worst set-back the IRA had experienced in sixty years. During their funerals the IRA made it perfectly clear that bloody retaliation could be expected. It was a threat that could not be ignored by the British government.

1

‘It is the belief of our Intelligence chiefs,’ the man addressed only as ‘Mr Secretary’ informed the top-level crisis-management team in a basement office in Whitehall on 6 November 1987, ‘that the successful SAS ambush in Loughgall last May, which resulted in the deaths of eight leading IRA terrorists, will lead to an act of reprisal that’s probably being planned right now.’

There was a moment’s silence while the men sitting around the boardroom table took in what the Secretary was saying so gravely. This particular crisis-management team was known as COBR – it represented the Cabinet Office Briefing Room – and all those present were of considerable authority and power in various areas of national defence and security. Finally, after a lengthy silence, one of them, a saturnine, grey-haired man from British Intelligence, said: ‘If that’s the case, Mr Secretary, we should place both MI5 and MI6 on the alert and try to anticipate the most likely targets.’

‘Calling in MI5 is one thing,’ the Secretary replied, referring to the branch of the Security Service charged with overt counter-espionage. ‘But before calling in MI6, would someone please remind me of the reasoning behind what was obviously an exceptionally ambitious and contentious ambush.’

Everyone around the table knew just what he meant. MI6 was the secret intelligence service run by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. As its links with the FCO were never publicly acknowledged, it was best avoided when it came to operations that might end up with a high public profile – as, for instance, the siege of the Iranian Embassy in London in May 1980 had done.

‘The humiliation of the IRA,’ said the leader of the Special Military Intelligence Unit (SMIU) responsible for Northern Ireland. ‘That was the whole purpose of the Loughgall ambush.’

‘We’re constantly trying to humiliate the IRA,’ the Secretary replied, ‘but we don’t always go to such lengths. What made Loughgall so special?’

‘The assassination of the Lord Chief Justice and his wife the previous month,’ the SMIU leader replied, referring to the blowing up of the judge’s car by a 500lb bomb in the early hours of 25 April, when he and his wife were returning to their home in Northern Ireland after a holiday in the Republic. ‘As Northern Ireland’s most senior judge, he had publicly vowed to bring all terrorists to justice, so the terrorists assassinated him, not only as a warning to other like-minded judges, but as a means of profoundly embarrassing the British government, which of course it did.’

‘So the ambush at Loughgall was an act of revenge for the murder of the Lord Chief Justice and his wife?’

‘It was actually more than that, Mr Secretary,’ the SMIU man replied. ‘Within hours of the assassination of the Lord Chief Justice – that same evening, in fact – a full-time member of the East Tyrone UDR was murdered by two IRA gunmen while working in the yard of his own farm. That murder was particularly brutal. After shooting him in the back with assault rifles, in full view of his wife, the two gunmen stood over him where he lay on the ground and shot him repeatedly – about nineteen times in all. The East Tyrone IRA then claimed that they had carried out the killing.’

‘And that was somehow connected to the Loughgall ambush?’

‘Yes, Mr Secretary. We learnt from an informer that two ASU teams from East Tyrone were planning an attack on the RUC police station at Loughgall and that some of the men involved had been responsible for all three deaths.’

‘Was this informer known to be reliable?’

‘Yes, Mr Secretary, she was.’

‘And do we have proof that some of the IRA men who died at Loughgall were involved in the assassinations as she had stated?’

‘Again, the answer is yes. Ballistics tests on the Heckler & Koch G3 assault rifles and FNCs used by the IRA men at Loughgall proved that some of them were the same as those used to kill the UDR man.’

‘What about the Lord Chief Justice and his wife?’

‘For various reasons, including the reports of informants, we believe that the ASU teams involved in the attack at Loughgall were the same ones responsible for the deaths of the Lord Chief Justice and his wife. However, I’ll admit that as yet we have no conclusive evidence to support that belief.’

‘Yet you authorized the SAS ambush at the police station, killing eight IRA suspects.’

‘Not suspects, Mr Secretary. All of them were proven IRA activists, most with blood on their hands – so we had no doubts on that score. That being said, I should reiterate that we certainly knew that the two ASU team leaders – Jim Lynagh and Patrick Kelly – were responsible for the death of the UDR man. So the SAS ambush was not only retaliation for that, but also our way of humiliating the IRA and cancelling out the propaganda victory they had achieved with the assassination of the Lord Chief Justice and his wife. Which is why, even knowing that they were planning to attack the Loughgall RUC station, we decided to let it run and use the attack as our excuse for neutralizing them with the aid of the SAS and the RUC. Thus Operation Judy was put into motion.’

‘The RUC was involved as well?’

‘Of course, Mr Secretary. It was one of their police stations, after all, that was the target. Also, they knew that this was a plum opportunity to take out some particularly valuable IRA men, including the two ASU team leaders.’

‘So the IRA gunmen were under surveillance long before the attack took place?’

‘Correct, Mr Secretary. We learnt through Intelligence sources at the TCG…’

‘The what?’

‘The Tasking and Co-ordination Group. We learnt through the TCG’s Intelligence that Lynagh and Kelly would be leading two of the ASU teams against the police station and that they would be heavily armed. It’s true that we were aware that their intention was not to kill but to destroy the police station – they knew that it was normally closed and empty by that time – but given their general value to the IRA, as well as their direct involvement in the murder of the UDR man and suspected involvement in the assassination of the Lord Chief Justice and his wife, we couldn’t let that consideration prevent us from grabbing this golden opportunity to get rid of them once and for all. Therefore, long before the attack, we had them shadowed by Army surveillance experts and the Special Branch’s E4A. It was members of the latter who actually witnessed the ASU teams placing the 200lb bomb in the bucket of that mechanical digger and then driving it to the Loughgall RUC station. We believe that what happened next was completely justified on our part.’

The man known to them all only as the ‘Controller’ was one of the most senior officers in the SAS, rarely present at Stirling Lines, though often to be seen commuting between the SAS HQ at the Duke of York’s Barracks, in Chelsea, and this basement office in Whitehall. Up to this point the Secretary had ignored him, but now, with a slight, sly smile, he brought him into the conversation.

‘As I recall,’ the Secretary said, ‘there were certain contentious aspects to the Loughgall operation.’

‘Oh, really?’ the Controller replied with a steady, bland, blue-eyed gaze, looking like an ageing matinée idol in his immaculate pinstripe suit and old school tie. ‘What are those?’

‘For a start, there are a lot of conflicting stories as to what actually happened during that ambush. Why, for instance, would seasoned IRA terrorists open fire, at 7.20 p.m., on an RUC station widely known to keep limited hours and to close completetly at 7 p.m.? Why didn’t they just bomb it and run?’

‘I know what you’re suggesting, Mr Secretary, but you’re wrong. Rumours that the SAS opened fire first are false. At least two of the IRA men – we believe Kelly and his driver, Donnelly – stepped down from the cabin of the Toyota and opened fire on the police station with their assault rifles.’

‘Even believing it to be closed and empty?’

‘Yes. It seems odd, but that’s what happened. The only explanation we can come up with is that Kelly and the other ASU team leader, Jim Lynagh, had an argument as to what tactics to use. That argument probably continued in the van as the terrorists travelled from their hide in the farmyard near the border to Loughgall. Kelly became impatient or lost his temper completely and decided to terminate the argument by getting out and opening fire on the police station, using it as the signal for the other men to start the attack. We can think of no other explanation for that rather pointless action. Either that or it was an impulsive act of bravado, though the general belief is that Kelly was too experienced a man to succumb to that.’

‘And it’s for that very reason that there are those who refuse to believe that the IRA opened fire first. They say that Kelly was simply too experienced to have fired his assault rifle at an empty police station he intended to destroy with a bomb.’

‘My men swear that the IRA opened fire first and that’s in their official report.’

‘But your men were there to set up an ambush.’

‘Well, Mr Secretary, we’d been briefed by British Intelligence that the mission was to be an OP/React. In other words, an observation post able to react.’

‘In other words,’ the Secretary said drily, ‘an ambush. Isn’t that more accurate?’

‘Yes, Mr Secretary, it is. An OP/React is a coded term for an ambush.’

‘And we can take it from the wide variety of weapons and the extraordinary amount of ammunition used by the SAS – about a thousand bullets fired, I believe, in a couple of minutes – that the purpose of the exercise was to annihilate those men.’

‘I believe the proper word is “neutralize”,’ the SMIU leader put in, feeling obliged to defend the operation he had helped to set up.

‘My apologies,’ the Secretary responded testily. ‘To neutralize those men. Does that explain why there were ambush teams outside as well as inside the building and why some of the local townsfolk were shot up – with one actually killed – by the SAS?’

‘Those were unfortunate accidents,’ the Controller replied firmly, ‘but they weren’t caused by an unnecessary display of fire-power on our part. The GPMG assault groups positioned in the copse were placed there because it was believed at the time – erroneously, as it turned out – that the IRA bomb team would approach the police station by way of the football pitch across the road from Armagh. The reason for having other troopers hidden elsewhere, including behind the wall of the church and in the town itself, is that we had also been informed that the IRA bomb would be set off by a timer or a remote-control device. We therefore had to be prepared to shoot at any point where a terrorist, irrespective of where he was located, looked as if he was about to do a button-job.’

The Secretary looked perplexed.

‘Detonating the bomb by a small, radio-control device hidden on the person and usually activated by a simple button,’ the SMIU leader explained. ‘Which means it can be done by a demolitions man some distance from the target. In the event, a simple fuse was used, which meant that those placing the bomb at Loughgall had to stay with it until the last moment and then personally light the fuse.’

‘That explanation doesn’t help us,’ the Secretary said, sounding aggrieved. ‘The widow of that dead man, now left with three fatherless children, is claiming compensation from our government and will doubtless get it, albeit in an out-of-court settlement.’

‘That man wasn’t the first, and he won’t be the last, civilian casualty in the war in Northern Ireland.’ Again, the shadowy SAS Controller was being firm and not about to take the blame for an action he still deemed to have been justified. ‘Sometimes these unfortunate accidents can’t be avoided.’

‘True enough,’ the Secretary admitted with a soulful sigh. ‘So, let’s forget about Loughgall and concentrate on what we believe it will lead to: a bloody act of retaliation by the IRA.’

‘Do you know what they’re planning?’ the Controller asked him.

‘We have reason to believe that the target will be soft,’ the SMIU man replied on behalf of the Secretary, ‘and either in southern Spain or Gibraltar – the first because it has thousands of British tourists as potential victims, the second because the IRA have often publicly stated that it is a potential “soft target” and, even better from their point of view, one strongly identified with British imperialism.’

‘Do you have any specific grounds for such suspicions?’

‘Yes. We’ve just been informed by the terrorist experts from the Servicios de Información in Madrid that yesterday two well-known and experienced IRA members, Sean Savage and Daniel McCann, arrived in Spain under false names. Savage is a shadowy figure of no proven IRA affiliations, though he’s been under RUC surveillance for a long time and is certainly suspected of being one of the IRA’s best men. McCann is widely known as ‘Mad Dan’ because of his reputation as an absolutely ruthless IRA fanatic up to his elbows in blood. It’s our belief that their presence in Spain, particularly as they’re there under false passports, indicates some kind of IRA attack, to take place either in Spain – as I said before, because of the enormous tourist population, presently running at about a quarter of a million – or in their oft-proclaimed soft target of Gibraltar. If it’s the Rock, where there are approximately fifteen hundred service personnel, then almost certainly it will be a military target.’

‘Do we know where they are at the moment?’ the Controller asked.

‘No,’ the SMIU leader replied, sounding slightly embarrassed. ‘We only know that they flew from Gatwick to Málaga. Though travelling under false passports, they were recognized by the photos of criminal and political suspects held by the security people at Gatwick. However, when we were informed of their presence at Gatwick, we decided to let them fly on to Spain in order to find out what they were up to. Once in Spain, they were supposed to be tailed by the Spanish police, who unfortunately soon lost them. Right now, we only know that they hired a car at Málaga airport and headed along the N340 towards Torremolinos or somewhere further in that direction. The Spanish police are therefore combing the area between Torremolinos and Algeciras and, of course, we’re checking everyone going in and out of Gibraltar. I’m sure we’ll find them in good time.’

‘So what happens when they’re found?’ the Controller asked.

‘Nothing,’ the SMIU man told him. ‘At least not just yet. We just want to observe them and ascertain what they’re planning. Should they remain in the Costa del Sol, then naturally we must be concerned for the safety of its thousands of British residents and tourists. On the other hand, if they cross the border into Gibraltar, our suspicions about the Rock as their soft target will be, if not actually confirmed, then certainly heightened.’

‘What if they simply have a holiday and then fly back to Northern Ireland?’ the Controller asked.

‘We’ll let them go, but keep them under surveillance, whether it be in the Province or somewhere else. We’re convinced, however, that they’re not on the Costa del Sol to get a suntan. We think they’re there to gather information about a particular target – and our guess is that they’ll materialize quite soon on Gib.’

‘To cause damage?’

‘Not now, but later,’ the SMIU leader said. ‘These men have entered Spain with no more than suitcases, so unless they meet up with someone, or pick up something en route, we have to assume that this is purely a scouting trip.’

‘Given all the questions you’ve just asked me about the Loughgall affair,’ the Controller said, smiling sardonically at the Secretary, ‘can I take it that you’re considering future SAS involvement?’

‘Yes.’ The Secretary leant across his desk to stare intently at the Controller. ‘If the terrorist outrage is going to be on Spanish territory, the scenario will place enormous constraints upon us – notably in that we’ll be totally dependent on the cooperation of the Spanish police and the Servicios de Información. This problem, unfortunately, will not go away if the IRA plan their outrage for the Rock, since any attack there will almost certainly have to be initiated on the Spanish side of the border, which will again make us dependent on Spanish police and Intelligence. Either way, they won’t be happy with any overt British military or Intelligence presence on the scene; nor indeed with the possibility of an essentially British problem being sorted out, perhaps violently and publicly, on Spanish soil. For this reason, as with the Iranian Embassy siege, we’ll be caught between making this a police matter – in this case the Spanish or Gibraltar police – or a military matter undertaken by ourselves. If it’s the latter, we’ll have to persuade the Spanish authorities that we can contain the matter as an anti-terrorist operation run by a small, specially trained group of men, rather than having any kind of full-scale action by the regular Army. That small group of men would have to be the SAS.’

‘Quite right, too,’ the Controller said.

The Secretary smiled bleakly, not happy to have handed the Controller a garland of flowers. ‘While undoubtedly your SAS have proved their worth over the years, they are not the only ones to have done so: the Royal Marines, for instance, could possibly undertake the same, small-scale operation.’

‘Not so well,’ the Controller insisted. ‘Not with a group as small as the one you’ll need for this particular task.’

‘Perhaps, perhaps not,’ the Secretary said doubtfully. ‘I have to tell you, however, that I’ve chosen the SAS not just because of their counter-terrorism talents but because they’re experienced in working closely with the police – albeit usually the British police – and, more importantly, because the Iranian Embassy job has given them the highest profile of any of the Special Forces in this or indeed any other country.’

‘Not always a good thing,’ the Controller admitted, for in truth he detested the notoriety gained by the SAS through that one much-publicized operation.

‘But good in this case,’ the Secretary told him, ‘as the Spanish authorities also know of your Regiment’s reputation for counter-terrorist activities and will doubtless respond warmly to it.’

‘So at what point do we step in?’ the Controller asked, now glancing at the SMIU leader, who was the one who would make that decision.

‘This has to remain a matter between British Intelligence and the Servicios de Información until such time as the terrorists actually make their move. Once that appears to be the case, the decision will have to be taken as to whether the Spanish police, the Gibraltar police or the SAS will be given responsibility for dealing with it. In the meantime, we want you to discuss the two possible scenarios – the Spanish mainland or Gibraltar – with your Intelligence people at SAS HQ and devise suitable options for both. When the time comes we’ll call you.’

‘Excellent,’ the Controller said. ‘Is that all?’

‘Yes,’ the Secretary told him.

Nodding, the Controller, the most shadowy man in the whole of the SAS hierarchy, picked up his briefcase, straightened his pinstripe suit, then marched out of the office, to be driven the short distance to the SAS HQ at the Duke of York’s Barracks, where he would make his contingency plans.

A man of very strong, sure instincts, he knew already what would happen. The SAS would take over.

2

After removing his blood-smeared white smock and washing the wet blood from his hands in the sink behind the butcher’s shop where he worked, Daniel McCann put on his jacket, checked the money in his wallet, then locked up and stepped into the darkening light of the late afternoon. The mean streets of Republican Belfast had not yet surrendered to night, but they looked dark and grim with their pavements wet with rain, the bricked-up windows and doorways in empty houses, and the usual police checkpoints and security fences.

Though only thirty, ‘Mad Dan’ looked much older, his face prematurely lined and chiselled into hard, unyielding features by his murderous history and ceaseless conflict with the hated British. In the hot, angry summer of 1969, when he was twelve, Catholic homes in his area had been burnt to the ground by Loyalist neighbours before the ‘Brits’ were called in to stop them, inaugurating a new era of bloody warfare between the Catholics, the Protestants and the British Army. As a consequence, Mad Dan had become a dedicated IRA veteran, going all the way with his blood-chilling enthusiasm for extortion, kneecapping and other forms of torture and, of course, assassination – not only of Brits and Irish Prods, but also of his own kind when they stood in his way, betrayed the cause, or otherwise displeased him.

Nevertheless, Mad Dan had led a charmed life. In a long career as an assassin, he had chalked up only one serious conviction – for possessing a detonator – which led to two years in the Maze. By the time he got out, having been even more thoroughly educated by his fellow-Irishmen in the prison, he was all set to become a fanatical IRA activitst with no concept of compromise.

But Mad Dan didn’t just torture, maim and kill for the IRA cause; he did it because he had a lust for violence and a taste for blood. He was a mad dog.

At the very least, the RUC and British Army had Mad Dan tabbed as an enthusiastic exponent of shoot-to-kill and repeatedly hauled him out of his bed in the middle of the night to attend the detention centre at Castlereagh for an identity parade or interrogation. Yet even when they beat the hell out of him, Mad Dan spat in their faces.

He liked to walk. It was the best way to get round the city and the way least likely to attract the attention of the RUC or British Army. Now, turning into Grosvenor Road, he passed a police station and regular Army checkpoint, surrounded by high, sandbagged walls and manned by heavily armed soldiers, all wearing DPM clothing, helmets with chin straps, and standard-issue boots. Apart from the private manning the 7.62mm L4 light machine-gun, the soldiers were carrying M16 rifles and had stun and smoke grenades on their webbing. The sight of them always made Mad Dan’s blood boil.

That part of Belfast looked like London after the Blitz: rows of terraced houses with their doors and windows bricked up and gardens piled high with rubble. The pavements outside the pubs and certain shops were barricaded with large concrete blocks and sandbags. The windows were caged with heavy-duty wire netting as protection against car bombs and petrol bombers.

Farther along, a soldier with an SA80 assault rifle was covering a sapper while the latter carefully checked the contents of a rubbish bin. Mad Dan was one of those who often fired rocket-propelled grenades from Russian-manufactured RPG7 short-range anti-tank weapons, mainly against police stations, army barracks and armoured personnel carriers or Saracen armoured cars. He was also one of those who had, from a safe distance, command-detonated dustbins filled with explosives. It was for these that the sapper was examining all the rubbish bins near the police station and checkpoint. Usually, when explosives were placed in dustbins, it was done during the night, which is why the sappers had to check every morning. Seeing this particular soldier at work gave Mad Dan a great deal of satisfaction.

Farther down the road, well away from the Army checkpoint, he popped in and out of a few shops and betting shops to collect the protection money required to finance his own Provisional IRA unit. He collected the money in cash, which he stuffed carelessly into his pockets. In the last port of call, a bookie’s, he took the protection money from the owner, then placed a few bets and joked about coming back to collect his winnings. The owner, though despising him, was frightened of him and forced a painful smile.

After crossing the road, Mad Dan stopped just short of an RUC station which was guarded by officers wearing flak-jackets and carrying the ubiquitous 5.56mm Ruger Mini-14 assault rifle. There he turned left and circled back through the grimy streets until he was heading up the Falls Road and making friendlier calls to his IRA mates in the pubs of Springfield, Ballymurphy and Turf Lodge, where everyone looked poor and suspicious. Most noticeable were the gangs of teenagers known as ‘dickers’, who stood menacingly at street corners, keeping their eyes out for newcomers or anything else they felt was threatening, particularly British Army patrols.

Invariably, with the gangs there were young people on crutches or with arms in slings, beaming with pride because they’d been knee-capped as punishment for some infraction, real or imagined, and were therefore treated as ‘hard men’ by their mates.

Being a kneecapping specialist, Mad Dan knew most of the dickers and kids by name. He was particularly proud of his kneecapping abilities, but, like his fellow Provisional IRA members, used various methods of punishment, according to the nature of the offence.

It was a harsh truth of Republican Belfast that you could tell the gravity of a man’s offence by how he’d been punished. If he had a wound either in the fleshy part of the thigh or in the ankle, from a small .22 pistol, which doesn’t shatter bone, then he was only guilty of a minor offence. For something more serious he would be shot in the back of the knee with a high-velocity rifle or pistol, which meant the artery was severed and the kneecap blown right off. Mad Dan’s favourite, however, was the ‘six-pack’, the fate of particularly serious offenders. The victim received a bullet in each elbow, knee and ankle, which put him on crutches for a long time.

While the six-pack was reserved for ‘touts’, or informers, and other traitors, the less damaging, certainly less agonizing punishments were administered to car thieves, burglars, sex offenders, or anyone too openly critical of the IRA, even though they may have actually done nothing.

As one of the leading practitioners of such punishments, Mad Dan struck so much terror into his victims that when they received a visit from one of his minions, telling them that they had to report for punishment, they nearly always went of their own accord to the place selected for the kneecapping. Knowing what was going to happen to them, many tried to anaesthetize themselves beforehand by getting drunk or sedating themselves with Valium, but Mad Dan always waited for the effects to wear off before inflicting the punishment. He liked to hear them screaming.

‘Sure, yer squealin’ like a stuck pig,’ he would say after the punishment had been dispensed. ‘Stop shamin’ your mother, bejasus, and act like a man!’

After a couple of pints with some IRA friends in a Republican pub in Andersonstown, Mad Dan caught a taxi to the Falls Road, the Provos’ heartland and one of the deadliest killing grounds in Northern Ireland. The streets of the ‘war zone’, as British soldiers called it, were clogged with armoured Land Rovers and forbidding military fortresses looming against the sky. British Army barricades, topped with barbed wire and protected by machine-gun crews atop Saracen armoured cars, were blocking off the entrance to many streets, with the foot soldiers well armed and looking like Martians in their DPM uniforms, boots, webbing, camouflaged helmets and chin-protectors. The black taxis were packed with passengers too frightened to use public transport or walk. Grey-painted RUC mobiles and Saracens were passing constantly. From both kinds of vehicle, police officers were scanning the upper windows and roofs on either side of the road, looking for possible sniper positions. At the barricades, soldiers were checking everyone entering and, in many instances, taking them aside to roughly search them. As Mad Dan noted with his experienced gaze, there were British Army static observation posts with powerful cameras on the roofs of the higher buildings, recording every movement in these streets. There were also, as he knew, listening devices in the ceilings of suspected IRA buildings, as well as bugs on selected phone lines.

Small wonder that caught between the Brits and the IRA, ever vigilant in their own way, the Catholics in these streets had little privacy and were inclined to be paranoid.

Turning into a side-street off the Falls Road, Mad Dan made his way to a dismal block of flats by a patch of waste ground filled with rubbish, where mangy dogs and scruffy, dirt-smeared children were playing noisily in the gathering darkness. In fact, the block of flats looked like a prison, and all the more so because up on the high roof was a British Army OP, its powerful telescope scanning the many people who loitered along the balconies or on the ground below. One soldier was manning a 7.62mm GPMG; the others were holding M16 rifles with the barrels resting lightly on the sandbagged wall.

Grinning as he looked up at the overt OP, Mad Dan placed the thumb of his right hand on his nose, then flipped his hand left and right in ironic, insulting salute. Then he entered the pub. It was smoky, noisy and convivial inside. Seeing Patrick Tyrone sitting at one of the tables with an almost empty glass of Guinness in front of him, Mad Dan asked with a gesture if he wanted another. When Tyrone nodded, Mad Dan ordered and paid for two pints, then carried them over to Tyrone’s table. Sitting down, he slid one over to Tyrone, had a long drink from his own, then wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

‘Ach, sure that’s good!’ he said.

When Tyrone, another hard man, had responded with a thin, humourless smile, Mad Dan nodded towards the front door and said: ‘I see the Brits have some OPs on the roof. Do they do any damage?’

‘Aye. They’re equipped with computers linked to vehicle-registration and suspect-information centres, as well as to surveillance cameras. Also, the shites’ high visibility reminds us of their presence and so places a quare few constraints on us. At the same time, the OPs allow members of regular Brit units and 14 Intelligence Company to observe suspects and see who their associates are. This in turn allows the shites collecting intelligence at Lisburn and Brit HQ to investigate links between meetings of individuals and our subsequent group activities. So, aye, those bastard OPs can do us lots of damage.’

‘Sure, that’s a hell of a mouthful, Pat.’

‘Sure, it’s also the truth.’

‘Do those OPs have any back up?’ Mad Dan asked.

‘Ackaye’. Each of ’em’s backed up with another consisting of two to four soldiers and located near enough to offer immediate firearms support. If that weren’t enough, those two OPs are backed up by a QRF…’

‘Sure, what’s that if you’d be writin’ home?’

‘A Quick Reaction Force of soldiers or police, sometimes both, located at the nearest convenient SF base. And that QRF will respond immediately to a radio call for help from the OPs. So, no, they’re not alone, Dan. Those Brit bastards up there have a lot of support.’

Mad Dan nodded, indicating he understood, but really he wasn’t all that interested. He was there to receive specific instructions for the forthcoming evening. It was what he now lived for.

‘So what is it?’ he asked.

‘A double hit,’ Tyrone informed him. ‘A bit of weedin’ in the garden. Two bastards that have to be put down to put them out of their misery.’

‘A decent thought,’ Mad Dan said. ‘Now who would they be, then?’

Tyrone had another sip of his Guinness, then took a deep breath. ‘Detective Sergeants Michael Malone and Ernest Carson.’

‘Two bastards, right enough,’ Mad Dan said. ‘Sure, that’s a quare good choice. Tonight, is it?’

‘Aye. They’ll be in the Liverpool Bar for a meetin’ from eight o’clock on. Just walk in there and do as you see fit. We’ve no brief other than that. Just make sure they stop breathin’.’

‘Any security?’

‘None. The dumb shites think they’re in neutral territory, so they’re there for nothin’ else but a quare ol’ time. Let the bastards die happy.’

‘Weapon?’

‘I’ll give it to you outside. A 9mm Browning, removed from an SAS bastard killed back in ’76. Appropriate, right?’

‘Ackaye, real appropriate. Let’s go get it an’ then I’ll be off.’

‘Sure, I knew you’d say that.’

After finishing their drinks in a leisurely manner, the two men left the bar. Glancing up at the OPs and fully aware that the pub was under surveillance, Tyrone led Mad Dan along the street and up the concrete steps of the grim block of flats. He stopped on the gloomy landing, where the steps turned back in the other direction to lead up to the first balcony. There, out of sight of the spying Brits, he removed the Browning and handed it to Mad Dan, along with a fourteen-round magazine.

‘That’s the only ammunition you’re gettin’,’ he said, ‘because you’ve only got time for one round before hightailing it out of there. That also means you’ve no time for mistakes, so make sure you get them fucks.’

‘Sure, that’s no problem at all, Pat. I’ll riddle the bastards and be out of there before they hit the floorboards.’

‘Aye, make sure you do that.’ Tyrone glanced up and down the stairs, checking that no one was coming. ‘So,’ he said, ‘I’m goin’ home for a bite. Off you go. Best of luck. I’ll see you back in the bar in forty minutes.’

‘I’ll be there,’ Mad Dan said.

As Tyrone turned away to go up the steps to his mean flat on the first floor, Mad Dan loaded the magazine into the Browning, then tucked the weapon carefully down the back of his trousers, between the belt and his shirt, hidden under the jacket but where he could reach round and pull it out quickly. He walked back down the stairs and out into the street, in full view of the OPs up above. Bold as brass, he walked alongside the waste ground as the street lights came on to illuminate the dark evening. Emerging into the busy Falls Road, he turned right and walked down the crowded pavement until he reached the nearest parked car. When he bent down to talk to the driver, he was recognized instantly.

‘Sure, how did it go, Dan?’

‘You know Tyrone. Eyes like cold fried eggs and yammerin’ on about the Brits, but he gave me the go-ahead and the weapon.’ Mad Dan checked his watch. It was five past eight. ‘They’ll be in the Liverpool Bar and they should be there now. So, come on, let’s get goin’, lad.’

When Mad Dan had slipped into the seat beside the driver, the latter said: ‘Sure, would that be the Liverpool Bar on Donegall Quay?’

‘Aye, that’s the one. Drop me off there, keep the engine tickin’ over, and get ready to hightail it out of there when I come runnin’ out. Then don’t stop for anything.’

‘I’ll be out of there like a bat out of hell. Sure, you’ve no need to worry, Dan.’

‘Just make sure of that, boyo.’

As the car moved off, heading along the Falls Road in the direction of Divis Street, Mad Dan felt perfectly relaxed and passed the time by gazing out of the window at the hated RUC constables and British Army soldiers manning the barricaded police stations and checkpoints. He had no need to feel concerned about the car being identified because it had been hijacked at gunpoint on a road just outside the city, and the driver warned not to report the theft until the following day. The stolen car would be abandoned shortly after the attack and, when found unattended, it would be blown up by the SF as a potential car bomb. The unfortunate owner, if outraged, at least could count himself lucky that he still had his life. To lose your car in this manner was par for the course in Northern Ireland.

It took no time at all for the driver to make his way from Divis Street down past the Clock Tower, along Queen’s Square and into Donegall Quay, which ran alongside the bleak docks of the harbour, where idle cranes loomed over the water, their hooks, swinging slightly in the wind blowing in from the sea. On one side the harbour walls rose out of the filthy black water, stained a dirty brown by years of salt water and the elements; on the other were ugly warehouses and Victorian buildings. Tucked between some of the latter was the Liverpool Bar, so called because the Belfast-Liverpool ferries left from the nearby Irish Sea Ferry Terminal.

The driver stopped the car in a dark alley near the pub, out of sight of the armed RUC constables and British soldiers guarding the docks at the other side of the main road. He switched his headlights off, slipped into neutral, and kept the engine ticking over quietly.

Mad Dan opened the door, clambered out of the car, hurried along the alley and turned left into Donegall Quay. There he slowed down and walked in a more leisurely manner to the front door of the Liverpool Bar, not even looking at the soldiers guarding the terminal across the road. Without hesitation, he opened the door and went inside.

Even as the door was swinging closed behind him, he saw the two well-known policemen, Detective Sergeants Michael Malone and Ernest Carson, having off-duty drinks with some fellow-officers at the bar. Wasting no time, Mad Dan reached behind him, withdrew the Browning from under his jacket, spread his legs and aimed with the two-handed grip in one quick, expert movement.

The first shots were fired before anyone knew what was happening.

Mad Dan fired the whole fourteen rounds in rapid succession, aiming first at Malone, peppering him with 9mm bullets, then swinging the pistol towards Carson, as the first victim was throwing his arms up and slamming back against the bar, knocking over glasses and bottles, which smashed on the floor.

Even before Malone had fallen, Carson was being cut down, jerking epileptically as other bullets smashed the mirrors, bottles and glasses behind the bar. The barman gasped and twisted sideways, wounded by a stray bullet, and collapsed as one of the other policemen also went down, hit by the last bullets of Mad Dan’s short, savage fusillade.

Chairs and tables turned over as the customers dived for cover, men bawling, women screaming, in that enclosed, dim and smoky space. Hearing the click of an empty chamber, Mad Dan shoved the handgun back in his trousers and turned around to march resolutely, though with no overt display of urgency, through the front door, out on to the dark pavement of Donegall Quay.

Swinging shut behind him, the door deadened the sounds of screaming, bawling and hysterical sobbing from inside the bar.

The RUC constables and British soldiers guarding the terminal across the road neither heard nor saw anything unusual as Mad Dan walked at a normal pace back along the pavement and turned into the darkness of the alley a short way along.

By the time the first of the drinkers had burst out through the front door of the bar, bawling across the road for help, Mad Dan, in the hijacked car, had been raced away from the scene, back to the crowded, anonymous streets of Republican Belfast.

‘Out ya get,’ his driver said, screeching to a halt in a dark and desolate Falls Road side-street.

Mad Dan and the driver clambered out of the car at the same time, then ran together out of the street and back into the lamplit, still busy Falls Road, where they parted without a word.

As the driver entered the nearest pub, where he would mingle with his mates, Mad Dan went back up the Falls Road and turned eventually into the side-street that led to the pub facing the desolate flats that had the British Army OPs on the rooftops. Though picked up by the infrared thermal imagers and personal weapons’ night-sights of the men in the OPs, Mad Dan was viewed by the British observers as no more than another Paddy entering the pub for his nightly pint or two. However, once inside he went directly to the same table he had sat at an hour ago, where Tyrone was still seated, staring up with those eyes that did indeed look no more appealing than cold fried eggs.

‘So how did it go?’ Tyrone asked, showing little concern.

‘The garden’s been weeded,’ Mad Dan told him. ‘No problem at all.’

‘Then the drink’s on me,’ Tyrone said. ‘Sit down, Dan. Rest your itchy arse.’

Mad Dan relaxed while Tyrone went to the bar, bought two pints of Guinness and returned to the table. He handed one of the glasses to Mad Dan, raised his own in a slightly mocking toast, then drank. Mad Dan did the same, wiping his lips with the back of his hand.

‘Neutralized or semi-neutralized?’ Tyrone asked.

‘As cold as two hooked fish on a marble slab,’ Mad Dan replied.

‘Gone to meet their maker.’

‘Ackaye,’ Mad Dan said.

Tyrone put down his glass, licked his thin lips, then leant over the table to stare very directly at Mad Dan with his cold eyes. ‘Sure, I want you to meet someone,’ he said.

‘Who?’ Mad Dan asked.

‘A kid called Sean Savage.’

3

Sean Savage loved his country. At twenty-three he was an incurable romantic who read voraciously about the history of Northern Ireland and travelled frequently across the Province by bicycle, his rucksack weighed down with books, as well as food and drink. He had done this so often that he was now considered an expert on Irish history.

With his vivid imagination Sean could almost see the island coming into existence at the end of the Ice Age, some 20,000 years ago, when the ice melted and the land rose up to fight the stormy sea. Cycling along the spectacular crags of the North Antrim coast, he would imagine it being shaped gradually over the years as the sea eroded the land on either side of the rocks, before human habitation was known. Northern Ireland’s first inhabitants, he knew, were nomadic boatmen who had crossed from south-west Scotland in 7000 BC and left the debris of their passing, mostly pieces of flint axes, in the soil along the rugged coastline.

Sean was particularly intrigued by those early explorers, often wishing he had been born in that distant time, sometimes even imagining that he had been one of them in a former life. One of his favourite spots was the crag surmounted by the remains of Dunlace Castle, where, sitting as near the edge of the cliff as possible, gazing down at the sea far below, he would imagine himself one of those early explorers, venturing in a flimsy coracle into the enormous cave that ran through the rock to the land.

He was a solitary person, enjoying his own company. Shy with girls and still living with his parents in a terraced house in Republican West Belfast, he filled his spare time with evening classes on the Irish language, cycling all over Northern Ireland, and exploring and reading about the formation of the land and how those early explorers from Scotland were followed by various invaders, including the Christians, the Vikings and, finally, the Normans, who had marked their victories by building castles along the coastline. The remains of those castles still covered the land, reminding Sean that Northern Ireland had often been invaded and was still a country ruled by hated foreigners – namely, the British.

Sean wanted to free his country. As he cycled to and fro across this land steeped in myth and legend – with ‘giants, ghosts and banshees wailing through the sea mist’, as one of the guidebooks had it – as he read his books and explored the ancient ruins or drank in the beauty of the Mountains of Mourne, the lunar landscape of the Giant’s Causeway, or the soothing green glens of Antrim, he wanted desperately to return to the past when Ireland belonged to the Irish. Like his early hero, Sorley Boy MacDonnell, who had boldly captured Dunlace Castle from the English in 1584, Sean wanted to break out of his anonymity and achieve heroic victories.

‘Sure, you’re just a wee dreamer,’ his friend Father Donal Murphy told him, ‘wantin’ what can’t be had. You can’t get the past back, boyo, and you’d better accept that fact.’

But Sean couldn’t accept that fact. Like many of his friends, Father Murphy knew him as a reflective Irish-language enthusiast, rambler, cyclist, Gaelic footballer and cook. Still single, he neither smoked nor drank alcohol, rarely expressed political views, and was never seen at Republican functions. Not for one second, then, did the priest suspect that Sean was a highly active, dangerous member of the IRA.

The nearest Sean had come to recorded involvement in the ‘Troubles’ was when, in 1982, he had been arrested on the word of an unknown ‘supergrass’ who had denounced him as an IRA hit man. Resolute in protesting his innocence, Sean was strongly defended by many friends, including Father Murphy, who all viewed the arrest as yet another example of the British tendency to imprison innocent people on flimsy evidence. Released a month later, Sean returned to his peaceful activities and, in so doing, reinforced the conviction of most of his friends that he had been wrongfully accused.

‘They’re so keen to find themselves some terrorists,’ Father Murphy told him, ‘they don’t bother with facts. Sure, they only had to run a proper check and they’d have found you were innocent.’

‘Ackaye,’ Sean replied. ‘Sure, that’s the truth, Father. They probably didn’t care who they arrested – they just needed some fish to fry. We’re all at risk that way.’

In fact, as only a few, highly placed members of the IRA knew, Sean was a dedicated freedom fighter who would go to any lengths to get the Brits out of the Province. To this end he had joined the IRA while still at school and soon became an expert ‘engineer’, or bomb maker, responsible for the destruction of RUC stations, British Army checkpoints, and, on more than one occasion, lorries filled with soldiers. Thus, though he seemed innocent enough, he had blood on his hands.

But he was not a ‘mad dog’ like Daniel McCann and took no great pleasure in killing people. Rather, he viewed his IRA bombings and, on the odd occasion, shootings, as the necessary evils of a just war and despised the more enthusiastic or brutal elements in the organization – those who did it for pleasure.

As Mad Dan McCann was one of those whom he most despised, even if only from what he had heard about him, never having met the man, he wasn’t thrilled when, in early November 1987, after receiving a handwritten message from his Provisional IRA leader, Pat Tyrone, inviting him to a meeting in Tyrone’s house, he turned up to find McCann there as well.

Sean had long since accepted that once in the IRA it was difficult to get beyond its reach. Like the killing of Prods and Brits, he viewed this iron embrace as another necessary evil and was therefore not surprised that the message from Tyrone was delivered to him by another Provisional IRA member, nineteen-year-old Dan Hennessy, who drove up on a Honda motor-bike to where Sean was sitting on the lower slopes of Slieve Donard, gazing down on the tranquil waters of Strangford Lough. Braking on the slope just below Sean, Hennessy propped the bike up on its stand, then swung his right leg over the saddle and walked up to Sean with a sealed envelope.

‘From Pat Tyrone,’ Hennessy said, not even bothering to look around him at the magnificent view. Hennessy was as thick as two planks and only in the IRA because he thought it would give him certain privileges in Belfast’s underprivileged society. In fact, he would be used as cannon-fodder. As such, he would almost certainly end up either in a British prison or in a ditch with a bullet in his thick skull. It was an unfortunate truth that such scum were necessary to get the dirty work done and that most came to a bad end.

‘How did you know I was here?’ Sean asked as he opened the envelope.

‘Tyrone sent me to your house and your mum said you’d come up here for the day. Sure, what the fuck do you do up here?’

‘I read,’ Sean informed him.

‘You mean you beat off to porn.’

‘I read books on history,’ Sean said calmly, unfolding the note. ‘This is a good place to read.’

‘You’re a bloody queer one, that’s for sure.’

Sean read the note. It was short and to the point: ‘Sean: Something has come up. We need to talk. I’ll be home at four this afternoon. Meet me there. Yours, Pat Tyrone.’ Sean folded the note, replaced it neatly in the envelope, then put the envelope in his pocket and nodded at Hennessy.

‘Tell Pat I received the message,’ he said.

‘Ackaye,’ Hennessy replied, then sped off down the slope, still oblivious to the magnificent scenery all about him.

To Sean it was clear that Hennessy loved only himself – not Ireland. He was a teenage hoodlum. Vermin. A former dicker elevated to the Provisional IRA ranks and dreaming of better things. An early grave is all he’ll get, he thought as he packed up his things and prepared to cycle back down the lower slopes of the mountain. And it’s all he’ll deserve.

Disgusted by Hennessy, Sean was reminded of him as he cycled back through the grim streets of West Belfast, where he saw the usual depressing spectacle of armed RUC constables, British Army checkpoints, Saracens patrolling the streets and, of course, the dickers, keeping their eye on the every movement of potentially traitorous Catholics, as well as the Brits and Prods. Like Hennessy, most of those ill-educated, unemployed teenagers were hoping to eventually break free from the tedium of being mere lookouts to become active IRA members and kill some Prods and Brits. As their dreams had little to do with a love of Ireland, Sean despised them as much as he did Hennessy and others like him, including Mad Dan McCann.

He was reminded of his contempt for Mad Dan when, entering Tyrone’s two-up, two-down terraced house in one of the depressing little streets off the Falls Road – a strongly Republican street barricaded at both ends by the British Army – he found McCann sitting at the table with Tyrone in the cramped, gloomy living-room, both of them drinking from bottles of stout and wreathed in cigarette smoke.

‘Have you come?’ Tyrone asked, using that odd form of greeting peculiar to the Ulster Irish.

‘Aye, sure I have,’ Sean replied.

‘You look fit. Been out ridin’ on that bike of yours again?’

‘Aye. Out Armagh way.’

‘Sean rides his bicycle all over the place,’ Tyrone explained to Mad Dan, who was studying the younger man with his dark, stormy eyes. ‘He sits up there on the hills, all wind-blown, and reads history and studies the Irish language. He’s our wee intellectual.’

‘Aye, sure I’ve heard that right enough,’ Mad Dan said. ‘He’s got a right brain on his head, so I’ve been told.’

‘You’ve met Dan?’ Tyrone asked Sean.

‘No,’ Sean replied. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you,’ he added, turning to McCann, but finding it difficult to meet his wild gaze.

‘All good, was it?’ Mad Dan asked with a leer.

‘All right, like,’ Sean replied carefully.

Mad Dan burst out into cackling laughter. ‘Aye, I’ll bet,’ he said, then stopped laughing abruptly as Sean pulled up a chair at the table in the tiny living-room. The walls of the house, which belonged to Tyrone’s mother, were covered with framed paintings of Jesus, the Virgin Mary and numerous saints.

A real little chapel, Sean thought, for Tyrone’s ageing mother. Certainly not for Tyrone. Indeed, when he looked at Tyrone, he knew he was looking at a hard man who had little time for religion, let alone sentiment. Like Sean, Tyrone lived for the cause, but his motives were purely political, not religious. For this reason, Sean respected him. He did not respect McCann the same way, though he certainly feared him. He thought he was an animal.

When Sean had settled in his hard-backed chair. Tyrone waved his hand at the bottles of stout on the table in front of him. ‘Sure, help yerself, Sean.’

Sean shook his head from side to side. ‘Naw,’ he said. ‘I’m all right for the moment.’

‘Oh, I forgot,’ Tyrone said with a grin. ‘You don’t drink at all.’

‘Nothin’ but mother’s milk,’ Mad Dan said. ‘Sure, wouldn’t that be right, boyo?’

‘I just don’t like drinkin’,’ Sean replied. ‘What’s the matter with that?’

‘Men who don’t drink can’t be trusted,’ Mad Dan informed him with a twisted, mocking grin. ‘Sure, isn’t that a fact now?’

‘It’s men who drink who can’t be trusted,’ Sean told him. ‘The drink loosens their tongues.’

‘And more,’ Tyrone said, wiping his wet lips with the palm of his hand. ‘It also makes ’em too cocky and careless – too inclined to make mistakes. You stay away from it, laddy.’

The remark offended Mad Dan, making him turn red. ‘Sure, you wouldn’t be accusin’ me of carelessness, would you, Tyrone?’

‘Not you, Dan,’ Tyrone said, though he had his doubts. ‘You can hold your own. I mean in general, that’s all.’

Sean coughed into his clenched fist.

‘He doesn’t smoke either,’ Tyrone explained.

‘Bejasus!’ Mad Dan said sarcastically. ‘Sure, isn’t he a right wee angel? Where’s your gilded wings, boyo?’

Sean didn’t bother replying; he just offered a tight smile. ‘So what’s up?’ he asked Tyrone.

‘Sure I know you like travellin’,’ Tyrone replied, ‘so I’d like to offer you the chance to travel a bit farther than the tourist sites of Northern Ireland.’

‘What’s that mean?’ Sean asked in his quiet, always deadly serious manner.

Tyrone drew on his cigarette, exhaled a cloud of smoke, then leant slightly across the table, closer to Sean.

‘It’s to do with the massacre of our eight comrades by those SAS bastards in Loughgall last May.’

Sean knew all about that massacre and felt rage just recalling it. This was a real war in the Province, with real death and destruction, so Sean normally tried to remain objective and not let hatred motivate him or, worse, distort his judgement. Nevertheless, the shooting of eight of his comrades by a large SAS ambush team placed inside and around the RUC station at Longhgall, with a civilian driver also killed and his brother badly wounded, had filled him with an anger that could not be contained. While Sean had not personally been informed of that particular IRA raid, it was as clear as the nose on his face that the Provisional IRA teams involved had timed it to take place after the police station was closed, which meant they had not intended bodily harm, but only to blow up the empty building. The response from the SAS had therefore been out of all proportion to the size of the event – a bloody overkill that had merely confirmed for Sean and other IRA members that the SAS was an officially sanctioned assassination squad acting on behalf of the British government.

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