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Finally, they left him, letting him sleep on the floor, joking that they were turning out the light, since he couldn’t see that anyway. He lay there for an eternity – but perhaps only minutes – now yearning just to sleep, too tired to sleep, and whispering his name, rank, serial number and date of birth over and over, determined not to make a mistake when repeating it or, worse, say more than that. The only words he kept in mind other than those were: ‘I cannot answer that question.’ He had dreams – they may have been hallucinations – and had no idea of how long he had been lying there where they returned to torment him.
They asked Martin if he smoked and, when he said no, blew a cloud of smoke in his face. While he was coughing, they asked him more questions. When he managed, even through his delirium, to stick to his routine answers, one of them threw him back on the freezing floor and said: ‘Let’s feed the bastard to the dogs.’
They stripped off his clothing, being none too gentle, then left him to lie there, shivering with cold, almost sobbing, but controlling himself by endlessly repeating his name, rank, serial number and date of birth.
He almost lost control again when he heard dogs barking, snarling viciously, and hammering their paws relentlessly on the closed door.
Was it real dogs or a recording? Surely, they wouldn’t…Who? By now he was too tired to think straight, forgetting why he was there, rapidly losing touch with reality, his mind expanding and contracting, his thoughts swirling in a pool of light and darkness in the hood’s stifling heat.
A recording, was the thought he clung to. Must not panic or break.
The door opened and snarling dogs rushed in, accompanied by the shouting of men.
The men appeared to be ordering the dogs back out. When the dogs were gone, the door closed again.
Silence.
Then somebody screamed: ‘Where are you based?’
It was like an electric bolt shooting through Martin’s body, making him twitch and groan. He started to tell them, wanted to tell them, and instead said: ‘I cannot answer that question.’
‘You’re a good boy,’ the civilized English voice said. ‘Too stubborn for your own good.’
This time, when they hoisted him back on to the chair, he was filled with a dread that made him forget everything except the need to keep his mouth shut and make no mistakes. No matter what they said, no matter what they did, he would not say a word.
‘What’s the name of your squadron commander?’ the bully bawled.
‘I cannot answer that question,’ Martin said, then methodically gave his name, rank, serial number and date of birth.
The silence that followed seemed to stretch out for ever, filling Martin with a dread that blotted out most of his past. Eventually the English-sounding voice said: ‘This is your last chance. Will you tell us more or not?’
Martin was halfway through reciting his routine when they whipped off the hood.
Light blinded him.
1 (#uf9f34f0b-ac0e-5cb8-96eb-379da35b3242)
‘I still don’t think we should do it,’ Captain Dubois said, even as he hung his neatly folded OGs in his steel locker and started putting on civilian clothing. ‘It could land us in water so hot we’d come out like broiled chicken.’
‘We’re doing it,’ Lieutenant Cranfield replied, tightening the laces on his scuffed, black-leather shoes and oblivious to the fact that Captain Dubois was his superior officer, ‘I’m fed up being torn between Army Intelligence, MI6, the RUC and even the “green slime”,’ he said, this last being the Intelligence Corps. ‘If we come up with anything, as sure as hell one lot will approve, the other will disapprove, they’ll argue for months, and in the end not a damned thing will be done. Well, not this time. I’m going to take that bastard out by myself. As for MI5…’
Cranfield trailed off, too angry for words. After an uneasy silence, Captain Dubois said tentatively, ‘Just because Corporal Phillips committed suicide…’
‘Exactly. So to hell with MI5.’
Corporal Phillips had been one of the best of 14 Intelligence Company’s undercover agents, infiltrating the most dangerous republican ghettos of Belfast and collecting invaluable intelligence. A few weeks earlier he had handed over ten first-class sources of information to MI5 and within a week they had all been assassinated, one after the other, by the IRA.
Apart from the shocking loss of so many watchers, including Phillips, the assassinations had shown that MI5 had a leak in its system. That leak, as Cranfield easily discovered, was their own source, Shaun O’Halloran, who had always been viewed by 14 Intelligence Company as a hardline republican, therefore unreliable. Having ignored the advice of 14 Intelligence Company and used O’Halloran without its knowledge, MI5, instead of punishing him, had tried to save embarrassment by simply dropping him and trying to cover his tracks.
Cranfield, still shocked and outraged by the death of ten men, as well as the subsequent suicide of the conscience-stricken Phillips, was determined that their betrayer, O’Halloran, would not walk away scot-free.
‘A mistake is one thing,’ he said, placing his foot back on the floor and grabbing a grey civilian’s jacket from his locker, ‘but to believe that you can trust someone with O’Halloran’s track record is pure bloody stupidity.’
‘They weren’t to know that he was an active IRA member,’ Dubois said, studying himself in the mirror and seeing a drab civilian rather than the SAS officer he actually was. ‘They thought he was just another tout out to make a few bob.’
‘Right,’ Cranfield said contemptuously. ‘They thought. They should have bloody well checked.’
Though nervous about his famously short-fused SAS officer, Captain Dubois understood his frustration.
For the past year sharp divisions had been appearing between the two main non-military Intelligence agencies: MI6 (the secret intelligence service run by the Commonwealth and Foreign Office, never publicly acknowledged) and MI5, the Security Service openly charged with counter-espionage. The close-knit, almost tribal nature of the RUC, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, meant that its Special Branch was also running its own agents with little regard for Army needs or requirements. RUC Special Branch, meanwhile, was running its own, secret cross-border contacts with the Irish Republic’s Gardai Special Branch. Because of this complex web of mutually suspicious and secretive organizations, the few SAS men in the province, occupying key intelligence positions at the military HQ in Lisburn and elsewhere, were often exposed to internecine rivalries when trying to co-ordinate operations against the terrorists.
Even more frustrating was the pecking order. While SAS officers attempted to be the cement between mutually mistrustful allies, soldiers from other areas acted as Military Intelligence Officers (MIOs) or Field Intelligence NCOs (Fincos) in liaison with the RUC. Such men and women came from the Intelligence Corps, Royal Military Police, and many other sources. The link with each RUC police division was a Special Military Intelligence Unit containing MIOs, Fincos and Milos (Military Intelligence Liaison Officers). An MIO working as part of such a unit could find himself torn by conflicting responsibilities to the RUC, Army Intelligence and MI6.
That is what had happened to Phillips. Though formally a British Army ‘Finco’ answerable to Military Intelligence, he had been intimidated by members of the Security Service into routeing his information to his own superiors via MI5. In doing so he had innocently sealed his own fate, as well as the fate of his ten unfortunate informants.
No wonder Cranfield was livid.
Still, Dubois felt a little foolish. As an officer of the British Army serving with 14 Intelligence Company, he was Cranfield’s superior by both rank and position, yet Lieutenant Cranfield, one of a small number of SAS officers attached to the unit, ignored these fine distinctions and more or less did what he wanted. A flamboyant character, even by SAS standards, he had been in Northern Ireland only two months, yet already had garnered himself a reputation as a ‘big timer’, someone working out on the edge and possessed of extreme braggadocio, albeit with brilliant flair and matchless courage. While admiring him, for the latter qualities, Dubois was nervous about Cranfield’s cocksure attitude, which he felt would land him in trouble sooner or later.
‘We’ll be in and out in no time,’ Cranfield told him, clipping a holstered 9mm Browning High Power handgun to his belt, positioned halfway around his waist, well hidden by the jacket. ‘So stop worrying about it. Are you ready?’
‘Yes,’ Dubois said, checking that his own High Power was in the cross-draw position.
‘Right,’ Cranfield said, ‘let’s go.’
As they left the barracks, Dubois again felt a faint flush of humiliation, realizing just how much he liked and admired Cranfield and had let himself be won over by his flamboyance. Though a former Oxford boxing blue and Catholic Guards officer, Dubois was helplessly awed by the fact that his second-in-command, Lieutenant Randolph ‘Randy’ Cranfield, formerly of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers and the Parachute Regiment, had gone to Ampleforth where the founder of the SAS, David Stirling, had also been educated, and was widely admired for his daring – some would say reckless – exploits.
Dubois had his own brand of courage, which he had often displayed in the mean streets of Belfast or the ‘bandit country’ of Armagh, but he was basically conservative in outlook and helplessly admiring of those less inhibited. He had therefore gradually become Cranfield’s shadow, rather than his leader, and recognition of this fact made him uncomfortable.
They entered what looked like a normal army compound, surrounded by high walls of corrugated iron, with watch-towers and electronically controlled gates guarded on both sides with reinforced sangars. These stone walls were high because the IRA’s flavour of the month was the Russian-made RPG 7 short-range anti-tank weapon, which could hurl a rocket-propelled grenade in an arc with an effective range of 500 metres. With walls so high, however, the IRA would have to come dangerously close to the base before they could gain the required elevation for such an attack. The walls kept them at bay.
‘Another bleak day in Armagh,’ Cranfield said. ‘God, what I’d give for some sunshine and the taste of sangria!’
‘In January in Northern Ireland,’ Dubois replied, ‘I can’t even imagine that. But I know that I’d prefer the heat of Oman to this bloody place.’
‘Some of the others arriving next week have just come from there,’ Cranfield said, ‘which means they’ll be well blooded, experienced in desert survival, filled with the humane values of the hearts-and-minds campaign…’ – he paused for dramatic effect – ‘and completely out of sorts here.’
‘Yes,’ Dubois agreed glumly. ‘We’ll have to firm them up quickly. And being attached to us won’t make them too happy either. They’ll think they’ve been RTU’d back to the regular Army.’
‘They should be so lucky!’ Cranfield exclaimed, shaking his head and chuckling ruefully. ‘We should all be so lucky! Instead, we’re with 14 Intelligence Company, in the quicksand of too many conflicting groups. We’re neither here nor there, Jeremy.’
‘No, I suppose not.’
Though 14 Intelligence Company was a reconnaissance unit, it had been given the cover title, 4 Field Survey Troop, Royal Engineers, but was also known as the Northern Ireland Training and Tactics team. Located in the army compound Dubois and Cranfield were visiting, it was equipped with unmarked, civilian ‘Q’ cars and various non-standard weapons, including the Ingram silenced sub-machine-gun. The camp was shared with a British Army Sapper unit.
‘Look,’ Cranfield said impatiently as they crossed the parade ground, from the barracks to the motor pool, in the pearly-grey light of morning, ‘what we’re doing isn’t that unusual. I mean, six months ago we crossed the border to pick up an IRA commander and deposit him back in Northern Ireland, to be arrested by the RUC and brought to trial. Though a lot of people cried out in protest, that murderous bastard eventually got thirty years. Was it worth it or not?’
‘It was worth it,’ Dubois admitted, studying the low grey sky over the green fields of Armagh and longing for a holiday in the sun, as Cranfield had suggested.
‘Right,’ Cranfield said as they entered the busy motor pool, which reeked of petrol and was, as usual, filled with the roaring of engines being tested. ‘Since that damned power struggle between Five and Six, Major Fred has repeatedly crossed the border wearing dirty jeans, bearded, and carrying a false driving licence issued in Dublin. We’re not alone in this, Jeremy.’
‘Major Fred’ was an MI0 attached to Portadown Police HQ. Almost as disdainful of MI5 and MI6 as was Cranfield, he was also as daring in defying both of those organizations and going his own way. As the value of what he was doing had yet to be ascertained, Cranfield’s citing of him as an example of what was admirable in the muddy, dangerous waters of intelligence gathering in bandit country was in no way encouraging to Dubois.
‘I’m not interested in Major Fred,’ he said. ‘Let him worry the Portadown lot. I’m only interested in 14 Intelligence Company and how it might be adversely affected by what you’re planning to do.’
‘There won’t be any adverse effects. We’ve had those already. We can’t do any worse than ten murdered and one suicide. At the very least we’ll deny the IRA what they think is a propaganda victory. It’s not purely personal.’
I’ll bet, Dubois thought. ‘I just wish the ceasefire hadn’t ended,’ he said, not wanting his silence to reveal that he was actually nervous.
‘Why?’ Cranfield replied. ‘It was all nonsense anyway, inspired by the usual, idiotic rivalry between MI5 and MI6. I mean, what did it all amount to? During a raid on an IRA headquarters in Belfast, security forces discover a “doomsday” contingency plan for counter-attack on Protestant areas should there be a repetition of August ’69. Dismayed, the Foreign Office, including MI6, seeks a political solution that involves secret contacts with the IRA. The IRA plays along. As they do so, MI5 insist that the terrorists are merely seeking a breathing space. Knowledge of the doomsday plan then gives MI5 a perfect chance to discredit political contacts. Bingo! The ceasefire collapses and we’re back in business. Pull the plug on MI5 and we’d all live in a better world.’
They stopped by a red Morris Marina, one of the Q cars, equipped with a covert radio and modified to hide a wide variety of non-standard weapons and Japanese photographic equipment. Two British Army sergeants known to Dubois – both in civilian clothes – were leaning against the side of the car, smoking cigarettes. They straightened up when Dubois and Cranfield approached, though neither man saluted.
‘Sergeant Blake,’ Dubois said, nodding by way of welcome. ‘Sergeant Harris,’ He nodded in the direction of Cranfield. ‘This is Lieutenant Cranfield of the SAS, in charge of this mission.’
Both men nodded at Cranfield, neither saying a word.
‘You’ve been briefed?’ Cranfield asked.
‘Yes, sir,’ Sergeant Harris said. ‘We’re not bringing him back. It’s terminal. He stays where he lies.’
‘Correct,’ Cranfield said. ‘So let’s get going.’
Sergeant Harris was the driver, with Cranfield sitting in the front beside him. As Dubois took his seat in the back, beside Sergeant Blake, he thought of just how confused were the issues of this conflict and how easily men like Cranfield, even himself, could be driven to taking matters into their own hands, as they were doing right now.
Still, it had been a rather bad year: the humiliating fall of the Tory government; the creation of a non-elected, supposedly neutral power-sharing executive to replace direct rule of Ulster from London; the collapse of that executive under the intimidation of the Ulster Workers’ strike and IRA violence, including the horrendous Birmingham pub massacre; the Dublin bombing; an IRA truce through Christmas and New Year of 1974-5, and finally the collapse of that truce. Now the SAS was being officially brought in, hopefully to succeed where the regular Army had failed. Dubois was mildly offended.
Sergeant Harris started the car and headed away from the motor pool, driving past rows of Saracen armoured cars, troop trucks, tanks, as well as other Q cars, most of which were visibly well used. The road led around to where the Lynx, Wessex and Army Westland Scout helicopters were taking off and landing, carrying men to and from the many OPs, observation posts, scattered on the high, green hills of the province and manned night and day by rotating, regular army surveillance teams. It was a reminder to Dubois of just how much this little war in Northern Ireland was costing the British public in manpower and money.
‘I still don’t see why they had to bring in the SAS,’ he said distractedly as the Q car approached the heavily guarded main gate. ‘I mean, every Army unit in the province has Close Observation Platoons specially trained for undercover operations – so why an official, full complement of SAS?’
‘The main problem with your COPS,’ Cranfield replied, meaning the Close Observation Platoons, ‘is that the men simply can’t pass themselves off as Irishmen, and have, in fact, often got into trouble when trying to. Since our men are specially trained for covert operations, they can act as watchers without coming on with the blarney and buying themselves an early grave.’
There was more to it than that, as Dubois knew from his Whitehall contacts. The decision to send the SAS contingent had been taken by Edward Heath’s government as long ago as January 1974. The minority Labour government elected six weeks later – Harold Wilson’s second administration – was not informed when elements of B Squadron 22 SAS were first deployed to Northern Ireland at that time.
Unfortunately, on 26 January 1974, a former UDR soldier named William Black was shot and seriously wounded by security forces using a silenced sub-machine-gun. When Black was awarded damages, the SAS came under suspicion. The soldiers, not trained for an urban anti-terrorist role and fresh from the Omani desert, had not been made aware of the legal hazards of their new environment.
Worse was to come. B Squadron’s contingent was withdrawn abruptly from Ireland after two of its members attempted to rob a bank in Londonderry. Both men were later sentenced to six years’ imprisonment, though their just punishment hardly helped the image of the SAS, which was being viewed by many as a secret army of assassins, not much better than the notorious Black and Tans of old. Perhaps for this reason, the presence of the SAS in Ireland during that period was always officially denied.
Nevertheless, when Dubois had first arrived in the province to serve with 4 Field Survey Troop, he found himself inheriting SAS Lieutenant Randolph ‘Randy’ Cranfield as his deputy, or second-in-command. At first, Dubois and Cranfield had merely visited Intelligence officers in the Armagh area, including ‘Major Fred’ in Portadown, lying that they were under the direct orders of SIS (MI6) and Army HQ Intelligence staff. When believed by the naive, they asked for suggestions of worthwhile intelligence targets. This led them to make illicit expeditions across the border, initially just for surveillance, then to ‘snatch’ IRA members and return them at gunpoint to Northern Ireland to be ‘captured’ by the RUC and handed over for trial in the north. Now they were going far beyond that – and it had Dubois worried.
‘At least your lot have finally been committed publicly to Northern Ireland,’ he said to Cranfield as the car passed between the heavily fortified sangars on both sides of the electronically controlled gates. ‘That might be a help.’
‘It’s no more than a public relations campaign by the Prime Minister,’ Cranfield said with his customary cynicism as the car passed through the gates, which then closed automatically.
‘Paddy Devlin’s already described it as a cosmetic exercise, pointing out, accurately, that the SAS have always been here.’
That was true enough, Dubois acknowledged to himself. Right or wrong, the recent decision to publicly commit the SAS to Northern Ireland had been imposed by the Prime Minister without warning, even bypassing the Ministry of Defence. Indeed, as Dubois had learnt from friends, Home Secretary Merlyn Rees had already secretly confessed that it was a ‘presentational thing’, a melodramatic way of letting the public know that the most legendary group of soldiers in the history of British warfare were about to descend on Northern Ireland and put paid to the IRA.
‘What the Downing Street announcement really signalled,’ Dubois said, still trying to forget his nervousness, ‘was a change in the SAS role from intelligence gathering to combat.’
‘Right,’ Cranfield replied. ‘So don’t feel too bad about what we’re doing. Just think of it as legitimate combat. You’ll sleep easier that way.’
‘I hope so,’ Dubois said.
As the gates clanged shut behind the Q car, Sergeant Harris turned onto the road leading to the border, which was only a few miles from the camp. Once the grim, high walls of corrugated iron were out of sight, the rolling green hills came into view, reminding Dubois of how beautiful Northern Ireland was, how peaceful it always looked, away from the trouble spots.
This illusion of peace was rudely broken when his observant eye picked out the many overt OPs scattered about the hills, with high-powered binoculars and telescopes glinting under makeshift roofs of camouflaged netting and turf, constantly surveying the roads and fields. It was also broken when armoured trucks and tanks, bristling with weapons, trundled along the road, travelling between the border and the army camp.
After driving for about ten minutes they came to the British Army roadblock located two miles before the border. Sergeant Harris stopped to allow the soldiers, all wearing full OGs, with helmets and chin straps, and armed with SA-80 assanlt rifles, to show their papers. Presenting their real papers, as distinct from the false documents they were also carrying for use inside the Republic, they were waved on and soon reached the border. To avoid the Gardai – the police force of the Republic of Ireland – they took an unmarked side road just before the next village and kept going until they were safely over the border. Ten minutes later they came to a halt in the shady lane that led up to O’Halloran’s conveniently isolated farmhouse.
‘He can’t see us or hear from here,’ Cranfield said, ‘and we’re going the rest of the way by foot. You wait here in the car, Sergeant Harris. No one’s likely to come along here, except, perhaps, for some innocent local like the postman or milkman.’
‘And if he does?’
‘We can’t afford to have witnesses.’
‘Right, sir. Terminate.’
Cranfield glanced back over his shoulder at Captain Dubois, still in the rear seat. ‘Are you ready?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good, let’s go. You too, Sergeant Blake.’
Cranfield and Dubois unholstered their 9mm Browning High Power handguns as they got out of the car. Sergeant Blake withdrew a silenced L34A1 Sterling sub-machine-gun from a hidden panel beneath his feet and unfolded the stock as he climbed out of the car to stand beside the other two men. After releasing their safety-catches, the men walked up the lane, away from the Q car, until they arrived at the wooden gate that led into the fields surrounding the farmhouse.
It was not yet 8.30 a.m. and the sun was still trying to break through a thick layer of cloud, casting shadows over the misty green hills on all sides of the house. Birds were singing. The wind was moaning slightly. Smoke was rising from the chimney in the thatched roof, indicating that O’Halloran, known to live alone, was up and about.
His two Alsatians, tethered to a post in the front yard, hadn’t noticed the arrival of the men and were sleeping contentedly. The slightest sound, however, would awaken them.
Cranfield nodded at Sergeant Blake. The latter set his L34A1 to semi-automatic fire, leaned slightly forward with his right leg taking his weight and the left giving him balance, then pressed the extended stock of the weapon into his shoulder with his body leaning into the gun. He released the cocking handle, raised the rear assembly sight, then took careful aim. He fired two short bursts, moving the barrel right for the second burst, his body shaking slightly from the backblast. Loose soil spat up violently, silently, around the sleeping dogs, making them shudder, obscuring the flying bone and geyzering blood from their exploding heads. When the spiralling dust had settled down, the heads of the dogs resembled pomegranates. Blake’s silenced L34A1 had made practically no sound and the dogs had died too quickly even to yelp.
Using a hand signal, Cranfield indicated that the men should slip around the gate posts rather than open the chained gate, then cross the ground in front of the farmhouse. This they did, moving as quietly as possible, spreading out as they advanced with their handguns at the ready, merely glancing in a cursory manner at the Alsatians now lying in pools of blood.
When they reached the farmhouse, Cranfield nodded at Sergeant Blake, who returned the nod, then slipped quietly around the side of the house to cover the back door. When he had disappeared around the back, Cranfield and Dubois took up positions on either side of the door, holding their pistols firmly, applying equal pressure between the thumb and fingers of the firing hand.
Cranfield was standing upright, his back pressed to the wall. Dubois was on one knee, already aiming his pistol at the door. When the latter nodded, Cranfield spun around, kicked the door open and rushed in, covered by Dubois.
O’Halloran was sitting in his pyjamas at the kitchen table, about ten feet away, as the door was torn from its hinges and crashed to the floor. Shocked, he looked up from his plate, the fork still to his mouth, as Cranfield rushed in, stopped, spread his legs wide, and prepared to fire the gun two-handed.
‘This is for Phillips,’ Cranfield said, then fired the first shot.
O’Halloran jerked convulsively and slapped his free hand on the table, his blood already spurting over the bacon and eggs as his fork fell, clattering noisily on the tiles. He jerked again with the second bullet. Trying to stand, he twisted backwards, his chair buckling and breaking beneath him as he crashed to the floor.
Dubois came in after Cranfield, crouched low, aiming left and right, covering the room as Cranfield emptied his magazine, one shot after another in the classic ‘double tap’, though using all thirteen bullets instead of two.
O’Halloran, already dead, was jerking spasmodically from each bullet as Sergeant Blake, hearing the shots, kicked the back door in and rushed through the house, checking each room as he went, prepared to cut down anything that moved, but finding nothing at all. By the time he reached the kitchen at the front, the double tap was completed.
