A buzzer suddenly went off by the door to the ops room and then sounded continuously as whoever it was kept their finger jammed against it. Graham hit a button on the desk that electrically unbolted the door. Mike the boss hurried in chewing a mouthful of food, having covered the distance from the cookhouse on the other side of the compound in record time.
‘Talk to me,’ he barked as he went to the large map that covered a sloping desk beneath the operations wall. Under its glass skin, the map contained all data pertinent to operatives, vehicles and locations the det had anything to do with in the Province. He studied the movable markers and wax notations on the glass that gave details of the only operatives on the ground at that time. He was young, fresh-faced and his nickname when he was not in the room was ‘the head boy’, because physically he could probably still pass for a sixth former. However, the similarities stopped there and anyone not recognising that could find themselves in deep water.
‘Spinks’s car’s been lifted with him still in the boot. One three kilo is in pursuit. They think it’s two up. I’ve had no comms with Spinks for three minutes,’ Graham informed Mike, as he handed him the phone and headed for the door, adding, ‘The standby chopper chief’ll be on the end of that phone any second. Keep calling Spinks - four two Charlie.’
‘Where’s Stratton?’ Mike shouted as Graham left the room, apparently without hearing him. Mike hit an intercom button. ‘Steve?’
A few seconds later came an answer, ‘Boss?’
‘I need you in here right away.’
‘On my way,’ Steve replied.
‘You’ll need the rest of your cell.’
‘Roger,’ Steve said.
Mike hit another intercom button. ‘Jack?’
‘Yo.’ Jack’s voice sounded like he was at the far end of a room.
‘Get every available bod on the ground towards black seven. We’ve got a Kuttuc.’
‘Right away,’ replied Jack immediately and much closer to his intercom.
Mike released the button and paused to think of anything else he could do of greater priority before the dreaded call he had to make. There was nothing else. Then he realised a tiny voice was trying to break through his concentration. It was coming from the phone in his hand. He quickly put it to his ear.
‘Yes, this is Camelot. I need the standby chopper now, as in five minutes ago. We have an op Kuttuc . . . That’s right. One of our guys has been lifted.’
He pushed down the cradle, released it to get the dial tone, took a deep breath, and keyed a number he was hoping would not be answered. Mike was a captain in the Hussars, his parent unit, and had had to put up with comments about his baby-face his entire career. His looks may not have changed much since he left university but he had matured a great deal during the last three years in this job. When nothing exceptional was taking place he appeared introvert and retiring. None of those characteristics were remotely evident when work got suddenly serious. He had the arrogance one might expect to find in a captain of the Hussars and would go toe to toe with anyone, even superiors, when his blood was up. Two things were guaranteed to bring out the demon in him: incompetence, and anyone trying to screw with his detachment, enemy or otherwise. He had never had an op Kuttuc before. In fact there had only been one Special Forces kidnapping since Nairac, an SAS liaison officer who was lifted, beaten and killed in the mid-seventies. The only det operative ever kidnapped, a couple of years before Mike joined the unit, was from the North Province undercover detachment. He was rescued in the nick of time by sheer luck not long after he had been snatched by the Provos. The main lesson learned from both kidnappings was that every passing second increased the odds against Spinks being rescued.
‘Lisburn ops here,’ the upper-class voice on the other end of the phone muttered.
‘This is Mike at south det, sir. I need to speak to the chief right away.’
‘Sounds urgent, old boy,’ said the officer.
‘It’s
‘One second,’ said the officer, reading the urgency.
Mike kept the phone to his ear while his eyes moved to the map and looked at the international border, specifically where it turned closest to the marker that indicated the point where Spinks was kidnapped. The distance was not very great at all.
Graham jogged along the corridor. ‘Of course I’m going to get Stratton. Who else?’ he muttered to himself in answer to Mike’s question as he left the ops room.
Bleeps like Graham ruled the operations room. Naturally, all major decisions had to be made by the boss, but in reality, Graham could handle just about any emergency situation that might arise, and in most cases quicker and more efficiently. Not only was he very proficient, he was aided by a phenomenal memory.Apart from knowing practically every call-sign and frequency the British army used in Northern Ireland, he could remember details of players, their vehicles and number plates, addresses, names, associates . . . the kind of questions operatives asked the intelligence cell over the air all the time and needed quick answers to. It was usually faster to track Graham down and ask him the question first before wading through the database or calling the intelligence cell.
Graham’s footsteps echoed on the old tiled floor in the narrow, flaking plastered corridor of the former Second World War Royal Air Force administration building that would have been condemned had the secret unit not taken it over. He turned a corner, arrived at a door, and pushed it open. The room was just large enough to cram in twenty assorted grubby old armchairs all facing a television set on a table at one end, a sagging bookshelf stacked with well-thumbed paperbacks, and at the opposite end to the television, a table covered in a selection of current newspapers. Hunched over a broadsheet on strong, lean arms was a man with long, mousy, unwashed hair wearing an old rugby shirt, his neck sunk between sturdy shoulders.
‘Stratton?’ Graham said. There was no trace of the familiarity he used when talking to anyone else in the detachment, even Mike the boss, and some of the urgency had gone out of his voice despite the gravity of the situation. He could not help himself. Stratton had that effect on him.
Stratton looked around. He hadn’t shaved in several days, which softened his angular features, and his nose looked as if it had once been broken. His face was expressionless in the way a predatory animal watches humans from within its cage. It was the eyes that fascinated Graham and, for him at least, embodied the character of the man. They weren’t manic, nor even piercing. Uninviting, hollow but also penetrating was how Graham described them to his brother, his only confidant on the subject of this extraordinary job. Stratton was like no other man he had ever met. Unlike the rest of the undercover operators, Stratton’s parent unit was Special Forces. He knew nothing for certain about Stratton’s past, only the countless rumours: veteran of the Gulf War, the Balkans, the drug wars in Columbia, and then there were the rumours about Afghanistan. And that was all before his kills since he arrived at the detachment: four in a year and a half. That was high considering the majority of the operatives had none and only two other men currently serving in another detachment had one each. But Stratton always seemed to be in the right place at the right time, or so it seemed. His success was no doubt helped by the fact that he was always looking for a kill when most operatives were content to merely survive a day’s work.
The first kills, only a month after Stratton had joined the detachment, were two unfortunate robbers armed with pistols and threatening to use them on anyone who tried to stop them. Stratton happened to be getting out of his car as the bandits came running out of the betting shop they had just held up and were climbing on to their getaway motorbike. It was all over in a couple of seconds - the time it took Stratton to draw his pistol from his shoulder holster and put two rounds through each of their crash helmets from twenty-five feet away. The robbers were Protestants, not that that was an issue for Stratton. They were bad guys who played with guns and unfortunately for them they ran into someone who didn’t.
The other two official kills were the result of an attempted car jacking. Stratton was stuck in a traffic jam in a busy street when a young, inexperienced Provo tapped on his window with the tip of his gun and demanded Stratton get out. Stratton remained cool and noticed the gunman had a partner covering him with a rifle from across the street. As he took a moment to stare into the narrow eyes of his would-be assailant, he saw something else that gave him every confidence he could deal with the situation swiftly and surely.
Stratton climbed out with his arms by his sides and faced the young man, who kept just beyond arm’s reach, his pistol held much too tightly in his left hand and levelled at Stratton. The man asked Stratton to hold open both sides of his jacket. If the nervous young Republican soldier caught sight of the pistol in its holster under Stratton’s
