Back at the operations room, Ed’s voice, the fear in it evident, boomed over the speaker. ‘One three kilo, towards orange five.’
The ops room was now a flurry of activity. The intelligence officer, and his two people were busy in the int cell that adjoined the ops room.Two off-duty bleeps had arrived in case they were needed, although if truth be known they were really hanging about to witness this unique event.
‘Toward orange five, roger that,’ Mike replied into the handset as Graham walked back in.
‘Stratton’s on his way,’ Graham said.
Mike nodded as he pored over the map. The entire province was coded at the major junctions and landmarks, all committed to memory by the operatives even though they had secure communications, just in case that system ever went down and they had to revert back to open comms as in the old days. Graham grabbed a bar cloth off its hook, wiped away the previous chinagraph pencil marks and circled orange five.
‘They’re heading for Dungannon,’ Graham said.
‘Probably, but where will they cross the border?’
‘If they do.’
‘We must assume it for now,’ Mike said, scrutinising the thick yellow demarcation line that ran from the top left to the bottom right corner of the map.
‘Where’s Bill Lawton?’ Mike asked referring to the detachment’s liaison officer.
Graham snatched up a phone. ‘He’s at a special branch meeting in Belfast,’ he said as he punched in a number.
‘Get hold of him. We need at least a dozen checkpoints covered.Tell him to call the Garda before he talks to anyone else. He’s to tell them we’re concentrating on an area five miles either side of Aughnacloy.’
‘Bill Lawton?’ Graham asked into the phone.
‘He’s to call them before he talks to anyone in Whitehall. I don’t want to hear from London until this is over . . . How soon can Stratton be at the border?’ Mike asked, well aware Graham could handle half a dozen different tasks at once and give them equal attention.
‘Twenty, twenty-five minutes,’ then into the phone, ‘Tell him it’s urgent, life and death,’ then to Mike, ‘Bill’s gone tramp around in the building somewhere. Someone’s gone off to look for him.’
Mike looked worried, as if trying to see the actual ground on the map beyond the two-dimensional topographical information. ‘If he’s in a bloody pub I’ll have his arse in a sling. The checkpoints will never be set up in time. The army and RUC are too bloody slow.’
Everyone in the room was thinking the same thing.
The Irishman kneeled heavily on Spinks’s sternum, searching his jacket pockets as the car bumped along at speed. ‘You one of those who don’t carry one because you think it’s a waste of time? Eh?’ He checked the trouser pockets, front and rear. ‘Grubby little bastard, ain’t ya?’ he growled. The man gave up the search and sat back a moment to take a look at Spinks, who lay there like a frightened seal. ‘You stink, Pink, so you do,’ he said, wearing a look of disgust as he wiped his hands on his own jacket.
Brennan was his name. He was from Dundalk in County Louth. His primary livelihood was armed robbery, cash targets mostly, such as banks, post offices and building societies. He preferred to work during business hours for two reasons: he felt it was the safest time of the day to rob a high street business, and he enjoyed seeing the terrified faces of the people when he burst in wearing his balaclava and armed with a pump-action shotgun or sub-machine-gun. Working for the Real IRA was more of a sideline for Brennan, although he would never admit that to anyone. In fact he described his criminal activities as ‘fundraising’ to maintain his war effort. He was a Republican to be sure but ultimately he was a mercenary - unless there was glory to be had; enough glory might well tip the scales in favour of doing a job for very little money, although a freebie would have to be exceptionally glorious. Brennan had not done a job for free for the Republicans since his early sectarian executions where he gained the reputation that allowed him to start charging a nice fee. This kidnapping offered both cash and glory. Brennan had been provided with the weaponry and given three thousand pounds, which included expenses, to carry out the assignment. It was well below his normal rate, but the glory of getting a Brit spy more than made up the difference.
The War Council discouraged him from telling anyone about the money he received for his work. Most soldiers were volunteers and worked for a basic upkeep that usually had to be supplemented by a regular job or crime. Some, especially the new, younger members were not paid a penny. If a soldier was sent on a long-term operation, such as a member of a bomb team in England, then the pay was not too bad. But Brennan was given special pay because he was known to get the job done. It was not always pretty, and often a little too brutal for some tastes, but he had a knack for success.
Murder was Brennan’s main choice of work. He discovered his penchant for it after he started working for the Provos in his late teens. He liked to do it up close and personal, and the slower the better. If he had the time to get acquainted with his victim, even better. He had no idea if he was to eventually kill Spinks. If it looked like they weren’t going to get him across the border then his orders were to execute him. That was his call to make. Ultimately Spinks was to be interrogated. Brennan hoped he would be the one selected to finish him.
‘If all your mates smelled as bad as you we’d have no trouble finding them,’ Brennan said to Spinks. He reached over into the boot and pulled out the MPK5 and pistol and threw them into the passenger foot-well.As he leaned further in to check for anything else the car went over a bump and he bashed the back of his head hard on the lid. He steamed a look at his young driver Sean as he rubbed the bump, snarled and finished his search. He found nothing else but the empty water bottle. The car then took a corner hard, sending Brennan crashing into the side window.
‘You roll this focken car and I’ll focken shoot you!’ Brennan shouted.
Sean was a cool character and didn’t flinch, but he had been warned not to fuck with Brennan. They had never met before the previous evening, when the team was called in for orders and, for security reasons, they had remained in the same house for the rest of the night. All Sean knew about Brennan was what the others had told him before Brennan arrived. One rumour had it that he had once killed one of his own people on a job for incompetence. Sean had long since decided that if they did crash, and if he was able to, he would keep running until he was all the way to America, which was about the only place he could think of where Brennan would not find him.
Whatever the truth about Brennan Sean couldn’t give a shite. He had his own job to do and he’d do it how he saw fit. He checked his rear-view mirror. No worries about the car behind; whoever was at the wheel was never going to catch him. Sean slipped down a gear as they approached another tight corner. He decided to be a bit flash and take the tight inside line rather than simply cut the corner. He hooked his front nearside tyre into the small ditch on the inside bend to hold the car tight in the turn and let the back end slip out a little, allowing a faster entry and exit. The trick was to jerk the steering wheel and flick the tyre out of the ditch after the apex. If the tyre didn’t eject the car would spin out of the turn and then Brennan would likely shoot him if they crashed.
Sean went through the turn easily and bombed on down the road. He had been selected for this task because he had a reputation for out-driving police cars. In fact his record was one hundred per cent. He often did it just for fun, bombing past a stationary police car in a small town or village and then leading a chase through the countryside until he lost it.
The road straightened out like a rail for at least a mile, with a small humped bridge halfway along it. Sean smiled to himself as he red lined it. His plan this time was to go airborne.
Paul Healy sat with a pair of headphones around his neck in the back of an old Ford Transit van opposite an array of jerry-rigged electronics equipment bolted into a basic framework.The gobbledygook sound of the secure communications emitted from a pair of small speakers. Healy was in his early fifties, balding and looked old and tired, like someone who was nearing the end of a long, exhausting journey having discovered halfway through how pointless it all was. Tommy sat watching him from the driver’s seat, smoking a cigarette, dog-ends all around his feet. Tommy had been given two specific responsibilities: drive the van, and protect Healy, with his own life if need
