Authors: Andy McNab
Remote Control (46 page)
‘The following week she was there again, only this time she tagged along behind the bandsmen as they marched to the square. Even one of the Rock apes could have worked out that she was recceing for the arrival of an active service unit.’
There was loud laughter. He’d done it again! I wasn’t too sure if we were all laughing at his jokes or just at the fact that he kept on telling them. Who the fuck was this man? This should have been one of the most serious briefings ever. Either he just didn’t give a fuck or he was so powerful no-one was going to say a word against him. Whatever, I could already tell his presence in Gibraltar would be a real bonus.
Simmonds stopped smiling. ‘Our intelligence tells us that the bombing is to take place some time this week. However, there is no sign that either McCann or Savage is getting ready to leave Belfast.’
He wasn’t wrong. I had seen both of them, pissed as farts, outside a bar in the Falls Road just the night before. They didn’t look that ready to me. It should take them quite a while to prepare for this one – or maybe this was part of the preparation, having their last night out before work started.
‘This is where we have a few problems,’ he went on. He was working now without his notes. Did that mean no more one-liners? Certainly there was more of an edge to his voice.
‘What are we to do with these people? If we try to move in on them too early that would only leave other PIRA teams free to go ahead with the bombing. In any case, if the ASU travel through Malaga airport and remain on Spanish territory until the last minute, there is no guarantee that the Spanish will hand them over, not only because of the dispute with the UK on the question of Gibraltar, but also because the case against them could only be based on conspiracy, which is pretty flimsy.
‘So, gentlemen, we must arrest them in Gibraltar.’ The screen went blank and there was only the light from the lectern shining up on his face. ‘And this throws up three options. The first is to arrest them as they cross the border from Spain. Easier said than done; there’s no guarantee we’ll know what kind of vehicle they’re in. There would be only about ten to fifteen seconds in which to make a positive identification and effect an arrest – not an easy thing to do, especially if they’re sitting in a car and probably armed.
‘The second option is to arrest the team once they’re in the area of the square, but again this depends on advance warning and positive identification, and their all being together with the device. At the present time, therefore, we are going for the third option, and that’s why we are all here.’
He took a sip of his tea and asked for the lights to come on.
‘The Security Service will place surveillance teams to trigger the PIRA team into Gibraltar.’ He looked around for each group as he talked. ‘The two soldiers who have just arrived from the province must give positive IDs before the civil authorities will hand over the operation to the military. The four men from your counter-terrorist team will go for an arrest, but only after they have planted the device.’
The two soldiers who have just arrived from the province
. Now I understood. That was Euan and me.
. Now I understood. That was Euan and me.
‘Once arrested,’ Simmonds went on, ‘they are to be handed over to the civil authorities. Of course the normal protection will be given to the team from any court appearance. The two operators from the province will not, repeat not, conduct any arrest or contact action. You understand the reasons why?’
He managed a smile. ‘I think that’s enough, gentlemen.’ He looked at Frank, the CO. ‘Francis, I understand we fly to RAF Lyneham in ten minutes to link up with the Hercules?’
Just over three hours later I was sitting in a C130 with Euan, who was busy worrying about a black mark on his new trainers. Kev was checking the weapon bundles and ammunition and, more importantly as far as I was concerned, the medical packs. If I got dropped I wanted fluid put into me as soon as possible.
We landed at about eleven thirty p.m. on Thursday, 3 March. The whole Rock was still awake; lights were on everywhere. We moved off to the military area, where trucks were waiting with our advance party to get us away quickly and without fuss.
Our FOB was in HMS
Rooke
, the Royal Navy shore base. We had requisitioned half a dozen rooms in the accommodation block and turned them into living space, with our own cooking area and ops room. Wires trailed everywhere, telephones were ringing, scaleys ran around in tracksuits or jeans, testing radios and sat comm links.
Rooke
, the Royal Navy shore base. We had requisitioned half a dozen rooms in the accommodation block and turned them into living space, with our own cooking area and ops room. Wires trailed everywhere, telephones were ringing, scaleys ran around in tracksuits or jeans, testing radios and sat comm links.
Over the din Simmonds said, ‘Int suggests there could be a third member of the team, and probably its commander. Her name is Mairead Farrell. Pictures will be here within the hour, but here’s some background for you. She’s a particularly nasty piece of work’ – he paused to time his delivery to perfection – ‘middle class, thirty-one, ex-convent schoolgirl.’
When the laughter died down he told us more about her. She’d served ten years in prison for planting a bomb in the Conway Hotel, Belfast, in 1976, but as soon as she was released she reported straight back to PIRA for duty. There was a slight smile on his face as he explained that her lover, unbelievably named Brendan Burns, had blown himself up recently.
The meeting broke and we mooched around looking for a brew. A scaley came over and handed out street maps. ‘They’ve already been spotted up by the Firm,’ he said.
As we started to look at their handiwork, he carried on. ‘The main routes from the border to the square are marked in detail, the rest of the town fairly well, and, of the outlying areas, just major points.’
I looked at it. Fucking hell! There were about one hundred co-ordinates to learn before the ASU came over the border. I didn’t know which was tougher, the PIRA team or the homework.
‘Any questions, lads?’
Kev said, ‘Yeah, three. Where do we sleep, where’s the bog and is there a brew on?’
In the morning, we picked up our weapons and ammunition and went onto the range. The four on the CT team had their own pistols. The ones we had were borrowed – our own were still in Derry. Not that it mattered that much; people think that blokes in the Regiment are very particular about their weapons, but they aren’t. So long as you know that, when you pull the trigger, it fires first time and the rounds will hit the target you’re aiming at, you’re happy.
Once at the range, people did their own thing. The other four just wanted to know that their mags were working OK and that the pistols had no defects after being bundled up. Euan and I wanted to do the same, but also to find out the behaviour of our new weapons at different ranges. After firing off all the mags in quick succession to make sure everything worked, we then fired at 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 metres. Good, slow, aimed shots, always aiming at the same point and checking where the rounds fell at each range. That way we found out where to aim at 15 metres, for example, and that was at the top of the target’s torso. Because of the distance, quite a lot for a pistol, the rounds would fall lower into the bottom of his chest and take him down. Every weapon is different, so it took an hour to be confident.
Once finished we didn’t strip the weapons to clean them. Why do that when we knew they worked perfectly? We just got a brush into the area that feeds the round into the barrel and got the carbon off.
Next job was getting on the ground to learn the spots system, at the same time checking our radios and finding out if there were any dead areas. We were still running around doing that when, at 2 p.m., Alpha came up on the net. ‘Hello, all stations, return to this location immediately.’
Simmonds was already in the briefing area, looking like a man under pressure. Like the rest of us he’d probably had very little sleep. There was two days’ growth on his chin and he was having a bad hair day. Something was definitely on; there was a lot more noise and bustle from the machines and men in the background. He had about twenty bits of paper in his hands. The slime were giving him more as he talked, as well as distributing copies of the rules of engagement to us. The operation, I saw, was now called Flavius.
‘Just about an hour and a half ago,’ he said, ‘Savage and McCann passed through Immigration at Malaga airport. They were on a flight from Paris. Farrell met them. We have no idea how she got there. The team is complete. There is just one little problem – the Spaniards lost them as they got into a taxi. Triggers are now being placed on the border crossing as a precaution. I have no reason to believe that the attack will not take place as planned.’
He paused and looked at each of us in turn. ‘I’ve just become aware of two very critical pieces of information. First, the players will not be using a blocking car to reserve a parking space in the target area. A blocking car would mean making two trips across the border, and the int is that they’re not prepared to take the risk. The PIRA vehicle, when it arrives, should therefore be perceived as the real thing.
‘Second, the detonation of the bomb will be by a hand-held, remote-control initiation device: they want to be sure that the bomb goes off at exactly the right moment. Remember, gentlemen, any one of the team, or all of them, could be in possession of that device. That bomb must not detonate. There could be hundreds of lives at risk.’
I was woken by the noise of engines in reverse and wheels on tarmac. It was just after six a.m. I had been asleep for three hours. It was still dark and the rain had eased quite a bit. I leaned over to the back. ‘Kelly, Kelly, time to wake up.’ As I shook her there was a gentle moan. ‘Oh, OK. I’m coming.’ She sat up, rubbing her eyes.
With the cuff of my coat I started to tidy her up. I didn’t want her walking into the airport looking wrecked. I wanted us looking as spruce and happy as Marie and Donny Osmond on Prozac.
We got out of the car with the bag, and I locked up, after checking inside to make sure there wasn’t anything attractive on view. The last thing I needed now was a car park attendant taking an interest in my lock-picking kit. We walked over to the stop and didn’t have long to wait before the bus arrived to take us to Departures.
The terminal looked just like any airport at that time of the morning. The check-in desks were already quite busy with business fliers. Some people, mostly student types, looked as though they were waiting for flights that they’d got there much too early for, and had got their heads down in sleeping bags spread across three or four seats, with a massive backpack alongside. Cleaners with polishing machines trudged across the tiled floors like zombies.
I picked up a free airport magazine from the rack at the top of the escalator. Looking at the flight guide at the back I saw that the first possible departure to the UK was at just after five p.m. that evening. It was going to be a long wait.
I looked at Kelly; we both could do with a decent wash. We went down the escalator to the International Arrivals area on the lower level. I put some money in a machine and bought a couple of travel kits to supplement our washing gear, and went into one of the disabled toilets.
I shaved as Kelly washed her face. I scraped the dirt off her boots with toilet paper and generally cleaned her up, combed her hair and put it in an elastic band at the back so it didn’t look so greasy. By the end of half an hour we were looking fairly respectable. The scabs on my face were healing. I tried to grin, but they hurt too much. No Prozac, but we’d pass muster.
I picked up the bag. ‘You ready?’
‘We’re going to England now?’
‘Just one thing left to do. Follow me.’ I pulled at her stubby ponytail that made her look like a 4-foot-tall cheerleader. She pretended to be annoyed but I could tell she liked the attention.
We went back up the escalator and walked around the edge of the terminal, seemingly looking at the aircraft out on the tarmac. In fact, there were two quite different things I was looking for. ‘I need to post something,’ I said, spotting the FedEx box.
I used the credit card details on the hire car agreement to fill in the dispatch form. Fuck it, Big Al could pay for a few things now he was rich.
Kelly was watching my every movement. ‘Who are you writing to?’
‘I’m sending something to England in case we are stopped.’ I showed her the floppy disk and back-up disk.
‘Who are you sending it to?’ She got more like her dad every day.
‘Don’t be so nosy.’
I put them in the envelope, sealed it and entered the delivery details. In the past we’d used the FedEx system to send the Firm photos that we’d taken of a target and developed in a hotel room, or other highly sensitive material. It saved getting caught in possession. Nowadays, however, the system was obsolete; with digital cameras you can take pictures, plug in your GSM mobile, dial up the UK and transmit.
We continued walking around the edge of the terminal. I found the power point I was looking for at the end of a row of black plastic seats, where two students were snoring. I pointed to the last two spaces. ‘Let’s sit down here. I want to look at the laptop.’
I got it plugged in and Kelly decided she wanted something to eat. ‘Give me five minutes,’ I said.
From what I’d seen already, I understood Gibraltar was a set-up, but it still didn’t explain what Kev had to do with it. As I read on it became clear.
It seemed that in the late 1980s the Bush administration had been under pressure from Thatcher to do something about Noraid’s fund-raising for PIRA. With so many millions of American-Irish votes on the line, however, it was a tricky call. A deal was struck: if the Brits could expose the fact that Noraid money was being used to buy drugs, it would help discredit PIRA in the USA and Bush could then take action. After all, who would complain about a US administration fighting the spread of dangerous narcotics?
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