Bandit Country – sample chapters - Andrew Turpin Thriller Author

Prologue

Wednesday, December 19, 1984

Crossmaglen, Northern Ireland

Dessie Duggan felt his heart rate slacken as he exhaled slowly yet again. Time seemed to stand still as he squinted into the high-powered telescopic sight and squeezed his finger, light as a lover’s caress, on the trigger of the forty-three-inch sniper rifle.

Even through the scope, the target he was aiming at looked tiny. There was no margin for error here. The physical effort required to pull the trigger was minimal, but every time he took a shot, his head seemed to burst outward under the mental pressure, the concentration.

The explosive sound of the weapon firing carried unimpeded across the flat, rain-swept fields. A quartet of crows that had only just settled at the top of a leafless oak tree to Dessie’s left took off again, squawking in alarm, and headed south toward the border with the Irish Republic.

Dessie, who lay prone on a short length of tarpaulin, remained still and glanced up and down the smooth matte-black metal casing of the FN FAL semiautomatic rifle, its twenty-one-inch barrel pointing toward a small copse almost five hundred yards away at the top of a slight incline.

He removed his earplugs, turned his head, and looked at his father, Alfie, who stood behind him, peering through a powerful spotting scope mounted on a monopod, toward a sheet of white printer paper pinned to one of the distant trees. After a few seconds, Alfie nodded. “Hit.”

“About bloody time,” Dessie said, his voice low and soft. He ran his hand through his cropped black hair.

“You control that breathing, son, you control your gun. Simple as that,” the older man said. “Otherwise it controls you. And then you’re finished.” He scratched at the gray and black stubble that sprouted under his chin and began to remove the scope from the monopod.

“Are we done? No time for another?” Dessie asked.

Alfie looked at his watch. “No. Been here twenty minutes already. It’s way too long. I need to disappear, and anyway, Patrick’s car will be here in a minute. We don’t want to make him late for the airport. Then my car won’t be far behind.”

He inclined his head toward the very tall, angular figure of Dessie’s oldest friend, Patrick McKinney, who stood behind him, arms folded. His hair had grown long and he’d recently dyed it black. He had a new beard and was wearing a pair of black-framed glasses. They’d been in the same junior school class and had grown up with a republican fire inside them that wouldn’t go out.

It was just past three o’clock in the afternoon, and the dregs of the pale winter sun, now down near the horizon, were casting long shadows.

Dessie stood, pushed the FN’s safety up, and removed the empty magazine. He slid the rifle into a long black case, together with the remaining cartridges, and zipped it up. Then he picked up the spent cartridge cases and quickly folded the tarp. “Okay, let’s go.”

The three men walked around the clump of rhododendron bushes that had hidden them from view and went back along the rough farm track toward Coolderry Road, the single-lane road four hundred yards away.

By the time they reached the road, a blue Ford Cortina that had pulled onto the shoulder next to Alfie’s Land Rover stood waiting, its engine running.

Dessie paused for a moment. The hour just spent with his father had been their longest time together in the previous thirteen months. It had been the same ever since the old man and Patrick had gone on the run, ducking and diving, following their escape from Long Kesh, the Maze prison southeast of Belfast, along with thirty-six others. Most of the escapees had long since been recaptured.

Alfie and Patrick stood on the wet grass and faced each other in silence. Alfie held out a hand and Patrick shook it slowly, then scratched the scar that ran down the right side of his face, below his cheekbone.

“Go well, Patrick,” Dessie’s father said. “I hope Boston is kinder to you than Belfast. A new life. We’ll all three work together again soon, I know it. Don’t let the bastards get to you.”

Patrick turned to Dessie and briefly embraced him, then stood back and nodded before climbing into the Cortina. “Tell the council I’ll still be looking to help. Funds, weapons, whatever.” He looked at Dessie. “And you,” he said. “Keep practicing. I’ll miss you, big man.”

With that he pulled the door shut and was gone.

Dessie and Alfie watched the Cortina head east toward Larkins Road and the back route past Thomas “Slab” Murphy’s farm over the border into the Republic. No sooner had it disappeared around the bend than another car, a green Rover 3500, came toward them from the same direction.

“Okay, time to go again,” Alfie said. “I’ll see you next month then, son, all being well.” He pointed toward the small copse of trees. “I want you getting four out of five by then. And you’d best go get that target.”

The Rover drew level with them and stopped.

“Try and enjoy your Christmas. Tell your mother I love her.” Alfie hugged his son before reiterating his usual parting refrain. “And if I don’t see you again, keep up the struggle. No surrender. Okay?”

Alfie eyed his son steadily. Dessie hesitated, looked down, and finally nodded. Only then did his father climb into the front passenger seat and close the door.

It was pointless asking his father where he would be for Christmas. He wouldn’t have been told yet. Shuttled from one safe house to another, usually by night, he slept on mattresses in back bedrooms, attics, and basements. Probably no more than a couple of days in each place, at most. It was no life for a fifty-two-year-old. Dessie’s mother, Megan, was on Valium to cope with the stress of it.

The driver slotted the Rover into gear and accelerated quickly westward along Coolderry Road.

Dessie stood next to the long wheelbase Land Rover, which belonged to the family farm, and watched the car until it was around the corner behind the woods and out of sight.

He looked at his watch and eyed the rough track that headed north off the lane through the fields toward the copse. He’d better do the sensible thing, as his father suggested, and take down the piece of paper he’d been aiming at.

That was when it happened.

From behind the woods, where the Rover had disappeared, came the insistent clatter of semiautomatic gunfire. Not just from one weapon but several.

Then a pause. Followed by more gunfire.

Then silence.

A cloud of dark smoke climbed from behind the trees into the winter air and drifted slowly in the breeze as Dessie sank to his knees.

Chapter 1

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Belfast International Airport

“We’re going on a detour first, before I take you to the apartment,” Michael Donovan said. He wedged himself into the driver’s seat, started the engine, and rapidly accelerated out of Belfast International Airport’s pickup zone.

“Where?” Joe Johnson said. He yawned. It had been a tedious twenty-hour journey from his home in Portland, Maine, via Boston and Amsterdam, and he’d only managed a fitful sleep on the plane.

“South Armagh,” Donovan said in his lilting Ulster brogue. He glanced from beneath a set of spiky black eyebrows across to Johnson in the passenger seat.

“South Armagh?”

“Yes, I want to show you Crossmaglen and Drumintee. Just a quick visit.”

Johnson raised an eyebrow. “That was a trouble spot, years ago, wasn’t it?”

“Yep. It’s still not exactly a safe haven.”

Johnson looked at his host. “So why are we going there?”

“You need to get a feel for this place. It’ll help explain why I’ve brought you over here,” Donovan said. He swung right at the traffic circle and headed south down the A26 toward Craigavon and Armagh County, instead of east toward Belfast as Johnson had expected.

“I thought you’d done that. You’ve said what you want me to do, roughly.”

“Yes, but some more background would be useful.”

Johnson had been getting emails from Donovan for several months urging him to head to Northern Ireland. Donovan ran his own business, matching foreign investors with companies in Northern Ireland that needed funds to grow.

Several of Donovan’s emails had mentioned continuing attacks by dissident Republicans on police stations, homes, vehicles, and individuals and especially the economic damage they were doing.

Donovan’s focus had been on how money was being driven elsewhere, which was hurting his business, and the police were not doing anywhere near enough to deal with it.

Johnson’s interest had been partly piqued by Donovan’s background as a former senior intelligence operator with the British army in Northern Ireland. He’d been a handler for informers within the Irish Republican Army, he’d said. For Johnson, an ex-CIA officer who’d played a similar role in Pakistan and Afghanistan, it had struck a chord.

The other attraction was that Donovan was offering 20 percent more than Johnson’s normal fees. And he’d paid for Johnson’s airfare.

Donovan’s large, fleshy left hand grasped the gear stick as he pushed his Audi 4×4 up into fifth.

“I thought the peace process had sorted out most of the problems, Michael,” Johnson said. “Isn’t it just a small group of nutters now, with no future?”

After decades of war between nationalist republican forces—who wanted Northern Ireland to be part of a united Ireland—and British security forces, the 1998 Good Friday Agreement had led to the apparent decommissioning of weapons. As part of the agreement, the British government consented to a new arrangement in Northern Ireland that allowed the Irish Republic a say in what happened there.

Donovan laughed, causing the jowls of his double chin to wobble. “You can call me the Don, like most people. No need for Michael. And you’re joking. It’s smoke and mirrors, mate. The old IRA leaders, like Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, might be wearing suits and ties these days, sitting in these fancy new Northern Ireland Assembly seats, but down at grassroots level, people still feel the same. The Catholics, the Republicans still want the British out of Ulster. These dissidents have still got guns, rocket launchers, and grenades stashed away in huge quantities. What they decommissioned in ’98 was the tip of the iceberg, a PR stunt. Forget it.”

He drove down the long, straight road past Maghaberry and onto the M1 divided highway, where he headed west toward Craigavon.

“Not far from here,” Donovan said, “down near Craigavon, a prison officer from Maghaberry jail was shot dead as he got out of his car at his golf course a few weeks back. Long-distance job by a sniper from high up on a hilltop. They think from around three-quarters of a mile away. Back in September, a guy who runs his own security company was also shot. That was another long-range job from a cliff top while he was walking his dog. A nasty business.”

Johnson frowned. “So the victims were Protestant, were they?”

Donovan nodded. “Yes, Protestant unionist guys but not particularly flag-waving types. Beyond that, there was no clear motive for either. We’ve had other killings, bombings of government offices, kneecappings. You name it. I mean, don’t get me wrong; it’s nothing like the dark days of the Troubles. We’re not going back to the ’70s, nothing like that, but it’s getting worse.”

Johnson glanced out the car window. “I’ve read about them forming a merged republican organization.” Prior to flying to Belfast, he’d gone through several high-level specialist reports on the Northern Ireland situation. All of them had mentioned a merger toward the end of the previous year between the Real IRA and other republican paramilitary groups, including Óglaigh na hÉireann, to form a larger entity, the New IRA.

“Yep,” Donovan said. “They were fragmented, but they’re becoming more organized. And it’s showing. Attacks are becoming more frequent and more aggressive. Make no mistake, there’s hundreds of them in the group now.”

“And who’s doing what about it?”

“That’s the issue,” Donovan said. “In some parts of Northern Ireland, like south Armagh, the police are still reluctant to police a lot of the time, though they’ll deny that. And of course, there’s been no army presence since mid-2007. As a result, it’s like the Wild West in some parts. That’s my problem. It’s shit for business. People don’t want to invest with all this crap still going on. I had an American guy over here in early November from California, looking at putting money—big money—into an aircraft components factory, a new venture to supply Airbus and Boeing. Would have created hundreds of jobs. Then the prison officer gets taken out. There’s a bomb attack on a police station. He gets the jitters and jumps on the next plane back to San Francisco. And you can’t blame him.”

“So it’s a money issue for you?” Johnson asked.

“Partly. I spent years as an intelligence guy in the army,” Donovan said. “It was interesting, but I got paid peanuts. I’m making up for it now, as a businessman. But I also don’t like people getting away with stuff they should have done time for, no matter who they are, which side of the fence they’re on. Guess I’ve changed my view on that over the years. When I was younger I looked the other way when it involved my own side. Anything went back then.”

Donovan glanced at Johnson. “That’s why I called you in. I’ve tried talking to the police, but they seem reluctant to act unless someone’s shooting at their officers. I’ve tried talking to journalists, but none of them have time to investigate stuff anymore. They’re all tied to their desks, under orders from their editors to write a couple of thousand words a day, and they’re scared of this republican lot, anyway. I’ve tried politicians, but they’re just bullshitters.” He shrugged.

“The journalists weren’t interested?” Johnson asked.

“A couple of them were actually very interested, in principle. They said that if I could bring them something concrete—names, evidence, and so on—they would have a look at it,” Donovan continued. “So again, that’s why I brought you in. I’d like to use the media to embarrass the authorities into action. But we need to make it easy for the journalists, so I want someone to do the spadework first.”

Now they were in County Armagh, and Donovan turned off the divided highway, heading south past Portadown and into the flat, rural countryside, punctuated with leafless winter trees, gray farm buildings, and isolated houses.

Donovan had interrogated Johnson thoroughly on his track record investigating historical war crimes, via email and during various phone calls, prior to flying him to Belfast. The Irishman had been particularly impressed with his work chasing down former Nazis and mass murderers from the Yugoslav civil war.

Johnson ran his hand through the short-cropped semicircle of graying hair that surrounded his bald patch.

“If you’ve got a passion for justice, then there’s a lot you can get stuck into here,” Donovan said, as he continued to drive south.

The Irishman continued driving along the A29 until they reached the Crossmaglen turnoff. Donovan pointed to a memorial on the other side of the crossroads. “That’s for the hunger strikers, the 1981 lot. Remember Bobby Sands?”

He swung the car right onto the B30: four miles to Crossmaglen, according to the road sign.

Johnson did remember the hunger strikes. He was only nineteen at the time but recalled the television pictures beamed from outside the Maze prison, southwest of Belfast, as Sands and several other IRA prisoners eventually died after weeks of refusing food and demanding special treatment, such as the right to wear their own clothes, arguing they were political prisoners, not criminals.

A few minutes later, they passed a petrol station and came to a dip in the road on a bend left, just before a dense clump of trees. Two cars were stopped in the middle of the road, one at a forty-five-degree angle, which meant there was no way to get around them.

Donovan braked and came to a halt behind the nearest of the two cars. “Looks like somebody’s broken down here. Or has there been an accident?”

As he spoke, a blur of movement in the trees at the side of the road ahead of them caught Johnson’s eye.

Suddenly, three men ran out from the shadows into the road about a hundred yards in front of Donovan and Johnson. The men were dressed all in black, each wearing a balaclava, two of them carrying handguns.

One of them held out his palm in front of Donovan’s car in a clear signal to remain still.

Donovan grasped the top of his steering wheel and jerked his bulky body forward. “What the hell’s going on here?”

Into their hearing came the distinctive high-speed clattering and thumping of a helicopter, drawing rapidly nearer.

One of the men in balaclavas crouched behind the farthest car, his gun pointed straight at Donovan’s Audi, another likewise from behind the nearest one. The third man strutted in a no-nonsense fashion right up to Donovan’s driver’s side window, carrying a sheaf of papers in one hand.

He jerked his thumb forcefully back, signaling Donovan and Johnson that they should get out of the car.

***

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Crossmaglen

The Police Service of Northern Ireland helicopter cruised in at a brisk 120 miles per hour over the random collection of green fields that spread across the County Armagh landscape like the shapes of a patchwork quilt.

The man sitting on the left side of the cabin, Eric Simonson, the chief constable of Northern Ireland, fingered his silver hair and looked out the window.

Clearly visible in the distance was the immense mass of Slieve Gullion, the ancient volcanic mountain that dominates south Armagh like a medieval fortress. The aerial view of sunshine splashed on the purple and gray rock and the green countryside reminded Simonson of an oil painting and always lifted his spirits.

Up front, the pilot, Steve Richardson, was focused on his instruments as he navigated the Eurocopter EC145 toward the village of Crossmaglen. To his left sat the copilot, Ben Trench.

Richardson turned his head toward Simonson and his four co-passengers who sat in the rear seats, including the assistant chief constable, Norman Arnside.

“Five minutes to landing,” Richardson said into his microphone.

Simonson heard the words clearly over the intercom connecting the passenger and crew headsets, despite the din generated by the aircraft’s twin engines. He caught Richardson’s eye and nodded.

Simonson was responsible for policing the six counties that make up Northern Ireland, and this was a big day. He had mulled long and hard over the decision to bring the man now sitting on his right, the British government’s secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Bryan Long, on a walkabout in Crossmaglen village center.

Decades ago, such a visit would not have been possible. During the dark days of the Troubles, south Armagh was a no-go zone for outsiders, an isolated place where well-organized, well-equipped IRA republican operators slugged it out on an almost daily basis with the British army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary, rebadged in 2001 as the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

Simonson, now fifty-nine, had seen soldiers and police killed on a regular basis by sniper bullets, car bombs, booby traps, and other devices. A considerable number of IRA fighters also had died in the fighting. It had been an exhausting, intensely brutal conflict: a nimble, surprisingly well-equipped guerrilla force on one side had often caused havoc among the well-trained but more regimented British security forces.

Now, almost fifteen years after the Good Friday peace agreement, Simonson had agreed with Long that he should see at ground level how his force was trying to change the face of community policing to engage with local people rather than push against them.

Nevertheless, Simonson still had concerns, deeper ones than he was prepared to share publicly. Chief among these was rising activity among the so-called dissident Republicans, the ones who refused to accept the political, peaceful solution to Northern Ireland’s future backed by former proponents of violence such as Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Féin, the republican political party.

The helicopter descended gradually and slowed sharply as it continued in a southeasterly direction toward Cross, as the locals called it, where it was scheduled to land at the police barracks, a base protected by high corrugated steel walls and electric fencing that stood next to Crossmaglen Rangers Gaelic football club’s ground.

Long looked at Simonson through heavy black-rimmed spectacles, then gave him a thumbs-up sign and smiled.

As he did so, a series of thuds came from underneath the helicopter, which lurched sharply to the right and dropped a little.

Richardson swore loudly over the intercom. “Bollocks. Think we’ve got some sort of mechanical problem.”

Simonson instinctively grabbed the side of his seat. He could see both Richardson and Trench leaning forward and staring frantically at their instruments, trying to work out what was wrong.

Seconds later, a series of thuds and bangs emanated from the rear of the helicopter.

The chopper then lurched sharply to the right again.

“I’m losing one of the bloody rotors, the rear one. We’re losing RPMs, the power’s down,” Richardson yelled.

There was another bang, this time at the front of the aircraft.

Simonson looked forward past Richardson at the left-hand side of the large curved glass windshield at the front of the helicopter.

Right at the edge of the laminated glass was a hole with a spiderweb of cracks spreading outward.

“It’s not a mechanical failure, there’s a bloody bullet hole. We’re being fired on,” Simonson yelled.

Another series of bangs came, and more holes appeared in the windshield.

The helicopter went into a slow spin that sped up as it passed 360 degrees.

“Can you control it?” Simonson shouted into his microphone.

“Yes, I can control it,” Richardson responded. “It’s the bullets. They’ve hit the back. The bastards. I’m going into autorotation, else we’ll spin like a top. I’m lowering the collective pitch control on the rotor blades. It’ll keep the revs up. Stop the spin.”

Ten seconds later, Richardson came over the intercom again. “I’ll have to put her down in a field.”

“In a fecking field?” Simonson asked, his body now rigid with anxiety.

“Yep. There’s no way we’ll get over the houses to the barracks like this.”

There were three more bangs as bullets slammed into the fuselage.

“Dammit, they’re maniacs,” Arnside said over the intercom.

“That’s a bloody machine gun they’re using,” Simonson said. “The gunman’s over to the right somewhere.”

Another ten seconds passed, which seemed to Simonson like an eternity, but there were no more bullets.

They passed over Newry Road, the B30, which ran into Crossmaglen. Simonson briefly noticed a couple of cars stopped in the middle of the road next to some trees, with men standing nearby, but had no time to consider the implications.

Now the spinning had stopped. The chopper seemed stable once again and was facing back toward Crossmaglen. Richardson appeared to have got the Eurocopter into a controlled slow glide.

“I’m going to put her down in that field over there,” Richardson yelled and pointed over to his left. “Get yourselves in brace position. We’ll be down with a bump. We’ll get out as quickly as we can. Remember to duck down; the blades will be spinning. Wish me luck.”

Simonson and the other four passengers leaned slightly forward, hands over their faces, elbows wedged into their hips, as they had been instructed in the routine safety briefing carried out by Richardson and Trench before they left Belfast.

Simonson had seen the field Richardson was aiming for. The stretch of grass, just a few yards from the road leading into Crossmaglen, wasn’t flat but was just about level enough, he thought. In any case, it was the only obvious option.

He felt the aircraft’s nose rise a little, flatten out, and then there was an almighty bump and a thud as the skids made contact with the turf.

Simonson bounced hard in his seat, forcing his shoulders painfully upward against his seatbelt.

They were down.

“Thank God,” Simonson said out loud over the intercom.

But already his mind was racing ahead. “We’ll need to head straight for cover. Once we’re out, run for that stone wall over to the right, next to the road.”

Chapter 2

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Crossmaglen

As machine-gun fire echoed distantly across the south Armagh countryside, the stricken helicopter dipping and spinning slowly, Dessie Duggan thought the job was done.

As he peered through his scope, Duggan could see the chopper rock and pitch as the bullets hit home.

But after a few minutes, it became obvious that the pilot had regained some control and was going to get it down.

Duggan swore softly. His boys sitting on the other side of Newry Road with their DShK heavy machine gun had been detailed to bring the chopper down. They’d started the job but hadn’t finished it. Maybe their gun had jammed again.

“He’s doing an emergency landing,” Duggan said. “Looks like Plan B, then.”

His spotter, Martin Dennehy, crouched to his right, peered through a powerful spotting scope on a small tripod. “Yeah, you should be able to reach him from here, depending on where the chopper comes down. Maybe you’ll have a chance when they get out,” Dennehy said.

“Slim chance.”

It was Duggan’s way of taking the pressure off. He let his torso sink onto the small tarp spread over the damp ground between two bushes and tucked the recoil butt pad of his beloved Barrett M82A1 rifle—his Light Fifty—snugly into his shoulder. Then he went through his relaxation routine.

It was a mild day for January, thanks to warm air that was drifting in from the south, in contrast to the four previous days that had frozen the ground. Duggan was thankful for that.

The pair were on an area of farmland three-quarters of a mile south of the field where the helicopter was about to land. Behind them, out of sight behind some trees at the end of a track that led to Monog Road, east of Crossmaglen, was a dark green Honda Civic, stolen before dawn that morning from a driveway just outside Newry and now carrying false license plates.

Duggan exhaled slowly, breathed in, and then exhaled again. His rifle felt like an extension of his arm, balanced perfectly on its bifold support.

Through his Schmidt & Bender telescopic sight, set to a maximum twenty-seven times magnification, he saw the chopper touch down. “The bastard’s landed it,” Duggan said.

It was going to be a long shot.

After checking his weather meter, he had already amended his scope settings to allow for the slight north-to-south breeze.

“You’ll have to just confirm to me who’s who,” Duggan said. “I think I can pick ’em through this, but not 100 percent sure. It’s too far.” He reached into his pocket, removed two yellow earplugs, and inserted them into his ears.

“Okay,” murmured Dennehy. “Just wait.” He also inserted earplugs, pulled his scruffy blue anorak straight, and reapplied his right eye to the spotting scope.

Seconds later, Duggan saw five figures emerge from the helicopter, all bent double. They moved quickly across the field toward a stone wall that marked the entrance to a farmer’s field.

“The chief constable’s on the left, definitely him, and the secretary of state’s second left,” Dennehy said.

“Definitely?”

“Yeah. The cop’s the one with the white hair, on the left. The Brit’s got black-framed glasses.”

“Okay, got ’em.”

There were five large fields between Duggan and the helicopter. He had a narrow angle of vision past some bushes a couple of hundred yards in front of him. A rise in the ground at the same place, forming a slight ridge, also limited his field of vision in the vertical. But he could see just enough.

He tweaked the position of the reticle just fractionally, watching the crosshairs fall, then rise with his breathing, focusing on the small figure on the left of the group of five, who were now crouching behind the wall.

They probably thought that with the machine-gun fire having come from the other side of the road, they were safe, Duggan mused.

Despite the earplugs, Duggan could hear muffled sounds all around him: the hum of distant traffic, a mooing cow, birdsong. But now he blocked them out. He even blocked his thoughts, everything, apart from the target he was focused on.

His body was rock-solid but relaxed. He exhaled once again, lowered his chest, and then lay motionless; his index finger began almost imperceptibly to move backward.

The Light Fifty fired, with a bang that sent a pheasant over to their left squawking up into the sky. The half-inch diameter, .50-caliber BMG bullet left the barrel at about 3,000 feet per second. The rifle’s butt recoiled an inch or so into Duggan’s shoulder, the spent cartridge case was thrown out, and the semiautomatic mechanism fed a fresh round into the chamber.

A few seconds passed.

“Nope,” Dennehy said. “Try again.”

“Bollocks,” Duggan said.

“There’s seven of them there now. The pilot and copilot have joined the others,” Dennehy said. “Secretary of state’s still second left.”

“Okay. I can see the cop’s still on the left, Brit still second left.”

“Correct.”

Duggan went through his routine again, settled his breathing, settled his crosshairs on his target, and then settled his mind once more.

A couple of seconds later, another explosive bang sounded as Duggan’s index finger pulled the Light Fifty’s trigger.

Another few seconds passed. Duggan kept his right eye glued to the scope. He saw the white-haired man on the left suddenly keel over and fall to the ground. The man next to him looked around, then dived to the ground. A second later the others also flattened themselves to the ground.

“You got the cop, not the Brit,” Dennehy said in a low voice.

Duggan showed no visible reaction. He stood up quickly and flicked the rifle’s safety catch horizontal.

“Right, let’s get out of here,” Duggan said. “The shit’s gonna hit the fan.”

“What about the feckin’ Brit?” Dennehy asked.

Duggan paused. “I can’t. He’s hit the deck.” He calmly removed the magazine and the remaining cartridge from the rifle chamber, bent down, picked up the two used cartridges off the ground, and folded his tarp.

Then he started walking back toward the green Honda.

***

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Crossmaglen

The man in the balaclava ordered Johnson and Donovan around to the front of the Audi and told them to flatten themselves on the hood, facedown.

The raucous sound of an oncoming helicopter grew rapidly louder behind them.

Johnson felt his stomach turn over. With two men behind him, both pointing handguns, he had no choice but to comply. He leaned over the car, his hands out in front of him, spread wide.

Donovan did likewise but then asked, “What the hell’s this all about, guys? We’re having a quiet day out here.”

His words were interrupted by the staccato sound of automatic gunfire coming from somewhere farther along the road, through the woodland.

Johnson jumped and raised his head. Above them was a black-and-yellow-painted helicopter with the word Police emblazoned in yellow along the side.

The aircraft lurched to the left and dipped a little; and after a few seconds its tail began to spin slowly around.

“Shit,” Johnson muttered. “What’s going on?”

There came another burst of gunfire, after which the tone of the helicopter’s engines lowered, then rose again, but now sounded quite different.

“Bloody hell, it’s coming down, the chopper’s had it,” Donovan said, his voice rising rapidly in pitch.

“Shut it, both of you,” the man said. He quickly frisked first Johnson, then Donovan.

“Okay,” he said. “This is an informational roadblock organized by the IRA, the New IRA, fighting for a united Ireland. That’s us. Take this and make sure you read it. You can go in a minute.” He handed both of them a leaflet.

By now the helicopter was a few hundred yards farther up the road ahead of them and descending rapidly. But the gunfire appeared to have stopped.

“Get back in the car, then don’t move until I tell you to. Don’t even think about trying anything else, or you’ll be crow’s meat,” the man in the balaclava ordered.

Johnson and Donovan climbed back into the Audi.

They sat in silence for a minute or two. The faint sound of a single gunshot from the direction of Crossmaglen could be heard, followed a minute later by another one.

A car pulled up behind them, and Johnson turned around to see the IRA man in the balaclava repeat the procedure with the driver and a woman passenger in the second car, spread-eagling them over the hood, searching them, then handing them leaflets. The woman screamed but was silenced by one of the men in balaclavas who yelled a stream of obscenities at her.

Johnson glanced at the leaflet.

It was a plain typewritten sheet headed “Óglaigh na hÉireann—The New IRA,” and contained two densely written paragraphs.

The New IRA is a combined republican force under a unified leadership that abides by the constitution of the Irish Republican Army. We are committed to the armed struggle in pursuit of Irish freedom through the removal of British military presence and British political interference. The people of this country have been sold a phony peace by a false political legislature that represents a failure of leadership of Irish nationalism. The ideals and principles set down and enshrined in the Proclamation of 1916 are what drive our unified organization. Nothing will divert us from this path.

Anyone passing on information about republican activity to the Police Service of Northern Ireland, MI5, the Gardaí, or Sinn Féin will be dealt with severely.

Donovan glanced at the sheet. “Now you see what we’re up against here.”

Johnson looked up as the three men in balaclavas ran back past Donovan’s Audi and jumped into the two cars that had been blocking the road ahead.

Seconds later, they shot off, back in the direction of Newry, away from Crossmaglen.

“We’d best get out of here, quickly,” Donovan said and started the engine. He accelerated forward.

As they passed the trees that lined the road, the police helicopter came into view on the left, resting in a field screened from the road by a stone wall. Two men could be seen standing on the other side of the wall.

Donovan continued to accelerate up a slope in the road and over a ridge. The village of Crossmaglen was now visible ahead of them, with its gray- and white-painted houses, a gas station, and a church spire.

He braked to a halt behind a line of cars at a junction. To the right was a large Roll of Honor sign with the pictures of twenty-four volunteers from the IRA’s south Armagh brigade. Johnson assumed they had died for the cause.

Four men dressed in black jeans and sweatshirts ran across the road in front of them and jumped into a car. Johnson noticed Donovan’s white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel.

Underneath the photographs was a quote attributed to a woman called Máire Drumm. “We must take no steps backward, our steps must be onward, for if we don’t, the martyrs that died for you, for me, for this country will haunt us for eternity,” it read.

The traffic began to move again, and the Audi passed through the village square. Donovan turned down Cullaville Road. “You’ll see the police barracks in a moment,” he said. “Ugly place; it’ll be like an ant colony that’s been set on fire right now.”

In front of them on the left lay a tall corrugated steel structure topped with several strands of electric fencing, with a communications tower rising inside. As they approached, two double vehicle gates opened, and a trio of police cars poured out, tires squealing, sirens blaring. Donovan braked hard to a standstill.

The three cars screamed past them toward the village square, their blue and red lights strobing the white-painted house walls at the junction. Two more cars followed a few seconds later.

Johnson was tempted to contrast the action playing out in front of them with Donovan’s earlier comment about police being reluctant to police but held back.

Donovan flicked on the car radio, which was set to BBC Radio Ulster, then accelerated away again. A business news program was underway, with a slot about the economic problems plaguing Northern Ireland.

After several minutes, the program was interrupted by a newscaster. “Apologies for interrupting the business news, but word has just reached us of a major incident in south Armagh. A police helicopter carrying the chief constable of Northern Ireland, Eric Simonson, was shot down just outside Crossmaglen. Police sources have told us that the helicopter managed to make an emergency landing, but Mr. Simonson was shot dead, seemingly by a sniper, as he escaped from the aircraft. The secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Bryan Long, was on the same helicopter but is understood to have been unhurt. We’re expecting to get official confirmation and more details of this incident very soon, and of course we’ll bring those to you as soon as they come in.”

“Unbelievable,” Johnson said.

Donovan glanced at him and pushed his head back into the headrest. “Bloody hell. I might as well flush my business down the toilet.”

Chapter 3

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Belfast

The mug of tea was sweet and hot. Brendan O’Neill sipped it slowly and looked around the snooker club bar.

He glanced at his watch again and removed his scuffed brown leather bomber jacket. It was almost noon and GRANITE was three-quarters of an hour late. True, the man wasn’t the most punctual individual on earth. But normally he could be relied on to turn up when he said he was going to.

Still, it gave O’Neill time to think things through, a rare commodity.

O’Toole’s Snooker and Pool Club, just off Falls Road in West Belfast, near the huge Milltown Cemetery, had been a fertile recruiting ground for O’Neill and his team of agent handlers at MI5 as they had tried to keep themselves up to speed with the sometimes random activities of dissident republican terrorists in Northern Ireland.

He had found three decent informants at the club, right in the middle of a Catholic republican stronghold, during the nine years he had been at MI5, to which he’d transferred from army intelligence. That was good going, he thought. So much so that he’d had to stop recruiting there for fear that if one agent was blown, it could bring down the others.

Of the three, GRANITE had been the toughest to recruit; it had taken three years of effort, off and on, and he had only come on the payroll a year or so ago. But he had established himself as a trusted lieutenant of the OC—the officer commanding—in the Real IRA’s south Armagh brigade, the group O’Neill was particularly focused on. MI5 was tasked with gathering intelligence to combat the growing threat from dissident Republicans who were happy to use violence to further their objectives.

Snooker was one of many plausible covers, a viable excuse for a meeting, although the serious business of passing over information was normally done at either Black Lake or Grey Dog, the code names for two safe houses in the area.

Only two months earlier, over a hurried sandwich lunch at Grey Dog, O’Neill had received a tip from GRANITE that a number of pipe bombs were due to be transported two days later in a certain car from Derry and were to be used to attack a police station south of Portadown, in County Armagh.

Police, operating on the pretext of a routine check for uninsured drivers, had checked the vehicle, discovered four large bombs in the trunk, and arrested the driver. Almost certainly, that information had saved lives.

O’Neill’s hope was that information from GRANITE would enable him to nail one of the big fish, namely the OC, the quartermaster, or the IO—the intelligence officer—of the brigade.

But he had found GRANITE difficult to handle. He was inscrutable and to O’Neill’s annoyance was often selective with the information he passed over. So far, the leads had led to the arrests of only minor RIRA volunteers.

GRANITE occasionally passed on information but first insisted on O’Neill committing to not using it or giving it to anyone else in MI5 or the police, usually because there was a threat that he might be compromised, given the small number of people with that particular knowledge.

There had been a few of those situations recently. GRANITE seemingly wanted to put O’Neill to the test, check him out, make sure he could trust him. That was how it felt, anyway.

That wasn’t good, O’Neill felt, given that he was supposed to be the one controlling the relationship.

In most cases O’Neill discussed the situations that arose with his boss, Phil Beattie, who headed the team of agent handlers in Belfast, but not always.

Three days earlier GRANITE had briefly mentioned a plan for some guns to be shifted north over the border from the Irish Republic into south Armagh. GRANITE was one of the drivers responsible for the transfer. Again he’d requested no action on O’Neill’s side and had claimed that the circle of knowledge was too small and that the OC, Dessie Duggan, would finger him immediately. He had claimed he didn’t know what the weapons were intended for anyway.

O’Neill had agreed. He reasoned to himself at the time that he couldn’t risk putting one of his agents at risk of a kneecapping, torture or even death. That was the first law of agent handling.

Now as always, the violent Republicans showed no mercy to a tout, or informer. So-called six packs were still relatively common—bullets in the ankles, kneecaps, and elbows—as were broken fingers and toes, sometimes arms and legs. The abuse was a warning to others.

The threat to handlers was almost as great. O’Neill had worked in Northern Ireland for well over three decades in different army and security roles. When he had started, O’Neill had followed the advice of an army colleague and took to sleeping with a fire extinguisher in his bedroom and a pistol under his pillow. Even now he followed the same routine.

Given all that, O’Neill often wondered at the motivation of some touts. Sometimes it was the money; he was paying GRANITE more than one thousand pounds a month. Sometimes it was a desire to take revenge on a superior inside the organization. Occasionally it was because touts did not agree with what was being done but were too scared to get out or object.

In the case of GRANITE, O’Neill guessed it was money.

O’Neill rubbed his chin, which was covered with a day and a half’s worth of stubble, and looked at his watch again. Ten past twelve. One more cup of tea, then he would have to leave. Something had clearly gone wrong.

He walked to the bar and asked the young blond girl behind it for another mug. On the other side of the bar the rolling satellite TV news was on, so O’Neill moved around and sat near the flat screen on the wall.

That was when he noticed the moving ticker across the bottom of the screen: “Breaking news: Ulster chief constable shot dead in south Armagh after helicopter comes under fire.”

O’Neill felt his chest tighten and his forehead start to sweat.

The girl behind the bar was looking at the screen and saw the ticker. “Shit, those guys are going one step too far.” She turned toward O’Neill. “Did you see that?” she asked.

He nodded distractedly, but his mind was already focused elsewhere.

Then O’Neill’s phone rang. He knew who it would be before he even pulled it out of his pocket.

***

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Forkhill, south Armagh

Duggan carefully placed all his clothing into a large black plastic bag.

One of the brigade’s volunteers was waiting in the hallway of his farmhouse south of Forkhill to take it away to be incinerated. Duggan didn’t want to risk leaving behind any traces of the gases and minute particles of propellant and other gun matter thrown off when he fired the Barrett.

Then he eased his angular, slightly stooped frame into the shower in his en suite bathroom and began to systematically soap himself down, cleaning his skin thoroughly. Then he shampooed himself three times, running his fingers carefully through his close-cropped dark hair, now flecked with gray.

The Barrett and the unused ammunition had been offloaded to another volunteer whose job it was to return the gun to the cache, located south of the border in some woodland down near Dundalk.

Downstairs, drinking coffee and waiting in his living room, were the guys with whom he had worked and operated for the past fifteen years, since the catastrophic Good Friday agreement.

Apart from Duggan himself, who had the OC title, there was Danny McCormick, the quartermaster, Liam McGarahan, who was the intelligence officer, Dennehy, and Kieran O’Driscoll, the finance director and brains behind the operation.

They all saw the political settlement as a sellout by Sinn Féin politicians Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, not least because it removed the historic claim of the Irish Republic on the six counties of Ulster and instead gave the people of Northern Ireland the right to decide whether they should be part of the UK or Ireland.

Not long after the peace agreement went into effect, Duggan’s group disentangled themselves from the Provisionals. They saw themselves as a separate entity altogether—a splinter group that was part of the Real IRA. More recently, there had been more cooperation with others, particularly the coalition of other republican entities under the name Óglaigh na hÉireann, following a merger agreement to form the New IRA.

Duggan knew that Óglaigh na hÉireann members had been handing out republican leaflets at a roadblock outside Crossmaglen while the operation to bring down the PSNI helicopter had been going on.

All the groups in the New IRA were firmly committed to a united Ireland—and to the armed struggle as a means of achieving it. They believed that sooner or later the peace agreement would fall apart, leaving them in the driver’s seat of a new armed, violent republican movement.

This often left them at odds with the Provisionals, the old guard, at national and local levels. In south Armagh, the Provisionals had been a highly organized group that operated with almost military discipline, so Duggan trod with care and with as much secrecy as possible.

Duggan toweled himself off, dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and sweatshirt, and headed downstairs carrying the clothes destined for the incinerator. He handed them to a young man who sat on a chair in his hallway and then watched as the man went out and climbed into a waiting car.

Then he walked to the living room door. He knew what was coming.

“All cleaned up?” O’Driscoll asked. He watched Duggan as he walked to an armchair and sat down.

“Yeah, spotless. Good job I was there to mop up Pete’s mess,” Duggan said, referring to the machine gunner Pete Field, whose job it had been to down the helicopter. “Went to plan, though. That was the obvious spot they’d land it. We chose well.”

Duggan looked at McGarahan. “Your man Fergus came up with good info there. Spot on. Timing was just as he told you.”

McGarahan nodded but didn’t smile. The information the IO had received in advance—of the chief constable’s visit to Crossmaglen and the fact that the secretary of state would be accompanying him—wasn’t the first valuable tip from his mole in the chief constable’s office, a public affairs officer named Fergus Kane.

“We spent a long time cultivating that guy,” McGarahan said. “Paid off now, hasn’t it?”

There was a short, awkward silence.

“So, Dessie. You did well with the cop. But what about the Brit?” asked McCormick.

There was a distinctly hostile note in the quartermaster’s voice.

“What do you mean, Danny?”

“You took down the right man first, did you?”

Here we go, it’s started. “Took down the one I could get best sight of. I was three-quarters of a mile away. I knew it was the chief constable. I was after the Brit next, but he’d hit the deck immediately, and the angle was too tight. We had to get out of there quick as possible.”

There was silence in the room.

“Anyway,” Duggan said, “None of you knows how to handle a Barrett, do you? What other OC is out getting his hands dirty, lying in the mud waiting for hours, looking through the crosshairs. None of ’em, I tell you. They’re all tucked up inside giving orders over their cocoa. I do it because none of you lot know how.”

He knew he was right. None of them could handle a sniper rifle. There was another silence.

Dennehy broke the silence eventually. “He’s right. He did well to hit the cop from that distance. Then the Brit was on the ground straightaway. Saw him through the scope.” He glanced at Duggan.

O’Driscoll butted in. “It makes little difference. The chief constable was a good hit. I mean, the shit’s hit the fan, it’s already causing chaos. The Brit would’ve been better, we’re agreed on that. But I’ve heard the radio news. They’ve no idea where the bullet came from. And there’s already been some rent-a-quote on the radio saying that at this rate the Brits’ll have to put the army back on the streets if the police can’t protect their own chief constable. Beautiful, if you ask me.”

Duggan nodded. “He’s right. Normalization’s out the window now.”

They all knew that their unwritten objective was to prevent the establishment of normal policing operations in Northern Ireland, which would put the province on a similar footing to the rest of the UK. The biggest step by the British government to that goal had been removing the army from the streets in 2007, when the ugly, symbolic army watchtowers had been torn down.

“That’s three you’ve done in the past few months, Dessie,” McGarahan said. “I don’t see the rationale behind all of them, but okay, I’d suggest taking a breather now until the dust settles.”

“I’d disagree,” O’Driscoll said. “Better to keep up momentum, actually. But if we’re going to keep it up, we’ll need more funds—a lot more. And soon. Dessie, you’ll need to speak to Patrick over in Boston about that.”

“Yeah, I’ve got to speak to him,” Duggan said. “I need another M82 as a backup now that we’re down to just one. I’m not happy with the one I’ve got—it’s a very old piece of kit.”

The biggest issue he had was that occasionally the bolt wasn’t chambering the next round properly; it wasn’t going into battery and engaging the lock ready to fire again. He couldn’t afford for that to happen when he was on a big job.

“If I had a new one,” Duggan said, “it’d also mean that Martin here could use the old one. We could get him trained up, make us a lot more effective.” He glanced at Dennehy. “Besides, it’s too much of a risk having just one gun in the locker. That okay, Kieran? It’s gonna cost a few bob.”

The other Barrett M82 rifle the brigade owned had been discovered by police in a cache in woodland near Armagh City during a raid a year earlier, along with a batch of other weapons. To replace it with another in good condition would probably cost US$6,000 to $7,000.

The finance director grimaced. “Yeah, okay, but like I said, we need more cash coming in if we’re going to spend that amount.”

McCormick laughed. “You’re full of shit, Kieran. How many millions have you got stashed away?”

O’Driscoll ignored the jibe.

“What we need, if we’re gonna keep momentum up, is a real ‘spectacular,’ in my view,” Duggan said. “And it needs to be us, this group, who does it, not one of the other brigades, and definitely not one of the other republican groups.”

“You wouldn’t count the chief constable as a ‘spectacular,’ then?” McCormick asked. “You had the chance. You had the secretary of bloody state in your crosshairs. Why didn’t you take him out? You’re the Dentist after all . . . aren’t you?”

After a few seconds Duggan said, “I’m thinking higher up the food chain than him.”

He leaned over the side of his armchair and picked up the previous day’s copy of the Belfast Telegraph and threw it down on the coffee table in the center of the room.

“There, take a look at that,” Duggan said.

The front-page headline, in large bold capitals, read, “Police Crank Up Security for G8.”

Below it, the story referred to a major security initiative by the Police Service of Northern Ireland ahead of the annual meeting of leaders from the eight main industrialized countries.

For the first time, the story continued, the G8 meeting was being held in Northern Ireland, at a hotel resort complex near Enniskillen. In an editorial, the paper said the choice of Northern Ireland was “a move intended to signal to the world that Northern Ireland was now demonstrably a safe place for tourists to visit and businesses to invest in.”

“You’ve got no chance there,” McGarahan said. “There’ll be a ring of steel around that resort. And after this chief constable thing, they’ll probably cancel the whole thing now, anyway.”

Duggan picked up the newspaper and turned to page 3, where the front-page story continued. He picked up a pen and circled a paragraph about halfway down. “They definitely won’t cancel. That’d be seen as bowing to terrorists now, wouldn’t it? There, read that.”

He passed the paper across to O’Driscoll, who read out loud, “US President Barack Obama and UK Prime Minister David Cameron are expected to carry out a community visit, possibly to a factory, library or school, during the two-day G8 summit meeting.”

O’Driscoll lowered the newspaper and stared at Duggan, as did McCormick and McGarahan.

“You’re joking, Dessie, aren’t you?” McGarahan said.

Duggan shook his head.

***