The Fire (22 page)

Rick Fuller's Story:

Our American pilot was true to his word and once we hit land he dropped the Lynx to a hundred feet, extinguished all lights and pulled down his night vision goggles. I'd never been a nervous flyer, having jumped out of so many aircraft in my time, but even I found the sensation of being thrown about at a hundred and ninety miles an hour in total darkness disconcerting.

Despite being fully strapped in, Des held onto a grab handle to steady himself. "I hope this wee fucker knows what he's doing, pal," he shouted over the scream of the engine.

"He's doing fine," I replied and gave the Scot a thumbs up to emphasise I was happy enough.

I looked over to J.J.'s seat to see if he was okay and the Turk was actually fast asleep. I shook my head in disbelief. I used to be able to sleep anywhere, anytime, but fifteen minutes to the drop zone in shitty weather and flying blind? Could you sleep?

I pulled a small hand held GPS unit from my coveralls and fired it up. Within two minutes it had found its satellites and was showing that we were just forty miles to our RV.

Price was not going to land the Lynx, so it was up to us to abseil the last twenty feet or so. This was always a precarious operation, especially in the dark. Once the chopper was hovering below fifty feet the instruments pretty much read zero. It was down to the skill of the pilot to ensure that the boys sliding down ropes beneath him dropped gently to the floor as opposed to falling the last fifteen feet in full battle kit because the twat couldn't judge distance.

Being the first out was always the shitty end of the stick. That said, on this occasion we were all dropping in together, so if the Yank got it wrong, all three of us would be nursing broken ankles before the job even started.

Price wanted to be in and out in less than thirty seconds. He knew that we were in the country to make a mess. It wouldn't take a genius to know that the fallout was going to cause political uproar, possibly even civil disorder, so he didn't want anyone to know he'd entered Irish airspace. He worked for the Firm for a reason and would leave nothing to chance.

The American dipped the nose of the Lynx and the aircraft slowed. We were in the process of ensuring that our kit was secure. Just like divers about to enter the water, we'd buddy up and check and recheck every flap, zip and belt was fastened. J.J. had the added encumbrance of his sniper rifle alongside his MP7, but he seemed unfazed by the whole scenario. Des, a veteran of so many thankless and dangerous missions, went about his tasks in his usual methodical calm way.

I tapped my oldest friend on the shoulder, a sign that his kit was squared away and the Lynx came into the hover.

Price looked over his shoulder again.

"Okay, Fuller, doors released!" he bellowed.

I slid open my door and was almost blown off my feet by the turbulence. J.J. was to my left and clipped his rope in position next to me.

"Nice weather!" he shouted, and gave me a cheeky wink. I couldn't stop myself from smiling. He was a good guy and I was glad to have him and Des at my side.

Price turned once again, gave me the thumb and shouted, "Have a nice day, boys. See you same time, same place tomorrow!"

I pulled down my balaclava, secured my rope, checked the fastenings one last time, and then dropped from the aircraft into pitch black and a very uncertain future.

Des Cogan's Story:

Our pilot had done a good job on judging the height of the aircraft and when I hit the snow covered grass below, I had a couple of feet of rope coiled at my boots. I said a quick Hail Mary for that little piece of luck and checked that Rick and J.J. were in the same condition as me. The chopper's rotors whipped up the fallen snow as Price gunned the engines and disappeared into the night sky. Within a couple of minutes, the only sound was the howling wind as it blew snow into our faces. It was cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey, pal.

We had just less than five miles to tab to the farm. Under normal circumstances, a piece of piss, but in this weather and with very little in the way of ambient light, it was going to be a trek.

We all shrugged off our MP7's from our backs and re-connected the slings so the weapons sat across our chests. I slid the action forward on mine and checked the safety was on.

In addition to my weaponry, I was carrying all our medical kit and would act as first aider should any of the team be wounded. This consisted of some sterile dressings, pre-loaded morphine and adrenalin syringes and some basic instruments including a couple of clamps and scalpels. I was hoping we didn't need any of it, but better to be safe than sorry. That said, it added another few pounds to my Bergen. Rick was peering at the display on his GPS unit which lit up his face in an eerie green glow. He looked like we did on Halloween when we put a torch under our chins when we were kids.

I was very glad we had GPS as there were no stars or moon to guide us. The snow had eased but still swirled around and seemed to change direction every few seconds.

Ricked pushed the small unit back in his coveralls and stood motionless for a few moments to allow his eyes to adjust to the near pitch conditions.

"Let's move," he said, "I'll take point... J.J., watch out for the hawthorn hedges out here, they're fuckin' murderous."

He was right. Both Rick and I had patrolled Crossmaglen long before we had completed selection. We'd had the dubious honour of attempting to win the hearts and minds of the locals of 'Bandit Country'. This of course did not work. The British army are notoriously bad at such things. Some fuckin' Rupert sat in an office in Whitehall usually comes up with some plan or other; decides to send in 2 Para as peace keepers and wonders why things are fucked up.

I remember we unfurled a banner in the town one day. It was to stretch across the main road. We were ordered to set up ladders and such to fit the fuckin' thing. It took about forty guys to protect the poor sods who were up the ladders from being shot by the Paddy snipers. The whole thing was a complete cock up. The banner was supposed to say something like 'The Army are here to protect you. The Army are your friends' or some such bollocks.

When we unrolled the thing, it had been in storage since the fifties and been brought back from Aiden. It may well have said what it said...but it was in Arabic.

Go sort that one.

Tours in South Armagh were really tough. It seemed to us that every local was PIRA or certainly a sympathiser. The second a soldier set foot on tarmac, some fucker was on the phone to the local Armalite brigade.

We lost dozens of guys to snipers and roadside bombs, it was horrendous. Finally, the Ruperts decided that we would only patrol across country and would not use roads of any kind, not even farm tracks. Virtually every field is bordered by hawthorn in Crossmaglen. It's vicious stuff, worse than barbed wire, and we would come back from patrol knackered and cut to shreds by the stuff.

Rick had not forgotten and neither had I.

The weather was changing again. The snow had stopped and the skies began to clear. We could now see some fifty yards in front of us but it was still slow going and all of us lost our footing on occasions as the snow beneath our feet began to turn to ice in the rapidly falling temperature. The wind chill made it feel like the fuckin' Arctic.

I was used to the cold. In fact I preferred it to being sweltering in some desert somewhere. That said, it had taken thirty minutes to complete just over one kilometre and I could tell Rick was becoming frustrated by our lack of progress.

I knew what he was thinking. I too was fearful what condition Lauren may be in when we got there too. Would she be alive?

God help McGinnis and crew if she wasn't.

Lauren North's Story:

What I'd thought to be a barn was no more than a hay store. It had no glass in the windows and the roof was holed in one corner. That said, the door was open and I fell inside grateful to be out of the freezing cold.

I didn't have enough strength to move any bales, so I climbed up as high as I could, squeezed between two stacks, tucked my knees up to my chin and shivered.

Thankfully the wind had eased and the snow was all but gone. The sky was now clear and through the hole in the roof I could see a blanket of stars. Had things been different, I would have marvelled at their beauty.

After ten minutes I pulled at the hay around me and used clumps of it to rub my hair and body in an attempt to remove frozen snow from my head and clothing.

I was still bitterly cold, but being out of the elements gave me a chance. Within ten minutes I felt better. I inched further and further into the bales to reduce the area around me and utilise my natural body heat. Ten more minutes went by. I desperately wanted to sleep, but I dared not. I pulled myself out of my hiding place, dropped down to floor level and had a quick search of the store.

Leaning against one wall was a pitchfork. I grabbed it, and climbed back into my hiding place with the three metal spikes pointing forward of my position.

I felt better, closed my eyes, and eventually, dreams came.

Time and space once again passed me by. I'd been physically tired as I lay down in my hay bales, but it had been the mental tiredness that had overcome me. I awoke with a jolt and it took me a few seconds to realise where I was. I had no idea what I'd been dreaming about but my heart pounded in my chest and I felt the need to swallow hard several times before I could get myself together.

I looked to the hole in the roof and could see a lightening sky. Dawn was close so it was maybe six o'clock. During my dream state, the snow had stopped, but the wind had returned and it howled and whistled through the broken windowpanes.

My clothes were still wet and I was cold and uncomfortable, but I could reason and feel my extremities, so I could function.

Stretching my stiff legs I was about to shuffle out of my hiding place when my stomach flipped with fear as I heard a vehicle approaching. 

It was unmistakeably a diesel engine and from the sound of the crunching snow, something with big fat tyres. Doors opened and slammed and there were male and female muffled voices. I wriggled as far back into my hiding place as I could and gripped the shaft of the pitchfork with both hands.

I was instantly warm from the flush of adrenalin. The unmistakable sound of footsteps on snow grew closer; more than one set...two...three? My mind raced as fast as my heart.

Then I heard a clearer voice.

I didn't recognise it; male, cultured southern English. The gusting wind and the thickness of the walls of the store made it impossible to hear his exact words, but he wasn't pleased and was shouting instructions to someone. Then I heard the car doors open again and the unmistakable sound of dogs.

Despite the near freezing conditions my hands were sweating as they gripped the rough wooden handle of the pitchfork, my only weapon.

I knew I could gleefully bury it in Dougie McGinnis or his cronies, but a dog? Could I kill a dog? I remembered Rick killing an Alsatian outside Joel Davies's house, just before World War Three erupted inside and how I threw up all over the front step. It didn't bode well.

I could hear my heartbeat as I tucked my legs under my body in order to position myself to attack anyone or anything that came to my hiding place. It was simply needs must.

The door handle rattled as someone attempted to get it open. At least two dogs whined on the other side. As the door was finally pushed open, I felt the icy chill of the wind rush into the store. The dogs padded inside and I held my breath.

As I'd expected, they came straight beneath my position, but couldn't climb the bales to actually get at me. I could hear them snorting, clearing their airways to get a better scent.

Through a tiny gap in the bales I could see a pair of booted, snow covered feet standing by the door. Seconds later, the feet spoke...they belonged to none other than Kristy McDonald.

"Go on, Bruno, find the bitch," she snapped. "Come on, Teddy....where is she? Come on, quick now, it's fuckin' freezin'!"

I caught a glimpse of one of the hounds, and that's what they were, hounds, the kind of dogs you saw on fox hunting pictures in a country pub. This made me feel slightly better as they weren't Dobermans or Rottweilers. I felt they would indicate my presence, but they weren't attack dogs, just sniffers, so all I had to deal with was the human element of the search party.

I kept stock still as one of the dogs sat just below my position started to bark. Even I knew that this was an indication that the animal had found what it was looking for.

So did Kristy.

She pulled the door open further. "Mr Clarke! Mr Clarke!" she shouted to the outside world. "I think we got somethin'."

This little snippet really sent my mind into overdrive. Could that possibly be Joseph Clarke, the guy who'd set the whole Irish job in motion, the guy from the Firm? If so what the hell was he doing here with Kristy?

He stepped into the doorway and he too shouted over his shoulder. "Seamus! Seamus! Come get the dogs away whilst we have a look, eh, old chap?"

I heard heavy footsteps and another pair of boots that belonged to Patrick O'Donnell's son strode into view. The dogs obviously belonged to the twin, and whimpered and barked as he drew close. He peered up toward my position, but I knew he wouldn't be able to see me without climbing the bales. I held onto the pitchfork so tightly, the muscles in my forearms started to cramp.

Seamus spoke slowly and had a strange accent, a mixture of southern English and northern Irish.

"Maybe she's here," he said. "But someone needs to climb up to be sure."

Clarke's voice dripped sarcasm. "Obviously, sunshine; just take the mutts away and let Kristy here have a look-see."

There was more whimpering and the dogs were led out of the store. I heard the car door open and close as they were put back inside.

Seconds later, he was back inside the store. I felt sweat drip down my spine; I'd clenched my jaw so tightly that it ached, but I had no desire to release the pressure.

Five feet below me, one of the three racked a weapon.

"Go on, Kristy," said Clarke. "Up you go."