First Into Action (6 page)

The IRA touts who operate purely for money are generally the most reliable. They are harder for their own people to detect and their information is more trustworthy. Information from these sources is often bought by the pound, the price dependent on its quality. The difficulty for the tout-maker is identifying the men and women who will sell his or her principles for a foreign bank account and eventually a new life somewhere. Recruiting is a risky business for both sides. Finding such people is the tout-maker’s job. Who he decides to recruit often depends on a compilation of detailed profiles, educated guesses and luck. The more senior the IRA recruit, the better the quality of information, but the greater the risk for the tout-maker – the IRA would not miss an opportunity to misinform, capture or kill one of them.

First contact with the proposed tout-to-be is the most nerve-racking and dangerous phase. The tout-maker usually has an armed driver who covers his route in and out, but he nearly always makes the actual rendezvous alone and often unarmed so as not to unnerve the potential recruit. The meeting places are, naturally, secluded spots – sometimes even in other countries. The tout-maker is entirely vulnerable to entrapment. He must wonder if he has chosen the target well. Is the recruit truly greedy enough to risk his life to sell out his brothers in the IRA? What if the recruit has a change of heart at the last minute? If the tout is ever found out he can expect to be tortured, then executed. The tout-maker’s greatest worry as he approaches this first meet has to be, is it a set-up? He arrives at every rendezvous like a bullfighter, but without a cape to hide behind or a sword to fight back with. He walks up to the bull, stands in front of it in his worn patent-leather shoes and drab raincoat, looks it straight in the eye and makes a deal. The things that must go through his mind as he approaches the rendezvous point would be enough to make a lesser man run screaming for his life. Many end up with shot nerves after only a few years at the front. No one knows how many tout-makers have been killed or have disappeared without trace over the years. They don’t officially exist, in life or in death, not in their true capacity. But there is always paperwork. Even top secret operations are documented. There has to be a report, official and unofficial. The official report that ends up in the newspapers might read something like: ‘An off-duty army officer was found dead last night shortly after he was seen leaving a popular pub . . .’

When the IRA recruit’s first deal has been sealed he or she becomes a ‘client’. The tout-maker then keeps in constant touch, mothering him, seeing to all his needs, counselling him, becoming as close to him as possible, assessing the information and constantly squeezing for more. Every tout has a ‘career’, a length of usefulness, and although most are short term in the scheme of things, the IRA has always been plagued by the suspicion of a high-ranking mole within its organisation, even today. The rumour alone does damage. I heard there were two.

If an operation is concluded with the help of a tout, that tout’s cover is most often ‘blown’ as a result, or is usually considered so. The tout is given the opportunity to move into a protection programme which means money and a new life, often in a different country. Most touts do very well out of the deal, which is what attracts them, and the rumours help to create more touts. But sometimes the tout gets greedy or is suspected of being a double agent, his information becomes dubious and he must be considered a threat to operations and to the tout-maker himself. If a tout finds himself in such a situation he is in danger from all sides.

I had spent the final hours of the first night’s ambush desperate to pee but not daring to move, and so before this night’s ambush I drank very little and did not eat much, either, because that would have made me thirsty.

It was colder now that the wind had picked up and I became hungry. I did not reach into my pocket for a bit of nutty (chocolate) in case O’Sally stepped into view right at that second. I would lose the draw. He was too deadly to take chances like that. He knew what it was like to kill a man.

Revulsion and fascination are the primary reactions to taking a life. If an operative discovers it to be revolting, he need not expose himself to it again and can quit. If he remains in the unit after taking a life it would suggest he is prepared to kill again. Most men who have ended a career in special forces without at least once being involved in a deadly conflict regret it to some extent.

O’Sally was more than fascinated with killing. He was an enthusiast. We had a few of our own just like him. I wondered how I would react when it was over – I did not expect to lose the conflict.

As for my fear, I knew I was on the road to controlling it when I began dreaming of meeting a would-be aggressor head on instead of letting my fear get a hold of me. I rarely fought as in quicksand any more. The reason behind the change was that I discovered I could re-programme my default instincts by constantly daydreaming of specific dramatic situations and seeing myself react the way I thought I should or wanted to. When the reactions spilled over into my dreams, the windows into one’s true personality, I knew I was succeeding. I was pleased there was a way of changing things I did not like about myself. The first dream I can remember having of killing a man was while asleep back in the hide during the O’Sally ambush. It was a dream in which I killed O’Sally. But it wasn’t an easy kill. I still moved somewhat sluggishly, whereas O’Sally was slick and efficient. But somehow I beat him to the aim, and, although he fired too, as I squeezed the trigger I ran towards him like a madman and destroyed him from feet away. After he was dead I was not revolted by it. When the day finally came for me to touch the candle, I took two lives at the same time and rarely ever think about it, and when I do I am not revolted.

I wondered how my SAS partner was doing at the front of the farmhouse. We’d hardly spoken in the two days we had been together in the hide. In fact about the only words we ever did say to each other were, ‘It’s your watch.’

It was an odd relationship. Two strangers waiting to kill two strangers.

In the hide we took it in turns in four-hour stints to sleep while the other kept watch. When we were not sleeping we ate or read a book. We could not leave the hide during daylight. We peed into an old gallon milk container, and crapped into plastic bags. The urine we could empty out on our way to the ambush, but there was nowhere secure to dump the bags of shit en route so we kept them in the hide to take back to the camp after the op. On extended jobs, where a food drop was required, the shit bags were handed over in exchange for the food.

My SAS partner was not the talkative type, but I assumed his lack of conversation also had to do with toeing the SAS party line. There was animosity between the two special forces groups. We felt the SAS were planning to take over our area of operations, which was the sea, coastlines and hinterland, and they did not want us even thinking about muscling in on theirs. The SBS were growing fast in size and ability and there were overlaps between the two units in several arenas. Both units felt threatened, and their feelings were justified.

For the SBS, rumours had been flying around that the Royal Marines were being considered for the chop. The Ministry of Defence was planning to disband the oldest and most battle-honoured regiment in the world. If the Marines were disbanded, then so would be the SBS, as we drew our manpower solely from the Marine commando units. An intervention by Lord Mountbatten apparently saved the Marines. Once the Marines were secure for the immediate future, the SBS had to move to establish themselves. Not only was terrorism on the rise, but in conventional warfare special forces were still highly favoured. The obvious arena for the SBS was everything to do with the sea, rivers and coastal areas. The SAS were well established and completely secure compared to us, but our growth was evident and we were already competing for jobs. It was like a corporate war between us.

One thing the SAS were a little concerned about was that the ‘A’ in Special Air Service looked like it was fast becoming obsolete and the ‘B’ in Special Boat Squadron was coming into its own very strongly (a more broadly descriptive name for us might be Special Water Squadron). The sea had long ago been the element to control, but after World War Two the skies became the most favoured territory for special forces infiltration. Parachuting was easy, quick and somewhat clandestine. But by now, even the smallest banana republic had radar sensitive enough to detect a plane dropping parachutists. Not even the most sophisticated powers can watch every inch of its coastline. Smugglers can attest to that.

As if to aggravate the SAS further, the SBS made a point of training themselves in the art of HALO (high altitude low opening) jumping, but it was not to irritate the SAS. Parachuting into the sea to rendezvous with a ship or submarine was a viable stealthy option.

After decades of relative stagnancy, the SBS wanted to become the foremost special forces unit. But we had a long way to go before London would take us seriously enough to risk using us on anything important. As for being first into action ahead of the SAS, our only chance, it seemed, would be if the operation was completely water orientated. But even then it was not a foregone conclusion that we would be selected.

On a more local note, a reason the SAS were a tad upset with us at that time in Northern Ireland was because we had almost caused them a major embarrassment. Some months earlier, during a previous SAS tour without the SBS, an SAS team had gone for a long walk over the border into the Irish Republic. It was not their first such venture, but this time they were caught by the (Southern) Irish police, which caused a little ‘incident’ between the two governments. The SAS did not want to admit they had got lost, but then could not explain what they were doing invading the South. Wrists were slapped and the SAS were warned not to do it again. The Irish government was concerned on more than one level, as a few years earlier two SAS troopers had popped south of the border for a private operation, a little bank robbery which they bodged up, ending up in a Dublin jail. Their commanding officer had to fly in and take them out, after which they were promptly dismissed from the service. This incident raised a laugh when it was reported in the local press.

Near the beginning of my tour, late one night, two SBS men were driving a van full of heavily armed, blacked-out SAS men to a drop-off on the Northern Irish border to watch a cross-over point. The SBS stopped the van in a dark, country lane to check the map while the SAS sergeant prepared to let his team out.

‘Don’t open the door,’ said one of the SBS lads, ‘we’re not at the drop-off point.’

‘Where are we, then?’ asked the SAS sergeant.

‘A couple of miles south of it – I think,’ the SBS man replied sheepishly.

‘How can we be a couple of miles south of it?’ the SAS sergeant asked irritably. ‘That would put us . . .’

The SAS sergeant saw his career flash before his eyes and was very precise as to the report he was going to file if the SBS did not get him and his men back into Northern Ireland as uneventfully as they had brought them out of it. After a few more wrong turns and a couple of Southern Irish villages later they arrived back in Northern Ireland without being seen. But the SBS were in the doghouse.

I never knew the exact time throughout the ambush. I could not look at my watch. In the darkness the luminous dial would appear like a beacon if I unclipped the leather flap that covered it. Boredom was making me long for the terrorists to arrive. But doubt also began to creep into my mind as time dragged on. I found myself looking for the subtle change in light on the horizon that meant dawn was coming and I could get off my damp, uncomfortable mound and walk away.

On this second night of the ambush, O’Sally did not turn up and the dawn did eventually move me on. I stood up like an old man and rubbed my stiff knee-caps and my cold, damp arse. I walked carefully out of the yard, treading slowly to reduce the sucking sound of my feet as they drew out of the mud. The same small light was on inside the house. Nothing had changed. I don’t think anyone was home or had been since I first arrived. I met my SAS partner at the pre-planned location fifty yards from the farm and we trudged back to our hide. We would return the following dusk.

It was not until a few days after I had finished Marine Commando training that I saw my first Special Boat Squadron poster. It was pinned up in a hallway of the headquarters building and was a picture of two men, heavily armed and camouflaged, paddling a canoe through the jungle. The canoes were similar to the canvas and wooden types that made the SBS famous in the Second World War, now made by Klepper, ironically a German company. The men had been called the Cockleshell Heroes in that war (cockleshell was the nickname for the canoe), after their most famous raid against German merchant ships in Bordeaux, where they placed magnetised limpet mines on the hulls below the waterline. Out of the ten men in five canoes who went on the operation, only two survived. Mountbatten, the man behind those first amphibious operations, said no attacks were more courageous or imaginative. No doubt this was the reason he was so fond of us. Those invaders who worked behind enemy lines in that war defined one of the most important roles for special forces, which is to get in close enough to accomplish what technology cannot from a distance. The Royal Air Force had tried repeatedly to bomb the German ships in Bordeaux and failed. In the Gulf War the SBS carried out operations against targets smart bombs could not find. Paddling into harbours in little boats to blow up ships was not a new idea for the British. The technique had first been used over 350 years earlier.

In 1587, a year before Drake destroyed the Spanish Armada in the English Channel, he took on an even larger Spanish fleet while it anchoredin the port of Cadiz. On board one of Drake’s ships was a sergeant (a Marine one might say, but it was to be another seventy-seven years before the Royal Marines were officially born) who came up with a high-risk, low-cost plan to destroy several Spanish ships while they lay at anchor. Drake liked the idea and let the man go ahead. Under cover of darkness, he rowed a small boat into the harbour and in amongst the Spanish fleet. Between two enemy galleons, he screwed a keg of gunpowder to one just above the waterline. Unfortunately, the same choppy weather that covered his infiltration prevented him from lighting the fuse. The mission was unsuccessful, but the general idea, so imaginative and daring, was to catch on. Drake later went on to destroy the fleet anyway.