Remote Control (45 page)
Authors: Andy McNab
She looked up. She didn’t say anything, but I took it as a yes.
‘That’s good, because I would like you to come too. You’ve been a really good girl, you always do what I say. Do you want to help me again?’
She shrugged. I leaned over and picked up the other teddy and rubbed its face against her cheek. ‘We’ll get Jenny and Ricky to help me as well. How about that?’
She gave a reluctant nod.
‘First of all, we’ve got to sort out the bag.’
I got into the back seat and put the holdall between us, opening it up. ‘What do you think we should take out, then?’
I knew exactly what we were going to take out: everything apart from the blanket and washing kit, because they were the only things I needed now. I said, ‘What do you reckon? Is that all?’ She nodded and agreed, as if she’d packed it herself.
Everything I was not going to take I put into the boot. The rain was now coming down more heavily. I sat with her again and pulled out the blanket. ‘We have to wait here for the next couple of hours. It’s too early to go to the airport yet. You can have a sleep if you like.’
I folded up the bag and made a pillow. ‘There, that’s better – cuddle Jenny and Ricky.’
She looked at me and smiled. We were mates again.
‘You aren’t going away again, are you, Nick?’
For once I told the truth. ‘No, I’m going to do some work. You just go to sleep. I’m not going anywhere.’ I got out and sat in the front again. I rested the laptop on my knees and lifted the screen. I checked that the keys were in the ignition and I could easily grab the steering wheel. I had to be ready to move at once if we got pinged.
I pressed the on switch, and as the screen lit up it cast a glow inside the car. I inserted Kev’s floppy disk. I was desperate to read the rest of his report, but, first, as an extra back-up, I downloaded everything onto the laptop. As I waited, I said quietly, ‘Kelly?’ There was no reply. The gentle rhythm of the rain had done its job.
I began reading where I’d left off. I knew that Gibraltar had always been a centre for international drug trafficking, money laundering and smuggling, but it seemed that, in 1987, Spain not only still wanted Gib back, it also wanted the Brits to crack down on drug trafficking as well. Thatcher’s government told the Gibraltarians to sort it out, but the high-powered speedboats still ran drugs over from North Africa. The Brits threatened direct control of the colony if the trafficking didn’t stop, and, at the same time, ordered a highly illegal operation against police and government officials they suspected of involvement. The boys taking the back-handers got the hint and suddenly stopped co-operating with PIRA and everyone else.
My eyes were racing ahead of my brain.
The closure of the Gibraltar route was all well and good for the war against corruption, but the Colombians were very pissed off. A major trade artery had been clamped off, and they wanted it reopened. According to Kev’s findings, they’d decided a show of strength was required. They wanted Gibraltar bombed as a warning that the officials should start co-operating again, and they ordered PIRA to carry it out.
PIRA had a problem with this. They wanted the route reopened as much as the Colombians did, but, after the débâcle of Enniskillen, they couldn’t run the risk of killing non-UK civilians and invoking even greater international condemnation. They’d refused to do it.
From evidence that Kev had gathered, the cartels’ reply to PIRA was blunt: either you bomb Gibraltar or we shift our drugs business to the Protestant UVF. For PIRA, not a good day out.
PIRA’s head shed came up with a solution and, as I read on, I couldn’t help but admire it. ‘Mad Danny’ McCann had already been kicked out of PIRA and reinstated against Gerry Adams’s wishes. Mairead Farrell, after the death of her boyfriend, had become too fanatical for her own good – ‘a bit of a social hand grenade’, Simmonds had said of her. PIRA’s plan was to send to Gibraltar two players they’d be happy to see the back of, together with Sean Savage, who just had the misfortune to be part of the same ASU.
The team were issued with the technology and Semtex for the bomb, but were told it was to stay behind in Spain until they had done their recces and rehearsals. They were told only to take it in once the blocking car was in position, to guarantee the correct placement of the bomb. PIRA then gave the three players bad passports and leaked information to London. They wanted the Brits to react and stop the bombing so that, when the three were arrested, they could claim to the cartels that they’d given it their best shot.
We’d duly been told about the ASU, but, as I remembered, we’d also been briefed that there would be no blocking car and that the bomb would be detonated by a hand-held device. These last two pieces of intelligence meant that McCann, Farrell and Savage had never stood a chance. They were dead from the moment we thought the bomb was in position and armed, because one of them was bound to make a hand movement at some stage that would be construed as an attempt to detonate the device. I certainly wouldn’t have taken the chance that Savage was only going for his packet of mints, and Euan obviously didn’t when he initiated the contact with McCann and Farrell. In Pat’s immortal words: Better to be tried by twelve than carried by six.
A dialogue box came up on the screen telling me that I was running short of power and needed to plug into another power source. Fuck! I wanted to read more. I got back to the screen and read as fast as I could to get the drift.
Even though there hadn’t been a bomb, the cartels had accepted that their Irish lackeys were playing ball. After all, three of their people had been killed in the process. PIRA kept the trade with the Colombians, even though, as Big Al had said, it was thereafter routed through South Africa and Spain.
PIRA were in raptures. They’d got rid of two troublemakers, not quite in the way that they’d intended, but three martyrs had been created, with the result that their cause at home was strengthened, and even more dollars rolled into the coffers from the Irish-Americans. It was only the Brits who appeared to have been left with egg on their faces, but, even so, no matter how much the international community publicly condemned the shootings, in secret most heads of state admired Thatcher’s muscular stand against terrorism.
Fuck it. Another box came up and told me to plug into an external power source. I switched the laptop off and packed it away, full of frustration. I wanted to know more. At the same time I was on a high. If we made it back to the UK with this stuff, I’d have cracked it with Simmonds.
It was three thirty a.m. There was nothing to do but wait for the next couple of hours or so, until the first wave of aircraft started to arrive and depart, creating enough activity for a man with a scabby face and a seven-year-old in tow to blend in.
I let the backrest down a bit and tried to get my neck into a comfortable position, but I couldn’t relax. My mind was racing. The whole operation in Gibraltar had been a set-up so that PIRA and the Colombians could keep making money. Fair one, but where did Kev and I fit into the scheme of things? I lay there and listened to the beat of rain on the roof.
For Euan and me it had all started on 3 March, less than a week before the shootings. We were both on different jobs over the water and had got lifted off and sent to Lisburn, HQ of the British army in Northern Ireland. From there it was a quick move by Puma to Stirling Lines in Hereford, England, the home of the Special Air Service.
One of the slime was waiting to take us straight to RHQ, and the moment I saw the china cups and biscuits outside the briefing room I knew that something big was in the offing. Last time that had happened, the prime minister had been here.
The room was in semi-darkness and packed. There was a large screen at the back of a stage and tiered seats so that everyone got a good view.
We were looking for somewhere to sit when I heard, ‘Oi, over here, dickspot!’
Kev and Slack Pat were sitting drinking tea. With them were the other two members of their four-man team, Geoff and Steve. All were from A Squadron and were doing their six months on the counter-terrorist team.
Euan turned to Kev and said, ‘Know what this job is about?’
‘We’re off to Gib, mate. PIRA’s planning a bomb.’
The CO got up on the stage and the room fell silent. ‘Two problems,’ he said. ‘Number one, a shortage of time. You leave immediately after this briefing. Number two, shortage of solid intelligence. However, Joint Operations Committee wants the Regiment to deploy. You will get as much intelligence as we know now, and as it comes in during your flight and once on the ground.’
I thought, What the fuck are Euan and I doing here? Surely as Det operators it would be illegal for us to work outside Northern Ireland? I kept my mouth shut; if I started querying the decision, they might send me back and I’d miss out.
I looked around me and saw members of RHQ, the operations officer and the world’s supply of Int Corps. The final member of the team was an ammunitions technical officer, a bomb-disposal expert on attachment to the CT team.
Someone I had never seen before moved towards the stage, a teacup in one hand, biscuits in the other. He stood to the right-hand side of the stage by the lectern. There was an overnight bag by his feet.
‘My name is Simmonds and I run the Northern Ireland desk for the intelligence service from London. The people behind you are a mix of service and military intelligence officers. First, a very brief outline of the events that have brought us all here today.’
Judging by the bag, it looked as if he would be coming with us. The lights were dimmed and a slide projector lit the screen behind him.
‘Last year,’ he said, ‘we learned that a PIRA team had based itself in southern Spain. We intercepted mail going to the homes of known players from Spain and found a postcard from Sean Savage in the Costa del Sol.’
A slide of the player came up on the screen. ‘Our Sean’, Simmonds said with a half-smile, ‘told Mummy and Daddy he was working abroad. It rang a few alarm bells when we read it, because the work young Savage is best at is bomb-making.’
Was he making a funny? No, he didn’t look the sort.
‘Then, in November, two men went through Madrid airport on their way from Malaga to Dublin. They carried Irish passports, and in a routine check the Spanish sent the details to Madrid who, in turn, passed them with photographs to London. It turned out that both passports were false.’
I thought to myself, Stupid timing by them really. Terrorist incidents in Northern Ireland tended to decrease in the summer months, when PIRA took their wives and kids to Torremolinos for a fortnight of sun and sand. The funny thing was that the RUC also took their holidays in the same places, and they’d all bump into each other in the bars. By travelling to Spain out of the tourist season these two characters had drawn attention to themselves; if they’d passed through Malaga airport during the holiday season, they might have got away with it.
It turned out that one of the passport holders was Sean Savage, but it was the identity of the second man that had got everybody flapping.
Simmonds showed his next slide. ‘Daniel Martin McCann. I’m sure you know more about him than I do.’ He gave a no-fucking-way sort of smile.
‘Mad Danny’ had really earned his name. Linked to twenty-six killings, he had been lifted often, but had only been put away for two years.
To the Firm, Simmonds went on, the combination of McCann and Savage on the Costa del Sol could only mean one of two things: either PIRA was going to attack a British target on the Spanish mainland, or there was going to be an attack on Gibraltar. ‘One thing was for sure,’ Simmonds said, ‘they weren’t there to top up their tans.’
At last there was a round of laughter. I could see Simmonds liked that, as if he’d practised his one-liners so the timing was just right. Despite that, I was warming to the man. It wasn’t often that you got people making jokes at a briefing as important as this one.
The slide changed again to a street map of Gibraltar. I was listening to him, but at the same time thinking of my infantry posting there in the 1970s. I’d had a whale of a time.
‘Gibraltar is a soft target,’ Simmonds said. ‘There are several potential locations for a bomb, such as the Governor’s residence or the law courts, but our threat assessment is that the most likely will be the garrison regiment, the Royal Anglians. Every Tuesday morning, the band of the 1st Battalion parade for the changing of the guard ceremony. We think the most likely site for a bomb is the square that the band march into after the parade. A bomb could easily be concealed in a car there.’
He might have added that, from a bomber’s point of view, it would be a near-perfect location. Because of the confined area, the blast would be tamped and therefore more effective.
‘Following this assessment we stopped the ceremony on 11 December. The local media reported that the Governor’s guard-house needed urgent redecoration. In fact, we needed time while we gathered more intelligence to stop it needing rebuilding.’
Not as good as his last one, but there were still a few subdued laughs.
‘The local police were then reinforced by plainclothes officers from the UK, and the surveillance paid off. When the ceremony resumed on 23 February, a woman, ostensibly holidaying on the Costa del Sol, made a trip to the Rock and photographed the parade. She was covertly checked and was found to be travelling on a stolen Irish passport.
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