Death on Gibraltar

‘The RUC was involved as well?’

‘Of course, Mr Secretary. It was one of their police stations, after all, that was the target. Also, they knew that this was a plum opportunity to take out some particularly valuable IRA men, including the two ASU team leaders.’

‘So the IRA gunmen were under surveillance long before the attack took place?’

‘Correct, Mr Secretary. We learnt through Intelligence sources at the TCG…’

‘The what?’

‘The Tasking and Co-ordination Group. We learnt through the TCG’s Intelligence that Lynagh and Kelly would be leading two of the ASU teams against the police station and that they would be heavily armed. It’s true that we were aware that their intention was not to kill but to destroy the police station – they knew that it was normally closed and empty by that time – but given their general value to the IRA, as well as their direct involvement in the murder of the UDR man and suspected involvement in the assassination of the Lord Chief Justice and his wife, we couldn’t let that consideration prevent us from grabbing this golden opportunity to get rid of them once and for all. Therefore, long before the attack, we had them shadowed by Army surveillance experts and the Special Branch’s E4A. It was members of the latter who actually witnessed the ASU teams placing the 200lb bomb in the bucket of that mechanical digger and then driving it to the Loughgall RUC station. We believe that what happened next was completely justified on our part.’

The man known to them all only as the ‘Controller’ was one of the most senior officers in the SAS, rarely present at Stirling Lines, though often to be seen commuting between the SAS HQ at the Duke of York’s Barracks, in Chelsea, and this basement office in Whitehall. Up to this point the Secretary had ignored him, but now, with a slight, sly smile, he brought him into the conversation.

‘As I recall,’ the Secretary said, ‘there were certain contentious aspects to the Loughgall operation.’

‘Oh, really?’ the Controller replied with a steady, bland, blue-eyed gaze, looking like an ageing matinée idol in his immaculate pinstripe suit and old school tie. ‘What are those?’

‘For a start, there are a lot of conflicting stories as to what actually happened during that ambush. Why, for instance, would seasoned IRA terrorists open fire, at 7.20 p.m., on an RUC station widely known to keep limited hours and to close completetly at 7 p.m.? Why didn’t they just bomb it and run?’

‘I know what you’re suggesting, Mr Secretary, but you’re wrong. Rumours that the SAS opened fire first are false. At least two of the IRA men – we believe Kelly and his driver, Donnelly – stepped down from the cabin of the Toyota and opened fire on the police station with their assault rifles.’

‘Even believing it to be closed and empty?’

‘Yes. It seems odd, but that’s what happened. The only explanation we can come up with is that Kelly and the other ASU team leader, Jim Lynagh, had an argument as to what tactics to use. That argument probably continued in the van as the terrorists travelled from their hide in the farmyard near the border to Loughgall. Kelly became impatient or lost his temper completely and decided to terminate the argument by getting out and opening fire on the police station, using it as the signal for the other men to start the attack. We can think of no other explanation for that rather pointless action. Either that or it was an impulsive act of bravado, though the general belief is that Kelly was too experienced a man to succumb to that.’

‘And it’s for that very reason that there are those who refuse to believe that the IRA opened fire first. They say that Kelly was simply too experienced to have fired his assault rifle at an empty police station he intended to destroy with a bomb.’

‘My men swear that the IRA opened fire first and that’s in their official report.’

‘But your men were there to set up an ambush.’

‘Well, Mr Secretary, we’d been briefed by British Intelligence that the mission was to be an OP/React. In other words, an observation post able to react.’

‘In other words,’ the Secretary said drily, ‘an ambush. Isn’t that more accurate?’

‘Yes, Mr Secretary, it is. An OP/React is a coded term for an ambush.’

‘And we can take it from the wide variety of weapons and the extraordinary amount of ammunition used by the SAS – about a thousand bullets fired, I believe, in a couple of minutes – that the purpose of the exercise was to annihilate those men.’

‘I believe the proper word is “neutralize”,’ the SMIU leader put in, feeling obliged to defend the operation he had helped to set up.

‘My apologies,’ the Secretary responded testily. ‘To neutralize those men. Does that explain why there were ambush teams outside as well as inside the building and why some of the local townsfolk were shot up – with one actually killed – by the SAS?’

‘Those were unfortunate accidents,’ the Controller replied firmly, ‘but they weren’t caused by an unnecessary display of fire-power on our part. The GPMG assault groups positioned in the copse were placed there because it was believed at the time – erroneously, as it turned out – that the IRA bomb team would approach the police station by way of the football pitch across the road from Armagh. The reason for having other troopers hidden elsewhere, including behind the wall of the church and in the town itself, is that we had also been informed that the IRA bomb would be set off by a timer or a remote-control device. We therefore had to be prepared to shoot at any point where a terrorist, irrespective of where he was located, looked as if he was about to do a button-job.’

The Secretary looked perplexed.

‘Detonating the bomb by a small, radio-control device hidden on the person and usually activated by a simple button,’ the SMIU leader explained. ‘Which means it can be done by a demolitions man some distance from the target. In the event, a simple fuse was used, which meant that those placing the bomb at Loughgall had to stay with it until the last moment and then personally light the fuse.’

‘That explanation doesn’t help us,’ the Secretary said, sounding aggrieved. ‘The widow of that dead man, now left with three fatherless children, is claiming compensation from our government and will doubtless get it, albeit in an out-of-court settlement.’

‘That man wasn’t the first, and he won’t be the last, civilian casualty in the war in Northern Ireland.’ Again, the shadowy SAS Controller was being firm and not about to take the blame for an action he still deemed to have been justified. ‘Sometimes these unfortunate accidents can’t be avoided.’

‘True enough,’ the Secretary admitted with a soulful sigh. ‘So, let’s forget about Loughgall and concentrate on what we believe it will lead to: a bloody act of retaliation by the IRA.’

‘Do you know what they’re planning?’ the Controller asked him.

‘We have reason to believe that the target will be soft,’ the SMIU man replied on behalf of the Secretary, ‘and either in southern Spain or Gibraltar – the first because it has thousands of British tourists as potential victims, the second because the IRA have often publicly stated that it is a potential “soft target” and, even better from their point of view, one strongly identified with British imperialism.’

‘Do you have any specific grounds for such suspicions?’

‘Yes. We’ve just been informed by the terrorist experts from the Servicios de Información in Madrid that yesterday two well-known and experienced IRA members, Sean Savage and Daniel McCann, arrived in Spain under false names. Savage is a shadowy figure of no proven IRA affiliations, though he’s been under RUC surveillance for a long time and is certainly suspected of being one of the IRA’s best men. McCann is widely known as ‘Mad Dan’ because of his reputation as an absolutely ruthless IRA fanatic up to his elbows in blood. It’s our belief that their presence in Spain, particularly as they’re there under false passports, indicates some kind of IRA attack, to take place either in Spain – as I said before, because of the enormous tourist population, presently running at about a quarter of a million – or in their oft-proclaimed soft target of Gibraltar. If it’s the Rock, where there are approximately fifteen hundred service personnel, then almost certainly it will be a military target.’

‘Do we know where they are at the moment?’ the Controller asked.

‘No,’ the SMIU leader replied, sounding slightly embarrassed. ‘We only know that they flew from Gatwick to Málaga. Though travelling under false passports, they were recognized by the photos of criminal and political suspects held by the security people at Gatwick. However, when we were informed of their presence at Gatwick, we decided to let them fly on to Spain in order to find out what they were up to. Once in Spain, they were supposed to be tailed by the Spanish police, who unfortunately soon lost them. Right now, we only know that they hired a car at Málaga airport and headed along the N340 towards Torremolinos or somewhere further in that direction. The Spanish police are therefore combing the area between Torremolinos and Algeciras and, of course, we’re checking everyone going in and out of Gibraltar. I’m sure we’ll find them in good time.’

‘So what happens when they’re found?’ the Controller asked.

‘Nothing,’ the SMIU man told him. ‘At least not just yet. We just want to observe them and ascertain what they’re planning. Should they remain in the Costa del Sol, then naturally we must be concerned for the safety of its thousands of British residents and tourists. On the other hand, if they cross the border into Gibraltar, our suspicions about the Rock as their soft target will be, if not actually confirmed, then certainly heightened.’

‘What if they simply have a holiday and then fly back to Northern Ireland?’ the Controller asked.

‘We’ll let them go, but keep them under surveillance, whether it be in the Province or somewhere else. We’re convinced, however, that they’re not on the Costa del Sol to get a suntan. We think they’re there to gather information about a particular target – and our guess is that they’ll materialize quite soon on Gib.’

‘To cause damage?’

‘Not now, but later,’ the SMIU leader said. ‘These men have entered Spain with no more than suitcases, so unless they meet up with someone, or pick up something en route, we have to assume that this is purely a scouting trip.’

‘Given all the questions you’ve just asked me about the Loughgall affair,’ the Controller said, smiling sardonically at the Secretary, ‘can I take it that you’re considering future SAS involvement?’

‘Yes.’ The Secretary leant across his desk to stare intently at the Controller. ‘If the terrorist outrage is going to be on Spanish territory, the scenario will place enormous constraints upon us – notably in that we’ll be totally dependent on the cooperation of the Spanish police and the Servicios de Información. This problem, unfortunately, will not go away if the IRA plan their outrage for the Rock, since any attack there will almost certainly have to be initiated on the Spanish side of the border, which will again make us dependent on Spanish police and Intelligence. Either way, they won’t be happy with any overt British military or Intelligence presence on the scene; nor indeed with the possibility of an essentially British problem being sorted out, perhaps violently and publicly, on Spanish soil. For this reason, as with the Iranian Embassy siege, we’ll be caught between making this a police matter – in this case the Spanish or Gibraltar police – or a military matter undertaken by ourselves. If it’s the latter, we’ll have to persuade the Spanish authorities that we can contain the matter as an anti-terrorist operation run by a small, specially trained group of men, rather than having any kind of full-scale action by the regular Army. That small group of men would have to be the SAS.’

‘Quite right, too,’ the Controller said.

The Secretary smiled bleakly, not happy to have handed the Controller a garland of flowers. ‘While undoubtedly your SAS have proved their worth over the years, they are not the only ones to have done so: the Royal Marines, for instance, could possibly undertake the same, small-scale operation.’

‘Not so well,’ the Controller insisted. ‘Not with a group as small as the one you’ll need for this particular task.’

‘Perhaps, perhaps not,’ the Secretary said doubtfully. ‘I have to tell you, however, that I’ve chosen the SAS not just because of their counter-terrorism talents but because they’re experienced in working closely with the police – albeit usually the British police – and, more importantly, because the Iranian Embassy job has given them the highest profile of any of the Special Forces in this or indeed any other country.’

‘Not always a good thing,’ the Controller admitted, for in truth he detested the notoriety gained by the SAS through that one much-publicized operation.

‘But good in this case,’ the Secretary told him, ‘as the Spanish authorities also know of your Regiment’s reputation for counter-terrorist activities and will doubtless respond warmly to it.’

‘So at what point do we step in?’ the Controller asked, now glancing at the SMIU leader, who was the one who would make that decision.

‘This has to remain a matter between British Intelligence and the Servicios de Información until such time as the terrorists actually make their move. Once that appears to be the case, the decision will have to be taken as to whether the Spanish police, the Gibraltar police or the SAS will be given responsibility for dealing with it. In the meantime, we want you to discuss the two possible scenarios – the Spanish mainland or Gibraltar – with your Intelligence people at SAS HQ and devise suitable options for both. When the time comes we’ll call you.’

‘Excellent,’ the Controller said. ‘Is that all?’

‘Yes,’ the Secretary told him.

Nodding, the Controller, the most shadowy man in the whole of the SAS hierarchy, picked up his briefcase, straightened his pinstripe suit, then marched out of the office, to be driven the short distance to the SAS HQ at the Duke of York’s Barracks, where he would make his contingency plans.

A man of very strong, sure instincts, he knew already what would happen. The SAS would take over.

2

After removing his blood-smeared white smock and washing the wet blood from his hands in the sink behind the butcher’s shop where he worked, Daniel McCann put on his jacket, checked the money in his wallet, then locked up and stepped into the darkening light of the late afternoon. The mean streets of Republican Belfast had not yet surrendered to night, but they looked dark and grim with their pavements wet with rain, the bricked-up windows and doorways in empty houses, and the usual police checkpoints and security fences.

Though only thirty, ‘Mad Dan’ looked much older, his face prematurely lined and chiselled into hard, unyielding features by his murderous history and ceaseless conflict with the hated British. In the hot, angry summer of 1969, when he was twelve, Catholic homes in his area had been burnt to the ground by Loyalist neighbours before the ‘Brits’ were called in to stop them, inaugurating a new era of bloody warfare between the Catholics, the Protestants and the British Army. As a consequence, Mad Dan had become a dedicated IRA veteran, going all the way with his blood-chilling enthusiasm for extortion, kneecapping and other forms of torture and, of course, assassination – not only of Brits and Irish Prods, but also of his own kind when they stood in his way, betrayed the cause, or otherwise displeased him.

Nevertheless, Mad Dan had led a charmed life. In a long career as an assassin, he had chalked up only one serious conviction – for possessing a detonator – which led to two years in the Maze. By the time he got out, having been even more thoroughly educated by his fellow-Irishmen in the prison, he was all set to become a fanatical IRA activitst with no concept of compromise.

But Mad Dan didn’t just torture, maim and kill for the IRA cause; he did it because he had a lust for violence and a taste for blood. He was a mad dog.

At the very least, the RUC and British Army had Mad Dan tabbed as an enthusiastic exponent of shoot-to-kill and repeatedly hauled him out of his bed in the middle of the night to attend the detention centre at Castlereagh for an identity parade or interrogation. Yet even when they beat the hell out of him, Mad Dan spat in their faces.

He liked to walk. It was the best way to get round the city and the way least likely to attract the attention of the RUC or British Army. Now, turning into Grosvenor Road, he passed a police station and regular Army checkpoint, surrounded by high, sandbagged walls and manned by heavily armed soldiers, all wearing DPM clothing, helmets with chin straps, and standard-issue boots. Apart from the private manning the 7.62mm L4 light machine-gun, the soldiers were carrying M16 rifles and had stun and smoke grenades on their webbing. The sight of them always made Mad Dan’s blood boil.

That part of Belfast looked like London after the Blitz: rows of terraced houses with their doors and windows bricked up and gardens piled high with rubble. The pavements outside the pubs and certain shops were barricaded with large concrete blocks and sandbags. The windows were caged with heavy-duty wire netting as protection against car bombs and petrol bombers.

Farther along, a soldier with an SA80 assault rifle was covering a sapper while the latter carefully checked the contents of a rubbish bin. Mad Dan was one of those who often fired rocket-propelled grenades from Russian-manufactured RPG7 short-range anti-tank weapons, mainly against police stations, army barracks and armoured personnel carriers or Saracen armoured cars. He was also one of those who had, from a safe distance, command-detonated dustbins filled with explosives. It was for these that the sapper was examining all the rubbish bins near the police station and checkpoint. Usually, when explosives were placed in dustbins, it was done during the night, which is why the sappers had to check every morning. Seeing this particular soldier at work gave Mad Dan a great deal of satisfaction.

Farther down the road, well away from the Army checkpoint, he popped in and out of a few shops and betting shops to collect the protection money required to finance his own Provisional IRA unit. He collected the money in cash, which he stuffed carelessly into his pockets. In the last port of call, a bookie’s, he took the protection money from the owner, then placed a few bets and joked about coming back to collect his winnings. The owner, though despising him, was frightened of him and forced a painful smile.

After crossing the road, Mad Dan stopped just short of an RUC station which was guarded by officers wearing flak-jackets and carrying the ubiquitous 5.56mm Ruger Mini-14 assault rifle. There he turned left and circled back through the grimy streets until he was heading up the Falls Road and making friendlier calls to his IRA mates in the pubs of Springfield, Ballymurphy and Turf Lodge, where everyone looked poor and suspicious. Most noticeable were the gangs of teenagers known as ‘dickers’, who stood menacingly at street corners, keeping their eyes out for newcomers or anything else they felt was threatening, particularly British Army patrols.

Invariably, with the gangs there were young people on crutches or with arms in slings, beaming with pride because they’d been knee-capped as punishment for some infraction, real or imagined, and were therefore treated as ‘hard men’ by their mates.

Being a kneecapping specialist, Mad Dan knew most of the dickers and kids by name. He was particularly proud of his kneecapping abilities, but, like his fellow Provisional IRA members, used various methods of punishment, according to the nature of the offence.

It was a harsh truth of Republican Belfast that you could tell the gravity of a man’s offence by how he’d been punished. If he had a wound either in the fleshy part of the thigh or in the ankle, from a small .22 pistol, which doesn’t shatter bone, then he was only guilty of a minor offence. For something more serious he would be shot in the back of the knee with a high-velocity rifle or pistol, which meant the artery was severed and the kneecap blown right off. Mad Dan’s favourite, however, was the ‘six-pack’, the fate of particularly serious offenders. The victim received a bullet in each elbow, knee and ankle, which put him on crutches for a long time.

While the six-pack was reserved for ‘touts’, or informers, and other traitors, the less damaging, certainly less agonizing punishments were administered to car thieves, burglars, sex offenders, or anyone too openly critical of the IRA, even though they may have actually done nothing.

As one of the leading practitioners of such punishments, Mad Dan struck so much terror into his victims that when they received a visit from one of his minions, telling them that they had to report for punishment, they nearly always went of their own accord to the place selected for the kneecapping. Knowing what was going to happen to them, many tried to anaesthetize themselves beforehand by getting drunk or sedating themselves with Valium, but Mad Dan always waited for the effects to wear off before inflicting the punishment. He liked to hear them screaming.

‘Sure, yer squealin’ like a stuck pig,’ he would say after the punishment had been dispensed. ‘Stop shamin’ your mother, bejasus, and act like a man!’

After a couple of pints with some IRA friends in a Republican pub in Andersonstown, Mad Dan caught a taxi to the Falls Road, the Provos’ heartland and one of the deadliest killing grounds in Northern Ireland. The streets of the ‘war zone’, as British soldiers called it, were clogged with armoured Land Rovers and forbidding military fortresses looming against the sky. British Army barricades, topped with barbed wire and protected by machine-gun crews atop Saracen armoured cars, were blocking off the entrance to many streets, with the foot soldiers well armed and looking like Martians in their DPM uniforms, boots, webbing, camouflaged helmets and chin-protectors. The black taxis were packed with passengers too frightened to use public transport or walk. Grey-painted RUC mobiles and Saracens were passing constantly. From both kinds of vehicle, police officers were scanning the upper windows and roofs on either side of the road, looking for possible sniper positions. At the barricades, soldiers were checking everyone entering and, in many instances, taking them aside to roughly search them. As Mad Dan noted with his experienced gaze, there were British Army static observation posts with powerful cameras on the roofs of the higher buildings, recording every movement in these streets. There were also, as he knew, listening devices in the ceilings of suspected IRA buildings, as well as bugs on selected phone lines.

Small wonder that caught between the Brits and the IRA, ever vigilant in their own way, the Catholics in these streets had little privacy and were inclined to be paranoid.

Turning into a side-street off the Falls Road, Mad Dan made his way to a dismal block of flats by a patch of waste ground filled with rubbish, where mangy dogs and scruffy, dirt-smeared children were playing noisily in the gathering darkness. In fact, the block of flats looked like a prison, and all the more so because up on the high roof was a British Army OP, its powerful telescope scanning the many people who loitered along the balconies or on the ground below. One soldier was manning a 7.62mm GPMG; the others were holding M16 rifles with the barrels resting lightly on the sandbagged wall.

Grinning as he looked up at the overt OP, Mad Dan placed the thumb of his right hand on his nose, then flipped his hand left and right in ironic, insulting salute. Then he entered the pub. It was smoky, noisy and convivial inside. Seeing Patrick Tyrone sitting at one of the tables with an almost empty glass of Guinness in front of him, Mad Dan asked with a gesture if he wanted another. When Tyrone nodded, Mad Dan ordered and paid for two pints, then carried them over to Tyrone’s table. Sitting down, he slid one over to Tyrone, had a long drink from his own, then wiped his lips with the back of his hand.