Gibraltar: Sunday 6 March 1988
We didn’t know which of the three was going to detonate the bomb. All Simmonds had been able to tell us was that it was a big one, and that it would be initiated remotely.
For now, though, there was nothing to do but wait. The security service had triggers out on the checkpoints with mainland Spain. Until the players were sighted, Pat, Kev and I were to stay exactly where we were – sitting outside a café just off Main Street, drinking coffee, looking and listening.
The spring air was crisp and clear under a blindingly blue Mediterranean sky, the morning sun just starting to make it comfortable enough for shirtsleeves. The trees that lined the square were packed with birds so small I couldn’t see them amongst the foliage, but they made enough noise to drown out the sound of traffic going up and down the main drag, just out of sight.
Through my earpiece I heard Euan make a radio check to the operations room. Everything he said on the net was very precise, very clear, very calm. Euan was the tidiest man in the world. If you sat on a cushion he would puff it up again the moment you stood up. Dedication was his middle name.
I heard a loud hiss of air brakes and looked up. A tour-bus had turned into the square and was parking up about twenty metres away. The sign in the windscreen said Young At Heart.
I didn’t pay much attention. I was bored, looking for things to do. The lace on one of my trainers had come undone. I bent to do it up, and got a jab in the ribs from the hammer of the 9mm Browning. The holster was covert, inside my jeans; that way, only the pistol grip would be in view if I pulled open my black nylon bomber jacket. I preferred to have my pistol at the front. A lot of the blokes wore theirs on the side, but I never could get used to it. Once you find a position you like, you don’t change; you might be in the shit one day, go to draw your weapon and it isn’t there – it’s several more inches to the right and you’re dead.
I had an extended twenty-round magazine protruding from the pistol grip. I also had three standard thirteen-round mags on my belt, reckoning that if fifty-nine rounds weren’t enough I shouldn’t be doing this for a living.
The senior citizens began disembarking from the bus. They were typical Brits abroad, the men dressed almost identically; beige flannels, sensible shoes and a V-neck sweater over a shirt and tie. Most of the women were in crimplene slacks with elasticated waistbands and a sewn-in crease down the front. They all had flawless, blow-dried, jet black, white or blue-rinsed hair. They spotted the café and started to move as a herd towards us.
Pat muttered, ‘Fuck me, PIRA must be getting desperate. They’ve sent the Barry Manilow fan club. Friends of yours, Grandad?’
He grinned at Kev, who offered him a finger to swivel on. Whether you like it or not you have to quit the SAS at the age of forty, and Kev had just a year or two of his contract to run.
The young at heart settled down at nearby tables and picked up the menus. It was now big time decisions for them – whether to have cakes or go for a sandwich, because it was half way between elevenses and lunch time and they didn’t know which way to jump.
The waiter came out and they started talking to him one syllable at a time. He looked at them as if they were mad.
On the net I heard, ‘Hello all call signs, this is Alpha. Radio check, over.’ Alpha, who was located in the ops room, was our controller. When we’d flown in 36 hours earlier our team of eight SAS soldiers and support staff had requisitioned rooms in the accommodation block at HMS
Rooke
, the British naval base in the docks, and turned them into living space.
Kev responded quietly into his concealed microphone: ‘Golf.’
Pat: ‘Oscar.’
I heard Euan: ‘November,’
My turn came: ‘Delta.’
The elderly Brits started taking pictures of themselves. Then they were swapping cameras so they could appear in their own photographs.
‘Slack’ Pat got up and said to one of them, ‘Here y’are, love, want me to take one of all of you?’
‘Ooh, you’re from England are you? Isn’t it nice and warm now?’
Slack was early 30s, blond-haired, blue-eyed, good-looking, clever, articulate, funny; he was everything I hated. He was also 6 feet 2, and one of those people who naturally shit muscle. Even his hair was well-toned; I’d seen him climb into his sleeping-bag with it looking groomed and perfect, and wake up with it in the same condition. Pat’s only saving grace, as far as I was concerned, was that when he stood up there was nothing where his arse should have been. We used to call him Slack because he had lots of it.
He had just started doing a David Bailey when we got ‘Standby, standby!’ on the net from one of the female triggers. ‘That’s a possible, a possible – Bravo One towards the town square.’
Alpha came back, ‘Roger that. Delta, acknowledge.’
I got to my feet, gave two clicks on the radio pressel that was wired into my jacket pocket, and started walking. It was pointless all three of us moving at this stage.
Families on their Sunday
paseo
strolled across from my left. Tourists were taking pictures of buildings, looking at maps and scratching their heads; locals were sitting down enjoying the weather, walking their dogs, playing with their grandchildren. There were two men with comfortable-looking beer bellies; old and not giving a fuck, smoking themselves to death. Trousers with big braces, shirt and vest, soaking up the March sun.
I wondered how many of them would survive if the bomb went off just here.
I was just starting to get in my stride when a very excited male trigger shouted: ‘Standby, standby! That’s also a possible Bravo Two and Echo One at the top end of Main Street.’
This got me quite sparked up.
I listened for Euan. His task in this operation was the same as mine, to confirm the ‘possibles’ with a positive ID. I imagined him sauntering along the pavement like me. He was short, with an acne-scarred face and the world’s biggest motorbike, which he could just about keep upright because his toes only brushed the ground. I liked to take the piss out of him about it as often as I could. I knew the guy like a brother – in fact probably better; I hadn’t seen any of my family for over twenty years. Euan and I had been young soldiers together; we’d passed Selection at the same time, and we’d been working together ever since. The fucker was so unflappable I always thought his heart must have only just about ticked over. I’d been with him in Hereford when the police arrived to tell him that his sister had been murdered. He just said, ‘I think I’d better go to London then and sort things out.’ It wasn’t that he didn’t care, he just didn’t get excited about anything. That sort of calm is contagious. It always made me feel secure to have guys like him around me.
I hit Main Street and pinged Bravo One straight away.
I got on the net: ‘Alpha, this is Delta. That’s confirmed – Bravo One, brown pinstripe on faded blue.’
He always wore that brown pinstriped suit jacket; he’d had it for so long that it sagged in the pockets, and there were constant creases in the back from where he’d been wearing it in a car. And the same old faded and threadbare jeans, the crotch halfway down between his bollocks and his knees. He was walking away from me, stocky, slight stoop, short hair, long sideboards, but I recognized the gait. I knew it was Sean Savage.
I followed him to a small square at the bottom end of Main Street, near the Governor’s residence, where the band of the resident British infantry battalion would fall out after the changing of the guard. It was where Simmonds suspected the PIRA team might plant their bomb.
Alpha, the base station controlling the operation for now, repeated the message so that everyone knew which direction Savage was walking in. I knew that Golf and Oscar – Kev and Slack Pat – would soon start moving up behind me.
There were six or seven cars parked up against the wall of an old colonial building, taking advantage of the shade. I saw Bravo One push his hand into his jacket pocket as he headed towards them. For a split second I thought he was going for the initiation device.
Without checking his stride, Savage focused on one vehicle in particular and headed towards it. I moved slightly to the right so I had a clear view of the number plate.
‘Alpha, this is Delta,’ I said. ‘That’s Bravo One now at vehicle Mike Lima 174412.’
I pictured Alpha with the bank of computers in front of him in the control room. He confirmed, ‘Roger that, Mike Alpha 174412. That’s a white Renault Five.’
‘It’s on the right, third car from the entrance,’ I said. ‘That’s nose in.’
By now the keys were in Savage’s hands.
‘Stop, stop, stop. Bravo One at the car, he’s at the car.’
I was committed to passing him quite close now – I couldn’t just change direction. I could see his profile; his chin and top lip were full of zits, and I knew what that meant. Under pressure, his acne always blew up.
Savage was still at the Renault. He turned, now with his back to me, pretending to sort his keys out, but I knew he’d be checking the tell-tales. A sliver of Sellotape across a door, things arranged in a certain way inside the vehicle; whatever, if they were not as he had left them, Savage would lift off.
Kev and Slack Pat would be somewhere near the entrance to the square, ready to ‘back’. If I got overexposed to the target, one of them would take over, or if I got in the shit and had a contact, they would have to finish it – and we’d all worked together long enough for me to know that, as mates as well as colleagues, they’d let nothing stand between them and the task.
The buildings were casting shadows across the square. I couldn’t feel any breeze, just the change in temperature as I moved out of the sunlight.
I was too close to Savage now to transmit. As I walked past the car I could hear the keys going in and the click of the lock.
I headed for a wooden bench on the far side of the square and sat down. There were newspapers in a bin next to me; I picked one out and sat watching him.
Savage made a suspicious movement and I got back on the net: ‘Alpha, this is Delta – that’s his feet outside, he’s fiddling underneath the dashboard, he’s fiddling under the dashboard. Wait . . .’ I had my finger on the pressel, so I was still commanding the net. Could he be making the final connection to the bomb?
As I was doing my ventriloquist act, an old boy wandered towards me, pushing his bike. The fucker was on his way over for a chat. I took my finger off the pressel and waited. I was deeply involved in the local newspaper but I didn’t have a clue what it said. He obviously thought I did. I didn’t want to stick around and discuss the weather, but I wasn’t going to just fuck him off either because he might start jumping up and down and draw Savage’s attention.
The old boy stopped, one hand on his bike, the other flailing around. He asked me a question. I didn’t understand a word he was saying. I pulled a face that said I didn’t know what the world was coming to, shrugged and looked down again at the paper. I’d obviously done the wrong thing. He said some angry shit, and then wheeled his bike away, arm still flailing.
I got back on the radio. I couldn’t exactly see what Savage was doing, but both of his feet were still outside the Renault. He had his arse on the driver’s seat and was leaning underneath the dash. It looked as if he was trying to get something out of the glove compartment – as if he’d forgotten something and gone back to get it. I couldn’t confirm what he was doing but his hands kept going into his pockets.
Everything was closing in. I felt like a boxer – I could hear the crowd, I was listening to my seconds and the referee, I was listening for the bell, but mostly I was focused on the boy I was fighting. Nothing else mattered. Nothing. The only important people in the world were me and Bravo One.
Through my earpiece I could hear Euan working like a man possessed, trying to get on top of the other two terrorists.
Kev and Slack Pat were still backing me; the other two boys in our team were with Euan. They’d all still be satelliting, listening on the net so as to be out of sight of the targets, but always close enough to back us if we got in the shit.
Euan closed in on Bravo Two and Echo One. They were coming in our direction. Everybody knew where they were, everybody would keep out of the way so they had a clear run in.
I recognized them as soon as they turned the corner.
Bravo Two was Daniel Martin McCann. Unlike Savage, who was well educated and an expert bomb-maker, ‘Mad Danny’ was a butcher by trade and a butcher by nature. He’d been expelled from the movement by Gerry Adams in 1985 for threatening to initiate a campaign of murder that would have hampered the new political strategy. It was a bit like being kicked out of the Gestapo for cruelty. But McCann had supporters and soon got himself reinstated. Married with two children, he had twenty-six killings linked to his name. Ulster Loyalists had tried to slot him once, but failed. They should have tried harder.
Echo One was Mairead Farrell. Middle-class and an ex-convent schoolgirl, she was at thirty-one one of the highest-ranking women in the IRA. See her picture and you’d think, aah, an angel. But she’d served ten years for planting a bomb in Belfast and reported back for duty as soon as she’d been released. Things hadn’t gone her way; a few months earlier her lover had accidentally blown himself up. As Simmonds had said at the briefing, that made her one very pissed-off Echo One.