‘Now, what happens if the target goes to ground in a house? Well, it’s up to the controller to bring people in to box the site.’ He moved four white counters on to street junctions around the black blob. ‘There you are. You sit on corners, in cafes or bars, waiting for the target to reappear. If you do your job properly, he can’t get out of the box without one of you seeing him.
‘If you think he’s seen you, the golden rule is: peel off. Tell everyone else and get lost. Things go tits-up when somebody thinks he’s OK and carries on. If you do that, all you manage to do is confirm to the target that surveillance is on him, and he may go to ground for weeks. OK, then, listen to this.’
He switched on an audio-tape — a hissing, crackly recording of a live operation. Every time a new voice came in he moved the corresponding white counter, and after every report he shifted the black target to a new position, all the time throwing in explanations of his own.
‘I’ve got the trigger on Bravo One’s house,’ said the first voice. ‘At the moment he’s complete.’
‘In other words, he’s indoors,’ said the instructor.
Then, a moment later, the voice said, ‘Stand by, stand by. The door’s open. Oh no. Nothing. It’s his wife going to the bins.’ Another pause. Then, ‘Stand by, stand by. That’s Bravo One leaving. He’s foxtrot northwards.’
‘He’s walking up this street here,’ the instructor explained, sliding the black counter upwards.
The voice came in again. ‘He’s wearing black on blue. Heading for the Drover’s Arms on the corner. Now he’s turning right…’
Another voice, a Scottish accent: ‘Yeah, I’ve got him. I can take him down Commercial Street. He’s foxtrot eastwards. Now he’s joined up with Bravo Two. They’ve both gone complete in Charlie One, a bronze Escort. Can’t get the number.’
‘Both targets are in the car,’ said the instructor, placing a yellow disc on the board.
A few seconds passed, and the Scots voice returned: ‘Charlie One mobile eastwards towards Green Three.’
Then came another voice, measured, authoritative, the controller: ‘Steve, are you covering Green Three?’
‘On Green Three, facing north.’
‘Prepare to take over Charlie One…’
As I listened, I felt the hairs on my neck rise up. The process was fascinating in itself, but in my mind’s eye I was part of a team in West Belfast, tracking two players through the seedy Nationalist areas — maybe the Falls Road or Andersontown. The guys in the car were leading us towards Gary Player and a major contact. Any moment I might set eyes on my No. 1 enemy.
The soundtrack fell silent. ‘If you’re driving,’ the instructor said, ‘the one place you don’t want to be is in the car behind the target. Keep two or three cars back. If people are doing something they didn’t ought to be doing, they’re forever looking behind them in their mirrors. If you do find yourself behind, for Christ’s sake peel off at the first opportunity and get someone else to take over.’
‘Stop, stop, stop!’ called a new voice from the tape. ‘Charlie One has pulled up in a lay-by at 489346. Bravo Two is foxtrot towards a telephone kiosk…’
The lads were getting excited by the idea of going across the water, and enthusiasm rose still higher whenever guys came back with stories of live operations. Several concerned the ace sniper who was doing shoots in the border area and in Belfast, taking soldiers out with a .50 rifle — a fearsome weapon which could put a round straight through a man’s chest, flak jacket and all, at five or six hundred metres. The sniper was highly skilled and well organized. From the way he operated, the Det concluded that he had been trained in America. He had a lot of dickers — lookouts — who would check that an area was clear before he ventured forth. Then, if all was well, he’d come out and do a shoot on an army patrol. The only man known to have survived an attack from him was a soldier who’d been on patrol in West Belfast. The incoming round hit his SA 80, which he was holding across his chest. The weapon disintegrated, and parts of it (or of the .50 bullet) flew upwards, ripping chunks out of his face; but at least he wasn’t killed.
The Regiment had set out to get the sniper by staging a come-on, posing as a green army patrol. The idea was to egg him on and keep him on the air so that the radio specialists could DF him and find out where he was based. It was dicey as hell, but it nearly worked. A few of the Regiment guys dressed up as ordinary soldiers and went through the motions of mounting a patrol. As they came into the target area, through their earpieces they could hear a dicker commentating on their progress.
‘OK,’ said this Ulster voice, ‘there’s a patrol coming down the road. They’ll be in your field of view in about thirty seconds.’
The sniper did not answer. There was a pause, then a sudden change of emphasis. ‘Jaysus!’ said the Ulster voice. ‘There’s something wrong here. They’ve got the wrong fecking weapons. They’ve got G3s, not SA 80s. The fellers are older, as well. They don’t look like squaddies at all.’
The sniper realized immediately that the patrol was an SAS one. All he said was, ‘I’m pulling off.’ With that he fell silent, and the attempt at DF-ing him failed.
That wasn’t the end of it, though. The Regiment tried again; this time they went to the lengths of taking a black fellow over, to make the patrol look still more realistic. They carried SA 80s, so that everything seemed pukka. It was quite an elaborate operation, with some guys airborne in a chopper and others deployed on the ground around the periphery, to block the sniper in if they got a line on where he was set up.
Again the patrol was listening out as the dickers commentated on their approach, but this time, to their consternation, they heard the shooter say, ‘Right, I’m ready to fire. I’ll take the second fecker from the front.’ At that they did a bomb-burst, and every man hit the deck in a different direction. Then they upped and ran like stags, all over the place. They didn’t collect back at the emergency rendezvous for more than an hour, and by then the gunman had once again melted into the night.
Of all our training, it was the range practices that I enjoyed most. Partly it was because I had become quite good with a pistol; but beyond that, in putting down live rounds I felt I was getting closer to my objective than on any of the rest of our activities, realistic though they were.
For pistol training we’d head out to the range at 0900. A couple of the guys were detailed to collect ammunition from the stores and lug the heavy metal boxes to the range hut. One man would go round putting up the red flags, to show that live firing was in progress, and the rest of us would sort out the targets.
The range had high stop-banks of soil thrown up in a horseshoe shape, so that you could fire at targets round three sides of it. Old railway sleepers were set into the ground, with holes drilled into them so that targets could easily be set up. We’d start by firing off two or three magazines just to get comfortable. Everyone had used pistols earlier in their training, so they all knew which their master eye was and how to take up a proper, easy stance: semi-crouching, with — for a righthander — the left hand cupped round the outside of the right, supporting it.
If rounds started going low, you knew you were snatching at the trigger — and the instructors had a special drill for correcting that fault. One of them would say, ‘Hey, try doing the old ball and dummy with me.’ Then he’d stand behind the shooter and load his pistol for him, sometimes putting live rounds in the magazine, sometimes leaving it empty, so that the man pulling the trigger didn’t know if it was going to go off or not. That way, if he was flinching and snatching, the instructor could see the end of the barrel dip, and try to rectify the fault.