19. The Ferryhill Road
CHAPTER 19
THE FERRYHILL ROAD
The way back north again. DS Clare in the lead Land Rover with his team, me in Land Rover 2 with mine.
It was raining and there had been some sort of road accident outside Dromad, but it wasn’t a problem since the diversion signs were pointing to the Ferryhill Road, which would take us only fifteen minutes out of our way.
In the daytime, this was a lovely part of County Louth to get diverted through. Dozens of little lanes that led down to the River Newry and Carlingford Lough. This was the very place where the great Cuchulainn, Champion of Ulster, tied himself to the boulder and fought off the armies of Meath—if you believed in that sort of thing.
And why wouldn’t you?
“Duffy, do you happen to know this part of the world at all?” Clare’s voice came on over the radio.
I picked up the mic. “Are you lost?” I asked.
“No. I was just wondering where the border is on this road,” he replied irritably.
I grinned at McCrabban. “Only Special Branch could get us lost five hundred meters from the border.”
Crabbie nodded and started filling his pipe.
“Do you want me to take lead and see if I can find the border? Or should we go back to the main road?” I said into the radio.
“No! That’s not necessary,” Clare said. “DCI Preston has just produced a very good one-inch-to-one-mile map. We’ll be fine. He knows this part of the country. We have everything in hand now.”
“They have everything in hand,” I said to McCrabban. “That means we could be here all night.”
“Could be,” he agreed. “I’m no expert, Sean, but I’ve bought cows down here a few times. This diversion is very strange.”
“Is it?”
“Yes. This is a very narrow road to be on. If we ignore the official diversion and go back to Dromad, there are a couple of different roads that could get us?—”
Weightlessness.
Metal.
Light.
Dirt.
My body crunched.
My body folded up.
Blood in my mouth.
Blood in my eyes.
Red out.
Black out.
Silence.
One beat.
Two.
Three.
Screaming.
Alarms.
Blood in my throat. Liquid on my right thigh that might be piss or blood.
Fingers on my face. Someone’s hand undoing my harness. Someone dragging me. Two hands on the neck of my flak jacket. A voice calling to me from the bottom of a well. Rain on my face. My legs being dragged across the windscreen. The voice getting more insistent and distinct.
Rain on my forehead like baptismal waters.
“Sean, are you okay?”
“What?”
“Are you okay?”
I was outside the Land Rover’s cab. Crabbie’s nose was a few inches from my face. It was pouring. We were in a deep sheugh by the side of the road.
I could hear a noise like gunfire.
I looked down at my legs. They hurt like hell, but they seemed to be in one piece.
Water was running down the back of my shirt, and in the darkness it was impossible to tell if the damp under my arms was water or blood.
“Are you okay?” Crabbie asked again.
“I think so. Aye, I’m okay. What’s happened?”
“Ambush.”
“Ambush?”
“Ambush. RPG and now machine guns.”
“From where?”
“Other side of the road. The hill there.”
I rubbed my face and looked up the road. The first Land Rover was on its side. Ours was on its roof. They must have fired both RPGs simultaneously. Now they were shooting at us with heavy machine guns and AK-47s. Perhaps a dozen fire sources. Two IRA cells, maybe three. It was a brilliant operation. O’Roarke delays us all day at the police station; then one team trails us from Dundalk, a second team sets up the phony road diversion signs, and finally three kill teams wait for us to arrive on the Ferryhill Road.
A .50-caliber machine gun was chewing up the Land Rover’s cab and engine, digging deeper into the armor with every pass. Men were yelling from inside. Crabbie had his pistol drawn, but what he was supposed to do with that against a heavy-duty machine gun, I had no idea. He might as well charge them with a samurai sword for all the good it was going to do.
It wasn’t the first time Crabbie and I had been in a Land Rover that had come under attack—shit, we were probably in double figures now—but this appeared to be the last time such a thing was going to happen.
We were well fucked.
“You see Clare or Preston or any of those guys?” I asked.
“No.”
“Did they get out of the cab?”
“I can’t tell. They’re not returning fire, anyway.”
We had our bloody own problems. There were three peelers trapped in my Land Rover’s main cabin, and eventually the .50-caliber would punch through the armor plate and kill them all. Lawson and that dick with the soul patch and the other trainee with the intelligent eyes—what was her name?
Black sky.
No stars.
“Sean, are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Why do you keep asking?”
“You keep passing out. Are you bleeding?”
“I don’t think so.”
I tilted my head up into the rain and it cooled my face.
Sitrep.
We were safe in the sheugh for now, but sooner or later the AK-47 men would move in with hand grenades and machine gun fire and finish us off too.
Because we were still on the Irish Republic side of the border, we couldn’t expect help from the British army. Even if they found out about our ambush, army helicopters would not cross the border without permission from the prime minister, and he would have to inform the Irish prime minister first. All that would take hours.
“Did you call in a mayday?” I asked Crabbie.
“No time. All I did was drag you out.”
I poked my head above the sheugh and looked over toward the vehicle. Bullets were thumping through the windscreen and ricocheting around in there. I could see the radio in pieces on the Land Rover’s upside-down roof.
I ducked back down into the sheugh. “Radio’s shot to hell anyway... Are you okay?”
“A few scratches. You?”
“I don’t know. Am I bleeding?”
“That’s why I asked you. Stay still.”
Crabbie did a lightning triage. “You seem to be okay.”
“Lawson and those others in the cab are going to die unless we can get them out of there,” I said.
Crabbie handed me his gun. “You’re right. You cover me as best you can. I’ll try to get the back doors open.”
“They’ll kill you.”
“I’ll be all right. I’ll keep low.”
“Tell you what, you cover me. I’ll try and get the bloody doors open,” I said, trying to hand him the revolver back.
“It was my idea.”
“I’m your superior officer, you bloody fool!”
“We’re both part-time reservists!” Crabbie countered. “And you’re the better shot. Cover me in three, two, one.”
Crabbie was not exactly Mr. Adrenaline or Mr. Exuberant, so when he did assume an air of command, it was unexpected and you had to pay attention to it.
He crawled out of the sheugh, and I shot at various muzzle flashes with his revolver and my Glock.
When he got to the Land Rover’s back doors, he tugged on them as the occupants inside kicked on the warped armor plate.
“Hurry up!” I yelled at him.
The doors suddenly gave way, and all three terrified young coppers came piling out.
“Over here!” I screamed. “On your bellies!”
Lawson, DC William Mitchell, and DC Judy McGuire scrambled over to the sheugh, followed by Crabbie. The darkness protected them, and they made it next to me without getting riddled with bullets.
The terrorists’ plan would have been even more effective and deadlier if one of them had thought to bring a couple of starlight flares. Or if they’d had just one guy with a machine gun on the embankment behind us... But you can’t think of everything, and Brendan’s plan was probably going to be good enough.
I patted Crabbie on the back. “Good, work, mate.”
He grunted a response and caught his breath.
“Lawson, Mitchell, McGuire, anyone hurt?”
“I’m okay,” Lawson said. The others were too frightened to speak.
“Triage them, Crabbie. Let me know if anyone’s seriously hurt.”
“Will do.”
“The other Land Rover?” Lawson asked.
“Up the road there, on its side. Don’t know if anyone got out of it or not.”
“How many terrorists?” Lawson asked, all business now.
“I don’t know. Twelve?”
“Did we cross the border?”
“No, we’re still in the Irish Republic.”
Lawson’s pale face looked grim in the moonlight. “So that’s it, then?”
“No, it’s not,” Crabbie said. “We’ll get out of this.”
“Crabbie’s always right. We will get out of this, okay?” I said.
“Okay,” Lawson said, and the other two were still too frightened to speak.
The firing stopped as the IRA men reloaded and regrouped.
“Triage complete. Nobody’s seriously hurt, Sean,” Crabbie said.
“What are we going to do, sir?” Lawson asked. “Make a run for it?”
“If we leave this sheugh and try to make a run for it, that big machine gun will chew us to pieces,” Crabbie said.
“I grabbed the MP5s from the cab,” Lawson said.
“You did?”
“Yeah.”
He reached down behind him and handed me one of the Heckler and Koch submachine guns.
“You grabbed both of them?” I asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Cool head. Well done, Lawson.”
“How many mags?”
“Couldn’t get the spare ammo. One each.”
“Everyone else have their sidearms?”
“I lost mine somewhere,” Mitchell said.
“Everybody else?”
“I’ve got my gun,” McGuire said.
“I’ve only two rounds left in mine,” Crabbie said.
“Here, you take the other MP5,” I said, giving Crabbie the submachine gun.
I handed my Glock to Mitchell.
Time for a pep talk so they didn’t go to pieces completely. “Everybody has a weapon now,” I said. “And we’re safe down here in the ditch. If they charge us, they’re going to walk into a barrage of hell. Aim for the torso. They’ll be coming across open ground. I think we can hold out here for a good wee while. We’ll be okay.”
There were a few murmurs of agreement.
You couldn’t let them give in to shock or panic. If they panicked and started running, the terrorists could pick them off one by one. Crabbie was steady, Lawson was steady, but the kids... If I was shitting it (and I was), they must be far worse.
I looked at my watch: 12:15. About two minutes now without a shot being fired. What were they doing?
“Are they reloading?” Lawson asked.
“No, they’re pros. That would have taken them fifteen seconds at most.”
“So what are they doing?” Crabbie asked.
“I don’t know. Changing position? Maybe trying to flank us? Lawson, you go to the edge of the sheugh down there, and if you see anything at all, lemme know.”
“If I have a kill shot?”
“Take it.”
“I will,” Lawson said.
Lawson and I had been in a situation like this in Islandmagee once a lifetime ago, but that time we had three opponents and we actually outnumbered them. This time, they outnumbered us by at least two or three to one.
What the hell was happening with the other Land Rover? Were they dead? Had they gotten out and run for help?
I looked at my watch again: 12:16 and still no firing.
Could the hit teams have withdrawn? Were they trying to flank us?
I poked my head up over the sheugh and looked up and down the road. No movement, no sounds. But there at the first Land Rover, a shadow.
I got back into the trench.
“I thought I saw someone at the first Land Rover,” I said to Crabbie. “I think at least one of that lot got out.”
“Maybe their radio will be working?” he suggested.
“Maybe.” I turned to the others. “Help’s probably on the way. Just keep it together for a few minutes longer.”
“Should we make contact with them?” Crabbie asked.
“I don’t want to shout out and let the terrorists zero in on our voices. I think it’s better to keeping fucking schtum.”
Crabbie nodded. “I could crawl up the sheugh and make contact that way.”
“What’s with you and your heroics tonight? You have a wife and three weans. We’ll just sit tight. Let the bad guys make the moves.”
And that was when the first mortar round landed fifty feet in front of us and exploded in a flash of light and white-hot shrapnel.
“What the fucking hell was that?” Lawson screamed.
“A mortar,” I said. “Everyone, keep your head down.”
Mortars.
They’d gotten their hands on mortars, and they could just lob them at us all night until they finally found the right range and killed us all in the ditch.
We were fucked now with a capital “F” and a big mortar-shaped fucking dildo.
So this was how it was going to end. If it weren’t for Emma and Beth, I’d almost be bloody glad. Dramatic.
We ducked as another mortar round whistled overhead, but this one was even farther off target, missing us long by a hundred feet.
They’d shot short and they’d shot long, and their range would get better.
“Wait here, Crabbie. I’ll crawl along the sheugh to Clare’s Land Rover and see if their radio is working.”
“You stay! I’ll go,” Crabbie said.
I put my hand on his shoulder and our eyes met. I gave his shoulder a squeeze and he nodded.
“If I don’t make it back, try to save the youngsters, eh?” I whispered.
“I will. Good luck, Sean.”
I crawled along the sheugh, which turned out to be a runoff ditch from the nearby slurry field. I didn’t mind the shit and the bog water and the slurry. At least it wasn’t a mortar in the bloody back.
When I got to the first Land Rover, I saw DCI Preston bent over the radio set, seemingly in concentration, but when I reached him there was an enormous frothing pool of blood on the ground all around him.
“Christ!”
A piece of shrapnel had somehow missed the body armor on his chest and the metal plate over his heart, hit his armpit, and traveled down into his chest cavity.
“Talk to me,” I said, but his eyes were blue and fixed and dead.
I shook him anyway.
I laid him down on the ground and ripped off his chest armor. I pulled open his shirt, but his insides had been bored out by the mortar fragment. The only thing you could say was that presumably, death would have been reasonably fast, either from the impact or from massive hemorrhaging.
I grabbed the radio, but that amazing mortar round that had killed him had also sent a shrapnel fragment into the battery pack, smashing it completely.
I banged the Land Rover’s side while random tracer bullets whizzed up all around. “Is there anyone alive in here?” I yelled.
“We’re alive!” the two Special Branch detectives said quickly.
“Open the door, crawl out, and follow me,” I said.
“How do we know who you are?”
“I’m Duffy. You met me yesterday!”
“You could be anybody. This could be a trick.”
“I’m Sean Duffy, Carrick RUC.”
“I think that is his voice,” one of them said to the other. The female detective inspector.
“He’s a Catholic; he could be in cahoots with them. He could have set this whole thing up!” the other said.
Another mortar landed with an almighty flash in the middle of the road between the two Land Rovers. I ducked into the sheugh as glowing fragments embedded themselves into the turf behind me and into the Land Rover’s soft underbelly.
“I don’t know what you two are doing, but I’m going back to my lads. Preston is dead and Clare is gone. Come or stay; it’s up to you!” I screamed into the Rover.
The rear door opened and a gun barrel pointed at me.
“Good, quickly now, grab everything you can in there. Guns, ammo, tear gas—grab it all and follow me. There’s a big drainage ditch immediately to your left. The terrorists have mostly stopped shooting. They’re firing mortars now. As soon as you come out the door, down onto your belly and into the ditch.”
I took a hit of Ventolin while they gathered their gear and crawled to the ditch. They were young, scared, and badly bruised, but in one piece.
“Now back along the sheugh to the others. You’ll be okay. What are your names again?”
“Michael O’Leary,” the lad said.
“Siobhan McGuinness,” the lass said.
“Michael, Siobhan, don’t worry, you’ll be telling your grandchildren about this one day. Now, come on, stay low and follow me.”
Back through the filth of the sheugh on our bellies.
The rain grew harder and turned to hail. It wasn’t the hail that was worrying me.
“Sean? Is that you?” Crabbie said.
“It’s me.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Only two survivors?” Crabbie asked.
“Preston’s dead. Clare wasn’t with him. He presumably has gone to get help.”
“The radio?”
“Shot to pieces.”
“No hope for Preston?”
“None. Died immediately. Shrapnel caught him under the arm, tore right through him.”
Just then the mortars started up again.
Closer now.
Better targeted. Two shells fell on the road just ten meters in front of us, and another landed directly on the Land Rover behind us. It blew up with a massive explosion.
We covered our heads as bits of tire and glass and metal rained down like falling stars from the black, unforgiving sky.
“Oh, shit! We’re fucked, aren’t we?” Michael O’Leary said, his eyes wild behind his cracked glasses. “We’re dead, aren’t we, sir?” he said, tugging my sleeve. Now that Clare was gone and Preston was dead, I was senior officer and thus in command of the seven of us who were still alive. I took a moment to assess the situation with professional detachment. We were maybe one or two kilometers inside the Irish Republic, heavily outnumbered, completely surrounded. The radio was busted, no one knew we were here, and help wouldn’t be permitted to cross the border even if it was apprised of the bloody situation. “Yeah, son, I’m sorry,” I wanted to say, but I knew better than that.
“We’ll be all right. I think Superintendent Clare has gone to get help,” I replied instead.
And if he hasn’t, I’ll fucking see that bastard court-martialed and fucking shot, I thought to myself.