A Short extract of my new book ‘A Collusion of Shadows’, that will be a blast from the past for anybody who served in South Armagh during the 70s, 80s and 90s. This piece of the narrative is based in the mid 80’s, but the place didnt change much over time. It’s a blast from the past for lads who have served in Ulster.
To set the scene: The main protagonist, Royal Marine Sgt Tommy Hehshaw from the Force Research unit is getting ready to exit the front gate at XMG.
Steve was looking out across the square from Barouki sangar, waiting to trigger a source for his fellow handler. He pulled open the steel shutter over the front observation aperture, snapped open his Scout Reg spotting scope, extended it and scanned the expanse of the square. It was a grim-looking place that seemed battered and devoid of colour, at least from his perspective. He had known the young paratrooper who had died because of a booby-trapped bike on the same spot. They had both survived P Company together, and the mutilated body of Private Barouki of 3 Para had posthumously gifted the fifty-foot-high observation tower his name. Steve’s gaze focussed briefly on the hideous-looking Republican memorial that was on the Newry Street side of the square. It was supposed to represent a brave prisoner rising like a phoenix and looking upward to heaven, but to the paratrooper it looked like a tall skinny guy skateboarding on a crow. Several real, jet-black and menacing-looking ravens perched on the statue. It was their stage, and they were the stars of the show. They occupied it with an air of arrogance, as if they were careless of being watched. Their demonic eyes sparkled in the dim light and gleamed in the shadows of the surrounding monument. They were like actors in an art house movie, filmed in the shades of coal black and misty grey, with the only sound- track the occasional flapping of their wings.
They were always there,
Like inky black harbingers of doom. Their bright beady eyes
Staring at the Brits
Who were staring at them.
Steve had once researched the collective noun for these birds. The term he discovered suited them. They flocked together, chattering with occasional squawks and caws, and were called various names, including a ‘conspiracy of ravens’ and also the very apt ‘treachery of ravens’. However, in the small village of Crossmaglen, ‘an unkindness of ravens’ seemed the most appropriate term. Two other men from the resident unit were in the fortified bunker that controlled the square. They were manning the two GPMGs or ‘Gimpys’ that protected both themselves and the Army base behind them. Steve had a thought:
Sometimes special duties aren’t that special!
To recruit people, a source handler must meet them, and the safest way to meet people in south Armagh was by hiding in plain sight and patrolling with the lads. Steve again scanned across the square and spotted the asset. He recognised him immediately. The source had parked his car outside the Allied Irish Bank, which was near the phone box on the Castleblaney Road part of the square. He was a well-built lad with a typical Gaelic football type physique. He was driving his usual Nissan Bluebird, in bright yellow with matching cow shit, and was wearing a black reefer jacket and blue jeans. Exiting the car, he popped the boot and grabbed a small tool bag. He held it in his left hand and then switched it to his right, which was his no- comms signal to his handler that meant “I’m clear and ready to meet.”. Steve pressed the Send button of his covert comms five times and received three bursts of static from Tommy in return. That meant:
Steve: “Deploy now!” Tommy: “Deploying.”
The guard commander always opened the side gate on the Cullaville Road personally when FRU personnel went out. Any movement in and out had to be coordinated with the sangar sentries watching for enemy movement over their gun sights on what passed for a normal day in the village. The sangars were high concrete pillboxes at all four corners of the fortified base that the Army had dubbed XMG.
Tommy gave the Scots Guards corporal the ‘thumbs up’. He checked the safety catch on his British Army standard SLR. It was far from being his weapon of choice, but his uniform, including the unit patch had to look exactly like any of the others in the four-man groups of soldiers. Four men were what the British Army in Ulster called a brick. Three bricks made up a multiple, and you needed a minimum of three bricks operating in coordination, and sometimes with a Saracen armoured car mounted with a .50 cal heavy machine gun, to patrol the village.
Tommy had already completed three ‘green’ tours of South Armagh, one with 45 Commando Royal Marines in ‘74, and another in 1976 with 40 Commando. He had most recently finished a tour with F Company of 41 Commando in 1979 before volunteering for the FRU. Those tours had been a mixture of fun, frustration, and danger, with some instances of death, chaos and near misses. After three tours he knew the village, its people, and almost all the details of its violent and bloody history. As a multiple commander in 41, he had given visiting dignitaries his version of a Crossmaglen battlefield tour. He was familiar with every attack location and knew where soldiers and policemen had been maimed or killed and he also knew that the ‘Ra’ repeated successful attacks, so it was valuable information for newcomers. Tommy would show nervous visi- tors the locations where previous sniping attacks had been mounted, or where a blast incendiary device had incinerated a young soldier on the square, or where the latest mortar bomb had landed. For the British soldier, Crossmaglen was a hateful place. You felt the glare of hostility as soon as you left the confines of the base. The locals jeered when a soldier or policeman died. The people of Crossmaglen also knew that the hate flowed both ways.
Getting ready to exit the gate in XMG, no matter how often you had done it, still gave you that fluttery feeling in the pit of your stomach. The older Royal Marine looked around at the other members of the patrol. They were all young Scots Guardsmen with an average age of maybe nineteen. They were smiling. He smiled back. While the average British teenager at home was submerging himself in angst and boredom and listening to The Smiths and the dirge ‘Heaven knows I’m miser- able now’, the youngsters of this patrol were dicing with death and were therefore living the fucking dream! The constant threat of immediate violent death added an undeniable inten- sity to life, and it made each day feel more precious and worth living.
Tommy had already briefed the other members of the patrol, although there were some elements he could not share with them. The patrol mounted to conduct what intelligence tradecraft refers to as a Lightning Contact. Tommy tapped the guard commander on his shoulder, and there was a clank as the steel door opened and the patrol ‘bomb burst’ out onto the Cullaville Road. One man broke right and the other left. A short sprint and they shook out into their four-man groups.
Tommy took the lead, with the LMG (light machine gun) gunner to his rear. The Guards were a good unit, and the lads had been in ‘Cross’ for a while. A good foot patrol is mutually supportive and hard to take on. The four soldiers in a brick move as a synchronised and mutually supportive unit. The two soldiers at the back take turns covering the rear, and all are constantly scanning through their gun sights and optics.
Tommy listened to his covert comms; a tiny bean-sized plastic receiver concealed in his ear. He was on permanent ‘receive’ as Steve locked him on to the agent from his vantage point in the sangar. The source had asked for an emergency meeting, which meant that he had something important to report.
Game on!
Silverbridge, South Armagh
Anybody three fields away could have heard the crackling sound of arc welding and the screeching of metal, but in Silver- bridge, South Armagh, when the IRA was working, nobody was listening. The barn had served as an improvised workshop for the various farms in the area before, so the sound of fabrication was not that unusual. In the large red corrugated structure, typically used for agricultural equipment, the boys were assembling a mortar base plate and tubes. The Mark 10 mortar was the latest variant developed by PIRA’s excellent improvised engineering department. It was a large-calibre device, with each tube capable of propelling 45 kilos of homemade explosive (HME) into a British Army base or police station. The warheads of the mortar bombs were normally a mixture of ammonium nitrate and nitrobenzene, but PIRA had just distributed their first delivery of Semtex from Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi. This increased the weapon’s operational effectiveness.
The three parts of the mortar system came together with the clanging of metal and the flash and crackling of spot welds. A Mark 10 comprised the firing platform, the tubes, the propulsion units and the all-important timer. It was a pre-manufactured standard bit of IRA kit called a TPU, or timer- power unit, a prepacked, small wooden box with batteries, wires, and the same type of Memo Park timer used in the Brighton bomb. The Memo-Park was meant to let a motorist know when his parking metre had expired.
The IRA now used it for the expiration of their fellow human beings. Working as a team, the men were perfectly in sync. The firing platform was a steel framework with four large tubes welded at a forty-five-degree angle to the base. It came together quickly, like a deadly modern art installation.
Crude.
Brutal.
Effective.
Fergal, the explosives man, worked separately. He had armed mortars many times before. The propellant charges were an ingenious piece of improvisation. He soaked circles of thin foam rubber, fashioned from ordinary household cleaning cloth, in a mixture of commercially available chemicals that the British Army called Co-op mix. They allowed the circles of the absorbent cloth to dry slowly in natural heat. Each layer of explosive foam chucked the bomb an extra twenty metres. He placed five at the bottom of each tube. They would fire elec- tronically by a current passed through a flashbulb. He had prepared the mortar bombs. The Semtex would detonate on impact, using an initiator from a shotgun cartridge.
Carefully parked in the workshop’s corner was the plat- form on which the mortar would arrive on target. It was a stolen flatbed lorry, the same colour and year as the lorry used by a builder’s yard which was a stone’s throw from the police barracks in Newry. They had copied the original number plates for the lorry. A tarpaulin then covered the mortar-mounted flatbed with the base plate and tubes. They would park it where the builder usually parked his vehicle. It would be visible but hidden in plain sight.
7
Bessbrook Mill
Tommy pulled the MP5K machine pistol from under his donkey jacket. It was suspended on a loop of bungee cord so that it hung in the right place if he needed to use it. He was standing at the unloading bay outside the FRU’s South Det office at Bessbrook Mill in South Armagh. He removed the long thirty-round mag and slipped it into his right pocket, and then held the machine pistol up to the unloading bay and pulled back the cocking handle until the 9 mm round in the breech popped into his hand. He repeated the process with his other personal weapon, a Browning 9 mm pistol, before he slipped it back, unloaded, into the quick-draw holster on his right hip.
He looked up to what had been his home away from home for the last two years. It was a disused four-storey granite linen mill that the British Army had used as its base since the 1970s, it was a grim-looking building that had started life as an attempt by a Victorian Quaker gentleman hoping to make some money while making a better life for the villagers. But it had ended up, in the eyes of Irish Republicans, as the symbol of crown rule in South Armagh.
The huge linen mill and the small village that had housed its workers had been built with no pub, no pawnshop, and no police. It was now used to house whatever Army battalion was currently on a six-month tour. Bessbrook Mill boasted rudi- mentary accommodation for a thousand men and contained the busiest heliport in Europe.
South Det was on the bottom floor of the mill and reached through the main back door. Tommy took out the earpiece of his covert comms as he pressed the code into a Simplex lock on the thick steel door that sealed the main office. George and Al were leaving for a job just as he was arriving. George was wearing his hair long, South Armagh style, and looked like a tenth-century Viking.
“Well done, mate.” George was his normal cheery self. He was a big Geordie lad with dark curly hair and a beard, wearing his usual beaming grin and carrying a Heckler & Koch 53 assault rifle that looked small compared to his bulk. He was cradling it as if it were a favourite axe picked up for his latest raid. The HK53 was the standard ‘long’ (assault rifle) because it had a retractable butt and could fit easily into a car bag. George carried the other part of the equation in his left hand, two H&K 30-round magazines held together with a connection clip. The first five rounds of each magazine were armour-piercing.
“Danny Mac is down to see you.”
“Thanks for the heads up.”
“I think you are in for a big pat on the back Tom.” George
had already read the priority intelligence flash report from Crossmaglen.
Tommy was smiling as he pushed open another door that led directly into the Binner. The Binner was the inner sanctum
A Collusion of Shadows 61
of South Det FRU. It was where agent handlers joked and drank tea, planned their operations, debriefed, and then painstakingly wrote up their MISRs (Military Intelligence Source Reports). All knowing that unless they met the high standard of the Det boss, they would be consigned for shred- ding and burning to the shiny steel receptacle in the middle of the office. Some thought this was why the Binner was called the Binner.
By Bessbrook standards, the office was very smart. The big MI5 budget ensured that it was all gleaming wood and magnolia walls, with an individual desk assigned to each handler. The office also had the latest in computer technology, including two Apple Macintosh 128K computers with a new word processing system that the collators were raving about called MacWrite.
The office was also where highly skilled collators researched for the next recruitment. They had significant tech- nical advantages. The computer age had arrived. Now, they downloaded onto computer systems what would formerly have been manually recorded in hundreds of box files or index cards. The first program was called Op Vengeful. It could instantly trace any car number and tell you who owned the vehicle and when it had last been stopped by an Army or police patrol or VCP (Vehicle Check Point). The other computer program was called Crucible and that could instantly trace any identified IRA man and give you everything that was known about him.
The white plastic booking in and out board was on the inside of the door along with a marker pen on a long piece of string. Tommy felt the eyes of the room on his back as he booked himself back in. He spotted Danny Mac sitting behind the glass partition in the Det commander’s office as he turned and waved a greeting. Danny smiled back and waved him in. Tommy was trying to work out what he had fucked up.
“Hi Boss,” Tommy said cheerily. Danny Mac was the FRU’s operations officer. “Congratulations Tommy.” This was the highest praise that Danny could give.
“Sit down,” Danny gestured towards a chair. Tommy thought he knew what was coming. His MISR had been a flash report and gave only the most important salient points “Please don’t take this as undue criticism.” Tommy immediately knew that the famous Danny Mac debrief was coming his way.
“You and Steve have developed and recruited a source within South Armagh PIRA, and this is the first pre-emptive report that we’ve had for months. It looks like you’ve hit the mother lode here, Tommy. But I need to give you some feed- back as part of the learning process.” The Royal Marine knew that he was due for some constructive criticism.
“The flash report should be followed up by a fully completed MISR (Military Intelligence Source Report) within twelve hours. You are one hour late! You say that the device is being constructed in Silverbridge, but you did not say what type of building is being used.” Then Tommy made a cardinal error and used the dreaded A word.
“Well, I assumed it was a barn or outbuilding.” Danny grimaced. One of the most frequent sayings on the FRU selection course was “Assumption is the mother of all fuck ups!” Tommy’s face flushed. Danny smiled. “I bet you wish you hadn’t said that.” He picked up the flash message.
“This is a breakthrough and a great bit of work. But it’s what you haven’t covered that’s more important. For instance, there’s a lot missing from the flash report. A flash message should still cover all the known interrogatives: for example, what type of mortar is it and when do they intend to use it. You also did not ask the most important of all the questions. Who else knows? Without an idea of the circle of knowledge, any search to find this device could compromise the source.”
Danny was a plain-speaking, old-school intelligence officer who had worked against the Soviet bloc in Germany before the troubles kicked off in Ulster. He had come up through the ranks and done every intelligence job on his way through them. Tommy suddenly realised that he could have asked those questions.
“Can you arrange another meet?” Danny asked.
Tommy thought for a second. “It’s a difficult one boss. This is a new friend and very cagey. We usually let him contact us, but we’ve a revcon (contact procedure) in place.”
“Right,” Danny said. “Revcon him as soon as you and Steve think it’s safe. Meanwhile, the only thing we can do is put out a general threat warning for mortar attacks.”
The handler realised that a threat warning about a mortar attack in South Armagh without a time and target was the same as saying that it might rain tomorrow, as both things happened regularly.
“I have something else important to run past you.”
It was a long drive down from where the unit’s ‘head shed’ was based in Thiepval Barracks in the sleepy County Antrim town of Lisburn. Tommy wondered why he hadn’t had a red line call and a summons to go to HQ. He now knew there might
be another reason for the visit.
“I’m on receive Boss,” Tommy said. Handlers sometimes
talked in terms taken from radio procedure. “OK,” Danny opened a buff-coloured folder in front of him on the desk.
“Cover story first. If anybody asks, I’m here to clear up some problems with your DV (Developed Vetting process) and, in a way, that’s true. Someone is going to make you a job offer. And just for the record, I would prefer you stayed with the unit. But, if you decide it’s not for you, no probs, you just forget about it and the DV thing is what you tell the others in the office.
“That’s a roger,” Tommy nodded.
“OK,” Danny opened the folder, “First, a blast from the past. Just to confirm, do you know a man called Billy Wheeler?”
“Yeah.” The thought of Billy Whizz made Tommy smile.
“He was one of the lads I grew up with. I also boxed him once. We both trained at Thomas Becket boxing club on the Old Kent Road. He was a tough lad. He nearly joined the Corps, but he got himself into some bother.”
“Armed robbery,” Danny clarified.
“Yes, I think so, but luckily I wasn’t with him that day.” Tommy chuckled.
“We were all a bit naughty then. We were pals, and boxed at the same club and went to the football most Saturdays. So, what’s the deal Boss?”
“I will come to the point, Tommy. We have received a request from Box. They need someone who knows the South Armagh-based players and who is willing to work in London”.
“In what capacity?”
Danny turned a page in the folder. “I will summarise from the concept paper, but you can look through this if you take the job. You would be part of a dedicated four-person closed- source unit operationally controlled by MI5. The sole purpose of the cell is to infiltrate and disrupt the Provisional IRA’s England Department. You would be under the control of Gower Street for the duration of the task.”
Tommy was lost in thought for a moment. “I’m not sure, boss.”
‘Well, do you want to talk to the MI5 officer before you decide?” Danny said.
“Yeah, I would want to ask some questions.”
“OK, follow me.” Tommy followed Danny through the Binner, and towards the DBC or debriefing centre, where sources were taken for emergency meets. It was a soundproofed room with plumbed-in recording equipment. It had a thick teak door that Danny tapped before he opened. The first thing that hit Tommy when the door opened was the scent of expensive perfume.
“Tommy, this is Jane.”
It was not quite love at first sight, but the moment he saw her, he knew he would take the job. The smartly dressed girl smiled a welcome. Tommy smiled back. Jane was sitting straight-backed and ladylike on a very ordinary floral pattern settee, the same type provided to thousands of British Army married quarters, but she looked special. The MI5 girl was wearing a short Donna Karan blazer over a pair of faded Levi jeans. She was well put together, slim, and fit-looking. She had her hair bobbed forward in the latest fashion concave cut, with the back of her neck shaved. It was not a hairstyle that you saw much In South Armagh. This was a London girl, a Sloane Ranger type, with a black Chanel cross-body shoulder bag to match. The girl’s light touch of make-up was immaculate. She had the most remarkable piercing blue eyes and oozed sexuality.
She pursed her lips slightly and pouted as she looked at the FRU man.
“Good to meet you at last, Sergeant Henshaw.” Her eyes held his gaze. Tommy felt himself melt a little. He knew imme- diately that she was a source handler. A good agent handler generates charisma, and she had that in shed loads. Tommy looked away. She was winning the handling war. The girl’s voice was refined and well-modulated with just a trace of work- ing-class London.
“My name is Jane. I am an MI5 officer, and we have a mutual friend.” Friend was another term a handler sometimes used to refer to a paid informant.” I think you know Billy Wheeler.”
“Yes, I know Billy Whizz,” Tommy said. Although he found it difficult to think of Billy as an informer.
“How did you recruit him?”
“Billy was a walk-in when we were working against the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation) and he works for us on his own terms.”
“Let me guess, politics only.”
“Yeah, but he’s given us some useful leads on the IRA in London.”
“So, how do I fit into your plan?”
Jane caught his eyes again and smiled. “I won’t try to do the old ‘handle the handler’ thing. You were trained the same way as me, and not telling you exactly what we want from you would be counterproductive. But before I give you the full brief, you need to know that this operation will be extremely dangerous.” Jane paused while Tommy processed what she had said.
“Do you fully understand?” Tommy heard the question as a challenge.
“Crossmaglen isn’t exactly safe either.”
“No, but you always have close cover and mutual support over here. The London job would involve a different way of working. We are putting together a four-person closed-cell unit that will work directly under my operational control. If you are interested, I will give you all the operational details now. If you are not, no problems at all and this conversation never happened. What do you think?”
Tommy didn’t need to think too hard about it. The prospect seemed as exciting as the MI5 woman who was trying to recruit him.
He smiled, “I’m in.”
Jane pulled out a white form from her designer handbag and handed him a copy of the Official Secrets Act with a non- disclosure section concerning Op TROJAN. The Royal Marine glanced through the page, picked up the biro clipped over it, and signed it with a flourish. The MI5 girl stood up from the chair and shook his hand. “I’m looking forward to working with you.” She gave him that knowing smile again.
“And now I can tell you how this operation is going to work.”
Tommy listened intently.
If you have enjoyed this extract from ‘A Collusion of Shadows’ by W T Delaney, the book is now available for pre-release on Amazon. Hit the following link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Collusion-Shadows-Tommy-Henshaw-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B0CZ33FZB6/ref=sr_1_1?crid=31S6YD85X2PEY&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.hKjraPPFyK6sqVyuAo9xc6zodErEQrWLlCSIKGJofwbhmHvg4qNyg3b_oduCBI5NLwuPOwOK50V1bW_vVWcHjtXYByhBT8W2N00KKieqE_YJRasqdhZQ9Gzfp2BO247-nMrTHc-sH-H2-0V6TIA3zWOaAGjF8gUPpnWfiqi6IfiK3HHkMEjPtZyGFJuDPZnqcKQkdFwI37hqOS6ZoVH10vgpXFJ_nkVblbrEzFZJH8U.u72mgXIpSo8TJBaWQGBAIEE9YL8HDFWeV6mimZluZAI&dib_tag=se&keywords=a+collusion+of+shadows&qid=1722160673&sprefix=A+cOLLUSION%2Caps%2C104&sr=8-1