Bandit Country. Peter Corrigan

is a reactive OP, Charles. I’m not giving you licence to run amok through the countryside. I want you to keep that stretch of the Fane under observation and only to react under the most stringent circumstances. The last thing we need is twelve troopers staging a rerun of the OK corral in Armagh. And we will also liaise with Lieutenant Colonel Blair of the Greenjackets. His men will form your back-up – and Early’s – until this op is over. Is that clear?’

      ‘Perfectly. If you’ll excuse me then, James, I’ll go and give the boys a Warning Order. They’ll be chuffed to fuck.’

      Boyd left like a schoolboy let out for the holidays. Cordwain stared at the map thoughtfully for a long time. It was disquieting, to say the least, to be sanctioning an operation with so little intelligence to go on, but then intelligence was so thin on the ground in this part of the world. Not like Tyrone, or Belfast, where there were ‘Freds’, renegade Republicans, aplenty.

      If this operation turned out as successfully as he hoped they might even be able to dispense with Early’s services, and that would be another bonus. Early was a hot potato, with his MI5 handlers to be placated and his stubborn bloody-mindedness. Not a team player, but then undercover agents seldom were.

      Cordwain shook his head as though a fly buzzed at it, trying to free himself of a sense of unease. He had the strangest feeling that Boyd did not quite know what he was up against, and he had an urge to cancel the whole operation, or at least scale it down. But it was on his plate alone. He could not involve the RUC, because they were not equipped to deal with a face-to-face confrontation with a heavily armed band of terrorists, nor with the covert surveillance that was needed to track them down. No, this was a job for the SAS alone, the sort of mission that they specialized in and relished.

      Why then the uneasiness?

      He bent over his desk, and began writing the orders that would take Boyd’s command out into Bandit Country.

       6

      Kilmurry, County Louth

      The bar was crowded with people, hot, noisy, hazy with tobacco smoke. In one corner a knot of musicians were playing a frantic, foot-tapping jig and most of the throng were clapping and stamping in time with the music. Pint glasses, empty and full, stood by the hundred on the bar and the tables or were clasped in sweaty hands.

      In the upstairs room the hubbub below could be heard as a vague roar of sound echoing up through the floorboards. The long upper room had been booked in the name of Louth Gaelic Football Club. The irritating noise seeping up from the noisy bar below would nullify the effectiveness of any bugs planted in the place.

      There were twenty-three men in the room, sitting round a long dining table or lounging against the walls. Heavy duffle bags littered the floor and on the table itself crouched two angular, blanket-draped shapes. The men were smoking rapidly, talking in low voices, chuckling or scowling as the mood took them. They comprised the bulk of two PIRA brigades. Some of them were elated at their numbers, some were nervous.

      Eugene Finn entered the room rubbing his hands and smiling his cold smile.

      ‘Don’t worry, boys. The dickers are all in place and the landlord knows the form. This is a private room. The Gardai will need a warrant to enter it and we happen to know they don’t have one.’