Soldier U: Bandit Country by Peter Corrigan

Author:Peter Corrigan [Corrigan, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2013-12-11T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

The army foot patrol was a large one; twelve men in staggered file moving down both sides of the darkened street. It was three o’clock in the morning and the street-lights of Crossmaglen were an amber glow in the early hours. The village was silent and sleeping, but the soldiers checked every window and doorway as though they expected a face to appear at it, a rifle barrel to flash. They were tense, jumpy, and they eyed the death tally that graffiti artists had painted on one gable wall with hatred. Ten-nil, it said, seemingly forgetting the seven PIRA members killed at Drumboy Hill. The thought sweetened the mood of the patrol a little, though they were still burning with a desire for revenge, like all the members of their battalion. Scarcely three days had passed since the murder of rifleman Kenny Philips at the vehicle checkpoint outside the town.

Gorbals McFee and the three other members of his team were at the rear of the patrol. Haymaker was there, the stitches removed from his face only that morning, Raymond Chandler, and Jimmy Wilkins: Wilkie. They were dressed and equipped identically to the Greenjacket soldiers that preceded them, except for the large bergens on their backs. The patrol was to cover their approach to the site of the OP.

On the northern side of Cross square was a line of three derelict houses, their windows boarded up and slates missing from their roofs. The local council had been promising for months to renovate them, but never seemed to get round to it. The patrol turned east on its approach to the square and moved down the narrow alley at the back of the houses. A head-high crumbling brick wall enclosed the tiny, overgrown back gardens. The doors in the wall were of wood, rotting and sagging on their hinges.

A cat darted across the alleyway, causing the point man to whip up his rifle, then breathe out softly and let the muzzle sink again. It was army policy to have weapons loaded but not cocked while patrolling in urban areas, so that there was no round ‘up the spout’ to cause a possible negligent discharge. But this moral nicety had gone to the wall a long time ago down in South Armagh. All the section’s weapons had been cocked as soon as the patrol had left the base, and the trigger finger of each man rested on the little stud that was the SA-80’s safety-catch, ready to flick it off and open up at the slightest hint of danger. The Greenjackets had lost too many men to worry much about infringements of Standard Operating Procedure now.

The patrol paused, the men seeking fire-positions. Gorbals nodded to Haymaker and the big man leaned against one of the doors in the alley, testing it. Letting his weapon hang from its sling, he produced a short crowbar from his thigh pocket and levered the door open. The hinges squeaked in protest, and then he had disappeared.

In a twinkling the other SAS men followed him, and the door was swung shut.

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