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  “There’s something you ought to know about the neighbours” he said thoughtfully.

  Back at Paddington Green police station, the most secure police station in England. The cells which had housed most IRA terrorists were empty apart from one man, Tony Black, whose world had suddenly fallen apart. He was out of his depth and he knew it.

  Chapter 11

  The Arrest

  By 6.30pm that same afternoon, a written statement confessing to his part in the Brinks Mat robbery had been signed by Tony Black; it had taken the team of detectives less than four hours to break their man. Even to the police of Paddington Green and the hardened coppers of the Flying Squad, who were used to interrogating the most hardened IRA suspects, the admission had been forthcoming with surprising ease. After the first session in which Frank Carter had left Tony to ruminate on a thirty year stretch in the scrubs, Tony had spilled the beans, hoping that the police would tell the judge he had co-operated and he would then receive a lighter sentence, which had been promised by a very sincere lie from Frank Carter. As soon as the statement was signed and before the ink was dry, Frank had organised a very serious posse of armed police for the sixty mile drive to the homes of John Illes and Brian Robinson. Speed was essential as Frank was sure once the two robbers discovered Brian’s brother in law was in the nick they would have it away.

  John Illes was sitting in the kitchen of his Kentish mansion feeling rather pleased with himself. In the few weeks since the blag, he had managed to move the gold and it was now in the hands of various associates. He was confident none of them would turn him over. Furthermore, a company had been set up in Bristol as a gold dealership; this was currently being used as a gold smelting operation. As soon as the gold was melted down it was moved onto the scrap market and converted into cash. Yup, thought Mouse, things couldn’t have worked out better. The tannoy broke the silence: “John Illes; this is Commander Frank Carter of New Scotland Yard. Your house is surrounded by armed police; you and any other persons in the house are to leave by the front door immediately. You cannot run, and if you resist you will be shot.”

  Mouse was mortified. How could Carter be here now, he knew Carter and knew he meant business. He just retained enough presence of mind to pick up the phone to warn Brian and the rest, but the phone was dead and that said it all.

  As John Illes was being shown to his new home a year later, that being A wing Her Majesties Prison Parkhurst, he was contemplating the rest of his life in this prison cell. Not in his wildest dreams could he have known that two hundred and fifty miles away a young man half way up the bleak terrain of Pen-y fan in the Brecon Beacons was going to change all that.

  Chapter 11 Mike (Nine Fingers) Tobin

  As Mike Tobin neared the summit of Pen-y fan he hadn’t a clue who John Illes was, or that he was starting a twenty five year stretch for the Brinks Mat. He’d heard of the robbery and over a pint he had even shown begrudging admiration for the balls of the robbers, but right now he would gladly swap life on the mountain for a prison cell.

  Mike Tobin joined the British Army aged eighteen. From a poor background in the North East of England, he knew life in Gateshead without qualifications or a job could only lead one way. Although uneducated, he was smart and self reliant so he had walked into the local army recruitment centre and signed up with the R.E.M.E- the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers to give them their full title. Not only would Mike get paid to see the world, well, Norway if he was lucky, but they told him at the centre he could train as a Mechanical Engineer, and he didn’t know what that meant but it sounded good.

  Mike took to army life like a duck to water. Based down at Bordon Camp south of Aldershot, his eager approach and natural enthusiasm made him a popular soldier within the ranks. Opposite the road from the main REME camp, and a quarter of a mile from that highway, lies an independent military barracks occupied by the Ghurkha Regiment. The rivalry between the two forces was fierce and often things got out of hand, necessitating the intervention of the Military Police.

  It was after one of the regular Saturday night skirmishes with the men from the mountains of Nepal that Mike found himself in the guardhouse on three days hard labour with a rival Ghurkha as company. A few hours earlier both men had been trading blows in the local hostelry when the MPs had stormed in and grabbed the first protagonists available. Unfortunately that happened to be Mike and the Ghurkha. As the hours passed, and the two men mellowed towards each other, the little Nepalese fighter regaled Mike with stories from the Ghurkha regiment. Mike was enthralled as the Ghurkha told him of jungle warfare and how, with their diminutive frames, they fought and usually beat most adversaries and indeed, Mike realised just how vicious they were.

  On the last night of incarceration the Ghurkha said to Mike: “Tell me, Mike, I’ve got to know you these past few days and it strikes me you want more action than the R.E.M.E. can offer. Have you ever thought about applying for the selection process of the SAS?”

  Mike thought for a moment. “No I haven’t, do you know how it works?” he asked.

  “Well,” said the Ghurkha, “Actually, yes, although we are not eligible, which is probably just as well or you English wouldn’t get a look in,” he laughed. “To apply is easy providing you have at least thirty nine months left to serve. Should you pass Selection Training and are between nineteen and thirty four, all you have to do is get the OK from your CO and away you go.”

  Mike was getting interested. “It’s that easy?” he asked

  The Ghurkha laughed again. “Mike we’re talking about the most elite cadre of Special Forces in the world, the selection process is the most gruelling imaginable, men have died trying to obtain that badge. The pass rate varies between five and seventeen per cent; there are some fucking hard bastards that don’t make the first week.”

  Mike’s mind was made up. He was now a qualified Mechanical Engineer which he rightly figured would be an advantage. So the next morning, after he had received one hell of a bollocking for his recent escapades from his CO Major Majors, he decided to ask if the Boss would help him apply for entry into the SAS. The Major looked him straight in the eye.

  “Mr Tobin,” he said, “I have worked with you these past four years and you have accredited yourself admirably. The SAS are always looking for people who are above average intelligence, assertive, self-sufficient, hard to fool and not dependent on others to name just a few of the qualities required, but before all of that you have to prove you have the physical stamina to sustain weeks of untold hardship when you undergo basic selection. However, putting that to one side, you have as good a chance as anyone I’ve recommended before, so the answer’s yes, I’ll apply on your behalf and let you know Dismissed, soldier.”

  Six months later, months in which Mike had committed himself to the hardest training regime he could muster in addition to his normal duties, he left the comfort of Borden Camp and entered into the initial SAS recruitment process. He found himself on the bleak hillside of Pen-y fan. The fan, as it is colloquially known, comes into play in the SAS selection regime in week two. At three thousand feet the tallest and most inhospitable peak in the Brecon Beacons, this is the point where the aspiring SAS soldiers are found out. Week one saw off forty five hopeful recruits before they had even seen the fan. Mike had done OK.

  Mike had seen those that had failed standing forlornly on Platform Four of Hereford station having been RTU (returned to unit), and was even more determined to make it through. On this particular day the mist had descended on the fan and Mike watched as those in front disappeared into the mire.

  Mike was now carrying a fifty five pound Bergen on his back, and alone for a split second his resolve had started to waver, but just as these thoughts were taking hold he caught up with a group of men who were the lead pack. This gave him the strength to shrug off his self doubt, as they descended the Fan for the second but not the last time that day. All fears of failure left Mike, and his resolve was solid again.

  As the
course progressed and more and more men dropped out, Mike seemed to get stronger and stronger, and the moment of uncertainty on the misty mountain was gone and never re-appeared. The last day of basic training finally arrived, which consisted of a forty six mile endurance march known as the “Fan Dance,” but having to be completed in twenty hours. It was more of a jog than a march, and carrying the obligatory fifty five pound Bergen on his back was Mike’s crowning glory. Finishing third on the day, his personal road to Damascus was complete and although there was still a long way to go, those that had made it this far were not going to fail now. That weekend, the remaining men were given the weekend off and instructed to return to Stirling Lines on the Monday for a further fourteen weeks of Continuation Training. Out of the hundred and sixty men who had started the course, thirteen left for some weekend R&R and thirteen reported back the following Monday.

  On that Monday morning, the remaining thirteen men started fourteen intense weeks of Continuation Training. Mike learnt survival, escape, evasion and most significantly, extraction of prisoners and hostages from hostile environments. They were tasked on one exercise to plan and extract a prisoner from a high security prison on the British mainland, and indeed only when the operation was in the final stages of a successful conclusion was it stopped and the relevant authorities informed. The Home Office went ballistic, but points were proven. The final six weeks were spent in the jungles of Brunei, and the hardships were unimaginable- rumours abounded that the week before they arrived a large snake had eaten an Irish Ranger. The truth was that a twenty five foot Anaconda had taken him from a hide he was occupying, wrapped itself around his body, suffocated him and done just that.

  Back at Stirling Lines, seven men had returned from the jungle, being the remaining existing recruits, and were waiting for the Colonel in Charge to deliver the final verdict. They didn’t have to wait long before he entered the room.

  “Welcome to the regiment, gentlemen” he beamed, “before I tell you of what life is going to be like in the regiment, I am going to give you your winged-dagger badges and wings, well done.”

  The cheer that emanated from the seven guys would have drowned a full capacity Wembley crowd and Mike was on his way.

  Chapter 12

  Northern Ireland - 6 Counties

  The history of Northern Ireland is as complicated as the mechanics of the universe. Like all Jihads or Holy Wars no one could say when it started and similarly no one could say when it ended. Although wars based on religion never end, they develop a truce or ceasefire at best, as is the case with Northern Ireland.

  When Oliver Cromwell was appointed Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland in the spring of 1649 he was tasked by Parliament to assemble a formidable force of 12,000 veterans to bring the island under British rule. During the following months, Cromwell’s troops, under his orders, gave no quarter to the Catholic people who were slaughtered in cold blood. It is fair to say that the legacy of Cromwell’s butchery lives on to this day in Irish folklore, making his name one of the most hated in Irish history.

  Following Cromwell’s introduction of the barbaric ways of the English, the most significant battle in Irish history was that which cemented the sectarianism which was already developing. The battle of the Boyne took place on July 1st 1690 and it was fought by two claimants for the English throne: James the Second, who was a Catholic, and William of Orange, a Protestant. The southern Irish, who were predominantly Catholic, were supported by James the Second, and the Northern Protestants were supported by William. Within a few hours of the battle it became clear that the forces of William would win and James beat a hasty retreat to Dublin, leaving the throne of England and the control of Ireland under the rule of the now Protestant King William of Orange. The significance of this battle of the two religious factions divided Europe at the time, and to this day tens of thousands of Orangemen march across Northern Ireland on July 12th to celebrate the great victory of the battle of the Boyne.

  The final straw for the two religious factions of Ireland came on 3rd May 1921 when the British Government of the time, in their wisdom, decided to divide the country into the free state of Southern Ireland and the British run state of Northern Ireland. This essentially put the Protestants in the South and the Catholics in the North, thus creating a divided society and a period of civil conflict and disharmony followed, culminating in the Northern Ireland riots of August 1969. What followed was thirty years of bloodshed, known as “the Troubles.”

  Mike Tobin knew none of this history, nor if truth were told, did he care. He was stationed in the army barracks of Bessbrook Mill, the hub of counterterrorism operations in South Armagh, bandit country as it was referred to by the inhabitants of the Mill. It overlooked the rolling hills of the county of Armagh, not far from the border of the Free State and an ideal area for the forces of the IRA to hide in and operate from. There were thirty-two SAS troopers based in these barracks, along with regular soldiers from units such as the Royal Artillery and Royal Marines. The SAS troopers kept themselves very much to themselves, not having to wear army uniform or indeed even keep clean and tidy. With their scruffy clothes and long hair they were given a wide berth by the regular soldiers, albeit the reputation of the SAS was enough for the regulars to show nothing but deference.

  If the British Army had failed to learn one lesson throughout its long and chequered history, it was to never underestimate its opponents. Whenever it had engaged local indigenous people on their own soil, it had always treated them as semi- literate heathens and the IRA were considered no different. As far as the Brits were concerned, these so called freedom fighters were a bunch of potato eating paddies without a brain cell between them. Nothing could be farther from the truth; the IRA were in fact a highly sophisticated and well organised army, who had studied guerrilla warfare, both in books and on the ground, with their foot soldiers slipping on and off mainland Britain to cause havoc, and higher command training in sophisticated terrorist activities in sympathetic countries such as Libya.

  The British had been in Northern Ireland long enough to know that the area of South Armagh was an ideal area for the Provo’s to hide and plot in the safety of the numerous farmhouses that straddled the border between North and South. It was no coincidence that the crack troops of the SAS were stationed in Bessbrook barracks, where they could slip over the border to spy on the farms that housed the terrorists. These farms, remote and unassuming, hid various factions of the IRA; some contained specialised sniper units, a couple more were bomb factories, and another was home for a particularly notorious IRA chief of staff. It was from one of these farmhouses that one of the most spectacular achievements the IRA accomplished on the British mainland was masterminded, that being the assembly and subsequent detonation of a massive bomb which nearly brought down Canary Wharf on 9th February 1996.

  The particular farm that had recently come to the attention of the British Intelligence Service sat no more than 3 miles from the border; it was occupied by three brothers and one cousin. Typical of the family connection that ran right through the borders, these four men were all killers. Trained in Syria in the art of subterfuge and stealth, they were marksmen who could assemble a deadly incendiary device from the innocent purchase of ingredients from Sainsbury’s; and they were infiltrators, whose role was to cause mayhem and destruction on the British mainland. They were in the final process of planning their third sortie across the water, and were due to leave in a few days. The security measures that were in place at the farm were state of the art, a few fences and a roll of barbed wire made the farm look innocuous enough, any thing else might draw suspicion. However, strategically placed and impossible to see, were four Infra Red Heat Seeking Cameras, capable of 360 degree surveillance. These thermal imaging beams were capable of detecting any suspects which gave off body heat up to a mile away. These static cameras would pick up anything that moved, or more importantly anything that didn’t move, within a one mile radius of the farm. Backing up this technology, each membe
r of the cell carried a hand held Thermal camera. These cameras were cutting edge performance capable of allowing the user to detect any imagery in total darkness, and all supplied by the good people of Boston USA. This is where the Provo’s had massive American support; most Bostonians had blood ties with Ireland somewhere down their lineage. although this support was about to take a downturn.

  So it was on this cold winter’s evening that the four plotters had put down the equipment they were readying for the forthcoming trip, and for the second night in succession placed the camera in the crow’s nest, high up in the chestnut tree adjacent to the Dutch barn. It then picked up an object high up on the ridge that ran the length of the farm’s boundary and beyond. The previous night the camera had bleeped, alerting the four protagonists to the fact something or someone was breathing on the ridge; not the first time that week, the cameras would sound off at anything from a passing fox to a low flying plane. What was now concerning the four men was the fact that in twenty four hours the living thing that the camera had been trained on since it detected life had not moved, neither had the intensity of the image, which might have suggested that an animal such as a badger was dying. If that had been the case the image would have dulled, no, something was out there, very much alive and very, very still.

  “We got ourselves some company,” said Dermott Donnelly, the youngest brother.

  “Right,” replied his older brother “let’s get up there and find who or what’s come to see us.”

  It was on this particular stormy night when it all went wrong for Mike Tobin. He was up in the hills observing the remote farmhouse just over the border, from which it was thought an IRA cell was operating, and he had been in this hide for three days and nights. Known as an OP observation point, the SAS were trained to live in these holes in the ground for days on end; you couldn’t smoke, eat, or even check the magazine on the Heckler and Koch sub-machine gun you were issued with.