Declan Daly - Borderline - An Oral History of the Brexit Wars 2020-2022

May 2020

OP 4A: (Near the border.)

Heartrate 102. The pair had just arrived in between the gorse bushes, off to the left of the thicket as viewed from the target and with three other, more obvious, locations to hide between them and the man they came to see. The crawl into position denoted effort and this was reflected in the beats per minute on the Corporal’s wrist. It would come down as he controlled his breathing. They were settling in now, the sniper and spotter were camouflaged, ahead of time and securely out of sight of prying eyes. Stillness, now, and self control were the name of the game. Rather than shrug his shoulders in a normal fashion to relax and potentially make an observable movement, he rolled them down and around to the front in a circle. Tilting his head to the right slightly, he looked down along his nose to the left at the other man sharing their small hide. The spotter, ten years senior to his twenty six, already had his scope, which resembled a stubby telescope on a short tripod, up on their objective and was lying immobile. The sniper made a comparatively large motion to lift the stock of his bolt action rifle and brought his cheek down to it, allowing his right eye to look through the sights at the small farm house four hundred metres to the front of their observation post and here his focus would stay for the remainder of the job.

The clouds drifted lazily in the summer sky, a light breeze blew left to right across his arc of fire and somewhere nearby a bird, having become quickly accustomed to their presence, was chirping again.He took in his sports watch with a quick glance. 61 beats per minute. Getting down to resting heartrate.

Wolf 3 – The Left Seat: (Casement Aerodrome, Baldonnel)

Sitting in the left seat of the AW139 helicopter, the co-pilot was wondering if it could reasonably be considered murder if, under the present extenuating circumstances, he killed the man next to him. They had briefed to death for this job, waited for the notice to move for days and now they were here, pre-start checks completed, troops on board, ready to light up the engines and go. Anyone could, or should, under the circumstances act as if something of moderate interest was happening. Admittedly they’d been put on five minutes notice to move over an hour ago. Yes, they had done everything they could do prior to putting the fuel pumps ‘on’ and the engine switches to ‘flight’. But his colleague just sat there, dark visor down on his helmet, which was itself tilted back to lie on the headrest of the right seat. Seventeen minutes ago he began to absently smack his lips. The wet pop was barely audible with his own helmet on, but he could see it. It shouldn’t bother him, but it really did. Enough to contemplate whether a lethal response was acceptable.

“Do you want the prestarts again?” In other words, please do something else with your stupid lips except smack them.

“Neg dude, they’re all done, just chill and wait for now I suppose”

“ Yeah, just in case we missed anything, you know?. If i keep him talking he can’t smack his lips!

“They’re all checked and checked again, let’s not mess around too much or we will move something we shouldn’t. Be a shame to blow the floats or something by accident at this stage.”

With that, the man seemd to lie further back in the seat if that was possible, crossed his hands over his body armour and behind the visor, there was almost no doubt his eyes were closed.

“Gotcha” (Not much else to say to that).

He looked past the apparently understimulated pilot at the other helicopters which were lined up waiting like themselves., then over his right shoulder at the rest of the crew. The crewman had his feet up on the stretcher, the medic was digging around in his daysack before triumphantly pulling out a Mars bar, which he offered to no one. They would only get called in if something bad happened with the Garda insertion teams on the other helis. Maybe the adrenaline wasn’t required after all. Right now anyway. The crewman gave him a silent thumbs up, not even raising his hand off his thigh doing it. He returned the gesture in an equally lacklustre fashion and turned back to the front and exhaled. He shuffled in the seat again.

Pop.

It had started again.

OP 4A:

Heartrate 48. It had been a quiet night. The target had gone to bed around eleven, or at least the lights had gone out and movement in the house had stopped. They had long since recce’d the building from their position and all the admin in the field tasks associated with the Observation Post (OP) were complete. They just had to watch and then act in accordance with the brief. They had started the daytime routine again – no movement and back on optical sights after a night of looking at the green glow of night vision equipment. Settling his body he always found easy, get comfortable, breath in, hold, breath out, wait for the carbon dioxide build up to tell your brain to repeat. It was a steady, rhythmic and a reliable way he had found, to not move for long periods of time. To keep his mind focused on the job he had other tricks. It was easy when all that could be done was done, to daydream and get distracted. To counter this, he would look around the target again for some innocuous detail. Last night he noted that open ends of barn on the left hand side of the yard had rusted to a lessor degree than the sides. This morning he was observing that the paint on the pebble dashed wall of the gable end of the house could do with a lick of paint. The expected visitors probably wouldn’t notice, but flecks of gray were appearing under the white surface. Starting to look a bit weather beaten like their owner. Speaking of which, the sun was now up. If the occupant of the house stayed in bed much longer, he’d miss half the day.

Wolf 3 – The Left Seat:

He would ask for something from the right door. The flight manual maybe. As the other pilot leaned over he would use the Heckler and Koch 9mm pistol in his chest rig, base of the skull and bang. Job done. It would be difficult to get the gun out and cocked before anyone reacted of course and shooting small arms in confined spaces, where everyone else was also armed, was always going to have certain fatal drawbacks, but ultimately it would be worth it.

The move from idle consideration of the legal defence he might mount, to actively planning to commit acts of violence, had been triggered by the addition of tongue clicking half an hour ago.

Three clicks in a row followed by one exagerated smack, pause for three seconds and begin the cycle again. And again.

OP 4A:

Heartbeat 60. He could hear the helicopters in the distance. Dull and muffled by the rolling terrain close to the border but there none the less. The man they came to see was outside now and apparently heard them too, looking to the South. Certainly greyer than some of the photos in his file, his hearing still worked. Broad shouldered but with less meat on his frame now, it was still easy to see how he had once cut a more impressive figure. One to be feared. One to be removed, when the time came.

Wolf 3 – The Left Seat:

Listening in on the VHF radios, not much was heard except the odd series of clicks and uncustomary quiet. The lip smacking from the other seat had stopped when they got the word to go (a very low tech thumbs up from an Air Corps HQ officer standing in the Air-Traffic-Control (ATC) tower with a landline beside him). Thirty five minutes later, they were hanging back in a holding pattern at altitude while the other two helicopters in their flight did their thing. Standing off at this distance, he couldn’t see them but from the array of briefings he knew that some certain event had occured that led to an Emergency Response Unit team from An Garda Siochana being launched to intercept a car and its’ occupants. Violence was expected. Medevac may be required. So here they were. Looking over his shoulder, the crewman and the medic had lost the look of affected boredom they had on the ground and replaced it with a look of readiness. In the front right seat, the occupant was leaning further forward in his straps with a tight set jaw. Their was little chat – prearranged codewords over their secure frequency would be the next instruction they would hear, with very different implications. Rampart: Medevac required, Landing Zone (LZ) secure. Darkline: Medevac required, LZ not secure. Seminar: Mission successful, return to base.