The Fellowship Read online

  Robert White

  Robert White is an Amazon best selling crime fiction author. His novels regularly appear in the top ten downloads in the Crime and Action and Adventure genres. Robert is an ex cop, who captures the brutality of northern British streets in his work. He combines believable characters, slick plots and vivid dialogue to immerse the reader in his fast paced story-lines. He was born in Leeds, England, the illegitimate son of a jazz musician and a factory girl. He hated school, leaving at age sixteen. After joining Lancashire Constabulary in 1980, he served for fifteen years, his specialism being Tactical Firearms. Robert then spent four years in the Middle East before returning to the UK in 2000. He now lives in Lancashire with his wife Nicola, and his two terrible terriers Flash and Tia.

  Novels by Robert White

  Rick Fuller Thrillers:

  THE FIX

  THE FIRE

  THE FALL

  THE FOLLOWER

  THE FELLOWSHIP

  Det Sgt Striker Thrillers:

  UNREST

  SIX

  Stand alone novels:

  DIRTY

  BREAKING BONES

  THE

  FELLOWSHIP

  A Rick Fuller Thriller

  Book FIVE

  (The CIA Diaries Pt2)

  By

  Robert White

  www.robertwhiteauthor.co.uk

  First published in the UK 21/12/2018 by Robert White

  Copyright @ Robert White 2018

  Robert White has asserted his rights under the Copyright and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction and, except for the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental. The opinions expressed in this work are fictional and do not represent the views of the author.

  ISBN: 978-1791853396

  For my wife Nicola

  Acknowledgements

  I spent fifteen years of my life as a police officer, five as a member of a tactical firearms team. After leaving the Service I spent four years working in the Middle East and during that time I had the pleasure of meeting and working with several retired members of Her Majesty’s Special Forces.

  One evening, sitting in an Abu Dhabi bar, I was having a quiet beer with two such ex-servicemen I had grown to know quite well.

  Casually, one broached the subject of a job offer. They needed a third man to complete a team who were to collect a guy from Afghanistan and deliver him across the border to Pakistan. The job was worth several thousand pounds each and would last three days.

  I was extremely flattered to be asked.

  I knew my two friends would be soldiers until they took their last breath. Even then, in their mid-forties, they missed the adrenalin rush only that level of danger could bring.

  Personally, I didn’t feel qualified enough to join them and turned down the offer, something incidentally, I have regretted ever since.

  I would like to say a big thank-you to those two men, who, with their many late night tales of war and adventure, inspired me to write this work.

  “We know that without food we would die. Without fellowship, life is not worth living.”

  (Laurie Colwin)

  November 1987, Sterling Lines, Hereford.

  Rick Fuller’s Story:

  The immediate aftermath of the Libyan debacle had been hard on the whole squadron. As patrol leader, I’d had the job of informing Frankie Green’s wife of his death. She, and his kids were devastated. Their lives torn apart. The worst thing about it was I couldn’t even tell her where he was or if we’d ever find his body.

  The lads had done the usual whip round. Beers had been sunk, tales had been told, but the mood was still bleak back in Sterling Lines. I, in particular, was finding it hard to come to terms with the loss.

  Two days after we had returned to camp, our OC summoned me to his office.

  “Not feeling yourself, Fuller, are you?” he’d asked.

  “I’m okay, Sir,” I’d offered, even though I knew he could see right through me.

  He sat back in his chair and held a fountain pen between the fingers of both hands, as if he was about to snap it in half.

  “Boy soldier, weren’t you? Father served, killed in action, Aden wasn’t it?”

  “Yes Sir.”

  He took a deep breath and pursed his lips.

  “Lads who have no experience of life outside the military, sometimes find dealing with family issues harder than those that have, how can I say, lived a little.”

  “You mean dealing with Frankie Green’s family, Sir?”

  “I mean seeing his wife and kids grieve, Fuller.”

  “I saw my mother grieve, Sir.”

  He blew air down his nose.

  “I’m sure you did, but you were a child, Fuller. What I’m trying to say to you, is that grief occurs in all walks of life.”

  “Frankie was my responsibility, Sir.”

  “And you are a damned fine trooper, an excellent patrol leader and great servant to this country. Fuller.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Look, son, I realise that you probably feel down right now, but all I can say to you, is that you have my utmost support, and that the next mission that comes along will go your way. How’s that?”

  “That makes me feel better, Sir. Always best to keep busy.”

  “Quite, Fuller. Well, good luck, off you trot.”

  And so, I did, feeling… well, not feeling much at all.

  We’d lost Frankie Green attempting to kill Abdallah Al-Mufti, Muammar Gaddafi’s right hand man. He’d been organising the sale of weapons and explosives to the Provo’s, including the Semtex that had been used at Enniskillen.

  Although we had caused major damage to Al-Mufti’s operation we hadn’t stopped the flow of weapons, and the intel coming back across the water was that the IRA’s stockpiles were still growing.

  Now, you might have thought that after the Remembrance Day disaster at Enniskillen, where eleven civilians were killed, the PIRA boys may have calmed down a bit.

  Not a hope. The late eighties were one of the worst periods of the Troubles.

  On 21st November, the Provo’s placed three bombs in the Kildress Inn in Cookstown, County Tyrone.

  On the 28th, two British soldiers were wounded when the PIRA launched three mortars at a temporary vehicle check point in County Armagh.

  In early December, there were a series of attacks on both military and civilian targets where British soldiers were wounded, but it was when the UFF leader John McMichael was killed by a boobytrap bomb attached to his car, just three days before Christmas, that the Head Shed got the nod and we could finally pull our fingers out.

  The OC made good on his word, and for Des Cogan, Butch Stanley, me and new boy, Si Garcia, the holidays were cancelled.

  On the morning of December 25th, our patrol sat around a small square table. A large tin tea pot took centre stage surrounded by four blue mugs and a shed load of empty foil cups that had once held mince pies. We were waiting for our man from the ministry to brief us.

  As the only married bloke in the patrol, Des was not a happy bunny. It wasn’t how any of us had envisaged spending Christmas day, but for him with Anne at home, it was doubly hard. Then again, our OC was pottering around, so if he was giving up his festivities, we figured things must be serious enough to warrant pissing the wife off.

  Just after 1600hrs, the boss wandered in with a tray of turkey sandwiches, four cans of bitter and another two boxes of Kipling’s specials.

/>   “Sorry chaps,” he said. “Best I could do at such short notice.”

  “Thought we’d at least have had a cracker or two, Sir,” said Butch tucking in, his huge drooping black moustache, instantly covered in stuffing.

  “Thanks, Sir,” I offered, cracking my can open. “What time is our man due?”

  “He’s here now, Fuller,” he said. “He’s just taking a call from London and he’ll be with you.”

  The OC tapped the side of his nose. “Think this one is a little wet behind the ears, so be nice to him, okay?”

  Wet or not, no sooner had we shovelled the last of our sandwiches down our necks, the face walked in. Unusually for a spook, he wasn’t suited and booted. He wore an open necked shirt and jeans and looked ever so slightly dishevelled. Maybe all the senior guys were sipping brandy and smoking cigars in their London flats and this fella was all that was left. He looked to be in his twenties, fresh faced and lithe to the point of skinny.

  He pulled papers from his briefcase and nodded towards our table.

  “You lads had enough to eat?” asked our man.

  There were nods as more foil cups were emptied of their contents.

  He looked at our large tea pot. “Any left in there?”

  “Help yersel,” said Des, finding a clean mug.

  “Cheers,” he said. Pouring himself half a pint of over-brewed Typhoo.

  “Right,” he slurped. “First of all, sorry to cock up your holidays, but this is urgent and there isn’t any time to fuck about.”

  He didn’t pick up his notes, just rested his hand on them.

  “Okay, we’ve known for some time that one of the roles of the IRA Southern Command, is to store and protect much of the organisation’s arms, and that small stocks are regularly transported from the South to the Province. These are intended for the immediate use of ASU’s (Active Service Units). There are, of course, smaller arms dumps in the border counties.”

  He looked at me.

  “You will be well aware of those Fuller as you and your patrol ran a surveillance on one, late last year.”

  The guy knew his stuff alright. I’d headed a four-man patrol in Crossmaglen, the previous November. We’d had eyes on an IRA weapon stash, Des had been dug in for several days to give us the heads up. The intelligence was that several other players would be visiting the plot to remove the kit and take it to a forward operating base. The weather was atrocious, and we were all pissed off and wet through.

  In the end, we were compromised by a bloody dog. We hadn’t seen it. One of the players had brought it in the back of a van, under cover of darkness.

  As often happens in the dark and bad weather, comms go down and tactics go to shit.

  The firefight was horrendous.

  Des was wounded on his approach.

  I killed five people that evening. When we eventually cleared the scene, I saw that two of the Provo’s I’d shot had been young women.

  The spooks reward was the recovery of 40 firearms, including thirteen FN FAL rifles.

  Mine had been another fucking medal that would sit in my drawer and not see the light of day.

  I just nodded at the guy and let him get to his point.

  He cricked his neck. “However, the bulk of the IRA’s arms reserves are stored in dumps deeper within the Republic. They choose this strategy partly because it is easier to find a safe hiding place for the kit south of the border. Less cops, more fields etc...”

  He took another slurp of tea.

  “Our intel tells us that some of the most important dumps are in the Munster area. These are regularly replenished by arms from the continent, brought into local ports by trawlers and other small boats. Now, we have recently discovered that the IRA’s quartermaster general is a man called McMullen, who lives just south of the border. However, his opposite number is based in Limerick. He goes by the name of Connor Gallagher and it is his job to organise the transport of weapons, ammunition and explosives from the South to the ASU’s in the North.”

  He shuffled through his papers and held up a grainy photograph.

  “This is him, here. And the reason that you fine chaps are missing your turkey dinners, is that Connor and his pals are about to move three hundred and eighty gallons of nitrobenzene from a store just north of Tralee and drop the lot at McMullen’s farm, which we believe is some ten miles south of Dundalk. Our informant says that the farm already holds a large stock of ammonium nitrate fertilizer. I don’t need to spell out the problem with that, do I, chaps?”

  Si Garcia, at twenty four, was the youngest in the patrol. Born not far away from Hereford, in Ross on Wye, he’d once played rugby for Gloucester. He was a sandy haired lad with a full set beard, broad shouldered and strong as an ox. He was quiet and unassuming with a dry wit when required, but it was always going to be hard for him, stepping into Frankie’s shoes. That said, he’d kept his head down, done his work and we couldn’t ask for more than that.

  Si had been selected because, like Frankie, he had a wealth of experience when it came to blowing things up.

  He knew exactly what the man from the ministry meant.

  “Nitrobenzene was used to make the bombs for Bloody Friday,” he said in his deep accented voice. “21st July 1972. At least twenty devices exploded in the space of eighty minutes. Nine dead, including two British soldiers and five civilians. With three hundred and eighty gallons of the stuff, mixed with AN. Fuck me, you could blow up half of Belfast.”

  The young face pointed at Si.

  “Spot on old chap. That is exactly the problem. Our intelligence suggests that the Provo’s are planning a spectacular. A massive bomb in Belfast, on New Year’s Eve.”

  I raised my brows at that one. You see, Belfast in the eighties hardly invited partying. It was dour and grey, with boarded-up windows and bricked-up homes.

  The Troubles had taken their toll. Belfast was never the Snipers’ Alley that the press would have you believe, but the centre had become a ghost town. Where once there had been a glut of bars, clubs and cinemas, they were now few and far between. The youth of the city scarcely ventured out into the centre, forever cautious of what had happened in Birmingham and Guilford in the seventies.

  The man from the Ministry read my thoughts.

  “Things are changing over there, Fuller. Belfast is not all flared trousers and soul music you know? Dance music has arrived.”

  Des spat crumbs on the table as he spoke. “Ye mean that shite where every fucker just jumps up and down, stoned off their tits?”

  The face gave Des a withering look. “Succinctly put, Cogan… These ‘Raves’ as they are being called are not held in traditional venues, but in disused warehouses and factories. They ship in massive PA and lighting rigs and people come from miles around to dance.”

  “And take drugs,” I offered.

  “Even so,” countered the face. “The organisers are expecting two thousand people from all sides of the city, both Protestant and Catholic.”

  The guy finished his tea. “Now, we don’t think the Provo’s will risk slaughtering some of their own youngsters, but they aren’t the targets.”

  “Then who is?” asked Des.

  “The RUC,” said the face flatly. “The cops are expecting trouble on the night and have cancelled all leave to deal with the influx of young people. Up to fifty police officers will be on duty around the venue.”

  Si Garcia had a puzzled look on his face.

  “It still doesn’t make sense,” he offered scratching his thick beard. “The Paddies are moving too much gear for that kind of job. I mean, If I wanted to hit say, six or seven targets using a nitrobenzene and AN mix, I’d only need about a tenth of what they are moving.”

  The face held out his arms and shrugged.

  “Chaps, half of my job is analysing intel, data, phone records and bugged conversations. T
he other half is surmising what they all mean.”

  “You mean guessing what they all mean,” said Des, his eyes flashing with irritation.

  The spook may not have had much experience, but he wasn’t fazed. He looked straight into the Scot’s face.

  “Well then, Mr Cogan, on this particular occasion, it’s our … guess, that you chaps’ had better stop this nitrobenzene ever making it across the border, or we’re going to be picking up pieces of dead policemen off the streets of Belfast on New Year’s Day.”

  He picked up the shot of Connor Gallagher. “And you can dispose of this gentleman at the same time if you please.”

  With that, the guy picked up his papers and was gone.

  Throughout the briefing, our OC had been tucked away in the corner. Now it was his turn. He walked over, dropped a pack of documents on the table and spoke quietly.

  “Maps of Tralee and the routes out of the area. Aerial photographs of the location of the chemicals and photographs of the two main players.”

  He sat on the edge of our desk. “Now, as the boys from Whitehall are unsure exactly when Gallagher will move the booty we need you over the water ASAP. So Fuller, that means you’re dropping in HALO. No leisurely boat trips to sun drenched shores for you this time. Get your kit together and report to the RSM within the hour. And good luck chaps. Get this one wrong and I have a feeling it won’t be a happy new year for anyone.”

  We all sat at the table in silence for a moment.

  Si eventually broke it.

  “How many HALO drops you lads done?”

  It was a fair question. The Regiment was split into different ‘troops.’ Air Troop, where Butch and I had been taken from, were the freefall parachuting specialists. We were tasked with jumping behind enemy lines, either on our own missions or to pave the way for other squadron troops. We were the HALO experts. But, Des, had been seconded from Mountain Troop, his specialism was Arctic warfare, climbing mountains and sitting in snow holes until his dick dropped off. Si, our new boy, had been drafted from Mobility Troop, his forte being the desert, mechanics and anything that went bang. All of us had various levels of airborne training, but, since being recruited into one of the new specialist counter terrorism patrols, we had gotten used to having both feet on the ground.