‘You have a package for Mr Francis.’
Joshua’s words were a statement rather than a question. They left the receptionist at Belfast’s palatial Europa Hotel in no doubt that her guest was correct.
‘Here you are, sir.’
The small blonde who manned the front desk was barely out of her teens. She bent down and grasped the handle of a large metallic briefcase, delivered less than an hour before. It was heavy enough to cause her difficulty as she lifted the case onto the desk, but Joshua plucked it up like it contained nothing weightier than air.
‘Do you need any help with your luggage, sir?’
The receptionist’s words trailed off towards the end. Joshua had already turned and was walking towards the bank of elevators that would take him to his room.
He stepped into a lift half-full with passengers and pressed the ‘8’ button. To those around him he must have seemed the very picture of professional calm. A businessman, probably. They could not detect the emotion that simmered beneath the calm demeanour.
Right now, Joshua was a dangerously coiled spring.
Anticipation was often the most thrilling aspect of Joshua’s career. He could visualise every possible scenario that could arise on an assignment. It was an essential skill; the only way to be prepared for anything. It was this visualisation that would usually send Joshua’s heart racing with excitement. But this time, uniquely, it filled him with dread.
Joshua had no doubt that Stanton was willing to live up to his threats. That failure would cost Joshua’s family dear. This alone would have removed the thrill of the hunt. But it was not alone. Not any more. Even now, as he exited the lift and followed discreet signs to his room, one thought continued to dominate his mind.
Joe Dempsey.
The news that Dempsey was closing in on Stanton had been strangely welcome at first. It meant that – should Joshua fail – he would die with the knowledge that Stanton, too, was doomed to a short life. To be hunted by the most gifted soldier Joshua had ever met. But that feeling did not last. Not once Joshua remembered exactly what he was going up against.
It had been the journey to Belfast that had brought the truth home for him. Ulster. The one post to which every British soldier of his generation had been deployed. And the very first place that Joshua had seen Joe Dempsey in the field. It was here that Joshua had seen how good his protégé really was. Looking back, it was a memory that made him fear the worst. That, this time, there would be only one winner.
It was not the thought of losing that concerned him. Joshua had no wish to die, but he was very aware of his own mortality. He had to be, in his profession. No, it wasn’t the loss. What worried Joshua was the consequence of that loss. Dempsey would find Stanton. Joshua was sure of that, just as he was sure that Dempsey would act with extreme prejudice when he did so. But what Joshua could not be sure of – what he could not count on – was the timeframe. Even the shortest break between Joshua’s failure and Dempsey’s revenge was a risk for Joshua’s family. In that time – however short – they would be at Stanton’s mercy. A mercy that Stanton absolutely lacked.
Joshua could not let that happen. He could not expose his family to that risk. And that meant that Joshua could not afford to lose.
The thought continued to trouble Joshua ten minutes later, as he opened the metal briefcase inside his locked room and began another process demanded by his compulsions.
It was a ritual he had followed countless times.
Similar packages had been delivered to him at hotels or deposit boxes or Western Union outlets in every corner of the globe. They contained everything a skilled professional would need to terminate his unknowing target. But by their nature these items were not selected or packed by Joshua, and so upon receipt he would strip them down to ensure that they lived up to his exacting standards.
The ritual – the stripping of the weapon and the detailed examination that followed – had prepared Joshua mentally for decades. Had calmed his fears, calmed his mind. Except this time his mind was on more than the cold steel in his expert hands. This time the monotony of the examination was broken by Stanton, by Dempsey, and by the threat that each man posed to Joshua’s own family.
He brought the military-standard Schmidt & Bender 3-12 × 50 PM II telescopic sight to his eye. Manipulated its range to his satisfaction. Continued for longer than was strictly necessary; his obsessive compulsion in action. It should have settled his mind.
Instead it just reminded him of that Ulster mission from long ago.
Dempsey had been fresh out of the hellish SAS selection process back then, but still he joined that first mission with an already fearsome reputation.
The young officer had sailed through advanced training with scores that rivalled even Joshua’s own. It had been inevitable, then, that they would be matched together for what was to follow. And so months were spent shoulder to shoulder as Joshua strove to raise Dempsey even further, to the level required of the regiment’s most elite section: the Chameleon Unit.
But training was no reality. The true test had come in the field.
Joshua had repeated this mantra from Dempsey’s first day. He had refused to recognise the rookie’s potential. Years of active service in the most dangerous corners of the globe told Joshua that being good on the training ground meant nothing. To win his genuine respect, Dempsey had to prove himself under fire. It was an opportunity that was not long delayed.
Three months of intensive drill-training in the world’s least hospitable environments had been cut short by orders to return to Hereford. Joshua and Dempsey had obeyed, arriving in time to join an equipped and briefed assault team as they prepared to leave the base. The two men had collected their equipment and reached the main unit as soon as they set foot on the ground, and received their own briefing in the air above the Irish Sea. It had been an irregular way to begin a virgin mission, but Joe Dempsey had shown no nerves. No fear.
And, for the first time, Joshua had allowed himself to be impressed.
The capital of lawlessness in Northern Ireland at the time was South Armagh, nicknamed ‘Bandit Country’. At the start of Joshua’s career it had been heavily garrisoned by armoured military installations. By Dempsey’s day these were fewer but they were still high in number. It had not seemed to matter. For years the county had been home to the worst of Republican terrorism. To fanatics whose solution to the Irish problem was murder and mayhem. With more violent death per head of population than any other part of the United Kingdom, this had been the Ulster where no soldier wanted to serve. And it was where Dempsey’s service really began.
The mission had been simple. It was no less dangerous for that. An MI5 informant had passed on word of an upcoming robbery at South Armagh’s biggest cash reserve. It was a secure facility close to the border with the Republic; to this day Joshua wondered how it had taken the IRA so long to target the place. Back then it had been guarded by a detachment of the Army’s Rifles Regiment and a separate squad from the Royal Ulster Constabulary. That had been a deterrent, but, with enough cash inside to fund an attack of terrifying proportions, not deterrent enough.
The IRA had assembled its best men to carry out the job. Their brief had been a clear one. Overwhelming violence would be the order of the day.
By the time they had reached South Armagh, both Joshua and Dempsey were clear in their own roles. They were to be part of a ten-man unit. All would be deployed outside the facility, with men on either side of the depot’s walls. Once there each man would secrete himself in the undergrowth, to await the arrival of the targets.
The team had been stocked for a wait that could extend into days. Each man was prepared to stay hidden – motionless – for up to seventy-two hours. Such early deployment had been deemed essential; the area would be under IRA observation well before the assault. Even a hint of SAS presence would have seen the raid abandoned.
But no such hint had been given. Each man had held his position undetected for over sixty hours. Had ignored the pain and discomfort. And so all had been ready to move when the moment came.
The sudden arrival of the IRA team would have been overwhelming, had it not been expected. Thirty men, hand-chosen to carry out the military-style raid. Half of that number had been divided into smaller groups to cover the depot’s exits, while the other half had accompanied a heavily armoured truck as it launched an attack on the front gate.
Only the thirtieth man had remained hidden. Posted to the surrounding hills, from where he would provide sniper cover that very few could equal.
The roar of the lorry’s engine had been the unit’s call-to-arms. The signal to move had been prearranged: the moment the lorry struck the depot’s secure front gate, when the largest number of the IRA team would be committed to the attack. That timing would raise the terrorist death toll to its maximum.
Joshua could still remember the deafening sound of metal upon metal. It had left no doubt that the front gate had been breached. No doubt that it was time to act.
Nine expertly trained soldiers had risen to their feet and moved in unison, flanking the depot from every direction. The tenth man – Dempsey – had remained in place, ready for a very particular role in the counter-attack.
It was Dempsey’s clinical execution of this role that Joshua most remembered. And which he now most feared.
Joshua’s awareness was as acute then as it was now. So he had been the first of the nine to spot a depot guard falling to a bullet from the hills, a shot that confirmed the presence of a sniper on the IRA side. This had been a worst-case scenario that made the operation much more dangerous. The same threat had been hammered home just moments later, when Joshua saw a member of his own unit fall under the sniper’s next shot.
The second shot had sent Joshua diving for cover, into the undergrowth to avoid the sniper’s crosshairs. As he hit the floor he had turned his head to where he knew Dempsey was hidden and in that instant had recognised the camouflaged recoil of the young officer’s sniper rifle. A single shot in the direction of the South Armagh hills.
It was a shot that Joshua had not expected. At least not so soon. Even now he marvelled that Dempsey could have deduced the IRA gunman’s location from just two shots. But back then he had not had time for disbelief. The absence of further sniper fire proved that Dempsey had made a miracle shot. The lone sniper was gone. Only the ground force remained.
What followed was a textbook SAS engagement, ending in the death of all thirty attackers. It was a loss from which the IRA would take a long time to recover. The price was four lives lost. One from the regiment, three from the depot’s guards. There had been many reasons for such a one-sided victory, but it was Dempsey’s actions that stood out.
Joshua could remember his own reaction like it was yesterday.
He had felt no pride in a successful mission. No sadness in the loss of a comrade. For Joshua there had been only one consideration: the arrival of a soldier with abilities that surpassed his own.
It had been unwelcome then. Now – years later and in circumstances that could cost Joshua his life – it was damn near unbearable.