Well past midnight, the man in the barn emerged for a stroll. He walked right past us, three metres away, and on to the gates, where he took a piss. The night was so still that we could hear every drop falling. Then he fiddled with the padlock — whoever might have put the new lock on, he had the right key — dropped the chain, and pulled the gates open one at a time. Hinges squealed and metal scraped over the gravel of the drive. That done, the man came sauntering back to pass us again and return to the barn. I guessed he was a guard, a kind of dicker, stationed there to make sure nobody else approached the place. I reckoned he was quite dedicated, as he’d been hanging around for hours in the dark, and had never showed so much as a gleam of light.
As if his little promenade had stirred the weather, the wind began to blow, drifting down the hill into our faces, and swirling round the cottage. In a few minutes it had become quite gusty, and I was glad because the noise of it made me feel less exposed.
At last, at about 0130, the Det reported another vehicle heading our way. Again the headlights came up from behind us, but this time they swung in through the gates, illuminating the cottage for a second before the driver snapped them off. He came past us on sidelights only — a van — and rolled on until he was almost inside the barn. Two men jumped out and called a quiet greeting to their waiting colleague. The kite-sight gave me a clear picture of all three.
I gave a jab on the pressel-switch.
‘Zero Alpha. Have you X-rays on target?’
Talking into my hood, I whispered, ‘Sierra Two, affirmative. Two X-rays arrived by van. Just about to unload into the barn. Wait one. Yes — one man has two longs. So has the other. Four longs into the barn. Can’t see much in there. Wait one — better now. They have a torch on in the back right-hand comer. Longs being lowered into hole below ground level. There’s straw round it. All four longs complete in hide… X-rays returning to rear of vehicle. Lifting out a heavy box. Two — two boxes. They look like ammunition, from the weight. Two boxes into barn, into cache. Ammo also complete.’
They didn’t hang about. I saw them lowering some form of lid and raking loose straw back into position; then all three came out and boarded the van. It looked as though there was a partition between front and back, because they had to put one man in through the rear doors and close him in. At the gates, one of them got out to fasten the padlock and chain behind them.
‘X-rays complete in van and mobile northwards,’ I reported. ‘Propose making CTR of barn itself.’
‘Zero Alpha,’ answered the desk. ‘Are you certain it’s clear?’
‘Looks good.’
‘At your discretion, then.’
‘Roger. Wait out.’
‘Did you get a look at any faces?’ I asked Mike.
‘Not really. Not enough light. But I wasn’t expecting anything much from tonight. These guys who move the weapons around are only minor players. It’s the shooters I’d like to see.’
‘Well, hang on here and cover me while I suss out the barn. If anything happens, start putting rounds through the roof. Then RV back at Fort Knox. Switch to the chatter-net for the time being.’
I was pretty confident that everyone had gone, but I took no chances. I stood at the barn door and listened for a while before I went in. Then I switched on my infra-red torch, invisible to the naked eye. Through my passive night goggles the interior of the barn showed up as light as day.
There was a good deal of loose straw piled in the far right-hand corner, and a low stack of bales to the right, only a couple of layers high. From the indentation on top of them, I could see that someone had been sleeping there. The floor was beaten earth. In the middle of it stood a wooden trestle table, with a frying pan and some plates on it, all dirty with old grease. There were also two tin-openers and an intact can of Pal dog-food. Jesus, I thought, these must be some low-level Paddies if that’s what they’re living on. The rest of the stuff in the barn was junk: a pile of old sacks; an ancient hay-cutter, rusted to hell; a couple of buckets, full of holes, with twisted handles; a ruined armchair with springs and stuffing bursting through dark-red upholstery.
I picked up a broken pitch-fork handle and began sounding the floor beneath the straw. At the fourth or fifth prod I got a hollow thump. Down on one knee, I drew the straw aside to reveal a circular sheet of heavy marine plywood, like the end of a beer barrel, with a piece of two-by-two nailed to the middle of it to form a makeshift handle. Fingers under one edge, fiddle around, lift gently. I couldn’t see or feel any booby-trap device.
Up came the board. Beneath it, the lid of a black plastic dustbin. Up came that too — and there, glinting in the torch-light, were four AK 47s, standing on their butts, muzzles uppermost. Beside them, two black ammunition boxes were stacked end on end. Holding the barrel carefully with a gloved hand, I lifted one of the rifles, and saw it had had plenty of use — the metal was scratched, and the woodwork of the butt and fore-end was chipped and scraped. The PNGs didn’t give enough clarity for me to see fine detail, so I pushed them up on to my forehead, whipped out my pencil torch and shone the fine beam on to the lettering beside the breech. The script was Chinese — no doubt that was where the weapon had come from. I lowered it carefully into place and flipped up the lid of one ammunition box. It was filled to the top with loose live rounds, but through them I saw something green and glinting. A quick rummage revealed two L2 hand-grenades, smooth green spheres about the size of a fist with a yellow band round them, and the inscription L2-A2. How the hell had the bastards got them — standard British Army issue?
Having checked the cache mentally, I replaced the box, the lid, the board, the straw, and withdrew, making sure not to step in any bare patch that might take a footprint. At the door of the barn I searched with my kite-sight for our OP in the ditch, and was glad to find that I couldn’t see any sign of Mike. But he was there all right — and once we’d reported to the desk that the hide was complete, we pulled off to our basha in the field.
All through the next day we lay low, sharing stags, two hours on and two off. We had the spotter scope trained on the cottage, and at that range the field of view took in the gates as well. Apart from the odd car passing up and down the road, the only event was the arrival of a party of potential buyers to look at the house in the middle of the morning.
Mike was having a kip, but I woke him up. ‘Now,’ I said, ‘watch this. If it was the dickers who put that new lock on the gates, they’ve fucked up. They obviously weren’t expecting any customers.’
A middle-aged gent in a dark suit got out of the car and went to undo the padlock. He tried for a couple of minutes, gave it a big shake, scratched his head, looked back at the car and tried again. Finally he turned and said something through the car window. Out got a young-looking couple, the bird a not-bad-looking blonde in a tight, short skirt. There was no way they could approach the home of their dreams except by climbing over the stone wall beside the gate. Fatty Estate Agent went first, and reached back to give the blonde a hand. Up she came, arse-on to us, with her skirt riding halfway up her kidneys, and displaying a pair of outrageous mauve knickers.