just recalling it. This was a real war in the Province, with real death and destruction, so Sean normally tried to remain objective and not let hatred motivate him or, worse, distort his judgement. Nevertheless, the shooting of eight of his comrades by a large SAS ambush team placed inside and around the RUC station at Longhgall, with a civilian driver also killed and his brother badly wounded, had filled him with an anger that could not be contained. While Sean had not personally been informed of that particular IRA raid, it was as clear as the nose on his face that the Provisional IRA teams involved had timed it to take place after the police station was closed, which meant they had not intended bodily harm, but only to blow up the empty building. The response from the SAS had therefore been out of all proportion to the size of the event – a bloody overkill that had merely confirmed for Sean and other IRA members that the SAS was an officially sanctioned assassination squad acting on behalf of the British government.
