The Steering Group

by M. J. Laurence

  Tensions and suspicions were running high amongst the opposition groups, and the operation was given high priority as the Steering Group wanted to track the entire arms route and tie it in with operational surveillance, not only of the Russian supply chain but its intended onward route, possibly to Sarajevo (the syphoned route), and of course its final destination in the Middle East and the end customers there or any onward movements. The team’s objectives were to neutralise all those identified on the primary list and destroy the cargo once I had separated myself from personal contact with Evgeny. Secondary to my role in accompanying Evgeny was to identify any Middle Eastern connections, gain their confidence if possible to expedite a meeting with them and the family under more controlled conditions, thereby facilitating solid intel confirmation that this new group was the same group at the information exchange near Khor Duweihin bay, and if so find out who the fuck they were!

  On completion, the plan was to retract into Bosnia Herzegovina close to the town of Srebrenica on the Serb border, then currently held by the Dutch, and await extraction under the guise that we were UN troops. On-board pre-insertion briefing intelligence unveiled that there had been some reports from UN officials of a build-up of Serbian forces outside Srebrenica on which NATO had requested ‘on one’ intel as to the size of forces converging in the area. The town was supposed to be a city of refuge carved out by the UN and under the command of a Dutch blue beret force. It all sounded straightforward enough, just like picking up the takeaway on your way home from work.

  Over the next two days we planned our insertion into Romania and how the team was going to cover the transport caravan on its final journey. The team was in agreement that it would be advantageous to follow the cargo for as long as possible, not only to gather information on the route etc. but the further it travelled into Serbia the less suspicion we would raise when we destroyed it, allowing for a cleaner exit on our side. This would all be dependent on my securing the final destination from Evgeny, the new customers, or it would all become a longer intel-gathering process. All the guys apart from Hugh would make their own way to the meeting point in Drobeta-Turnu Severin. Hugh would be 48 hours ahead of me and be my transport into the town to meet Evgeny. Hugh would then cover my insertion until the transport made Valjevo, and the team would oversee the entire operation out of sight. It was a ‘suck it and see’ type operation all the way to be honest; we didn’t really know what or who I would encounter in Drobeta or Valjevo. Once I had made the necessary contacts and played the family pantomime, Hugh would assist in my extraction then we would destroy the transport and neutralise package four, that being Evgeny. It’s still hard to say it, Evgeny being a target on the Steering Group’s list, but he had become a ruthless bastard in the arms trading world and rumours from other operatives working for the Steering Group had made me subtly aware that he was into the people-smuggling business through Iran and Russia into Europe.

  There was always a lot to learn from the team, and their planning and meticulous attention to detail for every possible scenario was nothing short of fascinating. Every building on the map was considered for use as an observation point, a refuge, extraction point, safe house, temp field hospital or just a landmark to be committed to memory – the detail was microscopic. Baz took me under his wing as he studied all the maps in detail, identifying all possible routes the transport could take – roads, forest routes, contours, towns, rivers, railways; every scenario was explored and dissected for operational possibilities. Baz ensured that all escape routes, evac and air support opportunities were listed for the command briefs. Transit times from one point to another, from one building to another, and shortcuts to cross-country and re-intercept points to avoid detection were all carefully considered and theoretically tested amongst the team, leading to discussions of how long it would take by road, on foot, yomping, high points for clear comms, and of course every ‘action on plan’ scenario the team could think of should situations change quickly or unexpectedly. Put simply, it gave me a lot of confidence going into this more than precarious scenario of unknowns than previously experienced. To be honest we had no firm plan when we would take out the cargo or Evgeny; there were a lot of ‘play it by ear’ type scenarios which didn’t allow for a straight in and out op.

  The next day revealed a beautiful dawn, the first light shimmering over the calm sleeping Adriatic Sea. I was on the sponson (like a balcony or viewing platform) having a coffee, taking in the air and listening to the gentle breaking sound of the sea against the hull of the ship. There were no signs of a conflict beyond those waves which seemed so gentle and relaxed in the morning sun. Time alone aboard ship is precious and to be savoured if you’re lucky enough to find some solitude in a steel floating city such as the America. It lasted until I saw the very first glint of an object in the sky moving too quickly to be a bird, then a smoke trail as it throttled back, turning to make an approach, the night sortie returning to the nest, pilot tired and low on fuel; the plane aligning with the ship as she increased speed, to harvest her hawks, the decks becoming busy in anticipation, fire crews ready, all eyes on the pilot who’s looking for the ball (the optical landing system – OLS), bright lights now from the landing gear, heavy smoke, then absolute thunder as it catches a wire at full throttle then whines down into an angry buzz saw screaming at a high pitch and looking for a resting place amongst the other tired fighters.

  The entire team assembled in air ops for a safety briefing before our separate departures. An S-3 Viking carrier take-off is nothing short of fucking amazing. It’s like a fighter aircraft but has four seats: the pilot and co-pilot in the front, with two seats in the rear for a tactical coordinator (TACCO) and sensor operator (SENSO), which we took as passenger seats. Taking off from a carrier for the first time must be equivalent to an astronaut’s first launch into space – that sudden rush and G-force as you leave the safety of the ship behind and accelerate and climb at a rate that is nothing short of terrifying. Videogame stuff – hard banks and manoeuvres – before levelling off above the clouds, ready to vomit but swallowing it all to try and look cool and in control. The pilot must have loved taking passengers just to try and give us a scare. Hugh and I flew together to Eleusis military air base in Greece, coordinates 38°03'50"N 23°33'21"E, then I took a civilian flight from Athens to Bucharest. Arriving by civil airliner as a tourist into the country was the only way in without raising any suspicions. I was then back into the familiar role of being the N1 operative, undercover, a member of the Russian family once again. I think the team hit the silk (parachuted at night) into an area just far enough out of Drobeta to avoid too much of a hike into town to await our arrival.

  My arrival into Bucharest’s Henri Coanda International Airport was uneventful, despite arriving on a TAROM flight (Romanian airline). The airport was drab and very post-war, an arched terminal building clagged on to a box-like structure with low ceilings, giving that cramped overcrowded feeling no matter how busy or quiet the place was. To be fair, the airport was one year into an ongoing expansion and was a mess. It was only 16.5km from the city centre of the capital and lay just outside the main ring road to the north. Exiting the terminal building revealed an overcrowded car park and a chaotic interchange of passengers and vehicles frantically arriving and departing from triple-parked taxis and buses, typical of any Eastern European airport. Hugh should have been waiting for me in arrivals but was late which was initially a worry. He soon arrived and explained how fucking chaotic the whole place was and that he had been a little choosy in the vehicle he had acquired, an ARO 244 which sort of looks like a Land Rover but is completely inferior, ideal for what we needed. It would blend in and be useful to the team after Hugh had taken me to meet Evgeny; it was the best off-roader on offer but would not stand out in a crowd.

  The drive from Bucharest to Drobeta is just under five hours and a distance of about 350km in a westerly direction and we set off by the most direct route via E81, DN65/E574 and DN6/E70 – what a fucking dra
g, but there was no direct train line. The alternative was to do 20 hours on a train via Sofia, and that wasn’t fucking happening, so I had the use of a ‘personal’ driver hired in Bucharest, which was the best way forward; and besides, Hugh was itching to get closer to the action and I appreciated the close-cover protection on this trip. The truck was a sloppy drive but fun, and I think Hugh made every effort to try and roll the fucking thing on the winding roads. We got as far as Pitesti and picked up a tail. Now, we didn’t know if it was serious or if the two of us were simply being totally overcautious. After a tense 30 minutes or so with us both checking our sidearms repeatedly, we ended up switching routes to the higher road and heading further north and then proceeding in an arc on Route E81, bypassing E574 altogether; we had lost the tail but were more alert now. We had to get in theatre mentally. It always starts out like a tourist trip, never feeling totally real for some reason when you set out. That fantasy can remain in your head until the shit hits and you have to get down to business; loss of focus shouldn’t happen but it does.

  The road wound through quiet villages and forests – quite a relaxing drive out into the country with only light traffic to annoy Hugh. The houses were quiet and quaint with red-tiled roofs and broken windows, some with rusted corrugated iron roofs holding up crooked chimneys that emitted the smell and warmth of wood fires being sucked into the cabin as we sped along. There’s always a stray dog to watch out for and regular potholes to dodge, which no doubt kept Hugh awake. People would wave and smile as they stepped out over their little bridges across the drainage ditches that ran alongside the roads, which made us nervous, some selling their wares on the gravel shoulder on makeshift market stalls. They all looked tired and dirty; all the men would be wearing jumpers, denim jackets, with old trainers and checked shirts, many with bushy moustaches, accompanied by their wives who all wore headscarves and aprons or shabby dresses and broken shoes. Their faces were like leather, mapped with stories of hardship and cold winters, comforted by the smiles the scruffy children would bring to them as they played in the gardens and on the roadside. How innocent most of the world can be, living in absolute ignorance of the forces at play all around them. I had time to take in some of the countryside and then inspect the inside of my eyelids for an hour whilst Hugh concentrated on not driving us off a cliff!

  Finally, we arrived in Drobeta, not quite the shithole we were expecting, and Hugh quickly managed to find the warehouse where I was supposed to be meeting Evgeny. We were on the banks of the Danube, the border between Romania and Serbia. Drobeta is home to a few historic sights and buildings, including the Iron Gate, Romanian Porţile de Fier and Serbo-Croatian Gvozdena Vrata, which is the last gorge of the Derdap gorge system on the Danube River, dividing the Carpathian and Balkan mountains and forming part of the boundary between Serbia and Romania, with towering rock cliffs that make it one of the most dramatic natural wonders of Europe. It was spectacular. The city hid behind a sort of beautiful façade, curious in its own way, busy but remarkably peaceful, encouraged by the central park surrounded by its history and other lesser tourist attractions. The River Danube itself and the Water Castle made for interesting sights to be enjoyed as a momentary but welcome distraction from the task ahead. Hard not to be a tourist despite the purpose of our visit.

  Hugh navigated through the town and eventually pulled the truck up on a hardstanding outside an old warehouse complex just upriver from a boat repair yard. It was typical of any disused industrial site, and we got out and stretched our legs looking for Evgeny; as there was no sign of him we took it upon ourselves to walk around and familiarise ourselves with the area, do a bit of a recce. It was pretty bleak and looked tired; the successful industrial days had long passed and only the debris and abandonment remained for us to look upon. Lifeless machinery, old ship winches and disused cranes and cargo equipment nestled amongst the weeds and all the broken orphaned trucks. The warehouses were overlooked by five-storey concrete slab accommodations, dilapidated and derelict but occupied by desperate souls hiding behind their towels or bed sheets used as makeshift curtains. Rubbish and litter overflowed from four-wheeled industrial waste bins, some toppled over in the street amongst the rubble, others overflowing, spewing house waste for the stray dogs and cats to feast upon, the walls all cracked and damaged showing the iron meshing beneath the surface of the concrete as if there had been a recent earthquake. Strangely, however, all the walls were littered with endless satellite dishes for TV, some clinging to makeshift support structures, air conditioning units and other contraptions that had been hastily attached from nearby windows.

  We were approached by four men, none of them recognisable, who were dressed in overalls with leather jackets, failing to hide the pistols beneath; I don’t think there was any intention on their part to hide the fact that they were armed. Two of them were dirty looking guys, unshaven, matted hair, overweight, smoking cigarettes as they walked towards us laughing and cursing about something. As for the other two they were definitely Russian, thin with hard jawlines, crew cuts, Russian tattoos, jumpy and nervous, but there with purpose. Hugh and I gave each other a glance before I deliberately opened the conversation in Russian. They were quick to respond and looked relieved that I was speaking in their native tongue, and they simply retorted that Evgeny was waiting in the hotel across from the yard. We invited them to join us to take us over to the hotel as we preferred to drive over than leave the truck unattended.

  A nervous but short silent drive followed as we headed over to the hotel, a four-storey yellow monstrosity surrounded by a crappy uneven bricked driveway which made for a parking lot, from which you were greeted by a poorly hand-painted faded hotel sign which hung from the second-floor balcony. The frontal aspect of the hotel was impregnated by uninviting dirty floor-to-ceiling sliding ranch doors giving access to each of the rooms they concealed. Wrought-iron railings were bolted to the balconies but were coming away from the rust-stained render, all of which attempted to safely enclose and protect the occupants from a fall. The occupants of these rooms were obviously not holidaymakers, smoking and drinking half-dressed, leaning over the railings, flicking their ash towards us as the net curtains behind them blew out of the balcony doors, some revealing the prostitutes who had obviously stayed the night. It was a dive, a complete dump, the kind of place you’d expect to conduct a dodgy business deal in, a place where should something happen it wouldn’t raise too many eyebrows. A place where checkout didn’t necessarily mean a nice smile and an invoice.

  Now, Evgeny wasn’t exactly himself, fucking jumpy as hell and pretty damn drunk in the lobby. We greeted each other briefly. He was so pissed. It was as though, on my arrival, I had suddenly relieved him of all responsibility for his purpose here in Romania. I was visibly angry and challenged him, aggravating the two guerillas he had sent to meet us. He was useless, and he hardly even noticed Hugh who I had introduced as my driver and transport back to Bucharest. Evgeny was straight into it, burbling in a semi-incoherent drunken state, trying to blurt it all out in one go. How it was all a fuck-up, how he was expected to perform a miracle on his own. He was completely panic-stricken about the cargo that needed to be loaded and on its way by the weekend, with no local labour and the customer coming on Saturday to ensure its departure. He complained endlessly about his father leaving him to do it all. He had apparently left several days ago to meet onward customers in Serbia.

  Evgeny was in complete meltdown, pissed, only half making sense, it was a mess. I had just walked into a fucking nightmare, and Evgeny needed to be sobered up in order to get things rolling. In planning this mission no one could have come up with this scenario, so we had to play the part and get the shipment ready to roll. I would have appreciated Anatoly’s presence at that time as none of this shit would have been allowed to develop. Anatoly was without doubt the brains of the two. The family was in trouble, it could all fall apart here in Romania, which we really didn’t want to happen. I wasn’t sure if it was all alcohol that was
fucking Evgeny up or a combination of his heart meds, alcohol and all the stress.

  I got the Russians to talk me through the consignment after putting Evgeny to bed. Fucking useless prick, I dragged his arse upstairs with Hugh to his shit hotel room with the welcoming committee in tow. The room was a cesspit, filled with really drab brown furniture, table, broken chairs, wardrobe and a bed, with an equally crap headboard adding to the sad-looking bed overthrown by a blotchy brown faded, almost orange, counterpane and grey sheets. There we were, Hugh and I, organising the two local guerillas to go out and get more reliable local labour as the two Russians showed us the shipment documents in detail, thankfully revealing some high-quality intel regarding the end users which included a cell in Yemen and a possible link to a further group working in Lebanon linked to cross-border attacks with Israel.

  We all sat in Evgeny’s room with a warm whisky and a cigarette each, smoke being swirled around by the ceiling fan which came on automatically whether you wanted it to or not when you turned the lights on. We worked through what can only be described as a somewhat questionable Russian military consignment order, complete with trans-border documentation from Russia to Romania and onwards into Serbia, together with shipping documents. The surplus illegal containers were piggy-backing a genuine shipment from Russia to Serbia, and there was an awful lot on that consignment order. The Russians were nervous. I talked to them about Evgeny and Alex, and as soon as I mentioned Alex they relaxed and the conversation became almost a test of who I was for a brief moment, but I spoke of my time in Dubai with the family and how we had done great business in the Middle East and how it was benefitting the Russian economy. I allowed the conversation to build and shared photos of me and the family, allowing them in turn to tell their story, and slowly they unwound. They had travelled with Alex from Moscow and showed a photo of him with me and Evgeny, but they were keen to learn who Hugh was. I explained about the awkwardness of the transport situation to get to Drobeta and how I had hired Hugh. Nothing to worry about as I was paying him good money and he didn’t speak a word of Russian. It was a gamble, but safe in the fact that two of them were never going to be able to take Hugh out. I’m sure the team was probably real close and watching all the events unfold anyway.