The journey from fwd to aft made for a stroll along a long passageway broken up by watertight doors, passing tiny offices, switchboards that hummed away all day and night, A/C compartments, the stench of the garbage compactor room, stores office and of course the Colonel Gaddafi (NAAFI) and the main galley. The Cavalier gave me the welcome of the orchestra that I remember so well from the Atlantic Star, all so familiar but strangely different now. I think this ship was probably the best ship I ever served on for the morale and the welcome from the crew, who assisted but didn’t pry, were inquisitive but didn’t ask. Then of course this was probably due to the cruise that it had been allocated; it was a cruise ship itinerary. Plus there was the issue of the fucking scran (food) on board which was unrecognisably awesome. In the main it was pretty damn good. To answer the question, who is the most important person on a ship, the answer is without doubt not the captain or the chief engineer but the chef. However, there was one chef who should have a special mention as he could single-handedly destroy a potato. How the fuck you can turn a potato into a completely hollow piece of coal using a steamer is fucking amazing, but if that fuckwit was ever on duty on a Sunday to do Sunday roast it wasn’t worth the time to get changed to go eat.
Keith and I went off to the EW office to read our orders and study the ship’s programme. It felt like it had been almost arranged by a tour operator. We had the most amazing itinerary of Caribbean islands coupled with mainland ports in North and South America to visit before heading off back over the Atlantic, all of which presented itself as a great opportunity for Keith and I to gel as friends. Keith and I became the closest of friends in literally a matter of minutes. We sat together for many, many hours in that EW office, and we saw the sun set and rise again as I brought him up to speed with Moscow, the family and how it had all come together for this mission and the defection of Anatoly. The thing is, Keith didn’t interrupt, he was engaged, respectful and very knowledgeable of how to run a mission from his own previous experience; he was my link to the Middle East where he had been working solo. He helped complete my jigsaw puzzle when I gave him an opportunity to input, and his input was nothing short of remarkable.
Things started to click into place – why Marcus had put us together. Keith had met Owen, picked up and followed the stink trail we had used in the Middle East to find Rashid Asadi and Ahmed Haddad, and brought intelligence of the Arab/Iranian links of the sleeper cells in the UK and the Russian sector back to the Steering Group. Clever bastard. They were all linked to a new terrorist cell in some way. I have never fully understood any of the terrorist groups that may or may not link to Iran or how the whole terrorist circuit worked because it was a complete mess and above my pay grade! But the people who wanted Anatoly as much as us were serious bastards, their origin was mixed, their history complicated and their intentions unpredictable. However, the people we sought were most likely Iranians looking to acquire the ultimate weapon, or a person who could build it, and that’s where Keith’s path crossed mine.
We talked generally about our solo assignments. His assignment had been in the Middle East. This guy Keith had spent three years in and around Tehran, for fuck’s sake. It would have been very different to my time in Moscow and definitely more complex and much higher risk. He knew where the final games would be played out, but more importantly all the names on the list, OUR LIST!, their groups and the people and places that tied it all together with his solo mission. Our solo missions were now inextricably linked, which made us strangely partners. Keith was very knowledgeable about our final goals and the needs of the Steering Group to get this and his mission in the Middle East brought to a conclusion cleanly. I had underestimated him and this wouldn’t be the last time. He had his finger on the pulse. I can’t explain it, we had a connection, and not just because our work had been linked; he had my back from that very first day, way before we came together for the endgame.
He was definitely a weird cunt, but despite his outward appearance of a short stocky bulldog this man was as ruthless as they came. He was a true assassin and a man of the utmost integrity and loyalty. A talented linguist, engineer and fucking great under pressure in environments you’d want to avoid. Fuck, I was actually pleased to have him alongside me. We fed positivity off each other, our friendship grew quickly and soon our brotherhood would know no boundaries. I think it was the amount of piss-taking that brought us so close together and the fact that operatives so very rarely work together, it’s almost unheard of. So, there was a mutual respect, that we had both already overcome some impossible operational requirements involving personal sacrifice and difficult and challenging times in the field. I loved to wind him up about being a cockney, and how the fuck an East Ender got away with working in the Middle East. I tried to do a London accent whilst speaking Farsi and managed to flash him up so violently he got to throw a few punches at me in jest.
We set about it, spending a lot of time together. We ate, drank, slept, partied, went ashore together, worked and planned for months, always hidden away, focused on the mission. We took over one of the engineering watches for a while, allowing us to spend more time thinking and working together. Not only did we bounce ideas off each other and assist each other in our studies, it opened up new avenues for us getting rat-arsed in the middle of the night. We would come off watch and dive into the mess so no one could interfere or overhear. We talked about past experiences, all the people we had engaged with and the skills we had developed, and of course endless conversations about our support teams and our time with them in training, theatre and at home.
He explored my weaknesses as I did his, and we got to know what each man was about. Keith was a sensitive guy, couldn’t take any shit about being a fat cunt (even though he wasn’t really), and his mother was off limits. He drank too much as did I and we both never knew when to stop. I learned his trigger points, his character and I enjoyed his humour, his goodwill and generosity. He always bought the first round, always saw us back to the ship no matter what fucking state we got ourselves into or if we had gotten lost in some shithole bar in the middle of nowhere. He found my temper, my anger, and quickly found ways to use it to get me in to as much trouble as I found for him. I had to bail him out of the shit a few times; he liked to go shagging whores in the seediest of places and didn’t like paying. But generally we were bulletproof on that trip. We laid the foundations for our friendship and loyalty to one another. Yes, we made promises, both during drink and soberly, that only men in our position could even dream of making, promises he and I would later uphold.
Our daily activities were planned to be mutually beneficial to the crew as we had no intention of upsetting the daily running of things for everyone but rather to get involved and get stuck in. It gave relief to the crew as both Keith and I were qualified engineers. It gave them a rest from the tedium and it passed time very quickly. Our watch loved working with us because we were so relaxed and we always had access to food, often inviting the lads for a free beer in the mess on occasion. If, however, we ended up down the stoker’s mess or as often happened the chef’s mess after the middle watch, we usually got so fucked up we ended up having breakfast brought down to us at 6.30am before we slid off to our racks and slept through the ship’s daily routine.
I think it was about a week before we were about to leave the ship, I remember sitting down with him in the cabin going over our plans. Keith didn’t know when we would go, I never told him and he never asked. He was just ready, ready mentally and eager to get going. We sat just having a laugh looking at some photos of a banyan we had gone along to with the ship’s company. Fuck, when we let loose, we fucking let loose. Unlike me though, after a day on the pop Keith was either rough as fuck or back on it. He was a bag of shit after a heavy session. I didn’t start suffering from hangovers until my mid-40s so I was the wanker up at 6am for a full English every time, and always first in the dining hall banging the shutters to get the chefs all riled up! As we talked, I let him in on our departure d
ate. We needed to do an equipment check. I had made arrangements for the SR’s mess to be out of bounds whilst we went through all our gear and over our plans. His mood and stance changed in a second like I had flicked his switch over to sensible or operational mode. This was it, I would now see Keith as a team member, not a run-ashore buddy. His demeanour fascinated me as he set about his personal prep.
We departed the ship in Jacksonville. Keith and I were picked up by a US Marine security team at the ship at about 3am. A few crew members were coming back to the ship properly pissed up and were wanting to get in and have a go in the Humvee. They unfortunately were very strongly denied and a scuffle broke out. The security team was not diplomatic in any way and one of the lads was brought to the deck really quickly with a busted nose. Keith and I carried on, ignoring the incident, jumped in and hid in the back before being taken the short distance to the Admiral David L McDonald Air Field with all our kit. It wasn’t a fucking arsenal, we had limited our kit and had stripped things back to mostly essentials only. We jumped out the transports on the airfield adjacent to a burning and turning Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk, DAP (Direct Action Penetrator). Fucking cool as fuck, operated by the 160th SOAR (Special Operations Aviation Regiment). They call themselves the ‘Night Stalkers’! Yanks! Fucking typical. It was a sweet ride, thanks to Ben Martin I’m sure. The flight crew welcomed us aboard. I guess they must have guessed by their orders to undertake this early morning flight that it was all a bit, let’s say, unusual and we weren’t the usual characters they gave rides to.
We were assisted in stowing our kit and given a short safety brief. Standing on that airfield in the middle of the night not knowing where this fucking helicopter was going to was a strange feeling. Not even I knew how we were getting to our insertion point. There’s something about helicopters that just aren’t natural. I don’t think according to the laws of physics they’re even meant to fly. I just paused for the briefest of moments after checking the Humvee for left belongings and looked at Keith in the helo. He was so fucking chilled out, already trying to catch a few zzzs. I took in a deep breath and savoured the smell, a deep pungent perfume of spent aviation fuel exhaust forced into the air by the turning rotor blades. This, accompanied by the noise of the jet engines and the flashing of the strobe lights against the tarmac, gave a formidable silhouette against the backdrop of a moonlit night. This was minute zero. On board I gave the pilot the thumbs up and a post-it note with the coordinates and time we had to be there. The noise increased as the pilot increased thrust, pulling up on the collective, the helicopter gave that little unusual wobble in the fuselage just as the wheels left the ground, the vibration increased and we climbed away into the darkness, soon leaving the American shoreline behind. I knew we would be picking up a maritime contact for our transit across the pond but wasn’t expecting a merchant ship.
We executed a FRIES (Fast Rope Insertion Extraction System), or rapid roping, onto the deck of an MSC (Military Sealift Command) vessel, which is a merchant ship to all intents and purposes but is actually owned and manned by the US Navy. There was a whole fleet of them in Diego Garcia when I was out there on ops so it was of no real surprise. They are usually filled to bursting with all manner of shit, from tanks to ration packs and everything in between. It was going to be a cruise to us and a safe one, all very relaxed and with all the comforts of home. Nothing dramatic really apart from getting on board her. I guess the idea was that no one knew we were there, no dockyard workers had seen us or our kit go aboard and the manifest was all but normal cargo and merchant mariners bound for Norway, completely kosher. Six days later we arrived in Bodo, Norway.
We were really against the clock now. We had a 2,190km journey to get from Bodo to Yaroslavl. That translates into a 30-hour drive, give or take. You can’t fly direct – it’s a three-stop connecting journey by plane and 13.5 hours if you’re lucky – so not much to be gained when you add all the waiting time. Besides, we didn’t want to be clocked in on a flight manifest, come up on a computer somewhere or turn on the Russian security systems to our presence, plus we had a passenger to bring back with us. Stealth was paramount. Now, as crazy as it all sounded at the time and the distance involved, you might be forgiven for thinking there were easier ways to do this. Norway, Sweden and Finland were easy transient and cooperational countries for us and our crossing into Russia would be via Raate on the Finnish and Russian border. Somewhat historical, as this was the road where the Russians fought the Finns in 1939/1940 to try and cut Finland in half. However, Keith and I would make a more discreet unnoticed use of the road and border crossing.
That was the only real obstacle, getting over the Russian border unobserved. We would be able to proceed to Raate near the Russian border, pick up on the intel and the contacts that Keith had gained, then, utilising their assistance, get visas and border permits so we would be legally able to enter Russia in a suitably untraceable manner. A big security risk to the West was criminal organisations run by Afghans living in Central Europe who illegally transported Iranians and Afghans into the EU via Turkey and Greece, now redirecting them via Russia with only a need to arrange legitimate or fake border permits to get them into the EU through Finland. Finland has a 1,340km border with Russia and is one of the longest external borders of both the EU and the passport-free Schengen area. This was why we had planned this route, this was why Keith was with me; he knew the smugglers, the people traffickers, this was his side of the coin, the Iranian side, the terrorist side. Our enemy was the ticket to complete our mission. Fucking great when you think about it, how we used the fucking terrorists to our own advantage before closing them down. That’s one of the cool buzzes you get from working intelligence, it’s much more powerful than a bullet if you can wield it. We intended to get a return ticket across the border with our new fake identities.
Our backup plan and less preferred option was to veer off Route 9125 into the hills along a track to the River Lahtipuro, taking us into Lake Raatejärvi across the lake – the border into Russia – pick up transport somehow on the other side and off we go. Fucking very clever if we could pull that off; all a bit too fucking crazy but doable if we had to. Option 1 was all hinging on my new partner coming up with the goods, the Iranian contacts on the Finnish side of the border, to get us the border permits allowing passage across into Russia. This was why the Steering Group operated at levels above the system. There was no link between either us, the people smugglers, Finland or Russia. Lone operators make the unthinkable possible by operating at the most discreet levels of engagement. We could get entrenched into the other side, enabling us to achieve what no government or military force could contemplate without creating a diplomatic crisis. Putting the two of us together was a stroke of genius on Marcus’s part, if we pulled this lot off. Two separate intelligence operatives bringing together two very different strands of work against terrorism, government corruption, arms dealing and the like, to achieve a goal the opposition didn’t even know was in play let alone how deeply aware we were of their operations. Keith had the lead in this and explained how we would pick up the passes and a guide into Russia.
Keith and I departed the ship in Bodo very early hours and quickly procured a Volvo estate for our drive, nothing dramatic, a blue 240GL estate, a sort of non-interesting type vehicle. I suppose you need to understand that as N1 operatives we had what is called NOC, or non-official cover; this, in simplistic terms, is intelligence work undertaken under assumed identities of private sector industry. It has the financial assistance of the government but is totally untraceable. Companies would provide to the British Government assumed identity cards, false employment papers, and assumed addresses upon which passports could be arranged for an undisclosed sum of money. There are people, companies, organisations and individuals (often ex-armed forces) that are sympathetic to the Crown and who make NOC possible. It helps the operative gain access to overseas’ bank accounts, money, credit cards and official documents such as driving licences, etc., etc.
For us guys on the ground it was often a lifesaver and a quick exit route back home if things went to shit. This is the espionage side of the job and it relies on good relationships often born out of those conversations that never take place in hotel bars or over a round of golf where everyone seems to do rather well out of the final handshake. Trigger pulling, no matter how necessary, I always felt really belonged to the UKSF and the regular army; our role in my mind was just to identify the real targets.
The car suited our needs very well, and we headed off into the country, quiet at first then later a little chatter. I’ve always believed that if you can stand being with someone in a car for more than a few hours and enjoy a comfortable silence as well as any conversation offered then you’re gonna get along anywhere. We talked about the Steering Group, laughed and shared pain about the training, how we had survived with all the mental training and torture, all the bullshit and how we fucking actually loved the job, how we loved being ghosts. We took the piss out of the Steering Group and our support team members, a series of character assassinations picking up on all the little mannerisms of our fellow colleagues. In between conversations we would sit in silence reflecting on those conversations, often bursting out with a random isolated laugh or smile. We put the radio on to listen to any local news to fill the gaps. The drive was boring and if I’m honest it was what we wanted. We had the passports and documents ready for the border with Sweden and Finland and weren’t expecting any dramas. I took the first stint from Bodo to the Swedish border. It took us about four and a half hours and we didn’t see much, just the road ahead, conditions were okay, some snow but nothing to get upset about, not enough to put the chains on. Fucking car heater wasn’t great and the washer kept freezing up. We relaxed into the journey, stopping for petrol, remaining discreet but focused. I think the first leg of our drive was mostly beneficial in that it allowed us to settle into the task at hand and get our thoughts in the right place. I had to get Keith to go over the whole Iranian exchange thing over and over, and it took some time for the penny to drop on why we were taking a guide over the border with us when I was perfectly capable of navigating across Russia.
The Steering Group Page 39