Wilco- Lone Wolf 13

by Geoff Wolak

  My phone trilled. ‘Captain Wilco?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Major Whitworth, 2 Para, we just arrived at this ... place. Not sure how I’d describe it, but according to the doctor you told him “welcome to hell”, and that fits well enough, more dead bodies here than in hell itself. And it stinks! What exactly are we supposed to be doing, because my briefing was light?’

  ‘Your job is to hunker down and fight off any attacks, to hide when rockets come in, but not to patrol out unless you want a shoot-out in the open.’

  ‘I see. And these bodies?’

  ‘There are body bags on the way, more men and more medics, to bag them up and drive them south and drop them off. Can’t bury them, they have to go back to the families, proper burial.’

  ‘And just when will all that happen?’

  ‘Soon. Go talk to the French major, I asked him to get more body bags. If you have masks and gloves you can move bodies further south, just drag them if you have to, and since the wind blows north to south you can move the bodies that are north and northeast to the south.’

  ‘Not quite the job we signed on for...’

  ‘Then get clarification from London. Not my job either, I just get paid to shoot them. But I suggest you get masks and gloves from the medics and move the bodies upwind to be downwind, for your own health reasons.’

  ‘Bloody marvellous, typical MOD cock-up as ever.’ He hung up.

  I called General Dennet, finally getting through to him. ‘Sir, there’s a problem at Camel Toe Base, and the British contingent there. First, it’s now a health risk to our men, and I am officially reporting it as such. Second, if we don’t get masks, gloves and start bagging up the bodies soon the international criminal court will want the British Army on trial.’

  ‘Someone mentioned it today, and the images on the news are horrific. Leave it with me, I need to shout a little.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  Paul MacManners called. ‘We’ve had a meeting about the Wolves, the British veterans and the new batch. We’ve had lots of problems with their parent units, men always on a charge or complaining about harassment, trouble with their officers, so we’ll lodge them all with you for now, we’ll get some more huts.’

  ‘There are a few politicians in the UK that would see such a move as you lot getting your own private army!’

  ‘Indeed, so they’ll be paid through the SAS, we’ve already discussed it with Colonel Dean and the JIC, and they’ll be a detachment of yours.’

  ‘A detachment of the detachment?’ I teased.

  ‘Perhaps a name that is simple to follow.’

  ‘SAS Recon Detachment.’

  ‘That would do, yes. The new British Wolves would be in the barracks till they qualify and have final assessment.’

  ‘There are a few of them that could be Echo, they’re shit hot.’

  ‘So replacements for men killed and wounded.’

  ‘We have enough men, a few spare, and the Wolves accompany us, so they’re there if I want them.’

  ‘Captain O’Leary is organising more of those cabins, six rooms in each.’

  ‘When I’m back I’ll have a look at space, but the one thing we’re not short of is space.’

  I went and found the veteran Wolves and explained it, but they kind of expected it. ‘Watch out for Sergeant Major Rocko, he carries a pistol on his hip.’

  In the Wolf recruits’ barracks I called out the British men and explained the situation, and that they could remain with Echo if they wished, once their training was complete, or return to parent units. None expressed a desire to return to their parent units, so the canteen at GL4 would be busy when we were not deployed.

  At 5pm we boarded our Tristar after some lengthy kit checks, a grenade or two found by some teams, men shouted at, and we were taking a risk by travelling together. I could have left teams behind for a day but I did not have the heart to do so.

  The Deltas and the Greenies would not be flying out with us, they were waiting a ride of their own, and there would be no French teams. Plus many of the wounded had already flown back. As we were about to board I was informed that Fuzz did not make it, and I notified the team. They were tired anyhow, so facial muscles hardly moved, nods given in acknowledgement.

  On the plane we found soldiers rotating, a few RAF personnel, and I made a point of speaking with a few, especially the officers; some had been at the FOB, and had been expecting us to go there. As we headed north my tired mind was on training the Wolves, and what was required to get them up to speed quickly.

  I also considered the middle men and the arms dealers involved with this. Some would be dealt with by myself and the Russian lads, some to be dealt with by Spectre, but I had no illusions about the paymasters; they would be off-limits as far as London was concerned.

  We hit with a bump, and I had dozed off for an hour, now rubbing my face along with many of the lads. Door open, we were greeted by cold rain, everyone finding it refreshing for a whole thirty seconds before moaning and wanting to be back in the desert.

  RAF buses were lined up ready on the floodlit apron, some for us, some for the American Wolves. I made sure that the sleepy Wolves and their sleepy NCOs got onto the right bus, headcounts performed, allowances made for the dead and the wounded. A final wave, and I would see them in two weeks or so.

  I checked that 1 Para and the Pathfinders were aboard their own bus, officers asked to headcount, and I told the men to ask for a few days off after I thanked them for their participation.

  Haines and his men boarded a bus, headcount done, tired faces checked, and I thanked them for their participation. On the Echo bus, tired men getting jackets on, I gave the driver a nudge and we set off around the Parachute School hangar, and I put my own jacket on. It was British summer time, which meant that it was cold, especially after the temperatures we had endured in the desert.

  After a short ride, barely fifteen minutes, we arrived at familiar gates, MP Pete on duty with an armed copper, a man we had trained, plus Rocko – our Sergeant Major up late. The bus dropped off myself and Swifty first, our crate found and pulled out, Moran and Mitch down, Ginger down - they did not have far to walk.

  In our little-used kitchen we found fresh milk and bread, and a note. “Today is probably Tuesday, 8th of May, if it’s past midnight.” We got the kettle on as Rocko asked questions of logistics and wounded men, and kit to return.

  ‘We left a shit load of kit in the desert, for the next team,’ I told him. ‘Left ammo behind save having it on the plane. I need to call the British major down there and have him inventory everything. We’ll get back the grenade launchers and box-fed, but I don’t want the British lads down there to go without, so ... have them down as dispersed stores for now.’

  ‘I got a list of what Valmet sent, so I can use that as the dispersed stores to start with.’

  ‘I think the Americans pinched two Valmet Elephant Guns, we need to check what’s left down there and what came back in the morning.’

  He sat with a brew and chatted for half an hour before heading off, and he would make an early start on returned kit, taking his position as top NCO seriously.

  I woke at 6am, the day dark and overcast, but the track was dry. Not surprisingly, there were no men running around.

  After a shower, clean civvy clothes on, I wandered to the canteen, finding a few people in, a full English breakfast enjoyed, two cups of tea as I spoke to Bongo’s new helper, the young lad in awe of me, as well as very critical of all of Bongo’s bad habits.

  At 7am I walked up to the small Officers Mess and found Major Sanderson sat with Captains Harris and O’Leary. I got a tea and joined them. ‘Mister O’Leary, you have a wife to cook you breakfast.’

  ‘I do the school run and then come straight here, save doubling back, and my wife sets off for work at about the same time - she’s posted to Swansea for a few months more, hour’s drive just about.’

  I faced Captain Harris. ‘And ... Lesley?’ I
floated.

  He stared into his cup. ‘It was hard on my wife, and she cried, we went to the funeral, more tears. We’ve had words about my safety here, but she’s not threatening divorce yet.’

  I faced Major Sanderson. ‘And your wife, sir?’

  ‘I’ll not bow down to terrorists, by damn, and she agrees with me. She’s old school, blue blood, no nonsense.’

  I faced O’Leary. And waited.

  ‘She’s worried, of course, but used to it, we were careful when I was at the old SAS base, we used fake names, avoided certain places.’

  ‘And a kid on the way...’

  ‘Yes, she’s getting bigger, and we’re just about over the shock of it.’

  I faced Major Sanderson. ‘What you been working on, sir?’

  ‘Your treasure trove. We have the timeline, most of the detail, and the JIC, MOD and Cabinet Office all want reports, a summary followed by detail, wounded and dead. We’ve been monitoring the Nigerian press as well as Mali and Niger, opinions and facts for the JIC and the final report.’

  ‘And..?’

  ‘The Nigerians are deliriously happy, a bit over the top I think, some anti-Islamic sentiment that could best be avoided or it will stoke more trouble, but they’re still rebuilding their shopping malls and trying to get oil workers back – so they’re being a bit vocal in their attacks.

  ‘In Niger it’s been balanced coverage for the most part, a few papers in Mali siding with the terrorists, a few papers further afield being negative towards us.’

  I told him, ‘I’ve asked for the list of men killed, by group, so that we can see if they were a militia ... or just farmers wanting some cash.’

  ‘The Nigerian Government is listing various militias as being wiped out to a man, and so far there’s no evidence to suggest otherwise, they’re all laying in the sand.’

  ‘And rapidly becoming a health risk for the soldiers down there,’ I pointed out. ‘Still waiting on body bags, and men to move the bodies.’

  ‘They’ll be a bit ripe,’ Harris noted. ‘In that heat.’

  ‘Very ripe, swollen - and exploding - before they start to dry out. Most people don’t realise what happens to a body left in the heat, not least the farting.’

  ‘Farting?’ Sanderson repeated.

  ‘Body stomach contents swell dramatically.’

  ‘Jesus,’ he let out, shaking his head.

  Up at the hangar the Major was just pulling in. ‘You’re back then,’ he loudly began. ‘Forgot what you looked like.’

  ‘Had a small squabble to deal with in the desert, sir.’

  ‘We got copies of the papers, and the story is up on the wall. I taped the two-hour special last night, recognised a few of the lads from behind, Stretch sleeping with a cap on his face, but I knew it was him.’

  We walked in, past the armed MP, and we headed up the steps to his office, a long one-to-one as O’Leary got on with some paperwork, the Major wanting the Valmet weapons up here at some point – not with the men down in Camel Toe Base.

  ‘We’ll probably be back down there at some point,’ I told him. ‘I might send teams on rotation. The local idiots will re-group and have another go, small probing attacks.’

  In the Intel room they greeted me, the new American guy welcomed, Stenson, a silver-haired fifty year old. I had a glance at some of the ten white boards on easels, commenting on some of the information. They had a long list of questions, so I sat and answered the questions over an hour.

  Taking a coffee break, I stood in the downstairs briefing room and followed the story day by day, but found it all fair and balanced. The various teams had been listed, and their positions in the trenches, a good write-up on the RAF medics, a photo of the goat.

  Back in the Intel room, the French guy told me, ‘Twelve French-Algerian citizen dead in the sand, fifty arrest in Paris. French newspapers … not so kind.’ He shrugged.

  I told Tinker that after lunch we would drive up to GCHQ. In the canteen I found most of the lads, and for most this was breakfast. I wanted only a light lunch since I was still full from breakfast, and I sat with my troop sergeants and discussed the Wolf training – training for the men after they’d had a rest.

  When four of the veteran Wolves walked in I told them they had two weeks off – and to get some down time away from the military. For now they were in the barracks.

  After lunch, I found that we were being invaded, four large lorries with cabins on the back, police escort due to the size and nothing to do with our security, one large crane trundling in. Mister O’Leary directed the operation with our RAF facilities officer, the huts to be lined up behind the others.

  I told O’Leary, ‘I want more of that bullet-proof fencing, around this lot, the lads are vulnerable.’ The RAF facilities manager would get on with it, a count of spare rooms revealing that we had ten spare rooms, more than anyone thought, two next to Bongo out of bounds, but Bongo was due to move off-base and live with his girl, so that gave us extra capacity.

  Fuzz was gone, Jacque would probably not return to us, so we would have twelve spare rooms plus twenty-four new rooms. And we had the barracks, but men could not live in there for more than a week at a time, there was no privacy. There were two houses left over, but I was not sure about putting the Wolves in them, we tended to use those houses for officers visiting us here.

  Getting a call in to the RAF at Brize Norton, our contact point for supplies, I asked for a large pre-fabricated shed, like the ones the SAS territorials used for storage, but to insulate it and kit it out as if for a meeting hall and recreational centre, chairs and sofas, coffee tables, kitchen, pool table. I also wanted another portakabin, same as the “E” Squadron lads used, again kitted as a recreational centre, I did not want the Wolves heading down the pub every night.

  I checked my pistol before I set out, Tinker also checking his pistol, and he claimed to be a dab hand with it these days. ‘You play computer games, not shoot people,’ I pointed out.

  ‘I shoot people in the computer games, same thing.’

  ‘Not ... quite,’ I told him as we drove, mirrors checked now and then for anyone tailing us. ‘How are your neighbours?’

  ‘Mad as hell, but they don’t think it was about me, I may have fibbed a bit. The nice old lady next door thinks I’m a computer engineer in Gloucester – I fixed her son’s PC.’

  At GCHQ Cheltenham they welcomed me like family, the Director making me a tea, a quick chat about the operation before he led me to the room set aside for this operation, many harassed looking nerds in white shirts appearing busy, white boards everywhere, red marker pen lines joining the dots, the intel links.

  The Director showed me the summary board. ‘This the valuable stuff. At the bottom are the commanders on the ground, dead or wounded, above them the regional commanders, then the weapons suppliers, then the middle men, and finally the paymasters.

  ‘You have question marks for three of the paymasters,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Not sure who they are, but we are closing in. Two are in Saudi.’

  Belchov was listed, and the men linked to him, as was Polchok and his contacts. When I saw the name Libintov I said, ‘Forget about him, he’s on our side.’

  ‘Our side..?’

  ‘I have regular contact with him as Petrov, and he won’t supply Islamists. He delivered weapons to me in the desert, and tipped me off about attacks. He wants his rivals diminished, so he’ll sell them out to us.’

  ‘He’s still a criminal gun runner...’

  I made firm eye contact and squared up to the Director. ‘And I’ll do all I can to see that he’s protected as a valued intel source. The Americans ... want him left in place.’ I waited.

  The Director finally nodded. ‘We turn a blind eye for now.’

  ‘We’ve done worse,’ I pointed out.

  ‘British soldiers at Camel Toe Base can collect our listening devices, we have handheld scanners that will find them.’

  ‘Gives them something to do,�
�� I agreed. ‘But don’t take your eye off that region, there will be other attacks, and the next wave will be the real die-hard nutters from the Arab world, so there’s more intel to be gained.’

  ‘We’ll keep the teams in place, scaled down.’

  I studied the board. ‘The French press were not kind to their Algerian nationals who went to fight.’

  ‘We think a total of eight British nationals were there, and one arrested back here is talking, and he revealed that there were twenty-six British Pakistanis at a camp in Afghanistan. We have some names, Mi5 following up leads.’

  ‘A cause to believe in, a cause to fight for,’ I said with a sigh. ‘Nothing more dangerous than a man who believes he’s right, and that god is on his side.’

  A man rushed in. ‘Sir, car bomb in Bamako, outside the British Embassy, modest damage and minor wounds, local police killed.’

  ‘Revenge attack,’ I noted. ‘And it won’t be the last.’

  I met with the man who was collating names and numbers, and he had estimates of the sizes of groups that had travelled to Camel Toe Base, plus satellite photos from the Americans. I picked up a black and white image, the runway clearly seen. ‘When were these taken?’

  ‘Morning after the final battle, so we’ve blown them up and divided them into squares and counted the bodies.’

  I stared at him, and waited.

  ‘If we don’t include the American bombing, or those you buried, those still in APC and aircraft, it totals five hundred and sixty two. Plus men killed at the artillery, the ambush south, and the wreckage, six hundred and eighty three.

  ‘We only have an estimate for those who died in the bombing, most blown to bits, so we counted the jeeps and assumed four men on average per jeep. That would add in a further three hundred and sixty men, so a thousand and forty-three give or take a few.

  ‘From that we deduct Group 1, two hundred and eighty, Group 2, three hundred and ten, Group 3, two hundred and sixty, minus the Nigerian Army men, minus a group of outsiders mentioned as sixty-five, leaves only a hundred to tally.

  ‘But, given that Group 4 is missing and failed to return, that adds in another two hundred and twenty, so I’d assume that the American bombs got them – they’ve not returned home. When it comes to conscripted local help, there’s a deficit of a hundred or so.’