by Shaun Clarke
‘Are those sappers?’ Andrew asked.
‘Yes,’ Lampton replied. ‘Under the command of one of our demolition specialists.’
As Lampton climbed out of the Land Rover and approached the men around one of the wells, followed by the others, the men, in two groups, both being watched attentively by many villagers, including children, were leaning over the walls of the two wells and shouting down into them. The voices of men down inside the wells came back up with a hollow, reverberating quality, though what they said could not be made out.
‘You look like you’re ready to take a dive,’ Lampton said, stopping just behind one of the men leaning over the bricked parapet of the well. ‘What’s going on?’
The man straightened up and turned around to gaze at Lampton. He had unkempt red hair, a beakish, broken nose, and a face flushed from sunshine or booze – possibly both. He was still in his twenties, but his dour expression and a couple of scars made him seem older.
‘Hi, Sarge,’ he said. ‘We’re trying to open these wells.’
‘What do you mean by trying?’
‘The problem is that in blowing the concrete apart, we might also destroy the walls, covering the concrete with more debris and fucking the wells up for good.’
‘Which means we fuck up the village for good.’
‘Yes, boss, that’s it.’
Lampton glanced at the well behind the man, his attention drawn by what sounded like the tapping of a hammer coming up from its depths. ‘What are the chances of success?’
‘Pretty good,’ the man said, ‘but not guaranteed. It’s a calculated gamble, I guess, but I’ve orders to try it.’
‘Why not?’ Lampton said, glancing at the villagers gathered together across the clearing, though being kept a safe distance away by some troopers. ‘If it fails, those poor sods won’t have lost any more than they’ve lost already. This village is dead as we stand here. We can’t kill it off more.’
When the red-haired man’s sharp blue gaze focused on Ricketts and the other two, Lampton introduced them, then said: ‘This is Corporal Alfie Lloyd, formerly a Royal Engineer sapper, then ammunition technician with the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, now an SAS demolition specialist.’ He turned back to Lloyd. ‘So how’s it going, Alfie?’
‘Fine, boss. We’re all set to go. The wet concrete was originally poured in from mechanical mixers and hardened at the bottom of the walls. We think it’s about six foot deep. We’ve drilled about halfway through it and filled the hole with C3 plastic explosive. There’s a man down each well right now, fixing the time fuse, blasting cap and det cord.’ He indicated the coils of detonating cord resting on the ground by each well, with one end looped over the wall and snaking down to the bottom, where the sapper below would now be fixing it to the blasting cap. ‘We’re hoping that with just the right amount of explosive we can shatter the slab concrete without doing damage to the walls around it. If we’re successful, the pieces of broken concrete can be hauled up from the bottom of the well in buckets, giving access to the water still below.’
Lloyd turned away from Lampton as the men who had been at the bottom of the wells clambered back over the sides, their bodies criss-crossed with webbing that held explosives, blasting caps and various tools, including wire-clippers and a small, light hammer. When they were completely over the walls, their companions pulled up the rope ladders.
‘OK?’ Lloyd asked. Both men put their thumbs up. ‘Right. Run the other ends of those det cords across to the detonators and let’s get this show on the road.’ He turned back to Lampton. ‘I’d stand over there, if I was you, a safe distance away. About the same distance as those gawking Arabs, in case we’ve miscalculated.’
‘Now you wouldn’t do that, would you, Corporal Lloyd?’
‘It’s best not to take chances.’
‘I’m not taking any chances,’ Gumboot said. ‘When I was in Northern Ireland, doing a tour in bandit country, we were called to the scene where some IRA wally had blown himself up by accident when planting a bomb. They gave us plastic rubbish bags and told us to pick up the pieces, which were scattered all over the fucking place. You couldn’t tell his dick from his fingers. That put me off explosives for life, so just tell me where to stand.’
‘Over there by those houses. Beside the Arabs. Where you belong, mate.’
Clearly knowing that Lloyd had no sense of humour whatsoever, Lampton led the others back across the clearing, until they were level with the detonators on either side of them. As they waited for the sappers to move their demolition gear away from the wells and fix the detonating cords to the detonators, Ricketts asked: ‘Were those wells sealed by the SAF?’
‘Correct,’ Lampton replied. ‘As I said, the adoo are fanatical communists. About sixteen months ago, just before the old Sultan was deposed by his son, Qaboos, he was informed that this village was sympathetic to the adoo, who were then in control of much of the region. Reacting as he always did, the Sultan sent his SAF troops in to hang the suspected adoo and seal the wells, the lifeblood of the village, by pouring in gallons of wet cement direct from mixers. But this didn’t stop the adoo from carrying out their customary brutalities against the same unfortunate Muslims. They came into the village that very afternoon, while some of the Sultan’s victims were still dangling from ropes – deliberately kept up there as a grim reminder to the villagers, and guarded by SAF troops. The adoo shot the troops, then engaged in their usual practice of trying to persuade the village elders to publicly renounce Islam. As is one of the adoo customs, when the elders refused, their eyes were gouged out and their daughters repeatedly raped. When the adoo then melted back into the wadis of the Jebel, the villagers were left without their life-giving water and, even worse, with many of their menfolk dead or blinded. In short, the village was doomed.’
Lampton stopped for a moment to watch the sappers fix the detonating cords to the detonators under the eagle eye of the dour corporal.
‘What a fucking awful story!’ Gumboot said to Ricketts and Andrew. ‘First you get it from one side, then from the other – just like the protection gangs in Northern Ireland.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ said Andrew. ‘What did they do?’
‘A bunch of fucking gangsters masquerading as freedom fighters,’ Gumboot said. ‘First, a Protestant gang would visit a shop and demand payment for so-called protection against the Catholics. If the shopkeeper refused, they either wrecked his shop or burned it down completely. If he accepted, he’d then receive a visit from a Catholic gang demanding payment for so-called protection against the Prods. If he refused, they did the same as the Prods – turned his shop over. If he agreed, the Prods came back and burned the shop down to keep the money from going to the Catholics. The poor fuckers didn’t know which way to turn. Often it was just a matter of who got to them first. Just like this place!’
‘Religion and politics,’ Andrew intoned in a mock-solemn voice, ‘are excuses for many evil deeds. Personally, I wash my hands of both and stick to my poetry.’
‘Look at those mad fuckers,’ Gumboot said, indicating with a nod the sappers, who were kneeling on the ground by the detonators, a hundred yards from the wells, fixing the end of the detonating cords to the charge terminals. ‘Did you see that Corporal Lloyd? He had a broken nose and scars on his face and we all know what from – his own fucking explosives. Some job to have, eh?’
‘Rather him than me,’ Ricketts said.
Satisfied that the sappers were getting on with their business, Lampton turned back to his probationers and continued: ‘What was I saying? Ah, yes, the village was doomed … Well, that’s why we’re here. Now that this area is back in Sultan Qaboos’s hands, it’s our job to rescue formerly doomed villages like this, righting the wrongs of the previous Sultan in the name of his son and reminding the Muslims what will happen to them should they let the adoo return. In this case, our first task is to open up those wells and give water, therefore life, back to the villagers. Once that’s done, we’ll br
ing in some BATT teams, including medics and veterinarians, to restore the sick to health and help the rest get the most out of the water, the crops it’ll bring back, and the livestock it’ll help to increase. After that, we’ll bring in English teachers, radio sets tuned to Radio Salalah, comics, books and other seductive Western luxuries.’
‘Propaganda,’ Andrew murmured.
‘No, Trooper. Hearts and minds.’
‘Ain’t no one gettin’ my mind,’ Andrew insisted. ‘That’s all my own, man.’
‘With a mind like yours,’ Gumboot said, ‘no one would want it. You’ve no cause for concern there.’
‘We’ve already got it,’ Lampton said. ‘The trooper just doesn’t know it yet.’
After grinning at the doubtful Andrew, Lampton returned his gaze to the sappers who were still kneeling on the ground, one at each detonating plunger. The grim-faced Corporal Lloyd checked that the gawking villagers, particularly the children, were being held back by the troopers, then, without ceremony, he told his men to set off the explosive charges. They pressed down simultaneously on the plungers.
At first, the explosions at the bottom of the two wells were muffled by the solid concrete and sheer depth, but as the concrete exploded, the noise became louder, like the roaring of a buried beast. Suddenly, with an even louder roar, the mouths of the two wells spewed clouds of dust, smoke, pulverized concrete – and finally, water.
The villagers erupted into cheers and cries of joy as the water showered up in the air, then rained back down on them, mixed with dust and powdered concrete. When it had settled down and the smoke and dust had cleared away, both villagers and BATT men rushed to the wells to fight for a position around the walls to look down into the depths.
In both wells the slab concrete had been shattered by the explosions and was piled up as rubble at the bottom. But the rubble was loose and easy to haul up, and soon water was clearly visible below. The village was saved.
Chapter 6
Any doubts that Ricketts and his two friends might have been harbouring about the reality of adoo raids were brutally laid to rest on the final day of their five-day tour. Awakened, as usual, at the crack of dawn, which was just after five o’clock; they rolled off their camp-beds, shocked themselves awake with a quick shower and then returned to the bivouac tent to get dressed.
‘What the fuck do we have to get up so early for, anyway?’ Bill asked, ‘when we’re not even on patrol, but just farting about the area, getting lessons in diplomacy and other shit from BATT teams?’
‘We have to get up at five in the morning,’ Andrew told him, ‘because whether or not we appreciate the lessons, our wonderful tour guides, such as Sergeant Lampton, like to fill in every minute of the day, from dawn to dusk.’
‘He’s a damned good guide, though,’ Ricketts said, slipping into his shorts. ‘And a nice bloke as well.’
‘You only think that,’ Gumboot teased, ‘because he put you in charge of us.’
‘Go fuck yourself, Gumboot.’
‘I agree with Ricketts,’ Andrew said. ‘Lampton’s A1. What’s your sergeant like, lads?
‘OK,’ Jock said. ‘Like yours, he never gives us a free minute, but otherwise he’s not bad. Good-humoured. Pretty relaxed. No problems there.’
‘Fuck the sergeants,’ Tom said. ‘What’s weird to me is the fact that having gone through the hell of Initial Selection and Continuation Training, we’re not even allowed to wear our berets, let alone any other insignia. I sometimes think I never really did all that – never really got badged.’
‘If you hadn’t been badged, you wouldn’t be here,’ Andrew said, ‘so get a grip on yourself. Think positive, man!’
While the men got dressed, the radio beside Tom’s camp-bed informed them that the official IRA had condemned a recent pub bombing by the Provisionals in which two people had been killed; that 32 inmates and ten wardens had died in a prison riot at the Attica State Correction Facility in New York state; and that Chelsea had beaten Jeunesse Hautcharage 13–0 in the second round of the European Cup Winners Cup. The news was followed by the ravings of a demented DJ introducing Rod Stewart’s hit, Maggie May.
Tom switched the radio off when they all left the bivouac tent, but Gumboot and Bill were singing Maggie May as they crossed the dusty clearing to the open mess tent. Inside, they joined the queue to the servery, where they engaged in a little waken-up bullshit with the cook. He had weary eyes and sweat on his vest.
‘What’s that?’ Andrew asked, pointing to the heaped, steaming baked beans. ‘Have you been robbing the bog again?’
‘You don’t like it, Trooper, go climb a tree and pick the kind of grub you’re used to.’
‘That still leaves us,’ Gumboot said, ‘and we’re in need of some decent grub, though that isn’t exactly what I see here. Is that compo sausage or stewed cock?’
‘If it’s the latter, I’m sure you’ve tasted it before, so why not try it again?’
‘He’s just insulted your manhood, Gumboot.’
‘He’s not a man if he stoops to that. Hey, chef, is that bacon you’re putting on my plate or just one of your old shoes?’
‘It’s tongue,’ the cook replied wearily as he slapped the bacon down on Gumboot’s plate between the sausage and baked beans. ‘It was torn from the throat of the fucker who insulted me yesterday. Now move along, Trooper.’
‘A nice man,’ Gumboot said, moving along to the tea urn. ‘I’m told he washes his hands once a week – when he has his day off.’
Andrew studied his mug of tea. ‘A strange colour, folks. It also has an odd smell. Has anyone ever seen that cook in the ablutions or does he piss somewhere else?’
‘Smells familiar,’ Ricketts said.
‘Pungent,’ Andrew clarified.
‘Close your eyes and think of England,’ Gumboot said, ‘when you have to swallow the stuff.’
‘Hey, you bunch,’ the cook bawled, glaring at them, ‘you’re holding up the whole queue. Clear off to the tables.’
‘Yes, mother!’ Andrew piped.
They sat around one of the trestle tables near the open end of the tent, from where they could see the rest of Um al Gwarif, including the other SAS tents, the whitewashed Wali’s fort, the SAF barracks, and the officers’ mess and accommodations partially hidden behind a row of palm trees. When a 25-pounder roared from beyond the perimeter, they all looked automatically in that direction, actually seeing the shell leave the smoking barrel. A few seconds later, a column of smoke and dust billowed up where the shell exploded on the lower slopes of the Jebel.
‘I’m amazed there’s any adoo left up there at all,’ Tom said, holding a fork heaped with baked beans to his mouth. ‘Those 25-pounders fire on the Jebel every couple of hours, day in and day out. It must be sheer hell up there.’
‘They rarely hit anything,’ Ricketts said as Tom swallowed his baked beans. ‘Or if they do, it’s just by accident. They’re just firing at random to keep the adoo on their toes and preferably sleepless.’
‘That’s why we’re all so exhausted,’ Bill put in. ‘We’re the ones kept awake!’
As the sand and dust thrown up by the big gun drifted back down over the hedgehog, slightly obscuring the view of the plateau, an unshaven white man wearing a filthy striped jellaba and loose shemagh stopped at the adjoining, empty table. He had an L42A1 7.62mm bolt-action Lee Enfield sniper rifle slung across his back and his webbing bristled with ten-round box magazines and L2A2 steel-cased fragmentation grenades. There was a Browning high-power handgun in a holster on his hip and two different knives – the fearsome Omani kunjias and a Fairburn-Sykes commando knife – were sheathed on the belt around his waist. Sitting down at the table next to them, neither smiling nor talking to anyone, he placed his plate of compo on the table, then unslung his rifle and aimed it at the smoke still boiling up from the lower slopes of the Jebel. He pretended to fire, making a clicking sound with his tongue. Then, still not smiling, he placed his rifle on the table beside h
is plate and began to eat.
Tom leaned sideways and whispered to his best friend, Bill: ‘That’s Sergeant Parker! They all talk about him. They say he’s the best sniper and tracker in the whole SAS.’
‘Looks pretty fierce,’ Bill said.
‘Apparently he is. Dresses up in those old Arab clothes and goes out there on a camel, criss-crossing the whole plateau, sniping on the adoo and often bringing prisoners back for questioning. He’s waging a private war out there and causing a lot of confusion.’
‘Glad he’s on our side,’ Bill said. ‘Wouldn’t want him against me.’
‘Apparently he’s going to be with us when we make the assault on the Jebel. They say he now knows as much about the Jebel as any tribesman.’
‘He looks like one,’ Bill said. ‘As mad and as bad. Well …’ he sighed melodramatically, ‘nice to know we’re protected.’
Hearing what they had just said, Andrew turned towards the man dressed like an Arab and said with a big smile, ‘Hi, there, Sarge!’
Parker stopped eating just long enough to turn his head and stare at Andrew with the steady, fathomless gaze of a cat. He did not say a word.
Glancing briefly at the others, Andrew cleared his throat, kept his smile firmly in place and turned back to Parker.
‘How are things up on the Jebel, then?’ he asked. ‘Pretty hot up there – right, boss?’
Parker just stared at him as if at a blank wall, his fork still raised in the air, with an untouched piece of sausage on it.
Andrew cleared his throat again. ‘Still picking off the adoo, are you? Still bringing them back down the hill for a talk with the green slime? Good work, Sarge. Keep it up!’
Parker just stared at him, his gaze as firm as it was unreadable, then opened his mouth and popped the sausage in, turning back to his plate. Andrew, clearing his throat for the third time, pushed his chair back and stood up. ‘Well,’ he said, louder than strictly necessary, ‘I think it’s time we all left, lads. Lots to do out on the Salalah plain. A long day ahead of us.’ He was out of the tent before Ricketts and Gumboot had kicked their own chairs back, but they soon caught up with him. ‘Did you see the way he looked at me?’ he said. ‘With those mad-dog eyes! A born killer if ever I saw one. I’m still shaking, man!’