Wilco- Lone Wolf 18

by Geoff Wolak

  In the morning, Major Harris and his team wanted to present to me an idea. They had a large map laid out over the suitably-named map table, the Brigadier stood with me and Captain Moran.

  Harris began, ‘There’s the one good road from the proposed rear base inside Oman, southwest towards the coast of Yemen. South of it the valleys run north to south, hard to cross. North of that road are low hills, and in places a jeep could cross. Far north is the Saudi desert, hard going, but can be crossed where the hills end and the sand begins.

  ‘There is a zig-zag route, an old camel train route, and your friend Maggsy was asked and he’s been down it, at least some of the way. He says that a jeep can make it, but that if it rains the sand gets too soft to cross in places.

  ‘It hasn’t rained, we checked, but should do so next month, so we have a timeframe. If you take that zig-zag route it will get you close to the al-Qaeda area, which is across the hills.’

  He tapped the map. ‘If we were to assume that they know we’re coming, and want to set traps, there are three suitable places where they could drive up the good road, then drive across tracks, north up to the camel trail and ambush you.

  ‘Those ambush points are marked here, where they might sit to ambush anyone on the camel trail, and where they could get to in jeeps.’

  I told him, ‘I’ll have the US Navy take high-altitude photos, and if the fighters are sat there I’ll insert by Lynx ten miles out and walk in behind them at night, ready for dawn. That could be the first action, but I don’t want to start the action till we have a supply depot somewhere forwards.’

  Harris tapped the map. ‘The west-most ambush point is south of a wide valley, three miles across. Anyone sat in the middle would see someone approaching. Maps and historical notes say that it’s flat, almost good enough for a Hercules.’

  ‘We could have a Lynx set down and have a look,’ I told him. ‘Then Hercules pallet drop, waste of fuel to land. But I’ll look for a Skyvan as well.’

  ‘What about roadblocks south of the target area?’ he asked.

  ‘That would mean that a group of our soldiers stop vehicles, and al-Qaeda love to blow themselves up. A car bomb would kill twenty men, so no, too much of a risk.’

  ‘OK, here.’ He tapped the map. ‘Tight gorge, plateau above it, fucking hard to get up and down to it. Armed men in jeeps could be fired at.’

  ‘Yes, great idea. We’d insert a team early on, maybe someone like the Pathfinders.’

  ‘And here, east of it,’ he said, tapping the map. ‘Same deal, a choke point.’

  ‘Yes, good, but first we recon it, they may be sat up there already, expecting us to drive past and to ambush us. Lynx can recon and land if it’s clear.’

  ‘And if the road to that point is cut and held? We could make use of that road.’

  ‘No, because they’d have a teenage boy on a bike with a nice smile, ten pounds of explosives strapped to his chest; we’d lose more men than in the fighting. No, we’ll avoid all close contact with civilians.’

  I pointed at the camel route. ‘Plan for men to hold that camel route every ten miles say, pick out good places. We take the total Marines and Paras, or whoever is in reserve, divide them up, and they drive down that route, leaving a team behind at certain places, re-supply by Lynx.

  ‘Next team to drive up passes them, supplies dropped off maybe, gossip caught up on. If some of it is good enough for a truck, send a truck. I want a line of bases, and each team patrols local. That way I know there’s no one behind me when I go forwards, and it gives the teams something to do.’

  He tapped the map. ‘Up here, al-Qaeda could drive around and come south and attack.’

  ‘Pick a good spot for insert teams of Wolves to sit and hide, and to report back to us. They’d go in early.’

  ‘There are only three suitable routes they could take south,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Good, three OPs.’

  ‘And the plan?’ he nudged.

  ‘If I thought they were sat in their camps that would be one plan, but I’m sure they’ll be out setting ambushes and mines, so that’s a different plan. My final plan will be ready after we hold the camel route, and the OPs above the road and the ways in for them. Then we strike the main body – if there is a main body.

  ‘I’m working on the assumption that the die-hard fanatics are on the side of this road with explosives strapped to their chests, jeeps ready to ram us and blow. When they know we’re using the camel route they’ll re-position the good boys to attack us where you indicated, but that will take a few days.

  ‘If and when we clear the east side of the country, I move on their camps, expecting them to be hidden in the hills here – east of those camps. We search the hills, small team against small team, then we hit the camps. If we do enough damage we leave, minimum casualties.

  ‘My aim is to set them back, not take land and control it, not search every canyon. If we do enough damage after three days – we leave,’ I firmly stated.

  Sanderson noted, ‘Given how spread out they’ll be, it will take more like three weeks!’

  I faced him and nodded. ‘Yes, sir. Time is not an issue, but casualties are. Two hundred dead terrorists means little to the people watching the TV news here and in the States, but twenty dead soldiers means a hell of a lot. As I told the Brigadier when he took over the Regiment: keep one eye on the media, one eye on the politicians.’

  He smiled. ‘You did, yes. Only place to win a war … is in the media.’

  Sanderson scoffed, ‘War planning to pamper to the whims of our politicians, not sound military sense!’

  I turned my head to him. ‘Unfortunately, sir, that’s the way the western armies operate in peace time.’

  Harris asked, ‘Who goes down there, from my team?’

  ‘You decide, based on threats of divorce or time away from spouses. But I would like you there.’

  ‘My wife is OK with it,’ he told me. ‘Plenty of volunteers from the team.’

  ‘Make sure we have enough people to cover the battle board here, 24hrs,’ I told him. ‘Tinker will liaise with GCHQ. Don’t need many people in-country, a small team. Do you have a list of units taking part?’

  ‘Yes, and contact numbers.’

  I faced the Brigadier. ‘Contact the MOD, sir, and let’s get a shit load of sat phones for those teams, at two for every team that may break off in the field. If the Paras leave eight men some place they need a sat phone, and if that sat phone breaks – they’re screwed.’

  ‘So one per sergeant almost,’ he noted.

  ‘Yes, sir. And if needs be, use our budget, buy fifty, we’ll use them sometime.’

  ‘We have each Wolf with a sat phone,’ Sanderson noted. ‘And your lot have almost one per man now.’

  ‘Wolves will never be in a team of less than four, sir, so they could loan our phones to others if need be. But we need all the units, make-up, names and phone before we step across the border.’

  ‘I’ll work on that today,’ Harris offered. ‘But what about French and American teams?’

  ‘They often have good comms anyhow, and I’ll check, tell them not to leave a team isolated with no comms. Oh, and aircraft radios, a shit load of them. Most American jets and AWACS can pick up our basic radios, but we have trouble sending to them at distance. Oh, anyone know the range of a Russian shoulder-launched missile?’

  The Brigadier put in, ‘Book says 17,000ft, but they have trouble locking on, so if an aircraft is above 5,000ft they don’t lock on well - not unless the aircraft is on fire. If the aircraft is coming head on they have trouble locking on, need to fire it at the jet exhausts.

  ‘Lug one over a mountain, drop it, and it stops working. Many of the missiles out there have sat in storage for twenty years and probably won’t work. Depends on whether or not they had a fresh supply.’

  ‘I’d say yes, a fresh supply. But the US Navy is confident.’

  ‘They had an F18 shot down in Somalia!’ Sanderson noted.

/>   I nodded. ‘Missile fired from just 500ft below the aircraft, the operator was stood on a mountain top. Still, I’ve asked the US Navy to play chicken with the missiles. Hopefully, the bad boys will waste some missiles before a Lynx or a Hercules is targeted. Those bad boys also have Dushka on jeeps, a threat to the Lynx.’

  At 8pm I got a call from Libintov.

  ‘How goes the airline?’ I asked.

  ‘Good, we are the only carrier, and now we move freight.’

  ‘How can I help you today?’

  ‘I have some information about a rival, and he will land weapons in Somalia tomorrow night, to be sent on to Yemen.’

  ‘Which air strip?’

  ‘The one that was bombed before, the runway is intact, a few holes.’

  ‘I will arrange something, but tell me – any civilians there?’

  ‘Some live at the edge of the strip and work in loading and unloading, no village close by.’

  ‘How many aircraft?’

  ‘Two AN12, I don’t have an exact time.’

  ‘Leave it with me.’

  I called Admiral Jacobs. ‘Sir, we got the game on. You remember that strip in east Somalia your ships hit, gun runners?’

  ‘Yeah..?’

  ‘Tomorrow night two AN12 will set down, weapons destined for Yemen.’

  ‘Yemen? Then we’ll bomb the shit out of them as they land.’

  ‘I don’t have an exact time, so you need a radar bird up.’

  ‘We’d see them a long way off.’

  ‘Do me a favour, sir, check carefully about UN flights, Red Cross, and eliminate the possibility of a screw-up here.’

  ‘Kosher flight will have a flight plan, so we’ll check. We’ll shadow them in and have a look - and then bomb the shit out of them.’

  ‘If you could, sir, damage the planes as they unload, give the crew ten minutes to get clear, then bomb the shit out of them – just in case. We don’t need a bad headline here.’

  ‘I’ll have a bird observe them and we’ll attack when sure, or we’ll put SEALS ashore first for a close look.’

  ‘Good luck, sir.’

  In the morning the Brigadier informed me, ‘Your good friend Colonel Clifford will be travelling down with staff, to … oversee things, as he did in the Liberia campaign.’

  ‘I have no problems with the MOD lending a hand, sir, or indeed taking some responsibility for what I do. I’m supposed to be the special forces team leader, not coordinator for all the teams.’ I held my hands wide. ‘I go shoot people, they stack blankets.’

  He informed me, ‘Regulars fly down today, the entire squadron, kit to Cyprus then a Hercules down, be two RAF Hercules down there plus the Omani Hercules. Paras fly tomorrow I think, Pathfinders with the Marines, Tristar fuel economy.’

  ‘Hope there’s no punch-up on the plane,’ I quipped. ‘And the jeeps, sir?’

  ‘C5 from Fairford will pick up kit at Brize Norton, now with RAF pilots these days, we’re buying some C5 from the Americans.’

  I chatted to Moran and Ginger with Crab and Duffy and we went through all the kit, most of it laid out in the hangar, enough desert browns but a shortage of suitable jackets. The SAS quartermaster lent us some, and at night a brown jacket was not needed anyhow – green would do.

  The men were all told to take t-shirts, most being green, as well as jumpers in crates – all of them green. Many opted to take woolly hats since we had plenty of brown woolly hats oddly enough. Green gloves and facemasks would be taken, if only to sleep in.

  We had small backpacks, and I suggested we get more quickly, Moran knowing a civvy shop that sold beige backpacks that would do, so he would take cash and buy whatever stock they had.

  I told them, ‘We aim to avoid long walks in the desert, but we walked well enough in Mali when we found the Legion remains. It was cold at night and warm in the day, so we apply the same tactics in Yemen – move at night, stop for a warm cup of tea, sleep in the day.

  ‘I’ll have HALO bags full of kit dropped off to teams, blankets as well, so instead of moving from one oasis to another we move from one kit drop to another – more chance of freezing our nuts off than dying of heat stroke.’

  Moran came back with backpacks, thirty-six of them to add to our existing stock, and we found that the Valmet grenade launcher backpack was suitable when not carrying a grenade launcher. Counting the backpacks, we had enough for all of Echo, the British Wolves, 14 Intel and SIS, the American Wolves having their own backpacks, larger than ours but not as cumbersome as a Bergen. We even had spares.

  Heading out again, Moran returned with forty beige shirts, the shirts of a very thick cotton material and as good as jackets, the shirts handed out to Echo men, tried on and swapped around.

  Thinking, I asked the MOD to ask the Omanis for small shovels, lots of them, and sandbags – empty ones. Each man would be required to take one or two empty sandbags into the desert, to be filled – if we could find some sand, and used as forearm rests whilst sniping.

  Colonel Clifford turned up unannounced, kit in tow, his small team in tow, rooms found for them in the officers mess.

  I welcomed him like a favoured uncle outside the hangar. ‘Some time away from the wife?’ I teased.

  He lost his smile. ‘You would not have heard, but I lost her to cancer six months back.’

  ‘Sorry to hear that, sir.’ We stepped to the grass, the tanks in view.

  ‘It was a relief, at the end, two years of suffering.’

  I nodded. ‘So now you’re a footloose bachelor…’

  ‘Seems odd, after all these years, and I moved out of the family home – kids working away, and I’ve sold it, apartment with two bedrooms, no photos on the walls. The grief counsellor said the best way to move on was to be selfish, and to do what I liked best, not dwell on it, not to keep her possessions.’

  ‘Sounds like a sensible approach. You staying to retirement?’

  ‘I know nothing else, so … yes I probably will.’

  I led him inside and made us a tea, a private chat for twenty minutes about anything other than the military before I met his team, some of them familiar. I took them to the training room and we sat.

  ‘What are the issues here?’ Colonel Clifford asked me.

  ‘Al-Qaeda will sneak into Oman and set off bombs near us, as well as send in a few suicide bombers, and inside Yemen they’ll wait to ambush us on the roads, so we’ll go in by helo - or walk across the sands. You’ll need to be ready on day one, sir, men dispersed, no group of men more than ten, well spread out, guards everywhere.’

  He nodded. ‘The fifth column again, and we had enough of that in Sierra Leone. I took more near misses from them than enemy action.’

  ‘And you will again here, so be careful where you eat and sleep, sandbags up against the walls and around tents, armed men outside the command tent, and when you go for a shit you have an armed man outside.’

  ‘I’ve been to Oman, trade show, and trained some of their people, and they’re a delight to work with, we won’t have any problems.’

  ‘Not the Omanis I’m worried about, sir.’

  He nodded. ‘Their bases tend to be wide open, no fences, just armed patrols and the fact that they have ten miles of sand for an infiltrator to cover.’

  ‘Al-Qaeda have been expecting me to attack for months, so they could have done something clever by now, bomb in a culvert near a base.’

  ‘I’ll make sure that idle hands spend their time searching.’

  ‘And if our soldiers are moved by bus around Oman we’ll lose a bus full. Insist on Hercules or helos, sir, no overland convoys unless it’s just kit. And if kit is moved that way … search it when it arrives, stack it somewhere isolated.

  ‘From Muscat to the west border is five hundred miles, only one main road, easy to set a trap, and the Omani police can’t check hundreds of miles of road.’

  He agreed with a nod. ‘Be a hell of a bus ride for our men, but I understand that the operating base in the
west is no good for a Tristar, no radar, no ILS either.’

  ‘The Omanis have a fleet of Hercules, sir, we’ll have two, and the Americans have some at their base near Muscat. Moving the jeeps is an issue, but five hundred miles is a bit much for a long-axle jeep. Take them a week to get there.’

  ‘There’s an Omani airfield in the far south, the old RAF Salalah, so I’ll talk to the RAF and the Omanis and try and land there, but I know it’s probably not suitable for a Tristar – just regional flights I think.’

  ‘Earning your keep already, sir,’ I commended with a smile.

  ‘What do you expect in the way of casualties, MOD did ask me?’

  I heaved a breath, and took in their faces. ‘A Saudi diplomat was killed in the States, on his way to warn me about something, so … I’m thinking al-Qaeda have a big bomb somewhere, and that the Saudis know where but won’t act – not least because we know they tipped off al-Qaeda and recently supplied weapons and money.’

  He exchanged looks with his team. ‘We’ll keep that to ourselves for now.’ They nodded.

  ‘The bomb that costs you your life, sir, may well have been paid for by someone in Saudi.’

  He stared back, resigned to the idea but horrified, and sipped his tea.

  With the GCHQ pair of officers taking delivery of new scanners, I walked to the north field and turned on my sat phone, soon walking east a few hundred yards as they stood at the fence. Back with them they were happy that the scanners worked, at least at this range.

  These new scanners had a switch, and could pick up radio chat, but I doubted that the fighters would have radios, they would have no need. Small teams would chat to each other using their in-built vocal chords, and use sat phones at distance.

  Our box-fed 5.56mm were loaded, but we figured we might hand them to teams from other units not carry them ourselves. Grenade launchers were also loaded, but again we’d not use them unless at a choke point, if we had a team perched up above a road. Grenades would not be taken, nor 66mm, but other units would have 66mm rockets.