by Tom Marcus
I caught a glimpse of the first Range Rover as it came screaming down the street side-on to the target vehicle, no lights on, smashing straight into the side of the Toyota Yaris. Just as it landed back on the pavement, two other Range Rovers, lights on full beam, came screaming in north and south to pin the car into position, but to be fair the Yaris was now a crumpled mess on the pavement, leaking all sorts of fluids, the airbags inside inflated.
As smooth as clockwork, the strike team smashed and pulled back the windscreen on the car – you can tell they practise this a lot – and like a rag doll the man was dragged through the windowless front and thrown onto the bonnet of one of the Range Rovers by two massive blokes in typical undercover SAS clothing: civilian but utilitarian combat trousers, sturdy hill-walking-type boots, pistol thigh-fits on their legs. As the two huge men zip-tied his hands, another, who had appeared from nowhere, placed a black hood over his head, bundling him into the back of a windowless Transit van.
As the Transit van drove away, the Range Rovers reversed out of position to follow it as it transported the prisoner to Paddington Green police station, used to hold and question high-profile terror suspects.
‘Charlie Nine, Base, do you read?’
‘Charlie Nine, yes, yes.’
Operations Centre told us that we needed to stay in the area until SO19 and Special Branch could retrieve the crumpled Toyota Yaris. Within minutes armed police arrived alongside typical plain-clothed Special Branch, and shortly after that an unmarked recovery vehicle arrived, as did the local residents who had heard a crash but luckily hadn’t witnessed the dramatic arrest.
‘All stations from Base, CEASE and WITHDRAW, acknowledge down the list.’
Leaving the area, I was dropped off at my van and travelled back to the debriefing room in the Operations Centre. Still smelling faintly of old tramp, I was running the last couple of hours through my head. This had to be our target. But what if it wasn’t? If he didn’t change his appearance, how did I miss him? Who was that person in the other burkha? Could this be the one who had been helping our target? I wanted answers and I was fairly sure I wasn’t about to get them.
I walked through the one-way glass doors and I saw my whole team, the Lead Operations Officer and two senior officers whom we usually only see if we’ve fucked up and someone has been shot in a case of mistaken identity.
As the debrief unfolded, we learned that our target was in that Toyota Yaris; he HAD shaved his beard. In the boot were six homemade pipe bombs, all linked to detonate at the same time from a single call on a brand-new pay-as-you-go phone found on the target. Special Branch also found Chinese Type 56 assault rifles with eight full magazines of ammunition. His target was a local school. He planned to attack two coaches of teenagers returning home after a school trip to France. Approximately sixty children, their accompanying teachers and their waiting parents. He was going to kill them all.
The senior suits left the room, and our Operations Officer briefed us for our job the following day: a high-profile IRA member was flying over to Glasgow to meet other senior members in a pub. It was anticipated they would be discussing members of the Police Service of Northern Ireland whom they planned to kill to disrupt the peace process.
And that was another day done, no praise, no handshakes, no thanks and certainly no medals.
We don’t do this for recognition or commendations from the Queen.
Some people join the service out of a sense of duty, some out of wanting to do some good by removing the evil.
I do it because it’s all I know. I’m a hunter of people and I’m damn good at it.
CHAPTER TWO
As a kid, I didn’t have any family. Not in the traditional sense of the word. My dad was an abusive alcoholic, which eventually took his life. His dependency on booze was spawned from his time in the army as an infantry soldier. My mum, for whatever reason, detached herself from the situation of poverty and abuse, which ultimately meant I raised myself from the age of about six. Growing up on the harsh streets of a sprawling northern city, sometimes staying in squats, taking myself to school, I knew even then there had to be more to life. I had to be able to make something out of this pile of shit.
I remember one morning on my way to school, seeing a shiny blue Ford Cortina. At the age of eight, unaware of the danger of talking to strange men, I asked the driver what he did to have the money to be able to drive a car like that. His reply made me determined to get out of this situation one day: ‘Ha, I do something that is way beyond someone like you. Enjoy your walk to school!’
I was never academic, nor physically the strongest at school. I was the dirty unkempt kid in the corner of the class, the one no one spoke to. The one that didn’t get bullied but wasn’t included either. The outcast. But the driver of that Ford Cortina did me a favour that day, when he assumed I would always be poor and never amount to anything. If a stranger made that snap decision about me, then it was more than likely everyone was thinking the same. If I wanted to be able to afford to wash my clothes at the laundrette round the corner, I needed to go after the money myself.
I stole a bucket from a local building site and, first thing next morning, started washing cars, near my school so no one knew where I lived in case they told my dad. I didn’t bother knocking on any doors; my plan was to wash all the cars on the street before people got up for work in the hope that they would noticed how nice their cars looked and come and give me some money for it. Using the outside tap on the playground of my school, I hauled the cold water and washed the cars with my hands. I was doing a reasonable job and I was sure I’d end up with enough money to buy something better than beans on toast for tea.
On my third car I noticed a really fat guy coming towards me with the knuckles of his hands facing forward, walking in a waddle due to his size, wearing a hi-vis jacket and dirty jeans. This was it, I thought, my first payment for washing his car, but I carried on cleaning the one I was doing even more enthusiastically, so he knew I wasn’t just a kid, I was serious about my new business. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any money; he was the owner of the building company I’d stolen the bucket from and he had recognized the logo on the side of it.
‘Listen, my property, my rules.’ And with that he kicked over the bucket so it lay on its side and drove his heavy boot straight through it, shattering it into dozens of pieces all over the pavement.
Watching his fat arse waddling away from me, I learned another valuable lesson: there will always be a bigger dog with sharper teeth, but mongrels have a way of surviving. In order to live on the streets and keep going, however, I needed to see the threats before they got to me. That bucket he stamped on could quite as easily have been my head. I was alone as a kid but that didn’t mean I had to just take what life threw at me, there was an opportunity out there for me somewhere and I wouldn’t stop until I found it.
Joining the army wasn’t a way out for me; I didn’t see it as a last option. It was my choice. I wanted to be part of a family, part of something that was fighting for good.
I walked into the army careers office on a rainy day. An infantry soldier, a bit overweight, sat behind a desk and welcomed me through the door.
‘Son, how old are you?’
‘Fifteen, I’m fifteen. I want to be a soldier.’
I knew he didn’t think I had it in me; I could tell by the slight smirk on his face and the pause before he offered me a seat as he shared a smile with one of his colleagues.
He started describing what the British army did, the various trades and entry requirements, but I could tell he was just going through the motions, he wasn’t actually trying to recruit me.
‘Have you ever lived on the streets?’ My voice broke into a slightly higher pitch as I interrupted his half-arsed sales pitch.
‘Son, I fought in the Falklands War! Living on the streets is a piece of cake to people like us.’
Shifting in my seat, I felt myself grow a few inches taller.
‘War, with a
ll your soldier friends to help you? All your food in your backpacks? I know I’m young and you don’t want me, but I’ve raised myself up till now. I’ll be good. I just need a chance.’
He looked across the office to his colleague, dumbfounded that a kid like me had managed to speak up for himself. You could read the thought process on his face.
Passing me a leaflet for the Royal Engineers, he went on to explain what I had to do next.
‘You need four GCSEs to be a mechanic – the army is short of grease monkeys who can fix the TCBs at the moment. You will travel the world, son, and listen to me here …’ He leaned forward just enough so that I could smell the stale smell of cigarettes and coffee on his breath. ‘If you don’t get these exams, I’m not taking you. So if you aren’t clever enough, CHEAT!’
As I walked the five miles back home I held on to that leaflet so tightly it was hardly readable that night in bed. So I did exactly that. I cheated in my exams and made it into the British army’s apprenticeship scheme at sixteen years old. I wasn’t old enough to vote, drink or see an adult movie.
After completing my trade training as a Plant Operator Mechanic, I was posted to Germany. At the time mine was the biggest regiment in the British army, with 1,500 troops in one camp. It became quickly apparent that I wasn’t a good mechanic. In fact I was absolutely fucking shit at it. But I could run, I was fast and fit.
The major in charge of our workshop pulled me into his office. ‘Marcus, this isn’t for you. You are going on the army’s Physical Training Instructor course and will move to work in the gym.’
Training every day? The responsibility of being one of only five PTIs in a unit of 1,500 soldiers? This was great news.
Passing the course was easy: you put 100 per cent effort in at all times, you learn what is being taught and before you know it you’re wearing the coveted Crossed Swords PTI badge and are training troops.
Twice a year we had a basic fitness assessment, which consisted of press-ups and sit-ups within a two-minute period and a 1.5-mile run. Our commanding officer, who was new to the unit, having returned from a tour with Special Operations, was cheating on his sit-ups by bucking his hips up to help him sit up rather than using his core strength. Walking up and down the mats, I was looking for cheating like this and reminded him that his repetitions didn’t count.
As the test came to an end, I read out a list of names who’d failed and would be required to attend remedial training, starting on the parade square at 0530hrs every morning in the run-up to Christmas before being retested. The commanding officer, a colonel, was on that list.
The next two weeks, prior to Christmas leave, were interesting. The regimental sergeant major, who was in charge of discipline in the camp, wanted my head on a stick!
He threatened me with jail on a daily basis for embarrassing the CO, and the officer in charge of the gym often had to protect me from it. A former SAS officer himself, he listened to my reasoning. I wasn’t trying to make a name for myself, this was basic soldiering.
‘If he is going to ask his soldiers to do something, he must be able to do it himself. He has to lead by example.’
Every morning I would face the stare of the colonel as I thrashed everyone to get them fit enough to pass the retest, until finally it was time for our Christmas leave parade briefing.
Every year we had a briefing on the parade square by the CO and RSM prior to going home. It was always the same format: what to expect next year, the achievements of this year and don’t get arrested. This year’s briefing was slightly different, though, due to the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11th only a few months before. Above all, make sure you come back!
Out of nowhere the atmosphere changed, the CO screaming at the top of his voice, ‘RSM!’
The man mountain marched over to me; as he got closer I felt like I was actually getting smaller. Slamming to attention, the RSM’s chest was touching my nose. Instantly I thought I was going to jail, I was going to be fast-marched off to the guard house and that would be my Christmas. Would I even get Christmas dinner? Man, this was shit.
The commanding officer then went on to explain how a ‘Little Hitler’ had decided he would make a mockery of the rank structure in this camp, how I showed no respect for senior officers and how that had to stop.
I could still feel the RSM breathing down on me, I was ready to be whisked away, but refused to let the fear of the unknown show on my face. I had to stand by my actions.
All of a sudden the RSM took a side step to my left, his right. I could feel the earth shake as his size 14 boots impacted the ground. I had a clear view of the CO walking towards me with his slightly longer than normal hair, hands behind his back and the quirky way he wore his uniform. It always looked out of place, probably because of his previous undercover role.
Refusing to back down, I looked the colonel straight in the eyes. Now in touching distance, he directed his words straight at me while speaking loudly enough for the whole parade to hear. ‘This is for having the biggest balls in the regiment!’
Producing from behind his back a bottle of champagne, he handed it to me and leaned right in to talk privately in my ear. ‘Enjoy your Christmas leave, but you’re not coming back. You start Special Operations selection in the New Year. Now fuck off!’
While the other guys patted me on the shoulder in congratulation, all I could think was: What is Special Operations? What do they do?
New Year’s Day came and I was sitting on the platform at the train station that I’d been told to report to. I still had no clue what I was about to do, what the unit did or whether I’d pass. One of the course instructors approached me in civilian walking gear.
‘Are you on a course?’ he asked, checking his clipboard of ID card photos against my face.
I nodded and was directed on to a nearby coach. This was alien to me: no uniforms, no rank and no military vehicles. As the coach filled with other anxious soldiers left the train station, I realized I was the youngest by far. If I wanted to be a part of this unit, despite the fact that I still didn’t know what ‘they’ did, I knew I would have to give everything to get through.
That first night in the large huts, surrounded by senior ranking non-commissioned officers, I felt like a young baby chick in a room full of virile cocks. As we were screamed at to get outside for more ‘phys’, I could tell the other guys on the course didn’t think I deserved to be there. In their eyes I was from the wrong background for Special Operations, not coming from a strong soldiering unit like the Parachute Regiment or Royal Marines, and then there was the issue of my age.
After being thrashed for nearly two hours in the pitch darkness, we went through pass-or-fail vehicle recognition in a red-hot dark room designed to increase the effect our lack of sleep was having. This was going to be easy for me; I’d always loved cars, and never being able to afford one added to the obsession. A constant stream of photographs was fired at us, everything from a side profile of a Ford Orion to the tail light of a Transit van. I was in my element and, without volunteering the answers too frequently, I was nicknamed ‘the boy racer’. To seal my fate, one instructor, trying to emphasize the importance of noticing details, asked the room: ‘You all recognize where the 70mph indication line is on the speedo, but how many of you know what that is in kph? It’s nearly always on the speedo next to the 70mph in a smaller font.’
Without thinking, I fired my hand into the air. I knew it was 110.
‘Hand down, boy racer, I don’t require another answer.’
The three instructors in the room looked at one another as I lowered my hand in shame; it was then I got the sense they knew I focused on the tiny details.
One of the hardest things during selection wasn’t the weapons training with the SAS or even the lack of sleep, it was the essay writing. Three nights in a row during camp one, which is the sleep deprivation and physical torture stage, we were taken in the middle of the night to a very hot room and told to sit at a desk and
watch a video. As the video on Burma tribes starts playing, the instructors walk out of the room switching the lights off. It’s a battle just to stay awake, never mind remember the details of what you’re watching on the huge TV screen. An hour later, just as the credits start rolling down the screen at the end of the documentary, the instructors burst in, turn the lights on, and give you another hour to write an essay of exactly what you have just watched.
As you desperately try to scribble as much as you can quickly without it becoming illegible, the hour ends and everyone files out of the room, handing their efforts to the instructor, who then shreds everything in front of you all without even reading it.
The next night, same again, 0300hrs straight into the same room, this time a documentary video on how different plastics are made, lights off and some people take this opportunity to sleep. Having only had two hours to close your eyes over the past forty-eight hours, it was really tempting. But I had to prove I was eligible to join this unit, which I still didn’t know anything about. Biting my lips and the insides of my cheeks to stay awake, I was drawing blood but it worked. Just as the documentary ended, in came the instructors again, an hour to write what we had seen and file out of the room, once again met with the sound of the shredder without even a glance at our efforts.
The third night hit us slightly earlier at 0230hrs. I was knackered and my eyes felt like they were actually bleeding at this point. The video started playing and the heating was turned up as the lights were switched off and the instructors left us to watch a video on ‘Wire Rope and Cordage’. It’s without doubt the most pointless and boring video I’ve ever seen. It was hideous. After two hours of watching how wire rope is made and the uses of cord in industry we were given thirty minutes to write as much as we could. I was one of four who managed to stay awake during the film. My writing had become almost childlike by this point; I very nearly asked for a crayon to make it a bit neater!