by Shaun Clarke
Glancing down the slope to where the earlymorning sun was starting to burn through the mist, making the snow glint and letting the spectacular landscape far below emerge more clearly, Marty saw that the men in OGs were still clambering up towards him and would soon be within firing range. Moving carefully, making no noise whatsoever, he tugged the blanket off his shoulders, uncovering his SLR, then rested the barrel of the weapon on the wall of the sangar, squinted through the sights, and captured the leading trooper in the cross-hairs. He adjusted the sights, satisfied himself that the men were still slightly out of range, and relaxed while holding his position, letting the troopers advance higher up the slope.
‘Mirbat,’ he whispered, thinking of the town where the last great battle of the war in Oman had been fought. ‘God, I wish I’d been there!’
The battle begun with Operation Jaguar had been completed with the Battle for Mirbat, which became a turning point in the war, ultimately leading to defeat for the adoo. Thinking about it, Marty realized that even now, as he gazed down the misty slopes of this snowcovered mountain in Wales, the remaining adoo were being pushed back to the Yemeni border by other SAS troopers. Marty wished he could be there instead of here, but he had to accept his lot.
Squinting through the sights of his SLR, he had to remind himself that the young men advancing laboriously up the hill were in fact candidates engaged in one of the many gruelling exercises thought up by himself and other members of the DS. Selection training had been diabolically refined to weed out all but the crème de la crème of the candidates. It now consisted of a three-week build-up period commencing with a standard army battle-fitness test and followed by a daunting diet of road marches and timed route marches across the Brecon Beacons in South Wales, by day and by night, in all kinds of weather, humping Bergens that were made progressively heavier until they weighed twenty-five kilograms. Map-reading and crosscountry navigation were included in the tasks. Stress was deliberately introduced by pulling the candidates out of bed unexpectedly, by not telling them the nature of the march they were about to embark upon, and by having RV points along the route manned by ruthless training-wing DS. Basic training climaxed with Sickener 1, the longest, most brutal march of this phase of training, which included the dreaded entrail pit.
Those who did not drop out during selection training– and many did – went on to Test Week, when the distances were increased, the times required to complete the march sadistically decreased, and the DS used every kind of brutal psychological ploy, known as ‘beasting’, to break the already exhausted candidate’s spirit. Test Week culminated in the sixty-kilometre endurance march known as the ‘fan dance’ because it involved reaching the summit of Pen-y-Fan, the highest mountain in the Brecon Beacons, in twenty hours, even in galeforce winds, rain and snow, and ‘cross-graining the bukets’, or going from one trig point, or summit, to another, rather than taking the easy way around them, all the time being harassed by the relentless DS.
The few who survived this final march, or Sickener 2, would go on to continuation training, followed by jungle and parachute training, but the troopers now advancing towards the hidden Marty had yet to make that final, dreaded march and were simply being put through an unexpected hike up the mountain, after being pulled out of their beds in the dead of night. Two of them, already exhausted by the rigours of the previous day, had angrily refused and been RTU’d. The remainder, those advancing up the sheer, snow-covered slope towards Marty, were still in the running.
Their task in this particular instance was to hike up to the summit of the towering Pen-y-Fan, reaching it before dawn and without being ‘captured’ or ‘neutralized’ by the DS scattered along the route. That they had managed to get this far was a tribute to their skill and tenacity, and Marty almost hated himself for what he was about to do to them. They would not, in this instance, be RTU’d, but they would certainly be shocked and bitterly disappointed to find themselves blocked off from the summit after coming so far to get so close, being too tired to notice the small sangar blending in with the rocks just above them.
Squinting along the sights of his SLR, breathing evenly, aiming at the ground directly in front of the feet of the first man in the ragged column, Marty pressed the trigger.
The roaring of the weapon split the silence, shocking the men below, some freezing instantly, others automatically throwing themselves sideways, even as the fusillade of bullets made the snow spit upward in a long jagged line that cut from left to right across the front of the column. The first man, showered by the flying snow and doubtless imagining that he had been shot in the feet, was one of those who froze, hardly able to believe his eyes; but a second burst from Marty’s SLR was aimed even closer to him and he suddenly jumped back, then flung himself sideways, behind the protective covering of the nearest rock.
As the others did the same, all hiding behind rocks, Marty stopped firing, put the safety catch back on, then stood up to let the candidates see him.
‘You stupid bastards!’ he bawled, looking down as those startled, camouflaged faces peered out from behind the rocks, their eyes raised in disbelief to find their 52-year old Squadron Sergeant-Major standing there on the very summit of the highest mountain in the Brecon Beacons, before first light, in the dead of winter. ‘You’ve all been neutralized. You should have kept your eyes open and seen me and taken cover immediately, in which case I’d have passed you. But you’ve failed. You didn’t make it. You let tiredness make you careless. Lucky for you, this isn’t one for the record. Now get back down that hill.’
Either cursing in anger or hanging their heads in shame, the candidates made their way back down the mountain with Marty behind them. He sympathized with them, understood their suffering, but did not let it move him. Their anger and shame at this moment, if they could bear it, would give them strength in the future.
This was the SAS way.
Chapter Two
Marty woke late in the morning to the sound of Diane typing downstairs. Still half asleep, but with the grey light of Notting Hill Gate beaming in through the window, he kept his eyes closed and thought of how much more pleasant it was here than in the SAS base at Bradbury Lines, Hereford. For a start, there were no women in the Sports and Social. Indeed, even in the town of Hereford the women were not remotely like Diane. Marty smiled. His body was limned with sensual heat. Diane liked making love a lot, but she preferred it in the mornings and she had woken him to have her way with him before starting her work. As usual, their lovemaking had been uninhibited, moving from desire to consummation with ruthless abandonment. Marty credited this to Diane, who had no qualms about sex, was often greedy for it, and blessedly had no pretences about it. Certainly he was aware of just how lucky he was to have such a woman at his age. Many men would have envied him.
Awakening fully, he glanced at his wristwatch and saw that it was already ten in the morning. He must have dozed off again after making love to Diane. Though he often did this, she didn’t seem to mind, doubtless because it enabled her to start her freelance work, which she liked to do first thing in the morning. Now, listening to her typing away downstairs, he had to concede that he was involved with a woman who was unusual in more ways than one. Independent as a person and ruthless as a journalist, she satisfied her sexual appetite to keep it from distracting her and leave her free to think about her work. As an investigative journalist, she was clearly at the top of her league, displaying a passion for the truth that was deeply impressive. It was also a passion that made her slightly neurotic and, at times, hard to handle. Certainly she was highly strung, but he felt that he could deal with that by keeping his distance.
Yawning, realizing that he had a full day ahead of him, he rolled out of bed, attended to his ablutions in the apartment’s cramped bathroom, dressed in grey slacks, shirt and tie, and went downstairs to have breakfast. Diane worked in a small, book-stacked study just off the main room, at a desk piled high with books and documents, so he stuck his head around the door frame,
saw her from the back as she punched her old Remington typewriter, and jokingly asked,‘What about the workers, then? Can I get you a coffee?’
She glanced over her shoulder with a smile and nodded affirmatively. ‘Yes, I could do with one.’
‘Will I bring it in to you?’
‘No, I’ll come out and join you. Just give me a shout.’
‘Right, I’ll do that.’
She had already gone back to punching the keys of the typewriter when he made his way into the kitchen to put on the kettle. When he had made the coffee and toast, he called out to her, telling her it was ready, and the clacking of the typewriter stopped as she came in to join him. She was wearing her customary work outfit of open-necked shirt tucked into blue denims, emphasizing her thin, undernourished figure. Though she was now in her middle forties, her face was still attractive, if rather severe, with her green eyes framed by short-cropped blonde hair, her face almost gaunt, the lips full and sensual. Her general lack of weight was caused, he knew, by too much tension, too many cigarettes, and too little to eat.
After kissing him on the top of his head, she lit a cigarette, blew a cloud of smoke, then took the chair facing him across the big round table.
‘Had a good sleep, did you?’ she asked, ‘after your base desires were satisfied?’
‘Bloody right. Not that it was my desires that were an issue, since you woke me up to have your way with me.’
‘If you have an itch, scratch it, I say. Then your head will be clear.’
She sipped her coffee and blew another cloud of smoke while Marty spread marmalade on his buttered toast.
‘So why do you need a clear head today?’ he asked. ‘What are you working on?’
‘An article about those revenge killings in Ulster. Eleven people dead, six of them Catholics, plus four militant Unionists killed in a car-bomb explosion. That place is a bloody nightmare now. Are your boys in there?’
‘No,’ Marty said.
‘Is that the truth or a diplomatic lie?’
‘It’s the truth, darling girl.’
‘The SAS were there in sixty-nine – openly, wearing uniforms, complete with beige berets and winged-dagger badges – and I’ll bet they’re still there.’
‘D Squadron went there in sixty-nine to search the bandit country for hidden weapons. That was a futile endeavour, so we haven’t been called back since.’
‘I’ll bet,’ Diane said sardonically, deliberately blowing a thin stream of smoke at him.
In fact, her intuition was correct and he was being disingenuous. While the ‘secret’ war in Oman had prevented the SAS from having a sizeable presence in Northern Ireland, individual officers and NCOs were posted there regularly, covertly, to conduct intelligence tasks. Though Marty had not been so privileged, he was hoping that he would eventually be compensated for not being in Oman with a tour of duty in the province in the near future. Hopefully, word on the grapevine had it that an SAS squadron was to be deployed there openly very shortly, probably in the new year, mainly for intelligence-gathering operations. If that happened, he was going to make sure that he was one of those sent – though naturally he was careful not to mention this plan to Diane.
‘Christ, it’s unbelievable,’ she said, ‘to have what amounts to a civil war on British soil. They’re slaughtering each other over there and the British troops are caught in the middle. It’s a pretty dirty business.’
‘I certainly don’t envy the greens,’ he said, ‘having to do thatparticular job.’
‘The what?’
‘Sorry… the greens… the British Army. That’s what we in the SAS call them.’
‘For a moment there, I thought you meant the IRA.’
Marty grinned. ‘No. Anyway, I don’t envy the greens their job, being attacked by women and children, never knowing who’s the enemy and who’s a friend. It’s pretty rotten for them. Maybe we should just get out and wipe our hands of the whole bloody business.’
‘We should never have gone there in the first place, but now that we’re there, we can’t pull out. The Yanks would never forgive us, for a start. They’re so romantic about it. Them and a lot of other stupid bastards who view the mess as a noble fight for freedom.’
‘Well, that’s what it is from the Irish point of view.’
‘Bullshit!’ She spat the word with passion, her pale cheeks slightly flushed, indicating that she was working herself up into another lather, which she tended to do far too easily. ‘The IRA,’ she continued, ‘are a bunch of bloody Marxists, almost certainly aided by similar groups elsewhere, getting money, weapons and training from them. Believe me, the socalled fight for Ireland’s freedom is only the first step in a link-up with terrorists worldwide. And God knows, there are enough of the bastards. Nationalists, separatists, anarchists, Trotskyites, Maoists, Leninists, communist proletariats and radical left Marxists. Christ, they’re springing up afresh every day: that anarchist Baader-Meinhof lot in West Germany; Italy’s ultra-left Red Brigade; the Red Army Faction and the June Second Movement; the PLO, the Spanish Marxist Basques of ETA; French Breton and Corsican separatists; the Japanese United Red Army; Argentine Montoneros, Uruguayan Tupamaros, and other South American groups being aided by Cuba.’
She stopped briefly and stared at Marty, but he said nothing, so she continued. ‘The IRA’s right in there, believe me, sharing their ideology. Now they and the others are coming closer together. They’ve been united by their mutual need for the theft of shipments of arms, stolen and forged documents, hot-money laundering centres, military training camps, safe houses, and socalled summit meetings between rival groups. It’s a fucking nasty business and the Irish are right in the thick of it, trading and learning.’
‘I gather you’re not a fan of the Republicans,’ Marty said drily.
‘No, I’m not. Are you?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘You’re a working-class lad and you can’t help sympathizing, but believe me, those bastards don’t deserve it. They don’t know what freedom means. Kangaroo courts, knee-capping, murder, extortion and money-laundering – that’s their idea of freedom. Freedom’s doing what theytell you to do. It’s the law of the jungle.’
When she talked like this, her cheeks became flushed, her green eyes turned brighter, and she took on a messianic quality that Marty found disturbing. On the other hand, he agreed with her, at least most of the way, and was often swayed by the strength of her convictions. She had, of course, picked up some of it from her father, the socially committed lawyer, but Marty suspected, perhaps chauvinistically, that it also sprang from her inability to have children and her compensatory need to channel her energies in other directions. Certainly she was extremely single-minded and could not be ignored.
‘I may be workingclass,’ he said, ‘but I don’t believe in Marxism and never have. I don’t admire the IRA any more than you do. You can take that as read.’
Diane grinned and puffed another cloud of smoke, though this time turning her head to the side, letting it blow away from him.
‘You’d say anything to avoid an argument,’ she told him.
‘Not true.’
‘It is. You’re so polite, Marty. I rant and rave, but you stay cool and keep your true thoughts to yourself. Did you learn that in the SAS?’
‘Maybe. I’m not sure. I have convictions, but I can’t express them as freely sometimes unnerves me.’
Diane chuckled. ‘You should talk to my husband. David agrees with the man I lived with before I married him. They both thought I was too opinionated, impossible to talk to, and absolutely stubborn. I’m amazed you’ve stuck with me.’
‘You’re not so bad, Diane.’
‘I found a patient man in you. I’m grateful. You’ve no idea, Marty. You’re the rock in my stormy sea.’
‘We’re good for each other.’
‘What a sweet thing to say. You know, you’re really a rare kind of man, Marty. Maybe one of a dying breed.’
‘What k
ind of breed is that?’
‘You have innate decency. It’s so natural, you don’t think about it. You have principles that you can’t even define, but they’ve guided your whole life.’
‘Shucks, you’re embarrassing me.’
‘You joke about it, but it’s the truth. Paddy Kearney believed the same – he told me so – and that’s why you and him have stayed friends for so many years. He’s a born aristocrat, you’re a working-class lad, butyou’re friends because you share the same values and respect each other for them. That’s pretty rare, don’t you think?’
‘We’re friends because of the SAS,’ Marty said. ‘That’s what drew us together.’
‘It’s more than that, Marty, and you know it. You’re friends because you’re both men of principle and such men are rare.’
as you do. Your passion
‘What about women?’ he asked. ‘I think you’re a woman of strong principles. Aren’t you rare as well?’
She smiled and shook her head from side to side. ‘No, it means I’m slightly crazy. I don’t even trust myself. I believe in what I’m writing as I write it, but when I’m finished I start doubting what I wrote and wonder why I bothered. Women are always incomplete: they always need that other half. I picked up my father’s sword, but it’s still his, so I feel like an imposter. I’m too emotional for my own good, too impulsive for constancy. That’s why you’re the rock in my stormy sea– you always think before you leap.’