Marine J SBS

by Peter Corrigan

  Light dawned on Willan at last. ‘So that’s why you’re here. You think we may be able to get you another lead, another exclusive. And here was I thinking it was me you were after.’

  ‘Business is business,’ she said with a smile. ‘Buy me a beer, Willan.’

  He did so, noting her legs as she crossed them on the bar stool.

  ‘I notice there was no mention of British soldiers in the news, no word on how it was a British-trained force which held up the invaders,’ she said casually.

  ‘We’re not here,’ Willan told her. ‘I don’t exist. You’d do well to remember that, reporter or not.’

  ‘But that would be a story and a half, wouldn’t it? How Tanzania, whose president hates all things colonial, had to ask the old colonial power for help in maintaining her borders.’

  ‘You run a story like that, and you’ll be out of this country before your feet touch the ground,’ Willan told her. ‘You’ll piss off a whole world of people.’

  ‘Including you?’

  He turned on her.

  ‘I don’t give a flying fuck what you print or what you don’t. My job is to fight, and to help others to fight. Two of my friends are already dead doing that; their bodies are lying unburied in the Kagera salient, along with hundreds of others. If you want to print something, then print that, but don’t be fucking coy with me. I haven’t the patience for it.’

  She looked a little shocked. ‘I’m sorry. I just didn’t think . . .’

  ‘Too fucking right you didn’t. This country is fighting for its survival against one of the worst regimes the world has seen since the Nazis, and all you can think about is a little personal glory. Maybe that’s your job to think that way, but it’s not mine, and if you go plastering our existence all over the newspapers, then we’ll be on the same plane out of here as you, and this country will be that little less able to defend itself. So be a good girl, eh? Do as you’re told; think like a human being for once, instead of a fucking newshound.’

  She glared at him, obviously furious. God, she’s pretty, Willan found himself thinking.

  ‘At least I’m not a cold-blooded killer,’ she hissed, then turned and flounced out of the bar.

  Shit. Now why did he do that? Why the high-horsed speech? He’d never get another roll in the hay with her now.

  Willan ordered another beer. The barman smiled at him sympathetically.

  ‘Women, eh?’ Willan said. ‘Can’t live with them, can’t live with them. Cheers.’ He sank the cold beer gratefully.

  The SBS men, sweet-smelling, refreshed and stuffed with their first decent meal in days, met in Prentiss’s hotel room. It looked like a tasteless shirt convention, Willan thought. He was angry at himself because he had had too many beers at a time when his mind should be clear, and he was still annoyed at having mouthed off to Sue like that. He did not like to hear people preach, and he had given her quite a sermon.

  Prentiss unrolled a map of Lake Victoria and its shores and weighted it down with beer bottles. The six surviving SBS men crowded round it.

  ‘We have a mission for you,’ Prentiss said, puffing on one of his reeking cigarettes.

  ‘Who’s we?’ Morgan asked.

  ‘Never mind. There is a target, or rather a series of targets, that we need taken out ASAP.’ The MI6 agent stabbed a finger down on the map.

  ‘Here.’

  ‘Entebbe,’ Willan said. He experienced an odd sinking feeling.

  ‘Just so. We want you to raid the airport at Entebbe . . .’

  ‘What, like the Israelis did a couple of years ago?’ Gordon asked.

  ‘Not quite. This time there are no hostages. The objectives are the sixty or so aircraft which are stationed there. Your job will be to disable or destroy as many of them as you can while they are still on the ground.’

  Breckenridge whistled softly. ‘Sixty! That’s ten apiece – a tall order if ever there was one.’

  ‘It’s been calculated that if you can take out half of them then you will have reduced the air threat facing the Tanzanians to acceptable proportions.’

  ‘I’d love to know who works out all these things,’ Willan said drily.

  ‘The air threat,’ Prentiss went on, ignoring him, ‘is the single thing which is most capable of breaking the back of Tanzanian resistance. We can’t allow the bombing of Tanzanian towns to go on any longer, to say nothing of the harm airstrikes can do to the infantry on the ground.’

  ‘We have some experience of that,’ Hill said archly.

  ‘Quite.’ Prentiss pulled out another map, smaller this time. It seemed to be the map of a long, narrow peninsula.

  ‘Here we have the Entebbe peninsula. You see that the airport is near its tip. There are two main runways, the southern and the south-western. Between the V formed by these runways are the main military hangars. Some of the targets are in these hangars. Look east. Closer to the eastern shore of the promontory are a series of taxi-ways and concrete holding areas. There are also large fuel tanks.’

  ‘Aha,’ Morgan said happily.

  ‘Yes. About two-thirds of the Ugandan Air Force is parked within a couple of hundred yards of the tanks – it’s because they don’t have enough refuelling vehicles; it’s more convenient that way.’

  ‘You’re implying that if we take out the tanks, then the planes will be destroyed with them,’ Willan said.

  ‘Many of them will, yes. But there will have to be charges placed on the aircraft also, just in case. The Ugandans don’t drain the fuel tanks of the aircraft themselves after every flight and quite a few of those planes will still have high-octane fuel in them, so they’ll go up like torches. We need two teams: one to set the charges on the main fuel tanks, another to set explosives on as many aircraft as possible which are farthest away from the tanks themselves, to add to the general effect.’

  ‘How many aircraft would that take out, if all went according to plan?’ Willan asked.

  ‘We think between thirty and forty.’

  ‘Nice one,’ Gordon said.

  ‘What about security?’ Geary wanted to know.

  ‘Lax. They have a decaying perimeter fence: barbed wire and the like. There is a guardroom between the two runways housing about a platoon of troops, and they have several jeeps armed with fifty-cal Brownings which patrol somewhat erratically the entire airfield.’

  ‘Not so good,’ Willan said. ‘I’d rather we had well-disciplined troops who kept to a nice, predictable schedule.’

  ‘They are inefficient in the extreme,’ Prentiss said. ‘An attack on Entebbe is the last thing they expect. You will have the advantage of total surprise.’

  ‘How do we get there?’ Hill asked. ‘It’s all the way across Lake Victoria.’

  Prentiss smiled. ‘Remember that big white boat you captured? Well, it’s still where you cached it, and your canoes and other maritime equipment are on board.’

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ Willan said.

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘But we’d be a sitting duck in that thing – their air force could blow us out of the water any time they liked.’

  ‘Not in weather like this,’ Prentiss said, gesturing out of the hotel room window to where the torrential rain was still pouring down outside.

  ‘And if it stops raining again?’ Morgan asked.

  ‘We will move by night. The drop-off point for the canoes will be west of Kkome Island, six miles offshore. You’ll paddle in, do the business and then paddle out again.’

  ‘Simple,’ Willan said sardonically. ‘You’ll be piloting the boat, will you?’

  ‘Yes, since my talent seems to run that way. And a crew of Ugandan exiles is being given to us, some of whom are natives of the Ssese Islands. They know those waters like their own backyards.’

  ‘You say all our gear is intact and on the steamer?’ Willan asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  Willan sighed. ‘All right. Let’s get down to brass tacks. Timings . . .’

  The othe
r SBS men looked at one another. The operation was on. They brought out notebooks and began taking down the orders which would take them north into Uganda.

  13

  The rain hitting the surface of the lake sounded like sausages sizzling in a pan. Willan peered out of the streaming windows of the wheelhouse at the darkness beyond. It was a moonless night, six days after the hotel-room briefing. The surface of Lake Victoria was flat and even; there was no wind to speak of either, which suited him fine.

  Visibility was down to about three hundred yards on account of the rain, and the old steamer was powering along with all lights out except the little glow which illuminated the binnacle. Prentiss was standing at the engine controls while a Ugandan native, Ukune, steered the ship. Down in the engine-room another group of Ugandan exiles were stoking up the boilers to keep a good head of steam going. The Victoria was making twelve knots; almost flat out for her.

  They had left the little cove near Mwanza the evening before, and had lain up during the following day in the shelter of the tiny, uninhabited island of Nabuyongo. Now they were in Ugandan waters. Off to their left was the tangled archipelago of the Ssese Islands. Their course was west-north-west, designed to bring them just to the left of Kkome. The drop-off point was only two hours away now, and the other SBS men were on deck, readying their equipment.

  They would take the Kleppers in on the approach. The Rigid Raiders were too large and it would be too risky to use their engines. The six SBS men would paddle in silently, the two strongest, Morgan and Breckenridge, towing two unmanned canoes behind them filled with extra limpet mines.

  The section would then split into three groups. Hill would stay with the canoes on the shore and do his best to make sure that any Ugandan sentry who stumbled upon them did not live long enough to boast about it. Geary and Breckenridge would set off for the fuel tanks a few hundred yards away, setting charges on each one. And the largest group, composed of Willan, Morgan and Gordon, would have the most dangerous task. They would have to travel farther still and place limpet mines on as many of the aircraft as possible which were parked on the tax-ways of the southern runway.

  Once the charges were in place, everyone would leg it back to the canoes and then paddle like hell for the old steamer which would be waiting six miles offshore. Once they were in the water, Willan had ordered them not to stop for anyone or anything. Anyone who was discovered was to make as big a fight of it as possible to gain the others time to get away.

  Or, Willan thought grimly to himself, as much fight as one man could put up when he was in a flimsy canoe. He still had that odd sinking feeling about the whole operation. It was another typical seat-of-the-pants job, as everything else had been in Africa.

  The SBS were armed with their Ingrams again, all fitted with silencers, and shoulder-holstered Brownings. They would wear tropical diving suits, but no fins, and would carry with them an assortment of grenades and flares as well as the explosives essential to the success of the mission. Once they had rejoined the steamer, Prentiss would take the old ship into the labyrinth of the Ssese Islands to lie up all the next day and avoid pursuit. It was known that the Ugandans had a few ageing patrol boats based at Port Bell, some twenty miles from Entebbe, and it would be as well to avoid them if they were called out, rather than try to batter a course through them.

  ‘We’re at the drop-off point,’ Prentiss said at last, consulting the ship’s compass and his watch. He clanged the engine levers back and forth.

  ‘All stop.’

  The engines faded to a murmur and the ship lost way. The night became almost silent.

  He and Willan went out on deck. The SBS men, with the help of the Ugandan crew, were already lowering the Kleppers over the side, and then sliding down the ropes after them. It was all done in near silence, only the dull thuds of the canoes bumping against the steel hull of the steamer breaking the quiet of the night. That, and the endless rain.

  Willan smeared cam cream thickly over his face and hands and hitched the Ingrams higher on his shoulder. His canoe was already in the water. He took hold of the rope.

  ‘Good luck,’ Prentiss said, holding out a hand.

  Willan shook it. ‘You’ll stay on station until four-thirty?’

  ‘Yes, as we arranged. After that I’ll be lying off Bubeke Island in the Ssese archipelago. Break a leg, Willan.’

  ‘I probably will,’ Willan muttered. He slid easily down the rope, his rubber-clad feet thumping lightly against the steamer’s hull. There was an awkward moment as he levered himself into the bobbing Klepper, but then he was in, his paddle in his hands, the other canoes about him. There was no hint of brightness or shine about the other canoeists; they merged with the night completely.

  ‘Let’s go, lads,’ Willan whispered, and he dug his paddle into the rain-pocked lake.

  It was easy going, despite the rain. The tricky part was the navigation. Willan was consulting his wrist compass every few hundred yards, keeping them on the bearing that would take them to their landing point.

  The eight canoes made good time. Despite being burdened with another of the Kleppers to tow behind each of them, Morgan and Breckenridge kept up easily with the others. The lake itself was empty at this time of night and in this weather. Even had there been boats out on the water, they would never have noticed the silent little vessels which glided along in their midst; the SBS had made water-borne penetration into a fine art.

  Muscles which Willan had not used in weeks were beginning to ache a little when he finally saw the tell-tale lights of the shore up ahead, blurred in the rain. The airfield, Prentiss had assured them, was not well illuminated beyond the lights of the runways and the tower. There were very few commercial flights in or out of Uganda these days. Europeans had been discouraged from visiting the country for the past five years, since Amin had seized a number of white tourists and accused them of spying back in 1974. And then, of course, there had been the Entebbe raid, two years before, when Israeli commandos had stormed the airport to liberate a group of Jewish hostages from Amin’s clutches.

  Willan began scanning the shoreline. He was looking for a dent in the coast, a tiny bay to the west of the airport which Prentiss had assured him would be an ideal insertion point.

  He saw it, and adjusted course minutely. The other canoes followed him without question. Geary would be check-navigating at the rear.

  The lights seemed very close now, throwing bars of brightness across the lake. This was one of the worst parts: the possibility of being seen while they were still relatively helpless out on the water.

  Willan’s canoe bumped lightly against sand. He stepped out of it and grabbed the short tow-rope at its prow. With his free hand he held the Ingrams at the ready. The weapon was loaded and cocked. He began wading ashore in calf-deep water, towing the Klepper behind him.

  The canoe’s bottom scraped on dry sand. He hauled it entirely out of the water, then took up position on his belly near the top of a nearby sand-dune. In seconds the rest of the team were all around him. They spread out in a horseshoe, the open end of the formation resting on the lake, and lay there without a word, watching and waiting.

  Nothing. The airport was clearly visible now. There were a few cars moving on the road to its north-east end, travelling up to Kampala perhaps. Willan could see almost everything: the fuel tanks, great metallic cylinders almost directly ahead, and beyond them, lines and lines of parked planes: MiG 16s and 17s, and a few Pucára ground-attack aircraft.

  He saw a sentry strolling along among the planes. He made out the guardroom, the jeeps with their Brownings parked outside. The place seemed sleepy, almost deserted.

  He tapped Gordon and Morgan on the shoulder. They nodded at him and then began dishing out limpet mines. Breckenridge was doing the same. The SBS men placed them in canvas shoulder bags which rode at both hips. They were heavy and awkward, and if a man moved suddenly they would clink together; but it could not be helped – not now.

  Willan’s team mo
ved out first, as they had the farthest to go. Next came Geary and Breckenridge. Hill remained behind, watching.

  Beyond the dunes the ground dipped and became marshy. It was thick with reeds, which made for agonizingly slow progress. Willan’s team threaded their way through the stems as quietly as they could, their feet sucking in the mud and water underfoot. Luckily, the rain continued to pour down, covering them with a blanket of sound. They had to pause once to let a water snake slither by. At least seven feet long, it sidled out in front of Willan with its head held up out of the mud. It seemed to pause and regard him for a moment, then slithered away. Willan unfroze. He was sweating, moisture stinging his eyes as the rain washed it off his forehead. Victoria’s water snakes possessed some of the deadliest venom in the world. The SBS men had been told before they left England that the tropical suits would protect them from snake bite, but he had no wish to put his to the test.

  They reached the end of the reeds at last and went down on their bellies in the foul-smelling ooze. There was a short expanse of open ground, now slimy with mud and full of puddles, and then the fence of the airfield itself. It was an ordinary wire fence with a coil of Dannet wire at its top and bottom.

  Willan tapped Gordon on the shoulder and the SBS man moved out while the other two covered him, alert for any sign of movement nearby. Further to the south, Geary and Breckenridge would also be on the move now. The two teams were taking separate approach routes to maximize their chances of evading discovery.

  Gordon was lying at the foot of the fence plying the wire-cutters. Thank God for the rain, Willan thought. It screened most small sounds and made the sentries perfunctory in their duties.

  Small, metallic sounds came from the fence. Willan nodded at Morgan and the big man went over to help Gordon, holding the wire taut while the wire-cutters severed it, so that it would not spring up.

  They were through. There was a gap perhaps eighteen inches wide in the wire now and Gordon was squirming through it. Morgan followed, then the pair took up fire positions on the other side. There was very little cover save for the darkness and the rain. Willan splashed over to the fence and crawled through. One of the canvas bags holding the limpet mines snagged on an end of wire, and he had to pause for what seemed like an age and free himself. He was through, thank Christ.