by Damien Lewis
Once back at the safe house the gold was unloaded and carried down the river bank to the waiting boats. By 4.30 a.m. each of the Zodiac RIBs had been loaded with three tons of gold, which was the maximum that Kilbride reckoned each craft could manage. The convoy of boats set off downriver in line astern, with Ward in control of the lead RIB and Kilbride stationed at the prow with the night-vision equipment. Johno took control of the rear boat, while Moynihan had volunteered to pilot the craft in the middle.
As the three boats were heavily laden and low in the water, Kilbride opted not to use the outboard engines. Instead, they allowed the current of the river to carry them through the dark city and down towards the open sea. By five o’clock that Saturday morning the flotilla had reached the estuary of the Beirut River without mishap.
Ward swung the engines of the lead craft down into the water and fired them up with a gentle roar. He set a bearing for the Palm Islands, on a calm and softly undulating sea.
Major Thistlethwaite was not in the best of moods. In fact, as he strode backwards and forwards behind his desk he was incandescent with rage.
‘Twenty-four hours now and not a word from Kilbride. Not a word! What the devil can have happened to him?’
‘Radios do malfunction,’ Sergeant Major Spud Jones, replied. ‘It does happen …’
‘Not on my watch it doesn’t,’ the Major snapped. ‘Don’t they have a back-up unit? Twenty-four hours and a whole troop still missing. It’s a disaster.’
‘They’re not missing, sir. It’s a radio malfunction.’
‘Not missing, Sergeant Major? Well then, why the devil don’t you tell me where they are?’
‘Radios do malfunction,’ the Sergeant Major repeated, as if he were talking to a child. ‘And Kilbride’s unit will have a back-up set. But it’s likely to be in their forward mounting base. When they get back to that location they’ll call in.’
The Major stared at Sergeant Major Jones. ‘You seem remarkably sanguine about all this, Sergeant Major. Remarkably so. Let’s just remind ourselves of the situation, shall we? Fighting has broken out all over Beirut; the militias are knocking seven kinds of shit out of each other; we have nine men in the midst of all that chaos somewhere, and they’ve been out of contact for the last twenty-four hours; and to top it all we have no idea where they are. I’d say that is a fairly serious situation, Sergeant Major. They could be killed, captured or worse …’
‘Kilbride’s a survivor,’ Sergeant Major Jones interjected. ‘He’s commanding a unit of fine men. They’re all trained for this sort of thing. In the Congo, Kilbride was part of a unit that went missing for ninety-six days. We’d given them up for dead, but Kilbride and his three mates made it out alive. “The Ghost Unit”, we called them … Like I said, Kilbride’s a survivor and he’ll bring his men out alive.’
‘Yes, I’ve heard all about his Ghost Unit, Sergeant Major – let’s just hope this isn’t a repeat performance.’ The Major stopped pacing and stared at the SSM. ‘In any case, it’s one thing going missing in the Congo jungles, quite another doing so in the middle of bloody Beirut. It’s hardly uninhabited forest, is it? I mean, can’t the man get to a telephone or something?’
‘Kilbride wouldn’t compromise himself by using voice comms, not unless it’s a life-or-death situation. That’s why we operate in Morse code … sir. He’ll wait until he can make contact via the radio … When we was on operations in Malaya, Congo and Borneo, it was standard operating procedure that any patrol had to be able to lose itself for a fortnight without revealing itself to the enemy.’
‘Well, you’re not in Malaya or Borneo now, are you? In all my years in the military I’ve never known such lax procedures …’
‘With respect, sir, this isn’t the regular army. We work to a different set of rules. I said before, Kilbride’s a survivor, and that’s what makes him a good operator.’
The major glared at Sergeant Major Jones. ‘He may be a good operator in your book, Sergeant Major, but in mine he is a menace … I want to ask a simple question of you, Sergeant Major, and I’d appreciate an honest answer. Do you really give any credence to this “radio malfunction” nonsense? Well, do you? Or might it not be one of Kilbride’s little games … What I’m driving at is this: is Kilbride really a survivor, Sergeant Major, or is he more of a … dangerous liability?’
‘I wouldn’t want to speculate,’ Spud Jones replied, stiffly. ‘Like I said, radios do go down. Not often – the A41’s a pretty bulletproof piece of kit. But it does happen. Anyhow, don’t you worry about Kilbride and his men – he’ll bring them out alive.’
‘It’s not that which worries me,’ the Major muttered. ‘Just imagine the fuss they’ll make in headquarters, not to mention Whitehall, if we lose a whole unit of men in the Lebanon. I mean, for God’s sake, Sergeant, officially we’re not even supposed to be in Beirut … We have a decidedly shaky Labour government in power, and Lord only knows if this has been cleared with them … This has the makings of a career nightmare …’
CHAPTER SEVEN
AT 6.30 A.M. on Sunday, 25 January an exhausted Kilbride found himself back at the Imperial Bank of Beirut overseeing the loading of the last of the gold. Kilbride had never felt so tired in all his born days, and the rest of the men appeared equally shattered. None of them had slept since being dropped by the submarine off the Lebanese coast some three days earlier.
He’d never quite believed that they would actually make it to this point, yet here they finally were. Eleven tons of bullion had been removed from the bank on the Friday, and ten tons had been taken out on the Saturday night, most of which had already been ferried across to the Palm Islands. Five more tons to go and they would be home and dry.
For this last trip Kilbride had divided his forces, which meant that his men were doubly overstretched. He’d left Johno and Ward on Ramkine Island, working with their scuba gear to sink the bullion in the cave depths, with Nightly lending them a hand. Kilbride was relieved to have got shot of the disgruntled SAS soldier: so far on this mission Nightly had turned out to be something of a liability.
Taking all the gold had always been a crazy idea, and Kilbride hoped that they wouldn’t end up paying for it with their lives. They just needed their luck to hold for one last trip across the war-torn city, and then they would be out of there for good. Kilbride had no desire ever to return, and even the allure of the brown-eyed girl at the checkpoint was starting to fade. The ceasefire had yet to be re-established and fierce firefights were raging up and down the Green Line. But at least this gave Kilbride and his men good cover for their ongoing activities: fresh fighting meant fresh wounded, and more work for the Red Cross medics who tended to the victims.
As the last gold bars were being loaded Kilbride went to check on the bank guards. They still had twenty-four hours until the bank’s opening time on Monday morning, and he wanted to ensure there was enough food and water to last them. As he opened the door to the room, Kilbride had an ominous, sinking feeling. There was no sign of the prisoners anywhere. He noticed a smashed window, high up on one wall, with a chair propped against it. He jumped up and peered into the darkness outside, but the guards had disappeared.
Kilbride didn’t know who was to blame and he didn’t really care. They were all dog-tired, and when fighting men got overtired mistakes started to happen. None of them had realised the extent of the guards’ recovery – that they were actually physically capable of making a getaway. Kilbride kicked himself for being so stupid. He hurried back to the front of the bank. Smithy and Berger emerged from the lobby carrying the radio set and the mortar tubes.
‘The guards have scarpered,’ Kilbride announced flatly. ‘Let’s hit the bloody road. And keep your eyes peeled.’
The men cursed their bad luck and made for the Bedford truck. Kilbride headed for the lead Toyota. But as he jumped inside he remembered something: the terrorist papers. There were documents in that vault detailing the financial holdings of Arab terror groups worldwide. He s
till had the number of the safety-deposit box that Sergeant Major Jones had given him. Could he live with his conscience – let alone Spud Jones – if he carted off the gold but left the papers behind?
He signalled to the lads to wait one, and sprinted back inside. A minute later he was back again, a thick wad of documents stuffed down the front of his medical tunic. But as he went to start the Toyota he heard the distant snarl of an engine from the southern end of Rue Riad al-Solh. He turned to see the familiar shape of a big American pick-up roaring around the corner. It accelerated towards him, its Dushka heavy machine gun searching for a target.
When it was still some five hundred yards away, the pick-up slowed to a halt and a dozen soldiers dismounted. They fanned out to either side of the street and began advancing towards Kilbride’s position. These were clearly professionals doing a professional job, and they knew the location of their target.
Kilbride grabbed his walkie-talkie. ‘Fuck it,’ he snarled. ‘Ambush positions.’
Smithy, Berger, McKierran, Moynihan and Boerke dismounted from their vehicles and filtered into the cover of the ruined buildings to either side of them. The men were tired beyond imagining, but the adrenalin was kicking in now and they were up for the fight. The Claymores were still in position, which was the last thing the enemy would be expecting. The one thing Kilbride hoped was that the Dushka operator didn’t open fire before they triggered the Claymore ambush.
Kilbride pulled out a 66mm LAW rocket from the rear of the Toyota. He scuttled across to the cover of a low wall and flipped it out into its firing position. Then he grabbed his walkie-talkie, held it to his mouth, and pressed the transmit button gently.
‘On Boerke, open up,’ he whispered. ‘When he hits the Claymores.’
The enemy advanced in a classic fire-and-manoeuvre pattern, each half-dozen soldiers providing cover for the others as they ‘leapfrogged’ their way down the street. Four hundred yards; three hundred yards; two hundred yards: the force drew closer and closer. Kilbride’s men were all but invisible in their positions, and the enemy had no option but to try to flush them out of hiding. At fifty yards, Kilbride could make out the features of the individual fighters. As they drew to within thirty yards’ range, he began to worry that Boerke had left the Claymore ambush too late.
One of the soldiers leaned out from the cover of a building, momentarily sighting an assault rifle on Kilbride’s position. Kilbride suddenly felt his blood run cold. He recognised the thick auburn hair spilling out from beneath the cap, the eyes above the khaki mask …
But the warm features of the brown-eyed girl from the checkpoint had now been transformed into those of a hunter. To either side of her were similarly feminine figures: the other girls from the checkpoint had come to hunt down Kilbride and his team.
There was a squish of static on Kilbride’s radio. ‘Now, man!’ It was Boerke’s voice, thick with the aggression of the imminent contact. Even had Kilbride wanted to, there was nothing he could do to stop him.
Boerke squeezed the clacker hand-held firing device three times, and a split second later a vortex of flying death erupted from the Claymore daisy chain. A wave of 2,100 steel ball-bearings tore up Rue Riad al-Solh, scything down anything in its path. The first half-dozen fighters – the doe-eyed girl included – were hit at pointblank range, their bodies pulverised, blood and shredded flesh thrown high into the air. An instant later, the second group of enemy fighters were ripped apart by the whirlwind of steel.
Behind them, several hundred spherical metal projectiles tore into the American pick-up, opening it up like a giant tin-opener. It slewed to one side, mounted the pavement and shunted its nose in through the window of a derelict shopfront, the driver slumped dead over the wheel. In the rear the Dushka gunner spun around, a smashed hand clutching his bloodied forehead, and keeled forward over the big machine gun. Kilbride let rip with the 66mm LAW, deliberately aiming for the vehicle’s fuel tank. The moment the rocket struck there was an intense flash of flame and the pick-up exploded, turning the street into a blazing inferno, a plume of black smoke billowing above the stricken vehicle.
Boerke and Berger began firing off rounds from their stubby M203 grenade launchers, pounding the positions where there might be enemy survivors. In less than sixty seconds it was all over, and over a dozen militiamen – and women – lay dead. No one from Kilbride’s force had suffered so much as a scratch, but he felt sick to his very bones. The brown-eyed girl from the checkpoint would be doing no more partying in Beirut, that much was for certain, and the same went for her warrior girlfriends. Kilbride wondered how many more of the militia would now be coming after them.
‘Move out,’ he grated into his radio. ‘Follow my lead.’
He pulled Emile to his feet and dragged him towards the lead Toyota. Once inside, he gunned the engine, wrenched the wheel angrily around and did a spectacular U-turn, wheels spinning on the debris that littered the road. Behind him, Smithy did a more ponderous about-turn in the big Bedford truck. Kilbride led the three-vehicle convoy north along Rue Riad al-Sohl – in the opposite direction to the burning wreck of the militia truck that blocked their route out of there. He glanced across at Emile. Their Lebanese fixer had buried his head in his hands.
‘Take us west,’ Kilbride said in a voice dead with exhaustion. ‘We’re not out of here yet, Emile. Take us west, okay?’
Emile lifted his head and ran a tired hand over his dirty medical tunic. ‘West?’ he queried. ‘West? West will bring us to the Muslims … to the Muslim militia.’
‘You have a better idea? Word’s out among the Christian forces about what we’re up to, so that’s our only chance.’
‘Take a left on Rue Weygand,’ Emile muttered.
They drove on in silence for several seconds, the only noise being the hum of the wheels on the road and the distant rumble of fighting across the city.
Emile turned to Kilbride. ‘Has it really all been worth it, my friend?’
‘Who knows?’ said Kilbride, keeping his eyes on the road ahead. ‘That’s not my concern right now. In a few minutes we could all be dead. Get us the fuck out of here, Emile.’
Emile shrugged. ‘All roads out of the Green Line lead to a checkpoint, my friend …’
Sure enough, five minutes later Kilbride found himself approaching a roadblock. He brought the vehicle’s speed down to dead slow.
‘Christian or Muslim?’ Kilbride asked as they crawled forwards. To him it looked pretty much like ‘Checkpoint Charlie’, as they’d nicknamed their regular crossing point into the Christian side of the city.
‘Muslim,’ Emile replied, quietly.
‘How d’you know?’
‘Trust me – I know.’
They rolled to a halt before the barrier. It struck Kilbride that the Muslim militiamen didn’t look entirely friendly. One of them approached the passenger door and rapped on the glass with the barrel of his AK47. Emile wound down his window and the militiaman began firing questions at him in Arabic. The Muslim militia knew that the Red Cross carried the Christian wounded, and the questioner was being far from friendly.
Kilbride felt a presence on his side of the vehicle. He glanced out of the side window. A second militiaman was jabbing his assault rifle at the Red Cross symbol on his driver’s door, and miming as if to shoot it up. He grinned evilly at Kilbride, his teeth showing yellow and rotten as he did so. The first militiaman started yelling at Emile, motioning for him to get down from the vehicle. Emile glanced at Kilbride, terror in his eyes, then turned to open the door.
The militiaman prodded Emile in the back and began marching him towards the rear of the convoy. The second militiaman went with them, and Kilbride kept watch in his wing mirror as they walked the length of the three-vehicle line. They paused at the canvas back of the truck, and Emile was forced to kneel down. Kilbride saw the first militiaman whip out a knife, and for a moment he feared that he was about to cut Emile’s throat. But then he stepped out of view behind the truck, brandi
shing the knife as he went. Kilbride knew that it was about to kick off big time.
He glanced ahead of him at the sandbagged position to his right. Four more militiamen were lounging about and enjoying the show. He eased his Browning out of his pocket, slipped the safety off and wound down his window. He gave the four enemy soldiers a big smile, and got a series of hostile stares in return. Keeping the weapon hidden, he brought his left hand over to join his right on the pistol grip, so as to better steady his aim. The sandbagged position was no more than fifteen yards away – he had thirteen rounds in the Browning and four men to kill. It was all about timing now, about how fast and accurate he could be on the draw.
In the rear of the Bedford Bill Berger was lying on a makeshift stretcher under a medical blanket. His head was wrapped in a bloodied bandage, and he had done the best job he could to make himself look like an injured man in need of urgent medical attention. As he listened to the yelling outside he felt a growing sense of unease. Although he spoke no Arabic, he could tell by the militiaman’s tone that he was cursing Emile and threatening him.
Like Kilbride, the big American sensed that it was all about to get very nasty. He eased the bulk of the GPMG onto his stomach, and double-checked that he had a round chambered and the weapon cocked and ready to fire. If anyone came into the rear of the truck he didn’t think they’d be doing so in friendship. And he didn’t think they’d be using the code word ‘Gold Fever’, either. In which case they were already as good as dead.
Suddenly, a blade came slicing through the canvas back of the truck. There was a savage down thrust, and then a slash to the right, forming a large L-shaped rent. A hand grabbed the flapping material and pulled it aside, and then a face was peering in. For a split second the militiaman and the big US soldier locked eyes and then Bill Berger squeezed his trigger. The big machine gun exploded with a roar, tearing smoking rents in the medical blanket and spitting out rounds into the militiaman’s chest. The force of the impacts hurled him upwards and backwards, and he landed on the windscreen of the vehicle behind with a soggy thud. As the body slid downwards, Moynihan levelled his pistol at the second militiaman and shot him in the head.