by Andy McNab
I didn't waste time checking my alti. I had to release my Bergen or I was going to break my legs when I landed – at the very least. It was still down by my arse, attached by the two hooks to my harness. I pushed down the release arms and the bundle dropped the fifteen-feet length of its retainer rope. When I heard it hit the ground, I'd have a split second before my boots did the same. Then, with my feet in a proper parachute landing position, just like they'd taught me on my static-line course, all I could do was accept the landing.
The Bergen thumped into the ground. Then, feet and legs together, shoulders in, teeth clenched, chin tucked into my chest, so did I.
I came in like a bag of shit. I grabbed a few lines and pulled them in to make sure the wind didn't catch the canopy and drag me along the desert.
All done, I just lay there for a few blissful seconds as my goggles steamed up once more. It was pitch black. I couldn't hear or see a fucking thing.
I undid my rig, laid the GPMG to one side, undid my Bergen, de-rigged everything and bagged it up. I dug around for a head torch and tried to get my bearings. Without the ability to steer to the drop zone, I'd probably drifted miles off-course.
I got out my Firefly emergency beacon and sparked it up. It gave out rhythmic bursts of high-energy light. Sooner or later somebody would find me.
It was about twenty minutes before I saw the welcome lights of a wagon. A little while later, a four-tonner pulled up. Nish was driving. Paul, Chris and Tiny were also aboard.
For once, Nish wasn't grinning. Normal service was resumed, though, once it was established I was OK. 'There you go – fucking crap hat.' Tiny lifted my rig for me. 'It's gonna cost you.'
Have a malfunction, I discovered, and it was a bit like getting a hole-in-one. The Milky bars were on me. I thought, Shouldn't it be the other way round?
Nish stuck an arm around my shoulder. 'Listen, mate, no one packs a malfunction into the main so you can practise. You just have to wait for them to happen. You're going to have many more.'
He helped me with my gear and as we put it on the back of the four-tonner, he said, 'I bet that was the way Al would have wanted to go.' He looked away. 'If only I'd checked that guy jumping over that gate . . .'
Tiny shook his head in exasperation. 'Nish, for fuck's sake, stop. He's dead. Leave it.'
But, increasingly, Nish couldn't leave it. The fun and pisstaking were a smokescreen, a layer of bullshit to cover up the bad feelings. He would walk out into the night saying he wanted a smoke, but it was obvious he wanted to be with his own thoughts.
I think he really did blame himself for Al's death. He didn't need to, but nothing we could say would change that.
61
With just a couple of weeks left in Oman, the OC, whose name really was Rupert, got all sixty of us into the HQ tent to explain a new squadron rotation system. There was going to be a composite troop over the water. It would be made up of guys from each squadron, and the tour lasted a year. At some stage, everybody would have to get it under their belt. But what they were looking for now was experienced guys to step up to the plate.
I knew I stood no chance. I was too junior. I had my infiltration skill, but still lacked a patrol skill.
Nish and Hillbilly were bouncing around, but Schwepsy kept pretty quiet. He was thinking about getting out. He wasn't alone. The Regiment was like a feeder to the private security companies. Nobody got judgemental about it. If you'd been in for a while and a good job came up, you just had to do the maths. Schwepsy had told me that when Frank left.
It wasn't the first time I'd heard talk about the Circuit: the handful of really good outfits that had contracts all over the planet, for bodyguarding, advisories, on-the-ground fighting, you name it.
A lot of the guys had left after Operation Storm and gone straight back to highly paid jobs in Oman, training the army to keep the Adoo at bay down south, though the choice option at the moment was the one Frank had in Sri Lanka. The Tamil Tigers were getting seriously sparked up, and there was bound to be a lot of work. People were trying to find out how much Frank was paid, and how long-term it was likely to be.
I was very happy where I was. The squadron was going to split up soon and zoom off all over the planet on team jobs, ops taken on by small groups, maybe four, maybe a troop, possibly as many as twenty or thirty. Nine out of ten times they'd be working for the Foreign Office, 'maintaining the UK's interests overseas'. Some would be fighting, some training other Special Forces groups, some sorting out the locals, then going to fight alongside them, perhaps trying to stop an insurgency or start one.
Some already knew what team jobs they were going on but didn't say, and nobody asked. Op Sec (operational security) was important. You only needed to know what you needed to know. Three who didn't know yet were Hillbilly, Nish and me.
Hillbilly sat on an old 81mm ammunition box later that night while Nish stretched out on his camp bed, debating whether or not to go over the water. A hundredweight sack of pistachio nuts stood on the sand between them. The waffle turned to team jobs in general. Nish knew exactly what he wanted. 'Anything in RWW would do me. I'd rather start a war than try to stop one.' He spat a mouthful of shells in Hillbilly's general direction.
I joined in. 'How do you get into RWW? How does that all work?'
Hillbilly did the same trick with the shells. 'You don't get in – they come for you. Nice work if you can get it. But first, me and Big Nose here, we're going over the water.' He shoved Nish away from his nut stash, then leant over and picked up the bag. 'It'll be a laugh.'
'I don't know about that.' Nish's expression had become serious. 'It'll be a chance to hose down a few more of those bastards who killed Al.'
'Nish, shut up.' Tiny put down his book at the other end of the tent. 'It's OK. It's all right, mate.'
Schwepsy appeared, his Aryan locks freshly washed and combed for an SS recruitment poster shoot. 'Guess what?' He helped himself to a fistful of Hillbilly's pistachios, cracked a couple open and spat the shells over Nish. 'Frank's back in H.'
Tiny was busy scratching himself. 'What happened?'
The pistachio-fest gathered momentum. Schwepsy turned to talk to Tiny. I was on the bed opposite so he spat the shells at me. 'Dunno.'
Nish sparked up: 'Probably overdid the ayatollah stuff, shoving it down everyone's neck. That's what's happened – he got binned.'
'Who knows? Who cares? Sounds like a cracking job, though.' Schwepsy bent down and grabbed the bag from Hillbilly. 'You two going over the water?'
Hillbilly shrugged. 'Sure, why not?'
I sat there like a spare prick at a wedding. It was like they were all getting ready for a great party and I hadn't been invited.
Tiny looked at me. 'I know exactly where you're going. Once you've done that scaley course, all crap hats go to F Troop. You'll be back to the jungle, mate.' He gave a chuckle and climbed into his sleeping-bag.
I thought: Fuck me, if he's that happy about it, I have to be worried.
62
Hereford
August 1985
We bummed around for a couple of weeks back in the UK, then everybody went their separate ways. Most went on team jobs; I was trying to get my head around Morse code.
By the end of the ten-week course, I'd be expected to knock out twelve words a minute, minimum. Out on operations we had to be able to communicate with each other – and with Hereford – to encode and decode, use all the encryption radios and make our own antennas. But when satellite comms were down and everything else went to rat shit, the faithful old dots and dashes would still come through. Everything we sent would be beamed to 'receivers', scaleys who lived in an underground bunker surrounded by satellite dishes and machines that went ping. It would be decoded and disseminated. But it always went to Hereford first.
Three weeks in, I could manage about one word every ten minutes. I went down town one Saturday afternoon for a breather. Coming out of McDonald's with a bag and a carton of Coke, I bumped into Frank.
<
br /> He looked genuinely pleased to see me.
'All right, mate? How's it going?'
The smile slipped. I guessed things weren't going too well.
'Fancy a pint?'
We headed for the Grapes, an old haunt of ours.
'I heard you were back.'
'And I suppose they're all saying it was for preaching the gospel too loudly . . .'
Music banged away on the jukebox. The air was thick with cigarette smoke. Every table was packed with Saturday-afternoon shoppers having a quick steak and kidney pie and chips.
It was a pint of bitter for him, lager for me.
We had to stand inches apart because of the noise. The cornflower blues had lost their sparkle.
'The whole country's just one big minefield. I went there to train, but they wanted me to fight the Tamils – and for no extra money. It wasn't about Bible bashing; it was about not getting my legs taken off for no good reason.'
I got stuck into my Kronenberg and let him carry on bumping his gums.
'I learnt my lesson over the water. And, besides, what the company was paying me was just a third of what the Sri Lankans were paying them.'
'They did spread the word that you were Bible-bashing . . .'
'They would, wouldn't they? They wanted an excuse to get rid of me. I went to a church in Colombo, but that was all I did. I was stitched up.'
'What are you going to do?'
He turned back to the bar, suddenly deflated. 'I don't know.' His tone became aggressive. 'I'm on the dole. Can you believe it? I never asked for anything in my life. They said, "What do you do?" So I told them. Know what job they offered me? Where we just met up. McDonald's. Can you believe that?'
'There's definitely no work? You been that badly stitched up?'
'There's some bits and pieces of bodyguarding about. I'm looking.'
'Look, mate, if you need some cash, I haven't got much, but—'
He lifted a hand. 'It's all right. I've got the dole, and they've given me milk coupons for the kids. That's enough humiliation for one week.'
I racked my brains for the odd word of comfort, but I wasn't the world's best at emotional conversations. We just stood there and did a bit of synchronized gulping.
'You know what, Andy? I think I'm still numb.'
'It can't be a good feeling, getting stitched up like—'
'No, no, no – from leaving the Regiment. It feels like there's nowhere for me to go. I miss the drive into camp every day. I miss the lads. You're the first I've seen. There's just no sort of . . . clarity . . . out here. It frightens me.'
'That's because you're a happy warrior and an embittered pacifist.'
Frank's eyebrows nearly disappeared into his hair. 'You been eating dictionaries?'
'Nish's words, not mine. It's how a lad called Graves described his mate, Sassoon. Not the hairdresser, another poet.'
'Well, I'm not Sassoon the poet, I'm Collins the unemployed.'
'You saying you fucked up, getting out of the Regiment?'
He put his empty glass on the bar, and the fire came back into his eyes. There wasn't even a flicker of uncertainty. 'No, not at all. I'm off for a piss.'
I watched the world's biggest liar head off towards the toilet and got another couple in.
63
Airport Camp, Belize
December 1985
Torrential rain pummelled the corrugated-iron roof of the Nissen hut. I felt like I was inside a giant snare drum. The MoD hadn't stretched to air-conditioning in the sweltering heat and humidity of Central America, but they had forked out for some Christmas tinsel and streamers, so we knew they loved us really.
My kit was packed on the floor ready to go. I was going to be back in Hereford in time for Christmas. The weekly RAF Tristar was about to land from Brize Norton with the mail and new bodies. The old ones were heading back to the UK the next day. I had an appointment at Woolwich military hospital. Not Ward 11, Snapper's old hang-out, but to find out what was wrong with my right leg.
I'd been here four months without injury, then done something to my knee on my last patrol along the Guatemalan border. I didn't know what or how, but in the jungle even a simple cut can become a serious problem. Fungi, parasites and exotic diseases battled to prevent your body healing. Within days, the joint had swollen up like a football. When I bent it, pus oozed out, and I could hear the fucking thing creak. Before long I was having trouble moving it at all, and had to be cas-evac'd out.
The rain eased and the drumming subsided. I lay there thumbing through back copies of Time magazine. 'SO FAR, SO GOOD,' said this week's cover. 'With candor and civility, Reagan and Gorbachev grapple for answers to the arms-race riddle.' Inside, I read about a bloke called Terry Waite who was flying to Beirut to try to free some hostages: 'An Anglican lay associate, Waite was drawn to the Church, he has said, for "its passionate coolness, its mixture of authority and freedom".' I made a mental note to remember that for next time I saw Frank. He was looking for a church; it sounded like this guy had it sorted.
It was all a bit happier than last week's cover: 'COLOMBIA'S MORTAL AGONY – A volcano unleashes its fury, leaving at least 20,000 dead or missing.'
Maybe Time alternated good weeks with bad; the issue before that one had 'HERE THEY COME' over a picture of Charles and Diana. The blissfully happy couple were on their way to Washington for a three-day visit. I could imagine the security frenzy.
The sound of punches and grunts took over from the drumming. A kit bag hanging from a tree outside the huts had been turned into a punch-bag, and Des Doom was giving it some serious stick. He was PVRing (taking premature voluntary release). It cost a couple of hundred pounds to break your contract, but then you were free to go. The trouble was, he'd only been in the Regiment four years, and had been taken off team jobs and sent to Belize for the whole duration of B Squadron's tour as a punishment. He was severely bitter and twisted about it, forever taking it out on the bag. I wondered whose face it was wearing today; he had a fair number to 'talk to'. They all suffered from NBPE – not being punched enough.
I didn't know what he was going to do when he got out; Des kept his cards close to his tattooed chest. But I was sure it would be as solid as a tank.
The only training facilities apart from the kit bag were some weights – a couple of catering-size baked-bean cans, filled with concrete, either end of an iron bar. After he'd made them the entertainments officer had obviously needed to catch some Zs.
Nish and Hillbilly were over the water. I'd had a letter from Hillbilly to tell me about a two-up, two-down in H that was going on the market after Christmas. The couple was splitting up. The male half of the relationship didn't know this just yet, but the female half had decided not to marry, so they'd be looking for a quick sale. Hillbilly was turning into one of Thatcher's golden children, often buying and selling property before it was even built. He would put down a deposit, and because new builds in Hereford were usually oversubscribed, he'd sell on his reservation to the highest bidder.
The owners of the two-up, two-down weren't the only ones going their separate ways. Nish had split with his wife and she had gone to Cheltenham with their son, Jason.
As a PS, Hillbilly said Nish had progressed from 'The House Of The Rising Sun' to 'Duelling Banjos' and it had been driving him deaf and mad. He'd banished Nish from the room they shared and made him practise in the sauna.
Harry was on a team job somewhere. He was thinking about getting out as well. He wanted to climb Everest, and the only way he could do that was to leave. Unlike other regiments, the SAS didn't grant their soldiers funds or time off for adventure training. It was particularly tough on Nine Troop guys, because they all got mountain lust sooner or later. Instead of pot plants and pictures, Harry's house was decorated with 1930s yoke-style ice crampons and old wooden skis. I couldn't make much sense of that. If I got some walls to hang things on, I'd go for something a bit more interesting than my old parachutes.