by Wilbur Smith
“Please come back to me,” she whispered as they parted.
“I will, I promise,” Cross replied, meaning it with all his heart.He bade farewell to Catherine Cayla, too. For safety’s sake, she was being taken back to Abu Zara. Cross told himself that she was still too young to understand what Christmas was, but still it hurt him to be apart from her then, of all times. Never again, he swore to himself. In future, I spend Christmas with my girl.
On land, Cross was as good a fighter and commander as there was to be found anywhere in the British Army. He’d been schooled at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst; been accepted by the SAS; fought in numerous conflicts (not all of them publicized) on Her Majesty’s behalf and then, having left the forces, done battle all over the world with men who had threatened his clients or his family. At sea, although he had some experience of taking on Somali pirates, he was not remotely as well qualified, and he knew it.
Cross therefore wanted the men who would be responsible for protecting Bannock Oil’s personnel and property at the Magna Grande field to receive the best possible training for the job, and he included himself in that number. That was why he had asked Paddy O’Quinn to track down some talent from the SBS, which was not only the first specialist waterborne Special Forces unit in the world, but also—in its own eyes, at least—by far the best.
So it was that an initial force of thirty men reported for training duty at the Cross Bow base on the one-time Arctic supply tug Glenallen. Alongside Cross were the two O’Quinns and Dave Imbiss. Half of the rest were the smartest, toughest, most reliable men on Cross Bow’s books. They were immediately distinguishable from the newcomers because, having long been used to having her among them, they weren’t trying to sneak long, lecherous looks at Nastiya. Those that were comprised ten crewmen, all veterans of the Special Boat Service, the SBS, led by a Glaswegian by the name of Donnie “Darko” McGrain.
Darko had been a Class 1 Warrant Officer, the Marines equivalent of an Army sergeant major. He was not physically imposing, being of average height with a scrawny physique apparently comprised entirely of bone, muscle and gristle. But he exuded an air of unrelenting energy, focus, determination and malice that was enough to reduce much bigger, stronger men to quivering wrecks. He made his presence felt from the moment he strode into the briefing room that had been constructed, along with basic sleeping, washing and off-duty quarters within the holds originally intended to carry spare parts, food and other supplies for the Arctic drilling barge Glenallen had been designed to support.
The men were sitting or sprawled in a variety of postures in the chairs set up opposite a low stage from which briefings and training lectures would be conducted. Most of them were bantering and joking with one another. Dave Imbiss and the O’Quinns were sitting at the front, deep in their own conversation. Then Cross walked in accompanied by Darko McGrain and suddenly every man, and the lone woman in the room, swung around, eyes front, back straight, waiting to hear what the boss had to say.
“Good morning gentlemen . . . and lady,” Cross began. “Four weeks from now all the preparations end and Magna Grande comes on stream. You can’t see them, but there are half a dozen oil wells within a few kilometers of here, all ready to feed oil to the rig and from there to the Bannock A floating, processing, storage and offloading vessel. There the crude will be turned into the usual range of products you’d expect from a land-based refinery and will then be loaded on to tankers for distribution around the world. So we are watching over an incredible undertaking, capable of generating tens of billions of dollars and, along the way, keeping you lot in work for years to come. But don’t think for one moment that this is some kind of easy-going ocean cruise. We’ve had credible intelligence reports that Cabindan separatists, who want independence from Angola, have targeted this field. They may be planning a spectacular, something that will put them on the world map, the way 9/11 did for al-Qaeda. Our job is to make sure that they cannot and will not succeed. And the only way we can do this is if we are fit, disciplined, well organized and well trained. Some of you have had experience of ocean-swimming, getting on to rigs and large vessels and carrying out counter-terrorist operations at sea. But most of us—and that includes me—know very little about any of that. So we have to learn fast. Therefore let me introduce you to the man who’s going to knock us into shape over the next four weeks: Donnie McGrain.”
There was a half-hearted smattering of applause as McGrain stepped to the front of the stage and looked out over his audience with a beady, piercing stare. “Right then, let’s see just how bad this is,” he barked in a Glasgwegian accent as rough as a bag of rusted nails. “How many of ye’s have served in the Royal or U.S. Marines, the SBS or Navy SEALs, or anything like that in any other armed forces?”
Six hands went up. McGrain shook his head and spat out an expletive. “Six? Ye’ll no’ retake a rig wi’ six men, Mr. Cross, I can tell ye that for sure.” He sighed heavily. “Youse lot with yer hands in the air then . . . Anyone got their SC qualification—that’s swimmer-canoeist for anyone who wasn’t SBS?”
Two hands remained in the air.
“Have youse bright sparks done any exercises on the North Sea rigs?” McGrain asked; and the two hands were lowered.
McGrain sighed and clutched his brow theatrically. “So ye cannae swim, cannae climb, dinnae know yer way around a rig. But trust me, four weeks from now ye will . . . bah God ye will. And if ye don’t, Ah will personally kick ye’s up the arse, off this ship and intae the bloody ocean, and ye’s can swim yer way back hame. Do I make masel’ clear?”
There was a wordless rumble around the room that more or less amounted to a “yes.”
McGrain was not impressed. “Ah said, DO AH MAKE MASEL’ CLEAR?”
This time the voices replied as one, “Yes, sir!”
McGrain nodded. “Tha’s better. But I was a warrant officer, no’ a bloody Rupert. So ye dinnae address me as ‘sir.’ Mr. McGrain will be perfectly adequate.”
Five minutes later, McGrain was in the cabin Cross had commandeered as his personal office. Both men had mugs of coffee in their fists. “It won’t be easy, Mr. Cross, I can tell you that,” said McGrain in a far less broadly Glasgwegian accent. “But you say these are good men.”
“The best,” Cross replied.
“Well, they’d better be. We’ve got four weeks to teach them how to swim hundreds of meters, carrying all their gear; how to get aboard the rig and the FPSO; and then how to overcome anyone on board without blowing the whole thing to hell.”
“These men work around oil installations all the time. They’re well aware of what could happen if a stray bullet hit an oil tank or a gas pipe, as am I. We’ve already taken precautions to minimize the risk.”
“Aye, but it’s not just your lads you have to worry about. It’s the terrorists, too. A bunch of African guerrillas running around an oil rig, shooting off their AK-47s, is not my idea of fun. See, Mr. Cross, sir, here’s what you need to remember. An oil rig is a place where the risk of fire and explosion is so great that you can’t take a single everyday electrical device into the production area. Not your phone, not your camera, nothing. Oh, aye, that platform is equipped with all the latest safety features, I’m certain of that. There’ll be steel plates between the production and accommodation zones. If there’s an explosion, they’ll deform and absorb the blast, like the crumple-zone of a car absorbs a crash. And every single drop of paint applied to any metal surface of the rig will be what’s called ‘intumescent.’ That means that when it’s exposed to fire, it bubbles up and forms a protective, heatproof layer between the flames and the metal.
“Now that’s all fine and dandy, but this is still an oil rig. And oil is highly flammable. And where there’s oil there’s also gas, which is highly explosive. And even if there’s time for some clever laddie to realize that the platform is under attack and initiate the shutdown procedures, ye cannae turn the flow of oil off, just by flicking a switch. It takes three hours, min
imum, for the pressure to drop to nothing and if something makes the whole bloody place go bang at any point in those three hours, well, you can have all the steel plates and fancy paint you like, but it’s nae going tae make a blind bit of difference.”
The Glenallen supply tug was a substantial ship, capable of crossing any of the world’s oceans in virtually any conditions, but she looked like a little dinghy compared to the towering mass of brutally functional engineering that was the Magna Grande drilling rig. The rig in its turn was dwarfed by the Bannock A production facility, which was moored about a mile away. Somehow, Hector Cross and his team had to protect these two huge vessels, using a pair of patrol boats that buzzed around their charges like little birds around a pair of exceptionally ugly hippos. But what if the enemy broke through their defenses, or caught them by surprise and managed to capture either or both of Bannock Oil’s prize assets?
Hector Cross had ordered the Glenallen to take up a station some 400 yards from the rig. Then he assembled his men on the deck, looking out across the smooth, gentle swell of the ocean toward the subject of this afternoon’s briefing. “Take a good look at that rig, gentlemen,” he said. “Let’s imagine the worst happens. Suppose a bunch of terrorists have decided to take control of it and they’re threatening to blow it up, or kill the crew unless their madcap demands are met. OK, then, how do we stop them?
“Answer: we don’t, not unless it’s absolutely necessary. In order to recapture a large vessel, or rig, standard operating procedure requires an initial, clandestine insertion of around twenty Special Forces operatives from the water, whose job is to secure the position for a full-scale assault by fifty to one hundred airborne troops brought in by helicopter. So it’s way out of our league. But there may come a time when we have no option. As you all know from your own experience, defense cuts have left virtually all western armed forces smaller and more run-down than at any time since the start of the First World War. So maybe the military can’t get here in time, or maybe there just isn’t anyone available to come to our help. Then we’re just going to have to do the job ourselves.
“This afternoon, we’re going to set out the basic issues involved in recapturing that rig. Once we’re topside on the rig, we’ll be dealing with the kind of anti-terrorist operation with which most of us are very familiar. But first we have to get there. And I’ll leave it to Mr. McGrain to tell you how that’ll be done.”
“Right!” barked Donnie McGrain. “This here is what is known as a semi-submersible rig. It’s a bit like a bloody great metal iceberg, because most of it is beneath the surface. As you can see, the rig, also known as a platform, has four diamond-shaped legs. Each of these legs has a side-support sticking out diagonally into the sea, like a metal wall. The part you can’t see is the huge, and I mean absolutely bloody gigantic underwater pontoon that the legs and the supports are standing on. That’s because the legs, the support and the pontoon have all been flooded with seawater, making them sink down into the sea, leaving just the upper section of the legs and the actual rig structure visible above the water. The pontoons are anchored to the seabed, which is about two thousand five hundred feet beneath us—och aye, it’s a long way down—and that’s what keeps the whole thing in place.
“Now, if there is an attack on the rig, the chances are it’ll happen at night, so as to have the maximum chance of taking us by surprise, and for the exact same reason, any counter-attack against them will also be carried out under cover of darkness. Now, that rig lights up like Las Vegas at night and illuminates the sea all around it. So you will make your initial approach from outside that lit area. You will be dropped into the water, either from this boat that we are on, or from one of the two patrol boats that operate from it, and count yourself lucky you’re not being chucked out of a submarine, the way we used to do it.
“Once in the water, you will swim in pairs, staying submerged for as much of the journey as possible. If the sea is rough, the waves will act as cover and reduced visibility will make it harder for anyone aboard the rig to spot you. And dinnae worry: the men in each pair will be linked by a buddy-line, so no one’s going tae drift away into the ocean without anyone noticing.
“In order to climb up a leg, the lead man—who for the time being will be me, or one of the other ex-SBS men—will hook on to one of the legs, secure the line to the leg and then start the process of climbing the rig. Now, there are ladders and walkways going up the legs of the rig, but we do not use them, if we can avoid it, because those ladders are the first thing that any terrorist with even half a brain in his wee head will booby-trap. So we start by heading for the spider deck, which is the first deck above water level—you can see it, over there, hanging underneath the main deck of the rig, between the four legs. Tae do that the lead man fires a grapnel, to which a rope is attached. He climbs up the rope, secures the spider deck and then pulls up the rope. While he’s doing that the second man in attaches a rope ladder to the rope, so that it’s pulled up to the spider deck and up they all go. We also have telescopic ladders, with a hook on the end that can, if conditions permit, be extended up to the spider deck without the need for a grapnel.
“Once you get on to the spider deck, you can repeat the process to get on to the main deck. But what if the entrance to the main deck is blocked, or there’s some bastard with an AK-47 standing the other side of it? Then the best climber in the team gets the chance to play at being Spidey-man. He hangs on to the underside of the main deck and makes his way to the edge of the rig, using carabiner clips and a rope to create a line the others can use. Then he climbs up the outside of the rig, rolls over the railing, lands on the main deck, shoots the bampot guarding the entrance in the back and whistles tae his pals to come and join him. And if you’ve got that far intact, then dinnae worry. Compared to what you’ve just done, the rest of the job’s a piece of piss. So does anyone have any questions?”
McGrain dealt with the various inquiries the men had to make, then said, “Right, youse lot. It’s been hot, boring work, standing here in yon sun, listening to me blathering on. What you need is a nice, wee, bracing dip. So in you go, right now, shoes off but keep your clothes on, all of them, and give me four laps of the boat. You too, Mr. Cross.”
Hector didn’t need to be told. He was already climbing up on to the rail and was the first to plunge into the water, twenty feet below. Once their boss had shown willing, the rest of the team could hardly hang back, but still there were plenty of muttered complaints as one after another they jumped into the water and formed a line of thrashing figures, following their leader like chicks after a mother duck.
The twice-daily swims were the bane of the men’s lives. A lap of the Glenallen was approximately 250 meters, so McGrain had begun Day One of training by ordering two laps per session. Men who thought nothing of a ten-kilometer run found themselves struggling to swim a twentieth of the distance. And then there was the shark factor. Tough, battle-hardened soldiers flinched at the thought of plunging into deep, dark ocean waters, filled with who knew what deadly sea creatures. But McGrain showed no mercy. He forced everyone into the water, like it or not, and had them swimming around and around, upping the distance every day, until they were so exhausted they would have considered it a mercy to be gripped in the jaws of a hungry man-eater and spared the unrelenting slog around, and around, and around the Glenallen.
Soon the days and then the weeks started racing by. McGrain began by using the tug as a training ground, getting them used to the idea of being in the water—just in swimming trunks at first—grabbing hold of a climbing net draped over the side of the boat and clambering up to the deck. By week two they were working on the vessels they were going to be defending, learning to climb up the hull of the Bannock A as well as the legs of the Magna Grande rig, and now they discovered a new enemy: heat. Combat clothing for this kind of operation was based on a drysuit that could be worn in and out of the water, but drysuits are designed to keep their wearers warm and both swimming a long dist
ance and climbing up the hull of a semi-submersible rig or a giant floating oil refinery are tasks that generate a huge amount of body heat. Even in the cold conditions of the North Sea, overheating can be a serious problem for fighting men. In the equatorial heat off the coast of West Africa the heat factor was a potentially deadly problem and a great deal of time, effort and experimentation was devoted to finding gear that would provide the combatants with all the pouches and webbing they needed, while still being light and breathable enough to keep heatstroke at bay.
Day by day, session by session, whether carrying out fitness drills and practical exercises, or doing classroom work, learning and memorizing the location and function of every important area of the rig and FPSO, the Cross Bow landlubbers were turned into something close to proper amphibious troops. But as the final week began, McGrain was still worried that there were holes in the team’s preparations. “They’ve had it too easy,” he told Cross. “The weather’s been steady: no high winds, no rough seas, barely even any rain. And we still haven’t started night training.”
“Are they ready for it yet?” Cross asked.
“Impossible to tell, boss. I mean, you get some fellas and they’re tough as nails, but you throw them into deep water at night and when they’re ten feet under, and everything’s black, and they don’t know which way is up, they just go tae pieces. There’s only one way you ever find out which ones can hack it and which ones cannae, and that’s doing it.”
Before Cross started sending his men up a ship’s hull and a rig’s legs in the middle of the night he had to inform the men in charge of them and get their agreement to what he had in mind. As a long-serving U.S. Navy veteran, Captain Cy Stamford had no objection to letting Cross and his men carry out nighttime exercises on the Bannock A. It helped that the two men had worked together before, fighting pirates off the coast of Puntland in northeast Somalia and had developed a healthy, mutual respect.