by Andy Maslen
For three weeks, a four-man patrol had been sitting in a swamp observing the PALM camp and reporting back via a satellite uplink to their HQ and a five-member British Government committee in Whitehall, their reports including, on one memorable day, a ten-minute conversation with the Prime Minister. They knew the names, personalities and personal hygiene habits of every single member of the PALM camped in the jungle with N’Tolo. And they had discovered something.
Every other day, N’Tolo and a group of four heavily-armed bodyguards left their camp in an SUV mounted with a Soviet DShK heavy machine gun. When Gabriel’s patrol met the intelligence-gatherers the briefing had been short and succinct.
“He’s having it off with a local chief’s daughter. Regular as clockwork. Couple of miles down the road there’s a village. At ten hundred hours, the Chief goes out hunting or whatever and thirty minutes later, in goes N’Tolo with four bodyguards in a Toyota packing a Dushka, does the dirty, stays thirty minutes more, then rides back to camp with a big grin on his face. Always takes his briefcase with him. So, tomorrow’s your day. Have fun and you can buy us all a beer back in Hereford.”
The next day started before dawn for Gabriel’s patrol. They were the kill team, assigned the job of taking out N’Tolo and retrieving his plans: Trooper Damon “Daisy” Cheaney, medic – fastest tooth-puller in D Squadron’s Mobility Troop; Corporal Ben “Dusty” Rhodes, demolitions expert – you build it, he could blow it up; Trooper Mickey “Smudge” Smith, signaller – could fix any comms kit from a mobile phone to a laptop, and the man whose life - and career in the SAS - Gabriel had saved jumping across to Old Tom; and the “Boss”, Captain Gabriel Wolfe, linguist – fluent in Mandarin, Cantonese, Russian and Spanish. By 0700 hours they were watching and waiting, 300 yards from the rear of the Chief’s hut. Three kilometres out, the rest of D Squadron had established a cordon – a “ring of steel” – through which nothing and nobody was getting in: or out.
At 10.30, a white Toyota Land Cruiser, sporting a Dushka heavy machine gun and a crudely stencilled logo - an outline map of Mozambique with crossed AKs over the top - rolled up to the village and stopped about 100 metres from the main compound. N’Tolo jumped down, carrying the attaché case and swaggered into the village. His goon squad slouched after him, smoking pungent joints, drinking from cans of beer and calling to the village women to come and join them. They patrolled a haphazard perimeter around the hut.
Smeared in jungle camouflage that broke up outlines and depersonalised them, Gabriel and the three other members of his patrol spread out across a twenty-yard line, keeping low to the ground as they crept closer to the hut. Each man carried a green and black American M16 Colt assault rifle. Proven in jungle combat since Vietnam, the M16s could discharge the entire contents of their magazines in under three seconds, or in controlled bursts of a handful of rounds at a time. The magazines held thirty 5.56 mm rounds each: the men were “bombed up” in soldier’s parlance, and carried a bandolier slung crosswise under their body armour filled with another 210 rounds in ten-round clips, the clips kept separate in nylon pockets secured with press studs. Smudge and Daisy had grenade launchers mounted underneath their M16s. All four also carried Glock 17 automatic pistols, grenades and black ceramic tactical knives that never lost their edge. The knives were Crown property, as were the other weapons, but many SAS men managed to retain ownership after they left the Army, Gabriel included.
N’Tolo’s men were armed with AK-47s – Kalashnikovs – the rifle of choice for guerrilla armies, freedom fighters and terrorists the world over, not to mention half the official armies in Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe. They were like Soviet-era Ladas compared to the Audi-quality of the M16s carried by Gabriel and his patrol. The mechanical parts were made from pressed steel, the grips and stocks from varnished pine, the kind of simple shaping and construction you’d expect to see in a school woodwork class. But they were cheap, easy to fix and worked just fine as killing machines. They were indestructible too – the IRA had been in the habit of wrapping them in plastic, dropping them in a bog and recovering them for active use after a couple of years with no ill effects. Inaccurate over any range greater than fifty yards, they were good enough for close quarters combat but otherwise more of a spray-and-pray gun. Each man also carried a machete on his belt. Gabriel had seen plenty of evidence of what these crude but effective blades could do to bodies, from punishment amputations to decapitations. He had no intention of letting the sentries use them on him or his men.
They waited. After ten minutes, the bodyguards had lost interest in their sentry duties and were standing in a line with their backs to the jungle, still whistling and catcalling the women. He uttered a quick ‘tss-tss-tss’ and made eye contact with the three men to his left. He pointed at the sentries and then swept the four fingers of his right hand across his throat. The men nodded their understanding. Following the Boss’s example, each man drew his knife, its short blade honed to a wicked edge that would cut skin, muscle and sinew without slowing. They were much prized among the world’s Special Forces soldiers. Now they held them points uppermost.
On Gabriel’s next silent hand gesture, a quick flick of his index finger, the four men sprang towards the sentries. Their coordination and precision was almost balletic. Left hand curled round the face, palm clamped over mouth to prevent screaming. Leaning back to pull the man off balance and expose his throat. Then a swift left-to-right stroke with the knife, so deep it severed the windpipe, the carotid artery, the jugular vein and part of the spinal cord. No screams, no scuffling, just an instant collapse as nerve impulses from the brain short-circuited at the severed spinal cord and the spattering of blood as it jetted forwards from each corpse onto the dirt path. Gabriel’s men dragged the bodies back with them and dumped them in the undergrowth.
Step one accomplished.
The four men ran in a half-crouch towards the Chief’s hut and came to a halt, on silent feet, with their shoulders to the wall. Gabriel took a breath and looked at his men: they held each other’s gaze for a split second then nodded their readiness. Gabriel held up three fingers of his left hand – the right was curled round the pistol grip of his rifle – and counted down. As his index finger curled into his palm they made their move.
Inside the hut Abel N’Tolo was buttoning his trousers, a broad grin revealing gold teeth. The girl in the bed could only have been sixteen years old. Her eyes widened and her hand flew to her throat as the four men, faces monstrous with green and brown streaks, burst in through the door and window. N’Tolo’s cheap silver case stood by a table, for all the world as if he were a businessman attending a meeting. Gabriel and his men sighted on N’Tolo and opened fire. N’Tolo was dead in seconds, the swarm of bullets shredding uniform, flesh and bone into a bloodied mess.
Step two done.
Ignoring the screaming girl, Smudge grabbed the briefcase. Now they had to exfiltrate, or as Gabriel put it, “Let’s get out of here!”
They ran from the tent, pausing to reload their rifles: ten rounds to a clip, three clips to a magazine, slotted home through the magazine ammunition bearers. Outside, they were expecting to meet zero resistance – N’Tolo wasn't popular among the tribes on whose land he and his gang camped. But there had been a catastrophic failure of intelligence. The village was supposed to be occupied by just a few old men, plus women and children too young to work the field. Instead, it swarmed with men running towards the Chief’s hut. They brandished Kalashnikovs, machetes, Russian-made Makarov pistols; one crazy-eyed guy toted an RPG – a rocket-propelled grenade. The heavy chatter of the Kalashnikovs overlaid the tighter, louder rasp of the M16s. Bullets whined through the air as Gabriel and his men returned fire. They were more disciplined than the PALM fighters: they held a tight square as they retreated towards the cover of the bush. A man launched himself towards them, machete held high over his head, screaming in a mixture of Portuguese and Makonde, a local language. Rhodes, at Gabriel’s right shoulder, fired a burst of f
ive shots. They hit the man high in the torso, ripping open the top of his chest and punching a fist sized hole in his throat. He tumbled over, spraying blood over them in jetting arcs. His machete wheeled through the air.
“Come on!” Gabriel yelled. “With me!”
They were running for the trees when Smith cried out and stumbled on for a few paces, swinging his arm out and around and seeming to hurl the briefcase behind him.
“They hit Smudge!” Cheaney yelled back.
The wiry Londoner had taken a 9 mm pistol round in the thigh. Gabriel stopped and turned, but Smudge had already got to his feet, adrenaline coursing through his bloodstream and numbing the pain.
“We need those plans, Smudge,” Gabriel shouted. “Get them back.”
“On it, Boss,” Smith shouted back, then turned and ran back towards the oncoming PALM fighters. He reached the bag and turned to race back to the others when a burst of fire from behind caught him in the chest. As he fell to his knees, he swung the bag across the gap between him and Gabriel. Then a 7.62 mm Kalashnikov round hit him in the back of the skull, exiting through his face. Smith collapsed in a tangled heap of limbs and weapons, the front of his head a bloody mess.
“Put down area fire! Drive them back!” Gabriel called.
The three surviving members of the patrol set up a withering array of fire, staggering their bursts to allow for reloading. There were just a few PALM fighters remaining now, and under the ferocious fire of the SAS men, they retreated to the far side of the village.
“Get Smudge,” Gabriel called. Rhodes and Cheaney rushed forward to retrieve the corpse of their fallen comrade. They had their hands under the corpse’s armpits and were dragging it back with them when a heavy machine gun – the Dushka mounted on N’Tolo’s Toyota – swept the village’s central clearing. Cheaney got hit by a .50 round that took his left arm off just below the shoulder. He screamed with pain and shock, dropping his dead comrade. Gabriel had to get them out.
“Leave him!” he screamed. “Let’s go! Now!”
It was against every code, every instinct, every rule of war to leave one of their own behind. But they faced a simple choice. Stay to retrieve the body, and get minced by the heavy machine gun; or run. Not an easy choice, but an obvious one. Gabriel applied a tourniquet and field dressing to Cheaney’s ravaged bicep then helped him to his feet.
With the PALM fighters now focused on securing the village and retrieving the body of their dead commander, Gabriel and Rhodes supported Cheaney, fighting their way through the jungle back towards the extract point. Stray bullets passed them, making the characteristic crack-thump sound: the crack was the sound wave being pushed along at supersonic speed in front of the bullet; the thump was the report of the rifle catching up a few milliseconds later. The Westland Lynx helicopter whop-whopped overhead and they met it as it landed in a clearing prepared by other patrols. The pilot held the big bird steady, the skids caressing the grass, as they were yanked aboard by three crewmen in olive green flight suits and white helmets. The chopper tilted and swung away from the scene of their firefight, and Gabriel looked down through the open loading door. The body that had been SAS Trooper Mickey “Smudge” Smith was crucified on a tree. A machete pierced each hand. The head lolled onto the chest and a buzzard, already perched on its shoulder, pecked and tugged at the exposed brain.
An internal inquiry cleared Gabriel of any wrongdoing for leaving Smith’s body behind. It was a covert mission operating under deniable CIA-British Government authorisation, and many of the army’s rules had been loosened or abandoned altogether. But for Gabriel and the men he led into the village, it had been an unforgivable sin. You did not leave a man behind. End of. He’d never forgiven himself for that decision and had asked his Commanding Officer, Colonel Don Webster, to accept his resignation three weeks after returning to Hereford. Six months further on, he was a civilian, though Webster had all but begged him to reconsider. He still had nightmares, when Smith called to him from his torn mouth, or sat beside him in the car, bleeding onto the seat.
Chapter 8
The sound of a car roused him from his trancelike state. He checked his watch: 19.59. The wine in his glass had warmed to the air temperature and the condensation was gone. It would be Britta. He met her at the front of the house, his mind half with her and half back in the jungle of Mozambique. She stepped down from the Range Rover and came towards him. She was wearing tight faded jeans, ripped at both knees, and a plain white T-shirt. The gap in her smile drew his attention to her mouth. They both paused for a moment, then Gabriel blinked and looked her in the eye. She held a bottle of wine, cocooned in grass green tissue paper. They embraced, kissing on the cheek. He wanted to hold her for longer and maybe she sensed his desire, because she didn’t pull away.
“Are you OK, Gabriel?” she said, leaning back to look at him again.
“Yeah, fine. I’m fine. Let’s go inside.”
“Where do you keep your wine? And we need a corkscrew.”
“There’s more in the fridge and look in the little drawer under the hob.”
Gabriel filleted a pair of sea bass using a short-bladed black ceramic knife. As he worked, Britta placed a thin-stemmed glass of the Burgundy by his right hand.
“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” Britta said.
“A while? It’s been five years. I thought you’d gone back to Sweden to marry your policeman and make beautiful red-haired babies.”
“Things didn’t work out. Turns out Per’s idea of waiting for me was screwing every waitress and barmaid he could find in Stockholm.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, looking at a strand of hair that had escaped her ponytail and lay curled around a triangle of freckles just under the angle of her jaw.
“I’m not.” She touched her throat, a little unconscious movement of her hand. “Per was an idiot. How about you. Are you seeing anyone?”
“Me? No. Not really. I was, but she moved back to London so that was that.”
“But you must have girlfriends down here, no? You’re a handsome man. They must be round you like bees in a honeypot.”
“OK there have been a couple of ladies but nothing serious. They’re all either married, engaged or far too young.”
“Poor Gabriel.” She pouted. “Stuck out here in the boondocks with just your little dog for company.”
“Don’t worry about my love life and I won’t worry about yours. So what else have you been up to? Rallying, you said?”
“Yes. I do ice rallying. And I’m training for the biathlon.”
“That’s skiing and shooting, right?” He knew it was, but wanted to ease back into his friendship with Britta.
“Cross-country skiing. And rifle shooting.”
“You any good?”
“Good?” Her eyes widened in mock-outrage. “Come on, Gabriel, you know I’m a good shot. Remember the Congo?”
“Jesus, yes. How long was that shot?”
“Ha! It was 1,300 yards. He went down like a pine tree, didn’t he?” She clapped her hands together for emphasis, the pop an eerie echo of the sound the bullet had made on impact.
“You saved that banker’s life.”
“Yeah, maybe I should have let him die, looking at what they get up to these days.”
“Hey, it’s the job, right. We don’t get paid to think.”
They chatted while he finished prepping the fish and some new potatoes. Once they were sitting down with the food in front of them he asked the question that had been sitting between them since their encounter on the road that morning.
“So, what’s going on, Britta? Were you on the up and up this morning?”
She put her knife and fork down and fixed him with a level stare.
“If you blab this I will have to kill you, you know that, right?”
“You can try. But I won’t tell, you know that.”
“It’s why I’m here. My boss wouldn’t have sent me if he doubted you.”
“So come on, spil
l.”
“Sir Toby Maitland has got himself a little group or skinhead followers – a mini-private army. We got wind of it through one of our analysts. We monitor all the rightwing websites and chat rooms. We think he’s planning something. Some kind of attack. The likeliest targets would be Asian community centres, or maybe Polish. He’s pretty down on minorities. We want you to stay close to him and report back when you know what he’s going to do. We’ll take it from there.”
“Hang on, back up a bit. Why, exactly, would someone in his position want to do anything as basic as stage racist attacks?”
“Maybe he wants to stir up social tensions, provoke a backlash or something. I don’t know. It’s above my pay grade.”
She paused and took a swig of the wine.
“Hey, steady,” Gabriel said. “That’s a very nice Marsanne, not some supermarket plonk. Have some respect for the wine at least.”
“OK, I’m sorry. Is this better?”
She took a dainty sip, rolling the wine around her mouth and “mmm-ing” and “aah-ing” like a wine snob on TV.