The team sat in the airport lounge having their first and last beer before taking on the BIB in earnest. Jansen went to a quite part of the bar and pressed the re-dial button on his satellite phone which called up the defence minister.
‘We’ve arrived sir, where do we go from here?’
‘Right commander...listen carefully, while I give you the latest satellite coordinates, courtesy of their GPS setup,’ The minister reeled off the figures, while Jansen traced them on a miniature map of the Muscat area.
The spot was some way out from the city centre, and he ran his finger along 86 Street from the city to an ill defined road called 8665 Ln, where the coordinates coalesced at the end of a small ill defined road ending in the middle of the dessert. A thin graduated red line ran close by, which turned out to be an oil pipeline according to the map legend.
He muttered under his breath...’Thank god for the GPS system, otherwise I don’t know where we’d be,’defence minister Hayes caught the remark.
‘You can say that again commander, its pretty wild out there, which is just as well...it will save civilian lives when the firing starts. I would assume, that there is some sort of building at the end of that road commander.’
‘I hope so, may be its an oasis.’
‘We should be so lucky commander...more likely a cesspool I would say.’
‘Thanks for the coordinates sir, I think they’ll prove most helpful’
‘Good, I’ll let you know if they change, also there should be three hire cars parked in the airport lot with yellow stickers on the front windscreen marked MG, courtesy of the Oman government...you’ll find the keys at the airport reception desk -- just show the man your passport and quote the code Matilda 2233...best of luck commander.’
Jansen went back to the airport lounge, had a long swallow of beer, then looked around at the motley team he had chosen straight from army records. On the whole he was a good judge of character but it strongly depended on the physical presence of the person and their subsequent body language.
Knowing how inaccurate army records were he wondered what sort of men he had actually taken on. One could never glean the measure of a soldier merely from the written word of an indifferent commanding officer. Often remarks were placed willy nilly into the records, either for the administrative convenience of filling up the page, or just for something to say about the person in that particular battalion. Army records were like weather statistics -- they were mean averages -- with mean being the operative word. No gentle small talk, where one could pick up vital clues as to the character of the man who made them, you were either black or white, and very anonymous
To know a soldier one had to literally live with him over a reasonable period of time. This was especially true in the heat of battle and at awkward times which demanded significant performance. One never knew if the man you stood next to was a coward until that vital moment in time.
Jansen finished his beer, picked up the keys, and took one last look around the airport lounge and thought about possible future outcomes...this could be the last he would see of polite civilisation for some time. A little reflection was always helpful before heading off into battle providing it wasn’t negative -- then it could be fatal.
He made peace with himself and wondered why he never really made peace with god, then dismissed the insistent idea that he must be some sort of atheist.
Nothing could be further from the truth; he had been a good student at school, and attended all the religious knowledge classes with the occasional attendance at Sunday school with his peers.
It was just that the religious teachings demanded previous assumptions like the acceptance of a supreme God, the Holy Trinity, the Virgin Birth and many other preconceived beliefs that were just not very scientific.
But there was a God all right, and he, she, or it, was way beyond anything we could conjure up from simple mythology, folklore, religion or paganism. Humans, like everything else, were a property of the cosmos and subject to its laws; such laws could not be waved aside for the sake of one individual -- God, or no God.
The bar tender picked up Jansen’s empty beer glass and mumbled something in a thick accent indicating a refill. Jansen shook his head and turned towards his men.
It was time for action and the simple pleasures of life would now be put aside.
A hand signal indicated ‘move-out’ as he headed towards the car park followed by his team. Jansen inspected the two government station wagons and sudan, he tossed the keys in the air and smiled profusely. They had got it right, all the vehicles were white, of recent vintage, and seemed to be in good condition. In the absence of a correctly camouflaged vehicle, white was as good as anything in dessert surrounds, it reflected the heat and could be camouflaged with camel dung if necessary.
He removed a pair of army issue binoculars from his back pack and surveyed the surrounding hilly terrain. Looking intensely at the colour variations in the sand dunes and mountain scenery. He averaged out the predominant colour which turned out to be an earthy yellow leaning towards plain khaki. It was pleasing, since the cotton fatigues he’d chosen for his men almost matched the surroundings, so far there had been several good omens if one believed in such mindsets.
Studying photo albums of colour shots of the Sultanate of Oman and the Muscat surrounds had been useful after all. There was only one thing that worried him and that was the winding dirt roads into the Muscat hinterland. Lots of precarious twists and turns around the hills and mountains, which not only seemed dangerous for a driving point of view, but also, were ambush death traps for unwary infidels.
SAS Sergeant Fred Worsley removed a larger map from his thigh pocket and spread on the bonnet of the sudan. He squinted hard at the map, then at Jansen. Some sort of cover for a paramilitary team, be it terrain or buildings, was virtually essential once the action started.
‘There’s not a lot to go on sir unless you like sand, sea and air,’ Jansen smiled sardonically.
‘Well, the less the complexity the greater the ease.’
‘Lets hope so sir, but we still need some sort of terrestrial guidance,' Jansen nodded and peered hard at the Australian and Oman government issue map, looking for a publication date or some vintage sign.
‘I don't think we can give this map too much credence sergeant. Probably the best thing to do is to ignore the graphic distractions and follow our own inclinations.
Jensen felt at ease with Sergeant Worsely he was clearly a military man who had spent most of his life with the army. Such experience came over in his actions, body language, and verbal syntax, the man lived and breathed the armed services. Built like a Centurion tank with a powerful torso and robust musculature to back it up -- he was every mans idea of the archetypal army sergeant. He didn’t need to be repeatedly told what to do -- his actions automatically kicked-in for the occasion at hand -- Jansen was grateful for this and allowed him significant leeway. The men were in place in double quick time and the convoy carefully made its way out of Muscat using the basic map coordinates and GSP readings. Worsely peered intently at the side of the road.
‘There is one thing sir.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Booby traps! I think we should be very cautious sir. I don’t want to cause undue alarm but a high percentage of fatalities in Afghanistan have been cause by road side bombs and the like.’
‘I take your point sergeant ...we’ll proceed slowly,’ this gave Jansen an even greater measure of comfort knowing that Worsely had first hand experience of dissident techniques -- it was good to have a man who could read the eastern mind.
The almost total lack of scenery, and the ever present sea of white sand, was both debilitating and depressing. It seemed to go on forever and Jansen found himself comparing it with the Australian outback, but even the worst of Aussie environs could not keep pace with the utter vacuity of continuous white sand. At least Australia had salt bush and various other hardy plants which broke up monotonous scenery.
>
Several times he began to nod off, and each time he woke he looked directly at Worsely, wondering if the monotonous conditions were also affecting his driving ability. The man was as alert as ever which drew even greater admiration from Jansen.
Two hours later the vehicles pulled in behind a string of sand dunes. Jansen lifted the pair of binoculars from his pack and focused them on a large brown building at the end of an unsealed road.
‘That looks like a strong possibility, its sitting dead on our coordinates,' Worsely took his own glasses and closely scanned the front of the building. It was the only significant building in the vicinity, apart from a collection of dilapidated mud houses scattered along the road side.
‘It’s hard to miss sir -- what do you think -- go in now, or wait till nightfall?’
‘We’ll have to go in now, that place will be virtually invisible in the dark, there’s no street lights or any other lighting around the place, and we’ve got no night vision equipment. We’ll be shooting each other in the blackness, and I don’t fancy spending the night here.’
Jansen hadn’t considered a confrontation in the dark -- especially a planned one. It was the folly of follies, the military and undercover work were full of major disasters that had occurred in dark places. The US Iranian disaster involving helicopter carriers and troops preparing for a hostage siege during president Carter’s watch came easily to mind. It was a terrible disaster killing a large portion of the undercover team. And the worst part was that the whole ruddy world knew about it -- it was in every major newspaper and on every TV station on the planet. It was abundantly clear that poor visibility in the dark was the main culprit. However good soldiers were, and however well trained, they simply weren’t supermen, and didn’t have infra red eyes in the back of their heads.
The incident undoubtedly sullied Carter’s presidency and destroyed any hopes he had of a second term in office His standing with the American public was never to be the same. It served to remind them that voting a peanut farmer into the White House may not have been such a good thing after all.
Jansen’s thoughts shifted closer to home, with the deaths of several crack Australian SAS personnel in a two helicopter gun-ship collision, also in the dark during a training exercise. Action and pitch blackness just didn’t go together, and as obvious as this statement was, some commanders actually seemed to think the two were mutually compatible.
It was this sort of thinking which killed men and added to the enemy’s chances of winning. Success on the battle field demanded a clear down to earth grasp on reality and yet -- many battles were actually won by taking risks which contradicted reality.
Jansen was adamant about battle conditions, and if any fighting were to be done, it would have to be in broad daylight, and preferable on his own terms.
Chapter Forty-five
The Large brown building looked innocent enough, stuck in the middle of no where, which seemed to be an Arab trait when it came to wholesale business premises. Periodic buzzing and clanking noises came from the centre of the building suggesting a possible workshop site. Jansen nodded at Worsely and signaled with his hands for a closer recognisance.
Sergeant Worsely did his best SAS low level crawl up to the side of the building and then skirted the entire premises, checking windows and entry doors. He touched his blue tooth earpiece and whispered into it.
‘No obvious visible activity, there are eight small windows and three entry doors. The east side door is flanked by a large roll up door and loading bay. This is possibly the easiest and quickest way in. There are periodic noises from inside...no apparent guards,’
Jansen replied, ‘okay, you and I will take the side door adjacent to the roller door. The rest of us will fan out into two groups and take the other two side doors.’ Jansen gave the signal to advance and the SAS team closed in on the warehouse stealthily jockeying for the best positions of entry.
Jansen went through the side door and nestled below the bonnet of an old car -- Worsely quickly joined him. It was obviously a large automotive repair shop judging by the number of vehicles occupying the whole ground floor of the building.
A group of men stood behind the grimy windows of an internal office in the corner of the building; they seemed to be arguing in Arabic and gesticulating to a man sitting on a couch.
Jansen raised his hand directing Worsely to cover the side of the building, then crouched and moved quickly to the office, he stood to one side, and Worsely readied himself to gate-crash the office door.
Suddenly a burst of machine gun fire echoed from the far side of the warehouse; the team had finally made contact with the BIB guards. The men in the office stopped arguing and stared into the warehouse gloom, Jansen fired a high burst from his MAC10 SMG smashing the glass and kicking in the door.
Worsely brought up the rear leveling his SMG at the surprised BIB leadership; caught entirely off guard they reluctantly raised their hands. Jansen new the hand raising was only a show and the slightest error on his part would instantly be taken advantage of.
He took a quick slanted look at the man on the couch -- was this disheveled heap of rag and bones really the US president? His face was pure white and shriveled, like that of a dead man, a condition he attributed to BIB treatment.
Jansen’s internal viscera reacted and an involuntary peristalsis ran the length of his gastro intestinal tract. The feeling was never very pleasant and his primordial instincts begged him to open fire, it was the safest way to relieve such unpleasantness. At that moment his mobile buzzed, and he ripped it from his top pocket.
‘Jansen here,’he eye balled the four Arabs as he held the mobile close to his ear.
‘Hayes speaking...get the hell out of there now!’ The message came over the line like an electric shock...the defence minister had shouted it down the line causing Jansen to pull his mobile sharply away from his ear. Hayes continued speaking loudly in an urgent voice.
‘The hostage they have is not president Garner, he is a secret service stand-in and he is dying from plutonium poisoning,’ Jansen spun round and took another look at the presidential stand-in. He was certainly dying and was probably already dead, and come to think of it, he didn’t look very much like the US president either.
‘You’ve got to get out of there now...the US airforce has homed a MOAB weapon on your coordinates -- you’ve got about five minutes to run 150 yards,’ Jansen’s brain latched onto the acronym, MOAB it signified Massive Ordinance Air Blast Bomb, it was the biggest conventional bomb in the world. He looked at Worsely in a state of panic and yelled.
‘Lets get out of here now,’ he turned and bolted through the door, yelling at the top of his voice to his men, as he exited the warehouse. His team followed within striking distance of his rear end.
Kazeni stared at Sharazi, then Garner, who was now completely laid out on the couch, saliva dribbling from his open mouth -- the rigidity was obvious -- he was undeniably dead.
‘Why have the infidels run away, what are they afraid of...does the president have the pox?’
The older man reiterated his earlier remarks.
‘He is not the president...I know, I have been within several feet of the man in the flesh,’ Kazeni gazed into space...‘how could this be? The man was extracted straight from the presidential limousine in the Sydney cross city tunnel, a switch was all but impossible.’
‘You said it was all but impossible -- that means it may have been possible...they could have switched the president earlier before you got to the presidential limousine.' The older man suddenly brightened and pulled a video cassette from a back shelf of the office.
‘This my friends was recorded from CBS TV only six weeks ago during a presidential address,’ he inserted the tape into an old video player and turned on a diminutive black and white TV; streaks of white electronic noise filled the screen accompanied by an intermittent hiss which drowned out any coherent audio.
A panoramic view of reporters and media personal suddenly
appeared with Garner’s voice in the back ground. The camera panned to the speaker standing at the rostrum and went in for a close up. Garner’s face filled the screen. The old man screeched shaking his arms in the air.
‘There I told you...how can that lump of shit on the couch be the president. There was a vague resemblance but the close up features were clearly not those of Garner.
Kazeni pondering a little longer...was this why the pursuit team had run away...because they had just received a call which told them Garner was not the real president, or were the reasons for their sudden departure more insidious?
Sharazi’s eyes suddenly lit-up in terror as his brain sifted through possible alternatives.
‘We should get out of here...I think we’re going to be bombed,’ Kazeni grabbed him by the arm. ‘It may be too late to run, we’ll have to protect ourselves here,’ he dropped dramatically onto one knee feeling with his fingers along the dirt encrusted floor, and grappled with a wooden slab, lifting a trapdoor in the floor. A shaft ran into the ground and both men quickly disappeared below floor level. The two other insurgents watched in amusement. The older man put his finger to his head and turned it like a corkscrew, he laughed, and spoke to his companion in Farsi. ‘They’re all crazy...even Americans are not stupid enough to bomb a worthless warehouse. I think we should...’his words were instantly erased, and his body vapourised as the MOAB exploded directly over the building.
A massive fire ball surged through the area and consumed everything within a fifty metre radius, it was abruptly followed by a shock wave, which leveled the whole block and every upright object in the vicinity
A perfectly flattened area appeared where the warehouse had once resided, and an enormous particle cloud fogged the sky for hundreds of metres in all directions.
For Jansen and his team it was a race against time, and one, that logically, the team couldn’t possibly win as they raced like hell for their lives. It was amazing how much space one could be traversed when one’s life depended on it.
Tehran Decree Page 17