Killer Elite (previously published as the Feather Men)

by Ranulph Fiennes

  With his hair cut short, army-style, de Villiers parked himself and his bergen on one of the wooden benches at Hereford railway station. The London train was due in twenty minutes. He opened a pack of Players No. 6 and offered a cigarette to the tall man in blue jeans and leather jacket slumped dejectedly beside him. De Villiers had selected him from among some twenty others over the past two days.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” was the only response.

  De Villiers produced a Ronson Storm lighter and lit their cigarettes. “Haven’t seen you around,” said de Villiers, glancing sideways at the man. “What went wrong?”

  “One of their bastard staff,” the soldier grunted, “thought I swore at him yesterday on the Fan.”

  “Did you?”

  The man gave a half smile. “Maybe. I felt more knackered than I thought was possible on the second time ’round. All my blisters burst. Maybe it’s all for the best but I hate the thought of the lads back in Catterick. They’ll take the mickey something awful for months. I was so sure I’d make it. What about you?”

  De Villiers was as charming as only he knew how, and as convincing. They traveled to Paddington together and exchanged cap badges, and by the time they went their separate ways there was little de Villiers had not learned about the SAS selection course to date and the expected horrors to come.

  At 11:45 p.m. on the night of January 31 and in heavy rain, a Ford Transit van in its GPO livery backed up briefly against the perimeter fence to the rear of the SAS officers’ mess. From its roof de Villiers threw down his bergen and dropped down over the high fence, breaking his landing with a standard parachute roll.

  Within seconds he was hidden behind the dark walls of the NAAFI, adjacent to the regimental cookhouse. With an hour or so to wait, he settled back under a shrub, his poncho drawn over his beret. Even if Meier failed, the first stage of the evening’s plans were under way and the weather forecast was hopeful: severe gales and snow on high ground. Meier had tried to woo one of the Army Catering Corps cooks but was foiled by SAS Security. His plan had been simple: identify one of the white uniformed chefs by the bins at the rear of the cookhouse. Not difficult with binoculars from his car in Bullingham Lane. Track the man to his drinking spot in the evenings and bribe him, as part of a wager, to let a fellow soldier, Meier himself, into the camp in his company and wearing “whites.” But as Meier learned when he befriended a pimply ACC youngster, the SAS forbade the cookhouse personnel ever to leave camp in their uniforms. Instead there was a changing room within the cookhouse and any unrecognized cook entering the main gate would be challenged by the MOD Police to show his ID card. Furthermore, Pimples informed Meier that Scouse, the chief SAS cook, who had been there twenty years, was a terror who kept close tabs on all his staff however temporary their posting. One of his rulings was “no strangers behind the hotplate.”

  Meier racked his brains, but nontechnical improvisation was not his forte and when by 10:30 p.m. that Thursday night he had no safe means of entry to the camp, he left the matter to de Villiers’s skill and drove south to Talybont.

  Forty-five minutes after midnight, with the rain still drumming down, de Villiers recognized Mike Kealy emerging from the shadows to the right-hand side of the HQ block, the direction of the officers’ mess. Kealy was fully equipped but moved quietly and easily.

  De Villiers swung his bergen over his back and followed Kealy to the nearby cookhouse. He climbed the four stone steps immediately behind him and they entered together. Inside the well-lit, L-shaped room thirty or forty students and selection staff were already seated and stuffing themselves with food. There was little chatter or camaraderie, for this was the final test of Selection Week, a milestone in the careers of the lucky few.

  De Villiers kept his belt kit on. He dumped his bergen beside Kealy’s and slipped a tiny radio bleeper into one of its side pockets. He joined the food queue at the hotplate, where the duty cook soon helped him to a large plate of mixed grill and a mug of hot tea. He had watched Kealy pass by the table where the instructing staff sat; the only animated group. The senior instructor, a giant of a man, greeted the major with a smile.

  “Hallo, Lofty.” Kealy smiled and took a seat at one of the tables reserved for the students.

  De Villiers, careful to avoid any eye contact with students or staff, sat close to Kealy, and when the latter went off to fetch a spoon, he reached across for sugar and palmed the contents of a packet of white powder into Kealy’s tea.

  The powder, ground down from four 250 mg. tablets of chlorpropamide, would not have an immediate or predictable effect. After an hour or two Kealy would begin to feel sweaty, weak, and increasingly disorientated, for chlorpropamide is a drug that promotes the action of insulin within the body. Kealy’s blood sugar would slowly fall below a tolerable level and would leave him dangerously vulnerable to the elements. The effects of hypoglycemia would steadily increase to a peak, or from Kealy’s point of view a nadir, somewhere between three and six hours after ingestion.

  Many of the students were loners. Some were veteran sergeants, even sergeant-majors, from airborne units with years of service behind them. If these men passed into the SAS they would enter as mere troopers and take their chances of promotion alongside far younger and less experienced soldiers.

  Initially over 150 soldiers from throughout the British Army had signed on for selection. After a week’s introduction to navigation and other basic skills, they were subjected to three weeks of softening up with ever-increasing grades of difficulty. They had fallen like flies, for the SAS selection staff watched every move and circled vulturelike to pounce on the merest whiff of weakness. The unfortunates found themselves waiting on Hereford station with a one-way ticket back to their own regiment.

  The fifth and last week had been a killer and, for the forty weary and blistered survivors now congregated in the cookhouse, this was the final act. Known simply as “Endurance,” the test involved each individual traveling alone over forty-one miles of difficult terrain with fifty-five pounds of equipment. Seventeen hours was the maximum time allowed but even if a man completed the course far more quickly he might still fail selection—with no reason ever given. Courses of over 160 selectees had ended without a single man entering the SAS. No wonder then that the trainees gulped down their food in an introspective mood, paying little attention to one another. De Villiers felt happier when the instructors, saying nothing, rose from their table and the students followed suit.

  Outside in the semidarkness de Villiers kept close to Kealy. When the two three-ton Bedford lorries stopped by the Guard Room, the trainees collected their rifles and then mounted up with their bergens. De Villiers, in the rain and the shadows, moved around but did not enter the Guard Room.

  The chief instructor rode in the cab of the leading lorry. Kealy, apparently keen to be treated no differently from the trainees during his self-imposed fitness jaunt, climbed into the back along with nineteen others, including de Villiers.

  The vehicles whined their way through the outskirts of Hereford, dodging heaps of litter caused by the national strike.

  “Guess who’s joining the strike tomorrow?”

  Disembodied voices in the back of de Villiers’s lorry.

  “I didn’t know anyone was still at work.”

  “Yeah, well, the gravediggers are all out as from tonight. Die now and yer old lady’ll have to clear a space in the deep freeze.”

  “Not in Hereford,” said a Welsh voice. “All our diggers are part-time. Most of them are the local fire service laddies.”

  By the time they reached Pontrilas at the eastern edge of the Brecon Beacons National Park most of the passengers had fallen silent in the canopied darkness. A mile from the Talybont Reservoir’s dam and close to the northern rim of Talybont Forest, the training sergeant-major halted the lorries in a car park beside Tarthwynni River. There was no shouting of orders. Each man had received his detailed instructions back in Hereford. The bergens were weighed on spring scales, and
Lofty, the training sergeant-major, waved the trainees off one by one into the night.

  De Villiers moved into the bushes, and when Kealy set out, one of the first to go, he followed some fifteen yards behind. He did not switch on his tracker unit for the bleeper but kept in touch with Kealy’s outline, different from the students’ because of his old-fashioned bergen. Most of the students also sported Denison cam smocks but Kealy wore the shorter SAS windbreaker. With only a fifteen-pound bergen load, and fit though he undoubtedly was, de Villiers still found it hard work to keep up.

  All the trainees carried three-quarter-length foul-weather coats made of plastic-coated nylon. “Don’t ever march in ’em,” was the training sergeant-major’s advice. “You’ll get as wet from your own sweat as you ever will from the rain. Then, next day, any downwind opposition will smell you a mile off. Just use them when you’re leaguered up and it’s pissing down.”

  Although few of the remaining trainees knew one another by name, some had become aware of Kealy’s identity. He had joined in their hill-slogging tests on two previous occasions and the word had spread that he was a regular SAS officer with a remarkable record. Kealy kept to himself. The muted adulation of the trainees, the sidelong glances and whispered comments as the news spread of a hero in their midst, made him feel awkward and embarrassed. Even so, the advantages of training alongside these eager “wannabees” outweighed the doubts because they were at peak fitness and many were ten years his junior. He knew that by measuring his own performance directly against theirs, he would be sure that he could match the stamina of any man in the squadron he was about to command.

  For two hours Kealy went well despite the darkness, driving rain, a steep climb of 2,000 feet over broken ground and areas where the snow lay knee-deep.

  Toward 5:30 a.m., nearing the summit plateau of Waun Rydd, de Villiers noticed with satisfaction that Kealy’s gait showed signs of weakening. For a while he would climb steadily with a deliberate step, then follow a zigzag course for a period, then once again head directly west as though on a bearing to some point just visible to his front.

  As Kealy’s speed lessened, lone trainees began to catch up, and when they reached the plateau, marked by the cairns of Carn Pica, there were five or six soldiers huddled together and shouting against the shriek of a sleet-laden southwesterly with gusts up to seventy knots. De Villiers squatted by his bergen some distance upwind as Kealy reached the group of trainees. He concentrated on remaining out of sight of the soldiers without losing touch with Kealy.

  Approaching the students at the cairns, Kealy exhorted them to carry on west but most were already shivering and fearful of exposure. Two decided to head north to seek shelter in the valleys of Nantlannerch and the others headed south for the Neuadd reservoirs. Kealy shrugged and took a compass bearing due west. He knew the subtle symptoms of hypothermia only too well. He had taught many a young soldier how to recognize the dangers of exposure. He also knew how to avoid its onset despite the very worst conditions. Rule one was to realize that, no matter how clever a man may be at spotting others becoming hypothermic, no one can be sure of recognizing his own deterioration, simply because, as the body core temperature drops, the body draws heat from the head. The brain begins to slow down, taking away the normal state of awareness and the will needed for self-preservation.

  An undrugged Kealy would have had no trouble with the simple eight-hour slog from Talybont to the Storey Arms. The weather was atrocious and he wore light clothing as was his custom and that of many other SAS mountain troop veterans. With heavy pack, rifle and cotton clothing, Kealy had many times completed far longer marches in more dangerous conditions. He knew every step of the route and, unlike many others that night, he never lost his way. Physically in fine shape, for he jogged daily when involved in desk work, he had recently joined the SAS trainees on two snowbound forced marches and showed himself to be as fit or fitter than the best of them.

  Kealy knew that trained airborne troops can travel, at temperatures below minus fifty degrees centigrade with blizzards producing a chill factor of minus seventy degrees centigrade, for many miles carrying heavy packs day after day, and wearing only breathable cotton clothes. Thoroughly soaked with sweat, “body-thin” from weeks of inadequate rations and lack of sleep, they nevertheless avoid hypothermia so long as they keep moving fast enough to maintain their body core temperature above thirty-three degrees centigrade.

  He knew that he was in a far superior state to such a scenario because, far from body-thin, he was well fed and his metabolism was acting like a factory, pumping out heat from the large breakfast he was still digesting. Even without the Mars bars that he ate whenever he felt his energy flag slightly, he would, if unaffected by the drug, have been more than capable of dealing with the conditions. Severe they certainly were from a standard mountain-walker’s point of view, but not from Kealy’s. At worst the wind strength gusted to seventy knots and the air temperature was as low as minus nine degrees centigrade, but this merely produced a chill factor of minus fifty degrees centigrade—no problem as long as he kept moving.

  Kealy knew all this and was fully aware that he must not stop. The curious state of lassitude and the overwhelming desire to rest that he was so unexpectedly experiencing must, he determined, be a temporary setback. Something he had eaten perhaps, a chill on the stomach, or a bug? He fought doggedly against the inertia and, luckily, the worst conditions were, after Carn Pica, all behind him.

  It was getting lighter. The going was flat in place of the tortuous climbing to date. There was now a well-used hilltop path underfoot from which most of the snow had been blown. Previously he had struggled up a steep, tussocked hillside through kneedeep drifts. The path was one he had often used and led west along the ridge of the Brecons, dropping into a sheltered pass at Bwlch y Fan. He had only to continue at a pace consistent with maintaining his body heat and all would soon be well.

  Fight the drowsiness … All will soon be well. He repeated this to himself and concentrated on the track to his immediate front. Always a little farther … Always a little farther.

  A few other students still persevered and, over the next hour, two or three noticed Kealy’s stumbling westerly progress. Knowing who he was, their own flagging morale was greatly boosted. If Major Kealy DSO, SAS veteran and hero, was finding the going hard then they must be pretty damn tough to be en route still. One or two offered him help, gloves, a foul-weather jacket. He tripped on a rock and bruised his knees slightly. After a short rest to recover, he shook himself and carried on. He was damned if he would give in or accept help. He flung away the spare gloves and the jacket.

  If things did get too bad he would remove one or two of the bricks that he carried to make up the statutory fifty-five-pound bergen weight. But he was sure he would get his second wind back before such a step became necessary. He estimated that some 1,000 yards up the track, which headed WNW, he would slow down to negotiate the ridgeline bottleneck of the Bwlch y Ddwyallt and join the well-trodden tourist path from the Pentwyn Rescue Post.

  By 8 a.m. he felt the leaden weight of inertia begin to lighten, and slowly, as his blood-sugar level eased back to normal, his brain was again fed with the sugar it required.

  The wind howled by in powerful, horizontal waves but Kealy knew he would be fine unless he stopped to rest. He jammed his cloth hat down, its flaps covering his ears. His bergen covered his back and his waist. Things were on the upswing.

  As Kealy passed by two small ponds, de Villiers glimpsed through the hood of his heavy windbreaker a solitary Day-Glo-tipped metal pole propped up by a pile of loose rocks. Reaching into his inner pocket, he produced a compact Motorola walkie-talkie. He estimated arrival within the next twenty minutes. At 8:30 a.m., in conditions of mist and lashing sleet, Kealy was halted by a large man in an orange parka. Standing astride the track, the man shouted, “Please help, my wife is dying. She is blue with cold.”

  The one thing Kealy had no desire to do was to stop, even briefl
y. He was going well now, savoring the gradual withdrawal of the leaden miasma he had fought against since Carn Pica. But he was at heart quite unable to turn down a cry for help. Swearing to himself, he nodded to the man and gestured for him to lead on.

  Some thirty yards through the mist to the side of the track and half hidden by a shallow depression was a four-man igloo tent in Army camouflage colors. Here the man stopped. Kealy shrugged off his bergen, automatically feeling for the first-aid pouch that hung over his backside between the water-bottle containers. In the dim light of the tent Kealy perceived two men sitting back, wearing the orange waterproof parkas. Both smiled at him. The man who had stopped him outside was bent over a fourth person inside a sleeping bag.

  As Kealy carefully wiped his eyes with his hands, for he still had trouble with his contact lenses, he felt a hardness pressed against the small of his back.

  “Do nothing stupid, Major Kealy. We are armed and you are in no fit state to cause trouble. Simply lie back against the wall of the tent and look into the light.”

  Kealy did as he was told, half wondering if Lofty and his staff had added a new and unexpected twist to the trainees’ endurance test. He screwed up his eyes against the bright light that shone in his face. He heard a soft, mechanical whirr as of a cine camera.

  After the accusations were over, along with Kealy’s bemused denials, his arms were pinioned, his shirt and windbreaker peeled back and a hypodermic needle inserted into the fold of soft skin under his armpit. Within seconds he lost consciousness as the insulin surged through his veins, and the Tadnams men, helped by de Villiers, eased his body out of the tent.

  Taking great care with their footprints, de Villiers and one other man carried Kealy to the side of the track and maneuvered his limp arms into the bergen’s shoulder straps. Propping him into a half-sitting, half-lying position against the bergen, they removed his hat and placed his rifle some distance away as though discarded. The other two men removed the bleeper, packed up the tent, leaving no signs of its presence, and all four then headed along the footpath to Pencelli.