Snatched

by Lilburne, Guy

  ~3~

  The announcement on the BBC news that Prince William was going on a three day state visit to Myanmar the next day went hardly noticed. It was reported that it was another sign of Myanmar being welcomed back into the world family and strengthening its ties and friendship with the West and with Britain especially.

  Mick Smith was from 22 SAS (Special Air Service) Air Troop. He was 34 years old and had completed undercover operations in Iraq and Iran and was part of a 16 man SAS troop who had attacked the presidential palace in Damascus a year ago. They killed three top officials, but the Syrian President had already left the palace quite by chance only an hour before the attack. He hadn’t returned to the palace in Damascus since. To this day nobody knows that the SAS were responsible for the attack. Smithy, as he was called by everyone in the regiment, had also done many ‘close protection’ jobs before, for both politicians visiting hostile countries and for members of the royal family. Tomorrow he was going to be going to Myanmar. His mission was to ensure the safety of HRH Prince William. That was how it was worded on his orders. Smithy was an expert at what he did. He had a meeting with the two police officers who would also be accompanying the prince as part of the close protection team. Smithy didn’t underestimate the police officers abilities or their training, but he just knew that they would never be as good as him or as deadly as he was if the need arose. He had introduced himself and they went over the prince’s itinerary for the state visit, communications, attack actions and extraction plans for the prince and themselves if they were ever needed. Smithy wasn’t there to make friends, share stories or make jokes. His manner was professional but not really friendly. He only said what needed to be said and made sure that each man in the three man close protection team knew their job. The police officers were two highly experienced officers and both had spent the last several years protecting individual members of the royal family. Tommy Lawson and Bill Thompson weren’t there to make any friends either. These were three men who you wouldn’t want to get into a fight with!

  The Prince flew out to Myanmar from London Heathrow on the specially charted flight at 3:00am on the 13th. Besides the close protection team he was accompanied by his private secretary, an interpreter, a political advisor from Buckingham Palace, a junior minister from the Foreign Office and a business advisor from the Prime Minister’s office. The rest of the plane was taken up by the British press and TV news crews. During the eight hour flight the prince was briefed on everything he was likely to need to know to make the visit a success. They touched down at Naypayidaw International Airport, 16 kilometres southeast of the new capital city of Myanmar. It was 5:00pm local time. They had left London at 3:00am and it already felt as if it had been a long day. State run TV and press were at the airport to greet the British prince along with some local government officials. A military band played the British national anthem. The prince stood at the top of the steps leading down from the aircraft. He was whacked by the intense heat and felt the sun burning his face in seconds, but he stood and smiled and waved and gave everyone the photographs and TV pictures that they wanted. Then he moved down the steps to receive salutes and shake hands with a long line of uniformed and suited officials. He kept smiling and looking as if he was happy to be there. As if there was no other place in the world where he would rather be, but where he really wanted to be was back at home with his wife. In the evening the prince attended a banquet where he met the President, Thein Sein, and the leader of the opposition, Aung San Suu Kyi, who the prince thought was one of the most intelligent and charming people he had ever met. He spent the evening sitting between the two leaders and enjoyed the evening a lot more then he thought that he would.

  ~4~

  Azeez and Maaz had had some unexpected good luck. Through their contacts with the disaffected Muslims in the north of Myanmar they had managed to make contact with the Kechins. The Kechins are a coalition of six tribes in the north of Myanmar. They formed the KIA (Kechin Independence Army) in 1961, after Burma tried to take over their lands, but dissected in 1968 when NDAK (New Democratic Army-Kechin) was formed from the independence army and aligned itself with the communist party. The Kechin’s had over 10,000 soldiers. They saw the opportunity in joining the planned uprising and agreed to help Azeez and the Muslim and ethnic rebels who he had already recruited. Now they really did have an army and Azeez thought for the first time that the uprising might even have a chance of succeeding in overthrowing the regime. If it did then the Burmese Muslims and the Christian majority of Kechins (the rest being Buddhist) would be fighting on amongst themselves for years to come. But that wasn’t Azeez’s problem. In the remaining days before the planned attack on the prince’s convoy they moved explosives, weapons and men around the country to strategic cities and map references, completely unnoticed. It seemed that everyone was too busy watching the royal state visit.

  ~5~

  On the 14th the prince was taken in a four vehicle convoy down to Rangoon, escorted by four police motorcyclist and two ten-tonne army trucks carrying a total of forty soldiers. Many people turned out on the route, but only in patches as the convoy passed their villages, until they got into the city itself. There thousands lined the streets to wave at the passing cars. The prince insisted on having the bullet proof windows down so that the crowds could see him and he could return their waves. The prince spent the afternoon visiting factories and meeting business people. In the evening he attended yet another banquet to meet even more business people and money men. The dinner was of more interest to the junior minister from the Foreign Office and the business advisor from the Prime Minister’s office, but the prince smiled, nodded and joked when he could. He made the usual sort of speech about a new dawn for Myanmar and new opportunities and old friendships. The evening was considered a great success! The state visit was being covered by the BBC world news and everywhere the prince went he was followed by the BBC royal correspondent Peter Hunt. The prince knew him well. It was Peter Hunt who had conducted the prince’s first ever broadcast interview.

  On the morning of the 15th the prince was taken in the same four vehicle convoy, escorted by the motorcyclist and army trucks to Mawlamyine, a city on the south coast of Myanmar. He was going to inspect a solar powered plant that extracted salt from the sea and then in the afternoon he would be flying back to London, back to his beautiful wife. He would be happy to be going home. The state visit was already being reported around the world as a great success. He had done a good job.

  The road journey had been uneventful and, as on the day before, there were pockets of crowds from the local villages that they passed, who lined the route to wave to the prince. One of the plain clothed policemen, Tommy Lawson, was the driver of the prince’s vehicle. He kept apologizing as the car bounced over bumps and holes in the ground when they had to travel over some of the unmade roads along the route, even though he knew that he didn’t have to. Smithy sat next to him in the front passenger seat. In the back of the limousine sat Prince William. On one side of him sat the other plain clothes officer, Bill Thompson, and on the other side sat the prince’s private secretary. Also in the back were the junior minister from the Foreign Office and the political advisor from Buckingham Palace. All the men in the car smiled and waved back to the people.

  Smithy turned to speak to the prince;

  “We are about ten minutes from Mawlamyine now sir. You can expect big crowds again once we reach the city limits.”

  “Thank you Smithy” the prince said and smiled.

  Smithy turned back just as the vehicle rounded the bend in the road. They were surrounded on both sides by jungle. Fifty yards in front of them there had been a road accident. A motorbike was crushed under the front wheels of a lorry. A body covered in blood and wearing no crash helmet lay on the road, the legs and lower torso still under the vehicle. A battered old blue and white police car was at the scene with its lights flashing. Two unifor
med police officers were out of the vehicle. One was talking to the driver and making notes in his pocket book. The other was examining the body and the vehicle and talking on his radio.

  Smithy didn’t like it; it could be an ambush. He shouted on his own radio for the convoy to stop.

  “Everybody stay in the vehicle. I’ll check it out. If there is any shooting you get out of the car and run into the jungle. You all stay together.” Nobody spoke. They just nodded their heads and Tommy Lawson and Bill Thompson took out their handguns, took off the safety catch and cocked them ready - just in case!

  Smithy got out of the vehicle. He hoisted his trousers up a little and stretched. He looked around but couldn’t see anything untoward. He walked slowly and deliberately past the lead car and past the army truck in front of that. He stopped and spoke to the army captain sitting in the passenger seat next to the driver.

  “Tell your men to get out of the truck. Tell them to do it slowly. Tell them to get out and stretch their legs or have a piss or a cigarette. Tell them to spread out along the tree line on each side of the road. This may be an ambush and we may already be surrounded and being watched. Tell the men in the truck at the back of the convoy to do the same. I don’t want panic. I just want them to be on their guard and keep their eyes open for anything.”

  The captain nodded and spoke on his radio. The tailgates of the two army trucks dropped open and the soldiers started to jump out and light up cigarettes, walk around or just urinate against a tree, but they were all looking for any potential ambush. Smithy walked on, slowly, towards the road accident. He waved one of the police motorcycle escorts to join him and the officer came alongside him on his motorbike. The policeman examining the body looked at them and waved them towards him. As Smithy approached he could see that the man under the truck was really dead alright. The two policemen spoke in Burmese to the traffic cop on the motorbike and he nodded to Smithy.

  “Everything okay. Just accident. They move truck little bit so we can pass.”

  “Okay.” Smithy nodded and had one last look at the scene and the men there. He didn’t see anything in their eyes that made them a threat. He spoke on his own radio and then turned to walk back to the convoy. The police cyclist went on in front of him to take up his own position and the soldiers started climbing back into the army trucks. Azeez watched as Smithy approached the convoy. He nodded to the sniper lying on the ground next to him. The man took aim.

  A high velocity bullet smashed through the front windscreen of the prince’s vehicle. It went straight through Tommy Lawson’s head, missed the prince by several inches and smashed the rear window of the car on its exit.

  “Fuck!” shouted Smithy as he hit the ground and rolled to the tree line of the jungle on his left side. A smoke grenade was fired into the prince’s vehicle and the men inside staggered out, coughing and choking with the smoke. They were shot dead on exiting the vehicle, leaving Prince William staggering around on his own. RPG’s smashed into the two army trucks and the remaining vehicles in the convoy, blowing them to bits. The following press vehicles were also blown up. Any soldiers that managed to jump from the back of the army trucks were mown down with heavy machine gun fire. The same heavy machine guns were also used to rake along the line of vehicles. Smithy had made it to the line of palm trees that marked the start of the surrounding jungle. There was too much smoke and too many explosions for him to see much. He saw the two policemen and the lorry driver from the accident firing handguns into the convoy. He fired three shots and the three men fell dead on the road. The explosions and gunfire continued as eight rebel soldiers ran out of the jungle from the right hand side and ran towards the prince’s car. They saw him crawling on his hands and knees towards the jungle on the other side of the vehicle. He was bleeding from several cuts to his arms and face but not too badly. The prince felt an almighty crack on the back of his neck. He wasn’t unconscious but he was in too much pain and too numb to move. He felt himself being picked up by several pairs of hands and he was carried into the jungle that lined the right side of the road. As the injured tried to get out of their burning vehicles they were shot dead.

  Smithy moved along the jungle line. He had to get to the prince. He got shot in the back. The force of the bullet carried him forward and he slammed into another palm tree and fell to the ground. His eyes closed.

  At the same time as the attack on the royal convoy, explosions occurred in all of the major cities; at airports, government buildings, army barracks, police stations, radio and TV stations. Rebel soldiers seemed to be attacking everywhere. It was as if hell had opened up and Myanmar had just fallen in. It was chaos. Terrifying, bloody, deadly chaos.

  The prince was thrown onto the jungle floor. He was stripped of his pink shirt and dark trousers. He saw another man being held. They were surrounded by rebel soldiers. Wolfgang gazed at the prince. He recognised him immediately.

  The soldiers looked for any rings or a watch on the prince in case they were tracking devices but he wasn’t wearing any. The prince’s clothes were put onto Wolfgang.

  “Hello” said Wolfgang, when his eyes met with the prince’s. “I’m sorry this has happened to you. I’m very scared now.”

  The prince smiled and nodded.

  “We’ll be okay. Don’t worry.”

  Wolfgang was being dragged away but he still watched as the rebel soldiers blacked the prince’s hair, face and body with something and dressed him in dirty ragged shirt and shorts. The prince had a sack put over his head and was being dragged off in the opposite direction.

  ~6~

  Wolfgang was dragged to a car waiting on the road. He was thrown in the back seat and his hands and feet were tied together. He recognised the driver. He was an Arab man with one ear. He had seen him around the army camp in the jungle a few times when he had been allowed to wash and had been taken under guard to a makeshift shower and toilet block. He thought that he was friends with Azeez because he had always seen the two men together. Wolfgang had now seen these men kidnap Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge. He suddenly realised for the first time that he wasn’t going to be released. He couldn’t stop the tears from running down his face. He wished he could talk to Azeez even though deep down he knew that Azeez probably wouldn’t help him.

  “Where is Azeez?” he asked. The driver didn’t turn around. He lit up a cigarette before answering.

  “Azeez busy today.” Maaz was smiling to himself. The adrenaline was still pumping around his body. The attack on the convoy had gone to plan, even better than to plan. As far as he knew only three of their own men had been killed in the attack.

  “I’m not going to be released am I?” It was half a statement and half a question. Wolfgang saw the man with one ear adjust the rear view mirror and he looked Wolfgang in the eye.

  “No. You are not going to be released.”

  “What is going to happen to me?”

  “I’m driving you into the jungle in the north and then I am going to kill you.”

  “How long?”

  “About three hours. Do you want a cigarette?”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t smoke.” Wolfgang’s tears had turned to gentle sobs now, but he just couldn’t help it.

  “Can I have a phone call? I’d like to say goodbye to my mother.”

  “No phone call.”

  “Three hours” Wolfgang whispered to himself. Strangely, he found himself thinking about his journal and the sad and powerful emotions that he could write about now if he had it. He didn’t know what else he was thinking about. His mind just kept going off at tangents. They weren’t real cognitive thoughts. Just random stuff. He had thoughts and visions of his family, friends and places from the past - even moments in time when he had laughed or eaten something. If he could think about it he would have been surprised at some of the things that came into his mind, but he d
idn’t think about it. He wasn’t thinking about anything. He certainly didn’t think about an escape. Now he had less than three hours to live!

  The prince was tied and gagged and thrown into the back of an old truck. There were other men in the truck. He guessed about ten. He was being held face down on the floor of the truck. He could see through the heavy sacking bag that had been put over his head but he couldn’t see much. He found himself wondering what had been kept in the sacking, it smelled of oil. He smelt of something that smelled like boot polish, but wasn’t. The prince was thinking of escape. He was thinking about Sgt. McGinley, the Scottish SAS soldier who had given him most of his survival training over the years. He was the man who had insisted that the prince have a refresher course every year and had taught him how to fight, how to fire weapons, how to catch food, and how to escape and evade capture. Sgt. McGinley was the toughest person the prince had ever met. He was solid and rock hard. He almost seemed indestructible. He made all the lessons fun and he laughed and joked with the prince as if they were friends, as if they were equals. On the very first meeting Sgt. McGinley had called him ‘Sir’, but the prince said he could call him Wales. McGinley quickly changed that to Walesy and that is what he had called him ever since. The prince wished that McGinley was there now, but he knew that wasn’t going to happen, so he thought instead about everything McGinley had ever taught him. The more he thought about McGinley the more he remembered.

  “………You wait for the opportunity to escape. The longer you are held the more chances you will get, but remember the most important thing. If you cannot escape then you survive and there are lots of ways to survive. Keep thinking and stay alert, but look as if you have given up……” he remembered McGinley telling him.