Snatched

by Lilburne, Guy

  “I’m surprised you didn’t kill Rafi” said Danny, as the car sped along heading south.

  “Would you have killed him?”

  “No, but I’m not SAS.”

  “I would have killed him if I needed to, but there was no need. He’s not a radical. He just wants to run his restaurant and he can’t afford to tell anyone that he has been compromised. At best they will cut off his funding. At worst they will kill him and he knows that. He won’t say anything. I have already contacted the British embassy and they are sending down a couple of agents to speak to him today. They are going to make him an offer he can’t refuse. I think he will be better off working for us!”

  They were heading to Yala Province. They had an address for Rafi’s contact on the Pattani River, near to the Bang Lang reservoir in the Thanto district; about 50 kilometres from the Malaysian border.

  McGinley started making phone calls from his mobile. Danny could tell from the conversations that he was arranging to meet someone and he could tell that it was going to be in somewhere called ‘Bacho’. Danny had never heard of it and had no idea where it was, but McGinley had already pinpointed it on the map and a time was agreed for the rendezvous. McGinley closed the phone.

  “Smithy didn’t beat the clock” he said, as if Danny knew who ‘Smithy’ was.

  “Beat the clock?”

  “We have a memorial clock and every time you go out on a mission you have to beat the clock, otherwise your name gets inscribed on it. Smithy didn’t beat it this time. He was one of our guys. He was protecting the prince when they snatched him. I’ve just been told that Smithy just died in hospital.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “So am I. He was a good guy.”

  The regimental clock tower in Stirling Lines, Hereford, has the names of SAS soldiers killed in action. Inscribed on the base of the clock is a verse from The Golden Road to Samarkand by James Elroy Flecker;

  We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go

  Always a little further: it may be

  Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow

  Across that angry or that glimmering sea...

  Mick Smith had failed to ‘beat the clock’ this time!

  “I take it we are meeting up with somebody from the regiment in Bacho?”

  “Yes” said McGinley. “We are meeting up with a troop from the Special Projects Team.”

  “A troop!” Danny didn’t know how big a troop actually was, but it sounded impressive and a troop of SAS men was as impressive as it gets, as far as Danny was concerned.

  It was just after midday when McGinley directed Danny off the road and onto a dirt track. Then some way along the track they stopped and Danny and McGinley got out of the vehicle. Within minutes they were surrounded by soldiers in camouflage with blackened faces. Smiling blackened faces. There were a lot of handshakes and back slapping. McGinley introduced Danny to the troop. There were sixteen soldiers and their commanding Officer was Captain Les Potts. It was the captain who shook Danny’s hand and thanked him for everything he had done so far and then told him that this was as far as Danny was going to go. Danny looked at McGinley who shrugged his shoulders, which told Danny that it was not McGinley’s decision. Danny wasn’t going to argue with them, but the disappointment showed on his face.

  “I’m sorry Danny” said Captain Potts. “But this is a military operation now. I’m sure you understand.”

  Danny nodded. He watched the soldiers melt away into the jungle…..and they were gone!

  Danny got back into the car and headed back towards Phuket. He had another seven hours drive ahead of him. It was early evening and already dark by the time he got back to Phuket. He dumped the car on a car park in Karon Beach and cleaned it down before taking a motorbike taxi over the hills into Patong. He expected Nok to be waiting in his room for him when he got back to the hotel, but she wasn’t. He tried to ring her on her mobile phone, but there was no answer.

  ~10~

  The troop had surrounded the house on the banks of the Pattani River. Trooper Kev O’Mara had taken up a forward observation position. He was only a few yards away hidden in the shadows under thick jungle undergrowth. It was dark but there were lights on inside and outside the house. There were building supplies piled high in a barn adjacent to the main house and an old truck that was obviously used to deliver them. There were two other trucks parked outside the house, which were being unloaded by twelve men. They were unloading arms, ammunition and explosives from the vehicles and taking them inside the house. Another six men were standing around in front of the trucks with automatic rifles and machine guns. They were supposed to be on lookout, but they were relaxed and chatting amongst themselves and not paying any attention to the jungle surrounding the house. Two other men watched on. One of them seemed to be in charge. Two dogs were asleep in front of the house. There were no women or children to be seen. A total of twenty men, six of them armed with weapons at the ready and the troop would assume that all the men were armed and dangerous! It would be an easy task to destroy this arms depot and kill all the men, but they had to identify the ‘contact’ and take him alive. This made it a difficult operation.

  Trooper O’Mara reported the situation back to Captain Potts via the throat microphone he was wearing. Potts told him to report further after the men had finished unloading the trucks. Thirty minutes later they had finished and most of the men sat around on the ground outside and started drinking whisky from bottles and eating from a pot of stew that had been brought out from the house. Some of the men holding the automatics stayed on guard and the two men who had been supervising the unloading sat at a table under the porch of the main house. The opened up a map and were discussing it in some detail. O’Mara reported back to Potts. The men from the SAS troop discussed possible attack plans and it was McGinley who came up with the plan which got the nod from everyone.

  The troop moved into position undetected. It was a good guess that one of the two men sitting at the table was the contact but they had to be sure.

  McGinley took out his mobile phone and rang the number of the contact that Rafi had given him. Everyone could hear a mobile phone ringing and watched the taller of the two men sitting at the table fumble in his pocket. He put it to his ear without looking to see what number had called him.

  “Salam,” he said. McGinley didn’t reply.

  A deadly torrent of gunfire ripped through the men sitting around in front of the house. But it wasn’t wild fire! The troopers used the double tap method, firing twice very quickly before moving onto the next target. They aim for the mouth. Doing so cuts the spinal cord and blows out part of the brain which prevents the brain sending the ‘pull the trigger’ signal to the gunman’s finger.

  There was no return fire and it was over in less than five seconds. McGinley had started to make the ten yard dash to the man still holding the mobile before the gunfire had stopped. He took the man off the small concrete bench and had him pinned face down in the hard dusty ground before the man could even register that they were under attack.

  “Sorry, wrong number” McGinley whispered.

  O’Mara and ‘Wiffy’ Watson were inside the house while the others checked that the threat from the men outside had been well and truly neutralised. A few moments later they were back out and declared the house clear.

  Wiffy was fluent in Thai, Malay and Chinese. He spoke to the petrified man who had now been sat up once again on the concrete bench. McGinley held a Browning High Power to the contacts head. The contact put up no resistance.

  He told Wiffy that he had done some work on an old house up in the Titwangsa Mountains in the Betong district. It was only about 10 to 15 kilometres from the border with Malaysia. He drew a line on the map that he had been studying that was still open on the table in front of him. He pin pointed the location of the
camp in the tropical rain forest. He told them that there were patrols of Muslim insurgency rebels from both Thailand and Malaysia who had been instructed to kill anyone trying to get to the house on the mountain. He said that they had not been told who was going to be held at the house but they guessed that it was Prince William after they had watched the news of the kidnap on the TV. He also told them that he had cemented the steel frame bed into the ground and a chain had been fixed to it. Wiffy got him to draw a plan of the house on the back of the map. He had now told them everything that he could and he looked into the eyes of the SAS men standing around him. He hoped that he had told them enough to save his own life.

  The contact was a different kettle of fish to Rafi. This man was a radical and if he was left alive then he would no doubt do his best to compromise the rescue mission. The Special Projects Team had no facility to take prisoners!

  A single shot rang out and the contact fell off the concrete bench and lay dead on the ground. Blood seeped from his head wound and mixed with the sand from the dusty ground turning it into a paste.

  All the dead bodies were dragged inside the building as the two dogs looked on with tails wagging. A delayed charge was set and the men moved off into the jungle. They were three miles further south before the charge went off. They could hear the explosion!

  ~11~

  The political pressure on the Prime Minister was growing. Only a small group of people knew the truth about Prince William’s kidnapping. The Prime Minister had no doubt that the Syrian President would order his execution once he knew that the British knew that he had ordered the kidnap. It was a race against time. He knew that the Special Air Service’s Special Projects Team were making their way through the jungles of south Thailand to a location where they believed the prince was being held, but their progress had been slower than he would have liked.

  Once the Syrian state media had leaked the story that Syria might be able to help in the prince’s rescue, Ed Militin, the leader of the Labour opposition party back in Great Britain, jumped on what he believed was another opportunity to make political ground on the Prime Minister. He had already had his own party people contact Syria and he was encouraged by what they had told him. In the House of Commons he openly accused the Prime Minister of incompetence and neglect of his duties, to the applause, jeers and laughter from the MPs on his side of the House. He declared that if he was the Prime Minister then he would do everything in his power to rescue the prince and he accused the Prime Minister of allowing his own personal dislike of the Syrian President to cloud his judgement. This was met with loud cheers from the opposition MPs (Members of Parliament), who shouted out their own abuse towards the Prime Minister and his government. The whole debate was being watched live on TV by millions who had never bothered to watch a live parliamentary debate before in their lives. But now, anything to do with Prince William was headline news.

  The leader of the opposition hadn’t finished yet, as he soaked up the applause and cheers of his own side. His speech writers and advisors had been up all night writing his debate speech for him and now he was about to play his trump card. In his privileged Oxford University voice he called for a motion of ‘No Confidence’ in the government. The Conservative government was in a coalition with the Liberal party after not gaining enough of a clear majority at the last election and they were vulnerable.

  The opposition leader began his speech; “This House has no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government……..”

  The roars and cheers from his own side of the House were deafening and drowned out what he was saying. He stopped and took in the atmosphere and he felt his own confidence rising. He started again to more cheers. The motion was carried with some support from the Liberal party back benches. The Prime Minister was forced to concede and was obliged to ask the Queen for a dissolution of parliament. A general election was called for in two months’ time. Until then the government would stay on as an acting government. The opposition party would run their entire election campaign on a promise to rescue Prince William. Their campaign slogan was ‘Labour, the party to save Prince William’. The Labour party think tank moved into gear and spin-off slogans were churned out;

  ‘Whether you are a Prince or a pauper, Labour cares.’

  ‘Labour, saving the monarchy and saving the country.’

  The Sun newspaper swapped their political allegiance and made their own ‘Free Willy’ campaign into a political one, calling for everyone in the country to vote Labour at the next general election. Prince William had the love and support of the British people. He was held in high esteem and suddenly this was being translated into support for the opposition party. The masses started to think that, somehow, a vote for the Labour party was going to help Prince William.

  ~12~

  Haadee was taking care of Prince William as best he could, but they had no treatment for malaria. The prince had little appetite, but they gave him as much water as he wanted to drink. Azeez and the others were all concerned, but there was little they could do. The only person who didn’t care if the prince lived or died was Maaz. He didn’t like the way the other men called the prince ‘Charming’. They talked about him as if he was a friend and Maaz had thought to himself on more than one occasion that he was the only one who hadn’t lost sight of the whole purpose of the kidnap. The prince was a political prisoner to be used for the good of Syria. It would be an inconvenience if he died before he served his purpose. Nothing more! The days were long and boring in the camp. It was humid and hot. The rainy season had already started and the rain had turned the dirt road leading to the camp into a boggy river of mud. Haadee spent most of his time sitting inside the house with the prince and reading the Quran out loud to him. The others sat outside under a green tarpaulin, which had been tied up between the house and a couple of nearby trees, and played cards. The rain weighed it down and the water poured down off the edges, splashing mud up in the air. The monotony of the rainy days was only broken up by meal times. Azeez was waiting for the call from the President’s office, but it still hadn’t arrived. He just got the occasional radio message from his Muslim brothers who were patrolling the tropical rain forest. There was nothing to report!

  ~13~

  Danny had something on his mind and he knew it was Nok. It was unusual for her not to answer her phone. He got up and showered. It was still only 6:30am and he tried to ring her again, but there was still no answer. He went down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast and was surprised at how many tourists got up at this time in the morning. It was a buffet style breakfast with two chefs standing at the end of the buffet cooking fresh eggs to order in any style you wanted, but to save time they had pre-cooked a lot of fried eggs, which were now going cold on a tray on top of the glass counter. After looking along the line of available food Danny decided that he didn’t fancy any of it and ordered two hard boiled eggs, which he had with toast and a pot of fresh coffee. The rain was pouring down and had already flooded some of the hotel’s gardens and pathways. Towels had been laid out on the floor at the entrance to the restaurant to stop people slipping on the shiny tiled floor. Somehow the rain was reflecting Danny’s mood; it was miserable! He was waiting until 8:00am when Nok’s detective agency would be open. He was going to ask Meiwa about Nok, but for now he had to wait and he hated waiting, especially when he had a bad feeling about it!

  The rain hadn’t stopped at 8:00am and Danny walked out of the hotel with one of their oversized umbrellas. The rain was too heavy for him to go on his motorbike so he took a tuk-tuk. Meiwa was sitting on the office floor eating spicy pork noodles for breakfast when Danny arrived.

  “Where is Nok?”

  “I don’t know. I not see for two days. I think she with you” said Meiwa, genuinely surprised that Nok wasn’t with him.

  “She isn’t answering her phone.”

  “Okay, one minute please. I try.”


  Meiwa tried, but the phone rang out unanswered. Now her surprise turned to concern.

  “You think something bad happen Danny?”

  “Yes I do. Did she say anything to you?”

  “No. She say nothing.”

  “Did anyone come to see her or ring her?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Did she go to meet anyone?”

  “No. I think she already with you.”

  “Ring the police and all the hospitals to see if they know anything. Then ring all her friends and ask them too.”

  The phone calls were negative. Nok was missing and nobody could give them any news that was going to help them.

  “What we do now Danny?”

  “Now we try to find her!”

  Chapter 5: Nothing stays the same

  Danny wanted to go and speak to Borg. He doubted that Borg would help him even if he could, but he wanted to speak to him anyway. When he had been a police detective back in England the husband or ex-husband was always a good place to start in any murder or missing person case involving a woman. He took Meiwa with him in the hope that she might help ease any tension that may still exist between the two men.

  They rode out towards the hills from Patong on Danny’s motorbike and ten minutes later they pulled up outside the huge sliding gate at Borg’s house. Danny rang the bell and they sweated in the hot sun while they waited for a reply. Borg looked out of a window from the house before opening the door and walking out onto the terrace. He was carrying the oversized baseball bat and allowing it to hang down in one hand and clunk on the tiled floor.