by Chris Ryan
As the two visitors reached the door, a couple of soldiers were coming out of the building. Their hair was longer than the average soldier’s, and although they were in camouflage gear, they looked very casual – sleeves rolled up, no berets, unconventional Salomon Quest boots. Like they were wearing uniform but not really. Army, but not really army. One of them held the door open. Carrington, in one movement, pointed at the soldier, winked and made a friendly clicking noise with the side of his tongue as he entered. Hugo cringed and felt himself offering the soldier an apologetic look that evidently only compounded the offence. He hurried to keep up with Carrington as he walked deeper into the building.
The older spook knew where he was going. He strode purposefully along anonymous corridors, past doors indicating RSM, Adjutant, Training Adjutant, Training Officer, Ops Officer. Finally they stopped outside one marked ‘Lieutenant-Colonel J. Cartwright, Commanding Officer’. Carrington knocked three times and entered without waiting for a response. Buckingham followed rather more diffidently, and closed the door behind him. He found himself in a plain room, about five metres by five, furnished with just a desk and three chairs. On one of the walls hung old photographs, some black and white, of men wearing berets bearing the familiar winged dagger. On another was a large, laminated map of the world. Behind the desk sat a man so tall and broad of shoulder that the desk looked comically small. He didn’t stand, but nodded respectfully at Carrington. ‘Oliver,’ he said. He had a rasping voice, as if he was recovering from laryngitis.
‘Johnny. How goes it?’
‘Badly, since you ask.’ He had a posh voice, not unlike Carrington’s. ‘These bloody cuts are hitting us hard. I’m bleeding guys left, right and centre to the private sector, and most of the kids putting themselves up for selection wouldn’t make it round The Krypton Factor.’
‘I’m sure your training wing haven’t lost the knack of applying boot to arse, Johnny.’
The CO shrugged, then, looking in Buckingham’s direction, raised an enquiring eyebrow. ‘Who’s this? Hugh Grant?’
‘Hugo Buckingham,’ Carrington said. ‘Buckingham, this is Johnny Cartwright, Commanding Officer of 22 SAS. Johnny, Hugo here’s the chap I told you about. Had a desk at our Saudi station until a couple of weeks ago. Went to the Other Place, I’m afraid, but we try not to hold that against him.’
Cartwright blinked. ‘The Other Place?’
‘Harrow.’ Carrington mouthed it silently like it was a dirty word. Cartwright gave Buckingham an uninterested nod. Buckingham tried to return it with a smile, but flushed when he realised Cartwright’s attention was already back on his senior colleague.
Carrington placed his attaché case on the CO’s desk, opened it and removed four green foolscap files. ‘Sit down, Hugo,’ he said as he did so. ‘This concerns you rather intimately, after all.’ He handed the files to Cartwright. ‘These are the men we’ve selected. Personal vetting has in each case come up positive.’
‘I hope GCHQ haven’t been tapping my men’s phones again?’
‘Your men. Their wives and girlfriends. Their parents. Their bank managers . . .’
The CO held up his palm. ‘I don’t want to know, Oliver,’ he said. Cartwright flicked through the files, reciting the name of the Regiment member to whom each pertained. ‘Jack Dodds . . . Greg Murray – good man, Greg – Spud Glover . . .’
A frown crossed his face as he opened the last file. ‘Danny Black?’ He looked up. ‘You don’t want him, fellas. He’s out of town anyway.’
‘I’m afraid I might have to insist, Johnny.’
Cartwright stared at his MI6 sparring partner, then exhaled with the air of a defeated man. ‘Do me a favour, Oliver. Take someone else. Give Black a break.’ The CO glanced at Buckingham as he said this – not, Buckingham noted, without a hint of resentment. ‘The lad’s been on ops for six months solid. And he doesn’t know it yet, but he’s got a bastard of a homecoming to look forward to. He needs some down time. Compassionate problems to sort out.’
‘What problems, exactly?’ Buckingham asked, careful to keep his voice respectful.
‘You’ve read his file,’ the CO snapped without even looking at the younger man.
Chastened, Buckingham looked at his knees.
‘Hugo has had other matters to occupy him,’ Carrington said.
‘Look,’ Cartwright went on, ‘the lad comes from a military family. Father was in the Parachute Regiment, took a bullet to the head in Northern Ireland from an IRA hit team. Been in a wheelchair ever since. Can’t even answer a call of nature without the help of a nurse, so I’ve heard. Astonishing the kid isn’t messed up himself. His brother certainly is – mental health issues ever since he was a child, in and out of prison since sixteen. Just reaching the end of six months for GBH. Ever heard of a Hereford Spanner?’
‘Can’t say I have,’ Carrington said.
‘Nasty little cocktail of ketamine, MDMA and cocaine.’
‘More of a brandy and soda man myself.’
‘Why’s it called a Hereford Spanner?’ asked Buckingham.
‘Because it looks like you’ve been hit in the face with one. If I had my way, we’d send the little buggers who think that kind of stuff is a good idea on ops to Colombia, let them see exactly where their recreational drugs come from.’ He shrugged. ‘Kyle Black saw fit to beat some kid to a pulp when he was high on one of these cocktails, then knock his dad out of his chair when the old boy tried to calm him down. Poor sod broke his arm – last thing he needed. I want to give Danny time to sort all this out.’ The CO squeezed the bridge of his nose and suddenly looked very tired. ‘Seriously, Oliver, choose someone else. Black’s off limits for now.’
Hugo turned to his colleague and gave an apologetic little cough. ‘Sounds to me like the poor fellow has enough on his plate already,’ he said. ‘I’m sure we can find a suitable—’
‘Let’s,’ Carrington interrupted, a withering look on his face, ‘speak when we’re spoken to, shall we, Hugo?’ Hugo felt himself flushing for a second time, and fell silent.
Turning his attention back to Cartwright, Carrington asked, ‘Do you know where the lad is now?’
‘I’m his commanding officer. Of course I know where he is.’
‘Good,’ said Carrington, resting his hands on his stomach. ‘Where?’
THREE
Fifty nautical miles north of the Libyan coastline, six billion dollars’ worth of US Navy aircraft carrier stood watch in the failing light. The USS George Bush was a long way from home. So was Danny Black.
He checked his watch. 21.45 hrs, Eastern European Time. The green light had come through from COBRA at 17.00 hrs GMT on the dot. Danny had a picture in his mind of the decision-makers hurriedly wrapping up their discussions before the end of working hours. Wouldn’t do for them to be late for their dinner appointments. Gordon Ramsay for the suits, meals ready-to-eat for the troops they were sending into action. Which was just fine by Danny. Thirty minutes from now it would be fully dark, and he and his patrol would be airborne. He glanced up, past the air traffic control radars, at the moon’s state: full, rising from the west, clear sky. There would be light to see by tonight, but also light to be seen by.
The Sea Knight that would ferry them off the aircraft carrier, over the southern Mediterranean and into the Libyan desert, was in a state of readiness. Tailgate down, rotors slowly spinning. Beyond it, parked to the side of the runway, were two F-16s. Beyond them, a whole fleet of aircraft. This Nimitz-class supercarrier could portage ninety fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, and tonight it had a full complement. Danny had been on the George Bush for twenty-four hours already, having arrived with his unit from a staging post in Malta. He had spent most of that time below decks in the SF quarters, a spartan collection of rooms that held little more than bunks for the guys to sleep in, an operations room with co-ax points for their radios, mapping areas and satellite comms, and a briefing room where they could plug in their laptops. They only ventured out for meals,
taken with the rest of the ship’s crew, at a table set aside for their use. Below decks, only the lull of the ship and the boom of fast air taking off and landing gave any hint that they were at sea. Now though, up here, he was surrounded by sea, a saline mist and the deafening industrial grind of the vessel’s steam turbines and nuclear reactors. It resembled not so much a ship as a floating city.
Like any city, the George Bush took a lot of running. With a ship’s company of more than three thousand, just keeping everyone fed – not to mention dealing with their sewage – was a round-the-clock enterprise. The aircraft carrier even had its own naval police force. Crime was far from unheard of. These ships hosted muggings, rapes, even murders – the usual depravities to be found among a population of this size. But the most dangerous place to be, by far, was here on the flight deck. It only took a pilot to misjudge his position by a few metres to turn this seaborne airfield into a disaster area. So the US Navy personnel running the show were strict. Nobody was on deck who didn’t have a legitimate reason to be there. Marshals with different coloured luminous jackets and hand-held signalling beacons conducted their business around the grounded aircraft. Aircraft-handling officers in yellow, ordnancemen in red, fuel handlers in purple, inspectors in black. The flight crew of the Sea Knight were loading up, along with the two US army shooters who would take the roles of door-gunner and rear-gunner for the next three hours.
And Danny. He stood twenty metres from the chopper, his pack on his back, his personal weapon slung low, his Kevlar helmet in his hands. The US military personnel all but ignored him as they swarmed round the Sea Knight, readying it for take-off, even though they were doing so for the benefit of Danny and his mates. The wind blew his blond hair all over the place and salty spray stung his skin. On the southern horizon he could see lights twinkling. Tripoli, he figured from his mental map. Amazing how some of the world’s worst shitholes could look all Thomas Cook from a distance. Something nudged him in the back. He turned round to see Boyd, their patrol leader. Like Danny, he was dressed in Crye multicam, belt kit fitted and M4 slung low and attached to his body with a short halyard. Unlike Danny, he already had his helmet on, complete with NV goggles – disengaged for now – and a small torch attachment. The helmet itself was cut away around the ears to make space for his earpiece, and a thin boom mike hung just below his lower lip.
‘Hey, Snapper!’ he shouted over the noise of the deck in his thick Northern Irish accent. Danny didn’t mind the nickname. Snapper was Irish slang for a kid, and at twenty-three Danny was the youngest in the patrol. Boydie was well known for stamping his authority on an op, and anyway, a bit of ribbing came with the territory.
‘Aye?’
‘What d’youse call a Libyan militant with no arms and no legs?’
‘A good start?’
Double thumbs up from Boydie and a grin that revealed the worst set of teeth in the Regiment. ‘We’re loading in five,’ he yelled back. ‘Ready to rumble?’
‘Roger that.’ Danny fitted his helmet and NV as Boydie went off to round up the others. The patrol leader always cracked the same joke before an op. Taliban commander with no arms and no legs? Ba’athist scumbag with no arms and no legs? Always a good start, in Boydie’s take on the world. Nobody in the Regiment would ever disagree with him, and certainly not tonight. The militants that Danny and his mates were heading in country to locate deserved everything they were about to get.
Three days previously, a group of four UN peacekeepers – all British – had been kidnapped in Benghazi. For twenty-four ominous hours there had been no news, until a tape had arrived at the offices of Al-Jazeera TV in the time-honoured fashion. The grainy footage showed the peacekeepers first bound and beaten, then hooded and dead, hanging by the neck from a wooden ceiling beam. A balaclava’d figure, speaking in Sulaimitian Arabic, claimed responsibility for the atrocity on behalf of a rebel group still loyal to the memory of the ousted Gaddafi regime. To add insult to injury, he was wearing one of the peacekeepers’ camouflage jackets, complete with the bright blue armbands of the UN. It had taken about twenty minutes for the footage to go viral – which meant the families of the deceased got the good news via YouTube rather than the traditional knock on the door – and thirty minutes for two of the bodies to show up in a street two blocks from the British Embassy in Tripoli, not only dead but horrifically mutilated, a pro-Gaddafi slogan carved on the torsos with a razor or the point of a knife.
Intelligence operations on the ground in Libya had gone into overdrive. Who were these militants? More to the point, where were they? There was no doubt in Danny’s mind that a fair few Libyan nationals had had their arms twisted – literally – to reveal what they knew, or suspected, about the location of the militants. The limb-twisting had come up trumps. Word had reached British intelligence officers of a tiny Ruwallah Bedouin village in the Libyan desert 150 klicks due south of Benghazi. Two independent sources had verified that the inhabitants had been evicted from their encampment there by a group of pro-Gaddafi militia. Evidence that these militia were the same individuals who had captured and killed the four UN personnel was sketchier, but, so far as Danny could tell, the powers didn’t give a shit about that. And he was right behind them: the only good militant was a dead one, and his patrol had direct orders to help the bastards on their way.
Their objective was straightforward. Insert under cover of night into a wadi five klicks to the south-west of the target area. Tab along the wadi and set up an OP at a pre-determined location with a visual on the Bedouin village. Conduct surveillance on the village to confirm the absence of Bedouin and the presence of militia. Then laser-mark the location so that an RAF Tornado could bomb the living shit out of the place and send a message loud and clear that anyone who harmed British nationals could expect a swift and brutal reprisal. Job done.
The rotors of the Sea Knight increased in speed. Boydie reappeared on deck with Tommo and Five Bellies, the other two members of their four-man patrol. Tommo was posher than tea at the Ritz, but his healthy disdain for the Ruperts meant the lads in the Regiment accepted him as one of their own. Five Bellies’ nickname had nothing to do with his girth – on the contrary, he was one of the fittest men Danny had ever met – but commemorated one particularly blood-soaked afternoon in Lashkar Gah when a group of heavily armed Taliban had cropped up out of nowhere and the advance to contact was faster than anyone wanted. He’d taken a shot with a .50-cal machine gun, and through sheer good luck it had ripped straight through five of them. A nickname, and a little piece of Regimental history, had been born. This evening, though, the guys looked almost identical, in their multicam and helmets with NV goggles perched on top. The five-klick tab was long enough that they didn’t want to be wearing plate hangers, though their CamelBaks full of fresh water were essential.
The loadmaster appeared at the tailgate of the Sea Knight, bulky headphones covering his ears and a mike at his mouth. With a wide sweep of his arms he indicated that Danny’s patrol should embark.
‘Let’s go, fellas,’ Boydie yelled over the noise. The four men jogged up the tailgate as the marshals cleared the deck ready for take-off. Danny nodded a greeting as he passed the rear-gunner on his way into the belly of the Sea Knight. Each member of the patrol removed his bergen and stowed it at his feet. Danny took a seat with his back to the side wall – Tommo to his left, the door-gunner to his right – and lightly clutched the webbing behind him while connecting his radio to the aircraft comms system. Five Bellies and Boydie, sitting directly opposite on the other side of the black cylindrical long-range fuel tank – it looked like nothing so much as a massive rubber sausage – did the same. The loadie’s voice came over Danny’s earpiece, a gravelly Midwestern drawl. ‘We have thirty seconds till take-off . . . three-zero seconds till take-off.’
The tailgate remained open. The rear-gunner was hunkered over his Minigun looking like he was about to lay down fire on the aircraft carrier itself. Through the opening, Danny could just make out a marshal i
n a yellow jacket receding from the LZ. The pitch of the Sea Knight’s engines rose, and with a low judder the chopper lifted slowly up from the carrier. It made a forty-five-degree turn so that it was heading towards land, and then gained speed.
With each member of the patrol hooked into the comms system, ordinary conversation was out of the question. The flight would be conducted largely in silence as each man prepared himself mentally for the op. Danny had other preparations to make too. He bent down and removed a small GPS unit from the top of his pack, along with a roll of gaffer tape. Boydie had designated him lead scout. They’d already entered into the GPS units the coordinates of their expected LUP and OP as waypoints, as well as two emergency RV locations in case they were bumped. If the guys got into a contact and scattered, each man would know where to head: make your way to the first RV, wait out for an hour and, if no one arrives, head for the second RV and wait out for another hour, before walking back on a bearing for the original drop point.
Hope for the best, plan for the worst.
Now Danny took the opportunity to tape the GPS unit securely to the body of his M4 – easy to locate without having to fumble for it in the darkness, and easy to read even while holding your weapon. He double-checked the rest of his gear. His Sig 9mm was clipped across his chest and his belt kit contained extra ammunition – he’d elected to stock up on this at the expense of full rations as they didn’t intend to be on the ground for more than twenty-four hours. Two flashbangs, two frags. A black-handled utility knife. Also a couple of personal items: a dented, burnished Zippo lighter with the letters ‘SB’ engraved in fussy copperplate. And a second knife, its five-inch blade narrower than that of the utility knife but just as sharp, its handle fashioned from ivory. There weren’t many kids who’d receive a gift like that on their thirteenth birthday, but there weren’t many kids who had Taff Davies as a godfather. ‘A man always has need of a good knife, kiddo,’ he’d said. Danny remembered it like it was yesterday.