by Andy McNab
It was the word everybody liked to hear on the net.
"Don't know what it is," he whispered, "but it's definitely a hide."
I got the radio out and communicated back to the boats. "Hello, Lima, this is Alpha, over." I got nothing.
I tried again. The hide must be in a blind spot. I knew that without comms the blokes would be flapping because they didn't know where we were on the ground and therefore couldn't back us quickly if we had a drama. It was now about one-thirty. I sat there pissed off that we weren't getting any comms and worked Out that by the time we walked to the boats to pick the lads up and bring them back to the hide, then larked the weapons and replaced the hide, we'd have run out of dark time hours. That meant me and Dave 2 staying on the target and everybody else going back and then returning the following night.
We both started to put the bricks and tin back in order, Dave 2 putting his hand out for each item like a surgeon requesting instruments. It had taken us an hour to open up the hide, checking all the time for telltales and that the cache wasn't rigged up with a booby trap, and it now took us as long to put everything back.
"I could see some longs wrapped in black plastic bags and some more shit deeper in ilie hide. I couldn't make it out," he said.
We moved back down to the boats, and I explained what was going on.
"Dave two and I'll just sleep here on the shore," I said. "We won't watch the hide-it's pointless, it's too exposed-but we want to make sure we can go back at last light, and that gives us an extra two hours to get the tech attack in. We can get the kit out as they are moving to us."
Next day we just sat there and lay up in the shade, watching the fishing boats and pleasure craft on the lough. One of us went on stag while the other one slept.
About two hours before last light we got back on the radio and spoke to' the blokes on the boats to check that everything was okay and that they were ready to move as soon as it was dark enough.
At last light we went straight up to the hide. As we started to pull it apart, the lights of the houses were still on. It was so close I could hear a toilet being flushed.
We uncovered an Aladdin's cave of AK47s, shotguns, small hand-held radios, and ammunition wrapped up in ski masks.
Now all we had to do was wait for Rick and Eno.
Time dragged on and on, and because of the blind spot, we still had no comms, even when we tried moving position.
It was now coming up to about one o'clock. I started to get worried.
It was going to get fairly light come about four. By two o'clock still nothing had happened. We made a plan: At three o'clock, if no one had reappeared, we'd have to block up the hide and bluff it.
This was worrying. This was our second visit, and this time the weapons ad been unwrapped. I didn't want to rush replacing the hide if Rick and Eno didn't turn up.
By about twenty past two we didn't even need night viewing aids as we watched the boys trogging up the hill.
"The fucking engine gave up halfway across!" Rick said. "We've been paddling like lunatics for the last two hours." Eno was by now doing his job. His annoying personal trait of being so precise and neat made him ideal for this type of work.
"We've got to rush it," I said. "It's going to be light soon."
"I've got theIR photography you took last light. You might as well look at it; it's light enough." Dave 2 and I covered them as they got on with it. It was nearly daylight when we started putting the stuff back.
Cocks were crowing. By the time we finished and got back to the powerless Gemini it was breakfast time and we had to paddle in broad daylight to meet the other boat that had been sent to fetch us.
My tour with the Det finished in late 1988. When I came back, everything between Fiona and me was different. I didn't know what it was, whether it was because we'd spent so much time apart, but there was a definite air of independence between us. It wasn't a case of me coming home to Fiona and Kate; the way I was feeling it was coming home to Kate, which was the wrong way around.
Running up to Christmas, I went away on another job for a while, and it was as if I'd never been at home. I yearned for Kate, the product of the relationshi, rather than the relationship itself. Fiona an p d I didn't exactly row about things, but there were times when we sat down and had to have some really serious talks about the direction we were going. Both of us knew there were problems, but both of us thought that we could work it out. However, my priorities were work, Kate, Fiona, and she probably sensed that.
Eno started to have a few problems with his marriage, too, and it eventually broke up. Maybe it was the same in the police force or the fire brigade, but people in the Regiment always seemed to be divorcing, remarrying, redivorcing, and always for the same reason. It took an enormous amount of effort and dedication for a bloke to have got where he was and to stay there, and almost inevitably there was -a conflict. our of us were sitting in a Portakabin listening to the slime telling us what was going on. Outside, the sun was shining, but it*asn't as hot as I'd expected for this part of the world. All around us on the walls were maps, Magic Marker boards, and cork boards.
The Int boy finished off by saying, "Well, that's it. I know you're not going to ask any questions, because it's a waste of time. I don't know the answers."
"So basically we're going to do something, but we don't know what, where, when, or how. We just sit here and pick our arses, do we?"
"Yeah, that's about the size of it. Have a look at what information there is on the board, and we'll start squaring it away tomorrow. The G Squadron blokes you're taking over from are away on the ranges at the moment; they'll be back tomorrow."
We had a quick look at the pictures of the city and personalities, but the faces were familiar, enough, and at this stage everybody was more interested in getting a few rays.
We walked outside onto the pan in our jeans, T-shirts, and trainers. The sun was blinding. On the pan were Chinooks and Pumas and a couple of aircrew mincing around on them.
James, one of the team, said, "Not hot enough to sunbathe in, but all right for a run."
"Where to?" I said, looking at the barbed-wire fence that surrounded the location. "Talk about keeping the animals from straying."
"One hundred fifty-two laps of that Portakabin, then," James said.
"Come on, there's nothing else to do."
We went back to the accommodation, another set of Portakabins.
We'd dumped our kit on the beds as soon as we'd arrived an hour before, then gone straight to the briefing room. I had a nylon Parabag and bergen containing all my equipment, the most important bit of which was my Walkman, with a couple of self-compiled tapes of Madness, Sham 69, the hymn "Jerusalem" from Chariots of Fire, and a bit of Elgar. I pulled open my bergen and strewed everything all over the bed. Out fell my sleeping bag and running kit.
James and I ran around the perimeter fence, past Chinooks and aircrew who were busy licking ice creams.
As we turned one corner, I said, "Look at that!" Sitting on the tarmac about a hundred meters away was a bit of machinery that I knew existed but had never seen: a long black spy plane of the USAF, all weirdly angled surfaces and very mean-looking. I didn't know why, but it somehow made me feel more confident that our job Half an hour later we were having a shower, then running around trying to find out where the aircrew had got their ice creams.
We had some scoff that night and sorted out our kit.
We'd been told to bring different types of civvy clothes with us, together with different types of body armor, overt and covert, to cater for every option. Among the four of us we had M16s, a couple of sniper rifles, MP5s, MP5Ks, MB5SDs, and a couple of Welrod silenced pis would be on. 386 tols; already on site would be different types of explosives to cover everything from blowing a wall to taking doors off. We also had all types of night-viewing aids, including passive night-viewing goggles that we might need to wear as we were moving in, and an infrared torch for our weapon, so we could move along without be
ing seen; we still didn't know whether we'd be wearing a pair of jeans and covert body armor and a pair of trainers, or green military kit, or going in with the full counterterrorist black kit.
Lat item in the Parabag was a day sack, stuffed with hemacell plasma substitute and "giving sets." If there were any major gunshot wounds, they'd have to be managed and stabilized until we got back.
Once the kit was checked we sat down to watch six hours of Fawlty Towers on video.
In the morning we read the papers, listened to the radio, watched a bit of telly. There was simply nothing else to do. In the end we dragged some of the plastic chairs outside and sat in the sun.
About midmorning two wagons turned up, and some blokes from G Squadron started piling out. They'd been down to the ranges doing some night shooting. First one out was Tony, who I knew quite well.
"Thank fuck you lot have turned up," he said.
"I see, good job then, I take it?"
"It's a bag of shit. No one knows what the fuck's going on.
We've got two more days, I think, then you're taking over."
"So you don't know anything?"
"Only that we're here."
All we knew was what the Int boy had told us. John McCarthy and Terry Waite were hostages in Beirut, together with an Irishman called Brian Keenan and countless Americans, and every agency, man, and dog in the Western world was running around trying to find them. if any of them were found, including the Yanks, we were going to go and lift them.
We went and had a brew and I asked Tony, "Have you been over there?"
"Yeah. Boring as fuck- There's a couple of boys over there at the moment, in the embassy or consulate'or whatever. They're sorting out all the LSs [landing sites], and they're the link between the embassy and us. Any information that's coming through, they're giving us a shout."
"And have they sent anything?"
"Jack shit. We're just running around like loonies at the moment.
It's the normal thing. This time next week it'll be binned, bet you anything. The only positive thing i is that there's got to be something up; otherwise they wouldn't have moved us here.)' "What's it like over there?"
"Just like you've seen on the news, really. Buildings full of shrapnel, piles of rubble, loads of old Mercs. To be honest, I didn't take that much interest. I'll believe it when I see it on this one.
I'll spark up when they find them and want us to go and do it.
All it is is another house assault. The only good thing so far is that we've got free sunglasses out of it." He pulled out some Ray 0 Bans and put them on.
"They're all right, aren't they?"
"Freebies? How come?"
"We were practicing this assault on the ranges, coming in on a Chinook.
The idea was we'd come in near the building, and as the heli lands the tailgate comes down and we just pile out' I and do it-running or in the light strike vehicles. It's al dark inside the Chinook, of course.
There's twelve of us sitting there with belt kit and body armor on, everybody's carrying MP fives and G threes and all sorts. We were ready to start World War Three.
"The tailgate comes down, we run out straight into the sun, and-fuck!
We're blinded! We couldn't see jack shit. It was a live attack, and all we heard was 'Stop!
Stop!" Sean was going ApeShit. 'Stop! Unload!" We un 388 loaded, and he said, 'What the fuck's going on?
Fucking hell, call yourselves Special Air Service soldiers?" 'But we can't see fuck all!" We'd missed all the targets. So the pilot saunters up and says, 'Well, you've just come out of a dark aircraft, haven't you, you dickheads?" We ended up being given aviator glasses.
Mind you, we had a honk."
"Why's that?"
"Ray - Bans. We wanted Oakley Blades."
What Tony was saying reflected the attitude on a lot of jobs, which was very downbeat. We were going to do a house assault in Beirut and bring home the bacon. So what? It was pointless getting excited or concerned until we found out what was going on and where they were-if they were still alive. Nobody had even confirmed that much. So no one was hyper, running around and screaming: "We've got to do this, we've got to save the hostages." When the job happened, the job happened.
All the principles were exactly the same as for any other house assault.
Only the area was different, and it was in a hostile environment. Again, so what? We'd got guns, we'd got the aptitude and the attitude, we had body armor, and we had aircraft-what more could we ask for?
G Squadron disappeared for the rest of the day. Sean got the four of us together and said, "We're going to have this trickle system going through. You four from B Squadron will take over, and in two days' time we'll send back four from G Squadron and just have a gentle tick-over so we've got continuity on the ground. The score's the same as normal.
You're in isolation, and you stay here. Mail can come in and out every day, you've got phone calls, and there'll be a run to the market every morning for soap and shit."
"What about the aircrew? Where are they?"
"The aircrew are staying downtown in a hotel.' "Ah, lovely," we honked.
It was always the same; we'd be in isolation, but the aircrew, who knew as much as we did, were put up in hotels or messes.
I turned to James and said, "Please do not feed the animals."
That was it for the day. There was a little multigym to fuck about with, but we soon got bored with that. I sat on my bed listening to the Walkman and reading the paper; then I wrote a letter home to Fiona.
"Hopefully that insurance claim will come through," I said.
"Just go ahead and get what color you like." We'd tipped some paint on the kitchen carpet, and I'd only got around to doing the claim form the day before I left. "PS: I promise I'll fix that leak in the roof."
Every time I got organized to do the repair, I'd been called away.
It had become a standing joke.
Next morning everybody was got together in the briefing room.
Tony was given the good news that he wasn't going back; his four were staying, and another four of G Squadron were sent home. It was funny, it always seemed that we took over something that G Squadron had initiated. Still, it was a good chance to take the piss out of them for being so incompetent that they had to be replaced.
A television set and video machine had been set up on a table in one corner. The slime stood up and said, "This is a video run of possible areas in Beirut where these people might be held. Nothing's confirmed, but these are the general areas so you can orientate yourselves a bit."
He started to run the videotape, which had come from the guys on the ground in Beirut. They'd been looking at the areas, driving them and walking them. They were taking photographs and doing video runs with covert cameras, looking at landing sites in and around possible targets, and security-both building -wise and physically, with guards.
They even studied the state of the traffic outside. Was it busy, was it quiet, were there little side streets? Was there a good escape route in and out?
They'd rigged up a camera in a van and driven around the areas.
The place was in shit state. The video was bouncing up and down, occasionally showing a glimpse of a dirty windscreen. It looked like something out of a World in Action report.
There's quite a skill to operating undercover in an urban environment.
It's a matter of trying to do normal things, while working to a different agenda; how you do this will vary according to the climate, prosperity, and traditions of the country you are operating in. A large city like Cairo or Bangkok is an anonymous place with a large population of floaters or drifters and plenty of public transport and public facilities. People keep themselves to themselves, and as long as the way you look and behave doesn't attract attention, you can move around freely. A place like Beirut, however, with strong family networks, local loyalties, or a repressive political regime, will be much harder to move about in-and movement is importan
t: It's easier not to be asked questions if you're not standing still.
Simon, the Int Corps fellow, spoke fluent Arabic and had spent most of his working life in the Middle East, including a long tour with the Sultan of Oman's forces as an Int collater and a spell in Beirut itself when the Brits supplied people to the UN forces. Now a warrant officer, he had been with the Regiment for many years.
He said, "I'll warn you of something now. It's such a fucking maze and there's so many different factions running around that if you're in the shit-if the operation goes wrong and you're not killed and survive-I can promise you you'll land up best mates with Terry Waite.
The sooner you're in, and the sooner you're out, the better." I wondered what would happen if I did become a hostage. I knew that I'd have a hard time initially, getting filled in, but after that I'd land up sharing a piss-pot with old Tel. At that stage I didn't really worry about it; the moment I knew the exact location we were going to hit, I would make it my business to learn by heart the locations of all the embassies and consulates and the location of the American University of Beirut and the main areas where all the reporters lived.
But, I told myself-and it was a big but-there was no way I was going to get captured. I had a big gun, loads of rounds, and it would all be over and done with in a quarter of an hour. No fucker was going to stop me getting back on the heli.
James sparked up and said, "When do we get over to Beirut then and have a look?"
"That's being organized now with the embassies. The boys over there at the moment will rig it all up and orientate you quickly. The helicopter's going to be doing some more practice runs in the next couple of days. As soon as that happens, we'll get you on board and off you go.
"The people in the embassies are trying to organize some tennis courts as an LS. A friendly power wants to pull its embassy staff out of the area as a cost-saving measure, but politically they can't be seen to withdraw.
By their letting us use their embassy gardens and tennis courts as a helicopter landing site, we're getting two birds killed with one stone.
We secure a method of infil and exfil, and as part of the bargain we'll pick all their people up and bring them back with us.