by Andy McNab
The other patrols didn't know yet what had caused the problem, but I kept Nino away from the others for his own safety.
Tony and I stood near the casualty, who by now was pumped up on morphine.
"He's looking better," I said.
"Won't be wanking for a few days, though," Tony said, and I had to turn away so the boy didn't see-me laugh.
Rod was trying to get information from the white-eye, but he said nothing. They searched him, but he had nothing on him; he was sterile. .
We went back into the hut and had a look around.
Porn mags lay on the floor by the sides of some beds; old copies of USA Today and Herald Tribune were piled up on a chest of drawers; one or two shortwave radios were on tables or by beds. We still couldn't work out what the satellite dish was for, because there wasn't a TV set or any sort of satellite comms, just a shortwave set. We weren't worried about finding out what radio frequencies they were on or whatever; that would all be discovered later on.
Some of the police had helped themselves to cans of food from the cookhouse and were passing them around. They were munching and smoking themselves stupid with the packs of 200 Marlboro they found in the huts.
Now and again there was a volley of excited, relieved laughing.
If any of the narcos had been wounded, we would have treated them.
It would have been pointless letting the characters die; quite apart from humanitarian considerations, the police were scared enough as it was about reprisals. Police students were being killed by the cartels as soon as they started their training. Four out of a. group of thirty had been shot with their families in the time we'd been there. It was good for the police that the narcos were seen to be getting medical treatment; it meant that the police were looking after their prisoners humanely, and obviously this would be reported.
We started to hear the helis coming in. I ran up to the helipad and threw out an orange identification smoke; besides giving them a precise location, it told them the wind direction.
We had line of sight so I got on my Motorola to talk them in for the final approach, in case they hadn't seen the smoke. "Gar, Andy, check?
Gar, Andy, check?"
There was no reply. I tried twice more, but by then the helis had seen us because they started to turn toward the smoke.
Rod and a cou 'le of his patrol were lifting the casup alty and walking toward the helipad. The first Huey landed, and Gar jumped off with the first replacement patrol, his clothes smelling all rather nicely of washing powder.
Gar came up to me, really serious. Behind him were the two colonels in charge of the unit. "What have you got?" he said. Then he spotted the casualty: "Okay, let's get him in the aircraft and gone."
Tony told Terry to take the new patrol down to the cutoff position near the river to give us early warning and bring back the two lads who had stayed there on stag.
The two officers went over to the narcos. Pointing at the European, one of them turned to Gar and said, "He'll be out very soon.
He won't go to jail. There's so much corruption, he will be out. The important thing is that we've stopped all this." He walked off and started to look around.
The officer was quite tall, about six feet, and in his early thirties.
He wore glasses with square, gold wire rims. He had an American twang to his accent and had probably been educated in the States. All the times I'd seen him, he'd sounded very conscientious and straight to the point, as if he really did want to stop the drug trade. The other one was in his late forties, early fifties, and was more of a realist."He knew what was going on, and he knew the business was never going to be stopped.
He got his cigarettes out, lit one up, and walked around talking to the boys.
Five heliloads came in, about forty blokes in total.
The aircraft took off again and headed for the nearest refueling point.
The younger of the two officers was sorting them all out. They had their own command structure. I watched the changeover; I didn't understand exactly what was being said by the boys who'd done the attack, but by their body language I could see it was very much along the lines of how fucking good they were.
The new boys went over to look at the body, and some of them gave it a little poke.
I went over to Nino and the radio. He was still pissed off. I gave him the day'sack and told him to pack the radio up and put it on his back because we'd be going in a minute. He looked as if I'd just told him he'd won the state lottery; he had a second chance now, an opportunity to show me that he could do something right-even if it was just to put a radio in a day sack.
"On me," Gar called to all the patrol commanders.
"Right, this is what's happening. It's being handed over now to the police. I want you to get hold of the patrols, bring them all in together, make sure that you've got everybody, and go back to your FRP.
Pick up the kit, and wait over in the corner there." He pointed at the edge of the compound.
"Get under the canopy, get some scoff on, and once the helicopters are refueled they'll come back and pick you up."
Terry sparked up. "Well, chuffed to fuck-we've already got our kit, so we'll go over there and wait."
We went back to the FRP, and then we trogged back and joined him.
They were brewing up, everybody very jovial and having a laugh.
Gar was still outside doing his liaison with the two police officers.
After a while he came over and sat down with us, helping, himself to some of my brew.
"What happened then?" he asked. I told him about El Nino and the ND.
Rod jumped in and said, "As soon as we get back, we need to fuck him off. Once everybody knows, especially since this boy's been shot, he's in severe shit."
"I'll sor that out now," Gar said, going over to talk to the older of the two officers.
I spun the shit with One-of-three-Joses and the others and told them they mustn't say anything to anybody about what happened. I said it would get everybody into trouble. They thought it was great; they had a secret now.
I could hear the helis returning. Gar came back. "The first heli is going to lift the prisoners off," he said. "The next ones are for you."
We walked up to the helipad and watched the narcos getting loaded on, everybody wanting to hit them on the way. All the boys then had to unload their weapons and put all their live ammunition in the top flap of their bergens. The last thing we wanted now was another ND.
Aboard the helicopters all the euphoria had died down by now. We were all realizing how tired we were, and probably thinking about what we were going to do when we got home. I dozed off, waking with a jerk each time my head fell forward.
The first thing we had to do when we got back was sort out our weapons and equipment and ourselves.
That only took a few hours, and then the boys got stuck into a barbecue of fresh and a massive piss-up on beer and whiskey.
Everybody was best mates. "Come to my village; it is really beautiful," said One-of-three-Joses.
"Not as beautiful as the women from mine.1) Rodriguez laughed.
Everybody got completely pissed and had a good old night. Nino, however, wasn't there. He had been told he was out on his arse; by the time we were on our third can of beer he was probably already back on traffic duty.
At midday the next day the Regiment blokes started our debrief We went through it all again: what we did right, what we did wrong, how we could ' improve.
"The only improvement I can suggest is to get our finger out and learn better Spanish," Terry said.
"And to make sure the safety catches on the Gauls are harder to get off," I said.
Gar told us that under interrogation the narcos had revealed that after a big farewell piss-up the day before the attack, some of their number had left the camp to escort the other two Europeans down river.
The European we had captured had already been released on bail.
The next day our patrols were all o
ff home as war heroes, and we screamed downtown for three days of eating ourselves half to death, trying to put back on the weight that we'd lost in the jungle, buying cheap emeralds and leather jackets, and going down to the embassy area, where all the nice bars were and saying hello to exmembers of G Squadron. And at last Rod was happy because he'd got out of the jungle without a zit and now his hair wasn't flat and greasy. ithin hours of Iraqi troops and armor rolling across the border with Kuwait at 0200 local time on 2 August 1990 the Regiment was preparing itself for desert operations.
I was still 3 i/c of the team, and my gang were unfortunately not involved. I watched jealously as G Squadron drew their desert kit and departed "on exercise."
Our nine-month tour was coming to an end, and we were looking forward to a handover, but as the weeks went by, rumors began to circulate of either a postponement or cancellation altogether. We got all the bullshit: "If it starts, there's still the antiterrorist threat in the
UK.
You'll still be needed here." I just kept my fingers crossed that the squadron changeover would happen as planned and G Squadron would be the pissed-off ones for a change.
My marriage to Fiona had broken down, and I'd made the decision that it was better to go while Katie was young rather than have her grow up in an atmosphere of rowing and honking. Although her mother and father would have split up, at least she wouldn't be experiencing bad feeling in the house and maybe going through the trauma of us parting when she was eight or nine.
There was no way I wanted to go back to living in the block. One of the scaleys was getting out to be a mature student but couldn't afford to keep up his mortgage on his student allowance; I said I'd rent the house off him, and if eventually he did want to sell it, to give me first refusal. So there I was, back in a two-up, two-down on a Westbury estate near the camp.
I threw myself into my job on the team. Everybody was mightily pissed off that we were probably going to miss out on the Gulf. We were sitting drinking tea in the hangar one morning, honking severely about what was going on.
Harry said, "I remember talking to A Squadron after the Falklands.
They were severely pissed off because they were on the team at the time.
And now it's going to happen to us."
At that moment Gar walked in with two strangers.
"These blokes have just come from Selection," he said.
"This is Bob, and this is Stan. Bob's going! to go to the sniper team, and Stan, I want you to latch on to Andy.
He'll show you the ropes-get all the kit; I bet you don't even know how to put it on, do you?"
This fellow turned around and said, in a thick Kiwi accent, "No, I don't actually."
Bob Consiglio and Stan were to have a good effect on us all: Straight out of Selection, they were raring to go; they loved being on the team, and their enthusiasm was infectious.
It was round about this time.that I spotted a gorgeous girl at the local gym. We were both sweating buckets, attending a new session that was particularly difficult.
She was working out in front of me, and I couldn't help appreciating the styling of her leotard.
After I'd seen her five or six times at the gym, I came across her one Saturday evening in a wine bar down town. She was with a girlfriend, and they were being chatted up by a bloke in D Squadron.
It was the first time I had seen her fully dressed, and again, she looked great.
A tinker came in selling roses. I bought one and asked her to take it over to the girl in the corner.
She came over afterward, gave me a radiant smile, and said, "Thank you."
"It's nothing," I said. "I only did it to annoy the bloke you're talking to."
"So charming," she said. "Your name must be James Bond?"
"No-Andy, actually. Look, your friend is getting on really well with that bloke. Seems a shame for you to go back and break it up.
Can I get you a drihk, Miss Moneypenny?"
"Jilly, actually-and yes, a bottle of Piis."
That was how it started. We talked to each other now at the fitness center, we saw each other in the town a couple more times, no dates or anything or phone calls.
But about three or four weeks after that things just snowballed and toward the end of October I asked her to move in.
On Remembrance Sunday the Regiment gym becomes a church. Every member of Stirling Lines-Regiment and attached personnel, serving and retired-who can be there is there. So, too, are their wives, girlfriends, and families and the families of people who have died.
Serving members of the Regiment wear full-dress uniform, the only time it is worn. This year I was in civvies as I was part of the protection outside the camp during the service.
After the service everyone moved outside to the Clock Tower.
Wreaths were laid by all the different squadrons, and all the different departments and organizations that were in and around supporting the Regiment. There was a two-minute silence, and then it was into the club for drinks and food. Many saw it as a chance to talk to ribtired members-the old and bold-because a lot of them only appeared for this one occasion a year. The party would go on for the rest of the day and well into the evening.
Instead of doing all that, I went with jilly down to the graveyard.
The regimental cemetery isn't in the Lines, it's in the local church; the Regiment has its own plot, and it was almost full.
"They'll either have to buy a bigger plot or stop all the wars," I said. jilly gave a smile that was more of a wince.
One or two other people were there to pay their respects to old friends.
One of them was an ex-B Squadron warrant officer who'd got out a couple of years before. It was the first time that I'd seen him in a suit. He had nothing with him-no flowers or anything like that.
He wasn't going to any grave in particular; he was just walking up and down, alone with his thoughts. His shoes and the bottoms of his trousers were wet from the grass, and his suit collar was turned up against the cold.
Jilly and I fell in step beside him.
"You going up the camp?" I said.
"Fuck that. There's too many people up there as it is, desperate to be part of the show. This is where people should be."
He was right. The Remembrance Day service was packed with camp followers and hangers-on who seemed far less interested in what was being commemorated than in being able to. say afterward that they'd been there.
Blokes who really are in the Regiment either feel sorry for or loathe those who've had some sort of contact and make themselves out to be more than they are or were.
They must have very low self-esteem if they feel the need to bluff, but what they perhaps don't realize is that they are normally found out. It is a very small world, and everyone knows one another or can connect.
Such characters would not be worthy of licking the mud off the boots of the people in the "plot."
I thought about the blokes I worked with. They were as much of a cross section personality-wise as would be found in any organization.
They ranged from the slightly introverted who kept themselves to themselvesto the point of training in the gym at 1:00 A.m.-right the way up to the total and utter extroverts who moondanced all over the place.
There's a hill outside Hereford called the Callow; as you hit the brow of it at night, you see below you the lights of the town. On their way back from a trip a lot of the singley party animals call it Hard-on Hill; they've been away for six months, and all they want to do is get into camp, have a shower, and scream downtown. At the other extreme was a single bloke I was flying back with from a trip who turned to me and said, in his thick Birmingham accent, "I can't wait to get back to clean my windows."
Then there were all the people in between. Everybody from a Hell's Angel to an exotic butterfly collector, and men of all colors and creeds-Australians, Kiwis, Fijians, Indians from the Seychelles.
Blokes were doing Open University degree courses; one wanted to becom
e a physics teacher when he left. People who'd really got into the medical side had gone on to become doctors.
There were other blokes who really got in to a country where they'd been operating-in particular, the Arab countries. A lot of them became very proficient in the language and got interested in the culture, the people, and the country itself and ended up going and living there.
In B Squadron there was a former taxidermist who was also an ex-convict and boxer. He had a deep freezer in one of the spare rooms in the block where he lived.
Inside, instead of frozen pies and fish fingers, there were dead foxes, owls, and salmon and cartons of chemicals.
Some blokes would bring him back dead animals from trips; others would use his services to get their pet dogs stuffed.
A lot of people got into anything to do with the air; once they joined a free fall troop, they got this fixation with anything to do with flying and free fall. Nosh had bought himself an old Cessna in the States and flown it over to the UK-an outrageous journey on a single engine. The fuel ladder in the back was leaking, it looked like the thing was going to fall apart, so he put his parachute rig on, took out all but two screws in the door, and flew high enough so if the bladder went, he could just jump out. The radios were not the sort for transatlantic flights, so he put out the antenna, which was a wire tied to a brick, and then measured it out to get the frequencies to hit the stations.
There were people who were severely into the old jap-slapping; they got to international level sometimes.
Others got into weird, obscure sports, especially the Mountain Troop blokes. They nearly always got into sheer-face climbing and developed an obsession with climbing Everest.
There was also Mr. Normal, Mr. Family Man with the house and 2.4 kids; he'd get back from a job, do all the debriefing, and then it was a total cut. He went home, mowed the grass, found the lost cat, and replaced the tile on the roof.
A major part of what made the Regiment more professional than the normal military unit was that it was staffed by people who could.-tell the difference between work time and play time. When you're working, you're working; when you're not, then it's time to be the idiot.