The Sixteen

by John Urwin

  As they passed, the man in the rear of the car turned his head sideways and spoke to someone sitting next to him and I caught a brief glimpse of the two men in the back.

  The descriptions of them Royston had given me were right, it was them. Our targets had arrived!

  I lay still for a while longer until the sound of the disappearing vehicles had completely gone, before I gradually raised my head and had a good look around. The light was quickly fading but I could see that the coast was clear. My joints were a little stiff and sore from keeping still for so long and I was covered in dirt, dust and insects, but I couldn’t wait to get to the top of the hill and, itching and scratching as I went, I quickly scrambled back to where Chalky was waiting for me.

  ‘Well?’ he queried.

  ‘Well what?’

  ‘Was that them?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s definitely them!’

  ‘Thank God for that, I couldn’t stand another day stuck on this damn hill. For a moment, there I thought they’d rumbled you! When I saw them stop and those guys jump off the back of that truck I thought I was going to have to come down there and give you a hand! That would’ve changed our plans, now wouldn’t it? What was that all about anyway?’ he said.

  ‘I haven’t got a clue, the two guys who jumped off just took a leak.’

  ‘Come on, let’s get back to the others.’

  We quickly made our way through the trees to where the rest of the lads were waiting.

  ‘It’s them OK, Geordie made a positive ID!’ Chalky announced.

  ‘Good!’ Royston said. ‘It’s just as well you went down there, Geordie. We saw the vehicles arriving but the car stopped where we thought they would, right outside the door of the main building, behind that damn lorry, and we couldn’t see who was in it.’

  ‘I didn’t think they were going to get that far,’ I said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, the VIP car stopped just yards in front of me for some reason. I thought they must have spotted me,’ I told him.

  ‘Oh, so that’s what happened?’ he said. ‘We couldn’t understand what was going on either. The first lorry stopped just after it rounded that bend for some reason and they waved to the guards at the gates then reversed back. The next time we saw them the VIP car was right behind them,’ he informed me. ‘Don’t ask me what that was all about. I’ve been in the Middle East for some years now and I’ve given up trying to understand these daft sods!’

  ‘I wondered what the hell was going on but I couldn’t see from where I was,’ I said.

  ‘Never mind, at least we know they’re here now. Let’s find a way to get rid of them!’

  The lights were on in both the building and the compound, and it was easy to see the whole area. Two men dressed in military uniforms were walking around accompanied by a civilian but we couldn’t be sure if they were our targets or not. They disappeared for a short while then made their way back to the main building. Through the two windows on the first floor, just above the parked truck, we could see several people sitting drinking and talking, but our targets didn’t join them. Instead, they had made their way along the corridor to the large room at the end, where we believed the meeting was due to take place. They stayed there for some time then left the room together, returning shortly after with seven or eight other people who all began to seat themselves around the table.

  ‘That’s definitely them,’ Royston confirmed, looking through his binoculars just as someone in the room pulled a blind down over the window. ‘Right, that’s it, let’s go. Dynamo, don’t forget to warn the rest of the lads that if I get out of the building alive, I’ll be the idiot rushing towards the gate firing my gun above your heads, with a red light on my chest. And by the way that’s not a target, it’s just to let you know that it’s me,’ he laughed. ‘So, just make sure you don’t get rid of the guards on the gate, I’ll need them to open it for me!’ he added.

  ‘He might be a little bit crazy, but he’s bloody clever!’ Dynamo laughed.

  ‘Come on, then, let’s get on with it,’ Royston said to Greg.

  We watched them stealthily make their way down the hillside, across the road to the corner of the compound and the darkened area at the rear of the toilet block, then they disappeared from view. The rest of the group were getting ready to cover Royston, and Greg and Dynamo moved off to tell them what was happening. I looked at my watch: it was 2100 hours and very dark now. As soon as everyone was aware that Royston had made a move, we all began to get into position and line ourselves up across the hillside in front of the compound. Each section had a target area of the building, mine being to cover the main entrance and to take out the nearby vehicles.

  I moved slightly further down the hillside and got as close to the main gate as possible without being seen. Dynamo was just behind me to my right with Chalky, Spot and another guy slightly higher up. The others positioned themselves at various points to the right and left overlooking the compound, Greg would provide cover from his spot down to the left of the main gate near the toilet block.

  Within minutes, we saw Royston squeezing his way through the gap at the top of the toilets, out of sight of the guards on the gate. Just then, a soldier began to make his way across the compound towards the toilet block and we watched anxiously as he went inside.

  Suddenly we heard the loud bang of a door being slammed shut and a figure emerged. The man appeared beneath the compound lights and began to walk towards the soldiers standing guard at the main door, dragging his gun along the ground and fastening up his clothing as he went. It was Royston! He’d done it!

  ‘Let’s wait until he gets within a few feet of those guards before we open fire,’ Dynamo said quietly. ‘Because once we start shooting, so will everyone else and I want to make sure he gets into the building.’

  Royston was only about four feet away from the guards on the main door when Dynamo opened fire at the windows and all hell broke loose as we all followed suit. The two guards at the door immediately ran into the building with Royston right behind them and all the lights in the building went out. Confused soldiers began to pour out of the buildings towards the rear of the compound, running in all directions, yelling and screaming at one another. The guys lobbed grenades with deadly accuracy, and vehicles exploded all around the bewildered, panicking troops.

  I hit the large truck parked at the side of the building, aiming at its tyres and where I thought the fuel tank was. It instantly burst into flames, just as a loud explosion came from inside the building and a body came flying out of one of the upstairs windows. It landed on top of the burning canvas covering the truck, which must have been carrying extra fuel because it suddenly erupted in a deafening explosion, which sent fragments shooting high into the air and all over the compound.

  The light from the burning vehicle brightly lit most of the area and we could see the poor bastards running around like ants. They hadn’t expected a thing and were being slaughtered; they simply hadn’t a clue what was going on and had no idea where all of the gunfire was coming from or which direction they should run in for cover. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. Everywhere was noise, confusion, screams and yells.

  ‘Concentrate on the entrance of the building,’ Spot yelled. ‘We’ll need to give Royston as much cover as possible when he comes out.’

  Suddenly through the smoke and flames, I saw a guy running towards us, a small red light on his chest.

  ‘There he is! That’s him,’ someone shouted behind me.

  Royston was out of the building and running towards the gate waving his gun in the air! We could clearly hear him above the noise, shouting in Arabic at the two guards hiding near the gates. It was unbelievable: one of them actually ran towards the gates and opened them for him. Royston immediately ran straight through, closely followed by the two soldiers who had been guarding the gates, with four or five other guys several yards behind them.

  On the hillside, we’d been constantly moving
and changing our positions to ensure none of us got hit if one of them got a bead on us, and I was now only yards away from Royston and the following troops. I took aim to provide him with cover and take out as many of them as I could but Dynamo suddenly grabbed my arm.

  ‘No, Geordie, wait!’ he shouted.

  At that moment, the ground in front of Royston erupted and two figures stood up, blasting the running men behind him just as he passed them. Two of his team had been lying in wait in their CTCs, which ensured they were completely hidden from everyone, including me! Lit up by the flames in the compound, from where we stood they looked like two giant hamsters standing up on their hind legs. They turned and immediately began to follow Royston, running with some difficulty down the road in the cumbersome coats, trying to undo the leg fastenings as they went.

  Dynamo and I followed them with Greg closely behind us and, as we rounded the base of the hill, the others caught up with us.

  ‘Take your time,’ someone muttered. ‘They must think there are hundreds of us!’

  ‘Well, they certainly don’t seem to have much transport left!’ Royston laughed, because we’d destroyed every vehicle in the compound. We briefly grouped together at the side of the road as Reg and Den removed their CTCs.

  ‘You could have let me know they were down there,’ I said to Dynamo. ‘I nearly bagged one of them!’

  ‘They went down there when you were watching by the roadside. Bloody good camouflage though, isn’t it?’ He laughed as we put our gear into our bags.

  ‘Is everyone here? Everyone accounted for? Right, let’s get the hell out of here and back to that damn river!’

  As we made our way along the road we heard several explosions behind us – the lads’ booby traps on the hillside were obviously working!

  Back at the river, we headed slightly further upstream of where we believed the old bridge and our ropes were, then worked our way down so we didn’t pass them. We didn’t want to miss them in the dark. Without any great difficulty we found the spot, and were surprised to see that the river had risen by almost another two feet in the short time we’d been away. We were lucky that it hadn’t washed our ropes away, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. We carried plenty of others and would have had no problems in repeating the process.

  We swiftly crossed the river and the last man over tied the heavy line to both the wooden post and the ‘H’ girder as we set up the pulley wheel system on the other side and tightened this to enable him to cross safely.

  Meanwhile he had tied a light line to the dog-clip on the heavy line and brought the light line across with him. We then released the pulley wheels, slackened the line off, which enabled us to retrieve the dog-clip with the heavy line attached. Again, the whole process was accomplished in a matter of minutes and there was no trace left behind that we’d ever been there.

  Once on the other side, we briefly discussed the operation with Royston as we packed up our gear.

  ‘Well, what happened?’ Spot asked.

  Royston grinned broadly and quietly began to recount what had taken place in the building. ‘I couldn’t believe it!’ he exclaimed. ‘When you lot opened fire, I followed the guards into the building and got to the top of the stairs before the lights went off, so I managed to get a quick look around. I was lucky: there was such a commotion and racket going on that no one in the other rooms took any notice of me, they were all too busy trying to get you lot, so I just ran along to the end of the corridor and took out the guy guarding the room. They’d locked the door so I blasted the lock off and lobbed in a grenade,’ he said in a matter-of-fact way. ‘Sorry I took so long but I wanted to make sure that I’d got them all before I left and it took a few minutes to check them, using my torch. The five targets were definitely in there and I’m positive the other three were European!

  ‘There was so much noise and confusion I could have taken out everyone in the building – they just didn’t have a clue what was going on,’ Royston continued. ‘On the way back, I think I took most of them out in the rooms along the corridor. They were all firing out of the windows so it wasn’t a problem; besides, with all that racket going on they wouldn’t know whether the bullets were coming from the outside or not,’ he added. ‘I definitely got all of them in that last room with a grenade just before leaving. I thought I might as well keep the numbers down and help you chaps out a bit,’ he said, laughing.

  ‘So that’s why that guy came flying out of the window and landed on the top of that burning truck,’ I said quietly to Dynamo, who then turned to Royston and demanded: ‘Well mate, where is the bloody thing?’

  ‘It’s in my bag,’ Royston replied in a quiet matter-of-fact tone.

  ‘Well let’s have a look at it then!’ Dynamo demanded.

  ‘Can’t do that, Top Secret stuff, don’t you know.’

  We all just stood there, staring at him in disbelief until eventually he burst out with a small laugh, saying finally: ‘Well, alright, if you insist.’ Then he bent down and took a small oblong box out of his bag and held it out in front of him, while we stood looking at it in disbelief. It was a small highly lacquered black box, approximately three by two by eight inches in size.

  ‘Bloody Hell! Is that it?’ someone burst out in disgust.

  Royston slowly smiled. ‘Advanced Technology, that’s what’s in there lads,’ he briefly explained.

  Chalky was standing next to me. ‘I’m dying to see this,’ he quietly muttered. ‘Come on open it up and it had better be good!’

  For a while Royston struggled with it but couldn’t find a way to open the box.

  ‘Here, give it to me,’ Dynamo said, holding out his hand into which Royston placed the box. Dynamo examined it briefly then he gently squeezed both sides of the box simultaneously and suddenly with a slight click it slowly opened as someone quietly said: ‘I think he’s done this before.’

  Dynamo paused for a moment then passed the opened box back to Royston, who looked into it briefly before he carefully lifted out and unwrapped its contents. In the light from our torches we all saw what appeared to be two ordinary flat pieces of glass. He let out a long sigh then quietly exclaimed with obvious relief: ‘Yes! Great! They’re both OK!’

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ Dynamo spoke our thoughts.

  Just then, as we all turned our torches on to the two bits of glass lying in Royston’s outstretched palm, it seemed as if the torch beams had charged them up and they began to emit a dazzling brilliance of myriad different colours. Royston swiftly rewrapped them and carefully placed them back into the box, saying as he did so: ‘Well done, lads, a good night’s work, now all you have to do is to completely forget what you saw.’

  Well, I thought, that shouldn’t be too hard, after all what did we see? Just two pieces of brightly coloured glass!

  Royston was speaking again: ‘I suppose you know what they do? Well, actually they don’t do anything on their own. You see they’re not much good without the other four pieces.’ We were all watching him closely, listening intently as he continued: ‘Don’t worry, no one knows where they are.’

  Chalky interrupted him, saying, ‘Well at least we got the job done thanks to you and your lot, Royston! I guess that’s what we were looking for in Egypt!’

  Royston did not reply but simply smiled slowly at Chalky as we all crowded around Royston to congratulate him, slapping him on the back and shaking his hand.

  ‘Well, lads, this is where we part company,’ Dynamo told us, ever eager to be on the move. ‘We can’t stay here chatting all night.’

  Royston nodded in agreement. ‘No, that’s right.’ He turned towards me. ‘Well, Geordie, we didn’t get our little chat but I’m pleased we met at last.’

  ‘Well at least we got the job done!’ Greg said to me with a wink.

  The guys all shook hands, then picking up our holdalls, we split up into our teams, each heading off in a different direction. I’d no idea where the others were going and by now I knew it was a poin
tless exercise to ask. Besides, all I was really interested in now was getting back to the truck and on to the helicopter. Dynamo, Chalky, Spot and I merely had to retrace our steps back across the valley to the rendezvous point on the top of the hill, where Bren would meet us later with the truck. We didn’t expect to encounter any problems on the way and had plenty of time to get back. As we moved away from the riverbank, we heard a commotion some distance away on the opposite side.

  They were apparently searching the area for us but we knew that there was no way they’d be able to follow us across the river at this point, even if they had any idea where we were, which they obviously didn’t.

  Although the trek back into the mountains was a steep climb, the four of us did not take long to reach the rendezvous point near to the ruins that Bren had pointed out. With plenty of time to spare before he was due, we sat down for a well-earned rest and after a short while I needed to take a leak.

  ‘I won’t be a minute,’ I told the others as I got to my feet.

  ‘Just make sure you’re down wind,’ Chalky called after me.

  ‘And watch out for those snakes,’ Spot sniggered.

  ‘Oh, very funny,’ I called back over my shoulder. ‘You and your flaming snakes!’

  ‘And scorpions!’ Dynamo added.

  The nearby dirt track ran between the steeply sloping hillsides and on the other side of it, at the base of the hill, I spotted a clump of convenient bushes and made my way across to them. Further down the track I saw a flash of light.

  Bren must be early, I thought and carried on with what I was doing.

  As I started back across the track, I heard the sound of an engine then saw another flash of light as a truck slowly made its way around the base of the hill. I stopped where I was in the middle of the primitive road and waited while the truck drove right up to me then stopped a few feet away. I couldn’t make out the driver with the headlights shining in my face but I heard the sound of the door opening and someone making their way towards me. To my surprise, a voice called out to me in Arabic.