by Chris Ryan
I sat holding my forehead in my hands. My head felt as if it were bursting. Already, with this new deployment barely announced, the stress was piling on.
This was going to be a high-risk operation, fraught with danger — could I stand the strain of another episode likely to be as traumatic as the one in the Gulf? Could I handle it on top of my acute personal troubles?
My instinct was to stay home at all costs, to be there when the PIRA dalled. I couldn't take the thought of somebody else making a cock-up that might lead to the hostages' death. But I knew perfectly well I had no option but to go; if I refused I'd be kicked out — not only from the Regiment, but out of the Army.
At moments of this kind it's easy to let resentment build up. The Regiment is notorious for pushing its members to the limit, putting them under intense pressure without regard to their mental state. The head- shed simply assumes that all the guys are fit, physically and mentally, all the time, and ready to go.
Now, for a few seconds, I thought, Ah, sod them.
Why can't they make a few allowances? Why can't they send someone else to do their dirty work? I looked up at Yorky and said, 'Does it have to be me?'
He stopped pacing and stood beside my chair. 'You know what the Regiment's like, Geordie. They'll talk sympathetically about your family, blah, blah, blah. But in fact they couldn't give a flying monkey's, especially when a job like this comes down from Whitehall. If the Government's ordered it, it's got to happen. It doesn't matter what you do — you can go in and spout Army regulations at the adjutant if you like — but I can tell you, it won't wash. Sorry, old mate, but it's got to be you.' His tone wasn't unkind, just matter of fact.
I took a deep breath and said, 'Fair enough. I suppose it might even take my mind off my home problems, having a fastball job to do.'
'Gradely, lad. And you're not just our number-one choice for the job; you're the only choice.'
'Why's that?'
'Because you alone will recognise the target without fail.'
'You could show other guys the mug-shot.' I pointed at the photo. 'They could memorise what he looks like.'
'It's not the same thing. You've seen him several times. You know him.'
'The thing is, this mug-shot's well out of date. Even when I saw him two years ago he'd aged a good bit over what you can see here. His face had got a lot heavier and more lined.'
'All the more reason for you to be in command.'
'OK. But Tony Lopez saw him just as much.'
'I realise that. I'm hoping I can get Tony on the operation with you for that very reason. But the whole thing's so sensitive that we're waiting on clearance from the Pentagon before we can include him in the team.'
'For Christ's sake!' I exclaimed. 'Is the target in fucking Moscow or somewhere?'
'Yer daft bat! Listen, Geordie. This is a black operation. You know what that means. Nobody has heard about it — nobody. It's not to be discussed with anyone — not even your closest mates. Outside these walls, it doesn't exist. And when it does go down, it will be completely unattributable: nothing you do must leave any trace to show that the legiment was involved.'
'Yeah, yeah. OK.' I'd been given all this shit many times before. I knew Yorky had to bring it out, but even so I didn't like having it rammed down my throat.
'There's to be a team briefing here at 1600 hours,' he was saying. 'All will be revealed then.'
In the afternoon, on my way across, I checked into the incident room again. Fraser and Bates were both intent:.i on a computer monitor, which I saw was carrying …. details of the player called Danny Aherne who liked sitting down to eyeball his victims. He was thirty-two, fair-haired, unemployed, and had a weakness for the drink. He was known to have been active in London earlier in the year, but had recently gone AWOL from his last known place of residence, a bed-and-breakfast room in Acton.
'He's involved,' said Fraser with some conviction.
'I'm damn sure of that. But I don't know why he's shifted. That may mean something or it may not. But those fibres… I'll bet my boots he was there.'
In Yorky's den I found five other guys assembled.
They'd been on the Wing for some time already, and constituted one of its two standing teams. The only one I knew well was Pat Newman, a big, dark, ruddy-faced lad with snow-white teeth, one of the heaviest eaters in the business, but very quick on his feet and a useful fellow to have around if things got physical. There was an obvious reason for him being on this new job: he'd done a course in Arabic, and spoke enough of the language to communicate about everyday matters.
A less acquaintance was Billy Walker, a little Londoner known as 'Whinger' on account of the fact that he was always moaning or making snide remarks in his own debased form of Cockney rhyming slang. He had peculiarly coloured hair — very light brown, like tow — which looked so artificial that strangers suspected him of dyeing it or wearing a wig; but anyone who lived and worked with him knew that it was his own, and never changed. He also had a horrible habit of rolling his own gaspers, which stank out any room he was in. But he was a good operator nevertheless: small, skinny and tough.
Of the other three, the tallest was Fred Parry, a fair- haired beanpole from A Squadron who'd had a great time blowing up fibre-optic comms towers in Iraq during the Gulf War. Then there was Stew Stewart, a gingery fellow from Merseyside who'd come into the P,egiment from the Cheshires. Stew, sometimes known as 'Turnip', wasn't exactly a figure of fun, because he was a good, willing lad, but he did take a lot of stick because of the trouble he had keeping girlfriends. With his broad, ruddy face, he looked exactly what he was a farmer's boy — and he was perpetually worried that his head was the wrong shape, a deficiency which he tried to remedy by resorting to fancy haircuts. That left only Norman Paxford, a stocky, dark Glaswegian whose aim in life seemed to be to talk as little as possible. He might easily have been nicknamed 'Jock' because of his hellish accent, but — maybe because he spoke so rarely — he was known simply as 'Norm'. People said that it was his Mexican-style moustache, neatly clipped into an upside-down U, that clamped his mouth shut and made it difficult for him to utter. But he was never rude, and if you asked him something he'd always answer, only in the fewest possible words. If you said, 'Everything all right, then, Norm?' he'd just go, 'Aye, thanks,' and leave it at that. In spite of his taciturnity he was a terrific worker, and utterly dependable.
We had a couple of minutes' chit-chat, and I noticed that the mug-shot of our Iraqi friend was up on one of the wall-boards, with several lines of writing beneath it.
Then the ops officer and Jimmy Wells came in towing a middle-aged guy in a shiny grey suit.
'I know this feller,' said Pat under his breath. 'He's been here before. We all know him from the Firm.
Gilbert the Filbert.'
Before we sat down on the chairs facing Yorky's desk, Mac introduced me briefly to the man from London: 'Geordie, meet Gilbert Dauncey. Gilbert — Geordie Sharp, commander of the team.' Then he led off, cautioning us yet again about the need for total security.
'Operation Ostrich,' he began. 'As you know, this is a black operation. That means there's to be absolutely no word of it outside your own team. If anyone drops the slightest hint about it, he'll be lkTU'd immediately.
OK?'
I saw Whinger bend his head to the left and flip the fingers of his right hand upwards past the back of his ear.
He could have been scratching at an itch or knocking away a fly; he could also have been saying 'Fucking roll on!' in sign language..
The gesture wasn't lost on Mac, who said sharply, 'Don't piss about, anybody. Just listen. The aim of the operation is to take out this man.' He indicated the mug-shot. 'You'll all have a chance to memorise the face. The guy in question is General Mohammed al- Khadduri, a top-ranking Iraqi who's defected to Libya.
Our colleague here' — he indicated Gilbert — 'will brief you on his background in a moment.
'First, though, the location. Al-Khadduri is now work
ing from a military camp on the outskirts of Ajdabiya. That's a town about a hundred and fifty kilometre, s south of Benghazi, the Libyan capital.'
Mac turned to face a map of north-eastern Africa, with the Mediterranean spread across the upper half and the Bay of Sirte taking a shallow scoop out of the Libyan coastline top-centre. 'Here's Benghazi,' he pointed with a broken-off billiard cue, 'at two o'clock on the coast of the bay, and here's Ajdabiya thirty ks inland, at five-thirty on the bay. The military complex is about here, ten ks beyond the southern outskirts of the town on the edge of the desert. All this ground immediately to the east is a training area.
'Cross-border insertion will be by”heli from the military airfield at Siwa, just inside Egypt.'
He placed the tip of his pointer to the right of a thick purple line running north to south, which marked the frontier between Egypt and Libya. 'A Chinook will put you down as close as possible to the target, but to avoid any chance of your being compromised the LZ will have to be at least fifty ks short of the camp. The run- in will be by quad bike.
'Now… timing. We have a strict timeframe, imposed on us by external constraints. The operation has to go down under cover of Exercise Bright Star, which is scheduled for May seventeenth to twenty- second. Bright Star is a major international deployment involving US and NATO forces. The aim is to establish and reinforce a simulated front line at a location in the Egyptian desert, against a threat from baddies to the south. If you like, it's a re-enactment of the start of the Gulf build-up of 1990. The exercise will involve all the NATO airforces as well as the USAF, and a considerable number of army units. That means there'll be a large number of air-movements, many of them from Cyprus, in the middle of which ours will get nicely lost.
'You'll stage through Akrotiri dressed as pathfinders — desert cam clothes, maroon Para berets and belts. As far as Cyprus, anybody who sees you will think you're umpires taking part in the exercise. Then, during the last phase of the flight, you'll change into rough civilian gear. Any questions so far?'
I glanced round the semicircle of faces. Everyone was looking hard at the map, thinking things over, but at that stage nobody had anything to say.
'All right, then. I'll ask for a few words about the target from our colleague from the Firm. Most of you know him anyway: Gilbert Dauncey.'
Gilbert stood up and began talking in a crisp, educated voice, public school but not lahdidah.
'General Mohammed al-Khadduri. You've seen his photo, and one of you I know has seen him. A big, burly fellow, we guess six feet, and powerfully built. A bit like a bear, but he's going to seed a bit now: we think he's put on a good deal of weight lately.
'His record wouldn't stand him in very good stead at the Court of Human 1Kights. For several years he was responsible for eliminating the political factions that threatened Saddam Hussein's government — and when I say “eliminating”, I mean “eliminating”. He didn't disband the dissident parties; he rubbed them out with wholesale executions, families and all. Another feather in his cap: it was he who directed the campaign of extermination against the Kurds in the north during the late eighties. The use of chemical weapons is his specialty, particularly against his own people.
'By the time of the Gulf War, Khadduri had risen to become Saddam's chief of military intelligence. At that time he enjoyed the President's full confidence, and spent much of the run-up to war with him in Baghdad.
In the first days of the air-war he had a narrow escape from an incoming Cruise missile, which hit a building when he was in the basement, but he came through the conflict unscathed.
'Afterwards, however, he and his boss fell out. We're not clear what caused the rift, but subsequent events suggest it was a basic disagreement over policy. Saddam wanted to soft-pedal things while he rebuilt his army and kept the Western powers in play, but Khadduri developed more and more extreme right-wing views. It seems that he took Iraq's defeat by the Coalition as a personal insult, and as time went on he became ever more eager to avenge it. Things reached the point at which he was going behind Saddam's back and privately inciting other Arab states to prepare for a joint assault on Israel, as a kind of reprisal. He was for a'n all-out attack using chemical and biological weapons.
'In the end, of course, word reached Saddam — and that was too much. Early last year, in February, Khadduri was arrested. It looked like he was for the chop, but then he was let out of prison on parole. He did a runner and pitched up with his friend Moammer Gadaffi, President of Libya. There, he's continued to promote the idea of an attack on Israel. In particular, he's tried to win support from Mubarak, President of Egypt, luckily without success. Worse, from our point of view, he's become a red-hot champion of the IRA.
He seems to think that by promoting revolution in Northern Ireland he can get his own back for the humiliation the Arabs suffered in the Gulf. Also, the CIA are worried that he's started supporting the fundamentalists behind the bombs on the mainland in the States.'
'Fuckin' 'ell,' muttered Whinger, maybe a bit louder than he meant. 'What an arsehole!'
Gilbert heard him and went on without a flicker: 'Precisely. Indications are that during the past year the amount of money reaching the IRA from Libya has more than doubled. Arms the same. Remember the merchant vessel that ran aground off Cork back in October? The Sirius? She was carrying containers that held more than a thousand AK-47s and several million rounds of ammunition. The manifest listed the containers as having been loaded in Amsterdam, but we believe they came all the way from Tripoli, with Khadduri's signature on the docket.
'In other words, this man has become a severe threat to the stability of the Province. He's also a menace in the Middle East as a whole. Now that he has the ear of Gadaffi, there's no telling what he may touch off. Our friends in the CIA agree his time is up.
'Fortunately we have excellent relations with Egypt, and we can use Egyptian territory as a covert staging- post for an operation. Still more fortunate…' Gilbert's face softened into the ghost of a smile. 'As of yesterday we discovered that one of you has the big advantage of being personally acquainted with General al-Khadduri.'
I nodded, aware that the other guys were giving me the eyeball. I glanced along the line and thought I'd better explain. 'When I was in the nick in Baghdad, after the patrol got compromised, this bastard used to come along once a week and give us the third degree.
I'd recognise him a mile off in thick fog.'
'He's your man, then, Geordie,' chirped Whinger.
'Nice little solo venture. Piece of cake.'
'Fuck off, mate,' I replied equably. Then I asked Gilbert, 'What's he doing, exactly? I mean, has Gadaffi given him a job?'
'Officially he's in charge of officer training. That's why he's based at Ajdabiya, which is Libya's answer to Sandhurst. But signal intercepts show he's using the place for every kind of political and revolutionary activity. I repeat: he's regarded as the most dangerous single operator in the Middle East, Saddam Hussein not excepted.'
There was a short silence. 'Gadaffi!' exclaimed Pat contemptuously. 'That guy's mad as twenty fucking hatters.'
'That's the trouble,' Gilbert agreed.
'Can you give us any personal gen on the target?' Pat went on. 'Any clue about his movements or habits?'
'Not much, I'm afraid. He's married, with a family, and he tends to join them at a house on the coast whenever he has days off. But while he's working he lives in the commandant's quarters on the base. One point that may prove relevant: we know he's a night owl, and sits up all hours working, when everyone else has gone to bed and things have quietefied down.'
'How do we know that?' I asked.
Gilbert hesitated, then said, 'You'll find out shortly.
Now, for details of the camp layout we're awaiting satellite intelligence from the CIA. A courier should be in London by tomorrow. I'm afraid some or all of you will have to come to London to see what he brings. The office have judged the material too sensitive for it to go outside, even here. Any
more questions? No?'
He sat down, and Mac took over. 'Thanks, Gilbert,' he said. Then he turned to us. 'I don't have to emphasize that your hit team will have to be absolutely clean. You'll wear Arab or some sort of civilian clothes, use Soviet or Chinese weapons and ammunition. None of you must carry any trace of any Western organisation.
Webbing, bergens, boots — everything's got to be checked for names or labels. If the team suffers a fatality, it will be absolutely imperative to bring the body out with you. If that proves impossible, you'll vaporise the body with a bar mine.'
'You mean we're going to take nice British bar mines with us?' Whinger said.
'No, no,' Mac assured him, 'we've got a few Chinese ones that'll come in handy.'
'How alarming,' went Whinger. 'Bloody charming.'
Mac ignored him and continued. 'Back to timing. As I said, Bright Star runs for six days. That means you've got to be in and out within this time bracket, while the cover lasts. And it commences on the seventeenth, which means you've got less than two weeks in which to get prepped up. OK? Any questions?'
'What about weapons?' Pat asked.
'You'll draw non-attributable AK-47s from the SAW section of the main armoury. They're being delivered from London in the morning. Once you've got them you'll store them here.' He gestured to the lockers at the sides of the room. 'Anything else?'
'Why isn't Tony Lopez in on this?' asked Fred Parry.
'He was in the nick with you, Geordie, wasn't he? He must know the guy.'
'That's right, he does.' Mac answered for me.
'Tony's an obvious candidate with his special knowledge. But because of American political sensitivities we haven't yet got clearance for him to join the team. We're still hoping he'll be able to come in.'
For a final word, Mac turned to me and said, 'If there's anything you want to know, Geordie, these guys will fill you in. They're all genned up on the way the Wing works. And if there's anything you need, don't worry about asking for it. What you may not realise is that the SAW has its own budget: within reason, money's no object, and there are no restrictions on equipment. If you need civilian clothes, for instance, go and buy them. Any bits and pieces of extra kit — the same. You're in a different game now.'