by Chris Ryan
You'd be surprised how dangerous body wastes can be. Not only do piss and shit stink, and attract flies and wandering dogs, but one turd may give away a mountain of secrets. Laboratory analysis can show not only what type of food the guy who laid it has been eating, but also his age and the physical state he's in.
Whether or not the Libyans had the techniques for that sort of work we couldn't tell, but it was perfectly possible that undisciplined crapping might reveal that we were a bunch of fit young westerners.
We also devoted time to working out our loads. The maximum weights given in the manual were 60lb. for the rear rack on each quad, and 50lb. for the front; but it was clear that such puny limits were no'good to us. We decided, for a start, that each of us must take one jerrican of spare petrol and one of water — these two alone would add up to nearly 100lb. - and on top of that we had weapons, ammunition, explosives, cam-nets and poles for OPs, shovels, other tools, food, spare clothes and other personal kit. I told the guys to cut down to the absolute minimum compatible with safety, and everybody kept packing and repacking to see what they could leave out. Another necessity was to ensure that the kit was properly secured to the bikes. I wasn't happy with the straps I already had, so I went down to Meg, the camp seamstress, who ran me up some webbing straps with ratcheted buckles to my own design.
After discussing what we needed and what we didn't in various Chinese parliaments, with all the team sitting round for a general discussion, we decided to take a single trailer, in which a good load of the heavier, bulkier items like jerricans, spare tyres and cam-nets could travel. One of the quads would have to pull it, but we could take turns — and, as somebody pointed out, if we did get a casualty, the wounded man or dead body could be transported in it. So the MT section obtained a trailer, and put it through the same process of removing all its identification marks.
As always in the Regiment, physical fitness was left to individuals. All the guys knew that they had to be in really good nick; if we hit trouble, our lives might depend on our ability to cover big distances at speed in *alien conditions, possibly with little food or water. So there was no need for organized runs or training sessions; people just went on with their own fitness routines whenever they had time. It was the same with inoculations, l:(ight at the start I had told everyone to make sure his jabs were up to date, and, if any were missing, to get his arse down to the Med Centre pronto.
The two RAF crews who would be flying us came down to give us briefings and discuss our requirements.
Both were dedicated to special forces support, so that they were old friends, and I recognised Pineapple Pete, the Here captain, from several earlier missions. (Why he was called that history did not relate; I suppose some Petes just are pineapples.)
'Off for a nice little drive in the desert, are you Geordie?' he asked. 'Just the job for the time of year,' of sightseeing. Nothing dramatic.'
The Here crew were on a need-to-know basis. All that mattered was that they took us to Cyprus, and on to Siwa, according to. the schedule that the Kremlin had devised. What we were doing was another matter and something about which they didn't even ask. The crew of the Chinook had to have more information: they knew that we were on a non-attributable operation, and they knew to within a few miles the area in which it would take place. But they, too, were in the dark about our target, and Steve Tanner, the skipper, was no more inquisitive than Pete. Of far greater importance to him was the state of the moon on the night we went in, and he was glad to find that it would be three-quarters full.
Together with him, his co-pilot and his head loadie, we worked out distances, timings, weights and so on.
But we never breathed a word about our target. At the back of my mind I kept thinking: there's always a chance that the hell will go down in the desert, and if it does, the less the crew know about us, the better- the less they can give away. All the same we had to plan emergency drills with them, in case the chopper's navigation systems went u/s, or it was shot down or forced down by engine failure. There were emergency rendezvous points to be memorised and procedures to be worked out. In the last resort, we might have to destroy the aircraft with explosives to make sure that no Libyans got their hands on it.
The crew also needed a cover stoW, to account for why they were in Libya at all. We decided they would say that they'd been taking part in Exercise Bright Star, that their navigation systems had gone down, and that they'd flown into Libyan air space by mistake. That might not sound very convincing but it was the best that could be devised.
FIVE
My own trouble was that I couldn't seem to shake off the tension which still built steadily. Normally I find the best answer to mental stress is hard physical exercise, but this time the remedy wasn't working. I was forcing myself to run and work out every day, yet still I was unable to relax, and sometimes I thought my head was going to burst with the pressure.
My days were packed with activity; not so the nights.
Back at the cottage I had far too much time to brood.
Several times I had asked the SB guys if there was any future in making some initiative on the hostage situation ourselves, trying to put out feelers, but the answer was always, 'No. The PIRA have got to move first. Unless, one of these days, a tout picks something up, or we get an intercept that gives us a line.'
Tired as I was, I found it hard to sleep — and the nightmares started again, similar to the one I'd had after the Gulf. Usually I was travelling fast through the dark, on a strange kind of roller-coaster or maybe a bike, until suddenly something grabbed me by the left arm, so that terrific forces threatened to tear me in half, setting up the most horrendous pain, and I'd wake up in a muck sweat, yelling with fright.
Soon there were only five days left before takeoff.
So far, everything had gone well. Then we had a setback which caused aggravation and distress at the time but almost immediately bounced back to our advantage.
We'd gone on into one of our nearby training areas to try the quads fully loaded on rough terrain at night; our aim was to run through the main moves of the operation, using a range-hut as the target building.
Having ridden to within walking distance we all tabbed forward to a wire fence. Pat and I then cut our way through, leaving the rest of the guys on the barrier, two to guard the opening we'd made, two to lay diversionary charges four hundred metres to the east, in roughly the position occupied by the south gates of the Libyan camp.
The first stages all went according to plan. Pat and I made a covert approach to the building, broke in through a window, fired a couple of rounds through a Hun's-head target in one of the rooms, and then let off a stun grenade outside to indicate that things had gone noisy. As e were moving back to the fence, a big bang went off down the llne, simulating the diversionary explosion, and we all legged it to the spot designated as our ERV.
So far, so good. But by then heavy rain had come on, and as we rode away in the dark the bikes began to slither around like snakes on the greasy grass. We were only using bags of sand as weights, but we'd measured them out and made sure that we had eighty pounds on the front rack and a hundred on the back, well strapped on. The loads certainly pushed the quads down on their suspension and made the steering heavier.
Coming downhill close to the lip of a ravine, Fred Parry, our lanky explosives star, hit a rock and skidded towards the edge. The crust of heathery peat broke away beneath his left-hand rear wheel, and a second later he and the bike were rolling over and over down the steep bank towards the stream.
He might have got away with it if it weren't for the lumps of rock sticking out from the sandy bank. By sheer bad luck the quad came down on him and pinned him against a rock that had no give in it, dealing his left leg a fearsome smack. He finished up face-down in some grass with the machine on top of him and the engine still running, wheels turning.
I'd been tiding next in line, and there was just enough light for me to see him go arse over tip down the bank. In a flash
I was offmy own bike and running down towards the casualty.
Fred was pinned down by a handlebar in the small of his back. His right leg was straight, but my torch-beam showed that his left leg was bent out at a diabolical angle.
I yelled, 'Don't move!' and reached under the handlebar panel to switch off his ignition. The smell of petrol was everywhere. I had visions of a sudden w00f.r and the pair of us on fire.
Fred was just moaning, 'Shit! Shit! Shit! My fucking leg!'
'Keep still,' I told him again. With a big heave I rolled the bike off him, back on to its wheels. At that moment heads appeared against the sky on the tim of the ravine above, and somebody shouted, 'Get up, wanker!'
'Bollocks!' I yelled at them. 'He got a bad break. Get on the mobile for the chopper. Tell them the casualty's got a broken leg, high up. Femur or hip.'
I knelt down beside l=red. His eyes were screwed tightly shut. 'How is it?'
'Fucking horrible.' He tried to move and gave a groan.
'Stay how you are. It'll be better if we don't try to move you. The doc's on his way. He'll be here in twenty minutes.'
The other guys came down and gathered round, making sympathetic noises now. Since we were only training, we had only a limited medical pack to hand, and so couldn't give Fred anything to ease the pain. But we wrapped him in our sweaters to keep him warm and covered him with ponchos to throw the rain off. I stayed with him while the others recced round for a place at which the chopper could put down. The ravine was too narrow for the pilot to hover, andit was obvious we'd have to carry the casualty up on to more level ground; but I reckoned it was better to wait until the doc had put a shot of morphine into him and got the leg splinted.
As I chit-chatted to keep up his morale, the rest tied ropes on to the stranded quad. With one guy steering it and two bikes pulling from above, they heaved it up on to the open hillside. The fuel tank had been punctured on the top, presumably by impact with a rock, but apart from a few dents and scratches the machine still seemed in remarkably good nick. The rest of the guys then got their bikes deployed in a big circle, with their headlamps shining inwards, to make a pool of light on which the chopper could put down.
The recovery went without a hitch. In twenty-two minutes from call-out the standby Puma was overhead and settling towards the lighted patch. In a few more seconds Doc Palmer and his medic were beside the injured man with their bags of tricks. Within five minutes they had him hot to trot, well doped with morphine, his left leg secured in a pneumatic splint blown up like a giant condom, which held the broken limb snugly alongside the good one in the stretcher.
While they were working we loaded the bent quad into the Puma and lashed it down. Then four of us carried Fred up out of the ravine and slid him on to the floor of the chopper. The last we saw of him, he was giving a cheerful wave as the helicopter lifted away.
On our way back to camp I felt depressed. With four days to go, we were a man down and urgently in need of a replacement. But then, as if Pat had intoned Allah tearim ('God is good') a few hundred times, I found we had one: that afternoon, clearance had at last come through from Washington for Tony Lopez to join the team.
For me this was a big breakthrough, and it gave my morale a boost. Tony was the guy I wanted more than anyone else — partly because he too would recognise the target and remove any possibility of identification error, and partly because I knew he was a ferociously effective operator, veteran of many hairy operations in Panama and elsewhere. Having spent five weeks in gaol with him, I was absolutely confident that we could rub along together. Besides, he knew more about the Arab world than the rest of us put together, because, a couple of years before the Gulf, he'd run a SEAL team job in Abu Dhabi, instructing the local forces in weapon training and close-quarter battle techniques. Like Pat, he'd done a course in Arabic, and had a smattering of the language.
Until then I'd observed the letter of the law and hadn't given him (or anybody else) the slightest hint about what I was doing. I'd had to tell Fraser that I'd be abroad at the end of the week for six or seven days, but I hadn't said what the operation was or where it would take place.
Now, with the agreement of the ops officer, I was able to put Tony in the picture.
When he heard what the deal was, he leapt up and punched the air with loud whoops of 'Great fuckin' snakes!'
'You're going to have to do the explosives,' I warned him. 'That was poor old Fred's job.'
'No sweat!' he cried. 'I've blown the shit out of more goddamn automobiles, trucks, houses, trashcans, bridges and railway lines than you could ever imagine.'
For a more thorough briefing, we decided that he should come out to the cottage and cook a celebration dinner.
The enemy, however, had other plans. At six-thirty that evening I'd just reached home when the incident room rang to say that the PIRA had called what they thought was my own number. I was to return immediately.
Having scorched back, I listened with a mixture of rage and fascination to the brief tape recording.
'I'll speak to Geordie Sharp,' said a man with a strong Belfast accent.
'I'm sorry,' replied Karen, the Streisand girl, who was on duty, 'he's working at the moment.'
'Can I call him somewhere else?'
'Afraid. not,' she said. 'He's out and about.'
'Who are you, then?'
'I'm looking after the house for him. Shall I get him to call you? Who's speaking, please?'
'Nobody he's heard of. What time will he be back?'
'What time is it now? I haven't got a watch.'
'Now? It's twenty-five past six.'
'Well… he said seven o'clock.'
'Half an hour, then?'
'That should be fine. Can I give him any message?'
'No. I'll call.'
'What name shall I tell him?'
'No name.'
'No name?'
'You can say Kevin.' And with that the man had switched off.
The call had been made from a mobile. From the way the signal came and went we were pretty sure he'd been in a car, driving around. He'd been on the air only a few seconds; Special Branch would have needed four or five minutes to DF him accurately. But at least there was now a chance of another call coming through for them to work on.
I listened to the tape three times. The twang of the accent — 'nay', almost 'nayee', for 'now' — took me straight back to Northern Ireland and the slimy, sleazy methods of the PItLA. In particular I thought of the night when, lying in a ditch a few yards from an isolated farmhouse, I could have topped Farrell as he stood there bollocking some underlings for failing to go through with a shoot. I remembered how he'd roared 'Cunts!' at them, addressing them as though they were shit. The guy had been barely thirty yards from me. My companion and I could have dropped the whole group of players — but the head-shed had forbidden us to open fire because one of them was then the most valuable tout in business.
This guy on the tape had the same sort of peremptory, domineering manner. The way he'd started in — 'I'll speak to Geordie Sharp' — immediately put a,stamp on him. There was no question of'can I…?' or 'please', just arrogance and bluster.
'Christ!' I muttered. 'Just wait till the bastard comes through again. I'll sort him.'
'Take it easy, Geordie,' said Fraser, who'd come flying back into the incident room from the digs he'd taken in town. 'Whatever your feelings, it's no good getting stroppy with these people. They're always hoping to make you lose your rag, and if you do you play into their hands.'
I settled in to wait. The girl had said I'd be back in half an hour. Kevin, whoever he was, should call again around seven. I rang Tony and told him I'd been delayed. 'Why not go on out to the cottage and make yourself at home?' I suggested. 'You know where the key is — on the hook.'
'OK,' he agreed. 'I've been to the supermarket and got the stuff to cook something real good. I'll see you later.'
As I hung around, the SB girl, Karen, began to get on my tits again. I
had to admit that she'd handled the call as well as anyone could have — she'd tried to keep the guy on the line, and given nothing away — yet there was something about her that annoyed me, an air of complacency that came over more in the way she looked and acted than in anything she said. She was wearing a track suit of dark-blue velvety material, and she seemed unable to keep still. She.was forever looking at her nails, filing one of them for a second or two, bringing a mirror out of her handbag, tweaking at her eyebrows, patting her fair hair into place, all as if she was trying to attract attention. The trouble with her, I decided, is that she's too damned pleased with her looks. I also caught her staring at me a couple of times in a way that was strictly unoperational. I realised that she must have been bored to tears, sitting around day after day on her fanny with nothing happening, living in some dreary bed-and- breakfast dump away from her home, wherever that was.
I knew I should have made an effort to chat her up and be friendly, but I just had too much on my mind.
Seven o'clock came and went. Seven-thirty, eight, eight-thirty.
Fraser could see I was getting more and more steamed up. 'Relax, Geordie,' he said. This is standard practice. They do it to wind you up. Don't fall for it.
Stay cool.'
'It's OK for you,' I said. 'It isn't your kid they've got.'
'I know. But I do have a little girl about Tim's age. I can imagine what you're feeling.'
I'd been so wrapped up in my own problems that I'd never paused to think about Foxy's domestic circumstances. The news that he had a family made him seem suddenly more human. Looking at the lines on his forehead I thought, You must have started late, to have a daughter of four. And he, as if reading my mind, added, 'I didn't get married till I was thirty-seven.'