Zero Option

by Chris Ryan

  As Whinger remarked, such treatment didn't exactly enhance the value of the machines - but then, after the operation had gone down, we weren't planning to auction them off in the main souk in Tripoli.

  We'd all ridden quads before, but we got a quick run-down on this latest model from Mike Molloy, the MT officer, a grizzled little terrier of a captain. 'They're fully automatic,' he said, sitting on one to demonstrate.

  'No clutch. The gear pedal's this one, by your left foot.

  As you move off, just keep coming up with your toe Super Low, One, Two, Three, Four. For reverse, push this red button on the panel between the handlebars, then down with the gear lever. Nothing to it.

  'Watch your starts, though. The motor's quite poky,

  and if you give it too much throttle it can put you on your back. As you'll see from the manual, wheelies are not recommended.' To demonstrate his point he started the engine, kicked into gear and revved up sharply. For a second I thought he'd overdone it. The bike seemed to leap into the air. It shot forward, but at the same time the front wheels came high offthe ground so that it was almost vertical, and Mike was clinging on like a jockey on the back of a rearing horse. A tiny bit more power and he'd have gone right over backwards, but in fact he came down safely and switched off. 'See what I mean?' he said.

  'Another thing to look out for is the tyres. As you realise, they're designed to operate at very low pressures - two point nine p.s.i. - cross-country. If you find you've got to run on tarmac, blow 'em up to at least double that or you'll knacker them.'

  We were given basic instruction in maintenance changing wheels, mending punctures, adjusting brakes, fiddling carburettor jets and so on - but Stew Stewart arranged to come back another day and go through the drills for things like ignition faults and fuel blockages.

  Most of the guys ignored the manuals that came with the bikes, but a couple of them gave short, satirical readings from the printed instructions. Whinger started honking off in a pseudo-Japanese voice: '“Always check for obstacles before operating in a new area.”' He gave a short, sardonic laugh. 'Thanks, mate. Just send us a load of large-scale maps of eastern Libya, all five thousands sheets! “Always obey local off-road riding laws and regulations.” Phone the Libyan Embassy, Geordie, and ask for a copy of the desert off-highway code. “Never go fast over the top of a hill.” For fuck's sake! If Gadaffi's nasties come after us I'll be going like shit off a shovel, I can tell you, even if I'm right on the summit of the biggest bloody mountain in North Africa.'

  That afternoon we loaded into a four-tonner and drove away to the Brecon Beacons for practice over rough terrain - through mud and water, up, down and across steep grass“ slopes. For. me, this was another psycho logical hang-up to be overcome. It was a motorbike accident which had led to my getting captured in Iraq: as the squadron had been moving up to a new location in the desert I'd dropped into a hole and smashed my left arm - and then, as an American casevac team was lifting me out along with other wounded, the chopper had been shot down. Now, once again, I was going to be riding a bike behind the lines in enemy territory.

  Admittedly I'd now have four wheels instead of two, and there wasn't a war on, but all the same the idea was a bit of a hurdle. To be nicked by the Libyans wouldn't be much less unpleasant than being nicked by the Iraqis especially as our presence in the country would probably be denied by the British authorities and we could easily be left to rot in one of Gadaffi's penitentiaries.

  Was it imagination, or did my arm produce a couple of twinges as I powered off up a rough grass track into the hills? For months it hadn't given the slightest trouble, even when I was on the weights in the gym, but now it seemed to be aching.

  I set myself to concentrate on balance, and getting the feel of the quad. With two front wheels the steering seemed much firmer than with one, but it was OK once I'd got used to it. The trick was to sit forward on the long saddle when climbing, back on the way down, and lean uphill on the cross-slopes.

  Pretty soon I had got the hang of it and started enjoying myself- and in fact everybody came back well chuffed with the machines, which were comfortable, fast, sure-footed and ideal for the job. Of course, we had been riding them with front and rear racks empty, and we realised they'd be a different proposition when loaded with all the kit and stores we were going to need.

  While we were out in the hills, a message had reached camp to say that our American contact had flown in from Langley, Virginia, and would brief us on the camp at Ajdabiya in the morning. With this in mind we stopped work and went home early.

  First light next day saw us piling into a Puma and whipping up to RAF Northolt on the western outskirts of London. It frustrated me to think that we were heading into the very area where Tim and Tracy might be held, and during the flight I was seized by the fantastic idea that I'd simply look down and see them being taken along a street - whereupon we'd bin our meeting with the Firm, fast-rope down on top of the prisoners' escorts, overpower them, and recover the captives.

  The rest of the journey into town - by road - took so long that we reckoned we could have tabbed it faster, and it was nearly ten o'clock by the time our wagon crossed Vauxhall Bridge, slipped in through twin security gates and pulled up in the basement of the Firm's forbidding new head-shed building on the south bank of the Thames. Our friend Gilbert met us in the basement and escorted us up into the heart of the block, punching in combination numbers to open one locked door after another. Security here was so tight that it felt as if we were in a submarine, passing through a series of watertight compartments. We'd been told that this building got swept electronically at least once a day to make sure no listening bugs had been infiltrated, and we had no difficulty believing it.

  We were never told the full name of the CIA agent who briefed us; Gilbert brought him into the lecture- room and introduced him merely as Gus. He was a short, stocky fellow in a navy blazer, with a pointed face, heavy suntan, close-cropped grey hair and shiny brown eyes - a combination that reminded me of a squirrel. Before he spoke, Gilbert gave us another dose of warnings about the need for total security - but here, in this alien environment, our guys were on their best behaviour, and Whinger didn't even scratch his ear.

  When the American began to talk we were riveted, because the depth of his information was amazing. It took a couple of minutes to get used to his broad southern accent, but soon we were hooked. Not even his habit of saying 'OK?' after every few words could put us off.

  Satellite data had been down-loaded'into his laptop, some of it enhanced into three-dimensional computer images, which he fired on to a screen, so that what we got was a series of snapshots taken from a variety of overhead angles. As we sat there watching, all the guys were impressed by the lecturer's high-tech apparatus and approach, but at the same time I couldn't help thinking how typical it was that, although the Yanks could see a fly twiddling its legs on the far side of the world, when they wanted guys to go in and shoot somebody unpleasant, it was the Brits whom they got to do the job.

  First Gus showed us the extent of the military camp.

  It was roughly rectangular, with the sides extending about two kilometres and the main approach road coming down to it from the north. Using a propelling pencil as a pointer, he picked out points of interest.

  'The perimeter fence is weldmesh,' he told us. 'OK?

  Ten feet high, with a two-foot extension tilted outwards on top. Four strands of barbed wire - dannart, you call it? - on angle irons I don't know whether you'll want to go through that or over it - through it, I guess. On the whole, we believe that security on the base is fairly primitive. The locals reckon the camp's protected by its location, with nothing but desert to the south. We can't tell from the satellite imagery whether or not the watch-towers are manned, but we think not.'

  'Excuse me,' I broke in. 'Is it all right to make notes?'

  'Go fight ahead - so long as you don't write down names, or anything that would identify the place to outsiders. OK?'

&n
bsp; 'Sure.'

  'So far as we can see, the fence isn't alarmed. No electric current in it, either - no sensors. Now, I'll just quickly show you the main areas of the camp. These are the accommodation blocks. Cookhouse, here. Mosque here - very important. Parade ground. Headquarter building, with a communications tower above it.

  Transport compound - you can see all the trucks lined up - and a few armoured vehicles here. Gasoline tanks in circular bunds. Gas filling point here. Two fifty-yard ranges; the main ranges are out in the training areas to the east. Ammunition bunkers way out on their own . . here. Armoury here. That's one thing about the Arabs: they can't stand having weapons around the camp. Everything has to be locked away - that is, except for the guns carried by the guards. This is the recreational area: football fields, volleyball court. OK?'

  'What are all those round things?' Pat asked.

  'These?' Gus pointed to two or three small dark blobs. 'Palm trees. Remember, you're looking at them from right overhead. Now, the building you're interested in is this one. Bottom left-hand corner, as God and our satellites see it. On your left if you approach out of the desert from the south.'

  The tip of the pencil-shadow trembled slightly as it hovered over an L-shaped structure set a little inside the angle of the perimeter fence. 'This seems to be a combination of office and residential accommodation.

  OK? It's on two floors, ground and upper, possibly also a basement. Concrete block construction, painted some light colour, buffor cream. Flat roof, double skinned to give some insulation from the sun. Metal window frames. This is where the target lives during his working week.'

  'How wide's that gap between the building and the fence?' I asked.

  'Maybe a hundred yards, maybe a little more. I'll take you in closer for more detail.'

  In the next image the building occupied most of the picture. Two vehicles were parked in front of it, and part of a swimming pool was visible on the left-hand side. 'OK. The main entrance is here, 6n the southern side. There's another door on the right-hand end, here,- and a rear door at the left, here. See this curving row of trees? It looks as though there's some sort of garden been planted in back. The private accommodation is here, around the west end. The room in which the target works nights is this one, on the corner of the upper floor. Two windows, one facing south, one west.

  Look at this.'

  The speaker put up a night-time shot, taken from an oblique angle. Everything was dim and hazy, and needed explanation. 'You're still looking down, but from a little way out front - a slightly different orbit.

  These are the lights on the perimeter fence.., and this is the south face of the accommodation building. The main doorway I mentioned is about there.' He pointed at the middle of the south front. 'Now. See the bright spot in this top corner? That's been there on several satellite passes made between one and two a.m. Rest of the building dark, this window lit, OK? That's where we think he'll be.'

  'But how do we know it's him?' I asked.

  Gus hesitated and turned towards Gilbert, as if uncertain who should answer the question.

  'Inside information,' Gilbert quickly explained. 'We have a sleeper who works in the building - a computer maintenance technician. The guy files us reports on a regular basis. The only thing is, he has one hell of a time because the power supply keeps going down. There are *back-up generators, but they don't work too well either.'

  I was rather impressed. I hadn't realised that the Firm had such a far-flung web of contacts. 'How late does the target stay there?' I asked.

  'Typically until two or three in the morning,' Gus replied.

  'And where does he sleep?'

  'In back of the building, on that same floor.'

  'What about guards?'

  'Two or three sleep on the premises. There are normally two on duty nights, but that doesn't mean they're going to be awake. You know what Arabs are like.'

  Gus paused, thinking. Then he added, 'If you're going in close, one thing in your favour will be the primitive air conditioning. There's no central system.

  Each room has its own unit set into an outside wall, and the fans are pretty noisy. Whenever the AC's on, there'll be a solid background roar. That'll help mask any sound you make.'

  'How far away is the nearest building?'

  The CIA man switched to another photo, halfway between the first and second in scale, and measured the space from the house to a neighbouring structure, offto the north. 'Also about a hundred yards, we think. This other thing's some kind of a store, probably uninhabited at night. I don't think it'll worry you.'

  For a minute or two we all sat staring, memorising details, and I made a few notes in my book. Then Whinger forgot himself and declared, 'All we need do is take a couple of Uzis with us and accidentally scatter them about the place..That'd put the finger on fucking Israel, all right.'

  I saw Gilbert looking rather pained, so I said, 'Not on, mate. We need to keep ourselves clean.'

  'Was that a joke?' asked Gus. 'I hope so. Oh, I nearly forgot. I don't want to overburden you guys, but there's a secondary target that would merit your attention.'

  He projected yet another image from his laptop and showed us a picture of a satellite receiving station - a thirty-foot steerable dish aerial with a couple of ancillary buildings - in a small compound of its own. 'This is one of the nerve centres of their military communications network,' he said. 'Knock that out and you'd do everyone a good turn. It was built by the Soviets, and with things being as they are now it might not be too easy to replace.'

  'Where is it in relation to the accommodation block?' I asked.

  'On the other side of camp. The east side. I think you'd see it OK from the perimeter wire.'

  'And how far from that gate you showed us?'

  'Maybe three hundred yards.'

  'P-PG,' said Whinger judiciously. 'Slip a rocket up it as we're moving off. No problem.'

  'Like I said,' Gus emphasised, 'it's very much a secondary target. Only to be engaged if you've hit Number One. And certainly I wouldn't want you to prejudice the main operation.'

  'Got that,' I said. 'Can you fill us in on the surrounding terrain?'

  'Sure.'

  A wide-angle shot (or maybe one taken from a higher orbit) showed an expanse of desert south of the camp. To our untrained eyes the picture didn't mean, much. Apart from a single dirt road coming out from the fence to the south-east and ending at a range, there were a few wadis and stream-beds winding about, but we couldn't identify anything else specific. Yet Gus, armed with notes, gave a useful general description.

  During the chopper flight in we would overfly one MS1L (main supply route), a metalled road running north-east to south-west, he told us. Once on the ground we'd have to cross another road, a smaller one, and a single large wadi. Down to the south the desert was flat, but as we approached the area of the camp we would come into a belt of dunes a couple of miles across from south to north, the range as a whole lying east and west, the northern edge of which was less than a quarter of a mile from the camp fence. Gus reckoned the dunes were 150 feet high, and should give us an excellent site for an observation post. The elevation was ideal: we'd be looking down slightly. Another picture, taken soon after sunrise, proved his point: strong light coming low from the east caught on the sweeping, curved rims of the dunes, casting pools of shadow hundreds or maybe thousands of yards long.

  As I stared at the picture my mind flew back to the Gulf, and the crappy gen we'd been fed in the run-up to the war. For months we had trained in the sand of the United Arab Emirates, firmly believing that the desert plateau in the west oflraq - where our patrols would be inserted - also consisted of sand. The basis of our belief was US satellite imagery, from which our own int boys had deduced that Iraq was covered with sand from top to bottom. Then, when our patrols had gone in, what did we find? The entire environment was rock and shale, with not a grain of sand in sight. All the kit we'd brought for building OPs was useless, and we were caught with our pant
s down: you can't build anything out of solid rock.

  Were we being given another load of crap now? I didn't want to seem aggressive, but I had to ask - so I put the point as politely as possible. 'Excuse me,' I said, 'but in Iraq we got stuffed because everyone misread the terrain.'

  'I know, I know!' Gus grinned in a friendly enough fashion. 'That was real tough. But the fault didn't lie in the imagery. The trouble was, your intelligence guys didn't know how to interpret the data they were getting. Nobody had time to brief them properly and pass information on down the line.'