Wilco- Lone Wolf - Book 4

by Geoff Wolak

  After a good rest, a few men electing to use the range, they got to bed early, kit ready for the next day, Swifty and myself staying the night ready for the morning, the RSM on his way north.

  At 6am I got them up, breakfast stuffed down, and at 6.40am I held the briefing, white board to hand.

  ‘OK, listen up. You will be picked up by helicopter soon, and fly north for two hours, dropping at the following coordinates ... you will then move towards your objective, which is a few miles northwest, at these coordinates ... your mission being to observe, detail and report what’s there, men and equipment.

  ‘You will try and get as close as possible, maybe even get inside, but you’re to avoid all contact at all times. You’ll make sketches of the facility, note men and patrols, dogs, whatever is there, and consider if an infiltration is possible and safe – a close look at whatever is inside the secret base.

  ‘You will notice that the guards are some of the same people that kept you prisoner recently. You will have blank rounds, thunderflashes, to be used as a last resort. If you get into a firefight it would be seen as a failure. You’ll have three to four days, so take your time and do it right, stealth at all times.’

  At 7am a Chinook disturbed the peace, our guests ready and knelt down, soon running aboard, the Chinook lifting over the outer fence and climbing, a two hour flight up to Catterick, a few men sleeping.

  I went forwards, greeted a familiar crewman, and placed on the headsets. ‘You fuckers know how to fly?’ I asked.

  They glanced around, smiling. ‘Passed my license last week,’ the pilot told me. ‘What you up to in Catterick?’

  ‘Got the American Delta Force lads with us, they’re trying some of our scenarios, so don’t crash, you’d have the Yanks after you.’

  ‘You won in Canada, I read.’

  ‘Was no real test, it was all a bit lame, no effort from the other teams. And I told the top brass that to their faces.’

  ‘You’re becoming a diplomat, Wilco.’

  Setting down, we hit the heather and moss in daylight, a light drizzle, and spread out, all round defence on soft heather as the Chinook powered away. It grew quiet, and we were up and running into the tree line.

  ‘Mister Castille, check your map, get your bearings, and choose a forwards operating base in a suitable position near the secret military base.’

  He checked his map, checked the compass, hand signals given, and off we went in single file through the woods, slow and steady. Tracks were checked and then run across as men covered both directions, and two hours later we reached a viewpoint, the road and river 500yards below.

  ‘Your choice of forwards base?’ I asked Castille in a whisper.

  ‘Woods behind us.’

  ‘Enemy patrol radius?’

  He stared down the hill, seeing a jeep on a road, a track coming up. Facing me, he took a moment, ‘A click back, away from any tracks.’

  ‘That’s what I would do, because this position is not far for a roving patrol from that base.’

  Easing back and lifting up, hand signals given, we reversed course and headed deep into a wood, a piece of high ground with many escape routes. They bunched up when called in, all round defence.

  ‘Listen up,’ I began, and they faced me. ‘I’ve spent a great deal of time fighting in woods just like this. Woods give you cover from air patrols, good, and you can’t be seen from miles away – also good.

  ‘But you must always keep in mind that at night this will be pitch black, and moving quickly and quietly through it is impossible. Whether you’re special forces or boy scouts, dense woods are hell to move through if you’re trying to cover some distance.

  ‘In Bosnia, I used the dense woods to great effect. I also fell over a few times and hit my face. And when they couldn’t find me, they used mortars and then heavy artillery, I still have the scars. Where we are now seems ideal, but late tonight, if you want to move quickly and quietly away from here, it’ll be a bitch, gentlemen.’

  Castille stood, and glanced around. ‘There.’

  I stood. ‘Why?’

  ‘Hidden, but better escape routes, fewer fallen trees to negotiate in the dark.’

  ‘OK, let’s go, and late tonight consider your movement, quick and quiet.’

  The new camp was established, ponchos rigged up, and Castille dispatched four men to sneak up on the base and observe, a four man roving patrol to the rear, radios checked.

  ‘Think about your rotation of men,’ I suggested as I got a brew on. ‘You need 24hrs eyes on, to note all the patrol times and movements. And never trust one man’s opinion of the detail of that base, always take a consensus, because one guy figures something is 300yards, the next that it’s 400yards.’

  An hour later and whispered warnings and radio calls were given, and we hid, a patrol of British soldiers wandering by, nothing to do with the exercise. They failed to spot us.

  Three hours later, the return of the first patrol led to much debate, sketches drawn. The secret base was two hundred yards long, one fifty wide, had six huts plus a canteen plus a command hut, four jeeps, and patrols on the wire were every fifteen minutes, jeep patrols seemingly random but roughly every thirty minutes.

  With that detail down, the next four men were sent out, same mission. It was dark as they returned, and got lost, radios used.

  Over the radio I told them, ‘You’re on a ridge. It slopes down to the road, up to the plateau. If the high ground is left, you’re facing us, keep going, aim to be a hundred yards down from the plateau. Use the shape of the slope.’

  They got close, were seen, radios bringing them in.

  ‘Fucking black as anything in here,’ Mahoney noted. ‘That other bit of woods might have been a bitch, as you said.’

  Ponchos over heads, torches on, they criticised the previous sketch and the patrol times, a heated debate.

  I said, ‘Maybe they change shift at noon, not midnight, and maybe different NCOs have different ideas. But tell me, what would be your plan if there are no solid patrol times?’

  ‘Sneak up as best as possible before dawn, when they’re tired,’ a man suggested.

  ‘Or abort,’ I told him.

  ‘Abort?’ he queried.

  ‘What are your orders?’ I asked him through the dark.

  ‘Stealth, observe, make a sketch.’

  ‘And if you’re seen, the secret enemy base is vacated, no airstrike. Is it worth it?’

  ‘Would you abort?’ Castille asked me.

  ‘Yes, because the orders are for a stealthy observation, not to shoot the place up. Could always come back another time, or get local human intel. Always keep your mission orders in mind.’

  The next four men were sent out, others bedding down, but at midnight dogs were heard. They got up and got ready, but did not break camp.

  ‘Castille, those dogs are getting closer,’ I warned.

  He took in my dark outline. ‘You’d move camp, we have men out there.’

  ‘You can find them later, you have radios. What is your mission?’

  He took a moment. ‘Break camp now, fast,’ he hissed, and five minutes later we legged it away from the dogs, glad not to be in dense forest, two men tripping.

  Castille radioed the rear patrol to avoid the dogs and that we were relocating, but he could not reach the forward observers. We moved half a mile, found a spot and waited, no dogs heard for an hour, the rear patrol talked towards the new position and we met up, a new camp created.

  On the four-hour mark the forward observers radioed in, and were directed to us – eventually. I went out and brought them in. Hidden under ponchos, torches on, they debated the patrol times.

  I said, ‘What we don’t know ... is exactly what they do to call the patrol times, but we do know that having seen a patrol there won’t be another for fifteen minutes, and no jeep patrol for half an hour at least.

  ‘So your next four men come with me and Swifty, and we try and take a closer look. We wait for a jeep patr
ol to pass, then move quickly to the road and across, and if we get to the wire we wait for a patrol to pass, have a quick look and leg it away. We can’t be certain of times, but we can be certain of gaps.’

  I led the next four off, Swifty behind me, and we greeted the dawn with a rain shower, hiding in the trees. Following a tree line we dropped down the slope and moved bent-double along a wall, leopard crawling a hundred yards, knives out, heather cut, and we got under it, all bunched up, a view down the hill as it got lighter.

  ‘Jeep coming out,’ came an American accent.

  ‘Get ready,’ I called.

  The jeep drove past us, we eased out and leopard crawled down wet grass between high heather mounds, to a copse and up and running, down to the road and into a ditch, shrouded by bushes.

  ‘What’s that?’ a Delta asked. ‘There, a drain.’

  ‘Go have a look,’ I said, and he moved bent-double, a peek inside. Back to us, he said, ‘Goes under the road, big enough for us.’

  ‘Excellent. Go to the end and take a look, see if the far side is exposed. Check the road first.’

  He peeked out, checked the road both ways and ducked into the drain, returning fifteen minutes later, a jeep having passed us. A wet man reported, ‘Heavy bushes other side, shallow river too, could get across, bushes other side, no view from the camp.’

  ‘Be best done in the dark,’ I said. ‘A jeep would see you in the river.’

  ‘Hell, yeah.’

  ‘On me,’ I called, and we moved off, soon up to our knees in water, through a patch of thick and tall reeds, and into the trees. ‘OK, scan the camp, make notes, look for a way to get close.’

  ‘That far river bank is overgrown, could move along it easily, in the water, got an escape route,’ one man suggested.

  ‘Could get under that bridge, you can see the river is low there,’ said another.

  ‘What’s that?’ a man asked, and peered through his telescopic lens. ‘It’s a drain, from the camp, big, big enough to crawl up.’

  ‘You like sewage?’ Swifty asked him.

  ‘If this was a live operation, or a war, sewage or not we’d go have a look, buddy.’

  I nodded. ‘OK, that’s an option. Scan the camp, see what you can see.’

  After an hour we moved further along the river, through thick trees, till we could not see the camp any longer. Seeing a shallow section of river they elected to cross and we moved across quickly, into dense woods the other side.

  ‘Guys, we’re only three hundred yards away,’ I cautioned. ‘Dog patrols, remember.’

  ‘The dogs don’t go outside the wire,’ they insisted, and we moved west. Coming right around the rear of the camp, we used up an hour, a Delta climbing a tree and getting a good look.

  Coming down, he said, ‘I can see the phone lines. And this side, the fence is rusted and broken.’

  ‘We’d best get back with that detail,’ I told them, and we reversed course - but very slowly, crossed the river and then ran across the road, into the woods and up, a patrol observed till it passed, and we reversed course along the stone wall as it rained, up the tree line and back. I used the radio as we approached, but I knew exactly where they were.

  Castille was nudged awake, the news keenly reported, a debate taking place about the approaches. Castille annotated his drawings, the drain under the road, the sewage drain, the phone lines. Things were looking up.

  The same four men would eat, rest, and move out after dark, myself and Swifty observing them from the road, a “rescue” team of four men to be at the side of the river, Castille to be with myself and Swifty and coordinating everything by radio.

  At 1am I lay next to Swifty, fifteen yards above the road, and we could see our guests move into the drain under the road. After a jeep passed, four dark outlines moved through the swallow water and along the river, hard to see much of the time, but we could hear the radio chatter.

  They paused under the bridge as a jeep drove out, tested the drain over a long twenty minutes and reported that it opened inside the camp. Pushing on, they followed the river to the same point at which we crossed earlier, pushed inland and around, and to the rusted section of gate, reporting the wires.

  I radioed, ‘Throw something over the phone and electric wires, insulate yourselves, and pull them down, then withdraw 500yards and wait. Without power and phones they’ll flap about.’

  ‘Captain Castille?’ they asked.

  ‘Do it, they won’t know it’s us, and without power we can get closer.’

  Fifteen minutes later the camp lights went out, men running around with torches, dogs barking, men shouting. Jeeps drove around to the rear, men patrolled around the outside of the camp, the broken wires inspected before returning to camp. Things settled down, but now the patrols used torches, giving away their positions clearly.

  Castille ordered his patrol forwards, to have a close look.

  I faced his dark outline. ‘Tell your men to cut small strips of cloth, rub the cloth under armpits and groins, pee on them if they can, wrap the cloth around a small stone, throw them over the wire.’

  ‘The dogs,’ he noted.

  ‘The aim is to make the handlers lose confidence in the dogs.’

  With the patrol back near the wire they received their instructions and got to it, and fifteen minutes later we observed a torch beam and heard the barking, three additional dog patrols closing in. With patrols moving outside the wire, Castille issued urgent instructions for his patrol to move back two hundred yards.

  None were caught, so they must have moved in time, and the dogs returned to the huts. Castille ordered his men forwards, and they easily lifted damaged sections of fence and two men moved inside, peeking inside windows for five minutes before withdrawing.

  When Castille ordered them around the river to the sewage drain, I intervened, ‘Withdraw back across the river, team near the river withdraw back through when you see them.’

  ‘Why we quitting?’ Castille asked.

  ‘Because you’re pressing your luck and forgetting the brief.’

  ‘Stealthy observation.’ He took a moment. ‘We got most of what we need, so we bug out without risking men.’

  ‘Exactly,’ I said as we lifted up.

  The patrols came up to us and we legged it up the ridge, back to base. When instructed they switched on all torches and gathered around.

  I began, ‘This scenario was put together to practise infiltration, yes, but also to test patrol leaders and team leaders. Your orders were to observe, to report, to avoid everyone. You did that unseen, well done.

  ‘When you heard dogs at the first camp, right decision was to leg it away, not risk it. A leader with a bit too much bravado may not have done that, the result being a shoot-out.

  ‘You found the drain, good, you used the river, good, you found the sewage drain, good, and you found the wires and damaged fence, all good. What was needed ... was for you to check all sides and all angles, then set a decoy for the dogs and take a close look – ideally when it’s raining and dark.

  ‘You got inside and back out without being seen, and that was the objective reached, so the sewage drain could have meant a shoot-out, men killed and captured. This test ... was about knowing when to pull back, when to quit.

  ‘They teach you how to attack, they don’t often teach you when to abort, and special forces NCOs and officers can often have too much bravado, too keen to impress their bosses or be tough in front of their men.

  ‘You’ve now had two scenarios where you needed to think about the patrols, change of shift, characteristics of individual guards, the dogs, the timing, the weak spots.

  ‘How to escape, how to get in, two sides of the same coin. And always remember that the world over – soldiers don’t like the rain.’ They laughed. ‘If it’s raining heavily, those guard patrols will go to shit and you move in.’

  ‘I’m gunna watch the Great Escape when I get back,’ came through the dark, and we laughed.

  �
��An excellent idea,’ I commended. ‘In your line of work you need to go to sleep dreaming about fences, patrol times, blind spots, dogs. If you get the detail right, then getting in is possible without a shoot-out, without men killed.’

  As they got a brew on, wet trousers changed, I made a call on the sat phone, and at 9am we knelt as the Chinook came in, our ride taking us south.

  Back at The Factory, Castille said, ‘Some of the lads want to try the three-day test. It’s a challenge, and I think you hurt their pride a bit.’

  I smiled. ‘I’ll make a call, see if people can be moved around, but we can only get four through it.’

  ‘Rest are officially on holiday, they want to do London,’ Castille informed me.

  Four days later, and four half-dead Deltas stood in front of me. ‘Gentlemen, you wanted to attempt the test, so who still thinks it was a good idea?’

  The sniper instructors laughed, none of the Deltas thinking it a good idea, eyes half closed.

  I lifted the clipboard. ‘Jurgensen, you scored sixty-eight, a bit lame, and below regular SAS standards. Sketerri – if I pronounced it right, your scored seventy-four, not too bad, but still below the standard. Mister Castille, who could have been in London right now in a nice hotel -’ The instructors again laughed. ‘- you scored seventy-eight, still just below the standard. Lieutenant Mahoney.’

  I lowered the clipboard and held it with both hands, and stared at him. He took in the faces, and glanced at Castille. ‘How do you think you did?’

  He made a face. ‘I ... think I did OK.’

  ‘Lieutenant Mahoney .... you scored ... ninety-two percent.’

  He stared back, dead on his feet, his face muddied. ‘Oh.’

  ‘That qualifies you to work with my elite team, should you be a Brit. Well done, few get that score.’

  Castille faced Mahoney. ‘Good effort, Lieutenant.’

  ‘Get cleaned up, get the crap out of pants, hot drink, and you can sleep on the way back.’

  Three jeeps drove them back to the base, rooms allocated by the RSM – their kit already inside, sandwiches handed out, hot tea, and they were told to sleep, doors locked from the outside but could be opened from the inside.