by Geoff Wolak
Kitted out, a few of my lads assisting, Sasha’s team got ready, water drunk, drills practised, harnesses checked over and over before the Hercules touched down. I waved them aboard half an hour later, and they were soon off, my fingers crossed.
Back at the hut, I got a call from Sasha an hour later, the men all down safe, no large explosions as the HALO bags hit the deck. Aideed had called with information, so we were a go – and our Russian team would not blow up someone’s nice road for nothing.
At dawn I was up and waiting by my phone. It finally trilled. ‘Da!’
‘It’s Sasha. We blew the road in a bad spot, big hole, but only say a quarter of the explosives, but now we have a second place to blow it. Some jeeps of armed men drove past, southwest, so we let them go.’
‘Hopefully they will report the road clear.’
‘We move northeast now.’
At 3pm the call finally came, Sasha having blown the road in two additional places, now perched up high and observing a traffic jam below. But a team of good men were fixing the damaged road with fervour, and Sasha said they had the tools for the job. They had planned head.
I made a hurried call, Libintov’s men on standby, and I gave the go signal.
An hour later, as the sun hung low, Sasha’s team heard a heavy drone, and looking up they could see the An12s on approach. They could not see the RPG heads falling, but the valley below rippled with explosions just as the road repairs were coming to an end, the valley soon shrouded in dust and smoke from one end to the other.
Casper got ready, and with his Elephant Gun he fired down, a 1200yard shot, and he killed the man in charge, Sasha aiming at the command staff directing the repairs.
The sheer weight of numbers of RPG heads had made a difference, many jeeps and trucks hit and set alight, even a few tanks hit and damaged.
Sasha called me with an assessment, I called Aideed, and at dawn the next day the retreating shambles of a force met Aideed’s shambles of a force, and the two sides clashed for three days as F18s took photos, Sasha’s team picked up by a Lynx at dawn the next day.
And, after mounting pressure from the media, the White House gave their own go signal, and several camps along the Ethiopian border were hit by 2,000lb bombs and demolished, the photographs making the front pages in the States, the fact that the camps were largely empty not reported.
Aideed just about won the battle, his opponent lost a great deal of hardware and retreated to the usual standoff, and Aideed’s shambles returned to Mogadishu. It was business as usual in Somalia, the daily squabbles, the poor citizens always looking down the end of a barrel.
Two days later, not much happening save a few gunmen scared off, a twin engine Piper set down, and I was called for. Outside the command room Franks stood with a newcomer, the man flanked by four US Marines ready for trouble, eyes everywhere, their M4s pointing at their boots.
The newcomer was grey-haired, and he looked like he was in charge of something important, and that he took no shit from anyone.
Franks began, ‘This is Ted Chakovsky, Section Chief Mid East.’
‘Good to finally meet you,’ the man began. ‘Heard a lot, and you look the part.’
I shook his hand. ‘Welcome to the FOB.’
He led me away, the Marines tersely told to hang back. ‘We’re hurting, and some think we’re losing, and some think we’re doing a bad job of it. The jerk in the White House pulled us out of Somalia in 1993 because we lost some men, the reaction of someone watching his ratings and not thinking like a great military leader.’
I began, taking in the line of Pumas, ‘We’ll never win against al-Qa’eda because it’s an idea passed on from one generation to the next, father to son, not a physical place, not one person with some good ideas, not a base we can hit, not a country you can threaten or bomb, it’s in the minds of men.’
‘That’s a pretty fucking smart observation for a captain; I can see why you’ve done well, you see through the bullshit. Your last insert went well we thought, but the media back home felt otherwise. Then we lost Desert Sands, now the Somalis have missiles threatening airliners and the folks back home are scared, and when the folks back home get scared the politicians behave like politicians and make crap short-term decisions.’ He stopped and faced me squarely. ‘So how do we beat them?’
‘You can’t. We can’t. We can only plug the hole till the next generation come around to plug that hole, because the men I killed last week had sons, and the sons will take-up arms for a cause – or for a few dollars, and their grandkids will be ready a few decades down the line.’
‘You don’t see a solution?’
‘There is a solution, of sorts. We win the battle in the media, whether it’s truthful or not. What happens here on the ground is less important than what the voters read over breakfast and see on the big screen.’
‘You should be working for me.’
‘I get that a lot.’
‘So how do we win the media battle?’
‘I have an embedded reporter. If he wants to stay with us he prints what we say. His paper gets their circulation up, we get our message across.’
‘You let our boys take the credit for a few jobs..?’
‘And your military saved my arse a few times, so we’ll call it even.’
‘Any practical steps we can be taking, media manipulation aside?’
‘You need a change of culture amongst a few of your units, as Desert Sands achieved. They had the right attitude, men keen to fight, not saying a prayer before a job.’
‘You could profile and select a team, and quickly?’
‘It seems to be the thing I’m good at.’
‘And your bosses..?’
‘Will bow down to Washington as always and take it up the arse.’
He smiled. ‘You don’t sound at all cynical. So I tell my friends in Washington that we start over and replace Desert Sands, new team, new culture, and you’ll assist.’
‘Talk to my boss David Finch, get him to tell you the story of my Lone Wolves, from profiling to training. Then learn from it. Copy it if you like.’
‘I’m in London in a few days, and I know David. You and he ... get along? He’s a stiff-assed pen pusher!’
I smiled widely. ‘We have some leeway in our working relationship.’
He nodded. ‘We’ll talk again soon, we need some good press coverage, and most of that in the last few years came from you, so don’t get killed out here.’
‘You concern for my well-being is going to leave me with a warm glowy feeling all day.’
He laughed as he turned. ‘Fuck off.’
I went and found Max. ‘I have a story for you, rather an opinion on why we’re losing this battle against the terrorists.’
‘We’re losing?’ he puzzled.
‘Yes, we’re losing the battle. And these fuckers will bring down a British plane soon enough.’
I took Franks outside the day we were ordered back. ‘Your people won’t touch a Saudi, but I have friends in low places. If that Saudi were to take a holiday in Europe, or anywhere outside Saudi Arabia, he’d be vulnerable. All you need do ... is accidentally tell me when he goes on holiday.’
‘Let me ... have a think about that.’
Three weeks later, and as I had bet Casper, our Saudi friend was drinking and whoring in Zurich, his family with him oddly enough.
Rain swept tiles were gently moved aside, and I felt the cold night rain on my gloves. I now had a hole to use for my binoculars, so I carefully and quietly moved another tile aside, lower down.
Casper had won the toss of a coin, and so he now lay down in the dust of the dark loft, adopted his Elephant Gun and clicked the silencer on, a magazine full of tungsten rounds loaded. This rifle, however, had been bought by Tomsk’s contact in Finland, no track back to Echo.
Casper eased forwards, his silencer sticking out into the cold night sky and getting wet.
I lifted my binoculars. Across the square sat a very n
ice five-star hotel, all brightly lit, our subject of interest camped out in the penthouse suites, three suites taken up. He had been gambling earlier, followed by a trip to the local whorehouse – the quality whorehouse, and was now back, his suite well lit up, the curtains open.
I focused my binoculars. Two bodyguards hovered near the door of the vast room, our mark now on the phone. ‘Get ready.’
Our mark paced the room in an animated conversation, teasing us, till he finally faced the window, little more than six feet beyond it.
‘Three ... two ... one ... fire.’
The blast registered with me, the glass of the hotel room not shattering, but our mark flew backwards, his bodyguards running in. Four fast shots, and now the glass shattered, the bodyguards hit. Casper shuffled himself and panned right. Women in black burkhas in his sights, he started firing, nine rounds used to kill five women, huge blood-spatter patterns up the walls.
I turned back to the mark. A boy had entered the room, now knelt over his father. ‘Kill the boy,’ I coldly stated.
Casper moved again, got ready, a round blasting out, the boy’s head splattered up the wall as more bodyguards ran in. Casper hit three for three, blood everywhere. ‘Made a mess of that nice hotel room,’ he noted.
‘Job done,’ I told him, my tile eased back into place. I knelt as Casper withdrew, the wet tile back in place, switching on my torch as Casper placed down the rifle, both of us in facemasks and wearing gloves.
I illustrated the sleeping body of our Lebanese friend with my torch as Casper grabbed brass shells and placed them against the fingers of our friend, finally placing the fingers of our friend onto the rifle as a moan was issued.
I eased back with Casper, two torches now checking for evidence. We both nodded. Casper drew a Colt .45 and put three rounds into the back of our Lebanese friend’s head, the man’s face blown off.
Down the ladder we went, reversing our course, a final look, the hatch closed as distant sirens sounded out. Out the window we moved, eyes everywhere, down the fire escape quietly but getting wet. Van door open, the van’s engine running, we eased into the back and closed the door, Sambo pulling off.
A mile away, and Sambo pulled into an alley. He jumped out into the cold rain and changed the plates. At the outskirts of the city we pulled into a factory unit, no one around, a black Mercedes waiting, keys in it. Casper was driving since he spoke French - and we might be pulled over. Windscreen wipers working, we set off west.
Across the French border we pulled onto an airfield at 3am, out the car with our facemasks on, and a grey-haired man took the car without a word. We jogged through the rain to a C160 with its engines turning, ramp closing as we sat. Henri passed us our kit bags, the three us being the only passengers, the hold empty.
Four hours later we landed in Morocco at a familiar airfield, facemasks on - myself and Casper now in uniform, and a jeep took us to a familiar dusty firing range.
Hunt greeted us. ‘Back safe?’
‘We were here the whole time, east, at the border.’
He nodded.
At the usual fence I found the lads cooking and I sat with my team.
Mitch asked, ‘Anything interesting on the news this morning?’
‘Some rich Saudi was shot dead in a Zurich hotel room, along with his entire family – and his bodyguards.’
Moran lifted his gaze.
‘Some falling out,’ Mitch noted.
‘They found the body of a Lebanese arms dealer with a sniper rifle,’ I told him.
Mitch added, ‘Ah, well that explains it. This Saudi got mixed up in something he should have kept his fucking nose out of.’