Killer Elite (previously published as the Feather Men) (24 page)

“High explosive and white phosphorus, Bob,” Mike ordered. The WP mortar shells would provide an instant screen of white smoke among the
adoo
, upsetting their aim and giving Labalaba time to prepare the twenty-five-pounder for action.

“Right, boss,” Bob replied and radioed his mortar-fire directions to Fuzz Pussey, an Oldham man, down in the mortar pit.

Mike could see major trouble was imminent. He turned to the powerfully built trooper lying behind the sights of the .50 Browning machine gun.

“Pete, see if you can establish comms with HQ.”

Pete Winner was a northerner with a fiery nature. In May 1981 he was to lead the Alpha Assault Group raid on the Iranian Embassy in Kensington, London.

Pete left the Bat-house roof and tapped out a Morse code message to SAS Headquarters near Salalah: “Contact. Under heavy fire. Wait. Out.” Sand and mud showered his face as a brace of 120mm Katyusha rockets exploded nearby.

A dull monsoon dawn had broken over the shore and the village. The SAS men wore shorts, shirts and desert boots. All were bare-headed.

For half an hour the attackers poured bullets, mortars and rockets at the forts and the Bat-house. Bob and Fuzz
returned mortar fire as best they could and the others formed a line to haul ammunition boxes up to the roof.

Shortly before 6 a.m. there was a sudden lull in the bedlam and little children appeared on the roofs of the town houses behind the Bat-house. Bob Bennett cupped his hands and shouted, “Go down, go down.”

The two SAS machine guns remained silent, not wishing to give away their position until a ground attack began. At exactly 6 a.m. all hell broke loose.

From shore to shore across the length of the wire the
adoo
opened up on the Mirbat defenders and, in groups of a dozen, their commandos began the assault. Using the still dim light, the clinging wraiths of mist and the broken ground for cover, they darted forward from rock to rock. They outnumbered the garrison by five to one and their firepower was greatly superior.

On the rooftop Pete Winner waited behind his heavy machine gun. Air-cooled and belt-fed, it could fire up to six hundred rounds a minute.

A few paces away Geoff Taylor, on loan to 8 Troop from G Squadron, adjusted the sights of the smaller 7.62 GPMG (General-Purpose Machine Gun) and prepared the feed belts with help from Roger Coles, a Bristol man built thin as a rake.

Mike felt the tension slacken in his stomach. He cleaned his spectacles with his shirttail and peered into the fog of dust and cordite. He forced down an appalling surge of fear.

Men were advancing on foot toward the perimeter wherever he looked. As they broke into a run, Mike turned and shouted, “Open fire.”

Winner and Taylor were totally efficient with their weapons. The ground to the north of the wire was soon littered with
adoo
bodies shredded by heavy .50-caliber and high-velocity GPMG bullets.

The advancing PFLO lines continued, ignoring the screams of their dying. The wire was breached in places, and rocket launchers set up behind rocks. Soon the Dhofar Gendarmerie fort and the nearby gun pit shook to direct hits from Carl Gustav rockets. Gaping holes appeared in the fort and bodies of dead gendarmes slumped over the wall embrasures.

The gun pit was undermanned but Laba worked like a demon to load and fire the Second World War relic over open sights and at point-blank range. His activities attracted a hail of bullets, one of which removed part of his chin.

Back at the Bat-house mortar pit 8 Troop’s second Fijian, another giant, named Sekavesi, lost walkie-talkie contact with his friend and braved seven hundred yards of open ground under heavy fire in a dash from Bat-house to gun pit.

Roger Coles sneaked out of the Bat-house with a Sarbe ground-to-air beacon. He hoped to call a helicopter in from Salalah to evacuate the wounded. Choosing a suitable spot close to the beach, he signaled the machine, which came in low over the sea. Murderous enemy fire precluded any landing and the helicopter veered away into the mist. Coles was lucky to make it back to the Bat-house.

In the gun pit Sekavesi and the wounded Laba were working the twenty-five-pounder. Covered in blood, black cordite and sweat, burned by the empty brass cases, they slammed round after round into the wire to their front. A 7.62 bullet entered Sekavesi’s shoulder and lodged itself close to his spine. A second bullet cut a deep furrow along his skull. Blood cascaded down his face, but realizing the imminent danger of being overrun, he propped himself against a sandbag with his rifle and, wiping blood from his right eye, continued firing at the wire.

Laba limped across to a 60mm mortar tube. A bullet penetrated his neck and the great Fijian fell dead. Beside him in the pit the Omani gunner lay writhing with a bullet in his guts. The big gun, of key importance to the defense of Mirbat, fell silent.

On the Bat-house roof Mike was deafened by the numbing roar of the battle but he sensed the sudden silence in the gun pit. Receiving no response to repeated calls with his walkie-talkie, he knew he must go to the pit without delay. Bullets were now passing over the Bat-house from the south as well as the north. This could only mean the
adoo
had outflanked the forts and were already into the village itself. Eight Troop were surrounded. Mike forced this unpleasant turn of events to the back of his mind. Bob, Pete and the others could hold the Bat-house; he must help the Fijians defend the northern perimeter at all costs. The thought of running the gauntlet from Bat-house to gun pit now that the
adoo
lined the perimeter wire with their full firepower was to stare death in the face. Yet every man on the roof volunteered to go with Mike. He chose Tommy Tobin, the medical orderly. As he was about to set out, Bob reminded him, “You’ll not get far in your flip-flops.”

Mike descended to his bed space and laced up his desert boots. Then the two men, edging around the mortar pit beside the Bat-house, sprinted to a low wadi bed and used its cover to advance a few hundred yards. They were halfway to the gun pit when the
adoo
spotted them and opened fire. With modern weapons, especially machine guns, and at a range of a hundred yards, it is not at all difficult to hit a man-sized target. Fifty or sixty trained PFLO guerrillas now adjusted their weapon sights and concentrated their fire on Mike and Tommy.

Once clear of the wadi there was not a scrap of cover. Only speed and sheer luck preserved their lives during the four long minutes of their run to the gun pit. Mortar
rounds exploded about them, burning tracer sighed above their bent backs and, ever closer, the ground beat of a chasing heavy machine gun pursued their path. From his rooftop Pete Winner spotted the
adoo
machine-gunner and, adjusting the sights of his Browning, blew the man apart. Mike and Tommy, lungs heaving and eyes blinded by sweat, flung themselves over the gun pit sandbags, Mike landing on the eviscerated stomach of a dead Dhofar Gendarme.

Mike summed up the position. In minutes they would be overrun. Only Sekavesi’s rifle was still active in the pit and many
adoo
were already through the wire entanglements.

The Dhofar Gendarmerie fort close by was holed and silent. All
adoo
fire was now directed on the gun pit and its occupants. The gun’s steel shield rattled and clanked as bullets struck its armor, direct hits slicing through and entering the pit behind. Tommy Tobin’s jaw and one cheekbone were shot away from his face. He lay by Laba’s body with blood pumping down his neck.

A group of
adoo
broke through the wire and rushed to the far wall of the fort. Creeping round to the corner closest to the gun pit, a mere fifteen yards away from Mike and Sekavesi, they unslung and primed their hand grenades, closing in for the kill.

The endless hours of snap-shooting at targets back in Hereford in which both Mike and Sekavesi, like all SAS men, had been thoroughly schooled, now paid off. Ducking and weaving within their pit, Mike subjected everything that moved to the quick double-tap, two-shot sequence that is the hallmark of Hereford training. He killed the first
adoo
just after he had unpinned a grenade. The man’s own body covered the explosion.

A light machine-gunner targeted the two survivors and for a while movement was impossible within the gun pit. Unable to shoot at the approaching
adoo
, Mike failed to
see a grenade land on the sandbag above his head. The explosion filled the air with sand, steel and a noise that seemed to crack his eardrums. Mike forced himself back up to his knees and then fully upright. Quickly he palmed dirt from his spectacles and, as he replaced them, saw the blurred image of an
adoo
immediately ahead and beneath the fortress wall. He fired twice and blew the back of the man’s head onto the masonry.

A half dozen grenades arched out toward the gun pit. Most detonated against the outer sandbag wall but one rolled over the top of the sacks and dropped onto the body of the dead gendarme. Mike watched the smoke wisp away from the six-second fuse and braced himself for death.

The grenade failed to go off. Mike winged a prayer of thanks to God and began to wonder why he was still alive. He felt no fear anymore. If he could survive this far, he was going to make it. A bullet passed through his hair and another fanned his cheek. He clearly saw an
adoo
aiming at him from beside the remnants of the perimeter fence. He killed the man and saw his Chinese field cap hooked up by the razor barbs of the wire.

Two BAC Strikemaster jets roared by, braving the near-impossible visibility. A curtain of
adoo
machine-gun fire rose to meet the planes and both were holed. They wheeled over the sea and Mike placed a fluorescent cloth panel on the floor of the pit as a guidance to the pilots.

The Strikemasters did what they could during the brief seconds of mist-free attack. Cannon fire and rockets racked the perimeter wire and gave the defenders of Mirbat a short but welcome respite.

Badly damaged, both jets limped away toward Salalah and the
adoo
attack resumed. Mike could now hear heavy firing from the seaward side of the gun pit and he called Bob Bennett to bring mortar fire down on the gun
pit’s immediate attackers. The SAS mortar man, Fuzz, jacked his tube up to maximum elevation, but Mike was still not happy with the results.

“Get the bloody rounds
closer
,” he ordered.

“I can’t,” Bob shouted at his walkie-talkie. “They’ll land right on top of you.”

“That’s what I want,” was Mike’s only reply.

Hearing Bob’s relayed orders, Fuzz grinned and, lifting the weapon by its legs, hugged the tube to his chest. Aiming by trial and error, he sent bomb after bomb into the immediate vicinity of the gun pit.

Two more Strikemasters attacked the perimeter and at last the
adoo
, some five hours after the attack had started, began to retreat into the mist. To the south the sounds of battle mounted over a wide area and Mike was greatly relieved at a radio message announcing the arrival of G Squadron helicopter reinforcements. They had been called off a training exercise and fitted out for battle as quickly as possible. Within an hour the fresh SAS force had driven the remnants of the
adoo
into retreat.

Mike left Sekavesi in the pit and entered the shattered fort. Major Alistair Morrison of G Squadron found Mike there. In his subsequent report he wrote, “I was speechless when I saw the area of the fort. There were pools of blood from the wounded, mortar holes, many rings from grenades and the twenty-five-pounder itself was badly holed through its shield. The ground was scarred by the many grenades which had exploded. It was obvious that an extremely fierce close-quarter battle had been fought there. Each one of Captain Kealy’s men made a point of telling me that he was the bravest man they had ever seen … I believe his inspired leadership and bravery saved the lives of his men and the town from being captured.”

Amid the carnage and the body bags, Labalaba was identified and taken away by helicopter. Over a hundred
of the PFLO attackers had been killed and many of the defenders were dead or dying. Bob and Mike sat together on the Bat-house roof feeling drained yet elated. Tommy Tobin was sent back to England to have his face rebuilt. Mike later visited him in the hospital in Aylesbury. A broken tooth had lodged in Tommy’s chest and he died two months later.

Three days after the Mirbat attack Mike and his men returned to Britain on leave. Mike sat with his parents in their sitting room at Forge House in Ditchling, East Sussex. There had been no news coverage of the Mirbat event in Britain. Over supper and until 1 a.m., Mike unburdened himself to his parents.

“It was exactly like watching a film,” he told them, “except that the dying really died. I thought I would be killed and I worried about people coming here to the house to tell you I was dead … it was very bloody … I felt a great peace when it was over.”

Two years later Mike and Bob Bennett met at the SAS London headquarters and were shown an official painting commemorating the events of Mirbat. Their CO, Colonel Peter de la Billière, asked for their opinion on the painting’s authenticity. Both men found their eyes pricking with the emotion of their memories.

Not until four years after the battle were details of it finally released to the general public, by which time the forces of the PFLO were on the retreat throughout Dhofar.

Mike Kealy was awarded the Distinguished Service Order by the Queen, a medal second in significance only to the Victoria Cross. He was the youngest Briton to receive the decoration since the Korean War. The only memento that he kept was the Chinese field cap he had retrieved from the perimeter wire before leaving Mirbat.

The River Wye passes by the villages of Fownhope and Mordiford on its way down to the Severn and, before entering the outskirts of Hereford, runs near the old-world pub, a place of log fires and genuine cartwheels, called the Bunch of Carrots. Until the late 1980s this was the acknowledged watering hole of married members of the SAS Regiment, a fact that Davies discovered without difficulty in the first week of April 1978.