Killer Elite (previously published as the Feather Men) (29 page)

De Villiers looked down at his hands and spoke slowly. “My life with you is a million miles from my business activities. They are incompatible and I have decided, now that you are free, to change my job. This will take a little while because there are things which I am bound to see through. When I leave you next month I shall deal with the outstanding business as quickly as possible.”

“And then?”

“Then I will settle in the Cape. I will find work with animal photography and wait for your answer.”

Somewhere north of the Malelane Gate to the park a wildebeest crashed out onto the red-dirt
murrim
track ahead of the Land Rover. De Villiers swerved and, by misfortune, one wheel struck a sharp rock. The vehicle careered into a boulder and de Villiers was knocked unconscious.

When he came to his senses he found that Anne was in pain. Her safety belt had saved her face but her legs had been driven backward and he suspected internal injuries. After giving her painkilling pills, he made for the Malelane Gate, thumbing a lift from a passing truck to the nearest telephone. An ambulance took them to Nelspruit Hospital but de Villiers was adamant that she must have only the best treatment and, against the doctors’ advice, flew with her from Nelspruit to Johannesburg, having caught the daily plane by the skin of their teeth.

That evening Anne was sweating, her pulse racing, and she was in shock. The doctor carefully lifted her legs one by one. As her right leg moved, she screamed. Her blood pressure was low. After blood tests and a cross-match she was given a Dextran drip and an X ray. Within minutes another doctor cheerfully announced to de Villiers that Anne had broken her pelvis: nothing that a simple operation would not fix, but the immediate problem, rendered critical by the delay before hospitalization, was internal loss of blood. Once the cross-match results were available, at least four pints would be replaced.

While de Villiers’s own cuts were being cleaned up more thoroughly than at Nelspruit, bottles of the correct blood group were removed from the hospital blood bank, warmed up and given to Anne via the drip.

The operation went smoothly and three months later Anne was well enough to ride again at La Pergole …

Davies sensed an urgency, an impatience quite at odds with the cool deliberation of the de Villiers that he knew, to nail down the last two Dhofar targets. For the past seven years the Clinic had kept busy enough, achieving some spectacular successes, and their reputation within the contract world was as high as ever.

Three million dollars was not a sum to be sneezed at, but since the late Sheikh Amr’s son Bakhait was still not chivvying the Clinic to complete the
thaa’r
, they had continued to postpone further research work into identifying the remaining targets.

They knew from the data originally furnished by Sheikh Amr that the targets were thought to be Sultanate soldiers, not SAS men. This information revealed that Mahad, Amr’s second son by his first wife, was killed in the early stages of an operation on January 4, 1975, close to the communist base of Sherishitti. He was killed by heavy mortar fire from the SAF position on the twin-headed mountain overlooking Sherishitti. Tama’an, Amr’s second son by his second wife, had fought with the Bin Dhahaib unit and was killed on September 19, 1975, at the close-quarter battle of Zakhir by a shell from an armored car.

The records of both relevant army actions were held inside Oman by the regiments involved at the time, with some files in general records in the Bayt al Falaj Headquarters.
To identify the officers or NCOs responsible for killing the sheikh’s sons required access to those records.

Despite the Clinic’s achievement of official No Foul Play verdicts with both Milling and Kealy, there had been in each case ominous signs of official awareness from some unidentifiable quarter. Davies was no longer willing to risk his neck anywhere near Hereford and the three members of the Clinic were in all likelihood logged on the immigration files of the Omani Police. It would be at best foolish for any of them to risk putting their heads into the Omani noose again. With virtually no tourists coming into that country, the police were able to scrutinize each and every new entrant by the No Objection Certificate method. So, year after year, the risk had remained too great, despite the potential reward, at least while the Clinic had ample work elsewhere.

Since neither the Hereford nor the Oman dangers had diminished, Davies did not find de Villiers’s new enthusiasm remotely appealing. He said as much but de Villiers remained obdurate.

“We must approach from a different angle.”

“We could send someone else,” Davies suggested hopefully. “The agency have suitable people.”

“You and Meier would be happy with a 30 percent cut in the fee? That is what we would agree to, should we subcontract any part of the identity-locating process. Never mind our reputation for self-sufficiency.”

“Are you saying
we
must reenter Oman?”

“Negative,” de Villiers thought aloud. “We need information
without
going in there. Someone already in Oman must work for us … Why not that old brigadier, the friend of the sultan? He was very helpful before … He may remember me.”

“You mean Brigadier Maxwell. He
will
remember
you,” Davies expostulated. “Too right. He will associate you directly with Milling’s death,” added Meier.

De Villiers shook his head. “That is an assumption. Maybe you are right: maybe not. We do not know that he ever connected the inquiries of two harmless American historians with Milling’s subsequent accidental death. It is possible the police did not make inquiries and never even questioned the brigadier.”

“But the man who followed us, the Sultanate officer, possibly Omani Intelligence Service, what of him? If OIS knew about us they are bound to have traced back our visit to the brigadier. They will know he gave us Milling’s name.”

“Perhaps not. I say it is worth trying since nothing is lost if the brigadier proves to be suspicious, unhelpful, and tells Omani security about our call. On the other hand, if he merely remembers us as diligent researchers, with no sinister connections, he may well tell us who was in command of the Armored Car Squadron at Zakhir on September 19, 1975. After all, he is the official biographer of the Sultan’s Armed Forces. If he doesn’t know, no one will.”

The brigadier had not been well for some time and was recuperating in his new home at Sidab, a gift from the sultan, when de Villiers finally made telephone contact. Maxwell’s old retainer Darwish answered and reluctantly fetched him from his afternoon siesta. The brigadier’s arthritis was causing him a great deal of discomfort in addition to the effects of a more serious illness, but his brain was as keen as ever and his great warmth of character was evident even over the telephone. Of course he remembered their meeting at Bayt al Falaj. He would be only too happy to help with any further inquiries.

De Villiers, confident that Maxwell was genuinely
keen to help and harbored no suspicions due to the Milling affair, decided not to say how sorry he was about the helicopter pilot’s accident. He merely launched straight into his questions.

“In September 1975—”

“Yes, yes,” said Maxwell, “the closing stages of the war.”

“There was a battle between communists and the sultan’s armored cars in a place called Zakhir.”

“Not Zakhir,” the brigadier chuckled. “No, my friend. The region is known as Defa but there is a solitary tree called the Zakhir Tree, and for reasons of local geography, there were a number of bitter engagements there over the years.”

“Would you have any detailed accounts of that particular period in ’75?”

“Absolutely. No problem at all. Since we last spoke there have been two or three excellent books. All obtainable through the book trade.”

He gave de Villiers three titles with the publishers’ details. “I feel sure you will find all the data you need in these works, but if you still lack information, let me know.”

De Villiers was effusive in his thanks. “One more question, Brigadier, who was the commander of the Armored Car Squadron at that time? Perhaps I could get accurate details from him.”

“Yes, indeed.” Maxwell thought this was an excellent idea. “It was Patrick Brook, a cavalry man, of course, and … no, wait a minute. Patrick left us in early ’75, so it must have been his successor, another donkeywalloper, as we call them, named Mike Marman. Bit of a wild character but an excellent officer—9th/12th Lancers as I recall. He’ll tell you all about the Zakhir Tree contact.”

“Is he in Oman still?” de Villiers prompted.

“Gracious, no. Left long ago. Most chaps only serve for two or three years over here. I expect he’s back in Britain or Germany. You should contact the Anglo-Omani Society or the SAF Association in London. They keep the addresses of all ex-Sultan’s Armed Forces people.”

De Villiers thanked the brigadier again and promised he would send him a copy of the finished history on its publication.

In the autumn, Davies began full-time work on the Zakhir research. That October he attended the monthly lecture meeting of the Anglo-Omani Society at their usual venue, Bury House, 33 Bury Street in St. James’s. Wearing a city suit and his old Parachute Regiment tie, Davies turned up at 6:30 p.m. and joined a dribble of single men and married couples who ascended to the upstairs meeting room without any form of identity or ticket check.

He found some forty chairs lined in rows opposite a small screen and a dozen or so guests being helped to sherry and cocktail biscuits by a friendly waitress. One or two solitary figures stood around looking awkward, and Davies moved in. Two of the men he approached—an oilman from Petroleum Development Oman and an ex-Scots Guards NCO—had not been in Oman in 1975, but a third, an engineer specializing in water drilling equipment and an obvious extrovert, had worked in Dhofar on and off from 1974 until 1977. He knew many SAF officers and was an avid reader of anything and everything to do with the Dhofar Campaign.

Davies steered the conversation around to the Zakhir event and listened to a flow of enthusiastic comment from the engineer. No, Zakhir had not been an SAF operation. The SAS were the main combatants and they had indeed received vital support from the Armored Cars. A cavalry officer named Simon Mirriam had distinguished
himself but he was not the Armored Car Squadron boss. That had been Mike Marman, a splendid fellow, well known for shooting up an SAF officers’ mess with a Kalashnikov assault rifle during a well-lubricated celebration.

“Is Marman here today?” Davies asked.

“No, I’ve never seen him at one of these meetings,” the engineer said, “but then I only come infrequently as a guest. I’m not a member of the society. If you want to contact Marman, or any ex-SAF chap, just ask the secretary for the members’ address list. Give me your address and I will let you know if I come across Marman’s whereabouts.”

Davies left him one of the Tadnams postbox addresses. He was now certain that Marman was their man but he double-checked all the same, obtaining back copies of the Regimental Journal of Marman’s unit, the 9th/12th Royal Lancers. In their 1976 magazine he found a short article written by Marman that gave graphic detail of various actions fought by Marman in Dhofar from October 1974 until mid-1976. It clearly stated that he had taken command of the Armored Car Squadron in January 1975. Now Davies had only to find the man.

He was unable to obtain an address from the Anglo-Omani Society but a phone call to the SAF Association’s secretary elicited a forwarding address via Lloyds Bank in Reading. Subsequent ferreting traced the elusive major to his most recent domicile, a tiny house in Clapham.

Orders to Middle East bookshops unearthed, at outrageous prices, the three books Colin Maxwell had recommended.
Who Dares Wins
by Tony Geraghty did not mention the Zakhir event, but
We Won a War
by John Akehurst provided Davies with an excellent photograph of Marman’s face, and
SAS: Operation Oman
by Tony Jeapes gave an account of the Zakhir Tree fighting and
the key involvement of “a troop of Saladin armored cars from Defa.”

On September 15, 1975,
The Times
reported that a priceless Rembrandt had been slashed by a nutter, a national steel strike was imminent, the Prince of Wales was in Papua, the price of cigarettes had risen to forty-five pence a packet, a bilingual secretary in London now earned £3,000 a year, Henry Fonda had opened a one-man show in Piccadilly, and
Fawlty Towers
had its first showing on television. There was, of course, no mention of Dhofar, a country whose existence was unknown to the vast majority of Westerners. At dawn that day an SAS troop in western Dhofar planned an attack on the communist guerrillas known to use the region of the Zakhir Tree as a base for Katyusha rocket launchers. The SAS troop included a tough bunch of individualists, Sergeant Rover Slatting, his close friend Danny, Wee Grumpy, Matt, and the muscle-bound Tony Fleming.

From their SAF base at Defa, thirteen SAS men set out with two ex-PFLO guides. The ground was sodden and a clinging mist compounded the darkness of the night. The guides failed to find the Zakhir Tree and, shortly before dawn, the SAS men split into two groups, the better to find their target. Danny, a corporal, moved ahead with one guide and finally located the tree. He also spotted many fresh boot prints and smelled smoke-dried meat. On his way back to Sergeant Slatting’s SAS group he glimpsed an
adoo
patrol through the mist. All hell broke loose. The SAS killed three guerrillas, and their own man, Geordie Small, died of blood loss from the femoral artery. Heavily outgunned, and without the benefit of the surprise they had sought, Slatting’s group of seven men lay low in the mire of wet clay amid a jungle of thorn bushes.

Tony Fleming was shot through the spine and lost
the use of his legs. Two men dragged him to the center of their hideaway and, as they did so, a guerrilla leaped up some ten paces behind them. Slatting turned and killed him.

A murderous crackle of bullets hid the noise of
adoo
with AK47s and grenades belly-crawling from bush to bush toward the SAS survivors. Branches snapped and broke all around, torn away by high-velocity bullets. To stand up was to invite instant death. The conditions of mist and thick scrub demanded instant reaction to any hostile movement. The
adoo
closed in with cunning and patience.