Killer Elite (previously published as the Feather Men) (36 page)

Mac never remembered anything about his attacks. But many of his dreams recurred so often that they lingered etched in vivid colors in his waking mind. Most were corrupted regurgitations of his past but, obedient
to no normal chronology, they unfolded in a weird disorder as though conjured into being by a madman. Mac was able to repeat every facet of the dreams to Pauline; not that she was able to draw much meaning from them. He would see himself plucking chickens at the factory the previous week and then, in an instant, playing children’s games with his brother on the hills above Cork back in the forties.

The war dreams came often and with particular clarity. One began at Windsor Castle with Mac in the dress uniform of the Grenadier Guards. The drill parade passed directly through a wall and entered the dripping woods of the wadi Naheez. Now the other men were in sweat-streaked camouflage, SAS comrades bearing heavy bergens, their wary eyes darting sideways through dense groves of
habok
, the euphorbia used to treat camel mange. A huge bird alighted and the men—all but Mac and a Hadr tribesman—were gone. Mac loved all living things. He knew the bird was a sacred ibis from the sea-
khors
, or creek. From the
habok
there now issued other wonders, Tristram’s grackle, great white pelicans, shrike and sunbird, yellow-vented bulbul, kingfisher, and Paradise flycatcher.

The Hadr led Mac into a fluted limestone cavern where together they took combs of light honey from the bees’ nests. They sat on a rock and ate the honey unharmed by the angry bees.

“With many others,” said the Hadr, “I fled from the Yemen to avoid death by
thaa’r
. Everywhere the blood is spilled to avenge previous killings. There can be no end to it.”

Mac’s honeycomb became a packet of army hardtack biscuits. As he crouched low among the boulders, sweat ran down into his eyes. A spider crawled over the back of his neck: he flicked out with repulsion but it was only
the parachute-cord necklace to which he had taped his morphine syrettes, wristwatch and identity discs.

Jock Logan tapped him on the shoulder and nodded. The advance was on. The “Duke” was there, Major Richard Pirie, dead now but always in the dreams. And the CO, Johnnie Watts, with his great wide grin and enormous confidence. G Squadron SAS. Jebel Samhan, Dhofar. Mac, the mortar expert, was part of the heavy gun troop, each man burdened by 120 pounds of weaponry, ammunition and water ration: in that heat a crippling load.

Up ahead the ex-communist
firqat
group began to crouch as they advanced, a sheepdoglike lowering of their backs as though sensing some alien presence close by. Mac knew that they could smell the enemy.

An Englishman, Kenneth Edwards, led the
firqat
, the Khalid bin Walid band, and Mac saw him bring up his rifle. Suddenly, immediately below them and dead ahead, Mac saw thirty or forty heavily armed
adoo
. Their Kalashnikov assault rifles indicated hard-core guerrillas; the
adoo
militia toted semiautomatic Simonovs. Smoke curled from cook fires. For once the
adoo
had been caught napping.

Mac and his group opened fire. Jock Logan, Barrie Davies and Ian Winstone sent a hail of GMPG bullets and 66mm LAW rockets into the midst of the
adoo
. They charged down, bloodlust up, fear and heavy loads forgotten. Dead and wounded from both sides soon littered the dustbowl.

In the dream Mac felt again the unbelievable heat, smelled the cordite, heard the buzz of the flies.

They ran short of ammunition and enemy guns from surrounding ridges began to pick them off.

The scene switched to the wadi Adonib in February 1975 with three G Squadron troops “beating” the forested
wadi floor. Mac was halfway up one flanking hill, and at a smoke signal from the squadron boss, a peer of the realm, he brought his deadly 60mm mortar into play with backing from his team, Mick and Ginge. The second round targeted an
adoo
patrol and, when the SAS beaters arrived, nothing was left but a leg and a pair of rubber flip-flops.

Now Mac sat in the long narrow saloon of Chancers Wine Bar with Tosh Ash, as witty as ever, and drinking like there was no tomorrow. Tosh had been one of the lads and fit as could be. Now a pubkeeper and
bon viveur
, his face was florid, unhealthy. They drank to Mac, Callsign Five, Mortar Man Extraordinary. It was one of the better dreams.

On November 28, 1987, thirteen years after the end of their time in Dhofar, Jock Logan and Barry Davies met in Hereford, as was often their wont, and walked together along Hampton Park Road to see their old friend. There were those who no longer visited Mac, perhaps because they had seen him on a bad day when the mood was on him, perhaps merely because their friendship had dissolved with time, as is the way of life. But Jock and Barry shared with Mac moments and memories that each of them savored and knew could never again be matched for sheer intensity of feeling.

Jock had with him a fat and well-thumbed album of photographs, not just of Oman days, but going back to the sixties, when he and Mac and Frank Bilcliff were at the forefront of Britain’s rock-climbers. Among many other feats their group had been the first Army men ever to scale the Old Man of Hoy’s crumbling flanks. Since Dhofar days, Jock had married a pretty lass who had worked at the Bunch of Grapes from 1967 to 1971. They had a lovely daughter now who was the best of friends with Mac’s daughter, Lucia, and Jock had been
Mac’s best man. Jock’s home was in Aberdeen, where he thrived at his job as salesman for a drill-bit manufacturer servicing the flourishing oil industry.

Barry Davies was a salesman for Cardiff-based BCB, manufacturers and retailers of survival equipment. He’d had his first book published earlier that year, a best-selling manual on survival techniques. Ten years earlier Barry had received the British Empire Medal for his part in an SAS operation sanctioned jointly by Prime Minister Jim Callaghan and Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.

In October 1977 four Palestinian terrorists hijacked a Lufthansa airliner. They were acting in support of the Baader-Meinhof gang and demanded release of the gang’s leaders from German jails. A German commando unit from GSG-9 was tasked to release the Lufthansa hostages with help from an SAS officer, Major Alistair Morrison. (Morrison had relieved Kealy’s group at Mirbat five years before, and in 1979 he was one of the first to learn of Kealy’s death on the Brecon Beacons.) Barry, then a sergeant, was tasked to accompany Major Morrison with a supply of special SAS flash-grenades. The hijackers led the Anglo-German team a merry dance and in Aden they murdered the airliner’s pilot. Flying on to Mogadishu in Somalia, they dumped the body on the runway, ending any remaining chances of negotiation. Morrison and Davies then led the highly successful attack by GSG-9, and both men were later decorated for their courage.

Barry was well respected in the SAS but he was by nature an entrepreneur and had for a long while been interested in the housing market inside Hereford. In the late sixties he found an excellent house in a suburb of Hereford for his friend Mac and soon afterward introduced him to a lovely girl named Pauline, who became Mac’s lodger and later his wife.

The two men turned into Salisbury Avenue. It was Saturday.
Pauline was at work in town but they had called at her shop, Chelsea Girl, to collect the house keys.

“Pauline says the fits are slowly getting worse despite Mac’s medication. His dark moods come more frequently. It must be very difficult for Pauline.”

Jock nodded. “He’s a lucky man having those lassies for wife and daughter. They will stand by him to the end.”

After medication Mac slept for nine hours uninterrupted by the dreams. He awoke refreshed and looking forward to the visit from his friends. He was a quiet, proud, and very private man. So long as he was employed in honest work he could keep his head up, no matter how bad the fits. Unfortunately this caused something of a vicious circle since hard work quickly made him exhausted and prone to worse attacks. To fend them off he would increase the tablets, which in turn made him drowsy and brought on the dark, destructive moods.

Mac hated the moods and the way he behaved when under their influence. He wished above all to be the best possible husband, father and friend, and he hated feeling exhausted. But to give up his job, to be unemployed and dependent entirely on Pauline’s work, would be more than his personal pride could bear.

During these run-up weeks to Christmas he had to work twice as hard at Sun Valley Poultry, for the chicken orders came thick and fast and everyone was on overtime. He earned £160 a week, Monday to Friday, and, despite the fits, had held the job down for several months. Sun Valley was on the far side of town and Mac traveled by bicycle. The pills often affected his balance and made him wobbly. Pauline, he knew, was increasingly worried, especially since a recent incident when a passing van had knocked him off his bicycle on a roundabout.

He fussed around the sitting room and puffed up the cushions. There was little to do as Pauline kept the place immaculate. Lucia was away at a ballet class in Church Road.

Jock and Barry arrived and Mac soon forgot his worries. They spent a merry afternoon in reminiscence, laughing over once shared hardships and recalling long-forgotten faces brought alive by Jock’s photographs.

After tea, Mac began to show signs of tiredness and Barry discreetly suggested it was time to leave. Jock promised to return the following day to collect his album, and when they were gone, Mac sat alone with a lager and thumbed slowly through the pages. He stopped at a photo captioned “Operation Dharab, January 1975.” The two men with an 81mm mortar tube were shirtless, bronzed and lean. Mac and Tosh Ash in their prime on the day both were wounded by the same bullet. That day Mac unknowingly became a marked man.

Operation Dharab was planned as the biggest army offensive of the five-year war against the communists, an attempt to attack the guerrilla stores center of Sherishitti, a complex of caves deep in guerrilla-held mountains. First an army force of 650 men would seize the ridgeline position of Defa, then advance into the beginning of the densely foliated zone that began two miles to the south, and on to a pair of bald hilltops known as Point 980. This position overlooked the valley of the caves, two and a half miles to the east. From Point 980 the final advance would be launched at Sherishitti.

The main army force was Jebel Regiment (JR), John Milling’s old unit, supported by Red Company of Desert Regiment (DR), whose second-in-command was Captain David Mason. Each of the four companies would have
firqat
guides and SAS liaison men attached. Two SAS troops and a strong
firqat
contingent would lead the advance under the command of SAS Major Arish
Trant. Mac, Tosh Ash, and their mortars would accompany this group.

On January 4 the Defa position was secured and the advance began. The SAS, after heavy fighting, secured an advanced position and finally Point 980. As over five hundred soldiers arrived at this feature, the SAS moved on to another hill, coded Point 604. As they prepared for the night, a small group went forward to lay trip wires and claymore mines just ahead of their position. Tony Shaw, close friend to Mike Kealy and about to take over the SAS squadron in Dhofar, was the point man and leader of the mine-layers. An
adoo
patrol attacked them and there were casualties on both sides.

A great deal of confusion and indecision held up the advance the following day, and the overall Dhofar commander, Brigadier John Akehurst, summarily removed the officer in charge and replaced him with Major Patrick Brook, Mike Marman’s predecessor as Armored Car Squadron leader.

Patrick Brook and the SAS major sent three of the companies east through dense scrub to gain positions above the caves before a final attack on Sherishitti. This move began on the morning of January 6, but the lead unit, Red Company DR, went a little too far south, a fact they recognized once they reached the wide, open valley that led to the caves. Their company commander, Major Roger King, suggested holding their position along the edge of the great clearing in order to give cover to a further advance by 2 Company JR across the open ground.

Two Company’s acting commander, Captain Nigel Loring, arrived and surveyed the wide valley ahead. His
firqat
liaison man, an experienced SAS sergeant, advised him, “Don’t go across. It will be suicide. Go
around
the clearing.” But Loring could see that the open area was well covered from two sides by men of Red Company, and knowing that speed was of the essence, he stood
up and led his men out into the sunny clearing, overlooked on the far side by the rocky hillside that was his objective.

When Loring and his lead platoon were well into the open the
adoo
sprang their trap. The far slope exploded with sound. There was no cover, so wounded men were hit again and again until they lay still. Captain Ian MacLucas was hit by seven bullets. Nigel Loring was killed. The killing ground echoed with the groans and the entreaties of the dying. To break cover and enter the valley from either side would require an act of great courage.

The Red Company soldiers and the SAS returned fire as best they could and certain individuals risked all in a crazy attempt to rescue the wounded. One of these was Sekavesi, the giant Fijian who had been with Mike Kealy at Mirbat. Another was Captain David Mason of Red Company, who, weaving from side to side, forced himself through the maelstrom of bullets, rockets and mortar explosions and spent two hours under fire to succor and rally the wounded. He finally staggered back with his friend, the wounded MacLucas. His escape unscathed was miraculous. Within months he was awarded the Sultan’s Bravery Medal.

When all their wounded were retrieved, and only the dead left behind, the Sultan’s Forces withdrew to Point 980. Behind them they heard the single shots of the
adoo
firing into the bodies in the clearing.

Jebel Regiment had suffered thirteen dead and twenty-two wounded. Ian MacLucas, saved by David Mason, was still a paraplegic in 1991. Many
adoo
, mostly of the Bin Dhahaib unit, were killed in Operation Dharab. One was Mahab bin Amr Bait Anta’ash, the second son of Sheikh Amr’s first wife. He was ripped apart by mortar fire from the SAS mortar position.