Spider Shepherd: SAS: #2 (12 page)

‘The matter is so sensitive,’ the CO said, ‘that no further information will be transmitted to you at this point. When you make the RV, you will be supplied with everything the Operations Oversight Team has calculated that you will need, and you will also be joined there by an additional patrol member, who will be bringing the Patrol Planning Pack by hand.’

The fact that the Planning Pack was being couriered to them rather than communicated over the secure line reinforced the sensitive nature of the operation, whatever it was.

‘One final point,’ the CO said. ‘While you are in-country where you are now, you are to liaise with General Said, the head of the local Royal Guard. He is a friend of HMG who we have trained in the past and he will supply you with any logistical support that you need to get you to the RV.’

Shepherd remained silent while the Embassy car drove them back to their hotel - need to know applied to chauffeurs even more than signals technicians - but he broke the news to his patrol mates as soon as they were safe from prying eyes and ears.

While Shepherd rounded up the RAF Hercules crew, Jock and Geordie jumped into a taxi waiting on the rank outside the hotel and set off to meet the General.

‘Don’t forget we need ammo,’ Jimbo shouted at them as they were clambering into the taxi. ‘We’re almost out after the contact in Nepal!’

A couple of hours later Jock and Geordie returned, driving a Royal Guard pick-up truck. Loaded in the back were four state-of-the-art steerable static line parachutes and a stack of boxes of .223 ammo for their Colt Commando model AR-15’s: the lightweight, air-cooled, semi-automatic ArmaLite rifles that, due to their accuracy and reliability were their weapon of choice on many of their ops. Jock carried the M-203, an AR-15 with an underslung 79mm grenade launcher that used the same ammo, to give the patrol a bit of short-range punch if it were needed. Thoughtfully, they had also called in at the souq - the market - in the ancient heart of the city and had managed to buy an assortment of rubber waterproof bags. The para drop would be into the sea alongside the US Navy warship and the waterproof bags would protect their weapons and equipment and save them having to waste a lot of time cleaning and drying it.

They spent the rest of the day preparing for the drop and later that night they set off for the air force base where there Hercules was waiting. The flight to the RV was the usual Herc experience: long, boring, noisy and uncomfortable, and it was a relief when Shepherd at last saw the US warship ahead of them. As he watched the other Hercules dropping its parachutes, Shepherd was surprised to see that the single personnel chute floating down was followed by six much larger cargo parachutes with heavy loads swinging beneath them. ‘How much kit do they think we need?’ he muttered. ‘It looks like they’ve sent the entire Quartermaster’s stores.’

Each of the containers was efficiently collected from the sea by the men manning one of the powerful ship’s boats and winched up to the deck of the destroyer. When the first Hercules had finished its drop, it wheeled away and departed to the north in the direction of Cyprus, the black smudges of the wash from its props staining the sky behind it.

‘Right, let’s get on with it,’ said the loadmaster, whose world-weary expression was designed to show that he’d seen it all and done it all and wasn’t remotely impressed by having an SAS patrol aboard. He swung the door open and at once the noise in the loading bay redoubled, the thunder of the engines sounding louder than ever, but still almost drowned by the roar of the slipstream.

The patrol hooked their bergens onto the parachute harness and then hooked the static line onto the overhead cable, ensuring they were safely anchored. After a cursory safety check, the Loady shouted to them ‘Stand by! Watch the lights!’

Shepherd had done hundreds of Para jumps in his time, first with the Paras, and then the Regiment, and probably knew the drill better than even the loadmaster himself. He nodded and fixed his gaze on the light panel above the open door.

Shepherd kept staring at the red light and the instant that it changed to green he propelled himself through the doorway. Immediately he was riding the slipstream as the lumbering shape of the Herc disappeared ahead of him. He felt the jerk as the static line triggered the ripcord and his chute deployed above him. After the deafening noise inside the aircraft, the silence was stunning. He took a moment to check that the three other chutes had also opened safely, then concentrated on his own tasks. He lowered his container on its rope below him, and looking down, he began steering towards one of the waiting boats. The container entered the water just before he splashed down into the sea himself, and almost as soon as he broke surface strong hands were reaching down and pulling him aboard.

When Shepherd and the others had all been transferred to the mother ship, they assembled on the forward deck where the fifth member of the patrol was waiting to greet them. He was a Fijian, Joe Lavatani, who, though a new face to Shepherd, Jock and Geordie knew well. He was dark skinned and, like most of the Fijians that Shepherd had met, seemed to have a permanent smile on his face. The Fijians had a fierce warrior tradition of their own and a long history in the British Army and the SAS. In the early 1960’s British commanders recruited a total of 200 Fijians into the newly created Regular Army. Over the next few years, twelve of them had gravitated to the SAS in Hereford. They proved to be prodigious warriors. Of the twelve, one was killed in action in 1972 in the Battle of Mirbat during the Dhofar Rebellion in Oman. He single-handedly wielded a twenty-five-pounder gun that normally required a gun crew of four to six men to fire, in a battle against overwhelming odds that had gone down in SAS legend. He was subsequently awarded a posthumous Mention in Dispatches for his heroism, but it was an award that many of his comrades in the Regiment felt should have been a Victoria Cross, and probably would have been, had the man in question not been firstly, a “mere” sergeant, and secondly, a Fijian. The 25-pounder, renowned as the Mirbat gun, was on display in the Firepower Museum of the Royal Artillery in Woolwich. Almost all of the remaining eleven Fijians were also decorated for their gallantry and by the time they returned home most had been wounded in combat while on active service.

After shaking hands with Shepherd and Jimbo, Joe hugged Jock and Geordie like long lost brothers and they then launched into a bout of reminiscences about past ops and escapades, and a round-up of everything they’d all been doing since the last time they met.

Shepherd waited patiently for a few minutes, then called them to order. ‘Okay guys, let’s save the rest of the catch-up until we’ve all got a glass of beer in our hands. Let’s focus on the op instead for a few minutes, shall we?’

Joe grinned. ‘Sorry, I sometimes get a bit carried away when I see old friends.’ He produced the Patrol Planning Pack from his bergen and handed it to Shepherd, who skim-read it at once.

The mission was a daunting one: to rescue two American students who had been kidnapped by a group of terrorists close to the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. The two boys, in their late teens, were the sons of a very senior member of the Administration in Washington DC.

‘We can’t be 100 per cent sure,’ Joe said, ‘because the intelligence is understandably patchy, but it looks as if, so far at least, the terrorists are unaware of the identity of the youths. Fortunately they appear to have left their passports in the hotel safe when they went out sightseeing for the day, and it seems that they were targeted and captured purely because they were US citizens.’

The Planning Pack also contained a summary of the available intelligence on the kidnappers. ‘Not exactly War And Peace, is it?’ Shepherd said, gesturing to the handful of lines of text that was all the information supplied. The little that was known indicated that the kidnappers were part of a large group of desert tribesmen who roamed the Western Desert of Egypt and Libya. They travelled in pick-ups that were armed with Russian ZSU anti-aircraft guns, 12.7mm NSV heavy machine guns and some SAM missiles. Although little known in the West, they were such a formidable group and so heavily armed, that the Libyan and Egyptian armies had evidently decided that discretion was the better part of valour and, rather than try to confront them, they preferred to leave the terrorists well alone. As a result, they had the freedom of the Western Desert and the Great Sand Sea, staging raids on tourist sites like the Valley of the Kings or the towns of the fertile strip flanking the Nile, and then disappearing into the vastness of the desert.

The plan put together by the Operations Oversight Team in Hereford involved a helicopter insertion into the Egyptian desert as close to the target area as possible. AWACS and satellite surveillance had identified an area close to the Nile where it was believed the group was now lying up. The patrol were not to transmit any signals when in country; instead they would be monitored by AWACS and would be given a “GO” or “NO GO” command for each phase of the operation from higher up the chain of command.

Jock gave a cynical smile. ‘The Yanks are obviously worried that if Israel cottons on to the fact that Special Forces troops are on the ground in Egypt on a clandestine mission, they might well choose to escalate the situation for their own ends.’

‘It wouldn’t be the first time,’ Joe said. ‘There are also many in the US military who harbour serious doubts about the security of the US covert communications systems and suspect that the Israelis have the ability to monitor them.’

‘That’s probably true,’ said Shepherd. ‘Much of the US equipment was developed jointly with Israel and many in the American forces believe that the systems contain covert monitoring circuits which transmit directly to Tel Aviv. Since the UK’s military communications also pass through American facilities or contain American-manufactured components, what we know, the Yanks will know. And if the Yanks know it, we have to assume that the Israelis will, too. Hence the restrictions on our comms when in-theatre. Better safe than sorry.’

‘Hell’s bells,’ Geordie said, ‘with friends like those, who needs enemies?’

‘You know what they say,’ said Shepherd. ‘Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.’

‘So this is an American-led operation, to rescue American boys, and making use of American assets,’ Jimbo said, ‘and yet they’ve given the job to us.’

Joe nodded. ‘The US Administration knows it would take too long to get Delta Force on the ground and in any case very few in Washington would have much confidence that Delta Force are really up to the task.’

‘They’ve got that right,’ Jock growled. ‘By the time Delta’s lot have finished their pre-op Bible reading and prayer meeting, and made arrangements for Burger King and Dunkin Donuts franchises to be set up to keep them supplied while in-country, we’ll already have finished the task and be on our way home again.’

‘At least it looks like we won’t be short of equipment for the job,’ Shepherd said, gesturing towards the cargo parachute loads stacked on the deck nearby.

Joe nodded. ‘Part of that is my fault. After I read the Planning Pack, I added a Packet Easy to the stores list as well. We might need it, and if not, we can always burn it to heat our rations.’

A Packet Easy was SAS shorthand for a pack of one hundred standard plastic explosive charges, each weighing one pound. It came with a variety of detonating card, primers, timer switches and detonators enabling the user to take on a large variety of targets. However, the plastic explosive was also so stable that, without a detonator, it would not explode and could even be set on fire and used as fuel.

‘So that explains one of the cargo chutes,’ Shepherd said. ‘But what was in the other parachute loads?’

‘Desert sand buggies,’ Joe said. ‘They are being tested by the Operational Equipment guys for Delta Force. They are tricycles with a silent petrol engine, and a seriously good bit of kit if you ask me. We’re lucky to get it. But the Yanks want everything to go smoothly so it’s money no object.’

‘A silent petrol engine? That would be a first,’ Jock said.

‘Virtually silent anyway,’ Joe said. ‘The exhaust vents into the aluminium frame rather than into the air, and they are so quiet that you can be standing next to them and not even realise that the engine is running. They are fitted with sand tyres, the whole thing weighs just a few pounds, and they will run forever on a jerry can of petrol, so they are pretty much ideal for where we’re going.’

Shepherd nodded, impressed. ‘It seems like the Yanks are developing the kit for something big in this part of the world pretty soon.’

He’d been thinking furiously about the task ahead of them and had already come up with a few ideas of his own but, as was the SAS custom he initiated a “Chinese Parliament”, allowing every member of the patrol to contribute ideas that would, if necessary, refine the plan. Those who chose to remain silent forfeited any right to complain about the plan or its results afterwards.

After a long discussion they decided on an approach to the target by water, reasoning that the kidnappers would be expecting any attack to come from the landward side. Having fine-tuned the plan a little more, Shepherd led them up to the bridge of the ship. Expecting a difficult meeting - relations between Brits and Yanks weren’t always silky smooth and the traditional rivalry between the Navy and the Army only added another layer of complications - they were pleasantly surprised to find that the ship’s skipper could not have been more helpful if he’d tried.

‘Welcome aboard, guys,’ he said. ‘I obviously don’t know what you’re up to, but it’s clearly top priority because I’ve received orders from “on high” that I am to co-operate with you to the fullest possible extent.’ He spread his hands wide, as if encompassing the ship around him. ‘So you’ve got a blank cheque. Anything we’ve got, you can have… within reason anyway.’