The Sixteen (17 page)

‘Our information is that he usually has two guys with him; if he has more than that we’ll just have to deal with it on the day and, more importantly, we’ll just have to make sure it does work!’ he replied emphatically.

We began to practise the manoeuvre, putting the ‘guards’ into various positions around the target, in front, to either side, then at the rear. By using the movements of The Machine, I was able to ensure that I hit Dynamo in exactly the same spot each time, no matter what position he was in or where the guards were.

Then we tried to come up with every possible scenario and, after several hours of practice, believed that we had covered every eventuality. The only way I was going to be able to manage it, would be to pretend to bump into the target; somehow I would just have to find a way of making it look accidental on the day. I spent a further couple of hours practising on a dummy, ensuring that I hit the exact same target area, over and over again, while the others tried to come up with alternatives.

The main problem was that we didn’t readily have access to the types of poison we needed at such short notice. To my amazement, as the day wore on it seemed increasingly obvious that my idea was going to be the only viable possibility of being able to carry out the operation without having to fight our way out.

‘They’d think I was a right nutter if I told them about attempting this back at the camp, I’d probably be discharged for being mentally ill!’ I sniggered to Dynamo. ‘I can understand what you were saying to me about going back and telling them the truth about what I’ve been doing – who in their right minds would believe this?’

‘Well, you’d better believe it because if it doesn’t work we’ll end up having a fight on our hands. So you’d better get it right, Geordie, we’re depending on you, old boy.’ Dynamo winked, and grinned back at me.

‘Oh, that’s great,’ I said, laughing. ‘I’ve done one operation and suddenly I’m the expert!’

‘Well, none of us have exactly done this one before, but there’s a first time for everything, mate, and this is yours!’

‘If I get the chance to bump into this guy, what can I say to him, Dynamo? How the hell do I say “sorry” in Arabic?’

‘You’ll have to know a few more words than that: we’re going to have maybe a couple of hours to wait for this guy so you’re probably going to have to do a bit of shopping! We’ll have to teach you to say “how much is that”, “thank you very much” and most importantly “can you show me where Woolworths is?”’ He sniggered.

Dynamo was fluent in several languages, including Lebanese, and he spent the next couple of hours trying to get me to say the phrases he felt I would need. He kept laughing at my attempts, most of which sounded like someone either being sick or spitting. As he instructed me, I continued to practise on the dummy, using a long, stiff hair from a yard brush as a needle. Spot had gone off in the jeep some time earlier and it was late when he arrived back, just as we’d finished.

‘How’s this, Geordie?’ he said, producing a very strong piece of wire about eight inches long, which looked like the spoke of a bicycle wheel, although I’m fairly sure that it wasn’t, it was too strong. ‘Any good?’

‘Yes, that’s perfect. All I’ve got to do is shorten it and put a point on the end. Where did you get this from?’

‘Don’t ask.’ He giggled and tapped the side of his nose with his finger as he walked over to the side of the hut and picked up a sweeping brush. ‘You want a handle for it, don’t you? Here take a bit off the end of this brush!’ he said, throwing it to me.

We cut off about two inches from the brush shank, thinned it
down a bit and put a hole in its centre to fix the sharpened ‘needle’ into. I needed a safe place to carry it, so I made a small hole in my sash where the buckle was and slipped the needle just inside at my waist front. The small piece of wood slipped easily into my pocket.

It was getting late and we needed to rest up before setting off. My head was buzzing as I lay down to try to sleep. I closed my eyes and went through the motions of bumping into the target and eventually dozed off, with Dynamo’s Arabic phrases repeating again and again in my head.

We slept from about 2330 hours. We had to be up at 0200 the next morning and ready to leave by 0230 when the hack was due to arrive.

A
s usual, we travelled looking as much like the locals as possible, dressed in jeans, a shirt and boots, I also wore an old combat-style jerkin. The only things we carried apart from our sashes were our boot-knives.

‘Here, Geordie, you come from Newcastle!’ Dynamo said, mimicking my accent as he threw what looked like a black-and-white checked tablecloth towards me. It was a large fringed scarf, of the type worn by men in the Lebanon, which would help to cover up the best part of my face.

‘Before we go anywhere we’ll have to get to work on Blue Eyes here!’ he said to the others.

I’d noticed when I’d arrived the previous day that they’d
all allowed a few days beard to grow and looked a bit scruffy, obviously in readiness for this mission, whereas I was clean shaven. This, of course, was a requirement of the regular army where special permission had to be obtained in order to grow a beard, but already they looked pretty much like natives and by comparison, I thought I looked like a mannequin in a tailor’s shop window.

They quickly set to work changing my appearance and although I was fairly deeply tanned by this time, they darkened my skin even more by applying some kind of cream, which to me resembled ‘gun blue’, in order to make me look as though I had a ‘blue’ beard or seven o’clock shadow (now called designer stubble). Another cream mixed with a black powder was applied to my hair, which made it very black and shiny and caused my scalp to feel incredibly itchy. Spot told me that all of this would wash off fairly easily and I noticed that when I scratched my scalp the colour rubbed off onto my fingers.

‘Make sure you don’t get wet, Geordie, we don’t want your make-up to run, now do we?’ Chalky joked.

By 0215, we were all ready, fully kitted out with our weapons, rope harnesses and ‘dog-clips’ attached. Spot glanced at his watch and went outside to watch for the hack. At about 0225, we heard the noise of it approaching but, as it was still dark, we couldn’t see anything yet. Chalky, Dynamo and I quickly followed Spot outside, taking the hurricane lamps from inside the hut to put out in a square as a landing guide.

Suddenly, the helicopter seemed to be right on top of us, and its black outline looked huge to me as it hovered deafeningly above us for a brief moment. The downdraught from its blades sent choking clouds of dust flying, which knocked over the hurricane lamps.

As he prepared to land the pilot switched on a spotlight and,
blinded by both it and the thick swirling dust, we stumbled around grabbing up the lamps, then quickly extinguished them before throwing them into the hut. I could barely see a thing and the noise was unbelievable.

Bent double, I dashed forward to the helicopter and scrambled on board just as the thing started to leave the ground – the noise was deafening. It was dark inside the cockpit but, outlined by the spotlight, I saw the shadowy figure of Chalky standing in the opposite doorway. I scrambled in on my hands and knees just as the helicopter began to rise and move forward all at the same time. Caught off balance I fell onto some controls in between the two front seats. The next moment two hands grabbed my shoulders and pulled me backwards onto the seat behind and Chalky yelled into my right ear.

‘Buckle up, Geordie,’ he shouted, gesturing towards the seatbelt.

Spot was sitting on my left and he and Chalky hooked our ropes above the doors on to the newly fixed brackets they’d mentioned earlier, ready to throw out later. They piled the remaining coils onto the floor in front of them where they held them in place with their feet.

The doors had been removed, presumably in an attempt to make access easier and to lighten the load, so we were open to the elements. Inside it was small and dark, and quite a squeeze with the five of us. The back had been removed from one of the front seats and Dynamo sat on this next to Ken, who I now recognised sitting in the pilot’s seat.

Inside the noise was deafening and although I immediately put my hands over my ears, they hurt from the racket. Spot nudged my left arm and handed me a headset similar to one that he was now wearing and indicated that I should put it on. When I removed my hands from my ears for just the brief seconds it
took me to put on the headphones, the noise was horrendous. Even with the headset on it was impossible to make out anything above the engine’s racket.

We seemed to level off quickly and, as I regained my balance, I looked out through the open doorway and tried to get my bearings but saw only the outlines of treetops directly beneath us before Ken switched the spotlight off. In the far distance I could just make out a couple of small lights from houses but I was totally disorientated and hadn’t a clue which direction we were heading in, although I knew it had to be southwards towards the sea.

I could see very little in the cockpit, as it was only dimly lit by a couple of indicator lights on the control panel and the dark outlines of the other guys were just visible as they fumbled about with the ropes on the floor.

We flew along only feet above the ground, twisting and turning to avoid detection, and I guessed that our speed must be about eighty miles an hour. We’d only travelled for a few minutes when Ken switched the spotlight back on briefly. Suddenly we went into a steep dive as though we were about to crash, and in the powerful spotlight beam I could see the ground below us – a cliff edge and beach, with small white waves breaking on it.

Ken switched the spotlight off again and we headed straight out across the waves into the inky blackness. It was worse than a fairground roller-coaster ride, my stomach was heaving, and at times I felt as though I was being pushed through the floor.

At first we flew very low over the sea, the sky having just enough light in it for me to make out the waves below. A cold wind blew in through the open doorways and right through the cockpit: it was freezing. Then suddenly the helicopter began to climb and as it levelled off again Ken indicated that we needed to keep our eyes open. He was talking over the headset but I still couldn’t hear a
thing for the racket. Chalky lifted one of my earpieces and shouted at me to watch for a red light.

About ten minutes later Dynamo pointed to something at the ten o’clock position. Ken looked in the direction he’d indicated then swung the hack over and, lining up with the now visible red light, headed in that direction. The red dot bobbed about in the distance as we headed towards it; it was the light of the small fishing boat waiting for us. As we drew nearer, this began to flash off and on and Ken gave us the thumbs-up signal to let us know that the boat had seen us and immediately dropped the aircraft down again to about thirty to forty feet above the sea. Then he gave us another thumbs-up signal to indicate that we were just above the boat and turned the spotlight on again as Chalky and Spot moved into position, one at either doorway.

They each threw out a rope and fastened on their dog-clips before swinging out into the openings where they stood for a moment with the tips of their toes on the edges of the doorways, looking beneath them. Suddenly they both dropped out of sight and the hack rocked violently from side to side. I sat holding the rope until it went slack and I knew it was my turn.

Dynamo moved into place in the opposite doorway as I put two wraps around my dog-clip and stepped out into the opening. Looking down, I could see a small boat bobbing around all over the place about thirty feet below. The helicopter swung backwards and forwards above it as Ken struggled to hold it steady and keep it lined up above the boat, but as Dynamo and I moved, our shifting weight inside the helicopter caused it to sway drastically.

For a brief moment, Dynamo stood in the doorway opposite then he disappeared. I immediately followed him and as I began hurtling downwards towards the boat, I realised I should have had three wraps on the rope instead of two. I had some difficulty in
stopping my descent, which I just managed to do about four feet above the water, just as Dynamo landed straight into the boat just ahead of me. But I was swinging about all over the place. The little boat was bobbing around like a cork on the choppy sea, which was being made worse by the helicopter’s downdraught. As it rose beneath me, my legs crashed into its small cabin. I let go of the rope and fell heavily on to the deck, hitting the wooden engine cover as I landed in a giggling heap. The helicopter immediately turned away from us, back towards Cyprus, with our abseil ropes dragging through the sea beneath it. Ken turned off the spotlight and it instantly disappeared from view.

I lay on the wet heaving deck, my ribs aching from where they had made contact with the engine cover as Chalky and Spot came over to help me up, laughing as much as I was. A wonderful smell of frying bacon wafted out from the tiny cabin.

‘My name’s Lynch,’ said the guy in charge of the boat, sticking his head out of the cabin door. ‘You’re just in time for a bacon sandwich.’

How he managed to cook in that tiny confined space with the boat rocking violently I have no idea but manage it he did and produced a wonderful bacon sandwich and steaming cup of tea. I warmed my freezing hands around the hot mug and looked up at Chalky sitting opposite me.

‘How did he get here?’ I said, nodding towards Lynch.

‘He’s one of us and that’s all you need to know, Geordie,’ Chalky replied and winked at me. ‘Naturally, nobody picks us up but us!’

‘Well, I’m certainly not going to ask how he got that nickname!’

Lynch came out of the cabin again. ‘We’re about thirty miles from the mainland, so make yourselves comfortable.’

He’s got to be joking I thought, looking around the deck of the tiny craft. There were pieces of net and bits of cork lying about
but all I could find to sit on was something that resembled an old lobster pot while the others made themselves as comfortable as they could on top of the engine cover. The sea was quiet and the little boat was being tossed about quite a lot, which, after the bacon sandwiches, made us all feel a bit queasy although no one was actually seasick.