The Sixteen (20 page)

‘He’s still over there beside the café, isn’t he?’ Chalky said, turning to look down the street just as Spot came dashing over to us.

‘You got him, Geordie, brilliant!’ he burst out.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ Dynamo asked.

‘You should have seen it,’ Spot said excitedly. ‘At first the guy seemed perfectly OK and I thought you hadn’t done it, Geordie, and then he just dropped like a sack of potatoes over the table and chairs. Completely ruined a perfectly good meal, too!’

‘Come on, let’s get away from here before anyone notices us,’ Dynamo warned and moved off towards a nearby alleyway. ‘It’d be daft to be spotted now, wouldn’t it?’

We got off the main street as quickly as we could but looking back down the alley, I saw crowds of people milling around the café and the little kid still struggling with the carpet.

So we followed the narrow alleyway Dynamo had turned into, then Chalky checked his map and we retraced our steps to the outskirts of the city before heading out towards the road back to the village. For some time we kept looking behind us to see whether we were being pursued, but there were no signs of anyone following us. When we reached the top of the hill where we’d helped to push the truck, we paused briefly and looked down towards the city. Although the road was very busy now with traffic in both directions, everything appeared to be normal.

As we walked along, they bombarded me with questions, wanting to know every detail of what I’d done, laughing and joking at my explanations. It felt great. Even though we were desperately thirsty and hungry, we were all elated and the walk
back to the village didn’t seem to take very long at all. No one took the slightest notice of us on the busy road and we ignored them, we just couldn’t give a damn.

At around two-thirty, we reached the outskirts of the village and discovered a tap against a wall. There were some kids playing nearby but they weren’t interested in us and just kept on with their game.

‘Stand back, lads,’ Dynamo said, grinning. ‘Let the man with the carpet have a drink first, he deserves it!’ The water from the tap was warm and probably contaminated but I didn’t care, my mouth was parched dry and it tasted wonderful.

Skirting around the outside of the village we made our way back to the embankment to wait for Lynch. We had almost two hours to kill until he was due so we lay on the sand in the scorching heat and rested, taking it in turns to keep a lookout.

Suddenly Spot hissed a warning.

‘Take cover, lads, there’s a patrol boat coming!’

We immediately dived over to the other side of the embankment, well out of sight of the passing old torpedo boat. We watched as it sped past just in front of Lynch, heading towards the cove. He quickly pulled alongside the remains of the jetty as we ran along it and jumped on board.

‘I can see that everything went to plan, otherwise you wouldn’t all be here in one piece, would you?’ he cracked. ‘Hey, where are my fish?’

‘Never mind that, where’s that bloody frying pan of yours?’ Dynamo spoke for all us. ‘We’re starving!’

‘Forget the frying pan for a moment, let’s get well away from here,’ Lynch said, as he revved the engine and we immediately shot away from the jetty and headed straight out to sea. ‘I’ve been watching those patrol boats all afternoon and they’ve been passing
here fairly regularly. I think the only reason they didn’t stop me just then was because I was on my own, but if they see you lot it might be another matter. Did you see what they are using?’ he asked. ‘Old British torpedo boats, so let’s get out of here!’

The return trip to Cyprus seemed to take ages; there was no speedy helicopter this time. We ate for what seemed like hours, huge amounts of sausages and beans, bacon sandwiches and cup after cup of tea. By the time we’d finished, we all felt quite seasick again. Night fell and we lay exhausted in the bottom of the boat as it motored relentlessly on and eventually arrived back at Cyprus around midnight.

Lynch dropped us off at Dhekélia in Larnaca Bay and then disappeared with the boat while we sat for an hour waiting for Ken to pick us up. Although the boat journey had been long, we were early in getting back, he informed us when he eventually arrived.

Well, you could have fooled me, I thought, that bloody journey seemed to be never ending.

The five of us squashed uncomfortably into the jeep and Ken sped back to the hangar. We were all very tired. It had been a long journey and all we wanted was to get some sleep, so we didn’t talk much. Ken told us that British troops were hot in the area, and we had to be careful, but mainly we sat in silence.

‘I trust everything went to plan,’ was all he said as he dropped us off.

‘Smooth as a baby’s bum,’ Spot replied, grinning broadly.

After a good night’s sleep, we started training at about 0900 hours the following day and Ken arrived at 1000 a.m. We discussed the operation in detail with him and Dynamo explained how we’d carried it out.

‘Well done, Geordie,’ Ken said, shaking my hand. ‘Our intelligence information certainly proved to be right about you! I’ve
got a sneaky feeling that you’ll soon be teaching them!’ he said, nodding his head towards my teammates.

The rest of that week I spent training and practising with them until Friday, when Chalky dropped me back at the Ordnance Depot at Dhekélia in plenty of time to be picked up by the working party’s truck and taken back to camp. When the truck arrived Bill was there sitting at the back.

‘Where the ’ell ’ave you been, I came looking for you, you bastard?’ he said by way of a greeting.

‘I’ve been making a few quid playing darts, besides those slave-drivers in there had me working late,’ I told him, hoping he would accept my explanation and leave it at that.

‘Huh, nice of you t’think of me!’ he grumbled. ‘Dun’t matter, they wouldn’t let me into t’camp anyway. I see “Grivas-bodily harm” has been at it again!’ he said, using the British troops’ nickname for the head of the EOKA terrorists, and then he thankfully changed the subject.

T
he jeep skidded to a stop outside the hut and Chalky dismounted onto the bonnet in his usual fashion. He’d picked me up earlier, just outside Limassol, where I’d been dropped by the working party’s truck as usual. I was supposed to be on detachment at the nearby camp.

I followed him inside and up the stairs to the ‘office’ where Dynamo was sitting, relaxing and drinking tea. As I entered, Spot appeared as if from nowhere and came in behind us wearing a CTC.

‘Hi Geordie,’ they said almost in unison, and Dynamo gave me a small wave of acknowledgement.

‘You’re all looking a bit rough this morning. What’s happened to your razors?’ I asked.

They all had a few days’ beard growth and, as it was unlike them to look scruffy unless there was a job on, I guessed that this must be the case.

‘Ken was here earlier, he’ll be back later with the hack,’ Chalky said, and I knew that I was right.

‘What’s up?’ I asked.

‘Well, Geordie, old boy, I think you’re really going to enjoy the little excursion we’ve got lined up for today. In fact, I think we should all have a smashing day out!’ he said, grinning broadly.

‘That’s right. You’ll have a great time,’ Spot added. ‘Come on, sit down, have some tea and we’ll tell you all about it!’

The office was fairly gloomy. Its only source of light came from a small broken window in the gable end of the building, where the strong sunlight lit up a small area of the floor. We moved the small table and our chairs into the light and sat around it with our tea and biscuits.

A couple of large maps covered the table top and hung down the sides; one was of Cyprus, Lebanon and Israel and the other was a detailed map of Egypt and Cairo. I noticed several red dots on the map of Lebanon and Israel; they followed the coastline and went down as far as Saudi Arabia.

‘What are they,’ I asked, pointing to the marks.

‘They mark the sites of fuel dumps. If one is discovered or missed the next location can be used,’ Spot told me.

As usual Dynamo was full of beans and bursting with energy.

‘We’re going to take you to see the pyramids, Geordie. Our target is in Cairo,’ he explained.

Now I saw what they meant by having ‘a great time’!

‘Flippin’ heck! You’ve got to be kidding me?’ I blurted out. ‘Cairo? What are we going to do in Cairo and how are we going to get there?’ I just couldn’t believe it!

‘That’s the reason we need to know where the fuel dumps are, the hack will have to refuel from one of them en route.’

Although I was excited about going on another mission with them, Cairo was a long way off and I was a little apprehensive. It must have shown on my face as Spot immediately picked it up.

‘Don’t worry, Geordie! We’ll be with you all the way. We’re only going to pop over to Cairo tomorrow to knock off this bloke called Nasser!’ He laughed.

The enormity of what he’d just said didn’t quite sink in immediately. I’d never heard of the man and, so as far as I was concerned, he was just another target. Besides, I was so taken up with what I’d recently learned and the professionalism of my colleagues that, as long as I was with them, I’d have gone anywhere. Then Spot explained to me just exactly who the target was.

So that was the job: Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser! Only the president of bloody Egypt! The plan was to go right into the heart of Cairo the next day and take out Colonel Nasser. Just like that! He had to be the most guarded man in Egypt!

‘Our information is that the Colonel will be visiting a certain headquarters or garrison in Cairo tomorrow and is expected to leave late in the evening,’ Chalky said, handing me some of the black-and-white aerial photographs of the building, which lay on the table.

I studied them closely, but to me the place looked impregnable. Situated in the middle of a heavily populated area made up of narrow streets, it was surrounded by two high-wire fences of at least thirteen feet, which could be alarmed, and guarded by both Arab and Russian troops.

Then I looked up from the photographs at my three mates, amazed; I couldn’t believe what they were actually contemplating.
I knew about Suez, and that British, French and Israeli forces had recently attacked Egypt, and Cairo in particular and, obviously, these people hated our guts! The audacity of planning to go into the heart of their capital to assassinate their president took my breath away.

However, from the training I’d been through with them and our previous missions, I knew without doubt that if it could be done, they were the only people who could do it.

‘Piece of cake, eh Geordie?’ Chalky winked.

I smiled back at him, unable to speak for a moment. I couldn’t help but wonder if this was where I might end up in an Egyptian jail or be found lying dead in the street. I shook myself mentally, knowing that I shouldn’t be thinking like that at all; they’d taught me to think differently, to be positive, but I supposed that it would take time until I was as relaxed about things as they were. But it had gone through my mind on more than one occasion just whose place I’d recently taken, and just what exactly had happened to him! It was a question I’d never asked and they’d never explained it to me – I wasn’t about to ask them now.

The rest of that day and late into the night we spent planning – discussing and deciding routes, what gear we would take, how we should dress and how best to conceal our weapons. To the uninitiated, it would seem an unimaginable and impossible task for four men armed with sashes, knives, a couple of crossbows, ropes, pickups and MK1s to walk into a well-armed, heavily guarded garrison and carry out this mission.

As ever, no one was obviously in charge. That just wasn’t how we worked; everyone’s thoughts and ideas were given equal consideration and discussed in full. Although I was the ‘junior’ member of the team in age and experience I was never made to feel that my input was any less valid than theirs; in fact they made
me feel just the opposite, although it was clear to me that they had already been over the details several times before I arrived.

As we collected our gear together I realised that, although I was proficient with all of it by then, I’d only used most of the equipment in training exercises, never as yet on a real job, unlike them.

‘Is this it?’ I asked Spot, indicating the small amount of equipment we were packing.

‘Well,’ he replied, ‘if we want to blend in and look like the locals we have to carry as little gear as possible; you know it’s not going to be that much different from Beirut, it’s just a few extra miles that’s all. We’ve got quite a way to go from our drop-off point to the target, about eighty miles, so we need to be inconspicuous, try and look like workmen or something like that.’

‘We know that it’s quite a while since the last raids,’ Chalky added, ‘but they’re pretty slow at doing things out there so there’s still a lot of road repairs going on in this area. We should be able to get away with carrying something that looks like work gear in a couple of bags, anything more than that might draw attention to us.’

‘Eighty miles! How long have we got to do that in?’

‘Fourteen hours from the drop-off point. But don’t worry, if it comes to it we can always catch a bus!’ Dynamo laughed. ‘Even if we’ve got to nick someone’s camel we’ll get there in time, besides there’s always some form of transport lying about.’

‘The most difficult part will be getting from here to our drop-off point without being seen,’ Chalky pointed out. ‘The hack will drop us roughly fifteen to twenty miles NNW of Port Said in a swampy area just west of the river, then return to pick us up early the following morning. That’s if we make it and get back there again, of course. So we’ll need to sort out some form of transport when we get there, otherwise we won’t get back in time to be picked up
at 0930. It’s going to be a pretty hairy run for Ken, trying to stay low enough to be undetected by their radar, but we’ll have surprise on our side.’

‘Won’t the area be busy at that time in the morning?’ I asked.

‘Probably, but that’s exactly why they won’t take much notice of us, why should they? Besides, by the time they get around to doing something about it we’ll be back into Israeli air space,’ Spot said.

‘Ken will be arriving at 0500 hours in the morning with the hack. We’ll be pushing it to its capacity on this trip, so it’s been modified for us; it’s a bit like a newer model if you like, but to save on fuel we have to carry as little weight as possible.’

‘The fuel capacity of the Sycamore is only about eighty-nine gallons, which will take us roughly two hundred and sixty-eight miles; the overall trip will be over five hundred. If everything goes to plan, we’re to be dropped at a deserted part of the Egyptian coast at approximately 1000 hours, after first refuelling here,’ Chalky said, pointing to one of the red dots on the map. ‘It’s in a pretty remote location on the Israeli border. In order to take us a few extra miles the hack’s been fitted with another tank, in addition to its two ordinary ones – just a precaution in case our designated fuel dump’s been discovered.’

‘So what happens if we have a problem on the way and have to ditch it?’ I asked him.

‘Don’t worry, it’s not the first time we’ve done a journey like this and we’ve never had any real problems so far, but if we do, things are in hand,’ Chalky cheerfully informed me.

I wondered if by that he meant the whole of The Sixteen would be standing by to help? So far I hadn’t met any of them other than my three teammates, Ken and Lynch, but I was really looking forward to the day when I did. Ken had told me that eventually I’d get to meet them all and I wondered if this might be that occasion.
But then if it was, it would probably mean that we’d run into some problems.

Although I felt very much a part of the team, and was certainly as well trained and skilful as my teammates by now, I still felt new and that I had an awful lot to learn about them. I knew they were extremely careful with what they told me and that most of the information I was given was strictly on a need-to-know basis, concerning only the current operation.

It was obvious that they knew a great deal more about one another, and the rest of the group, as I’d overheard them discussing previous missions from time to time, but when I tried to find out more they just told me to forget it. I don’t think that this was due to any lack of trust on their part, it was just the way in which they operated, but often I felt at a bit of a disadvantage.

As we didn’t want to carry too much gear or arouse suspicion, we decided that we probably wouldn’t need to wear jackets or coats. If it did get cold we would just have to improvise along the way. So, in order to look more like ordinary workmen, we merely wore white shirts, cotton trousers and boots, which made it slightly more difficult to carry concealed weapons. However, we decided on each of us carrying our MK1s and fifty rounds of ammo, as well as our sashes and boot-knives.

We also carried two battered canvas bags between the four of us, which each held a 120-foot rope, a light line, pick-ups, ten pulley wheels, a folding crossbow, eight assorted arrows with different specialist heads, plus a new CTC each and whatever ammo we were unable to conceal about us. We also had a water canister and some ‘dog biscuits’ each.

Our preparations for the job went on until late that night, after we had assembled and checked our gear. Once we were completely sure that we’d prepared everything we needed for the
trip, and were satisfied that we had studied every detail of the target area, we discussed our contingency plan should anything go wrong. If for some reason we were delayed by a couple of hours, we’d miss our designated pick-up time and would need to remain inconspicuous for several hours until the next pre-arranged time at around 1600 hours.

For all we’d spent the better part of a day and night discussing the job, and my head was full of details, I had no difficulty sleeping that night, nor did any of the others. We woke early the following morning and as we ate breakfast, I helped Spot prepare some sandwiches and fruit to eat on the journey, as we knew there would be no time to eat when we got to Egypt.

As soon as we were ready, I was impatient and eager to be on our way. It felt as though we’d been sitting waiting for hours when suddenly the whole building shook, as the hack flew overhead and the dust storm it stirred up flew through every crack and crevice in the old building. Choking and barely able to see, we grabbed our bags and rushed outside just as it landed about twenty to thirty yards from the hut.

To our surprise the props immediately began to slow down, then Ken jumped out and ushered us back inside and up into the office.

‘Nasser’s changed his plans,’ he said. ‘He’s moved out of the area but there’s another job: you need to “take care” of someone else instead. Fortunately he’s in the same building, otherwise the whole operation would have been aborted. Our information is that he’s a senior foreign military advisor but the security around him won’t be so hot. The building and its surroundings are those in the photographs you’ve seen, only the target has changed, so the plans are roughly the same.’

Ken produced two large black-and-white photographs plus a
smaller one of the target himself for us to study. Dynamo took this, put a slit into the waistband of his trousers and hid it inside. We left the two larger photographs on the table. Time was of the essence now, and we had to get to the fuel dump before 0800 hours, so we didn’t waste any more moments. The place would be cleaned up after we left and, as usual, there would be no trace of anyone ever having been there. I still had no idea who did this, but I suspected that it could only be other members of The Sixteen.

Grabbing our gear once more, we dashed outside and followed Ken towards the dirty grey helicopter. It was the first time I’d seen it in daylight and I was surprised at its strange shape, which made it look as though its back was broken. Its entire insignia had been obscured and the doors removed, presumably in an attempt to make access easier and to lighten its load, so once more we were open to the elements.