Immediate Action Part 39

The a.s.saulters would get on the last helicopter.

It looked as if we were going to go in on a green option with body armor, and then over that we'd have coat for the covert infil. We were going to drive up to the building and do an explosive entry. We'd need information on the doors; we didn't know what was on the other side. We didn't want to start killing the people we were supposed to be saving.

The charges for that were all made up. We were going to drive along three different routes, and everybody would have personal comms, on one frequency.

Then it was a question-as so often-Of hurry up and wait, and check and test, check and test-and yet another six hours of Basil, Sybil, and Manuel.

Finally we were told by Sean, "Okay, they're going in tomorrow night; the pilot's going to practice going in on NVGs. So if you want to go along for the ride, away you go. You've got to go in uniform, no weapons. Carry an ID card with you, and ID tags."

All four of us met the aircrew near the Puma.

"How's it going?" I said.

"Boring as usual," was the reply. "These luxury hotels all look the same to me."

"f.u.c.k you."

"Right, we'll go in about three-quarters of an hour.

Basically all we're trying to do is practice going in on NVGs and do some time checks. We'll land on a new LS."

They were in flying suits and life jackets, pens and bits of paper dangling off all over them. We put on life jackets and sat in the back.

The flight was uneventful. There was nothing to see as we flew over the Mediterranean. Then, as we approached Beirut, I craned my neck to look out of the window. Disappointingly it looked like any other Middle East city. There were lights in houses, car headlights carving their way through dark areas. What we couldn't see with the naked eye was the infrared flash of the Firefly equipment that was guiding the pilot into the middle of the city.

I heard the rotors slowing down, and we lost height.

Minutes later we were on the ground; the rotors kept turning as the loadie opened the door and two blokes from G Squadron came running toward us. Their job was to be liaison and mark the LS for us and bring the aircraft in. The loadie waved for two other boys to come forward.

They, too, were G Squadron, and what they were after was the mailbag we were carrying. They grabbed it and ran hunched double into the darkness. I saw a vehicle's headlights go on and watched it drive off.

At almost the same time the heli lifted; we did a big circuit and flew on to our refuel point.

I turned to James and said, "Er, so that was us in Beirut then?"

"Never mind," he said, "at least we know the flying times."

Everybody slagged us off the next morning about our big sortie.

"How was Terry then? Any messages for the archbishop?"

There was a cross section of people who were feeling sorry for the hostages and those who simply didn't care.

"What the f.u.c.k was Waite doing there anyway? He didn't have to be a brain surgeon to know that he was going to get caught."

Then, at about four o'clock one morning, one of the scaleys on stag on the radio net came screaming in. He threw all the lights on and shouted, 'We've got a standby! It's on! They want you in the briefing room now!"

Good news!

We pulled some kit on and ran down to the briefing room. Simon was there to greet us with the words "It's on: we're going in at oh-eight-hundred."

He was standing there in running shorts, flip-flops, and a big baggy T-s.h.i.+rt, and his gla.s.ses were on wonky from all the rus.h.i.+ng around.

"They've got the location.

We're just waiting for it to be confirmed. It's coming to us now."

Sean stood up and said, "Everybody, listen in. What we're going to do is a smash and grab. The aircrew are coming in now. As soon as we know the location, we'll have a look at it. No time to f.u.c.k around.

If we can get on target in the helis, we're just going to go straight in.

"I want to go through the rules of engagement before we start. Do not shoot at anybody unless he's firing at you or putting someone else's life in danger. I repeat, do not shoot unless there's somebody putting your life or someone else's life in danger. We don't want the f.u.c.king OK Corral down there, all right? just get in there, get it done, and get on the aircraft. The mission is to get the hostages. As soon as we know the location, we're going to run through a quick set of orders.

We've been told it must be done today. Okay, sort yourselves out.

It'll be a green option."

There wasn't an air of excitement or tension. After so many weeks of practice we just wanted to get it done. I put on my green DPM and smock and the lightweight boots I used on the team. We wouldn't be tabbing great distances; we were only going to be on the ground for maybe half an hour. Over my smock I put my chest harness with ten magazines of 7.62. I took the G3 with a folding stock because it had more firepower than anything else. In a bag I took an MP5. If things changed while we were in the air, I had to make sure I'd catered for it.

On my back I had a small day sack containing. two liters of hemocell plasma replacement and four giving sets. The rest was packed out with field dressings and a nylon fold-up stretcher.

Around my neck I had my dog tags and my ID card, through which I had burned a small hole and put some string, and two Syrettes of morphine.

The drugs were unlikely to be used; it's not good to use morphine for gunshot wounds to the chest, stomach, or head. In any event, we should be back drinking tea and ordering our duty-frees before it was needed.

We came back over to the briefing room.

"Still waiting," Sean said.

By now all the air crews had arrived and I could hear rotors turning.

The air crews came in, flying suits, pistols tucked in their harness, maps and chinographs and bits of paper and radios all over them.

We sat there. After ten minutes somebody said, "Let's get a cup of tea."

Sean said, "Yep, f.u.c.k off. But the only places I want You to be are in the cookhouse, the living accommodation, or here."

The scaleys said, "Let's sort out these radios while we're waiting for the brief."

We checked that our radios between us and the helicopter were working.

The helicopter would be relaying everything. On the ground we'd only need comms between us personally, working one to one with an earpiece.

We sat there and waited, cups of tea in hand. It was now six o'clock.

The start time was eight o'clock. Sean let us go to the cookhouse. A couple of people wandered back to the living accommodation, had a wash, brushed their teeth.

Then what we got from Sean was: "Bin it. It's canceled."

Oh, for f.u.c.k's sake. So near and yet so far.

We kept all the kit in the o.ps room, went for a run, watched more -tv, read the newspapers. Later that afternoon we went for another briefing.

We were told, "It's finished. It's binnedWe don't know why, so don't ask."

We packed all our own kit and handed the other stuff in to the stores.

We had two days off, so the most important thing, now that the weather was hotter, was getting the wagons and having a couple of days on the beach.

At the end of the day we weren't that particularly fussed about it. It was just another job that we'd got pretty bored practicing for.

Soon afterward and article appeared in the Times, accusing the government of "squandering chances" to rescue the hostages. A Foreign Office spokesman was quoted as saying, "We have vigorously followed up the many approaches which have been made to us. All of these have, sadly, run into sand for a variety of reasons."

Oh, well, we never found out what the sand was, but at least we'd tried-and got a nice tan.

The lecture room in Hereford was full as Bert from Int Corps gave B Squadron the background.

"As you are aware, the Regiment has been involved in many antinarcotic measures. We have worked with a number of American drug agencies, such as the D.E.A, whose personnel have visited Hereford on a number of occasions. Members of the Regiment have also a.s.sisted the U.S Coast Guard with antidrug patrols.

On the domestic front, the Regiment has been involved in drug-busting operations in London, mainly to stop PIRA's fund-raising drug operations.

"The main market for narcotics is still the United States, but Europe is catching up fast; the inner cities have become major distribution points, and it's feared there could be a major epidemic.

Now it has been decided at the highest levels that several UK agencies will join in the fight, and you are one of them.

"So, gentlemen"-Bert pulled down a roller map of Central and South America and jabbed at a specific region-"I give you a theater of operations that is so secret that anyone heard discussing it-even in camp will be R.T.U'D on the spot." Then, allowing himself a brief tongue-in-cheek grin, he said, "So to get you into the habit straightaway, even I am only going to refer to this place as a certain Latin American country."

His face serious once more, he went on. "This is not going to be easy.

Our certain Latin American country' is one of the most violent in the world, apart from those physically at war. There were more than twenty thousand murders last year-at least three thousand drugrelated killings in one town alone. In fact these days a local male between the ages of eighteen and sixty is more likely to be murdered than to die of any other cause.

"The Latin American drug trade has developed from a small cottage industry in the early seventies into a multibillion-dollar enterprise, with its own distribution network and armies of narcoguerrillas to make sure it stays that way. The chief villains of the piece are the cartels, a.s.sociations of drug producers and smugglers who have combined to divvy up the market and intimidate the authorities. Their vast profits have brought them power; they've killed politicians, judges, and senior army officers-and got away with it. Measures have been taken, but it's like pus.h.i.+ng water uphill.

"All efforts must be made to fight the drug trade in its own backyard.

If we can hit them at source and slow down the growth and production, we will then see the effect back in the UK."

Bert distributed photocopies of an intelligence report that showed that according to the U.S State Department, three Latin American countries between them produced enough coca leaves in 1988 to yield 360 tons of pure cocaine. At fourteen thousand dollars for a kilo at onethird purity, the suppliers' income would be fifteen billion dollars from cocaine alone-and that took no account of the ma.s.sive quant.i.ties of marijuana grown and processed. However, since the cartels also controlled distribution and retail sales, their profits were, in fact, much higher-an estimated margin of 12,000 percent from production cost to' street value.

"To look just at cocaine for a moment," Bert said, "it takes two hundred kilos of leaves to produce one kilo of paste. The leaves have to be converted into coca paste in their country of origin because the sheer volume and weight of leaves make it impossible to move them very far.

The plantations were scattered in the valleys, with thousands of collection points at which the leaves were rendered down. The coca paste was then taken to one of thousands of small dirt airstrips hidden in the jungle, and from there to drug manufacturing plants to be converted first into cocaine base (it took 2.5 kilos of paste to produce 1 kilo of base) and then into cocaine hydrochloride-pure cocaine. IMTo run the drug production line, the cartels had ' ported skilled technicians, many of whom were Europeans, as well as specialized equipment and supplies. They also handled the smuggling operation and had even set up their own distribution networks in America and Europe.

Bert said, "In the last two years the number of addicts in New York has trebled from one hundred eighty-two thousand to six hundred thousand-and that's without the up-and-coming generation of heroin users. just looking at one of the problems that we've got-cocaine-the size of the job can be measured by a recent seizure: In September police in Los Angeles impounded the largest single-consignment ever discovered, over twenty tons.

Its value was about two billion dollars wholesale, yet the seizure had no effect on price. In other words, supply still exceeded demand.

"Our 'certain Latin American country' is itself not a fantastic producer. However, rather than try to convince other governments to defoliate millions of acres of marijuana and coca, it makes sense to attack further down the chain, at the drug manufacturing plants.

"We don't want that sort of problem to happen in the UK. We need to hit the problem at source. It is a proactive strike, a first strike; if we are successful in our task, we will cut down the stream of drugs into t'he UK."

G Squadron had been the first to deploy. I didn't mind going in after them a few months later. In many ways it was better to take over from somebody else; they'd have had all the c.o.c.k-ups and found out all the little bits and pieces that we needed to know, and squared them all away.

B Squadron started to plan and prepare for the takeover. The first priority was to learn the language to a pa.s.sable standard, as it would obviously make our job i easier if we could communicate directly with people rather than have to go through a third party; what is said can be wrongly understood by the interpreter, and his translation can't be confirmed.

I seemed to live in the language lab. All around me blokes in headphones were shouting, "f.u.c.k it!" in frustration and either storming off for i brew or binning it for the day. Personally I used to go for a run when the grammar got too much for me. I wasn't that fussed ah. out getting it exactly right. I just wanted to get to grips with the verbs.

When I'd learned Swahili, I'd found that if I got hold of those, I could work around everything else. Spanish is in fact not that hard to learn; within a few weeks I could hold my own in any conversation about the price of tomatoes or the time of the next train.

Some of the blokes picked it up really well, and one of them in particular even appeared to have the accent down to a T. I thought, great, if ever we get time off, I'll stay near him. I changed my mind when I heard him trying to chat up a Spanish all pair in the town one day.

"h.e.l.lo, love," he said. "At what time this evening do you terminate?"

We were also doing all the normal planning and preparing that we'd do for any operation, as well as making sure the weapons were okay and the equipment was sorted out. Bert gave us detailed in-country briefs, teaching us more about the main players.

The Int people dragged in all the local newspapers and weekly news magazines. A couple of the blokes had Spanish wives, and they came in and chatted to us. It was all part of the process of getting tuned in to the country, which we took seriously-so much so there was a strong rumor going around at one stage that the boys in B Squadron were taking lambada lessons at Bartestree Village Hall. It all went back to the way people looked at the squadrons, and B Squadron was definitely seen as the yee-hah party squadron.

Some of G Squadron were going to come back with us to ensure continuity in the task. They started briefing us, confirming what we had been taught but also giving their version of what had gone on and suggestions as to how we could make things better next time around.

Our job was going to be in two phases. First, we were going to grab hold of the paramilitary police and a.s.sess their standard of training.

Then we would start training them from that baseline, taking them through all the basic skills that were going to be required, such as aggressive patrolling, OPs, and close target recces. The object was to show them how to find the DMP (drug manufacturing plant), then stay in close proximity and send back the information. It wouldn't be an easy task.

"A lot of DMPs are deep hides in the jungle," said Tony from G Squadron.

"Fantastic setups, well guarded and well alarmed. They have a system of tunnels and escape routes for leaving the plant in the event of an attack. By the time they hear the aircraft bringing in a heliborne a.s.sault, they'll be away-down the tunnels, into other hides, or along the escape routes."

We were going to enter Bert's "certain Latin American country" covertly, not exactly sneaking in like spies, but the Regiment's experience was that if a trip was unannounced, there was less to go wrong.

The first leg was by C130 to St. John's, Newfoundland, for an overnight stop. The interior of a Hercules is spartan, not much more than rows of nylon seats an'd luggage racks, and this one was also bulked out with equipment. I tied my hammock to the aircraft frame and climbed in with my Walkman and a book. By the time we all had our hammocks up the interior of the aircraft looked like a nest of hanging grubs waiting to grow into something nice. Slaphead nabbed the prime spot near the tailgate, where there was plenty of room for a hammock and all your gear; the only problem was the proximity of the toilet, a curtained-off oil drum full of chemicals. The stench was grim.

We stepped off the aircraft in summer clothes to find that it was winter in St. John's. We made our way to the hotel in temperatures of minus twenty.

"We've got to go out on the town," said Slaphead, get a few bevies down us."

During the mad dash from the hotel into the town Slaphead's dome froze over and I grew ice on my mustache. By the time we reached the drinking district everybody was purple.

Slaphead strode up to the bar, ran his eye along the optics of sour mash whisky, and said, "Hot chocolate, please."

The following morning we took off again, finally reaching the military airfield in darkness. We flew in with the aircraft unlit and the crew on PNG. As we landed and were taxiing along the runway, I saw the silhouettes of twenty or thirty aircraft parked up on the gra.s.s: small jets, twin-engine, an old Junkers 88, a couple of Dakotas.

"Some of the aircraft that've been confiscated from the drugs boys," said Tony. "Now they're just sitting there, rotting."

Despite Bert's briefing sessions, we'd all had visions of being in a nice warm place-balmy South American climate and all that. In fact it lay high up on the plain and was anything but tropical. As we stepped from the aircraft into a freezing cold night, B Squadron's O.C and the SM, who had gone out the week before with the light HQ group, were there s.h.i.+vering inside their Gucci leather coats.

Vehicles were there to collect half the squadron and our equipment and take us to the camp. "It's about twenty minutes from here," said the sergeant major. "If there's no traffic."

"And if there is traffic?" asked Slaphead.