Immediate Action (38 page)

    Let's have a drink on the old fucker."

    So we had a drink on him and hoped that the rupert was okay. He was quite shaken up. It is not the best of introductions to have your troop senior die on you and then maybe think that everyone blames you-which they didn't. It seemed that life on a mountain didn't suit him; about three months later he moved to our troop.

    Maybe it was the thought of all that ice cream.

    We were sitting under a baobab tree, a weird, muscled sculpture with branches like roots sprouting white, starlike flowers, drinking the rum and talking about the locals. "The Bushmen have great respect for the baobab," Tiny said. "Pick its flower, they say, and a lion will eat you. These hills are sacred to them, too. It's taboo to kill an animal that lives here."

    One of 9 Troop said, "Joe was out in a one-ten yesterday and'shot an antelope for us to eat. Apparently his death came as no surprise to the locals."

    As I lay in my biwi bag that night, looking past a bright moon to a gleaming Milky Way, I was a believer.

    I had never been particularly worried about dying. We all had to die at some stage; I just wanted it to be nice and quick; I didn't want it to be painful. I didn't have any big religious notions about death.

    I liked to think there was something after it, a place or dimension where I'd find all the information I'd ever wanted to know, such as what a Love Heart tasted like and all the other great secrets of life.

    That was the only advantage that I could see.

    I'd always been sure that I was going to die early in life anyway.

    I'd always had that feeling, ever since I was a kid. I'd always thought, I'm going to live till I'm about fifty-five, and that will be it. Didn't stop me being a sucker when the pension salesman came around, though.

    When mates died, I was upset initially, but after that it was okay. It was more upsetting if they died in a drastIC way, but the fact that they were dead, there were no problems with that. What was horrible and a real pisser was if people died or got severely injured and impaired for the rest of their lives for no reason. It was always unfortunate when people died during training. We'd lost quite a lot of people through drowning in the jungle; river crossings were the number one killer in the Regiment. Sometimes I thought, Hell, we're practicing things that are going to be dangerous enough on the day, so why tempt Providence?

    But if that attitude was allowed to prevail, we would lose all the advantages of realistic training.

    Joe had to be taken into South Africa to get a British Airways flight out, and this would unfortunately entail a delay. Barry, the storeman at Squadron HQ, hosed down one of the six-foot tables, sorted Joe out on it and cleaned him up, then got all the meat out of the freezer and stored him inside it instead; he then organized a huge feast to eat all the meat before it spoiled. When all the arrangements had been made, they got Joe in a motor and drove him into South Africa.

    From there he was put in a coffin and flown home.

    Meanwhile we had work to do. We were flown in a I up to the shuttle service of little Islander aircraft h Okavango, a vast expanse of lakes and river systems that borders on the Caprivi strip, the area of drama with South African forces. The plan was for us to join forces with 6 Troop, who'd been up there for weeks.

    The average contact in that sort of bush, even though it looked pretty sparse, was about five meters. Everybody was carrying his personal choice of weapon that he considered would be good at such close ranges-SLR, 203 and M16, and shotgun. Mine was a 203.

    The BDF were armed with the Galil, Israel's answer to the AK47.

    It was a very good weapon, simple to use and to clean, and with a simple and reliable action. People could learn it quickly, but its one drawback was its weight; it was a bit heavy for the troops of many of the countries that used it.

    The other equipment that we'd taken with us was minimal-as ever, only as much as we could get into a bergen. As in the jungle, we'd need just two sets of clothes-a dry set and a wet set. As well as that I took a poncho, in my case an Australian shelter sheet that crumpled up really small, a hammock, and an American poncho liner, an excellent bit of kit similar to a very thin nylon duvet. The rest was food, water, bullets, ahd a bit of first-aid kit.

    We were there to practice a two-troop camp attack in the swamps.

    The camp we were training on was an alligator farm i'n the middle of nowhere.

    Members of 6 Troop went out and did the recces, spent a couple of days putting OPs on it, and got all the information back.

    We were living on a little spit of land within the swamps, among beds of fast-growing papyrus. Over the years, as the hippos had come up onto these little islands, they had obligingly created perfect landing slips for our Geminis. We could drag the inflatables onto the spit and conceal ourselves and our equipment in the reeds and operate from there.

    There was no way anyone would find us.

    Everybody was cammed up and carrying belt kit and weapons as we climbed into the boats and set off into the darkness. One boat was up ahead as lead scout.

    Aboard were two people-one driving, one navigating.

    The cox was Solid Shot. As a member of Boat Troop he knew what he was doing. He would just let the motor run on its own revs and guide it through the reeds and obstructions. It was amazing how little noise was made by the motors.

    The other member was the Boat Troop Boss, the rupert who passed in my Selection. He was from some armored recce unit and was quite funny and likable. He would be checking with Solid Shot on navigation.

    Solid Shot was soon to be a fellow officer. When we got back from this trip, he was going to be commissioned as Captain Solid Shot, so he wasn't so thick after all. We were all very happy for him.

    We were moving along at little more than tick-over pace; the Yamaha is remarkably quiet if you're just trogging along without revving it up. As we got closer to the target, the engines were cut off, and we started paddling.

    Sandy and I were up at the front of the second boat.

    With his, blond Brillo pad hair under a very large bush hat he looked like one of the Flowerpot Men. Our job was to cover the first boat, which we could just about see up ahead in the darkness. We wanted lots of distance between boats in case of a contact, but at the same time we had to keep in visual touch. If we started losing contact, it would all go to a gang fuck.

    We were mooching along, no sound except for the occasional slurp of a paddle in the water, when suddenly, from near the lead boat, we heard what sounded like an explosion. It was followed by another, and another, and then we could see the foaming white of violently disturbed water.

    The lead Gemini stopped, and so did we. The whole two troops were now just floating in the water and being taken slowly downstream. We then heard what sounded like the roar of a steam engine.

    We heard the sound again, and this time it was getting closer, a deep, outraged bellow that told us we were about to be thrown out of the party.

    Next thing we heard was "Fuck, fuck, fuck!" from the lead boat as a massive head and shoulders reared out of the water and took a bite into the rubber. Luckily the inflatables were constructed in sections, so that if one did get a puncture, it was only that section that went down.

    There,was an ominous sound'of rushing water, and my eyes strained in the darkness to see the threat. An ugly head arrowed toward us, erupting into an explosion of foam and jaws the size of a Mini.

    Sandy said, "Fucking hell!" and everybody in the boat paddled so fast a man could have water-skied behind us.

    As the deep, honking voices receded behind us, I realized I was drenched-whether from swamp water, exertion, or sheer terror I didn't know.

    The snorting and thrashing of the hippos would have compromised us, so we had no alternative but to turn back and try to find another route in.

    Our time on the target would be severely cut as a result, because we had to be in and away again before first light, needing darkness to get back to our hide position, the troop L.U.P.

    We eventually got to the area of the attack. The blokes from the lead boat jumped on others, and we dragged the bitten vessel along behind. It was the first time I'd been in an attack where people couldn't stop laughing. It had been a ridiculous scenario: two troops of the world's finest, screaming along the Okavango waterways armed to the teeth, going in to do an aggressive act, stopped in their tracks by a hippo that had the hump.

    We had a very interesting few more weeks in Botswana, during which I learned the Afrikaans for "Let's get the hell out of here!" and the Botswanan for "Look at that springbok run."

    At the end we had a big barbecue back at the squadron RP. It was as much a drink for Joe as anything else, and during the course of the night things were getting out of hand. A thunderflash (training grenade) came over the roof, then another. The locals were still shitting themselves about S.A.D.F incursions, and the explosions did not go down well.

    The SSM shouted, "That's enough. The next one who throws one gets R.T.U'D [returned to unit]."

    Two minutes later, BANG!

    The SSM went running around the area looking for the flash banger, but no one could be found. A few of us saw who he was but said nothing.

    The following morning the squadron O.C got everyone together. "You have until midday to come forward," he said. "If not, there will be no R and R, and from now on you will provide security with the Botswanans."

    We all knew who it was, but no one said a word.

    The O.C finished with the words "He has to make up his mind if he is a man or a mouse."

    The Botswanan Mouse was born. We got pissed off with the restrictions that were imposed on us as a result of this blokes irresponsible behavior and even more pissed off with him. He deserved to be R.T.U'D, but everyone had a strange and probably mistaken sense of loyalty. He was flapping good style, however, and quite rightly so.

    No one ever exposed the identity of the mouse. Every group of people has someone they don't like or want to work with. When we returned to Hereford, as well as Slaphead's pictures in the interest room, there were several cartoons of the mouse, and he continued to reap what he had sown.

    M n entire squadron of the Special Air Service was 14 on the team" in the UK for six to nine months, on permanent standby. After a buildup of four to six weeks, which included training with the squadron still on, the commitment was handed over; it might have been only eighteen months since the blokes were last on the tearr, but there was always something new to learn.

    The team consisted of two subteams, Red and Blue, each with an assault group and sniper group. Having two teams meant that two incidents could be covered at once; there were also contingency plans for other squadrons to produce teams if there were more than two incidents that had to be covered.

    The assaulters were the people with all the black kit on who go jumping out of helicopters and banging down doors; they tended to work in four-man teams, but this was flexible depending on the target. One of the assault groups was the M.O.E (method of entry) team, responsible for making up the explosive charges for the rest of the team to use.

    There was also a signals setup. As well as look after the team's equipment they had to provide comms from anywhere in the world, as there were also commitments overseas. As some of them were required to enter a target with the team, they trained alongside us.

    The medic carried the world's biggest trauma pack. If there was a man down, the firefight still had to go on; it was the medic's job to get in there and start getting some fluid into him and managing the trauma.

    Until everything went bang and an attack went in, the sniper group were the most important people. They were on the target, giving the rest of us real-time information. They, too, were trained as assaulters.

    The squadron HQ comprised the O.C, a major, and the SSM, a warrant officer, who were responsible for both teams.

    I found being on constant standby no more of a problem than it must be for a doctor; we were on call and we lived with it. We each had a bleeper and didn't go anywhere without it.

    Seven Troop was always part of the Red team, which was wonderful because the squadron HQ was next to the Blue. If there were any bone jobs to be done, the head shed would just nip next door; we were fifty meters away in our own hangar.

    First thing in the morning we'd meet up in the crew room. Some would have run in or have already done their training in the gym. It was a personal thing; no one ever told us to do it; however, the day we couldn't do our job because we had lacked the self-discipline to go and train, we'd be standing on Platform 4.

    Cycling was very popular at one stage, and some mornings it looked like the Tour de France coming into the main gate. I preferred to run in from my house, have a shower, then go and have a brew in the crew room.

    It had the look of a seventies-built school staff room, with a TV and magazines that were six months out of date, army soft chairs with horrible colored nylon covers, and mugs that were badly stained by coffee. It stank of stale tea, coffee, and cigarettes.

    One of us would go to the cookhouse in a Range Rover and pick up some tea in Norwegians and the packed lunches-brown paper bags that contained a typical school lunch of soggy rolls, Yorkie bar, and crisps. By eight o'clock we'd have eaten everything and would start discussing the day's training.

    "What are we doing today then, Gar?"

    Gar was in his mid-thirties, an ex-Green jacket, and had been in the Regiment for years. He was very experienced over the water and really switched on. Recently divorced, he was reliving his youth; he was immensely sociable, tailor-made for B Squadron. He wore Armani suits and jermyn Street shirts; even the sergeant major called him Champagne Charlie. At the same time, however, he was very sensible, and not the right bloke to get on the wrong side of. Everybody tried to be best mates with Gar; get in his bad books and you were in trouble.