Authors: Andy McNab
Crisis Four (3 page)
Reg 1 was in front of me. Six feet two, and built like a brick shit-house, he was probably having an even worse time in the cramped conditions. His curly black hair, going a bit grey at the sides, was all over the place. Like me, before I left in ’93, he had been selected to do work for the intelligence and security services, including the sort of job for the US that Congress would never sanction. I had done similar jobs myself while in the Regiment, but this was the first I’d been on since becoming a K. Given who we were going in against, none of us was giving odds on whether we’d get to do another.
I glanced across at Sarah, to my right in the semi-darkness. Her eyes were closed, but even in the dim light I could see she wasn’t looking her happiest. Maybe she just didn’t like flying without complimentary champagne and slippers.
It had been a while since I’d last seen her, and the only thing about her that had changed was her hair. It was still very straight, almost South-East Asian, though dark brown, not black. It had always been short, but she’d prepared for this operation by having it cut into a bob with a fringe. She had strong, well-defined features, with large brown eyes above high cheekbones, a nose that was slightly too large, and a mouth that nearly always looked too serious. Sarah would not be troubled in her old age by laughter lines. When it was genuine, her smile was warm and friendly, but more often it appeared to be only going through the motions. And yet, just when you were thinking this, she’d find the oddest thing amusing and her nose would twitch, and her whole face would crease into a radiant, almost childlike, grin. At times like that she looked even more beautiful than usual – maybe too beautiful. That was sometimes a danger in our line of work, as men could never resist a second glance, but at thirty-five years of age she had learned to use her looks to her advantage within the service. It made her even more of a bitch than most people thought she was.
It was no good, I couldn’t get comfortable. We’d been on the aircraft for nearly fifteen hours and my body was starting to ache. I turned and tried the left side. I couldn’t see Reg 2, but I knew he was to my left in the gloom somewhere. He was easy to distinguish from Reg 1, being the best part of a foot shorter and with hair that looked like a fistful of dark-blond wire wool. The only thing I knew about them apart from their zap numbers was that, like me, they had both been circumcised within the last three weeks and that, like mine, their underwear came from Tel Aviv. And that was all I wanted to know about them, or about Regs 3 to 6 who were already in-country, waiting for us – even though one of them, Glen, was an old friend.
I found myself facing Sarah again. She was rubbing her eyes with her fists, like a sleepy child. I tried to doze off; thirty minutes later I was still kidding myself I was asleep when I got a kick on the back of my legs. It was Sarah.
I sat up in my sleeping bag and peered into the semi-darkness. Three loadies (load masters) were moving around with orienteering torches attached to their heads, glowing a dim red so as not to destroy our night vision. Each of them had an umbilical cord trailing from his face mask, and their hands moved instinctively to make sure it didn’t get snagged or detached from the aircraft’s oxygen supply.
I unzipped the bag and, even through my all-weather sniper suit, immediately felt the freezing cold in the unpressurized 747 cargo hold. None of the passengers or cabin crew would have known there were people down here, tucked away in the belly of the aircraft. Nor would our names have appeared anywhere on a manifest.
I folded the bag in half, leaving inside the two ‘aircrew bags’ I’d filled during the flight – plastic bags with a one-way valve which you insert yourself into and piss away to your heart’s content. I wondered how Sarah had been getting on. It was bad enough for me because my cock was still extremely sore, but it must be hard being female aircrew on a long flight with a device designed only for males – or the female commander of a deniable op. I put a Post-It on my mental bulletin board, reminding myself to ask her how she got round the problem. That was if we survived, of course, and were still on speaking terms.
I could never remember which was starboard or port; all I knew was that, as you looked at the aircraft from the front, we were in the small hold at the rear and the door was on the left-hand side. I clutched my oxygen tube as a loadie crossed over it, and adjusted my mask as his leg caught it, pulling it slightly from my face. The inside was wet, clammy and cold now the seal had been broken.
I picked up my Car 15, a version of the M16 Armalite 5.56mm with a telescopic butt and a shorter barrel, cocked it and applied the safety. The Car had a length of green paracord tied to it like a sling; I strapped it over my left shoulder so the barrel faced down and it ran along the rear of my body. The rig (parachute) would go over that.
I pushed my hand under the sniper suit to get hold of the Beretta 9mm that was on a leg holster against my right thigh. I cocked that, too, and pulled back the topslide a few millimetres to check chamber. Turning the weapon so it caught one of the loadies’ red glows, I saw the glint of a correctly fed round, ready to go.
This was my first ‘false flag’ job posing as a member of Israeli special forces, and as I adjusted my leg straps I wished I’d had a little more time to recover from the circumcision. It hadn’t healed as quickly as we’d been told. I looked around me as we got our kit on, hoping the others were in as much pain.
We were about to carry out a ‘lift’ to find out what the West’s new bogeyman, Osama Bin Laden, a Saudi multimillionaire turned terrorist, was getting up to in Syria. Satellite photography had shown earthmoving and other heavy equipment from Bin Laden’s construction company near the source of the river Jordan. Downstream lay Israel, and if its main source of water was about to be dammed, diverted or otherwise tampered with, the West needed to know. They feared a repeat of the 1967 war, and with Bin Laden around it was never going to be a good day out. He hadn’t been dubbed America’s ‘public enemy number one’ by Clinton for nothing.
Our task was to lift Osama’s right-hand man – known to us only as the ‘Source’ for op sec (operational security) reasons – from on site. His private jet had been spotted at a nearby airfield. The US needed to know what was happening in Syria, and, more to the point, maybe learn how to lay their hands on Osama. As the briefing guy had said, ‘Bin Laden represents a completely new phenomenon: non-state-supported terrorism backed by an extremely rich and religiously motivated leader with an intense hatred of the West, mainly America, as well as Israel and the secular Arab world. He must be stopped.’
Once ready and checked by the loadies, it was just a question of holding on to the airframe and waiting. There was nothing to do for the next few minutes but daydream or get scared. Each of us was in his or her own little world now. Before any operation some people are frightened, some are excited. Now and again I could see reflections from the red torches in people’s eyes; they were staring at their boots or at some other fixed point, maybe thinking about their wives, or girlfriends, or kids, or what they were going to do after this, or maybe even wondering what the fuck they were doing here in the first place.
Me, I didn’t know what to think really. I’d never been able to get sparked up about the thought of dying and not seeing anyone else again. Not even my wife, when I was married. I always felt I was a gambler with nothing to lose. Most people who gamble do so with the things that are important to them; I gambled knowing that if I lost I wouldn’t break the bank.
I watched the glowing redheads pack our kit away into the large aluminium Lacon boxes. Once we’d been thrown out and the door had closed again, they’d stow all other evidence that we had been there in the boxes and just sit it out until they were taken care of in London.
Two of the loadies started a sweep with their torch lights to make sure there was nothing loose which could be sucked out as soon as the door opened. Nothing must compromise this job.
We got the order to turn on our own oxygen, disconnect from the aircraft supply and stand by. Sarah was standing in front of Reg 1, who was to tandem jump with her. She had never failed to amaze me. She was an IG (Intelligence Group), the very top of the intelligence-service food chain, people who usually spend their lives in embassies, posing as diplomats. Their lives should be one long round of receptions and recruiting sources through the cocktail circuit, not running around, weapon strong. Then again, Sarah had always made a point of finishing the jobs herself.
She was masked and goggled up, looking for all the world as if she’d done this a thousand times. She hadn’t; her first jump ever had been three weeks before, but she took her job so seriously that she’d probably read ten books on freefall and knew more facts and figures than all of us lot put together.
She turned and looked for me. We got eye-to-eye and I gave her an everything-is-OK nod. After all, that was part of this job, to look after her.
The loadie motioned us towards the door. Our bergens, each containing forty pounds of equipment, were hanging from our rigs and down the back of our legs. We waddled forward like a gaggle of geese, putting weight on each foot in turn. Thankfully the bergens hadn’t needed to be fully laden. If everything went to plan, we’d only be on the ground for a few hours.
There was a pause of about five seconds as the loadie by the door spoke into his mike to the British Airways navigator, then he nodded to himself and swung into action. The door was about half the size of an average up-and-over garage door. Pulling out all the levers, he swung them anticlockwise, then pulled the handles towards him. Even though I had a helmet on, I heard the massive rush of air, and then a gale was thrashing at my sniper suit. Where the door had been there was now just a black hole. The tags on the aircraft’s luggage containers fluttered frantically. The freezing cold wind whipped at the parts of my face that weren’t covered by my mask. I pulled my jockey’s goggles over my eyes, fighting against the blast, gripping hard on to the airframe.
Seven miles below us lay Syria – enemy territory. We did our final checks. I wanted to get this jump out of the way, get the job done and be in Cyprus for tea and toast tomorrow morning.
We rammed up close to each other at the exit, the roar of the wind and the jet engines so loud I could hardly think. At last came a handheld red light from the loadie. We all joined in with a loud scream: ‘
Red on, red on!
’ I didn’t know why, no-one could hear anything; it was just something we always did.
Red on, red on!
’ I didn’t know why, no-one could hear anything; it was just something we always did.
The loadie’s light changed to green and he shouted, ‘
Green on!
’
Green on!
’
He moved back as we all shouted to ourselves, ‘
Ready!
’
Ready!
’
We rocked forward, trying to scream above the roar: ‘
Set!
’
Set!
’
Then we rocked back. ‘
Go!
’
Go!
’
Out and out we spilled, four people on three rigs, tumbling towards Syria. Being the last man, I was pushed by the loadie to make sure there wasn’t too much of a gap between us in the sky.
You can now freefall from an aircraft flying at high altitude and miles from the target area and land with pinpoint accuracy. The HAHO (high altitude, high opening) technique calls for extreme weather clothing and oxygen equipment to survive temperatures as low as minus 40°C, especially when a fifty-mile cross-country descent can take nearly two hours. It has now largely replaced the old HALO (high altitude, low opening) approach, for the simple reason that, instead of hurtling towards the ground at warp speed, with no real idea of where you’re going to land or where the rest of the team are once you’re on the ground, you can glide gently onto the target sitting in a comfortable rig. Unless, of course, a man in a white coat has recently clipped a bit off the end of your cock.
I felt the jet stream pick me up and take me with it. As the aircraft thunders over you at 500 miles an hour you think you’re going to collide with the tailplane, but in fact you’re falling and never hit it.
Once I was out of the jet stream it was time to sort myself out. I could tell by the wind force, and the fact that I could see the aircraft lights flashing three or four hundred feet above me, that I was upside down. I spread my arms and legs and arched my back, banging myself over into a stable position.
I looked around – moving your head during freefall is about the only thing that doesn’t have an effect on your stability – trying to see where everyone else was. I could just about see a figure over on my right-hand side; I didn’t know who it was, and it didn’t matter. As I looked up I saw the tail-lights of the 747 disappearing way above us, and downstairs, on the floor, there was nothing, I couldn’t see a single light.
All I could hear was the rush of air; it was like sticking your head out of a car travelling at 120 mph. What I had to do now was keep stable and wait for the AOD (automatic opening device) to do its bit. The drill is just to assume that it’s going to work, but to get in the pull position just in case. I thought, Fuck that. I knew my pull height – 30,000 feet, an 8,000-foot drop. I moved my left hand up, just above my head, and my right hand down to the pull handle. There has to be symmetry with everything. If you’re in freefall and just put one hand out, that will hit the air and you’re going to tumble.
I could see the needle on my wrist alti. I was past 34,000. Instead of waiting to feel the pull of the AOD on the pin, I kept on looking at the alti, and bang on 30,000 feet I pulled the handle and pushed my hands up above my head, which made me backslide, which meant the air would catch the drogue chute to bring the main pack out. I felt it move and rock me slightly from side to side. Then bang – it’s like running into a brick wall. You feel like one of those cartoon characters that’s just been crushed with a rock.
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