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Authors: Duncan Falconer

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Military

First Into Action (8 page)

BOOK: First Into Action
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3

By the third night of the ambush I started to have serious doubts about whether O’Sally was ever coming. I had lost the razor edge I had arrived with the first night. The muzzle of my weapon had drifted off the critical arc of fire I had set for myself. I shifted a little too noisily. I often took my hand off my weapon stock to reach into a pocket for a piece of nutty. I began to realise why they had given me this ambush. It was because the odds on O’Sally coming home were really very low. ‘Let the sprog have that one,’ I could hear them saying. Otherwise they would have sent their best people on a kill like this. And what had the SAS trooper around the front done to deserve getting stuck on this job?

Then I heard a noise close by – a stick breaking underfoot. My senses screamed into focus, my head went tight with concentration, I stopped breathing, my heart virtually stopped beating and the world moved into slow-motion.

Seconds later it came again. Definitely a footstep, followed seconds later by another. My heart kicked in again. It felt like a lead weight bouncing hard inside my rib-cage. Someone was slowly approaching down the hedgerow. My mouth was slightly open, an instinctive reaction that improves the hearing. I took shallow breaths. Adrenaline pissed through my veins. I carefully moved my weapon to aim at the end of the hedgerow just yards from me. Another footstep. My finger was lightly touching the trigger, a little more pressure and a burst of bullets would roar from it. I wanted to hit him in the head first shot, but what if he was crouching? What if I aimed too high and missed his brain? I aimed lower, my plan being to move it up and unzip him from belly to forehead. It would not matter if he had a bullet-proof vest, not with this weapon. You would need three-quarter-inch steel plate to stop 5.56mm high velocity at this range.

The footsteps paused. He was listening. I could not afford to even blink or swallow now. If I could not see his face, he could not see me yet. How long would he wait to step forward? As soon as I could make out the remotest outline I would let rip at it. What if it wasn’t O’Sally? Tough shit. I’d find out when I shone a torch on his dead face. No one else was supposed to be out here anyway. It was not my SAS partner. We had a signal worked out if one needed to approach the other. A few days earlier, on the border near Forkhill, a duck-hunter had been shot and killed when he turned the corner of a field to face the point-man of a Marine patrol. The Marine simply saw a man carrying a gun and cut him in half. No one blamed the Marine. Duck-hunting in bandit country was not the brightest of pastimes. Anyway, this had to be O’Sally. He always took point. I had the drop on him. I was going to shoot the son-of-a-bitch right through his message centre, stop the signals from moving down his cerebral cortex to his finger so he would not pull that trigger and kill me. God, I hoped I would not fuck up. I did not feel like a soldier at that moment, never mind an élite soldier. I felt nodifferent from when I was at school, a kid, as if it was only the other day. School
was
only the other day. Looking back on that moment and others like it, the rush one gets from deadly conflict, they were the most thrilling of my life, what I like to call rocking-chair moments, to look back on when you’re old and all you have left are memories.

A soft, squidgy sound came. He was shifting his weight. Nothing could move quietly in that mud. I suddenly feared my safety-catch was on. No matter how hard I squeezed the trigger the gun would not fire and I would die. My right thumb quickly found it and it was off. Of course it was off.

‘Come on,’ I kept saying to myself. ‘Take the step. Show me just a piece of yourself.’

The step came and I could make out his face. He was low, on his knees, and he was growling.

How I did not blow it away I’ll never know.

It stood there on the end of the hedgerow looking at me and snarling continuously, pausing only to take a quick breath. It was six feet in front of me. Maybe it belonged to O’Sally. It looked like a Rottweiler. Its head was huge.

My eyes and ears scanned the area like lightning. Had O’Sally sent it ahead to flush out anyone waiting for him? If I fired at it O’Sally would see my muzzle flash and fire towards that. Maybe it was a stray dog. Whatever it was, if I shot it the operation would be blown – locals would hear the report – the word would be out before dawn – O’Sally’s house was hot – he would never come home, and my name in special forces would mean shit. His first ambush and all he shot was a dog. What a nobber. My brain needed more information. The dog came closer. Christ, it wanted to have a go. I could not afford to get into a hand to hand with it, either. I was screwed either way.

Then I had an idea. I carefully reached into a breast pocket and pulled out a laser torch. Laser torches were designed to be used with light amplifiers such as passive night-vision goggles (PNGs), otherwise the light is invisible to the naked eye. The laser beam is harmless to flesh, except areas as sensitive as the retina of an eyeball, which it will burn if concentrated on for several seconds. I flicked on the beam and aimed it at the dog’s face. I could not see the beam and had to guess it. The dog continued to growl, but then began blinking and shaking its head. I was on target and the laser was quickly taking effect. Its eyesight was deteriorating and it had no idea why. Within a few seconds it stopped growling, let out a whine, and backed away. I had blinded it. It turned around, disorientated, and walked off into permanent darkness. I heard it bump into bushes as it headed back into the countryside.

Silence fell. I was fully alert once again. I chastised myself for relaxing. This was not a game. No matter how long the odds are of something coming off you never relax, especially when you’re the only one on watch. War graves are dotted with those who did.

I would not normally have been carrying a laser torch. They were not standard equipment unless you had the PNGs to go with them. PNGs fitted over the head with lenses positioned over the eyes that extended like binoculars and were balanced by a counterweight on the back of the head that allowed the hands to be free. They were not practical for ambushes because the batteries did not last very long and they had a binocular effect which distorted the true distance of objects. If you were to stand and look straight ahead you could not see the first yard of ground immediately in front of you without looking down at your feet, which then looked further from your body. An inexperienced user walked in a kind of goose-step fashion. The reason I had the torch was because a few nights earlier I had been on a reconnaissance job with Sam, an SAS trooper.

We had been sent to check out a building in the middle of a large farm complex suspected of being used by the IRA for hiding arms. There was a ground frost that night and we had to avoid the hundreds of puddles and water-filled hoof-prints that had frozen over. Country folk, especially those fighting for the cause, are vigilant, often to the point of paranoia. They will notice any small thing out of place. They might not know one footprint from another in a busy farm, but they could tell if someone had been snooping if, in the morning, the thin film of ice that had formed in the night had been freshly broken.

We would not be able to use regular torches inside the dark building so Sam had brought along a pair of PNGs. I was lookout while Sam, an experienced trooper, picked the padlock. He signalled he was ready and I closed in. Sam pulled on the goggles and tightened the strap on the counterweight. The lenses extended four inches from his eyes, making him look like a giant insect. The high-pitched whine of the tiny transformers was barely audible.

‘Open the door,’ he whispered.

I opened the door and we both stepped inside. I closed it behind us and put my back to the wall. It was so dark I could not see a hand in front of my face. I could feel Sam beside me searching his pockets.

‘Shit!’ he hissed. ‘I can’t find the fuckin’ laser.’

The PNGs needed a small amount of light to amplify, though much less than the human eye needed to see. In total blackness, such as inside a closed vault without a single light source, the PNGs would not work. There was just enough starlight coming in through a single dirty window for the PNGs to amplify, but a laser torch would have looked like a powerful light beam to him.

‘Do you think you dropped it somewhere?’ I asked.

‘Dunno. I ’ad it when I got in the car.’

He scanned around. ‘I can see enough to do the job. This looks like some kind of tool-shed. You stay ’ere while I ’ave a skeg.’

I was not about to go anywhere. I might as well have had a blindfold on.

I felt Sam step away from me and then a second later there was a crash followed by a painful-sounding moan.

‘Sam,’ I whispered. ‘Sam, you all right?’

The moan came again and sounded like it was below me.

‘Sam?’

I could hear him moving slowly.

‘Uggg. This ain’ a fuckin’ storage shed,’ he said painfully. ‘It’s a fuckin’ garage.’

I crouched and stretched forward, feeling the floor. I felt an edge where the floor dropped away. Sam had fallen into an inspection pit.

Something landed beside me with a clatter. I felt around and found the PNGs. They were badly buckled.

‘Fuckin’ PNGs. Useless piece of crap,’ he mumbled. ‘’Elp me out of ’ere, for fuck’s sake.’

I reached down into the darkness, found his hand and helped him out of the deep, narrow, greasy pit used for servicing the underside of vehicles. He did not seem to have broken any bones, but every joint had been well rattled and he was filthy. There was no point in continuing with the recce. The goggles were bent out of shape and so was Sam. I helped him outside and propped him up against the building while I replaced the padlock. He leant on my shoulder, and as I helped him through the complex I radioed for the pick-up car. We looked like a pair of drunks hanging on to each other as we staggered down the deserted lane. Half a mile from the target, well away from any other structures, our car stopped alongside us. I helped Sam into the back and we drove off. Something was digging into my butt and I pulled it from under me. It was the laser torch. Since the PNGs were no longer any good I kept the torch issued with them rather than handing it in. As we passed through a town, by the light from the streetlamps, I saw Sam’s face. He must have hit the bottom of the inspection pit face first, because the bruise around his eyes was oval-shaped like a Lone Ranger mask.

After the dog had gone it began to rain gently and I sat motionless once again, hunched under my stunted tree holding my gun. I stayed that way until the first hint of dawn. Once again O’Sally had not come. I met my SAS partner at the usual place and we walked back to our hide. The next night was our last night in that ambush, and it was to be the last night anyone would have to wait outside that house for O’Sally ever again.

As I arrived in Royal Marines Poole for the SBS acquaint I had mentally prepared myself to expect just about anything – I had nothing to go on but the exaggerated stories from recruits at CTC. The rumour that bothered me the most was one about having to hold your breath for five minutes underwater. I was relieved to discover that was not a requirement. But some tales were not exaggerated.

I was initially surprised by what I took to be lax security around a camp that housed such a secret organisation as the SBS, but it was there. It was invisible. The SBS protected themselves with the most effective security system there was. Anonymity. Unlike the SAS, the SBS wore exactly the same uniform and cap badge as regular Royal Marines and could not be told apart. And they shared the large camp with several other regular Marine departments such as Driver Training, Ships Detachment courses, R Company, which was responsible for recruiting and laying on displays all over the country, Landing Craft Company, Royal Navy ranks and several other smaller departments and schools which altogether consisted of several hundred non-SBS ranks and their structures. I was impressed with what I thought was a deliberate ploy – the SBS’s covert existence hidden within the overt structure of the Royal Marines and Navy. The truth behind the SBS’s set-up and organisation was a bit disappointing. I did not piece it together for many years, by which time many aspects of our structure had improved, and many had not. But since I was still unaware of all the politics and bullshit as I took my first tentative steps into the world of the SBS, I’ll leave those revelations alone for now.

As I walked through the camp, that same feeling of inadequacy I experienced on the train to Deal grew in me again. Anyone who looked hard and ruthless I assumed was SBS and I wondered what I was doing here.

At the headquarters building I met Andy and Dave. I was relieved to sense that they were uncomfortable too. Together we went to locate our quarters, which we found in one of several recently built three-storey barrack-room blocks. The selection course took up three of these buildings at the start, each capable of sleeping over fifty men. Marines were arriving for the course from the far-flung corners of the corps, loaded with baggage and looking for their assigned rooms. It was a hive of activity. There was an endless cacophony in the corridors and stairwells, Marines shouting for pals or looking for the galley or bedding store. But beneath the surface of all this normality there was an air of expectancy. It was safe right now, with some Marines even confident enough to exude a bit of macho bravado, but very soon the pain and hardship would begin and no one could honestly say they were eagerly looking forward to it. We would live in these barrack blocks for as long as we lasted the selection course, by the end of which the buildings would be ghostly quiet and empty, the few survivors being able to fit into just two rooms with beds to spare.

There were six beds in our ground-floor room and we were the first to arrive. We unpacked our kit into our lockers and sat around, talking quietly. The next thing to look forward to was lunch. We were all a little nervous. It was like our first day at Deal all over again. We didn’t know exactly what we were getting into. All we could be sure of was it was going to be a damn sight harder than the commando course. The window beside my bed overlooked an empty field in the centre of the camp large enough to accommodate several football and rugby pitches. A large helicopter was parked to one side. Poole Harbour was half a mile away. Beyond the sound of men settling into their rooms around me I could sense the peacefulness outside. This place was a stark contrast to the bustling soldier factory that was CTC. The ghosts of those who had gone before us haunted the room. A daily programme sheet was pinned into one of the lockers and bits of survival packages such as sutures, fishing line and hooks were left in drawers. It was rumoured that the selection course had an average pass-rate of only one in sixteen. Pinned on a window-frame, partially hidden by the curtain, was a photograph of three course members climbing into a landing craft, having just completed a gruelling survival exercise on Little Cumbria Island in the wilds of Scotland. They had been stripped naked, then dumped on the island with nothing but a pile of hessian cloth to make clothes from. They lived off seagulls and their eggs, kelp, rabbits, if they could find a way to snare them, and vegetation they had been taught was nutritious. Every waking hour was spent in the pursuit of food and firewood and by the end of the week they looked pale and feeble. One of the men in the photo was named Arthur, and though I saw him once or twice around the squadron it would be two years before we would have our first words together and then it was in unusual circumstances.

BOOK: First Into Action
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