Authors: Chris Ryan
The radio fell silent. Danny and Boydie kept the militants in their sights. The technical stopped almost directly to their twelve o’clock. Two of the guys climbed down and the vehicle continued back round the opposite side of the village and disappeared from sight. The men lit cigarettes and stood there, looking out across the desert. Even from a kilometre away, Danny could discern their arrogant slouch. One of them put binoculars to his eyes and scanned round. Danny felt himself tense up slightly as the binoculars aligned with their location, but the militant didn’t even pause before moving on. Their cover was good.
Activity on the radio. ‘
Charlie Alpha Five, this is Zero. We have a green light. Repeat, we have a green light.
’
‘OK, Snapper,’ Boydie said. ‘Lase the target.’
Danny focused the cross hairs of the LTD on to the closest building, a single-storey breeze-block house against which the second Libyan militant was leaning. Moments later the device was firing an invisible beam directly at the building. When the ordnance came in, it would follow that beam to make a direct hit.
‘Done,’ Danny said.
‘Target lit,’ Boydie confirmed over his headset. ‘Repeat, target lit.’
A pause. A crackle. Then: ‘
Fast air on target at 06.25. Wait out, Charlie Alpha Five. Over.
’
Silence. Danny checked his watch. 05.32 hrs. The two militants lit fresh cigarettes, unaware that they were getting a wake-up call, RAF style, in fifty-three minutes.
They waited. Somewhere above the Mediterranean, Danny knew, an RAF Tornado squadron would be thundering towards the North African coast. The Libyan skies were no stranger to fast air, of course, but the average local probably wouldn’t know a Tornado from a twin-prop. Not that they’d have much chance to check these aircraft out. By the time the boom of their jets hit anybody’s ears, the Tornados themselves would be out of sight. And the militants in the Bedouin village probably wouldn’t hear a thing anyway: by the time the sonic boom hit their location, the Tornados would be gone and their bombs would have hit.
‘Looks like Dumb and Dumber got bored,’ Boydie said. Danny took a look on target. The two militants had disappeared.
‘With half of NATO after them, you’d think they’d at least keep stag.’
‘Don’t get cocky, Snapper,’ Boyd said in his frustratingly patronising way. ‘No telling what we can’t see. They might have covert OPs.’
Before Danny could reply, the radio crackled again. ‘
Fast air, fifteen minutes out.
’
‘Gonna get noisy,’ Boydie warned. Danny felt a flash of irritation. Boyd was a good guy, but he sure had a way about him sometimes. I might be young, Danny thought, but I’m not some wet-behind-the-ears newbie fresh out of jungle training . . . Keep your pie-hole shut, he told himself. Now wasn’t the time to give Boydie a rundown of his character failings. Instead he just grunted in agreement and went back to watching.
And waiting.
‘
Fast air, five minutes from target.
’
Danny sipped water from his CamelBak. His multicam was soaked with sweat. It would be good to get the hell out of this sweltering OP.
‘
Fast air, two minutes from target.
’
Through the scope Danny saw the technical return, this time along the western perimeter of the village. It stopped in almost exactly the same position as earlier, but this time the make-up of its passengers had changed. There were now three militants standing round the .50-cal, while two others sat along the side of the vehicle, the backs of their heads facing the OP. Unlike the others, these two weren’t wearing keffiyehs.
‘
Fast air, one minute from target.
’
‘Something’s wrong,’ Danny said.
‘What’s up?’
Before Danny could answer, the two new arrivals stood up. In an instant he saw that their jackets bore the UN’s blue armband.
‘Call it off,’ he said, his voice terse.
‘Easy, Snapper . . .’
‘There’s two UN personnel in that vehicle. Call off the strike!’
‘
Fast air, thirty seconds from target.
’
‘The peacekeepers are dead,’ Boydie said. He was angry now. ‘The militants were wearing their fucking jackets, remember?’
‘We don’t know for sure
all
the peacekeepers are dead. They’ve only recovered two out of four bodies. What if two of them are still alive?
Call it off!
’
‘
Fast air, fifteen seconds from target.
’
Boydie had lowered his optic and was hunkering down ready for the blast. Danny, however, kept his eyes on the target. Was his mate right? Maybe the figures in the UN jackets
were
just more militants. He watched carefully as they dismounted from the back of the technical. Two of the armed militants joined them.
‘
Fast air, ten seconds from target.
’
‘Turn around,’ Danny willed the figures. ‘Turn—’
He took a sharp intake of breath. A militant had just raised his fist and dealt one of the jacketed figures a massive blow to the stomach. The figure bent double and collapsed to the ground.
‘
Fast air, five seconds from target.
’
Danny quickly shifted himself closer to Boydie’s side of the OP. With his right hand he forcibly grabbed his mate’s boom mike and twisted it round. ‘
ABORT! ABORT! ABORT!
’ he shouted. From somewhere behind them, Danny heard the distant roar of jets. It faded as soon he’d heard it, and in his mind he saw Tornados pulling away at the last moment. The militants clearly heard it too. A couple of them looked up into the air, but then made dismissive gestures as they evidently decided that the distant fast air was nothing to do with them. Danny’s earpiece burst into life. ‘
Strike aborted. Strike aborted. Charlie Alpha Five, you’d better have a damn good reason for this.
’
Boydie was staring at Danny with a mixture of fury and shock. Danny was breathing heavily. He jabbed a finger in the direction of the village. ‘Look!’ he hissed.
Boydie looked.
The two figures in UN jackets were both on the ground now, being kicked and beaten by the three militants. One of them produced two hoods, knelt down and slipped them over the hostages’ heads. Danny felt Boydie readying his weapon and was about to do the same when another militant fired a shot in the air. The three militants laughed, removed the hoods and started kicking their captives again. Boydie lowered his optic and twisted his boom mike back into position.
‘Zero, this is Charlie Alpha Five. We have eyes on two UN hostages. Awaiting instructions. Out.’
The silence in the OP was as oppressive as the increasing heat as Danny and Boydie waited for further instructions from base. They watched from a distance as the militants laid into the hostages – more, Danny sensed, out of boredom than for any strategic reason.
‘Good call, fella,’ Boydie said finally. There was reluctance in his voice, but respect too. Boydie was a big enough man to admit that he’d been wrong.
‘
Charlie Alpha Five, this is Zero. We have a green light for a hostage rescue. All militants to be killed or captured. Over.
’
Boydie and Danny exchanged a glance. ‘Wilco,’ Boydie replied, before turning back to his mate. His eyes were searching. Testing. ‘So, Snapper,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a klick of open ground and an enemy armed with AKs and a .50-cal. If those poor sods whose bellies they’re using for footy practice die, they die badly. Ready to get them out?’
Danny looked towards the village again. The militants had had their fun and were loading the hostages back on to the technical, which then started up and soon disappeared from view. All that was left was the barren desert, the low buildings of the Bedouin village and the Land Rover.
‘Ready,’ he said.
FOUR
The plan was simple. Wait for nightfall, when darkness gave them a good chance of approaching the village unseen. Cause a diversion to draw out as many militants as possible – that was Danny’s job, and he had it all worked out. Then go in hard and fast to take out the remainder and release the hostages. The headshed wanted to send in reinforcements, but Boydie stamped on that idea with a curt radio communication. If the militants had any idea they were being watched, there was a strong possibility they’d drive away and the whole thing would be over. The team were the ones who were on the ground, and the ops room were letting them call the shots.
It meant waiting out in the OP for the rest of the day. Danny and Boydie took it in turns to sleep, two hours on, two hours off. Danny’s sleep was fitful. Whenever Boydie started to doze, he would sort of whistle, a gentle buzzing between his tongue and the roof of his mouth that he probably wasn’t even aware of. The tune sounded mournful. Strangely familiar, though Danny couldn’t put his finger on it. An old Irish song maybe? He didn’t know. He distracted himself by recalling everything he knew about the village from the aerial photography they’d studied back at base. It was about fifty metres by fifty. In addition to the four domed buildings at the front, and the single-storey structures that surrounded them, there was a central square, about ten metres by ten. The photography had shown this square surrounded by tents. Whether these were still there, or the Bedouin had taken them with them when they left, the unit couldn’t say. Nor did they know where the hostages were being kept. They’d have to work that out on the job.
Around midday the weather suddenly, and unexpectedly, changed. Cloud cover rolled in, but the heat was still dry and intense. Covered by the hessian camouflage, Danny felt like he was lying in a puddle of sweat. His muscles ached from lack of movement, and the pressure points where his flesh pressed against the ground throbbed. It was a relief when the light started to fail. They had seen no movement during all that time. Danny realised he was anxious – not on his own behalf, but for the hostages.
‘You don’t curse much, eh, Snapper?’ Boydie said out of the blue.
Danny said nothing.
‘I noticed it, that’s all. Don’t know how you manage it. All those gaps in talking where you have to put a “fuck” in.’ He sniffed. ‘Or a “cunt”.’
Danny ignored this and asked, ‘Why do you think they pretended they’d killed all four UN guys?’
Boydie thought for a moment. ‘They’ll be pumping these two survivors for intel. My guess is they thought that, if we had them all down as dead, we wouldn’t send in a rescue mission.’ A pause. ‘I reckon our UN friends are having a pretty ugly day. That little mock execution we saw was a way of shitting them up. The PIRA boys used to do it back home. Nothing like the prospect of a bit of lead in your skull to get the old tongue wagging.’ Danny felt Boydie giving him a piercing look. ‘I heard you had a bit of family history in the Province.’
‘Aye,’ Danny said. It wasn’t something he liked to talk about. But Boydie kept up his gaze. ‘My dad was 1 Para,’ Danny said. ‘Took an IRA round to the side of the head during the Troubles. Total amnesia. Forgot everything.’
‘Jesus,’ Boydie sighed.
‘I was just a baby.’
‘How’d your ma take it?’
Danny stared resolutely through the optic. ‘She didn’t have to,’ he said. ‘She died just after I was born.’
Silence in the OP. Danny didn’t feel like discussing it any more. He checked his watch. ‘Seventeen hundred hours. It’ll be dark in a couple of hours,’ he said.
And that ended the conversation.
It was 22.00 hrs before they emerged gingerly from the OP. Keeping low, they collected up their Claymores before ducking back down into the wadi. The cloud cover rendered it darker than the previous night, so Danny engaged his NV as they picked their way back to the lying-up point to RV with Tommo and Five Bellies. Having kept radio contact to a minimum during the day, they filled their patrol mates in on the events of that morning. ‘We’ve counted five militants, all armed, plus the two hostages,’ Boydie explained. ‘But there may be more. We’re going to take out as many as we can in one hit.’ He looked over at the packs. ‘Only take what you need,’ he said. ‘We don’t know what to expect up there. We don’t want anything slowing us down.’
It took them five minutes to prep. Each man checked his personal weapon and the contents of his belt kit: spare ammo, frags, flashbangs. Danny carried the Claymores as well as a small, hand-held cutting tool. Then, on a word of instruction from Boydie, they commenced their sortie. The patrol reassumed single-file formation. But this time Danny, weighed down by the Claymores, ceded the role of lead scout to Tommo, and instead took third position in the line-up. The four tabbed along the wadi back towards the OP, climbed up on to the desert plain and started to jog across open ground.
Three hundred metres from the village, Tommo held up one hand and the patrol came to a halt and went to ground. Danny scanned the area ahead, preparing to cause his diversion. No sign of the militants. The parked Land Rover was to his eleven o’clock, approximately twenty metres shy of the village. At a thumbs up from Boydie, Danny pushed himself to his feet again and trod quietly towards the vehicle. He didn’t look back. He didn’t need to. He knew the others would be stealthily putting themselves into position, surrounding the village, ready to strike at the given moment.