Bastards. Baz and Smudge interlocked arms either side of me as we ran towards the rear door in a threesome, the Chinook doing about 60mph over the water at about 50ft, and out we fucking went. No parachute, no training, just me screaming, in fear and in excitement, the downdraft of the rear rotor blade firing us all down into the water like vertical torpedoes. I was gonna fucking drown. I hit the water like a bullet and went under for about an hour… well, maybe 30 seconds I suppose, my life jacket auto inflated after a short delay (saltwater activated), and bingo, I’m floating in the fucking sea with no idea where the fuck I am and half near dead from all the seawater I had just ingested, coughing my guts up in a half panicked girly state. No idea where the guys are, can’t hear anything. Then I can hear a powerboat, RIB (rigid inflatable boat) maybe. Can’t see anything, just hear that shit getting closer. All I’m thinking is I’m gonna be a fucking death statistic in a boating accident report.
No time to get upset, the RIB pulls up right on top of me, no lights, dark, cold, wet and totally fucking bewildered, I’m then dragged out of the water. I’m on the floor of the RIB as we accelerate max chat away from the drop point and I’m like a sack of shit on the deck. Can’t see the guys’ faces, so I’m just holding on for the ride, body bouncing and crashing on the floor of the boat as it navigates the sea swell. Helicopter flies overhead, no lights or fuck all, then I see it land in the water with the back door down, strobe light guiding us in as we fucking drive the RIB right inside the fucking back of the helo. We just went under those rotor blades with inches to spare; I reckon if anyone had stood up they’d have been decapitated, brown bread for sure. A few seconds later and we are all out of the RIB, into the cargo nets, RIB disappears and we are airborne again. White light goes on and every cunt is laughing their tits off at me. So I stood up, took a bow and just collapsed on the deck like a sack of shit. We were all cleaned up and eating breakfast in the mess by 8am. Yep, the fun had started alright.
That had been my first wet jump – and no fucking training at all. Baz told me it was sometimes better not to know what I was gonna be doing or what they had planned for me; besides, they wanted to surprise me. We practised these kinds of manoeuvres of insertion and extraction frequently and it was a fucking blast every time, the guys always wanting to push the boundaries and extend my operating envelope with every exercise whilst raising the risk or fun factor depending on the point of view. The training progressed from jumping out of a Hercules or Chinook over water to a full HALO (high altitude low opening) skydive into Belize, which I have to say was an amazing yet terrifying experience. I’m not sure if some of the training was necessary or even relevant, but I am sure the guys enjoyed taking me out and scaring the shit out of me every time. I guess the fact that I enjoyed it all, embraced their challenges and didn’t complain may have gone some way to my being somewhat accepted into their world, if only as a temporary member of the club.
My time at Poole was brilliant. I was a free agent. I had a mission package with timeframes that weren’t suffocating, plenty of prep and integration time with the team. The mission was just kept on standby, on the back burner, waiting for the green light to intercept and remove target items 1 & 2, our top-tier targets. Let there be no doubt there was plenty of detailed and careful planning and collaborative work being undertaken by the Steering Group in coordinating the re-introduction of me into the fold with Alex, who had been operating between London, Moscow and Dubai. It wasn’t clear if he had been meeting with Mohammed bin Shaban Al Zidjali or Ahmed Haddad in Dubai or if any such meeting had taken place outside of the UAE. There were obviously other jigsaw pieces that needed to be in place before the team and I were put into play.
Correspondence between myself and the Pavlovich family started to ramp up and there was intense pressure and interest from the Steering Group, which aided the wording of all my correspondence, or should I say vetted the wording of my correspondence to get things moving in the right direction. It was obvious the group was looking for a way in. I was communicating fluidly with Anatoly for about four to six months before we had the break I needed. I had been communicating, by snail mail and email, that I had taken a gap year and was travelling seeing the Far East and hoped to extend my travels as much as possible and maybe come back home via Moscow to see my friends and the family.
I had hinted in my correspondence to Anatoly that I may pass back through Moscow, and as a result things started to develop and make way for a path back into theatre. It was around this time that all the lights were turned on, so to speak. Anatoly was jealous and talked often in his emails and letters of his dreams to travel and let slip that Alex and Evgeny had also been travelling a lot and had been away in Italy and Istanbul recently with Erik. Anatoly was upset that the family were taking regular vacations in Dubai with all the family but that he was unable to attend due to his heavy work commitments. He disclosed details of how he was now working for the navy on their nuclear propulsion systems and was excited to share how fascinating his work was, not giving away anything in his letters of course but it was obvious that it was all very intensive. Now that he was actually working in Sarov after he had graduated with honours, his career path seemed already well laid out before him, almost predetermined, which was of serious interest to the Steering Group as there were other communications that had been intercepted between Anatoly and Asad, who was back in Iran. It was such a ridiculous open line of communication into the heart of the lair in which hid the dealers and organisers of illegal arms trades and technical information from Moscow into the Middle East and Eastern Europe. This conduit was the catalyst upon which the Steering Group had pinned their hopes on getting right into the centre of Alex Markoff’s world with Mohammed bin Shaban Al Zidjali.
Of course, I had missed Anatoly and Evgeny as friends immensely, and the correspondence was sometimes very deep and personal, probably a little too much in that it revealed my inner feelings which sometimes ran contrary to the mission directive. I often wondered what the Steering Group made of all the chit-chat but I remembered Spud’s words of wisdom and how he had dealt with the whole Northern Ireland family he had lived with and loved so much. His surrogate family had been henchmen for the IRA and had so much blood on their hands, when you bring the truth into the conundrum it’s easier to refocus. I had to remain focused. I don’t think it would have been possible to have undertaken a second mission trip into the Moscow group if I hadn’t developed some personal and lasting relationships. The official line to be toed was to just observe and record whilst not being noticed; this was fine on paper but once you’re in as deep as I had become, the truths and the lies had to run equally as deep to avoid detection. There are a lot of contradictions in the policy, training and reality of the experiences and expectations in espionage work. I think as long as you succeeded, were never compromised, a blind eye was turned on such domestic issues and personal attachments. This was always going to be a point of contention between an operator and his handlers.
I remember there had been a number of delays in the development and coordination of the mission, and I had drifted a little into a dull routine, keeping the communication conduits alive whilst keeping up with all the training and personal development with the guys from the squadron. It was intended that I complete a training package that the team had put together and tailored to my needs at the earliest opportunity and not be idle, so to speak, during this long pre-mission gestation. I was frustrated as always and wanted to bring things forward, but I had to be reminded by Cdr Brown and the Steering Group that there were other pieces on the chessboard that needed to move first. The planets had to align, and the collaboration with other governments and their intelligence organisations needed to be carefully choreographed to avoid a diplomatic disaster or a complete fuck-up in the coordination, execution and timing of the Steering Group’s mission plan.
The team and the Steering Group met in Poole to discuss and outline the tactics that were in play to see Operation Segment concluded s
uccessfully. It was shaped into an interesting collection of strategies deployed in different regions with separate operations running simultaneously but autonomously. The overall idea was aimed at reducing the actual on-ground requirements in the build-up to any deployment by subduing the ‘enemy’ by making life really difficult without actually fighting. The word ‘enemy’ brings up some sort of defined group or nation in your mind with whom we as a nation had declared war. However, in this closed world of the Steering Group, enemy simply meant anyone or any group the politicians couldn’t do business with. It can never be too defined, as today’s enemy is more than likely tomorrow’s ally, and vice versa. Our enemies are very rarely the kind of people who fly a flag and have a voting public.
Make no mistake, the biggest, perhaps most powerful weapon in any conflict is intelligence. Our operations would see minimum input by the smallest of teams for the biggest result. Our disruptions were intended to force a capitulation of the greater forces away from the bigger battle. That battle being for Israel, the race for nuclear technology in the Middle East, and Iran’s play to become a nuclear superpower over Saudi Arabia, which equally supported and denied it, depending on who you wanted to believe. I guess the team and I had only to realise that we were but a small part of the bigger regime and were just instruments in a delicate operation who needed to tread ever so carefully in what we did, stopping the flows of weaponry and information in certain directions whilst avoiding initiating a global heart attack and creating a political meltdown or all-out war.
Don’t ask too many questions and you don’t need to worry as much, was Smudge’s point of view. Hmmm, I suppose he was right, but we all needed to know that what we were doing was right, for our own sanity. Once we had that in our heads then the enemy could truly be our solemn enemy and good would prevail through our fervent desire to get the job done, or some bullshit like that. I think, looking back, it’s a human need to just know what you’re doing is right. So you can justify it. So you can cope with it later in life when you learn that maybe it might all have been a bit questionable. If you were to shine a spotlight on it or put it all under the public microscope years later, would you be able to blame someone else or truly defend your actions? That’s where my mind wandered to when the team and I sat and planned for Operation Segment.
We stepped back from all the politics, we had to – it was driving me mad and was unproductive. We settled back into our relaxed state of readiness, our pre-op way of life, and were stood down in order to make the most of our free time. I took up their ad-hoc training programme wholeheartedly and did all I could to fit in and meet their expectations. To fail everything miserably, which may have been the intention all the while, would have spelled disaster in all camps. I can only speak from my experience as an intelligence operative, not a para or commando – I was never one of those boys. I can’t even begin to imagine what they went through to be selected into the squadron. I fitted into their training programme as they saw fit. I wasn’t selected and neither did I apply for any of this training, and I know that the SF teams rarely took on intelligence operatives or allowed them into their teams entirely. I guess their training package was a rite of passage in order to be assigned an SF support team – you had to earn that team’s approval, or something like that. Fuck knows, I was N1 and the guys were tasked to take me all the way with my assignment. How they put us together remains a mystery, but I was pleased to know who I had watching my back as I played out the Steering Group’s pantomimes.
This ad-hoc training programme was mostly conducted down south but with a few trips out of town, so to speak. If the all-arms course and the Green Beret thing was tough (and I now know I didn’t do the whole thing), this shit was definitely the agoge of all military training. The training programme they had designed for me was an intense cultivation of loyalty, honour, discipline and mind control through intellectual adjustment, all delivered in nothing but the most unusual and most demanding of circumstances they thought I could withstand, to refine the subject into a proxenos for the nation, uncontrolled but at the same time controlled, a reactive component in a larger, much more complex disciplined machine.
The training included but was not limited to:
• Extensive diving techniques and maintenance
• Evasive driving
• Speed marching and endurance runs
• Jungle training
• Arctic training
• Language skills
• Middle Eastern culture and desert training
• Parachuting practice – HALO/wet jumping
• Demolition methods
• Infiltration of ships and oil platforms
• Canoeing skills
• Survival training in the wilds of Dartmoor, the Black Mountains and Wales
• Beach reconnaissance, including photography skills
• Maritime counter-terrorism activities
• Advanced weapons handling
• Submarine infiltration, escape and capture
• Concealment
• Interrogation training – both as the interrogator and the captive
I enjoyed the training and all the camaraderie of the group immensely; they were great guys and had my best interests and safety at heart. Looking back, I guess they needed me to see the whole thing through in order to play almost as an equal. I was a link the security forces needed and one the Steering Group wanted to use but was not yet fully integrated with the bag of hammers they wanted me to work with. Although I was very much a standalone asset, I felt a part of the team, and over time I think they took me in. I was well under their wings, I guess, after just a few months. Being very different to them somehow made me all the more interesting to them, and the fascination went both ways. I enjoyed being the centre of attention, to be honest, and having one-on-one training. It was mutually beneficial to have the team destroy me and rebuild me in so many different ways. From sitting in the mud of the Solent with a telegraph pole, up to my waist in mud, to jungle training, the team knew my weaknesses and strengths without any doubt. Yeah, I made for a good toy, but one they could trust and a toy they knew the strengths and weaknesses of. I think after spending so much time with them they actually wanted me to succeed in my assignment and, between them, secretly decided I was worth the effort.
It was my next assignment with the group that really tuned me in to developing a skill set that would be useful, and I was sent to complete the advanced evasive driving course, which involved almost unachievable timed transits using public roads and motorways whilst pursuing or being pursued by what could only be described as crazed drivers who were perhaps related to the Stig (from Top Gear). Such urban racing exploits usually ended in a dockyard, abandoned warehouse complex or deserted military base, with a counter-terrorism exercise to complete the training, and this was sometimes done with live ammo. I started out driving 3.0ltr Vauxhall Senator armoured cars at speed on main artery motorways with the Yorkshire and Humberside police driving units. They were great guys and I totally fucked it up a few times causing some serious damage to the cars. I eventually upgraded all the way to chipped Audi V8s, and I can now understand why those fucking idiot kids go out joyriding or do doughnuts on the street. There should be a skid pan in every town to let young lads get it out of their system, it’s a great laugh.
After passing the evasive and advanced driving courses, I teamed up with a few of the close protection teams on occasion, to run VIPs about; it actually attracted extra pay and helped with a shit roster no one actually liked doing. I personally thought it was an okay job to do in my spare time, or more often than not in company time. Yeah, there were some stuck-up passengers but some were genuine enough to hold a decent conversation with me, which helped on the longer drives. I drove dignitaries, world leaders and some royalty all over the country. It was an interesting pastime, to be sure.
More than anything for some months we were killing time, but the guys were persistent in pushing me along; I wa
s their little project. I ended up undertaking survival training after an extended field skills course which included a number of different training grounds including a trip to Belize for jungle training that lasted just over a month. I was transferred to the British Army Training Support Unit Belize (BATSUB), which is located at Price Barracks, approximately nine miles outside Belize City. We had nicknamed it ‘bathtub’ for obvious reasons. Insertion was into Belize by a HALO jump from 12,000ft and all the guys were up for it and came along to have a laugh at my expense I’m sure. HALO involves jumping from a very high altitude, only opening the chute at the last moment above the hard deck. The idea is to exit the plane, at night, above visual range of enemy on the ground and then open the chutes at low altitude, thus minimising the time spent suspended below a slowly descending canopy, which makes you a fucking target, and avoid any radar detection. The jumper sometimes has to wear oxygen breathing apparatus as the air is too thin at high altitudes. Keeping a stable freefall posture whilst laden down with a bergen (backpack), oxygen bottles, weapons and the parachute strapped to one’s back is a nightmare. Yeah, it’s the best adrenaline fix in the world.
The Steering Group Page 21
