by Chris Ryan
Danny instructed an air hostess not to disturb him until they were landing, then pulled a blindfold over his face and reclined his seat so it was fully flat. He had long since taught himself to grab some shut-eye whenever and wherever he could, knowing that he couldn’t always be sure when he’d next have the chance. He slept deeply for three hours. When he woke, he looked out of the window. He saw a blood-red sun setting across a mackerel sky. And on the ground, through the half-light, he saw dots of orange – flames, licking from the oil fields of the Middle East. Iraq, he surmised, or Kuwait. He thought how you only ever really got a sense of the vastness of the Arabian peninsular from the sky. He felt an uncomfortable twist in his stomach at the thought that he’d slept over Syria. He recalled its war-torn towns. The blood and destruction. He tried to put it from his mind. What had Clara said, about remembering the things he was supposed to forget? He felt a pang at the thought of her, and at the thought that they were heading into very hostile territory. If something happened to him – something terminal – Clara would never know how he really felt about her. She’d probably hate him for the rest of her life. When he reclined again on his seat, his sleep was not so deep.
Wheels down, 20.30 local time. The pretty air hostess ushered Danny and Spud off the aircraft before anyone else had the opportunity even to stand up. They received a few more curious glances this time, as they hauled their heavy diplomatic bags along the aisles. A blast of heat hit them as they alighted on to the waiting stairs, at the bottom of which was a middle-aged man in a lightweight suit who reminded Danny of Buckingham. He stood next to a black Range Rover, passenger doors open. ‘Tim Johnston,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘British Embassy. You’re cleared for security. There’s a welcoming committee from the Omani military at the other side of the airfield. Allow me to escort you.’
Danny and Spud nodded and climbed into the back of the vehicle, still clutching their bags. They drove in the opposite direction from the large, brightly lit modern terminal building. The embassy guy clearly knew better than to ask them what they were doing, so the two-minute journey passed in silence. A couple of hundred metres up ahead, Danny saw a helicopter standing alone on the tarmac – a Puma, with the red and green markings of the Omani military. A three-man flight crew loitered alongside it. They wore standard desert camo, with shemaghs covering their heads or wrapped round their necks. As the Range Rover approached, one of them – clearly the pilot – disappeared inside and by the time they pulled up 20 metres from the chopper, its rotors were already starting to spin.
The embassy guy leaned over from the front passenger seat. ‘Best of British, gentlemen,’ he said, and once more Danny was reminded of Buckingham. But he put that from his mind as he and Spud debussed and ran across the tarmac. A few words of greeting with their Omani escorts and the two Regiment men climbed up into the Puma. They’d barely been on the ground ten minutes before they were airborne again. The golden, sprawling lights of Muscat disappeared as they found themselves plunging through the dark night of the southern Arabian peninsular.
It took two and a half hours to cross the length of Oman to its western border, including a 25-minute refuelling stop at a military base somewhere en route, during which time Danny and Spud sat quietly out of view in the shadowy interior of the Puma. They passed the journey in silence, drowned out by the regular thunder of the chopper’s rotors as it slid unobserved through the skies with its secret cargo. Occasionally, through the windows, Danny saw the lights of a settlement far in the distance, or headlamps on a deserted highway, but their flight path was clearly taking them across vast, uninhabited stretches of land. He found he was keeping a lid on a sudden feeling of excitement. It felt good to be abroad again. Good to be on unfamiliar territory. You could get lazy in London. Out here, living by your wits was the only option.
And it was intriguing, if nothing else, to know that they were about to set foot in the Goat Farm.
Danny and Spud had heard people talk about the Goat Farm. They all had, back in Hereford. It was a military camp near the south-western shore town of Salalah, where the Sultan’s special forces were trained, usually under the grizzled eye of ex-Regiment personnel. The Regiment had form in this part of the world. In the early seventies, communist guerillas from South Yemen had been involved in the Omani Dhofar rebellion. The SAS had dispatched nine personnel to help train the Omani special forces. They had come under attack in what became known as the Battle of Mirbat, where nine guys had held their own against a force of more than four hundred. Two of them died – one from having his jaw blown off. But that savage battle itself was a piece of Regiment history, and from that day to this, the SAS were welcome in Oman.
The Puma started to lose height. Danny looked through the window. He estimated that they were less than a thousand feet high. He could see the lights from a network of evenly spaced symmetrical buildings, and also the orange glow of what looked like a large open fire. A minute later his vision was obscured by brown-out as the chopper came in to land, kicking up clouds of desert dust. Thirty seconds after that, they were on the ground.
The Omani flight crew opened up the doors for them. Danny and Spud shook their hands, then jumped out. The rotors were slowing down, but they were still surrounded by whirling clouds of dust that obscured their vision and stung their faces. As he peered through the cloud, however, Danny saw a bright light and, standing in front of it, the silhouette of a sturdy, broad-shouldered figure standing in wait. Clutching their holdalls – which were still wrapped in the white diplomatic bags – they ran from the chopper towards the figure. The dust settled and the noise eased off as the rotors powered down.
‘Evening, kids,’ said a voice. A deep voice, slightly hoarse, with a definite London accent. Danny shielded his eyes from the light surrounding the silhouette – emanating from the headlamps of some sort of armoured vehicle – and found he could just make out the man’s features. The face was deeply lined and weather-beaten. The eyebrows were dark, the hair ruffled. He wore camouflage gear, and it crossed Danny’s mind that here was the sort of bloke who’d look out of place wearing anything else. He stepped towards them, hand outstretched.
‘Welcome to the Goat Farm,’ he said.
His name was Roberts, and in the minute it took him to lead Danny and Spud towards a single-storey corrugated-iron building with a noisy petrol generator outside, he’d given them the lowdown on his career: 20 years in the Regiment, 20 years in the employ of the Sultan, helping to train up the Omani special forces. The Goat Farm was the closest thing he had to a home.
‘Don’t get me wrong, kids,’ he said as he let them into the building. ‘Made some good friends out here. Don’t suppose I’ll ever go back to Blighty.’ He switched the light on. ‘But it’s good to see someone from home now and then.’
Danny’s eyes smarted from the light. When they relaxed again, he saw that this was little more than a warehouse. Shelves along the walls, full of boxes of God knows what. Even more boxes piled up at one end. Sand on the floor, where it had blown in through the door. He looked back at Roberts and saw that his face had a pale white scar along the jawline. Roberts caught him looking at it. ‘Jambiya scar,’ he said.
‘What’s that?’ Danny asked.
‘Jambiya? It’s a knife. Yemeni men hang them by their belt. It’s a status thing. The markings on the hilt indicate how important they are. And they’re not afraid to use it.’
‘You spent much time in Yemen?’
‘Wish I hadn’t, kid. Where you headed?’
‘Ha’dah.’
‘Might have guessed. Worst place in the whole stinking country. Full of toughs beetling around on their pissy little motorbikes, and they don’t just carry jambiyas. They’ve all got a piece of some kind. More AKs in Ha’dah than frickin’ toothbrushes.’ Roberts fetched an unmarked bottle of an amber liquid and three dirty glasses from one of the shelves. ‘You want some?’
The guys shook their heads.
‘You’re as bad as t
he fucking Arabs. Except they’re off their tits on khat half the time.’ He poured himself a good couple of inches of whatever firewater it was, then knocked it back. ‘Give me Scotch over that shit any day,’ he said. He turned and walked over to one of the boxes on the floor. ‘See,’ he called back to them, ‘the trouble with your khat is that it gives you the horn of a rhino, but stops you getting it up.’
From the box, he pulled a bundle of clothes, then carried them back to where Danny and Spud were standing.
‘About six o’clock, the men all get together and start chewing the weed. They call it the hour of Solomon, because everyone’s so high they think they’re the wisest fucker in town. Course, they’re just speaking bollocks. And dancing. Don’t forget the dancing. All good men together.’ He dropped the clothes in a pile at the guys’ feet, then danced a comical little jig that petered out into a wheezing chuckle. He took another swig of his drink. ‘The fellas have got a thing about perfume, too. That’s how I got this.’ He touched the scar on his face. ‘Accused some rosewatered Yemeni twat of being a nancy boy when he was twerking with his buddy. Fucker came at me with his jambiya. Messy business. Messier for him, of course, but that’s another story.’ He poured himself a second Scotch and left Danny and Spud to rummage through the clothes.
There were two dishdashes there, and matching shemaghs. But before they put them on, Danny and Spud turned their attention back to their diplomatic bags. They undid the padlocks and pulled out the holdalls. They removed their stripped-down rifles and started piecing them together. The air was filled with the dull clunk of metal on metal. When they were complete, they extracted their ops waistcoats and fitted them over their T-shirts, before filling them with grenades and ammunition and affixing their radios. As they worked, Danny was aware of the grizzled form of Roberts watching them with something approaching envy. He sensed the old-timer wished he was still on the job.
They fitted bungee cord to their rifles and slung them so they were hanging along the side of their bodies, then fitted their Sigs into their waistcoats. Only then did they pull their dishdashes over their clothes and wrap their shemaghs around the lower part of their faces and the top of their heads, so only their eyes and nose were fully visible. A sharp-eyed observer might notice their boots, but that was a risk they’d have to take. It was much too hard to move around quickly in desert sandals. Roberts threw them an embroidered shoulder bag each. ‘Can’t schlep round Yemen with a fucking Bergen,’ he said. ‘Decant what you need into those.’
Once they were dressed, Roberts eyed them up and down, then gave an approving nod. He downed the remnants of his glass. ‘Follow me,’ he said.
He led them back out of the hut into the warm desert night. He looked up to the sky. ‘About midnight,’ he said, clearly reading the time in the stars. A truck had driven up to the Puma and was refuelling it, but the guys turned left. Up ahead was a large bonfire. Danny could hear it crackling, and could make out the silhouettes of about ten men sitting round it. He could tell that they too were wearing shemaghs, and assumed that these were members of the Omani special forces for whom the Goat Farm was home. But Roberts led them away at an angle from the fire, and as he walked, he pointed towards the sky. ‘Bang on time,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to give you the grand tour next time you come.’
He might have been an old-timer, but his eyes were still good. Danny peered upwards. The stars were incredibly bright, millions of pinpricks swirling in the blackness. And against them, it was impossible to tell how far away, a black form hulking in the sky.
They saw the incoming Chinook before they heard it, but the distant buzz of the twin rotors hit their ears just a couple of seconds after Roberts spoke. The pilots were clearly flying blind, relying on night-vision goggles, because the chopper itself emitted no light. The great black silhouette against the stars grew bigger, closer. The roar increased. A couple of minutes later, the Chinook was coming in to land on a sparse LZ 50 metres from where Danny, Spud and Roberts were standing. Another two trucks immediately screeched up to start refuelling.
‘Fun to slum with you, kids!’ Roberts shouted. He clapped them on the shoulder. ‘Now get the fuck out of here.’
Danny and Spud ran towards the open tailgate of the Chinook. The swirling clouds of dust stung their eyes and those parts of their faces that weren’t covered up by their shemaghs, but Danny could still make out the long shape of the aircraft and a faint glow above the twin rotors as airborne sand sparked against them. As they ran up into the chopper, the familiar stench of aviation gas hit Danny’s nostrils, a dirty, greasy smell but a strangely comforting one. Up ahead, a grey Toyota Tundra was parked in the middle of the aircraft, fastened to the sides by lengths of sturdy rope. Left-hand drive, Arabic plates. Two men stood by it, both wearing head cans and boom mikes – a loadie and an engineer. There were no words exchanged: the loadie simply jabbed his finger towards a bench that ran along the right-hand side of the chopper. Danny and Spud headed towards it and took a seat. Two headsets were hanging from the side of the chopper. They plugged themselves in and immediately heard the pilot’s voice: British, with that easy confidence all pilots seem to have: ‘We’ll be airborne in ten minutes, lads. Flight time approximately three hours, subject to what we find when we approach our destination. I’ll keep you in the loop.’
To Danny’s right was a small window. Through it he could see the bonfire, though the glow was diffused by the brown-out around the Chinook. Spud was looking straight ahead. Steely. Focused. Just like Danny. Because they both knew that the op started here.
Movement at the far end of the chopper. The tailgate was closing. The loadie and the engineer took seats opposite Danny and Spud. A moment later, they felt the Chinook rise into the air. Not high. In the darkness, Danny’s only point of reference was the fire. He estimated that they were about 30 metres up when the Chinook suddenly turned and they started plunging through the Middle Eastern night.
The pilot’s voice in their headsets: ‘We’re heading north up the Oman-Yemen border,’ he said. ‘When you feel us turn again, that means we’re entering Saudi. We’ve got permission to be in Saudi airspace along the northern Yemeni border, but the border’s still fluid. We’ll be flying blind the whole way.’
A hiss in the headphones, then silence. Just the dull, repetitive thud of the Chinook’s rotors, as it carried Danny and Spud towards their destination.
02.30 Arabia Standard Time
They had been airborne for two and a half hours. Danny’s muscles were stiff, his backbone aching from contact with the hard side of the Chinook. The headset burst into life again. ‘Entering Yemeni airspace in five,’ he said. ‘We’re hoping to use the cover of a high-walled wadi to get us close on target.’
Sure enough, five minutes later the Chinook banked to the left, then suddenly lost height. Danny looked out of the window. There was a moon now, and by its silver light he could see, perhaps 20 metres from the chopper, a craggy wall zooming past, and the faint shadow the Chinook cast against it. He found himself unconsciously checking for the bulk of his weapon under his dishdash. This was dangerous territory. Chinooks had been put down by RPGs in safer areas than this. He found himself thinking about a Seal team who had taken a hit while inserting into the mountain regions of eastern Afghanistan. They’d suffered the biggest loss of life in the force’s history, and that was before a single man had set foot on the ground.
Twenty minutes passed. The pilot again: ‘We’re fifteen minutes out. We’re about to leave the wadi.’ Danny pictured the maps he’d examined back at Heathrow. Ha’dah was on a mountain, so they would need to make a steep climb. ‘We’ll approach from the north, which is the least populated region,’ the pilot continued. ‘We’re going to try to put you down on the road, but we’ll need to find a deserted spot, so get ready to hop and pop when we give you the word.’
The loadie and engineer stood up on the opposite side of the chopper. The loadie indicated that the guys should remove their cans, while the e
ngineer went about unstrapping the Toyota from the bonds that held it fast in the aircraft. While he did this, the tailgate lowered. A rush of new air filled the aircraft. Danny and Spud approached the vehicle. Danny could feel the aircraft gaining height and through the opening tailgate he saw not the earth any more, but an inky skyful of stars. He opened the driver’s door of the vehicle and climbed inside, while Spud took the passenger seat. There were still two ropes securing the vehicle – the engineer would release them when it was time to alight. Danny’s hand felt for the gearstick. It was locked in first gear, handbrake on. The key was already in the ignition. He pressed down the clutch and turned the key. The engine started immediately. He didn’t turn on the headlamps, but he did lower his window.
The chopper had stopped gaining height now. The loadie appeared by the door. ‘Thirty seconds!’ he shouted through the open window. And as he spoke, the chopper twisted 90 degrees clockwise. Through the open tailgate, Danny could see a narrow, winding mountain road. He estimated that they were 30 feet above it, but then they started a sharp, almost vertical descent. The road came up to meet them. There was a jolt as the chopper touched down. The engineer released the final two cords.
Danny pressed the accelerator and lifted the clutch up to its biting point, one hand on the wheel, the other on the handbrake. The Toyota felt like it was straining to escape from the chopper, its engine groaning loudly. Suddenly the loadie was by their side again.
‘Go!’ he shouted, and he thumped the top of the Toyota three times.
Danny let the clutch up. The vehicle shot forward, like a stone from a sling. It practically bounced on to the tailgate ramp, and sped down from the chopper. A second later, he felt the crunch of rubber tyres on a rough surface. And as he checked his rear-view mirror, he saw that the Chinook was already rising, its tailgate still down.
