Soldier I

by Kennedy, Michael

  Out of nowhere, Big Bruiser had regrouped and was back, clambering up the hill. He was playing the big hero. He must have thought he would make one last stand to impress his mates. JB let out a roar and charged down the hill towards him. Big Bruiser took one look at the Terminator, turned on his arse and fled.

  That was it. Job done. The last of the opposition could be seen fleeing up the hill on the opposite side of the A303. Time for a postcombat brew. We reorganized on the edge of the stone circle. We were just checking that none of our radios had been lost during the brawl when the hippies from the bus arrived. A rag-tag bunch of druids, beadshakers and pendulum-swingers, it was like the fatigue party coming to clean up after the battle. 'Ah-ha, the Stonedhenge Brigade,' I thought. Big Fred decided to use diplomacy. 'Who's your leader?' he asked, without a hint of aggression in his voice. A small, effeminate-looking guy wearing an Afghan jacket and beads stepped forward. 'What do you want?' said Big Fred quietly.

  'Look man,' said the hippie. 'We don't want any trouble from you guys. All we want to do is touch the stones. This is the most magical place on the planet. When you touch the stones, you feel a vibration, just like hugging a tree, man. The warmth and energy goes right up your body. This is a temple. We just want to touch the stones, man.'

  No problem. We organized them into a queue, took down part of the barrier, and one by one we allowed each hippie in to kiss and hug his favourite stone. Everyone was happy, and we saw in the solstice peacefully. Fuck soldiering, maybe I should have been in the Diplomatic Corps!

  28

  The Bodyguard

  'If you're going to guard a body, it might as well be a beautiful one!' Pete Scholey was forever winding me up about my lack of good fortune work-wise compared to him. While I'd been scratching around guarding animals he'd been bodyguard to Miss World for six years. How lucky can you get? 'Tough job, but someone's got to do it,' he was always saying. Then he would add with a broad grin, 'Of course, I only do it to keep in touch with my feminine side.' If only! I was dreaming of doing some decent bodyguarding work. Then out of the blue my luck changed.

  Over many years the SAS had developed special expertise in covert bodyguarding techniques – or close protection as we call it. Our reputation came before us, and we trained with the great and the good, politicians and royalty.

  I was once Prince Charles' driver for a day of anti-ambush car drills. He swept in driving his vintage Aston Martin, which added a bit of James Bond glamour to the utilitarian training ground. Charles strode purposefully onto the driving range, fully kitted out for a mobile assault, and sat next to me in a car loaded to the gunwales with stun grenades, MP5s and reserve ammunition. I gave him a briefing, then we were off. I roared off at speed towards various pop-up targets on the range. As I executed a handbrake turn, our future king, window down, blasted away with the MP5 for all he was worth. He was really up for it, really getting into it. He was an excellent shot, and dropped all the targets. He'd grown up with guns and was as good a shot with an MP5 as he is with a Purdey, but he took even more delight in the flash-bangs – hurling them to cover our escape.

  The Regiment was to be honoured by another visit from Prince Charles, this time accompanied by his wife, Princess Diana. We put on a fast roping demonstration for the royal couple, involving a helicopter hovering a hundred feet above a two-storey building with a flat roof. A thick hemp rope attached to the helicopter was then thrown out and left to dangle onto the roof. One by one, the members of the team grabbed the rope and abseiled a hundred feet down onto the flat roof, like sliding down a fireman's pole.

  The demonstration went like clockwork, until the last assault trooper exited the chopper. He seemed to falter, lost his grip, and fell a hundred feet straight down onto the flat roof. As he hit the deck at a rate of knots, Prince Charles remained fairly cool, but Princess Di visibly stiffened. A shocked look came over her face and she turned white. Just before she looked about to pass out, her pale expression turned to disbelief as the fallen assaulter suddenly jumped up, dusted himself down and gave her a cheery wave.

  It was a right royal stitch-up. The last abseiler to leave the helicopter had been a very realistic dummy, thrown out of the helicopter by one of the crew. The assaulter who came back from the dead had been lying flat on the roof from the start, lying concealed behind a three-foot-high wall that ran around the edge of the roof. There was relief all round and huge laughter from the Prince of Wales. Princess Di, however, still looked queasy. She really was in bits.

  * * *

  All this experience was to stand me in good stead. My next job came from one of the small, anonymous security firms on the circuit, the type of firm only ex-SAS would know about. The guy on the end of the line was Harry. He was the operational manager, and more importantly he was ex-B Squadron. I had worked with him on surveillance operations in Northern Ireland.

  He started his pitch. 'I need a bodyguard. This one's high-risk, Pete. Nobody wants to touch it with a bargepole unless they go in mobhanded and that's not the client's style. You know the rule of thumb when dealing with a psychopath: it's three against one, three of the good guys against the headcase.'

  I was beginning to feel a bit uneasy. I took a deep breath and said, 'I'm listening.'

  He went on, 'The subject is an Australian criminal, basically, a gangster. He is mentally unstable and frequently carries a weapon. His name is Andrew Jefferson. He ran a small machine shop in Sydney which was a front for illegal activities such as reactivating deactivated weapons. There were some financial issues and the local police were hot on the case, so he decided to do a runner to England along with the equipment from his factory, which was crated up and shipped to Felixstowe docks. His last illegal activity before leaving for England was to visit his local Harley-Davidson dealer and ask if he could test drive one of their top-of-the-range bikes. He rode it straight down to the dockside where the ship for Felixstowe was being loaded, and hid the bike amongst the crated machinery for transportation to the UK. The whole shipment is being held in a bonded warehouse near the docks in Felixstowe. The Australian government has got involved and through the British courts managed to get a court order to seize the shipment before it was cleared by customs.

  'Yesterday customs received a phone call from Jefferson. He said he was coming down to the bonded warehouse "to sort things out". With an edge of intimidation to his voice, he added that he hoped his shipment had cleared customs.

  'Pete, this is where you come in. A solicitor from a London office and working on behalf of the Australian government will be standing in the warehouse reception waiting to serve Jefferson with a writ banning him from the warehouse. He needs protection. He will also issue the court order confiscating all his shipment. The firm of solicitors don't want a big team of heavies in reception in case Jefferson gets frightened off before the writ can be served. They want low profile, someone who can handle the situation on a one-on-one basis if things turn nasty. I thought with your experience dealing with Portuguese gangsters in Hong Kong you'd be up for it!'

  The phone went silent. Now it was my turn. 'This begs one big question. Why hasn't he been arrested by the Brit police?'

  'Because he hasn't done anything wrong in England and as of this moment in time there is no extradition order,' came Harry's reply.

  'Let me just think about this one and I'll get back to you.' I put the phone down. Well, here was a criminal who lived by his own twisted set of rules. You can lie, you can cheat, you can steal, you can kill people, you can do any fucking thing you want and nobody does or says anything about it. He needed taking down.

  I opened the bottom drawer of my desk and took out the black leather Zap gloves. They'd been given to me back in 1986 when I was still in the Regiment on the Counter-Revolutionary Warfare wing, by a visiting member of the FBI on what we called a tough guys' course – training the Feds in unarmed combat. I knew they'd come in useful one day. I slowly pulled the gloves on and examined the fit. In a hidden pocket on the ba
ck, just over the knuckles, was a solid lump of lead four inches long by two inches wide, the soft grey metal insert moulded nicely to the knuckles. A covert knuckle-duster! An equalizer! You could literally thump a stone wall with these and not come to any harm.

  'Just like old times,' I thought. I called Harry and accepted the contract.

  Two days later on a cold February morning I was standing in the reception of George Barker Ltd, customs clearance and customs brokers, with Chris the solicitor from the London office. This was a large facility with over 5,000 square metres of secure warehousing and twenty-fourhour CCTV, an alarm system connected to the local police station and a panic button in reception. I noted with some satisfaction that the CCTV cameras at the front covered the car park and reception.

  The time was now 11am. The gangster should have been here by now. I removed the photo of Jefferson that Chris had given me from my inside pocket and began studying it. 'Do you think he's coming?' I didn't get time for an answer.

  Out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of a black BMW entering the car park at speed. With a squeal of tyres the car skidded to a halt fifty yards from reception. A stocky, well-built figure dressed in a long, darkblue Mafia-style overcoat emerged from the vehicle. It was Jefferson, a big man acting the part of an even bigger man. He headed straight towards reception with an air of clear and present danger. Maximum violence was written all over his face. I took one look at him and realized from past experience that there was no way I was going to reason with this guy. Make no mistake, this was going to be brutal.

  My priority now was protecting Chris. I decided to carry out a preemptive strike, attack being the best form of defence. I grabbed the writ, stuffed it into my pocket, and then moved quickly through the door to reception, putting myself between Chris and Jefferson. By now I was in the car park pulling on my Zap gloves, making sure the soft lead inserts were moulded to my knuckles and the gloves were a snug fit. Jefferson, six feet of hulking Australian aggression, strode menacingly up to me. 'Keep your distance,' I barked. 'Step back and stay away.'

  He gave me the hard-man stare. Pitiful.

  I played his game and looked unflinchingly back, trying to out-stare him. 'Keep your distance,' I repeated.

  'Get out of my face,' he growled.

  I kept the icy stare zapping into his face.

  'I said get out of my face!' and with that he produced an industrialsized screwdriver from his inside pocket and brandished it like a knife. 'Get out of my face or I'll have your eyes, boy. I'll take your eyes out and eat them one by one in front of you like pickled onions on a cocktail stick.' He was now shaking with fury and making jabbing motions with the screwdriver.

  I did step back and lower my stare but only to give myself time to think. 'I'm going to have to get one over on this fucker. I'm going to have to pull the old Queensberry Rules con,' I thought as I brought my gloved fists up and adopted a perfect boxing stance as though offering him a fair fight.

  He took the bait. Looking cold and hard with a slight smirk on his face he said, 'OK, son, but without the gloves.'

  I stepped back again, my eyes firmly fixed on the jabbing screwdriver. I removed the gloves and returned them to the pocket of my Barbour jacket. I could always get the right-hand glove on pretty quick in an emergency. I returned to my perfect boxing stance.

  Jefferson threw the screwdriver to the ground and his fists came up into what could be classed as a reasonable boxing stance. Perhaps he had been a boxer in his youth like the Kray twins. The only bit he forgot about was his feet. Instead of standing side-on with his left leg leading, he stood with his legs apart, offering me as a target one of the most vulnerable parts of his body.

  It was a kind invitation that I couldn't possibly refuse. I stepped in after him as though I was going to start boxing, then I brought my right boot up hard and fast into his groin. His eyes opened wide with shock and there was a deep intake of breath as though he was drawing his last. He staggered back several paces before falling to his knees, clutching his bollocks. As I moved in for the kill I noticed he was looking in the direction of his car. Suddenly he started scrabbling along the ground towards the BMW. For a big man he was quite agile. The adrenaline rush was probably blocking out the pain.

  He was soon on his feet and within seconds he had the boot of his car open. Reaching in, he took out what looked like a heavy-duty crowbar that he must have got from the One-Stop Breaking & Entering Shop. He began flourishing the crowbar like a sword.

  I reached quickly into my jacket pocket and retrieved the Zap gloves. I pulled them on and flexed my knuckles satisfyingly. At last, I get to use the gloves! I took off my Barbour jacket and was wrapping it around my left arm to use as a shield when – what a pity – out of the corner of my left eye I saw the blues and twos. A police car powered into the car park and screeched to a halt. Two members of the local plod jumped out and deployed their batons. As they locked him in handcuffs I stuffed the writ into his top pocket. 'Don't forget your paperwork,' I grinned as he was led away.

  Shame I didn't get to use the gloves, though.

  29

  Mafia in Moscow

  The incident with the Australian gangster proved a turning point. I started getting regular work providing security for top businesspeople at AGMs. I flexed my muscles at meetings for Manweb, British Airways, Shell, BAS and McAlpine. These all proved to be routine and run-ofthe-mill, but nonetheless good experience. The Vickers AGM was a bit tastier. The great manufacturer of arms, tanks and warplanes, this was right up my street. But it's a contentious area of operations, and there was always going to be more potential for disruption by protesters, or infiltration by people spying on behalf of competitors in this fiercely competitive, multi-billion-pound global industry.

  But what made this a stand-out meeting was the small matter of a motion to be discussed: that Vickers should sell off to either BMW or Volkswagen its most famous division – Rolls-Royce Motors. The prospect of this quintessentially British manufacturer falling into foreign hands exercised certain minds so strongly that death threats were sent to the chairman, Sir Colin Chandler. We beefed up our normal security arrangements and everyone was well and truly keyed-up. In the event, apart from angry exchanges from the floor, and one character playing the Dambusters March on a handheld ghetto blaster, the meeting passed off without incident and BMW won the rights to one of the most famous brands in the world.

  Then came the big one. A principal of enormous wealth and influence, who was president and founder of a remarkable success story. In little over ten years since his company's formation in America, sales had rocketed to an eye-watering billion dollars a year. It's only a rare individual who can achieve that level of success. Sales were continuing to increase, products were expanding. The company was going from strength to strength. He'd well and truly cracked the American market. Now it was time to conquer the world. Starting in Moscow, then the assassination capital of the world. As soon as we arrived at the hotel, the atmosphere was heavy. 'We had a bit of a problem last week. You may have heard.' The concierge stared at us, weighing us up. 'A British businessman. He wasn't playing the game. He didn't understand the local rules. He was assassinated with a magazine full of AK-47 just outside the front door. Welcome to Moscow, gentlemen.'

  This guy was going to take some serious bodyguarding.

  The luxurious, five-star Moscow Marriott Grand was a stone's throw from Red Square, the Kremlin and the Bolshoi Theatre. As I gazed around the elegant reception hall I thought, 'If they openly kill people here, what do they do in the suburbs?' I glanced at my other team members, Rusty (the team leader) and John Mac (the mystery man on the balcony of the Iranian Embassy. John was the real deal, not a character from that famous volume of fairytales and tall stories entitled One Thousand and One Walters, or The Iranian Knights – written, of course, by unreliable narrators). I was reassured to be in good company. We were going to need plenty of top cover for this one.

  With big opportunities c
ome big dangers. Ask any prospector during a gold rush. After communism fell in the late Eighties and early Nineties, the former Soviet Union had collapsed into near economic and social anarchy. The transition from the old state-controlled economy to a free market model was a slow and painful one. Corruption, murders, contract killings and violent crime were now widespread and casual.

  Bumbling Boris Yeltsin was head of government and the economy was in meltdown. With state spending grinding to a halt, hyperinflation decimating savings, huge tax increases being imposed, unemployment rising to epic heights, whole swathes of industry gone to the wall, and any state enterprise which actually produced wealth having fallen into the hands of the privileged oligarchy, millions of ordinary people had been plunged into crisis. They were desperate to escape the rampant poverty.