by Damien Lewis
Bill Berger scratched his head irritably. ‘Okay, buddy, I’m enlightened. Fascinatin’ stuff. But where’s it all goin’?’
‘Patience … The Assassins’ invincibility was based upon terror. You come and try and get us and we’ll assassinate you, that was the basic threat. But the Assassins were defeated, and you know who did for them? The Mongol hordes. The Assassins became too full of themselves, sort of swallowed the myth of their own invincibility. Then the Mongols came along and saw through all their bullshit. They besieged their mountains fortresses, and killed every living thing: men, women, children – even the cats and dogs were put to the sword.’
Bill Berger rolled his eyes. ‘This is goin’ somewhere, ain’t it, buddy? I mean, the boys’re turning up tomorrow and we gotta have something for them.’
‘People think of the Mongols as an unruly, savage rabble,’ Kilbride continued. ‘Far from it. In truth they were elite warriors centuries ahead of their time. They had the best training, iron discipline, top-notch reconnaissance and intelligence gathering, and great mobility and comms. They used trickery and cunning in combat, like attacking from behind enemy lines. In short, the Mongols were a lot like us, mate.’
‘So, buddy? So where’s all this takin’ us? What’s the secret to blowin’ the Black Assholes to hell?’
Kilbride stared at Berger for a second, then cracked up laughing. ‘I’ve no idea, mate. I just thought I’d make you sit through all that history shit ’cause I know how much you hate it. I’m not sure it teaches us a fucking thing …’
Bill Berger narrowed his eyes. ‘Son of a bitch, Kilbride …’ Then he, too, burst into laughter.
But beneath the humour Kilbride was seriously worried. He’d spent three days wrestling with the problem and was no nearer to working out how the eight of them were supposed to wipe out the Black Assassins. At present he had no alternative but to lay the issue before the lads when they arrived the following morning, and see if they could come up with something.
Sometime in the early hours of the morning Kilbride found himself torn out of a deep sleep. A voice was clamouring inside his head: he’d had an idea, a flash of subconscious inspiration, and that was what had woken him. As he scrabbled around for a pen and paper he tried to remember what it might have been. And then he had it. A Trojan horse. A Trojan horse. Somewhere in the landscape of his slumber he had hatched a plan … He scribbled down some barely legible notes, then sank back down onto the pillows: he would sketch it all out in greater detail over an early breakfast.
At 7 a.m. Bill Berger set off with Nixon to collect the lads from the airport. Everyone from the original Beirut job was expected, barring Nightly. He’d sent Kilbride his apologies via email: his wife was expecting their third child and having kids was an expensive business. He couldn’t afford to come. Kilbride had offered to pay for his flight, but Nightly had insisted that whatever the men decided he would go along with. He for one was on for the mission. Kilbride detected that the troublesome soldier from his 1979 troop had mellowed over the years. There was a humility about the man that he hadn’t expected.
At 11 a.m. Kilbride’s Mercedes jeep was back at The Homestead. The lads piled out and greeted him with a chorus of: ‘Hello, you old fucker.’ Since leaving the SAS Kilbride had run into nearly all of them on the circuit, as the private-security business was called. Iraq, Afghanistan, Liberia, Iran, the Congo – they’d ended up in all the usual places. The only exception was Jock McKierran. Kilbride was thrilled that the big Scotsman had made it, and he knew that he had Smithy to thank for that. Smithy had driven up to Scotland, picked up McKierran, and stuck by his side all the way to Dar-es-Salaam.
Once the men had dumped their kitbags, they gathered at the front of The Homestead for a welcome beer. Smithy gazed at the white sands and blue waters of the tropical ocean, just at the end of the garden.
‘Bloody nice place you got here, mate,’ he remarked to Kilbride. Tashana, the maid, appeared with a trayful of beers. Smithy gave a low whistle. ‘Bloody lovely crumpet, ’n’ all.’
Kilbride grinned. ‘Piss off, mate – she’s already accounted for.’
‘Yeah,’ Bill Berger added. ‘She’s promised to marry a Yankee …’
‘In your dreams,’ Smithy countered. Just then another woman emerged carrying a plate of snacks. She had the face and figure of Halle Berry in Die Another Day. She made her way across to them. ‘Jesus,’ Smithy hissed, ‘she’s even more gorgeous. Where d’you find—’
‘Let me introduce my wife,’ Kilbride cut in. ‘Marie-Claire, this idiot’s my old mate Smithy. And meet the rest of the boys …’
Marie-Claire took Smithy’s hand as he stared in embarrassment at the sand. ‘Don’t worry,’ she smiled. ‘Two kids and yet I’m still more gorgeous than Tashana? You’ve just made my day.’
‘How did a nice girl like you end up with a doddery old fucker like Kilbride?’ Smithy asked, trying his best to recover his cool.
Marie-Claire ruffled Kilbride’s hair. ‘Of all the marriage proposals, his was the only one that came with a bunch of idiot mates. How could I resist?’
The rest of the men had a good laugh at Smithy’s expense. It seemed as if Kilbride’s wife had more than got his measure. After they’d necked the beers, Kilbride took his men into the office. Nixon had prepared a tray heaped with sandwiches, plus several pots of tea.
‘Know your enemy. Blow your enemy!’ Smithy snorted, as he read aloud the signs hanging above the computers. ‘No bloody guessing who came up with the second. Who invited the bloody Yank along? Why can’t this just be an English job, for Queen and Country …’
‘’Cause you’d fuck it up, that’s why,’ Bill Berger cut in.
‘Sure, you’re forgetting the Irish too,’ Moynihan added. ‘For you’ll be needing the luck of a Paddy on this one …’
‘And the balls of a South African, man,’ Boerke added.
‘Plus I’m half Welsh,’ Ward piped up.
‘And I’m a Cornishman,’ Johno added.
‘And Nightly’s from Mars,’ Boerke remarked.
‘Aye, and don’t forget the Scots,’ McKierran growled. ‘We even bring our own wee chairs with us these days.’
There was a ripple of laughter at McKierran’s joke: it was good to know that the big Scot wasn’t touchy about his wheelchair-confined status.
‘Right, enough arsing around,’ Kilbride announced. ‘This is the proposed schedule. Today’s Friday and most of you are flying out on Monday morning. I want to use today and tomorrow for mission planning. Saturday night we hit the town. There’s a place called Q-Bar, and trust me, you’ll like it. Sunday is a day of rest. Believe me, after Q-Bar you’ll be needing it …’
There was a raucous chorus of shouting and chants of ‘Q-Bar! Q-Bar! Q-Bar!’
When the noise had died down a little, Ward glanced up at Kilbride. ‘So the Lebanon mission’s on, is it, boss?’
The room went very quiet. All eyes were on Kilbride. ‘There’s a few things still to sort. But yeah, I reckon it just might be, mate.’
CHAPTER TEN
KILBRIDE SPENT THE next two hours running over developments since the original 1979 bank job, in particular the designation of the Palm Islands as a protected nature reserve. Then he outlined his and Bill Berger’s plan to return to the Lebanon posing as a team diving the wreck of HMS Victoria. He outlined all the advantages, including the wreck’s proximity to Ramkine Island and their hidden gold, before moving on to the problems.
He filled the men in on his links to The Project – an organisation that most of them already knew existed – and recounted his recent meeting with Nick Coles. It was clear that there could be no gold-retrieval mission without dealing with the Black Assassins. Then he laid out the offer that Nick Coles had made to them: weapons, comms, intel and surveillance back-up, in return for the elimination of the enemy.
They broke for a late lunch. There was a sombre atmosphere in Kilbride’s office as the men sat around, munching throug
h a giant pile of Nixon’s sandwiches. They’d come here expecting a simple operation in which little could go wrong. Instead they now knew that they were pitted against the enemy from hell.
Once the men had eaten Kilbride threw the discussion open. ‘If anyone has any idea how we go about hitting these bastards, then let’s hear it. Anything, however wacky, ’cause we’re up against it.’
There were several seconds of silence before Bill Berger spoke up. ‘I’ve an idea, buddy … Last night I kinda maybe hit on something. Seems to me we might be lookin’ at this all wrong. We’re presuming the Black Assholes are gonna be onto us as soon as we hit Lebanon. But what about a one hundred per cent covert operation? How about we head in from the sea, hit the cave unseen and retrieve the gold unseen? A totally covert job and no one knows we’ve even been there. The Black Assholes, The Project – they can all go screw themselves.’
‘Nice idea,’ said Kilbride. ‘There’s one problem. You’ve got seventeen and a half tons of gold. There’s no covert craft that could get in and out of the cave with even a fraction of that sort of cargo. Plus you need the dhow, or something similar, for your onward journey. That’s always going to be highly visible.’
‘I’ve got an idea, boss,’ Smithy volunteered. ‘Probably totally bloody stupid, but you did ask. You smelt the gold into earth-moving equipment – you know, like JCB buckets, or something. You paint it up to look the part, then you ship it out of the Lebanon like it’s bog-standard earth-moving kit.’
Boerke snorted. ‘Where does all this take place, man? In the cave?’
Smithy glared at him. ‘No. But there’s got to be metal workshops all over the bloody Lebanon.’
‘There are,’ Kilbride confirmed. ‘But it doesn’t help. To get the gold to the smelter you still have to retrieve it from the cave, and that’s where they’ll see us and hit us.’
‘Plus you think people won’t talk?’ Boerke added. ‘You have seventeen and a half tons of gold being turned into digger blades in a backstreet Beirut smelting works, and no one’s going to blab? Get real, man.’
‘All right, so you park a trawler next to the bloody cave, fill the nets with gold, haul them up and it sails out of there,’ Smithy retorted. ‘What’s so bloody stupid about that?’
‘It’s highly visible,’ Kilbride cut in, before the South African could slap Smithy down again. ‘Plus the Palm Islands are a National Park, remember? There’s no fishing, no diving, no anything allowed, unless you have a permit.’
Smithy scowled. ‘So where the fuck does that leave us?’
‘Och, there’s always a way,’ McKierran growled. ‘Just we need to be canny about it … Take a look at me, lad. Knackered from the waist down, so I use my arms to get around.’
‘Jock’s right – we’ve learned something already,’ Moynihan added. ‘We know we can’t do this secretly. And if we can’t, then we’ll be needing some luck and some trickery …’
‘Trickery,’ Smithy muttered. ‘Always was your bloody speciality.’
Moynihan ignored the dig. ‘What we need to be doing is somehow fooling the enemy into letting us remove that gold … I can’t think of a way myself, but that’s what we need to be looking at. End of feckin’ story.’
Kilbride allowed the discussion to run and run. The general conclusion seemed to be that they needed a ruse – a trick to sneak the gold out from under the enemy’s nose. The only trouble was, no one could think of one. Finally, Kilbride decided to try out his own plan on the men. If none of them had yet thought of it, maybe the enemy wouldn’t, either.
‘Any of you know about the sacking of Troy? After years besieging the city of Troy, the Greeks reckoned it was time to give up. But before leaving they built a massive wooden horse and left it outside the gates. The Trojans opened the gates and wheeled the horse inside, thinking it was a gift from a defeated enemy. They hit the wine and started to party hard. But the belly of the beast was hollow, and it was stuffed full of Greek troops. Halfway through the Trojans’ piss-up the Greeks burst out of the horse and trashed the place. That’s what we need – our own Trojan Horse. We need a decoy shipment of gold.’
Kilbride glanced around the room. ‘Imagine you make up seventeen and a half tons of fool’s gold. It looks like gold, it feels like gold, only it isn’t gold. Imagine if that shipment of false gold is quietly hidden somewhere in the Lebanon. Then we turn up, very publicly, and head off to “retrieve” it. The enemy see us and they follow us. They watch us unearthing our hidden loot, or so they think. They attack. We fight back. But eventually, we’re beaten. The enemy seize the “gold”. They celebrate. They go crazy. They drop their guard.’
Kilbride paused to catch his breath. All eyes were on him now. Boerke shifted, impatiently. ‘Go on, man.’
‘Okay, now imagine that we’ve done the deal with The Project. We’ve got total intel and comms back-up. We know the enemy’s every move and we know when they’re about to attack. We plan our defence accordingly, so we can put up a realistic fight but still get out alive. Now, imagine that we’ve split forces. Think of it as an A Team and a B Team. The A Team are dealing with the decoy gold. The B Team have got the dhow anchored off the Palm Islands, and they’re happily diving on the wreck of HMS Victoria. As soon as they get the call that the enemy have taken the bait, they launch the gold-retrieval mission. They operate at night, using RIBs to remove the gold and bring it back to the dhow. By the time the Black Arseholes have realised they’ve been had, all of us – and the gold – will be long gone.’
Kilbride could feel the excitement in the air now. The men knew that this version of the mission just might be doable.
‘Okay,’ he continued. ‘The dhow is crewed by those who are least physically capable of the decoy mission. No disrespect – but that’s Smithy, Moynihan and McKierran …’
At the mention of his name McKierran looked up sharply. ‘Ye mean to say I’m fookin’ in?’ he asked. ‘I’d always imagined you bastards would be leaving me behind …’
Kilbride grinned. ‘You’re on the dhow, Jock, and you’ll be mighty useful. We need every one of us for this mission, and maybe a couple more, too …’
Jock McKierran grinned. ‘Och, why not just call our end of things Operation Three Cripples?’ He glanced at Smithy and Moynihan. ‘I mean, we’ve Popeye Moynihan there with his gammy eye, Hopalong Smithy and myself, Wheely Jock McKierran …’
Kilbride laughed. ‘Okay, Operation Three Cripples it is. That leaves us lot – Berger, Boerke, Ward, Johno, Nightly and myself – on Operation Trojan Horse. Everyone all right with that?’
Kilbride glanced around the room to see if there were any objections, but the men just nodded their approval.
‘Right, I reckon that at three the B Team is undermanned, and you need two extra blokes. So, I’m proposing we bring in two young lads – fit sorts who can handle salvaging seventeen and a half tons of gold. I have two blokes in mind. They’re both in their late twenties, both ex-special forces and, most importantly, I trust them.’
‘Why?’ Boerke demanded. ‘What makes you trust them?’
‘One of them’s my son. My son from a previous woman. Mick Kilbride’s his name. He’s ex-SBS. His closest buddy, Brad, is an ex-US Navy SEAL. They’d join the dhow crew and dive on the gold, whilst Moynihan and Smithy operate the RIBs. And McKierran, you’d man the mother ship at all times. You’d use RIBs with those hybrid diesel–electric engines. By day when you’re diving the wreck you use them on diesel mode, which charges the batteries. At night when you’re salvaging the gold you run them on silent electric mode.’
Kilbride had sketched out most of the plan over breakfast, and was making up the rest of it as he went along.
‘The dhow’s a big old girl,’ Kilbride added, ‘and I reckon you’ll be able to strap the RIBs onto the deck and sail with them from here. You’ll need weapons, ’cause there’s pirates around the Somali coast, but I reckon we can organise you something locally …’
Kilbride ran throu
gh some of the other mission details. By now it was approaching midnight and despite the buzz of excitement in the room the strain of travel and jet lag was starting to get to the men. Kilbride had one last issue to raise before they headed off to get some sleep.
‘There’s one problem. I want everyone to think about this between now and tomorrow. Operation Trojan Horse only works if we have The Project’s backing. And that, as you know, is a two-way deal. At present Trojan Horse may fool the enemy, but it doesn’t destroy them. The Project will only back us if we can find a way to blow the Black Assassins to hell. For ever and for good. And that’s what we need to crack.’
The men wandered off to their rooms, leaving Kilbride and Bill Berger alone on the office patio.
‘That was a darn good show in there, buddy,’ Bill Berger remarked. ‘Awesome plan. But where the hell did it come from? Last night we didn’t have a clue: this morning, you got it ninety per cent sorted.’
‘Tell you the truth, I was awake half the night, and that was when the idea hit me. But don’t rely on me doing the same tonight. I’ve been racking my brains, but I haven’t a clue how we hit these bastards …’
Bill Berger shook his head. ‘Me neither, buddy, me neither.’
The following day was spent brainstorming the issue, but by the time Kilbride and his team were ready to hit the Q-Bar, they were no nearer to finding a solution. The few ideas thrown up had been just as quickly shot down in flames.
The Q-Bar was an hour’s drive away in downtown Dares-Salaam. As usual it was heaving, and Kilbride took a table against the wall facing the dance floor and bar. Kilbride ordered drinks and several large jugs of lager arrived, along with eight glasses. A band was playing in a space next to their table, pumping out good 1970s dance numbers and some disco beat. The noise made conversation all but impossible, which meant more time to concentrate on the beer and the girls. The place was heaving with honeys, and not a few were casting lingering glances in their direction.
