It was dark when we entered the town, which was nothing more than a large market-place made up of about 100 wooden stalls, all set up in an 'organised-chaos' way. Lighting was available only to those wealthy enough to afford a fuel-run generator or small, sweet-smelling paraffin-type lamp. The big lights I had seen from Fred's basha, which I had thought marked our destination, were actually those on the dockside, and we weren't anywhere near them.
The market had a vast array of fresh vegetables and fish — and some not so fresh! Sweet, acidic spicy smells wafted all around us. The place was jammed with traders and hawkers out on the hustle, and thousands of bargain hunters all shouting at each other. It was a prime example of a place you shouldn't go after dark, but here we were.
There were people out eating, but not as we might do back home, sitting outside a restaurant on a hot summer's night; these people were eating on the ground. There weren't any tables, apart from an open-area eating house where we were heading. It was the only 'restaurant' I could see with half-decent lighting — a dozen or so strings of light bulbs precariously suspended from a series of long poles, though all but three were blown.
Our waiter for the evening was a big, wart-faced local. I didn't think he was from these parts but none the less still had the usual ball of chat stuck in his gob. He was dressed, not in a waiter's uniform, but in a ragged, faded white T-shirt and a pair of jeans that had seen the arse-end worn out of them a long time ago. As he approached our table, I noticed that Fred and Alistair were deep in conversation.
'Can I see a menu?'
'Sorry, man, we have no menus, only one dish, meat,' the waiter replied.
I felt slightly embarrassed for even asking. Fred looked up and laughed.
'Three of the specials, then, and some water please,' I said.
'Excuse me, sir?'
'Food for the three of us, that's great,' Fred replied.
We all burst out laughing at what I'd just said. It wasn't that I was trying to be funny, I just wasn't thinking. How was I to know that there was only one dish available?
What he brought us was a great scoff of goat stew served up on an old but clean-looking metal canteen tray — the sort you get in the army or prison — and washed down with lumpy, very sweet guava juice, and for afters, quite amazingly, we had a dollop of homemade ice cream. Where that came from or how it was made I had no idea. Actually, it tasted like a very cheap vanilla-flavoured ice cube, but still, it was appreciated. Later, Fred told me that the goat had been slaughtered in the old 'bash-it-to-death-with-wooden-clubs-where-it-stands' method, a tradition in this part of the world. That would have accounted for the bits of splintered bone and grit in every mouthful. Again the people were very friendly. A few stopped and talked to us while we ate but most just stared as though we were some kind of new breed of circus animal. They did seem happy to see us, though. Fred was a great host, and he chatted away to the locals in their half-Arabic, half-African lingo. By the end of the evening's festivities I was pretty sure Fred had 'gone bush' while living out here.
With no hangovers the following morning, we were all up and at it, and by first light we were standing on the end of one of the longest runways in the world, only to be confronted by a quite extraordinary, eerie sight. As the light broke through a high cloud base, I had this strange sensation that I could have quite easily been on the front line of the first Russian offensive at the start of World War III, if we were still experiencing the Cold War. In front of me stood well over 200 SAM missiles, some sited on their ground-based launching pads. Many were at their launching angle of 45 degrees but most were lying down, as if ready to take the place of those due to be fired. It just blew me away. They were all of a late 1950s–1960s model and had been sweating here in the blistering sun since the mid-1970s, ready to 'cock off'.
I stared in sheer amazement, wondering, What if the Shuttle has to use this runway and the pilot's a bit bleary-eyed from his descent and crashes into the lot of them? Some fireworks display for sure, probably it would vapourise the entire port of Berbera. As difficult as it was, I put the thought of the SAMs out of my mind and got on with the task of recce-ing the landing strip, but every now and then I kept glancing back at them, just to reassure myself that this was not a dream.
Apart from a few lumps of rock and wood left by the locals, the landing strip was all clear. I picked a spot for the Here touchdown where the sun had not burnt into the tarmac too much, then called up Baz. He was in the air and on time. When I told him about the landing strip and the SAMs, he just laughed. I guess it was a standing joke among incoming pilots and the people of Berbera.
The distant rumble of a Here's engines getting closer always sends a shiver of excitement down my spine. It's a great feeling if you know it's coming to pick up from a mission or to drop a resupply, and that morning was no exception, as the sound told me that Baz and his crew were spot on time. Of course, a different feeling of warm nervous tension enters the body when the ramp is lowered at night at 28,000 feet and you know you have to jump out of the thing.
The Here landed in a great ball of dust and for a brief second I couldn't see it, but as I heard the massive engines in reverse thrust it reappeared magnificently and taxied towards us. It took us an hour to unload, by which time the four hired trucks had arrived. They were old Russian wrecks, but not as bad as those in Mozambique — at least these had some tread left on their tyres! With the help of some locals we loaded up in no time, but now we had a problem. The drivers were unwilling to drive all the way to Hargeisa because of talk about recent bandit activity. Even though the trucks were loaded and the drivers had known of their destination the day before, no amount of persuading by Abdoli was going to get them moving — so I had to offer more money. By the time the haggling had finished it would have been cheaper to buy a truck, but at least I got it sorted. Once that was out of the way, we were off, heading back west.
I swear they must have had the current year's Hertz price list, the amount it cost: US$180 per truck in the end, and that's how they wanted it, not in local currency. I didn't blame them because their currency wasn't worth a bean; that amount in local notes wouldn't have fitted into the boot of an average car.
Over the next two weeks things really got going. First I set about establishing the base camp and setting up some kind of routine so we didn't get every Tom, Dick and Harry roving about the camp on the ponce. The trainee Pioneers were arriving daily and were sorted by Abdoli and his men, and all of our team had arrived safely from the UK. There were six of them, plus myself and Alistair; that made eight.
They were a diverse bunch. One guy, Stuart, had just recently left the Royal Navy after six years and this was his first civvy job. Two more, both young, were ex-SBS, and another was an old hand, Vic, who had been around the bomb disposal business for many years, and the last two were ex-Naval guys. On initial appearances they all seemed switched-on and looked the part. We settled in no probs, since we were all used to roughing it from our Service days, and on top of that they were being paid a big wedge of £200 a day for an initial six-week period. In addition, the organisation asked us to find a further guy to monitor the team on their behalf (a rather unusual request), so JJ came on board.
It took us a week to get the camp into some sort of order. We pitched our new tents in military-style lines, dug shit pits and invented makeshift showers, which were refilled by means of an old water bowser I had commandeered, and secured all our equipment under lock and key. Everything was going fine. We were getting on well with the locals and really gelling with Abdoli. Through him I eventually got a meeting with Mr President himself. Everything was very amicable, and if there was anything the team required, all we had to do was ask. It had the makings of a great contract.
One night, about three days before I had to return to the UK to liaise with Forester, JJ wanted a chat with me, reference a 'delicate operational point'. He told me that he had a few reservations about some of the team's experience in clearing land mines.
Who did he think was not up to it? I asked.
'All of 'em,' he said.
I asked him to explain this pretty serious accusation. And over the next hour or so I found myself living my worst nightmare. There was a bit of bitchiness in JJ's tone, but fair play to him, it needed guts to come out with it all. It transpired that all the guys were very experienced clearance divers , but the four Naval guys had minimal hands-on experience in any form of ordnance disposal. Disposing of under-the-sea missiles with just a bit of hands-on removal of mines on land was not enough. As for the two SBS guys, they had less mine-clearing experience than I did. They were more used to putting mines on ships, not taking them out of the earth.
JJ continued to express his doubts, constantly apologising for not wanting to drop any of the guys in the shit. Everyone had to earn, and £200 a day was a lot of money to lose; on the other hand, he wanted to know that the team he was going to work with was all on the same wavelength.
He went on: 'It's not like you can bluff your way with these mines, it's dangerous shit. Abdoli's men, they do know a few things about mine-clearing, be it slightly less orthodox than the way I've been trained.'
It wasn't till the following morning that I briefed Alistair — I'd wanted to throw a few things around in my head before I spoke to him. Not surprisingly, he was as shocked as I was. In fact, he was furious.
We decided not to mention anything to anyone and went about our business as usual. Operationally this was not a problem because the team was still waiting for all the rest of the Pioneers to arrive, so there was not much to do apart from familiarisation with the local ground and personalities.
The next few days I couldn't help thinking, Why hadn't I been stronger in putting my case for an all-Engineer team? How could Forester make a balls-up on such a momentous scale? Of course, I knew how! He didn't have a clue about the business we were in — but I knew that anyway, it was I who wrote up the contracts and sourced all the necessary equipment for the job — and he sure as hell didn't understand the logistics of working on the ground in a hostile country, otherwise he would have listened to what I had been telling him.
'You have to know the beast,' I would say. I'm not being derogatory, I'm referring to 'us', ex-Special Forces people. Whether we like it or not, we are a different breed of soldier — I know that because I'm one — and I know how my people tick. Forester didn't. Putting an unqualified team on the ground compromised us totally. The people who you are trying to help lose all faith in you, quite rightly so, and that's when you get big problems. Hearts and minds go out of the window because the locals see you as a bunch of bluff merchants. You lose all street cred and, worst of all, you could end up losing your life. In this part of the world, life is as cheap as a five-quid blow job. As it turned out, the day I left Hargeisa was the day I left Somaliland for good, but none of the team was to know that, and neither was I. My intention was simply to go back and brief Forester on the situation, resolve it by putting the right guys on the ground — the ex-army guys I'd wanted in the first place — then return.
As a matter of course for anyone flying back to civilisation, I was handed a shopping list of things the guys couldn't buy locally, mainly small items such as washing and shaving kit and torch batteries. One item jumped out at me — ten big boxes of Kellogg's Corn Flakes with a name scribbled by the side of the order! It was a request by the guy who had just got out of the Navy. It's usual on such jobs that on the first ration supply a few goodies are thrown in, a couple of boxes of cereals or a few Mars Bars, but that's your lot. It's normally a one-off gesture because they're non-essential. Bulky items such as boxes of cereals are usually the first things to get ditched because aircraft space is always at a premium. Anyway, cereals go soft within a few hours of being out in the heat. It did bring a smile to my face, despite all the worries, when I knew that I was right about the drawbacks in picking an all-Navy team because of their inexperience in the field. It left me thinking, What the hell was this sailor's last posting — the Good Ship Lollipop?
Back in London I voiced my concerns to Forester, in particular his selection of team members. He should have listened to Alistair and me. My other point, which he failed to take on board, was that we couldn't just arrive in a place like Somaliland with a shedload of all-singing, all-dancing boxes of brand-new equipment and shiny things, then start to train the Pioneers, who basically possessed shit all, in the art of land-mine clearance, and not recompense them with a half-decent wage.
During the drawing up of the contract I had addressed precisely these problems, plus the need to build in a lot of 'fat' for any unforeseen events that might happen during the contract, such as hosting the President and other important people who would be crucial to the smooth running of the job. But Forester disagreed with me, taking the line that we were out there to help them, not party with them.
'Now listen, Steve, I don't know how you guys accounted for hosting parties when you were in the SAS. I bet you had to pay for it yourself, no doubt.'
'Well, Forester, you seem to know what's what, but actually we had a thing called a Squadron Fund which was part of the budget and took care of all necessary parties. You mean to say you didn't have a similar thing when you were working in the City?'
'Yes we did, but it was all strictly accounted for in a businesslike fashion, by way of receipts.'
There was not a lot I could say about his comments but, with hindsight, I should have. Since he had the money in the bank and held the purse strings, it seemed to me at the time that he preferred to choose profit before professionalism. It was my opinion that he thought that he was dealing with a bunch of, as he put it, 'idiots' who didn't know, or care to know, the difference. I was convinced that the profit had gone to his head and now he was slowly losing the plot through his own sense of greed.
'You come back here and tell me that the men I've sent out are clearance divers and not land-mine experts! Ha! You're just trying to scaremonger and throw a spanner in the works. Now I know exactly why your wife left you!' Forester yelled at me.
I blew up. 'Well fuck it, that's it. Sort me out the money you owe me, and make sure that includes all my commission on all the equipment I sorted out — because you didn't have a fuckin' clue about jack shit, and I'll leave you to it.'
'I'm paying you only what we agreed, and that's the daily rate times the time you were out in Somaliland; not a penny more.'
Now, as you can imagine, on hearing what he had said about my ex, I was spitting feathers. I was shaking . He had now made it very personal and that particular conversation has stuck with me ever since. The money, well, I just had to write my commission off and put the episode down to experience.
As a man, I could have done one of two things. My first thought was to jump over his desk and slit his big fat belly and watch him slowly haemorrhage to death. Or I could clear my desk and simply walk away. With emotions running high, I did the latter, just turned and walked. If I hadn't done, my life would be rather different now. I might still be doing time for murder or at least attempted murder; worse, I might have had to flee the country and go on the run, never to see my daughter again. I was so raging with anger that on the drive back home to Hereford I wrote off my mother's Audi at Oxford, the pride and joy of her life as my late father had bought it some years earlier; that was a fate worse than death.
Having thus severed my links with Forester completely, I was no longer involved with this contract in any way, though I did hear that he got hold of someone else to run it, keeping the same guys on the ground.
Some months later, a friend of mine who worked for the UN sent me an eight-page confidential assessment document that the UN and other agencies had written about the working practices of Cadogan in Somaliland. On the one hand I read through it with great delight, but on the other I felt a great deal of sadness for the people of Somaliland. They'd desperately needed this operation to work.
It was a scathing attack on Cadogan's inabilities to carry out such an op
eration. Criticisms were many. Examples: one, the 'in-country' team was not qualified to carry out or train others in the clearance of landmines, the whole point of its being there; two, the team members didn't keep records of areas that had been cleared by the Pioneers once the contract was up and running, which is basic, drummed into every student on day one, week one of any landmine clearance course; three, there was an inadequate amount of remuneration for the Pioneers, and no insurance policy to pay them in the event of accidents (hearts and minds); four, there was inadequate 'in-field' medical cover — again, another basic. The list of bad points went on.
In another document attached to the assessment was a quote from a guy called Yusuf Hussein Diria, a 27-year-old former mine engineer in the Somali National Movement, and one of the founders of the Pioneer Corps:
'When Cadogan came here it seemed that they came to learn, not to teach. They were asking us questions.'
There was also a list of the dead and injured as the contract got under way: one Cadogan team member seriously injured; seven Pioneers killed, and over 30 injured.
To sum up from the same article, there was a piece which read: 'After continuing strikes by the Pioneers because of one thing and another, mostly over pay, and, believing that the Cadogan team were about to leave the country without paying them, they surrounded the team members' living accommodation and held them at gunpoint, and only when government officials intervened did the Pioneers lift their siege. This allowed the Cadogan men to make good their escape and flee the country for good.'
Some time later, I found out that Cadogan had disappeared from the old offices, never to be heard of again.
Alistair and I still keep in touch from time to time. He, too, thinks he was stitched up like a kipper by Forester and he told me he was seeking legal advice about his situation. The rest of the team I have not seen or heard from since I left Somaliland.
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