Killer Elite (previously published as the Feather Men)

by Ranulph Fiennes

  “Do you love me?” she asked him, her face uptilted and her wonderful hair reaching down to the small of her back.

  She has never been loved, de Villiers marveled to himself. He spoke in a whisper the better to retain the magic of it all.

  They knelt together in the forest and the words of love tumbled out. Neither had known such depths of feeling before, for both had lived lives devoid of human warmth. The words that they exchanged were a necessary foreplay to their mounting passion. Their shared knowledge of what was to come was in itself sublimely sensual.

  Then de Villiers smelled the sweat of the Zulu. He flung himself sideways but the giant’s cudgel glanced off his shoulder and a sharp pain shot down his arm. The Zulu padded back to the shadows and wheeled Fontaine into the glade.

  “Samuel should have used his assegai,” he snarled, his lips rigid with fury. He wore a dressing gown of blue silk and a double-barreled twelve-bore shotgun lay across his wasted legs. Quite why he let de Villiers go, neither of them would ever know.

  De Villiers was driven to Weinberg by a silent Samuel, his only possessions packed in the rucksack he had carried the first time he came to La Pergole nearly a year before.

  Fontaine made it known throughout the tight-knit Cape community that de Villiers had somehow abused his hospitality. He would not easily find further employment within many miles of La Pergole, or, as important to him, Vrede Huis.

  De Villiers knew the strict religious code of the Afrikaners. Anne would never leave Fontaine. The dream had been shattered even as it materialized and, with nothing to hold him in South Africa, he returned to New York.

  A Marine Corps friend introduced him to an association that found work for Vietnam veterans. By 1971 he had entered the fringes of the contract-killing business and within four years he was working internationally for a U.S.-based agency. After a complex job in Greece, he teamed up with Meier and Davies and the Clinic was born …

  11

  In London de Villiers met up with his colleagues and explained the new job. Meier’s immediate reaction was, “How did this old sheikh get on to the agency?”

  “Simple,” de Villiers replied. “He has a son at school in England who watched the movie The Day of the Jackal. The boy tells his dad that Europeans kill each other for cash. The sheikh then moseys along to his PLO friends, thick as flies in Dubai, whose office, as you know, has done business with the agency before. Bingo.”

  “How do you rate our chances of finding the sheikh’s targets?” Meier asked.

  De Villiers favored neither optimism nor pessimism since he found both equally unreliable.

  “If it had been straightforward, I am sure Sheikh Amr would not have come to us. His sons were killed over a six-year period by government forces.” Meier and Davies listened intently, for they knew de Villiers disliked repeating himself. “The sheikh gave me an outline of each death and all four occurred in areas held by Omani units or British Army Training Teams known as BATTS. These are small, specialized groups of SAS men.”

  “So our targets are either Brits or Omanis?” Meier pressed.

  “Not quite true,” de Villiers spoke slowly. “BATTS include a smattering of Fijians and the Sultan’s Armed Forces [SAF] officers are Omani, Brit, Dhofari, Aussie, Paki, South African, Indian and Baluchi. Since our targets may by now be dead or retired from their military work, our search area could be quite wide.”

  Davies whistled through his teeth. “It would be easier to locate four fleas on a rhino,” he murmured.

  Meier grunted. “No one will pay you five million for that.”

  “Remember,” de Villiers broke in, “we have no time limit other than the premature death of our targets before we can trace them. So we can continue with normal work as we wish and concentrate on the Dhofar targets when other business is slack.”

  “It may be easier to trace men who are still in the forces,” Davies mused, “but, when retired, they’ll be a lot easier to hit.”

  “We must computerize this problem,” Meier said. “We cannot just search at random.”

  De Villiers looked at the Belgian. “I don’t intend to.” His voice was toneless. “We have four months free before we need start on the Miami contract. To make the most of our team we will split up. Davies will cover the case of Sheikh Amr’s second son, who died in 1972. His killer was almost certainly the SAS commander at the Dhofar garrison of Mirbat. The SAS are based in Hereford. Davies, being Welsh and ex-British Army, should have little trouble in making some discreet inquiries there.”

  Davies nodded his head but his habitual half smile was not in evidence.

  “You and I,” de Villiers addressed Meier, “will trace the man who killed Amr’s first son of 1969. This incident was an ambush in a remote part in the Dhofar jebel covered by a single company of the sultan’s army. The sheikh has no idea where the Omanis keep records of their military actions, what we call war diaries, but that should not be difficult to find out. We will fly to Muscat as soon as Tadnams can arrange visas, or No Objection Certificates as the Omanis call them.”

  Meier seemed to find no holes in this program or, if he did, he kept them to himself. “And the other two targets?” he asked.

  “Not so easy,” said de Villiers, frowning. “Amr’s third and fourth sons were killed in 1975 during the last year of the war. They died in bitter and confused fighting close to the South Yemen border.”

  Sultan Qaboos, seven years after sending his reactionary father to exile in London’s Dorchester Hotel, had dragged Oman out of the Middle Ages and, thanks to determination and mounting oil revenues, installed the full panoply of twentieth-century benefits—schools, roads, hospitals—where there had so recently been only stagnation and suffering. Qaboos, the fourteenth ruler of the Abu Saidi dynasty since its inception in 1744, retained absolute power. The law of the land was Koranic and handled by qadhis in regional courts. The sultan allowed virtually no tourists into Oman, so his police were able to enforce rigid control over foreigners likely to cause trouble.

  In his mid-thirties, the sultan was equally handsome in his Savile Row suits at London functions or when clad in full sultanic regalia at ceremonies in Muscat. He spent most of January 1977 at his new palace close to the town of Seeb and conducted daily interviews with ministers and advisers. One of the latter was the retired deputy commander of the Sultan’s Armed Forces, Brigadier Colin Maxwell. After twenty-five years with the forces, which he himself had formed in 1952, Maxwell had retired to become a defense adviser to the sultan.

  For an hour the two men discussed the Omanization of the Sultan’s Armed Forces, a process whereby the number of British officers was to be reduced as quickly as their Omani replacements could be trained.

  Maxwell left the palace, with its lofty, modern lines and acres of fountain-fed pools. He never ceased to thank the Lord that, as Allah, He had given Qaboos to the people of Oman. Maxwell loved the Omanis and rejoiced that their centuries of strife and backwardness had, through this one man Qaboos, come to an end.

  Maxwell’s Omani driver dropped him off at his home in Ruwi, part of the first modern block built in the area. Said Fahher, uncle to Sultan Qaboos and Deputy Minister of Defense, also lived there.

  From the front of the apartments the old town of Ruwi sprawled seaward and, just across the nearest wadi, as though Beau Geste was a neighbor, the crenelated ramparts of Bait al Falaj fortress slumbered beneath the red flags of the Sultanate.

  Maxwell lived alone but for his staff. For thirty years, since post-Second World War service in Somalia, he had suffered from chronic arthritis, but this had never diminished his natural warmth of character. The expatriate administrative officers of the Sultan’s Armed Forces were known for their internecine feuds and backbiting, but Maxwell was universally liked, for he possessed not an ounce of malice nor cynicism toward his fellow men. On that particular day in January 1977, this was perhaps rather unfortunate.

  Toward 7 p.m., as Maxwell relaxed on his balcony, his house
boy announced the arrival of two American military historians who had telephoned earlier in the day. This was nothing new. He had received many such callers ever since his appointment as official historian to the Sultan’s Armed Forces.

  Maxwell was delighted that interest in his favorite topic should be spreading as far afield as the U.S., and he spent the next half hour waxing eloquent on the origins of the forces he had created. The two Americans apparently specialized in the worldwide communist expansion of the fifties and sixties. They were especially curious about late 1969, when Marxism had come within a whisker of engulfing Dhofar. The critical factor that had delayed a guerrilla onslaught in that postmonsoon period, when all but a nine-mile coastal strip of Dhofar was under Marxist control, involved a sudden thrust by a small Sultanate force deep into their eastern territory. This incursion, known as Operation Snatch, sparked off what was to become a flood of ex-guerrillas who changed sides and joined the government forces, at that time numbering under three hundred fighting men.

  The Operation Snatch force killed a senior political commissar and the leader of an Idaaraat torture squad named Salim, the eldest son of Amr bin Issa, the sheikh of that region.

  Maxwell searched through one of his files and at length gave a cry of success.

  “Yes,” he said, lighting a stubby French cigarette, “that was a brilliant operation handled by our intelligence officer Tom Greening and commanded by Peter Thwaites. Quite threw the adoo off guard for months.”

  “The field commander was Thwaites, you say?” asked de Villiers, taking notes.

  “No, no.” Maxwell breathed out a cloud of smoke as pungent as burning camel dung. “Peter commanded all the forces in Dhofar. I am uncertain who the actual man on the ground was but you could find that out from the relevant regiment. They will still have all their old contact reports.” He extracted a military deployment chart from his folder. “Ah,” he beamed with pleasure, “a company from the Northern Frontier Regiment was the only unit stationed anywhere near the area of Operation Snatch. They were my old regiment, you know. In 1955 I formed them from the Batinah Force and led them in their first action, an attack on the Imam at Rostaq.” A small, nostalgic smile creased the brigadier’s sun-ravaged cheeks.

  “But come now. You are after the sixties, not the fifties. You must go and see the current CO of NFR. He’ll tell you all you need to know.” He paused. “But wait. NFR are at Simba now.” He shook his head and frowned, but then brightened up. “There is no problem, my friends. I will telephone Ted Ashley at JR—that is, the Jebel Regiment. Ted is their colonel and you will find him at Nizwa, just up the road to the interior. He will help you as much as he can. So will his officers, many of whom are old Dhofar hands. NFR would, of course, be better but they are down in Dhofar now, beyond your reach as it were.”

  They parted company with much shaking of hands and mutual affability.

  Tadnams had arranged three No Objection Certificates for de Villiers, Meier and an Indian driver. They had learned from Charles Kendall’s of South Kensington, UK agents for the sultanate, that a major new fisheries project was about to be launched and workers were being taken on by the American Temple Black Corporation. The boss’s wife, Shirley Temple, had once been the golden girl of Hollywood and, as idle rumor had it, a teenage idol of the current Minister of Fisheries.

  “What are we now,” Meier grunted as they left Brigadier Maxwell’s apartment, “fisheries inspectors or military historians?”

  “We are well on our way to the first target,” de Villiers replied. “These Brits are a pushover. Get them reminiscing and they’ll tell you anything.”

  Their driver, Karim Bux, waited at their hotel, the Al Falaj, together with his rented Nissan pickup. They drove southwest along the newly graveled road leading to the oilfields of Fahud. After an hour they crossed the great German-made bridge that spans the wadi Sumail, a valley subject to spectacular perennial floods.

  De Villiers leaned across Meier and pointed north up the dark green line of the wadi.

  “Be sure to remember that deserted village, Karim Bux, and the date-palm grove below it. If we need an RV”—rendezvous point—“that’s it.”

  The road was now flanked to the north by 10,000-foot-high cliffs that soared sheer to the plateau of the Jebel Akhdar. At Izki they bore west and entered ancient Nizwa, the eighth-century citadel of Oman.

  Thanks to Maxwell’s telephone call the Nissan was expected at the Jebel Regiment garrison and a soldier escorted them to the officers’ mess. The adjutant, Captain Mohanna Suleiman, was waiting for them.

  “I will give you whatever help is possible.”

  They sat in comfortable chairs in the mess, a place of brass ashtrays, countless stale newspapers and white-robed mess boys.

  The captain explained that Colonel Ashley was away. Soon, he said with pride, Major Ibrahim would be taking command, the very first Omani regimental colonel.

  After some talk of little consequence, de Villiers broached the key question. “Captain, sah’b,” he said. “Brigadier Maxwell tells us that, in October 1969, there was a company from the Northern Frontier Regiment stationed in Dhofar. We are writing an account of those times for an American publisher. Do you know anybody who may remember those days?”

  The Omani captain smiled. “You are in God’s favor. There is a police officer from Seeb who sometimes visits because he used to command one of our companies and, like our second-in-command Major Mackie, this man was once a British Royal Marine. His name is Milling—John Milling.”

  “This John Milling was with which regiment?” de Villiers asked.

  “He was with NFR at the time you are asking about. He was transferred to this regiment in 1971 in order to put together our first company. He will be happy to meet you, I am sure. You will find him at the Police Air Wing with their helicopter detachment. Insh’ Allah, all will be well for you.”

  As they were leaving the chief clerk passed by. The adjutant stopped him. “Chief,” he said, “these gentlemen are inquiring about Dhofar for a history book. Maybe you can help them.”

  The chief clerk told de Villiers all he could and that was enough. Captain Milling had indeed been in the northern jebel in October 1969 and had at that time led a dangerous mission involving the very first adoo informer to help the army.

  “Was this action known as Operation Snatch?” Meier asked.

  “That I cannot say, but I can assure you there were no other operations in the area at that time and John Milling was definitely the officer in charge.” He chuckled. “Nobody could mistake John, then or now; he is a giant of a man. Why don’t you go and see him for yourselves. I will phone him if you like.”

  De Villiers hastily thanked the chief clerk. A phone call would not be necessary. They took their leave and headed back toward Ruwi. The sun dipped below the western jebel and the valleys receded into dim and cheerless voids.

  12

  The Marches is the ancient name for the country on either side of the Welsh-English border. Here the wild ridges of the Black Mountains give way to hop fields, orchards and high-flowering hedges. The deep gorge of the Wye cuts through the Forest of Dean, and the cathedral city of Hereford, Queen of the Marches, remains serenely prosperous through the deepest of recessions elsewhere in Britain.

  Hereford, a somnolent little city, is the home and the heart of the SAS Regiment. Certain pubs in and around the town are patronized by SAS and ex-SAS men, but an outsider would not easily identify them, for the majority are quiet, affable individuals who take great pride in anonymity and, unlike special forces the world over, hardly ever become involved in public brawls.

  In 1988 the Bunch of Grapes public house, on the north side of town, was closed because of structural damage and ceased to be a haven for SAS men in civvies. But on February 11, 1977, both bars throbbed with life and music. In a corner of the main downstairs public bar Bob Bennett, on leave from his regiment in Germany, held his mug of John Smith’s beer aloft and, with his friend Ken Bor
thwick, toasted the Queen.

  “May she thrive for another twenty-five,” said Ken. “God bless her.” He was a member of the Territorial Army Volunteer Reserve and a policeman from neighboring Worcestershire, but both men had met up at the Grapes to join friends for a Royal Silver Jubilee Party, one of thousands held across Britain that year.

  “Cheers, boys.” The landlord, Tony Burberry, joined the toast. “Long time no see, Ken. How’s the Force?” Tony was a bluff, professional publican with no army ties of his own. His personal chemistry and an aptitude for discretion had first attracted the SAS fraternity to the Imperial, a pub where he was tenant in the mid-sixties. Then, when he moved to the Grapes, the SAS followed him. No man could wish for a better clientele, for they spent good money, drank sensibly, behaved well, and their reputation scared off the town’s less savory elements.

  There was the downside, an ever-present fear of IRA bombs, but the boys kept their own security roster, and were more alert and capable than the most expensive security money could buy.

  Tony knew three generations of SAS: the Malaya boys, the Borneo crowd, and more recently the Oman BATT men. Memories of the wars in which they had served bound them together as tight as ticks. Of course, they had all operated in other theaters of combat, fought skirmishes in those territories that had taken the fancy of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for a while, but always in small groups of two, four or six. These groups did not exchange their war stories with one another, nor with anyone else for that matter, which left precious little mutual ground for reminiscence other than the three major campaigns of the postwar years where whole squadrons had acted together.

  Bob Bennett, whose home was in Hereford, knew many of the local characters and discussed them with Ken Borthwick. Some of their party began to drift away to other pubs as the evening wore on. A Welshman with a local crumpet clutching his waist found some sitting space at their table. The girl was very drunk but the Welshman still made sense. He crooned her a love song from the Valleys and was cheered by the crowd for his pains.