Killer Elite (previously published as the Feather Men)

by Ranulph Fiennes

  Two shafts to the south Mason came to a pile of spoil that helped him gain a chimneying position at the base of the man-made tube. He waited patiently for two hours, then, with his back and his arms inching up one side, his braced feet up the other and his rifle hanging below him from its strap, he reached the surface panting and filthy.

  The plateau was lifeless in all directions, a midday heat shimmer raising inverted mirages to the south. He returned cautiously to the Datsun, collected his bag from the bushes, knocked away the remnants of the windshield and drove back to the main road. There was no sign of the Nissan. Mason took his second travel bag down to the wadi a mile upstream of Fanjah and, washing with care, changed into the standard expatriate uniform of cotton slacks and shirtsleeves.

  From the pocket of his dirty Army trousers he took the empty case of the only bullet he had fired and buried it in the wadi bed. Lighting a Montecristo cigar, he cleaned the Rigby thoroughly and sat back to enjoy life in general and especially the magnificent view of the great mountains to the north.

  At 3 p.m., back in his hotel room, Mason telephoned Inquiries. There were two numbers for Chief Superintendent Bailey of the Royal Oman Police Air Wing. He took both and tried the home number first.

  The Baileys’ Kashmiri houseboy, Said, who spoke good English, answered and apologized that the sah’b was out and would be quite unobtainable for the rest of the day.

  “But this is very urgent.”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “Could you give him a message?”

  “Very happy, sir. Yes, a message.”

  “Please tell him he must on no account go flying tomorrow morning. In fact no flying at all until he has spoken to me on this number.”

  He gave the Kashmiri the hotel number and his room extension, but not his name.

  Mason had been prebooked into the Gulf Hotel as “MOD VIP ex-Kendall,” and on arrival had told the receptionist his passport was at the British Embassy for renewal. Three subsequent and generous tips to receptionists for minor services had helped avoid any reminders about the passport. He had called himself Mr. D. Messon and given the management to understand he would be staying for a further three weeks.

  The Kashmiri repeated Mason’s message back to him and then added, “Chief Superintendent Bailey will not be flying tomorrow, sir. You must not worry about that. He is not to fly for at least two more days.”

  “Are you certain of that?” Mason was bewildered.

  “Certain sure, sir. Oh yes indeed, he will not fly. I know his program. I look after him.”

  Mason thanked the Kashmiri. The man sounded honest and reliable. There was nothing more he could do to warn Bailey until the next day. At no stage in the Sumail had his face been visible to the Welshman or his cronies. Of that he was certain. Nothing would connect him with the dead Asian and he felt fairly sure that the opposition would dispose of the body themselves. That evening, when traffic in and out of Northern Headquarters was at its busiest, he returned the Datsun to the Motor Transport Section and borrowed a Land Rover in its place. If anyone noticed the soiled state of his uniform they might feel disdain but not suspicion.

  After an excellent dinner, Mason settled back in his room to an evening of Tolkien and listening for the return of the Welshman.

  Bridgie wore a cleverly cut white dress that accentuated her narrow shoulders and superlative cleavage while playing down the current size of her midriff. She was a touch troubled by John’s mood. He was as gentle and attentive as ever where she was concerned, but definitely out of sorts for some reason. He had been a touch upset by his recent Jebel Akhdar mission but this was altogether different. If she did not know him better she might have thought him nervous. This and the memory of the St. Patrick’s Day omen made her especially anxious when John failed to turn up at the embassy dinner. The ambassador, Sir Peter Treadwell, was leaving, and his wife had laid on a splendid affair, a distant echo of the Raj.

  John had flown down to Salalah that morning with Geoff Leggatt to inspect a sailing boat and to bid farewell to RAF friends. After forty-nine years, RAF Salalah, one of Britain’s remoter outposts, was packing up and hauling down the flag. Its very existence had saved the Sultanate from a Marxist takeover in the late sixties.

  The guests took their seats and Bridgie was beside herself with worry. She had every confidence in John’s flying abilities but she could not shake off the sense of foreboding that increasingly weighed on her mind.

  The third course had been served when the animated hubbub puttered to near silence. Every woman in the room found her eyes following the splendid figure of John Milling in his white tuxedo as he strode to the ambassador to apologize for his unavoidably late arrival. He laid his hands affectionately on Bridgie’s bare shoulders then sat down between two ladies, both of whom addressed him at once. Many members of the Muscat expatriate community were secretly jealous of one or other of the Millings while finding both the best of fun.

  The postdinner cigars and superlative port from the embassy cellar soon gave way to boisterous games, and a number of guests, including John, ended up fully dressed in the pool.

  Back at home John and Bridgie were asleep by midnight. Their worries put aside, they were both looking forward to spending a free Sunday with young Oliver on their secret beach. Twenty minutes by helicopter to the southeast of Muscat, John had discovered a deserted cove of white sand and surf. There they had spent many a perfect day wandering naked along the limitless shore, collecting seashells and lazing with a picnic in the dunes.

  17

  Mason awoke early on the Saturday and telephoned the Bailey house at 7 a.m. This time the Kashmiri houseboy fetched the Chief Superintendent from his breakfast.

  Mason went straight to the point.

  “I am very glad to make contact. I need to speak to you at once, for I have good reason to believe your life is in danger.”

  “I must thank you for your concern,” Bailey’s voice sounded cool, “but, forgive me for asking, who are you?”

  David was keen to avoid knowledge of his presence in Muscat leaking out. There were still a few British, mostly ex–Army officers on contract, who would remember him, and people talk. It would not be long before someone in the Welsh Guards heard the gossip.

  “Please understand that it is difficult to talk on the telephone. I can come to see you immediately anywhere that suits you.”

  Bailey began to sound standoffish.

  “You told my houseboy I was not to go flying.”

  “Correct.” Mason was emphatic. “Your machine has been damaged, sabotaged by one of your own workers. I can show you a photograph of the man.”

  “Have you told the police?”

  Mason hesitated. “I have no proof … but I know you are in danger. We must meet so I can explain the situation.”

  Bailey was impatient now. “Look, I have a very busy day today and it does not include any flying. Quite honestly, I think this is a police matter and you should contact them at once. The earliest I can see you is tomorrow morning and then I’m afraid it must be brief. This is a very busy time of the year for us.”

  Mason agreed to meet the police chief at 8:30 a.m. on the Sunday. He spent Saturday morning developing the film shot in the Sumail. Davies was back and using room service for all his meals. Mason was forced to curb his curiosity as to whether the hornets had altered the man’s appearance.

  Davies had in fact been lucky: saved only by plunging into a subterranean pool and staying there until the hornets had gone. The Clinic members had split up as soon as Mason went underground. Davies had followed him down the falaj but the others had remained above in case their quarry reemerged. Davies had eventually crawled from the pool, but could not see through his swollen eyelids. Hearing his cries, the others had descended and hauled him up on the rope.

  They had left Karim Bux’s body in the gravel wastes of the Wadi Umayri, off the Fahud road, for the wolves and vultures. Then they had driven to the Gulf Hotel and helped Davie
s to his room, where the in-house medic had removed two dozen hornet stings from his face and hands. He would be of no further use to the operation.

  Meier had passed a good deal of time in idle conversation with the European ROP aircraft engineers. Milling, he learned, was highly regarded and nearly always nominated as pilot-instructor to the police cadets on their first helicopter flights. Meier had decided therefore to go ahead with the operation that night since three cadet flights were planned for the following morning.

  Meier and two Joannou and Pariskavides contract workers spent the morning installing ducting for a new intercom system within the ROP hangar. All normal duty personnel left by 1:30 p.m. Only three people would remain: the Operations officer who left at 6 p.m., and two engineers, one fixed-wing and the other a helicopter specialist, who covered the afternoon shift. They would spend their time continuing tasks left over from the morning shift and preparing the aircraft for the following day’s flying program, including, that day, twenty minutes checking the Bell to be flown by Milling. Just a standard inspection of oil levels and control integrity.

  Meier and his two J&P colleagues worked on during the afternoon, concentrating on the intercom installation and leaving the two engineers to do their work. There was no flying that afternoon, and by 4 p.m. the engineers had completed the daily inspections and preparing the aircraft for the next day’s program and left. Meier was relieved to see them go. He had delegated the relatively simple task of fixing the ducting to his two Indian coworkers while he worked separately, sorting out some wiring in another room. Soon after the Air Wing engineers had left he suggested to the two J&P workers that they might wrap it up, but he would stay on for another half hour or so to finish what he was doing. Meier told them to take the J&P pickup and said that he would get a lift with the Ops officer to the airport roundabout and hitch from there.

  By 4:30 p.m. he had let the Operations officer know that the J&P workers were leaving. After making sure they were off the premises, he went down to the general workshop underneath the Operations Room, laid a mat on the floor, closed the door and fell asleep. His wristwatch alarm was set for 7 p.m.

  At 5:30 p.m. Meier was woken by a metallic clanking. At the far side of the well-lit workshop a tall man was checking through an engineer’s toolbox. Meier recognized Brendan O’Brien, one of the aerobatic aces of the Rothmans flying team, on a visit from England. Their four Pitt Special biplanes were parked inside the hangar and O’Brien was probably carrying out some repair to his machine.

  Meier remained motionless, uncertain whether he had been seen. He was worried on two counts. Chief Superintendent Bailey was holding a buffet supper party that evening, to which the Rothmans people had been invited. If O’Brien had seen him, he might well mention the fact to Chief Bailey. If, on the other hand, O’Brien intended to work overnight on his biplane, Meier’s own plans would be scuppered.

  After an hour or so Meier heard O’Brien laughing with the Duty Operations Officer and then the sounds of their leaving the hangar. He double-checked that he was alone in the building, then climbed the stairs to the executive corridor and the Operations Room, where he checked the daily roster board. For the following day, March 20, the main duty was marked up as “Police Cadet Helicopter Familiarization Flights,” with Milling’s name entered as pilot-instructor. The first take-off of three separate flights by that machine was scheduled for 8 a.m., but he knew the flight engineers would arrive at least an hour earlier to check and prepare the machine. Meier had twelve hours to himself. A single armed guard patrolled the compound at night, but he would only enter the hangar if given reason for suspicion.

  Meier stripped off his clothes and donned an ROP set of engineer’s blue overalls with tactile gloves and flip-flops. He then placed his tools and instruments on a trolley and wheeled it to the machine with the correct tail number. His plan was simple enough. He would create a mechanical defect, and Milling would crash, but the event would be blamed on pilot error, not sabotage.

  Meier eased himself upward from the hangar floor and into the innards of the machine by way of the heavy rubberized ring that protects the helicopter from the pendulum motions of the swinging cargo hook. The hook itself was not fitted. If it had been, Meier would have had to work on top of the helicopter’s roof by removing the gear box cowling in full view of any surprise visitor to the hangar.

  Once inside the area known to most helicopter aficionados as the “hellhole,” Meier used the rubberized bumper as a conveniently placed seat. He carefully positioned himself in the rear left-hand side of the hellhole with his back against the apex of that corner. Reaching upward, he hooked a fluorescent inspection lamp over a hydraulic ingress pipe and strapped his ready tool bag around his waist.

  Oman is relatively cool in mid-March, and the hangar, despite the lack of air-conditioning, would remain around sixty-four degrees most of the night. Inside the hellhole, Meier worked in a cramped position and was soon smeared with grease impregnated with grit and dirt.

  The hydraulic system of the Augusta Bell 205 A-1, a civilian version of the Vietnam-famed Huey, has two oil reservoirs feeding three hydraulic actuators or “jacks.” Each of these cylinders is attached to the gear box and to the nonrotating star that is situated on the mast and beneath the rotor head.

  The jack that Meier intended to doctor was the one that assisted the pilot’s collective control level, the function of which was to lift the aircraft in its vertical plane.

  The Bell maintenance manual made it clear that the relevant cylinder was situated to the rear and left-hand side of the static gear-box body. Meier located the hydraulic input pipe where it entered the collective jack and, using two open-jaw 5/8 AF spanners, disconnected the mating union and blocked off both pipe ends with blanking caps. There was a slight seepage of MIL-H-5606 hydraulic fluid from the jack, which Meier mopped up with a rag.

  After resting his arms for a while and adjusting his spectacles Meier began the search for a lee-plug. In the casing of each cylinder there were four or five steel bungs, or lee-plugs, originally drilled so that the manufacturers could carry out interior fitments. Each hole was only 3mm in diameter, and since the head of each bolt had been chamfered flush with the cylinder wall and then sprayed with a light green paint, Meier realized that he might not find a lee-plug by touch alone. If unsuccessful he would sound-tap, but that was a time-consuming process.

  After a number of false alarms he got lucky, locating a bung almost opposite his position and fairly low down the face of the cylinder. Between the lee-plug and the inner side of the hellhole’s bulkhead there was a gap of some nine inches in which Meier had to work; a challenge of the sort he loved best. Manipulating a right-angled drill head with a 3mm-diameter tungsten-steel bit, he removed the plug with total precision. This task alone took him two hours, for he had to ensure that no metal detritus entered the jack.

  With painstaking care he tapped a thread into the wall of the hole he had exposed, greased it and screwed in his own homemade lee-plug. This steel bolt was a mere quarter millimeter longer than a standard 4mm-long lee-plug and, to the eye, no different in size or shape.

  Meier’s substitute lee-plug had at this stage two important ancillary features: an alloy male thread welded around its entire length, like a coil around a magnetic bar, and a 2mm-square steel nut with a hole drilled through its center. The threaded lee-plug screwed into the hole in the nut for a distance of 0.25mm, the limit of the nut’s female threading. The nut was 1.5mm in depth and two small holes had been drilled into two of its opposing outer sides.

  The skin of the hydraulic cylinder was itself 4mm thick. Meier tightened his two-part lee-plug into place using a torque spanner to avoid wrenching the alloy thread loose from its steel core. Then, producing his second homemade device, he placed it over the square nut so that male plungers in its base slotted home into the small holes drilled in the nut’s outer sides. The end of an open steel tube protruding from the base of the device entered the hole in the top o
f the nut with precision.

  The apparatus was a miniature explosive hammer with just enough power to focus a 3,000 psi blow directly onto the cuckoo lee-plug, sheering its alloy thread and forcing it down into the oil-filled cylinder. The device measured four inches square and three inches deep. Its explosive unit contained a hollow ring primed with a fraction of an ounce of treated PE4 and a Kaynor .008 detonator no bigger than a grease nipple. Slightly raised on the unit’s upper surface was a Seiko micro timerswitch. Meier had preset its twenty-four-hour alarm trigger, using the end of his ballpoint pen, for 1005 hours, at which time the helicopter was scheduled to be in flight with its load of police cadets.

  With the device locked onto the bolt head, Meier positioned his third and last contrivance, a six-inch-square, two-inch-deep, pad of bulletproof Kevlar that clipped over the rest of his appliance. This would minimize damage to the inner wall of the bulkhead and help ensure that, once blown, all traces of the apparatus and the steel nut would fall down the hellhole and hit the ground well away from the subsequent crash site. The only item left behind by Meier would be the lee-plug, and that would be inside the punctured cylinder.