Bloody Heroes

by Damien Lewis

  2

  OCEAN STRIKE

  IT WAS THE pitch black of a bleak winter’s morning when the lead Chinook came swooping in low over the grey-flecked swell. Hungry wave crests seemed to reach up and snatch at the chopper’s landing gear as the giant machine pounded onwards at 120 mph towards its target. Forward in the cockpit, the pilot was struggling to keep his aircraft low enough so as to avoid the radar sweep of the enemy ship up ahead, while at the same time preventing his chopper, and the thirty men he was carrying, from plunging into the freezing waters. If he ditched at sea, he and the SBS men could be dead from hypothermia within twenty minutes. Flying on night-vision goggles (NVGs) and instruments only, all that was visible below was the faint green glow of the sea spray whipped up by the wind before it slammed into the chopper’s cockpit with the force of a raw, elemental nature.

  Overnight, the weather had taken a decided turn for the worse: cloud cover was down to 150 feet, there was a thirty-knot wind and a fifteen-foot swell.

  As none of the aircraft in this covert air armada were showing any lights, they raced past the dark waters like wraiths in the ink-black sky. Directly behind the two Chinooks, flying in staggered V-formations, were the two Lynx attack choppers carrying the sniping teams, and the three Sea King helicopters with the command, control and follow-up elements on board.

  In the rear of the lead Chinook, even the scream of the chopper’s giant turbines was unable to drown out the howling wind. As he sat there right behind the loadie, psyching himself up to be first down the ropes, Mat could already imagine the cold slap of the sea spray hitting the chopper as he stood at the open doorway preparing to jump.

  Following his lead Jamie, Tom and Mucker would be ready to hit the fast ropes – which were coiled up like well-fed serpents on the floor – directly behind him. But it was a godforsaken night. With weather like this, who needed terrorists?

  They were thirty-five minutes into the flight when the loadie signalled the ten minutes to target mark, by holding up two full hands of fingers. As he did so, the atmosphere inside the chopper became one of a muzzled, icy, killer calm. Mat and his three teammates stared out of the Chinook’s portholes, straining their eyes in the leaden darkness to catch the first glimpse of the target vessel, some twenty miles to the south-east of them. They hit the six minutes to target mark and still there was no sign of the ship.

  As the chopper closed in, each man on that aircraft was taking advantage of these last few moments to run through his team’s specific tasks one last time – their primary and secondary targets, their place on the fast ropes, their call signs. Just as the loadie signalled the three minutes to target mark, Mat started jabbing his index finger excitedly at the rain-lashed window. He’d just caught sight of a set of ship’s lights blinking in the darkness up ahead of them. The MV Nisha. The target.

  As they hit the two minutes to target mark, the enormity of the task now facing the SBS and SAS soldiers hit them hard, like a blow to the stomach. They were four miles out from the ship now, and several of them felt physically sick as they imagined everything that could go wrong with this mission. Chinooks carry no armour plating at all, leaving them highly vulnerable to even small arms fire. Once over the ship they were basically sitting targets for anyone with a weapon below them. As they would have to hover some ninety feet above the vessel, and hold that hover for as long as it took the remaining troops to fast-rope down, the terrorists would have ample time to blast them out of the sky.

  Up front, Mat could feel the blood thumping in his temples, the adrenalin pumping, his heart racing with the visceral thrill of imminent combat. Then, for a split second only, he was struck by a shiver of fear as an image flashed through his mind of a Chinook ploughing into the ship’s mast – just as it had done on the exercise several months earlier – its rotors sheering and buckling with the impact. If their chopper went down now, this far out in the open ocean, they’d have a long way to go before she reached the seabed. And there was no way that any of them would be coming up again for air, of that Mat was certain.

  But just as quickly as the image came, it went again, and Mat was on his feet, pulling his respirator down over his face, and signalling to the others to do likewise. He checked his MP5 machine gun one last time to make sure he had a round chambered and that the safety was off, then pulled on the thick leather gloves that would prevent him cutting his hands to shreds as he went down the fast ropes into action. Reaching behind his back Mat patted the bottom of his backpack just to reassure himself that the plastic explosives charges were still there. Then he glanced round to give the thumbs up to the other lads.

  As he did so Mat realised just what an awesome sight it was in the rear of that chopper: all the guys were on their feet now; all were wearing their jet-black CT (counter-terrorism) gear (fire-retardant and rubberised cotton ‘frizz’ suits that were flexible enough to run and fight in, but also waterproof enough so that they could dive in them too); all had their respirators pulled down over their faces; all had their MP5 machine guns or pump-action shotguns slung from their chest harnesses, and flash-bang stun grenades and CS gas canisters hung from their webbing; and each operator had a knife and a Sig Sauer pistol strapped on where they favoured it for the quick, killer draw. When operating in constricted areas like a ship’s hull a knife or pistol strapped to a leg might get caught as the soldier moved through a tight passageway or up a ship’s ladder. So most of the men had opted to strap their knife, inverted, on their left chest plate and a pistol on the right hip.

  For a split second, Mat put himself in the place of the terrorists down below him on that ship – asleep in the crew quarters, keeping watch from the bridge, or maintaining the vessel on a direct bearing, whatever they might be doing. Mat checked his watch: 5.15. Maybe, if they were good Muslims, they’d be getting ready to say their first prayers of the day, as it was about the right time for them to be doing so.

  Holy fuck, Mat thought to himself, how would he feel if he stepped out of his ship’s cabin and caught sight of a load of blacked out men aboard this chopper descending from the heavens above – anonymous, mean as hell, armed to the teeth and with blazing blood-red eyes. As that thought struck and then left him, Mat was filled with a total, overwhelming confidence that they were going to take down that ship and win the day. Somewhere on that ship was a deadly, evil weapon, designed and built by sick murderers. A ship crewed by men who sought to kill thousands of innocent women and children, and to kill them in the most horrible, horrific ways possible, using nerve poisons. And he and the rest of the lads were just about to put a stop to the bastards. How could they fail?

  He was but one of seventy members of the black death that were going to hit that ship like a whirlwind. Let’s fucking do this, a voice had started screaming inside his head, impatient to get down the fast ropes and into action. Let’s fucking get in there, get it on and get at them. They were the best. They were the warriors. Who could stop them?

  Suddenly, there was a rip roaring blast of icy wind howling through the chopper’s hold as the loadie threw back the side door, and the men felt the giant aircraft flaring out to hover. Peering out into the freezing ocean maw, wind whipping and tearing at his clothing, all Mat could see was the dark waters heaving and sucking below him. Then, on the crest of a massive swell, a set of ship’s lights were carried above the seething blackness, as the giant superstructure of the MV Nisha emerged out of the sea some hundred feet below. The ship was six storeys high at least – including the hull – and she appeared like some surreal tower block looming out of the ocean waters.

  The Chinook was barely sixty feet away from the ship now, and the pilot was edging his aircraft closer by the second. He would have to be directly over the vessel before Mat and his team would be able to hit the fast ropes. For a horrible second Mat was convinced that the pilot had brought the chopper in too close and that its rotors were about to collide with the ship’s rigging. And then the loadie was kicking the fast ropes out the side door
and they went tumbling away into the darkness below them. The thick ropes jinked and snaked with the roll of the aircraft – like two sea serpents reaching up to strike the chopper and drag her into the angry depths.

  Slowly, the pilot edged the Chinook closer and closer towards the ship’s bridge, fighting to hold her steady some fifty feet above the vessel. As he did so, Mat realised with a shock that conditions were so bad that he could barely make out the flat section of roofing that was their rope-down point. The ship was pitching about in the swell so violently that Mat wondered whether they could even make the jump. Ultimately, it was the pilot’s call as to whether to abort the mission. Yet with the threat from the ship being so serious, they had little alternative but to go ahead. Either they hit the fast ropes and made it on to the ship, or there would be no stopping the MV Nisha.

  Visibility was being made a damn sight worse by his respirator, Mat realised – the heat thrown off by his body among all the rain and sea spray was steaming up the mask’s two glass eyepieces. As a spasm of frustrated anger surged through him, Mat ripped the gas mask off his face. He was just about to throw it back into the chopper when caution got the better of him, and he clipped it on to his chest webbing. Behind him, Jamie, Tom and Mucker followed suit. They were going in unprotected. So be it. Whatever nasty shite – whichever nerve poisons – they had on board that ship, they’d just have to make sure they hit it so hard that no one got a chance to use any of it against them.

  To either side of Mat, the two sniper specialists – Bret and Chis – were ready at the open windows now. They had their G3 sniping rifles – shortened versions with retractable stocks – braced across their knees. Everyone was having the same visibility problems, and following Mat’s lead both of them had ripped their respirators off. This would give them a better chance of being able to spot anyone through their laser sniping scopes who might be putting up armed resistance on the bridge, and kill them. As the pilot fought to bring the chopper in close enough to be able to drop the men, Mat found himself cursing the amount of time it was taking. They’d been closing on the ship for some sixty seconds now, and Mat couldn’t believe that the terrorists hadn’t detected them. At any moment he was expecting to see the flash of muzzles in the darkness below them and hear bullets slamming into the floor of the chopper.

  Mat was practically hanging out of the aircraft, straining to jump, when suddenly the loadie gave him the Go! Go! Go! But as he grabbed the rope and went to step into the black void, the chopper banked violently, throwing him off his feet and out of the aircraft door. As he fell he made a desperate lunge for the rope, caught it, lost his grip, caught it again and then he was plummeting downwards at forty feet a second with the rope smoking through his fingers and the deck racing up to meet him. With all the strength he could muster Mat clamped his hands fast around the thick rope, the deceleration threatening to tear his arms from his shoulder sockets. A split second later his feet went slamming hard into the metal deck. As he rolled to his right to break the fall Mat realised that he’d slowed his descent just enough to save himself from serious injury. He’d been lucky.

  Getting up into a crouching position, he was just about to remove his gloves when he felt his heart miss a beat. Time seemed to stand still as he watched the glow of an opening doorway some thirty feet below him. Then one of the terrorist suspects was standing silhouetted against the light from the ship’s bridge, craning his neck to get a look at the Chinook high above him. Even as the enemy figure started up the metal stairway towards the roof, Mat knew that he didn’t have time to rip off his fast-rope gloves and bring his MP5 to bear before the man would be on to him. And he also knew from countless training sessions that it was impossible to operate a weapon before first removing those thick gloves.

  A split second later, reacting with pure instinct and raw aggression, Mat was on his feet. He took three steps forwards to the top of the stairway and before the shocked figure could react, Mat smashed his fist into his jaw. The single, massive right hook lifted him bodily off his feet. As the man’s knees buckled beneath him he went down hard, falling backwards down the stairs. He hit the deck like a sack of shit and he didn’t get up again.

  As quickly as he could Mat ripped his gloves off, unhooked his MP5 from his chest harness and brought it to bear at his shoulder. Silently, he crept down the stairway towards the open doorway. As he moved forwards he stepped carefully around the unconscious figure. Mat knew without looking that Tom, Jamie and Mucker were right behind him on his shoulder.

  This was the most dangerous part of the assault. The bridge was the nerve centre of the MV Nisha. While the rest of the enemy might still be asleep in the crew’s quarters, the bridge was bound to be occupied at all times. If they could seize control of the bridge and hold it, then they could stop that ship.

  Keeping his weapon forward and on the aim, Mat burst through from the dark night into the brightness of the bridge. For a moment he was blinded by the light. But his eyes adjusted quickly and he swept the area for the enemy.

  ‘GET DOWN! GET DOWN!’ he yelled.

  He’d spotted three men at the rear of the bridge. He was waving his MP5 machine gun at them and pointing to the floor. But the men seemed frozen to the spot with shock. They’d been taken by complete surprise and none of them appeared capable of moving.

  Mat took four quick strides across the bridge and grabbed the nearest, wrestling him to the floor. He shoved his boot into his back and forced him face downwards, while menacing the other two with his MP5. Then Mucker and Tom moved in. They shoved the other two face downwards on the deck. The prisoners were dressed in bulky waterproofs and overalls. They had dark, Asian features and they had been sat at a table, playing a game of what looked like dominoes. They appeared utterly terrified.

  Mat swung his weapon around towards the front of the bridge now. As he did so he caught sight of a fourth figure crouched over the ship’s wheel, some fifteen feet in front of him. By the looks of his tattered uniform he had to be the MV Nisha’s captain. But right at this moment he had his hands in the air, instead of on the ship’s wheel – because Jamie was holding a pump-action shotgun to the man’s head.

  ‘Keep on this bearing if you want to live,’ Jamie barked in his clearest, simplest English.

  But the captain of the MV Nisha was scared out of his wits. He rolled his eyes in panic and made no move to hold the wheel.

  ‘Grab the wheel and steer, man,’ Jamie yelled.

  He forced the captain’s hands back down and placed them on the wheel.

  ‘Now, stay on this course, dead ahead.’ He used one of his hands to indicate a line out of the ship’s window straight ahead of them. ‘Dead ahead, got it?’

  The captain finally seemed to get what Jamie was on about. He began nodding his head quickly. With both his hands on the ship’s wheel he began to swing it from left to right, as he mimed steering the ship.

  ‘You got it, but straight ahead, like,’ Jamie said. He was trying to soften his voice so as to calm the captain down. ‘And slow your ship to a stop.’

  Mat glanced at his watch: they were sixty seconds into the assault, and already the ship’s bridge was theirs. Suddenly, echoing up from below them there were the repeated Boom! Boom! Boom! reports of what sounded like pump-action shotgun fire. Somewhere in the crew’s quarters, another of the fire teams was going into action and it was kicking off big time.

  ‘Cuff ’em, Mucker, quick as you can,’ Mat commanded, his voice laced with urgency as he indicated the three prisoners now prone on the deck before them.

  There was no time to think now, only to act and react and keep moving through the ship. The quicker they could get all the enemy secured, the quicker they could move on to their secondary target and deal with whatever shit was going down below.

  Mat turned to check outside. The enemy figure that he’d thumped was still lying in a heap exactly where he’d floored him. He dragged the unconscious crewman over towards a section of steel railing that ran up
the stairs.

  Boom! Boom! Boom! More gunfire rang out from below.

  Quick as he could Mat whipped a length of plasticuff out of one of his chest pouches, bound the unconscious man’s hands together, and then cuffed them viciously tight to the railing.

  He’ll have a shock when he comes to, Mat thought to himself, with grim satisfaction. Not to mention the headache.

  Moving back inside, Mat glanced over at Mucker and Tom. They nodded back at him. All the prisoners had been secured. Mat pressed the switch on his radio first grip. He spoke into his mike, calling the command unit. The mike was held against his throat, where it could pick up even the most softly spoken of messages.

  ‘Alpha One One, Romeo Control,’ Mat intoned.

  ‘Romeo Control. Go ahead Alpha One One.’

  ‘Secured primary. Five times X-rays [enemy] detained. Negative Yankee [friendly] casualties. Maintaining heading and slowing ship to stop. Leaving two Yankees at primary and moving to secondary.’

  ‘Roger that.’

  That quick exchange on the radio meant that the SBS command element (and COBR in turn) now knew that control of the ship was in friendly hands. Whatever else happened Mat and his team had to hold the bridge. As long as they did so the MV Nisha would be getting no nearer the British coastline with any chemical weapon that she might have on board.

  As soon as he’d finished making the radio call, Mat turned to the others on his team.

  ‘Right, Mucker, Tom, you know the score. Stay here and keep your eyes peeled. Once you’re relieved, move to our secondary target. Then go on from there until you find us.’