by Shaun Clarke
At that moment an enemy machine gun roared into action and streams of green tracer looped up the hill, whipped between the running men, and converged on Captain Keating, who was punched violently sideways, then spun around and fell to the ground, hitting the stones with a sickening thud and flopping onto his spine. Even as some of the men were about to turn back and help him, more tracers stitched him, as did the combined fire power of many Lee-Enfield rifles, and his body was punched sideways across the slope until stopped by a boulder. There he spasmed repeatedly under the impact of more bullets, gradually turning into what looked like a tattered pile of rags and stopping his quivering only when the guerrillas, realizing that he was dead, transferred their fire back to the sangars.
‘Oh, Jesus!’ Tommy Taylor whispered.
‘So it goes,’ Taff said.
Suddenly, peals of thunder were heard from the dark horizon, accompanied by jagged flashes of what even Marty assumed was lightning. Within seconds, however, the first shells from the 25-pounders in Thumier were exploding across the southern hill, tearing up soil, sand, gravel and rocks between the advancing guerrillas, many of whom were swept up and smashed back down in the swirling dust and billowing smoke.
While the barrage was devastating the hillside, Marty, Taff and Tommy made their escape from the small sangar, with no choice but to leave the dead body of Trooper Reid behind, and headed quickly down the northern hill to join the first group, including the two wounded men, where they were lying on their bellies, giving covering fire with their assault rifles. Once joined by the others, the group on the ground stopped firing, climbed back to their feet – though the two wounded men were wobbling unsteadily– and hurried away from the southern hill, leaving Marty, Taff and Tommy to keep an eye on the guerrillas surrounding the sangars and, if necessary, hold them off.
The barrage from Thumier ceased temporarily, leaving an eerie silence and a pall of black smoke that deepened the darkness over the southern hill.
‘They’re advancing on the sangars,’ Taff said, speaking with no tremor of emotion. ‘They think we’re still in there.’
‘Thank God we’re not,’ Tommy said.
Using a pair of binoculars and his PNGs, Marty watched as the guerrillas, recovering from the barrage, fired a ferocious fusillade at the large sangar, mistook the showers of sparks flying off the stone walls for enemy gunfire, and broke into two separate groups in order to charge the sangar from both directions. Encircling the sangar, they lost each other in the darkness, fired from both directions, mistook each other’s fire for an SAS reaction and commenced to slaughter each other.
‘Beautiful!’ Marty whispered with satisfaction.
His satisfaction was short-lived. While the two groups of guerrillas were thus engaged, a third group entered the small sangar and emerged with the lifeless body of Trooper Reid, which they carried awkwardly down the hill, making their way between the scorched, blackened craters torn from the earth by the 25-pound shells from the Thumier barrage. Even as that sight filled Marty with bitterness, a second group picked up the body of Captain Keating and likewise carried it down the hill, eventually disappearing in the darkness.
Knowing that they could not recover the two SAS bodies, Marty, Taff and Tommy picked themselves off the ground and hurried away to catch up with the main group. Together, the men headed back to the Dhala Road and, ultimately, Thumier, pursued all the way by the vengeful guerrillas.
Sitting three months later in that crowded square in Crater, Marty realized that the war in the hills had been lost because it was already a lost cause created by politicians intent on getting Britain out of the colony while leaving a token British presence there. That remaining presence, of which the SAS was a part, had the unenviable task of defending a people who did not want to be defended and increasingly supported the socalled enemy. Marty had thought of this with bitterness when he’d come down out of the hills of the Radfan after that aborted, bloody operation and he thought of it now, even more bitterly, as he sat in this square, waiting to cut down a man known to be spying for the guerrillas.
Naturally, he thought as he peered over the veil of his shemagh at the packed outdoor tables of the restaurant from which his target would emerge, he would not be here now if the squadron had not made it back to Thumier after that failed operation. They had, however, made it back only after a night of hell on earth, pursued across rocky slopes, along dried-up, pitch-black wadi beds and across flat, windblown plains by a swarm of guerrillas intent on avenging the havoc created by them. The guerrillas had been as thick as flies on the dark hills, popping up from behind rocks, darting out from behind parched bushes, djellabas and shemaghs fluttering, to snipe relentlessly at the retreating enemy. More than one SAS man died that night, others were wounded, and a couple hallucinated from loss of blood and exhaustion as they made their slow progress with the two wounded men acting as back markers. Nevertheless, by inching forward, from the protection of one rock outcropping to another, given covering fire by their comrades, they finally managed to reach the Wadi Rabwa and, beyond it, the flat, dangerously exposed plain that led to Thumier. There, even as the guerrillas were swarming down off the hills to annihilate them, they were rescued by four Saladin armoured cars that raced out of the FRA base at Thumier, firing their machine guns. Eventually, even as the firepower of the Saladins was forcing the guerrillas back up into the hills, two Hawker Hunters flew out from the Habilayn airstrip and roared in to pour a murderous hail of gunfire into the guerrillas as they were trying to make their escape back to Radfan. The SAS survivors were then picked up in the Saladins and transported, exhausted and bloody, back to the safety of Thumier.
Now, made up and dressed like an Arab, feeling almost like one, Marty realized just how lucky he had been to have made it this far. That failed operation in the Radfan mountains, which, for him, symbolized this whole damned war, marked the end of his time in the mountains and already seemed like a distant dream.
Shortly after his return to Thumier, when he had enjoyed a brief rest period, he and Taff had been chosen for a special, secret assignment in Aden and subsequently flown in a Sikorsky Whirlwind from the parched lava-rock and desert of Thumier to the industrialized clutter and clamour of Aden, then driven in a British Army jeep to the military complex at Khormaksar. There, at a briefing conducted by a green slime officer, Captain Alan Saunders, they were informed that they were about to engage in a clandestine plain-clothes operation of the kind first devised by Major Frank Kitson during Kenya’s Mau Mau campaign, which the SAS was briefly involved in during the 1950s.
According to Saunders, the campaign in Kenya had led to the formation of a few socalled ‘counter gangs’, or anti-terrorist teams, composed of former terrorists and loyal tribesmen led by British officers disguised as natives. The same type of operation had also been used in Cyprus as the basis of the undercover Q units. However, when the SAS first set up a CQB course in Khormaksar for a carefully selected group of men, they knew that there was no hope of ‘turning round’ Arab terrorists and so decided, instead, to function more like the Q squads of the Palestine police as started by Roy Farran, a veteran of the wartime SAS.
The work in Aden, Saunders informed them, in some instances involved driving around in Q cars, or unmarked cars, searching out possible Yemeni agents; in others the job was to pick up terrorists alive and bring them in to Khormaksar for questioning; and in others still, it simply meant shooting them before they had a chance to do the shooting. In all three cases, it was a highly dangerous, face-to-face business that required a lot of nerve and the willingness to venture into the crowded alleyways and souks of Aden, made up and dressed like an Arab. And when it came to shooting, it required special skills in a killing method known as the ‘double tap’. This dangerous work was carried out by the ‘Keeni-Meeni’ teams of the SAS.
‘Keeni -Meeni’, they were informed, was a Swahili term used to describe the movement of a snake in long grass: sinuous and unseen. The word had become a syno
nym in Africa– and with the slave trade in the Arabian Gulf – for undercover work. The British Army picked it up during the Mau Mau campaign in Kenya and from there it travelled to the SAS in Aden, where it was related specifically to operations involving the relatively new standard operating procedure known as the ‘double tap’, which they would be learning in Khormaksar as part of a special CQB course.
The Keeni-Meeni squad was located and trained in Ballycastle House, a block of flats formerly used as married quarters. When Marty and Taff first arrived, they weretaken straight to the quartermaster’s store where they were kitted out with an Arab futah, then given a Browning 9mm High Power handgun, the beloved 9-Milly, with a Len Dixon holster and told to belt it into the cross-draw position, slightly to the rear of the waist at the left side, making it easy to withdraw, or ‘cross draw’, with the right hand. Then they were led to a large gymnasium converted into a combined firing range and CQB training house. This was packed with Fijian SAS troopers who were, they soon learned, among the deadliest of the Keeni-Meeni teams. There, side by side with the Fijians, some of whom were enormous, they were repeatedly put through the SOP known as the ‘double tap’ – a way of very quickly withdrawing the 9-Milly from under the folds of the futah and firing with perfect accuracy at close range.
Though the original ‘double tap’ had been so named because it meant firing two shots in quick succession from the handgun, their counter-terrorist experiences had shown the Keeni-Meeni teams that a determined terrorist often carried remote-control detonation devices or a second weapon that could be fired even when the terrorist was seriously wounded. For this reason, the Keeni-Meeni teams now used sustained firepower to ‘neutralize’ the terrorist, which meant firing at least six rounds in under three seconds.
rounds in under three seconds.
Milly out from under the futah and bringing it into the firing position quickly enough, and accurately enough, to down the enemy before he could react. As this was made no easier by the complicated folds of the futah, they had to rehearse for hours before getting as far as the actual firing range. Once there, however, they were taught to follow the quick withdrawal of the handgun with the equally quick neutralizing of the target with the double tap. This method of firing had begun with the unorthodox triangular posture devised by Major Roy Farran during World War Two and evolved into the socalled Grant-Taylor Method: legs spread, pistol raised and held two-handed in the triangular firing position, then six shots fired in quick succession. For the purposes of training, the shots were fired at a target at the end of a firing alley and the men were trained relentlessly until they could put six rounds through a playing card at fifteen metres. When they could do this, they were ready to have their faces tinted dark, put on their Arab clothing and go into the streets of Aden to hunt down the enemy.
‘I like dressing up,’ Taff told Marty as he care fully tinted his blond hair dark and slipped brown contact lenses over his blue eyes. ‘Remember how we used to do it in Malaya and Borneo? I always thought that was great.’
‘This isn’t a game,’ Marty responded, feeling like an assassin.
‘It is to me,’ Taff assured him.
Before leaving, they were informed that the KeeniMeeni teams did not carry identification, did not pick up wounded team members, and did not go back for those who got lost. If a man was wounded or became lost in the souks, he was all on his own.
Initially, Marty and Taff were placed under the wing of the highly experienced Sergeant Pete Hopper, who gave them a guided tour of the port of Aden, including the business section, atTawahi, the harbour area, Mal’alah, and the ‘high-risk’ areas of Crater and Sheikh Othman. This introductory tour was taken in a Q car: a deliberately battered and soiled Volkswagen Beetle that had been packed with cardboard boxes, Arabic wrapping paper and merchandise such as cigarettes, binoculars, cameras and boxes of ballpens, to make it look like a local trader’s vehicle.
‘It smells like a toilet bowl,’ Marty complained. ‘It’s not bad,’ Taff said.
In the Mal’alah, or harbour area, they drove through
densely crowded narrow streets, past the many dutyfree shops and food stalls, and parked on the Tawahi main road, close to the fenced-off harbour but a good distance away from the armed British soldiers guarding the entrance to the Aden Port Authority Trust. A newly painted P & O passenger liner was anchored in the bay, looming large beyond the iron railings, concrete municipal buildings and warehouses of the docks, with passengers coming ashore from the transit craft and emerging from the Aden Port Authority Trust gateway to be greeted by importuning taxi drivers. The Tawahi main road itself was packed with shops, smoking and steaming food stalls, Sunni and Saydi Muslims, Hindus, Yemeni Jews, holy men and traders, beggars and thieves, veiled women and unwashed children, as well as mangy dogs, cats and even cows – all watched carefully by British Army soldiers armed with Sten guns and SLR rifles.
The harbour area, Marty and Taff were informed by Sergeant Hopper, was difficult to work in because Aden was a free port used constantly by shipping-line passengers, despite the presence of the armed ‘greens’ in the streets. Because of this, tourists often crammed the already packed streets, doing their shopping, and either blocked the planned line of fire of the KeeniMeeni teams or went into a panic and got in the road when the SAS men were trying to make their escape. It was also a hard fact of life that often, after an SAS assassination, the locals would take their revenge on the nearest available white person – invariably an innocent tourist.
The side-streets of the main town were much easier to work in, being filled with shops, most with British names – the London Store, the New Era– but all run by Arabs who sat outside on wooden chairs to sip tea and haggle with the tourists, mere feet away from the tense British soldiers standing guard at nearly every corner.
Worst of all, however, was the ‘high -risk’ area, Crater, on the lower slopes of the volcanic mountain, with its teeming narrow streets, traders and animals. It was also cluttered with burning braziers and big pots of cooking food or boiling tea. So when they were in the Crater area, the SAS men would be hemmed in on all sides, at all times, and almost nose-to-nose with their targets. It was not a comforting thought.
Once Marty and Taff had been familiarized with the area, Sergeant Hopper acted as team leader in a series of attacks on local double agents who had to be shot down as they went about their daily business in the port of Aden. The first one was neutralized while stepping out of a taxi in a crowded part of the business area, atTawahi, the second in the harbour area where he was about to pick up some tourists in his taxi, and the third in a packed souk, gunned down as he was dining on couscous at an outdoor table.
In each case, the SAS team operated the same way. Once out of the Q car, the three men did not speak to each other, kept well apart, and made sure that they were always in sight of each other. If any Arab spoke to them, they tried to avoid replying, though in a manner that would not offend, usually just by nodding in response and walking on. If that was not possible, they replied in basic Arabic, learned at the Hereford and Army School of Languages, though they spoke as briefly as possible and always acted as if they were in a hurry. Finally, when they reached their chosen killing zone, the first man to see the target would be the one to neutralize him. If, on the other hand, they all saw him at once, they all fired simultaneously. They would then make their escape under cover of the confusion created by the shooting, often pushing shocked bystanders aside, hopping over café tables, or knocking over food stalls, to run back through the maze of narrow streets until they had reached the Q car parked some distance away. Once in the car, they would drive out of the area as quickly as possible, not stopping until they were back in the safety of the military complex at Khormaksar.
The first three shootings, led by Sergeant Hopper, were the worst for Marty, as he wasn’t used to shooting people in such a close-up, calculated way, outside the heat of battle, and doing so filled him with reservations. He was, of
course, as usual, taken aback by the ease with which Taff did the same thing. By the third shooting, however, he had managed to distance himself from the act by concentrating almost solely on the details of the operation: the environment, the people in it, and anything that might impede the shooting itself or his route of escape. He also forced himself to remember that the men he was shooting down, most acting as double agents, had caused the deaths of British operatives, members of the Keeni-Meeni teams, and Arab friends of the British. This justified what he was doing and made it easier to deal with.
Once Marty and Taff started going out on their own, working as a two-man team, they became highly efficient and even addicted to the excitement of it. Now, as Marty sat beside Taff at a café table in a crowded square in Crater, he realized that the Keeni-Meeni operations had been therapeutic for him, heightening his awareness of mortality, giving him back the lust for life, and helping him to place the last few years into perspective. He now accepted that his world, if irrevocably changed by personal tragedy and the natural fears of middle age, had not been completely shattered and still held out the hope of a decent future.
He realized, also, with a great deal of regret, that this would be his final operation in Aden before he returned to the relatively normal world of Bradbury Lines. To offset this regret, he had already planned to get in touch with Diane Lavery. This, too, was a sign of the emotional renewal that had been wrought through his work in the harsh mountains of Radfan and the crowded, highly dangerous streets and souks of Aden. In truth, perhaps because of the danger, he had gained a new lease of life here.
Taff nodded silently towards the door of the restaurant they were watching from their outside table. Looking in that direction, Marty saw his target emerging from the building. He was an Arab, a big man, wearing an English suit with striped shirt and tie– an ‘old school’ tie, no doubt – and he was grinning as he stepped from the shadows of the doorway into the sunshine, talking over his shoulder to the man coming out behind him. Though he looked good-natured and civilized, Marty knew that he was a Yemeni-trained double agent, alternating between giving false information to the British and passing on to the enemy information about British activities in the area. Either way, his activities had led to many failed missions and casualties, including some dead Keeni-Meeni operatives. He had to be neutralized – assassinated – before he could do further damage.
