Operation Pink Elephant

by Stephen Dando-Collins

  ‘Copy that. We’ll approach on foot. Over.’

  ‘Roger that. Papa out.’

  The GRRR men moved slowly, carefully into position on the outskirts of the village of Kanda in low moonlight. All twelve members of the team were present. Toushi, dressed in his civilian wear, had been given his assault rifle and pack by his colleagues, and was ready to play his part in the rescue of Lucky Mertz. They had left Lieutenant Roy and Sergeant Simma back at the mission in charge of the prisoners. It was now up to GRRR to do what they did best.

  To determine how they would go about this, the four sergeants in the group – Charlie, Ben, Hazard and McHenry – huddled together in the darkness. Charlie was in charge, but with the life of their friend Lucky in the balance, he wanted to be sure that the senior men in the team were in complete agreement about how they were to proceed.

  ‘I say we go in hard with stun grenades and grab Lucky while they’re all seeing stars,’ Hazard said in a low voice.

  ‘Only problem with that idea,’ whispered Charlie, ‘is that we don’t know for sure that Lucky’s in the village.’

  ‘And if he is there,’ said Ben, ‘where in the village is he? We have to know precisely where he is before we go in with all guns blazing.’

  ‘You got that right, Ben,’ McHenry agreed. ‘Somehow we gotta case the joint.’

  ‘I suggest we send Caesar in with the camera,’ said Ben.

  ‘Can he operate okay in the darkness?’ asked McHenry.

  ‘Sure,’ said Ben. ‘Remember how good he was in Deep Cave in Afghanistan? Caesar doesn’t need light to navigate. His nose is his radar.’

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ said Charlie. ‘Kit him up, Ben, and let’s get to it.’

  It took several minutes for Ben to take the special equipment from his pack and prepare Caesar. First, he strapped a black Kevlar dog vest around his canine partner, before clipping a small video camera and transceiver on top of it. All the while, Caesar stood patiently as Ben placed the equipment on his back. Ben switched on a separate transceiver and booted up a laptop. Finally, he knelt beside Caesar and gave him a couple of dog biscuits to carry him over until he could organise him something more substantial to eat.

  Once Caesar had devoured the biscuits, Ben spoke quietly to him. ‘Caesar, we’ve got to find Lucky.’

  Caesar’s tail immediately began to wag. His expression seemed to say, Our friend Lucky? Is that who you mean, boss?

  Ben smiled. ‘That’s right, mate – Lucky. Our mate Lucky.’

  Charlie handed Ben the akubra, and Ben lay it upside down in front of Caesar. The labrador immediately put his nose inside the crown and began sniffing.

  ‘That’s it, mate, get a good whiff. I want you to find him for me. Find Lucky, Caesar.’ Ben patted him vigorously, then pointed to the village. ‘Seek on, Caesar. Seek on! Find Lucky!’

  Without hesitation, Caesar leapt forward and went trotting into the night.

  Ben joined the other members of the team in slipping night-vision goggles onto his helmet. From now on, the GRRR men would view their surroundings as if it were daytime, but in an eerie shade of green. Sitting cross-legged on the ground, Ben focused on the laptop’s screen. Charlie, Hazard and McHenry clustered behind him to also watch the images on screen – images being sent back to the computer from the camera on Caesar’s back.

  Caesar quickly entered the village. With his nose to the ground, he skirted hut after hut. The voices of men, women and children came from within each, but Caesar ignored them all as he went in search of his friend Lucky. When he reached the palisade surrounding the cattle compound, Caesar’s tail began to wag. He had picked up a familiar scent. Only a few hours earlier, Lucky had been doing his exercise walk on the other side of this palisade.

  Caesar trotted along beside the curved wall of wood for ten metres, following the scent, until he saw a shadowy figure with a gun ahead. Dropping onto his stomach, Caesar sniffed the breeze. That breeze brought him the scent of a Tanzanian. Slowly, Caesar backed away a few metres and then rose up and trotted around the wall in the opposite direction. Although Ben could direct him via a small speaker in the transceiver on his back, Ben didn’t dare speak in case his voice was heard by the RAT sentries. Caesar was making all his decisions unaided.

  Again, an armed figure loomed in his path. And again Caesar halted, then backtracked. With the enemy preventing him from following the scent around the outside of the compound, Caesar decided to try to follow it on the inside. Urgently, he began to sniff the ground along the palisade. Choosing a spot where the ground was softest, he began to industriously paw the earth.

  The GRRR men watched what was happening via the laptop screen, a hundred metres away. ‘What’s he doing?’ Tim McHenry whispered to Ben.

  ‘Digging,’ Ben returned with an embarrassed grin. ‘He’s digging. The one bad habit I’ve tried to train him out of!’

  ‘That bad habit might just pay off for us tonight,’ said Charlie.

  ‘You got that right,’ said McHenry. ‘Go, Caesar!’

  Like a digging machine, Caesar spewed soft earth out behind him. He dug until there was a hole deep enough for him to get his head beneath part of the wall. But the equipment on his back prevented him from crawling under. Undaunted, Caesar resumed digging. The next time he tried it, he was able to worm his way through.

  Clambering out the other side, Caesar shook himself from head to paw to shed dirt. He looked around the emptied cattle compound and spied a herder’s hut. Lowering his nose to the ground once more, Caesar soon picked up Lucky’s scent. Following it, he trotted to the hut’s entrance. For a moment he stood there looking at the locked door, then made a decision – he would follow the hut wall until he came to what he judged was soft ground. This he did and, again, he began to dig.

  The hut walls weren’t sunk as deep as the compound wall. Poles had been rammed into the ground, and the hut walls fastened to them. Caesar was digging at a gap between wall poles, and as a result, he only needed a hole fifteen centimetres deep to be able to gain entry to the hut. He wriggled through the hole, pulling himself to his feet inside the hut, and shaking off the dirt. Caesar saw the eyes of six men looking back at him and, without hesitation, went directly to one of the figures, jumping up at him and licking him on the face while his tail wagged furiously.

  ‘I’m pleased to see you, too, Caesar my old mate,’ Lucky said with a laugh. He pulled the labrador’s head into a cuddle and patted him vigorously. ‘Good old Caesar!’

  ‘You know this dog, sir?’ asked old Julius, amazed.

  ‘Like I know my own brother,’ Lucky replied. ‘We’ve been in quite a few scrapes together, this dog and me.’ He ruffled Caesar’s neck. ‘Haven’t we, Caesar?’

  In response, Caesar licked him on the mouth.

  ‘Does this mean we are to be rescued?’ Koinet asked from the other side of the hut, speaking for the first time since he had been returned to the captives.

  ‘You just sit quietly and everything will be fine, Koinet,’ Lucky responded.

  Now, to the further astonishment of the rangers, Ben’s voice emerged from the speaker on Caesar’s back. ‘G’day, mate.’

  Grinning, Lucky looked into the infrared camera on Caesar’s back. ‘G’day yourself, Ben. Nice to know you’re out there, mate.’ As Lucky was aware from past experience, there was no microphone among Caesar’s equipment, but he guessed that Ben could read his lips on his computer screen.

  ‘You and your friends are to stay put and keep low, Lucky, and look after Caesar,’ said Ben, before adding an instruction in a firm voice. ‘Caesar, stay! Stay with Lucky!’

  Looking like robots in their helmets and night-vision goggles, and moving slowly in a crouch, Charlie, Angus and Chris crept toward a village hut. These huts didn’t have doors, just removable barriers of inter woven branches to keep out prowling predators. Inside each hut, a blanket covered the doorway. The oblong windows of the huts were at head height and had no glass in them, just a crisscro
ss lacing of branches that permitted air circulation.

  Standing beside one of these windows, Charlie poked a small infrared camera through a gap in the window lattice, recording what was inside. Pulling the camera back, he dropped to his good knee to review the footage. The occupants of the hut were all asleep. There were no weapons to be seen, nor any sign of the RAT. Charlie pointed to the next hut to do the same, and the quartet silently moved on.

  At the same time, Hazard, McHenry and Cisco were checking huts on the other side of the village. Like Charlie’s team, they were looking for Zuba and his remaining men. Ben remained where the others had left him, watching his computer screen to make sure that Caesar and the hostages were okay. Meanwhile, a third GRRR team carefully approached the cattle compound. Baz was in charge of this team, and he was backed up by Claude, Casper, Toushi and Willy Wolf. Their task was to free and secure the hostages.

  As the hostage rescue team snuck up to the cattle com pound wall, Baz spotted the shadowy figure of a RAT guard standing ahead. Via hand signals, Baz instructed Jean-Claude to take care of the guard. Jean-Claude silently lay down his M-16, slid his commando knife from its sheath and crawled like a snake toward the guard. At the last moment, the guard – Tonkei – sensed that he was not alone. As he turned, raising his AK-47, Jean-Claude sprang like a lion. Within seconds, he was behind the much shorter guard, his knife to the man’s throat.

  ‘Not a sound, mon ami,’ he whispered. With his left hand, Jean-Claude pulled the AK-47 from the terrified guard’s hands and cast it aside. As Tonkei’s mouth hung open, Jean-Claude removed the cigarette stuck to the guard’s bottom lip. ‘Cigarettes, they will kill you,’ he whispered, before letting it drop to the ground.

  As Jean-Claude hustled Tonkei to Baz and the others, a second guard suddenly appeared behind them.

  ‘Achtung!’ Wolf warned.

  But this guard, only a boy, dropped his AK-47 upon spotting the heavily armed GRRR men, and ran off into the night in terror.

  ‘Jean-Claude, keep an eye on your prisoner,’ Baz instructed in a low voice. ‘Willy, Toushi, Casper – with me.’

  The four of them moved to the compound gate. A wooden bar was all that kept the gate closed. Carefully, Baz and Willy removed the bar and noiselessly lay it to one side. Pulling the gate back, the four men slipped into the compound. First Toushi, then Willy then Casper and finally Baz, sprinted to the front of the herdsman’s hut.

  ‘Anyone home in there?’ Baz whispered through the door. ‘I’ve got a special delivery for Mr Lucky Mertz.’

  ‘Is that you, Baz?’ came Lucky’s voice.

  ‘Too right it’s me,’ Baz returned, a grin spreading across his face. ‘Who else would bother rescuing you, mate?’

  ‘What took you so long?’ said Lucky.

  ‘Always complaining! You got much company in there?’

  ‘Five of my rangers and a furry mutual friend.’

  ‘No bad guys?’

  ‘No bad guys.’

  With the other three keeping low, their weapons at the ready as they surveyed their surroundings for signs of the RAT, Baz stood up and studied the padlock on the door. ‘I’ll have to blow the door, Lucky. You and your lot keep well back. And keep Caesar’s head down.’ Laying his Minimi against the wall, Lucky reached into one of his pouches for a small explosives charge made from C-4 plastic explosive that he’d prepared earlier.

  ‘Have you secured the village yet?’ asked Lucky.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Well, then you can’t blow the door yet. You’ll alert Zuba’s people in the village. Kerb your impatience, mate. You’re too eager.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ Baz responded irritably.

  At that moment, a dog began barking somewhere in the village. Baz froze and listened intently to the night as the dog continued to bark. Then, the sound of automatic weapons fire reached his ears.

  ‘They’re alerted now,’ Baz said with a smile, before setting to work attaching the explosive charge to the padlock.

  A small dog had appeared in Charlie’s path and started barking at him. Chris Banner had lunged for the dog in an attempt to keep it quiet, but it had evaded him and run off through the village, yapping with every bound. The trio instantly prepared for a reaction from the huts, and sure enough, a man with an AK-47 appeared at a nearby hut window. Spotting them, he opened fire in their direction. As the gunman’s bullets flew well wide of their mark, Charlie let off a three-round burst. Charlie never missed. The gunman had dropped from sight.

  Charlie immediately reached for his belt and grabbed a stun grenade. Rising and dashing to the window from where the RAT had fired, he pulled the pin and dropped the flash-bang through a gap in the window lattice, ducking for the detonation. Seconds later, the barrier at the hut door beside Charlie was thrown aside and dazed figures came stumbling out into the night. One of those figures was carrying an AK-47. Charlie quickly stuck out one of his Zoomers and tripped up the man as he passed. As the African tumbled through the air, his weapon flew from his grasp.

  The firing and explosion caused all hell to break loose in the village. Men, women and children emerged from their huts, running and shrieking into open country. The GRRR men kept low, and in a matter of minutes they snared six RATs among the panicking villagers. All surrendered without a fight.

  ‘How many bad guys does that leave on the loose?’ came Hazard’s voice over their personal radios.

  ‘Just two,’ said Charlie. ‘Zuba and his deputy. Search every hut.’

  ‘You got it,’ replied Hazard. ‘They gotta be here someplace.’

  As Baz and three members of his detachment hunched beside the herdsman’s hut, a dull thud came from the door as the C-4 exploded. As soon as the dust settled, Baz was on his feet and moving to the door. He’d done his job well – the explosive charge had neatly removed the padlock. Baz kicked open the door and found six men and a labrador sitting in the gloom, looking at him. Lucky Mertz was hugging Caesar, whose tail began to wag at the sight and smell of his friend Baz.

  ‘Let’s go, you blokes,’ said Baz. ‘We’re getting you out of here.’

  Led by old Julius, the Tanzanian rangers all came to their feet and moved to the door. Koinet came last of all.

  Lucky, standing with Caesar at his side, waited for his men to leave, then held out his hand to Baz. ‘This was the last place I expected to see you again, mate,’ he said with a smile.

  ‘Likewise, mate,’ said Baz, shaking Lucky’s hand. ‘I hope we don’t make a habit of this. I thought a good Special Forces operator like you could look after himself.’

  ‘I can look after myself well enough, Baz, but I had to think of my rangers. If you hadn’t come along tonight, I was planning to dig my way out.’

  Baz laughed. ‘Caesar dug his way in instead!’

  Led by Charlie and Hazard, the teams made their way from hut to hut, checking for signs of Colonel Zuba and Captain Chawinga. Charlie’s team had checked five huts and were approaching a sixth when Charlie saw a grey-haired man in a red beret disappear inside it. After the man failed to stop when Charlie called a challenge to him, the team burst in through the open door. They found the man sitting on the ground, singing to himself. The beam of Charlie’s torch fell upon the man’s shrivelled face. A shotgun lay beside him. Angus scooted past Charlie and grabbed the weapon, but the grey-haired man seemed unconcerned.

  A message from Baz came over their personal radios. ‘Charlie, we’ve got Lucky and his men. I’ve relocated them and Jean-Claude’s prisoner to the outskirts of the village, at Ben’s location.’

  Charlie smiled with relief. ‘Are they all okay?’ he radioed back.

  ‘Right as rain. Caesar’s fine, too.’

  ‘Keep them there, Baz. Ben, you and Caesar come to me. We’ve located Zuba’s deputy. But there’s no sign of Zuba. Caesar might be able to track him down.’

  ‘On our way,’ Ben responded.

  By the time Ben and Caesar joined Charlie’s team, Charlie had lit the
hut’s kerosene lantern, filling the single room with a golden glow.

  Charlie glared down at their latest prisoner. ‘Where’s Zuba?’ he demanded.

  Chawinga looked up at the GRRR men and smiled. ‘You will never find him,’ he said. ‘This I do declare. He is too clever for you mzungu.’

  ‘Where is he, old man?’ Chris Banner demanded. ‘Where is Zuba?’

  Chawinga shrugged. ‘You will never find him.’ He chuckled to himself. ‘Only the flies know where he is now.’ He began to sing anew.

  Angus looked down and saw a small transistor radio and a beret lying on the floor. ‘A red beret, like the RAT wear!’ he said, stooping to pick it up.

  ‘Leave it!’ said Ben.

  Angus looked around at him in surprise. ‘Why?’

  ‘You’ll mask the scent on it. If I’m not mistaken, that beret belonged to Zuba.’ Ben led Caesar to the beret. ‘Have a sniff of that, mate.’

  Caesar dutifully sniffed the beret, then looked around at Ben with a quizzical expression on his face, as if to say, Okay, now what, boss?

  ‘Follow the scent, Caesar,’ Ben instructed. ‘Find Zuba for us. Seek on, Caesar!’

  Caesar immediately turned and led Ben from the hut. Leaving Angus to look after Chawinga, Charlie and Chris followed after them. With his nose to the ground, Caesar trotted through the village at a pace that required Ben and the others to jog to keep up. Before long, he led them to a dung heap outside the crowded goat compound. Made up of cowpats and goat droppings, this reeking pile was used by the villagers as a source of fertiliser for their few subsistence crops. A spade lay to one side. Here, Caesar stopped, as if uncertain. He looked up at Ben, as if to say, The scent stops here, boss.

  Dropping to one knee, Ben said softly, ‘See what you can find, mate.’

  Nose to the ground, Caesar circled the dung heap, before returning to Ben. By this time, Hazard, McHenry and Cisco had joined the party. Again, Caesar stood looking at the dung heap, as if mystified.

  ‘Don’t tell me Caesar’s lost the trail?’ said Hazard, slipping a fresh piece of gum into his mouth.