Immediate Action

by Andy McNab

  "To look just at cocaine for a moment," Bert said, "it takes two hundred kilos of leaves to produce one kilo of paste. The leaves have to be converted into coca paste in their country of origin because the sheer volume and weight of leaves make it impossible to move them very far.

  The plantations were scattered in the valleys, with thousands of collection points at which the leaves were rendered down. The coca paste was then taken to one of thousands of small dirt airstrips hidden in the jungle, and from there to drug manufacturing plants to be converted first into cocaine base (it took 2.5 kilos of paste to produce 1 kilo of base) and then into cocaine hydrochloride-pure cocaine. IMTo run the drug production line, the cartels had ' ported skilled technicians, many of whom were Europeans, as well as specialized equipment and supplies. They also handled the smuggling operation and had even set up their own distribution networks in America and Europe.

  Bert said, "In the last two years the number of addicts in New York has trebled from one hundred eighty-two thousand to six hundred thousand-and that's without the up-and-coming generation of heroin users. just looking at one of the problems that we've got-cocaine-the size of the job can be measured by a recent seizure: In September police in Los Angeles impounded the largest single-consignment ever discovered, over twenty tons.

  Its value was about two billion dollars wholesale, yet the seizure had no effect on price. In other words, supply still exceeded demand.

  "Our 'certain Latin American country' is itself not a fantastic producer. However, rather than try to convince other governments to defoliate millions of acres of marijuana and coca, it makes sense to attack further down the chain, at the drug manufacturing plants.

  "We don't want that sort of problem to happen in the UK. We need to hit the problem at source. It is a proactive strike, a first strike; if we are successful in our task, we will cut down the stream of drugs into t'he UK."

  G Squadron had been the first to deploy. I didn't mind going in after them a few months later. In many ways it was better to take over from somebody else; they'd have had all the cock-ups and found out all the little bits and pieces that we needed to know, and squared them all away.

  B Squadron started to plan and prepare for the takeover. The first priority was to learn the language to a passable standard, as it would obviously make our job i easier if we could communicate directly with people rather than have to go through a third party; what is said can be wrongly understood by the interpreter, and his translation can't be confirmed.

  I seemed to live in the language lab. All around me blokes in headphones were shouting, "Fuck it!" in frustration and either storming off for i brew or binning it for the day. Personally I used to go for a run when the grammar got too much for me. I wasn't that fussed ah. out getting it exactly right. I just wanted to get to grips with the verbs.

  When I'd learned Swahili, I'd found that if I got hold of those, I could work around everything else. Spanish is in fact not that hard to learn; within a few weeks I could hold my own in any conversation about the price of tomatoes or the time of the next train.

  Some of the blokes picked it up really well, and one of them in particular even appeared to have the accent down to a T. I thought, great, if ever we get time off, I'll stay near him. I changed my mind when I heard him trying to chat up a Spanish all pair in the town one day.

  "Hello, love," he said. "At what time this evening do you terminate?"

  We were also doing all the normal planning and preparing that we'd do for any operation, as well as making sure the weapons were okay and the equipment was sorted out. Bert gave us detailed in-country briefs, teaching us more about the main players.

  The Int people dragged in all the local newspapers and weekly news magazines. A couple of the blokes had Spanish wives, and they came in and chatted to us. It was all part of the process of getting tuned in to the country, which we took seriously-so much so there was a strong rumor going around at one stage that the boys in B Squadron were taking lambada lessons at Bartestree Village Hall. It all went back to the way people looked at the squadrons, and B Squadron was definitely seen as the yee-hah party squadron.

  Some of G Squadron were going to come back with us to ensure continuity in the task. They started briefing us, confirming what we had been taught but also giving their version of what had gone on and suggestions as to how we could make things better next time around.

  Our job was going to be in two phases. First, we were going to grab hold of the paramilitary police and assess their standard of training.

  Then we would start training them from that baseline, taking them through all the basic skills that were going to be required, such as aggressive patrolling, OPs, and close target recces. The object was to show them how to find the DMP (drug manufacturing plant), then stay in close proximity and send back the information. It wouldn't be an easy task.

  "A lot of DMPs are deep hides in the jungle," said Tony from G Squadron.

  "Fantastic setups, well guarded and well alarmed. They have a system of tunnels and escape routes for leaving the plant in the event of an attack. By the time they hear the aircraft bringing in a heliborne assault, they'll be away-down the tunnels, into other hides, or along the escape routes."

  We were going to enter Bert's "certain Latin American country" covertly, not exactly sneaking in like spies, but the Regiment's experience was that if a trip was unannounced, there was less to go wrong.

  The first leg was by C130 to St. John's, Newfoundland, for an overnight stop. The interior of a Hercules is spartan, not much more than rows of nylon seats an'd luggage racks, and this one was also bulked out with equipment. I tied my hammock to the aircraft frame and climbed in with my Walkman and a book. By the time we all had our hammocks up the interior of the aircraft looked like a nest of hanging grubs waiting to grow into something nice. Slaphead nabbed the prime spot near the tailgate, where there was plenty of room for a hammock and all your gear; the only problem was the proximity of the toilet, a curtained-off oil drum full of chemicals. The stench was grim.

  We stepped off the aircraft in summer clothes to find that it was winter in St. John's. We made our way to the hotel in temperatures of minus twenty.

  "We've got to go out on the town," said Slaphead, get a few bevies down us."

  During the mad dash from the hotel into the town Slaphead's dome froze over and I grew ice on my mustache. By the time we reached the drinking district everybody was purple.

  Slaphead strode up to the bar, ran his eye along the optics of sour mash whisky, and said, "Hot chocolate, please."

  The following morning we took off again, finally reaching the military airfield in darkness. We flew in with the aircraft unlit and the crew on PNG. As we landed and were taxiing along the runway, I saw the silhouettes of twenty or thirty aircraft parked up on the grass: small jets, twin-engine, an old Junkers 88, a couple of Dakotas.

  "Some of the aircraft that've been confiscated from the drugs boys," said Tony. "Now they're just sitting there, rotting."

  Despite Bert's briefing sessions, we'd all had visions of being in a nice warm place-balmy South American climate and all that. In fact it lay high up on the plain and was anything but tropical. As we stepped from the aircraft into a freezing cold night, B Squadron's O.C and the SM, who had gone out the week before with the light HQ group, were there shivering inside their Gucci leather coats.

  Vehicles were there to collect half the squadron and our equipment and take us to the camp. "It's about twenty minutes from here," said the sergeant major. "If there's no traffic."

  "And if there is traffic?" asked Slaphead.

  "Three hours."

  There was traffic. Even so, we were the lucky ones.

  The other half of B Squadron was going elsewhere, and that was four hours away-"when there is no traffic."

  We arrived at first light at the police camp where we'd be staying. As we came up the drive,. it looked quite a pleasant site.

  The paramilitaries' camp looke
d well maintained and very clean, with large, long buildings that were old but in good repair. Then we turned left and landed up in a stinking old hut the size of an average sitting room. There were bunk beds and a table, and shower room off to one side. There was no storage space. It felt like we were living in a submarine.

  "We've had to use the shower as a storeroom," I honked to Gar.

  "Just as well," he said. "There's no water anyway."

  We soon found out that the toilets didn't work either, so they also became a cache for bergens and other kit. I put my sleeping bag on the nearest bed, and that was it: home.

  In the morning we had a walk around the camp with Tony, who had been on my second Selection but failed.

  He had come back straightaway and passed the second time.

  The police were very much the paramilitary force I was expecting to see.

  Their equipment was mainly supplied by the Americans, but I also spotted a lot of European kit. Their weapons were also a mixture of U.S M16s and Israeli Gauls, and quite a few Russian AKs.

  However, the patrols that we were to be training just had the Galil-basically AK47 parts with a different barrel and furniture.

  "An excellent weapon," said Tony as he stopped to shake hands with people that he knew. "Unfortunately they don't know how to use them yet."

  The boys were dressed smartly, and all looked very organized. He introduced me to them, and they struck me as very open and sociable people.

  "The camp's looking good on the outside," Tony said, "but in fact it's a heap 'of shit once you scratch the surface. Their living conditions are not very good at allbetter than ours, but still not good. The food is absolutely heaving, even by their standards."

  I wasn't sure whether to believe him, until we went past the cookhouse and two boys who had just eaten breakfast came out and puked it all up again on the ground. The building reeked like a shithouse in an abattoir.

  "These people are the creme de la creme, but they aren't particularly well treated," he went on. "However, if you're a peasant farmer with jack shit, six kids, and a donkey, why not become part of the system? At least you're getting paid, and in theory the family are getting looked after."

  Having seen the people outside the cookhouse, I decided to stick to what we'd all brought with us. As usual, we had arrived laden down with tins of tuna, bags of pasta, and bottles of curry sauce.

  Billy from G Squadron, the'world's smallest and most aggressive curly blond-haired jock, was sleeping on the bottom bunk. As soon as he woke up in the morning, he unzipped his sleeping bag and got his little petrol cooker going on the floor. The water went on for his brew; then he mixed his porridge up.

  I peered over the edge of the bunk. "Oh, good, what's for breakfast?" I asked pleasantly.

  "I'm surprised you're hungry, you bastard," he said.

  "We've spent all frigging night chewing on your farts."

  "Sorry," I said. "Jet lag." I got up, sat next to him, and then kept looking at him and smiling until he gave me a mug of hot chocolate and some porridge. Over the next few days he got more and more annoyed that I wasn't making my share of the breakfast, which was exactly my intention. Finally, honking at me for being a lazy bastard, he picked the cooker up to throw it at me and forgot that he'd just used it.

  There was a sizzling sound, the smell of burned flesh, and the shape of the cooker top burned into his hand. It made quite a nice pattern, I thought.

  Since the shower room was now the storeroom, we had to go and wash at outdoor taps around the corner.

  The water was freezing.

  The weather was a bit nippy in the morning but then wonderful when the sun rose in the sky. We were high up in the hills and were warned that we'd be getting out of breath for the first couple of days until we acclimatized. Of course no one took any notice, and all went up the hills for a run. Billy was loving it as. we were all in shit state.

  Everything was a competition to him and he enjoyed stopping and shouting, "B Squadron, a bag of shite."

  I. watched the arrival of the people we were going to train.

  There were about forty or fifty of them all told, and they swaggered malevolently about the place like a convention of nightclub bouncers.

  The mentality of the Latin American male was very macho; we were somehow going to have to harness the machismo and try and turn it into something of substance.

  We were sitting against our hut wall watching them assemble.

  Billy started to laugh and said, "If they stick their chests out any more, they're going to explode. I love this part-watch this!"

  He then got up and walked into the middle of them and started shouting out commands to get them organized. After all this macho stuff they were getting ordered about by a two-foot midget barking at their kneecaps.

  Whenever I met troops that I was going to be staying with, their body language was nearly always "We don't need you; we're hard as fuck."

  Above them, the prime personalities in the organization also resented us to an extent because we were undermining their authority.

  We'd have to be really tactful in the way that we treated them; no lording it over thetil and playing the Great I Am, because that wouldn't get the results. We'd have to show respect to their leaders at even the lowest level so they didn't turn against us, but at the same time we had the problem that familiarity breeds contempt. By and large, however, we'd just I make sure we were friendly and approachable; everything was a learning opportunity, and we hoped to learn as much from Ithem as they from us.

  The paramilitaries were an incrdible sight. They were wearing the world's supply of belt kit and webbing, with knives hanging off them everywhere and six-shooters in holsters around their hips.

  Gar and I swapped glances. We couldn't just say, "This is a heap of shit-get rid of this, get rid of that," because it wouldn't work.

  They'd go against us, and we wouldn't get what we wanted. So to start with, we didn't say anything.

  Each one of us was given ten blokes, and it would be our responsibility to take them from the basics and build them up. The very first thing to do was sort them out. with some equipment. We gave each of them a bergen, a sleeping bag, a sleeping bag liner, a waterproof outer, and a compass. You'd have thought we were giving them the crown jewels. A compass to them was gold dust. Even at officer level, none of them could read a map ok use a compass, so these blokes had credibility straightaway with all their contemporaries; they were the team with compasses. Nobody knew what to do with them yet, but that was beside the point.

  Before we could start teaching them any sort of tactics, we had to get to grips with their shooting. Their idea of firing a weapon was to loose off countless rounds on full automatic and make lots of noise.

  It was totally ineffective. The weapons started to go high, and they mostly missed the targets.

  "Very good," I beamed. "Now can I show you a few little tricks somebody taught me recently?"

  The camp we were in was built on the top of a hill of sandy soil, the sides of which made excellent ranges.

  The first lesson was to teach them to conserve ammunition. "It's a good idea to make every round count," I said. "If you're getting through a magazine every five seconds, your ammunition won't last long.

  If you want to look after your ass, look after your ammunition."

  We took them back to first principles, starting with how to lie down with a weapon and fire at a target, nice and controlled. Once we'd got to that stage, we taught them in the kneeling and standing positions. We taught them on the ranges, not under pressure, but in a friendly atmosphere-no shouting, no hollering, just attempting to get good results.

  These boys were soon starting to perform well on the ranges, and the other police who were not part of our group were jealous, especially those of higher rank.

  None of them knew how to use their weapons properly; I saw some Gauls and M16s that were still smeared with the grease they had been packed in when they arrived.

&nb
sp; I was on the ranges one day with the boys. We'd got to the stage where they were moving from the lying position into the kneeling position and then into standing, doing timed shots at about a hundred meters. The equivalent of a sergeant major from another group came storming over and said, "My weapon does not work.

  Every time I fire it, it alms off. I need you to correct it."

  It was nothing to do with us, but I got the zeroing tool out and did a couple of twists to the foresight and rear I t sight. I looked, hrough and said, "Yep, that's much better. You have look, see what you reckon." . He got the weapon into the shoulder, looked through it, and was as happy as a sandboy. As far as he was concerned, he was ready for Bisley. just as with young recruits 'at Winchester, there was no such thing as a bad soldier, only a bad instructor-once you had the right material. We got them to the stage where they could fire their weapons and frequently hit what they were aiming at. Whether they could do that under pressure was another matter, and our lives could depend on it at a later date.

  We started incorporating live firing exercises. The average contact in the jungle was going to be at a range of about five meters; they'd have to recognize a target and shoot quickly and accurately.

  We'd go out into the hills and rig up a scenario: They'd walk down it first as individuals, recognize a target, snapshoot and kill it, then move back. Then we'd do it in pairs, firing and maneuvering, moving down the range. It reminded me of Selection.

  When we sat with them at lunchtime, we'd be chatting away, trying to find out how they lived. It was easy to see what the food was like.

  The storeroom their ration packs came from was obviously Infested with rats because everything that wasn't canned was chewed to bits.

  They threw it away and opened the cans.

  We were away from the camp training one day. The air was crisp, the sky more blue than I thought possible.

  Everybody was boiling water on hexy burners, us for our pasta, them for their coffee.

  "What about all this fantastic coffee I've heard so much about in television commercials?" I said.