Killer Elite

by Ranulph Fiennes

  The powder, ground down from four 250 mg. tablets of chlorpropamide, would not have an immediate or predictable effect. After an hour or two Kealy would begin to feel sweaty, weak, and increasingly disorientated, for chlorpropamide is a drug that promotes the action of insulin within the body. Kealy’s blood sugar would slowly fall below a tolerable level and would leave him dangerously vulnerable to the elements. The effects of hypoglycemia would steadily increase to a peak, or from Kealy’s point of view a nadir, somewhere between three and six hours after ingestion.

  Many of the students were loners. Some were veteran sergeants, even sergeant-majors, from airborne units with years of service behind them. If these men passed into the SAS they would enter as mere troopers and take their chances of promotion alongside far younger and less experienced soldiers.

  Initially over 150 soldiers from throughout the British Army had signed on for selection. After a week’s introduction to navigation and other basic skills, they were subjected to three weeks of softening up with ever-increasing grades of difficulty. They had fallen like flies, for the SAS selection staff watched every move and circled vulturelike to pounce on the merest whiff of weakness. The unfortunates found themselves waiting on Hereford station with a one-way ticket back to their own regiment.

  The fifth and last week had been a killer and, for the forty weary and blistered survivors now congregated in the cookhouse, this was the final act. Known simply as “Endurance,” the test involved each individual traveling alone over forty-one miles of difficult terrain with fifty-five pounds of equipment. Seventeen hours was the maximum time allowed but even if a man completed the course far more quickly he might still fail selection-with no reason ever given. Courses of over 160 selectees had ended without a single man entering the SAS. No wonder then that the trainees gulped down their food in an introspective mood, paying little attention to one another. De Villiers felt happier when the instructors, saying nothing, rose from their table and the students followed suit.

  Outside in the semidarkness de Villiers kept close to Kealy. When the two three-ton Bedford lorries stopped by the Guard Room, the trainees collected their rifles and then mounted up with their bergens. De Villiers, in the rain and the shadows, moved around but did not enter the Guard Room.

  The chief instructor rode in the cab of the leading lorry. Kealy, apparently keen to be treated no differently from the trainees during his self-imposed fitness jaunt, climbed into the back along with nineteen others, including de Villiers.

  The vehicles whined their way through the outskirts of Hereford, dodging heaps of litter caused by the national strike.

  “Guess who’s joining the strike tomorrow?”

  Disembodied voices in the back of de Villiers’s lorry.

  “I didn’t know anyone was still at work.”

  “Yeah, well, the gravediggers are all out as from tonight. Die now and yer old lady’ll have to clear a space in the deep freeze.”

  “Not in Hereford,” said a Welsh voice. “All our diggers are part-time. Most of them are the local fire service laddies.”

  By the time they reached Pontrilas at the eastern edge of the Brecon Beacons National Park most of the passengers had fallen silent in the canopied darkness. A mile from the Talybont Reservoir’s dam and close to the northern rim of Talybont Forest, the training sergeant-major halted the lorries in a car park beside Tarthwynni River. There was no shouting of orders. Each man had received his detailed instructions back in Hereford. The bergens were weighed on spring scales, and Lofty, the training sergeant-major, waved the trainees off one by one into the night.

  De Villiers moved into the bushes, and when Kealy set out, one of the first to go, he followed some fifteen yards behind. He did not switch on his tracker unit for the bleeper but kept in touch with Kealy’s outline, different from the students’ because of his old-fashioned bergen. Most of the students also sported Denison cam smocks but Kealy wore the shorter SAS windbreaker. With only a fifteen-pound bergen load, and fit though he undoubtedly was, de Villiers still found it hard work to keep up.

  All the trainees carried three-quarter-length foul-weather coats made of plastic-coated nylon. “Don’t ever march in ’em,” was the training sergeant-major’s advice. “You’ll get as wet from your own sweat as you ever will from the rain. Then, next day, any downwind opposition will smell you a mile off. Just use them when you’re leaguered up and it’s pissing down.”

  Although few of the remaining trainees knew one another by name, some had become aware of Kealy’s identity. He had joined in their hill-slogging tests on two previous occasions and the word had spread that he was a regular SAS officer with a remarkable record. Kealy kept to himself. The muted adulation of the trainees, the sidelong glances and whispered comments as the news spread of a hero in their midst, made him feel awkward and embarrassed. Even so, the advantages of training alongside these eager “wannabees” outweighed the doubts because they were at peak fitness and many were ten years his junior. He knew that by measuring his own performance directly against theirs, he would be sure that he could match the stamina of any man in the squadron he was about to command.

  For two hours Kealy went well despite the darkness, driving rain, a steep climb of 2,000 feet over broken ground and areas where the snow lay knee-deep.

  Toward 5:30 a.m., nearing the summit plateau of Waun Rydd, de Villiers noticed with satisfaction that Kealy’s gait showed signs of weakening. For a while he would climb steadily with a deliberate step, then follow a zigzag course for a period, then once again head directly west as though on a bearing to some point just visible to his front.

  As Kealy’s speed lessened, lone trainees began to catch up, and when they reached the plateau, marked by the cairns of Carn Pica, there were five or six soldiers huddled together and shouting against the shriek of a sleet-laden southwesterly with gusts up to seventy knots. De Villiers squatted by his bergen some distance upwind as Kealy reached the group of trainees. He concentrated on remaining out of sight of the soldiers without losing touch with Kealy.

  Approaching the students at the cairns, Kealy exhorted them to carry on west but most were already shivering and fearful of exposure. Two decided to head north to seek shelter in the valleys of Nantlannerch and the others headed south for the Neuadd reservoirs. Kealy shrugged and took a compass bearing due west. He knew the subtle symptoms of hypothermia only too well. He had taught many a young soldier how to recognize the dangers of exposure. He also knew how to avoid its onset despite the very worst conditions. Rule one was to realize that, no matter how clever a man may be at spotting others becoming hypothermic, no one can be sure of recognizing his own deterioration, simply because, as the body core temperature drops, the body draws heat from the head. The brain begins to slow down, taking away the normal state of awareness and the will needed for self-preservation.

  An undrugged Kealy would have had no trouble with the simple eight-hour slog from Talybont to the Storey Arms. The weather was atrocious and he wore light clothing as was his custom and that of many other SAS mountain troop veterans. With heavy pack, rifle and cotton clothing, Kealy had many times completed far longer marches in more dangerous conditions. He knew every step of the route and, unlike many others that night, he never lost his way. Physically in fine shape, for he jogged daily when involved in desk work, he had recently joined the SAS trainees on two snowbound forced marches and showed himself to be as fit or fitter than the best of them.

  Kealy knew that trained airborne troops can travel, at temperatures below minus fifty degrees centigrade with blizzards producing a chill factor of minus seventy degrees centigrade, for many miles carrying heavy packs day after day, and wearing only breathable cotton clothes. Thoroughly soaked with sweat, “body-thin” from weeks of inadequate rations and lack of sleep, they nevertheless avoid hypothermia so long as they keep moving fast enough to maintain their body core temperature above thirty-three degrees centigrade.

  He knew that he was in a far superior
state to such a scenario because, far from body-thin, he was well fed and his metabolism was acting like a factory, pumping out heat from the large breakfast he was still digesting. Even without the Mars bars that he ate whenever he felt his energy flag slightly, he would, if unaffected by the drug, have been more than capable of dealing with the conditions. Severe they certainly were from a standard mountain-walker’s point of view, but not from Kealy’s. At worst the wind strength gusted to seventy knots and the air temperature was as low as minus nine degrees centigrade, but this merely produced a chill factor of minus fifty degrees centigrade-no problem as long as he kept moving.

  Kealy knew all this and was fully aware that he must not stop. The curious state of lassitude and the overwhelming desire to rest that he was so unexpectedly experiencing must, he determined, be a temporary setback. Something he had eaten perhaps, a chill on the stomach, or a bug? He fought doggedly against the inertia and, luckily, the worst conditions were, after Carn Pica, all behind him.

  It was getting lighter. The going was flat in place of the tortuous climbing to date. There was now a well-used hilltop path underfoot from which most of the snow had been blown. Previously he had struggled up a steep, tussocked hillside through kneedeep drifts. The path was one he had often used and led west along the ridge of the Brecons, dropping into a sheltered pass at Bwlch y Fan. He had only to continue at a pace consistent with maintaining his body heat and all would soon be well.

  Fight the drowsiness… All will soon be well. He repeated this to himself and concentrated on the track to his immediate front. Always a little farther… Always a little farther.

  A few other students still persevered and, over the next hour, two or three noticed Kealy’s stumbling westerly progress. Knowing who he was, their own flagging morale was greatly boosted. If Major Kealy DSO, SAS veteran and hero, was finding the going hard then they must be pretty damn tough to be en route still. One or two offered him help, gloves, a foul-weather jacket. He tripped on a rock and bruised his knees slightly. After a short rest to recover, he shook himself and carried on. He was damned if he would give in or accept help. He flung away the spare gloves and the jacket.

  If things did get too bad he would remove one or two of the bricks that he carried to make up the statutory fifty-five-pound bergen weight. But he was sure he would get his second wind back before such a step became necessary. He estimated that some 1,000 yards up the track, which headed WNW, he would slow down to negotiate the ridgeline bottleneck of the Bwlch y Ddwyallt and join the well-trodden tourist path from the Pentwyn Rescue Post.

  By 8 a.m. he felt the leaden weight of inertia begin to lighten, and slowly, as his blood-sugar level eased back to normal, his brain was again fed with the sugar it required.

  The wind howled by in powerful, horizontal waves but Kealy knew he would be fine unless he stopped to rest. He jammed his cloth hat down, its flaps covering his ears. His bergen covered his back and his waist. Things were on the upswing.

  As Kealy passed by two small ponds, de Villiers glimpsed through the hood of his heavy windbreaker a solitary Day-Glo-tipped metal pole propped up by a pile of loose rocks. Reaching into his inner pocket, he produced a compact Motorola walkie-talkie. He estimated arrival within the next twenty minutes. At 8:30 a.m., in conditions of mist and lashing sleet, Kealy was halted by a large man in an orange parka. Standing astride the track, the man shouted, “Please help, my wife is dying. She is blue with cold.”

  The one thing Kealy had no desire to do was to stop, even briefly. He was going well now, savoring the gradual withdrawal of the leaden miasma he had fought against since Carn Pica. But he was at heart quite unable to turn down a cry for help. Swearing to himself, he nodded to the man and gestured for him to lead on.

  Some thirty yards through the mist to the side of the track and half hidden by a shallow depression was a four-man igloo tent in Army camouflage colors. Here the man stopped. Kealy shrugged off his bergen, automatically feeling for the first-aid pouch that hung over his backside between the water-bottle containers. In the dim light of the tent Kealy perceived two men sitting back, wearing the orange waterproof parkas. Both smiled at him. The man who had stopped him outside was bent over a fourth person inside a sleeping bag.

  As Kealy carefully wiped his eyes with his hands, for he still had trouble with his contact lenses, he felt a hardness pressed against the small of his back.

  “Do nothing stupid, Major Kealy. We are armed and you are in no fit state to cause trouble. Simply lie back against the wall of the tent and look into the light.”

  Kealy did as he was told, half wondering if Lofty and his staff had added a new and unexpected twist to the trainees’ endurance test. He screwed up his eyes against the bright light that shone in his face. He heard a soft, mechanical whirr as of a cine camera.

  After the accusations were over, along with Kealy’s bemused denials, his arms were pinioned, his shirt and windbreaker peeled back and a hypodermic needle inserted into the fold of soft skin under his armpit. Within seconds he lost consciousness as the insulin surged through his veins, and the Tadnams men, helped by de Villiers, eased his body out of the tent.

  Taking great care with their footprints, de Villiers and one other man carried Kealy to the side of the track and maneuvered his limp arms into the bergen’s shoulder straps. Propping him into a half-sitting, half-lying position against the bergen, they removed his hat and placed his rifle some distance away as though discarded. The other two men removed the bleeper, packed up the tent, leaving no signs of its presence, and all four then headed along the footpath to Pencelli.

  Now that Kealy was motionless, his body began to lose heat rapidly through convection, conduction, radiation and evaporation. Quite when he died is open to doubt.

  At close to 9 a.m. two trainees found his body. One, a captain, thought he felt a faint pulse but could not be certain. They did the best they could and Signaler Simon Maylor spent many hours pressed body-to-body against Kealy inside a survival bag within a hastily fashioned snow hole.

  Twenty hours later improved conditions allowed a helicopter to land. Kealy’s body was airlifted to Brecon Hospital Mortuary for an autopsy. All signs of chlorpropamide and excess insulin had long since dispersed within his bloodstream.

  There were those among Kealy’s friends who found it hard to believe that a fit and experienced mountain man such as he could have died in such circumstances, but since there was no other possible explanation, even the canniest of SAS staffers agreed that “anyone can die of hypothermia in such conditions.” That was the obvious answer. There could have been no foul play, for there was no one with any motive. Far from it, Kealy was a friend to all who knew him.

  The Brecon coroner, Trevor Evans, discussed the matter with the Chief Constable of the South Powys Division and reiterated on several occasions that he felt the SAS should be more careful with their trainees.

  Mike Kealy’s grieving parents remained baffled. They knew their son, a man of enormous common sense and practicality, would have removed bricks from his bergen long before he reached the stage of lying down and giving up. “Anyone can die of hypothermia,” they were told by sympathetic old friends. But they knew Mike was not “anyone.”

  The media learned of the tragedy, and the angle they took to explain the conundrum of so experienced a man simply lying down to die was as unfortunate as it was sensational.

  Sun: SAS hero Major Mike Kealy lost his last battle… a desperate attempt to show he was still as tough as his young recruits.

  Western Mail: SAS major died trying to outdo recruits.

  Daily Telegraph: SAS hero died in snow trying to prove fitness.

  Kealy’s close friend Major Tony Shaw concluded, “He was an experienced hillwalker who knew the risks well. He had instructed soldiers and knew the effects of hypothermia and how to avoid them. He looked at this test purely in subjective but positive terms: he wore light clothes to avoid overheating and to increase his speed. When he realized he had misc
alculated it was too late, but he could not give up and walk off the hill. Once he had decided to undertake the task, it was in his nature that nothing would be allowed to stop him.”

  The greatest irony was that Mike Kealy did not lose his last battle against the elements. He won because of his doggedness, and lost his life because of his innate kindness.

  Major Kealy’s obituary appeared in the Daily Telegraph-The Times was on strike-on February 6, 1979. Tony Shaw wrote of him, “He stands as a memorial to all that is courageous and honest. We do not often see his like. He will be sadly missed.”

  25

  … For ten years they had seen each other well away from Tokai, and in between Anne’s regular visits to her husband’s hospital bed. Their love matured and gradually impinged upon de Villiers’s innermost psyche. Then, suddenly, Jan Fontaine contracted jaundice at the hospital and died. His unexpected death forced de Villiers to confront an issue he had studiously avoided. He knew that he resented, even hated, Fontaine, but he never for a moment considered the easy solution of a hospital accident. That would be murder, not impersonal business, and would sully the pure and solid core of his love. Likewise he knew he could never propose marriage while he was still earning his living by killing.

  He lived by the unwritten but rigid law of the contract killer. If he took on a job, he would see it through to the end. He would complete those contracts still in hand but he would take on no new work.

  In the African winter of 1986, two months after the death of Jan Fontaine, de Villiers flew with Anne to Pietersburg and hired a Land Rover. Unhampered by time limitations, they wandered the Transvaal, camping among the quiet pools and mist-laden hills of Magoebaskloef, to the night calls of Samango monkeys. Then, high in the Woodbush Mountains, they backpacked through forests of kiepersol and cabbage trees, gazing up at giant ironwoods alive with birdsong.