He wiped his damp forehead and removed his spectacles. “It would not go straight. Did you not see? I could not get the angle right. So, knowing all was lost if I continued to try
for the optimum angle, I slewed it ’round… My last chance… You see, I was too late to crash into Marman. My only sure chance was for Marman to crash into the BMW.”
“Never mind, you did good. It is finished. Forget the problems.”
Meier reached for the radio and tried de Villiers’s call sign. Silence, but then they had agreed on strict radio silence afterward.
They were five hundred yards past the scene of the crash. Already, closer to the scene, cars were stopped on both sides of the highway. Both men grabbed for their binoculars.
John Smythe was horrified. He had used the Ford Escort as a shield all the way from Steeple Langford, keeping well behind, for he was aware of Marman’s program and so was not worried about losing sight of the 2CV. He had begun to nurture suspicions about the driver of the Ford.
When the crash occurred, the Escort had gone past the accident site and out of Smythe’s view. He pulled to the side some three hundred yards short of the BMW’s resting place. The 2CV was out of sight, down the bank. Smythe was mystified. He was certain he had witnessed a planned murder but who and where was the guilty party?
He reached for his binoculars and scrutinized the occupants of the stationary vehicles as well as the small group of people gathering by the crashed cars. All seemed innocent. Back behind him the road was empty but for moving traffic. However, some two hundred yards away, on the far verge of the highway, he saw the Volvo, and refocusing his binoculars, felt his skin prickle at the back of his neck. He had studied the Sumail photos long and hard and he had an excellent memory. One of the two men in the Volvo was definitely the man in the floppy hat. The chin, the nose line and the general set of the lower features were identical.
Smythe had no alternative choice of action. When he found a telephone he would give Spike the sad news, but meanwhile he would gently check out what he fully realized might turn out to be merely an embarrassing coincidence. As he pondered his move, it came to him that both Volvo occupants had used binoculars. Birdwatchers or racegoers perhaps? Perhaps not. He decided to avoid any risk of losing them. Instead of turning around at the distant roundabout, he would cross the central divider. Finding a gap in the traffic, both ways, he did just that.
As Smythe’s Morris Marina TC Coupe jolted onto the eastbound lanes, Meier took alarm. This was his undoing, for it served to confirm Smythe’s suspicions. He gave open chase as the Volvo accelerated away. Jake took the Stonehenge fork, and at Tilshead, in the center of Salisbury Plain, veered east on to West Down. Smythe kept close but, on a minor dirt track, found himself confronted at a sharp bend by the halted Volvo and one of its passengers, pointing a gun at his windshield.
Too close to reverse, and unarmed, Smythe knew he stood a good chance of dealing with both men if only he could get within kicking range of the gun. He could kick more quickly than the gunman could squeeze his trigger. This was not conceit: it was standard knowledge to thousands of karate practitioners everywhere.
Smythe raised his hands and stepped out of the Marina. As Meier moved to frisk him, he made his move. The gun, a. 44 Magnum Blackhawk, flew to the ground but Meier eluded the follow-up blow and closed in a bear hug with Smythe.
Jake, having retrieved the revolver, moved behind Smythe and shot him through the back of the neck. This was an error, but Jake was a mechanic, not a gunman, and for a moment he could not comprehend why Meier and Smythe both fell to the ground and lay still. He felt a sharp pain in his wrist from the kick of the heavy revolver and his ears rang. Brain, blood, and bone splinters from Smythe added to the mess that was Meier’s face.
Jake crossed himself instinctively and dragged both bodies into the Volvo’s spacious rear compartment. He covered them with the sound baffle and drove to the agreed upon rendezvous with de Villiers in Andover.
De Villiers showed no visible distress at the news of Meier’s death and accepted without question Jake’s explanation of the accident. He phoned a Tadnams number and three hours later two men arrived in a Volkswagen Polo. Jake placed some tools and a brake-fluid container in two carrier bags and transferred them to the Polo. They did not see the Volvo again.
De Villiers had watched Sir Peter Horsley being taken off to the hospital with head lacerations but otherwise seemingly unhurt. The two wrecked cars were transported to a garage in nearby Amesbury, Panelcraft Motors, which de Villiers had studied carefully before coming to the rendezvous.
At 2 a.m. that night the two men broke into the garage without difficulty and leaving no signs of their visit. By flashlight they removed all the parasite components, reconnected the brake lines, bled the brakes and refilled the system with fluid. They were clear of the building by 4 a.m. but the police accident inspector did not arrive until after 11 a.m. and his necessarily rather limited check revealed nothing suspicious.
Three weeks later Sir Peter Horsley was warned that the police were considering a charge against him of causing death by reckless driving. Sir Peter hired a private investigator and, the following April, his name was completely cleared at an inquest in Salisbury. The key factor was evidence from witnesses, such as Mrs. Elspeth Allen, the horse-van driver, that Sir Peter’s car began to swerve when driving smoothly in the middle of the road and not, as the police had suggested, following tire contact with the curbside.
The coroner, Mr. John Elgar, recorded a verdict of misadventure and concluded, “Sir Peter’s vehicle was seen to snake along the A303 for some reason which we will never know, then crossed the central divider and came into violent collision with the other vehicle.”
In late November 1986 Davies showed a letter, addressed to him at one of the Tadnam’s postal addresses, to de Villiers. The water engineer whom Davies had met at the Anglo-Omani Society’s meeting the previous October had written to say how sorry he had been to read of Major Mike Marman’s death and that, incidentally, he had been wrong about the Zakhir action. Marman had not after all been in the armored cars on that occasion. The relevant officer had been Captain Simon Mirriam, one of Marman’s troop leaders in Dhofar.
Both surviving members of the Clinic agreed they would say nothing about this to the sheikh, since Marman remained, by wider definition, responsible for the action. They had acted in good faith and had already received his check in return for the film taken in Blandfield Road, newspaper evidence of the ensuing accident, and their file on Marman’s apparent responsibility for the death of Tama’an bin Amr.
PART 4
36
Epilepsy is common. Five hundred thousand people in Britain alone are epileptics. The disorder can attack anyone, at any time, sometimes developing in old age. Genetic factors are often responsible but, as in Mac’s case, an accident can cause structural abnormality to the brain and bring on “secondary” epilepsy. Anticonvulsant pills usually help epileptics lead a normal life but there are often side effects such as nausea, hair loss, coarsening of the features, drowsiness, double vision, and disturbing nightmares.
Mac had served with distinction in the SAS until, when he was driving a Land Rover over the Dhofar jebel in 1975, a land mine had blown him into the windshield. His skull was driven inward, impacting his brain. Mac had suffered intermittent epileptic fits ever since. His eleven-year-old daughter, Lucia, was a plucky, loving girl who had never known a time when Daddy did not have fits. She knew about the recovery position, the dangers of choking, and had coped all alone on occasions when she was back from school but her mother was still at work.
Mac never remembered anything about his attacks. But many of his dreams recurred so often that they lingered etched in vivid colors in his waking mind. Most were corrupted regurgitations of his past but, obedient to no normal chronology, they unfolded in a weird disorder as though conjured into being by a madman. Mac was able to repeat every facet of the dreams to Pauline; not that
she was able to draw much meaning from them. He would see himself plucking chickens at the factory the previous week and then, in an instant, playing children’s games with his brother on the hills above Cork back in the forties.
The war dreams came often and with particular clarity. One began at Windsor Castle with Mac in the dress uniform of the Grenadier Guards. The drill parade passed directly through a wall and entered the dripping woods of the wadi Naheez. Now the other men were in sweat-streaked camouflage, SAS comrades bearing heavy bergens, their wary eyes darting sideways through dense groves of habok, the euphorbia used to treat camel mange. A huge bird alighted and the men-all but Mac and a Hadr tribesman-were gone. Mac loved all living things. He knew the bird was a sacred ibis from the sea- khors, or creek. From the habok there now issued other wonders, Tristram’s grackle, great white pelicans, shrike and sunbird, yellow-vented bulbul, kingfisher, and Paradise flycatcher.
The Hadr led Mac into a fluted limestone cavern where together they took combs of light honey from the bees’ nests. They sat on a rock and ate the honey unharmed by the angry bees.
“With many others,” said the Hadr, “I fled from the Yemen to avoid death by thaa’r. Everywhere the blood is spilled to avenge previous killings. There can be no end to it.”
Mac’s honeycomb became a packet of army hardtack biscuits. As he crouched low among the boulders, sweat ran down into his eyes. A spider crawled over the back of his neck: he flicked out with repulsion but it was only the parachute-cord necklace to which he had taped his morphine syrettes, wristwatch and identity discs.
Jock Logan tapped him on the shoulder and nodded. The advance was on. The “Duke” was there, Major Richard Pirie, dead now but always in the dreams. And the CO, Johnnie Watts, with his great wide grin and enormous confidence. G Squadron SAS. Jebel Samhan, Dhofar. Mac, the mortar expert, was part of the heavy gun troop, each man burdened by 120 pounds of weaponry, ammunition and water ration: in that heat a crippling load.
Up ahead the ex-communist firqat group began to crouch as they advanced, a sheepdoglike lowering of their backs as though sensing some alien presence close by. Mac knew that they could smell the enemy.
An Englishman, Kenneth Edwards, led the firqat, the Khalid bin Walid band, and Mac saw him bring up his rifle. Suddenly, immediately below them and dead ahead, Mac saw thirty or forty heavily armed adoo . Their Kalashnikov assault rifles indicated hard-core guerrillas; the adoo militia toted semiautomatic Simonovs. Smoke curled from cook fires. For once the adoo had been caught napping.
Mac and his group opened fire. Jock Logan, Barrie Davies and Ian Winstone sent a hail of GMPG bullets and 66mm LAW rockets into the midst of the adoo. They charged down, bloodlust up, fear and heavy loads forgotten. Dead and wounded from both sides soon littered the dustbowl.
In the dream Mac felt again the unbelievable heat, smelled the cordite, heard the buzz of the flies.
They ran short of ammunition and enemy guns from surrounding ridges began to pick them off.
The scene switched to the wadi Adonib in February 1975 with three G Squadron troops “beating” the forested wadi floor. Mac was halfway up one flanking hill, and at a smoke signal from the squadron boss, a peer of the realm, he brought his deadly 60mm mortar into play with backing from his team, Mick and Ginge. The second round targeted an adoo patrol and, when the SAS beaters arrived, nothing was left but a leg and a pair of rubber flip-flops.
Now Mac sat in the long narrow saloon of Chancers Wine Bar with Tosh Ash, as witty as ever, and drinking like there was no tomorrow. Tosh had been one of the lads and fit as could be. Now a pubkeeper and bon viveur, his face was florid, unhealthy. They drank to Mac, Callsign Five, Mortar Man Extraordinary. It was one of the better dreams.
On November 28, 1987, thirteen years after the end of their time in Dhofar, Jock Logan and Barry Davies met in Hereford, as was often their wont, and walked together along Hampton Park Road to see their old friend. There were those who no longer visited Mac, perhaps because they had seen him on a bad day when the mood was on him, perhaps merely because their friendship had dissolved with time, as is the way of life. But Jock and Barry shared with Mac moments and memories that each of them savored and knew could never again be matched for sheer intensity of feeling.
Jock had with him a fat and well-thumbed album of photographs, not just of Oman days, but going back to the sixties, when he and Mac and Frank Bilcliff were at the forefront of Britain’s rock-climbers. Among many other feats their group had been the first Army men ever to scale the Old Man of Hoy’s crumbling flanks. Since Dhofar days, Jock had married a pretty lass who had worked at the Bunch of Grapes from 1967 to 1971. They had a lovely daughter now who was the best of friends with Mac’s daughter, Lucia, and Jock had been Mac’s best man. Jock’s home was in Aberdeen, where he thrived at his job as salesman for a drill-bit manufacturer servicing the flourishing oil industry.
Barry Davies was a salesman for Cardiff-based BCB, manufacturers and retailers of survival equipment. He’d had his first book published earlier that year, a best-selling manual on survival techniques. Ten years earlier Barry had received the British Empire Medal for his part in an SAS operation sanctioned jointly by Prime Minister Jim Callaghan and Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.
In October 1977 four Palestinian terrorists hijacked a Lufthansa airliner. They were acting in support of the Baader-Meinhof gang and demanded release of the gang’s leaders from German jails. A German commando unit from GSG-9 was tasked to release the Lufthansa hostages with help from an SAS officer, Major Alistair Morrison. (Morrison had relieved Kealy’s group at Mirbat five years before, and in 1979 he was one of the first to learn of Kealy’s death on the Brecon Beacons.) Barry, then a sergeant, was tasked to accompany Major Morrison with a supply of special SAS flash-grenades. The hijackers led the Anglo-German team a merry dance and in Aden they murdered the airliner’s pilot. Flying on to Mogadishu in Somalia, they dumped the body on the runway, ending any remaining chances of negotiation. Morrison and Davies then led the highly successful attack by GSG-9, and both men were later decorated for their courage.
Barry was well respected in the SAS but he was by nature an entrepreneur and had for a long while been interested in the housing market inside Hereford. In the late sixties he found an excellent house in a suburb of Hereford for his friend Mac and soon afterward introduced him to a lovely girl named Pauline, who became Mac’s lodger and later his wife.
The two men turned into Salisbury Avenue. It was Saturday. Pauline was at work in town but they had called at her shop, Chelsea Girl, to collect the house keys.
“Pauline says the fits are slowly getting worse despite Mac’s medication. His dark moods come more frequently. It must be very difficult for Pauline.”
Jock nodded. “He’s a lucky man having those lassies for wife and daughter. They will stand by him to the end.”
37
After medication Mac slept for nine hours uninterrupted by the dreams. He awoke refreshed and looking forward to the visit from his friends. He was a quiet, proud, and very private man. So long as he was employed in honest work he could keep his head up, no matter how bad the fits. Unfortunately this caused something of a vicious circle since hard work quickly made him exhausted and prone to worse attacks. To fend them off he would increase the tablets, which in turn made him drowsy and brought on the dark, destructive moods.
Mac hated the moods and the way he behaved when under their influence. He wished above all to be the best possible husband, father and friend, and he hated feeling exhausted. But to give up his job, to be unemployed and dependent entirely on Pauline’s work, would be more than his personal pride could bear.
During these run-up weeks to Christmas he had to work twice as hard at Sun Valley Poultry, for the chicken orders came thick and fast and everyone was on overtime. He earned?160 a week, Monday to Friday, and, despite the fits, had held the job down for several months. Sun Valley was on the far side of town and Mac traveled by bicycle. The pills oft
en affected his balance and made him wobbly. Pauline, he knew, was increasingly worried, especially since a recent incident when a passing van had knocked him off his bicycle on a roundabout.
He fussed around the sitting room and puffed up the cushions. There was little to do as Pauline kept the place immaculate. Lucia was away at a ballet class in Church Road.
Jock and Barry arrived and Mac soon forgot his worries. They spent a merry afternoon in reminiscence, laughing over once shared hardships and recalling long-forgotten faces brought alive by Jock’s photographs.
After tea, Mac began to show signs of tiredness and Barry discreetly suggested it was time to leave. Jock promised to return the following day to collect his album, and when they were gone, Mac sat alone with a lager and thumbed slowly through the pages. He stopped at a photo captioned “Operation Dharab, January 1975.” The two men with an 81mm mortar tube were shirtless, bronzed and lean. Mac and Tosh Ash in their prime on the day both were wounded by the same bullet. That day Mac unknowingly became a marked man.
Operation Dharab was planned as the biggest army offensive of the five-year war against the communists, an attempt to attack the guerrilla stores center of Sherishitti, a complex of caves deep in guerrilla-held mountains. First an army force of 650 men would seize the ridgeline position of Defa, then advance into the beginning of the densely foliated zone that began two miles to the south, and on to a pair of bald hilltops known as Point 980. This position overlooked the valley of the caves, two and a half miles to the east. From Point 980 the final advance would be launched at Sherishitti.
The main army force was Jebel Regiment (JR), John Milling’s old unit, supported by Red Company of Desert Regiment (DR), whose second-in-command was Captain David Mason. Each of the four companies would have firqat guides and SAS liaison men attached. Two SAS troops and a strong firqat contingent would lead the advance under the command of SAS Major Arish Trant. Mac, Tosh Ash, and their mortars would accompany this group.
Killer Elite Page 27
