by Shaun Clarke
Terry turned back to face them. ‘We expect the same of you,’ he said, reloading his pistol. ‘You have until tomorrow.’
‘Christ!’ Jimbo whispered, staring in disbelief at the card.
‘Let’s get started, gentlemen,’ Wild Bill said, exhaling a cloud of cigarette smoke. ‘We haven’t got all day.’
‘Yes, we have,’ Terry replied.
They did indeed have all day and Terry ensured that it was a long one, taking them repeatedly through the double tap. Both Dead-eye and Jimbo were experts with the handgun, but the trick in this instance was withdrawing it from beneath the long futah and bringing it into the firing position quickly enough, and accurately enough, to cut down the enemy before he could react. As this was made no easier by the complicated folds of the robe, they had to rehearse the withdrawal for hours before getting as far as the actual firing range.
While taking their training seriously, both sergeants could not help being amused at the idea of being trained by a trooper who normally took orders from them. This led to many jokes, which Terry took in good part.
Eventually, however, both men had mastered the rapid withdrawal technique and were able to go on to the firing range, where it was combined with shooting. In this part of the training both men came into their own, showing that their extensive experience of armed combat in many previous operations had honed their shooting skills to a fine edge. Before the long day had ended both were withdrawing the handgun, bringing it into the firing position, and firing with absolute accuracy, repeatedly piercing the playing card right through its centre. When they had done this at least a dozen times, with no misses, Terry, having enjoyed his brief moment of authority, called it a day.
‘You blokes are as good as me now,’ he said, puffed up with pride. ‘We’ll go into Aden tomorrow. For now, let’s have dinner.’
‘Yes, boss,’ said Dead-eye and Jimbo simultaneously, before both burst out laughing.
6
Awakening at first light the following morning, Dead-eye, Jimbo and Terry had a shower and shave, then dressed in their olive-green gear, or OGs, and went to the NAAFI canteen in Ballycastle House for a breakfast of fried eggs, bacon, sausage, baked beans and toast, washed down with a couple of mugs each of steaming hot tea.
‘Better than that noggie food, I can tell you,’ Jimbo said with relish, scooping up his fried egg on his fork.
‘That’s not very nice, Sarge,’ Terry said with some feeling. ‘They’re Arabs, not noggies.’
‘They’re all brownies to me,’ Jimbo said. ‘Apart from that, I’ve nothing against ’em. I just don’t like their grub.’
‘If you like your scran so much,’ Dead-eye said, ‘why don’t you fill your mouth with it and let us have some peace?’
‘Good old Dead-eye,’ Jimbo snorted, shoving a piece of sausage into his mouth and winking at Terry. ‘Always sticking up for the lower orders. He developed his little fondness for our coloured brothers in Malaya and Borneo.’
‘An enemy to respect,’ Dead-eye said. ‘You had to admire them.’
‘I don’t respect anyone trying to nail me. I just treat ’em with care. Your respect for blokes trying to kill you has always bleedin’ amazed me.’
‘If he respects men who are trying to kill him,’ Terry said with a cheeky grin, ‘he’ll be full of respect in the souks of Aden. Have my NCOs finished their breakfast? Good! Let’s take off.’
‘Is that an order or a request?’ Jimbo asked, letting the cocky young trooper know who was in charge.
‘We’re running late.’
‘There’s your answer,’ Dead-eye said.
Jimbo grinned, greatly amused by the confidence Terry had picked up since joining the Keeni-Meeni squads. ‘I’m pretty sure we’re in good hands,’ he said.
‘Thanks a lot, Sarge,’ said Terry.
They returned to the ‘spider’, their sleeping quarters, where they set about making themselves look like Arabs by darkening their skin with a mixture of coffee, lamp-black, iodine and potassium permanganate. Some of them, including Dead-eye, had done the same in Malaya when passing themselves off as Malays or Chinese. The basic mixture could be lightened or darkened with ease, which made it highly adaptable for a wide variety of skin tones. In this case, when the three men had created a colouring similar to that of the local Arabs, they applied it carefully to their faces, hands, wrists and all the way up their arms, to ensure that no white skin would be glimpsed should the loose sleeves of the futah ride up. As they were wearing Arab sandals, instead of shoes, they also dyed their feet, ankles and legs up to the knees. Finally, even though they would be wearing the Arab shemagh on their heads, they dyed their hair black to ensure that their alien hair colour would not be betrayed by loose strands.
‘This is the bit I love most of all,’ Terry said, examining himself carefully in the full-length mirror. ‘Dressing up for the part. It brings out the natural actor in me. Changes my personality completely. Don’t you think so, Sarge?’
‘You don’t have a personality,’ Jimbo replied. ‘You’re just a walking vacuum in a uniform. Without that, you’d be nothing.’
‘Not a uniform today, Sarge. I’m an Arab now.’
‘Fucking Lawrence of Arabia, more like it,’ Jimbo laughed. ‘And every bit as barmy.’
‘All these Arabs are mad,’ Terry said. Now let’s go out and prove it.’
The joking, Dead-eye knew, was a means of holding in check the healthy tension that was now taking hold of them as they thought of mingling with the Arabs, practically face to face. For all the bullshit, the three of them knew, as they strapped their holstered Brownings in the cross-draw position under their futahs, that what they were about to do was very dangerous indeed and that they could easily end up dead – either shot by the enemy or murdered by an irate mob after being caught attempting the double tap. In particular, irrespective of the reassuring feel of the 9-milli in the holster strapped around his waist, Dead-eye felt unprotected without his L42A1 bolt-action sniper rifle and heavy bandoliers of 7.62mm rounds; in truth, he felt almost naked.
Walking to the motor pool with their faces darkened and robes, flapping in the breeze, they received a lot of derisory remarks from ‘greens’ and other SAS men. Used to this by now, Terry just grinned and gave the jokers the finger. At the motor pool, they had to sign for a ‘Q’ car, or unmarked car, this one a particularly battered old Beetle of the kind used by a lot of the local Arab traders. To emphasize its well-worn appearance, it had been packed with cardboard boxes, wrapping paper with Arabic lettering and other junk merchandise, such as cigarettes, cheap binoculars and cameras, and boxes of ballpens, as sold by the traders in the bum boats.
‘Christ,’ Jimbo said, studying the car. ‘I don’t mind it looking so bad, but it smells like it’s been pissed in.’
‘It probably has been, at one time or another,’ Terry said. ‘The piss of fear, Sergeant.’
Glancing sideways at Terry as they clambered into the messy, foul-smelling car, Dead-eye realized that the young trooper had matured tremendously since his hellish experiences in Borneo, only a year ago. Straight out of Hereford, Terry had been very unsure of himself at first, the constant butt of the other men’s jokes, but he had soon proved to be an excellent soldier, particularly at the climax of the campaign when, with Corporals Alf Laughton (now a member of the directing staff at 22 SAS Training Wing, Hereford) and Pete Welsh, they had fought their way back to base through the hellish swamps surrounding the River Koemba. Welsh had died at the climax of that operation – shot off a walkway, to plunge to his death in the roaring torrents of a gorge over a hundred feet below. Terry, however, had not only survived it but, as the team’s signaller, protected his all-important radio every inch of the way. Shaped into a toughened, experienced trooper by that frightful experience, he had been a natural choice for the present highly dangerous task. Now, he was more than a little confident, even with his NCOs.
As Terry drove the two sergeants out of the guarded
gates of the military complex and along the dusty road to Aden, in the shadow of the volcanic mountains, he told them a little about the city.
‘Being located at the southern entrance to the Red Sea,’ he began rather pedantically, ‘it’s mainly been used as a commercial centre and refuelling stop for ships. However, it first really gained importance with the opening of the Suez canal in 1869, then with the development of the oilfields in Arabia and the Persian Gulf.’ Jimbo rolled his eyes, but Terry did not notice. ‘It has a few small industries, such as light manufacturing, evaporation of sea water to obtain marine salt, and boatbuilding. Naturally, as a free port, it’s much loved by tourists and other seaborne travellers, despite the presence of the armed greens in the streets.’
‘Nothing like a little duty free,’ Jimbo said, grinning at Dead-eye, ‘to make the tourists lose their common sense. So give us the layout, lad.’
‘Ah!’ Terry exclaimed, catching the older man’s drift. ‘It consists of three sections: Crater, the old commercial quarter; at-Tawahi, the business section; and Ma’alah, the native harbour area. We do most of our work in Crater or around the harbour area.’
‘With the tourists,’ Dead-eye said.
‘Right, Sarge. And those tourists are a bit of a problem when it comes to making a hit.’
‘Block your line of fire, do they?’ Jimbo asked.
‘Exactly. Or go into a panic when you’re trying to make your getaway. Run right across your path of flight. Either that or the Arabs, when they see the dead man, take it out on the nearest white person. And who’s that?’
‘Someone off a boat,’ Dead-eye said.
‘Exactly,’ Terry said. ‘Tourists!’
Arriving at the harbour area, they drove through narrow, crowded streets, past the many duty-free shops and food stalls, and parked on Tawahi Main Road, close to the fenced-off harbour, but a good distance from the armed British soldiers guarding the gateway to the Aden Port Trust. The P & O liner Himalaya was anchored in the bay, looming large beyond the iron railings, concrete municipal buildings and warehouses of the docks, but passengers were coming ashore from the transit craft and emerging from the gateway to stare goggle-eyed, first at the brazenly importuning taxi drivers, then at the packed, dusty streets of the town.
‘Ships’ passengers are often a bit frightened when they first set eyes on this area,’ Terry said, indicating Tawahi Main Road and its many shops, smoking and steaming food stalls, Sunni and Saydi Muslims, Hindus, Yemeni Jews, holy men and traders, beggars and thieves, veiled women, and dirty children – all watched by stony-faced armed British troops – the ‘greens’ – armed with Sten guns and self-loading rifles. ‘But the only real danger here is in having your pocket picked or losing your money when you buy a phoney Parker pen or a pair of binoculars without lenses. The real danger is up in Crater, where most of the terrorists hang around.’
‘So what are we doing here?’ Dead-eye asked him.
‘Just filling you in, Sarge.’
Starting the car again, Terry drove at a crawl along the busy road, into the seething heart of Aden, where the Arabs were as dense as flies and every bit as noisy. As the car passed through side streets filled with shops, all run by Arabs though most had British names such as the London Store or the New Era, Dead-eye took note of the shopkeepers sitting outside on wooden chairs, the tourists haggling as they sipped tea, the tense soldiers standing guard at nearly every corner, and realized that this place, no matter what Terry thought, was a powder-keg waiting to be lit.
‘Take the 9-milli out here and fire it,’ he said, ‘and you’d have bloody chaos.’
‘Too right,’ Terry confirmed. ‘The tourists would shit themselves, the Arabs would take it out on the tourists, and the greens would open fire on the Arabs. A right bloody mess, all right.’
‘And Crater?’
‘No greens. Few tourists. Just the Arab – ours and theirs. The ones on our side are poor and can’t take sides, so we’re all on our own up there.’
‘You like it, don’t you?’ Dead-eye said.
‘Yes, I do,’ Terry confessed.
‘Danger can be addictive,’ Jimbo said. ‘You’ve got the bug, kid.’ He glanced up the lower slopes of the mountain beyond the town and saw a triangular-shaped maze of white, flat-roofed buildings, partly covered by a layer of dense, low cloud. ‘Is that Crater up there?’
‘Yes. That’s where we’re going. We’ll be there in ten minutes.’ Turning another street corner, Terry left the shops behind, then turned again almost immediately, passing a wire fence that ran alongside the road skirting the lower slopes of the mountains. ‘Here,’ he said, reaching into the glove compartment and withdrawing the photos of two male Arabs. ‘These are the two we’re after. They live down in Aden but visit Crater every afternoon to collect funds from various shopkeepers for their Yemeni brothers up in the Radfan. We’ll just have to trawl the various places we know they go to and hope to catch them before the day’s done. If we do, we finish them off with a double tap, then get the hell out of there.’
‘Are we going in this car?’ Dead-eye asked.
‘No. We park in a residential street at the edge of Crater and walk into the commercial centre. When we’ve completed the job, we’ll all make our own way back to the car, then skedaddle out of there.’
‘How long does the first man at the car give the others to reach him?’
‘He either gives them five minutes or takes off at the first sign of trouble – such as avenging Arabs.’
‘But the other two could just be lost or captured,’ Dead-eye said. ‘Don’t we go back to find out?’
‘No. And we don’t pick up the wounded or go back for anyone who gets lost. That’s why we don’t carry identification. It’s a win-or-lose game.’
‘Fucking great,’ Jimbo said.
‘Sensible,’ Dead-eye corrected him.
‘I agree,’ Terry said. ‘The Arabs are too volatile and unpredictable, so there’s no turning back.’
While Terry drove towards Crater, Dead-eye and Jimbo studied the photos of the two Arabs more carefully. When they were sure they had taken in every feature of the two men and would recognize them if they saw them, they put a match to the pictures, let them burn up, then threw the blackened remains out of the car window, thus ensuring that no evidence of their intentions would be found on their person if they were caught.
They reached Crater after a ten-minute drive along a road that wound up the lower slopes of the volcanic mountain. Terry’s ‘commercial centre’ was actually a rabbit warren of narrow streets and souks, all packed with shops, small, enclosed bazaars, cafés, Arabs and animals. Many of the Arabs were playing draughts or other games at tables outside the cafés. Others were smoking opium pipes. Nearly all were drinking mint tea. The alleys and souks were filled with the smoke from burning braziers and steam from pots of cooking food or boiling tea. Men were leading cattle through the narrow, packed souks, letting them ease their way, mooing, through the tide of people, which included many children and their veiled mothers. There were few cripples or blind people, for most of them were down in the harbour area, exploiting the tourists. Even without them, there was still a fearful crush.
‘You were right,’ Dead-eye said, ‘there’s no room to breathe here.’
‘Which means little room to manoeuvre,’ Jimbo added. ‘No wonder it calls for special training.’
Terry grinned, pleased. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The training isn’t just for accuracy with the 9-milli; it’s to get up your speed. When you see the target, you don’t have too much time to prepare yourself and take aim. You have to make an instant calculation even as you’re whipping out the gun. You have to shoot and scoot, so make sure you get it right the first time. There are no second chances.’
After driving around as much of the area as was possible given the narrowness of the souks, pointing out as they went the gathering places for enemy agents, Terry parked on the southern edge of the densely populated area, in a st
reet of flat-roofed stone houses that contained few people and ran out to the mountain slopes, thus providing a quick escape route. After automatically checking that their Brownings were in the proper, cross-draw position under their robes and that their make-up was still in good shape, the men got out of the car, surprised by how hot the sun was, even though it was still overcast.
‘It’s always like this,’ Terry explained, glancing at the few Arabs, mostly women and children, wandering about the residential street. ‘Bloody muggy. Are you all set?’ Dead-eye and Jimbo both nodded. ‘All right,’ Terry continued. ‘From this point on, we don’t speak. We keep well apart – we’ll be less noticeable that way – but make sure we’re always in sight of each other. If any Arab speaks to you, try to avoid replying, but without actually offending him. I usually just nod and keep walking. If that’s not possible, reply in Arabic, but as briefly as possible, as if you’re in a hurry. First man who sees the target pots him. If we all see him at once, we all shoot at once. Try to get as close as possible before firing. We run for it the minute we’ve fired – we can’t stop to check that he’s dead. Escape under cover of the confusion caused by the shooting. Any questions?’
Dead-eye and Jimbo both shook their heads.
‘I’ll lead the way, stopping at the various likely meeting places I’ve already shown you. You keep a good distance behind me. When I stop, you fan out around me, though still well away from me, mingling with the crowd. Let’s go.’
By leading them along the relatively quiet residential street, Terry was able to give them time to adjust to the unease they felt when walking past real Arabs. Though their faces were dyed dark and shemaghs half-covered their faces, both Dead-eye and Jimbo felt as white as ever and could not accept that their disguise would pass muster this close to the women and children in the street. In the event, though many of the children and a few of the women and older men glanced at them, none of them seemed to notice anything unusual, and they reached the end of the street without incident.
