Wilco- Lone Wolf 7

by Geoff Wolak

  And coffee was all we got, a kiss on the cheek and phone number taken, an expensive taxi back – after I had paid for the meal for all of us.

  At the gate we found the MPs sat chatting to the duty MPs, and joined them.

  ‘Not a bad night,’ Swifty noted, the puppy jumping all over him.

  ‘When the car came through the window I was mad at that guy,’ I began. ‘Thought he’d fucked up my chances.’

  ‘And if the hammers has been back?’ MP Pete posed.

  ‘I was hoping Swifty would go for the head shot after I distracted the guy, then I saw the hammers forwards. I wonder if I would have pulled that girl, you know, if I’d shot him.’

  Swifty laughed loudly. ‘No!’

  MP Pete said, ‘People being killed right in front of you puts girls off. You know, dead bodies, blood.’

  ‘They’re nurses,’ I countered with, Swifty laughing all the more.

  ‘Well fuck, they’d be impressed if I did on the TV.’

  MP Pete shook his head. ‘Boss, don’t go shooting anyone to impress a bird. Please.’

  By Monday I was feeling better, and I figured that a week of good sleep was probably all that I had needed. My training was coming along, I was pushing myself, and I felt better.

  Most of the lads had turned up Sunday night, a drink the pub down the road, gossip caught up on – not least our wine bar incident, and Monday morning saw everyone gather in the briefing room. Some even appeared a little sun-tanned.

  ‘I hope you all had a good rest, but it’s time to get some training in now, and with the weather OK I’ll try and arrange some time in Scotland, some walking, some climbing, a map reading exercise or two. Any injuries for me to worry about?’

  No one had anything to report.

  ‘OK, good.’

  Our Admin corporal burst in. ‘Urgent call, Boss.’

  I followed him out, and into the Portakabin, lifting the phone. ‘Wilco.’

  ‘It’s Bob. A plane has been hijacked in Mali, heading west, a few Brits on board, many French. French GIGN will go after it, but they asked for you in support in case the passengers end up in the desert.’

  ‘Where’s it heading?’

  ‘Unknown, but could be Mauritania. I can have a plane ready in an hour, there is one at Brize Norton, but you might just go out there, sit around and come back.’

  ‘Just like Delta Force,’ I quipped. ‘Mahoney will be used to it.’

  ‘Are you ... OK to deploy?’

  ‘If you say we need to go, we go.’

  ‘But you’ll be back with the French...’

  ‘No big deal, we have to work with them.’

  ‘Their new Echo lookalike may spearhead this if the GIGN pass it over, their first official job.’

  ‘Let’s hope it’s not a screw up then.’

  ‘Reading between the lines, I’d say they want a little hand holding.’

  ‘Or blame sharing!’

  ‘Well, maybe.’

  I sighed loudly. ‘Have the plane ready, we’ll be there in an hour.’

  Back in the briefing room, expectant faces waited. ‘OK, listen up. When I say go ... you have thirty minutes to get desert gear on, fully kitted, we have a plane hijacking in West Africa – and our plane leaves in an hour. Move it!’

  They rushed out, chairs knocked over.

  I faced Bradley. ‘You may deploy, sir, command level decisions and all, so maybe you should get your desert kit ready, but then standby here.’

  ‘I have my kit here anyhow.’

  I lifted my head to O’Leary as he hovered. ‘Get the buses and escort.’

  He stepped out.

  ‘Bongo, Stores, I want AKM, but also VEPR, smoke and stun grenades, thunderflashes and respirators.’

  They rushed out.

  ‘Captain Harris, put a team together, you come along.’

  His people filed out.

  I ran across the runway to my house, tearing off my greens and getting my fresh clean browns on, hearing Swifty doing the same. Bandolier lifted, webbing slung over a shoulder, I cleaned out and topped up my two water bottles, two tins of spam taken from the cupboard and shoved into my mess tins, wrapped in green cloth.

  ‘You ready?’ I shouted.

  ‘Just about,’ came back.

  When he was ready we named items and ran down the list, metal crate closed but not locked yet, finally checking the house, everything switched off. We closed the door and walked over to the hangar, our crate placed down with others. Jogging to the armoury we drew our usual weapons, magazines issued.

  At the hangar, the lads knelt loading magazines, and we joined them, four magazines loaded for now, webbing and bandoliers placed into our crate.

  In the team crates we placed boxes of ammo, thunderflashes and smoke grenades, respirators, ration packs, brown cloth and extra brown flysheets.

  ‘We fighting in the desert?’ Rocko asked.

  ‘If they take the hostages off the plane someplace, yes, if not we might support the French when they storm the plane.’

  ‘Plane storming never works out well for anyone,’ Rizzo firmly put in.

  ‘Then maybe we can alter that, or warn the French,’ I told him.

  ‘That hijack in Marseilles went off OK for the French,’ Moran insisted.

  ‘I saw it on the TV,’ Rocko retorted. ‘Where the commando was dangling off the steps, others shot. Didn’t look that OK.’

  ‘Passengers all survived,’ Moran countered with. ‘Terrorists all dead.’

  ‘Assault team wounded,’ Rocko quipped.

  The Major walked over in his desert browns. ‘Bob said I should come along, in case there are issues with the French, or they do something daft.’

  ‘Like storming a fucking plane!’ Rocko noted.

  ‘They never go off well,’ the Major noted. ‘What about the regulars?’

  I eased up from my crate. ‘We’re there in support, and we don’t need a lot of men to support someone else. French may just want us to offer sniper support.’

  ‘Might keep Rawlson sweet,’ the Major noted.

  I made a face, considering that. Leading the Major back to his office I called Credenhill.

  ‘Captain?’

  ‘We’re off to a plane hijacking in West Africa, sir -’

  ‘So why the hell weren’t we notified about that, that’s our area?’

  ‘Because it’s a French GIGN led operation, we’re just in support, but I’d appreciate your “D” Squadron lads along or on standby.’

  ‘Hijackings don’t normally end well, Captain,’ he cautioned.

  ‘Maybe we’ll be lucky this time, sir.’

  ‘And they drag on for days and weeks.’

  ‘That they do, sir. So ... your men?’

  He sighed. ‘I’ll have them ready for the morning.’

  ‘Could you bring along a good supply of VEPR and fifty cal, your men may be offered a sniper support role.’

  ‘Will do. And be careful, Captain, this might be your undoing.’

  Phone down, I stared at the Major as he stared back. ‘He thinks this might be my undoing.’

  ‘Even you can’t storm a plane with any certainty,’ he pointed out. ‘One man you miss with a grenade and it’s all over, plane in flames – a bad newspaper headline.’

  I held my hands wide. ‘If people expect us to fail, we’ll not surprise them if we do. But we have to try.’

  We double-checked kit till the buses and escort arrived, but this was a well practised routine, the crates loaded, and off we set towards Brize Norton, blue flashing lights around us.

  Moran turned his head to me on the coach. ‘Max?’

  ‘This could end badly for the French,’ I told him.

  ‘Whether it does or not, we need the blame in the papers before the bodies are cold.’

  ‘You’re getting a bit mercenary, Captain.’

  ‘I don’t want the good work we’ve done, our reputation, undone by a French fuck-up.’

  �
�Damn right,’ Swifty put in.

  ‘No time to get Max here for the flight, unless it’s delayed. And he could be elsewhere,’ I pointed out.

  ‘They’ll surround that plane and negotiate for days,’ Swifty said. ‘He could join us out there.’

  ‘We can make an assessment when we know what the hell we’re doing.’

  ‘Where we heading anyhow?’ Moran asked.

  ‘Not sure yet, the hijack plane is in the air,’ I told them. ‘Hijackers could land it anywhere.’

  At Brize Norton we unloaded kit, the RAF now aware that we had priority, a Tristar just for us, plenty of RAF police around.

  I called Bob. ‘You know where that plane is heading?’

  ‘It just landed in Mauritania, being refuelled, and the authorities there are refuelling it. They’ll allow it to leave.’

  ‘They don’t want the headache.’

  ‘No, and it could go anywhere, maybe the Middle East. I’m sending you to Morocco to refuel and wait, French doing likewise, four hour flight. By time you land that plane may be down as well. If not, you could be chasing it around.’

  ‘Now we are Delta Force.’

  ‘Call me when you land in Morocco.’

  ‘Bob, what’s the international law on a hijack rescue, with mixed nationals?’

  ‘All comes down to the country it settles in, they have jurisdiction, and the French have to argue their way in to storm a plane and get permission. But if foreign nationals are killed outside French soil it opens up all sorts of claims, even compensation to the airline for a damaged plane. And right now, the GIGN would be most unwelcome in many North African states.’

  ‘Is that why we’re involved, Bob, politics and blame setting?’

  ‘It’s all about politics and blame setting, not saving lives.’

  I gathered the lads, as well as Signals and Intel. ‘OK, listen up. The hijacked plane has landed in Mauritania, but is being refuelled and they want rid of it. We’re flying to Morocco to refuel, then to chase that plane around. Mahoney, you should feel right at home.’

  ‘Done this shit a few times,’ he noted. ‘What if it heads to an unfriendly country?’

  ‘Then we turn around and come home.’

  ‘Done that a shit load of times as well,’ Mahoney noted.

  ‘You know the soft points on an airliner?’

  ‘I did all the courses, yeah.’

  ‘Skin of an airliner – will a 7.62mm penetrate?’

  ‘Yes, it’s not that tough, but there are soft spots and internal girders. Hit a soft spot and the round will go right through and out the other side. Hit a seat and the round stops, hit a support frame and it stops dead. Weakest spot is above the passenger window and below the luggage rack, twelve inches. The top is solid, so is the underside.’

  ‘Passenger windows?’

  ‘They’re quite tough. You could crack one open with two hits.’

  ‘Pilot’s windows?’

  ‘Again, tough. Round will ping off it, but crack it.’

  ‘Weak spot on the cockpit?’

  ‘A round will penetrate just above the pilot windows and to the side of the pilot windows, rest has instrumentation in the way.’

  ‘Fifty cal?’

  ‘Will go through a window, yes, even a pilot’s window, but not at an angle. Skin soft-spots are the same for any calibre, other areas have junk in the way.’

  ‘Door?’

  ‘Doors are tough, but a fifty cal will penetrate much of the time. Thing is ... if a round hits something solid it stops, and the door has levers inside and frame work.’

  ‘Climbing up the undercarriage to get in?’

  ‘There are one or two models of plane with access panels, not many. We had a book of them, and the technical data.’

  ‘Doors can be opened from the outside?’

  ‘Yes, on all aircraft, the emergency handle. Can’t be locked from the inside.’

  ‘Slide can be pulled from the outside?’

  ‘Yes, there’s a handle.’

  ‘And the best known methods of entry?’

  ‘You wait for the dumbass hijackers to make a mistake, like opening the door for food and water. Storming it means ladders and opening the doors, and that takes thirty seconds at least, time for a grenade to be thrown. There have been very few successful rescues, like the GIGN in Marseilles recently, one in Singapore a few years back.’

  ‘And the reason the GIGN were successful in Marseilles?’ I probed.

  ‘They used sets of steps to approach at night - most of the terrorists seen to be in the cockpit, opened the door quietly but were spotted, a shoot out – a few men wounded. They were successful because the hijackers had no explosives or grenades, no passengers shot at.’

  ‘So if the terrorists are busy shooting at us, they’re less likely to shoot at the passengers,’ I noted. ‘Door entry can work.’

  Boarding the plane half an hour later, my head was full of plane-storming scenarios. We had not tried that yet, and were unlikely to be tasked with that in the UK, that was the role of the regular SAS – who had practised just that in years gone by at Brize Norton.

  In front of me was an aircraft safety brochure with the emergency exits drawn on, and I held it up as I discussed scenarios with Swifty; doors and slides.

  We touched down at a familiar military airfield in Morocco, a few French C-160 transports on the apron, soldiers and ground crews moving around. I told everyone to stay where they were, and stepped outside into an oppressive heat, sat phone in hand, squinting in the bright sun.

  ‘Bob, it’s Wilco, we’re down.’

  ‘Plane is heading to Algiers.’

  ‘Algiers! You must be fucking mad if you think we could storm a plane there!’

  ‘The Algerian government are at war with the rebels you killed, they love you to bits, and the GIGN will move there now.’

  ‘They don’t need us, since the passengers will never leave the airport.’

  ‘You’re still tasked with supporting them, we promised the French.’

  ‘They don’t need us, so is this blame sharing?’

  ‘I don’t think so, just that they’re aware of the joint ventures we undertake, and you’re there as a courtesy. I’ll be sending the “D” Squadron team on as well.’

  ‘And dickers on the wire?’

  ‘Yes, could be an issue.’

  Phone away, I sighed heavily. ‘Fucking hell.’

  Back inside, the crew told me that we had to disembark as they refuelled, so I led everyone off and gathered them together in the heat.

  ‘Listen up,’ I called as they squinted back at me, caps placed on. ‘After refuelling we’re heading to Algeria.’

  ‘Algeria!’ came from a dozen mouths.

  ‘They’ll shoot us on sight!’ Rizzo said.

  ‘No, the Algerian government is on our side fighting the rebels, and they’re happy with what we did here in Morocco.’

  ‘Fucking rebels ain’t happy!’ Rocko put in.

  ‘No, we need to trust no one, tight stag routine, but that’s a French issue.’

  ‘Who’ll storm the plane?’ Moran asked.

  ‘GIGN,’ I told him.

  ‘So why are we even going there?’ he asked.

  ‘British Government offered us as support, so ... we support the French whilst checking under the bed and hiding a lot.’

  A loud chorus of disapproving comments swept around, but we were interrupted by French Major Liban, Henri’s boss. He pulled up with several other officers.

  ‘Major,’ I offered, shaking his hand. ‘Come to see if Henri is shining his shoes?’

  He laughed. ‘In basic training maybe.’ He gestured to another major. ‘This is Major Iconu, GIGN, and Captain Debard, GIGN.’

  I nodded, smiled, and shook their hands, Moran closing in. ‘Your success with the last hijack plane from Algiers has led you here.’

  ‘Your successes have also led you here, Captain,’ came back from the GIGN Major, heavily accen
ted.

  ‘Tell me, why a split between GIGN operations and 1st Battalion Paras?’

  ‘Ah,’ the two major’s said at the same time, looks exchanged.

  ‘Politics,’ Henri’s boss said. ‘And ... bad politics sometimes. We have always had a natural split between soldiering and domestic terrorism. The Foreign Legion has been in North Africa for a long time, and 1st Battalion take over in the desert some years now. The new group will be for North Africa work, not aircraft, not in domestic matters.’

  The GIGN major began, ‘Some politician draws lines on a piece of paper. We do some work, 1st Battalion do some work. If we do more work, the Army complains, and we do less. Back and for, back and for.’

  I nodded. ‘I understand entirely. We British are masters at political interference and bullshit.’

  ‘But you are given a long leash,’ Henri’s boss noted.

  I raised a finger. ‘So long as I get good newspaper headlines.’

  They laughed.

  ‘After Marseille we get more budget,’ the GIGN major noted. ‘If this operation is good ... things are good, I tell the Defence Minister to fuck the 1st Battalion.’

  They again laughed.

  Henri’s boss, Major Liban, put in, ‘If it is bad job, I get to fuck the GIGN.’

  ‘How similar our military units are,’ I quipped.

  They gave big Gallic shrugs. ‘It is the same the world over,’ Henri’s boss noted.

  I nodded. Facing the GIGN major, I said, ‘Same plan as Marseille?’

  ‘Yes, if we think it is similar.’

  Henri and Jacque closed in, chatting to their boss as Moran chatted to the GIGN officers in French. Soon refuelled, we boarded, and we were soon powering down the runway and heading east.

  A short hour later we came in on approach over a sprawling city, hills to the west, a long waterfront with many docks and marinas. We circled around and landed from the east, the airport an odd shape of two runways that looked like one long runway bent in the middle.

  As we approached, my heart skipped a beat, our target plane on the taxiway at the east end, flashing blue lights around it, and we passed it at little more than a hundred yards away.

  ‘That’s the hijack plane!’ Moran noted.

  ‘Yeah, and if they blew it as we passed we’d be dog meat!’ I complained.

  Taxiing around to the central hub on the north side, I peered out the windows. ‘This is an accident waiting to happen.’