Wilco- Lone Wolf 21

by Geoff Wolak

  ‘But the KLA irregulars are doing that already?’ I pressed.

  ‘In a small way, yes, your way would be noticed – and not at all done in a small way.’

  ‘So … we wait for both sides to hurt each other then step in?’ I complained.

  ‘We have a mandate to sneak in and observe, that's all for now.’

  ‘Great, just fucking great. We all know what's going to happen, but we need the Press involved and the folks back home caring first.’

  ‘That would be a cynical view of it, yes.’

  ‘So I send Max from The Sun to Kosovo, with his camera...’

  ‘Well, that might help, yes.’

  I called Max and summoned him, with his combats. Max arrived that evening, and I explained the plan, Max to get some training in and then to go sneak around Kosovo to get some evidence of a massacre. He was keen and ready.

  In the morning, Max had new sniper gear issued, webbing, and he began a tough three-day regime; pistol, Valmet, AK47, first aid, dog evasion, and time at The Factory going over fences as I considered a warmer climate, and a trick for the Serbs.

  With David's approval we booked transport, packed kit, and two days later we landed at the base in Mauritania, all of Echo and the Wolves apart from Nicholson and Swan, plus two British Wolves, to take Max into Kosovo. Even the wounded men were with us.

  14 Intel were not with us, they had their own courses, and my troop of regulars with Stiffy had their own courses to attend.

  The American Wolves flew down by USAF Hercules with some kit, GL4 left empty yet well-guarded. I greeted a familiar French officer in the late afternoon sun, and it was nice and warm here compared to chilly old England, my nurse still with me, plus her colleagues from the base. 2 Squadron were set to arrive with their medics, as well as their kindergarten flight.

  We reclaimed a familiar barracks and dumped crates and kit, soon to the canteen, the American Wolves on a different time slot - as at GL4.

  Out the canteen we headed straight to the bar, soon sat outside with beers at the barbecue area, the smell of the desert in our noses as the sun set.

  Moran noted, ‘We have those four new lads from 14 Intel with us...’

  ‘Where better to test them?’ I told them. ‘They drop and walk, three times a day.’

  ‘And the wounded lads?’

  ‘Help out, and sunbathe.’

  ‘Better to heal here than back at base,’ Swifty noted. ‘Dry here.’

  Wandering around the bar, I came across Parker and Monster, an unlikely pair that had bonded. ‘Parker, you all healed?’

  ‘From which injury, Boss, had like three? Get with it.’

  Monster laughed as I gave Parker my peeved look.

  ‘Actually, I was thinking about the RPG.’

  ‘Shit, Boss, that was ages ago. But thanks for asking. I got a nail at the base, but it's OK.’

  ‘Monster?’

  ‘I got a tiny shard of metal, back of the head, took the fuckers ages to find it.’

  ‘Well, you're not using your head, so that's OK,’ I told him to some loud protesting as Parker laughed at him.

  I found Rizzo and Slider with Dicky and Henri. ‘You old fuckers healing?’

  Rizzo showed a fresh scalp wound, Slider managing to be injury free. He had been running up the stairs of the barracks when the bomb blew.

  ‘You get these latest fuckers?’ Rizzo asked.

  ‘Americans, same idiots behind the action in Panama, and they all met a bad end. One of them, he was dumped outside a hospital, kneecaps shot out, fingers cut off.’

  ‘Shit...’ Dicky let out. ‘I'd rather they just kill me. You couldn't even push the wheelchair, turn the TV on, eat with a knife and fork. Nasty, that is.’

  ‘Be spoon fed the rest of your life,’ Rizzo noted with a grimace.

  ‘He got what he deserved,’ I told them. ‘His life choices.’

  Rizzo asked, ‘We gunna practise dropping onto ships at sea?’

  ‘Fuck no. Won't try that again – we could have all missed the ship and drowned.’

  ‘Not even the SBS do that,’ Slider noted. ‘And probably for good reason.’

  ‘British Press gave them some shit,’ I told him. ‘Their job, not ours.’

  ‘They back on jobs?’ Rizzo asked.

  ‘Do you see the fuckers anywhere..?’

  I stepped to Doc Morten as he chatted to Doc Willy and a French medic, greetings extended, then on to Salome with Mitch and Greenie.

  ‘You pick-up any wounds?’ I asked Mitch and Greenie.

  Mitch responded, ‘Piece hit the wall above me.’ He thumbed at Greenie. ‘Piece hit his webbing. And Salome was sat on a beach. Naked.’

  ‘Naked in January?’ she scoffed. ‘Israel is freezing in January. I go in April only.’

  I told them, ‘Her boss is happy with her, that she's ... placed with us.’

  ‘Can learn a lot from us,’ Mitch suggested. ‘Like how to duck.’

  ‘Important, knowing how to duck,’ I told them. ‘They want you back yet?’ I asked Mitch.

  ‘They ain't said squat. Said to wait.’

  ‘Might get your own team, like Mahoney.’

  ‘Well … yeah, but I hope it don't end like that. I'll be walking in.’

  ‘It's all a risk,’ I told him.

  ‘And this next job, Kosovo?’ he pressed.

  ‘Is a damp squib so far, the Serbs shooting up a few villagers, but nothing on the scale of the Bosnian massacres. We have two teams in-country, and the local Serbs soldiers are sat baking bread, no combat patrols out ready, no nothing.’

  My phone trilled. ‘It's Murphy, Boss.’

  ‘Talk of the devil,’ I told them. ‘How is it, Murphy?’

  ‘Well, we got us here a situation with these here local fellas. We can see them raping and stealing in this here village and being generally unsociable like.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘About nine of them.’

  ‘Kill them quietly, leave no evidence, take your brass.’ Phone down, I stared at it.

  ‘Problems?’ Mitch asked.

  I faced them. ‘The fucking KLA are raping and killing the local villagers.’

  ‘And we're supposed to support them,’ Greenie complained.

  ‘What happens in the woods stays in the woods,’ I told them. ‘What's the fucking point of liberating a country just to hand it to these scumbags?’

  ‘Our boys will kill them?’ Greenie asked.

  I nodded. ‘And so will I when we go in, orders or not. We don't work with men like that.’

  ‘No,’ Salome agreed. ‘I shoot them in the balls, like Tomo.’

  ‘Max the reporter is there,’ I told them. ‘Might get some evidence, but … he's supposed to get evidence of Serb massacres, not KLA massacres.’

  ‘Why not report both,’ Mitch suggested.

  ‘I will, and the politicians can all fuck off. And your government lists the KLA as terrorists anyhow.’

  ‘In Costa Rica we thinned out the bad boys,’ Mitch put in. ‘Locals should live better now. We hit any idiot with a rifle or pistol.’

  ‘When I first got to Panama, years back, I went out alone and sat in a tree with my rifle, and … it was looking down on Sodom and Gomorrah. I shot many of them, and now it's a better place, and a girl might actually grow up without being gang-raped.

  ‘And many of the lads, they were shocked by our first trip into Sierra Leone, villages wiped out, dead kids and babies, mothers lying next to them. Moran was shocked, everyone is when you see that kind of shit, it's hardly what you signed up for.’

  ‘But it gets it in focus,’ Greenie noted. ‘What we're there for. That rooftop in Guinea, that got it in focus for me; we were there to protect the locals. And the locals brought us food.’

  I found Tomo with no bicycle helmet on, chatting with Mouri and two British Wolves. ‘Tomo, where's your helmet?’

  ‘It's all healed up now, Boss, and that helmet was due to come off tomorrow anyhow
. Nicholson and Swan in Kosovo?’

  ‘Yes, leading Max in to get some photos of the massacres, but so far it's the Kosovans doing the massacring.’

  ‘So why we helping them?’ Mouri puzzled. ‘And they're Muslims.’

  I told them, ‘The bullshit story ... is that the Kosovan Albanian Muslims are the majority, and they are, around 80%. But it was a white Christian country that slowly got Albanian Muslims wandering over the border till they were the majority, and majority rule is democracy – to some people some of the time.

  ‘But if the majority of people in London became Muslim, as they are, could they vote to break away from the rest of England? That's the argument. In Kosovo, NATO wants to fuck off Serbia because they were an old Cold War enemy and they massacred the Bosnians.

  ‘But if the majority of people in Arizona become Hispanic, could Arizona vote to break away from America? The answer is no, to all Americans, but the Americans never apply the same standards to other countries.

  ‘In Europe, Catalonia wants to break away from Spain, and northern Italy wants to break away, and the Basque region and others, but they won't allow that. Double standards.’

  ‘So we fight to make a Kosovo independent of the Serbs...’ Mouri asked.

  ‘Yes, the hope being that Croatia and Bosnia and Kosovo become small democracies that join Europe and NATO down the road. But the Russians are pissed off that we're doing it, but at the moment the Russians are very weak. The Serbs and the Russians are very close culturally.’

  I chatted to Sasha and his team, all in good spirits and all glad to be some place warm, moving on to Stickler as he chatted to British Wolves. ‘Stickler, you healing?’

  ‘Still got a sore arse, Boss. I sleep on my front.’

  ‘Could be worse.’ I pointed at a Wolf. ‘You were wounded in Panama?’

  ‘Got a splinter up the rectum, Boss, three hour operation. It doesn't hurt when I shit, but I always worry when I shit, and I take laxatives. They say it's tough skin, but it worries me a lot. Hospital in Panama was OK, I got a handjob from a cute nurse, gave her some dollars.’

  ‘You're not allowed to get handjobs from nurses!' I scolded him as they laughed. ‘You're supposed to be a good patient, your name's not Tomo.’

  ‘She lubed up a hand, a finger up my arse five times a day,’ he added. ‘We were practically married.’

  Shaking my head at him I led Stickler away from them. ‘How you getting on?’

  ‘Fine, sir.’

  ‘You making friends and fitting in?’

  ‘Haven't clashed with anyone, and they're all crazy as fuck. I drink with Nicholson and Tomo, Mouri and Swan, the Wolves.’

  ‘And your training?’

  ‘Good with a Valmet now, sir, getting much better with a pistol, hadn't used a Browning much before. I did the pig stitching with the Yanks, and the map reading tricks.’

  ‘And living at the base doesn't worry you?’

  ‘Would like to see them coming and shoot the fuckers, car bombs scare me.’

  ‘Me too,’ I quipped. ‘In Kosovo you may get to shoot someone, sneaking through the woods. No car bombs.’

  After a few hours in the bar I wandered in to greet the duty team, a SEAL team on standby, all asking questions of the para drop. There was also a British Pathfinders team here, no SBS.

  In the morning I checked with the Para Instructors, all twelve of them, and they were busy sorting the chutes ready, a Hercules and a C-160 available to us.

  ‘Refreshers for those that need them,’ I told them. ‘Aim for the first drop at noon, if the pilots are OK with it, three drops a day at least ongoing, plus night drops. At least drops in the dark, so after 8pm, they don't need to be 1am drops.

  ‘You start with the American Wolves, who've all made a shit load of drops, then you move them onto HALO and my bag technique – that's why they're here. So, two drops after a refresher, then HALO.’

  Those teams that were sat waiting were sent out on route marches in different directions, the sun damn hot - no one complaining about that fact, some teams dispatched to the range.

  Captain Henri was tasked with teaching mortar firing techniques, and we had a perfect mortar range here, plenty of mortar shells to hand. Sambo knew the circular route march, and so took the four new superstars from 14 Intel on a very long walk – avoiding a meeting with the mother of his child in the local town.

  I spoke to Morten and we agreed a plan for his medics, all to get three drops and some long walks back, followed by range time and map reading practise. They would also have pairs on duty and on call in case of broken ankles, a jeep available for them.

  The next day I observed as Wolves practised my bag technique on the ground before jumping in pairs with instructors, arms held ready, and the first three teams hit the sand without killing themselves.

  After lunch I took the new 2 Squadron lads to one side, a lecture on the desert. ‘In Mali we walked seventy miles across the desert, the sort of place no sane person would want to be. But the fact was, it was easy. We slept in the heat, we walked at night and saved water, we had rations, and we possessed both a map and a brain.

  ‘People die in the desert because they're not prepared, and they panic. If you keep a cool head, and you have the supplies, it's easy.’

  I built a shell scrape in the sand, poncho up. ‘Right, which way should the poncho face?’

  ‘Mecca, sir?’ a man asked with a grin, his buddies laughing. ‘Coz we're in the desert like, Arabs an all that.’

  ‘No, not Mecca,’ I said with a smile. ‘If there's a breeze, and there usually is, you want the breeze blowing down the inside, to keep you cool. Right, where do you put your water bottle?’

  ‘Close at hand, sir,’ one suggested.

  ‘Why, in case some wandering camel herder steals it?’ They laughed. ‘You bury it a few feet down, where the sand is cool, therefore...’

  ‘Your water stays cool, Boss.’

  ‘Correct. So you face the wind, water bottles buried, and you sleep in the day, noon till 4pm say. Now, what are the effects of desert heat on a body?’

  ‘Sun stroke..?’

  ‘Only if you're a twat and have no head gear. The effect … is that you don't have an appetite. So you eat less and end up with less energy to keep going. So you force the food down, followed by a cuppa. Best to eat a midnight, when it's cold, damn cold. Now, how cold does it get in the desert at night?’

  ‘Down to 12degrees, sir.’

  ‘Depends on where you are, and the season. It can drop to zero. And what happens when it drops to zero?’

  ‘You freeze to death.’

  ‘Yes, you can freeze to death in the sunny desert. If you know you have a walk in the desert planned, you take a desert jacket. You have a cuppa after dark, you walk in a group, to stop and eat at midnight, another cuppa an hour later, keep walking. What happens if you sleep at night when it's cold?’

  ‘You wake up dead, sir.’

  ‘Yes, or you wake up with no energy, like running a marathon, and you move slowly and die. So you sleep in the day and walk at night, and you learn to use the stars. There's the Southern Cross, the best pattern to look for, so make sure you know your stars.

  ‘Now, how fast do you walk at a steady tab, no heavy kit, sandy floor?’

  ‘Three miles an hour steady, sir.’

  ‘That would be a good average, yes. If the sand is deep you slow right down, but if it's hard like Mali was then you gain some time. So you plan a route, you work out the miles, and you know how long you'll sleep and cook, and in a few days we'll send you off to do just that, but with limited water.

  ‘So tonight, paper and pen and work it out, assuming you have sixty miles to cover. Right, what are the issues with sniping in the desert?’

  They exchanged looks.

  ‘Turn around, lay down, and peer down that road, you morons!'

  They lay down. ‘Ah. It shimmers, sir.’

  ‘Yes, it fucking shimmers, and you won't hit anyth
ing. What you do, you take ten seconds to aim, and take an average guess as to where the man is as his image flickers about. Consider the maximum left side and right side, and average it out, then shoot, then adjust.

  ‘If you get shimmer on the range, then you see where your shots are falling and adjust up and down. And if you see some guy on a camel approaching you, and he's shimmering, that's just an old movie you're remembering.’

  They laughed.

  ‘So who knows what a barrel mirage is?’

  ‘A hot barrel causing the air to shimmer, sir.’

  ‘Yes, cured by a wet rag, so remember that when firing a GPMG here. Your SA81 is not an issue, no exposed barrel length, same for the Valmet, both with high sights. OK, when seeing a mirage, you're always aiming too high. Aim slightly lower and test what happens. Have a buddy ten yards away calling the corrections.’

  After lunch I called Bob. ‘We're down in Mauritania. Listen, you think you could pay someone to take pot-shots at us on the wire?’

  ‘Ah, I know a bad boy who knows other bad boys in that area, and they're completely crap. You want cannon fodder, yes?’

  ‘Ideally.’

  ‘Leave it with me.’

  I had 2 Squadron put men on the wire in rotation, plus American Wolves in pairs, and they would get lessons on a good OP camouflaged in the desert, the local French to patrol around.

  Murphy called at 6pm. ‘Boss, we got bored with this here barracks, so we discussed what to do, then we blocked the drains and cut the electricity.’

  ‘Murphy, that was mean.’

  ‘But we found us a dead partisan.’

  ‘Partisan, as in an old Harrison Ford movie, Force Ten From Navarone?’ I teased.

  ‘Yeah, that's them, sir, partisan in these here Ballicks.’

  ‘Balkans. They're called the KLA, Kosovo Liberation Army, Dumbass.’

  ‘Ah, right. Well we found a dead one, been dead a week, and we put him on the power cables that blacked out the barracks.’

  ‘Murphy, they may discover that he's been dead a while.’

  ‘Well, yeah, but after they stop him smouldering like and he's cooled down some.’