by Geoff Wolak
Back at the hangars I made sure that the RAF Regiment had at least two French jeeps to use, and I told them to take plenty of food and water.
Turning, I found our reporter, and I sighed. ‘Let me guess.’
‘I can’t report much from back here, and nothing might happen, you might just sit around for a few days.’
I nodded. ‘We might just do that, or we might all get killed.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s all a risk, and I know the risks, and besides ... my boss would be happy with you if I was killed out here.’
I’m sure, deep down, that he cares about you.’
‘Don’t bet on it.’
I sighed. ‘OK, you come with me in my jeep. Don’t go far, we’ll be leaving soon.’
Half an hour later I approached the SAS and Para jeeps as they lined up. ‘Listen up. GPMG ammo?’
‘Boxes,’ they reported.
‘7.62mm Russian ammo?’
‘Boxes of magazines,’ they reported, checking.
‘Rations for a week?’
They pointed at boxes.
‘Water for five days?’
They point at cans and plastic bottles.
‘Sat phones?’
The SAS had three, the Paras one.
‘Paperbacks?’
They looked at each other, then laughed.
‘I got one,’ I trooper offered.
‘It’s going to be boring, so ... if you have reading material, get it now.’
A few men rushed off as my lads brought their jeeps out and halted parallel.
‘Rocko, Rizzo, we all stacked up?’
‘Yeah, and we got toilet paper,’ Rizzo came back with.
‘We have spare kit for everyone else,’ Rocko mentioned. ‘More than for just us lot.’
‘I want the lead vehicles to be the stolen jeeps, spread the lads out.’
‘The RAF Regiment grabbed two, so just two left,’ Rocko said.
‘Henri, Jacque, drive the stolen jeeps!’
They jumped down with their kit and ran back, bringing up the jeeps.
‘At the front. Napoleon, Mouri, those jeeps.’
They swapped rides. I pointed at our reporter. ‘Lead jeep, in the back.’
He lugged his heavy kit, and I wondered what the hell he was carrying.
Back in the hangar I had a quick look around, a few troopers left for the Pumas, and I headed to the command room. ‘OK, we’ll be off now. We’ll try and get there after dark, hide up, and then ... we wait your intel. Make sure that the French know we’re moving east as a convoy and to that mine, so they don’t freak out and shoot at us.
‘Have the RAF Regiment sent to that first mine, with the fuel truck, and keep the Pumas ready with an extraction team, medics on standby.’
‘Why not take a medic or two?’ the RAF logistics officer suggested.
Captain Harris shrugged his shoulders. ‘Safe enough for them.’
I nodded. ‘Be in touch later.’
I jogged around to the medical tent, kicking up dust. I pointed at the man who had flipped out in Angola. ‘Get your kit, you’re coming with us, and I need a doctor to come along as well.’
‘I’ll go,’ a man offered.
The head surgeon turned to him. ‘Stay out of harm’s way.’ The volunteer grabbed his webbing and first aid kit as the head surgeon turned back to me. ‘Bring them back in one piece, eh.’
‘Be safer than being on a fucking Puma,’ I quipped.
‘True, very true.’
‘If we get wounded, you’ll have an hour’s flying time to get ready, and put a medic on each Puma if they come get us.’ I told them to leave personal weapons and ammo behind, and led them off at the jog around to the jeeps, putting them in the rear.
A thumbs-up to Sergeant Crab, getting one back, and I mounted up, engines started, and off we set, a wave at the RAF Regiment lads on the gate, if you could call it a gate, it was a lonely fence post four feet tall signifying the end of the base and the start of the outside world.
With the sun ahead of us, sun-shades pulled down, we drove east at a steady forty miles per hour.
I swivelled in my seat. ‘What the fuck you lugging?’ I asked our reporter.
‘My sat kit.’
‘Your what?’
‘I have a sat phone and fax, it sends pictures, expensive kit.’
‘What quality are the pictures?’ I puzzled.
‘Good enough for a newspaper. It ain’t fast, but it gets them there.’
‘How’d you get a printer picture ... out here?’ I puzzled.
‘It’s a digital camera, electric, black and white images on a computer disk thing, and that plugs into the fax machine.’
‘Ah...’ I let out. ‘Clever.’
‘It’s the future, be no wet film cameras in the future. With these you just take a picture and hand someone the disk, and then to an AppleMac computer ready for cut and paste into the paper.’
‘Be useful for intel work, to send images back for analysis,’ I said. ‘We could have sent back the ID cards we found on the bomb makers.’
A long straight road penetrated the lunar landscape of red dust and grey rocks, and it delivered us to the ill-defined border and led us onwards.
Just about two hours in and we passed the first mine on our left, its mounds of red ore climbing high, and from a distance it looked like they could have been the work of some giant insect as it burrowed.
On another twenty miles of lonely road, bracketed by flat inhospitable nothingness, and we turned south, avoiding a small town, a few trucks and jeeps passing us. If reported, they would report us heading south.
A loop around to the east and then north, a village bypassed, a green and cultivated area passed, and we crossed the main road east at a junction, twenty miles northeast to avoid a village, and we curved around to the east and then southeast, the road poor in a few places as we lost the sun, a purple sunset behind us.
Slowing, we took it easy for the final ten miles, and I checked my sketch. Signs for the mine appeared, large ore trucks trundling past and blinding us, hands up to eyes, curses given. Spotting the telltale mounds on the dark horizon I slowed Henri, and we turned off our lights just as we turned south onto a track, a few places uneven.
Each jeep in turn followed, its lights off, but there was a strong contrast in colour between the jeeps and the road, the road and the waste that had been placed either side of it, so we could navigate. Four hundred yards in we halted, and I clambered up onto the roof, counting dark outlines, and happy with the count.
Back down I waved Henri on, and we followed the track deeper into the mine, soon turning east, and we were now in a canyon made by dumped waste either side of us, a bad place for an ambush – bad for us if someone was waiting for us.
Fifteen minutes of uneven track led to a fork in the road, so my navigation was OK, and we went straight over and on a mile, passing an unlit building on the right – that matched up to the map, and we turned south for a mile, east for a mile, and finally we drove north till we could drive no further, but we had no need to check the map because the bright lights of the mine shone out from behind huge slag mounds.
I pointed at a place for Henri to park and I jumped down, using a torch to direct our jeeps into a line, the SAS off to opposite side, the Paras next to them, and we had arrived – men could finally take a pee. I set up a stag rotation, everyone else told to get some food on and that we need not worry about visible lights, we were surrounded by a sixty foot tall wall of waste product.
I took out my sat phone and dialled.
‘Captain Harris here.’
‘It’s Wilco, we’re here, right spot, all settled in.’
‘OK, I’ll call if we get updated intel.’
Sergeant Crab wandered over to me. ‘So what’s the plan?’
‘Those lights are from the processing plant, other side of it and right a bit is the admin area, and that’s what they would hit. If they come in ... it will be from a ro
ad on the east side. Tonight I’ll have a look, and we can make a plan, find a way to get there sharpish if they turn up unexpected.’
‘And if they do?’ he pressed.
‘We run like fuck around those mounds and have at them. But the Intel boys should pick up the radio chatter first.’
He sloped off for some food, so did I.
An hour later I clambered up a mound with Henri and we peered down at the floodlit scene. In front of us sat a huge elevated conveyor belt moving ore and rocks, a tall tower at one end, water being sprayed along its length, men seen working. The other side of it sat large garages for very large yellow trucks and diggers, to the right of them the accommodation block – men did not go home at night, and further right was the three-storey admin block, all the lights on.
Somewhere in that block was a canteen, and I had been informed that the mine boasted a small medical bay, a doctor, and even an ambulance of their own. Well, out here they were a very long way from anything, and probably two hundred miles from a decent hospital.
Just before dawn I got a knock on my jeep window, lads waking me as I sat in my comfy reclining chair. Easing out, I stretched and yawned, and took a pee onto red ore.
Brew on, I sat chatting to the lads, a tin of meat tackled, and when ready I took Rizzo and Rocko up a track and to a point where we could view the mine without being seen.
‘It went quiet after midnight,’ Rocko noted. ‘I was on stag, and it just all stopped, dead quiet.’
‘They sleep in the accommodation block down there, so if I was sleeping there I’d want the fucking rock crushers off at night.’
‘They have armed guards?’ Rizzo asked.
‘On the gate, plus a roving patrol apparently,’ I told them. ‘So let’s hope they don’t come this way around.’
Back down, I grabbed a metal pole and drew a large diagram of the central mine area, calling over all the lads, a few woken up for the command meeting.
‘OK, listen up.’ I pointed with the metal pole. ‘This is the conveyor belt, just over these mounds, say one hundred yards from the mounds, and two hundred yards further – here – are the garages and the trucks and diggers, then the accommodation block, then the tall admin building, and that’s most of it.
‘If they hit at night, after midnight, then they’d want to hit the accommodation block, because they all tuck up warm and go to sleep. During the day, most people would be either in the admin building or out working.’
Sergeant Crab said, ‘Most of ‘em is bunched up at night, so they should hit at night.’
‘Yes, but the other mines were all hit in the day; the bandits like to be home with the wife at night,’ I told him. ‘So, if they hit when we’re not ready ... my team will run across to the action, SAS and Paras – in your jeeps, back around and to the road, cut the road and leave a jeep, hit the main entrance and then drive at them, GPMGs used.’
‘We don’t get into position first?’ Captain Hamble asked.
‘No, because we’d be seen, and someone inside is reporting out to the bad guys, that’s where we got the intel. If he reports out that an attack will take place at a certain time then we’ll move into position and ambush them – assuming that we can spot them, we don’t want to shoot up civilians.
‘Now, if I wanted to attack that mine ... I’d have thirty men in the back of one of the trucks, all covered up, known man driving. We’d go in all smiles, right up to the admin block, jump down and attack.
‘But at the other mines they drove up in a long line of jeeps. We have our planes up there, back down the road, and if they see a long line of jeeps we can get ready. So, if we get the intel and we have a time frame, we wait till they’re close, we let them get inside and show weapons, then we hit them.
‘Rocko, I want you and three men up that tower at the end of the conveyor thing. Rizzo, I’d want you and three men around the side of that admin block and up on the roof, there’s a metal fire escape. Rest would be under the conveyor, hidden, and we hit them as they come in. Problem will be the poor sods at the main gate.’
‘They’d get killed,’ Captain Hamble noted.
‘I’m not so sure,’ I said. ‘If I wanted into a place like this I’d bribe the guys on the front gate, or drive past them somehow. They don’t want a shootout at the front gate, they’d only kill two or three people, and the armed guards back here would be alerted. This is supposed to be a big raid, so they want maximum casualties.’
Hamble added, ‘So they neutralise the front gate, neutralise the guards, then spend a day here shooting every last worker. Do the inside men have guns?’
‘I doubt it, they’d be found,’ I said. ‘But we don’t know. But what we can’t do is show ourselves ahead of time, because we don’t know who the inside men are. Circumstances dictate. And maybe the men at the front gate get killed, not our problem, our hands are tied.’
‘What about an ambush back down the road?’ a Para asked, our reporter keenly listening in.
‘Where would we hide the jeeps, which road, how far down? There are three access roads and a few tracks. You going to be in an OP for six days? Maybe the attack never happens, or it happens seven days from now. We’re stuck with what we have, and we make do – and we hope the intel comes in.’
Men read paperbacks, or lounged around in the heat, some jogging around in circles from time to time, bending and stretching, some cleaned weapons, and the day dragged on, the sun setting, many giving interviews to our reporter, photographs taken of the camp, the jeeps, men in profile.
I called in to Captain Harris, and into Bob direct, but our chatty inside men were not being so chatty.
The second day came and went, men unshaven, paperbacks and magazines passed around, and I insisted that everyone bend and stretch and jog around once an hour when awake. Meal times broke the tedium.
The second evening I got a call, and the boys at GCHQ had the attack down for early the next morning, but coming from several directions, mention of a rear gate to be left open. I called out through the grey half-light.
‘Get your kit on, kit checked, get some water, get ready!’ I shouted as I walked around the camp, frantic activity seen for ten minutes. I finally gathered them all in the centre of the camp, all kitted ready, dark grey outlines, faces clear to see from the floodlights.
‘OK, we have intel, the attack should be tomorrow at sunrise, and from several directions at once. So ... we can’t spread out, and we can’t place three ambushes, not that we know which direction they’re coming from or how they’ll get here. So we make do.
‘SAS, Paras, I want your jeeps lined up on that track ready to go, be ready before sun-up. When the attack starts you drive to the junction, turn right and right again, onto the road, to the main gate, and attack anyone there. Drive inside and down to us, attacking as you go. When the shooting eases I want you split up and driving around the mine looking for the gunmen.
‘Rocko, team of four on the tall part of the conveyor after midnight. Rizzo, team of four on the admin building, rest of my team and SBS under the conveyor, get hidden. Problem is going to be that we might get spotted before the fuckers get here, so stay well hidden, no contact with anyone working here. If you are spotted, don’t shoot anyone, but if necessary grab a worker, tie him up, explain the situation. I want you, Sergeant Crab, and one of the Paras on my radio frequency, keep the chat down.
‘Tonight, SAS and Paras, sleep in your jeeps, full kit on and ready, we may get a nasty surprise ahead of time, be ready to move quickly at dawn, start engines and test the jeeps. Rest of you, when that clanking stops we move out and get position slowly and quietly. Rizzo, very slow and careful, we don’t need them alerted. OK, any questions?’
‘Casevac drill?’ Captain Hamble asked.
‘There’ll be a Puma on its way the instant we know the bad boys here, second at the other mine, medics on board, and we have two medics with us.’
‘Where do you want us?’ a medic asked.
‘Good
question.’ I gave it some thought. ‘Right behind me when I move.’
‘And me?’ our keen reporter asked.
‘In front of me, bullet stop.’
They laughed.
‘You been chatting to my boss again, eh.’
‘Behind the medics,’ I told him. ‘Stay down, and don’t get shot. OK, get ready everyone, double check everything, take a shit, have some food, could be a long day tomorrow.’
The jeeps were moved into position, engines turned over, no chance of being heard due to the mines beating heart of machinery. At midnight that beating heart eased and stopped, men lining up in their teams.
‘Rocko, go!’ I said, four grey outlines moving off.
We waited ten minutes.
‘Rizzo, go, slow and steady. If you can’t get up on the roof without being seen or heard, find a spot near that building.’
Four grey outlines kicked up dust and moved off, and again I waited ten minutes.
‘Rest of you, on me, medics behind me, and our glory boy.’ I led them off at a slow steady pace, and beyond the mounds I stopped and knelt, they stopped and knelt. I could see Rizzo’s team sneaking along to the right, darting from vehicle to vehicle. I waited, scanning the area before moving off and down, a broken down old fence negotiated, piles of ore weaved around – good cover if we needed it, and I approached the conveyor.
That conveyor started life inside a building to the right at ground level, and it slowly climbed at a steady angle from right to left, ending in a tall tower and a giant metal funnel. Easing under the conveyor, where it allowed five feet of headroom, I knelt, in front of me a convenient pile of dust built up from that ore dropping off the conveyor, and it stood some four feet tall. It made for a perfect position.
The medics eased in on my right and knelt, then sat with their backs in the ore, so too our reporter, the lads spreading out left and right. All got down and waited. We had four hours, give or take.
The area around the accommodation block and office was still well lit, but much of the floodlighting had now been switched off. As we sat there a few trucks trundled past, men packing up and heading inside the accommodation block.
