Killer Elite

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 often 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.

On January 4 the Defa position was secured and the advance began. The SAS, after heavy fighting, secured an advanced position and finally Point 980. As over five hundred soldiers arrived at this feature, the SAS moved on to another hill, coded Point 604. As they prepared for the night, a small group went forward to lay trip wires and claymore mines just ahead of their position. Tony Shaw, close friend to Mike Kealy and about to take over the SAS squadron in Dhofar, was the point man and leader of the mine-layers. An adoo patrol attacked them and there were casualties on both sides.

A great deal of confusion and indecision held up the advance the following day, and the overall Dhofar commander, Brigadier John Akehurst, summarily removed the officer in charge and replaced him with Major Patrick Brook, Mike Marman’s predecessor as Armored Car Squadron leader.

Patrick Brook and the SAS major sent three of the companies east through dense scrub to gain positions above the caves before a final attack on Sherishitti. This move began on the morning of January 6, but the lead unit, Red Company DR, went a little too far south, a fact they recognized once they reached the wide, open valley that led to the caves. Their company commander, Major Roger King, suggested holding their position along the edge of the great clearing in order to give cover to a further advance by 2 Company JR across the open ground.

Two Company’s acting commander, Captain Nigel Loring, arrived and surveyed the wide valley ahead. His firqat liaison man, an experienced SAS sergeant, advised him, “Don’t go across. It will be suicide. Go around the clearing.” But Loring could see that the open area was well covered from two sides by men of Red Company, and knowing that speed was of the essence, he stood up and led his men out into the sunny clearing, overlooked on the far side by the rocky hillside that was his objective.

When Loring and his lead platoon were well into the open the adoo sprang their trap. The far slope exploded with sound. There was no cover, so wounded men were hit again and again until they lay still. Captain Ian MacLucas was hit by seven bullets. Nigel Loring was killed. The killing ground echoed with the groans and the entreaties of the dying. To break cover and enter the valley from either side would require an act of great courage.

The Red Company soldiers and the SAS returned fire as best they could and certain individuals risked all in a crazy attempt to rescue the wounded. One of these was Sekavesi, the giant Fijian who had been with Mike Kealy at Mirbat. Another was Captain David Mason of Red Company, who, weaving from side to side, forced himself through the maelstrom of bullets, rockets and mortar explosions and spent two hours under fire to succor and rally the wounded. He finally staggered back with his friend, the wounded MacLucas. His escape unscathed was miraculous. Within months he was awarded the Sultan’s Bravery Medal.

When all their wounded were retrieved, and only the dead left behind, the Sultan’s Forces withdrew to Point 980. Behind them they heard the single shots of the adoo firing into the bodies in the clearing.

Jebel Regiment had suffered thirteen dead and twenty-two wounded. Ian MacLucas, saved by David Mason, was still a paraplegic in 1991. Many adoo, mostly of the Bin Dhahaib unit, were killed in Operation Dharab. One was Mahab bin Amr Bait Anta’ash, the second son of Sheikh Amr’s first wife. He was ripped apart by mortar fire from the SAS mortar position.

Mac and Tosh Ash of the G Squadron SAS mortar group were both wounded by the same adoo bullet and evacuated by helicopter. Barry Davies was pulled back to take over command of the mortars.

Mac felt a wave of tiredness and carefully laid the album down on the carpet. He was asleep, so Pauline answered the door the next morning when Jock called in, before returning to Aberdeen, to collect his photographs.

As Jock left he noticed, as he had the previous evening, a black Volkswagen Polo parked close by the bus stop opposite Mac’s house. The driver, a woman in dark glasses, was reading a magazine and did not appear at all bothered when Jock walked purposefully in her direction.

“Could you tell me the time?” He leaned over so that his face was close to hers.

She smiled and wound down the window. “Nine-fifteen,” she said and returned to the pages of Cosmopolitan.

Jock thanked her and returned to his car. The accent was Midlands with no foreign inflection, but that was no guarantee. Why was she there, and been there the previous day? Only a keen, suspicious eye would have picked up any significance in her presence, only somebody who knew of Mac’s uniquely hazardous status. Knowing the various terrorist organizations who might have good reason to fear and therefore to hate the SAS, Jock was fully aware that a man with Mac’s history and health would be a prime target for any of these groups.

Distinctly uneasy, Jock stopped off at a pay phone in town and called his old comrade-in-arms and longtime friend Detective Constable Ken Borthwick of the Worcester Police. He would know whom to alert.