Zero Option

FOUR

I was at the solicitor's office by nine o'clock. 'Thos C.

Higgins & Partners' said the highly-polished brass plate beside the door. I had no appointment, but I knew Higgins kept the first half-hour of the morning free and was confident he'd see me. In fact he walked up to the front door at the same moment as I did, and greeted me like an old pal, spectacles flashing.

His office smelt of lavender furniture polish, and the handsome grandfather clock was ticking away as steadily as ever in a corner. Since he knew my affairs well, there wasn't much explaining to do, and I soon put him in the *picture.

'I don't know if it makes any difference,' I said, 'but Tracy's pregnant.'

'Is she?' he exclaimed. 'Congratulations!'

'Well, it's only two months so far.'

'You mean you would like to make the child a beneficiary of your will?'

'That's what I was wondering.'

'I think it's hardly possible. I mean, if she were, God forbid, to be killed during the next few weeks, the child could not survive.' He paused for a moment, then said, 'Is there no one else you could name as a residuary legatee?'

I shook my head. 'As you know, I'm an orphan. I don't have anybody.' Then suddenly an idea came to me, and I said, 'I know. Yes. I'd like to nominate a colleague: Tony Lopez.'

'Is that his full name? Tony?'

'No, it's Antonio. He's American, Puerto Rican by origin. If Tracy and I are both written off, I'd like him to get everything. But the most important thing is that I'd like him to be the guardian for Tim.'

'Very well,' replied Mr Higgins cautiously. 'I'm sure that can be arranged. I shall need Mr Lopez to complete certain documents, of course.'

'Sergeant Lopez,' I said.

'Sergeant. I'm sorry.'

Mr Lopez! Just thinking about it creased me up.

Tony was so much the professional soldier that the very idea of him being a civilian seemed ridiculous; I knew he'd bust his butt (as he would put it) laughing about it.

The morning's highlight was the arrival of the quads.

Seven brand-new Honda Big Reds — one for each member of the team, one spare — were decanted from a truck into the tender loving care of the MT section, which at once set about destroying their glamour and making them look as nondescript as possible. By the time our lads went down to take delivery of the bikes their appearance had changed completely. Not only had every trace of scarlet paint been scraped, rubbed or grit- blasted off and replaced by a drab sand-colour, but the engine numbers had also been ground.off the crank cases with emery wheels and the serial numbers scraped off the frames. The ignition keys had been stripped of their numbers so that no identification remained, and the engineers had cut different numbers of notches in their rims, one to seven, so that they could still be matched to the right bikes.

As Whinger remarked, such treatment didn't exactly enhance the value of the machines — but then, after the operation had gone down, we weren't planning to auction them off in the main souk in Tripoli.

We'd all ridden quads before, but we got a quick run-down on this latest model from Mike Molloy, the MT officer, a grizzled little terrier of a captain. 'They're fully automatic,' he said, sitting on one to demonstrate.

'No clutch. The gear pedal's this one, by your left foot.

As you move off, just keep coming up with your toe Super Low, One, Two, Three, Four. For reverse, push this red button on the panel between the handlebars, then down with the gear lever. Nothing to it.

'Watch your starts, though. The motor's quite poky,

and if you give it too much throttle it can put you on your back. As you'll see from the manual, wheelies are not recommended.' To demonstrate his point he started the engine, kicked into gear and revved up sharply. For a second I thought he'd overdone it. The bike seemed to leap into the air. It shot forward, but at the same time the front wheels came high offthe ground so that it was almost vertical, and Mike was clinging on like a jockey on the back of a rearing horse. A tiny bit more power and he'd have gone right over backwards, but in fact he came down safely and switched off. 'See what I mean?' he said.

'Another thing to look out for is the tyres. As you realise, they're designed to operate at very low pressures — two point nine p.s.i. - cross-country. If you find you've got to run on tarmac, blow 'em up to at least double that or you'll knacker them.'

We were given basic instruction in maintenance changing wheels, mending punctures, adjusting brakes, fiddling carburettor jets and so on — but Stew Stewart arranged to come back another day and go through the drills for things like ignition faults and fuel blockages.

Most of the guys ignored the manuals that came with the bikes, but a couple of them gave short, satirical readings from the printed instructions. Whinger started honking off in a pseudo-Japanese voice: '“Always check for obstacles before operating in a new area.”' He gave a short, sardonic laugh. 'Thanks, mate. Just send us a load of large-scale maps of eastern Libya, all five thousands sheets! “Always obey local off-road riding laws and regulations.” Phone the Libyan Embassy, Geordie, and ask for a copy of the desert off-highway code. “Never go fast over the top of a hill.” For fuck's sake! If Gadaffi's nasties come after us I'll be going like shit off a shovel, I can tell you, even if I'm right on the summit of the biggest bloody mountain in North Africa.'

That afternoon we loaded into a four-tonner and drove away to the Brecon Beacons for practice over rough terrain — through mud and water, up, down and across steep grass“ slopes. For. me, this was another psycho logical hang-up to be overcome. It was a motorbike accident which had led to my getting captured in Iraq: as the squadron had been moving up to a new location in the desert I'd dropped into a hole and smashed my left arm — and then, as an American casevac team was lifting me out along with other wounded, the chopper had been shot down. Now, once again, I was going to be riding a bike behind the lines in enemy territory.

Admittedly I'd now have four wheels instead of two, and there wasn't a war on, but all the same the idea was a bit of a hurdle. To be nicked by the Libyans wouldn't be much less unpleasant than being nicked by the Iraqis especially as our presence in the country would probably be denied by the British authorities and we could easily be left to rot in one of Gadaffi's penitentiaries.

Was it imagination, or did my arm produce a couple of twinges as I powered off up a rough grass track into the hills? For months it hadn't given the slightest trouble, even when I was on the weights in the gym, but now it seemed to be aching.

I set myself to concentrate on balance, and getting the feel of the quad. With two front wheels the steering seemed much firmer than with one, but it was OK once I'd got used to it. The trick was to sit forward on the long saddle when climbing, back on the way down, and lean uphill on the cross-slopes.

Pretty soon I had got the hang of it and started enjoying myself- and in fact everybody came back well chuffed with the machines, which were comfortable, fast, sure-footed and ideal for the job. Of course, we had been riding them with front and rear racks empty, and we realised they'd be a different proposition when loaded with all the kit and stores we were going to need.

While we were out in the hills, a message had reached camp to say that our American contact had flown in from Langley, Virginia, and would brief us on the camp at Ajdabiya in the morning. With this in mind we stopped work and went home early.

First light next day saw us piling into a Puma and whipping up to RAF Northolt on the western outskirts of London. It frustrated me to think that we were heading into the very area where Tim and Tracy might be held, and during the flight I was seized by the fantastic idea that I'd simply look down and see them being taken along a street — whereupon we'd bin our meeting with the Firm, fast-rope down on top of the prisoners' escorts, overpower them, and recover the captives.

The rest of the journey into town — by road — took so long that we reckoned we could have tabbed it faster, and it was nearly ten o'clock by the time our wagon crossed Vauxhall Bridge, slipped in through twin security gates and pulled up in the basement of the Firm's forbidding new head-shed building on the south bank of the Thames. Our friend Gilbert met us in the basement and escorted us up into the heart of the block, punching in combination numbers to open one locked door after another. Security here was so tight that it felt as if we were in a submarine, passing through a series of watertight compartments. We'd been told that this building got swept electronically at least once a day to make sure no listening bugs had been infiltrated, and we had no difficulty believing it.

We were never told the full name of the CIA agent who briefed us; Gilbert brought him into the lecture- room and introduced him merely as Gus. He was a short, stocky fellow in a navy blazer, with a pointed face, heavy suntan, close-cropped grey hair and shiny brown eyes — a combination that reminded me of a squirrel. Before he spoke, Gilbert gave us another dose of warnings about the need for total security — but here, in this alien environment, our guys were on their best behaviour, and Whinger didn't even scratch his ear.

When the American began to talk we were riveted, because the depth of his information was amazing. It took a couple of minutes to get used to his broad southern accent, but soon we were hooked. Not even his habit of saying 'OK?' after every few words could put us off.

Satellite data had been down-loaded'into his laptop, some of it enhanced into three-dimensional computer images, which he fired on to a screen, so that what we got was a series of snapshots taken from a variety of overhead angles. As we sat there watching, all the guys were impressed by the lecturer's high-tech apparatus and approach, but at the same time I couldn't help thinking how typical it was that, although the Yanks could see a fly twiddling its legs on the far side of the world, when they wanted guys to go in and shoot somebody unpleasant, it was the Brits whom they got to do the job.

First Gus showed us the extent of the military camp.

It was roughly rectangular, with the sides extending about two kilometres and the main approach road coming down to it from the north. Using a propelling pencil as a pointer, he picked out points of interest.

'The perimeter fence is weldmesh,' he told us. 'OK?

Ten feet high, with a two-foot extension tilted outwards on top. Four strands of barbed wire — dannart, you call it? — on angle irons I don't know whether you'll want to go through that or over it — through it, I guess. On the whole, we believe that security on the base is fairly primitive. The locals reckon the camp's protected by its location, with nothing but desert to the south. We can't tell from the satellite imagery whether or not the watch-towers are manned, but we think not.'

'Excuse me,' I broke in. 'Is it all right to make notes?'

'Go fight ahead — so long as you don't write down names, or anything that would identify the place to outsiders. OK?'

'Sure.'

'So far as we can see, the fence isn't alarmed. No electric current in it, either — no sensors. Now, I'll just quickly show you the main areas of the camp. These are the accommodation blocks. Cookhouse, here. Mosque here — very important. Parade ground. Headquarter building, with a communications tower above it.

Transport compound — you can see all the trucks lined up — and a few armoured vehicles here. Gasoline tanks in circular bunds. Gas filling point here. Two fifty-yard ranges; the main ranges are out in the training areas to the east. Ammunition bunkers way out on their own. here. Armoury here. That's one thing about the Arabs: they can't stand having weapons around the camp. Everything has to be locked away — that is, except for the guns carried by the guards. This is the recreational area: football fields, volleyball court. OK?'

'What are all those round things?' Pat asked.

'These?' Gus pointed to two or three small dark blobs. 'Palm trees. Remember, you're looking at them from right overhead. Now, the building you're interested in is this one. Bottom left-hand corner, as God and our satellites see it. On your left if you approach out of the desert from the south.'

The tip of the pencil-shadow trembled slightly as it hovered over an L-shaped structure set a little inside the angle of the perimeter fence. 'This seems to be a combination of office and residential accommodation.

OK? It's on two floors, ground and upper, possibly also a basement. Concrete block construction, painted some light colour, buffor cream. Flat roof, double skinned to give some insulation from the sun. Metal window frames. This is where the target lives during his working week.'

'How wide's that gap between the building and the fence?' I asked.

'Maybe a hundred yards, maybe a little more. I'll take you in closer for more detail.'

In the next image the building occupied most of the picture. Two vehicles were parked in front of it, and part of a swimming pool was visible on the left-hand side. 'OK. The main entrance is here, 6n the southern side. There's another door on the right-hand end, here, — and a rear door at the left, here. See this curving row of trees? It looks as though there's some sort of garden been planted in back. The private accommodation is here, around the west end. The room in which the target works nights is this one, on the corner of the upper floor. Two windows, one facing south, one west.

Look at this.'

The speaker put up a night-time shot, taken from an oblique angle. Everything was dim and hazy, and needed explanation. 'You're still looking down, but from a little way out front — a slightly different orbit.

These are the lights on the perimeter fence… and this is the south face of the accommodation building. The main doorway I mentioned is about there.' He pointed at the middle of the south front. 'Now. See the bright spot in this top corner? That's been there on several satellite passes made between one and two a.m. Rest of the building dark, this window lit, OK? That's where we think he'll be.'

'But how do we know it's him?' I asked.

Gus hesitated and turned towards Gilbert, as if uncertain who should answer the question.

'Inside information,' Gilbert quickly explained. 'We have a sleeper who works in the building — a computer maintenance technician. The guy files us reports on a regular basis. The only thing is, he has one hell of a time because the power supply keeps going down. There are *back-up generators, but they don't work too well either.'

I was rather impressed. I hadn't realised that the Firm had such a far-flung web of contacts. 'How late does the target stay there?' I asked.

'Typically until two or three in the morning,' Gus replied.

'And where does he sleep?'

'In back of the building, on that same floor.'

'What about guards?'

'Two or three sleep on the premises. There are normally two on duty nights, but that doesn't mean they're going to be awake. You know what Arabs are like.'

Gus paused, thinking. Then he added, 'If you're going in close, one thing in your favour will be the primitive air conditioning. There's no central system.

Each room has its own unit set into an outside wall, and the fans are pretty noisy. Whenever the AC's on, there'll be a solid background roar. That'll help mask any sound you make.'

'How far away is the nearest building?'

The CIA man switched to another photo, halfway between the first and second in scale, and measured the space from the house to a neighbouring structure, offto the north. 'Also about a hundred yards, we think. This other thing's some kind of a store, probably uninhabited at night. I don't think it'll worry you.'

For a minute or two we all sat staring, memorising details, and I made a few notes in my book. Then Whinger forgot himself and declared, 'All we need do is take a couple of Uzis with us and accidentally scatter them about the place..That'd put the finger on fucking Israel, all right.'

I saw Gilbert looking rather pained, so I said, 'Not on, mate. We need to keep ourselves clean.'

'Was that a joke?' asked Gus. 'I hope so. Oh, I nearly forgot. I don't want to overburden you guys, but there's a secondary target that would merit your attention.'

He projected yet another image from his laptop and showed us a picture of a satellite receiving station — a thirty-foot steerable dish aerial with a couple of ancillary buildings — in a small compound of its own. 'This is one of the nerve centres of their military communications network,' he said. 'Knock that out and you'd do everyone a good turn. It was built by the Soviets, and with things being as they are now it might not be too easy to replace.'

'Where is it in relation to the accommodation block?' I asked.

'On the other side of camp. The east side. I think you'd see it OK from the perimeter wire.'

'And how far from that gate you showed us?'

'Maybe three hundred yards.'

'P-PG,' said Whinger judiciously. 'Slip a rocket up it as we're moving off. No problem.'

'Like I said,' Gus emphasised, 'it's very much a secondary target. Only to be engaged if you've hit Number One. And certainly I wouldn't want you to prejudice the main operation.'

'Got that,' I said. 'Can you fill us in on the surrounding terrain?'

'Sure.'

A wide-angle shot (or maybe one taken from a higher orbit) showed an expanse of desert south of the camp. To our untrained eyes the picture didn't mean, much. Apart from a single dirt road coming out from the fence to the south-east and ending at a range, there were a few wadis and stream-beds winding about, but we couldn't identify anything else specific. Yet Gus, armed with notes, gave a useful general description.

During the chopper flight in we would overfly one MS1L (main supply route), a metalled road running north-east to south-west, he told us. Once on the ground we'd have to cross another road, a smaller one, and a single large wadi. Down to the south the desert was flat, but as we approached the area of the camp we would come into a belt of dunes a couple of miles across from south to north, the range as a whole lying east and west, the northern edge of which was less than a quarter of a mile from the camp fence. Gus reckoned the dunes were 150 feet high, and should give us an excellent site for an observation post. The elevation was ideal: we'd be looking down slightly. Another picture, taken soon after sunrise, proved his point: strong light coming low from the east caught on the sweeping, curved rims of the dunes, casting pools of shadow hundreds or maybe thousands of yards long.

As I stared at the picture my mind flew back to the Gulf, and the crappy gen we'd been fed in the run-up to the war. For months we had trained in the sand of the United Arab Emirates, firmly believing that the desert plateau in the west oflraq — where our patrols would be inserted — also consisted of sand. The basis of our belief was US satellite imagery, from which our own int boys had deduced that Iraq was covered with sand from top to bottom. Then, when our patrols had gone in, what did we find? The entire environment was rock and shale, with not a grain of sand in sight. All the kit we'd brought for building OPs was useless, and we were caught with our pants down: you can't build anything out of solid rock.

Were we being given another load of crap now? I didn't want to seem aggressive, but I had to ask — so I put the point as politely as possible. 'Excuse me,' I said, 'but in Iraq we got stuffed because everyone misread the terrain.'

'I know, I know!' Gus grinned in a friendly enough fashion. 'That was real tough. But the fault didn't lie in the imagery. The trouble was, your intelligence guys didn't know how to interpret the data they were getting. Nobody had time to brief them properly and pass information on down the line.'

'So you're confident this environment is sand?' I gestured at the screen.

'One hundred per cent. Look at the'soft curves on these dunes. They couldn't be made of rock. Apart from anything else, they change shape with the seasons as the winds shift their surface. There's another thing, too: it's the loose texture of the ground that stops the Libyans using this sector for manoeuvres. As I said, they've got enormous infantry training areas, but those are all further north where the desert's harder and more stable.'

He paused and added, 'You're going in on ATVs, I think?'

'That's right.'

'They'll be fine. Roll over the sand no problem.'

That reassured me. At least this info was coming straight from a guy who knew what he was talking about, rather than through a range of filters and competing intelligence agencies hundreds of miles apart.

Gus moved on to show us more detail of the terrain on our run-in. The large wadi was almost two miles wide. 'In winter that can be some river,' he told us. 'But right now it's dry, and likely to remain so. Could be the odd pool still lying in the bed, but my bet is you'll cross, dry-shod.'

He then gave us a ran-down of temperatures at first and last light. Here again I was on my guard, because in Iraq we'd been totally misinformed. Nobody had warned us that on the plateau in winter we would encounter snow, ice and vicious winds, with daytime temperatures barely above freezing, and night-times well below. The result was that we went in with nothing like enough clothes, and two of our guys died from hypotherrnia. Now in Libya we were promised a night-time minimum of eighteen Celsius and a daytime maximum of thirty-six. From the magic laptop came three-day weather charts giving temperatures, humidity, moon state, and first and last light. When I challenged the temperatures, mentioning our Iraq experience, the answer was, 'Yeah — but that was winter, and on the plateau you were a thousand feet above sea level. This time it's early summer, and even on those goddamn dunes you'll be at sea-level or maybe even below it.'

Again I relaxed.

Gus continued with an analysis of vehicle movements up and down the approach road to the camp, but these were of less interest to us. I couldn't see us getting up round that side of the establishment at all.

We'd come in from the south or south-east, find a lying-up point a kilometre or so short of the fence, and build an OP on one of the dunes. Mine's a steak, as Whinger would say: piece of cake.

Having made sketches and taken some notes, I felt reasonably confident. But one point that still worried me was the sheer number ofjundis likely to be on site.

Gus reckoned that there might be two or three hundred troops on the camp at night. If the alarm went up and that lot got deployed into the desert, they could form a hell of a cordon, through which we'd just have to blast our way.

All the more reason for us to operate discreetly: we'd need to be. in and out before anyone became aware of our presence.

Back in Hereford, the knowledge we'd gained focused our training effort. Now we knew that we needed practice at building OPs in a sandy environment, so we loaded the quads into another four-tonner and made away to the dunes near Borth on the Welsh coast. There we had a couple of good days riding the bikes on the loose, steep slopes and making OPs by digging into banks, building walls with bags of sand, and roofing over the hollows we'd made with extending aluminium rods covered with scrim netting and marram grass. The second day turned out fine and warm, so when we'd finished work two of the guys stripped off and rushed into the sea; but the water was so cold that they were out again in short order, cursing wildly and covered in purple-red patches.

After a few hours riding the quads I'd thought of a couple of modifications that might prove useful. One was a bracket mounted above the handlebar panel to hold a Magellan GPS kit, so that we could keep an eye on our little displays while driving with both hands on; the other was a speedometer (as delivered, the bikes had nothing to tell you how fast they were going). So I got the MT Section to give us all Magellan-holders, and to cobble up two of the quads with speedos.

Weapons and weapon-training were another major preoccupation. From the SAW's own closed-offsection of the armoury we drew brand-new AK-47s, silenced Browning 9ram pistols, and one Soviet-made Dragunov 7.62 sniper rifle — a semi-automatic, bolt- action weapon fitted with a telescopic sight. The AK- 47s were Chinese-made Type 5611s, with skeleton stocks that folded under for easier transportation, and Chinese characters stamped into the metal. It was obvious they'd never been fired because the working parts were still coated in their original grease; they could well have been part of the shipment seized off the Irish coast which Gilbert had mentioned.

After stripping the rifles and giving them a good clean-up, we took them out to an isolated range and began getting to know them. The AK-47 is a primitive beast, coarsely made and finished, but it's a robust enough weapon, and at normal distances reasonably accurate. The safety-catch, on the right-hand side above the pistol-grip, is dead simple — one click down for fully automatic, two down for semi-automatic — and pro vided rounds don't jam in the magazine you're laughing.

To free up the working parts we loaded magazines fully with thirty rounds apiece, and fired a few initial bursts, four or five rounds at a time. Three of the mags proved sticky, if not downright defective, so we binned them on the spot. Then we got down to zero the rifles, and found that at a hundred yards we could achieve three-inch groups, firing at plain white aiming marks on a buff background. At two hundred the rounds were falling four or five inches, but an adjustment of the battle-sight, half-way up the barrel, soon put the point of impact back in the bull. Nevertheless we decided that our best policy would be to keep the sight in its normal position and, if necessary, aim a bit high.

I never saw the AK-47 as our assassination weapon.

It would be our main armament if we got involved in a contact, but it was too crude and cumbersome for the close-quarter job which I envisaged. Our aim was to take Khadduri out with maximum precision and minimum disturbance: a surgical strike at pointblank range, for which a silenced pistol would be ideal. I therefore paid close attention to my 9 mm Browning.

Like the rifles, the Browning is a basic weapon, but this customised version had a thick cylinder of sound- baffle wrapped round the barrel. Another silencing device is the button Which locks the top slide of the pistol forward after a shot, keeping most of the noise inside — the penalty being that you have to knock the lever off to re-cock the mechanism. After a few warmup shots I fired at a Hun's-head target from close range — between ten and twenty feet. Although the pistol was accurate enough I didn't like the trigger-pull, which was too heavy, and I wasn't happy with the sluggish action. So in the afternoon I took the weapon back to the armourer and got him to polish up all its working surfaces, and next time out on the range I found a big improvement. At twelve feet I could put every round not just into the Hun's head but into a two-inch circle in the middle of the forehead.

I knew that, if I could get close enough to the target, I would nail him.

Our joker weapon was the sniper rifle, which proved deadly accurate. We set the telescopic sight at 300 yards, and worked out how much to aim up or down at other ranges without altering the zero. Already a plan of campaign was forming in my mind: when the assault party of two or three went in to penetrate the building and engage the target, the rest of the guys would be on the perimeter fence, ready to put down rounds if anyone came after us. In this last role the Dragunov could prove a big asset; if it dropped a sentry, for example, three or four hundred yards from the real scene of activity, it would create a useful diversion.

As for the secondary target — that would have to take its chance.

Explosives I left mainly to Fred Parry. After some discussion we decided to bin the idea of taking bar mines, Chinese or otherwise, as they weighed about forty pounds each and we already had too much kit to carry. Instead we indented for a supply of Semtex, with which we could blow the fence, a door or a window, or make diversionary booby-traps that would delay any attempt at follow-up. We could also use it to destroy a quad, if one was disabled, or — in extremis — to vaporise, a body. A further joker in our pack was a clutch of Claymore anti-personnel mines, which are easy to transport. These curious-looking things — like little green bars in the shape of crescents, only an inch and a half thick, with a leg at each end — pack a nasty punch in the form of ball bearings, which fly out like grape shot when the mine is detonated. American-made Claymores have TOWARDS ENEMY stamped on the business side. Ours, which were Soviet-made, bore no such legend; but as we were all familiar with the weapon, we knew well enough that the outside of the crescent was the face to show the Libyans.

A trickier subject was rations. We were going in on hard routine — no cooking, no fires, no heating of brews, even — and this meant that for three days at least all our food would be cold. That didn't worry the guys, especially as we would be in a hot climate; all the same, it was a drag having to transfer every boil-in-a-bag meal from its silver pack, which had writing on it, into an anonymous, clear plastic bag with a zipper-lock fastener. By the time we'd cut offone end of each pack and squeezed sausage and beans or steak and kidney into another container, the meal was even more featureless and gunged-up than before. Yet nobody cared much: on an operation, people accept that they're not at the Ritz; they eat only to shove the necessary amount of calories down their necks, and look forward to proper meals when they get home. Besides, the plastic bags would have a useful secondary role: after we'd eaten their contents we could crap into them.

You'd be surprised how dangerous body wastes can be. Not only do piss and shit stink, and attract flies and wandering dogs, but one turd may give away a mountain of secrets. Laboratory analysis can show not only what type of food the guy who laid it has been eating, but also his age and the physical state he's in.

Whether or not the Libyans had the techniques for that sort of work we couldn't tell, but it was perfectly possible that undisciplined crapping might reveal that we were a bunch of fit young westerners.

We also devoted time to working out our loads. The maximum weights given in the manual were 60lb. for the rear rack on each quad, and 50lb. for the front; but it was clear that such puny limits were no'good to us. We decided, for a start, that each of us must take one jerrican of spare petrol and one of water — these two alone would add up to nearly 100lb. - and on top of that we had weapons, ammunition, explosives, cam-nets and poles for OPs, shovels, other tools, food, spare clothes and other personal kit. I told the guys to cut down to the absolute minimum compatible with safety, and everybody kept packing and repacking to see what they could leave out. Another necessity was to ensure that the kit was properly secured to the bikes. I wasn't happy with the straps I already had, so I went down to Meg, the camp seamstress, who ran me up some webbing straps with ratcheted buckles to my own design.

After discussing what we needed and what we didn't in various Chinese parliaments, with all the team sitting round for a general discussion, we decided to take a single trailer, in which a good load of the heavier, bulkier items like jerricans, spare tyres and cam-nets could travel. One of the quads would have to pull it, but we could take turns — and, as somebody pointed out, if we did get a casualty, the wounded man or dead body could be transported in it. So the MT section obtained a trailer, and put it through the same process of removing all its identification marks.

As always in the Regiment, physical fitness was left to individuals. All the guys knew that they had to be in really good nick; if we hit trouble, our lives might depend on our ability to cover big distances at speed in *alien conditions, possibly with little food or water. So there was no need for organized runs or training sessions; people just went on with their own fitness routines whenever they had time. It was the same with inoculations, l:(ight at the start I had told everyone to make sure his jabs were up to date, and, if any were missing, to get his arse down to the Med Centre pronto.

The two RAF crews who would be flying us came down to give us briefings and discuss our requirements.

Both were dedicated to special forces support, so that they were old friends, and I recognised Pineapple Pete, the Here captain, from several earlier missions. (Why he was called that history did not relate; I suppose some Petes just are pineapples.)

'Off for a nice little drive in the desert, are you Geordie?' he asked. 'Just the job for the time of year,' of sightseeing. Nothing dramatic.'

The Here crew were on a need-to-know basis. All that mattered was that they took us to Cyprus, and on to Siwa, according to. the schedule that the Kremlin had devised. What we were doing was another matter and something about which they didn't even ask. The crew of the Chinook had to have more information: they knew that we were on a non-attributable operation, and they knew to within a few miles the area in which it would take place. But they, too, were in the dark about our target, and Steve Tanner, the skipper, was no more inquisitive than Pete. Of far greater importance to him was the state of the moon on the night we went in, and he was glad to find that it would be three-quarters full.

Together with him, his co-pilot and his head loadie, we worked out distances, timings, weights and so on.

But we never breathed a word about our target. At the back of my mind I kept thinking: there's always a chance that the hell will go down in the desert, and if it does, the less the crew know about us, the better- the less they can give away. All the same we had to plan emergency drills with them, in case the chopper's navigation systems went u/s, or it was shot down or forced down by engine failure. There were emergency rendezvous points to be memorised and procedures to be worked out. In the last resort, we might have to destroy the aircraft with explosives to make sure that no Libyans got their hands on it.

The crew also needed a cover stoW, to account for why they were in Libya at all. We decided they would say that they'd been taking part in Exercise Bright Star, that their navigation systems had gone down, and that they'd flown into Libyan air space by mistake. That might not sound very convincing but it was the best that could be devised.