Life in the mountains of Iraq is harsh in winter, with slanting bitter rain and scudding clouds. The notion that all parts of the Middle East are warm is a popular fallacy.
“Okay, Major, you know Iraq, I don’t. Why are they phony?”
“Life-support system,” said Martin. “Too many villages, too many peasants, too many goats and sheep.
Not enough forage. They’d starve.”
“Shit,” said Beatty with feeling. “So damn simple.”
“That may be, but it proves Jericho wasn’t lying, or mistaken again. If they’ve done that, they’re hiding something.”
Colonel Craig, commanding officer of the 22nd SAS, had joined them in the basement. He had been talking quietly to Steve Laing. Now he came over.
“What do you reckon, Mike?”
“It’s there, Bruce. One could probably see it—at a thousand yards with good binoculars.”
“The brass wants to put a team in to mark it. You’re out.”
“Bullshit, sir. These hills are probably alive with foot patrols. You can see there are no roads.”
“So? Patrols can be avoided.”
“And if you run into any? There’s no one speaks Arabic like me, and you know it. Besides, it’s a HALO
drop. Helicopters won’t work either.”
“You’ve had all the action you need, so far as I can gather.”
“That’s crap, too. I haven’t seen any action at all. I’m fed up with spooking. Let me have this one. The others have had the desert for weeks, while I’ve been tending a garden.”
Colonel Craig raised an eyebrow. He had not asked Laing exactly what Martin had been up to—he would not have been told anyway—but he was surprised one of his best officers had been posing as a gardener.
“Come back to the base. We can plan better there. If I like your idea, you can have it.”
Before dawn, General Schwarzkopf had agreed there was no alternative and given his consent. In that cordoned-off corner of the Riyadh military air base that was the private preserve of the SAS, Martin had outlined his ideas to Colonel Craig and had been given the go-ahead.
Coordination of planning would reside with Colonel Craig for the men on the ground and with General Glosson for the eventual fighter-strike.
Buster Glosson had morning coffee with his friend and superior Chuck Horner.
“Any ideas for the unit we’d like to use on this one?” he asked.
General Horner thought back to a certain officer who two weeks earlier had advised him to do something extremely rude.
“Yeah,” he said. “Give it to the Three Thirty-sixth.”
Mike Martin had won his argument with Colonel Craig by pointing out—logically—that with most of the SAS soldiers in the Gulf Theater already deployed inside Iraq, he was the senior officer available, that he was commander of B Squadron, which was then on operations in the desert under the command of his number two, and that he alone spoke fluent Arabic.
But the clinching argument was his training and experience in freefall parachuting. The only way into the Iraqi mountains without raising an alarm was going to be a HALO drop—high altitude, low opening—meaning coming out of the aircraft at 25,000 feet and falling free to open the chutes at 3,500
feet. It was not a job for beginners.
The planning of the entire mission ought to have taken a week, but there was no time for that. The only solution was for the various aspects of the drop, the cross-country march, and the selection of the lying-up position to be planned simultaneously. For that, Martin needed men he could trust with his life, which was precisely what he was going to do anyway.
Back at the SAS corner of the Riyadh military air base, his first question to Colonel Craig was:
“Who can I have?”
The list was short; there were so many away on operations in the desert.
When the adjutant showed him the list, one name sprang out at him.
Peter Stephenson—definite.”
“You’re lucky,” said Craig. “He came back over the border a week ago. Been resting ever since. He’s fit.”
Martin had known Sergeant Stephenson when the sergeant had been a corporal and he a captain on his first tour with the regiment as a troop commander. Like himself, Stephenson was a freefaller and a member of the air troop of his own squadron.
“He’s good,” said Craig, pointing to another name. “A mountain man. I suggest you’ll need two of them.”
The name he pointed to was Corporal Ben Eastman.
“I know him. You’re right—I’ll take him anytime. Who else?”
The last selection was Corporal Kevin North, from another squadron. Martin had never operated with him, but North was a mountain specialist and highly recommended by his troop commander.
There were five areas of planning that had to be accomplished simultaneously. Martin divided up the tasks among them with himself in charge overall.
First came the selection of the aircraft to drop them. Without hesitation, Martin went for the C-130
Hercules, the habitual launch pad of the SAS, and there were then nine of them serving in the Gulf. They were all based at nearby King Khaled International Airport. Even better news came with breakfast: Three of them were from the 47th Squadron, based at Lyneham in Wiltshire, a squadron that has years of experience liaising with the SAS freefallers.
Among the crew of one of the three Hercules was a certain Flight Lieutenant Glyn Morris.
Throughout the Gulf War, the Hercules transports had been part of the hub-and-spoke operation, shifting cargo that arrived at Riyadh to the outlying bases of the Royal Air Force at Tabuq, Muharraq, Dhahran, and even Seeb in Oman. Morris had been serving as loadmaster or cargo supervisor, but his real function on this planet was as a PJI, Parachute Jump Instructor, and Martin had jumped under his supervision before.
Contrary to the notion that the Paras and the SAS look after their own parachuting, all combat dropping in the British Armed Forces comes under the RAF, and the relationship is based on the mutual trust that each party knows exactly what it is doing. Air Commodore Ian Macfadyen, commanding the RAF in the Gulf, seconded the desired Hercules to the SAS mission the moment it arrived back from stores-dumping at Tabuq, and riggers began to convert it for the HALO mission scheduled for the same night.
Chief among the conversion tasks was the construction of an oxygen console on the floor of the cargo bay. Flying mainly at low levels, the Hercules had till that point never needed oxygen in the rear to keep troops alive at high altitude. Flight Lieutenant Morris needed no training in what he was doing, and he brought in a second PJI from another Hercules, Flight Sergeant Sammy Dawlish. They worked throughout the day on the Hercules and had it ready by sundown.
The second priority was the parachutes themselves. At that point, the SAS had not dropped into Iraq from the skies—they had gone into the Iraqi deserts on wheels—but in the weeks preceding the actual war, training missions had been constant.
At the military air base there was a sealed and temperature-controlled safety equipment section, where the SAS had stored its parachutes. Martin asked for and got an allocation of eight main chutes and eight reserves, although he and his men would only need four of each. Sergeant Stephenson was allocated the task of checking and packing all eight throughout the day.
The chutes were no longer the circular type associated with the airborne units, but the newer design called “squares.” They are not really square but oblong and have two layers of fabric. In flight, air is ducted between the layers, forming a semirigid “wing” with an airfoil cross-section, enabling the freefaller to “fly” the chute down like a glider, with greater mobility to turn and maneuver. These are the type normally seen at freefalling displays.
The two corporals got the task of obtaining and checking all the remaining stores that would be needed.
These included four sets of clothing, four big Bergen rucksacks, water bottles, helmets, belts, weapons, HVCs—the high-value con
centrates, which would be all there was to eat—ammunition, first-aid kits ...
the list went on and on. Each man would be carrying eighty pounds in those Bergens and might need every ounce of them.
Fitters and mechanics worked on the Hercules itself in a designated hangar, overhauling the engines and servicing every moving part.
The squadron commander nominated his best aircrew, whose navigator accompanied Colonel Craig back to the Black Hole to select a suitable drop zone, the all-important DZ.
Martin himself was taken in hand by six technicians, four American and two British, and introduced to the gizmos he would have to operate to find the target, locate it to within a few square yards, and relay the information back to Riyadh.
When he had finished, his various devices were security-packed against accidental breakage and taken across to the hangar, where the mountain of gear for the four men grew and grew. For extra safety, there were two of each of the scientific devices, adding again to the weight the men would carry.
Martin himself went to join the planners in the Black Hole. They were bent over a large table strewn with fresh pictures taken by another TR-1 that morning just after dawn. The weather had been clear, and the photos showed every nook and crevice of the Jebal al Hamreen.
“We assume,” said Colonel Craig, “that this damn gun must be pointing south to southeast. The best observation point would therefore seem to be here.”
He indicated a series of crevices in the side of a mountain to the south of the presumed Fortress, the hill in the center of the group within the square kilometer that had been designated by the late Colonel Osman Badri.
“As for a DZ, there’s a small valley here, about forty kilometers south. ... You can see the water glinting in a wee stream running down the valley.”
Martin looked. It was a tiny depression in the hills, 500 yards long and about 100 wide, with grassy banks strewn with rocks, and the rill trickling its winter water along the bottom of the dip.
“It’s the best?” asked Martin.
Colonel Craig shrugged. “Frankly, it’s about all you’ve got. The next is seventy kilometers from the target. Get any closer, and they could see you land.”
On the map, in daylight, it would be a cinch; in pitch darkness, plunging through freezing air at 120 miles per hour, it would be easy to miss. There would be no lights to guide them, no flares on the ground. From blackness into blackness.
“I’ll take it,” he said. The RAF navigator straightened up.
“Right, I’ll get going.”
The navigator would have a busy afternoon. It would be his job to find the way without lights and across a moonless sky not to the drop zone but to a point in space from which, bearing in mind wind drift, four falling bodies could leave his aircraft to find that tiny valley. Even falling bodies drift downwind; his job would be to estimate how much.
It was not until the hour of dusk that all the men met again in the hangar, now banned to everyone else on the base. The Hercules stood ready, fueled. Beneath one wing was the mound of gear the four men would need. Dawlish, the RAF jump instructor, had repacked every one of the eight forty-eight-pound chutes as if he would be using them himself. Stephenson was satisfied.
In one corner was a large briefing table. Martin, who had brought enlarged photographs from the Black Hole with him, took Stephenson, Eastman, and North over to the table to work out their route from the DZ to those crevices where they intended to hole up and study the Fortress for however long it took. It looked like two nights of hard march, resting in place in the intervening day. There could be no question of marching in daylight, and the route could not be direct.
Finally each man packed his Bergen from the bottom up, the last item being the belt order, a heavy webbing belt with numerous pockets that would be unpacked after landing and worn round the waist.
American hamburgers and sodas were brought from the commissary at sundown, and the four men rested until takeoff. This was scheduled for 9:45, aiming for a drop at 11:30P.M.
Martin always thought the waiting was worst; after the frantic activity of the day, it was like a long anticlimax. There was nothing to concentrate on but the tension, the constant nagging thought that, despite all the checks and double-checks, something vital had been forgotten. It was the period when some men ate, or read, or wrote home, or dozed, or just went to the lavatory and emptied themselves.
At nine a tractor towed the Hercules out onto the apron, and the crew of pilot, copilot, navigator, and flight engineer began their engine run-up checks. Twenty minutes later, a black-windowed bus entered the hangar to take the men and their gear to the drop plane, waiting with rear doors open and ramp down.
The two PJIs were ready for them, with the loadmaster and chute rigger. Only seven walked up the ramp on foot and into the vast cavern of the Here. The ramp came up, and the doors closed. The rigger had gone back to the bus; he would not fly with them.
With the PJIs and the loadmaster, the four soldiers strapped themselves to the seats along the wall and waited. At 9:44P.M. the Hercules lifted off from Riyadh and turned her blunt nose to the north.
While the RAF plane rose into the night sky on February 21, an American helicopter was asked to stay to one side before coming in to settle close to the American sector of the air base.
It had been sent to Al Kharz to pick up two men. Steve Turner, the squadron commander of the 336th Tactical Fighter Squadron, had been summoned to Riyadh on the orders of General Buster Glosson.
With him, as ordered, he brought the man he considered his best pilot for low-level ground-attack sorties.
Neither the CO of the Rocketeers nor Captain Don Walker had the faintest idea why they were wanted.
In a small briefing room below CENTAF headquarters an hour later, they were told why, and what was needed. They were also told that no one else, with the sole exception of Walker’s weapons systems officer, the man flying in the seat behind him, was allowed to know the full details.
Then they were helicoptered back to their base.
After takeoff the four soldiers could unbuckle and move around the hull of the aircraft by the dim red lights overhead. Martin went forward, up the ladder to the flight deck, and sat for a while with the crew.
They flew at 10,000 feet toward the Iraqi border, then began to climb. At 25,000 feet the Hercules leveled off and crossed into Iraq, seemingly alone in the starlit sky.
In fact it was not alone. Over the Gulf an AWACS had orders to keep a constant eye on the sky around and below them. If any Iraqi radar screen, for some unknown reason not already totaled by the Allied air forces, chose to “illuminate,” it was to be immediately attacked. To this end, two flights of Wild Weasels with antiradar HARM missiles were below them.
In case some Iraqi fighter pilot chose to take to the sky that night, a flight of RAF Jaguars was above and to the left of them, a flight of F-15C Eagles to the right. The Hercules was flying in a protective box of lethal technology. No other pilot in the sky that night knew why. They just had their orders.
In fact, if anyone in Iraq saw any blip on the radar that night, it was assumed the cargo plane was just heading north to Turkey.
The loadmaster did his all to make his guests comfortable with tea, coffee, soft drinks, and crackers.
Forty minutes before Release Point, the navigator flashed a warning light indicating P-minus-forty, and the last preparations began.
The four soldiers put on their main and reserve parachutes, the former across the breadth of the shoulders, the latter lower down the back. Then came the Bergens, hung upside down on the back beneath the chutes, with the point between the legs. Weapons—a silenced Heckler and Koch MP5 SD
submachine gun—were clipped down the left side, and the personal oxygen tank hooked across the belly.
Finally they put on their helmets and oxygen masks before connecting the latter to the center console, a frame structure the size of a large dining table crammed with bottles of oxygen. When
everyone was breathing and comfortable, the pilot was informed and began to bleed the air and pressure level inside the hull out into the night until both had equalized.
It took almost twenty minutes. Then they sat again, waiting. Fifteen minutes before Release Point, a further message came from the flight deck into the ears of the loadmaster. He told the PJIs to gesture to the soldiers to switch from main console oxygen to their own personal minibottles. Each of these had a thirty-minute supply, and they would need three to four minutes of that for the drop itself.
At that point only the navigator on the flight deck knew exactly where he was; the SAS team had total confidence that they would be dropped in the right place.
By now the loadmaster was in contact with the soldiers by a constant stream of hand signals, which ended when he pointed both hands at the lights above the console. Into the loadmaster’s ears came a stream of instructions from the navigator.
The men rose and started to move, slowly, like spacemen weighed down by their gear, toward the ramp. The PJIs, also on mobile oxygen bottles, went with them. The SAS men stood in a line in front of the still-closed tailgate door, each checking the equipment in front of him.
At P-minus-four the tailgate came down, and they stared out into 25,000 feet of rushing black air.
Another hand signal—two fingers raised by the PJI—told them they were at P-minus-two. The men shuffled to the very edge of the ramp and looked at the lights (unilluminated) on each side of the gaping aperture. The lights went red, goggles were drawn down. The lights went green. ...
All four men turned on one heel, facing into the cavern, and jumped backward, arms apart, faces down.
The sill of the ramp flashed beneath their masks, and the Hercules was gone.
Sergeant Stephenson led the way.
Stabilizing their fall position, they dropped through the night sky for five miles without a sound. At 3,500
feet automatic pressure-operated releases jerked open the parachute packs, and the fabric exploded out.
In second position, Mike Martin saw the shadow fifty feet beneath him appear to stop moving. In the same second he felt the vibration of his own main chute opening, then the “square” took the strain and he slowed from 120 miles per hour to fourteen, with hesitators taking up some of the shock.