Authors: James Barrington
The loadmaster reappeared in the hold, checked that everyone there was wearing a headset, and
then gave Richter a thumbs-up as he sat down.
‘We’re about sixty seconds from the first landing strip,’ the captain
announced, his voice clear enough through the intercom. ‘We’ll do a low-level fly-by to check the surface, and if it looks OK we’ll land. Check your belts are tight and hold
on.’
The Hercules sank even lower, then lurched up slightly, levelling at about one hundred feet.
In the cockpit, the captain had switched on the set of landing lights filtered for NVG use,
and was peering through his night-vision glasses at the ground below the aircraft. If he was going to land here, he wanted to be absolutely sure he could do so safely and, even more
important, take off again afterwards.
From the cockpit, the desert surface looked firm, and though there were plenty of rocks and a
few stunted shrubs evident, none of them looked big enough to do the aircraft any damage.
‘Good enough,’ the captain said. ‘Let’s put her down.’
He discarded his NVGs, pulled the aircraft round in a tight turn to
starboard, climbed back up to three hundred feet and started what at an airfield would have been called the downwind leg.
‘Landing checks.’
The co-pilot ran through the list, as the rumble of the main landing gear being lowered echoed
through the hold, audible even over the howl of the engines. The Hercules banked steeply to starboard, the pilot holding the turn and easing it onto a final approach heading. He levelled the
wings, switched on the normal landing lights and pulled the throttles back, and the C-130 sank gently towards the ground.
The SAS troops rapidly checked their equipment and weapons. Then they held on tight.
‘Alpha and Bravo, check in,’ Dekker ordered, and was rewarded by seven voices
responding on their secure radios in proper sequence. Richter was the odd man out, in more ways than one, and he found himself using the radio callsign ‘Spook’, simply because
Dekker liked the sound of it.
Touchdown was much bumpier than Richter had expected, the Hercules bouncing violently several
times as its speed dropped away. Even before the aircraft came to rest, and the piercing whine of the engines had fallen to a more bearable level, the SAS troopers had unclipped their
seatbelts and stood up. Two of them were already releasing the securing straps on the Land Rovers before the loadmaster stepped across to the ramp controls. The remaining five men, plus
Richter and Dekker, headed to the rear of the hold and waited. The loadmaster studied the group, noting that all the men had their Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine-guns cocked and held
ready, then began lowering the ramp.
Immediately, the lights in the hold extinguished, and they saw a slowly extending oblong open up
in front of them, a dark blue sky studded with stars. Then the surface of the desert itself appeared. The moment the ramp grounded, the SAS troopers thundered down it and fanned out, alert
for any sign of danger.
In the hold, the engines of the two Pinkies started simultaneously, then they rolled down the
ramp and stopped side by side. Once everyone had climbed on board, Dekker checked that all the GPS units were indicating the same location, and that both the satellite navigation systems were
working properly. They had to be able to find their objective
swiftly and, equally important, find their way back to the Hercules once this operation was over.
Dekker carried out a final radio check to ensure that everyone was on the net, then gave the
order to advance. Behind them, the ramp closed and the noise of the C-130’s engines rose to a roar as the pilot began manoeuvring the aircraft into a take-off position. Once he was
satisfied, he would shut down the engines and simply wait for the team to return.
They knew it was going to be an uncomfortable ten miles – the satellite photographs had
made that abundantly clear – but they weren’t prepared for just how rough the desert terrain actually was. Picking a suitable path through the rocks and boulders tested both
drivers to the limit, and they weren’t helped by the covers over their headlamps that reduced the normal beam by about eighty per cent. Richter was hoping to get in and out of Algeria
undetected, and bright lights can show up a long way off in the desert. Sound travels far as well, so the vehicles’ engines were fitted with additional silencers, and the engine bays
packed with sound-insulating material to reduce the risk of being heard.
Under normal conditions, driving this distance should have taken about twenty to thirty minutes,
but it was nearly three quarters of an hour before Dekker looked up from his navigation system and ordered the vehicles to stop. They were now just under a mile from the airfield boundary,
nine miles from the waiting Hercules, and that was as close as they could risk taking the Pinkies.
Dekker ordered the two drivers to stay with their vehicles, then led the rest of his men,
Richter tagging along behind, towards the east and to Aïn Oussera.
Twenty minutes later they were lying prone on the summit of a slight rise, as Dekker and
Richter studied the layout of the airfield directly in front of them.
The north coast of the Kuksa-bong peninsula is partially cultivated, but west of Kama-san the
south coast is essentially uninhabited. The reason
almost nobody lived there was the same reason that Yi Min-Ho couldn’t land there: an extremely inhospitable terrain
cut through with deep, heavily wooded valleys ending in steep cliffs overlooking the sea. Instead, the plan called for him to be landed south of Suri-bong, on the north side of the bay known
as Daito-wan. Yi himself would have preferred a location even further east, but that was impossible because of the logistics of getting the inflatable back to the fishing boat, and it would
also have greatly increased the possibility of detection.
About five hundred metres off the coast the crewman eased the inflatable to a virtual standstill
and cut the engine. The boat rocked gently on the waves while the two men scanned the shore through image-intensifying binoculars, looking and listening for any sign of life or movement, but
the coastline appeared almost deserted. They could see a few lights – probably from oil lamps, since the mains electricity supply in North Korea is, to put it mildly, erratic –
signifying isolated dwellings, but there were no large settlements in this region.
At a gesture from Yi Min-Ho, the crewman restarted the engine and steered towards the beach.
This was perhaps the most dangerous phase of the entire operation, and they proceeded very cautiously, checking all around them – not just on the beach ahead – as they neared
landfall. Both knew the fate that would await them if they were caught by the North Korean security forces.
The moment the inflatable touched the beach, the crewman jumped out and held the bow steady
while Yi Min-Ho shrugged his haversack onto his back and climbed out, his boots crunching on the pebbles. Without a backward glance, the crewman immediately pushed the inflatable away from
the beach, and climbed back into it.
Yi looked back once, checking that the boat was well clear of the strand and already heading
south-west to rendezvous with the fishing boat, then he tramped across to the cover of the trees that bordered the shore. There he stopped, put down his haversack and took out the Kyocera
satellite phone and the GPS receiver to check precisely his current position. He’d landed almost exactly where they’d calculated, and this he hoped was a good omen. He next
switched on the Kyocera, made a call that lasted less than fifteen seconds, then turned the unit off.
Yi hefted the haversack onto his back again, tucked the GPS receiver
into
one of his pockets, and started walking. His destination lay some fifteen kilometres directly to the east, but he would probably have to walk about double that distance. He couldn’t
cover the entire route in darkness, but the final section of his journey would be in the hill country south of Kungnak-san, where he could probably travel safely in daylight. If nothing
unexpected occurred, he should be in position sometime the following morning.
The base looked almost deserted in the ghostly green light of the image intensifier, but
Richter could see at least a dozen sentries posted around the hangars ranged inside the boundary fence. Most seemed to be smoking, the sudden flares of brightness unmistakable through the
NVGs. That was good news from the point of view of the SAS team, because sentries with lighted cigarettes give away their positions every time they draw in a lungful of tobacco smoke, but
also have degraded night vision and are less likely to be fully alert.
‘That’s it,’ Richter murmured into his boom microphone, ‘the second one
from the left.’
The satellite pictures they’d studied at Hereford had clearly identified the hangar that
Six and the Americans wanted investigating. They’d also shown, on three separate passes, that it normally had sentries posted on all of its four sides, which presented a problem, but
Richter thought he’d worked out a way around that.
‘Still happy with the plan?’ Dekker asked.
‘I’m not happy with any of this, but I don’t see any other way of getting a
look inside. Do you?’
‘No, not unless we take out about half those sentries first. And since the
Head-shed’s very keen to ensure nobody knows we were here, that’s not an option.’
‘Right,’ Richter said, ‘we’d better get on with it.’
To the front of their position, a wadi ran diagonally towards the airfield’s boundary
fence. It looked around four or five feet deep,
enough to conceal a crouching man, and was the obvious way to reach the fence undetected, which now made Dekker nervous.
‘If I was in charge of security at this place,’ he said, ‘I’d stick a
handful of Claymores in that ditch. I think our best approach is straight to the fence, keeping low. The guards are positioned around the hangars, not on the boundary, and there aren’t
any watchtowers or dogs to cause a problem.’
Dekker turned aside for a short conversation with his number two – a small wiry
sergeant-major named Wallace – then he briefed his men. Just he and Richter, accompanied by a trooper carrying a collapsible aluminium ladder, would cross the open ground to the
airfield boundary, while the rest of the men stayed well back. If they reached the fence undetected, Richter would use the ladder to get inside. Then it had to be all up to him, since he was
the deniable asset, carrying no possible means of identification. The SAS troopers would protect his progress, of course, but under no circumstances would they themselves enter the base. That
had been made very clear at Hereford. Richter must get inside, carry out his surveillance, and get out again, alone.
Richter checked his gear. Like the SAS troopers, he was wearing all-black combat clothing, but
he wasn’t carrying the usual assortment of weapons, ammunition and equipment. He had a Sig 226 in a holster strapped to his thigh, which he really hoped he wouldn’t have to use,
because that would blow the mission; a set of compact binoculars; a collapsible jemmy; a coil of thin but very strong climbing rope, two webbing straps and a harness; and a high-specification
digital camera inside his jacket. And that, apart from a slim leather wallet containing a selection of specialized lock-picking tools, was pretty much all he had. Stealth, not firepower, was
his most important weapon here.
‘Ready?’ Dekker asked, and Richter nodded. ‘Right, let’s go. All
callsigns, heads-up. Spook’s going in, immediate.’
Dekker led the way, sliding backwards from the top of the rise until he could stand up safely
out of sight of the air base. A trooper appeared beside him and placed his 203 against a rock. The ladder, folded and fitted to the frame of his Bergen, was a cumbersome and bulky load, and
he didn’t want to carry the rifle as well.
There were dips and rises on the desert floor, and clumps of rocks
between
their position and the perimeter of the air base. Dekker quickly sketched out a route that would make the best possible use of what cover there was available, then set off. Richter followed,
the trooper with the ladder behind him. The three men proceeded slowly, only one at a time, so as to minimize the possibility that their movements would be seen. The nearest sentry was only
about one hundred yards away, which was far too close for comfort.
They were forty yards from the fence when Dekker suddenly dropped flat, followed by the
others. He’d seen headlights approaching from inside the airfield. The vehicle came closer, apparently following the perimeter track. It passed directly in front of them without slowing
down, and they could see it was an open jeep or similar with a machine-gun mounted on the back.
‘Probably just a roving patrol,’ Dekker suggested, his voice sounding alarmingly
loud in Richter’s earpiece. ‘No doubt checking that all the sentries are still awake.’
‘Which they are, unfortunately,’ Richter replied.
They resumed their slow and steady progress, and five minutes later the three of them were
crouching in a slight dip in the ground only fifteen feet from the fence. It was a typical low-security barrier: steel posts about ten feet high set into concrete bases, with heavy-duty wire
netting strung between them, supported by horizontal steel cables.
‘No sign of sensors,’ Dekker observed, ‘and it’s definitely not
electrified, so you won’t fry when you touch it.’
‘That’s encouraging, at least.’
Dekker slid the folding ladder from the trooper’s Bergen frame and laid it out flat on the
ground. Most collapsible ladders have joints that click loudly when they snap into place, but this one had been specially manufactured for the Regiment. It was absolutely rigid when
assembled, but the joints closed in complete silence.
In less than a minute the ladder was ready. They checked in all directions, making sure that
they were still unobserved, then Dekker stepped forward and leant the ladder against one of the steel posts supporting the fence. The ladder itself was twelve feet long, since the analysts at
JARIC had calculated the height of the fence at ten feet, based upon the length of the shadows they’d observed on the satellite imagery.
Richter climbed up swiftly, swung his leg over so that he straddled the fence, his feet
resting safely on one of the horizontal steel cables, pulled the ladder up and over, then lowered its base to the ground inside the airfield. Then he slid down it, lifted the ladder away from
the fence and placed it flat on the ground.
Outside the wire, Dekker gave him a thumbs-up, then the two men melted away into the night.
Richter was inside. Now all he had to do was complete the mission and get out again. It sounded
easy enough if you said it quickly.