‘Thanks,’ he said, munching it. The others looked at him. ‘What?’ Scouse said with an innocent expression, still chewing, spitting a bit of bread out as he spoke. ‘It was only one bite anyway.’
The Lynx flew at maximum speed 5,000 feet above the countryside and it was not long before the coast was in sight. They passed over Exeter and followed the River Exe to the sea.
‘CTC,’ Scouse said, indicating the Commando Training Centre on their left, the camp at Lympstone where they had all joined the Royal Marines as recruits, some much longer ago than others.
Stratton looked down on the huge complex and picked out the Tarzan course, weapon training huts and the route up to Woodbury Common and the endurance course. Memories of life as a young, innocent recruit scrolled through his mind, a time when he could never have even begun to guess what the future held for him. He had lived from day to day through the six months of arduous training while the vestiges of civilian idiosyncrasy were gradually stripped from him to be replaced with those of a soldier.Then as soon as it was over and he had earned the title Royal Marine, it was not enough. He wanted more intensity, tougher goals and a smaller, more exclusive group, and so he applied to join the SBS. As he looked out of the window he thought about his life since then and what he had achieved. He could think of nothing now that seemed worthy though some had at the time. He often doubted his chosen career. As he got older he began to believe that soldiers throughout history had never really achieved much. If the definition was true that the quality of a war was judged by the resulting peace then he had failed in everything. The wars he had been involved in were in the same old places against the same old enemy and fighting for the same old thing: power and control, and the soldiers fuelled the war machines.
Stratton felt a tap on his shoulder and looked away from the window to see it was the co-pilot. They were moving beyond the estuary and he was indicating ahead. Stratton took a headset off the panel beside him and put it over his ears.
‘There it is,’ the co-pilot said, pointing.
Stratton looked below the horizon to see a tiny cluster of ships still quite far out to sea. The tanker was easiest to make out and the other specks were no doubt the coastguard and some police boats.
Scouse was listening on his SBS network radio and nudged Stratton. ‘Team Bravo and Charlie are in the water and closing on the tanker. They’re waiting for us.’
‘I want the other boats out of the way,’ Stratton said.
‘They’re getting the order now,’ Scouse said.
There was a possibility of an explosive device on board and there was no longer a need for the boats to be there anyway. The thought of a greater threat such as an atom or even a dirty bomb had occurred to most but that was not worth talking about at this stage. If there was a serious device they wouldn’t know anything about it a second after it went off.
Stratton leaned forward to get a look at the pilot but didn’t recognise him. ‘Who’s the pilot?’ he asked Scouse. The pilot and co-pilot could only hear him if he spoke through the intercom headset.
‘Ah. One small problem,’ Scouse said. ‘He joined the branch a couple of weeks ago and he was the only pilot available at five minutes’ notice.’
‘You’re kidding me.’
‘He’s obviously good or he wouldn’t be here.’
‘Has he done an eagle feast before?’
‘One, and not at max speed.’
‘I wouldn’t describe that as a
small
problem, Scouse.’
An eagle feast was part of a simultaneous two-pronged assault on a ship at sea: one from the water, the other from the air.To approach from the air unnoticed a craft had to be high, but then to take part in the assault it had to cover the distance down to the boat in the fastest possible time. The best way the Special Forces naval pilots had come up with was simply to take the wind out of the rotors and let the helicopter drop like a stone. The hard part was controlling the drop and getting the wind back into the rotors at the end of it.
Stratton put his cabin headset back on and pushed the mic in front of his mouth. ‘Pilot? What’s your name?’
The pilot glanced back for a second. He looked very young. ‘Robert,’ he said into his own mic. He was an officer but had been around long enough to know it was first-name terms among all ranks in the SBS working at the sharp end, including attached ranks such as he was.
‘Good to meet you, Robert. I’m Stratton. Is that right you’ve only done one eagle feast before now?’
‘Yes, a week ago,’ he said, doing his best to sound confident, but Stratton was not so sure.
‘You happy with the procedure?’
The pilot paused a moment and Stratton thought he caught a slight change in his expression.
‘Well . . . to be honest, not really,’ he said. ‘Wish I’d had the chance to practise a couple more before my first live one.’
Stratton glanced at Scouse who was listening through another headset and wearing a concerned expression, which was more put on than genuine - cavalier humour was the norm in the SBS, especially when tension was mounting. But there was something to be worried about since there was not any room for error on the manoeuvre.
‘Too late to worry about that now,’ Stratton said to the pilot.
‘Rubbish,’ Scouse chimed in. ‘There’s plenty of time to shit yourself.’
‘They’re waiting on us,’ Stratton continued. ‘Let’s get to the drop height.’ Then aside to Scouse: ‘He can only get it wrong once.’
‘True enough,’ Scouse said.
The pilot eased up the blade pitch control and the Lynx started to climb.
‘How long to eighteen thousand feet?’ Stratton asked him.
The pilot glanced quickly over at Stratton, looking more worried. ‘You mean twelve thousand feet.’
‘I like to come in from eighteen. Hardly any chance of being seen or heard at that height. How long?’ Stratton asked again.
The pilot glanced at his co-pilot who shrugged helplessly. ‘Em . . . three minutes,’ the pilot said awkwardly, his mind starting to race.
‘What’s six thousand feet between friends,’ Stratton said to Scouse. ‘Where are the boats?’
‘A mile in rear of the tanker,’ Scouse said.
‘Tell them to start their run now.’
Scouse relayed the order as the Lynx shuddered, straining to climb as fast as it could.
A mile behind the tanker the pair of 22-metre-long grey-and-black VSVs cruised gracefully through the water at quarter speed. They were unusual boats, shaped like a cross between a slim wedge of cheese and the nose of a Concorde supersonic jet, and virtually undetectable by radar due to their stealth construction. The boats were designed to cut through the waves not ride over them like every other high-performance speedboat, and in rough conditions they could pierce a swell and disappear beneath the surface for a short period of time. The boats were fully enclosed with a cabin capacity of twenty-six operatives packed tightly together and an optional pair of twin 50-cal. machine guns in the bows. Their maximum speed was confidential and far in excess of the maker’s advertised 60 knots.
The coxswains pushed their throttles forward and the massive twin 2,000hp diesel engines roared deeply as the boats accelerated powerfully through the water. The forty operatives, twenty in each boat, were dressed identically to Stratton’s team but with added specialised equipment for getting on board a large ship.The VSVs cruised a few metres apart and within half a minute were at near maximum speed and closing on the tanker like surface torpedoes.
The Lynx shuddered and levelled out. ‘Eighteen thousand feet,’ the pilot said, and sounding none too confident about it.
‘We right behind the tanker’s stern?’ Stratton asked.
‘It’s directly below us,’ the co-pilot said, making some checks on his instrument panel.
‘Hold until I give the word.’
‘Roger that,’ came the co-pilot’s reply, glancing at his nervous partner as inexperienced as he was.
The pilot released the controls one hand at a time to clench and unclench his hands and get the blood flowing through them. His anxiety was growing. Under normal circumstances, the training for this procedure was taken in gradual steps to allow the pilot to get the feel for it, a few hundred feet first before working up to a couple of thousand, the speed building each time. He had put troops down on ships many times in the past but never from an eagle feast. When they called him in the mess during breakfast that morning, told him about the operation and asked if he could do it, he said he could without hesitation. His response had been partly macho but mostly because he didn’t want to pass on the opportunity of a lifetime to do a live operational ship attack with the SBS. There were more pilots than there were opportunities to take part in a job like this one and it would be a big chalk up on his record. But now, hovering at eighteen thousand feet, the tanker looking quite small far below, he was having doubts and questioning his gung-ho eagerness. It was not just his life at stake, there were seven more in his hands. Here he was getting ready to do what until a few years ago only a handful of highly experienced pilots had attempted. Only the best were allowed to even try. He was one of the best, but if he screwed this up, well, he would not be around to get chastised for it, that was for sure. It was too late to change his mind now. He would rather crash the helicopter than live with the life-long disgrace of backing out of it.
‘Two hundred metres,’ Scouse relayed from the VSVs. ‘One hundred . . . Slowing . . . Alongside.’
The two VSVs approached directly behind the stern of the tanker and then broke swiftly to come along either side. Meanwhile in the back of the boats, the hook-men, two in each, were already on their feet and in harnesses designed so they could stand and hold the skyward-pointing launchers on their shoulders without falling over, even in rough conditions. When the coxswains reached a point alongside the tanker just behind the superstructure and inches from the wall of steel, they dropped the power off quickly then hit reverse thrust for a few seconds to hold their position and match the ship’s speed. Without a word of command the hook-men fired their air guns and four grapnels flew high into the air, trailing lines to land on the deck. Operatives quickly pulled the lines back until the grapnels caught hold. This was where a little luck was required since the hooks were out of sight.They had to grab something solid. If the hook did not it could spring loose and once the line had the climber’s weight on it, drop him. Often the hook did come loose, flew back until it snagged something else such as the rails, and dropped the climber into the water so he had to carry on climbing from there. A much worse scenario was if the hook flew over the rails and out to sea. The climber would fall into the water and there was a danger of him going under and being sucked through the props. Four grapnels meant the odds were almost certain a hold would be taken somewhere, and one, although not ideal, was all they needed at a push.
‘Go!’ the operatives pulling the lines shouted as they felt the hooks bite hold.
The climbers attached their climbing devices, activated them and shot out of the boat. The secret to this manoeuvre was to keep facing the ship and run up the side. Each climber carried three lightweight caving ladders rolled up and clipped to his hips.They stopped just short of the lip of the deck, keeping out of view in case they came under attack, unclipped the first ladder, hooked it to the lip, and let it unravel down to the boat. They repeated the procedure with the other two ladders then remained where they were with their weapons aimed up at the rails while operatives started to climb from below. When the first three reached the deck they in turn hooked two more ladders on to the lip and let them unroll, and then this first wave of four men climbed over the rail on to the deck to secure a bridgehead. In less then two minutes from first hook-on, both teams were aboard. They divided up and headed towards their designated targets.
‘They’re on!’ shouted Scouse.
‘Go!’ Stratton said to the pilot who took a breath, dropped the pitch of the blades, removing all the lift, and nosed the craft forward.The Lynx quickly picked up speed and plummeted like a bird of prey going for a kill. Everyone experienced the drop in the pit of their stomach as the blood rushed to their head causing momentary dizziness. It began like the scariest fairground ride in the world, but the real fun part was to come.
After two thousand feet the Lynx was near vertical and Stratton could see the bows of the tanker through the windshield. The craft started to shudder as it reached terminal velocity. Stratton, Scouse and Tip beside him were held facing forward in their seats by their seatbelts while the other three could only sit back and look at them. The pilot increased his grip on the controls as they began to shake more violently, his eyes glued to the altimeter. Fourteen thousand feet. It was not the ideal time to ask himself the question, but when dropping from twelve thousand feet he knew he needed to start pulling out of the dive at two and a half. The question was, when dropping from eighteen thousand, did he have to pull out sooner? Surely not, he thought. Terminal velocity was terminal velocity no matter what height you started from. Then the Lynx gave a violent jolt with a force the pilot had never experienced before. Eight thousand feet. There was another equally violent shake as if a bus had rammed into their rear. He wondered if the rotors were buckling. Perhaps his nose was too far down. He had to maintain a steep angle, but not completely vertical. He had to keep air under the rotors to force them away from the helicopter’s body. If he went too steep and air got on top of the blades, it could force them down where they would chop a piece off the helicopter as they turned. Another bang. If any part of the blade broke away it wouldn’t function properly and they’d never pull out of the dive.
‘Now remember, we want the top floor, not the basement,’ came Stratton’s voice over the pilot’s earphones. The pilot did not find the comment reassuring. The controls shook in his hands. His eyes flicked from the instruments panel to the window for a second and saw it was filled with the enormous tanker, laid out in front of him like a runway, except he wasn’t approaching like a plane but in a flat dive headed straight for the poop deck. He then started to experience a most frightening phenomenon, not uncommon in situations like this, known as ground rush. His eyes started picking up minute details of the ship giving him the horrifying impression of being only yards away. Inexperienced free-fallers sometimes had similar illusions which could cause panic and premature pulling of ripcords. For a few seconds the pilot believed they were about to slam into the deck like a kamikaze aircraft. He almost panicked and was about to pull back when he forced his eyes to find the altimeter. Three thousand feet. He still had five hundred feet to go. He forced himself to hang on for two more seconds. Two thousand and five and he pulled up the pitch lever with one arm while at the same time dragging the stick back with the other.The craft did not respond immediately and he pulled the controls as hard as he could as if trying to rip them out of the floor. The Lynx shook so violently it felt like it was going to fall apart. Then suddenly, the nose began to lift. Everyone sunk into their seats, compressed by the enormous G-force exerted upon them. The pilot no longer used the instruments to fly and stared at the superstructure. It was in full view and they were heading straight towards it. He held the controls back with all his strength and then heard a voice saying: ‘Come on. Come on . . .’ It was his.