Chris Ryan - Killing for the Company

A small convoy of unmarked black transit vehicles, covered with a thick layer of sandy dust, were waiting immediately behind the plane, and standing outside them were a handful of people. Luke immediately recognised the OC, Julian Dawson, and Sergeant Major Bill Thomas, who’d gone out as an advance party. The others were also in civvies but making no attempt to hide the assault rifles strapped round their bodies. They were clearly members of some branch of the Israeli Defence Forces, ostensibly there to help the squadron load up and escort them to their operational base, but nobody was under any illusion that they were there to control more than to assist.

Luke had never been to Ben Gurion before. His operations in the region had always taken him further east, into Jordan, Iraq and the Stan. He knew, though, that the Israelis had good reason to be paranoid. Their principal airport had long been a target for terror attacks, dating back to the early seventies when Black September — the same Palestinian terrorist group that later orchestrated the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics — landed a hijacked 707 on the runway. The Israeli Government had called in their elite special forces, Sayeret Matkal, more commonly known as the Unit. The Unit was based on the SAS, even down to sharing the same regimental motto, ‘Who Dares Wins’. They had stormed the 707, taking control in less than ten minutes and nailing two of the four hijackers as well as one passenger. Since that day, Ben Gurion had been one of the most highly defended airports in the world, with both uniformed and covert police and the IDF operating round the clock.

Luke eyed up the Israeli soldiers as he unstrapped himself from his seat in the C-17. To a man they had shaved heads and tanned skin. Some of them were so dark as to look Arabic. Were these guys members of the Unit? Maybe. No way they’d tell him and he wasn’t going to ask. One of them shouted something in Hebrew as a passenger jet thundered overhead, and the others opened up the back of the transits while the Regiment men unloaded their gear from the aircraft and packed it into the waiting vehicles. Ten minutes later they were speeding across the airfield. At the perimeter they passed a checkpoint that made Heathrow look like a Center Parc. It was guarded not only by armed personnel, but by three open-topped technicals with. 50-cal machine guns mounted on the top, each one manned by a cold-eyed Israeli soldier. A regular level of security, or laid on in response to the volatile international situation? Luke didn’t know.

‘Hope no one’s over their booze allowance,’ Fozzie announced as the plainclothes IDF lads negotiated their way out of the airport. A couple of minutes later they were speeding away from the airport towards a wide, well-maintained main road.

They travelled for forty-five minutes before pulling off the main road. Five minutes after that they slowed down some more, coming to a halt at the edge of a high fence with rolls of barbed wire perched on top. There was a huge yellow sign — ‘Hebrew for “Fuck off”,’ Fozzie suggested — and at a break in the fence was a barrier, manned by two armed soldiers in olive drab. They were clearly expecting the convoy: one look and they opened the barrier and waved them on.

It was pitch-black outside. At first Luke couldn’t see much of the immediate surroundings. In the distance, though, he caught sight of the red lights of control and communications towers, and they were not far inside the perimeter when a chopper flew overhead. He had the impression of an immense military installation, and that impression was confirmed a couple of minutes later when the central hub of the base came into view.

It was a sprawling mess of low, single-storey buildings, aircraft hangars and equipment warehouses. Each building looked like it had been stuck there without much thought, as if the whole place had grown up randomly over a long period of time. Even though it was late, there was plenty going on. Military trucks were swarming round. As they drove past a hangar, Luke caught sight of an F-16, brightly lit and surrounded by engineers. There was even a missile of some description, mounted on the back of a mobile launcher and being moved from one side of the base to another, where there was a small forest of signalling gear — masts, satellites, the works. Men in olive drab were everywhere, illuminated by bright floodlights that wouldn’t have looked out of place at Old Trafford. No one seemed to pay any attention to the convoy. Hardly surprising, Luke thought to himself. The whole base had the air of being in readiness for war, so a couple of busloads of extra soldiers was hardly enough to get tongues wagging.

The convoy trundled through the base for another couple of minutes until it came to a small group of buildings set apart from the main body of the base. They were low and functional, constructed from bare breeze-blocks, and unlike the rest of the camp, there were no military personnel milling about here, nor any military vehicles. B Squadron debussed outside these buildings and filed into the largest of them.

An ops room had been set up here. Nothing fancy. Didn’t need to be. A few tables and chairs, with laptops and comms equipment dotted around. One wall was plastered with mapping of the region — both satellite and topographical — and the windows had all been covered up from the inside using simple black bin liners. The Regiment might be on friendly territory, their presence might not be a secret to the Israeli authorities, but what happened inside these buildings was covert, and nobody would welcome prying eyes.

Once they were all inside, the OC called them to attention. He pointed to a door at the far end of the ops room. ‘Briefing room through there. Bunks in the adjacent building, weapons store beyond that. There’s a cookhouse in the main base — you can get some scoff after you’ve unloaded the gear.’

‘I could murder a bacon sarnie, boss,’ Fozzie called out from the back.

Dawson smiled. ‘You might be in for a bit of wait. All right, fellas. Get moving.’ He picked out Luke and the other three members of the four-man unit carrying out the op into Gaza. ‘You four, get some kip, and no bashing the bishop. You need to be out of here by 06.00 hrs, and it would be a crying fucking shame to keep Hamas waiting, right?’

Truth was, Luke wasn’t even thinking about Hamas. He was thinking about Chet’s boy.

‘Right, Luke?’ the OC repeated himself.

‘Right, boss,’ Luke replied. ‘06.00.’

He picked up his Bergen and left the ops room. Tomorrow was going to be a long day. Fuck knows what it would bring, but he needed to be ready.

9 December.

Luke was the first of the unit into the briefing room, but O’Donoghue was already there. His tired eyes were bloodshot and he reeked of sweat. Luke could tell at a glance he’d been up all night. He was sitting staring intently at a laptop. When he saw that Luke had entered, he nodded. ‘Seen this?’ he asked.

Luke went over to his desk. The screen, which refreshed every five seconds, displayed an outline of the eastern Mediterranean. He could make out the shape of Israel, with the Gaza Strip on its western edge. To the north, Lebanon; south, Egypt; east, Jordan. A hundred and fifty klicks into the Med he saw the island of Cyprus, where he’d been on decompression more times than he could count. But there was more than just the geography to look at. Fifty clicks south-east of Cyprus were two flashing red dots, and in the flat terrain north-west of Jerusalem, three triangles.

O’Donoghue poked the dots with a thick, calloused finger. ‘Yanks,’ he said. ‘Marines. Ground attack aircraft.’ His finger moved to the triangles. ‘British Army, IDF, Canadians and Ozzies in from Germany. Five thousand men mobilised already and they’re still coming. We’ve got half the fucking RAF sitting on the tarmac in Cyprus.’ He sniffed. ‘I’m telling you, if Stratton doesn’t get the right noises out of Hamas, they’re going to do a Dresden on the Gaza Strip. And I wouldn’t put it past Israel to send a few over into Lebanon and the West Bank either. Every raghead east of Bradford’s going to be signing up. The Yanks have sent over satellite imagery. There’s troop movement along Iran’s western border and we’re getting reports of Yemeni activity in the Gulf of Aden. Even the fucking Iraqis are making the wrong noises.’