Ranulph Fiennes - Killer Elite

The fifth and last week had been a killer and, for the forty weary and blistered survivors now congregated in the cookhouse, this was the final act. Known simply as “Endurance,” the test involved each individual traveling alone over forty-one miles of difficult terrain with fifty-five pounds of equipment. Seventeen hours was the maximum time allowed but even if a man completed the course far more quickly he might still fail selection-with no reason ever given. Courses of over 160 selectees had ended without a single man entering the SAS. No wonder then that the trainees gulped down their food in an introspective mood, paying little attention to one another. De Villiers felt happier when the instructors, saying nothing, rose from their table and the students followed suit.

Outside in the semidarkness de Villiers kept close to Kealy. When the two three-ton Bedford lorries stopped by the Guard Room, the trainees collected their rifles and then mounted up with their bergens. De Villiers, in the rain and the shadows, moved around but did not enter the Guard Room.

The chief instructor rode in the cab of the leading lorry. Kealy, apparently keen to be treated no differently from the trainees during his self-imposed fitness jaunt, climbed into the back along with nineteen others, including de Villiers.

The vehicles whined their way through the outskirts of Hereford, dodging heaps of litter caused by the national strike.

“Guess who’s joining the strike tomorrow?”

Disembodied voices in the back of de Villiers’s lorry.

“I didn’t know anyone was still at work.”

“Yeah, well, the gravediggers are all out as from tonight. Die now and yer old lady’ll have to clear a space in the deep freeze.”

“Not in Hereford,” said a Welsh voice. “All our diggers are part-time. Most of them are the local fire service laddies.”

By the time they reached Pontrilas at the eastern edge of the Brecon Beacons National Park most of the passengers had fallen silent in the canopied darkness. A mile from the Talybont Reservoir’s dam and close to the northern rim of Talybont Forest, the training sergeant-major halted the lorries in a car park beside Tarthwynni River. There was no shouting of orders. Each man had received his detailed instructions back in Hereford. The bergens were weighed on spring scales, and Lofty, the training sergeant-major, waved the trainees off one by one into the night.

De Villiers moved into the bushes, and when Kealy set out, one of the first to go, he followed some fifteen yards behind. He did not switch on his tracker unit for the bleeper but kept in touch with Kealy’s outline, different from the students’ because of his old-fashioned bergen. Most of the students also sported Denison cam smocks but Kealy wore the shorter SAS windbreaker. With only a fifteen-pound bergen load, and fit though he undoubtedly was, de Villiers still found it hard work to keep up.

All the trainees carried three-quarter-length foul-weather coats made of plastic-coated nylon. “Don’t ever march in ’em,” was the training sergeant-major’s advice. “You’ll get as wet from your own sweat as you ever will from the rain. Then, next day, any downwind opposition will smell you a mile off. Just use them when you’re leaguered up and it’s pissing down.”

Although few of the remaining trainees knew one another by name, some had become aware of Kealy’s identity. He had joined in their hill-slogging tests on two previous occasions and the word had spread that he was a regular SAS officer with a remarkable record. Kealy kept to himself. The muted adulation of the trainees, the sidelong glances and whispered comments as the news spread of a hero in their midst, made him feel awkward and embarrassed. Even so, the advantages of training alongside these eager “wannabees” outweighed the doubts because they were at peak fitness and many were ten years his junior. He knew that by measuring his own performance directly against theirs, he would be sure that he could match the stamina of any man in the squadron he was about to command.

For two hours Kealy went well despite the darkness, driving rain, a steep climb of 2,000 feet over broken ground and areas where the snow lay knee-deep.

Toward 5:30 a.m., nearing the summit plateau of Waun Rydd, de Villiers noticed with satisfaction that Kealy’s gait showed signs of weakening. For a while he would climb steadily with a deliberate step, then follow a zigzag course for a period, then once again head directly west as though on a bearing to some point just visible to his front.

As Kealy’s speed lessened, lone trainees began to catch up, and when they reached the plateau, marked by the cairns of Carn Pica, there were five or six soldiers huddled together and shouting against the shriek of a sleet-laden southwesterly with gusts up to seventy knots. De Villiers squatted by his bergen some distance upwind as Kealy reached the group of trainees. He concentrated on remaining out of sight of the soldiers without losing touch with Kealy.

Approaching the students at the cairns, Kealy exhorted them to carry on west but most were already shivering and fearful of exposure. Two decided to head north to seek shelter in the valleys of Nantlannerch and the others headed south for the Neuadd reservoirs. Kealy shrugged and took a compass bearing due west. He knew the subtle symptoms of hypothermia only too well. He had taught many a young soldier how to recognize the dangers of exposure. He also knew how to avoid its onset despite the very worst conditions. Rule one was to realize that, no matter how clever a man may be at spotting others becoming hypothermic, no one can be sure of recognizing his own deterioration, simply because, as the body core temperature drops, the body draws heat from the head. The brain begins to slow down, taking away the normal state of awareness and the will needed for self-preservation.

An undrugged Kealy would have had no trouble with the simple eight-hour slog from Talybont to the Storey Arms. The weather was atrocious and he wore light clothing as was his custom and that of many other SAS mountain troop veterans. With heavy pack, rifle and cotton clothing, Kealy had many times completed far longer marches in more dangerous conditions. He knew every step of the route and, unlike many others that night, he never lost his way. Physically in fine shape, for he jogged daily when involved in desk work, he had recently joined the SAS trainees on two snowbound forced marches and showed himself to be as fit or fitter than the best of them.

Kealy knew that trained airborne troops can travel, at temperatures below minus fifty degrees centigrade with blizzards producing a chill factor of minus seventy degrees centigrade, for many miles carrying heavy packs day after day, and wearing only breathable cotton clothes. Thoroughly soaked with sweat, “body-thin” from weeks of inadequate rations and lack of sleep, they nevertheless avoid hypothermia so long as they keep moving fast enough to maintain their body core temperature above thirty-three degrees centigrade.

He knew that he was in a far superior state to such a scenario because, far from body-thin, he was well fed and his metabolism was acting like a factory, pumping out heat from the large breakfast he was still digesting. Even without the Mars bars that he ate whenever he felt his energy flag slightly, he would, if unaffected by the drug, have been more than capable of dealing with the conditions. Severe they certainly were from a standard mountain-walker’s point of view, but not from Kealy’s. At worst the wind strength gusted to seventy knots and the air temperature was as low as minus nine degrees centigrade, but this merely produced a chill factor of minus fifty degrees centigrade-no problem as long as he kept moving.

Kealy knew all this and was fully aware that he must not stop. The curious state of lassitude and the overwhelming desire to rest that he was so unexpectedly experiencing must, he determined, be a temporary setback. Something he had eaten perhaps, a chill on the stomach, or a bug? He fought doggedly against the inertia and, luckily, the worst conditions were, after Carn Pica, all behind him.