Marine J SBS Read online

  Contents

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  1

  August 1978

  It was a moonless night towards the end of the dry season, that three-month period of the year when the incessant rainfall around Lake Victoria lessened. The acacia and whistling thorn were in full leaf, the grass on the savannah as high as a man’s waist. On the vast expanse of the lake itself colonies of birds bobbed, asleep on the waves. On the southern shore a few late lights glimmered in the town of Mwanza, in Tanzania, but most of the villages were dark and silent.

  A series of dark shapes came hissing over the lake, long and sleek. They came from the north, from Uganda, the dictator-ruined country of Idi Amin.

  The boats came on quietly and swiftly, their crews straining at the paddles. No outboards among them, they were powering towards the Tanzanian shore with only a whisper and splash of water, the starlit gleam of foam.

  The old passenger steamer which served as their mother ship was five miles behind them. It had brought them from their barracks around Entebbe the night before. Lake Victoria has almost the same surface area as Scotland, and is subject to vicious storms. It would take a larger vessel than the open canoes these men piloted to cross her vast width – hence the old, hastily refitted steamer, a relic of colonial days, which waited now with her lights off and her engines turning over quietly, out on the dark expanse of water.

  The canoes hit the beach, the men splashing out to haul them up the sand. A guard was left at each, hefting a Kalashnikov AK47 assault rifle. The rest of the crews dispersed inland through the insect-loud night. They were young men on the whole, from the Baganda tribe which had given their country its name. Tonight they would be visiting members of the Sukuma and Makonde tribes, who predominated in Tanzania.

  They were dressed in ragged, filthy clothing that might once have been combat fatigues. Many wore wellington boots; others were barefoot. But they all carried AKs, with spare magazines slung round their necks in canvas slings. Nearly all also bore a panga, the wicked machete of East Africa, and at least two had rifle grenades extending from the barrels of their Kalashnikovs.

  They flowed inland like a silent pack of hyenas sniffing for blood.

  All around the shores of the great lake were the scattered villages of fishermen, for the most part composed of round huts, thatched with brush and mud-walled, though some were reinforced with corrugated iron. Many of the villages were surrounded with thorn bomas to keep out the larger predators which roamed the wooded savannah beyond. The Ugandan soldiers poured into the villages with their pangas drawn and AKs cocked.

  There were screams in the night, an isolated shot followed by a volley, a burst of automatic. Someone had grabbed a burning stick from a fire and was torching buildings. The night was soon lit up with crackling flames and the flash of gunfire.

  Figures ran in and out of the darkness. Women shrieked as they were dragged from their beds to witness their husbands being shot or hacked to death. The Ugandans fired wildly at anything that moved. Screaming toddlers were cut in half by the heavy 7.62mm rounds. Old people were dragged out of their huts and chopped apart. The younger women were raped again and again by mobs of grinning soldiers, then shot where they lay.

  The fires spread. The dried-out thorn of the bomas caught like tinder, forming circles of fire and trapping villagers within their confines. The raiders fired hundreds of rounds into the fleeing shadows trying to escape into the night, some hitting their own men. Then they began to retreat towards the lakeside, dragging with them the prettiest women and anything of value which caught their fancy.

  They left behind them a series of raging infernos that lit up the shoreline for half a mile. Once back in their canoes they laughed and sang and plied their paddles with a will. The burning villages created a red glow in the sky behind them, and the dark shapes of bodies bobbed like corks on the calm waters of the lake.

  The sun was already high in the sky, blazing down pitilessly on the shining water, when the canoes came to congregate once more around the patient steamer to the north. The men clambered up the rust-eaten sides of the old ship, tired now, their rifles hanging from their shoulders. They passed up the captives and the loot from their night raid and made the sese canoes fast to lines at the steamer’s stern.

  The boilers were stoked, steam raised, and the old ship began powering north again, to the Ugandan shores of Victoria. The white man on the bridge listened, grinning, to the account of the night’s doings. His employers would be pleased, which was just as well. When the head men in Idi Amin’s Uganda were not pleased, others’ heads had a nasty habit of rolling.

  He would refuel at Entebbe, which, ironically, had once been the main gathering point for the war canoes of the Ugandan kings, or Kabakas. Then no doubt he and his little army would be sent out to terrorize the Tanzanians once more.

  It was all part of some larger scheme, of course. Amin was planning something big for which these raids were only a preparation. But the steamer’s captain cared nothing for that. He was making a handsome profit out of the spoils of his nightly outings. People might be suffering, but then Africa had always been a harsh place, and no one would ever be able to change that.

  2

  The room was huge, wood-panelled and high-ceilinged. There was expensive carpet underfoot, a walnut drinks cabinet, Chippendale chairs, a vast desk. The telephones on the tooled-leather desktop seemed out of place, too modern for such a setting. Through the double-glazed windows, the faint hum of Whitehall traffic could be heard.

  The man who sat behind the desk was Savile Row smart, grey-haired and double-chinned. Opposite him another sat in dark naval uniform, the cluster of rings on his lower sleeve marking him out as a rear admiral. His cap sat on his lap. He was frowning.

  ‘I really can’t see what it has to do with me, sir,’ he said.

  The man behind the desk steepled his fingers.

  ‘I thought I had made myself perfectly clear, Admiral Leighton.’

  ‘Oh, you have – perfectly. But I don’t see what use I can be to you. Why not SAS? Or regular army? I cannot see the sense in getting the Navy involved in this. The situation seems volatile enough, and Marines would be working entirely outside their normal role.’

  The man behind the desk sighed.

  ‘Let me recap for you, Leighton.’

  ‘It’s Africa . . . I mean, why should we want to have our people in there in the first place?’

  The other man’s face darkened. ‘If you will kindly let me explain.’

  ‘By all means.’ Leighton folded his arms and looked patient.

  ‘We have reliable intelligence out of Uganda. Amin’s regime is tottering. The madman has gone too far. It’s all very well slaughtering thousands of innocents, but when a dictator neglects to pay his army, then he is courting disaster. Our information is that his army is mutinous and getting out of control. Amin has conducted a purge of many of his ministers and senior officers, and tried to buy off more through promotions, but he may have used that tactic once too often. There has been more than one assassination attempt on him in the past six months, and it looks as though he may well be ousted by force in the near future . . .’

  ‘Excellent news. The sooner that butcher is gone the better.’

  ‘Quite, so long as another, worse butcher doesn’t replace him. But I’ve not reached the important part. We have a source in Kampala, a reliable source, who seems quite adamant that Amin is planning a war.’

  ‘Who wit
h?’

  ‘We’re not sure. But all the signs point to an invasion of either Tanzania or Kenya. Now we know he has the hardware for it; Gaddafi has been supplying him with all things military for years now. The Ugandan Army is ill-disciplined and faction-ridden, but it is the best equipped in East Africa – all the latest Soviet equipment. Amin, it would seem, intends to unite it behind him by leading it on a victorious campaign either to the south or the east. No doubt the soldiers will extract their own wages out of whatever unfortunate country they occupy. And the Amin regime will have the resources of that country to draw upon.’

  ‘God help us,’ the admiral murmured. ‘All East Africa under the heel of that madman.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘I still can’t see why you want Navy personnel for the job.’

  ‘I’ll explain. We have approached both Arap Moi of Kenya and Nyerere of Tanzania, to see how they would view the possibility of a small British training team helping their own forces – what there are of them.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Moi refused. He’s still trying to measure up to the memory of Kenyatta, and the last thing he wants is to start inviting the forces of the old colonial power back on to Kenyan soil. So there is nothing we can do there – though we have warned him of the current situation.’

  ‘He’ll be screaming for the UN if Amin’s tanks begin rolling across his borders,’ Leighton said grimly.

  ‘Probably. But that is no longer our concern. The thing is, Nyerere, despite his Marxist leanings, has agreed to accept a small British presence. Apparently Amin’s forces have been hitting his borders pretty hard this past few months, and Tanzania’s army amounts to a few hundred barely trained militia. He’s worried, quite rightly.’

  ‘So we send in a team. But will that really make such a difference?’

  ‘It depends who they are, Admiral. And this is why you are here with me this morning. You see, you may have forgotten, but most of the border between Uganda and Tanzania runs across Lake Victoria, and it is across the lake that the Ugandan forces have been making many of their raids. As well as training Tanzanian soldiers, Nyerere wants these raids curtailed and the invaders given a bloody nose. He thinks that if we can give Amin’s thugs pause for thought down there, they may leave Tanzania alone.’

  Leighton raised an eyebrow. ‘And invade Kenya perhaps?’

  The other man shrugged. ‘That is not our problem at the moment. We can tackle only one bushfire at a time.’

  ‘If I remember, it was you people who started this one, along with the Israelis. You couldn’t get Obote out and Amin in fast enough.’

  The suited man’s eyes narrowed. ‘We did what we thought was right for British interests at the time. We had no way of knowing that Amin was such an amoral psychopath.’

  ‘How many of his own people has he killed now? Ninety thousand? And that’s old intelligence. It could be a couple of hundred thousand by now. And Britain helped put him in power.’

  ‘I am sure I need not remind you, Admiral,’ the man behind the desk said icily, ‘that politics is hardly your arena of responsibility.’

  ‘Oh, I know that. My kind, we only do the cleaning up after the politicians have finished their meddling.’ The admiral glared at the other man. After a moment, however, he cleared his throat and said in a calmer tone, ‘But I see now why you want a water-borne force. It would increase their mobility, for one thing.’

  ‘What can you give me exactly? We need only two teams at most. Eight men.’

  ‘I have 2SBS sitting in Poole. They’ll be able to find the men.’

  ‘Excellent.’

  ‘What kind of political mandate do we have for this operation, though? Just how much support will these teams have?’

  ‘Don’t worry, Admiral. We have contacts in Tanzania in the Front for National Salvation. Tito Okello is their leader, and claims that he can put two thousand men at our disposal, all Ugandan exiles.’

  ‘What about Obote? He’s still in Tanzania. Won’t he want to become president again if Amin actually falls?’

  ‘Yes, but the Ugandan exiles in general have little to do with him. It was dissatisfaction with him that led to his fall from power in the first place.’

  ‘Have they a viable alternative?’

  ‘That is not a matter of import at the moment. The important thing is that these teams of yours will not be sent into a vacuum; they will have contacts and a ready supply of trainees.’

  ‘And what about support from the UK?’

  ‘We will back them up to the hilt, Admiral.’

  ‘Will you, though? What about the Foreign Office? I take it they’re on board.’

  ‘This has been authorized at the highest level, I assure you, Admiral.’

  ‘Bypassing the FO?’

  The civilian’s face reddened. His eyes glittered with anger. ‘That is not your concern. This comes from Number Ten. That’s all you have to know. One of my department heads will be round to brief your people as soon as you have selected them, and if you have any further queries then they are to be addressed directly to me.’

  Leighton rose and settled his cap firmly on his head.

  ‘MI6. You people just adore playing cloak-and-dagger, don’t you? I’ll go along with it – just so long as my men are not left with their arses hanging in the wind.’

  Then he turned and left, ignoring the hand the other man had stretched out towards him.

  3

  Sergeant John Willan was tired, wet and cold. He was wearing a Surface Swimmer’s waterproofed suit made of rubberized Grenfell fabric, and over it a waterlogged set of webbing that held his equipment. From one hand dangled a silenced Sterling sub-machine-gun and with the other he was pulling along a Klepper collapsible canoe, the rubber hull leaving a deep groove in the mud-flat he was squelching through.

  It was the middle of the night on a desolate portion of the south coast of England and there was a bitterly cold wind blowing over the mud-flats and quicksands that stretched out behind him. The sea was a thin white line of surf a hundred yards back in the darkness.

  It was two years since Willan had left Oman with the last of 42 Commando, but even now he still sometimes missed the hot sun of the desert, conveniently forgetting the bitter nights in the mountains. Especially now. It was supposed to be late summer, and yet he was having to stifle shivers as he hauled the Klepper up the muddy beach to the dunes beyond. Other grooves in the mud told him where to go; he had been the last man out of the submarine.

  He found the rest of the section sheltering behind a slab-sided sand-dune, fanned out in All Round Protection. He dumped his own canoe and as he walked into the middle of the circular formation he yawned and said in a low voice: ‘Endex then, lads. Any word of the transport?’

  ‘Over the side of the dune, Sarge, engine running,’ someone said to him in the same quiet tone.

  ‘Any problems, boys?’

  ‘Parker’s boat leaked air a little; put him off balance.’

  ‘What about debussing?’

  ‘No problems, Sarge. We all rolled off her like shit off a shovel.’

  ‘Good news. Grab your gear then, lads. Corporal Geary, do a quick kit check. We’ll have a formal debriefing back at base. I want everyone out of the cold ASAP.’

  ‘Fucking British summers,’ someone muttered resentfully.

  The section began gathering their equipment together. Willan collared the signaller and sent word to Zero, or Exercise Control, that he had called endex. It hadn’t been much of an exercise really, more a revision of skills they needed to relearn every so often. They had been dropped by a P-class patrol submarine eight miles offshore and then paddled the Kleppers in through a rising swell. Old canoes, the Kleppers, in service for decades. They were kept rigid by being pumped up with air, and when deflated could be carried in a suitcase. It had been a while since Willan and several of his men had handled a paddle, so when the sub’s commander had very kindly volunteered to carry the SBS section, it had
seemed too good a chance to miss, despite the fact that it was at too short notice to book a training area. Willan was wondering now, though. The men seemed a little switched off, and if truth be told, so was he. He had almost finished his tour of duty with 2SBS; soon he would be going back to a Commando. He would miss the squadron more than he cared to admit. It would have been nice to wind everything up with a little live op, or a quick tour somewhere rather than this tame series of exercises they had been doing lately.

  The red tail-lights of the four-tonners could be seen off in the dunes, their exhausts plumes of scarlet-tinted fog. It would be good also to get back to base, have a hot bath and then sink a few beers. Willan saw that all his men had gathered together and then led them off towards the waiting trucks. They were mostly silent; the eight-mile fight against the choppy sea had been exhilarating but tiring. They needed something to pick them up, he thought, a shot in the arm.

  Or a new NCO maybe, he accused himself sardonically. He trudged towards the waiting transport in a black mood, thoroughly dissatisfied with himself. A good excuse to get rat-arsed.

  Later the next evening, sitting in the bar with a frothing pint of bitter in his big fist, life seemed a little more rosy. Some idiot was playing ‘Edison Lighthouse’ on the jukebox, a couple of his section were having a game of pool and a few more marines were propped against the bar of the Globe and Anchor engaged in lively conversation.

  Willan was something of a loner socially. He had his friends, and he was a good team player when the occasion arose, but there were times when he seemed to put out invisible signals that said he wanted to sit in solitary thought. His section had long since gotten used to his minor eccentricities. They called him ‘Dad’ sometimes, only half in jest, for he was five years older than any of them, having got his SC3, his Swimmer-Canoeist qualification, in his early thirties. And now he was leaving the unit.

  He drained his pint, held up the empty glass wordlessly to the attentive landlord, and lit a cigarette. He smoked rarely, knowing what effect the things had on fitness, but there were times when nothing else would do, and this was one of them.