Aggressor

Aggressor.

by Andy McNab.

PART ONE

1

Monday, 5 April 1993

The three of us clung to the top of the Bradley armoured fighting vehicle as it bucked and lurched over the churned-up ground. Exhaust fumes streamed from its rear grille and made us choke, but at least they were warm. The days out here might be hot, but the nights were freezing.

My right hand was clenched round an ice-cold grab handle near the turret. My left gripped the shoulder strap of my day sack. We"d flown three thousand miles to use this gear, and there was nothing to replace it if it got damaged. The whole job would have to be aborted and I would be severely in the s.h.i.t.

Nightsun searchlights mounted on the four AFVs strafed the front of the target buildings. The other three were decoys; ours was the only one transporting a three-man SAS team. That was if we could all keep a grip on the thing.

As our driver took a sharp left towards the rear of the target, our Nightsun sliced a path across the night sky like a scene from the Blitz.

Charlie was team leader on this one, and wore a headset and boom mike to prove it. Connected to the comms box outside the AFV, it meant he could talk to the crew. His mouth was moving but I didn"t have a clue what he was saying. The roar of the engine and the clatter of the tracks put paid to that. He finished, pulled off the headset, and lobbed it onto the grille. He gave Half a.r.s.e and me a slap and the shout to stand by.

Seconds later, the AFV slowed, then came to a halt: our cue to jump. We scrambled down the sides, taking care our day sacks didn"t strike anything on the way.

The vehicle swivelled on its own axis, mud cascading from its tracks, then headed back the way we"d come.

I joined Charlie and Half a.r.s.e behind a couple of cars. They were obvious cover, but we"d only be here a few seconds, and if the Nightsuns had done their job, anybody watching from the building would have lost their night vision anyway.

We hugged the ground, looking, listening, tuning in.

Our AFV was now grinding along the other side of the building with its mates, Nightsuns working the front of the target. And now that they were a safe distance from our eardrums, the loudspeakers mounted on each vehicle began to broadcast a horrible, high-pitched noise like baby rabbits being slaughtered. They"d been doing that for days. I didn"t know how it was affecting the people inside the target, but it certainly made me crazy.

We were about fifty metres from the rear of the target. I checked Baby-G: about six hours till first light. I checked the gaffer tape holding my earpiece, and that the two throat-mike sensors were still in place.

Charlie was sorting out his own comms. When he"d finished taping his earpiece, he thumbed the pressle hanging from a wire attached to the lapel of his black corduroy bomber jacket, and spoke low and slow. "This is Team Alpha. We clear to move yet? Over." Brits found his thick Yorkshire accent hard enough to understand; f.u.c.k knows what the Americans at the other end would make of it.

He was talking to a P3 aircraft circling some twenty-five thousand feet above our heads. Bristling with thermal imaging equipment to warn us of any impending threat while we were on the job, it also carried an immensely powerful infrared torch. I checked that my one-inch square of luminous tape was still stuck on my shoulder. The aircraft"s IR beam was invisible to the naked eye, but the reflections off our squares would stick out like sore thumbs on their camera. If we were compromised and bodies poured out of the target to take us on, at least P3 would be able to direct the QRF [quick reaction force] to the right place.

The reply from the P3 came to my earpiece too. "Yep, that"s a free zone, Team Alpha, free zone."

Charlie didn"t bother to voice a reply; he just gave two clicks on the pressle. Then he came alongside me and put his mouth right against my ear. "If I don"t make it, will you do something for me?"

I looked at him and nodded, then mouthed the question, "What?"

I felt the warmth of his breath on the side of my face. "Make sure Hazel gets that three quid you owe me. It"s part of my estate."

He gave me the kind of grin that would have won him an audition with the Black and White Minstrels. It had been years since he"d subbed me for that f.u.c.king bacon sandwich, but the way he went on about it you"d have thought he"d paid off my mortgage.

He rolled away and began to crawl. He"d know that I was second in line, with Half a.r.s.e bringing up the rear. Half a.r.s.e also had personal comms, but his earpiece was just shoved into his jacket pocket. He was going to be the eyes and ears while Charlie and I worked on target.

The crawl was wet and muddy and my jeans and fleece were quickly soaked. I was beginning to wish I"d worn gloves and a couple of extra layers.

Like the other two, I kept my eyes on those parts of the target behind which the P3 couldn"t penetrate: the windows. The rabbit noise and searchlights should keep the occupants" attention on the front of the target until we were done, but we"d freeze at the slightest movement, and hope we hadn"t been seen or heard.

"You"ve got thirty to target, Team Alpha." P3 were trying to be helpful.

Torchlight flickered behind a curtain on the first-floor window. It was directed inwards, not out at us. It wasn"t a threat.

We carried on, and six minutes of slow crawling later we were where we needed to be.

2

The flaky white, weatherboarded exterior was only the first of three layers. The building plans showed there were likely to be another two behind it. One was tarpaper to prevent damp and help with insulation, and then there"d be the interior stud wall, which would have a finishing coat of either paint or paper, or both. None of which should be a problem for the sophisticated gear we were carrying.

As planned, we"d crawled to a point between two ground-floor windows. A utility box the size of a coal bunker was set against the wall. It was an ideal location for the stuff we were going to leave behind.

Fingers shielding the lens of his mini-Maglite, Charlie opened the utility box with a square lug key and had a quick look inside.

Half a.r.s.e had his pistol out; he kept his eyes on the windows and his ears everywhere else. He"d had a b.u.t.tock shot away during an op a few years back, and right now I wondered if it meant his a.r.s.e was only half as cold as mine. His wife wanted him to have an implant so he didn"t scare the kids when he took them swimming, but they weren"t available on the NHS, and he refused to go private. "I"m too tight-a.r.s.ed" was his standard joke. "Or rather, tight half-a.r.s.ed..." n.o.body ever laughed. It wasn"t very funny, and nor was he.

We knew that everyone in the various Pods [tactical operations] would be watching the thermal and IR imagery of us at work, beamed down to them by the P3. We wanted to make sure it was a job well done; don"t mess with the best was the message we wanted to transmit though right now it was the last thing any of us was worried about; personally, I just wanted to do the business and get away alive. This was my last job before I left the Regiment. It would be the mother of all ironies if I got dropped or injured now.

I eased my day sack off my back. A distant voice inside the building shouted out something but we ignored him. We"d only react if someone was actually shouting that they"d spotted us; otherwise, we"d be stopping and starting every five minutes. You just have to get on with it until you know there is a definite drama. That was what Half a.r.s.e was here for.

Charlie had worked out where he wanted to fix the device. He pressed a thumbnail into the wood at almost ground level and gave me a nod. I brought out a pyramid from my day sack, seven inches high and made of alloy. Instead of a peak, it had a hole, and at each of the four corners was a fixing lug.

Guided by the beam from Charlie"s Maglite, I positioned the pyramid so the hole was directly over his nail mark, and held it there while he put a battery-powered screwdriver to the first lug. Very slowly, very deliberately, the shaft of the screwdriver rotated. It took the best part of two minutes to screw it in tight. By the time the first three were in, my hands were almost numb.

A different voice shouted from inside. It was closer, but it wasn"t talking about us. He was complaining about the rabbit noise, and I couldn"t blame him.

The sweat on my back was starting to cool and I could feel fingers of wind fighting their way down my neck. At last, Charlie fixed the last lug and I gave the structure a wiggle left and right to test it was stable. He was the mechanic; I was the oily rag. The rest was up to him now.

He retrieved a drill bit half a metre long and seven millimetres in diameter from his day sack and threaded it carefully into the pyramid hole, oblivious to everything else that was going on.

He blew on his fingers to warm them, then eased the drill in further until it just touched the wood of the exterior wall. This kit couldn"t be worked by any old knuckle-dragger, which ruled me out. It called for a delicate touch and a steady hand. Charlie was the best of the best; he always said that if he hadn"t gone into this line of work, he"d have taken up brain surgery. Maybe he wasn"t joking; I saw him settle a bet once by turning one five-pound note into two with a razor blade. Back in Hereford, they called him the CEO of MOE [method of entry]. There wasn"t a security system in existence that he couldn"t defeat. And if there was, he wouldn"t lose any sleep over it. He"d get me to blow it up instead.

Next out was the power cable, connected to a lithium battery inside his day sack. Charlie plugged it into the pyramid. There was a moment"s delay as jaws inside the pyramid clamped round the bit, and then it began to turn, so slowly it almost seemed not to be moving. The only sound was a barely audible, low-frequency hum.

There was nothing we could do now but wait as it started to work its way quietly, slowly, methodically through an inch of wood, a sheet of tarpaper, and about half a centimetre of plasterboard. I moved against the wall to make myself as small a target as possible if anyone looked out of a window. My right hand lifted my fleece and rested on the grip of the pistol pancake-holstered on my jean belt. My left pulled the zipped-up front over my nose for warmth.

This kit worked on the same technology they used in neurosurgery; if you"re drilling through a skull it helps to be doing so with something that stops when it senses it"s about to hit the cranial membrane. Our one behaved the same way when it was just about to break through the final layer of paint or paper. And so it left no sign it automatically collected the debris and dust as it went.

Charlie disconnected the power and pulled out the bit, then took out a fibre-optic rod with a light on the end. He moved it down through the pyramid, just to make sure he wasn"t about to break through the stud wall. Everything seemed to be fine. He removed the fibre optic, reinserted the drill, and reconnected the power. The gentle hum resumed.

It moved quicker as it hit the tarpaper, then slowed again as it encountered the plasterboard. Charlie stopped it again and repeated the operation with the fibre optic.

I looked over at Half a.r.s.e. He was lying on his back with his feet nearest the wall, his pistol resting on his chest, pointing up at the first-floor windows. He must have been freezing his a.r.s.e off or what was left of it. I thought about the Americans in the Pods, drinking coffee and smoking cigars while they watched our progress. Most of them were probably wondering why the f.u.c.k we didn"t get a move on.

It took nearly an hour before the drill stopped turning for the third and final time. Charlie did his trick with the fibre optic again and gave us a thumbs-up. He removed the drill bit, put the screwdriver to the first lug, and began to turn it anticlockwise.

When he"d removed the pyramid, Charlie dug out the microphone. It too was attached to a fibre-optic cable, so it could be put into position correctly.

I stowed the gear carefully, bit by bit, in my day sack. No point rushing it and making noise.

With a flourish, Charlie connected the microphone to the lithium battery and laid a metre-long wire antenna on the ground.

As soon as the power was switched on, there was squelch in my earpiece. The signal was beamed to the Pods and then bounced back to us. We didn"t want to have to get on the net to check that we"d done the business.

I heard the microphone rustle as Charlie fed it gently into the freshly drilled hole. He stopped now and again, eased it back a fraction, then pushed it through a bit more. As it got closer to the membrane, I could hear a woman murmuring to her children, and a man moaning in agony. It must have been the one who"d taken a round in the stomach during the first attack.

It was almost time to leave. Charlie closed and relocked the utilities box as I dug the wire into the earth and smoothed it over. He did a quick final sweep of the area with his shielded Maglite, and we got rid of a couple of footprints. Then we started to crawl back to RV [rendezvous] with the Bradley.

Voices echoed in my earpiece as we went; a man mumbled pa.s.sages from the Bible; a child whimpered and pleaded for a drink of water.

We had done our bit.

Now it was time to hand our toys over to the Americans.

3

Two weeks later

The baby rabbits screamed all night long. It was close to impossible for us to sleep and we were six hundred metres from the action. f.u.c.k knows what it must have been like for the hundred-odd men, women and children on the receiving end of their relentless squeals, taped on a loop and amplified a thousand times through the AFVs" loudspeakers.

It was still dark. I unzipped my sleeping bag just enough to slide my arm out into the cold. I tilted my wrist close to my face and pressed the illumination b.u.t.ton on Baby-G. It was 5.38 a.m.

"Day fifty-one of the siege of Mount Carmel." I kicked the bag next to me. "Welcome to another day in paradise."

Anthony stirred. "They still playing the same b.l.o.o.d.y record?" It was strange hearing him swear in perfect Oxford English.

"Why, mate? You got any requests?"

"Yes." His head emerged. "b.l.o.o.d.y get me out of here."

"I don"t think I know that one."

It didn"t get a laugh.

"What time is it?"

"Half-five, mate. Brew?"

He groaned as he adjusted position. Tony wasn"t used to sleeping hard. He belonged in a freshly starched white coat, back at his lab, twiddling test tubes over Bunsen burners, not roughing it alongside guys like me, teeth unbrushed so long they"d grown fur, and socks the consistency of cardboard.

"The papers were calling it the siege of Mount Apocalypse yesterday," Anthony said. "Lambs to the slaughter, more like." It came from the heart. He wasn"t at all happy about what was happening here.

Once we"d fixed the listening devices, n.o.body was interested in the Brits who"d been sent to Waco to "observe and advise". We were surplus to requirements. After a three-day consultation with Hereford, who"d had a consultation with the FCO, who"d spoken to the emba.s.sy in Washington, who"d spoken to whoever, Charlie and Half a.r.s.e had flown back to the UK. I was told to stay and keep an eye on Tony. The Americans might still want to use the box of tricks he"d brought along.

I rolled over and fired up our small camping gas stove, then reached for the kettle. When it came to home comforts, that was pretty much it. There wasn"t a toothbrush in sight, which probably explained why the Yanks kept their distance.

I looked through one of the bullet holes in the side of the cattle trailer that had been our home for the last five days. The darkness of the Texas prairie was criss-crossed by searchlight beams. The AFVs circled the target buildings like Indians around a wagon train, Nightsuns bouncing wildly. The psyops guys were still making life a living h.e.l.l for those trapped inside. The media had got it right. We were trapped on the set of Apocalypse Now Apocalypse Now.

The compound, as the Feds were calling the Branch Davidians" hangout, comprised a mishmash of wooden-framed buildings, two three-storey blocks and a large rectangular water tower. In anyone else"s language, it would have been described as a religious community, but that wouldn"t have suited the FBI. The last thing they wanted was for this operation to smack of persecution, so compound it was.

There"s a ten-day rule when it comes to sieges; if you"ve not resolved the situation by then, the s.h.i.t has really hit the fan. And we were pushing the envelope five times over. Something had to happen soon. The administration wasn"t looking too clever as it was; with every new day that pa.s.sed, things just got a whole lot worse.

The ear-piercing, gut-wrenching screams suddenly stopped. The silence was deafening. I peered through the bullet hole. Three or four AFVs were cl.u.s.tered near the car park. Intelligence from ex-members of the cult had suggested that since storage s.p.a.ce inside the buildings was at a premium, a lot of them kept their belongings in the boots of their vehicles.

The first AFV lurched forward, ploughed through the fence and kept straight on going. I gave Tony another nudge. "f.u.c.king h.e.l.l, look at this."

Tony sat up.

"They"re crushing all the cars and buses."

"What the h.e.l.l are they trying to do?"

"Make friends and influence people, I guess."

We watched the demolition derby while the water boiled.

4