chest harnesses filled with various pieces of equipment and ordnance, leather gloves, helmets on laps, throat mics, MPK5 sub-machine guns and P226 semi-automatic pistols strapped to their thighs. Scouse, sat beside Stratton, slid a heavy-duty black holdall along the floor and dumped it on top of a large coil of heavy thick rope at Stratton’s feet, one end of which was shackled to a strong point in the ceiling near Stratton’s door.
‘Here’s your kit,’ Scouse shouted over the shrill of the engines.
Stratton took his jacket off and started pulling at his tie. ‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘Possible hijacked supertanker. Sometime before dawn. It’s way off course and doesn’t respond to any radio calls.The coastguard’s alongside but it’s too high for them to climb on deck. They have a chopper in the area but they’ve been told not to board her. The bad news is it’s heading for the coast at top speed, towards the Torquay area, and it’s full to the gunwales with oil.’
‘How long’ve we got?’
‘It’s gonna be tight. By the time we get there I reckon we’ll have about fifteen, twenty minutes to take it.’
‘Anything on the bad guys?’ Stratton asked as he pulled off his shoes and trousers and dug his one-piece fire-retardant assault suit out of the bag.
‘Helicopter reports no sign of life on deck and the bridge looks empty.’
‘Where’s it from?’
‘It’s an Aralco oil company boat. One of their big ones. Last stop was Sidi Kerir oil terminal off the coast of Egypt in the Med where it took on its load. It was on its way to Rotterdam. Last known contact was with its headquarters in Dubai one a.m. this morning.’
‘What’s the plan?’
‘Two under-slung VSVs are on their way by Chinook. We’ll take the bridge as the lads hit the main deck. A bunch of bio-chem and nuclear specialists are on their way.’
‘Who’s in the VSVs?’
‘Jacko’s got Alpha in VSV one, Stevens has Echo in two. And you’ve got us.’
Stratton looked at the other faces: Fred, Nick, Tip and Foster. ‘All right, lads?’ he asked. They gave him a thumbs up. Stratton didn’t know them very well though he had worked with Tip a couple of times. Because Stratton had spent so much time away from the squadrons he hadn’t rotated through the various teams as much as other seniors such as Scouse. Now that he had been back almost a year he was getting to know most of the guys again and meeting the new ones. Everyone knew him, of course, even the new operatives who had just joined. It was generally considered, although it was not a subject particularly discussed, that Stratton was the SBS’s top operative, and often other operatives’ first choice of team commander if an operation was going down.That was influenced by the fact that Stratton was often the operations room’s first choice for the more difficult tasks. Senior officers acknowledged he had the gift of inspiring those he worked with.
‘Hey, Stratton,’ Foster said, leaning towards him. ‘Morgan ’asn’t fucked up my jacket by any chance?’
‘Why’d you lend it to ’im if you’re so worried?’ Tip asked.
‘Either ’e went with the jacket or I did,’ Foster stated.
‘He said something about trimming the sleeves a bit,’ Stratton said poker faced.
Foster studied Stratton, wondering if this was a bite, but he didn’t know him well enough to call him on it.
‘Did that to a pair of trousers I lent him,’ Tip added.
Foster looked at Tip, still unsure, and sat back to mull over the future of his jacket.
Stratton struggled to pull the suit on over his torso, pushed his arms into the sleeves and zipped up the front to his throat. He strapped up his boots, pulled on his harness, sorted out his weapons, put his helmet on his lap and clipped his throat mic around his neck. The final piece of clothing was a pair of leather gloves, which he pulled on tightly, sealing the Velcro around his wrists. He was ready.
He leaned forward to zip his civvies inside the bag when he thought of something. Remembering Scouse’s great appetite he took the sandwich out of his jacket pocket and offered it to him. Scouse took it, looked inside and stuffed the entire thing in his mouth.
‘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
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
