But Stratton never felt completely comfortable operating alongside men like Hopper because they brought their families with them. Hopper was always thinking about them or talking about them in conversation. He seemed unable to disconnect while away on ops. Hopper never saw it as a disadvantage being a family man as well as an SBS operative. He regarded himself as pure special forces. He only talked to civilians beyond casual exchanges if he had to. He viewed them as potential security leaks. All of his friends were serving or former military personnel.
All of which meant several things to Stratton. Hopper would be fine and he would do the job well enough. But he would have preferred it if Hopper had not been chosen for this operation. He was better suited to large-scale ops. But at the end of the day Hopper had a reputation for being reliable, for being steady, and Stratton had no doubt he would do well.
‘We weren’t talking the day I left for here,’ Hopper went on. ‘Had a bit of a row. Not the best thing when you’re off on an op. By the time I get home it will all have blown over. Helen doesn’t hold on to things like that for long. You’ve met Helen before, haven’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Course you have. That last service family barbeque. I never associate you with those kinds of bashes.’
‘I think I got back from somewhere that day and just happened to be there.’
‘That would explain it.’
‘We’re getting close to the RV,’ Stratton said. He wasn’t concerned about being overheard. They were still a long way from the village. But the family chat was getting him out of the right frame of mind. It didn’t feel right to be talking about Hopper’s family life. It was precisely the reason why he didn’t like working with married fads.
They came to a broader track that connected the coastal highway with the village. A short distance further along they hit a track junction, the other route leading way up into the hills.
A narrow wadi ran alongside the track and through the junction at that point. Stratton stepped down into it. Hopper joined him.
‘This is ideal,’ Hopper said. ‘Far enough away from the village and the highway.’
The air was still. Both men heard the quiet sound of boots on loose stones and they looked along the track that led up into the hills to see a figure approaching along it. The man was short and solid-looking and carrying a small backpack. He stopped on the edge of the wadi and squatted on his haunches with an economy of energy.
‘Ram ram, Prabhu,’ Stratton said, by way of greeting.
‘Hajur, sab,’ Prabhu replied.
‘Sabai tic cha?’ Stratton asked. It was more of a formality than anything else because Prabhu would have warned him as soon as something was not OK.
‘Tic cha,’ Prabhu replied in his calm, easy manner, a hint of a smile on his lips. He had a flat, ageless face, short dark hair. He was a former British Gurkha officer and had completed twenty-four years in the battalion, rising through the ranks to major, one of the few who did. ‘Ramlal is waiting in the vehicle around the other side of the hill,’ he said.
‘Good man. Take this pack back with you. We’ll do the snatch here as planned. Soon as it goes off, you drive down and pick us up.’
‘No problem, saheb,’ Prabhu said, exchanging packs with Stratton.
‘Don’t forget your gas masks,’ Stratton said with a smile. He had a soft spot for the Gurkha soldier but especially for Prabhu who he had worked with before in Afghanistan and Iraq.
‘Don’t worry. We won’t forget.’
The ex-major set off back the way he had come and Stratton pulled a gas mask from the pack and handed it to Hopper, who stuffed it into one of the large pockets in his coat. Stratton took another mask for himself, which he pocketed. Then he took a large, heavy, jagged metal coil from the pack. He carried it along the wadi for a few metres and stopped to inspect the track.
‘This’ll do,’ he decided.
Hopper climbed out of the wadi and Stratton handed him the coil. Hopper crossed the track, placed it on the ground, removed two metal pins from the brutal-looking device and pushed them into holes in its sides. He removed his scarf, bundled it on to one of the pins and gently hammered the pin home with a rock. He repeated the process with the other pin until the device was held securely, and wrapped the scarf back around his neck. As he walked back across the track to rejoin Stratton in the wadi, he unwound a coil of steel wire, the final part of the installation.
Hopper pulled the wire just enough to make it taut, then he put a rock on it to keep it in position on the edge of the wadi.
‘We’re good to go,’ Stratton said and they both walked back to the track junction.
Stratton took a final item from the pack – a cardboard box – and opened it to expose half a dozen canisters, ring-pulls attached. They looked like smoke grenades but smaller. He handed three to Hopper. ‘The lead car will open their doors as soon as they stop,’ he said. ‘That’s the best time to pop them in.’
‘We found that smashing the windows and dropping them inside the vehicle was quicker,’ Hopper said.
‘What if the glass is armoured? They’ll lock the doors and you won’t get in.’
‘Unlikely, but I get your point.’
‘You take the rear vehicle and I’ll take the lead.’
‘Roger that. Good luck,’ Hopper said and he made his way back along the wadi to the cable, where he sat down and made himself comfortable.
Stratton sat back so that he could see the village, and stretched out his legs. He felt tired. The past few days had been long ones.
The operation had started in Washington DC three days earlier. He had flown in to attend a meeting of British and US special operations. Discussions about strategic alignments for Afghanistan and North Africa. It had finished with a global assessment of the Islamic offensive to date. Not surprisingly to Stratton, the Americans pegged Somalia, Djibouti and Eritrea as focal points for future operations. Somalia had become a mess on just about every level and was threatening to get worse. The world’s centre for piracy and large-scale kidnappings was fast becoming a conduit for hard drugs and arms smuggling. And the ops guys talked about another, possibly greater concern: Somalia had begun to emerge as an operational front for international Islamic terrorism.
It wasn’t Stratton’s kind of meeting. All too hypothetical for him. But he hadn’t been able to avoid it. With his level of experience he was expected to contribute to alliance planning strategies that included British special forces. His fears of one day getting permanently dragged into the office, desk, operations administration system had gone up a notch. But luckily for him, on this occasion someone in London thought they needed him more than the Washington thinktank did.
As the second day of meetings came to an end, Stratton received a high-priority message to make his way to the British Embassy. Just him, no one else. Not the two SBS officers and the sergeant major from C Squadron he had arrived with. The message couldn’t have been clearer. The faint odour of an operation wafted through his nostrils. He couldn’t get out of the US Navy Intelligence offices quickly enough and grabbed a taxi to the other side of town.
On arrival at the embassy he was met by an aide. After brief formalities and security clearances, the aide walked Stratton up to the third floor, along cream-coloured corridors, and invited him to attend a private briefing inside the bubble chamber – the electronically sealed room designed to prevent eavesdropping. Stratton had been expecting several people to attend the brief. But he was mistaken. It was just him and the aide. The younger man, clearly from MI6, started talking. He was erudite, polished and intelligent.