A trickier subject was rations. We were going in on hard routine — no cooking, no fires, no heating of brews, even — and this meant that for three days at least all our food would be cold. That didn't worry the guys, especially as we would be in a hot climate; all the same, it was a drag having to transfer every boil-in-a-bag meal from its silver pack, which had writing on it, into an anonymous, clear plastic bag with a zipper-lock fastener. By the time we'd cut offone end of each pack and squeezed sausage and beans or steak and kidney into another container, the meal was even more featureless and gunged-up than before. Yet nobody cared much: on an operation, people accept that they're not at the Ritz; they eat only to shove the necessary amount of calories down their necks, and look forward to proper meals when they get home. Besides, the plastic bags would have a useful secondary role: after we'd eaten their contents we could crap into them.
You'd be surprised how dangerous body wastes can be. Not only do piss and shit stink, and attract flies and wandering dogs, but one turd may give away a mountain of secrets. Laboratory analysis can show not only what type of food the guy who laid it has been eating, but also his age and the physical state he's in.
Whether or not the Libyans had the techniques for that sort of work we couldn't tell, but it was perfectly possible that undisciplined crapping might reveal that we were a bunch of fit young westerners.
We also devoted time to working out our loads. The maximum weights given in the manual were 60lb. for the rear rack on each quad, and 50lb. for the front; but it was clear that such puny limits were no'good to us. We decided, for a start, that each of us must take one jerrican of spare petrol and one of water — these two alone would add up to nearly 100lb. - and on top of that we had weapons, ammunition, explosives, cam-nets and poles for OPs, shovels, other tools, food, spare clothes and other personal kit. I told the guys to cut down to the absolute minimum compatible with safety, and everybody kept packing and repacking to see what they could leave out. Another necessity was to ensure that the kit was properly secured to the bikes. I wasn't happy with the straps I already had, so I went down to Meg, the camp seamstress, who ran me up some webbing straps with ratcheted buckles to my own design.
After discussing what we needed and what we didn't in various Chinese parliaments, with all the team sitting round for a general discussion, we decided to take a single trailer, in which a good load of the heavier, bulkier items like jerricans, spare tyres and cam-nets could travel. One of the quads would have to pull it, but we could take turns — and, as somebody pointed out, if we did get a casualty, the wounded man or dead body could be transported in it. So the MT section obtained a trailer, and put it through the same process of removing all its identification marks.
As always in the Regiment, physical fitness was left to individuals. All the guys knew that they had to be in really good nick; if we hit trouble, our lives might depend on our ability to cover big distances at speed in *alien conditions, possibly with little food or water. So there was no need for organized runs or training sessions; people just went on with their own fitness routines whenever they had time. It was the same with inoculations, class="underline" (ight at the start I had told everyone to make sure his jabs were up to date, and, if any were missing, to get his arse down to the Med Centre pronto.
The two RAF crews who would be flying us came down to give us briefings and discuss our requirements.
Both were dedicated to special forces support, so that they were old friends, and I recognised Pineapple Pete, the Here captain, from several earlier missions. (Why he was called that history did not relate; I suppose some Petes just are pineapples.)
'Off for a nice little drive in the desert, are you Geordie?' he asked. 'Just the job for the time of year,' of sightseeing. Nothing dramatic.'
The Here crew were on a need-to-know basis. All that mattered was that they took us to Cyprus, and on to Siwa, according to. the schedule that the Kremlin had devised. What we were doing was another matter and something about which they didn't even ask. The crew of the Chinook had to have more information: they knew that we were on a non-attributable operation, and they knew to within a few miles the area in which it would take place. But they, too, were in the dark about our target, and Steve Tanner, the skipper, was no more inquisitive than Pete. Of far greater importance to him was the state of the moon on the night we went in, and he was glad to find that it would be three-quarters full.
Together with him, his co-pilot and his head loadie, we worked out distances, timings, weights and so on.
But we never breathed a word about our target. At the back of my mind I kept thinking: there's always a chance that the hell will go down in the desert, and if it does, the less the crew know about us, the better- the less they can give away. All the same we had to plan emergency drills with them, in case the chopper's navigation systems went u/s, or it was shot down or forced down by engine failure. There were emergency rendezvous points to be memorised and procedures to be worked out. In the last resort, we might have to destroy the aircraft with explosives to make sure that no Libyans got their hands on it.
The crew also needed a cover stoW, to account for why they were in Libya at all. We decided they would say that they'd been taking part in Exercise Bright Star, that their navigation systems had gone down, and that they'd flown into Libyan air space by mistake. That might not sound very convincing but it was the best that could be devised.
FIVE
My own trouble was that I couldn't seem to shake off the tension which still built steadily. Normally I find the best answer to mental stress is hard physical exercise, but this time the remedy wasn't working. I was forcing myself to run and work out every day, yet still I was unable to relax, and sometimes I thought my head was going to burst with the pressure.
My days were packed with activity; not so the nights.
Back at the cottage I had far too much time to brood.
Several times I had asked the SB guys if there was any future in making some initiative on the hostage situation ourselves, trying to put out feelers, but the answer was always, 'No. The PIRA have got to move first. Unless, one of these days, a tout picks something up, or we get an intercept that gives us a line.'
Tired as I was, I found it hard to sleep — and the nightmares started again, similar to the one I'd had after the Gulf. Usually I was travelling fast through the dark, on a strange kind of roller-coaster or maybe a bike, until suddenly something grabbed me by the left arm, so that terrific forces threatened to tear me in half, setting up the most horrendous pain, and I'd wake up in a muck sweat, yelling with fright.
Soon there were only five days left before takeoff.
So far, everything had gone well. Then we had a setback which caused aggravation and distress at the time but almost immediately bounced back to our advantage.
We'd gone on into one of our nearby training areas to try the quads fully loaded on rough terrain at night; our aim was to run through the main moves of the operation, using a range-hut as the target building.