Killer Elite (previously published as the Feather Men) Page 27

  Mike Marman was in a very fine mood because Rose May had telephoned him the previous evening to say her father had agreed to pay for their sons’ private education costs: an enormous load off Marman’s shoulders. He was also happy to be seeing his hosts, General Robin Brockbank and his wife, Gillie. The general, now colonel of Marman’s old regiment, had also been its commanding officer at the time Marman joined up.

  The Brockbanks were full of advice and information to help Marman find civilian employment, and he much enjoyed the meal with them. He drank only a gin and tonic and a glass of wine because he was driving and felt pleasantly relaxed when he took his leave at 3:15 p.m., with ample time to get back to Clapham during office working hours.

  Smythe found that he could not tail the 2CV quite as he would have liked, due to the presence of a white Ford Escort that kept to the same route and some distance behind the Marman car.

  As his wife was away visiting her mother in the north, Sir Peter rose early and worked with his secretary, Mrs. Bromley, in the outhouse office until lunchtime on his board papers and the agenda for the following day. He planned to arrive at the Moorland Links Hotel in Yelverton, near Plymouth, by 6 p.m., in plenty of time for the Board dinner that evening.

  After a leisurely lunch he reversed the BMW out onto the drive and switched on the car radio to keep him company on the long drive down the A303.

  Meier nodded to Jake. The Volvo nudged away from the curb in the center of Houghton and a stone’s throw from Park Court.

  Some twenty minutes later, at 3:25 p.m., as the Volvo passed the Bulford turning off the A303, heading west, de Villiers’s voice came over Meier’s CB radio: “2CV doing seventy miles per hour. Just crossed the A360 turn-off. Out.”

  Meier’s fingers flickered on his calculator. He muttered to Jake, “Marman will reach the big roundabout in three minutes. We will be there in one and a half minutes. Horsley must keep his speed up so we meet well clear of the far side of the roundabout.”

  De Villiers’s voice again: “At the Stonehenge fork now. One and a half miles to the roundabout. Still seventy miles per hour. One car behind me. All clear ahead of Marman. Out.”

  Meier’s veins stood out on his forehead. His knuckles were white as he clutched at the control board strapped to his left thigh. “Dammit. Geh schnell, mach schnell, man.”

  But Sir Peter was in no hurry. A Bedford horse box with a woman driver was already on the roundabout and using the same exit lane. Sir Peter slowed down and only began to overtake it when clear of the roundabout.

  De Villiers’s voice cut through the babble of Meier’s cursing: “2CV still seventy miles per hour. Last stretch to the roundabout. Still no cars ahead of Marman.

  Out.”

  “No good,” yelled Meier at Jake. “The horse van is in the way … quick, overtake, overtake … No, the horse-van driver will suspect. You must get past Horsley too … go on, go on … I can operate okay looking back.”

  The road was almost dry, the sky overcast but visibility excellent. The highway climbed gently to the west with an almost imperceptible leftward curve.

  Sir Peter had overtaken the horse van at sixty-five miles per hour and was intending to return to the inside lane. He glanced in his mirror to check that all was clear behind him in that lane and, accelerating gently to seventy, he was halfway back across the central broken white lines when a large car overtook him.

  At this point the nightmare began. The BMW appeared to yaw violently and Sir Peter’s heart missed a beat as he clearly felt the car’s rear end lurch sideways. A burst tire? He could not be certain but what was increasingly clear, as he struggled to control the now wildly snaking vehicle, was that neither the steering nor the braking system was having any effect on the chaotic course of his maverick car. It was as though the car had developed a mind of its own. It swerved to the right and struck the curb of the center grass divider.

  Sir Peter sensed the red blur of an approaching car before the actual impact. The 2CV, traveling at seventy miles per hour, struck the BMW head-on and Marman was killed instantly, his skull fractured. His car spun away to the very edge of a sheer forty-foot embankment.

  Jake was cheering. “Perfect … ausgezeichnet … You are a genius.” He had seen the crash in his mirror. “Nobody could survive. The 2CV is like a concertina.”

  But Meier was shaking. He switched the BMW back to Normal and shouted at Jake, “Stop, stop. We must be sure the job is done.” As Jake slowed, Meier released his pent-up emotions. “That was very, very bad. Never have I had such trouble in our practice in Boston and Kent. The bloody horse van … I am first from the side, then from the front, but all our practice was from behind.”

  He wiped his damp forehead and removed his spectacles. “It would not go straight. Did you not see? I could not get the angle right. So, knowing all was lost if I continued to try for the optimum angle, I slewed it ’round … My last chance … You see, I was too late to crash into Marman. My only sure chance was for Marman to crash into the BMW.”

  “Never mind, you did good. It is finished. Forget the problems.”

  Meier reached for the radio and tried de Villiers’s call sign. Silence, but then they had agreed on strict radio silence afterward.

  They were five hundred yards past the scene of the crash. Already, closer to the scene, cars were stopped on both sides of the highway. Both men grabbed for their binoculars.

  John Smythe was horrified. He had used the Ford Escort as a shield all the way from Steeple Langford, keeping well behind, for he was aware of Marman’s program and so was not worried about losing sight of the 2CV. He had begun to nurture suspicions about the driver of the Ford.

  When the crash occurred, the Escort had gone past the accident site and out of Smythe’s view. He pulled to the side some three hundred yards short of the BMW’s resting place. The 2CV was out of sight, down the bank. Smythe was mystified. He was certain he had witnessed a planned murder but who and where was the guilty party?

  He reached for his binoculars and scrutinized the occupants of the stationary vehicles as well as the small group of people gathering by the crashed cars. All seemed innocent. Back behind him the road was empty but for moving traffic. However, some two hundred yards away, on the far verge of the highway, he saw the Volvo, and refocusing his binoculars, felt his skin prickle at the back of his neck. He had studied the Sumail photos long and hard and he had an excellent memory. One of the two men in the Volvo was definitely the man in the floppy hat. The chin, the nose line and the general set of the lower features were identical.

  Smythe had no alternative choice of action. When he found a telephone he would give Spike the sad news, but meanwhile he would gently check out what he fully realized might turn out to be merely an embarrassing coincidence. As he pondered his move, it came to him that both Volvo occupants had used binoculars. Birdwatchers or racegoers perhaps? Perhaps not. He decided to avoid any risk of losing them. Instead of turning around at the distant roundabout, he would cross the central divider. Finding a gap in the traffic, both ways, he did just that.

  As Smythe’s Morris Marina TC Coupé jolted onto the eastbound lanes, Meier took alarm. This was his undoing, for it served to confirm Smythe’s suspicions. He gave open chase as the Volvo accelerated away. Jake took the Stonehenge fork, and at Tilshead, in the center of Salisbury Plain, veered east on to West Down. Smythe kept close but, on a minor dirt track, found himself confronted at a sharp bend by the halted Volvo and one of its passengers, pointing a gun at his windshield.

  Too close to reverse, and unarmed, Smythe knew he stood a good chance of dealing with both men if only he could get within kicking range of the gun. He could kick more quickly than the gunman could squeeze his trigger. This was not conceit: it was standard knowledge to thousands of karate practitioners everywhere.

  Smythe raised his hands and stepped out of the Marina. As Meier moved to frisk him, he made his move. The gun, a .44 Magnum Blackhawk, flew to the ground but Meier eluded the follo
w-up blow and closed in a bear hug with Smythe.

  Jake, having retrieved the revolver, moved behind Smythe and shot him through the back of the neck. This was an error, but Jake was a mechanic, not a gunman, and for a moment he could not comprehend why Meier and Smythe both fell to the ground and lay still. He felt a sharp pain in his wrist from the kick of the heavy revolver and his ears rang. Brain, blood, and bone splinters from Smythe added to the mess that was Meier’s face.

  Jake crossed himself instinctively and dragged both bodies into the Volvo’s spacious rear compartment. He covered them with the sound baffle and drove to the agreed upon rendezvous with de Villiers in Andover.

  De Villiers showed no visible distress at the news of Meier’s death and accepted without question Jake’s explanation of the accident. He phoned a Tadnams number and three hours later two men arrived in a Volkswagen Polo. Jake placed some tools and a brake-fluid container in two carrier bags and transferred them to the Polo. They did not see the Volvo again.

  De Villiers had watched Sir Peter Horsley being taken off to the hospital with head lacerations but otherwise seemingly unhurt. The two wrecked cars were transported to a garage in nearby Amesbury, Panelcraft Motors, which de Villiers had studied carefully before coming to the rendezvous.

  At 2 a.m. that night the two men broke into the garage without difficulty and leaving no signs of their visit. By flashlight they removed all the parasite components, reconnected the brake lines, bled the brakes and refilled the system with fluid. They were clear of the building by 4 a.m. but the police accident inspector did not arrive until after 11 a.m. and his necessarily rather limited check revealed nothing suspicious.

  Three weeks later Sir Peter Horsley was warned that the police were considering a charge against him of causing death by reckless driving. Sir Peter hired a private investigator and, the following April, his name was completely cleared at an inquest in Salisbury. The key factor was evidence from witnesses, such as Mrs. Elspeth Allen, the horse-van driver, that Sir Peter’s car began to swerve when driving smoothly in the middle of the road and not, as the police had suggested, following tire contact with the curbside.

  The coroner, Mr. John Elgar, recorded a verdict of misadventure and concluded, “Sir Peter’s vehicle was seen to snake along the A303 for some reason which we will never know, then crossed the central divider and came into violent collision with the other vehicle.”

  In late November 1986 Davies showed a letter, addressed to him at one of the Tadnam’s postal addresses, to de Villiers. The water engineer whom Davies had met at the Anglo-Omani Society’s meeting the previous October had written to say how sorry he had been to read of Major Mike Marman’s death and that, incidentally, he had been wrong about the Zakhir action. Marman had not after all been in the armored cars on that occasion. The relevant officer had been Captain Simon Mirriam, one of Marman’s troop leaders in Dhofar.

  Both surviving members of the Clinic agreed they would say nothing about this to the sheikh, since Marman remained, by wider definition, responsible for the action. They had acted in good faith and had already received his check in return for the film taken in Blandfield Road, newspaper evidence of the ensuing accident, and their file on Marman’s apparent responsibility for the death of Tama’an bin Amr.

  PART 4

  36

  Epilepsy is common. Five hundred thousand people in Britain alone are epileptics. The disorder can attack anyone, at any time, sometimes developing in old age. Genetic factors are often responsible but, as in Mac’s case, an accident can cause structural abnormality to the brain and bring on “secondary” epilepsy. Anticonvulsant pills usually help epileptics lead a normal life but there are often side effects such as nausea, hair loss, coarsening of the features, drowsiness, double vision, and disturbing nightmares.

  Mac had served with distinction in the SAS until, when he was driving a Land Rover over the Dhofar jebel in 1975, a land mine had blown him into the windshield. His skull was driven inward, impacting his brain. Mac had suffered intermittent epileptic fits ever since. His eleven-year-old daughter, Lucia, was a plucky, loving girl who had never known a time when Daddy did not have fits. She knew about the recovery position, the dangers of choking, and had coped all alone on occasions when she was back from school but her mother was still at work.

  Mac never remembered anything about his attacks. But many of his dreams recurred so often that they lingered etched in vivid colors in his waking mind. Most were corrupted regurgitations of his past but, obedient to no normal chronology, they unfolded in a weird disorder as though conjured into being by a madman. Mac was able to repeat every facet of the dreams to Pauline; not that she was able to draw much meaning from them. He would see himself plucking chickens at the factory the previous week and then, in an instant, playing children’s games with his brother on the hills above Cork back in the forties.

  The war dreams came often and with particular clarity. One began at Windsor Castle with Mac in the dress uniform of the Grenadier Guards. The drill parade passed directly through a wall and entered the dripping woods of the wadi Naheez. Now the other men were in sweat-streaked camouflage, SAS comrades bearing heavy bergens, their wary eyes darting sideways through dense groves of habok, the euphorbia used to treat camel mange. A huge bird alighted and the men—all but Mac and a Hadr tribesman—were gone. Mac loved all living things. He knew the bird was a sacred ibis from the sea-khors, or creek. From the habok there now issued other wonders, Tristram’s grackle, great white pelicans, shrike and sunbird, yellow-vented bulbul, kingfisher, and Paradise flycatcher.

  The Hadr led Mac into a fluted limestone cavern where together they took combs of light honey from the bees’ nests. They sat on a rock and ate the honey unharmed by the angry bees.

  “With many others,” said the Hadr, “I fled from the Yemen to avoid death by thaa’r. Everywhere the blood is spilled to avenge previous killings. There can be no end to it.”

  Mac’s honeycomb became a packet of army hardtack biscuits. As he crouched low among the boulders, sweat ran down into his eyes. A spider crawled over the back of his neck: he flicked out with repulsion but it was only the parachute-cord necklace to which he had taped his morphine syrettes, wristwatch and identity discs.

  Jock Logan tapped him on the shoulder and nodded. The advance was on. The “Duke” was there, Major Richard Pirie, dead now but always in the dreams. And the CO, Johnnie Watts, with his great wide grin and enormous confidence. G Squadron SAS. Jebel Samhan, Dhofar. Mac, the mortar expert, was part of the heavy gun troop, each man burdened by 120 pounds of weaponry, ammunition and water ration: in that heat a crippling load.

  Up ahead the ex-communist firqat group began to crouch as they advanced, a sheepdoglike lowering of their backs as though sensing some alien presence close by. Mac knew that they could smell the enemy.

  An Englishman, Kenneth Edwards, led the firqat, the Khalid bin Walid band, and Mac saw him bring up his rifle. Suddenly, immediately below them and dead ahead, Mac saw thirty or forty heavily armed adoo. Their Kalashnikov assault rifles indicated hard-core guerrillas; the adoo militia toted semiautomatic Simonovs. Smoke curled from cook fires. For once the adoo had been caught napping.

  Mac and his group opened fire. Jock Logan, Barrie Davies and Ian Winstone sent a hail of GMPG bullets and 66mm LAW rockets into the midst of the adoo. They charged down, bloodlust up, fear and heavy loads forgotten. Dead and wounded from both sides soon littered the dustbowl.

  In the dream Mac felt again the unbelievable heat, smelled the cordite, heard the buzz of the flies.

  They ran short of ammunition and enemy guns from surrounding ridges began to pick them off.

  The scene switched to the wadi Adonib in February 1975 with three G Squadron troops “beating” the forested wadi floor. Mac was halfway up one flanking hill, and at a smoke signal from the squadron boss, a peer of the realm, he brought his deadly 60mm mortar into play with backing from his team, Mick and Ginge. The second round targeted an ado
o patrol and, when the SAS beaters arrived, nothing was left but a leg and a pair of rubber flip-flops.

  Now Mac sat in the long narrow saloon of Chancers Wine Bar with Tosh Ash, as witty as ever, and drinking like there was no tomorrow. Tosh had been one of the lads and fit as could be. Now a pubkeeper and bon viveur, his face was florid, unhealthy. They drank to Mac, Callsign Five, Mortar Man Extraordinary. It was one of the better dreams.

  On November 28, 1987, thirteen years after the end of their time in Dhofar, Jock Logan and Barry Davies met in Hereford, as was often their wont, and walked together along Hampton Park Road to see their old friend. There were those who no longer visited Mac, perhaps because they had seen him on a bad day when the mood was on him, perhaps merely because their friendship had dissolved with time, as is the way of life. But Jock and Barry shared with Mac moments and memories that each of them savored and knew could never again be matched for sheer intensity of feeling.

  Jock had with him a fat and well-thumbed album of photographs, not just of Oman days, but going back to the sixties, when he and Mac and Frank Bilcliff were at the forefront of Britain’s rock-climbers. Among many other feats their group had been the first Army men ever to scale the Old Man of Hoy’s crumbling flanks. Since Dhofar days, Jock had married a pretty lass who had worked at the Bunch of Grapes from 1967 to 1971. They had a lovely daughter now who was the best of friends with Mac’s daughter, Lucia, and Jock had been Mac’s best man. Jock’s home was in Aberdeen, where he thrived at his job as salesman for a drill-bit manufacturer servicing the flourishing oil industry.

  Barry Davies was a salesman for Cardiff-based BCB, manufacturers and retailers of survival equipment. He’d had his first book published earlier that year, a best-selling manual on survival techniques. Ten years earlier Barry had received the British Empire Medal for his part in an SAS operation sanctioned jointly by Prime Minister Jim Callaghan and Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.