Deep Black Part 1

Deep Black.

by Andy McNab.

About the Author.

Andy McNab joined the infantry as a boy soldier. In 1984 he was 'badged' as a member of 22 SAS Regiment and was involved in both covert and overt special operations worldwide. joined the infantry as a boy soldier. In 1984 he was 'badged' as a member of 22 SAS Regiment and was involved in both covert and overt special operations worldwide.

During the Gulf War he commanded Bravo Two Zero, a patrol that, in the words of his commanding officer, 'will remain in regimental history for ever'. Awarded both the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) and Military Medal (MM) during his military career, McNab was the British Army's most highly decorated serving soldier when he finally left the SAS in February 1993. He wrote about his experiences in two phenomenal bestsellers, Bravo Two Zero Bravo Two Zero, which was filmed starring Sean Bean, and Immediate Action Immediate Action.

He is also the author of the bestselling novels, Remote Control Remote Control, Crisis Four Crisis Four, Firewall Firewall, Last Light Last Light, Liberation Day Liberation Day, Dark Winter Dark Winter and and Deep Black Deep Black. His new novel, Aggressor Aggressor, will be available from Bantam Press later in the year. Besides his writing work, he lectures to security and intelligence agencies in both the USA and the UK.

Acclaim for Andy McNab: 'McNab's great a.s.set is that the heart of his fiction is non-fiction: other thriller writers do their research, but he has actually been there' Sunday Times Sunday Times 'McNab is a terrific novelist. When it comes to thrills, he's Forsyth cla.s.s' Mail on Sunday Mail on Sunday www.booksattransworld.co.uk/andymcnab 'Addictive... Packed with wild action and revealing tradecraft' Daily Telegraph Daily Telegraph 'Firmly established as one of the UK's top thriller writers, McNab draws heavily from his experiences in the world's most highly skilled special forces unit to make his fiction explosive, pacey and authentic' Express Express Magazine Magazine 'The word page-turner seems coined for McNab's work' Crime Time Crime Time 1.

Bosnia, October 1994.

From where I was hiding, the bottom of the valley looked like no man's land on the Somme: acres of mud churned up by tank and heavy vehicle tracks, mortar craters filled with dirty water. Here and there a dead hand clawed at the sky, pleading for help that had never arrived.

It was a grey and miserable day, not yet freezing, but plenty cold enough to have robbed me of a whole lot of body heat over the last three days. Even so I was still luckier than the scattered corpses, half buried in the mud. Judging by their state of decomposition, some had been there since the summer.

I was about a hundred Ks north of Sarajevo, dug into the treeline at the base of a mountain. My hide looked across the valley to what had once been a cement works, precisely 217 metres away. The problem for the owners was that it had been a Muslim cement works. The perimeter fence had long since been flattened by Serb tanks, and not a single part of the complex had been left unscarred by the bitter fighting. Most of it had been reduced to rubble. A three-storey building that I guessed had once been a block of offices was just about standing, heavily pitted by artillery and small-arm rounds. Black scorch marks framed the holes where there'd once been windows.

I'd counted maybe thirty or forty Serb troops through my miniature binoculars, and I could see they were as cold and p.i.s.sed-off as I was. Smoke billowed from an annexe, mixing with the occasional burst of diesel exhaust; one or two of Mladic's boys were starting the vehicles, so they could get warm inside the cab.

I could only guess that, like me, they were waiting for the general's arrival. Ratko Mladic, the commander-in-chief of the Bosnian Serb Army, had been supposed to show up the day before, but that hadn't happened. f.u.c.k knows why. Sarajevo had just told me to wait where I was, and that was what I'd do until they told me to lift off the target.

I was up to my ears in a Gore-Tex sniper suit, a big, bulky overall with a camouflaged outer and a duvet-type lining. It had kept me warm for the first few hours, but prolonged contact with the ground was steadily draining me. I had about two days' food left, but being so close to the target, I was on hard routine. I couldn't heat up food, or make a brew. Still, at least I was dry.

I raised the binos and scanned the ground again, controlling my breathing. It wouldn't take much of a vapour trail for someone to think I was having a cookout.

The coffin-shaped sc.r.a.pe I'd dug after moving covertly into the area was about two feet deep and covered with camouflage netting. I adjusted it again to make sure the objective lens at the front end of the LTD [laser target designator] had a clear field of view to the factory. When Mladic arrived to do whatever he was going to do in the middle of nowhere, I'd call it in. The Firm, getting sh.e.l.led to s.h.i.+t by the Serbs back in Sarajevo, would green-light a fast jet loaded with a 2000-pound Paveway laser-guided bomb. About fifteen or twenty minutes later, depending on how long it took the platform, as we said in the trade, to deliver, there'd be a top-level vacancy in the Serb high command.

After the hit, I'd get the f.u.c.k out as quick as I could. The Serbs weren't fools; they knew these precision bomb strikes were man-in-the-loop technology and they'd be out looking for me.

Apart from the LTD and my daysack, everything from the sniper suit to the plastic bags of s.h.i.+t and petrol can of p.i.s.s would stay in the hide. It wouldn't matter if the Serbs unearthed it: this wasn't the first time they'd been marked, and it wouldn't be the last. They knew who was doing it, but would blame the Muslims anyway. I'd rather have left the LTD as well, but there was a difference between the Serbs knowing they were getting designated and being able to prove it.

After extracting myself from the immediate area, I'd just hit a road and become Nick Collins, freelance reporter, again. I carried a Sony Hi-8 video camera and a Nikon 35mm SLR in my daysack. On the way in to the job I'd mixed with the local population here and there to make sure I had plenty of shots. If I was caught, I wanted to look the part.

Nick Collins had an Irish pa.s.sport for this job. Irish or Swiss, they're the safest doc.u.ments in the world. Who's ever p.i.s.sed off with Dublin or Berne? With a name like Collins but a London accent, I'd have to say I came from Kilburn. Dad just never got round to taking Brit nationality when he finished working for McAlpine in the early seventies.

Freelancers like me were two a penny out here. Young guys, and the occasional girl, trying to make their fortune with bang-bang pictures and footage that might be good enough to be syndicated round the world. I'd joined a cast of hundreds who'd booked an air ticket then headed to Dixons in search of a decent SLR camera and a few hundred rolls of film. Once in-country, they asked where all the chaos was and made for it like bees to a honeypot.

Shouts were coming from the factory. I raised my head slowly and squinted through the dull, grey light. A group of Serbs were playing football again to warm themselves up. They were in a ragbag of uniforms. Some had camouflage; some were in what looked like German army-surplus parkas. Some were wearing wellington boots with thick, knee-high socks folded over at the top; some had decent calf-height boots. I'd seen better dressed and better organized Serb troops; maybe these were the cooks and bottle-washers. Whatever, they had a new football today.

I'd watched as these guys killed two Bosnian 'soldiers' the morning before an old man and a boy of about fifteen. They'd taken them into the factory. Judging by the screams, they'd probably interrogated them, then brought them outside and shot them in the chest. I thought it strange at the time; why not in the head? That was what normally happened. I found out why at afternoon kick-off.

The whole thing over here was a f.u.c.k-up from start to finish if there ever was a finish. I thought about the young girl I'd met a few days before, s.h.i.+vering at the roadside with a much older woman. She spoke a bit of English, so I asked their permission to take some photographs to fill up another roll of thirty-six for my cover story. She smiled shyly and told me her name.

'Where you going, Zina?'

She s.h.i.+vered again and motioned down the road. 'Sarajevo.'

What could I say? She was jumping out of the frying-pan and into the fire. The Serbs had had the place under siege for over two years. As well as constant sniper fire, they were lobbing about four thousand mortar and artillery sh.e.l.ls into the city every day. The UNPROFOR troops who controlled the airport had their hands tied. About the only thing they could do was fly in aid for the half-million or so Sarajevans who were trapped. Thousands had been killed, but maybe this lot would be among the handful who made it through the Serb front line and into somebody's bas.e.m.e.nt. I hoped so. If we both got to the city I might get my jacket back.

Even in this f.u.c.ked-up place, some situations were more f.u.c.ked-up than others. The old woman had been wearing a once-pink anorak many sizes too small for her. Her face was barely visible under the hood's fringe of white nylon fur, but I could see in her eyes that she was dying.

'Here.' I was still several Ks short of the cache where the LTD and all the other kit I'd need had been dug in by the Regiment as soon as the cement works became a possible target but I couldn't just leave the young girl like that. I took off my red ski jacket and gloves and handed them over.

She thanked me. Then, as if she had forgotten her plight for a few seconds, she struck a pose, right shoulder towards me, head flicked to the side as she zipped up her new jacket. 'Kate Moss, no?'

I brought the camera up to my eye but I couldn't bring myself to press the shutter release. Tears were suddenly streaming from very clear brown eyes and down her face. She was already back in the real world.

2.The football game had really warmed up now. Today's ball had mud caked on its matted grey hair and beard. I lowered my binos. I didn't want to see that s.h.i.+t. If they found me, the next head could be mine.

The ground below me was soft but sappingly cold. I wished the Regiment boys had left me a roll mat. Tensing my body, I wiggled my toes again and again, trying to generate some heat, but it wasn't working. Mladic had better turn up soon. I didn't have a picture of him with me because of opsec, but I'd burned one into my memory before I came out. I'd know his ugly fat face when I saw it.

The LTD was housed in a green metal box about the size of a breeze block. The tripod it was mounted on was extendable to about two feet, though I had it just inches off the ground. It had a viewfinder at the back, and a lens at the front, protected for now by a plastic cap, which would fire a laser about ten miles. There was also a laser range-finder, which was how I knew the target building was exactly 217 metres away.

The theory behind this kind of attack was very simple. A jet would come in from behind me, roughly in line with the beam from the LTD, but low, the other side of the mountain, out of sight and sound of the factory. When it was about nine or ten miles away, the on-board computer would tell the pilot to pull into a steep climb. At just the right moment he would let go of the Paveway, very much like bowling a ball underarm. By the time it had cleared the mountain, the jet would have turned and be on its way home.

The Paveway wasn't so much a missile as a standard 2000-pound lump of metal and explosive, with some fins strapped on its tail. Once it had been lobbed, the nose-mounted detector would look for the laser beam splas.h.i.+ng on the target, lock on, and freefall to the target. This man-in-the-loop technology was all very well, but as I watched the soccer match, hoping I wasn't going to f.u.c.k up and become their next ball, I wished someone would hurry up and invent no-man-in-the-loop technology.

I had to be this close because of the mountains behind me. When the LTD fired its laser, the beam would break up at the point it hit the target, giving the splash the Paveway would be looking for. Had it been aimed down at an angle from high ground, there would have been less splash, and the Paveway might have trouble locking on as it came over the mountain. I had only one chance of getting Mladic. To maximize the splash, I had to aim the laser at as near to a right angle to the target as possible, which meant being virtually on top of the factory in fact, in tactical terms, close enough to spit on it.

I checked again that the alloy tripod was nice and solid. I had filled three plastic bags with mud and slapped them over the legs to keep the beam constant and stable. If Mladic was to get hit in the building, the Paveway's fuse would be set to delayed, to make sure it penetrated the brickwork before detonating. Paveway had what was called a 'circular error probable' in other words, circ.u.mference of f.u.c.k-up of about nine metres. If I was out by three, the bomb could be out by twelve, but pinpoint accuracy wouldn't matter too much today. The full blast of 945 pounds of tritonal would rain the steel casing down on him, and even I'd have to get my head down.

I'd taken a pair of badly made and c.u.mbersome black nylon gloves from a body at the roadside. I pulled one off with my teeth and reached into the top pocket of the Gore-Tex suit for another two Imodium. I tried to time my bowel movements for the night.

The sound of engines rumbled up the valley to my right. I raised the binos again as a convoy of mud-covered wagons with canvas backs lumbered towards the factory. There were six of them, civilian vehicles. They all looked as if they had seen a few winters. As they got closer, I saw the drivers were in Serb uniform.

They drove into the compound and turned. I saw heads, many in headscarves, bouncing from side to side, sandwiched between Serb guards. The prisoners weren't just men and women. There were children too.

3.The Serbs who'd been sitting in the back, AKs over their knees, jumped down, smoking and joking with each other. The Muslim civilians clambered out after them, scared and bewildered, wrapped in blankets and all sorts against the cold. Their breath hung around them in a big cloud as they huddled together.

The bottle-washers stopped playing football. There was a new game in town. They left the head where it was and ambled over towards their weapons.

More tailgates dropped and there was a lot more shouting. Children cried as they were wrenched from their mothers and herded out of sight behind the office block. The remaining men, women and teenagers were split into groups. It was not looking good.

This was the third job with Paveways I'd been on since the end of August. The theory was that if you wiped out the Serb command, the troops would dissolve into chaos and the Muslims might stand a chance against the fourth largest army in Europe.

The first two princ.i.p.als I'd hit were colonels in charge of ethnic cleansing brigades. I'd heard the horror stories. The Serbs moved in after the sh.e.l.ling and rounded everyone up. The men would get separated, then they'd get dropped. Then the women and children were brought forward and despatched alongside their husbands and fathers. Anyone unfortunate enough to be female and between the ages of about fourteen and thirty was raped, often repeatedly. Some were killed during the a.s.saults. Many were held until they were at least seven months pregnant before being released.

Others were sold into the s.e.x trade, exchanged for cash and drugs with the traffickers who follow all wars and do business with both sides. A white girl could be worth up to fifteen thousand dollars these days.

4.I checked my watch. It would take the Serbs a good half an hour to sort out the prisoners. If I called in the air strike right now, some of these people might stand a chance, if they survived the blast. It was worth a shot; as things stood, most of them were going to die anyway.

As I watched a 4x4 bouncing along the track towards the factory, I wanted to reach for the beacon big-time. But my hand didn't move. That wasn't the mission. I was here to take a life, not save it. It was not the best of choices, and I knew I'd be waking up in a sweat at three a.m. for the next few weeks, feeling a low-life for not having done anything but, f.u.c.k it, we all had to die some time. I just wished I wasn't the one with his finger on the b.u.t.ton.

The segregation was almost complete, except for one boy's mother arguing with a soldier. The bottle-washers were kicking her, trying to pull her son away from her and put him with the men. She begged and pleaded, holding on to the boy for dear life. He didn't look much older than thirteen.

My view was blocked for a second by the arrival of the 4x4, an unusually s.h.i.+ny Land-cruiser. The door opened, and out of it came a slight figure with a flowing beard, not very tall, who walked calmly towards the mother and son.

The man seemed to float across the mud. The Serbs couldn't take their eyes off him. There was no begging, no arm-waving, the newcomer just held his hands in front of him and talked. I studied him through my binos. He was in his early to mid-twenties, and wore a Russian-style fur hat and a heavy greenish coat. His body language was confident. The bottle-washers seemed almost subservient to him. They stopped kicking the woman. She stayed on her knees in the mud, clutching her child to her chest.

The bottle-washers looked like they'd been told off at school. I couldn't help feeling that the boy's reprieve would be short-lived.

Beardilocks helped them to their feet and took them back to the group of women. The Serb guards even parted ranks to let him through.

Then there was a shot, a stunned silence, and another shot. Two of the male prisoners crumpled to the ground.

As the truth dawned, the women and children began to wail and scream.

There were two or three more shots. Slow. Rhythmic. Methodical.

More cries. Just tens of metres away, husbands, sons, uncles, brothers were getting it in the head.

I got my head back down into the hide, mentally numb now, as well as physically. You had to be able to throw that switch or you'd be barking at the moon.

5.For the next ten minutes, all I could hear were screams and the rhythmic tap of single shots. Then I heard the sound of vehicles, gradually getting louder. I slowly raised my head, and pointed the binos down the road.

A convoy of seven this time, all civilian Toyota 4x4s, two with flat beds and .50 cal machine-guns mounted over the cabs, was moving fast up the valley. The vehicles were new, too good for squaddies to be messing around in, and they bristled with whip antennae. This looked like a command group.

As they swung into the compound, I checked each one, but the windows and windscreens were too splattered with mud to make anyone out. The only people I could see were the heavily wrapped-up gunners on the .50 cals, who were being thrown around on the back, but trying to look cool.

The convoy pulled up outside the office block. Soldiers and bottle-washers ran towards them and fell in at attention. This was looking promising. I felt warmer already.

Mladic got out of the second vehicle, dressed in American camouflage BDU [Battle Dress Uniform] and a Serbian pillbox hat. He was just like his pictures; fifty years ago he could have been Hermann Goering's double.

After a quick f.u.c.k-off salute, he was bonding big-time with the local commander. As he stood over the bodies, chatting to his junior officers, I turned on the beacon to get the platform stood to. It had only one frequency, constantly monitored by an American AWACS aircraft, circling the country some forty thousand feet above me.

I hit the send b.u.t.ton. This close to the target, I couldn't risk speech.

I kept on hitting it, maybe six or seven times, before a soft American female voice came through the earpiece. That was a pleasant change: last time it had been a hard-nosed guy with the kind of East Coast accent that took no prisoners.

'Blue Shark Echo? Radio check.'

I hit the pressle twice. She would get squelch into her headphones.

She came back on, very quiet, very slow. 'That's OK, strength five, Blue Shark Echo. Do you have a target?'

I hit the pressle twice.

'Roger, Blue Shark Echo. Stand by.'

AWACS would be telling Sarajevo I had the princ.i.p.al. The whole detect, decide, destroy system was being bypa.s.sed because the decision to destroy had already been taken. All Sarajevo had to do was authorize the aircraft to stand to.

Because this job was known only to about a dozen people, there was no way the command set-up could have operated from the UN safe zone at Sarajevo airport. Instead, they were in an office above a cafe in the city, probably huddling under the table right now as another Serb artillery bombardment rattled their windows.

Maybe an American pilot on one of the carriers was striding to an aircraft. Very soon he or she would be circling above the Adriatic, waiting for the call to make their approach to target. Maybe it was a Brit Tornado based in Italy, less than the distance from London to Scotland but a whole different world away. The crew wouldn't even have time to get comfortable before they'd be heading home for hot coffee and a video. I didn't have a clue, but it didn't really matter. I wasn't going to hear the aircraft, let alone see it.

I was waiting for her to come back and tell me a time to target. I just hoped that Mladic stayed static long enough. On the last job, time to target had been fifteen minutes.

The bottle-washers were getting busy again. Two were blacking out the ground-floor door-frame and windows with blankets. Then foldaway chairs and trestle tables were dragged out of the 4x4s and taken into the office block, followed by baskets of food and armfuls of wine bottles.

I couldn't believe what came out next: a pair of candelabra, complete with candles. It reminded me of the cavalry officers I'd known before I'd joined the Regiment, who'd carry the regimental silver with them in their tanks on major exercises and set the table for dinner as if they were taking a break from the Charge of the Light Brigade. As an infantryman I used to honk about the c.r.a.p hats and their fancy ways, green with envy as I opened my ration can of sweaty processed cheese.

Mladic just stood there with his hands on his hips, apparently oblivious to the carnage.

My new best friend was back on the net. 'Blue Shark Echo, over.'

I hit the pressle twice.

'I hear you fives, Blue Shark Echo. You will have a fifteen that's one five minute time to target. Copy?'

I did. I hit the pressle twice as I watched bundles of firewood being taken into the office. Smoke was soon streaming out of the cracks in the wall. With luck he would just have sat down to eat by the time I started easing the Paveway up his a.r.s.e.

I pulled my glove off with my teeth then slowly reached out to the front of the LTD and lifted the little plastic cover from the objective lens. Next I dug around in the breast pocket of my sniper suit for some toilet roll and gave the gla.s.s a wipe from the centre outwards to clear it of condensation. Then I eased myself up a little so I could look at the sight picture in the viewfinder. I aimed the crosshairs at the ground floor, on the area of wall between the two covered window-frames. I moved them vertically up, aiming at the point where the first floor hit the front elevation. With nine metres margin of error, I wanted to make sure that there was no chance it would just plough into the ground. Now it didn't matter if it was nine metres high or left or right, it would still hit.

It looked as if pre-dinner drinks were about to be served. Mladic headed for the office block, his sidekicks in hot pursuit. The shooting continued as he disappeared inside.

There was nothing I could do now but wait. I couldn't afford to call the platform in just yet. He might take it into his head to come outside again with his G and T and go for a wander. With the amount of alcohol, food and candelabra on show there was no rush. Well, there was, but I couldn't cut corners.

I gave it ten minutes. Chances were he was staying inside now. I hoped he had seen enough dead bodies for the day.

I got on the net and hit the pressle five or six times.

'Is that you, Blue Shark Echo? Send again.'

I hammered the pressle another couple of times.

She came back. 'Do you have a designation?'

Press, press.

'Roger that, confirm you have designation.'

Press, press.

'Delayed fuse?'

Press, press.