Chapter 1

I jumped out of the chopper onto the deck of the Destroyer. I was the last man off. It was a balmy evening; all I was thinking about was a shower and some good food. It had been a long two months.

We had hunted down and killed at least a hundred and fifty Somalian pirates that were known to have boarded British ships, we also destroyed over thirty boats.

It seemed to us like a drop in the ocean, but it was sending out a message to the kidnap gangs. Captain Harding had been a good CO and we were coming back with all the men we went out with.

Two men had flesh wounds but to be fair all in all it had been a success.

I made my way down the cabins we had been allocated and stripped off before heading to the heads as the Navy call the bathrooms. I had a crap; it is amazing how much you miss sitting on the bog for a shit.

After that, I stood in the shower for a good twenty minutes letting the hot water wash over me. I washed, swilled, washed and swilled, then got out of the showers and dried off. There had been little chance of a shower during the mission.

It was good to have clean clothes to wear. I went to the locker I had been allocated and retrieved my mobile phone. The girls had texted me asking me to call as soon as I could, they wanted to see me ASAP.

I could not wait to see them; I was as horny as fuck. I went back to the base and we did a debrief before I was given the week off. I headed off to Birmingham with a smile on my face and a hard-on in my pants.

Asmaan and Damsa were happy to see me and we fucked all week until I had to report back for duty.

I had been back on base for two weeks, each weekend I went to see the girls for a fuck fest, and in the week, I was helping to train up some Canadian SF guys.

We had just finished a run-through in the killing house when I got the message to go and see the CO. I knocked on his office door and heard him call me in.

There was a sergeant sitting on one of the seats, a guy I did not really know. I had seen him around, but he was not a mate as such.

“Hello Rosie,” said the CO, he stood up and shook my hand.

“Hello Boss,” I replied.

“How is the training going?” he asked.

“It is going well Boss; we have another two weeks with them, and they will leave us in a much better state than they arrived “I said with a wry smile.

“Good Man,” he said, “This is Dave ‘chalky’ White.”

The sergeant stood up and we shook hands. He was a typical SAS guy, six foot tall and wiry. He looked like he could handle himself.

“Good to meet you mate,” I said.

We did not use ranks, we did not salute, and the CO was boss but no one else worried too much about ranks.

“And you mate, I have heard a lot about you!” he said as he sat down.

“The good stuff or the bad stuff,” I asked with a grin.

“Both mate, both,” he said with a wink.

“Tea or coffee lads?” the boss asked as I sat down.

We both opted for coffee, and the Boss made a call and ordered the brews.

Once the coffee and plate of custard creams had been delivered the boss handed out some maps.

“Right Rosie we have a little job for you, The IRA have sold some weapons and explosives to a Taliban cell in the UK” he told me.

“And how do we know about this boss?” White asked

“Box has an informer, they have been told about it, the what’s the where and the when.” The boss told us.

Box, as MI5 was known to the SAS, the security services had been planting people deep into mosques. The mosques in the UK were breeding grounds for the Taliban.

“So, what do they have planned?” I asked eager to know where I came into this.

“Over to you chalky,” the boss said as he dunked a biscuit into his coffee.

“Okay so we know the boat is going to land on a beach on the Isle of Skye, we had a team ready to go and meet them, but our sniper had an accident this morning and he will be out of action for a month or so,” Chalky told me. He did not say what sort of accident the sniper had had and I did not ask.

In that sentence, everything clicked into place. Each team or brick as the SAS called them was made up of four guys, each with a different speciality. A Comms guy, a medic, and a sniper as well as the team leader, I was a sniper and I was needed to make up the team.

“Okay, so you need a stand-in,” I said and took a sip of the coffee. I slipped another custard cream off the plate and dunked it.

“Yes mate, we need a sniper and there are not many of those hanging around the barracks, most are in the sandpit or down in the smoke,” Chalky said.

It was true, the regiment always had at least two teams in London on call, as the country was on high alert. There had been several high-profile Taliban attacks over the last few months.

The rest of the teams were in the sand pit, most hunting down home-grown Taliban and ISIS fighters. It was better to hunt them down and kill them when they were in a war zone than when they were back in the UK.

“Count me in mate, when do we need to leave?” I asked. I was eager to get back into action and to get stuck in. I did not join the regiment to sit around Hereford and babysit trainees.

“We leave on early on Friday morning, the boat will land on Monday morning,” Chalky said, “me and the rest of the team went up two weeks ago and did a recce. We will fill you in when we get up there, mate.”

“Right, I better go and get tooled up,” I said and put my now empty coffee cup on the tray it had been brought in on.

Chalky did the same and stood up as I did.

“Right lads if there is anything you need, please just let me know, and good luck lads!” The Boss said.

We all bumped fists before leaving his office. Before Covid, it would have been handshakes. Some guys preferred the first bump and some are old school.

Chalky walk over to the Quartermaster stores with me. We chatted as we walked.

“So, we will be taking the role of hill walkers, we have a lodge booked for the weekend, and we will take two range rovers, two men per vehicle,” Chalky told me.

“So, I need my walking kit as well as weapons and belt kit,” I asked.

“Yes, the comms is all sorted so don’t worry about them” he said, “Once you have your kit, I will take you over to meet the other lads.”

I went and got my kit; I had my own hill walking gear so I did not need that. I got all the gear I needed including some Multi-Terrain Pattern camouflage gear, I had been wearing the desert pattern for so long that I did not have any MTP, or green camo gear. I got a first aid kit, a Camo net sheet and some other bits and bobs.

Then we went to see the armourer. He was a big bear of a man that had been with the regiment for years and he had an encyclopaedic knowledge of weapons. His name was Andy Davidson but he was known to everyone that met him as Big Davy. He was one of those guys that was always happy.

“Hello, Rosie mate. How was Somalia?” he asked, his smile lit up the room.

“Hot, and dirty mate but we did a good job and put some bad guys in the ground” I smiled.

“Good lad and I hope my kit worked well?” he asked.

“It did mate” I said and we bumped fists.

One of the great things about the SAS is that you get to pick your own weapons, as long as they do the job.

I got myself a Glock 17 with two spare mags. My main weapon choice was the L119A1/A2 Special Forces Individual Weapon (SFIW), it uses 30-round magazines and I took four spares. The L119A1 comes in two flavours: one with a 15.7-inch barrel and a more compact version with a 10-inch barrel / upper. I opted for the 1O inch.

The Heckler & Koch M110A1 7.62mm semi-automatic sniper rifle was my next choice. It also used thirty-round mags and I took two spares. I got boxes of rounds for all the weapons.

I had my own Bergan and my own Fairbairn Sykes Commando Knife; it had seen a lot of action and it never failed me.

Chalky helped me carry my gear to the hangar that the team were using as their base. We put my gear onto one of the metal tables and he introduced me to the other lads.

Mike, ‘MC,’ Collins was the medic, I knew his face but had never worked with him. The Comms man was Barry ‘Big Baz’ Byrd. I had worked with him on two ops in Libya. He was a great guy, quiet and studious, but in a firefight, he was a beast.

We all shook hands. Chalky suggested we go and eat and have a chat about the mission. The canteen was not busy, we got into the queue. I opted for fish and chips with mushy peas, with a pint of water.

The other lads got their food and we sat at a table. As we ate the lads asked me about my last mission and I told them about the job we had done in Somalia, then they told me they had been on call in London for two months, they had come back to Hereford and had been given this job as soon as they got back. They were all envious of me getting to go out to Somalia.

They were eager to get stuck into some real work. Sitting around a barracks or driving around London was not what we came into the SAS for. Most if not all SAS troopers craved action, why else would you want to join a Special Forces regiment? Once we had eaten, we all got up and got pudding and coffee.

Apple pie, custard, and coffee. We all sat back down and Chalky looked around to make sure we were not being overheard. He outlined the plan.

So, the boat was an old trawler, three IRA men would man it. They would bring the boat all the way into the little bay that was hidden away on the far side of the Isle of Skye, they were bringing in at least three boxes of AK47s plus ammo and a box of explosives and detonators. There might be other stuff, but we were not sure.

The Taliban were travelling up on a Saturday morning from Bradford. There would be four of them in a camper van. The handover was supposed to take place at 0500 hours, it was autumn, and it would be dark at that time in the morning. We would take them out once the handover had been done.

The head shed was not bothered about us taking out the IRA guys, it was more about the weapons and the Taliban.

We were to take no prisoners and leave no clues. Chalky pulled a map out of his jacket. He and I would be on a hill above the bay and MC and Big Baz would be on either side of the bay. Once the crates had been unloaded off the trawler, I would take out the tyres of the campervan and then we would sweep down into the bay and dispatch the Taliban. Any bodies would be loaded into the transit van, and we would take the weapons before setting the camper van alight.

As with all SAS plans every member of the team had the right to ask questions, and if you did not ask questions, you could not moan if the plan did not work. It was obvious that the other lads had asked their questions before. So, I stuck my oar in

“So, we don’t take out the trawler?” I asked.

“Nope not unless they fire on us” Chalky said,” and if they do I have an M16A2 fitted with a M203 40mm grenade launcher.”

I knew the weapon; the underslung grenade launcher was a nice bit of kit.

“And the Taliban won’t be armed?” I asked.

“We have been told not, but if they are I am sure we have more firepower.” MC chipped in.

“Well, as soon as the crates are off the trawler, they will be well-armed!” Mc said.

“Yes, so we need to take them out as soon as the crates are unloaded, we need to be quick and sharp” Chalky said.

“It all seems too easy to be true,” I said and Big Baz nodded., “So why are MI5 not taking them out”.

“God knows but we are more than happy to do the job for them,” Chalky said with a smile. I guess two months in London waiting for something to happen had given him an itch.

We went back to the hangar, and I took my time loading the spare mags, most SAS guys preferred to load their own mags and pack their own parachutes. That way if things went wrong, you only had yourself to blame.

It was nine o’clock by the time we had sorted the gear out, the Range Rovers had special weapons lockers under the back seats. MC, Big Baz, and I headed toward the camp’s bar. Chalky had to go and see his Mrs Most SAS men were not married, it was hard for wives when lads went away for months and had no way to communicate with their families.

I got a round of beers in and we sat at a table in the corner of the room. There were a few lads in that I knew, and we exchanged nods. I drank my beer and listened to Big Baz telling us all about his first time in Belfast.

Once he had told us about how he had killed an IRA bomb maker with his bare hands we talked about the mission. We all agreed that it seemed too easy, we all wondered why the police or the security services were not taking it on but ours was not to reason why just to do or...

We each bought a round and then we head off back to our rooms. When I got to mine, I put the kettle on and got my hill walking gear out. I then packed my Bergen.

I slept well that night, the following morning I did a five-mile run then showered and went to the canteen, I got a full English and a coffee, MC was sitting on his own, so I joined him.

“Morning Rosie, “he said and took a bite out of a slice of toast.

“Hello MC,” I replied,” Sleep well, mate?”

“Always do mate.” He laughed.

“So, what have we got today?” I asked as I tucked into my food.

“Chalky wants us to go to the media room and review some drone footage,” he said and slurped his tea.

“I could do with some time on the range to zero in my weapons,” I said.

“Yes, we all should do that, maybe get it booked for this afternoon?” he replied. He pulled a mobile out of his pocket and made a call. When he had finished, he smiled at me.

“Range number four booked out all afternoon mate” he said and slurped down more of his tea.

After we had eaten, we got takeaway brews for the whole team and walked over to the media room.