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A Special Forces operative makes an intelligent career change |
| Lieutenant Roger Courtney stared down into the gully below. It was a 150-foot drop and he could not see if there were rocks beneath the waters of the pool below. Dogs were barking and men shouting in the forest behind him. They were closing in. It was now or never. He jumped. He held his legs fast together and arms tight to his side. He still felt the impact like a shock throughout his body, but nothing broke. He swam quickly to the side. A shot from above zinged into his arm. He felt the hit but was so high on adrenaline after the chase and the jump that it barely registered. Roger was on automatic, his SBS1 training propelling him fast forward. Images of Jill, his wife, flashed into his mind as he moved into the trees and down toward the coast. Just before embarking a week ago, her smiling face still shone in his mind's eye saying she was going to have a baby. He pulled a small rubber dingy out from under seaweed on the beach. He cast off, paddling furiously. At sixty feet from shore, he slipped into the water. He knifed the boat as he did so. Shots came from the beach. He ducked his head beneath the waters and swam further out. The waterproof transponder on his arm, silently messaging into dark ocean. Thirty feet later he felt a tug from below and saw a frogman beneath him holding a portable airmask. He took the mask. He dived down to an SDV2 Clinging on with his good arm the mini submersible then sped to HMS3 Astute waiting off shore disembarking in the Special Forces payload bay. Later, on board the submarine, he was greeted by the Major. "Where are the others, Lieutenant?" The Major asked. "They did not make it. Shit intelligence, the HUMINT source, whoever he was, sent us to the wrong place, it was just an outpost. We lost oversight and went dark shortly after landing." Roger rubbed the wound on his arm. The Major ignored Roger's obvious discomfort for the moment, "Did you accomplish the mission?" "Yeh, on the quiet I hacked a computer at the outpost and extracted some intel. There was more at the main site, but we had less time to collect it." Roger handed the Major a portable thumb drive in a waterproof capsule. "When we knew the true location we yomped4 there and shot Sawadjaan dead. It was a risk but not a silent kill, I think they knew we were coming, and all hell broke loose. They must have had a hundred fighters on-site. Jim and Seb were taken out by an RPG5. I was winged in a gully during my exit." "Sorry about your friends. At least it was not all for nothing, what do you think went wrong?" "I wanna strangle the HUMINT6 source whoever the frig he was. Or maybe some so-called IT experts read the numbers wrong or pattern recognition couldn't distinguish a terrorist from the maid? Who the frig knows? I guess they planned this, it felt like a trap, they must have used an ECM7 on overwatch." "Right," said the Major rubbing his chin. "Go get yourself cleaned up. We will do a full debrief later." Roger hesitated before his reply, his mind a jumble of thoughts. The job had become harder in recent years and this mission had been the final straw. The Astute class submarines had been grounded for a year by major screwups relating to dry dock space at Faslane8. This forced the SBS onto surface ships or US ships during that time. HR9 was continually breathing down his neck for comments he made about the presence of women in the special forces. Roger did not believe in quotas and no woman had yet to pass Commando training anyway. He was quite forthright in denouncing the idea of lowering standards and making the service less lethal to fit some politically correct ideology. At the same time, being a married man, he had zero tolerance for sexism. He had just never met a woman who could do what he did. This had earned him trouble with the latest lieutenant colonel of the regiment, Samuel Wetherbottom, who had ambitions to rise higher in the ranks and was pandering to the new Labour government. Courtney had denounced him to his face when he had suggested quotas and gender-related recruitment standards for the SBS. He'd made an enemy and there was no way up for him anymore in the ranks. He emerged from his thoughts with a decision on his lips. "Sir, I am giving you my notice. That is the last time I'm doing that; it is time for a change. Jill is pregnant, and I want to be there for my kid. I've been doing this for ten years now, pissed off all the wrong higher ups and you'd probably be told to retire me in a few years anyway. It just won't be the same without Jim and Seb. We trained together..." The Major nodded and placed a hand on Roger's shoulder. You've earned the right to leave when you want, but let's give it a few days, hey." HMS Astute rendezvoused with the HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier, a week later, and Roger transferred taking a helo back to RM10 Poole11 in Dorset. Roger found his bunk and slept the sleep of the righteous twelve hours before rising. The next day he went to the office there to hand in his resignation. He was waylaid on the way there by two men and a woman in the Green Slime berets of the Intelligence Corps. "Slime, who let you on base? Tell me you are here to apologize for being crap at your jobs and for the death of my men," said Roger rather more hotly than he had intended. It was only then that Roger noticed that the tallest man in the group wore a Brigadier's uniform and was not a man to mess with. Roger regretted his outspokenness and bowed his head a little embarrassed at his lack of restraint. "We were sorry to hear about the loss of your friends. We were impressed by the way you improvised and completed the mission even without good intelligence. You knew what to look for and you had the technical skills to find it." That answer confused Roger, "True. I do not understand, Sir. Why are you talking to me, Brigadier? I am a long way below your pay grade." "We heard you were looking for a desk job. We know you have some of the skills we require, and we can train you up in the ones you do not have yet. You also know what it is like to be on the other end of the intelligence game in the field. You could be a vital connector to special forces men in operations - saving their lives and making them more effective." A year later Roger was a trained 'Operator Military Intelligence' living in barracks in MOD12 Chicksands, Bedfordshire. His daughter, Chloe, had been born three months before and there was already another on the way. It was a different kind of life but after all the action of the last decade and a half, he was ready for it. His new friends were people he worked with and many of them had families on base. His time filled up with barbecues and baptisms. The job was also interesting supporting men in the field with actionable intelligence. His new boss was a woman, Major Sandra Williams and they were in her office discussing a report. She was like him in her early thirties, but only a slight 5' 6'' compared to his 6-foot heavily muscled frame. Despite the size disparity he had grown to respect her as a very capable commander and to defer to her decisions and advice. Roger asked, "Can you tell me why all the phone chatter is concentrated in one single place rather than spread out? Are they all using a landline or mobiles? The intelligence says mobiles, it makes no sense they'd all be standing in the same place." "They are masking their signals. Wait watch...," Sandra fiddled with a few keys on her computer, dragged a circle around the base on the map, and right-clicked for an interpretation. The red dots symbolizing the signals disappeared from the target base and appeared concentrated in another place entirely. Roger looked at her genuinely impressed. "That's genius and it confirms my suspicion. The HUMINT must be false, it does not match the pictures and the chatter. Who is this guy anyway?" "You mean he is telling us to hit one target, but the base is here where all the dots are?" "Exactly, I think he is leading my men, I mean SBS, into a trap." "Show me," said Sandra. He respected that she was open to considering his point of view but also that she was astute enough to know if he was barking up the wrong tree. He always felt he had to bring his A-Game into this office. That said this weekend Julie and Sandra had organized a birthday party for Sandra's oldest daughter. This was a different life now. Roger had come equipped with his laptop. He linked screens to the whiteboard at the front of the office. "Look, the drone footage shows the main activity here." He pointed a red dot laser pointer at a map on the whiteboard where all the phone calls originated. On a sidebar on the same view, he scrolled through pictures taken by drones of the site, "See we have infrared pictures and vehicle activity. The phone calls point to the same place. So, he has told us that the base is in the valley but that makes no sense. A few good snipers with night sights could wipe us out from the high ground." His laser pointer drew circles on the map, "So the obvious conclusion is that the base is actually on the hill and he's feeding us bullshit." Sandra smiled, "You still think like the man we will send to the situation. That is an asset and I think you are right. Draft a new plan to take out the base on the hill. Do a historical analysis of how our HUMINT asset may have misled us in the past also." "Yes boss," said Roger. It was during that research that Roger found out that the same HUMINT asset was responsible for the deaths of Jim and Seb by a similar tactic of misdirection. When the team was sent in to take out the base he and Sandra were both standing there in the operations room to watch the mission with some nervousness and excitement also. Various generals and the defence minister were also present though seated around a table before the main screen. The map on the main screen showed the drone footage of the battlespace. SBS assets shown in green and enemy combatants in red. The helos landed without incident and the men deployed around the base. The order was given, and they went in. It was over in seconds with multiple targets engaged and eliminated. Roger knew most of the guys on the op. and smiled with some satisfaction at their professionalism. A great deal of data was recovered before a flawless extract. Later after reviewing the collected evidence they met again in Sandra's office. Sandra said, "You were spot on about the HUMINT asset. His name was Ahmed AzharAlvi. He was killed in the attack and was the sub-commander of the terrorist group. I am going to recommend you for promotion to Captain and give you your own team." "Thanks, Major, I never thought I could make the switch. The SBS was my life, but I absolutely love this new job." Notes ▼ Footnotes |
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