THE FOLLOWER: SAS hero turns Manchester hitman (A Rick Fuller Thriller Book 4)(5)

Tiji, Libya. Thursday 19th November 1987.


Des Cogan’s Story:

We’d found our LUP (Lying up point,) just after 0700hrs. The sun was just about up and began to warm our frozen bones.

Sometime around 1600hrs, we knew it would drop like a stone again, plunge Tiji into darkness and the temperature would plummet into minus figures.

We were hunched in a dried-out wadi that ran north to south, some five hundred metres from our target. Deep enough to conceal us from any nosy locals but close enough for me to get eyes on Al-Mufti’s premises with the binos. We dropped our Bergens - got some much needed rations down our necks and a brew on.

Feeling a little warmer, we then sorted out our kit, checking and re-checking our weapons. Freddy was already setting up his own personal bomb making factory as he hummed a little tune.

“What’s that you’re singing?” I asked.

“On Ilkley Moor baht hat,” he said.

I shook my head.

“It’s a tale about this lad like,” he explained. “He goes up on t’moors we no hat on, and he catches his death o’ cold.”

I laughed. “Yer a fuckin’ alien, pal. Nobody can understand that shite.”

Freddy rolled C-4 in his palms to warm and shape it. “It’s a good Yorkshire tune Desmond. Tha wouldn’t understand.”

I left him to it.

Tiji was bigger and more modern than I imagined and contemporary buildings were visible in the far distance.

That said, the area around our target was stock poor.

Sand-rendered, low-rise, flat roofed dwellings sat opposite each other, divided by tight alleyways. Narrow potholed streets were home to skinny wild dogs prowling around sniffing for scraps. Local women carried baskets of vegetables on their heads as they trudged to the local market, and men in national dress drove the odd goat in the same direction hoping for a sale.

Al-Mufti’s house was located on the corner of a narrow lane and a wider tarmac road that ran between the oilfield and the town proper. This meant we had a good view from our wadi, but would make getting in close difficult in the daylight hours. The land between our position and the target was flat as a pancake, with no cover at all other than the odd telegraph pole. If we got caught out there, we’d all be slotted in an instant.

Our plan had been simple enough. Ensure Abdallah Al-Mufti was all tucked up in bed, get in close to the house under cover of darkness, attach enough C-4 to blow the thing sky high, and fuck off quick sharp.

Simple eh?

Not so.

The gaff was not only bigger than we first thought, maybe five bedrooms, but also under armed guard.

Two men with AK-47’s slung across their chests patrolled the perimeter. They looked tired or bored, or both, but they or their replacements would have to be dealt with before we could plant our charges.

In addition to the two sleepy heads, a crew of other faces, mostly dressed in typical Arab terrorist garb wandered about the street, smoking and carrying everything from AK’s to GPMG’s. They didn’t appear to have a purpose, they were just… there.

The building opposite our target was a larger structure with a high walled rear yard. It wasnea a dwelling, more of a storage facility. One eighteen-ton six-wheeler had already trundled around to the back gates early doors. The truck was on its axles, fully laden, and the wandering terrorist types, slipped in and out of this building at regular intervals to help with the unloading of whatever its cargo was.

Whitehall’s estimate of thirty guys supporting Al-Mufti was conservative to say the least, and as the morning wore on, our head count continued to rise. We stopped bothering at fifty.

Parked directly outside the front door of our target’s house, were three vehicles. The first was a Toyota pickup. It had the suspension jacked up and big fat tyres fitted to enable it to negotiate the desert terrain. Experienced desert drivers are a Godsend. They know exactly how much air to have in the tyres to get you where you need to go. In some conditions, they run them almost flat and carry a small compressor in the back to re-inflate them when the ground changes.

This wee model also boasted some kit you wouldn’t get offered as an optional extra in the Toyota showroom. It had an M2, bolted to the roof. The heavy machine gun, designed by John Browning had a full belt of .50 BMG cartridges sitting next to it, all ready to be fed into the weapon. Even though the M2 was an old weapon, first deployed in WW1, in the right hands, it was devastating.

Behind the Toyota was a Mitsubishi Shogun. It had the same wheel treatment, but was all clean and shiny with privacy glass to the rear. Obviously, Al-Mufti liked to ride in air-conditioned comfort, rather than in the dust filled open air with his troops.

The final vehicle was another pick-up truck of indeterminate make that looked like it had been in a war or two.

Just before 1000hrs we had movement from the house.

“Heads up,” said Rick sharply.

The tired patrolling guards perked up no end, and the seemingly random set of faces that wandered the street between the house and the storage facility suddenly became an organised, drilled cordon, all taking their previously agreed positions, weapons at the ready.

If Ronnie Reagan himself had been an overnight guest, he couldn’t have been happier with the security.

It was only once that this team had got their shit together, that the close protection crew who all appeared to have been sleeping in the main house appeared. First, the three drivers stepped out and started the engines of their respective vehicles. Next came the guy in charge of the M2. He clambered up onto the lead pickup, fed the belt of cartridges into the weapon and cocked it. He looked a big musclebound mean fucker and scanned the horizon in our direction.