Mud Sweat & Tears - Bear Grylls [68]
The four of us then ate, went over the mission once more, and then re-checked our kit once again.
The helicopter was due at dusk.
CHAPTER 61
It was a bright night as we watched the chopper swoop in low over the camp, silhouetted against the moon. We threw our packs on board and climbed inside.
It was my first time in a military helicopter flying at low level through the mountains to a remote LZ (landing zone) at night. As part of the team, as fit and as trained as I could have ever hoped to be, I felt invincible.
The chopper soon came to a hover, barely five feet off the ground on the top of a bleak mountain. We silently piled off and took up our all-round-defence positions as the heli disappeared down off the peak, into the night sky.
Soon it was all silent, save for the noise of the wind steadily blowing across the back of our packs as we lay quietly and waited. We needed to tune our senses in before we started to move.
We then patrolled off. Our first contact was seven miles away.
We were to be met by a nondescript person in a nondescript vehicle, who would relocate us closer to our target and provide updated intelligence on our mission.
We arrived, took up split positions, waited and listened.
Slowly, though, the tiredness of the night began to creep in, as the adrenalin of the previous hours began to wear off.
Stay awake. Come on, Bear. Get a grip.
Those hours waiting, immobile, cold and stiff, were a fight to stay awake through.
Every few minutes I’d nod off and then wake with a start, trying to shake the fatigue from my head. I even tried resting my chin on my rifle’s foresight, which was sharp and pointed, in an attempt to keep myself awake.
Finally, the agent pulled up in the clearing.
Quickly and silently, we piled into the back of his transit van. For half an hour the agent drove us through narrow lanes, as we pored over the sketch map we had just been given in the back. The red light of our torches flickered crazily.
Soon we were dropped off in a lay-by, on a small deserted road, and the vehicle disappeared into the night.
We set off cross-country and patrolled to our prearranged OP (operating procedure) point, where we would set eyes on our primary target for the first time.
The scenario for the exercise was simple.
Our target was the suspected hideout of a kidnap-hostage sting. On confirmation of this intel, we would have twenty-four hours to regroup with two further patrols, brief them, form a plan to rescue the hostage, and then execute the mission. We would then have to extract ourselves to our final RV.
From here, all patrols, plus the hostage, would be extracted.
At the end of all of this, we would be ‘compromised’. We would be intentionally caught and would then begin the final phase of ‘capture-initiation’.
Through everything that would happen during this final test, we of course would know it was all simulation. Yet we had learnt over the months of continuation training to treat everything we did as real.
That was the key to preparing troops for combat: train hard, fight easy. Make the training as real as possible and when it then happens for real, there are fewer surprises.
And one thing the SAS have become very good at over the years is making that training simulation feel utterly real.
Trust me.
CHAPTER 62
We located a good OP position overlooking a deserted house – which was our target. We camouflaged ourselves and set about our OP rota. This would consist of working in pairs on two-hour shifts, observing the target and taking notes on any enemy movements, and eating and resting.
It was a welcome relief finally to be able to close my eyes, even if only briefly.
It was summer, and the sun shone all day on our well-hidden camouflaged position, which made a change from the incessant summer showers we had endured for the previous ten days. And quietly, undetected, we lived and watched, only three hundred yards from the target location.
Our tasking the next night was to guide two further patrols into our location from a few miles