The Fist of God

Coordination of planning would reside with Colonel Craig for the men on the ground and with General Glosson for the eventual fighter-strike.

Buster Glosson had morning coffee with his friend and superior Chuck Horner.

“Any ideas for the unit we’d like to use on this one?” he asked.

General Horner thought back to a certain officer who two weeks earlier had advised him to do something extremely rude.

“Yeah,” he said. “Give it to the Three Thirty-sixth.”

Mike Martin had won his argument with Colonel Craig by pointing out—logically—that with most of the SAS soldiers in the Gulf Theater already deployed inside Iraq, he was the senior officer available, that he was commander of B Squadron, which was then on operations in the desert under the command of his number two, and that he alone spoke fluent Arabic.

But the clinching argument was his training and experience in freefall parachuting. The only way into the Iraqi mountains without raising an alarm was going to be a HALO drop—high altitude, low opening—meaning coming out of the aircraft at 25,000 feet and falling free to open the chutes at 3,500

feet. It was not a job for beginners.

The planning of the entire mission ought to have taken a week, but there was no time for that. The only solution was for the various aspects of the drop, the cross-country march, and the selection of the lying-up position to be planned simultaneously. For that, Martin needed men he could trust with his life, which was precisely what he was going to do anyway.

Back at the SAS corner of the Riyadh military air base, his first question to Colonel Craig was:

“Who can I have?”

The list was short; there were so many away on operations in the desert.

When the adjutant showed him the list, one name sprang out at him.

Peter Stephenson—definite.”

“You’re lucky,” said Craig. “He came back over the border a week ago. Been resting ever since. He’s fit.”

Martin had known Sergeant Stephenson when the sergeant had been a corporal and he a captain on his first tour with the regiment as a troop commander. Like himself, Stephenson was a freefaller and a member of the air troop of his own squadron.

“He’s good,” said Craig, pointing to another name. “A mountain man. I suggest you’ll need two of them.”

The name he pointed to was Corporal Ben Eastman.

“I know him. You’re right—I’ll take him anytime. Who else?”

The last selection was Corporal Kevin North, from another squadron. Martin had never operated with him, but North was a mountain specialist and highly recommended by his troop commander.

There were five areas of planning that had to be accomplished simultaneously. Martin divided up the tasks among them with himself in charge overall.

First came the selection of the aircraft to drop them. Without hesitation, Martin went for the C-130

Hercules, the habitual launch pad of the SAS, and there were then nine of them serving in the Gulf. They were all based at nearby King Khaled International Airport. Even better news came with breakfast: Three of them were from the 47th Squadron, based at Lyneham in Wiltshire, a squadron that has years of experience liaising with the SAS freefallers.

Among the crew of one of the three Hercules was a certain Flight Lieutenant Glyn Morris.

Throughout the Gulf War, the Hercules transports had been part of the hub-and-spoke operation, shifting cargo that arrived at Riyadh to the outlying bases of the Royal Air Force at Tabuq, Muharraq, Dhahran, and even Seeb in Oman. Morris had been serving as loadmaster or cargo supervisor, but his real function on this planet was as a PJI, Parachute Jump Instructor, and Martin had jumped under his supervision before.

Contrary to the notion that the Paras and the SAS look after their own parachuting, all combat dropping in the British Armed Forces comes under the RAF, and the relationship is based on the mutual trust that each party knows exactly what it is doing. Air Commodore Ian Macfadyen, commanding the RAF in the Gulf, seconded the desired Hercules to the SAS mission the moment it arrived back from stores-dumping at Tabuq, and riggers began to convert it for the HALO mission scheduled for the same night.

Chief among the conversion tasks was the construction of an oxygen console on the floor of the cargo bay. Flying mainly at low levels, the Hercules had till that point never needed oxygen in the rear to keep troops alive at high altitude. Flight Lieutenant Morris needed no training in what he was doing, and he brought in a second PJI from another Hercules, Flight Sergeant Sammy Dawlish. They worked throughout the day on the Hercules and had it ready by sundown.

The second priority was the parachutes themselves. At that point, the SAS had not dropped into Iraq from the skies—they had gone into the Iraqi deserts on wheels—but in the weeks preceding the actual war, training missions had been constant.

At the military air base there was a sealed and temperature-controlled safety equipment section, where the SAS had stored its parachutes. Martin asked for and got an allocation of eight main chutes and eight reserves, although he and his men would only need four of each. Sergeant Stephenson was allocated the task of checking and packing all eight throughout the day.

The chutes were no longer the circular type associated with the airborne units, but the newer design called “squares.” They are not really square but oblong and have two layers of fabric. In flight, air is ducted between the layers, forming a semirigid “wing” with an airfoil cross-section, enabling the freefaller to “fly” the chute down like a glider, with greater mobility to turn and maneuver. These are the type normally seen at freefalling displays.