The Exit Club: Book 4: Conspirators Read online

  The monumental story of the SAS in war and peace…

  Marty Butler is a conscript soldier who has his baptism of fire with the Long Range Desert Group in North Africa in 1941, where his fearlessness and love of

  action set him apart from even the best soldiers. It is therefore not long before he is singled out to become part of the newly formed SAS.

  During the next five decades Marty fights bloody wars and engages in highly dangerous counter-terrorist activities in Malaysia, the Middle East, Northern

  Ireland and the Falkland Islands, rising high in the ranks because of his skill and commitment. But against a growing tide of political corruption and international terrorism, Marty begins to use his deadly skills for his own personal mission, with shocking implications – for himself, for those who love him, and especially for those who have crossed him.

  Epic in its scope, meticulous in its detail, and highly controversial, The Exit Club is the ultimate novel about the SAS– riveting fiction rooted in dramatic fact.

  The Exit Club

  The Ultimate Novel of the SAS

  Shaun Clarke

  All five parts of The Exit Club were first published in a single volume in Great Britain in 1996 as a Coronet paperback by Simon & Schuster Ltd

  Copyright © Shaun Clarke, 1996

  ISBN 0-671-85478-X

  This ebook edition published in 2014 by Shaun Clarke The right of Shaun Clarke to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any

  form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the Author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this ebook publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Designed in the Isle of Wight, Great Britain, by www.inkdigital.org

  The Exit Club

  We are the pilgrims, master, we shall go Always a little farther; it may be Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow Across that angry or that glimmering sea…

  From Hassan by James Elroy Flecker

  Book Four

  CONSPIRATORS

  31 JANUARY 1991

  Feeling the unsteady beating of his own heart, the old man was reminded of his friend’s heart attack and surmised that it had all started then. It would actually have started before, of course, with those deaths in the Malayan jungle, when he realized for the first time that war was not a game and that its horrors were manifold. He had certainly changed after that, becoming less naive, even cynical, forced to battle to hold onto his faith and youth’s optimism. First that and then the women, those premature deaths, one an accident the other self-inflicted, both damaging to him.

  The second involvement was the bad one, the old man now thought, feeling the handgun in its holster in the cross-draw position, waiting for the final double tap.

  ( You let yourself be sucked into her paranoia and you never escaped. If you’d kept a reasonable distance, stayed aloof, you wouldn’t have turned the wrong way. What she wrought, you inherited.)

  The early-morning street was quiet. It was usually quiet here. Cars moved constantly along the leaf-strewn road, but few people were out and about, and many windows were shuttered. The rich were always fearful, protected by patrolled by savage dogs. His friend had come a long way for this, turning onto crooked highways, and now, with his new, embittered view of the world, he lived as a rich and powerful man who had placed himself above the law. He had become judge and jury and executioner in a valley of death. His trail was bloody and clear to see.

  Plessey and Marconi and the Royal Military College of Science, the old man speculated, still sitting in the gleaming Mercedes Benz, looking across the road at his friend’s house, partially hidden by the high walls of the garden. They were all involved in top-secret defence projects and they may have been linked. They may have sold their deadly products to corrupt, repressive regimes, though no solid proof for that has been found and probably never will be.

  ( Nevertheless, whether or not this is true, it is what you believed and acted upon, my friend. You became the Grim Reaper.)

  iron grills and CCTV, their gardens armed security men and well-trained,

  Having targeted Plessey and the Royal Military College of Science, he followed the links found in hearsay or imagination and moved against Marconi. The fifth victim, a former Marconi scientist reportedly working on radar, sonar and guided missile systems, died in his fume-filled garage, supposedly while servicing his car.

  Just like the metallurgist in Oxfordshire, the old man thought. It couldn’t have been an accident.

  The sixth victim, a former British Army brigadier working on secret defence projects for Marconi near Camberley in Surrey, was found dead by electrocution at the cottage in the grounds of the Marconi factory, his teeth wired to the mains supply.

  Just like the scientist from the Plessey Naval Systems at Addlestone, the old man thought. That was no accident either.

  The seventh victim, engaged in testing computerbased defence systems for one of Marconi’s sister companies, died when, on his way to work, he inexplicably U-turned into a slip road on a dual carriageway and crashed into a disused building at eighty miles an hour.

  This was supposedly after he’d been visited by two unnamed members of the Special Branch, the old man thought. The Special Branch denied any such visit, so just who were those men? The same two who had visited all the others? The two he knew so well?

  The eighth victim, a 24-year old computer expert working on the world’s most advanced electronic defence system for Marconi Underwater Systems, was found on a footpath seventyfive metres below Clifton’s suspension bridge with his trousers pulled down and a puncture mark on his left buttock. Reportedly he had been driving to Bristol in his car just before his mysterious death occurred.

  It was thought to be a suicide jump, the old man recalled, until they found that puncture mark on his buttock. Then theyweren’t so sure.

  (But I am. I’m very sure. That victim was knocked out with an injection before being thrown off the bridge. You couldn’t have done that, my friend, but it would have come naturally to your partner. There was little he wouldn’t do.)

  After that, as the evidence clearly indicated, his friend, that man in the guarded house across the road, took a step back, perhaps shocked by what was happening, while his partner, the one who rarely blinked, went out of control and neutralized the rest in cruelly novel ways.

  The ninth victim, also a computer expert at Marconi Underwater Systems and engaged in sensitive defence technology, apparently committed suicide by tying together four lengths of nylon rope, securing one end to a tree, the other to his neck, and then driving away from the tree at high speed. He, too, was reportedly en route to Bristol when it happened.

  The tenth victim, a 44-year old defence engineer, also working at Marconi Underwater Systems, was found drowned in a partially frozen canal, weighed down by a painter’s trestle, a few days after he had received a call from Marconi, saying they wanted to discuss his work.

  The eleventh victim, a 46-year old design engineer at Marconi Space and Defence Systems, Portsmouth, reportedly working on top secret weapons and satellite development projects for the government and NATO, died of a drugs overdose.

  Almost a baker’s dozen, the old man thought.

  (But it did
n’t go any further. It didn’t and won’t.) He checked his wristwatch and glanced across the road, through the locked gates of the property, noting that the front door of the house was still closed and that the guards seemed lethargic. His friend was running late. Usually he was punctual. This was the day that the Association met and he always came out at the same time to be driven to town. That time had now passed.

  ( You did what you thought was right, but then it all went too far and, when you realized just how wrong you’d been, you started withdrawing. You’re almost a recluse now, hiding in your own shadow, and you know that your friend has been neutralized and you’re thinking about that. Almost certainly you’ve guessed who was responsible and know it won’t end there. When you come out, which you will very soon, you won’t be too surprised. You may even welcome it.)

  Sliding his right hand around his waist, the old man checked that his handgun was still in the cross-drawn position in its Len Dixon holster. His fingers caressed the leather, which was worn smooth with age, and the touch of it took him back through the years to the very beginning. They had both been young then, filled with optimism and faith, secure in the belief that what they were fighting for was worthwhile, which it was at that time. Then it gradually changed, became more complex, less clean, and as they aged and the British Empire crumbled it became a lot dirtier. He was out of it by then– the young man that he had been– but his friend, the one in hiding across the road, was still serving his country right or wrong, and in time he became disillusioned and let bitterness blind him.

  He saw only what he wanted to see, heard only what he needed to hear, and, impelled by self-righteousness and the pain of broken faith, he took all he had learned and perverted it for his own kind of justice. He became the judge, jury and executioner for all those who had wronged him by betraying his regiment, his country, his faith, and he embarked on a cleansing operation of unparalleled ruthlessness. That man over there, that loving husband and decent father, that good citizen and courageous fighter, had travelled from the light to the darkness in search of redemption. He would find that in death.

  The old man in the gleaming Mercedes Benz straightened up in his seat, removing his hand from the leather holster at his waist, and stared across the quiet road. The security guards in the driveway of the big house had just listened to their handsets and were now taking up protective positions by the front door and main gate. They were preparing for someone to come out and they were taking no chances.

  (The end begins now. Let it be quick and clean.) It was quick, but it seemed a lot longer as the past rushed back in. He lived a life in mere moments.

  Chapter One

  Marty saw the first of the men emerging from the mist that clung like grey gauze to the snow-covered, rocky slopes of the mountain, with the landscape spread out eerily far below them. They looked like ghosts in the mist, hardly human, misshapen as they were by overweighted Bergen rucksacks and rolled groundsheets, all holding M16 rifles at the ready. Still a long way down the hill, they were coming up it in irregular file formation, spaced well apart, with some lagging too far behind, obviously close to exhaustion. The only sound, apart from the distant jangling of their equipment, was the low moaning of the wind that swept the snow off the rocks and blew it across the bleak mountainside.

  Though covered in a blanket and protected by the stone walls of the small sangar he had built for himself, Marty was still numb with cold and feeling his age. Three years older than he had been when he’d had his heart attack during the assault on the Jebel Dhofar in Oman, he was proud to be still unusually fit for his age and could hold his own against the younger men now advancing uphill. Nevertheless, he was pushing his luck by being here and knew that if his superiors discovered that he had come against their orders, they would strongly disapprove.

  Not that he gave a damn. He had done it out of boredom, defying the gods. While he waited for the marching men to reach his hidden position, he thought back on the past three years and realized that, although his work since the heart attack had not been without its interesting side, it had gradually started grinding him down with its sheer repetition.

  At the time of the incident, he thought that he’d been shot in the heart and was dying. Only when he regained consciousness in the military hospital did he realize that he was still alive. He was then informed by an RAMC surgeon that he had suffered a mild heart attack due to the strain of humping the heavy GPMG and tripod up the sheer face of the Jebel. Mild though it had been, it had caused him deep humiliation, making him face the fact that he was inexorably ageing and that his days of truly challenging active service might well be over.

  Certainly, mild or not, the heart attack was enough to ensure that he would not be sent back to Oman. Instead, he had been assigned as a member of the directing staff, the DS, of 22 SAS training wing, where he recuperated while lecturing new candidates on the theoretical aspects of the ever-broadening programmes for basic training, continuation training, and crosstraining, both in Hereford and abroad.

  By now the organization of 22 SAS, totalling 750 men, had evolved into four ‘Sabre’ (fighting) Squadrons: A, B, D and G; a reserve Squadron, R; and the Rhodesian SAS, C Squadron, which in the late 1960s had been involved in operations against black nationalists, including cross-border raids into Mozambique, Botswana and Zambia. There was also the 264 SAS Signals Squadron, Royal Corps of Signals.

  During his subsequent three Lines, while the war in Oman was still being engaged, Marty had been privileged to take part in the broadening of the regiment’s scope with, in addition to the training demolitions revolutionary warfare wing, and an operations planning and intelligence wing, fondly known as the Kremlin and manned by the green slime.

  Though he was nominally a DS with the training wing, Marty’s past experience with the regiment had encouraged his superiors to involve him in the development of various counter-revolutionary warfare techniques and let him be privy to the inner workings of the Kremlin which, since the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, had become increasingly concerned about the widening of terrorist activities worldwide and now envisaged the need for special training to combat them. detached from the

  years at Bradbury wing, an operations research wing, a wing, a relatively new counterAlready,the construction of the ‘Killing House’, or close quarter battle (CQB) building of the kind discussed frequently between Paddy Kearney and Bulldog Bellamy was nearing completion. Other techniques for combating terrorism had led to consultations and exchange programmes with friendly special forces groups such as the US Delta Force and similar in France, Germany, Holland and Italy. For this reason, though not involved in active duty, Marty had spent much of the past three years overseas, which had compensated him somewhat for not being on active service.

  Gradually, however, as links with other special forces groups were firmly established and the new programmes clearly defined, he had found himself spending ever lengthier periods in Hereford, lecturing the new candidates in map-reading, navigation, weapons maintenance, CQB tactics and field exercises. He had not been in the field himself and the loss had been deeply felt, eventually building up a well of frustration that had finally led him to defy his superiors and make his lonely hike up this mountain to build himself a sangar and keep watch in the early-morning hours as the new candidates made their painful way towards the snow-covered summit.

  Now, as he shivered under his blanket and watched the hopefuls advancing up the misty, snow-covered hill, every man clearly frozen and none looking too bright in his state of physical and mental exhaustion, he recalled his own climb up the equally formidable, baking hot slopes of the Jebel Dhofar. Indeed, the war in Oman was continuing this very moment and Marty understood that, while he missed being there, he was probably lucky to have got out while he could, no matter how painful his exit. Otherwise, he would have been in for years of particularly gruelling, dangerous work and, if not struck down by the adoo, probably killed by an even worse heart attack.

  T
hough the assault on the Jebel Dhofar had finally been successful, the fatalities had been high. According to what Taff and Tommy Taylor had told him upon their return to Hereford, the rest of the fight for the Jebel had been hell, culminating in a march along the Wadi Dharbat with the adoo sniping at them and shelling them with mortars from fortified sangars high on the hills. To make matters worse, just as the combined SAS and SAF forces were about to capture the plateau, the unpredictable firqats decided to lay down their arms, insisting that it was the beginning of Ramadan, when they could not eat, drink or fight. Naturally, the minute they saw that, the adoo poured down the hills in their hundreds to annihilate the SAF forces with Kalashnikovs, FN rifles and RPD light machine guns, eventually coming so close that hand-tohand combat was engaged. Luckily, the SAS troopers were saved at the last minute by the arrival of RAF Skyvans, which devastated the adoo still on the hills with a load of Burmail bombs. So the battle was won eventually, but the cost was certainly high.

  Wounded during the fight, Taff was flown back with other wounded to RAF Salalah and saw that the dead, including adoo, had been placed in body bags and just heaped on the Skyvan’s floor, then lashed down with web straps, with the weight of the dead bodies squeezing out body fluids and blood to create a dreadful stench. Though normally imperturbable, Taff had later told Marty that all he could remember about that flight was recovering consciousness, seeing the body fluids and blood seeping out of the body bags, and smelling the stench. He had then passed out again, not recovering until the aircraft touched down in RAF Salalah.

  By that time, Marty had already had his own operation and was recovering in a hospital in Hereford. However, as he was recuperating and trying to deal with the humiliation his heart attack had caused him, he was kept up to date on the events in Oman by a steady stream of visitors, including Taff, when he had recovered, and Tommy Taylor. From those conversations he learned that after he had been flown out of the field on a casevac the SF advanced fifteen miles into communist-held territory and built three defensive positions on the Jebel Khaftawt. This was called the Leopard Line. From there, they moved out to surround the area with an aggressive patrol campaign, clearing the adoo out of the wadis. Eventually, after ten days of fierce fighting, Operation Jaguar established the Sultan’s forces on the Jebel Dhofar, which was a major setback for the adoo. Their attack on Mirbat the following year was their final, desperate bid to win back their prestige. But they lost that as well.