Soldiers Without Borders
For Verona and Lucy
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Dedication
Glossary
Introduction
Maps
Prologue AWAKENING
WAR HORSES
Chapter one AFRICAN NIGHTMARE
Chapter two BLACK HAWKS DOWN
Chapter three WHO DARES
Chapter four LEAVING SAS
Chapter five THE SULLIVANS
Chapter six SKULL THE FIXER
Chapter seven THE ‘OASIS’
Chapter eight NEW TRICKS
SECURITY
Chapter nine THE MAN FROM WOODSIDE
Chapter ten BAGHDAD OR BUST
Chapter eleven SON OF THE FATHER
Chapter twelve CLIMB EVERY MOUNTAIN
Chapter thirteen AS THE CROW FLIES
Chapter fourteen BEYOND BLACK HAWK
COMMANDING OFFICERS
Chapter fifteen THE BRIDGE BUILDER
Chapter sixteen THE RELUCTANT EXECUTIVE
Chapter seventeen BREAKING THE CHAIN
ANZAC SPIRIT
Chapter eighteen BLOOD BROTHERS
Chapter nineteen THE FAMILY
Chapter twenty FRED AND SONNY
Chapter twenty-one THE MAORI SPIRIT
WHEELCHAIR BOUND
Chapter twenty-two THE FIGHTING MAN
Chapter twenty-three STRENGTH AND GUILE
THE BROKEN ONES
Chapter twenty-four DAMAGED GOODS
Chapter twenty-five RECOGNITION
Chapter twenty-six THE KIND OF MEN
THE SPICE OF LIFE
Chapter twenty-seven KEN ACKERS
Chapter twenty-eight THE DOORKEEPER
Chapter twenty-nine THE BRIEF MAN
Chapter thirty THE KITE SURFER
Chapter thirty-one NOT HAPPY JACK
THE HUMANITARIANS
Chapter thirty-two FROM LITTLE THINGS
Chapter thirty-three THE NURSE
Chapter thirty-four THE STRATEGIST
THE POLITICIANS
Chapter thirty-five THE NEAR-DEATH POLLIE
Chapter thirty-six THE WATER POLLIE
Chapter thirty-seven THE NEAR POLLIE
FULL CIRCLE
Chapter thirty-eight THE OPEN DOOR
Chapter thirty-nine COMING HOME
Index
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
Glossary
1 SAS 1 SAS Squadron
2IC second in command
2RAR 2nd Battalion Royal Australian Regiment
2 SAS 2 SAS Squadron
3RAR 3rd Battalion Royal Australian Regiment
3 SAS 3 SAS Squadron
ADF Australian Defence Force
ADFA Australian Defence Force Academy
AO area of operation
ASIS Australian Secret Intelligence Service
CCP casualty clearing post
CDF Chief of the Defence Force
CQB close-quarters battle
CO commanding officer
CT counterterrorism
DFAT Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
DIO Defence Intelligence Organisation
DRC Democratic Republic of Congo
dust-off troop extraction
Falintil Army for the National Liberation of East Timor
FOB forward operating base
GPS global positioning system
HALO high altitude low open
helo helicopter
Huey Iroquois UH1H helicopter
Kopassus Indonesian special forces
LNG liquefied natural gas
LRPV long-range patrol vehicles
LUP lying up position
MID mentioned in dispatches
NCO non-commissioned officer
NVG night-vision gear
OAG offshore assault group
O-boats Oberon Class submarines
OP observation post
PTS Parachute Training School
PTSD post-traumatic stress disorder
RAAF Royal Australian Air Force
RHIB rigid hull inflatable boat
RMC Royal Military College, Duntroon
RPG rocket-propelled grenade
RSM regimental sergeant major
SASR Special Air Service Regiment
SBS Special Boat Service (UK)
SEALs Sea, Air and Land Forces (US Navy)
SF special forces
SOC Special Operations Command
SOCOM Special Operations Command
SOE Special Operations Executive
SOPs standard operating procedures
spook secret agent
TAG tactical assault group
TTPs tactics, techniques and procedures
UAE United Arab Emirates
UN United Nations
UNAMET United Nations Assistance Mission in East Timor
UNAMIR United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda
USAF US Air Force
WMDs weapons of mass destruction
Introduction
One of the biggest challenges facing the Special Air Service in the uncertain post 9/11 world has been to hold on to its highly trained soldiers.
This extraordinary group of Australians work in a shadowy but tremendously rewarding occupation and taxpayers invest a huge amount of money in their special skills.
In my first book, The Amazing SAS, many men of the SAS opened up about their exploits from the time of the 1999 East Timor crisis to the 2003 Iraq War. Their personal tales and insights, which they shared with generosity of spirit, were about extreme soldiering and how to apply strategic force while maintaining humility and humour.
Yet since 2003 many of them have resigned to pursue other opportunities in a borderless marketplace where their skills are in high demand.
Ever since World War II there has been a trickle of special forces operatives who have moved out to pursue ‘other interests’ but that trickle has become a torrent in the early years of the twenty-first century.
In Iraq alone there are more than 40,000 private security contractors and the best paid of those are former ‘tier one’ special forces operators from Australia, Britain and the US. Hundreds more are working in Afghanistan, Africa, and South-east Asia and in many other parts of the world applying their unique abilities to a variety of highly paid jobs.
I wanted to know more about what our former elite soldiers were doing in these often obscure pockets of the world and how they were finding life beyond the SAS, so I raised the idea of this book with Terry O’Farrell.
Terry left the SAS himself in 2004 after a 38-year army career mostly spent in the regiment, including two tours of duty in the Vietnam War. He is now a full colonel and assistant commander of special operations for the government of the United Arab Emirates.
He liked the idea for a new book and he offered some unique perspectives. The Middle East is the current centre of the action for serving and former special forces soldiers and Terry and his team are right at the heart of it.
One of them was George, a senior operator whom we met in The Amazing SAS during his time in East Timor and Afghanistan and a ferocious networker.
Soon emails were flying around the world and my initial list of names jotted on the back of an envelope grew into a long catalogue of those who were prepared to share their stories, including some upon whom fortune has not smiled as kindly as she has on heroes of the most recent conflicts.
A strong theme quickly emerged. Wherever they are and whatever they do, these former SAS soldiers are linked by a bond that is forged during their time in the elite regiment.
The
new information age has also enabled them to keep in touch as never before, contributing to the creation of a shadowy and increasingly valuable global network of former brothers-inarms that reaches across generations and national borders.
It is a network that is made all the stronger by their common experience of the gruelling SAS selection course, which requires each successful candidate to leave his old self behind and step forward into a new life.
So as I set out in late 2006 to discover more about what ex-SAS men get up to after they walk out the gate of Campbell Barracks in Perth, I was very lucky to meet up again with some of the great characters whom I encountered as I researched the first book.
They were very generous with their time and hospitality as well as opening doors into the wider network. Whether it was in a small hamlet outside Hobart or amongst the concrete, steel and glass fantasy of Dubai or in a London pub, I found an incredible and ever-expanding network of these former troops linked together across the globe and all of them with terrific stories to tell.
That is how the theme of Soldiers Without Borders emerged. As one former SAS man told me, it doesn’t matter where he is or what he is doing; a quick call on Skype will connect him to dozens of mates. In some places, such as Dubai international airport, they can literally collide with one another in the check-in queue.
The Chief of the Australian Defence Force, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, is more aware than most of how difficult it is to keep special forces soldiers stimulated and in the service of the Commonwealth.
‘I hold them in the very highest regard,’ he told me in March, 2008. ‘I think they are arguably the best special forces in the world. They are certainly the crème de la crème as far as we’re concerned and they do a magnificent job for us. And therefore I am very keen to retain as many of them as I can.’
Houston is a realist about the fact that the lure of big dollars in the global security market has taken a particularly heavy toll on the regiment, but he also knows that money does not always compensate them for the support network and the standard of professional excellence of the SAS. He is keen to see SAS operators re-enlist once they have tried their hands in the outside world.
He also recognises that keeping SAS soldiers interested and rewarded is a major task.
‘They are very talented people, very highly trained and you don’t get into special forces unless you are an adaptable soldier. And I guess the other thing about the special forces people is, they are always wanting to improve themselves. There’s a great desire to achieve the maximum amount of self-improvement to attain higher skill levels. So their professional standards are very high and they are second to none.’
In conducting the interviews for this book I found that that desire for excellence continues to drive former SAS men—able-bodied or not—in their new lives, whether working as security operators in Iraq, crisis managers in Africa, corporate risk advisers, small businessmen, politicians, ministers of religion or even stand-up comics.
Their tales are diverse and fascinating, as are their reflections on the military life that made them the people they are today.
Every quote is genuine, chosen from dozens of interviews conducted during 2006, 2007 and 2008. Where possible I have used full names. Three—Ray Jones, Rob Jamieson and ‘Audrey’ are pseudonyms. George, Grant, Steve, Chris and Willy could only be identified by their first names for reasons of national security.
Maps
Prologue
AWAKENING
The oily waters of the South China Sea lapped against the side of the tramp steamer as she chugged north towards her destination.
Standing against the rail, gazing out into the moonless night, Ray Jones wondered what the hell he had got himself into.
The former Australian SAS officer had only taken on the job as a favour to a mate, but it had been a shit sandwich from day one. Even the fact that it was a clandestine task, an important national security operation to collect a deadly secret military cargo on behalf of western governments, couldn’t lift his spirits.
Jones knew the score with ‘deniable’ operations that were sanctioned secretly at the highest levels. If they turned to custard and the cover was blown, the powers-that-be would simply deny everything and disown all involved, from the military down to the spooks and, at the bottom of the food chain, hired guns like him.
After breaking down in the Java Sea, the vessel had safely negotiated one of the busiest and most pirate-prone waterways in the world, the Malacca Strait between Malaysia and the Indonesian island of Sumatra, and was now heading gingerly through the tepid, tropical waters.
Jones and his offsider were supposed to be the security detail on board, in case pirates or anyone else decided to raid it. Asia’s seaways are riddled with gangs of marine criminals, equipped with fast boats, GPS and satellite phones, who hit private and merchant vessels and rob, kill or cast adrift all souls.
Jones wasn’t too bothered about pirates; he had enough firepower at his disposal to dampen even the most daring swashbuckler sailing under the Jolly Roger. Besides, the government men who were on board to oversee the operation would provide plenty of muscle should he require backup.
What was eating away at him was the fact that here he was back on bloody gunfighter detail. He knew he should be in a boardroom somewhere, selling his education and military expertise to corporate high flyers or governments, not wet-nursing some half-arsed freighter and her motley crew.
The ship’s master was a former navy man who, Jones thought, obviously couldn’t cut it in Her Majesty’s senior service and had washed up on this rust bucket. He had taken an instant dislike to Jones and his mate and had made life a misery at every turn, treating the security detail like deck hands rather than as the professionals they were.
Jones knew that keeping to himself as much as possible would be the key to getting through the weeks that stretched out in front of him. He decided then and there that this would be his final turn as a gunslinger.
The vessel arrived in port and the owners came on board. After a few days alongside, there was suddenly a sense of urgency. Several plain wooden crates were transferred from a nearby ship and stacked neatly on the wharf. Inside was a new missile system, ready to be transported supposedly to a buyer in the Middle East. The highly sensitive cargo was loaded onto the steamer and she put to sea on a westwards course towards an Arab port, but several days later she swung about and made for her real destination.
An agent from a western government’s overseas spy organisation, under the guise of a Middle Eastern arms dealer, had brokered a deal with corrupt elements inside a foreign, potentially unfriendly military service to buy the weapon. Instead of heading to that troubled region it would be shipped to an allied power’s research facility where its brand new guidance system would be investigated, isolated and stolen.
On this leg of the voyage Jones and his team were placed on intensive 24-hour watch, not just for pirates, but for any hostile government ships as well. Fortunately the voyage proceeded without a hitch and some time later the vessel hove to off a port. A fast, friendly navy vessel soon pulled up alongside and the cargo was transferred for shipment to allied laboratories where scientists waited to unlock its secrets. Within days valuable data concerning the weapon system would be on its way to its real western destination where countermeasures would be developed.
After more than two months on the hot, stinking vessel, Jones was delighted to bid farewell to the steamer and her bizarre skipper. While he kicked himself for taking the job in the first place, the contract had taught him many lessons, the foremost being that he was too old to be carrying a gun on dubious jobs.
‘Essentially, I was no longer prepared to put up with idiots,’ he says. He vowed that the boardroom and not the wardroom was where he would operate from then on.
Six years on, Ray Jones (not his real name) has built a successful international business and can laugh about his days on the tramp steamer.
In hi
s new role as a chief executive he is always on the lookout for talent—former SAS colleagues whose qualifications might include extreme service in ‘deniable’ operations under deep cover in the post 9/11 hunt for Islamic terrorists.
These jobs are at the so-called ‘tier one’ end of the special forces spectrum, and include such tasks as providing security for agents from government overseas spying agencies and collecting human intelligence to help track down some of the world’s most powerful terrorists through small para-military groups operating outside the diplomatic safety net.
Jones knows that it is only a matter of time before some of these tier-one specialists reach the end of their time in the SAS and start looking for opportunities elsewhere. He also knows that sooner or later a client will require an operative with this unique skill set.
In the post 9/11 world, many former SAS soldiers are working in hazardous or challenging jobs in new careers and businesses spanning the continents in a strategic environment that was unimaginable a decade ago.
They are part of a growing global network in what, to them, has become a borderless world.
WAR HORSES
Chapter one
AFRICAN NIGHTMARE
The brand new white BMW 325Ci hits 160 kilometres an hour as it zooms along one of Abu Dhabi’s numerous eight-lane freeways.
The fit, olive-skinned driver’s eyes are smiling behind his designer shades and he has not a care in the world.
‘Life doesn’t get any better than this,’ he says, as he speeds home to his luxury villa and his loving wife.
The handsome former Australian SAS sergeant looks for all the world like a well-heeled local and he works to a similar timetable: only 35 hours a week as a contract instructor with the United Arab Emirates Special Operations Command and earns at least twice his former pay. Just 11 years earlier, he was sifting through the rancid mud and filth of Kibeho in Rwanda, searching for survivors of perhaps the most savage massacre of the late twentieth century.
Pacing up and down with his Steyr rifle at the ready, George was almost daring the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) soldiers at the checkpoint to take him on.