Counter-insurgency in Aden

Counter-insurgency in Aden
Shaun Clarke

Ultimate soldier. Ultimate mission. But will the SAS be able to rid Yemen of its unstoppable guerrillas?Aden, 1964, and the British are waging two different kinds of war.Inhabitants of northern Yemen’s forbidding mountainous region of Radfan are conducting guerrilla attacks against the British. Armed by the Egyptians and trained by the communist Yemenis, they seem an invincible fighting force.With only one hope of beating them, the British draft in an even more tenacious group of soldiers – the SAS! Their mission: to parachute into enemy territory at night, establish concealed observation posts high in the mountains, and direct air strikes on the rebels moving through the sun-baked passes.At the same time, in an even more dangerous campaign, two- or three-man SAS teams disguised as Arabs must infiltrate the souks and bazaars of the port of Aden in an attempt to ‘neutralise’ leading members of the National Liberation Front. But will their disguise allow them to get close enough to their targets, or get out again alive…?

Counter-insurgency in Aden

SHAUN CLARKE

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain by 22 Books/Bloomsbury Publishing plc 1994

Copyright © Bloomsbury Publishing plc 1994

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2016

Cover Photographs © www.piciubrothers.altervista.org (http://www.piciubrothers.altervista.org) (main image); Shutterstock.com (textures)

Shaun Clarke asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780008155063

Ebook Edition © November 2015 ISBN: 9780008155070

Version: 2015-10-29

Contents

Cover (#u96d54a7a-b317-5f1d-b43e-821d48d0974f)

Title Page (#uc9f91ced-8e10-5cbb-97d5-7e3ca8a0c8c6)

Copyright (#ud37d9e00-1a48-5513-be97-4be6eac3dfa2)

Prelude (#u4cb10f7a-7bfd-5f57-91d8-826b33472f5d)

Chapter 1 (#u9f27a252-7bf1-53c7-a5e4-98870bceccb4)

Chapter 2 (#u222f3ebc-60cf-5b8f-979e-cdd71c6383d4)

Chapter 3 (#u5e13980e-adbd-500f-af6c-da1f74a97517)

Chapter 4 (#u78d1910e-1218-5210-906c-26357c5fdf77)

Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)

OTHER TITLES IN THE SAS OPERATION SERIES (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Prelude (#u4d86fdb7-72f8-53f2-8e0f-8b1600163f65)

The port of Aden is located on a peninsula enclosing the eastern side of Bandar at-Tawahi, Aden’s harbour. It is bounded to the west and north-west by Yemen, to the north by the great desert known as the Rub’ al-Khali, the Empty Quarter, to the east by Oman, and to the south by the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea. Though a centre of trade since the days of antiquity, and mentioned in the Bible, the city in 1964 looked less than appealing.

Standing beside his wife, Miriam, on the deck of the P & O liner Himalaya, Norman Blakely, emigrating to Australia from Winchester, where he had taught ancient history at the renowned public school, realized he had known all these facts since his own school days. He certainly recognized the features he had often read about, yet he felt a certain disappointment at what he was seeing, not least the surprising modernity of the place.

Even from this distance, beyond the many rowing boats and motor launches dotted about the mud-coloured waters of the harbour, Aden was no more than an untidy sprawl of white-painted stone tower buildings and warehouses surrounded by an ugly clutter of jibs and cranes, immense oil tanks and huge lights raised high on steel gantries – all hemmed in on two sides by the promontories of Jebel Shamsan (Aden) and Jebel Ihsan (Little Aden). Both of these short necks of bleached volcanic rock thrust out from, and were dominated by, an equally unattractive maritime mountain range that varied from 1000 to 2000 feet and was constantly shadowed by depressing grey clouds.

Rising up the lower slopes of the mountains behind the town, about a mile beyond it, was a roughly triangular maze of low, white-painted buildings, which Norman assumed was the old commercial centre known as the Crater. What he did not know – even though he and the other passengers had received a leaflet gently warning them of the ‘occasional’ dangers of Aden – is that it was the home of the most dangerous anti-British terrorists in that troublesome country.

‘If the town’s as depressing as it looks from here,’ Norman said to Miriam, ‘we’ll take a taxi up to the Crater. It’s almost certainly less commercialized than Aden proper – and hopefully more like the real thing.’

‘That leaflet said not to wander too far from the port area,’ Miriam reminded him.