Capture by Colin MacLauchlan
I was naked, blindfolded and handcuffed.
My head now sticky with blood lay pressed against the wall as I sat on my knees with a muzzle grinding into the back of my head. I searched my head for answers. My mind seemed to go off on different paths all at the same time. How did I get here? This had started off as a routine drop off. We were to drop off the two Secret Intelligence Service agents at the border before returning to base to resume intelligence gathering and agent handling. All par for the course in the SAS.
But today had gone horribly wrong!
Like most other high profile incidents, it had snowballed from a number of small misfortunes. We had been compromised at the drop off, we had tried to move to an alternate spot and the vehicle had broken down, again we tried to hijack a taxi but they had phoned ahead and laid the trap.
We had driven into the VCP (Vehicle Check Point) completely unaware, and then all hell had broken loose! 30 policemen had circled the car, firing weapons in the air and shouting incoherently. I had tried to reason but to no avail, I tried to wave our ID and Government credentials at them, I tried to delay them and play down the situation, smiling and muttering in my broken Arabic, it made things worse.
There were only two of us and we were dragged from the cars by the screaming mob, I lashed out punching and kicking in all directions, all the while grasping my weapon but resisting the temptation to fire as a last resort. Finally as I lay on the ground with a muzzle against my head I gave up.
We were dragged into a nearby building and stripped of our clothing, I was constantly smacked on the back of the head by pistol and rifle butts and the dull clunks became almost rhythmic and peculiarly less sore but the warm sensation down the back of my neck let me know that I was bleeding heavily.
There were moments of resistance and futile struggle as my pride kicked in, notably when my last line of defence in the form of my pistol was taken from me and in no less fashion with my underwear.
There is something about being naked, not just the feeling or the bareness of it all but the fact that you almost sub consciously concede to your captors, seems like the end of the road and you have nothing left to fight for, or indeed to hide.
Yet strangely I wasn’t as scared as perhaps I should have been, in the back of my mind, this was a case of mistaken identity, wrong place wrong time, I would be found and released immediately, apologies given and I would return to base the bearer of a great tale for years to come. That was until my captors lost control. I then became very afraid, there was no order, no one in charge and therefore no one to stop me being butchered here like a dog, shouting was mixed with laughing and the odd kick would come in from the side, catching me unaware and sending me sprawling sideways onto the concrete floor, where I would lie helpless until being shoved back up into the position I was in with a slap over the head for good measure.
The SAS would know I was gone but would they know where I was, we had no beacons or transmitters to let them know where we were, we had no dedicated QRF (Quick Reaction Force) to bale us out when it got messy. Our radios didn’t even work this far out of town. This wasn’t a good situation to be in and it slowly started to sink in. These people knew exactly who we were and they were arguing not about who we were and what to do with us but how they were going to kill us!
I remember listening to the guys back in base talking about if they ever got captured how they would go down in a hail of bullets or shoot themselves first, yet strangely these were not my first thoughts. I still hoped for escape, for rescue, for release yet as this mob grew angry to the point of hysteria and became more blood thirsty by the minute I knew I would have to decide soon.
That moment was made up for me less than a minute later when I felt it grow quiet and the unrecognizable thick jab of a pistol barrel was jabbed into the back of my head forcing it onto the wall, there seemed like an eternity before anything happened and everything seemed to go into slow motion. In a microsecond every memorable point in my life flashed in front of my eyes like an old flicker tape movie. I thought of my family and friends and then to the outcome of all this... CLICK... Nothing happened! Was it a misfire? A horrible joke? I didn’t wait for a second chance. The moment was now! I tensed every muscle in my body as if in pre-warning of what was to come, paused and sprung!
