Sitrep A: 29/3/82: 08.00 hrs: B: Troop to cancel training. Move to Gibraltar: C: Heli lift 17.00: D: RV SAS liaison GHQ: Gib.
S ergeant John ‘Blue’ Harding was like every SAS trooper – a sucker for a fastball, the adrenalin buzz of approaching action even more of a turn-on when he was left to speculate about the nature of the operation. He listened as Luke Tuikabe, Graunch Powell and Digger Patterson boxed the options endlessly, shouting above the noise of the heli. The big Fijian, Luke, was the most excitable of them all, throwing his huge frame around, laughing, threatening to pick up the other pair, a feat of which he was easily capable.
Blue, when they included him, just sat back, said nothing and smiled. He’d been in the Regiment longer than these guys. He knew that whatever they thought they were up for it would be something completely different. The law of King Sod said this: that if the four of them had spent the last two weeks on an ‘O’ class sub, working their bollocks off, practising float-on, float-off drills in an eight-man Gemini inflatable, then wherever they were bound for now was likely to be halfway up a mountain and as dry as a witch’s tit. When he heard the BBC World Service, Blue found out he was well wrong!