Another plus was the big swimming pool, which we could use whenever we wanted. The canteen, which we shared with the Colombians, was an attractive, airy place, but at first most of the guys couldn’t take the food at all. It seemed to be beans and chillis with everything, and by the end of the day most of us were racing for the bog. As everyone was expressly ordered to put used paper into a bin, rather than down the pan, the shit-house was not a place in which to sit thinking fine thoughts.
Peter Black spent that day with us to see us in, and came with me and Tony to meet his opposite number, Captain Jaime Ortiga — a smooth guy, dark and Indian-looking, with a pencil-thin moustache. He was all smiles as he ushered us into his office. The room was bare, with whitewashed walls and a single big fan turning slowly overhead. The only decoration was a colour photograph, mounted and framed, on the wall behind the boss’s desk. It showed a middle-aged guy in a peaked cap with a red band, and about three hundredweight of medals on his chest.
Have a go, I thought. Break the ice. So, summoning my best accent, I asked, ‘¿Hay el Presidente?’
Captain Jaime looked hellishly startled. He spun round as if someone had driven a pin into his arse, saw the photo, and suddenly realized what I had said. The moustache spread out in a wide smile.
‘¡Si, si! El Presidente Gaviria! ¿Habla castellano?’
‘Un poco.’
‘¡Muy bien!’
That little exchange put him in high good humour, and, with Tony interpreting, he gave us a very civil welcome to the base. I was pleased to find that I could understand almost everything he said, even if I got a bit tongue-tied when trying to answer questions. I heard him ask Tony how he came to have such fluent Spanish, and Tony kept out of trouble by saying that he’d learnt it as a child.
The captain told us that the group he wanted us to train consisted of forty-two DAS officers. Some were new to bodyguard work, but others had already been partially trained by the Americans. Suddenly he broke into English to say: ‘We no like Americans. British better! British tactic better!’ No doubt he meant it as a compliment. I was watching Tony’s face, and saw one eyebrow go up by about two millimetres.
It was agreed that we would start training next morning. With the preliminaries settled, Black set off for Bogotá in a Land Cruiser, together with his diplomatic bag, the radio codes and so on. The drive was said to take about four hours. He told us he was going to be based in the Hostal Bonavento, a small hotel near the British Embassy in the northern quarter of the city. He reckoned he’d be spending a good deal of time at the embassy, in the office of the defence attaché, which had a direct satellite link with the UK. Since we had a portable satcom set with us, keeping in touch with him would present no problem.
Training started on day two. Startled out of their wits by Murdo McFarlane’s reveille, the home team shambled out on to the barrack square at 0630, all shapes and sizes in white T-shirts with little DAS logos on them and dark-blue trousers.
We formed them up in three ranks, comprising three groups of fifteen, fifteen and twelve. At my request, Tony put over a little spiel about the requirement for physical fitness and strength in BG work, and the need to be able to heave bodies around in quick time. I could see one or two of the Colombians looking fairly sick, and when we set them running round the perimeter wire, the fatties soon fell away behind. By the time we’d given them a dose of circuit-training they looked about done-for; but after a shower and breakfast they came out spruce enough for training proper. We were hoping to pass them all out in the end, so we wanted to nurse them along.
At an early stage we explained to them that the team which eventually emerged would have two elements: the bodyguard itself, which would surround the president and give him close protection, and the counterattack squad, which would range out ahead of him whenever he was on the move, making a show of its weapons and letting everyone know that it had real teeth. I’d expected the majority of them to prefer the second option, and I was surprised to find that most of them thought it was the BG work that was really macho. They thought they were defending God, and all wanted to be the man who saved the president’s life — i.e. in the bodyguard itself. The idea of going CAT really pissed them off. At a later stage we planned to split the course into two main streams, but for the time being we tried to teach all of them a bit of everything.
They certainly needed some instruction, most of all in the use of weapons. Some were OK with their pistols, but when it came to rifles and machine-guns they were useless. I could see that they were actually scared of the weapons, and sometimes shut their eyes when they pulled the trigger. They were also excitable, and inclined to be bloody dangerous. There was one short-arsed guy considered even by his mates to be a bit cracked in the head. His name was Alejandro, but they referred to him openly as ‘El Loco’ — the loony — so we did the same. One day I had him firing his Galil on automatic when suddenly he gave a yell and dropped the weapon, which went on blasting off of its own accord, leaping about on the ground and sending rounds winging away into sundry parts of Colombia. Fortunately there were only half a dozen rounds left in the magazine and nobody got hurt. When I tore into him for letting go, El Loco protested that the gun wouldn’t stop firing when he released the trigger — and when we stripped it down, we found that the sear had indeed broken.
To sharpen up their powers of observation, we laid out a special lane through the jungle surrounding the camp, putting down things like compasses, small pieces of map, matchboxes and other objects that wouldn’t normally have been there. We then made them walk down the lane, one at a time, taking notes of what they’d spotted. To keep them on the ball we made a few booby traps out of trip-wires connected to thunderflashes.
I also gingered them up with a few little explosives. The aim of working with plastic explosive was to make them aware of the damage a car-bomb could do, and to teach them what to look for when they were clearing an area — to keep eyes open for suspicious packages or anything out of the ordinary. They were fascinated when I broke some eight-ounce sticks of explosive out of their wrapping paper and started to knead them in my hands. When I proposed to set fire to a lump of the stuff they were poised for the off; and when I did ignite it, they disappeared like shit off a shovel into the jungle, because PE 4 burns with a merry roar and an intense orange flame. They weren’t to know that it can’t explode if ignited, unless it’s in a bloody great lump of thirty pounds or more. Later we got the wreck of an old car out into an area surrounded by rocks, and, working on the principle of P for Plenty, I put a charge of nearly five pounds underneath the chassis. When the students saw the whole thing rise to the height of the tree-tops, they were chuffed to bollocks.
That helped bring them on side. But it was when we started on car drills that we really got a good spirit going. Until then the Colombians tended to feign indifference, especially the ones who’d already had some training from the Yanks. They thought they knew it all, and weren’t interested in learning anything new. But when they heard what we were actually saying, and saw that our methods were far superior, they came over to us in a big way. For instance, the Americans had taught them that if they got attacked from one side, all they had to do was turn in that direction and assault the enemy. When we showed them how to pepperpot outwards, and come in from different angles under covering fire, they were mightily impressed.