Zero Negativity

COPYRIGHT

HarperCollinsPublishers

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

FIRST EDITION

© Anthony Middleton 2020

Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Cover photograph © Pål Hansen/Twenty Twenty

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Anthony Middleton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780008336516

Ebook Edition © September 2020 ISBN: 9780008336547

Version: 2020-09-29

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DEDICATION

I dedicate this book to you, the positive thinkers, the positive outlookers of life, and to those who possess the power of positivity and believe that anything can be achieved if you put your mind to it.

CONTENTS

1  Cover

2  Title Page

3  Copyright

4  Note to Readers

5  Dedication

6  Contents

7  INTRODUCTION: BULLETPROOF

8  CHAPTER 1: I KNOW WHO I AM

9  CHAPTER 2: TEAR THE MOULD AWAY

10  CHAPTER 3: KILL THEM WITH KINDNESS

11  CHAPTER 4: KEEP IT SIMPLE

12  CHAPTER 5: CHANGE OR DIE

13  CHAPTER 6: MAKE MANY PLATFORMS

14  CHAPTER 7: YOU’VE GOT TO GO THROUGH THIS

15  CHAPTER 8: BE A SHEPHERD NOT A SHEEP

16  CHAPTER 9: GIVE THEM ENOUGH ROPE

17  CHAPTER 10: THE GARDEN OF EDEN

18  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

19  By The Same Author

20  About The Publisher

LandmarksCoverFrontmatterStart of ContentBackmatter

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INTRODUCTION

BULLETPROOF

It could be any night. We could be anywhere.

This one starts in a huge encampment out in the grim, grey, enemy-crawling desert. It’s stuffed with millions upon millions of dollars of the most advanced military equipment known to man. During the day, hundreds of US personnel hurry about with their sleeves rolled up, their berets set just so and their regulation assault rifles slung over their shoulders. CIA operatives in tan chinos and sporting Oakley shades do their best to pretend they don’t exist. All around us are massive hangars housing fully kitted-out Hawks, Apaches and Chinooks. This isn’t a massive surprise. The gyms here are bigger than an entire British base.

There’s an almost hallucinogenic difference between the US camp and my destination later tonight, a shabby, run-down compound deep in the desert. It’s difficult to believe they exist in the same world, let alone the same country. For now, though, they’re both shrouded by darkness, at that time when everything changes and objects lose the reassuring form they possessed in the day: the shadow cast by a dog is easily mistaken for a whole patrol of men, a dislodged stone sounds like a rifle shot.

We learned where we were going at a briefing two hours ago, and the following minutes have passed quickly. I’m absorbed by routines that have become deeply familiar to me. I check my kit, again and again and again. I know that if I make just one slip – a piece of carelessness in cleaning my weapon, an oversight when packing ammunition – I might as well be writing my own death sentence. I don’t want my last thoughts on this planet to begin, ‘If only …’

Once I’m sorted, I enter the coordinates of our target into my GPS. I check the map, looking for reference points. If I see a mountain, for instance, I’ll want to remember its location so that when I see its triple peaks out of the corner of my right eye in the dark, I’ll know we’re heading in the right direction. After that, I look hard at every piece of intelligence that’s come my way and stare at the buildings I’ll soon be storming into. I commit every detail to memory, so I won’t be surprised by a corridor that opens out unexpectedly or a door that leads nowhere.

I always have the same questions running through my head. What is my job? Where do I go first? Where can I expect to find armed guards? Are there civilians? When I see the target, how will I identify him? I try to break every element down until I’ve reached a point where I understand it completely. I have a visual mind. When I’m looking at a map there will come a moment when its contours levitate into three dimensions above the page.

When I’ve done all this, I run through the first plan, and for each key moment try to find an alternative in case something goes wrong. If this door won’t open, how else will we get in? Secondary options? Try an entrance round the back? It’s another form of visualisation. I try to imagine every single eventuality to the point where I almost have a muscle memory of it. When the action actually does unfold, it will be as if I’ve already experienced it.

The skill is not to overthink it or to overload yourself with more information than necessary. You need to stay nimble; you’ve got to be able to think on your feet. If you’ve absorbed too many details, your thinking will be rigid, undynamic. As Mike Tyson once said: ‘Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.’ When the shit hits the fan – as it inevitably will at some point – I know that I still have the foundations of the mission in my head. Everything else can be supplied by my training.

The first few times I went into combat I had a nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach that ended up destroying my appetite. It didn’t last long. I don’t stuff my face before setting out, but I have to make sure I’m fed and watered. Carbed up. The mission could last two or three hours. It could also unfold over two or three days.

Some people seek out others. I just want to be by myself and try to grab as much time alone as I can. I want to get into the zone, run the mission through my head again. Tonight I’m calm. This hasn’t always been the way. There have been occasions when I was able to actually see my nerves. One night, before a mission that had very particular personal resonance for me, I remember how the adrenaline came on like a king tide. I could feel it in my veins, surging and throbbing in great liquid waves. I’d headed over to the hangar ahead of my comrades half an hour early, to give myself the chance to have a brew in the silence before it all kicked off. But as I dipped my spoon into the packet of sugar, I noticed it was shaking. Little granules were falling off its sides and back into the packet. I watched for a moment, focused on each crystal as it tumbled downwards, then looked up anxiously toward the hangar door. This was no good. I had to get myself under control.

I tried forcing myself to steady my breathing, slowing it down, deepening my draws of oxygen. But when I looked down, the spoon was still shaking. At that moment I heard footsteps. I glanced up. It was another soldier. Give it thirty seconds and there wouldn’t be any sugar left on the fucking thing. The other guy’s footsteps came closer towards me, echoing in the vast, dark hangar. As he approached, I felt a sudden rage at my weakness. It blasted through me, but I managed to control it. I allowed the fury to fill me up, every limb now engorged and primed, every muscle taut. A few years earlier, my anger would have taken over. Now I’d learned to use it like an injection of insanely powerful steroids. I was ten times stronger than I’d been a moment ago. A hundred times stronger. I looked at the spoon. It was almost still.

‘Making a brew?’ he asked.

‘Yes, mate,’ I said, looking up with a calm smile. ‘Have we got any biscuits?’

I know that controlling my emotions is so important. I have no problem showing how I feel to others – I don’t mind them knowing that I’m human and that I’m vulnerable – but in some situations it’s selfish to unsettle others by exposing the worst of yourself. So whatever I’m thinking inside, I work hard to make sure nobody can guess that I’m anything other than relaxed and ready.

I spend a few more minutes alone in the hangar. Even now, at the beginning of a night that I know could well be my last, it’s strange to be confronted by scenes that speak so strongly of another, more mundane kind of existence. It’s also oddly reassuring, a reminder that no matter what happens later, life will go on without me.

Take the table in the corner. It’s a sight that in all the years I’ve served in the forces I’ve somehow never been able to escape. Everywhere I go, it’s exactly like this – an arrangement as British as the royal wave. The shitty table with the foldaway legs and the shiny brown wood-effect surface. The chipped mug full of spoons with the faded writing on it: HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD or MG HOLDINGS LTD. The steel urn with the red light and the black power cord and the old taped-on Biro notice that warns ‘CARE! HOT!’, the trusty half-empty box of PG Tips, next to it the scaggy jar of Nescafe with the cracked lid. And, last but not least, the damp-stained, crumpled packet of Tate & Lyle, the sugar inside it rocky and discoloured after being dipped in by too many wet spoons. In many ways it’s depressing, but there’s something about this collection of tatty objects that never fails to make me smile.

After a while I’m joined by the rest of the team and we head out onto the night-shrouded pan. The silhouette of the Chinook is hard to make out at first, then slowly it comes into focus. Even standing idle, it projects brute power. With its rotors extended, it’s a big, ugly beast: thirty metres long, almost six metres tall, and with guns bristling menacingly on either side. The helicopter has been stripped of all excess weight to aid manoeuvrability, its walls taken right back to the outer panels. Ungainly as it is, I feel a strange affection for the vehicle that has come to play such a big part in my life. More than the operations themselves, it’s the minutes, hours even, that we spend in this machine that I remember most clearly. So much of what happens in combat is instinctive, with events often being over almost before they’ve begun. But here in the Chinook there’s always time for me to think and reflect.

After we clamber aboard we all sit there in our team locations – our positions dictated by how we’ll deploy as soon as we step off the aircraft. We sit evenly spaced on benches that run parallel to the helicopter’s sides. It’s more comfortable than you might think. Then the engine starts. You hear a loud, piercing noise, a wail so loud that for a moment it’s almost unbearable, before it gives way to the heavy whirring of the rotors. I feel a tiny pulse of exhilaration as they pick up speed. Here we go again, I think. Then the Chinook’s hatch door rises and we’re lifted into the night air.

Whoomp whoomp whoomp.

Back at the base we were joking around, taking photos and laughing; far more relaxed, far more chilled out than you’d expect. We all know what we’re doing, we know what we’re capable of, so it creates a playfulness that often expresses itself in extremely bleak humour.

That mood is over now. The helicopter climbing up is the sign for me: shit’s happening now, we’re not turning back. I’m getting into the zone. I look around at the other men. They look back. Nobody says anything, but we exchange glances. Are we all here? Are we all good? Are we all ready?

Whoomp whoomp whoomp.

Moments pass, and when I next look up I see everyone lost in their own little zones, psyching themselves up. Some just stare into the middle distance, others have their iPods on. It’s a night mission, so the uncanniness of our environment is heightened by the fact that, inside and out, we’re flying without lights in order to try to avoid unwanted attention. Looking out the window, I can see the dark silhouettes of the mountains that we’re flying between, keeping as low – and as low key – as possible. I try to match them to the topography I’d seen on the map earlier in the evening. It’s reassuring to have even a vague idea of where we are amid the all-consuming darkness.

Whoomp whoomp whoomp.

The rotors sound distant to me now, almost obliterated by the raw aggression pulsing through my headphones. It’s cold at night. I’m swaddled in a big fucking jacket. It’s XXXL, more duvet than coat. I listen to heavy metal – Slipknot, Metallica, Rage Against the Machine – at full volume. Drums crashing, guitars distorted and dirty, voices screaming. Wave upon wave of nasty, violent music that sends my heart racing, makes every nerve in my body feel alive.

Whoomp whoomp whoomp.

Forty minutes into the flight, a voice in my earpiece. It’s the sergeant major: ‘Ten-minute call.’ My heart begins to thud. I put on my helmet, connect my night-vision goggles (NVGs) and begin getting used to seeing with them. They send me into a narrow, grainy world of green and black. When I first started to wear them they made me feel a bit like I was drunk, reeling about because my depth perception was way off and everything was tinged with a nauseous green fog. Now I can see as clearly with them as with my naked eyes. Once I get out there I know I’ll be able to judge every crack in a door, every barely visible movement on the other side of a dark room, with incredible accuracy. My enemies will be struggling in the dark; I’ll be able to see things down to the nearest millimetre.

Whoomp whoomp whoomp.

Only the briefest stretch of time separates us from the moment when we’ll have to burst out of the helicopter and into the dust cloud it always kicks up as it lands. I’ve done it many times over, but the experience never fails to get my adrenaline surging. It’s when we know we’re at our most vulnerable. Eight to ten seconds when your world is reduced to a beige haze and the knowledge that every extra moment spent in it is an extra moment of danger. Propelled by the Chinook’s downdraft you have to sprint, breath hoarse in your chest, legs burning with a sudden rush of lactic acid. You’re not thinking of anything except escaping the dust cloud.

You’re hyper-alert. It’s almost like you don’t miss a thing, as if all of your senses have been supercharged. You have to be able to absorb and assess every piece of information that’s thrown at you, and you’ve got to do it in fractions of seconds.

And yet there’s something euphoric about that time. People always say to me: Ant, you’re an adrenaline junkie. They’re wrong. I’m very calculated. I’m in control. I’m not a reckless person. But what I’ve realised is that there will always be part of me that’s in love with walking that delicate line that separates life and death. I’m most alive during those beautiful, uncomplicated fragments of time when all the noise and mess falls away and your existence is stripped back to two stark outcomes. You’re either going to live, or you’re going to die. That’s it. It’s the purest form of life: to me, the ultimate form of peace. You run like fuck to reach the other side; and then you’re through, ready to slide into a gun position.

Whoomp whoomp whoomp.

More time passes. I know how easy it would be to drift into a negative spiral. One thought leads to another. Before you know it, you’re crippled, your head filled with doubt. You’ve ceased to live in the here and now and have instead stepped into a world of what ifs and maybes. I know that lots of people suffer from imposter syndrome. I don’t. I’m here, in this helicopter, because I’m good at my job. If I start wondering whether I deserve it, if I let doubts creep in, I’ll inhibit my ability to do what I do effectively. You don’t want to be that guy who loses his nerve and pokes his head around the corner, in the process making himself the world’s easiest target. As far as I’m concerned, when I hit the ground, I’m the best soldier in the world.

The first time I came under fire, all that ran through my head afterwards, when the mission was over, was: That’s it, that’s it done. I’d held my nerve, I didn’t fall apart. Now it’s become part of my everyday existence, although being shot at during the night will always remain strange to me. You don’t see the bullets, or where they’re coming from. But you hear the whipcrack as they zip past you. The louder the snap, the nearer the miss. As time goes by you learn to tell the different weapons apart. That’s an AK-47; that’s a heavy machine gun. Fuck, an RPG.

I don’t let it affect me. I think to myself, if I do get hit then hopefully it’ll be in the head and I won’t know a fucking thing about it. If it’s another part of my body, then I’ll deal with it there and then. Worrying won’t make me any safer. Far better to focus on the way I move, the way I use the cover. I’m fast, confident and aggressive. I believe I can do things that the majority of other people can’t. Positive thinking. If I fixate on the bullets, I’ll stop or I’ll hide, and probably end up in more danger. I never go out there thinking I’ll be shot. I’ve always believed I’ll be getting back on that helicopter on the way home.

I’m sure the enemy can see my aggression. I’m sure too that it gets into their heads. If your enemy looks bulletproof, then the chances are that part of you might begin to believe they really are.

Whoomp whoomp whoomp.

The sergeant major signals the five-minute call. I switch into another zone. My hands run across all of my webbing and equipment. Checking. Checking again. Checking again. I’m still cool, still thinking calmly about what’s ahead of us. Is my weapon’s magazine in securely. Is it cocked? Do I have a round in the chamber? Safety catch is on.

My weapons feel as much part of my body as my hands or knees. There’s something I can’t fully explain to anyone else about the way I hold and nurture them. I’ve moulded my rifle with little bits of tape on its stock so that it fits perfectly into my arms; so perfectly that I can operate it with one hand. Once I go into combat I know exactly where it is at every moment. When I move, it moves. It never feels as if there’s any conscious effort. Lifting my rifle is, to me, no different to stretching out a leg. I can carry it through tight spaces – narrow doors, tiny cubbyholes – without it ever snagging or catching on anything. It’s my life. It’s everything.

Two-minute call.

Whoomp whoomp whoomp.

I can feel the Chinook losing height, the sensation of rapid but controlled falling in the core of my body merging uncomfortably with my rising adrenaline. We all stand up, face the door and stabilise ourselves for landing by placing our hands shoulder to shoulder.

My mind flicks forward again, imagining those seconds before I kick the first door down. I don’t fuck around; I don’t overthink. I just commit. I know I have to get through it, no matter what. Holding back won’t help me. What you’re unbelievably conscious of in those seconds is the people around you. You’re stacked up against the doorframe, about to launch yourself into a life-or-death situation, your two comrades sweeping to the other side of the entrance. You’re all looking after each other. You need to know, with absolute, unshakeable confidence, that whatever happens to you, they’ll get the job done, or take a bullet for you. These are men you’ve trained with, kicked doors down with. You know how they operate. The look doesn’t last long. I nod, or squeeze a shoulder. Let’s fucking do this.

A lot of the doors are shitty, worm-eaten relics. One kick and they smash almost into dust; you feel like Superman. Others you have to hammer away at – the tension rising with every blow that doesn’t knock it over. But sometimes on those missions where everything is about discretion, once you get flowing you don’t even need to kick them open. Keep it simple. If the door’s already unlocked, then it probably doesn’t need your size tens being put through it. There’s you and another guy, lined up on the wall either side, whispering over our radio. ‘Try the door.’ The look … then, ‘One, two, three.’ Boom. You’re through, your men behind you.

Whoomp whoomp whoomp.

I slip the jacket off, remove my headphones and get down on one knee. Another silent check of all the lads. Seeing them fills me with confidence. They’re good guys. I know I can rely on them. I have to rely on them. I’m in that fucking zone. Whoomp whoomp whoomp. My NVGs are down over my eyes. The helicopter surges down to hit the ground, making my stomach feel as if it’s trying to swallow my heart. No matter how many times I’ve been in this position, I’ve never quite got used to the speed with which these massive twin-rotored machines can be made to move. It’s truly incredible. Their pilots hurl them around mid-air like they’re plastic toys. If they see an RPG coming towards them, they can spin them on a dime, dancing elegantly out of its path.

Ready. Ready. Ready. Waiting for the tailgate to go down. A mechanical whirr, and the world outside comes steadily into view. The cold, dry, woody air of the desert rushes in, along with great billows of dust. We launch ourselves straight out.

GO.

All of this feels like a long time ago. When I think about that part of my life, it sometimes seems as if all of these things were experienced by a completely different man. So much has happened since. I am no longer a warrior; I’m a TV presenter, an author and a businessman. I’ve experienced crushing lows, and incredible highs. I’ve been to prison, the top of Mount Everest, to places I’d never previously have believed possible. But there’s a thread that connects that version of me to the one currently writing this book: positivity.