My mercenary comrade was kidnapped, roped to a tree and blasted to death..by his own men;
PART TWO OF NO-HOLDS-BARRED BOOK BY BRITAIN’S TOP SOLDIER OF FORTUNE
Byline: MIKE RIDLEY
BRITISH mercenary Karl Penta brought an entire country to its knees almost single-handedly. The former merchant seaman from Liverpool was hired to fight with poorly-trained rebels against a South American dictator in the jungles of Surinam.
In the second part of an adaptation by MIKE RIDLEY, Karl, 51, reveals how a British comrade was coldly executed – by his own men…
JOHN Richards was feeling good. He had just killed seven enemy soldiers in a raid and was back at the rebel camp.
Suddenly three of his men grabbed him and smashed a rifle butt in his face.
He was dragged out into the jungle, tied to a tree and shot several times.
Sad news. The former French Foreign Legionnaire and I had run the most successful mercenary operation ever, aiding a poorly-armed rebel army against the country’s brutal leader Desi Bouterse.
Within months, Bouterse was forced to begin peace talks with the rebels. Job done, I headed back to the UK.
Then John got in touch. He had switched sides and recruited six former Legionnaires and Royal Marines to kill the rebel leader Ronnie Brunswijk.
I had concerns about his men and told John: “I’ll have nothing to do with it and strongly advise you don’t do it.” He went anyway.
As usual, the men soon fell out among themselves, this time over money. Richards had apparently been recorded discussing a personal bank account in Holland where the mercenaries’ pay of over pounds 200,000 had been deposited.
The mercenaries had headed for Brunswijk’s HQ in Moengo. Somehow he found out about the assassination plot but seemed to believe that three of Richards’ men – Marines Alan Boydel and Neil Finnighan and Legionnaire infantryman Bill Oakey – were not part of it. Ronnie announced he was going to kill John. After returning from an early morning attack on a jungle army base, John was grabbed and disarmed by Boydel, Finnighan and Oakey
IN a confession, secretly filmed by ITV’s The Cook Report, Boydel admitted: “They tied him to a tree.
“John asked, ‘What’s going to happen to me?’ Bill just said, ‘You’re going to get bitten by mosquitoes and then Ronnie is going to question you.’
“Finney had a Mossberg shotgun, Bill had a FAL rifle and I had a Mossberg. I said I couldn’t do it. Next I heard John scream ‘No’, then ‘bang, bang, bang’.
“Finney was pumping shots into him. Bill’s gun jammed so he grabbed Finney’s.
“I saw the shells hitting John and he was twisting around. All his chest was gone. I walked over and said, ‘Yeah, he’s dead’. But as I walked away I heard this voice saying, ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ so I turned, put the barrel to his head and went boom.
“John had every intention of ripping us off and he deserved to die for that. If you’re in a mercenary operation the rule is, ‘don’t muck the boys around, you are going to get killed’.
“I asked if we were going to bury him but Bill and Finney said, ‘No, leave him for the animals’.”
The trio left the jungle and were held by government forces. They were deported the following day, with officials claiming troops had ambushed the mercenary leader.
Scotland Yard became interested but later Boydel was told no charges were pending and the matter was dropped.
Things had been a lot more straightforward during my time in Surinam. Take the time we captured a government spy named Koyku. Dirt flew up as 7.62mmm bullets tore up the earth by his head as he lay on the ground.
Next the bullets ripped around his legs. Then the Jungle Commandos used sticks to lay into Koyku.
He was shaking like a leaf as he gingerly raised himself on to his knees and clung to my camouflage pants, sobbing, “Oh my God, oh my God.” I’d been given the job of tracking down the spy responsible for grenade attacks on the homes of rebel supporters. He’d already killed one man and two children.
WE’D lured Koyku to a bar where I smashed him in the face with my Browning pistol and handcuffed him.
He was a hard nut to crack, having been well-trained by Colonel Gadaffi’s men in Libya.
His face was smashed, his once-white linen suit was in ribbons – but he still wouldn’t talk. I shoved him in a small lock-up in the jungle camp, fired a four-second burst from a CS cannister and shut the door.
A loud vomiting noise was followed by screams. As I opened the door, he shot out at 90 miles an hour and confessed everything.
SCARED AS I SET A TRAP
FEAR gave me energy as I paddled the canoe across the mile-wide Maroni river in pitch darkness, expecting a gunboat to appear at any moment.
I went over the plan again as I sat on a landmine I’d made from a black cast-iron fire extinguisher.
A dirt road ran along the edge of the Maroni river. The Surinam army drove up and down here, supplying a garrison. I was going to plant the mine along the road, triggered by a trip line.
I was nervous and starting to sweat. Operating alone is very difficult. And if I got trapped on the other side, I’d have to wait 24 hours for the next night’s tide.
At last I could make out the opposite bank. I landed next to a big tree trunk growing out into the river.
There was only one place for the mine – in the middle of the road, between the tyre tracks.
I took out an entrenching tool and started digging. I placed the mine, fed in the detonator and covered it. The disturbance was so slight it was almost impossible to spot.
I rigged wires to the peg switch and battery then tied one end of fishing line to a branch 7ft up a tree.
Within an hour I was back at my hotel having a celebration drink when I heard a dull thud in the distance.
The mine had killed the two-man crew of a Dutch-built YP four-wheel armoured car.
PLANE HIJACK WENT FINE BUT I WAS SICKENED BY VOODOO
I GRABBED the pilot with the most stripes on his epaulettes. “Do everything I tell you to do. If not, I will kill this man here,” I said, pointing to the co-pilot.
I added: “I’m English by the way, my name’s Karl, how do you do?”
Surinam Airways – which was owned by the dictator Bouterse – had a small fleet, including a 28-seater Twin Otter worth pounds 2million. If we stole it, we could sell it back to the insurers Lloyd’s of London and use the money to buy weapons.
I made my move when it landed at a remote beauty spot at Raleigh Falls. I was determined that no one would be harmed.
Tourists waiting for the flight were politely told they were going nowhere. A middle-aged woman said: “That’s OK. In fact, you’re very nice, can we take some photographs for our holiday albums?” So John Richards and I had our picture taken – with pistols holstered, by the way.
Lloyd’s paid Ronnie Brunswijk pounds 400,000 for the plane’s return. During negotiations, we used it to move newly-trained Jungle Commandos towards the front line.
After one landing the men went to the cookhouse for a plate of rice. As we stood in the queue an awful gagging stench filled the air. Round the back was a voodoo shrine featuring a badly-decomposed head wearing a tin helmet.
The Jungle Commandos were ruled by voodoo. They all wore metal armbands covered in rags which they believed made them invisible to bullets.
These people believed they could take the qualities of their victims, and often put body parts into a 45-gallon drum filled with water. You want the brains of this man? Wash in water with the victim’s head floating in it. This barbarism had to stop.
I ripped up the voodoo shrine, which caused some shouting and consternation.
Then I went and told Ronnie: “If your guys want to use the bodies of soldiers they kill, hang them from trees with a note warning government troops: this is what you get.
“Psychological warfare – not pulling their hearts out and chopping their heads off.”
A Mercenary’s Tale by Karl Penta is published by John Blake Pub-lishing at pounds 15.99.
But Sunday People readers can get a copy for just pounds 9.99 including P&P by calling the mail order hotline on 020 7381 0666.
CAPTION(S):
TIME OUT: A rare moment for John Richard and I to take it easy; GANG: Ronnie Brunswijk, John and myself; VIGILANT: John patrols roads. His death didn’t surprise me; Posed by models Picture: MARTIN SPAVEN; PRIZED: Rebel leader Brunswijk, second left, admires his plane