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Me and My Motors: Andy McNab
SAS guide to the mean streets
Settled to a life of literary endeavour, he still prefers a four-wheel drive, but now for the urban jungle. “I’m one of those nasty SUV drivers,” he says, flashing his best devil-may-care grin at his BMW X5. “I like them. I’m not exactly the cleanest of people; give me a really nice car and you can guarantee I’ll put stains all over the leather.”
In his day blemished upholstery was the least of his worries. Before the first Gulf war and the Bravo Two Zero operation that led to one of the biggest publishing phenomenons of the 1990s and transformed McNab from soldier to bestselling author, he spent many tense months in unmarked cars tracking IRA suspects around the streets of Belfast.
“We’d drive the most ordinary cars we could. People thought they must be souped up, but we couldn’t risk it,” says McNab in his south London drawl. “When you’re undercover it’s all about blending in and anything out of the ordinary could risk drawing unwanted attention. You could choose your own cars from a pool. If you got bumped (bumped off) because your car was too flash, that was your fault.
“Sometimes we’d be tracking a target for weeks while they were carrying live weapons or bombs from one of the big republican estates to another. We’d have to follow their every move in the hope of intercepting the bomb before it could be placed.”
Such interventions were termed “mobile intercepts” and made use of skills taught to the elite regiment partly by professional rally drivers, including handbrake and J-turns as well as high-speed handling. Not all the techniques were quite so conventional, however. “There would be three cars all following one target vehicle,” explains McNab. “You’re wearing gloves and goggles in case the windscreen goes through, because you’ve got to carry on regardless, even while you’re firing.
“Then, when the moment comes, one car overtakes and stops dead in front and . . . smash! The target crashes into it, then the second car smashes into the target from behind and the third car comes round the side and the driver grabs whoever we’re after.”
Following each high-speed chase, all trace of the smashed-up cars would be cleared away as quickly as they had arrived.
McNab is a pseudonym and the man behind it still refuses to show his face for fear of reprisals. He greets me with a broad smile, strides forward and doesn’t so much shake as squeeze my hand, boa-like, until I emit a yelp and he lets go.
Over the years McNab became used to treating cars as disposable.
In the desert, though, it wasn’t always quite that easy. “In the Gulf we had to learn to negotiate all sorts of terrain,” he says of his time behind enemy lines in the early 1990s. “People think it’s just smooth sand like in Lawrence of Arabia but it’s not. Land Rovers are always getting stuck — you seem to spend all your time digging them out. There was a lot of waiting around and the Brits used to race the US troops in their Hummers. They ’d usually beat us cross-country but we’d thrash them on tarmac. Now, though, the Land Rover is a much better vehicle.”
Apart from getting stuck, the biggest problem in the desert was camouflage. “It might seem an impossible task, but just using the lie of the ground you can camouflage a whole line of vehicles. I’ve got photos where whole squadrons are completely hidden,” he says. “Of course nowadays it’s not just the physical shape you have to hide, you’ve got heat for thermal imaging. Everything has moved on and there’s no difference between day and night on the battlefield.”
McNab has come a long way since he was abandoned by his mother in a Harrods carrier bag and found by medical staff on the steps of Guy’s hospital in 1959. He was adopted by a Bermondsey couple when he was five years old, and as a self-confessed teenage tearaway joined the Royal Green Jackets in 1976, graduating to the SAS in 1984. Today his renown as a genuine action hero is such that he mixes with film stars on the sets of movies such as Collateral (starring Tom Cruise) and Heat (starring Al Pacino and Robert De Niro) as a technical adviser. The phenomenal success of his Boy’s Own adventures has allowed him to indulge his passion for fast cars, which in recent years have included a Porsche 911 and an Aston Martin Vanquish.
His first venture into motoring, however, was more cheap and cheerful: a clapped out hand-painted Mini Clubman with fake fur upholstery. From there he progressed to a Renault 5, through various motorbikes to the hundreds of nondescript saloons and army Land Rovers.
Today the contents of his various garages must make him the least favourite citizen of Mayor Ken Livingstone, the avowed enemy of 4x4 drivers. As well as his BMW off-roader McNab owns a Mitsubishi L200 4x4 that he keeps at his house in Hampshire, shared with his fifth wife, a publisher turned Pilates fitness instructor. At his New York home he runs a 2½-ton Cadillac Escalade, although he plans to donate it to his 17-year-old daughter Katy as soon as she passes her driving test.
His brief flirtation with Porsche and Aston Martin was brought to an abrupt halt when his wife complained that nobody would ever let her out at junctions. A big 4x4 seemed like the best solution, although McNab can think of an even better one . . .
“I would like to get a great big pick-up truck and put bull bars on the front,” he says. “Then when someone cuts you up at a junction you bump into them, and when they get annoyed you just go, ‘yeah, yeah . . . ’ then pay up.”
After all those years being a terrorist target, McNab could now find himself on a new hitlist — Ken Livingstone’s.
On his CD changer
The Streets – A Grand Don’t Come For Free Pearl Jam – 10 David Bowie – Diamond Dogs Black Eyed Peas – Elephunk Genesis – A Trick of the Tail Puddle of Mudd – Come Clean Italian for Beginners – “I’ll get round to it eventually”
Andy McNab’s latest thriller, Deep Black, is published by Bantam Press, £17.99