Sub-Sahara

by Ethan Arkwright

  ‘Hi, James. Yes. I hear you fine.’ The well-spoken voice of Christian Bramwell came through the phone.

  Christian Bramwell was an intelligence and operations analyst at Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, the intelligence and security agency that deals with communications and supports military operations across the world. Bramwell was monitoring the progress of Cavill’s team from the depths of the huge GCHQ building called the Doughnut in the suburbs of Cheltenham. He was also monitoring intelligence ‘chatter’ for anything else that could relate to Stratton’s Special Forces for Good or SFFG mission. Cavill and Bramwell were already acquainted through the deal that Sir Henry Stratton made with the foreign secretary, to whom GCHQ reported.

  Part of his secret deal with the British government was that in a case when Stratton’s SFFG team went on a mission that helped the cause of the British government, GCHQ would provide limited operational support via use of one analyst. This agreement had a few benefits for the British government. One was that they believed they could then keep tabs on Stratton’s force. The larger benefit was that Stratton’s SFFG could be used on a ‘buccaneering’ basis. That is, the British government could take the benefit if SFFG were successful but also completely disassociate itself if the mission went wrong or diplomatic incidents resulted. The deal was that the analyst resource—currently, Christian Bramwell—could give intelligence and operational support from databases and satellites to Cavill on the ground via satellite link, but no physical support would be coming that could be linked back to any British forces.

  Cavill had met Bramwell once and was surprised that he was is not in any way a ‘geek’ as these people are normally portrayed. He was a well-built, professional operations person, based in a modern operations room.

  In this case, the Americans and Chinese had already warned the British to stay out of the evolving situation in the Sahara. So, the British would not be deploying the SAS but would therefore support SFFG where they could.

  ‘Christian,’ Cavill said. ‘We’ve got a transport plane heading the same direction as us and two Chengdu F-7 aircraft on our wings checking us out. They’re flying Nigerian colours, but the pilots are speaking Chinese. I need to know if they’re hostiles or not.’

  ‘I’ll do a quick search. Hold on,’ Bramwell said.

  Cavill could hear furious typing on a computer keyboard through the phone.

  The co-pilot turned. ‘They’re not responding on the radio,’ he said.

  ‘This is not good at all,’ the pilot said, shaking his head.

  ‘James.’ The phone crackled as Bramwell came back. ‘We’ve got intel on the Chinese special forces having an unofficial training base in Mauritania. They’ve a lot of clout in that country with their mineral purchases. The contact from the west could be a transport plane bringing them in from there.’

  ‘Great,’ Cavill said. ‘What about the fighters? They’ve just peeled off the wings and disappeared behind us.’

  ‘The Nigerian Air Force has twelve Chengdu F-7 aircraft, probably serviced by Chinese operatives. It’s the Chinese version of the MiG-21: old, but enough to kill you in an Antonov. The Chinese could have scrambled their operatives who maintain the planes for the Nigerian Air Force to commandeer them once they clocked you or to cover their transport.’

  ‘But we’re over a thousand clicks from Nigeria,’ Cavill said. ‘How can they even make it this far?’

  ‘Wait…got it,’ Bramwell said. ‘The F-7 has an unweighted range of two thousand two hundred kilometres and a combat radius of eight hundred and fifty kilometres with ordnance. If they took off from the most northern Nigerian Air Force base of…Kano, they can make it. But only on a one-way ticket. They’ll have to ditch the jets. Looks like these boys are committed, James. Have they still not signalled to you?’

  The air exploded with noise, and the plane shook as one of the fighters did a wild strafing run with its machine guns across the Antonov.

  ‘They just did!’ Cavill yelled. ‘Gotta go!’

  He grabbed onto the chair in front of him as the pilot immediately put the plane into a steep turn. Everybody in the back clung on for dear life. The colour drained from the faces of the civilians.

  One of the jets screamed past the cockpit window.

  ‘We’re too slow for them,’ the pilot said. ‘They can’t just sit behind us to take us down with guns; with their speed, they will overshoot.’

  ‘So what?’ Cavill asked as he watched the jet banking away to come around again. ‘They keep doing long, looping turns to get us back in their sights? Until they shoot us down?’

  ‘Yes. Exactly,’ the pilot said. ‘No need to even use missiles; use guns on normal Antonov.’

  The second jet came screaming over them so that it was directly in front.

  ‘But this is not a normal Antonov. Surprise, mudak,’ the co-pilot said as he fiddled with buttons around a small screen between his legs.

  ‘We have modified plane,’ the pilot said with a smile. ‘Attached two AIM-92 Stinger air-to-air missiles to fuselage, same like they use on Predator drones. Got them during United States withdrawal from Afghanistan. Hard to keep track of so much equipment…’

  ‘Got him,’ the co-pilot said. He hit a small red button. They heard a separate roar and watched a trail of white streak out from under the Antonov. The missile curved as it followed the fighter jet, which was banking to get behind them. They saw the fighter jerk wildly as its pilot realised too late what was happening. The Stinger went straight up the tailpipe, and the jet exploded in a massive fireball.

  Alarms started screaming in the cockpit of the Antonov as sensors picked up another missile in the sky. It was headed towards them from the other fighter. The pilot twisted the controls to put the plane into another steep, banking turn as the co-pilot hit a different series of buttons and yelled, ‘Releasing chaff!’

  An explosion of white was fired from the wings and rear body of the Antonov’s fuselage as a series of flares arced into the sky in multiple directions. These provided a number of false targets to the incoming missile, which locked on one of the flares as a stronger heat signal and exploded on impact with it. The impact was so close that they all felt the shock wave reverberate through the plane.

  ‘That was close,’ Cavill said.

  ‘Now for bad news,’ the pilot said. ‘We out of countermeasures. If he gets another lock on for missile, we are defenceless.’

  ‘What?’ Cavill said in amazement. ‘How’s that possible?’

  ‘Sorry.’ The pilot shrugged. ‘We are small company. Couldn’t afford more.’

  Cavill’s mind was racing. They were all going to be killed before they even got to the site. The fighter jet would be swinging round again to get the final shot in. Once it got behind them with enough time to fire another missile, they were dead.

  ‘Level the plane out and keep it level. Open the rear ramp,’ he said as he made his way towards the door to exit the cockpit.

  He tapped his throat microphone as he ran back down the long fuselage. ‘Jerry, has everyone got their parachutes on?’

  ‘Yes, all good to go,’ Jerry responded in the small earpiece in his ear. ‘The loading ramp is opening.’

  ‘Get the team up and in position with their weapons, ready to fire out the back.’

  ‘Roger.’

  Cavill came in sight of the people in the rear of the plane. There was an expanding bright light as the back door went down. The wind swirled in the confined space. He could see his troops already kneeling and lying flat with their HK416 combat rifles aimed at the light. Cavill jumped on the Land Rover 110 fixed at the rear, swivelled the .50-calibre heavy machine gun to point out the rear, and released the firing mechanism. ‘Right,’ he yelled. ‘When that plane comes around again and you have line of sight, open up with everything to stop it from firing, or we die here. We need to keep it off us long enough to get closer to the drop zone.’

  The back door was now fully open,
and with their eyes adjusted to the light, they could see the fighter completing its turn to line up for the final shot.

  ‘Fire!’ Cavill yelled while depressing the triggers on the .50-calibre. The cabin erupted in a cacophony of fire aimed at the fighter. The chances of a single person firing at a fighter and hitting it were low. A wall of bullets being sent out might just have an impact. The fighter jerked a little bit just as it was levelling off. Something had hit it. Cavill was firing tracer rounds and was angling to get closer to the jet. Someone fired a white phosphorous grenade out the back, and it exploded in the sky. Either spotting the incoming tracer or the white explosion, the fighter started weaving desperately.

  ‘It’s working!’ Cavill yelled above the roar.

  The fighter flew upwards to get out of the situation, disappearing from view.

  There was a deafening blast, and the plane shuddered as an explosion went off near the front of it. The fuselage started to fill up with smoke. More noise of impacting machine-gun fire came as the jet fighter returned from a different angle to strafe one of the wings.

  The big Antonov started to descend rapidly and then slowly turned—not of its own accord.

  ‘Everybody out,’ Cavill yelled. ‘Now!’

  His troops immediately strapped on their weapons and started bailing out the back of the plane.

  Cavill jumped off the Land Rover and pulled the levers so that the crates of equipment and cars started sliding out the back on rails. All of the boxes had transport parachutes with altimeters attached to them, so the parachutes would deploy at designated heights. He ran to the door and turned to do a final sweep to make sure that everyone was out.

  His eyes locked with those of Kate Edwards, who stood frozen with fear near the edge. He could see that her parachute was attached to the static-line apparatus. All she had to do was fall out the back. The wire would automatically deploy her chute. He ran to her, scooped her up, and ran straight out the back of the plane. He released Kate as soon as his boot left metal, and he turned to peel away from her into a free fall. He saw the reassuring sight of her body jerking as her parachute deployed and took her weight. He flipped over to his stomach, settled himself into a stable position, and pulled his ripcord. As soon as the parachute deployed, he turned back to see where Kate was. She was floating down nicely. In the distance, there was a huge explosion as the Antonov erupted in a ball of fire in the sky.

  Chapter 13

  As he settled his parachute into a stable descent, Cavill scanned the sky again. He hadn’t seen the pilots get out, and he didn’t see their parachutes in the sky, so had to assume they were dead. He had time to think about the small explosion near the front of the plane. There was no fighter-aircraft fire anywhere near that. He had been looking at the fighter out the back door when it happened, so what would have exploded? Something timed as they approached the drop zone? Did they have a saboteur? Or worse, a traitor? He didn’t believe it was someone on his own team but couldn’t exclude the possibility. Greater suspicion must surely be on the people he had been forced to take along.

  There was little time to think about it any further as he was descending fast and caught movement in his peripheral vision. It was parachutes not in the style of his team’s. There were other people in the sky! They were also clad in desert-pattern fatigues but of a slightly different hue than his own. He reasoned that it had to be a Chinese special-forces team quickly deployed from their base in Mauritania and dropped by the transport they’d spotted on radar. Cavill looked around to see his team spread out over a wide distance in the area below him. They were going to land just before the Chinese did. Some of them may not even have seen the other parachutes. He touched his throat mic to speak to his team members, who were all connected by similar microphones and earpieces over a VHF frequency reaching two kilometres.

  ‘Listen up, people. We’re landing hot. There are airborne forces inbound around us. Regroup into teams of four by three on the ground and take out any confirmed hostiles before they regroup to kill us. Civilians, keep your heads down in the sand until we come and get you. I mean it. Literally bury yourself in the sand.’

  Jerry Cornell hit the ground first. He immediately ditched his parachute and unclipped his special weapon, his beloved McMillan TAC-338 sniper rifle, from his chest.

  He sprinted to the top of the nearest sand dune and set the rifle up. He looked through the telescope just as two Chinese landed and started to aim their weapons into the sky at his teammates. ‘No, you don’t,’ he said as he fired off two shots in two seconds to drop both enemy soldiers. ‘Confirm hostiles,’ he reported into the radio.

  Cavill was still coming down and started to track towards a Chinese parachute in the sky to shadow it down to the ground. The Chinese soldier landed on one side of a small sand dune, and Cavill swung to land on the other side. He quickly dropped his chute and pulled a grenade to lob over the top of the dune at the position of the landed enemy. He was already running around the dune with his rifle ready as the grenade went off in a huge explosion of sand. Cavill popped around the side and saw the soldier. He was wounded by the blast, but he was still standing and aiming his gun at the top of the dune, expecting him to come over the top. Cavill unleashed a burst up the man’s body to culminate in a bullet through the head. Cavill was up and running before the body hit the sand.

  Four of Cavill’s troops, Nathan Harcourt, Richard Sansom, Gil Evron, and Steve Lampack, had all landed close to each other and immediately reconvened into standard four-unit protocol, each covering designated arcs of fire while they moved between the dunes looking for their friends and enemies. The difficulty of fighting in a pure desert landscape was the lack of distinguishing features. It was hard to call out how far north or south they were from the only distinct feature there, the sand dunes, as they all looked the same. So quick identification of targets and firing was the game, which they had practised thousands of time in their respective antiterrorist training. They were following a set of tracks between two dunes, with Steve Lampack in the lead. There was a blur up ahead as someone ran between the dunes in front of them. Lampack released a short burst of automatic fire while Richard Sansom dropped to his knee at Lampack’s side to provide additional cover if Lampack’s weapon jammed or he missed. He didn’t. The enemy trooper up ahead went face-first into the sand.

  ‘Another one down,’ Lampack said quietly into the radio.

  Chris Boulton had not landed near any of his teammates. He was running by himself, exposed, in the direction of Lampack’s gunfire. As he sprinted around the base of a dune, he ran smack into two Chinese special-forces operatives coming the other way. His reflexes worked beautifully to get a burst of ammunition off into one of the enemy, but the second managed to do the same thing to him. The bullets hit his weapon, his chest plate, and his arm, sending him sideways. The enemy didn’t hesitate and shot him in the head. Chris Boulton’s body collapsed into the sand as the Chinese trooper’s neck exploded in a fan shape of red before falling next to him.

  ‘Two more hostiles down. They got Boulton,’ Jerry Cornell said into the radio, still looking through the telescopic sight of his sniper rifle after shooting the enemy through the neck. He cursed himself that he hadn’t picked up the movement a second earlier to give Chris a chance. He knew that Cavill would be even more upset, as Boulton had served with him in his old regiment.

  Cavill had not had any more enemy contact, but he had hooked up with Mike Nathan from his team. They were moving slowly towards Cornell’s position. Cavill cursed when he heard about Boulton.

  No more firing was heard.

  ‘Everybody report in,’ Cavill said. ‘I’m with Mike. I’ve tagged one.’

  ‘Three for me,’ Cornell said. ‘And Boulton got one.’

  ‘Lampack here, with Sansom, Evron, and Harcourt. Tagged one.’

  ‘Sizemore here,’ Bill Sizemore said, in his Southern drawl. ‘With Rolleston and Van der Westhuizen. We’re at the top of a dune facing three hostiles
at the top of the next dune. Any movement on either side receives heavy fire. Got ourselves a standoff, here. Oh, also got two civilians behind us. The girl and the language guy.’

  ‘Good,’ Cavill said. Given that they were completely on the back foot, things could have been a lot worse. ‘Where’s Fabrice?’

  ‘I went out the plane with him,’ Sizemore said. ‘Once the chutes deployed, it looked like he had some issues. Couldn’t steer. So he went wherever the wind took him, probably a couple miles away.’

  ‘So we’ve tagged five. Did anyone see more than eight of them in the sky?’

  ‘Don’t think so, but can’t be sure,’ Cornell said. Nobody disagreed.

  ‘Right,’ Cavill said. ‘We’re all covered except for Fabrice. No one has had contact in last few minutes, so assuming they were an eight-man patrol, then the three facing Bill’s team are all that’s left. Bill, chuck a red phos behind you. Everybody, converge on that rally point.’

  Bill dutifully pulled the pin from a red smoke grenade and threw it further down the dune for a rally point and the area of enemy contact.

  The entire team converged on the pillar of expanding smoke, which stood out for miles against the background of the bright-blue sky of the desert.

  Cavill ran towards the smoke with Mike Nathan at his side. ‘Whoever gets there first,’ he said, ‘two of you keep running parallel in case they make a break for it. Physically, we can run faster than them, so be ready to chase them down or flank them for when they make a move.’

  ‘Lampack, here. We’re arriving. I’ll split off left. Harcourt’s going right.’

  A few seconds later, Cavill rounded the final dune to see the smoke flare burning halfway up the dune in front of them and the rest of his troops heading for the top of the dune. They ran to join them and went straight past Kate Edwards and Matt Hayden, who were sitting at the bottom of the dune looking scared and bewildered.

  They reached the top of the dune and were breathing heavily from the exertion of running through sand with a full load of kit in the desert heat.