With a Nimrod calling the shots, of course, you could do it a lot more accurately. You’d know precisely where the target was right up to the moment of the drop.
He was in his drysuit, applying cam-cream. They were mostly finished with their individual preparations by the time the Hercules had levelled at its transit height of two thousand feet. If they’d had to they could have jumped in three minutes, let alone thirty.
Plenty of time for briefing, therefore. Ben sat on his own Sea-Rider’s stern, with an elbow on top of is outboard, and beckoned to them to gather round close enough to be scream at… Sticks Kelso right in front of him, on the bow of the second boat: leaning forward, elbows on rubber-encased knees. The others packed in around them.
‘We’ll be dropping a couple of miles short of where the gulet’s likely to stop to send her boat ashore. Her course is 128, reciprocal of that’s 308, we’ll drop a mile apart — Sticks on the right… Weather forecast is clear sky — no moon. Moon later but not now. Low swell, wind northwest two to three. Coxswains’ll wear PNG — should have a half-mile vis from the tops of the swells. We’ll use VHF to synchronise the approach. Usual drill then, you know it. If they don’t stop and we have to use the LAWs, aim for the wheelhouse, OK?’
Kelso had pointed at Ducky Teal, to handle his boat’s light anti-tank weapon. Chalky Judge already knew it would be his job in the first boat. Ben went on, ‘We’re not here to kill anyone. But one, if they resist, or two, any attempt to send up flares — because we’ll be bloody near that coast — then we don’t risk our lives, right? Geoff, I want their radio smashed as soon as we board… But any threat to us or to the completion of the task, don’t mess about, use your SA80s, it’s what they’re for.’
Sticks glanced around at the faces ringing them, then looked back at Ben and nodded. Ben yelled, ‘You know what Swale looks like. If all goes well we’ll take him with us, but otherwise he’s to be killed. I’ll do it, but if I’m not in a position to for any reason, someone else must.’ Sticks nodded again. ‘But the outcome we want is the gulet stops — or doesn’t, but anyway we board and take it over, crew and passengers surrender. We’ll secure them—’ he mimed it, crossing his wrists behind his back — ‘in the gulet if we have the time, otherwise in the boats. Point is we must be out of Syrian water by sunrise. If time allows we’ll take the gulet, but she’s slow so maybe we’ll have to sink her.’ He looked at Romeo Hall. ‘PE in the bilges, three locations. She’s heavy-timbered, need to blow her bottom out.’
Hall nodded. It wouldn’t be any problem.
He’d about finished. Thinking that they were going to need the extra petrol they’d brought. The regular tanks would give these outboards a range of sixty to eighty miles, but they’d have used some before they boarded, and the run to Dhekelia would be about a hundred. Result of having to start so close to the Syrian coast… ‘Sticks, one more thing. I had Russell Haig on the radio from the tower just before we took off. He’s most likely in the air by now, chasing out after us. He suggested he could guide us — if we need it, which maybe we will — by Sarbe voice comms when we’re in the boats. So listen out, OK?’
Sticks raised a thumb.
‘That’s it, then. Questions?’
There weren’t any. Fortunately. Briefing in a loud scream wasn’t the easiest way to do it. But that last-minute call from 8 Kilo 6, the proximity to Syria and the absence of Nimrod guidance had changed the basics of the operation quite considerably.
2316 now: about a quarter of an hour to go. Coxswains and crewmen checking their boats and the boats’ fittings for about the fiftieth time. Ben took a look round too, at the Sea-Riders and the containers in which some items’ stowage had to relate to that boat’s crew. For instance, Judge’s explosives were in the first boat — Ben’s, Bert Hattry as Coxswain and Deakin as crewman — while Doc Laker’s medical outfit had to be in the other — Kelso’s, coxed by Froggie Clark.
Each man’s Sarbe was inside his drysuit, on a lanyard.
Sticks was going from man to man checking Sarbes. Back in Poole — which at this moment could have been some place on the back of the moon — there was a poster on the wall in the sergeant major’s office, a photograph of an extremely attractive tennis girl in the shortest of short skirts, walking away from camera with a racket in one hand and the other hand’s fingers up under the fringe of skirt, reconnoitring to touch a pair of minuscule pants; below the picture was the advice Don’t chance it — CHECK!
Sticks was checking. Although each of them would have checked already.
2325: the Hercules was losing height, and the two halves of the team were separating, mustering round their boats.
*
Radar monitoring and the satellite communications link was via Dhekelia now. On radar they had the Hercules approaching the Syrian coast and Foxtrot 2 Bravo on her way out from Akrotiri. Foxtrot 2 had climbed to its transit height of five thousand feet while the C130 was at this moment descending towards the thousand-foot mark from which the Marines would jump. The Nimrod had a long way to go before it could make any useful contribution, and obviously the jump couldn’t be delayed.
In London, in the Special Forces section of the Joint Operations Centre in the Ministry of Defence a warrant officer spoke into a microphone in front of him on the long central table. ‘Any movement over Syrian airfields?’
An RAF staff officer had asked for this information, after a question from Charles Hislop, and there was an interval before the answer came. Hislop mentally counting out the seconds, visualising the interior of that Hercules, his men ready in their drybags around the Sea-Riders; seeing also the fat, lumbering shape of the aircraft as a blackness blacker than the surrounding night, gleam of restless sea below and distantly — though not distantly enough — pools of light marking towns and settlements, ribbons of light along new roads and motorways, and — maybe — airbase runway lights switching on, Migs rolling forward…
‘Negative.’ The voice came from nearly two thousand miles’ distance, by surface measurement, but in fact had travelled a lot farther, bouncing off an orbiting communications satellite. ‘Negative, Syrian air.’
‘That’s something.’ The Duty Operations Director — a rear-admiral — glanced at Hislop. Charles Hislop running a palm over his bald head, seeing in his mind the C130’s cargo door opening, the ramp’s initial jerk before it began to hinge downwards, descending steadily then until the tail-end of the aircraft was open to the night. Hislop had jumped from Hercs enough times himself to know exactly what it looked like, felt like.
He murmured to the SF Adviser — who happened also to be a Royal Marine major, formerly a member of the Special Boat Squadron — ‘Why wouldn’t the Syrian airforce react, I wonder?’
‘Maybe they guess the intrusion’ll be over before they’d get there.’
‘Or —’ the admiral suggested — ‘they guess the intruders might be Israelis and they don’t want to lose their Migs.’
*
Two miles to the west, Eddie Harrington flung himself over on the bed again. In the other one his wife snored softly in deep, enviable sleep. While he stayed wide awake in nightmare.
Not because he was in the doghouse with her. He was: she’d been in bed when he got home, she’d half-lowered her book and asked him coldly whether he couldn’t have been back at a reasonable hour on her first night home? He’d begun to tell her: he’d had this meeting… She’d cut him short: ‘You could have telephoned me — some time during the evening, couldn’t you?’
It was the truth that he’d been obliged to attend an after-hours conference. It had been on purely routine, domestic matters, and he hadn’t got away until about eight thirty. He’d wanted to get home early, not having seen her since Friday morning and knowing she’d be expecting him to hurry, to be agog for a blow-by-blow account of her weekend in Paris. But that had been just too had; and he hadn’t telephoned because he hadn’t expected the meeting to take anything like that long.
Too bad. And from bad, to infi
nitely worse.
He’d thought about taking a taxi, but at theatre time they were never easy to find in that area, weren’t always that much quicker anyway, so he’d decided to go as he usually did by underground; in fact he’d only covered the first thirty yards before a taxi had taken him.
He’d jumped clear, sure it was going to hit him: its headlights had sprung up to blind him as it had swerved, wheels mounting the pavement. He’d cannoned back against the wall and the cab had stopped, slewed slantwise across the pavement, its lights dimmed, then two men jumped out of the back — he’d thought, to see if he’d been hurt… They’d grabbed him, flung him inside — half-stunned, flabby with shock — and the cab had bumped down into the road, driven on. Passing Century House.
Struggling up: astonished and very, very frightened… ‘What the hell—’
‘Shut up, Eddie. Sit still, and look at this.’
Holding it so a street light caught it as they passed: the brown gas-board envelope on which he’d made those notes. And which when he’d last seen it had been on his desk in the flat.
‘Who put you up to it, Eddie?’
‘Who are you — where’d you get—’
‘To the first question, never mind, to the second, where d’you think we got it? But I’m asking the questions, Eddie, and there’s really only the one that matters: who put you up to it?’
‘Up to what?’ He’d begun to move, and met with immediate restraint. They were young, strong, and he was neither… ‘Where’re you taking me?’
‘Well, it depends. if you don’t answer that question we’ll end up some place very quiet and private, what you might call unfrequented. If you do, we’ll drop you at your door and you can live as miserable as you like ever after. The other way, Eddie, you’ll be the victim of a hit-and-run. Saw how easy it could happen, did you?’
‘Look. I haven’t the least idea what—’
‘End up dead that way, Eddie. Can’t have you on the loose when you’re trying to kick us all in the balls, can we? We know the background, old son, let’s not hang about. We won’t waste time and effort sweating it out of you — no, honest, I can reassure you on that point. The deal is, you can tell us or we kill you. Let’s try again: who put you up to it, you fat old creep?’
‘Christ—’
‘Sorry. Sorry. Didn’t mean to—’
‘If you’re from Box five—’
‘Box of five what?’
‘You must be, but—’
‘Answer the question, Eddie.’
‘If I told you — if I could tell you — how would I know you’d—’
‘Let you live horrible ever after? Well, you’d have to take my word. There’d be a condition too — you wouldn’t tip ’em off. We wouldn’t’ve been near you, no one would, all you’d say is you can’t go through with it. If you said we’d been on to you, you’d get the old hit-and—run bit after all. From us, that is. Oh, and you’d have to put it in writing, ie — what you were doing, who was paying and how much — all that stuff, and over your autograph. That’s the deal if you want it, Eddie. Do you?’
‘I’d be free — I mean, retire, and my pension—’
‘Not my business, Eddie. One thing we’re not is the DHSS.’
The other one laughed. Harrington began, ‘The person whose name you want—’
‘Name, address, occupation, family detail: and your connection, how he got on to you, how he’d ’ve known you’d do it.’
‘What’ll happen to him?’
‘Happen?’
‘Might he be left — well, free, and—’
‘You’ve an enquiring mind, Eddie, haven’t you.’
‘Why I’m asking—’
‘I know why you’re asking. Question of what he might do if he got to know you’d shopped him. Right? Yeah, well, you’d have to cope with that one yourself, Eddie. Man tries to betray his own country, he can reckon on losing a little sleep, eh?’
*
Above the black opening in the end of the hold a red light came on, a warning are just as the loadmaster shouted, ‘Stand by!’ The loadmaster would have been reacting not to the red light but to the order in his headphones, from the cockpit. Six Marines crouching with their hands on the first Sea-Rider’s sides and their heads up, eyes fixed on the light. Ben Ockley at the bow, port side, Bert Hattry opposite him: behind Ben, Romeo Hall, and Chalky across from him. In rear, Wee Willie Deakin and Geoff Hosegood. All six in more or less the athletes’ on–your–marks-get-set position: six taut laces streaked with cam-cream garish in the light’s red stain.
It went out. A green one flashed on and the loadmaster bawled, ‘Go!’
The six ran aft, taking the boat with them on its track of rollers and launching it ahead of them so that it reached the end of the lowered, down-slanting ramp before they did, tilted over, flew out into the darkness before their own dives took them after it, bodies seemingly suspended in the black frame for a motionless fraction of a second and then snatched away in the howl of wind and the roar of engines.
The green light went out.
Sticks Kelso, Ducky Teal, Ray Wilkinson and Andy Laker, and at the stern Froggie Clark and his crewman Frank Kenrick, moved the second boat up to where the first had started. Hanging on to it so the aircraft’s lurching wouldn’t send it charging out on its own, while Froggie clipped its static line to the runner on the jackstay.
Red light.
Six rubber-suited men crouching with their boat. Knowing the first six would be plummeting into the sea at about this moment.
Red light out. Green on: and the loadmaster’s yell. The same rush then, the Sea-Rider hurtling aft into the oblong of night sky, bodies tumbling out behind it, right and left.
Gone. The green light went out. The loadmaster was reporting into the mike of his headset on its long trailing lead that the drop had been completed. The ramp was rising, hydraulic rams sliding over to drag up those tons of steel and shut the door behind departed guests.
*
A small blue light was switched on automatically when the Sea-Rider hit the water, slamming down even-keeled at a distance which Ben, splashing in a second later and releasing himself from his harness instantaneously, then surfacing and looking for the boat, judged to be about ten metres. In fact it was at about twice that distance. The apparent proximity an illusion which he remembered now from previous drops. By the time he got there Geoff Hosegood and Wee Willie were already inboard, had extinguished the blue light and cleared away the parachute gear. Bert Hattry heaving himself in over the bow. Ben came aboard in a rolling motion over the port blister, hearing the drone of the Hercules’ four engines fading westward and knowing that Sticks’ team would be on their way down by now — and Chalky Judge conveniently creating a balance with his own arrival from the other side. Hattry was at the outboard, stripping it of its protective plastic bag and plugging in the lead from the gas-tank, then opening the tap and feeling for the toggle on the lanyard. Hall, last to come aboard, slithering in over the quarter. Wee Willie had one container open and was getting out first essentials when the outboard fired at the first pull, revving high to start with, Hattry then at his controls amidships, throttling down… Wee Willie was passing out the SA80s but he had Bert’s PNG headset ready for him, for as soon as he could handle it.
The loom of a light, triple flashes, was from Ras el Buri and bore 055 degrees. Ben had had this lighthouse’s range and bearing from the dropping point, from the chart before they’d taken off. The chart had flattered it with a visibility of twelve miles, and they were inside that range now, but chart-data visibility was for a height-of-eye of fifteen feet and it was a very different matter from wave-level in a Sea-Rider.
The boat was swinging, rocking around to point northwest; as she got on to that course and gathered way she began to bump, her bow meeting the swells head-on. It was an easier motion than the general tossing around, you could use both hands instead of having to keep one for holding on with.
‘S
tarscope, Ben.’
He reached back to take it from Wee Willie. Star Tron nightscope. He put its strap over his head and crawled into the bow, and the next thing was to get the SA80 hooked to one of the fittings provided for that purpose on the blisters. Then in action you wouldn’t lose it over the side if you had to let go of it for some reason — like being shot or having to grab a neighbour before he went over. Bert Hattry was steering one-handed, using the other to adjust the headset of his passive night goggles, and Geoff Hosegood had taken the wrapping off the VHF radio and was tuning it. There’d be nobody in range to communicate with yet, but there would be in a minute; the range of the set was virtually line-of-sight — daylight sight. The Sea-Rider’s bow lifted as she climbed a long, low swell. Pole Star clear and bright fifty-two degrees to starboard; so Hattry had it about right: when the gulet appeared she should be more or less right ahead.
Bert Hattry was using his coxswain’s seat now, a kind of saddle roughly in the middle, but with the PNG on too he was half-standing from time to time, and whenever they were lifted on a swell, to get a longer view forward. Ben similarly occupied — kneeling, using the starscope as the boat rode up another ridge of black water. Still throttled down, not much way on while they waited for the others, but in any case expecting the gulet to be coming to them.
Nothing in sight. Dark night, and the immensely long lines of the ridges approaching, rushing under. More movement on the sea than he’d expected. All the guns were clipped to the blisters now, and Wee Willie was passing the LAW to Chalky when a voice from the radio, distorted but recognisable as Ray Wilkinson’s, squawked: ‘Sticks calling Ben. No see gulet, can you? Over.’
‘Tell him negative, steer three-zero-zero, twenty knots, go.’
Hattry opened his throttle while Geoff passed the message. Plunging into a dip, no hope of seeing anything at all, the gulet could have been fifty metres away and you wouldn’t have seen it until you lifted again. Like now…
Special Deception Page 22