by Matt Lynn
Darkness swirled around the airport and stinging sand whipped Pack's face. Outside the terminal building, figures in ice-white robes moved around like people from a madhouse.
There was nothing on the streets of Khartoum except packs of dogs running across rubbish in the gutter, nothing to show it had not been evacuated because of some terrible plague. The hotel entrance was concealed in the dirty whitewashed walls of a comer building. A guard slept in a chair outside the hotel. The stairs of green and grey stone were chipped, and faded photographs taken by the Ministry of Tourism hung from the walls welcoming Tim to pyramids and river cruises as if he was on a holiday package tour.
In his room, Tim flung open the high glass windows onto the terrace, dogs ran and howled below and the bulb of a street light flickered and then went dead. A gust of wind blew sand down the street and there was nothing else around.
No sound. No movement. No people. No life. He had an urge to ring Jennifer but there were no phones.
Pack booked his four-wheel drive for the next day to take him to the sites of Naqa, Musawwarat and the pyramids at Meroe. He told the hotel manager, Theo, that he wanted a day to settle in, so Theo sold him a Khartoum and Omdurman city tour in a 1969 Hillman taxi at five dollars an hour.
'Once you've seen the Mahdi's tomb, the Khalifa's house and the Omdurman Fort, that's about it,' said Theo, pushing old brochures across the desk towards him.
'Anything worth buying? Carpets, that sort of thing?' asked Tim.
'Swords. They have excellent swords here.' Theo held open the door to let Tim out. 'But this isn't Egypt, you know. Nasty place, really.'
Three special-forces engineers had been in just two days earlier, posing as Australian archaeologists staying at the Acropole, like Tim. They took a four-wheel drive out towards Naqa and measured the California Bearing Ratio which determined the hardness of the desert surface. It came out at seven along a 2,500 foot stretch just three miles north of the town of al-Kadarou and they left infra-red signal lights at either end of the strip to guide in the aircraft.
Abdul, Tim's taxi driver, drove through filthy traffic over the Blue Nile bridge. Everything was covered in a yellow brown dust. Bus passengers peered through glassless windows, standing in the doorways, hanging on to rusted metal outside.
'Swords,' said Abdul, whose eyes were on Tim in the rear-view mirror. He pulled up in the narrow streets of Omdurman Souk and guided Tim around the rubbish pushed up against walls in sandstorms.
The shop smelt of leather and animals; silver coffee pots and camel whips bound with gold, red and green wire hung from the ceiling. The wooden counter was strewn with leather and canvas scraps. An Arab craftsman worked with a knife and hammer on a bright-orange, half-made camel saddle in the middle of the counter.
A teenage boy squatted on a stool behind and polished the black sheath of a sword with shells sewn onto its sides and straps hanging from it to attach to the warrior's saddle.
'From the Red Sea,' said Abdul, and the owner of the shop nodded. In Arabic the owner told the boy to stand up and introduced him as his son, Yasin Orner, drawing the
customer into his shop and his family. Yasin handed Tim the sheath. His father broke off his work on the saddle to bring down another sword from a higher shelf. It was in a brown, dusty sheath with a tassel caked in the muck of the villages. The handle was wrapped with silver leaf and he drew the weapon out to show Tim the Arabic writing inscribed on the steel.
He spoke to Abdul, who translated. ‘This is an old
Sudanese poem ...'
'From where?' said Tim. Yasin produced a cup of sweet tea in a glass for him.
'He's a Mahas. From the north, 'answered Abdul. 'You can tell by his skin colour. The sword is from his village.'
Tim absorbed the stench of animals and spices and he enjoyed the safety of what he was doing; with a taxi driver, buying a souvenir in the Omdurman Souk. The success or failure of an espionage operation was as narrow as the blade of the sword in front of him. Tim liked where he was because he could justify it and because he wanted the sword. He would take it home and hang it on the wall of his house in Queensborough Terrace.
'When you meet the enemy and there's no way to win,' Abdul read from the inscription, 'it is better to die than to runaway.'
There was a stirring of blankets in the comer and Tim thought a dog was waking up behind him. But as he turned, he saw curious child-like eyes peer out in a frame of blackness and dusky colours.
Samira appeared as she always did when a tourist was getting interested and about to buy. She moved around the shop, sometimes to his left, sometimes to his right. Tim couldn't work out whether to see her as a child or a woman. Her breasts were beginning to form. She wore a school uniform of green and white, but her eyes and facial expressions were mature and wilful and something about her youth, innocence and playfulness amid the rankness of her environment captivated Tim, just as Samira's father intended, so that from the moment he spotted her, the swords were as good as sold.
'The swords will be cleaned very well,' Abdul was saying.
'What is your address?'
'The Acropole Hotel.'
'Your home address.' Yasin spoke for the first time. 'I will write it on the bag in case it gets lost on the plane.'
'The boy will make you a special canvas bag to check it onto the Lufthansa flight,' said Abdul.
In the late afternoon he found another taxi outside the Meridian Hotel. Soon, they were back crossing the White Nile Bridge which Abdul had told him was built by the British, then past the modem buildings of the Koran University and the Parliament on the right.
On this return journey, Tim felt he was getting familiar with the city now. They went straight through Omdurman this time, heading north along the sealed road to Meroe. The driver was dressed Western style in slacks and an open-neck shirt. His car was a Toyota, not a Hillman, but the back seat was equally tom, sunken and uncomfortable, the windows immovable, one jammed with sand, the other by a broken handle.
As soon as they left Omdurman the desert scrub stretched before them in a heat haze. Women in orange and white stood in clusters waiting for buses. Construction sites, with no one working on them, sprang up at the side of the road. These were the villas built on money from the Persian Gulf. Some were finished in compounds with high walls and air-conditioning units sticking out of the windows. Most were unfinished and empty, the sign of no planning and loan money which had run out or never really existed.
Tim had gone over the maps with Walmsley and he knew that if he passed a regular military check-point he was at Kogallat and had gone too far. The rescue squad had to get in and out without touching a check-point. The Nile to his left was hidden by farmland. The railway was on the right, with goats wandering between the tracks, and it stretched away into the scrubland, disappearing into desert and eventually ending up through war zones and broken track in Port Sudan on the Red Sea.
After almost half an hour of silence, the driver said suddenly in English. 'Why are you going to al-Kadarou?'
'My great-grandfather used to be the district commissioner there,' said Tim straight away. 'I want to take some photographs for the family.'
The driver didn't react. He lit a cigarette, slowing, steering with one hand and cupping the other against the wind for the flame to catch. When he put the lighter away, Tim caught his eyes in the mirror.
Tim noted the landmarks given to him. The radar beacon to his left, in a wired-off compound with a red light flashing on the top. Half a mile further on was a junkyard of old electrical transformers from a substation and pylons, stark and ugly, stretching across the desert towards Omdurman.
N-Kadarou,' announced the taxi driver.
Tim got him to stop two hundred yards from the villa, which he recognised from the satellite photographs. There were rows of new villas, but this one was distinctive because it was finished and lived in, with bright red flowers trailing over the wall and fairy lights strewn around conifers which towered over the garden.<
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Two white-painted water tanks stood against the front wall, which was whitewashed. The metal gate was locked and as Tim walked down the alleyway at its side, he noticed another wooden gate, also locked, at the end, which hadn't been picked up by the satellite.
There was a radio playing just inside the gate and soft voices. Cigarette smoke drifted up.
Standing back from the wall, Tim could make out the sloping roof of the guard house. A second compound butted onto the back, but this was empty and a gate hung open, unlocked. After that, there was nothing except fields and dirt tracks all the way down to the river.
The only window across which blinds were drawn was on the northern comer of the house. There were two chairs outside on the balcony, with the pages of a magazine flapping on one. A glass of water was on the floor beside it. This was the room that the hostage was being held in.
No-one else was in the alleyway.
Tim dropped the map he was holding, then knelt down and took out two commercial car-tracking devices, each disguised as a small mobile telephone. They sent out an intermittent homing signal which was picked up by a special computer normally fitted in police cars and helicopters. Not perfect, but an acceptable risk to bring through customs.
Tim pushed one tracker into the sand by the wall, burying it about an inch deep. He put the second ten yards further along. Each had an independent algorithm or special code. The signal would be activated by the SAS units as they came in, giving them the confirmation that they were attacking the right target.
The taxi driver was having coffee at the restaurant next to the villa. Blue metal tables were on the street outside. Water urns, stacked up high, formed a boundary between the cafe and the alleyway and cases of empty soft-drink bottles made up the counter between the shop and the house.
Tim opened the back door of the taxi, prompting the driver to jump up and hurriedly call for the bill. He was about to get in when he saw that the boy coming out from the back of the shop was Yasin. Tim leant on the roof of the car, watching as the driver paid. Then Yasin recognised Tim, at first surprised, then waving and talking to the driver about him, pointing. Must have been telling him about the swords.
Tim closed the door and walked over to them. Yasin shook his hand enthusiastically, clasping it with both of his: 'This is where I live. My mother owns this tea house,' he said in schoolboy English. 'Do you want some coffee? On the house?'
Yasin's enthusiasm was overwhelming and Tim couldn't help smiling. 'I have to get back.'
'The driver says your great-grandfather was the commissioner at al-Kadarou. You should meet our Mayor. He is a very nice man. I will take your photo together.'
Afterwards, Tim would stand by what he did next; would do it again in the same situation. He was damned by coincidence, because he would never know what happened and he should have just got in the car and let Yasin take his chances with the Special Forces. Instead he said, 'It's really lucky I bumped into you, because I need to buy more swords and to have them by six tomorrow morning.'
Yasin looked unhappy and bewildered, 'But it takes hours to prepare them to a high standard.'
'I know. But it really is important. Perhaps your sister, any one else in the family could work overnight in Omdurman for me. I'll pay double.'
Yasin whistled through his teeth, while putting the driver's grubby notes into his pocket. 'I'll have to ask.' He shouted out for his father, picked up the driver's coffee cup and wiped the table. Yasin's father eyed Tim suspiciously as he emerged, Yasin explaining the proposal, trying to sell it.
'The old man doesn't want to do it,' said the driver. 'He's not sure if he's got four more swords.'
'Why do you need them so early?' asked Yasin, switching to English. Now Samira was running towards them. Yasin spoke to her abruptly and gave her the cup and the towel to take in.
'I have to leave for Meroe. And from there I'm going straight to the airport.'
Tim took out a packet of panatellas and offered one to the old man and one to Yasin. The old man didn't respond, so Tim took another out and gave three to Yasin and said: 'It's what gentlemen smoke when they don't like cigarettes.'
Yasin took them and passed them under his nose, smelling the tobacco through the cellophane. His father was shaking his head, and his son translated more of what Tim said, tapping the old man's arm to convince him, but the father was adamant. 'I'll meet you at the airport with them,' said Yasin, as if that was in recognition for the cigars. He shrugged. 'My father won't let me go.'
Tim could do no more. He told himself that for months afterwards.
He found a seat in the foyer bar and ordered a Hilton Dream fruit cocktail. He didn't study the other guests.
Instead, he bought postcards and wrote them to his mother, to his brother in Suffolk, to his sister in London and to Jennifer Chandler, whose home address he didn't know, so he addressed it to the bank in Copthall Avenue. He laid a copy of Time magazine which he had bought at Heathrow on the table, just as Walmsley had told him to.
Charlie Mills, first secretary, SIS agent, a diplomat specialising in the world's hell holes, recognised Tim from the photographs sent over, finished his soft drink and called for the bill. Tim's magazine gave Mills a final confirmation and he left for the embassy where he signalled the go-ahead. For what, though, he had no idea.
At the Akrotiri Royal Air Force Base in southern Cyprus, a Mark 1 Hercules received take-off clearance and taxied onto the 8,000-foot runway. It was a few minutes before
19:30. Permission had been given for an overweight take-off. Fully laden with fuel for the ten-hour return journey, the empty Hercules was 142,000 pounds. But her total weight was now 160,000 pounds. She carried four extra crew, two aircraft ground engineers and two mobile air movements staff, together with sixteen men from the Special Air Service and three Toyota pick-up vehicles, already muddied and chipped to blend in with the Khartoum traffic.
The pilot didn't bring up the nose until she had covered more than five thousand feet of the runway. As soon as she was airborne he spoke one two-syllable word- RABBIT-on the agreed high frequency band 5897.
The soldiers inside sat back in their red nylon paratroop seats for the long, uncomfortable journey. They lined up on either side of the three pick-up vehicles with the Toyota logo prominently displayed on the back. Before boarding for the last leg of this journey, they had checked their personal equipment, the MP5 Heckler and Koch submachine gun, two Remington 870 pump-action shotguns to blast their way into rooms, an SSG 3000 0.308 sniper rifle to take out a dangerous single enemy, CS gas stun grenades, light aluminium assault ladders coated with rubber to dampen the noise of leaning them against the building, explosives and their own personal side-arms, mainly the 9mm Browning High Power, SIG-Sauer and Glock 18 semi-automatic pistols.
For the first hour the aircraft had a clear run in inter national airspace. But still the pilot kept to the dangerously low-level altitude of just 250 feet to escape all radar. Only the Israeli government had been told of the aircraft's routing, which was why, instead of flying almost due south, the pilot veered slightly to the east to avoid Cairo and the sensitive areas around the Suez Canal.
The Hercules was a solitary, lumbering, vulnerable aircraft. It travelled at only 250 knots. Its only stealth was its low altitude. Its daring lay in the bravery of the men who flew her. They were alone, in radio silence, with a weapon of war which for many was so outdated that it was laughable. The ground temperature was 19 degrees Celsius. There was no wind and no slopes in the terrain they were heading for.
One hour before landing, twelve of the men slipped white Sudanese robes over their light-weight Kevlar body armour.
Two got into each of the three cabs of the Toyota vehicles. The other six climbed into the backs, securing themselves against the impact of landing. The two mobile air movement staff unlashed all but three of the chains securing the vehicles.
The daytime build-up of humidity and cloud over the Nile had cleared by midnight. With t
he river as his landmark and the desert lit up by starlight, the pilot studied the landscape, which appeared before him in shimmering but clear green through the night-vision goggles. He began the approach with the Global Positioning System, but soon spotted the infra-red beacons laid by the special forces engineers.
One minute before landing, the engines of the three Toyotas started up. The back door was fully open, the ramp closed. On touchdown, the pilot immediately brought the nosewheel down, threw all four engines into maximum reverse thrust and braked. The Hercules was enveloped in sand thrown up by the airflow from the propellers. A roar from the engines shattered the night quietness.
As the aircraft slowed, the movements staff undid the remaining chains that held the vehicles. Five seconds after stopping the ramp was on the ground. Ten seconds later all three vehicles were off the aircraft and speeding across the desert to join the paved road south to al-Kadarou.
Four men stayed with the aircraft and set up two fields of fire with heavy machine guns and anti-tank weapons.
The vehicles came off the desert onto the sealed road, south of the check-point at Kogallat and entered al-Kadarou from the north. It was 01:30. Tracking signals in the lead vehicle's computer confirmed their destination. The traffic was thin, but the road was not completely deserted so that groups of men riding towards Omdurman in three Toyotas were not an unusual sight that would arouse suspicion. They drove slowly through the town.
Yasin was sweeping the floor of the tea house, just behind the crates of Pepsi when he saw a vehicle stop across the road, with the men just sitting there. Two other vehicles came down right next to the house, a place cars hardly ever went. And never two at once. He heard the engines fade and then stop. Yasin ran upstairs to the roof to get a better look and by then the men were acting like nothing he had seen before. They ran silently towards the gate at the back of the compound. One moved forward and pressed something against the metal gate. Two carried a steel ladder. Three others fired fat-barrelled guns into the air. There was a soft bang and suddenly the whole compound was filled with thick black smoke, spreading along and rising up, so he couldn't see the men any more.