‘What about the Americans, sir? Won’t they take a stand?’ The question came from Wells. Sampson played with a pencil for a few moments before answering.
‘The trouble with the Americans just at the moment,’ he said slowly, ‘is that their own shadows are making them jump. The Hungarian business has got them on tenterhooks, and they’ve been exerting all sorts of pressure on us to call off Musketeer and get out of Egypt. The Russians recently threatened to send atomic rockets on London and Paris if we didn’t pull out; it was an idle threat, but it produced no American reaction at all. They didn’t offer to come to our help if it happened. So, I think they’ll leave it to us to sort out the Muramshir affair. Then if everything goes wrong, it’ll be our pigeon.’
He shook his head suddenly, as though ridding himself of distasteful thoughts.
‘Oh, I don’t doubt that the Americans would intervene if their interests in the Gulf are really threatened, but things would have to be pretty desperate before they’ll risk a war with Russia. In the meantime it’ll be up to us, and we’ll have to box very cleverly indeed. Don’t you agree, Colonel?’
‘I, personally, would like to see Khorat wiped off the face of the earth,’ Al-Saleh said bitterly, ‘but I know that such a thing is not possible. Somehow, we must dislodge the Khoratis from our territory. We must also do it without destroying the oilfield, which would destroy Muramshir’s economy. And then there is the added complication of the foreign nationals.’
‘Oh, yes, I’d forgotten to mention them,’ Sampson said apologetically. ‘Just for your information, Yeoman, some sixty or seventy oil company employees — mostly British, but with some Americans and French — are apparently being held captive at the oil complex. The Khoratis may use them to bargain with. But whatever happens, we don’t want to see them dead.’
Sampson once again assumed his air of brisk efficiency. ‘That’s the position as it stands, gentlemen. Fortunately, in view of our pact with Muramshir, we already have several plans to cover this eventuality. It remains to implement the scheme which is best suited to the situation.
‘First of all – and I’m sure Colonel Al-Saleh agrees with me in this — the pressing need is to provide Muramshir with air power. That’s where you come in, Yeoman; we are despatching your two Venom squadrons immediately to Faraz, Muram-shir’s capital. You’ll be based at the civil airport. It’s not large, but you should be able to operate your Venoms out of it without too much difficulty.’
Yeoman and Wells exchanged sidelong glances. We’ll see what happens when we’ve a full load of bombs or rockets and the temperature’s 130 in the shade, Yeoman thought.
‘Your primary task,’ Sampson continued, ‘will be to prevent any attempt by the Khoratis to break out from the oilfield area and push southwards to Faraz. In other words, your job will be to buy time while we muster other forces to go to Muramshir’s aid. On no account, however, are you to operate north of the oilfield, unless you receive specific instructions to do so from HQMEAF.’
‘But that means we won’t be in a position to cut the Khoratis’ supply lines,’ Yeoman objected.
‘That, unfortunately, is correct,’ Sampson said. ‘However, for the time being, for reasons I have already mentioned, we are anxious to keep any action well away from the frontier area. We don’t want to risk any Soviet intervention, and if a single bomb lands in Khorati territory they’ll use that as an excuse. It will be some days before our forces in Muramshir are strong enough to meet any considerable threat.’
‘I can see that the Russians are likely to be cautious before committing any ground forces,’ Yeoman said. ‘But are they likely to send their MiGs into action against us?’
‘That, of course, is a real possibility,’ Sampson informed him, ‘and another good reason for restricting your operations to the area south of the oilfield. It’s a fair way from the main Khorati base, so unless the Khoratis call on their Russian friends to maintain constant air patrols in support of any offensive, it would take some time for air cover to arrive.’
‘What other forces are you planning to send to Muramshir?’ Yeoman asked.
‘I can’t give you a full breakdown,’ Sampson said, ‘because that’s not my province. The Navy, unfortunately, can’t spare any carriers because of the Suez commitment, but they have despatched two frigates from Singapore; it will be some time before they reach the Gulf, of course. As far as armour is concerned, the best we can do for the moment is to send a squadron or two of armoured cars from Aden. We haven’t a hope of getting any heavier stuff out there for at least three weeks. If it comes to breaking up a Khorati armoured assault, then your ground-attack Venoms are our only real hope.’
‘To defend Muramshir’s capital in the event of a Khorati breakthrough,’ Sampson continued, ‘we are airlifting four infantry battalions from Kenya, together with some artillery and anti-tank weapons, as soon as Transport Command can spare aircraft from Musketeer. That ought to be in the next three or four days. Some other more specialist forces will also be involved; I can tell you nothing about them at the moment. Now, Yeoman, you are going to have to move quickly; we want you on station and ready for action in Muramshir within twenty-four hours. Can you do it?’
‘We can,’ Yeoman told him. ‘But with Transport Command working at full stretch, how are we going to ferry out the ground crews and spares?’
Sampson smiled. ‘We’ve thought of that. Transport Command’s Hastings and Valetta aircraft, as you rightly point out, are working at full stretch, but there is still one option open to us. At this moment, two Blackburn Beverley transports are flying out from the UK; they’ll be here by tonight. The Beverley has only been in service for six months, as you know, and has yet to operate in Middle East conditions, so this will be something of an operational trial for the aircraft. But it can carry ninety passengers or a payload of twenty tons, so it should be ideal for the job in hand.’
‘Well, that’s a relief,’ Yeoman said. ‘Our aircraft won’t fly unless they’re properly maintained.’
‘May I ask a favour of you, Wing Commander?’ It was Colonel Al-Saleh who spoke, and Yeoman looked at him inquiringly.
‘I must return to Muramshir urgently,’ Al-Saleh said, ‘but the machine which brought me to Cyprus, an Airspeed Oxford, is worn out and its pilot tells me that it will not fly again until its engines are changed. Can you take me with you?’
‘Oh, I think we can manage that,’ Yeoman told him. He looked at Wells and Dalton. ‘We’ll take the Vampire along, and the colonel can ride in the second seat.’ The Venom wing had a solitary Vampire TII trainer, which was used for a variety of duties. It would come in useful, Yeoman thought, if he needed a fast communications aircraft.
An hour later, after some welcome tea and further briefings, they were on their way back to Akrotiri, taking Colonel Al-Saleh with them. With a thousand and one things to take care of before the impending move, there would be no rest for any of them.
Behind the scenes, the massive organization necessary to bring help to Muramshir was sliding into gear with astonishing speed. Yeoman’s Venom wing was the ‘teeth force’, to be deployed rapidly and hold the fort, but a flurry of signals and orders made certain that the larger forces earmarked to follow it would do so without undue delay. In Kenya, the four infantry battalions were alerted and ordered to stand by with full kit; in Germany, a squadron of Canberra strike aircraft suddenly received a warning that a move to an unspecified overseas destination might be on the cards; in the United Kingdom, a battalion of the Parachute Regiment was pulled out of its exercise area in the Scottish Highlands and moved quickly south to be encamped close to the big RAF Transport Command base at Lyneham in Wiltshire. The men predicted confidently that they must be getting ready to move to Egypt, for the name of Muramshir was not yet on everyone’s lips.
All that was needed now was time; and buying time was the heavy responsibility that now faced Yeoman and his two Venom squadrons. He was eager to get on with the job, impatient a
t the small but inevitable delays that crept into the schedule. As the day wore on he grew increasingly short-tempered, and was annoyed with himself because it was happening. Wells and Dalton, who knew him well, tolerated his grumpy mood.
‘You ought to ease up a bit, boss,’ Dalton admonished him mildly after he had heard Yeoman deliver a blistering attack over the phone on some unfortunate individual in the stores who had failed to requisition some spares. ‘You’ll give yourself a heart attack, one of these days.’ Yeoman’s retort was unprintable.
His mood improved a little later that afternoon, when the promised Beverley transports came lumbering into Akrotiri, looking oddly old-fashioned with their fixed undercarriages. They taxied in to park beyond the twin lines of Venoms, their massive 162-foot wing-span dwarfing the jets. Yeoman, feeling in need of a break, took twenty minutes off to have a look round one, and came away awed by the Beverley’s sheer size. The huge cargo hold resembled a miniature hangar; from it, ladders led up to the flight deck, where the four crew members sat thirty feet above the ground, and to the passenger deck, which had comfortable seating for forty people. Another fifty could, if necessary, be accommodated in less comfort on folding seats in the cargo hold. Four Bristol Centaurus engines took the great machine plodding through the air at about 200 mph.
‘Don’t be fooled by our rather cumbersome appearance,’ Yeoman was told by the commander of the Beverley detachment, Squadron Leader Mark Hayman — an immaculate individual who wore a white flying overall with his squadron’s crest on the left breast pocket. ‘The Beverley will take off in less than six hundred yards, depending on weight, and she’ll come to a stop in under 250 yards. As soon as all the wheels are on the ground we open up the engines with the propellers in reverse pitch to assist braking, you see. With reverse pitch, we can taxi backwards if we need to. The only real drawback with the aircraft is all the bloody steps we have to climb to get up to the flight deck; you need three hands, if you’re carrying a nav bag at the time.’
Hayman told Yeoman that two of the squadron’s aircraft were carrying out a shuttle service between the United Kingdom and Vienna, carrying medical supplies and food, mostly dried milk, to help the refugees who were pouring across the border from stricken Hungary. ‘There are literally thousands of the poor beggars camped around Vienna Airport, looking for some way out,’ he said. ‘It’s tragic to see them, especially the kids. God knows what will happen to them.’
Although he did not condone what was happening in Budapest, Yeoman could not bring himself to feel particularly emotional about the Hungarians. They had, after all, fought the Russians twice in half a century on Germany’s side, so it was small wonder that the Russians wanted to keep them under their heel. Russian action in Hungary was one thing, and by no means a pretext for going to war with the Soviet Union; Russian action, or the threat of it, in Muramshir was quite another.
Darkness fell over Akrotiri, but the ground crews continued to work under arc lights, checking every last technical detail before the Venoms set out on their 1,700-mile flight. The first leg of the route would take them north-east to Van, in Turkey, then south-east to Shiraz in Iran, slipping through the narrow corridor between Iraq and the Soviet Republic of Georgia. There was no room for navigational error here; a few weeks earlier, a Vickers Viking on a routine transport flight between Turkey and Pakistan, via Iran, had vanished without trace in this area. The buzz was that it had strayed into Soviet air space, and that Russian fighters had shot it down.
By 0300, everything was ready. The Venom pilots had a final briefing, and then snatched some breakfast. Within the hour Yeoman was leading the first section of four jets down the runway and climbing away into the dawn light. Not for the first time in his career he wondered what lay ahead of him.
Chapter Six
The last leg of the venoms’ flight to Muramshir, a 350-mile hop from Shiraz in Iran, was delayed by unexpected heavy rain that reduced visibility to half a mile for more than an hour. When the Venoms finally took off, it was under a wan and sickly sky, their wheels kicking up spray from the runway, but the clouds began to break up as the aircraft crossed the Gulf, and they arrived over Faraz, the capital of Muramshir, to find the town bathed in morning sunlight.
In the streets of Faraz everything came to a stop. People halted in their tracks as the Venoms swept low overhead, staring up at first in alarm at the screech of twenty-four jet engines and the sight of the unfamiliar twin-tailed aircraft, then shouting to one another in jubilation as the handful who recognized the roundels on the Venoms’ wings cried out the news that the Ingleezi had, indeed, come to Muramshir’s rescue.
The Venoms streaked over the nearby airport at one thousand feet in sections of four, line abreast, and broke into line astern downwind, preceded by the solitary Vampire trainer that carried Colonel Al-Saleh.
As there seemed to be a complete absence of air traffic control and of any ground personnel to marshal the aircraft, Yeoman instructed his pilots over the radio to disperse their Venoms around the field in case the Khoratis tried a surprise attack. For the same reason, one section of four Venoms was to be placed on immediate readiness; it would be uncomfortable for the pilots, who were already weary and sweaty after their flight, but they would be relieved in an hour’s time by another section, and so on.
Yeoman led his section to a spot close to the airport buildings, where the Vampire was already parked, and allowed the de Havilland Ghost turbojet to idle for half a minute to stabilize the engine temperatures before turning off the high pressure fuel cock and shutting down the electrics.
He slid back the perspex canopy, undid his seat and parachute harness and climbed down from the cockpit, inserting the safety pins into his ejection seat before he did so. This was normally the job of the ground crew, but they had yet to arrive and it seemed that Faraz Airport was sadly lacking in ground staff.
It was already hot, and would get much hotter later on. Yeoman made a mental note to have protective covers rigged over the Venoms’ cockpits, otherwise it would be like climbing into a metal oven.
Colonel Al-Saleh was waiting to greet him, together with some senior army officers to whom Yeoman was introduced, and whose names he immediately forgot; Al-Saleh was the important figure, and it was he who would be responsible for liaising with the RAF detachment. He told Yeoman that the Sultan, whose palace was half an hour’s drive away, wished to meet him and his squadron commanders, and was slightly put out when Yeoman informed him politely that protocol would have to wait.
‘I don’t wish to seem discourteous,’ Yeoman said, ‘but we might have to fight a war at any moment, and I want to make sure that we are in a position to do it. Now, you’ve told me that the Sultan has kindly offered to accommodate the pilots in his palace, but it’s too far from the airfield. I want them to be billeted close to the aircraft. The Beverleys are bringing some tents with them, and they’ll have to do until we can find somewhere more comfortable. And I need an operations room, too, preferably one in or near the control tower.’
An hour later, Yeoman had become thoroughly depressed by the situation at Faraz; the Muramshiris had absolutely no idea of the requirements of a modern fighting squadron, and it was becoming very clear that the RAF personnel would have to sort out just about everything for themselves, from washing facilities upwards. Much of this organization would have to wait until the ground crews arrived, which would be some hours yet. In the meantime, the best he could do was to ensure that his pilots were rested and fed, and try to establish what was happening in the north of the country.
The intelligence that trickled through to Faraz was scanty, and based on radio information sent back by the thin screen of Muramshiri Army units deployed to the area south of the oilfield. The Khoratis, now heavily reinforced, were holding their positions but were as yet making no move to strike southwards.
Yeoman, who had been discussing the situation with Colonel Al-Saleh, suddenly reached a decision.
‘I think,’ he said, �
��that I’ll stick my neck out and fly up there to take a look for myself. Do you fancy coming along for the ride?’
Al-Saleh looked at him. ‘But you have orders to operate only to the south of the oilfield,’ he objected. ‘Might not the sight of one of your Venoms provoke the Khoratis into action before your main forces arrive?’
Yeoman grinned at him. ‘Who said anything about Venoms?’
He pointed across the airfield to where several piston-engined aircraft were parked, including the Muramshir Air Arm’s two B-26 light bombers. ‘Are they serviceable? The B-26S, I mean?’
Al-Saleh looked doubtful. ‘I think one of them might be,’ he said. ‘It was flying the other day.’
‘Well then, why don’t we use it for a spot of reconnaissance?’ Yeoman said. ‘In fact, I’m surprised no one has done so already.’
Al-Saleh looked embarrassed. ‘Unfortunately — or perhaps fortunately — I am not responsible for the operations of the Air Arm,’ he said. ‘It has only a few personnel, and they do not fly frequently. Nevertheless, I shall find a pilot and we shall make the flight.’
‘No, never mind that,’ Yeoman grunted. ‘I’ll fly it myself. I flew one once at Boscombe Down; that was years ago, but I think I can remember where everything is. I’ll need someone to do the map-reading for me, though, as I’m not familiar with the terrain.’
‘I myself shall come with you,’ Al-Saleh told him, and issued some rapid orders to a young officer who was standing close by. The man went off to round up some ground crew.
Three-quarters of an hour later, as he taxied out for take-off in the B-26, Yeoman was beginning to regret his decision. The light bomber was, to use his own expression, ‘a bloody bag of nails’. Everything seemed to be working all right, according to the instruments, but there was a lot of unaccountable vibration which, to his finely-tuned pilot’s senses, told him that all was far from well. It got worse as he opened up the two Double Wasp engines to full power for take-off.
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