Venom Squadron

by Robert Jackson

  Yeoman felt himself beginning to lose his temper, and hoped that his face did not betray the contempt he felt. This young man, after all, was in an unchallenged position to put right some of the evils he had just described, if only he had the guts.

  ‘The things you speak of will change in time,’ he said curtly. ‘There is bound to be change, if you yourself help to create it.’

  ‘That’s just the point,’ the Sultan said, spreading his hands. ‘I’m not cut out for this job. I hate it. I want to be back in Europe among the people I’ve grown up with, people I like. This Khorati chap, Orabi, would be much more suited to running Muramshir than me. He seems to be making quite a good job of his own country.’

  ‘Then why did you ask for our help?’ Yeoman asked quietly, inwardly furious at the young Sultan’s attitude. The other’s eyes widened.

  ‘Why did I ask?’ He laughed suddenly. ‘This might astonish you. I didn’t. It was the Council of Ministers and the Chiefs of Staff who requested help from your government, not me. All I did was sign the bit of paper they put in front of me, just for a quiet life. Otherwise, they’d have made my life a misery. After all, put yourself in my place. I want to get out, for good. What better way to do it painlessly than to have someone else take over power here, and all the responsibility that goes with it?’ Yeoman rose to his feet, throwing protocol to one side. He felt like hitting this well-groomed, smooth young man between the eyes. The Sultan smiled up at him disarmingly.

  ‘Now you’re angry,’ he said. ‘I thought you might be.’

  ‘No,’ said Yeoman, ‘not angry.’ It was not quite the truth. ‘Disappointed, maybe.’ He took a deep breath, thinking, in for a penny, in for a pound. ‘Now let me tell you something. I risked my neck this afternoon, and so did Colonel Al-Saleh. Neither of us particularly enjoyed the experience. A lot of my chaps are going to risk their necks too, before this is over; some of them may die. It makes no difference. We have a job to do. Whether you personally like the idea or not, we’re going to defend your bloody country, at least until I have orders to the contrary from my government.’

  The Sultan stared up at him, eyebrows raised. ‘I could have you executed for those remarks,’ he said mildly.

  ‘Perhaps.’ Yeoman’s voice was icy. ‘The veneer of civilization is pretty thin, isn’t it? Go ahead, then. Call your guards. But before they get to me, it will give me great satisfaction to break your bloody neck.’

  He gazed at the younger man for a few moments, unblinking, then abruptly turned on his heel and strode from the room. Behind him, the Sultan laughed. The mockery in the sound made Yeoman’s hackles rise, but he didn’t look back.

  Al-Saleh was waiting for him outside, and he gave the colonel no inkling of what had taken place, being quite certain that the Sultan would say nothing. Together, they returned to the car — Yeoman having told Al-Saleh that the Sultan would see him later — and began the drive back to Faraz. The colonel, apparently oblivious of Yeoman’s dark mood, chattered away happily, talking mostly about the young Sultan; he was clearly devoted to the man.

  Yeoman felt bone-weary by the time they arrived back at the airport. It had been a long day, spiced with danger and frustration, but there was still a lot to be done before nightfall, when he would allow himself the luxury of a few hours’ sleep. His overtired mind raced with a speed that made his head feel as though it would burst; there were problems to be solved, and he was powerless to do anything about some of them. The engineers, for example, had carried out an inspection of the runway and had pronounced its surface dangerously weak; it would stand up to operations by the Venoms all right, but prolonged use by heavily-laden transport aircraft might cause it to break down. Then there was the question of fuel; there was already a small stockpile of aviation gasoline at Faraz, supplied by the Iranians, but that would not sustain operations for very long; a tanker was on its way up from Aden, but it would be forty-eight hours before it arrived.

  Then, behind all the other problems, was the business of the Sultan, an intelligent, thoroughly ‘westernized’ and educated man who, for some reason, had no wish to see his own country defended against aggression. The more he thought about it, the more Yeoman refused to believe that the Sultan was really looking for an easy way out; there was something else, a deeper reason which Yeoman had yet to fathom out. It niggled at the back of his mind, and left him with a feeling that this whole operation would be dogged by complications which no one had foreseen.

  Still, there was no point in voicing intangible fears; time enough to deal with emergencies as they arose, he thought. Meanwhile, the build-up of the ‘teeth’ forces in Muramshir continued. The Beverleys departed, heading back to Cyprus for another load of supplies and personnel, and at Faraz Airport the newcomers settled down for the night and tried to get as much rest as possible. No one knew what the morning might bring.

  There was only one disturbance. Sometime during the small hours, a pair of Hastings transports came throbbing out of the south-east, the pilots feeling their way cautiously down through the darkness towards Faraz Airport’s runway, delineated by a primitive flarepath. The transports touched down safely and taxied over to park on the far side of the airfield, their way lit by a jeep bearing two lanterns. The Hastings pilots had been warned to look out for it. The vehicle was crewed by two men who looked like Arabs and who wore Arab garments, but who were not Arabs; men who had materialized as if by magic out of the darkness, from the direction of the town.

  The Hastings’ Hercules engines were shut down, and silence fell once more over Faraz Airport. A door opened in the side of each transport, and a metal ladder appeared out of the interior. Dark silhouettes in the night, burdened with equipment, filed quickly down the ladders and formed up in silent ranks between the two aircraft. Within minutes, a hundred men were drawn up in the darkness.

  Only days earlier, they had been fighting terrorists in the Malayan jungle. The flight from Singapore had been long and wearying, and bed for them that night — or what remained of it — would consist of the hard ground, with a cape for covering. But the troopers of No 22 Special Air Service Regiment were well used to that.

  Chapter Seven

  John T. Sanderson squatted outside the door of the radio shack, gazing moodily at the sunrise and at the armed guard who stood with his back to it, in silhouette. The bastard was never more than a few yards away; not a hope in hell of making a break for it. And even if a guy did manage to slip away, Sanderson thought, where the hell would he go without food and water. Anyway, as far as he was concerned, it was out of the question. He had a definite responsibility, like it or not, to the thirty guys in the shack.

  It was decent of the guards, he thought sarcastically, to allow the prisoners outside one at a time for a breath of fresh air, if there was such a thing in this hell-hole. It stank inside the hut; what wouldn’t stink, with thirty unwashed male bodies in close proximity day and night for four days, allowed out under guard only to visit the latrine or to snatch a whiff of torpid desert air? He guessed that the conditions inside a second hut, a hundred yards away, must be pretty much the same. The other oil workers were being held there; he’d had glimpses of them, but no other contact.

  Still, they seemed to be in pretty good shape. The prisoners were being given plenty of water, and rations which, although monotonous, were at least adequate. Maybe if it hadn’t been for that paratroop officer, though, things might have been a great deal worse. The Khoratis looked a pretty tough bunch, and ruthless with it.

  Sanderson wondered about the man. He was a strange bird; a European for sure, or at least part European. Some kind of mercenary, maybe. Certainly highly professional, though, and one used to considerable powers of command, judging by the way he handled his men. Sanderson had hoped he’d come back and talk, let them know what was going to happen to them perhaps, but since that first encounter when the oil installations were captured he had only seen the man at a distance.

  There had been a bit of excitemen
t the day before, when that old B-26 had flown over. Sanderson hadn’t been outside at the time, so had not seen it, but an eye-witness said that a fighter that looked like a MiG had chased it off. They had all heard the sound of cannon fire, and then the man who was outside the hut had told the others he could see smoke, coming up over the horizon. Curtains for the B-26 and its crew, no doubt.

  There had been MiGs overhead at regular intervals since then, but no sign of the Muramshiri Air Force. Sanderson could not really blame the Muramshiris for failing to put in an appearance; he had some knowledge of Arabic, and from snatches of conversation he had heard between the guards he gathered that units of the Muramshiri Army had taken a considerable beating a couple of days earlier. Besides, he knew that the Muramshiri Air Force was practically non-existent. Things, generally, looked pretty bleak.

  A voice from the interior of the hut broke into his train of thought.

  ‘Hey, Sandy, you going to stay out there all morning? C’mon, let somebody else see daylight.’

  ‘Yeah. Hold on a minute. Something’s happening.’

  Sanderson stood up slowly and carefully, so as not to alarm the guard, and peered out across the compound, squinting against the glare of the sun. It was the noise that had first attracted his attention; the sound of tank engines, bursting into life. It was coming from the desert beyond the road that led to the airstrip, from the place where the Khoratis had concentrated their T-34S and self-propelled guns.

  ‘What’s going on, Sandy?’ The voice from inside the hut was insistent.

  ‘I’m not sure yet. Wait a bit.’ Against the rising sun Sanderson could see the dark hulls of tanks in motion, crawling slowly across the horizon. They were moving from left to right across the sunrise, heading south, and as Sanderson watched the sun’s light was dimmed by the dust clouds they stirred up. The sight of an armoured regiment on the move was impressive, and even the Khorati guard had momentarily forgotten his responsibilities and had turned to watch.

  ‘It may be just an exercise,’ Sanderson said, ‘but it looks as though the Khoratis are starting their drive south. There are tanks on the move, lots of them. It’s hard to see how many, because of all the dust, but I’ve counted forty or fifty so far. Looks like they’ve got support vehicles with them, too — quite a number of trucks, maybe carrying infantry and, I guess, fuel and ammo.’

  ‘I hope to Christ they get it over with soon,’ said the voice inside the hut, ‘then maybe they’ll let us go home.’

  ‘Quit complaining,’ Sanderson grunted. ‘You get three meals a day here, and you don’t have to work. Think of it as a vacation.’ Suddenly, he lowered his voice a little. ‘Hold it, we’ve got company.’

  The Khorati guard suddenly snapped to attention, his machine-pistol held rigidly across his chest, as three men approached at a rapid pace. Sanderson had no difficulty in recognizing the blue-eyed paratroop officer; he was flanked by two NCOS. There was a very purposeful air about all three of them as they halted a few feet away from the American.

  The officer stood with his hands behind his back and nodded a greeting.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Sanderson. I hope you and your men managed to sleep well?’

  ‘Sleep?’ the American snarled. ‘How the hell do you expect us to sleep, in that God-awful dump! It stinks to heaven in there. We want out, mister, and we want out soon. There’s half a dozen different nationalities in there, and you can bet your sweet ass that our governments won’t take this lying down. Not the government of the United States of America, at any rate. So why don’t you just — ’

  The paratroop officer held up a hand, interrupting him. ‘Your governments will do nothing, Mr Sanderson. They have already been informed that you are alive and well, and under the protection of the Khorati Army. They will not risk any enterprise that might endanger your lives. You will be released in due course, have no fear of that. In the meantime, have you had breakfast?’

  ‘No. We haven’t.’ Sanderson was surprised and annoyed by the sulky tone in his own voice. This guy seemed to take the wind out of his sails at every turn.

  ‘Then I shall arrange for it, immediately.’ The officer rapped out some orders to the NCOS, who went off at the double.

  ‘We still want to know what’s going on,’ Sanderson protested. ‘We have a right to that, at least. The guys in there are getting really restless; one or two of them might try to make a break for it, and I don’t want to see anybody get shot.’

  The officer looked at him for a few seconds, then said: ‘I can assure you, Mr Sanderson, that you will be quite safe here. In fact, you will be safer here than anywhere else. My paratroops have orders not only to guard you, but also to protect you. From any threat at all. Does that satisfy you?’

  ‘No, it doesn’t. Far from it. You mention a threat. What sort of threat are we likely to be under, unless it comes from your armed thugs?’

  The paratroop officer shrugged off the insult. ‘My armed thugs, as you call them, are the last people you need worry about.’ He looked hard at the American, then said: ‘Trust me, Mr Sanderson. I am not your enemy, believe me. More than that I cannot say at this moment. Now, here comes your breakfast. We’ll talk again later.’

  A truck used by the Khorati paratroops as a mobile field kitchen came lurching across the compound. The paratroop officer smiled, then turned on his heel and strode away, leaving Sanderson more than a little perplexed.

  The American would have been even more puzzled if he had been able to observe the paratroop officer’s actions a few minutes later. Crossing the compound, the man made for a signals truck which was parked in the open, well clear of the site buildings, and climbed into the back. The vehicle had a single occupant, a sergeant major whose face and physique denoted supreme fitness, despite the fact that he must have been approaching middle age. He rose respectfully as the officer climbed aboard.

  ‘Is all well, sir?’ he asked. The officer nodded.

  ‘All is well,’ he answered, in Arabic. ‘Have there been any weakening of loyalties?’

  ‘None, sir. The men are with us, for the sake of Khorat.’

  ‘For the sake of us all,’ the officer murmured. He smiled at the sergeant major affectionately. ‘Thank you, Siraj. God knows, I stand in need of your support.’

  The other smiled back. ‘We have known one another too long, sir, for me to think of following any other path. Do you wish me to stand guard? Is it time?’

  The officer nodded. ‘It is indeed time, Siraj.’

  The sergeant major picked up a machine-pistol and went outside, leaving the officer to sit down behind the truck’s radio equipment, which was already switched on and warmed up. He put on a set of headphones and began to make careful adjustments to the frequency selector. Satisfied at last that he was properly tuned in, he glanced through the rear window of the truck to make certain that all was clear; there was no one in the vicinity but the sergeant major, who was seated on an upturned oil drum and smoking a cigarette as though in deep relaxation.

  The officer turned back to the radio and pressed the microphone switch, uttering a few brief code words which would have been unintelligible to anyone except himself and the recipient. A reply, tinny and metallic in his headset, came back almost immediately.

  Quickly and urgently, for time was important and he was afraid in case his radio message might be monitored, the paratroop officer began to speak.

  At Faraz, Yeoman and his staff had succeeded in setting up an Operations Room of sorts in a ground-floor room of the control tower building. The tower itself was now manned by RAF personnel, who were striving hard to get its aging communications equipment working.

  Yeoman had been designated as detachment commander for the time being, which meant that he was theoretically in control of all air and land operations conducted by the UK forces in Muramshir’s defence while the military build-up continued, and he now found both a friend and an ally in the person of Major Swalwell, who commanded the newly-arrived SAS contingent fr
om Malaya. Swalwell and his men had worked closely with the RAF in their Malayan jungle operations, to which Yeoman himself was no stranger, and he was well aware of the life-and-death importance of keeping good liaison with the pilots, who might have to carry out air strikes within yards of where his own men were deployed.

  Yeoman explained the problems that confronted him to the SAS officer, who already seemed to have an astounding knowledge of the area and its terrain.

  ‘If the Khoratis launch an all-out attack now,’ Yeoman explained, ‘we are going to have to hold them with the forces at our disposal for forty-eight hours, possibly more, until the vanguard of the main “teeth” force arrives by sea. Transport Command will be flying in troops from this afternoon, but the initial build-up will be slow and we’ll be desperately short of vehicles and artillery.’ He bent over a map that lay outspread on the table, and pointed to a feature a few miles north of Faraz.

  ‘See this? It’s a ridge, running in a curve towards the coast. There are only two between here and the oilfield — I nearly flew into the other one yesterday — and that’s too far away for our purposes. Now, I’m suggesting that we deploy whatever forces we have along the closer ridge; it sits astride the track running north-south, and the area to the west is broken by rock formations and gullies which would make life very difficult for tanks.’

  ‘So the Khoratis would have to take the ridge before they could launch an attack on Faraz itself,’ Swalwell said.

  ‘That’s right, and before they reach the ridge they’ll have a long haul across the open desert where they’ll be wide open to air attack. The closer they come, in fact, the better chance we’ll have of stopping them, because the Venoms will be able to fly more sorties. Moreover, as we found out in the Western Desert during the war, the further armour has to travel, the more it becomes afflicted by problems such as shortage of fuel, mechanical breakdowns and so on.’