by Peter Cave
First things first. He busied himself hauling in his chute, gathering the billowing folds of material around his feet. Luckily there was only a faint breeze, which made the job comparatively easy. Stamping the gathered parachute into a lumpy ball, he held it between his feet and released his harness straps. He moved his head slowly from side to side, taking in his surroundings and attempting to locate the rest of his men.
In the eerie, greenish glow of the passive night goggles the surrounding terrain was like a schoolboy’s impression of a lunar landscape. OK, so it was not exactly desert, Hailsham told himself as he started to make out a little detail and some sense of his surroundings. It was open steppe country – a vast, flattish area of thin grasses and stunted bush and scrub. In the far distance, virtually making up the horizon, the foothills of the mountain terrain which should have marked the outer perimeter of their original drop zone showed up as a jagged, darker green line.
It was difficult to make an accurate assessment of distance with the PNGs, but Hailsham estimated that the first line of hills was at least eight miles as the crow flies. With first light probably less than two hours away, the immediate problem was obvious. Even if they started out immediately, they would be dangerously exposed long before they could reach cover. What was even more worrying were the half-dozen or so pinpricks of light which he could make out between them and the foothills. Obviously camp-fires, but whether they were of nomadic Kazakh tribesmen or guerrilla forces, there was no way of knowing.
Something moved in Hailsham’s peripheral vision – a dark, lumpy shape, bouncing or rolling towards him. As his head whirled to confront the sudden menace, his hand was already flying to his hip, clawing at the holstered Browning.
The tension in his body, and the adrenalin rush which had triggered it, seeped away in relief as the wispy, vaguely spherical object brushed against his legs and stopped. Hailsham reached out to touch its dry and brittle fragility. It was a clump of sage brush, torn loose from its tenuous roots in the dry and dusty steppe soil and bowled along on the breeze. He flicked it away again, and watched it continue its erratic course across the arid plain.
Other dark shapes were approaching him now, but these were identifiable and comfortingly familiar. Andrew loomed up out of the darkness first, like a shadow within a shadow. Behind him, Hailsham could pick out the reassuring bulk of the Thinker and the slightly shorter figure of Jimmy.
Andrew glanced at the Browning, which Hailsham still held in his hand. ‘Expecting trouble, boss? Or were you planning to fire off a salute to greet us?’
Hailsham holstered the pistol. ‘Where are the others? Did everyone make it down safely?’
The sergeant nodded. ‘No problems. They’re waiting over by the CADS, about 300 yards that way.’ He jerked his thumb back over his shoulder. ‘I reckon you must have caught a last-minute updraft or something.’
‘It sure as hell wasn’t a thermal,’ Hailsham muttered, shivering. He reached down to pick up his chute, anxious to start moving. ‘I suppose you’ve already noticed that we have company?’ he asked, jerking his head towards the foothills.
‘We’ve also got a few problems,’ the Thinker confirmed. ‘Cyclops seems to think they’ll probably have dogs, and we just happen to be directly downwind right now.’
‘Shit!’ Hailsham hissed. It was something he had not considered, and the last thing they needed at that particular moment was further complications. He fell into step behind Andrew as he began to lead the way back to the main force.
Barry had already opened the CADS container and broken out a couple of folding shovels. He and Tweedledum were busy digging a trench in which to bury the parachutes. Hailsham tossed his own into the pile.
‘So, what’s the plan, boss?’ Tweedledee asked. ‘Do we bed in or are we going to get moving?’
‘Damned good question,’ Hailsham answered. Under normal circumstances, it would have been standard practice to seek out somewhere to dig a trench hide for the morning. Exposed as they were, they might just as well erect a bloody great flagpole instead. ‘Short of us all doing about a dozen four-minute miles in succession, I’d say our choice of options was strictly limited.’ He broke off, staring out across the open ground towards the foothills once again. The cluster of camp-fires seemed to be concentrated in one small area. Probably a sheltered gully between two ridges of hills, he guessed. Which meant that the campers, whoever they were, probably had a clear forward view over the plain but restricted vision on either side of them. There seemed only one possibility that offered a fair chance of making progress without being spotted.
‘We’ll split into our two patrols now,’ Hailsham announced. ‘It’ll mean a pretty lengthy detour, but if we fan out we stand a reasonable chance of getting far enough before daybreak to dig in somewhere that offers at least partial cover from any OP in those hills. With a bit of luck, they’ll be shipping out at first light anyway – in which case they’ll either have their backs to us or they’ll cut straight through between us.’
‘And if they don’t?’ Andrew asked.
Hailsham shrugged. ‘Then we’ll have them caught in a pincer between us. If they prove to be hostile, we’ll at least have a fighting edge. We can hit them from two sides.’
Andrew nodded. It was as good a plan as any, given the circumstances. ‘Of course, the good news is that it could just turn out to be a bunch of nomads,’ he pointed out. ‘In which case, if we’re lucky, we’ll all get to eat goat stew for breakfast.’
‘I liked the sound of baked eagle better,’ Cyclops observed. ‘Smelly bastards, goats.’
‘You ain’t gonna reek of violets yourself by the time you’ve humped all your gear over to those hills,’ Andrew pointed out. ‘It might be bloody cold, but you’ll still work up a sweat under those layers of Gore-tex.’
‘It’s not as bad as I expected,’ Jimmy said brightly. ‘I’ve been in colder places. My old lady’s bedroom, for a start.’
‘You wait until we get up in those mountains,’ Tweedledum warned him. ‘Your old lady’s bedroom will seem like a Moroccan whorehouse.’
‘His old lady’s bedroom is a Moroccan whorehouse,’ Tweedledee put in, raising a good-natured laugh.
Hailsham let the merriment die away. ‘Right, we’d better get going,’ he said finally. ‘And once we do get moving, we cut the bullshit, is that understood? All communication will be on a strictly business-only basis. Sound travels a long way in open country like this.’
‘I suppose that rules out a nice stirring marching song?’ Cyclops ventured.
Hailsham glared at him. ‘Trooper, I’ll kick your arse if you so much as break wind,’ he promised. ‘Right, let’s do it.’
The men broke naturally into the two agreed patrols – Tweedledee, Tweedledum and Cyclops staying with Hailsham; Jimmy, Barry and the Thinker with Andrew. They busied themselves sharing out the supplies and spare ammunition. Andrew slung the heavy Stinger launcher over his shoulder, forcing a grin in Hailsham’s direction as he felt the full weight of his extra burden. ‘And, yes, I’m still glad I insisted on bringing it,’ he said out loud, in answer to an unspoken question.
Fully laden, the two patrols lined up, facing their objective. Hailsham scanned the far ridge of hills through his PNGs, seeking out a primary RV to meet at if they both managed to evade the encampment successfully. Just above and behind the site of the camp-fires, he could make out a long, flat ridge broken by a single high, rocky outcrop. As a landmark, it was good enough. He pointed it out to Andrew.
‘If we make it to the hills safely, we RV there at 10.00 hours tomorrow,’ he instructed.
The sergeant nodded. ‘We’ll be waiting for you,’ he promised. ‘Any prefences for lunch?’
Hailsham smiled, clapping him on the shoulder. ‘Just be there,’ he said.
The patrols moved out at a tangent from each other, the laden bergen on each man’s back making them look like a small caravan of strange, two-legged dromedaries. There were no farewells. To sa
y goodbye admitted the possibility that you might not see one another again. Fanning apart in a wide ‘V, they were soon out of sight of each other, even with the aid of the PNGs.
No, he did not regret bringing the Stinger along, Andrew reminded himself, although the extra 65lb of the launcher and the single missile he carried made him feel like a pack-mule. Even so, he still hoped he would not have to use it in anger. For there was no real enemy. If they were forced to kill, it would be for all the wrong reasons, and there would be no pride, no glory, in that.
The thought depressed him. It was a shit mission, and had been from the start. The only enemy, if there was one at all, was what was lurking in wait for them up at that research complex. An invisible enemy, an unknown threat. And the SAS were soldiers, not bloody Ghostbusters. Andrew sighed, thinking about it. Yes, it was a shit mission all right. And he and his men were being used like pieces of toilet paper.
They had covered no more than about seven miles, and it was already becoming noticeably lighter. To his right, away from the hills, Andrew could see a misty band of lighter green creating a thin stripe between the darkness of the terrain and the sky. He raised his hand to the PNGs, lifting them away from his eyes. The stripe was a faint ochre glow now, sandwiched between two slabs of blackness. In a short time it would begin to glow red, then golden, as the early morning sun pushed its umbra ahead of it.
Andrew’s gaze travelled to his left, picking out the twinkling of the camp-fires once again. They were closer now, but they seemed higher than they had appeared from their original position. He snapped the goggles back into place and stopped, raising his hand in the air.
The Thinker closed up on Andrew’s right shoulder, lowering his mouth to his ear. ‘What’s up, boss?’ he whispered.
Andrew pointed ahead, slightly over to his right. ‘Am I imagining it, or is the terrain sloping down ahead of us?’ he asked.
The corporal strained his eyes into the gloom. It was difficult to define contour or elevation, but there did appear to be a shallow but sustained incline ahead of them. ‘Yeah, I think you’re right,’ he agreed. ‘But we should be going up, not down, if we’re heading towards the hills. What do you reckon?’
Andrew sucked at his teeth. He was not sure, but it was a strong hunch. ‘I reckon we might have just found ourselves a little bonus,’ he said quietly.
Barry had moved up to join them. Behind him, Jimmy kept his distance, remaining in the Tail-end Charlie position. Andrew waved him forward.
‘Listen, I want you to skirt out to the right,’ he told the Scot as he finally came near. ‘Sweep around in an arc and then rejoin us about 200 yards ahead. Thinker and I reckon there’s some sort of depression over there. Check it out, will you?’
‘You got it, boss,’ Jimmy said, slipping away as Andrew shrugged the heavy Stinger into a more comfortable carrying position and began to move off again.
By the time Jimmy had finished his sweep and moved back to rejoin them again, Andrew could see him coming from a good 200 yards away. It was definitely getting lighter – and rapidly. He hoped that Jimmy was going to confirm his suspicions. He was in luck.
‘You were right, boss,’ Jimmy whispered. ‘It’s like a very shallow gully, but it gets steeper as you move down. My guess is that it’s a dried-up wadi that’s been scoured out by the spring snow-melt coming down from the mountains.’
Andrew could not repress a wry grin. ‘I’m impressed, Trooper,’ he said. ‘Nobody told me that you’d graduated in geology.’ Serious again, he added: ‘How deep do you reckon it gets? Enough to give us cover?’
But Jimmy was way ahead of him. ‘Let’s put it this way, boss. I couldn’t even see you, let alone that ridge of hills over yonder. Looks like we’ve just found ourselves a place to hole up for a few hours.’
It was all the confirmation Andrew needed. ‘Right, let’s go for it,’ he hissed, breaking away to the right. ‘If we can’t see our friends up in the hills, it’s a pretty safe bet they won’t be able to see us, either. The sooner we get dug in, the better.’
Following his lead, the patrol began to move slowly back down the path taken by the Glaswegian. A few minutes later, the last of the camp-fire lights winked out of view as they dropped down below the lip of the shallow ridge and continued their descent.
Major Hailsham had also been acutely aware of the imminent approach of dawn and the urgent need to find some sort of cover. He scanned the bleak terrain ahead with increasing frustration. There was nothing that could be turned to their favour, not even a shallow dip in the ground. It was beginning to look as though they would have to do it the hard away.
He slipped off his PNGs and turned to face the rising sun. A broad band of reddish-gold light was now visible over the horizon. He estimated that they probably had less than three-quarters of an hour before they would be illuminated against the barren background of the steppe like flies on fly-paper.
Time, then, was of the essence – and location seemed not to make much difference. Hailsham brought the patrol to a halt, summoning in Cyclops from ‘Charlie’ position. ‘Looks like we’re going to have to dig in here,’ he told the men flatly. ‘It’s not exactly summer camp, but it’s going to have to do.’
They all knew what to do. Tweedledum and Tweedledee took a pair of shovels and began to dig out a long, narrow trench. In true SAS tradition, Hailsham dropped his bergen and knelt down to help, scratching at the earth with his bare hands. Cyclops, showing the sort of initiative which had earned him more than one official accolade in the past, sat down on his behind and began to scrape away soil with the heels of his boots.
It was a tough and laborious job. The red, dry and crumbly earth was more like coarse sand, sliding back down the sides of the trench almost as fast as they could scoop it out. Eventually, however, they had managed to gouge out a rough V-shaped slit in the ground, about six feet deep at its lowest point and about five feet wide. It was not much, but for the next few hours, at least, it would be home. Now all they needed was something to cover the top once they were inside. Hailsham remembered his alarming encounter with the rolling clump of sage brush. Where there was one, there could be others, he rationalized. Leaving the three troopers to finish off the slit-trench as best they could, he went in search of further roving herbage.
He returned some ten minutes later, dragging four wispy balls behind him. With the laces from his boots, he lashed them loosely together and held them down with one foot as he rummaged through his bergen for a coil of climbing rope. Finally, after weighing the balls down with his bergen, he ushered the men into the hastily improvised hide and waited for them to settle down as comfortably as was possible. The three men chose to arrange themselves like a rowing team, each sitting behind the other’s back with his knees pulled up.
Hailsham found himself thinking of the games of ‘Sardines’ he had played as a child, and it made him smile. Scrambling down into the single space left, he pulled his bergen in on top of him and arranged the sage brush above his head until it virtually covered the top of the trench. With luck, from the outside it would just look like a clump of drifting grasses which had bunched themselves together. As long as no one decided to take a closer look, it should suffice.
Hailsham tapped Tweedledee lightly on the shoulder. ‘You and Tweedledum try and grab an hour’s kip,’ he hissed in the trooper’s ear. ‘Cyclops and I will keep watch until daybreak, and if our friends don’t move on, we’ll have to think again.’
Tweedledee nodded silently, and passed the message on to his mate. The two troopers lolled sideways against the side of the trench hopefully, although the chances of getting any real sleep were minimal. They both fully realized how exposed they all really were. The situation was hardly conducive to relaxation. At best, the next few hours would be a tense and tedious waiting game.
Chapter 11
It was the sort of morning that had inspired countless writers and poets over the centuries, Andrew Winston among them. In other circumstances, he w
ould have seen it as the start to a beautiful day. Lines from one of his own early efforts ran through his head as he surveyed the blood-red orb of the dawn sun beginning to lift away from the knife-edge of the horizon.
Morning
And the blood-streaked labour pains of light
Striate
Across the swollen belly of the dawn.
He smiled ruefully. One day he would finish that particular poem, equating the sunrise to a new birth. Right now, more urgent problems occupied his thoughts.
He slithered out of the hollow which he and his men had scooped out of the side of the gully and began to crawl up its sloping side on his belly. Reaching the top, he peered cautiously over the lip, bringing a pair of powerful non-reflective binoculars up to his eyes.
Despite the earliness of the hour, the encampment was already a hive of bustling activity. The camp-fires had been doused, and Andrew could make out individual figures scurrying about, packing up their blankets and equipment. He nodded to himself, smiling. It looked as though Hailsham had been right: they were preparing to move out.
They were a motley bunch, perhaps forty to fifty strong. Some wore vaguely military-style uniforms or camouflaged fatigues, while others were clearly dressed as civilians, swathed in brightly striped khalats, topped by turbans or embroidered skullcaps. With a slight sense of shock, Andrew noticed that there were also several women and children in the party.
The Thinker had slithered up the side of the ridge to join him. ‘Friend or foe, boss?’ he whispered in the sergeant’s ear.
Andrew handed him the binoculars. ‘Take a look for yourself,’ he murmured, waiting silently while the other man scanned the encampment.
Finally lowering them again, the Thinker glanced sideways with a faint shrug. ‘At a guess, I’d say they were a bunch of refugees with an armed escort,’ he volunteered.
‘That’s what I thought,’ said Andrew, nodding. ‘But not very well armed, from the look of things. All I saw were a few old breech-loading rifles. No heavy guns, no mortars, as far as I could see.’ He took back the binoculars, raising them to his eyes once again. ‘From the way they’re gathering their stuff together, I’d say they were getting ready to move up further into the hills.’