Stinger

by Stinger (retail) (epub)

  Jeff was brewing up and scratching at his insect bites. ‘Forget the brew,’ I said. ‘They’ve doubled the guard and they’re definitely watching us. Let’s get the hell out.’

  ‘We still have to come back.’

  ‘I know, but I’ll feel a lot safer with Dexy and the others around us.’

  There was a catch in his voice. ‘I won’t feel safe until I’m back in my local.’

  I looked at him again. He had deep black shadows under his eyes, and his clothes were loose on his frame. ‘That diet’s most certainly working,’ I said.

  ‘If you don’t eat or sleep, it’s amazing how much weight you can lose.’

  I kept a wary eye on the guards as we walked to the helicopter and began the preflight checks. They moved so that they could keep us in sight and I saw one speaking into his radio, but they made no attempt to interfere.

  I concentrated on the preparations for the flight and heaved a sigh of relief as both engines fired and the gauges and captions gave normal readings. ‘So far so good,’ I said. ‘Let’s get out of here. One more trip there and back, then it’s up to Dexy and the guys.’

  I taxied slowly towards the compound gates, then swung the heli round to take off facing away from the guards. If they started firing I wanted as much metal and armoured plate between us as possible. Once airborne, I kept in a tight spiral climb over the compound until we had reached three thousand feet, before levelling and turning west to follow the valley down towards Kabul. As we approached the pass I pulled back on the cyclic again, keeping the same margin between us and the ground as we climbed towards the summit.

  I saw the red Toyota still parked at the lookout and a huddle of figures nearby. I switched my gaze forward, looking over the ridge into the valley beyond.

  ‘Missile launch!’ Jeff shouted. ‘Dive! Dive! Dive!’

  I stamped down on the left rudder and rammed the cyclic forward, pulling a savage left-hand break. ‘Flares!’ I yelled, but it was unnecessary. The ritual drummed in on a thousand training missions was paying off.

  Jeff stabbed the flare release, counted down five seconds and then I heard the rattle and bang as he punched out another volley. I swung the Hydra nose-on to the Taliban lookout, masking the heat signature of our engines, and dumped the collective. The heli slid downwards in a barely controlled dive.

  A pinpoint of light trailing a pillar of smoke and flame flashed towards us. It passed so close to my face that instinct made me duck. ‘Look ou—’

  The rotors sucked at the grey smoke trail as it flashed past in a heartbeat and detonated in a huge ball of orange fire on the white heat of one of the flares.

  The ground was now an even greater danger; we were almost in free fall. The engines howled in protest as I grabbed the collective and dragged back the cyclic. I kicked the right rudder, trying to bring us level. Still we slid downwards.

  The Hydra responded to the controls with agonising slowness. It rocked slowly back into level flight and began to climb as I piled on the power. I glanced left and froze as the arc of the rotors sliced through the cedars, shredding the topmost branches. I kicked the rudder to swing us away, but our attempts to evade the missile had brought us back close to the summit of the pass. I heard rattles and cracks from below us and the whine of ricochets as rounds struck the cab. I jinked the heli right and left, then pushed the cyclic forward again, forcing the collective against the stops, racing to put the ridgeline between us and our attackers.

  I heard more rounds puncturing the cab and there was a crack and a shout of fright from Jeff as a round smashed through the Perspex of the side window and exited through the screen of the cockpit. Then we were skimming over the trees on the far side of the pass. I kept the heli at treetop height; another few seconds and we would be out of range of the guns.

  The heli juddered and lurched. At the same moment a warning siren began to whine and the smell of burning oil filled the cockpit. My eyes darted to the instruments, but Jeff was already calling it. ‘Engine fire. Shut-down sequence. Fuel cock.’

  Another couple of rounds ricocheted from the tail. ‘Shut.’

  ‘Extinguisher.’

  ‘On.’ I snapped the switch; the heli again juddered and slowed. I heard the engine note change and the beat of the rotors alter as gas flooded the engine. The stench of hot metal and burning oil intensified then began to fade and the cloud of smoke and steam was chopped away by the rotors.

  The rattle of rounds against the fuselage had stopped, but we were still banked steeply and descending. Vortices from the blades were throwing up plumes of dust from the ground beneath us. ‘Up, you bastard, up!’ I shouted, trying to coax every ounce of power from the one remaining engine.

  The Hydra righted and began to climb. I levelled almost at once, at just fifty feet. My eyes darted to the readings on the panel, looking for more trouble before it happened. The noise was deafening, the normal bass beat of the engines and the whoosh of the rotors undercut by a high-pitched, chattering whine.

  I gave it twenty more seconds at maximum power, then lowered the collective, nursing the engine a little. ‘Three options,’ I said. ‘Set down here, make for the compound at Kabul or take off for the border. Fuel?’

  ‘We’re okay for Kabul,’ Jeff said. ‘Maybe for the border too, but it’s very tight.’

  I checked the readings once more. The oil temperature was high. ‘Setting down here looks like the worst option to me. The Taliban would be on us within half an hour. They’ve tried to shoot us out of the air. I’m sure they’d have just as much fun shooting us on the ground.’

  I waited a few seconds, but Jeff was silent. ‘If we run for the border we may run out of fuel and have to come down inside Afghanistan anyway, and if we do that we’re blowing the mission.’

  ‘But if we go to Kabul, what are our options?’ Jeff said.

  ‘It’s for Dexy to call,’ I said. ‘If he wants to risk it, then that’s what we’ll have to do. You don’t know if those guys were shooting at us out of irritability or because we’re blown. If we are, then Dexy and the other guys, and Amica, are all in deep shit too.’

  I felt sick at the thought.

  I checked the gauges again. The oil temperature had risen a little further and the hydraulic pressure had dropped. I lowered the collective a fraction more.

  ‘So we’re going to Kabul?’ Jeff said.

  ‘What else can we do?’

  He didn’t reply.

  I kept the Hydra in level flight, doing my best to minimise the twists and turns as we followed the course of the river down the valley. Goats and a herd of sheep scattered as we flashed overhead. A few figures ran with them, the survival instinct hammered into them over years of raids by helicopter gunships. Other people remained motionless, so close below us that I could see their mouths opening and shutting as they stared upwards.

  Another Taliban position loomed on the ridgeline ahead. I eased the heli even lower and hugged the far side of the valley. I could feel the sweat trickling down my neck, and my hands were clenched rigid on the controls. I glanced sideways at the Taliban post and could see a row of heads outlined against the sky, but there was no firing. I breathed out as we crested the ridge and dropped into the next valley.

  The oil temperature was still rising, and twenty miles out from Kabul I heard an arrhythmic rattle beneath the chattering whine of the engine. It grew steadily louder, clanking like an old banger with its big end gone. The pulse of the engine began to slow and quicken, the heli decelerating and accelerating in time with it.

  I coaxed a little more height, my eyes fixed on the horizon, willing the Hydra towards Kabul. Neither of us spoke lest we broke the spell that was holding the heli in the air.

  Finally the Kabul skyline pierced through the dusty haze ahead of us, but I dared not relax. The engine noise forced any thought other than survival out of my head. I picked out the grey slab of the Qarga dam above the city, the curve of the sports stadium and a flash of sunlight reflecting from the
tiles of a mosque.

  The engine coughed, faltered, then picked up again. The heli dropped like a stone, slowed and strained to climb once more. I was whispering under my breath, ‘Come on. Come on. Come on.’

  I could see the perimeter of the compound ahead, the diamond pattern of the fence and the vicious coils of razor wire laid along the top.

  ‘Nothing fancy,’ Jeff said. ‘Let’s just get this crate on the deck.’

  I didn’t reply. I juggled the controls, making minute adjustments to our trim, all the time straining my ears for any change in the engine noise. I eased the cyclic forward, dropping the nose of the heli, as I saw the compound begin to open up ahead of us.

  The engine faltered again, rallied, and then there was an explosion as if a grenade had detonated over my head. There was a flash of silver, and a broken piston lashed out through the edge of the casing like a steel javelin, pursued by a shower of fragments.

  The sudden silence was broken only by the slowing beat of the rotors. The heli began to slide down and to the right. Instinct made me stamp on the rudder and fight the controls, but there was no engine to power them. The earth floor of the compound was barely thirty feet ahead of us and the same distance below.

  ‘It’s all right, we’re going to make—’

  The right wheel clipped the top strand of the perimeter wire and the heli toppled over. The still flailing rotors knifed into the ground and shattered one by one. Shards of broken metal flew through the air around us, gouging the walls of the cab.

  A second later we hit the dirt. The tail collapsed and snapped off, and we rolled over twice as the cab bounced and slithered to a halt in a cacophony of shattering metal and Perspex. My helmet smacked against the side strut and I blacked out.

  I came to, hanging upside down in my seat harness. I could hear the drip of leaking fluid, the hiss of steam and the ticking of hot metal as it cooled. I turned my head and winced as pain drilled through my temples, and a wave of nausea swept over me.

  Bile flooded the back of my throat. I swallowed and yelled at Jeff, ‘Out! Out! Out!’ I took a grip on the side strut, punched the release buckle on my harness and swung down on to the inside of the roof, gashing my shin in my haste to get my feet down first. I took most of Jeff’s weight as he released himself and slithered down alongside me. There was no door on his side, just a battered hole where one used to be. We crawled out, jumped to the ground and stumbled away from the heli as fast as we could.

  Boon and Tank sprinted out with fire extinguishers and doused the still smoking engine. Dexy grabbed my arm. ‘What the hell happened?’

  ‘Not here,’ I said, moving away from the circle of AMCO personnel who had gathered to gawp at the wreck. To my relief, the Taliban made no move as I limped away across the compound.

  Dexy and the others huddled around as we told them what had happened. When we had finished, he walked to the corner and called up base on the satphone, his voice low and his back turned. He broke the connection and sat silent for a couple of minutes. When he looked up, his face was set. ‘Right. The only reason why the Taliban here are not on our case already must be their lousy communications. We can’t expect that situation to last. Take only essentials.’ He glanced at me. ‘Make sure you bring those forged passes. We’ll toss everything in the back of one of the AMCO pickups and fuck off in that.’

  ‘To the border?’ Rami said.

  ‘No way. The operation isn’t blown yet, and the rest of the guys are still in the LUP. We’ll head south-west out of the city, as if we’re heading for Qandahar and the border, then go covert and double back on our tracks towards Konarlan. We’ll link up with the others, carry out the assault and then exfiltrate overland to the border.’ He glanced at me. ‘You and Jeff can take your pick. I don’t think that heli will be flying again. You can either E & E direct to the border and take your chances on your own, or you can travel with us, wait at the RV while we carry out the assault, and then E & E through the mountains with us.’

  Jeff’s expression was unreadable. I waited a few moments for him to speak, then shrugged my shoulders. ‘I’ve always preferred mountains to deserts. We’ll stick with you.’

  ‘Then let’s get to it.’

  ‘What about Amica?’

  ‘What about her?’ Rami’s tone was hostile.

  ‘If we’re blown, so’s she.’

  ‘That’s her problem. We’re here to carry out a mission, not rescue civilians.’

  I clenched my fists. ‘Amica has risked her neck for us for the last six years.’

  He ignored me, speaking directly to Dexy. ‘This mission is too important to be jeopardised by amateurs and women.’

  Dexy held up a hand. ‘We don’t have time for this.’ He glanced from Amica to Jeff and me. ‘We’re not leaving you here for the Taliban. We’ll take you with us, but if at any time I,’ – he stressed the personal pronoun, without looking at Rami – ‘I feel that you are in any way putting us at risk, you will be ditched and left to find your own way home. Now let’s go. Make your way to the pickup in ones or twos. Make it look casual and don’t carry so much kit that it looks like we’re moving out. Rami, give me a hand.’

  Rami shot him a furious look, but did as he was told.

  Dexy rummaged among the piles of AMCO stores. ‘No paint, damn it,’ he said. ‘This will have to do.’ He picked up a five-gallon drum of oil. They carried it out to the pickup, and leaned on the tailboard. Rami smoked a cigarette and the two of them began chatting, apparently without a care in the world.

  The rest of us sauntered over to join them a couple of minutes later. Amica was a few paces behind, shrouded in a blue burka. As the others stood in a circle, blocking the view of the guards at the gate, Jeff and I slid half a dozen jerrycans of petrol into the back.

  Dexy yawned and stretched and moved round to the driver’s side. I stopped him. ‘Best if I drive. If the shit hits the fan, we’d be better off with my hands on the wheel and yours on a rifle.’

  He nodded and got in the passenger side, the rest of them perched in the back.

  The guards stood up as we approached the gate and I slowed as if about to speak to them, then raised my hand in a wave and spun the wheel, slewing the pickup around, out of the gate.

  I drove through the outskirts of Kabul and along the Qandahar road for about forty minutes, the road tracking the left-hand bank of the river. Then we began to climb into the hills and the fields gave way to scrubby woodland. The road ahead of us lay empty as far as the next ridge. I glanced in the mirror, then jerked the wheel to the right. The pickup bumped down a track between the trees, down towards the river.

  I touched the brakes and without a word of command Tank and Boon jumped down and ran back up towards the road. Each tore a branch from a sapling as they ran and brushed away the tyre tracks from the verge.

  I turned the pickup around on the bank of the river, then parked among the trees, invisible from both the road and the river. Dexy looked at his watch. ‘We need to work fast. I want to be well east of Kabul before curfew.’

  While Tank and Boon covered the entrance to the track, Dexy and Rami huddled together studying maps and satellite images. Jeff, Amica and I used rags to smear oil all over the bodywork, the roof of the cab and the number plates. As soon as the pickup was covered, we scooped up handfuls of dust and sand and tossed them over it. The white paint and AMCO markings disappeared under a thick layer of honey-brown dust.

  When we’d finished, Jeff and I stripped off our flying suits. We knotted the arms and legs, filled them with rocks, and tossed them into the river. I changed into drab brown clothes and began to wind a turban around my head.

  Amica peered at me for a moment. ‘Your roots are showing. Give me the dye and I’ll fix it.’

  ‘Shit,’ I said. ‘I’ve left it behind.’

  She glanced towards Rami, but he was still absorbed in studying the maps. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘I’ll fix it the same way as the pickup.’ She poured some oi
l into her hand, scooped up some dust and rubbed it into a filthy brown paste. She smeared it around my hairline and the edges of my beard, frowning with concentration, her face only a few inches from my own. Then she stepped back, tilting her head to one side to study her handiwork. ‘That should do,’ she said.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I said.

  She paused, as if the question surprised her. ‘Doing this, you mean? Why, do we have a choice?’

  ‘We don’t. You might have had.’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Anyway, you’re safer with us,’ I said.

  She shrugged. ‘Perhaps it’s safer for you as well. If the Taliban had come for me…’ She left the sentence hanging in the air.

  ‘You did counter-interrogation training, just like us.’

  ‘But if they tortured me, I would betray you.’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t.’

  She held out her hand towards me. ‘Look at my nails.’ There was a curious ridge across each of them. ‘When I left Afghanistan six years ago, I was stopped at a Taliban checkpoint near the frontier. I was wearing the burka, but in my haste to leave I’d forgotten to remove my nail polish.’ There was a catch in her voice. ‘One of the Taliban soldiers, a boy of sixteen, perhaps less, saw them. He grabbed my arm, dragged me away from the other refugees and punched me in the stomach. I dropped to my knees. More of them held me as the boy produced a pair of steel clippers. He didn’t cut the nails, though, he began tearing them out, breaking them off at the root. He paused between each one to abuse me, calling me a whore and a traitor. When he had finished he put his foot on my back and forced me down into the mud. He ground my face into it and then walked off and left me. No one moved to help me, even after the Taliban got in their vehicle and drove off. The column of refugees just began to move on again. Except one women who stayed behind and helped me up. She tore strips from her underwear to bind my fingers and stayed with me as we walked on towards the frontier. I lost sight of her in the crowd at the frontier and though I searched and searched for her on the other side, I never saw her again.’ She had been staring over my shoulder as she spoke, but now she turned her head towards me. ‘If they torture me, I know I will break.’