The Tango Briefing

by Adam Hall

  Tango Victor.

  I used the tubing like an oar, bringing the sand away but only enough to guide me. This was the leading edge of the tailplane and I moved across the flank of the dune and began probing again. It was already clear that the bodies had been lying only just below the surface because they were to the north of the freighter, in the lee of the dune: it had been the south wind that had done this, the Ghibli.

  The sand fell away as I worked at the area aft of the trailing edge, port mainplane. It was where the door of the cabin was likely to be. For a while I missed it because it had been left wide open and I was actually digging through the drift of sand that had formed in the cabin itself between the pilot’s compartment and the freight section. The heat was intense because the fuselage had become a quartz-coated oven and I gave it a couple of minutes and came away.

  It seemed twice as far to the canopy and I drank some water and dropped prone and let the muscles go but the hammering didn’t stop, must do better than this, body had to keep going because there was work for the mind, still had a mission running and we’d found the objective, not long now. The hammering shook me, colours throbbing behind the eyes and the skin perfectly dry, rather worrying, the bout of renewed energy had been dangerous, keep still, just keep still.

  Tango.

  I didn’t answer, didn’t move, you want to live, you’ve got to keep still. Breathing difficult, the weight of the shoulders compressing the lungs, roll over, over and lie still, a thin cackling from somewhere, unearthly sound, coming again, a high cackling above the canopy, they’d seen the two bodies.

  Tango.

  Don’t move. Don’t even think, brain function heat-productive.

  The spread nylon bluish above me and motionless, the air totally calm, my arms melting into the sand, my legs dissolving, the nerves inert, the pain of the bruises ebbing, the body cradled in euphoria, control it, stay just this side of unconsciousness, the hammering fainter and less insistent, the lungs filling of their own accord, the healing process taking over from the stress syndrome, lie still and all will be well.

  Moisture gathering on the skin, the skin cooling, the heart-rhythm slowing, the colours receding from the optic nerve, order restored.

  Tango.

  I opened up the transmit.

  Hear you.

  A sound from someone farther away, obviously Diane, a soft intake of breath. I suppose they’d been getting edgy because I hadn’t answered for a while.

  Loman asked:

  Have you a problem?

  Not now. I’ve found the plane.

  Three or four seconds.

  Congratulations.

  Poor little bastard, saved by the bell, the whole bloody mission back in his hands, quite overcome. He was asking me for a report.

  1 can’t tell you much yet; I’ve only just started. Thing’s covered with sand. Both crew were running away from it when they died.

  Please take photographs.

  I’m going to. Oh you mean of the crew?

  Yes.

  I thought for a bit.

  I’ve moved them.

  That doesn’t matter. Photograph their faces.

  I didn’t like it at all.

  Loman, have you any idea what’s inside that plane?

  No. I am merely passing on instructions from London.

  I believed him because there couldn’t be any reason for him to withhold information at this stage: his executive was going into a hazardous area and wanted all the help he could get. The blackout on this cargo was so total that Control wouldn’t even tell the director in the field, a man of Loman’s status.

  Play it by the book for a change and consider demanding information from London before proceeding. Loman would have to signal if I asked him: executive requests details as to type of hazard, so forth. It wouldn’t be unreasonable because commercial aircrews are not timorous men and these two had run clear of Tango Victor with the fear of Christ in them and I was expected to go in there and find out why.

  Loman.

  Hear you.

  Have you any idea of the risk, I mean how big?

  He thought about that.

  No. You say the crew were running away from the aeroplane when they died. Do they look as if they were frightened?

  Terrified.

  It was perfectly clear to us both that London had an idea what had killed Holt and his navigator: the instructions had been for me to take photographs of their expressions.

  Do you want me to signal Control about this?

  I thought that was rather civil of him.

  Because he didn’t fancy it at all. He’d got his ferret right up against the quarry and ready for the kill and he didn’t want to disturb it. The moment I went off the air he’d switch channels and send to London through the Embassy in Tunis: Q Quaker now destin objiv point. It’s the only signal that makes any kind of bang throughout the departments concerned with the specific mission and it would give Loman a lot of joy to send it. To ask for additional information would just cause delay and he knew we couldn’t afford it but he was still ready to do it if I insisted.

  From here I could see the dark hole in the dune and all I had to do was walk over there and go inside and complete the mission: all they wanted was a batch of pictures and a taped report on Tango Victor’s cargo and it probably wouldn’t take more than half an hour and then Loman could pull me out and we’d go home, a crash-priority operation at PM level completed inside seventy-two hours of Tilson’s briefing me in London.

  Not really the time to tell them the executive in the field had got gooseflesh,

  Loman.

  Hear you.

  They realize this cargo could be dangerous,

  Yes.

  They probably know what it is,

  Yes.

  Why would they decide to keep us uninformed on this, even though it’s going to wreck the whole mission if I’m killed?

  He answered almost at once and I knew he’d been waiting for this question and had prepared the reply.

  I can only think that the area is so sensitive that the risk might be greater if their knowledge were passed on to us,

  I’d expected that.

  You’re talking about implemented interrogation.

  Yes.

  At any phase?

  At every phase, including this one.

  I was going to ask him how he worked that one out but it was simple enough when I gave it a second thought and I was suitably warned: brain function wasn’t satisfactory, the heat and everything, and the worry about what was inside that black hole over there. What he meant was that in Kaifra he was exposed to the risk of capture and interrogation by an opposition cell and that if it was implemented by the usual pain-stimulus methods he would probably give them information. The info he already possessed was lethal if it got into the wrong hands but without it he couldn’t have taken over as director: it was just that London was scared of adding to it unless they had to.

  They’d know, as soon as he told them, that I was now within minutes of going into the freighter and if they could signal me direct there wouldn’t be any problem: out here in isolation there was no risk of anyone raiding me and since I was on the point of moving into hazard they’d be prepared to warn me on the type of difficulties I’d be faced with. But they couldn’t do it.

  They’d have to advise me through Crowborough, Tunis and Kaifra, exposing the signal to switchboard staff, cipher clerks and people in the same room with them. They could throw out a preliminary signal carrying a selected code structure and then follow up with the encoded material for me to break up but it still wouldn’t be safe because the clerks in the Embassy cipher room could read it for themselves.

  Bloody nuisance but there it was.

  They were cackling again and my scalp got up. Bad sign, bag of nerves just when there was something important to do.

  All right, Loman. Tell London they can go and stuff themselves. I’m going in.

  Quite a long pause.


  Very well. Please take all precautions.

  How the hell can I when I don’t know what’s in there?

  Not at all good, nasty show of nerves. Couldn’t look away from the hole in the dune, getting obsessive, best thing would be to finish the job quickly.

  Loman, what stage are you going to start running the tape?

  As soon as you enter the aircraft.

  They gave you an auto-destruct?

  Of course.

  They’d had to. They’re not entirely witless in London they’d narrowed the risk down to a matter of minutes. They couldn’t signal me any advice because nobody had to know about this cargo, not even Loman, but in a few minutes from now I’d be telling him and in precise detail and they’d covered the situation in the only way they could: the moment my report was finished he’d be putting the tape into an auto-destruct container and once he’d shut it and set the fuse the risk would be over because if anyone else tried to open it they’d just blow it up.

  The precisely-detailed information on Tango Victor’s cargo would remain only in Loman’s head, and until now I hadn’t realized that in one respect this was a shut-ended mission for him too. For her own sake he’d send Diane out of the room when I started reporting: she couldn’t reveal what she didn’t know, and most trained interrogators can tell whether you’re lying or not when you say you’ve no information for them. But Loman would remain at risk and if the opposition located the base and raided it and went to work on him the auto-destruct thing wouldn’t be a lot of use.

  So this was a 6-K mission.

  Not many of them are. It’s mostly left to the discretion of the director and executive in the field because they’re placed better than anyone else to decide what ought to be done, but sometimes an operation comes up where the area’s so sensitive that they like you to sign one of their buff-coloured forms before they brief you. Of course you can refuse, just as you can refuse any specific mission for any of a dozen reasons, but once you’ve agreed to sign Form 6-K you’re issued with a set of capsules and it’s up to you to make sure they’re dispersed among your gear so that if you’ve put one in your flight-bag and you leave the thing on a bus you’ve still got a spare in your pocket.

  They can’t force you to do what you’ve signed for: it’s just that your professional pride has been brought into things and as far as I know they’ve never had anyone let them down. What gives us a giggle is that these capsules are issued to us in Firearms, it seems so bloody appropriate.

  Some of us have pulled in a 9-suffix to our code name and they don’t bother to make us sign anything: we’ve proved we can’t be broken this side of unconsciousness, so we don’t carry capsules on this kind of mission unless we’ve actually asked for some, to avoid possible unpleasantness during the operation. Not many directors have the 9 because they’re far less exposed in the field than their executives and I knew Loman hadn’t got one because there’s a list and we know who’s on it.

  So he must have signed the form on this trip. There’d be no point in ordering him to put the tape in a bang-box if he was liable to get snatched and grilled. They’re usually brightly-coloured with a distinctive pattern, so people don’t confuse them with indigestion pills or anything.

  Perhaps that was why he’d been so nervous. We all get a bit ragged towards the end-phase and this time we were having to cope with the heat as well.

  The sweat was coming freely now and the pulse was about right so I told him I was ready to go.

  Very well. We shall be off the air for a few minutes.

  Going to signal Control, tell them we’d found the plane, three jolly cheers. I picked up the set and the camera and walked into the sun.

  The first one had a thin moustache, rather well trimmed, bit of a lady’s man and hardly the type who’d want to go into the album looking like this. Three shots from three angles and don’t ask me why they wanted actual pictures, there was something important I was missing but there wasn’t time to worry it out. The second one had either been pecked or caught his face on something sharp when he’d flung himself out of the cabin. A couple of close-ups of the dead vultures and one shot of the doorway making a hole in the dune.

  A lot of dry cackling again, I suppose they were frustrated because I wouldn’t let them get at the two cadavers. But their shadows were bigger and I looked up and saw they’d come quite a bit lower: their heads were turning on their long gristly necks to keep me in sight as they circled.

  Then I had to wait, squatting by the transceiver and covering my neck against the sun, thinking of nothing in particular, how hot it was, what the hell did the snails eat, the way she’d looked at her fingertips.

  Tango.

  Hear you.

  I’ll be keeping open for you from now on.

  All right. I’m immediately outside the freighter and I’m going to leave the set here and take the mike inside on the extension.

  Understood. Will you Then there was a quick fade, as if he’d suddenly put a hand over the mike, and I thought the last two words had probably been spoken to Diane as he asked her to leave the radio-room before I began reporting for the tape.

  Onset of chill, the hairs lifting on my forearms. The bodily changes due to the heat were being modified by the psychic unease aroused when I’d turned them over and looked at their faces.

  Aircrews are practical men with a high threshold of fear and the durable brand of philosophy that is learned by living with the elements and acknowledging their infinite power. I would expect them, as the mountainside loomed through the fog or the explosion shook the airframe, to show natural and momentary fear before they concentrated on whatever action remained open to them. I would expect to find, on the faces of men who had died in a plane crash, an expression of anguish, fear, or resignation. Not of terror.

  The brain is concerned with practical considerations: facts and figures, the interplay of kinetics and mechanical forces involved in high-speed collision. The psyche is more subtly concerned with abstracts ranging from ecstasy to nightmare, including terror. The raised scalp, the trickle along the spine are induced by things strange to us, or abhorrent: the silence of a slowly-winding snake, a leaping shadow, a howl in the deep of night.

  I could think of nothing like this that could have struck terror in these two men before they died. But our people in London could. Photograph their faces, Loman had said. I am merely passing on instructions from London.

  The birds cackled above me, wheeling lower, perhaps because I’d stopped moving. I wondered if I ought to go over and do something to protect the two bodies: Holt and his navigator wouldn’t know what was happening but I didn’t want to have a thing like that on my mind as well. In the end I did nothing because there wasn’t anything to throw over them and even if I buried them the birds knew now that they were there.

  Loman.

  Receiving.

  Your voice faded out on that last signal.

  Yes, I covered the microphone.

  Telling her to go?

  Yes.

  Just checking.

  Understood.

  I disconnected the microphone-lead and coupled it to the coiled extension, reconnecting.

  Testing.

  Receiving you.

  I’m going inside.

  Chapter 14

  FRENZY

  Silence.

  Heat.

  Darkness.

  A faint smell: the rubber casing of the torch. I slid the switch and light hit the skeleton framework of the fuselage. I went forward and stopped in the next second and stood off-balance listening to the steady hiss from somewhere below. Forebrain desperate for explanation: a stream of images out of sequence. The sound becoming fainter.

  Sand. Sand dislodged by my feet from the drift the wind had brought in and pouring on to the metal trough of the mid-section here between the pilot’s deck and the freight compartment.

  Pulse slowing again. Rhodospin was concentrating and my eyes were adapting to scotopic vision, the
torchlight growing brighter. Other senses finely adjusting, hyper-receptive to stimuli: heat on the skin, marked absence of motion or even vibration as my weight shifted on to the floor of the pilot’s deck. The entombing sand was deadening the motion normally set up by people entering a vehicle with sprung mass and pneumatic tyres.

  The door to the freight section was ajar and I moved the torch beam through the four-inch gap in a vertical sweep but it lit nothing except the ribbed wall of the fuselage. The urge was to go in there first, kick the door wide open and go in ready for anything, so I moved in the opposite direction because the urge was emotional: I was afraid of going in there and wanted to get it over. It was safer to follow the instincts and reason.

  London wanted to know things.

  Loman.

  Receiving you.

  I’m now in the pilot’s compartment. Throttle closed, undercarriage control in the raised position, flaps at full. Fuel reserve at one quarter, all lamp switches in the off position. Instruments and controls compatible with a forced-landing situation by daylight. The crew got out of their ‘chute harness, the ‘chutes still on their seats. Radio is switched to 6 MHz, one set of headphones on the floor and an earpiece smashed: evidence of impact effects or possible haste to leave the plane.

  The torch beam went on moving, sometimes: reflecting from polished surfaces. Pair of worn flying-gloves, photo of a Eurasian woman tucked into a panel over the left-hand seat, packet of chewing-gum sticking out of the map-pocket.

  Can you see anything not normally found in the cabin of an aircraft?

  This was obviously the first question on a list they’d given him. I spent a full minute on it with the torch.

  No. One or two personal effects: pair of tennis shoes in an open locker, carved teakwood statuette in one of them, copy of Playboy. Nothing else.

  Thank you.

  Do you want pictures?

  No.

  It was the cargo they were more interested in.

  The extension lead got caught on a seat strut and I freed it and moved back towards the freight section, my boots grinding on the loose sand across the floor. I didn’t hurry because there were a lot of questions crowding in, one of them worrying me. If it was something in the cargo that had driven the two men out of here with the fear of Christ in them I couldn’t see why the door was no more than ajar; the four-inch gap seemed too narrow to allow anything to attack through it, and obviously they wouldn’t have stopped to pull the door shut after them.