Special Deception

by Special Deception (retail) (epub)

  His engineer didn’t like it at all. Stuart had insisted that 2220 was the very latest they could afford to remain on patrol, and even that was taking more of a risk than anyone in his right mind would take, with an extremely valuable aircraft and a crew whose costly training didn’t include much long-distance swimming. He’d put it in this semi-humorous way, Doug recognised, because he had to be aware that his nagging must have been getting on his skipper’s nerves.

  ‘If it looks as bad as you’re projecting, I’ll break away sooner. Cut the corner halfway down, maybe.’

  He glanced to his right. Denniston was upright in the co-pilot’s seat but he hadn’t said a word in the last ten or fifteen minutes. Switched off, or asleep, or both.

  Five minutes now to the top, the final turn to starboard. It was a bit over the odds, McPhaill thought, to bounce you with a six-hour stint instead of the routine four, and then on top of that expect you to bat on. On the other hand he was aware that the absence of Foxtrot 2 Bravo meant that some real wally on the staff had let the Marines down very badly, and he was personally concerned to go as far as he could to minimise the damage.

  ‘What’ve you got now, TACNAV?’

  Cornwall made a sound like a man snapping out of daydreams.

  ‘Ah — nowt that’s new, skipper. Same bodies continuing southward, no changes of courses or speeds. The two from the south have gone into Famagusta, and the ferry’s off the screen.’ He was talking, McPhaill thought, like a man who for some time hadn’t given the picture much attention, was now catching up, refreshing his own memory… ‘On the Syrian coast we have the tanker that came down from the northwest: she’s now off Baniyas. That’s the boy we looked at, if you remember, Cuban registry… No, as you were, correction — that one’s stopped, right inshore, close to the oil terminal, must be at moorings. Our lad’s still twenty-five miles offshore, southbound. Destination Tartus, could be… Now, northern sector: no, not a damn thing…’

  ‘Make sure of it. We’re coming up to the turn, then it’s home, sweet home.’

  The outine Navigator, George Binnie, commented drily, ‘That couldn’t be a reference to Akrotiri, surely.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Denniston stirred a hand coming up to adjust the position of his throat microphone. ‘After seven hours, Akrotiri’s OK by me.’

  ‘Good sleep, Harry?’ McPhaill put the Nimrod into the turn. Maybe anticipating the moment just a little. Denniston admitting that he might have dropped off, for a spell. He’d heard all the earlier chit-chat though, knew what was happening. He’d evidently been thinking, too; he said, ‘Bootnecks’ll be going mad, won’t they, until Foxtrot 2’s back on the job.’

  At 2228 George Binnie broke a silence, asking Cornwall, ‘Didn’t we have four southbound widgers under us last time round, TACNAV?’

  ‘Uh-uh. Three.’ Pause… ‘Here — three, OK?’

  ‘Lap before that, then. Or even the one before that. Quite a stretch farther north. What’s your log say to that?’

  ‘Hang on.’ Adjusting scale, Doug guessed. It wasn’t what was happening three laps ago that mattered, it was what was down there now. He heard Cornwall say, ‘If there were four, still are four… And lo and behold, we do still have… No. No, we have three.’

  ‘So what’s this?’

  ‘Tanker. I just told the skipper—’

  ‘I suggest he’s number four and he split from this cluster some time back. Long enough to have displaced himself eastward by — Jesus, twenty miles?’

  ‘That’d mean the tanker is this fellow close inshore. But if so… Well, can’t be, but…’

  He’d be getting a verdict from the computer: from the computer setup, there were actually three separate computers in the assembly. Working fast and — despite that ‘can’t be’ — anxious now, Doug had heard the uncertainty in his tone for the first time ever, in that moment. He didn’t interrupt with any questions or urgings, he left it to the TACNAV to sort it out. Knowing he was more than capable of doing so, knew his job backwards, had always been right on top of it, with all the answers and always bull’s-eyes. Anyone could make mistakes: but from this cliché Doug would have excluded Frank Cornwall, and at this stage he still didn’t believe the guy could have fouled it up, was still expecting him to have it sorted, verified, within seconds.

  8 Kilo 6 was already five miles farther south than she had been when the Routine Navigator had stuck his oar in.

  Cornwall blurted, his voice suddenly high-toned: ‘My God, course is one-two-eight, speed is — ten point six knots, it did split from—’

  ‘Radar profile?’

  ‘It’s — our target, skipper. The gulet. Jesus, I can’t see how I—’

  ‘My course to take a look at it?’

  Stuart, engineer, broke in: ‘If we divert now, let alone go down to—’

  ‘All right, protest noted. TACNAV?’

  ‘Come left to zero-zero-seven. But that’s in Syrian—’

  ‘Range?’ 8 Kilo 6 banking as she turned. ‘Co-pilot call base, tell ’em we have the gulet — position, course, speed — computer confirmed, I’m going down to double-check.’

  ‘Skipper — sorry, but—’

  ‘Twenty-three point two miles.’ Cornwall, answering the range question. ‘Course should be zero-zero-six.’

  ‘I want pass two hundred metres clear at one hundred fleet.’ The way he always did it, on at level flight-path, to look as if the aircraft just happened to be passing close, so there’d be at least a chance the target wouldn’t know it was the centre of attraction. Doug told his engineer, ‘Out esteemed staff have already dropped those guys in the shit, I’m not dropping ’em on some bloody tanker. If we have to we’ll land at Larnaca, right?’

  *

  ‘How long is it since they threw you out of the Army, Charlie?’

  Denham asked the question. He, Charlie and Bob Knox were in the gulet’s wheelhouse as she closed in towards the coast, showing navigation lights because if the Syrians had her on radar a darkened ship would arouse more suspicion than a lit one. Charlie told Denham coldly, ‘They didn’t. I was chucked out of the SAS, more or less, so I went back to my old regiment. I couldn’t stand it, so I resigned.’

  ‘And they let you go, just like that?’

  ‘Yes, Bob.’ Staring at him… ‘Just like that. What you’re implying is maybe they weren’t sorry to offload a piss-artist. You’re right, too, I was really into it at that stage.’

  Knox’s dark shape shifted. ‘So damn touchy, Charlie—’

  ‘Hey!’ Smiley Tait called from outside, the stern. ‘Hey — Bob—’

  They’d all heard it at that moment. Joseph at the conning position lowering himself in an attempt to see upward through the window, the other three rushing to join Smiley outside. Then it was almost on top of them, a roar mounting to climax in an explosion of noise — close to starboard, not overhead as it had seemed it would be — a hurtling shape visible for about two seconds, then the glow of jet-trails fading, soundwaves reverberating away into the enclosing night.

  ‘Bloody near hit us!’

  ‘Same one, maybe.’ Bob added, ‘Nimrod, obviously from Akrotiri.’

  ‘It could’ve been a Nimrod.’ Charlie was still staring after it. ‘But unless you saw a lot more than I did—’

  ‘I’m only guessing, Charlie. It was something like that.’

  ‘Whatever it was—’ Leila, coming from forward, ducked into the wheelhouse — ‘I don’t like it.’

  They’d seen a Nimrod earlier in the day, when they’d been a long way north and steering as if to pass close round Cape Andreas. They hadn’t stopped at Ovacik, after all. Leila had wanted to push on farther east so that when they turned it might look as if they’d come from Iskenderun, and later she’d taken advantage of the chance to join up with three other boats steering a similar southward course, one a motor-cruiser and the other two under sail, all three flying the Swiss flag, evidently some kind of holiday flotilla. They’d seen another earlier in t
he day, up north, apparently making for Kyrenia, about a dozen identical sailboats straggling down coast. There was a Swiss holiday flotilla based at Marmaris, Leila had said, although she didn’t know if this might have been a part of it. Charlie suspected she’d been counting on finding company of this kind, to disguise the gulet’s approach to Syrian waters; she’d made sure they had a lot of time in hand, an as they closed up on the Swiss she’d twice told Joseph to reduce speed, first to six knots and then to three. At dusk they’d been in a close group crawling south when they’d seen the Nimrod circling from west to east, and about three-quarters of an hour later they’d heard it — assuming it was the same one — pass overhead somewhere. Soon after this they’d altered course to southeast and increased to full speed. There’d been a tanker ahead, distantly visible stern-on to them before the light went, but it must have been drawing rapidly away ahead of them even after the increase to about eleven knots.

  That tanker had appeared from the northwest and crossed ahead of the little flotilla an hour or so earlier. But they’d seen no other ships or ships’ lights since the change of course and speed.

  Charlie suggested, ‘Might have been Syrian. Unless it was a different Nimrod to the one we saw before. Could’ve been a Mig-25, d’you reckon, Bob?’

  Denham agreed. ‘Nimrod wouldn’t be swanning around here would it.’

  Tait said, ‘Could’ve been Syrian and still not seen us. Or a Nimrod. Who gives a shit — I don’t.’

  But the gulet was turning, broad white wake bending as she swung to port. Leila called, ‘Bob, here, please?’

  She had the chart spread on the table and she’d been working on it.

  ‘Look here.’ Charlie followed Bob inside, peered over Leila’s tanned shoulder. ‘We can’t know what that airplane was doing, but maybe it reported us.’ She pointed at new pencil markings. ‘We were steering as if for a legitimate approach to Tartus — but then to turn off before we’d come so far. D’you see? And to be gone before anyone on shore began to scratch his head too much… But now, I think we put you off closer to Baniyas — here. This beach is only a little more than eight kilometres north of the other one. No big problem for you, I think. And you see, ten forty now, you leave us a half-hour early, that will help, huh?’

  11

  The C130’s hold, with only the two black-hulled Sea-Riders as cargo, seemed not only cavernous but incredibly noisy, an empty steel drum thunderous with the roar of engines. The cargo door had been shut, the hydraulically-operated ramp angled upward towards the tail: and when that thing was next lowered it would be to eject a dozen men and two boats into the night.

  The boats were on the centreline, on the track of steel rollers which allowed for the loading and unloading of very large weights of cargo. They were held there by braced steel-wire strops, with their snouts pointing towards the exit in the aircraft’s tail.

  Ben was it front conferring with the navigator and the pilots. They’d been checking 8 Kilo 6’s signalled position of of the gulet — first report at 2222 and the second at 2231 after McPhaill had confirmed the identification visually. Position, course and speed matched, near enough exactly, the information which the CO had provided in his briefing at Lyneham less than forty-eight hours ago. Hislop had brought maps and a chart with him, the maps showing the grid-reference location of the inland target and the chart reflecting this so you could see where Swale’s party would need to land — where you’d choose to land yourself if that was where you had to get to.

  From the position 8 Kilo 6 had given, extending the gulet’s course of 128 degrees at the given speed of ten and a half knots, you had them getting in close to that bit of coast at just about midnight. That was where you’d have expected them to land, it was where their course was taking them, and midnight was about the time you’d have aimed for yourself: It made sense, you could accept it.

  The main difference between the present reality and the scenario as it had been projected was that the intention had been to stop the gulet well away from the Syrian coast, and with any luck in daylight.

  Luck hadn’t been exactly plentiful, so far.

  Still sitting, waiting, engines thundering…

  ‘What’s keeping us?’

  The navigator yelled into his ear, ‘Nimrod landing — Fox 2 Bravo…’ He saw Ben’s expression, added ‘Landing now, chum!’ Then he turned away: the co-pilot had punched his shoulder and was holding out a radio headset, gesturing towards Ben… ‘Tower!’

  He pulled the phones over his ears, said into the mike, ‘Ockley here.’

  ‘Ben — Russell… Listen — I’ll have us chasing after you within minutes. Won’t need to be up long so I’ll cut short the fuelling. You may have dropped before I’m on the scene, otherwise I’ll try to guide your pilot. But listen, you have Sarbes, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So if you need guidance when you’re on the water, we can communicate.’

  ‘Right!’

  Having taken over the gulet, what was more, he could report the situation and London would know all about it within minutes.

  ‘Good luck, Ben.’

  The Sarbes, search-and-rescue beacons, had a speak function as well as the automatic one. On auto they’d transmit bleeps on the international distress frequency, but with the switch to ‘speak’ you had two-way voice communication with aircraft up to ten thousand feet, provided they were more or less overhead.

  He passed back the headset. And the Hercules had begun to move. The navigator was grinning at him, raising a thumb… Ben went back aft, rolling the chart as he went; it could be stowed in one of the containers in the first boat. He had Hislop’s map inside his shirt; it was actually a strip cut from a larger map, rolled into a tube and protected in a condom with its open end knotted. Sticks had the same. Condoms supplied by Marine Tony Hall who’d thus justified — as if he hadn’t before — his nickname, ‘Romeo’. The maps would be of more use than the chart, in inshore waters, as they showed more coastline detail than the chart did, landmarks such as new oiltanks and other recent installations in that area. Oil from Iraq was pumped across Syria to that coast, to terminals and refineries in the Tartus — Baniyas area.

  Preparing to give his team a last-minute briefing, Ben was thinking that despite the problems imposed by darkness, it was essential that the interception and boarding should be completed quickly and efficiently, so that the Sea-Riders’ powerful outboards could then remove them from the vicinity of the Syrian coast as rapidly as possible. The drop was going to be much too close to that coast to feel any kind of complacency about it. Fast interception and a quick, neat boarding: if it took more than minutes, the gulet’s ten or eleven knots might not get her away quickly enough, it might well be to sink her. If her crew and passengers had had the sense to stay alive — it was up to them, how they reacted when they were stopped and boarded — they could be brought back in the Sea-Riders.

  You had to sit, now, for the takeoff. The aircraft had halted, done a half turn. Noise and vibration worse again as engine revs built up, and the loadmaster — a burly Crab NCO — was ordering the Marines to their perches along the sides of the fuselage. Grey-painted metal and plastic, patches of multi-coloured wiring and other gear… Some of the team were already in drysuits, others hadn’t yet pulled them on over their DPMs and such equipment as they were carrying on their bodies during the drop. Most of it — the SA80 individual weapons and ammunition, and grenades, and such gear as Laker’s medical bag, Hall’s kit of explosives, Ray Wilkinson’s Nikon, two starscopes, several pairs of binoculars, were in the containers inside the boats. In fact there were two categories of equipment: ‘first line’ consisting of the gear that was ordered — weapons, compasses, Sarbes, diver’s knives, water-bottles, first-aid packs, a ration-pack — and ‘second line’ varying according to individual choice. It might include extra rations — ‘nutty’, alias chocolate, etc. — energy tablets, spare knife, maybe a handgun. The DPM suits were elaborately furnished with
pockets internally and externally for such items.

  The Hercules began to roll again. For real, this time. Launching itself down the runway, engines at full blast. Geoff Hosegood, pausing in the application of black camouflage cream to his face, held up his left arm, drawing back the sleeve to expose his diver’s watch; Froggie Clark shouted over the din, ‘Gotta be Doc’s — right?’

  Hosegood pursed his lips, shook his head, eyes on the watch. Nobody caring now, because there were plenty of other things to think about. The sweepstake had served its purpose, but it had become a triviality. Anyway, Laker hadn’t won it: he’d been down for takeoff at 2245, which extended to 2252½, and it was a few seconds past that now. 2253… Hosegood grinning, pointing at Chalky Judge, who raised both fists in a gesture of victory and then continued with what he’d been doing, tightening the straps of the holster on his right leg, his diver’s knife. And the wheels had left the ground… Ben unclipped his belt and got off the seat; the loadmaster looked displeased, but this was no time for humouring Crabs. He told the team, pitching his voice up to beat the noise: ‘Thirty minutes. Thirty. Then—’ — pointing at the tail-end, and downward.

  Actually it would be nearer forty before they dropped. The transit was a distance of one hundred and forty miles and then there’d be a minute or two for manoeuvring into the dropping run. They’d jump from one thousand feet, which meant about half a minute in the air although it always felt a lot longer than that. But from a thousand feet he doubted whether on this moonless night the pilots would have much hope of actually spotting the gulet. And there was no Nimrod out there to direct them, as there should have been. So the drop would in a real sense be ‘blind’: except that he’d done the chartwork, and based on the data supplied by Doug McPhaill you could reckon on ending up ahead of the gulet and inshore of it. The Sea-Riders would be dropped two thousand yards apart and would then close in at speed on their target.