It would be about the last, Ben guessed, at the rate the light was going now. You’d be shooting at shadows or rifle-flashes from now on. At anything that moved. The bastards had to be held off, kept back for as long as possible and far enough back not to know the withdrawal was starting when it did start. But they hadn’t been sitting on that hillside all afternoon for nothing, they’d surely be turning on the pressure soon.
Shots from the goat-track side. He called, ‘Sticks, see if they need help.’ He pushed his selector switch from single shot to automatic, cradled the weapon in one arm while he swept the dark rockscape with his glasses. Teal fired again, drawing several shots in reply. They’d sounded closer than he wanted them. He had movement in his binoculars, brought the gun up for a snap shot while keeping his eyes on that spot, snapped off a short burst and heard a shout, then the thud of a body falling, hitting rock.
It couldn’t last. Ammunition wouldn’t last more than half an hour at this rate. Nobody’d come here equipped for trench warfare. Sticks told him, returning, ‘They’re OK. Goon was climbing the track, Ray did him.’
He needed that Hind to come. For the blast, sheet of flame, helo burning and bodies scattered, Syrian confusion. As it was going now you couldn’t think of pulling out; the pressure wasn’t overwhelming but it was constant, despite the fact Syrians were getting killed; if you tried to withdraw and the shooting stopped they’d know it, be on to it in seconds.
‘Charlie?’
Glancing round: Charlie was a dark oblong against pale-coloured stone. ‘Hear me, Charlie?’ A burst of firing from the right, an SA80 in action… Charlie moved: ‘Want me there, Ben?’
‘No, stay there.’ He went to him, crouched close to him, to be heard… ‘I’m going to have to shoot your Russian. Because—’ his words were lost as Teal fired a short burst and shifted target for another — ‘tricky enough anyway, without leaving him to tell ’em which way we went… D’you agree?’
Charlie let it sink in. Understanding Ben’s reason for asking. Killing men in combat was one thing, killing a prisoner was another. But it was necessary: and his job. Leo had brought him here, and he was the reason these guys were here; Geoff Hosegood was going to be crippled for life — that was old Charlie Swale’s doing too… ‘Yeah. You’re right.’ He added — back to those other thoughts and talking to himself as he began to struggle up, ‘And we’re not out of the bloody wood yet, old son…’ An SA80 blared ten feet away: in an ensuing silence Kelso told Ben, ‘That was a grenade then. Closer by fifty metres, sod ’em.’
‘Ben, hang on—’
He’d cursed, swung back to him: ‘Where you going, Charlie?’
‘Kill the Russian. My Russian — right?’
‘Yeah. All right.’ Ben turned away: listening into the dark, into the pauses between outbreaks of gunfire. It was already louder, clearly not just wishful thinking… He shouted, ‘Sticks, all yours now!’
‘Harrier?’
They’re going to wear us down, he thought. Wait for us to use up all the ammo. Then send the Hind up. In the circumstances, assuming they’d want the prisoners on the hoof, it was the obvious way to play it. They’d know that whoever was up here couldn’t have any great reserves of ammunition. In fact they’d know they had it made, didn’t have to rush it or waste their own men’s lives.
So we have to move out. Now.
He crouched on the steps where Hafiz had spent most of the previous night, and switched on his Sarbe. Ray Wilkinson’s — he’d swapped, since the other one’s battery might have been running low.
The Crab was there — on tap, on cue…
‘Victor 4 Tango calling Ben—’
‘Hearing you — threes… Listen, we’re in a jam here, in action, have to make this quick — you hearing me?’
‘Closing you. Hear you fours. Ben, you listen, this is urgent!’
‘We’re under fire, surrounded, I’m pulling out in about one minute, stealing transport if I can, might hit the beach by sunrise. Got that?’
Close now, hovering, the noise filling the night, clogging the ears and brain with sound. Crouching over the Sarbe, cupping both hands at his ears right above it: the Harrier pilot’s voice again: ‘Twenty minutes after I leave you, you’ll have a Super Stallion here. Be ready for immediate fast embarkation. Your CO with four Sea-Rider crew will disembark to cover your withdrawal, leave defence to them. Twenty minutes from now, OK?’
Surprise so stunning it was like a punch between the eyes: a sense of the unreal, you had to struggle through it, out of it… ‘Where — Christ, where’ll it land?’
‘Right there, where you—’
‘Flat part below is mined. Flat rock down there — explosive. And up here obstructions — ruins — all over. Tell ’em they’ll have to—’
‘Leaving you, Ben, sorry, timing’s tight on this one. Good luck…’
*
Charlie sat, close to Leo Serebryakov. He’d prepared the Uzi before he’d come over, gripping the little boxy weapon between his knees and using his only working hand to jerk the magazine’s top round into the breech. The Uzi’s small-looking spout was an inch or two from the right side of Leo’s head. Charlie’s forefinger curled around its trigger, that hand and the gun’s weight resting against stones that had been piled on each other six or seven hundred years ago.
Leo shouted, ‘When it leaves, we moving?’
‘Well.’ Charlie hesitated. The head turned, he had to pull the gun back to avoid contact. Leo asked, suddenly suspicious, ‘They are going to take me, are they?’
Straight question: straight answer. He took a deep breath, and it hurt that shoulder. ‘Since you ask — no, they aren’t.’
Shouting through the noise, into each other’s faces… ‘Charlie — Christ, Ben promised—’
‘Keep your word, do you?’ Soul of honour — Bob?’
‘Charlie, listen, we can deal, you know the value of the info I can—’
‘Goodnight.’ He let him feel the gun against his head, felt and heard the convulsive reaction, shock and terror. He tightened his finger on the trigger.
Jammed…
He’d tried to fire and couldn’t. Couldn’t do anything about it quickly one-handed either. Leo swung his right arm, back-swiping at him, Charlie turning to protect his smashed side, in a spasm of pain that made his head swim.
‘You there. Charlie?’
Voice from Outer Space, thin, far away through the aircraft’s thunder. He’d got his knees up to jam the gun between them so he could work at it. No joy in it for Bob meanwhile, extending his period of blue funk. Although in Damascus under sentence of death after giving evidence against one’s own people the final hours mightn’t have been all that rosy. Leo still convulsing and the Harrier departing — like ripping a hole in the sky to let the sound out. Ben’s voice suddenly clear then, clear and close: ‘If you haven’t killed him, Charlie, don’t!’
*
The Sikorsky pilot, Major Gregg Swensson, glanced round from his armoured seat and raised a gloved thumb to Charles Hislop. ‘Your guy’s on his way out, just turned that corner. It’s running like clockwork, Major!’ Hislop nodded to him and to the co-pilot, put own the borrowed earphones and went aft. The flight engineer, a heavyweight sergeant by name of Wayne — Pete, not John — grinned at him as he passed. Same kind of slow grin: could well have been a grandson…
Swensson had been referring to the Harrier in that statement, and would have had his information from the Hawkeye, now at twenty-five thousand feet and running this, controlling also Tomcats 105 and 107 who were on their way out from Akrotiri, climbing to their offshore patrol positions.
In the big helo’s cabin, extremely spacious and unbelievably noisy — well, believably, if you knew you had two turbines right over the top of your head — Hislop joined Bert Hattry, Froggie Clark, Wee Willie Deakin the judo expert and Frank Kenrick the grim-faced young Aberdonian. All in DPMs and trainers, armed with SA80s and grenades, faces cam-creamed, even Kenri
ck’s expression showing his pleasure at finally getting into the action. These four had exactly the same commando and specialist qualifications as the others, just happened to have drawn the Sea-Rider crewing jobs on this deployment.
Hislop sat behind them, in the array of nylon-webbing seats. Across from him were the two doctors — one RAF, one Army from the battalion at Dhekelia — and two medical orderlies, one RAF and male, the other a Royal Navy girl, QUARNS, on exchange posting at the base hospital. They had four steel-framed cots rigged and ready with drip-feed stands and other gear beside them.
The only other occupant of this compartment was the hoist operator, Airman Dave Latta. He was at the after end, near his gear, chewing gum and reading a paperback. The Tannoy broadcast hummed, and Gregg Swensson’s voice boomed at them: ‘We’re now over Syria. Hummer 602 reports no activity on Syrian airfields. Looking good, this far.’
*
The Hawkeye was cruising at twenty-five thousand feet, riding the night sky at a modest 140 knots thirty miles clear of the Syrian coast, with two pilots up front but mission command back where the CICO — Combat Information Center Officer — was controlling the ‘big picture’, liaising with the ground at Akrotiri and with the Saratoga, and overseeing the functions of his ACO — Air Control Officer — who controlled the fighters, and Radar Operator who was in communication with the Super Stallion. The RO was also the trouble-shooter on the Hawkeye’s equipment, and that was certainly no sinecure; the computer-controlled radar assembly could detect, automatically track and analyse anything that moved in something like three million cubic miles of airspace; it could pick up a target as small as a cruise missile at up to about three hundred kilometres, and handle marine surveillance while simultaneously tracking six hundred airborne targets and directing up to forty intercepts.
It could handle a lot more than it was likely to be required to do tonight, in fact.
The ACO, Matt Zimmermann. was murmuring into a microphone, ‘Roger, Tom One Zero Five. No chores for you at present, Harry.’ He nodded to Digby O’Donnell, the CICO. ‘That’s the both of ’em.’
Both on patrol at fifteen thousand feet. And the Super Stallion was on the point of turning on to the inland leg of its approach to the target, altering to a course that would take it up the east side of the Alawis. The moment when that outsize US helo might become illuminated by Syrian ground radar was when Swensson climbed to get to his LZ on the high end of the ridge; and that was when the Tomcats might get some work to do.
O’Donnell leant forward, pushed some keys. Intent on his computer monitor. He reached again, tapped in a coded question.
‘Matt, check this one?’
Wanting it double-checked although he was already 99 per cent sure what it was. The computer profile was detailed and precise, and the computer never forgot a face. This one was on the sea. Roughly the latitude of Tripoli, twenty-three miles offshore.
The ACO concurred: ‘No doubt of it, none whatsoever.’
‘Small world, huh.’ The CICO began to call the Saratoga, for a directive as to whether that gulet they’d been told to look out for and destroy on sight was still on the ‘wanted’ list.
*
‘That was good, Max.‘
Max was at the wheel, perched up on the high stool; he’d taken over from Joseph, who’d gone forward. Glancing round – scrawny, lizard-like, a lizard’s eye half-closing in a surreptitious wink as he peered round at her. She’d only commented on the food in order to encourage the two passengers to offer some similar plaudit: because Max needed that kind of thing, had a tendency to depression. But they didn’t even glance up from their meat balls in rice. They were from Islamic Jehad, and men of influence, VIPs recently in Teheran; they’d joined the gulet in Al Lathqiyah and were to be landed in Tripoli. A pleasure trip, breath of sea air. The gulet was required in Tripoli in any case. Leila hadn’t been told precisely what the next job was, but Joseph had heard something about a shipment of weaponry northward.
From Asala, the Armenian group based in the Bekaa Valley maybe, an arms smuggling run to their brothels in Turkey. The gulet was perfect for that job, of course.
Leila edged out from behind the table. ‘I’ll leave you to finish on your own.’ One of them glanced her way, sauce running down his chin as he eyed the bulge of her thighs, but he didn’t speak and the other one had eyes only for the food.
She went up the side to the foredeck. Joseph was lounging there, smoking a cheroot and watching the stars. He asked her, ‘Are they happy?’
‘They’re pigs.’
He laughed. ‘Prefer your last passengers, eh?’
‘They’ll be dead by now.’
She got up on the cabin-top. The gulet was pitching rhythmically, seas swishing brilliant white from the heavy timber bow as it lunged through them. The plastic-covered mattress on the cabin-top was running wet; but so was the woodwork, and she didn’t care. It was a fine night and there wouldn’t be many left to come now, you’d soon have strong winds and rough seas on this coast.
She drew her legs up, hugged her knees, began to croon in her low-pitched, husky voice — and thinking of that last lot they’d carried, since Joseph had mentioned them — ‘Ma hala, ma hala, gatl en Nasara…’
How sweet, oh how sweet, to be killing Christians… Joseph put the cheroot between his lips, gently clapped his hands, encouraging her to continue. Tomcat 105 would have been about twelve miles distant at that moment.
*
The pilot of Tom 105 was Lieutenant-Commander Harry Biro, and his RIO, Radar Intercept Officer, was Lieutenant Josh Hughes. Hummer 602 had obtained confirmation from USS Saratoga that the gulet was a terrorist conveyance currently engaged in terrorist operations, to be treated as hostile and in appropriate circumstances destroyed on sight, and the Hawkeye’s ACO had then guided Tom 105 down towards the target until Hughes had acquired it on the fighter’s own radar. The F-14s’ radar was pretty good, but limited in azimuth.
Biro said, ‘Two Sparrows. Firing from two miles.’ Hughes locked the Sparrow radar to the target. The Tomcat was by this time travelling faster than any bullet: Hummer 602 had told him, ‘Make this fast, Harry, might need you back here where the real work’s liable to be,’ so he’d gone on to his after-burners and smashed through Mach 1, putting his fighter into a ten-degree dive from ten thousand feet. He’d selected Sparrow because it was the most suitable missile for the task. Phoenix was air-to-air, Sidewinder heat-seeking; Sparrow being radar-guided seemed a surer bet, since he doubted whether that slow-moving timber vessel would be emitting all that much heat.
Hughes’ voice now: ‘Five to go, starting now. Four — three — two — one’
‘Birds away!’
Birds twelve feet long, high-explosive warheads, flying at Mach 3.5… The double flash was like a giant match rasped into ignition on the black surface, golden nucleus expanding into a fireball as the gulet’s hull burst open, timbers scattering over acres of glaringly bright seascape. Biro dragged his stick back, threw Tom 105 round to port, to get back to where the real work might be.
*
‘Want help?’
Romeo Hall’s head turned, and Ben heard the shouted answer, ‘Better on me own’ before a multiple outbreak of automatic fire and some single shots from up here in the ruins ended a brief respite in the action. The attacking Syrians’ fire seemed to be coming from every square metre of the mountainside — and from much too close now. In that pause, he realised, they must have been moving up.
There’d been another attempt at forcing the back door, the goat-track entrance, but it was easy to defend and Ray Wilkinson was handling that side on his own. Ben, Sticks, Laker, Teal and Judge were spread over this south-facing curve of the ruins, replying mostly with single shots to the stammering flashes of Kalashnikovs, while Hall was on his way down to the lower level to defuse his helo trap by removing the igniters and disconnecting the Cordtex.
Igniters were spring-loaded triggers, would be activated by the helo l
anding on them, maybe by its downdraught when it was close enough, to fire a .22 cap and detonate the Cordtex — instantaneous explosive fuse, lengths of it criss-crossing the rock down there, the ends knotted as detonators embedded in the PE.
Dead right that Romeo’d better do it solo. Knowing exactly where he’d laid the charges and placed the igniters, and having to wriggle around on his belly in the dark… Teal meanwhile blasting with his SA80 on auto: shifting to a new magazine, surely his last, shouting, ‘Bugger was right up on the side there!’ That close: Ben knew their chances of getting away would have been very slim by this time: but in fact he wouldn’t have hung around this long, if the helo hadn’t been coming he’d have had them moving out right after the Harrier’s visit.
Bullets smacked into ancient masonry close to his head: and he heard Chalky yell, ‘Romeo’s hit!’
Laker got there first, to where Hall had been the edge, about to slide over. Laker’s anger in a scream: ‘Oh Jesus, damn it!’ In the next moment Ben’s fingers were in the mess at the back of Romeo’s head where the Kalashnikov round had smashed its way out.
Simultaneously, first sound of the Sikorski giant helo, its deep hammering distant but unmistakable, coming from the south.
Had to do something: and quick…
‘Put him over!’
In the hope that the body might hit an igniter, do the job it had been about to do when it had been Romeo Hall. With the bonus that any Syrians on that lower edge — where Teal had just shot at one — would be wiped off… Ben and the Doc crouching — trying to stay low, but doing this you couldn’t — hefting the body and launching it into the dark. A bullet grazed the back of Ben’s neck as he dropped flat: he and Laker on their faces, waiting for the explosion…
There wasn’t one. Romeo’s body misused to no effect. Saluted by Kalashnikovs in chorus, SA80s more and more economical in their replies, signalling clearly that the defence would shortly fold through lack of ammunition.
Special Deception Page 36
