The Syrians would also be hearing the Super Stallion now. Anyone’s bet whether they might think it was one of their own or guess at the truth, but either way it might encourage them to try a rush.
It was also anyone’s bet whether the Harrier pilot had taken in the message which he hadn’t acknowledged, about that lower level being mined.
‘Sticks—’ bawling at close range — ‘try shooting at the PE!’
Back among the rubble, then, crouching over his Sarbe… ‘Stallion pilot, Ben Ockley calling, d’you hear me, Super Stallion?’
Should have given him that message too — to listen out on Sarbe frequency. His hope was they might have thought of it anyway. ‘Stallion pilot…’
Kelso had no SA80 shells left. He’s switched to an Uzi: one magazine in it and one spare. Ears filled by the helo noise… He sprayed the far side of the rock plateau — for insurance — as he moved forward, crouching, to try his chances of hitting Cordtex or an igniter or some of the plastic itself. With no idea of where or how Romeo had set it out… A figure loomed close, lurched against him: ‘You, Ben?’
Charlie Swale. Bloody great target, upright though favouring the wounded side, in full view of the snipers… Sticks screamed at him to get out of it, get back into cover. Then pushed on, closer to the edge.
Ben, knowing this was hopeless, tried the Sarbe link again, one last time… ‘Ockley calling Super Stallion, come in, Super Stallion…’
Waste of time — time he didn’t have, the whole night pulsing with the giant helo’s racket. He heard Charlie’s shout: ‘Ben? That you, Ben?’ Charlie was brandishing an Uzi: and that would do — to join Sticks, double the long-odds chances… ‘Charlie, give me that!’
‘No ammo — sorry——’
Apologies, for Christ’s sake… Anyway he’d remembered where they’ left the spares. Although it would be worse than fairground odds, shooting blind into the dark with millions-to-one-against chances of hitting something the the thickness of a pencil. The Super Stallion’s deafening noise was to the left and lifting, and the gunfire, Kalashnikovs’ flashes, from the front had thinned. Syrians maybe thinking this was the helo assault they’d been told to expect? He grabbed an Uzi, one of two he’d dumped for emergency use in close-range fighting if it came to that stage of desperation, and ran back. The Super Stallion was now overhead, still high but its downdraught already kicking up a cloud of dirt and rock particles. Its searchlight then: stabbing down into this murk, lighting the whole scene around the central core of brilliance. The helo was moving, the beam moving with it, sliding away and over the lip to plumb that lower level. Coming down… Ben was close to the edge, not far from where Hall had his brains shot out; crawling forward, glancing to his right at stabbing flashes of automatic fire which had seemed to be aimed a him but evidently were not. Then a vision of Chalky kneeling, crazily exposed, blasting with an AKM at some attacker; but in the next second he was upstaged by Charlie Swale — an apparition loping forward in the floodlight’s glare — tall, lop-sided with his smashed right side and strapped-up arm. Really lop-sided, though, some burden in the crook of the other arm — a stone, cube of antique rubble for a missile to hurl down at the explosive charge: it would bounce on rock, bounce around a bit, wasn’t a bad idea — and he nearly made it, shambling towards the edge, gunfire out there immediately thickening: and he’d checked, twisted round, staggering, dropping his block of antiquity close to the edge, he’d so nearly made it. He was staring up into the glare that was descending fast towards him, the light’s focus narrowing as it came down and the noise expanded, downdraught a gale of grit and muck, Charlie’s face upturned to it and his good arm lifted either to shield his eyes or in futile warning. Then he’d been hit again: or Ben thought he had, seeing the tall figure stoop suddenly, lunging forward and outward in a sprawling dive. The helo was coming down, straight down still, its point-five machine-guns spitting fire, and Charlie had gone head-first over the brink. His body might have bounced once on that steep drop, in the rising cloud of debris, or his dive might have taken him clear of the slope; whichever, when he hit the rock floor he blew the charges.
*
Hislop had thought it was curtains. As if a missile or shell had burst right under the Stallion’s belly. The enormous helicopter was buffeted upward, flame was vivid outside all its plexiglass windows as if the fuselage was ablaze. Passengers had gone flying in all directions, gear flying too, smashing. Medical gear specially, a lot of glass smashed. Then the external flames snuffed out or fell back and the Stallion was under control, Swensson getting his ship up out of it, clear of whatever had come so close to finishing them — would have, if it had gone off a few seconds later when they’d have been right down on top of it. Hislop and the other Marines had been ready to disembark, having unstrapped themselves from their seats a minute earlier; they’d been flung in heaps, and he was disentangling himself somewhat bloodily from a smashed drip-feed stand when Swensson’s smooth tones came over the broadcast system: ‘May be OK on that rock now, but my feeling is once shat on twice shy. D’you agree with me, Charles?’
Latta, the winchman, was helping the pretty nurse to salvage and re-stow equipment. All of them at it, but it looked like he was helping her. Hislop crabbed forward: the flight engineer told him, ‘No sweat, Major, you’d be amazed what this baby can take.’ He looked proud. Hislop said, ‘I’m amazed already.’ In the cockpit, then: ‘I agree.’ He yelled, ‘Too many Redskins that side anyway.’
‘So you wanna break your neck. OK, on your marks…’
*
Ben had thought they were finished, too, he’d thought the Sikorsky was on fire and crashing. He’d been dazed by the blast, and singed — on the edge, emptying a magazine down at the PE to no effect, he’d been more or less in it. Now he saw the massive helo go into hover above the west side of the qal’at, saw the cargo door open under the after end of the fuselage, abseil ropes snake down and the first pair – Hislop and Hattry — on them, rushing own… Ben seeing to it that Kelso and Chalky were staying put until those others got here — they were being profligate with their Uzi ammo now, and Ray Wilkinson was busy on the other side, Laker and Teal getting Geoff on to the makeshift timber stretcher and rushing him into the helo’s thunderous downdraught. Then one of them back with the board to put the Russian on it. The CO had been taking over by this time: Ben met him in sudden close-up as they raced in opposite directions, Hislop sprinting with Frank Kenrick at his heels, SA80 in his left hand, a grenade in the other and pulling the pin out with his teeth as he ran. They’d brought a lot of grenades, were distributing them like confetti. There’d been a ladder dangling now, abseil ropes were being pulled up out of the way, Laker had got Geoff strapped into one stretcher — the medics had thrown some down — and Geoff was on is way up on the hoist, Laker and Teal back again with the Russian and on their knees fastening a stretcher around him. Each of them had two SA80s: Geoff’s and Romeo’s, which Ben had left with them, and they were to go up the ladder themselves once the Russian was off the ground. Chalky running for the ladder now, sent back by the CO; he had an AKM slung on his back as well as the SA80. Then Kelso, carrying his own gun and two Uzis, but Ben intercepted him, took the Uzis and threw them into the dark in opposite directions. It wasn’t possible or necessary to explain. He was on the southern edge again after that, between the CO and Bert Hattry who were lobbing grenades clear over the plateau to explode as they rolled down the slope beyond it. Deakin and Kenrick were then also on their way: it was about ten minutes since the explosion, maybe five since the helo had dropped the first ropes.
Ben pulled the trigger on an empty magazine, his last. Hislop sent him away: he’d already sent Hattry. Ray Wilkinson and Froggie Clark had come from the goat-track side and were climbing like monkeys, and Ben waved Sticks on to the ladder ahead of him. He himself was about halfway up when the CO passed him — one foot in the strap of the winch-wire, getting a free ride, but both of them going up fast then because Gregg Swe
nsson wasn’t hanging around unnecessarily, his winchman had been counting heads and he had his Stallion rearing up into the night. The searchlight had been switched off, Ben was climbing the twirling, swaying ladder through a hurricane of downdraught up towards the oblong of light awaiting him.
*
Mugs of tea, beef sandwiches, and a reek of disinfectant…
Bearded, blackened faces, eyes all with the same deep-sunk, cautious look about them. Not the eyes their wives or mothers knew. The caution might have been an unreadiness to trust in this apparent safety, in being alive while there were some who weren’t.
Geoff was on a cot, with an Army doctor and the girl attending to him. Leo Serebryakov on another had a drip-feed into his undamaged arm, a hypodermic needle sliding at this moment into a vein in the other one. Ben asked the Crab doctor, having to scream to be heard over the noise, ‘This guy going to live?’
Laker hadn’t been at all sure he would. The doctor didn’t look up: he shouted, ‘No reason I’ve seen yet why he shouldn’t.’
Not much reason he should, either, Ben thought, moving to a seat behind his CO’s. Especially when Romeo Hall and Charlie Swale were dead.
The Russian would provide good insurance, though, alive. He leant over to shout to Hislop, who cupped an ear as he turned his head.
‘They’ll get plenty out of that guy. Seems to want to tell it all. He was briefed in Moscow — GRU. False identity, Brit passport, recruited Swale so as to frame him for some show-trial, he was working with some dissent faction in Syria… And he murdered one of the mercenaries he brought here with Swale — a Brit — in cold blood, admits it.’
Hislop nodded, shouted, ‘Not bad for starters.’
‘Not even Assad could say we weren’t justified.’
Hislop’s eyebrows rose. ‘Couldn’t he…’ He paused, then turned again: ‘Anyway, should do you and me a lot of good.’
‘We going to need it?’
A shrug… The round, bland eyes were non-committal. And the shouting made conversation too difficult. They’d be on the ground at Akrotiri in about an hour, there’d be time enough then for the questions and answers.
And to call Mary.
But questions like how come the Cousins had got into it this deep. And whether he’d have made it his way — the backdoor exit, grabbing that truck for a high-speed dash to the coast. Hall might be alive now: others might have died. You’d never know… But something he did know — and he’d have it in and out of his mind as long as he lived — was what John Kelso had shouted in his ear couple of minutes ago: ‘That guy — Charlie — he bloody dived!’
Charlie Swale had a wife — or had had. See her, tell her?
Or maybe the CO would… And meanwhile a point that needed to be made right away, in case London might want to use it, was that he’d left Israeli ration-packs and Israeli weapons on that hilltop.
Someone had pushed a sandwich into his hand. He was leaning forward — elbows on knees, tea-steam in his face, cocooned in noise. The noise was a blessing in its way, a refuge.
First published in United Kingdom in 1988 by MacMillan London Ltd
This edition published in Great Britain in 2015 by
Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
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Beaconsfield, Bucks HP9 2DU
United Kingdom
Copyright © 1988 by Alexander Fullerton
The moral right of Alexander Fullerton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781910859896
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Special Deception Page 37
