by Chris Ryan
He was still talking as the sun's rays at last left Bibrus. The smooth boobs quickly turned a dirty white, stars began to show in the clear sky, and night settled over the Caucasus range.
On our descent into Kars I wondered how the pilots would communicate with the tower. Did someone down there speak Russian, or did both sides talk in English? I never discovered but we landed safely, to find that the Here from Cyprus was already in.
Tony's stand-in had been right about the temperature too. As we stepped out of our little aircraft, the cold bit. On that high plateau our breath condensed in the air, and frozen mud crunched under foot. All round the horizon frosty-looking mountains showed faintly in the starlight. Great was my delight when I found mates from the squadron, settling themselves into an empty warehouse with big blower heaters blasting from the corners.
There was no time to socialise or piss about. I said hello to a few of the guys, then quickly sought out the OC of the standby squadron, Bill Chandler, who'd got himself an office of sorts in a cabin at one end of the big shed. A scalie had already got his Satcom set up, and Bill was talking to Hereford.
As I approached, he looked up at me, gave a grin and said into the phone, "Yes. He's here. He's made it."
When he came off the air, my first question was, "How do we stand on security inside the squadron? I mean, how many of the lads know about Orange?"
"Nobody yet," was his answer.
"It's on a need-to-know basis.
Obviously the HALO team are going to have to know. It's them and the Chinook crews who'll have to exfil the damn thing. I'm going to tell them at their final briefing. As far as everyone else is concerned, it's purely a hostage rescue mission."
"That's fine." I nodded.
"Just remember that Sasha, my Russian partner, doesn't know about Orange either."
"Christ! This is getting complicated. He's going to find out sooner or later."
"Not necessarily. If he does, I'll square him. But I'm doing my best to keep him in the dark."
"That's your problem," said Bill.
"Meanwhile, can you tell me what Orange looks like? You're the only person here who's seen it."
"Three components," I told him.
"Two identical black steel cases, roughly three foot by two foot by one. One box about eighteen inches cubed."
"Weight?"
"The big components eighty kilos each, the small one forty."
"OK, thanks." Bill made some notes.
"Tell you what," I said.
"When Sasha and I go in, WI get eyes on Orange and have to refer to it over the Satcom, I'll call it "three heavy cases". All right?"
"Thee heavy cases," Bill confirmed.
"The latest satellite imagery suggests that they, or it, are in some outlying building to the east of the house."
"Then that'll be the summerhouse."
"The summerhouse," he repeated, scribbling again.
"We're still waiting for confirmation of exfil by Chinook. As soon as we get it we'll pass it through." Then he said, "You and your pal had better brief the air crew. The captain wants to be on his way by ten.
The R.A.F had set up a temporary base in what was obviously a training wing a classroom of sorts, with a blackboard, tables and chairs of tubular metal, and garish, incomprehensible Turkish posters round the walls. The only member of the crew I'd met was Alec, the co-pilot, who introduced me to his captain, a solid, fair-haired Scot called Dan. They had maps spread out over two of the tables pushed together, and were using rulers and compasses to mark them up, punching figures into a lap-top.
"OK," said Dan, inviting me into the discussion.
"There's not much civilian air traffic over this godforsaken area, but there is the occasional night flight coming up over Grozny from Baku, down here on the Caspian. Therefore our aim is to fly a normal civilian track. Your target's Sarnashki, right?"
"Yeah we're aiming for an opening in the forest three ks north-west of the village."
"Roger. The wind's about five ks on two-four-zero, so if we tip you out ten ks west, you should be able to fly yourselves in.
I nodded.
"That'd be fine."
"Good. That'll keep us well clear of Grozny. So..." He stood up and stretched before running through a quick recap.
"We go out on zero-eight-four and hold that heading till we cross the civilian track from Baku. Then we turn left on to two-eight-eight and head up between Grozny and Ordzhonikidze. Our marker point for the turn is this peak here, Dyltydag. It's over four thousand metres and fairly isolated, so we should pick it out all right but if we can't, the computer will hack it."
"What height will we be flying at?"
"Twenty-eight thousand. You'll want plenty of clothes on.
I nodded again, wondering at the sight of all those peaks on the map a range running for two or three hundred miles, northwest to south-east, with numerous 15,000-footers among them.
We were going to fly right over the whole lot. All I asked was, "How long will it take to get there?"
Alec did a few more calculations and came up with, "One hour five to the turn, then twenty-five minutes to the DZ overhead. It should be no problem to get you there. It's not you that's bugging us, though."
"What is it, then?"
"The exfil. Two Chinooks are on their way from Cyprus, and we're trying to work out a way of getting them through this bloody range of mountains. It's a hell of a proposition, I can tell you. Even if we put extra fuel forward, right on the border, it's still a fearsome distance to anyone going in low level."
"What about coming from the other side?" I suggested.
"From Russia?"
"Yeah. Wouldn't that be a better proposition? The intervening terrain doesn't look nearly so high."
"We're working on it. But we don't have clearance from the Russians yet from any direction."
"Call Anna."
"Anna?"
"The woman who's been doing our liaison in Moscow. She's shit-hot. She'll fix anything. Colonel Anna Gerasimova, FSB."
"Sorry, mate what's that?"
"The Federal Security Bureau, part of the old KGB, hived off, I saw the guy giving me an odd look, so I said sharply, "Write her name down, and the number. She may not be in the barracks flow, but she'll be there first thing in the morning. You'll get her on our Satcom link."
"It's bloody horrible being the passenger," I warned Sasha, looking down at the tandem rig laid out on the floor, 'because you've got no control."
"You tell me," he said cheerfiully.
"I do it."
We'd already had some practices during the morning, back at Balashika, but this was a fill-scale dress rehearsal with all our kit on. The two PJIs who were coming with us fitted Sasha into his webbing harness, with hooks at the shoulders and at the waist, linked him to my own harness and pulled him in tight against my front, with both our full berg ens strapped to the front of his legs and a single oxygen cylinder on the outside of my left thigh. Trussed together like this, carrying a lot of weight, we found it almost impossible to walk.
"Let's go through the motions again," I said.
"As the plane approaches the DZ, we move to the edge of the deck. Let's say it's that line on the floor. Go on, then."
Slowly, awkwardly, moving our legs in unison, we shuffled the short distance to the line.
"OK. Now we're waiting for the two green lights on either side of the opening." I pointed outwards at head level, right and left.
"When we get them, and a signal from the head lo adie we just lean forward together and topple out. After that, you don't need to do anything except hold the same position. Keep your hands crossed over your chest, like you've got them now. All right?"
Sasha nodded.
"Once we're under canopy, we can take off our masks and let them hang. Then I'll slacken off the straps so that you slide down, about this much." I held my hands a foot apart.
"That means your feet will be lower than mine, so they'll touch the ground first.
Just as we're coming in to land, I'll tell you to start walking. At first you'll be walking in the air, then on the deck.
OK?"
He nodded.
Without changing my voice I went on, "There are two other things you need to know. First, if our chute fails to open, cross your legs and keep them there."
"And why?"
"So they can unscrew you from the ground."
He stared at me, and I went on relentlessly, "The other thing is, keep your right hand up."
"Why that?"
"So you don't break your watch when you go in."
At last he smiled and aimed a gentle punch at me. Outwardly he seemed pretty calm, but perhaps not, because he kept sliding off for sessions in the bog.
Meanwhile, I was sorting the kit they'd brought us and repacking it into my bergen. They'd given us plenty of warm clothes, including two free-fall Goretex suits with Thinsulate linings: when zipped together, the jackets and trousers gave us a perfectly windproof outer layer. There were also a couple of sweaters apiece, thermal silk long johns and long-armed vests, and any amount of boil-in-the-bag meals, which we could eat cold if necessary. If all went well, we'd be on the ground for less than thirty-six hours, so I cut down our load as far as I dared, as the combined weight of our essential kit was already formidable.
I had a 203, with eight spare thirty-round mags and two grenades, plus Sig, spare mags, knife, Satcom, GPS, covert radio, kite-sight, binoculars, fireflies, water bottles sleeping bag, bivvy bag and cam nets. A lot of the heaviest stuff, like the magazines, went into the pouches on my webbing, but there was still enough to fill a bergen. Sasha had his Gepard and spare mags, plus a pistol and ammunition.
At 9:30 p.m. I went for a final briefing with Bill Chandler.
The met forecasts were unchanged. Orange hadn't moved: the satellite was still getting its signal.
"As far as they can tell, it's not in the main house," Bill told me.
"If it was inside a big structure, they probably wouldn't hear it. It seems to be about a hundred metres east of the building."
"OK," I said.
"As soon as we're on site I'll call you and let you know what we can see.
After a sandwich and a cup of tea we were ready to go. At the last minute I bumped into Pat, who looked in rollicking form, his bright brown eyes shining, cheeks ruddy, and his teeth flashing white as ever.
"Taking on Chechnya single-handed, are you, Geordie?" he enquired with a big grin on his face.
"Just the two of us. Pat, this is Sasha, a very good colleague from Moscow. Sasha Pat Newman."
"Hi, Sasha!" Pat shook hands quickly.
"You want to watch this fellow he's a dangerous bastard to be with."
Rising to the banter, Sasha took hold of my webbing and said, "I keep him tied to me.
"Quite right! Otherwise he might dump you in it."
"You look out," I told Pat.
"The Chechens are pretty handy with their guns. Move a bit faster this time or you'll end up a Figure Eleven again."
"We'll see!" Pat grinned and gave me a smack on my sore shoulder.
"Eh," he went, seeing me wince.
"What's the matter?"
"I got nicked there in a bit of a shoot-out."
"Really! We live in dangerous times. Happy landings, anyway."
"Same to you, Pat. We'll see you tomorrow."
As we moved off, Sasha asked, "What is Figure Eleven?"
"One of the targets we shoot at on the range." With both hands I drew the silhouette of a man's torso in the air.
For us, down in the back of the Here, the flight was routine and relatively short. After take-off the pilot climbed hard, under full power, to clear the mountains, and the vibration was enough to loosen your teeth. Then we levelled off, and I went up on the flight deck for a look at the terrain.
Beneath us a sea of snow peaks lay glittering in bright moonlight, with jagged ridges of rock running down from the summits in incredibly complex patterns. I plugged the end of my helmet lead into an intercom socket and said to the pilot, "Glad we're not going out right here."
"Aye," he went.
"You wouldna have much of a chance. Here's our marker summit coming up already. See it?"
Dead on the nose of the aircraft a singk snow-clad peak was rising from the horizon, slender and pointed. We seemed to be approaching it at a snail's pace, then all at once loomed closer.
While I was staring at it the plane tilted steeply to the left as the auto-pilot made our programmed turn.
Back in the hold, the head lo adie signalled us to start getting our tandem rig on, and the two PJIs helped do up the straps,
clips and buckles to the correct tension.
So, for the final few minutes, we stood strapped tight together, unable to sit down, barely able to walk. My pulse rate had shot up and my heart was pounding. I'd peed into the Elsan just a few minutes before, but already I had the feeling I wanted to go again.
I tried to concentrate on controlling my breathing so that I didn't hyperventilate.
On our own oxygen now, with masks in place, it was impossible to communicate any longer. In spite of the discomfort, there was time too much time for my mind to zip back to the fuck-up over France. The big difference now was that Pavarotti, poor bugger, was on the deck, in the hands of the Mafia, and had no chance of flying into me on the way down.
Either side of the tailgate the red warning lights flicked on.
The head lo adie gave me two fingers. I acknowledged them, and saw him hitch his own harness to a strop hanging from the wall.
The tail opened, letting in a blast of searingly cold air. As the ramp settled into its horizontal position the guy motioned us forward, and with another well-anchored lo adie steadying us from behind, we waddled to the edge of the abyss, a few inches at each step, stiff-legged as ducks.
One finger from the head lo adie One minute to go. Sixty seconds of sheer terror.
Sasha seemed totally cool, not trembling or shifting about. I could only think, He must have nerves of fucking steel. I found it impossible to think rationally. All I could do was try to keep my breathing rate down and will the seconds to pass faster.
Then suddenly both red lights turned to green.
"Green on!" I yelled.
"GO!"
I gave Sasha a tap on the right arm and as one we leant forward and toppled into a blasting, icy hurricane.
Immediately we were in a face-down attitude, Sasha beneath me. Freezing air ripped past my cheeks, scouring like crystals of ice. Far below and away to our right the snow-peaks shin-unered and glinted. I felt the drogue-chute tug at the centre of my back as it deployed behind us, slowing our descent slightly and keeping us stable.
Then, steering with hands and feet, I turned us round until our heads were pointing north. I was still aware of the moonlit snow summits, now out on our left, but there was no time to enjoy the view. Our urgent need was to pinpoint the LZ. It should be showing up as a lighter patch in the black of the forests.
At first I couldn't pick it out and panic threatened. Every second I kept glancing back at the altimeters on my forearms.
The hands were unwinding like clocks gone berserk.
At last I got it: a little grey oblong, father to our right than I'd expected, but well within reach. By dropping my right arm and raising my left, I tilted us in that direction. At the change of attitude I found myself dreading the possibility of going into another spin; but Sasha played his role perfectly, remaining passive beneath me, not trying to influence our flight-path, relying on me to steer.
Down, down, down we went. Sixteen thousand, fourteen, twelve. The forested hills were gloriously black below us. Far off to our right, beyond the LZ, was a small cluster of lights, which I reckoned was Samasliki, too far off for anyone there to spot one little dot falling from the sky. Otherwise the wooded hills were magnificently dark, denoting a total absence of houses. No bright windows, no roads, no moving vehicles.
Ten, eight, six... Our target was growing rapidy into a fair-sized field.
Five... I tugged the release toggle. Away went the drogue with a snap, pulling out the big chute, and with a heavy snatch we were jerked upright, swinging beneath the main canopy. Immediately I unhooked one side of my mask so I could talk again, and released the tension on the harness buckles, so that Sasha sank down until the top of his helmet was level with my chest, giving me a better view of where we were heading.
The pale opening in the forest was well within reach, ahead and slightly to our right.
"See it down there?" I said quietly, pointing.
"Fantastic!" Sasha breathed, on a high. Now I could hear him hyperventilating.
"Breelliant!" he went.
"Otlich no!"
"OK," I said, 'take it easy, and don't make too much noise."
I steered for the open patch, glad of the bright moonlight for the view it gave us, but feeling altogether too conspicuous. At least the LZ looked fairly level.
The black trees came up rapidly to meet us. We were over the southern edge of the clearing, sliding towards the centre. As we came in I pulled on both risers, staffing our descent.
"Get ready," I told Sasha.
"Start walking now."
Then I flared again: the chute came up and stalled, and a moment later we landed softly on short, frosty grass.
For a few seconds we crouched, motionless, listening. Not a murmur. The breeze carried a thin, clean scent of pines. The opening we'd landed in looked to be about two hundred metres by one hundred, with trees on all sides. Then it was out of the harness, weapons out of their ties and at the ready, and down in a defensive position, facing outwards. Sasha needed no instruction: he moved fast and instinctively.
My hands were lumps of ice. My fingers started to throb and burn as I worked them furiously, open and shut, to get the circulation going while I waited for my GPS to get a fix and confirm we were on the correct location.
As soon as the figures came up, and I saw they were right, we rolled our jumping kit into a bundle, shouldered our berg ens and set off towards the edge of the field in search of a place to hide or bury the evidence.
"Big experience for me," Sasha panted, still breathless with excitement as we hurried forward.
