The Tango Briefing q-5

by Adam Hall

  The note of their engines was steady.

  And quieter now.

  Kerosene.

  Kerosene and the dust settling and the brightness coming back into the light while I lay prone watching the reflections in the dark unwinking eye, while I lay surprised and not quite understanding, listening to the thrum of the rotors passing towards the west, while I lay with weakness flooding into me as the tension came off and the nerves lost their tone, the sound from the sky dying away until, as I lay listening, silence came.

  Switch.

  Tango.

  Can get quite worked up when your base won't answer then I remembered and spun it back to 7 and called him again. Still wouldn't bloody well answer. They've been off the air for over two minutes now well don't panic there's no action needed but why don't they answer they're my base and this is my lifeline.

  Tango — Tango.

  It was her voice, soft and precise.

  I said

  Where the hell have you been?

  Loman hates that: he likes you to make a point of replying with the code for the mission, not his day today, the sweat running into my eyes because we'd confirmed these were the right rocks and the freighter must be near them and they'd put sixty choppers across the area and they hadn't seen it so it couldn't be here after all.

  I'm sorry. We were monitoring the helicopters.

  So was I.

  Then Loman came on.

  Tone rather light, rather correct.

  Quiller.

  Hear you.

  Where are the aircraft at present?

  They've gone.

  They overflew your position?

  It wasn't really a question. Diane spoke Arabic and she'd monitored their frequency so she'd heard them telling each other to 'check those rocks' and she would have told Loman so he knew bloody well they'd overflown my position. He just didn't understand it and I knew what that meant: he'd got confirmation from London.

  I was still lying prone and there wasn't any more need so I crawled backwards out of the niche but stayed in the shade, my shoulders against the rockface. There was a scuttling sound and I turned my head and saw it had gone. Then I shut my eyes because the panic was over and I wanted to think.

  Did they overfly your position?

  I ought to be helping the poor little sod.

  Yes. Slow speed, low altitude, took their time, couldn't miss it. You've had confirmation from No. 2 Fighter-Recco, is that it?

  Pause.

  Yes. There has been no error of any kind.

  Didn't make sense.

  There must have been, Loman.

  You and I have confirmed that the rock outcrop where you are now is in fact the rock outcrop in the photograph. The RAF has just confirmed by signal that the object in the photograph is a crashed aeroplane and that it is lying on the sand at a distance of four hundred and eighty-five yards — four eight five — from the outcrop with a bearing of two hundred degrees — two-double-oh.

  Vaguely I thought no wonder he's been worrying about my mental condition but he can think again now because a hundred and twenty men of the Algerian Air Force couldn't see the thing either.

  You do it for me then, Loman. You work it out. That's what you're for.

  After a bit he said:

  Stay on receive.

  I shut my eyes again.

  There wasn't anything he could do anyway. Get a pencil and paper but there weren't any figures, no way of checking. Talk to the girl but what could she do? Any of us do?

  Beware.

  Not quite a word: the shape of a thought. The fine grains hitting the side of the box in the low wind. More scuttling now, maybe I was stuck right outside one of their dens and they couldn't get home. It had sounded like the sand when it had pattered against the polyester box in the low wind, with the folds of the 'chute canopy still showing where the sand hadn't yet drifted. I'd made a mental note at the time, warning myself that the desert wasn't like other places.

  Of course he'd go straight into signals again with London and ten minutes from now they'd have a full-scale emergency meeting in session at the Bureau and I hoped it'd keep fine for them.

  No one else could have got here first. We knew there were at least two other networks with a crash-priority interest in Tango Victor but there hadn't been time for them to get here and anyway we'd have had a flash about it from Control: if the opposition beats another cell to the post in the end-phase of a mission then everyone gets to know about it, don't worry. And theycouldn't have taken the wreck away, even by a concerted chopper lift, without making so much noise and leaving so much mess that the rest of us would have just taken a look and gone off home.

  Stuttering. They were quite big things, heavy when they ran although they ran like a flash. They bothered me, wouldn't let me alone, the sound of the sand pattering against the side of the box, the low wind slowly covering the nylon 'chute, a mental note, the desert hides things, beware.

  Someone was saying oh… my… Christ… in a kind of measured tone, perhaps not aloud, just inside my head, and I opened my eyes and looked through the scratched sunglasses to the blaze of the dunes out there. Then I hit the transmit.

  Tango.

  She answered straight away so I knew he couldn't be in signals with London and I suppose it made sense because this problem wasn't for Control, it was strictly local. He'd been using his time thinking.

  He came on and I said

  Can you get hold of a met.record for this area covering the last three days?

  He didn't ask why, so perhaps he'd been thinking on much the same lines as I had. He just said he'd contact the airfield at Kaifra. The phone was obviously working now because he was back in a few minutes and said yes, there'd been a sandstorm two days ago, particularly severe.

  13: OBJECTIVE

  The tube went in and I pushed, leaning on it.

  When I pulled it out the sand ran into the hole it had made, filling it. There wasn't anything pointed I could use: the end of the tube was blunt and therefore not very efficient as a boring tool but it was all I had. It was one of the sections of telescopic tubing among the survival gear, meant to hold up fabric and make it a shelter.

  I pushed it in again, six feet away, and leaned on it.

  Skin perfectly dry. Cooling had stopped.

  I'd have to watch that because heat stroke develops quite rapidly: the body temperature starts rising soon after the stage where the sweat evaporates without having time to cool the skin. Quickened pulse, loss of consciousness, death.

  I drank again to replace some of the sweat but the water was hot and gave no sensation of quenching the thirst: it was just liquid going into the organism. I was having to calculate now and we were running it close: one more litre was left for working with, and one reserve litre for staying alive during sleep. I could go another ninety minutes at this rate on a litre but that didn't have anything to do with it because the heat explosion would begin a long time before then unless I could take some rest.

  They had come back and their shadows drifted across the flank of the dune as I pushed the tube in and struck nothing. Pull it out. Two paces and try again.

  It must be this one, this dune, or the one on the far side of my No. 2 camp. I'd brought a canopy and three lengths of tubing to make shade, and the 200 °CA had been left on receive. In the last two hours I'd taken four equally-spaced rest periods of fifteen minutes. Loman had come on the air to tell me 1: that the Algerian squadrons would refuel west of here and disperse to their home stations without making a return sweep and 2: that Chirac had confirmed that even a medium sandstorm could bury an aircraft the size of Tango Victor.

  Chirac had pointed out that the freighter had probably hit the sand with the undercarriage up to avoid flipping over and in any case would have gouged a deep trough until the aerofoil had started planing. This would leave the tip of the rudder only two metres or so from the ground and the main structure considerably lower. The 35mm Nikons hadn't been able to register
this because they'd been almost vertically above, but from ground level it couldn't have been easy to see even before the sandstorm had blotted it out.

  Probe and try again, two paces.

  The chance of hitting the rudder or the aerial mast was remote. According to Chime's reckoning the mainplanes, tailplane and fuselage would be at least two metres from the surface. I'd once been in Arizona when the wind had reached seventy and the whole desert had got up and blown across the sky and it had taken us a day to dig out the half-tracks.

  Push and lean and pull out.

  I didn't know anything about falling over till my shoulder began blazing. I couldn't seem to get up because the whole weight of the sky was pressing on me. Heart hammering a lot, throbbing behind my eyes, get in the shade, crawl there if it's all you can do, but get there.

  Sand in the teeth, gritty, and my hands burning, using them as forefeet, clumsy, going too slow, have to hurry, pool of shade, prone.

  He called up at 16.31 hours, waking me.

  No, I said.

  Slight moisture on the skin and the pulse back to normal but I knew it'd start again within ten minutes of going back into that furnace.

  He wanted details.

  I'm using a metal probe, area focus the same as before.

  It seemed to have taken me a long time to say it and now I was out of breath. He didn't answer straight away.

  How much longer can you go on working there?

  I don't know.

  My hand just reached for the flask: I hadn't actually decided to drink.

  I am only asking for an approximate idea, of course.

  He had to say it again before I registered.

  There's water for about an hour's work. But I'm starting get — starting to get — heat stroke symptoms.

  Quite a long pause.

  Would you be able to remain under shade until nightfall?

  My head swung up suddenly and my' eyes opened.

  You mean you could drop more provisions?

  No.

  The pulse had quickened and there was an almost immediate increase in sweating. But he'd said no and it was the first time it had actually been admitted that this was a strictly shut-ended mission unless I could find the objective.

  I propped the mike on my knee, heavy to hold, cost water.

  Take all — it'd take all the water I've got, waiting till dark.

  It would be cooler then. You could work

  No go. Thing is to press on. Tango out.

  Only way to shut him up. Not a thing he could do, not even drop more water. He'd have to signal Control and tell them the score: the executive in the field has a limited number of hours to live, am I to abandon?

  I got up and went out and the slam of the direct heat nearly knocked me down and I staggered a bit and then got some kind of rhythm going. The tube was stuck in the sand where I'd left it, too hot now, blister your hand, so I kicked it over and got hold of the other end and began walking to the part of the dune where I'd halted operations. About halfway there I tripped over his foot.

  It took a little time because he might be able to tell me things by the way he was lying, face down and with his feet towards the end of the dune. I worked slowly, trying to get all the data the situation could provide. My tracks had a slight curvein them: I'd made a detour on my way from the canopy without meaning to, and this was why I hadn't tripped over him when I'd gone in to rest. I turned him over.

  He had died in terror.

  The hands flung out as he'd fallen, perhaps running too hard, running like hell away from the wreck of the freighter, running in terror. His face showed that much. He had died screaming.

  Not far away there was something black showing in the sand: my feet had brought it to the surface; it lay at the edge of my tracks. It was plumage and as I pulled it upwards the wing rose, scattering sand, and then the gross black body with its bald head dangling, the hooked beak agape. The bird, like the man, had died screaming.

  There was another, so near the man that in moving his body, turning it over, I had exposed part of its wing. The heat didn't seem so bad now and I was moving more quickly, a sense of purpose reviving the organism. I made a direct line to the end of the dune where his feet had pointed, and tripped again, dislodging a peaked cap from a man's head. His body was in the same attitude: he'd been running away from the freighter. His face had the same expression.

  A third vulture was lying at the foot of the dune. I was kicking into the thing before I knew it. I didn't stop to examine it because the renewed strength in me was pushing me onwards and the fourth time I drove the tube into the sand it struck metal.

  Distance 485 yards. Bearing 200°. Longitude 8°3′ by Latitude 30°4′.

  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, theGhibli.

  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 Lo
ndon.

  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 theonly signal that makes any kind of bang throughout the departments concerned withthe specific mission and it would give Loman a lot of joy to send it. Toask 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.