by Chris Ryan
‘Roger,’ I went. ‘Which way’s he coming in?’
‘West to east, from behind you.’
‘Roger. I’m almost at the end of the Mall. Tell the pilot I’ll try to give him smoke at both ends of a good strip. Got a problem, though. Truck’s overheating. Stand by.’
Eyeballing frantically to my left, I recognised the start of the Mall and swung left-handed off the road towards the flat ground. On the temperature gauge the needle was up into the red. Before we reached the level area we had to cross an old river bed. Over the bumps I changed down into second. Steam began pouring from under the bonnet. Fifty yards short of the flat, the needle went off the dial. I sensed that if I gunned the engine for another few seconds, it would seize. Somehow I’d got to get the truck on to the flat ground so that the Herc could pull up beside it. No way would the incoming crew be able to carry every missile a hundred metres or more.
I switched off, and said to Jason, ‘Got to get some water into it. Here, take these.’ I pulled out two smoke grenades which I’d had stowed in my Bergen, down beside my feet. ‘The plane’s coming in this way.’ I made a sweeping movement, indicating an approach from behind us and to the left. ‘Run! Crack one off over there, on the flat. Then run again. Minimum five hundred metres straight along. Six hundred if you can make it before you see the Herc coming. Okay?’
‘Yassir!’ Jason’s face was all lit up. He slipped the grenades into his pouches, jumped down, and ran like a grey spider, stumbling over the tussocks.
‘Green One,’ I went on the radio. ‘Tell the Herc he’ll have one lot of smoke anyway, maybe two. If it’s only one, that’s his touch-down point; if it’s two, they’ll mark both ends of the strip. Stand by.’
I leapt to the ground. Steam was still pouring from the bonnet. With the catch released, the damage was obvious: some sharp edge driven into the front of the radiator. The whole engine was dangerously hot. I was still wearing Rasputin’s protective gloves, but first I smothered the radiator cap with a piece of sacking as well, then turned it. Jets of steam spurted sideways. I ran round to the back of the wagon, unhooked the cage that held the jerricans under the false floor, dragged a can out and lugged it to the front. The first few pints of water exploded in steam, but the rest took the temperature down and the system began to fill.
As I stood there holding the heavy can level, I heard the engines of the Herc. I glanced behind me towards the beginning of the Mall. Green smoke was billowing, going almost straight up, and in the distance Jason was running.
Fresh water started to dribble from the hole in the honeycomb of metal on the radiator front. I stopped pouring, flung the can away, stuffed sacking into the puncture, replaced the cap, slammed the bonnet down and hauled myself into the driving seat. The engine fired. I went into first, crawled forward, and changed into second.
With my own engine running, I could no longer hear the plane. How far out was it? Jason had cracked off the first grenade well out on the flat ground. Fifty yards short of it, I stopped at right angles to the line of approach and craned forward in the cab, peering to my left. Nothing in sight.
A thought struck me. If I could get the wagon to the far end of our makeshift runway, the Herc could load up from it there, without having to taxi back the length of the strip. Because there was zero wind, the pilot could take off again in the opposite direction, and not overfly the convoy approaching from the east.
I revved up, rolled forward and turned right along the designated runway. Up ahead Jason had vanished into the heat haze. Too late, I glanced down at the temperature gauge. Once more the needle was high in the red. A second later I was getting steam again – a big cloud of it this time, spurting up in front.
No chance of stopping now. I had to keep going. I was maybe halfway along the strip when I heard what I’d been dreading: a horrendous, grinding scream from the engine, followed by a noise like chains being pulled fast through iron railings, then a single, devastating crack.
The wagon hiccuped to a halt. I grabbed the radio. ‘Green One,’ I shouted. ‘I’m fucked! Where are you?’
‘Right behind you,’ came the answer. ‘We have you visual. What’s your problem?’
‘Engine’s seized. Can’t move.’
‘Stand by. We’ll get a towline on you.’
Within seconds, the pinkie came up with a rush on my right and scorched to a halt a few metres ahead. Dust swirled up round it. Pav was driving, with Stringer beside him. The rest of the guys – I noted with relief that we’d suffered no casualties in the shoot-out – jumped off the open back and ran out a rope. Above the noise of the jeep’s engine idling I could hear Stringer shouting over the satcom. I caught a glimpse of Danny with blood on his face. Holding the rope in place, he waved the jeep forward. Pav twisted round in his seat, then turned back and eased his vehicle forward to take up the strain. In the distance ahead a second column of green smoke was rising.
I already had my gear shift in neutral, and to minimise resistance I held the clutch pedal down on the floor. Still spouting steam, the mother wagon rolled forward, slow as a crippled elephant. Suddenly, from behind, from right above our heads, came an almighty roar and a blast of hot air as the Herc thundered over, not fifty feet up. Its undercarriage was down, but even as it cleared us I saw the flaps come up and heard the pilot increase power as he lifted away.
‘What’s he doing?’ I shouted.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Pav shouted back. ‘How can he land with you in the middle of the fucking runway?’
I felt faint, as though I was going to pass out. My left leg was shaking violently with the effort of holding the clutch pedal down. I let the pressure off, and we continued to roll. Without any power the steering had gone heavy as lead. We were doing only eight or nine kilometres an hour. At that speed I had time to reach out for a water-bottle and get the contents down my neck. Far out in front, the Herc was lifting away in a hard turn to the left, with black exhaust trails streaming behind its engines.
The liquid gave me new heart.
‘Tell him we’ll be ready for him next time round,’ I said to Pav. ‘And tell him the black guy on the runway’s one of ours.’
‘Roger,’ Pav answered. ‘We’re in the shit already. The plane’s just taken fire from the enemy column. The pilot reckons they’re within three ks of the strip.’
I measured the distance from us to Jason’s second smoke grenade. Two hundred metres. For another few seconds I held on. ‘Keep going,’ I called. ‘Keep going . . . This’ll do. Pull off! Pull away to the right.’
Pav turned. He had the sense to keep going until he’d towed the mother wagon well off the strip, at right angles to it, tail-on. The moment he stopped, Danny leapt off and slashed through the rope with a knife. Then Pav drove off twenty or thirty metres.
I jumped to the ground, ran to the back of the wagon and unhooked the fastenings of the tail-board. At a glance I could tell that several of the warhead casings had cracked during our violent transit. The whole load seemed to be coated in transparent slime.
The roar of aircraft engines made me look behind. There was the Herc, coming round in a hard turn, almost at zero feet, banked like a huge, heavy fighter, with the tip of its port wing flicking over the bush.
‘Shit hot!’ I shouted. ‘That’s some flying!’ But when I moved towards the pinkie and the other guys, to get the crack, they edged rapidly away, staring at me as if I were a lunatic.
‘What’s the matter?’ I called.
‘Keep your fucking distance, Geordie!’ Mart shouted. ‘There’s NBC suits for us all on board the Herc. Until we’ve got them on, just stay clear of us and the wagon.’
The Herc was already coming in. Having made the tightest possible circuit, the pilot straightened up and banged his big aircraft down just past the first smoke grenade. Smoke and dust exploded as the tyres bit. So hard was the first impact that the plane bounced and flew another fifty metres before it smacked down again. There was a terrific roar as the pilot reverse
d the thrust of the props, and the aircraft disappeared in a whirling cloud of dust, sand and debris.
By the time it trundled level with us it had slowed to a walking pace, and it swung hard round, right-handed, turning back to face the way it had come, before rolling to a halt no more than thirty metres from the mother wagon. Already the tail ramp was on its way down. From the side door burst a team of men in sand-coloured NBC suits, complete with helmets, masks and respirators. The two guys in the lead carried armfuls of spare suits. Ignoring me, they ran for the pinkie and threw the garments at the rest of the lads, who immediately started struggling into them.
The remainder of the NBC team came in my direction. The leader shouted something in my face, but the combination of his mask and the scream of the Herc’s engines deadened his voice, and I didn’t get what he said.
Instead of replying, I pointed at the back of the mother wagon. The guy ran towards it, stopped a couple of metres short, took one look at the load and made a colossal ‘no way’ gesture with his gloved hands, flinging his arms out wide to either side, on a level with his shoulders, like a member of a ground crew telling a pilot to shut down his engines. Then he turned and did the same towards the flight-deck of the aircraft.
He must have given a radio order to his mates. Three men ran forward with a hold-all and began rigging explosive charges on the noses of the weapons in the top layer. As they worked, the leader made violent gestures towards our team, pumping his right hand up and down and pointing at the plane. ‘Get in!’ his signals were saying. ‘Move! On the double! All aboard!’
The lads stumbled towards the pinkie, half in and half out of their sandy suits, to grab their weapons. Pav must have realised that he wasn’t going to need any protection after all, because he ripped his kit off and threw it on the ground with an angry gesture before he seized the .50 from its mount, then snatched his own 203 and ran for the plane, clutching both weapons. Stringer was already fully dressed, but Danny and Chalky moved awkwardly, with their legs encased, holding the upper halves of the suits around their waists. The Herc sat there, big and heavy, with all four props spinning.
As for me, I felt zombiefied. I couldn’t move. I stood and watched the demolition guys taping their det cord into position and setting a timer. Stringer was right: we should have blown the missiles in the cache, without ever bothering to move them.
One of the demo team gave me five fingers: five minutes to get clear. Still I was rooted to the spot. I watched him, and all the NBC team, sprint for the tailgate of the Herc and up the ramp. I seemed to be caught in a dream. Everyone else could move, but I was frozen. Through the swirling dust I saw Pav and Chalky come out on to the ramp and make frantic gestures, ordering me, begging me, willing me, to go aboard. Their mouths were wide open, yelling. Another guy, unrecognisable in his NBC kit, was giving a similar performance from the side door. But something made it impossible for me to do what they wanted.
At last I came to life. I grabbed my 203 from the front of the doomed mother wagon and ran – not for the Herc, but for the pinkie. I slotted my weapon into the clips above the dash and jumped into the driving seat. The ignition key was in place. I switched on, started up and scorched off towards the far smoke pillar. As I accelerated away, the note of the Herc’s engines rose and it started to move in the opposite direction. The side door had been closed; the tail ramp was going up.
I found Jason flat on his face, in a firing position, with his 203 levelled towards the east. Great guy – he was preparing to take on the Alpha column single-handed. I pulled up beside him with a yell of ‘All aboard!’, and hardly gave him time to scramble into the passenger seat before I shot forward again, hell bent on getting out of sight before the rebel convoy came into view. Instinct sent me due north, into a patch of dense bush, where thickets of thorn grew two or three times the height of the vehicle.
As soon as we were out of sight of the road, I stopped and switched off.
‘If they’ve seen us, we’re fucked,’ I said. ‘But I think we’re okay.’
We grabbed our 203s, jumped out and scuttled to the edge of the thicket, at a point where a gap in the bushes gave a view of the open ground.
The roar of the Herc’s engines under full power rumbled back at us. The aircraft was taxiing straight away into the far distance, trailing dust. Then it lifted off, leaving all the debris behind it. Seconds later a brilliant flash spurted from the mother wagon, and the BOOM! of a big explosion buffeted past us. Pieces of metal erupted into the air, falling back over a wide area. A grey, mushroom-shaped cloud soared upwards, and beneath it the wreck of the truck was enveloped by flames.
‘The buggers won’t fancy that,’ I said, half to myself, half to Jason. ‘Now they see the aircraft’s away, and there’s nothing left for grabs on the strip, they’ll keep going, to check the cache. They’ve nothing else to go for.’
My hunch was immediately put to the test. Within a minute the first vehicle appeared, a Gaz jeep, proceeding quite fast along the road, with two guys standing in the open back. Obviously a scout – it was well ahead of the rest. Before it came level with the burning remains of the wagon, it stopped.
‘They’re radioing back,’ I said. ‘Reporting the situation, asking for orders.’
After a pause, the jeep went forward again. When I saw it wasn’t deviating from the road, but heading on for the town, I breathed deep with relief. A minute behind it, the rest of the convoy lumbered into view: two more jeeps, four heavy trucks with their open backs full of troops, four closed lorries, a tanker and two more jeeps bringing up the rear – quite a force. Which vehicle was Joss in, I wondered? I dearly wanted to launch a 203 grenade and take the bastard out.
All Jason and I had to do was keep still until they’d disappeared, then slip away to the east. I felt momentary exultation at the thought that this lot of pricks was about to run head-on into the survivors of Muende’s convoy, but then, with the abrupt release of tension, exhaustion hit me. Lying flat out, with my face on the backs of my hands, I closed my eyes and let out a deep sigh.
‘Okay, sah?’
I opened my eyes, to see Jason staring at me with a worried expression.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ I went. ‘A bit tired, that’s all. And Mabonzo, you know what we’re going to do now, don’t you?’
‘Yassir. Go get the diamond.’
SIXTEEN
Our basic need was to head north-north-east across country. I didn’t want to use the road, for fear that Joss might have a back-up convoy coming along behind him. Alpha Commando certainly possessed more vehicles than we’d seen. At the same time, I did want to put distance between ourselves and the burnt-out truck, to get clear of any radioactivity released by the explosion. I knew I must already be contaminated to some extent, but I saw no point in taking unnecessary risks. So I pulled off Rasputin’s sodden suit, buried it as best I could, and for an hour drove carefully through the bush, parallel with the road but out of sight of it, following a gully which twisted and turned more or less in the right direction.
With the immediate threat gone, reaction set in. I realised I was physically exhausted, and knew I had probably exposed myself to a fatal dose of radiation. What I didn’t appreciate was that my mind and motives were totally confused.
To start with I felt angry with myself for screwing everything up. It was my fault entirely that I was stranded in the middle of a hostile country, my fault we’d gone after the arms cache in the first place, my fault I hadn’t boarded the Herc when I had every opportunity, and the rest were desperately urging me to shift my arse and join them. Self-pity soon gave way to guilt. Thinking back, I knew full well that I’d been secretly planning this breakaway ever since Sam sprang Genesis and me from the cell. It was in the light aircraft, just after Genesis died, that I’d conceived the idea of peeling off from the rest of the team to go in search of the diamond. I’d kept the scheme hidden in my mind all through our approach to the weapons cache. The worst thing was that I’d deliberately decei
ved my mates. Never before, during sixteen years in the Regiment, had I done anything like that. I’d had disagreements and rows, of course, but they’d always been in the open. I’d always remained a good member or leader of the team; never had I double-crossed the rest of the lads about my intentions.
Now I told myself that if Whinger had been alive, I wouldn’t have done it. I’d have confided fully in him, and almost certainly he would have talked me out of such a wild idea. But Whinger had gone, that was the whole point. It was his death that had thrown me off balance. If only we hadn’t rescued the German woman. If only Whinger hadn’t got burnt. If only we’d never gone to the convent. If, if, if . . . As Pavarotti was fond of saying, if my Auntie Nel had had two balls, she would have been my Uncle Arthur.
Now, of course, I had the satcom. I could always call the Kremlin. But what good would that do? Some rupert would only start in, bollocking me. Whatever else I needed at that moment, I didn’t need advice or orders from Hereford.
Contradictory thoughts whirled round and round my head until, giving in to exhaustion, I came to a temporary halt under a grove of trees bearing dark-green leaves.
‘Got to take a break,’ I told Jason. ‘We’ll stay here till dark. We’ll be safer moving at night, in any case.’
He nodded. Except for a small cut beside his left eyebrow, his long, thin face looked no different from normal; but in the past forty-eight hours he’d had as little sleep as I had, and I knew he must be worn out.
‘Get your head down too,’ I told him.
‘Yassir.’
I should have asked him to do an hour’s stag, while I had a kip. But by then I was so far gone that I’d developed a fatalistic attitude. It was a million to one against anyone finding us, I thought, and even if they did, I didn’t care. I dug out a mozzie net, rigged it over my head and chest, stretched out on the bare earth, and within seconds was dead to the world.
