Zero Option

SIX

As at the start of any operation, the guys were tense and quiet, exchanging the odd bit of chit-chat while we waited for the off, but thinking all the time of what lay ahead and wondering what they might have failed to pack.

Whinger was dragging on one of his filthy, home- rolled fags. He'd had an amazing haircut that left his head covered.with short, tow-coloured fuzz and made him look like a coconut. To everyone's amazement Norm had shaved off his moustache, on the grounds that a Mexican appearance might not do him much good if the Libyans caught him. ('You never know,' said Tony, who'd picked up the vibes of the team very quickly, 'it may loosen his tongue. By the time we make it into the desert he'll be talking his head off.') Stew, also, had had a fancy haircut — a flat-top.job, in imitation of Tony and was taking stick from everyone about his girlfriend.

'Managed to slip her a length, did you?' sneered Whinger.

'Bollocks, mate.'

'You mean she wouldn't have it? Must be your technique that's at fault. Puts the wind up her something chronic.'

'Take her by surprise,' said Norm — and I thought, By God, Tony's right!

'Belay her to the bed-head,' I suggested. 'Then she wouldn't have much option.'

Poor Stew had gone red as a beetroot, and I lifted my chin at Whinger to say, 'Hey, leave him alone.' As for me, I kept thinking uneasily of my best-ofthree-falls with Karen, and hoping she wouldn't try to take it out on me while I was away. But to have mentioned that episode to the lads would have made my life not worth living, so I kept mum.

Now it was operational details that mattered. I'd already made one last check to ensure that everyone was properly sterilised — that is, not carrying anything, however insignificant, which might betray our origins if any of us was killed or captured. One box of matches, a chocolate-bar wrapper, a bank note or coin, an envelope, a label on a shirt-collar or the tongue of a boot — any of these would be enough to give us away. In keeping with Regimental practice, preparation had been left to individuals, and nobody had done anything so old-fashioned as line the team up for inspection: I'd just asked everyone to make doubly sure he was clean.

As for me, I made yet another mental check of my possessions: AK-47, spare magazines, Browning, spare mags, Semtex, detonators, det cord, clackers, Magellan, covert radio, torch, spare batteries, camera, binos, Commando knife, PNGs, ski goggles, medical kit, water-bottles, food, extra fuel, cam-net, poles, shovel, sand-bags, shamag. My only personal item was a tiny silver St Christopher, given me by Tracy, which I wore on a chain round my neck. Seeing it one evening in the shower, Tony had suggested I'd do well to leave it behind; but I pointed out that no Arab would know what it was, except some kind of good-luck charm, and therefore it wasn't a risk. By then I was really attached to the little figure, which seemed to have protected me in Colombia, and with things being how they were I wanted to preserve any possible connection with Tracy and Tim.

Our departur6 from Hereford was by no means routine. Except for a few small items in day-sacks, all our kit, including weapons and ammunition, was packed and strapped down on to the quads or in the trailer, and we didn't intend to touch it again until we were over Libya, about to come out of the chopper and start driving towards our target. We were wearing desert DPM fatigues with Parachute Regiment berets, so that as we staged through Cyprus we could pass as umpires taking part in Exercise Bright Star; but we carried no money, no passports, and no means of identification. Our desert clothes had been packed up in one large bundle, and we planned to change into them once we'd taken off from Akrotiri on the last leg of the flight. We all had shamags to wrap around our heads, and our shirts and trousers were the kind of cheap cotton, drab olive or grey or brown, that low-grade Arabs wear to work.

An intelligence update during the past few hours had reduced our window of opportunity to a dangerously narrow span. Some bright int guy had belatedly realised that the Arab weekend consists of Thursday and Friday, rather than Friday and Saturday as our briefing had laid down. This meant that our target might well leave the camp on Wednesday afternoon or evening. Since we weren't going to reach our location until very late on Monday night we'd have only Tuesday night on which to get him.

We'd just taken this news aboard w'hen yet another update came in, emanating from the sleeper-agent within Ajdabiya itself. This last message said that al- Khadduri had a very important visitor coming to see him for secret discussions on Thursday morning, so that he'd definitely be around on the Wednesday night.

That evened the score a bit — it gave us two possible chances — but the tightening of our schedule naturally made my adrenalin flow all the faster. And of course, the sooner we got through our business in the desert, the sooner I'd be back to sort out the mess at home.

The quads went on ahead by four-tonner, and a minibus collected us at 1530. For me, leaving camp seemed like an echo of the recurrent dream in which my left arm kept getting caught and dragged backwards; although I was departing in the general direction of North Africa, part of my mind was stuck fast in Hereford, anchored there by the fact that Tim and Tracy were in enemy hands. As we drove offeastwards, I felt as if the knowledge was tearing me apart.

At 1KAF Lyneham, Hercs were lumbering off the runway every few minutes, and a whole line of them was drawn up on the pan, but one aircraft stood apart from the rest in a distant corner of the field. We drove straight out to it, and found that our bikes had already been loaded. The trailer had been backed in first, and the quads had been strapped down to rings in the steel deck, facing the tail-gate in a zig-zag line so that we could ride them straight out when the time came.

The flight crew greeted us like old pals. Pineapple Pete was his imperturbable self, and All the head loadie — a huge guy with arms covered in tattoos — gave me a run-down of all the units taking part in the exercise.

'You lot are never part of it,' he said teasingly.

'Of course we are. Can't miss out on the chance of getting ourselves some decent suntans.'

Although All didn't say any more he winked, and I saw that he knew we were up to some special villainy.

In spite of the high level of activity everyone seemed relaxed and happy. Our take-of[was scheduled for 1830, and at 1810, as Pete and his co-pilot walked out, I fell in with them.

'Once we're airborne you're welcome up front any time,' Pete said. 'Make yourself at home.'

I thanked him and climbed into the back, where the lads hadn't waited for any invitation but had been busy slinging para-silk hammocks from the cargo nets on the sides of the fuselage.

Soon the engines were turning and burning, but we could tell at once that something was wrong: one of the motors kept back-firing, and ran so rough that after a while the crew shut all four down. A few minutes later they tried again, but the result was the same: one explosion after another shook the aircraft. Eventually, after a second shut-down, word came over the intercom that we were to abandon ship.

'This fucker's no better than a heap of scrap metal,' said Pete contemptuously as he stood on the tarmac and kicked one of the aircraft's tyres. 'I'm not flying the bastard anywhere, least of all to the middle of bloody Egypt.'

To the consternation of the movements officer he demanded another Here immediately — and so forcefully did he state the importance of our deployment that after only half an hour he got one taken off the main exercise rota and seconded to us. Naturally that left someone else in the shit, but it was no business of ours.

Then, of course, all the paperwork had to be redone and the load transferred. Among our own guys there was a good deal of honking as they dismantled their sleeping accommodation and bundled it away — but after a delay of two hours we were at last airborne and on our way.

The noise in the back of a Here — a high, ringing scream — is so punishing that talking requires a major effort. The result was that nobody bothered to make conversation. Anyone who wanted could pull on one of the head-sets dangling from the sides of the fuselage and listen in to the crew, but that soon palled and we generally preferred to get our heads down, aiming to doze or sleep the seven-hour flight away.

A couple of hours out I started worrying about our late take-off, because our timings on the following night were going to be critical. I suspected that after the long haul to Cyprus the crew would have to have a regulation break. Then there'd be a three-hour flight to Siwa, the Egyptian military base — and we needed to be there by early evening, so that we could do a quick transfer to the chopper and be on the ground within reach of our objective while there were still several hours of darkness ahead.

Sweating about it, I headed for the flight deck to ask the skipper what the drill was. Up there, everything seemed pleasantly relaxed; the atmosphere was less claustrophobic than in the back, the noise level much lower. With the plane on autopilot, Pete and his co pilot sat chatting over their head-sets, and through the windshield a vast array of stars was visible above us, with the lights of some German town twinkling far below.

'Fear not,' said the skipper when I put my question to him. 'We can fly, and remain on duty, for up to sixteen hours at a stretch. If you want we could take you straight on to your destination with only an hour to refuel. It's up to you.'

'No, no,' I said. 'We're not that pushed. Let's stick to the schedule. I'd rather come into Siwajust on dark, in case there are eyes around the airfield. Christ knows what the security's like on Egyptian bases. As long as we're there by 2100, we'll be fine.'

'OK, then. Our ETA in Akrotiri is now 0330 Zulu.

That's 0630 local. Siwa's an hour behind that. If you don't want to be there before dusk we won't need to take off until 2000 local. That'll put us into Siwa at about 2200, by which time it should be good and dark.

That suit you?'

'Perfect.'

'In that case, I'll put in for a departure slot at 2000.'

He scribbled i note on his kneepad.

Reassured, I went back, pulled on some ear- defenders and got my head down like everyone else.

The next thing I knew, I heard the engine-note dropping as we began our descent into Akrotiri. After a landing smooth as silk, Pete taxied offto a secure area at one corner of the airfield and we stumbled out into a beautiful dawn. The sky was clear, the air warm but still fresh, with sharp, lemony scents all around.

'Who's for a peach?' said Whinger, giving an almighty yawn.

'Peach?' said Pat. 'What the fuck are you on about?

'The beach, cunt.'

'To hell with the beach,' Tony told him. 'Wha: about a shower and breakfast?'

Taking our day-sacks, we bussed across to th sergeants' mess, sh9wered, and got ourselves big fry-ups Then, and all day, we kept close together in a group discouraging approaches and questions from outsiders We were given basic accommodation — bare rooms wit[two bunks in each — and so spent most of the time in o around the mess. Everybody was eager to spruce up theil tans, which the English spring had hardly got going, bu by mid-morning the sun was seriously hot and cautioned the guys about getting burnt. Not that the really needed any warning; because they'd all serve, abroad in hot countries, they knew that if they did g, down with sunburn it would be their own fault and the could be put on a charge, just as if they'd got drunk o caught a dose of clap.

Even if we'd wanted to, we couldn't have left th, base — partly for security reasons, but mainly becaus, there was always a chance our departure time might b, brought forward. So the lads screwed the nut on an idea of looking for amusement, and accepted that th was just a steady day.

We spent much of the morning going through our plans in an informal O-group, sitting on the concrete floor of an unfinished building which had a roof but no walls, so that plenty of air drifted across it. In particular we confirmed the six away-points, or emergency rendezvous — the points in the desert south of Ajdabiya we'd head for if we were forced to split up — which we'd already punched into our Magellan GPS sets.

These were designated 'E1KV One, EIKV Two' and so on. They existed only in our minds, and there were no marks on any of our 1:50,000 maps, but those sets of figures could easily prove lifesavers.

We also concentrated on correlating the latitude and longitude readings punched into the Magellans with the old-fashioned grid-system on the maps. The lat-long figures were more accurate, and there was always a chance that the batteries in the GPS sets would fail or that there'd be a shortage of satellites overhead at some critical moment. If either of those things happened, we'd be forced back on to the more primitive avigational system of grid-references and compasses.

Our Here remained under guard where it had come to rest, and it attracted no attention because the field was dotted with similar planes, landing and taking offall day as they ferried personnel and stores southwards towards Egypt and the exercise. Soon after midday a bowser-truck went across to refuel ours, and when it was clear we walked back to the plane to break out the bundle of desert clothes; but we soon spewed out of the cargo bay cursing horrendously, because with its tailgate closed the aircraft had heated up like an oven, the inside temperature had soared well into three figures and we decided the job could wait until we were airborne that evening.

It was at lunchtime that we hit a problem. At the far end of the long mess hall Stew spotted someone he'd known pretty well in his parent regiment, the Cheshires. We realised that they must be acting as marshals on the base for the duration of the exercise, and that this created a serious risk that somebody would recognise him and start asking questions — potentially a major disaster, and a prospect which haunted all members of the SAS on covert operations. All Stew could do was slip away as soon as he'd finished his meal and lie low in the room he'd been allocated until it was time to leave.

For the rest of us, the best feature of the sergeants' mess was the supply of fresh oranges. We reckoned they must have come straight off the trees on the island, because they tasted a hundred times sweeter and fresher than any orange we'd had before. A great big basket of them stood at the end of the counter, and after Pat had eaten-four, straigh down, I said to him, 'Watch it, mate, or you'll have the runs.'

'Last vitamin C for a week,' he retorted as he put away yet another — and we all pouched a couple to eat during the next leg of the journey.

This time our departure ran smoothly, and within a minute or two of take-off we were heading southeast over the Mediterranean. As soon as we were in level flight we sorted out our civilian clothes and changed into them, bundling up our DPMs for return to Cyprus.

Our desert gear smelled musty and unfamiliar — Christ alone knew who had worn the stufflast. Whinger yelled that his shirt stank like an Arab's jock-strap, and Stew shouted back, 'It'll stink of you soon enough.' My own shirt wasn't much better, and I shook myself around inside the drab, buff material to get the feel of it. The shirt, a pair of sand-coloured trousers and a thin grey jersey were all I reckoned I'd need.

Our makeshift hammocks had remained in place, so we climbed back into them and lay there in the dim light, ear-defenders in place, each thinking his own thoughts. Mine were of Tim and Tracy — and in particular the boy's paintings I'd found in the desk at home. There was one I remembered in detail: a tank blowing up, with a brilliant, jagged flash of flame all round it and some spiky wrecks of shattered trees in the background. Where could a kid of four have picked up such violent images? Only from the TV, or maybe from listening to me talk about the Gulf. I wished he'd get interested in nature and try drawing the things like squirrels and rabbits that he saw every day. Perhaps when he was older.

And fight now? I had a sudden, horrible thought that his captors would be trying to indoctrinate him against me, teaching him foul language and filthy ideas. I remembered how kids his age in Belfast shout 'Fucking pigs!' whenever they see a Brit soldier come past, and hoped to hell that the PIRA wouldn't have time to corrupt Tim's mind in that way.

After a while, unable to relax let alone sleep, I went up on the flight deck, and I was there when we crossed the Egyptian coast. Far off to our left a spread of lights was twinkling hazily in the dusk.

'Alexandria,' said the skipper.

Beneath the nose the odd cluster of lights marked smaller towns along the shore, and the occasional flares we saw were from oil wells burning off gas; but beyond them, inland, the desert stretched away black as night, with nothing to break its monotony. At this point our target lay about eight hundred kilometres away to the east. Pity we can't just fly across and drop a bomb on the bastard, I thought — and I was on the point of saying as much to Pete when I remembered that he knew nothing of our operation, and had been too professional to make the smallest enquiry about what we were up to.

So for the time being I returned to my hammock but half an hour later Pete called me back to the fligh deck to say he'd been in touch with an 1LAF liaiso officer in the control tower at Siwa.

'Your Chinook's ready for you,' he said. 'God know where it's come from, but it's parked on a pan near the western perimeter of the airfield. As soon as we hit th, deck they're going to send out a vehicle to lead us to it.

'That's excellent. Will there be other Hercs on the field?'

'Absolutely. It's just like Akrotiri. The place i heaving with them — all part of Bright Star.'

'That's what the chopper's been on too,' I said 'Officially it's gone tits-up and been retired sick fron the exercise for a few days.'

Full darkness had fallen by the time we began ou descent. The loadies helped us unshackle the quads an get ourselves organised. Without head-sets on it wa impossible to hear spoken orders, so Big Alf, who w listening in to the flight deck, resorted to his usu system of hand-signals as we were coming in.

At five minutes to touch-down he gave us fly fingers outspread, then three two minutes later. Wit two minutes to go we started our engines and sat ther with the quads ticking over, ski goggles on in case gr: flew about when we landed. With all the noise it w hard to tell if the individual engines were still runnin so I reached down with my right hand to feel m exhaust. Exhaust fumes began to fill the hold, but befor they built up to a serious level we were getting on finger. I realised I needed a piss, but told myself it would have to wait.

The top half of the tail-gate rose slowly, letting in rush of warm, fresh air, and with it an even fierc engine scream. Through the rectangular opening a could see lights shining from latticed towers are vehicles moving. Then, with a thump, the plane was on the deck and rolling.

The bottom half of the tail-gate began to go down while we were still taxiing. The Here made a couple of turns, left and right — I guessed it was following a lead vehicle — and we had barely come to a standstill before Alf was waving us off. First down the ramp was Tony, and the rest of us followed swiftly in single file, Stew and his trailer bringing up the rear.

Outside, the first thing that hit me was the smell of an African settlement, the inevitable stink of heat and drains and dust hanging in the hot night air. The Chinook was within fifty metres of us, tail-gate down, rotors whirling. In seconds all six quads were at the bottom of the ramp, and we leapt off to manhandle the trailer backwards up the slope — first on, last off. Then, one after another, with Stew leading, we reversed into the belly of the chopper and parked in another zigzag alongside the big, black rubber sausage of an extra fuel tank.

Our new head loadie was sitting in the hatchway of the partition that separates the hold from the flight- deck. He twisted round to get a look at us, and the moment I gave him the thumbs-up he hit the button to raise the ramp. He also passed word to the pilot, who immediately revved up his engines, put on pitch and lifted away.

The transfer couldn't have been accomplished any faster. I didn't believe that anyone could have seen us, but even so for the first few minutes the captain headed due south, to confuse anyone who might be watching, and made sure that he was out of sight before he swung on to an easterly heading. When I waved at the cockpit to indicate that I wanted to make contact, the head loadie pointed to a head-set, which I plugged into a socket on the wall.

I had to think for a moment who our new skipper was. Then I remembered him and his crew coming to Hereford. Of course: it was Steve Tanner, another Geordie, a small, dark fellow with sticking-out ears.

'Evening, Steve,' I went. 'Geordie Sharp here.'

'Hi, Geordie,' came the reassuring voice. 'Good to have you aboard. We've crossed the border already.

Welcome to sunny Libya.'

'Great! That was a neat pickup.'

'Not too bad.'

'What's our flight time?'

'We're estimating one hour fifty. There's no wind to speak of, so you should be on your location just after midnight.'

'That'tl do well. Can we just make sure we're all agreed about where we're going?'

We spent a few minutes double-checking not only that night's destination, but also the precise location of EPV Six, the spot in the desert from which the Chinook would recover us once the operation had gone down. There seemed to be no problem: the figures tallied, and I was able to relax for the time being.

All the same, I stood for a while, peering out of a porthole. The night was clear, the moonlight bright. I knew that the crew's PNGs must be giving them an excellent view ahead — and they needed it, because they were skimming the desert at 150 m.p.h, and at no more than fifty feet, low enough to stay” beneath any radar, and seemed confident that no obstructions lay in-our path. lather them than me.

'As far as we know there's nothing whatever between us and the MSR,' Steve said, 'and that's nearly an hour ahead. A hundred and thirty miles of f-all but sand. '

In the back the guys were sorting out their weapons and ammunition and re-lashing the remainder of their kit. I followed suit, loading one full magazine into my AK-47 and sliding four more into the pouches of my belt-kit. These final preparations didn't take up much time, and there was still an uncomfortably long wait ahead. My mouth felt dry, as it used to before football matches at school, so I ate one of my oranges to slake the thirst.

As we flew, Steve kept up an intermittent com mentary over the intercom. 'Got a fire to our left,' he said suddenly. 'Looks like a bedouin encampment on our port front. We'll give that some space, I think.'

The heli took a violent heave to the right and climbed, then, a minute later, another to the left as we straightened back on to our true course. Presently Steve said, 'There's the MSP now. Not much moving on it.

One set of lights heading north to starboard, and that's all… unless some mad bugger of an A-rab is driving without lights — which is quite possible.'

I felt the Chinook climb again, and imagined the thick red line on the map, which ran across our line of advance almost at right-angles. Then, as Steve banked right, I knew he was swinging north to keep away from three small settlements that lay either side of a kink in the road.

'That those villages on the MSI?' I asked.

'Clearing them now.'

A few minutes later he came on for the last time and in his best railway official's poncified tones announced, 'This is your next station stop. All passengers prepare to alight.' Then he reverted to his normal voice and said, 'When we're on the deck, Geordie, I'll wait for sixty seconds to make sure you're OK. Then, if you don't shout, assume there's no drama and we'll be off.'

'Roger,' I answered. 'That's fine.'

'Good luck, then. See you in a couple of days.'

'Thanks,' I said. 'Nice trip.'

Once more we settled ourselves on our quads. I ran over my equipment mentally, also feeling everything I could: AK-47 slung on my back, spare magazines in belt-kit, Browning in waist-holster, knife in sheath, water bottle on belt kit, ski goggles on forehead, PNGs round neck. I tugged at all the straps on my racks, fore and aft, to make sure they were secure. Looling round, I saw that everyone else was doing the same. Tony, who was behind me, gave a wink and a grin, sticking up his right thumb.

At the two-minute signal we started our engines, wound our shamags round our heads and settled ski goggles over our eyes. I switched my radio to the copilot's channel and said, 'OK, Gerry. I'll call if there's any problem. If I don't come on in sixty seconds flat, it'll mean we're OK.' 'loger,' he answered.

At one minute, the Chinook started settling into a hover with the tail-gate descending. A blast of sand and grit came flying into our faces and there was a bump as the wheels touched; out of the corner of my right eye I saw the tail-gate loadie give me a raised thumb, and a second later I was rolling down the ramp.

Our plan was to fan out in an instant bomb-burst. I aimed forty-five degrees to the left through a storm of dust and sand. Tony did the same to the right, Pat at sixty degrees behind me, Whinger behind Tony, and Stew and Norm straight forward With the trailer to a position in the centre of our circle. In that mass of flying shit it was impossible to tell how far I'd gone, but when I reckoned I was seventy metres out I stopped, brought my rifle to the ready and sat facing outwards with the engine ticking over. Out there, I was clear of the dust- ball, but when I looked back, all I could see was a huge cloud seething and heaving in the moonlight.

If there'd been any sort of drama I'd have called the co-pilot, put a couple of bursts in the direction of the trouble, and driven straight back up the ramp. But after a minute, when no SOS call came, Steve built his revs back to a peak and the aircraft lifted away. In a few seconds the heavy, thudding beat of its rotors had faded into the night, leaving us alone in the desert's tremendous silence.

There was sand beneath me — I could feel it shift under my toes — but it seemed quite firm, as if there was a hard bottom a couple of inches beneath the surface.

That augured well for our run in. So did the three- quarter moon, which was on its way down. The air felt warm on my face, and out here, away from civilisation, it smelled completely clean.

My watch was reading eight minutes past midnight.

I waited, watching the dust-cloud settle and disperse.

Then I switched my radio back to our chatter channel and jabbed the pressel. 'Everyone all right?' I asked.

'Tony?'

'Yeah.'

'Pat?'

'Yep.'

'Whinger?'

'Yep.'

'Norm?'

'Aye.'

'Stew?'

'Fine.'

'OK. Check Magellans.'

I switched mine on and pressed the button for the light that illuminated the little screen. Stuck in its special holder above the handlebar panel the instrument was at easy reading height, but we still had to sit and wait for a satellite to come over the horizon and pass within range.

Because the satellites are all in different orbits, they come past at irregular intervals: sometimes you have to wait half an hour, then get three in twenty minutes. We could have moved off right away, and I knew that the guys must be itching to go, but Tony had agreed that it was better to get an accurate fix before we started. With luck, the Chinook should have dropped us right on the spot, but if we were a bit off target we might be all to cock in our navigation.

Five minutes passed. Ten. 'Come on, you son of a bitch,'

Tony muttered over the radio. 'Shift your butt.'

I knew how he felt. We seemed to be very exposed, sitting there in the moonlight with the desert stretchin away level all round and not a stitch of cover in sight, l tried to imagine the next satellite, zooming round th earth at 17,500 m.p.h., and smiled at the thought ofi shifting its butt in response to Tony's exhortation. The Whinger came on the net with, 'Oh, for fuck's sak Let's let going.'

'Chill out,' I told him.

A moment later Tony said, 'There we go. Thaf number one. It's looking good. We just need two mol for a triangle.'

The second and third satellites came up within couple more minutes. 'OK,' I announced. 'We're twenty-one East, twenty-four thirty-four. Twenty eight North, fifty-nine twenty. Everyone agreed?'

Skipper Steve had done us proud. We were withil few yards of the drop-off point chosen in Herefo Now all we had to do was follow our pre-set course the location of our lying-up point, about sixty-f kilometres due north — and navigation was dead e because the displays on our screens showed us if were on track, or deviating to right or left.

'tight,' I said quietly, 'we've all got the anything happens. Pat, you do lead scout to start w Go as fast as you can manage comfortably. Prob.

Stew and the trailer will set the limit at the back, ' weight of the stores will make him the slowest — see how it goes. The rest keep in line ahead, at whatever interval we can see at. Try it out. Keep fight in each other's tracks if you can. When we get nearer the target, we'll put pickets out.

'On this first leg there shouldn't be anything ahead of us for fifteen ks. Then there'll be a road across our front.

After that, nothing till we come in sight of the high- ground feature. Skirt that fight-handed, then start looking for the big wadi. Once we're through that it should be only half an hour to the area of the LUP. OK?

Let's go.'

Pat led off, with me next and the others following.

The combination of moonlight and PNGs gave a good view — I reckoned I could see some detail at nearly three hundred metres — but of course, in those conditions anyone on the move is at a big disadvantage versus anyone stationai'y. It's always movement that takes the eye, whereas men lying or kneeling on the deck can easily pass for stones… until it's too late. Thus we were all well aware that we could ride into an ambush at any moment.

All the same it was great to be moving, the warm air flowing past my face. R.iding in second place I had a chance to relax and think while the lead scout carried the biggest load. He had to keep his eyes skinned for dips, hollows and rocks — to say nothing of possible nomad encampments or even Libyan army positions. It was also down to him to hold the right course and keep the speed up. All this put him under heavy stress, and I'd planned in advance to switch the lead every half hour.

Pat looked like a solid black blob bobbing on ahead of me. His wheels raised a small dust-cloud, which a breath of wind from the west was carrying off to our fight. At first the going was good: the terrain was flat, with outcrops of rock here and there, and the quads ran easily over the turn sand. I'd taped over all the lights on my handlebar panel, but the needle of the speedometer was still visible, and from its angle I could see that we were maintaining a steady thirty k.p.h. Every now and then I pushed the light button on the Magellan to check our heading, and kept finding that Pat was sP0t-on.

We were running through shallow sand, and inevitably leaving tracks. Behind the trailer, which was last in line, we'd rigged up a primitive sweeper-rake some hessian sacks lashed to a cross-bar — to obliterate our individual wheel-marks so that, even if the Libyans did spot the trail during daylight, they wouldn't be able to tell what sort of vehicles had made it. Even so, it would be easy enough for the pilot of a jet or hdicopter to follow the trail and see where we'd gone. I just hoped that a strong wind would blast all our traces into eternity — or else that, in the immensity of the desert, nobody would fly over or come past until we had done our business.

Twenty minutes into our first run, Pat came up on the chatter net. 'Geordie, I'm stopping. There's something ahead of us. I can't make it out.'

'All stations stop,' I replied. 'Switch offand wait out.

OK, Pat, I'm coming up to have a look.'

I cruised up beside him and shut down my engine.

'There,' he whispered, pointing ahead and to the right.

'Something black. I thought I saw it move.'

Peering through my PNGs I irrimediatdy spotted what he meant: a black shape, possibly two hundred metres off, with an irregular outline, its left side low and its right taller and pointed. It could have been two men close together, one kneeling or sitting, the other standing.

'Can't get it,' I murmured.

'It's the right-hand bit that I thought I saw move.'

I pushed the PNGs up on to my forehead and brought out my binoculars, but the ambient light was so faint that they were no help. With the PNGs back on I watched again. It was quite eerie, sitting there in the great silence of the desert, the gentle puffs of wind coming in over our left shoulders and I felt myself getting jumpy.

'Chill out,' I said under my breath. 'You're doing fine.' I knew from past experience that when you're out at night, almost anything will move in the end — or seem to — if you watch it for long enough. Whether your eyes deceive your mind or vice versa I'm not sure, but if your nerves are on edge even rocks appear to take on a life of their own and start shifting stealthily about.

'Anyone back there make it out?' I asked over the net. 'Two o'clock to our line of advance.'

'Thorns,' said Whinger. 'Couple of thorn bushes.'

'You sure?'

'Reckon so. The right-hand one/s moving. The top of it's blowing in the wind.'

'OK,' I said. 'I think you're right. We'll carry on.

Head left, Pat, and give it some room. I'll cover you until we're past.'

I unslung my AK-47 and sat with it at the ready as Pat set offleft-handed. Whinger had been right. The clump of thorns waved in the wind as we passed, and we left it to its own devices in the dark.

After another twenty minutes without incident I decided to bring Pat back. I knew he wouldn't want to give up lead scout — being mustard keen, he'd carry on all night if I let him — but I also knew that he'd inevitably get tired, and that the edge would go off his vigilance.

'Tbin out,' I told him over the radio. 'Norm, move up front.'

'It's no sweat,' Pat called back. 'I'm fine here. D'you want me to go faster or something?'

'Not at all. Y6u've done a great job. I just want everyone to rotate.'

'OK, then.' As he fell back past me and Norm went forward, I gave them both thumbs up.

Soon the sand seemed to grow deeper; I could feel it dragging at my wheels. The quad started to slew about, the steering grew heavier, and I needed more power to maintain speed. Then Stew, at the back, called to say that he was falling behind; the trailer wheels were digging in, and even on full power he was losing us.

'Ease off, Norm,' I instructed. 'Aim for twenty rather than thirty.'

'Aye, OK,' said Norm. 'I'm throttling back.'

'Good,' I went. 'See if you can hold that, Stew.'

I could feel my adrenalin flowing fast now. At all costs we had to be on target by first light, predicted to be at 0445; by then, we needed to have found a suitable lying-up point and to have built an OP. If we main tained our present speed we'd reach the area of the LUP inside another hour, and we'd be OK. But if we had to start winching our bikes up and down the walls of the wadi our speed of advance could drop from twenty k.p.h, to one, and we could well end up in the shit.

When we'd been running for an hour I called a refuelling halt. I couldn't tell how much petrol we'd used, but it obviously made sense to top up our tanks while nobody was harassing us; also, it took a few kilos off the load on the trailer. Two of the guys assumed defensive positions, twenty-five metres out on either side, while the rest of us tanked up, then two others took over from them while they came in and did the same. Although the desert seemed empty, we couldn't be sure that the Libyans weren't out on night exercises, that a patrol might have heard us coming.

Soon we were rolling again, with Whinger now in the lead, and after only ten minutes we seemed to begin to emerge from the deep-sand belt, the bikes starting to move more easily. But then came a sudden call from the rear.

'Geordie,' said Norm, and from the way he said my name I knew there was something wrong.

'What is it?'

'I've dropped a bollock.'

'How?'

'My fucking Magellan.'

'What's happened to it?'

Tve left it behind.'

'Don't be stupid.'

'I have.'

'Where?', 'At that halt.'

'Bloody hell! All stations stop!' A surge of alarm drove down into my guts. Again and again I'd harped on the importance of not shedding any item of kit, however trivial, in case it betrayed our origins and a Magellan, programmed up with our courses and way- points, was the worst possible object to leave lying in the desert. Norm was usually the most careful member of the whole team. 'What the hell were you doing, taking it off the bike anyway?' I asked.

'I didn't want to risk splashing petrol on it, so I took it out of the holder and put it on the ground while we were gassing up.'

I felt exasperated — but Norm knew he'd screwed up, and I saw no point in mouthing offat him. So I just said, 'You'll have to go back. There's no alternative. We can't risk leaving it. D'you think you can find the place?'

'Dunno. Have to try. How long is it since we restarted?'

'Eight minutes,' said Stew. 'We were rolling for eight minutes exactly.'

'Time yourself-back,' I told Norm. 'You should be able to see the marks where we did the refueling.

Whinger, go with him. The rest of us will wait for you here. And take it easy — we're still all right for time.'

So we were, but not by much.

Two of us sat in a hollow, with the other two posted out on either flank. It was reassuring to find that the noise of the quads' engines died away quickly into the night, but tension built up as the minutes ticked by.

Feeling restless, I got off my bike and walked away to have a piss.

'Stupid cunt!' Stew muttered as I came back, voicing the anxiety that all of us were feeling.

'Easily done,' I said. 'You might drop the next bollock, Stew. Give him a break.'

Presently in my ear-piece I heard Norm say, 'Back on site.'-Then, a moment later, he exclaimed, 'Got the fucker!' and everyone relaxed.

With the party reunited, we rolled forward again to the north until, from in front, Whinger called, 'Stopping, stopping. There's an obstruction ahead.'

'OK,' I answered. Tm closing on you. Everyone else, wait out.'

I cruised up beside him.

'See it?' he said quietly. 'Like a wall.'

'It's the road, but it's on an embankment. In the desert they're often built like that, to stop sand drifting over them.'

'Yeah, but there's something this side of it.'

'Wait one.' I reached forward to the top flap of my bergen and undid the straps, feeling for my binoculars.

The 10 x 50 lenses, bloomed for light-gathering, instantly revealed the nature of the problem.

'Shit and derision!' I cried. 'It's a fucking pipeline!

Two-deck, each pipe about a metre diameter. There's no way we can ride over that.'

'How in hell didn't that figure on the briefing?' said Tony. 'Didn't the CIA guy mention it?'

'Not a dicky-bird.'

'Jesus Christ!'

'Let's blow the shit out of it,' said Whinger. 'Make a passage.'

'Brilliant!' I told him. 'And attract every son of the Prophet in Libya straight on to us. They'd send out all choppers in the country to sweep up and down until they found out what happened. No thanks. There's only one thing for it. Scout right and left. There must be a culvert under it somewhere for herdsmen to walk through. Tony, you and Pat go right. Norm, you and Whinger left. Move up a bit closer to it first, then keep heading along parallel with the road till you find an underpass. Stew and I'll hold here until one of you calls.'

The two pairs went off, disappearing into the dark like black dots. Nearly ten minutes had passed — ten minutes of steadily increasing tension — before Tony came back on the air.

'OK, guys. Head right. We've found a tunnel.'

'Koger,' I answered. 'We're coming. Norm, did you get that?'

'Aye. I'll close on you. No luck this way.'

We found Tony and Pat on their feet, wielding their short-handled shovels like lunatics. They'd discovered a culvert, but sand had drifted into the mouth of it and left only eighteen inches of headroom. At first glance the task of clearing a passage looked colossal; but, as Tony had appreciated, the drift tapered off rapidly inside the tunnel, and we only had to lower the first few feet.

Again we lost ten minutes, at the end of which we were all sweating like pigs. When we moved off again the wind felt icy as it cooled the moisture on our bodies.

Now we really were up against the clock. It was 0315, and I reckoned we had ninety minutes at most before dawn broke. In that time we had to cross the wadi, find a site for an LUP, ditto for an OP, build the OP and settle down out of sight. I was needled by the multiple uncertainties ahead. The distance we had to travel was relatively small, probably not more than ten kilometres.

What mattered was the nature of the terrain ahead, What would we find in the area of the OP? Would we get a good enough view of the camp? Were the Libyans in the habit of coming out into this part of the desert?

Once more we made good progress, and soon Norm called back to say that he could see the feature hill.

'I have Mont Blanc on my left front, where it should be,' he reported. 'It's quite impressive in the moonlight.

Steep sides, crags on top. Reminds me of Stirling Castle.'

For Norm that.was an epic, the speech of a lifetime.

Boy, I thought, the desert must be really turning him

Having given the hill a wide berth we got back on to our northerly heading and pressed ahead, now with Tony in the lead. The ground became more and more stony, until we were jolting around over loose shale. In one way I was pleased — on this surface we would leave no tracks at all — but on another level I began to worry: if the terrain was like this close to the camp, we'd be screwed when it came to building our OP, and we might find ourselves in another Iraq-type fiasco.

The desert started to undulate, with small, dry valley, running north-east to south-west across our line of advance. I guessed they were tributaries of the main wadi ahead — and sure enough, Tony presently called back to say that he could see the valley ahead of him.

There we got our first lucky break. It was obvious that over the centuries winter torrents had cut a deep scar through the desert, and in many places the walls of the trench took the form of rocky cliffs, perhaps twenty feet high. But at the point where we arrived the bank had collapsed into a broad tongue of shingle, and, far from having to resort to ropes and winches, we were able to ride straight down it, leaving no trace. Boulders dotted the floor of the dry watercourse, and we wove our way between them easily enough for maybe one kilometre until another sloping bank took us out the far side.

That simple passage boosted morale and put us nearly back on schedule. By 0330 the moon was low on the horizon to our left, but by then I reckoned we were within five or six kilometres of the location for the LUP as one by one the surrounding features fell into place.

First we ran off the shale and back on to sand. Then we ' saw the ground ahead of us rising in dunes.

I called Tony to a halt and put pickets out to ride level with him, right and left.

Less than a minute later Whinger, who was out on the right, called, 'Eh, Geordie. I'm on a road.'

'A road? You can't be.'

'I fucking am. It's brand-new. Just been bulldozed out.'

'Stand by. I'm coming up.'

Whinger was right, of course. I found him parked on a dark-looking strip of track, with the sand scraped off into ridges on either side. The underlying rock felt pretty rough, but it was easily negotiable by vehicles with reasonable clearance.

'This wasn't on the satellite shots,' I said. 'They must have been working on it in the past few days.'

'It's coming down from the north-east,' said Whinger, checking his compass. 'Remember that track the satellite showed, leading out from the camp towards the range? I reckon this is an extension of it.'

'Looks like it. What a bugger!' I sat still for a moment, considering this new development. It meant that, if things went noisy, the Libyans would in theory be able to drive out behind our temporary positions and cut off our retreat.

'I don't like it,' I told Whinger. 'But we can't stop now.'

By ranging up and down, we found a point where sand gave over to rock and no new banks had been heaped up, and we crossed the line of the track there, in single file, leaving no trace of our passage. But the mere existence of'the road made me uneasy.

On we went, slowly now, into the dune-scape, circling the bases of'the hillocks. The sand here was very soft, so that although we were leaving wheel-marks they more or less filled themselves in behind us. Then Norm, who was scouting left, called, 'Watch your selves, lad. I can smell smoke.'

'Everyone stop,' I Went. 'What is it, Norm?'

'It smells oily, like diesel burning. Coming on the wind.'

'Probably some goatherds camping out,' I said.

'They'll be burning old oil in a drum. Can you see anything?'

'Nothing.'

'Pull off, then. Come back this way. leel your right, everyone. We're going round it.' So we made a detour, and slowly came back on to our heading.

The incident had done nothing to'reassure me. I didn't like the idea there were other people besides us out there in the desert.

Soon afterwards Whinger, who was still on the right, went up on to a rise and suddenly called, 'Geordie!

Lights ahead.'

I rode over and came up behind him. There was no need for him to point this time. The first thing I noticed, high in the air, was a single bright-red glare, then below it I saw lights burning faintly across our front, some in a line, others in clusters beyond them.

'Got it!' I said. 'That red thing must be the warning light on the comms tower.'

'I reckon so.'

'How far out are we?'

'Hard to tell. Could be one kilometre.'

'We're close enough, anyway. I'd like to put more ground between us and those bastards behind us, whoever they are. But we can't go any nearer the camp than this. Got to find an LUP site around here. That row of lights must be the perimeter fence, with other installations beyond.'

Everyone went look about, and within a few minutes Pat called to say he had located a good spot, away to our left. Closing on him, we found him in a gully, with sand underfoot and a vertical rock wall about three metres high along one side. There were fissures in the rock, into which we could drive pegs, and the whole area had a fairly rough texture. I saw straightaway, as he had, that if we parked the bikes nose-to-tail along the wall, and slung cam-nets over them at an angle like a sloping roof, it would make as good a hiding-place as we were likely to find.

The time was 0355, and already 1 thought I could detect a faint lightening in the eastern sky. We rolled the trailer in backwards, hitched it to Stew's bike again, and manoeuvred the rest of the quads into line ahead of it, ready for a quick take-off' Then we broke out the gear for the OP and prepared to move forward on foot.

'Final check,' I said quietly when I'd gathered the guys round. The and Tony will spend the day in the OP. Depending on what we find, we may decide that the op should go down tomorrow night. If there's any problem, we may have to wait until the night after.

Either way, we'll want the support party forward soon after dark tomorrow.'

'Tonight,' Tony interrupted.

'As you were. Tonight. I'm talking about tonight, Tuesday. For Christ's sake — I'm losing track of the days.

Cancel all that.'

I pressed the light button on my watch for a check.

'It's now 0400 on Tuesday. If possible, the op Will go down tonight. If everything looks OK, we'll call the three of you forward once it's dark.' I jabbed a finger at Pat, Whinger and Norm. 'Stew, you'll be our backmarker. Hold the fort here. OK?'

'Sure.'

'Whinger, get a sitrep back to the Kremlin as soon as you've got an aerial sorted. Tell them we have eyes on the target area and everything's hunky-dory. And euerybody, go easy on the water. It's going to get hot as hell when.the sun rises, and we don't know how long we're going to be herel OK, all?'

Getting no answer except a couple of grunts, I said, 'Right — we're off. Pat and Norm, you help us carry the stuff forward for the OP. Then back here. Let's go.'

We settled our bergens and rifles on our backs, slung the other bundles about us, and began to move off.

'Give 'em hell,' said Whinger.

'I'll wait till you're in the front line with us,' I told him. 'Then you personally can stand up on top of a dune and fre the first shot to start the battle.'