Zero Option

SEVEN

On the side of a dune facing the camp we found a hollow fronted by a couple of scrubby thorns. By cutting a few more bushes elsewhere and bringing them across to reinforce the natural thicket, we made a small enclosure. At the same time we deepened the hollow by digging, and used bags filled with sand to make walls inside the thorns.

A rectangular gap left in the front wall gave us a view forward into the camp, and a cam-net stretched across the top, with more thorn branches scattered on it, completed the basis of our hide. The dune gave us natural protection from the rear, its disadvantage being that we couldn't see anyone coming from that direction. We reckoned, though, that the little hill was in direct line-of-sight from the LUP, so that the backup party could watch our rear for us.

We'd almost finished building when a sudden noise from the direction of the camp made us freeze. The first blast of it — a kind of screeching groan — lasted such a short time and cut off so abruptly, almost like a dog's bark, that we couldn't make out what had caused it.

'Jesus!' exclaimed Pat. 'What the fuck was that?'

Before anyone could answer the sound came again.

This time it kept going for several seconds, and Tony let out a gasp, half relief, half amusement.

'Not Jesus,' he said. 'Allah. It's the muezzin, giving the first call to prayer.'

We were at least two hundred metres from the perimeter wire, and the sound was coming from somewhere beyond it; yet the volume of the amplified voice was such that it blasted past us like a gale of wind, and we felt sure the guys in the LUP, a kilometre behind us, must be hearing it too. So it proved: they told us later that the grating, metallic, undulating chant of 'Allah akhbar! Allah akhbar!' carried way past them and on into the desert to the south.

'Sounds like he's underwater, poor bugger,' said Pat.

'That's just their crummy electronics,' Tony told him. 'The old mullah'll be up a tower someplace. We'll see the mosque as soon as it gets light.'

'Come on, guys,' I interrupted. 'Don't piss about.

Never mind the mullah. We need to get tidied up here.'

In the eastern sky the dawn glow was coming up fast.

It would,have been good to carry on working and perfect our camouflage, but time had run out. From previous stints near the equator I knew how quickly the light would strengthen as the sun rose. The Libyans might have eyes on the desert, and I wasn't going to risk any movement after dawn.

'Away you go,' I told Pat and Stew. 'You don't want to be caught with your pants down.'

'R.ight then. Good luck.'

'Same to you. We'll see you tonight.'

Off they went, walking backwards round the side of the dune and whisking away their tracks with strips of hessian. A few minutes later they called on the radio to say that they were back in the LUP, and that they had eyes on the back of our mound.

Tony and I settled down for a day of observation. For me, breakfast consisted of cold spaghetti in tomato sauce, washed down by a brew of powdered lemonade.

Tony had his favourite corned beef hash and pineapple slices, eaten together. We'd been planning to work alternate shifts — two hours on, two off- but found that, despite the fact that we'd had practically no sleep, neither of us felt tired. Our excitement supercharged us, and we both watched eagerly as dawn revealed the secrets of our objective.

The perimeter fence was just as the CIA man had described it: three metres of weldmesh, topped by an outward-sloping overhang of barbed wire. Every hundred metres there was a floodlight atop a slender pole, but several of the bulbs were out of action, and useful pools of darkness lay between the illuminated stretches. The goon-towers — built into the fences several hundred metres apart — might have been run up for a film about some German prison camp in World War Two: primitive wooden boxes on stilts, once painted white but now peeling, with wide-eaved flat roofs to give shade and the sides open to the air. There was one at the corner of the wire, slightly to our left, and another in the middle of the south fence to our right. This second tower stood beside a wide gate, also made of mesh, and the rough track Gus had indicated ran away from it towards the range in the southeast.

The important thing for us was our discovery that the towers weren't manned. Nor was there any patrol on the wire. With our binoculars we scanned every tower for signs of infra-red lamps or microwave dishes or TV cameras, but saw nothing; the whole system looked too primitive for any such high-tech devices.

'As the guy told us,' I said, 'they're not expecting any threat coming out of the sand.'

We'd positioned ourselves opposite the office cure accommodation block, and our binos gave us a brilliant view of it: a scruffy, off-white building, two storeys tall, with patches of discoloration staining its walls, air- conditioning units under every window, and long, dirty, tapering streaks beneath them where condensation had been dripping doyen over the years. The front entrance was in the middle of the wall facing us, a flight of five or six semi-circular steps leading up to its plain porch.

The door we became more interested in was at the side, to the left as we looked. Soon after six o'clock it opened from the inside, and some kind of jingli, or servant, began going in and out. The guy, who was quite old and had frizzy grey hair, wore a khaki shirt and trousers, but no shoes.

'Could be our best entry point,' said Tony quietly.

'Out of sight of most of the camp. Besides, the perimeter light opposite it is down.'

'Just thinking that. The tradesman's entrance.'

The window of the room in which our target was supposed to work was at the top left of the building.

When we had arrived on site the room had been dark but that was hardly surprising, as it was already four o'clock by then.

As the light strengthened the perimeter lights went out, but the single red lamp on the comms tower continued to glow. Then, at about six-thirty, the sun came over the eastern horizon and low rays blazed across the camp from our right. From the scribbled notes and plans I'd made during our brief in London, I soon identified the compound's main features: the approach road coming in from the north, the guardroom, the headquarter block, the tall mast marking the comms centre, the armoury, wired offiri its own secure enclosure inside the perimeter, the fuel station, down- near the wire to our right, and the mosque, gleaming white, with an onion dome and huge loudspeakers sprouting from the corners of a balcony round its tower.

Far offto the right, in a little compound of its own, we could see the comms facility that Gus had given us as a secondary target. The white dish aerial was pointing nearly straight up.

'That damn thing's farther off than he reckoned,' I said.

'What did he tell you?' Tony asked.

'He said two-fifty metres from the wire. It's got to be three-fifty at least. It's still in range, but not by much.

Anyway, it's non-essential. We'll see what happens when the time's ripe.'

As the camp came slowly to life, Tony's earlier tour in Abu Dhabi proved invaluable, because he was able to interpret all the small events we witnessed. Apart from the jingli, the earliest arrivals on the scene were bread and milk vans, which pulled up by the guardroom on the far side from us and then, after long delays, drove in to various buildings which were obviously messes.

'What's all the fuss on the barrier about?' I asked.

'Typical,' Tony replied. 'The guys on duty have to assert themselves somehow and show they're superior to the ignorant drivers. So they give them a hard time, even though they see them every day. You watch in a minute, when the rank and file arrive. But, Jesus… look at this.'

'What is it?'

'See that long building with the green roof? Look right over the top of it.'

'Got it. motor blades.'

'Yep. There's a goddamn chopper parked there.'

'Let's hope it's gone u/s. We don't want that bloody thing overhead.'

Soon after seven o'clock, a stream of ordinary cars and land cruisers began rolling down the approach road and on to a big car park outside the wire. By then a man with a mill-board was scuttling about, trying to reserve the spaces nearest the fence, and evidently taking flak from the drivers he chased away.

'See that?' said Tony. 'The bastards are so idle they won't walk a step if they don't have to.'

'Why don't their drive in, though?'

'Against the rules. Bad security. Nobody trusts anybody. I mean, any of these guys might have a bomb in his vehicle and park it next to the headquarter block.

One of them might try to top the colonel.'

Within twenty minutes some sort of physical training was taking place. A long straggle of men in shots and trainers came trotting round the track inside the perimeter, with one instructor leading and another trying in vain to drive on the laggards at the back. The front dozen or so were actually running, but everyone else was walking. A few of the guys were mock- fighting, hitting out and kicking at each other, but most of them were simply chit-chatting as they ambled along.

'What tossers!' I cried. 'What a fucking shower!'

'They are,' Tony agreed. 'But if you quizzed any of them they'd swear they.run a marathon every morning.'

At ten past eight, after that virtuoso display, the camp went dead as everyone disappeared indoors for showers and breakfast. By eight-thirty our active night had begun to tell on us. The sun, striking into the OP from our right, was already seriously hot, and, with no action to watch, we both felt tiredness attack.

'Get your head down while there's nothing happening,' I told Tony. 'If any action starts up I'll wake you. '

He shaped to argue but I more or less ordered him to sleep, and in a couple of minutes he was 6ut, lying along our right-hand wall. Looking down at his dark Puerto R.ican complexion, I thought that in an emergency he might pass for an Arab, especially at night.

When I squinted up at the sky through our roof of cam-net and thorns, I wished we'd been able to create something more solid in the way of a sun-shade. The best remedy was to tie my sweater horizontally to the underneath of the net, but even in the shade I could feel the sweat going out of me like steam, and I wanted to drink all the time. We'd each brought two belt-bottles full of water, and a gallon can as a back-up, and I knew we were going to need strict discipline to stop us running out.

At nine-twenty people started drifting on to the drill square, apparently for some sort of parade. Jinglis carried out armchairs and set them in position on a dais under a pointed wooden roof, and various slovenly-looking characters drifted about.

I was just thinking there was no point in waking Tony until the show began, when suddenly I saw something that grabbed my attention. Out of the front door of the accommodation block came four armed men, obviously guards, who formed up, two either side of the entrance. A moment later a big, heavy fellow in white drill shirt and trousers appeared, carrying a peaked cap in his hand. If he'd had the hat on his head I might not have recognised him. As it was, I gave Tony a kick and cried, 'Eh! Eh! Eh! Look at this!'

He was up beside me in a second, binos glued to his eyes. 'Shitface!' he exclaimed.

'Christi' I felt my heart pounding with a surge of adrenalin. 'If we had the sniper rifle we could drop him here and now without ever going through the wire.'

'Yeah — but the marathon runners would be out after us.

'I don't think they'd catch us. But if they got the heli airborne, we'd be deep in the shit.'

We watched fascinated as Khadduri smirked to right and left, apparently making small talk to his bodyguards.

Then he settled his cap on his head and set offalong the front of the building, heading for the parade.

'Doesn't change, does he?' said Tony. 'Great sense of humour. Remember how he used to laugh when he was hitting you on the arm?'

'Will I forget it?'

Soon the parade had formed up, but we never had a clear view of it because a thick heat-haze had begun to shimmer and shudder above the ground. Through the fuzz we saw the officers take their places in the arm chairs, with Khadduri in pole position at the right-hand end of the line. In front of them the rank and file sat on the deck in rows, cross-legged; and a tall man in white robes, who could only be the mullah, moved up and down the ranks bellowing into a microphone, his torrent of abuse outrageously magnified by the loudspeakers.

'What's he bollocking them for?' I asked.

'Anything he can think of- being late, not saying their prayers enough… Look how they're cringing.'

As the priest advanced on each man, shaking his fist and roaring insults, the guy would bow his head in submissiol until it touched the ground. It was like an amazingly hammy theatre show, and I was loving every minute of it, when a call on the radio jerked me back to the task in hand.

'Watch yourself, Geordie.' It was Pat.

'What's the problem?'

'Camels. There's a bloody great herd coming across behind you from the left. They're going to pass between you and us.'

'Is there anybody with them?'

'Can't tell yet. They're streamed out over hundreds of meters. We can't see the back often.'

'What are they doing, running?'

'No, no — just grazing on. Stand by till we see the end of the line.'

I looked at Tony. He was pointing at his bergen, asking with his eyebrows if he should stuff everything into it. I shook my head and whispered, 'Not yet. This must be the lot we passed in the dark, when Whinger smelt that fire.'

If we got compromised, all we could do was to leg it back to the LUP, jump on the quads and scoot away into the desert, having called for immediate helicopter evacuation. But that would be a disaster — the end of the operation.

We waited a couple of minutes. I could feel sweat running down my backbone. Then Pat came up with.

'There are two herders, a man and a boy.'

'Have they got a dog?'

'Wait one… Yes. There's one dog, like a big grey lurcher.'

'Shit! How close behind us are they going to pass?'

'Maybe two hundred metres.'

'Keep us informed if they start coming any closer.'

Roger.'

As far as we could tell in our baking hollow, there was no wind at all — not a breath that would carry our scent behind us. Besides, five hours had passed since any of us had crossed the line on which the camels were advancing; I couldn't believe that any dog would pick up any traces from that burning sand.

Presently I heard a shout, then another, from alarmingly close quarters. Over the radio link I asked, 'Pat, for Christ's sake. What are they doing?'

'Chill out,' he replied calmly. 'The lead camels are passing you now. They're just wandering on. Now the leader of ali's having the crap of its life. No bother. Sit tight.'

I found I'd unconsciously been holding my breath, so I let it out and inhaled deeply.

'Keeping on,' Pat continued. 'Allah karim. Halfway across… Three-quarters. There must be two hundred altogether. The end of the column's level with you now. Look out, though. The dog's turning in your direction.'

'How far from us?'

'Still the two hundred metres. Stand by… No — it's OK. The dog's OK. He's only having a piss on a tuft of dead grass. That's all he's about. Now he's carrying on.

Herders the same. One herder pissing… Now they're clear. They're squared away.'

'Thanks, Pat.'

'You're welcome. By the way, what's that godawful noise?'

'That's the local vicar clearing his throat, having a gargle.'

'Are his congregation bloody deaf or something?'

'Yeah, I should say they are by now.'

The parade over, everything went dead again, both in the desert and in the camp. The camels vanished into the heat haze, and inside the wire, after their mass bollocking, the inmates dispersed to hangars or classrooms for their morning instruction. I tried to get my head down, but was bothered by the steadily rising temperature. 'What did they predict for us?' I asked fretfully. 'Wasn't it thirty-six? This feels more like fucking forty.'

All the same, I must have dropped off to sleep, because I came to with Tony shaking my elbow and found that two hours had passed.

'Anything doing?'

'The duty officer's been round — a jerk wearing a red sash and carrying a cane under his arm, sticking his nose in everywhere, throwing his weight about. And now they're lining up for the big event of the day, midday prayers.'

From all corners of the camp men were trudging towards the mosque. The wind had got up, blowing into our faces as we watched, and the heat seemed to have eased a fraction. I reckoned that hot air was rising off the desert floor behind us and drawing slightly cooler air down from the north, ultimately from the sea.

At any rate, the breeze had cleared some of the haze, and through our glasses we could see the faithful taking off their boots and socks, which they left neatly set out in a long line before they went in to pray.

'I always wonder how in hell they know whose are which,' said Tony. 'Look at that: three hundred pairs of goddamn boots in a line. Just imagine what a screw-up there'd be if we put a couple of bursts into the tower: they'd be fighting like lunatics to find the right pair.'

But before I could answer another terrible cacophony burst from the loudspeakers as the mullah launched into his chant of'Allah akhbar! Allah akhbar!', and the prayers were under way.

At 1230 the personnel fanned out from the mosque and disappeared indoors again, presumably for lunch, and the next we saw of them, an hour later, they were ready for the off, queuing at the guardroom for the duty officer to sign their exit chits.

'They all get searched when they go out,' Tony said.

'Nobody trusts anybody.'

'But what could they possibly nick?'

'Weapons, ammunition. Anything liftable.' Tony looked at his watch and added, 'Know what? This is the beginning of their weekend. They're on their way already.'

'What about Shitface? I hope he's not going to thin out as well.'

'He is, though. That's him in the white jeep. Don't worry. He'll be back for that special meeting tomorrow.'

The afternoon slowly dragged itself away. The heat hammered in on us, in spite of the wind, and tiny black biting flies hopped around the sand. We squashed dozens of them as they landed on Our bare arms and necks, but every nip from the ones we missed left a red mark and started up an itch. We sweated and drank, sweated and drank, but so great was the rate of evaporation that neither of us wanted a piss all day.

During my stag Tony dropped off again with his shamag spread over his face, and I had a struggle to keep alert. Looking down at his peaceful form, I felt glad that he was with me, yet at the same time wondered if I'd boobed in making legal arrangements for him to become Tim's guardian. If both of us got written off now, my affairs would be in chaos.

At 1530 we heard another call to prayer, but this meeting was poorly attended compared with the morning effort, because most of the faithful had departed in that exodus after lunch. Aside from that there was practically no movement inside the camp, nothing to engage my interest. What kept me awake was the saccession of disturbing thoughts that chased each other through my mind.

The idea of killing someone in cold blood isn't a pleasant one. It is true that I had a personal grudge against our target, for the way he had treated me and Tony, and for his callous, cynical attitude in general.

Yet that alone didn't justify murdering him. To weight the scales against him I mentally threw in the fact that he was financing and supplying the IRA on a massive scale. It was his support — or, at any rate, the support of people like him — that had led indirectly to Kath's death and, now, to the kidnapping of Tim. The flow of money and weapons from overseas was what kept the IP going.

And in any case, I told myself, this isn't a personal matter. The fact that I happen to have a personal involvement is coincidental. The operation is one that the R.egiment has been tasked to carry out, and fate — or luck, or whatever it is — has decreed that I'm the guy in charge. That's all it is: a job to be done.

Trouble was, I had a far more difficult job to do back in the UK. Now we'd got as far as the OP, the topping of Khadduri seemed relatively simple. I felt sure that Tony and I would hack it, no bother. Infinitely more complex was the problem of recovering my family.

As I wrestled with this prospect, my mind kept harking back to the scheme I'd proposed to Pat — that a gang of our lads should take the law into our own hands, spring Farrell from police custody and hand him back to his mates in Belfast. Once again I heard Pat saying, 'You must be fucking mad!' and I realised the plan was probably quite unworkable. Nevertheless, I couldn't banish it from my head — and gradually, as the baking afternoon wore on, it evolved into a new version.

What if I kept the basic idea, but instead of trying to do something unilaterally, I brought the Regiment and the police on side, and got their backing? “gith the cooperation of the police we'd snatch Farrell while he was being moved between gaols, hold him in some safe house, tell the PIIA he was free, and exchange him for Tim and Tracy. But we'd arrange things so he could be immediately recaptured, possibly by putting a bug into his clothes or the heel of one of his shoes, and having a chopper airborne to follow whatever car he got into.

The scheme seemed so brilliant I felt quite lit up, and ceased to worry about the heat or the sand flies. But would the Regiment wear it? Impossible to say. In fact, I supposed, even if the head-shed agreed, authorisation for any such operation would have to come right from the top, from the Home Orifice, the Home Secretary or the Prime Minister. As in Operation Ostrich, permission would have to be completely unattributable, and deniable. Yet why shouldn't it be? Here I was, stewing deep inside Libya, about to.murder a senior army officer with the direct connivance of the British Government. If Whitehall sanctioned the elimination of dangerous foreigners, why should it baulk at a plan that merely ran rings round the II:(A?

I was so chuffed with my idea that I wanted to discuss it with someone immediately. But it didn't seem fair to wake Tony, who was sleeping quietly. I could hardly start honking about the plan over the radio to Pat.

So for the time being I had to bottle it up inside me.

I was still on stag when Khadduri reappeared. It was after six, the sun hanging low over the desert, and the heat had at last started to abate. Tony was getting some food down his neck when I saw the clean, white land- cruiser hurrying down the approach road towards the main entrance. Instead of detaining it, as they had every other vehicle, the guards whipped up the barrier and saluted it-past.

'Watch this,' I said. 'It looks like the VIP visitor. I thought the bastard was supposed to come tomorrow.

Looks like he's a day early — or our intelligence was Out.'

The jeep drove straight through the camp to our corner and pulled up outside the front door of the accommodation block. Out stepped Khadduri with one other guy, both went indoors, and the vehicle drove away.

The sight prompted me to a quick decision. 'Listen, Tony,' I said, 'we're going in tonight. There's nothing to be gained by waiting. Quite the reverse. He might clear off before tomorrow evening, after all. D'you agree?'

'Fine by me. Provided the bird stays on the nest.'

'Right, then.' I held in my pressel switch and called, 'You there, Whinger?'

'Roger. How 'you doing?'

'Fine. Onpass to head-shed that the bird's on the nest and the operation can go down tonight. Get them to clear that, OK? And ask if there's any update from their end.'

’Roger. I'll call you presently.'

I imagined Whinger going through on the Satcom a direct, one-to-one call to the comms centre in Hereford: 'Zero Alpha, Zero Alpha, this is Delta Four.

Over.' At the other end I could see Yorky and Mac, and probably the CO, sitting round in the ops room while the duty signaller kept an eye on the set. 'This is Zero Alpha,' Mac would answer, 'go ahead.' Whereupon Whinger would pass on what I'd said and ask for permission to proceed. There'd be a slight dday after each person had spoken, but the voices would be crystal clear. There was no question of anyone eavesdropping on the exchanges because speech was automatically encrypted; the snag was that a satellite transmission created a much bigger electronic splash than high- frequency radio, and so was easier for a direction-finder to pick up. Exchanges were therefore kept as short as possible.

I also imagined the Prime Minister taking the closest possible interest in the operation. By my calculation the time in London was four o'clock, and probably the PM was in the House of Commons, fielding questions and giving stick to the Opposition. But at the back of his mind, I told myself, I bet he's thinking of us. I bet he's wondering how we're doing.

In the baking, sandy confines of the OP we waited for an answer, and presently Whinger came back on the air. 'OK,' he said, 'I've been through. I told the head- shed that two guys have eyeballed the bird, and that he's definitely on the nest. They just want to be sure you've seen enough and are confident about going in.'

'Tell 'em we're fine. No problem. We've seen everything we need to. We'll aim to go in at midnight, when the rest of the personnel have thinned out. If all goes according to plan, we'll want the chopper on ERV Six by 0200. Check that with them too. And ask if there's any news on the personal front, please.'

'Will do.'

Again we waited, and soon Whinger relayed confirmation through: no personal news, but the operation was on.

'In that case,' I said, 'we need you three guys up here by 2200. That'll give us plenty of time to brief you on details before we move up to the wire. Make sure Norm has his lock-picking kit. Bring both lPGs and the Dragunov. Don't forget — plenty of Semtex, and a can of fuel for a distraction charge.'

We saw them before we heard them: dark figures moving lowly towards us through the moonlight.

When they were thirty metres offI said quietly over the radio, 'OK, lads, we have eyes on you. We're right in front.'

We stood up and let the three come to meet us.

Then we led them round the front of the dune to give them a view of our objective.

'There's the building,' I began. 'And there's the lighted window. As in the script. The main entrance is the one facing us, but there's a back door round the corner to the left, in the shadow. Look at the fence. See where the first missing floodlight is? Up that side, fourth from the left-hand corner, more or less behind the building. We aim to cut the wire at that point, in that pool of darkness. Once we're through, Norm — you'll accompany me and Tony to the building, to pick the lock on that back door. When we go in, you'll stay in place to cover the door. All right?'

'Aye.' Norm nodded.

'Whinger, you stay on the fence to secure the gap.

You'll have the Dragunov as well as your AK-47. If any Libyan threatens our withdrawal, you can drop him from there with the sniper rifle. OK?

'Pat, 1 want you to range right-handed along the front fence.' I swung a hand across. 'Get down as far as the gate beside the tower there and get ready to crack offa distraction charge. If we can, we'll keep everything quiet. But if things go noisy, set a time-fuse and pull back this way. When the charge goes, put a rocket into the satellite dish where those red lights are showing.

From the gate, the range should be about three-fifty metres. Is all that clear?'

'What if it doesn't go noisy?' Pat asked.

'We'll call you as soon as we're back through the wire. Once we're together again, you may still get a go at the dish. Then we'll tab off in orderly fashion to the OP. There we pick up our kit, leg it for the LUP, and away. Any more questions?'

'What if you can't find the target?' asked Whinger.

'We'll find him. We know the bastard's in the building. Ten to one he's sitting in that room right now. But if anything goes wrong we'll have to play it by ear. If he gets out of the building, by any mischance, one or other of you fence guys will probably have to drop him.'

The temptation to go in early built steadily. By 2300 the camp had fallen totally quiet. The light burned on in the target room, but nobody else seemed to be stirring. I imagined Khadduri at his computer terminal, working out details of his strategy for a mass Arab attack on Israel.

We'd told the head-shed that zero-hour was going to be midnight, and for a while I reckoned we'd better stick to that.

Then, as we sat in the moonlight on the face of a dune opposite the corner of the wire, Stew came on the air with a question that fairly put the wind up us. 'Aye,' he said, 'Are you guys on the move somewhere?'

'No,' I told him. 'We're sitting tight with eyes on the target building. Why?'

'I've just seen three people moving out to my left as I face you.'

'What were they doing?'

'Walking in single file. Apart from that, I couldn't tell. They were right at the limit of visibility.'

'Any weapons?'

'Not that I could see.'

'Roger. It could be the camel herders. We'll carry on regardless.'

I pretended to be cool, but in fact the sighting changed my mind about waiting. If there were people about in the desert, the less we hung around the better.

'Bollocks.to it,' I said. 'Let's go in now. There's no point in farting about any longer.'

I called Stew again. 'Tell the Kremlin we've advanced the deadline: we're going in right away, and we'll keep them informed.'

While the others hung back and covered me, I crawled forward seventy metres to the fence at the darkest point and went to work with bolt-cutters. A thick ground-wire ran along the bottom: it felt as if it was under tension, so I left it alone and made an L- shaped incision in the mesh, with sides two feet long.

The wire was fairly soft, and the blades have practically no sound as they bit together through each strand.

Having stowed the cutters in my belt-kit, I pulled up the flap of mesh that I'd made, put my AK-47 through and crawled after it. Tony and Norm followed, and all three of us scuttled for the shadow at the back of the accommodation block.

There we waited, each on one knee, facing outward.

Close under the wall the noise of the air-conditioning units was considerable: a steady roar which drowned out all other small sounds. From here I saw that, to anyone inside the camp, the lights on the perimeter fence made the desert beyond seem black as a witch's tit. Even for us, it was impossible to detect that our other guys were out there.

'Right, Norm,' I whispered. 'There's your door.'

Tony and I remained on full alert as he set to with his torch and little bag of tricks, ten metres from us. We were both sweating like pigs, partly from the heat, partly from tension. I saw Tony's forehead gleaming in the faint light and beads of moisture trickling down his cheeks.

Inevitably Norm made a few clicks and scrapes exactly the sounds I'd heard in my nightmare at the cottage — but nothing to compare with the steady background drone that filled the air, and in an incredibly short time he had the door open.

'Rubbish,' he muttered, indicating the lock. 'Just a Yale-type. Opens from the inside with a turn of the knob.'

'Brilliant! We'll see you soon.'

We slung our rifles over our backs to leave our hands free, slipped inside and closed the door gently behind us. Inside was a passage, dimly lit by a single fluorescent tube. A smell of spicy food hung in the air — turmeric or cumin — and I guessed we were in the kitchen area.

After the heat outside, the air-conditioned atmosphere bit cold. I began to shudder, and felt the sweat congealing in the small of my back.

Two metres to our left the corridor came to a dead end in a closed door; to the right, it turned a corner. I calculated that our target room was almost directly above our heads.

I peeped round the corner. Another passage, longer, with doors on both sides, almost dark. This one lay parallel with the-front of the building. I reckoned it must lead to stairs opposite the front door.

The floor was cement painted with some dark-green compound. Our boots made no sound on it as we tip toed along. In fifteen paces we were at one side of a small entrance-hall or lobby, bare of furniture. The front door was to our right, and stairs with a metal banister rail and the same dark-green paint on the treads rose to our left. Beyond the reception area the passage carried on through the other half of the building.

Tony put a hand on my arm and pointed. Farther down the corridor, on the left, light was showing through the crack of a partially opened door. The room could have been an office — but equally it could have been the bog. Whatever it was, nobody was moving, and I shook my head to show we should ignore it.

I went.up the steps first, the Browning cocked, while Tony covered me from below. At the head of the stairs another corridor ran directly above the one on the ground floor. Dim fluorescent tubes glowed in the ceiling.

Standing on the second-top step, I put my head cautiously round the corner of the passage. From under the last door on the left, at the end, light was showing.

Without turning back, I waved my left hand to bring Tony up. A moment later I felt him materialise at my shoulder.

There in the heart of the building the noise of the air conditioners was much reduced, and it was quiet enough for me to hear my heart pounding. This was it.

This was the spot we'd come 4,000 miles to reach. All we had to do now was creep forward about twelve metres, open the door and drop the target where he sat.

Suddenly we heard a noise below: a chair had been pushed back or the drawer of a filing-cabinet slid shut.

Then door-hinges squeaked, and soft footsteps came towards us along the ground-floor corridor.

In a second we were both round the corner, into the upper passage, backs to the wall, in full view of anyone who came out of the target's room but shielded from the stairs. The footsteps started up the first flight. In ten seconds they'd be level with us.

Without a sound Tony pressed his Browning into my left hand and drew his Commando knife from its sheath on his belt. As the newcomer reached the top step Tony struck so fast round the corner that I saw nothing but a flurry of movement. The man made hardly a sound — just one gargling grunt as the blade drove into the side of his neck. If you rip out a guy's jugular and windpipe with one thrust, he doesn't start shouting. Tony caught him by the shoulder as he crumpled, turning the torso away from himself so that the spurting blood flew wide. The limp body slid bumping down the steps and came to rest on the half landing.

I could feel Tony quivering as I handed him back his pistol. Now, I thought: move, move.

Before I'd taken a step the passage lights went off. A second later they flickered back on, pinking and clicking, then went off, came on again, and finally died.

With them went the air-conditioning, and the background drone sank away into total silence.

Jesus! A power-cut. The extreme tension made me connect the shut-down with the corpse on the stairs.

Had we somehow caused the breakdown? Had the fall of that body triggered some switch? Impossible, surely.

It must be a coincidence. Whatever the cause, maybe the blackout would work to our advantage. Maybe it would flush Khadduri out and send him straight towards us.

I felt for my torch, down a slim pocket on my left, thigh. 'Get ready, I breathed. 'This'll bring him out.'

For a moment-nothing happened. I was stricken by a fleeting panic that Khadduri wasn't in his lair after all.

Then we heard movements inside his room, and I tensed myself for the door to open.

Another wait. What the hell was he doing? Maybe he was frantically trying to save whatever he had in his computer. But then, after another few seconds, came back the power: the fluorescent strips clicked and popped back into life; the air-conditioning units started up again.

With the background noise restored I ducked back on to the staircase, jabbed my pressel switch and said softly, 'Pat, what the fuck's happening to the power?'

'Dunno,' came the instant answer. 'The whole system went down for a few seconds. The entire camp was dark. Back on now.'

'OK. Nobody moving?'

'Not a soul.'

I felt my boot slip on the second step down, and realised the stairs were running with blood. Now I'd be leaving footprints. Too bad. Even our boots were Soviet-made.

I gave Tony a nudge and pointed down the corridor, breathing, 'Let's go.' But we'd taken only a couple of steps when the power went down yet again.

We stood still in the pitch-black corridor. I had the Browning in my right hand, torch in the left. Now he'll come out, I told myself. I reached back, hooked the torch round Tony's elbow and drew him forward with me. We crept on, one step, two, three, until I reckoned we were no more than six or seven feet from the target's door.

Noises came from inside the room: somebody stumbling over furniture. We heard the handle turn, then the hinges squeaked as the door came open. Torch on. There in the beam was al-Khadduri — heavier, greyer than I remembered, hair ruffled up on end, but without the slightest doubt the same man — in an open-necked white shirt, carrying a bufffile-holder in his right hand.

His eyes had a startled look and he opened his mouth to say something, but before any word came out my 9mm bullet smacked him in the centre of the forehead.

The impact knocked him backwards bodily, and he slumped to the floor. On the deck his head turned sideways, and in an instant I was on top of him, putting a second round through his skull just above the ear. At the second shot the body twitched and jerked as if it had had an electric current shot through it, and the feet, which were encased in some kind of soft shoes, went slap, slap, slap against the wall as the dead man's knees doubled up and straightened violently, up, down, up, down. I saw now there'd been no need for the second round, because the first bullet had blown offthe back of his skull and a mess of brains was hanging out. The papers had cascaded out of his file and scattered along the floor. There was blood on his face, his shirt, the floor, the door.

Subconsciously I knew that even the silenced pistol had made two heavy thuds, enough to have alerted anyone on the upper storey, but our immediate need was to snap some pictures of the dead man so that Western intelligence chiefs got absolute proof he'd been eliminated.

For a couple of seconds I sat on Khadduri's legs to stop that mad thrashing. Then, as the nerve-responses faded, I stood up, and in a pre-arranged move Tony bolstered his pistol and grabbed the body under the armpits. The hands and arms were still twitching as he dragged it a couple of steps backwards and propped it against the door. By the time he had it in position I'd got my Instamatic camera lined up, the torch beam giving enough light to aim the lens, and I knew the automatic flash vOould do the rest.

'For Pete's sake get a move on,' Tony gasped. 'The bastard's bleeding all over me. I hope to hell he hasn't got AIDS.'

'Tip his head back a bit,' I hissed. 'Up! Up! Get him by the hair… That's it. Wipe the blood off his nose.

There — hold him there. Now turn his head sideways for a profile.'

I fired off six frames, three full-face, three profile, then pouched the camera and turned to go. In a couple of seconds we were at the top of the stairs, but shouts and a rush of feet in the lower corridor halted us on the top landing.

Men were yelling 'Misabeeh! Misabeeh!'

'Lights,' whispered Tony, 'they're shouting for lights.' Then, voicing my own thoughts, he said, 'They'll find the body on the stairs. That'll stop them.

Use the window. It's only a ten or twelve foot drop.'

We ran back to Khadduri's door, stepped over his huddled body, turned the handle and went in. On impulse I reached back, felt for a soft, still warm hand, grabbed it, dragged the body into the room and shut the door behind it.

The room was slightly less dark than the corridor, lit by enough moonlight to make out the pieces of furniture. As Tony picked his way through them to the window I felt for the key and turned it in the lock.

Then he hissed, 'Shit!'

'What's the matter?'

'Can't shift the window. Must be locked.'

I knew from our observation during the day that the casements were made of heavy-duty metal. I came up beside Tony, grabbed the lever-handle and heaved downwards. No movement whatever. Bringing out my Browning, I slammed the butt against the glass — but although the pane buckled it didn't break. Against the moonlight I peered closely and saw that it was reinforced with wire mesh.

I whipped back to the door and opened it slightly to listen. They'd found the body on the stairs and were jabbering like monkeys. There was no way we'd get down past them. We were trapped on the upper storey.

I locked the door again and got on the radio. 'All stations. The bird is down. P,epeat, the bird is down.

But we've been compromised. We need immediate distractions. Pat, are you hearing me?'

'Loud and clear.'

'Get an IPG into the right-hand end of our building. Upper floor, your right-hand end. Now.

Then fire your distraction charge soonest. After that, if it's still on, have a crack at the satellite dish.

'Whinger?'

'Hello.'

'Once the rocket's gone, get rounds down into the area of the guardroom. Are there any lights on in the camp? Over.'

'No lights, Geordie. The whole system's gone down.'

'OK. Let me know if anything comes on. We're in the bird's nest itself. We're stuck for the moment. But it's no sweat. When we can, we're coming out through the window that was lit.'

In one of the pouches of my belt-kit I had two small demolition charges, ready made up. It took only a few seconds to mould them on to the window fastening. Tll wait for the RPG to hit,' I told Tony. 'Then I'll blow it. Block your ears.'

We both lay flat on the floor at the base of the outer wall, heads away from the window, thumbs over ears.

Seconds crawled past. I held the clacker between my knees, willing Pat to let drive. Then, without warning, there came a thunderbolt, an immense roar, and a concussion that shook the entire building. In its aftermath, the boom of our little charge was tiny, but still enough to leave our ears ringing.

Tony and I leapt up. The window had swung open.

With my shamag in a bundle I swept the sill back and forth to clear any broken glass and went out feet-first.

The barrel of my AK-47 caught on the top of the frame, and I had to wriggle my torso violently to free it. Then I hung down, flexed my knees and let go.

The landing was hard but OK. Just as Tony thumped down beside me, a huge sheet of flame split the night from along by the gate, instantly followed by the boom of another explosion. Good on yet, Pat, I thought.

On the radio I called, 'Norm, we're out front and coming round the corner towards you. Are you there?'

'Roger. Ready and waiting.'

We scuttled to the corner of the building, felt rather than saw Norm in front of us, and all three headed fast for the gap in the wire. By then rounds were going down in every direction. Short bursts were coming in from Pat and Whinger, but from several points inside the wire tracer was flying out into the desert, most of it in the direction of the gate, where the explosion had started a small fire.

As we reached the wire I heard the whoosh of another rocket coming in. Turning, I saw the streak of it heading for the comms dish. Automatically I began counting: one, two, three… By four I kne it had missed.

Fractionally later came a boom as it self-destructed.

Fuck the dish, I thought. We're not risking our lives for that.

We wriggled through the gap in the wire, ran until we were well clear of the fence, and dropped into a hollow. I was panting and sweating in the hot outside air, but on a high, boosted by a mixture of fear and elation. I felt neither tired nor hungry, not even thirsty just great. 'Stew,' I called. 'Have you onpassed to the head-shed that the bird is down?'

'Roger. Message passed and acknowledged. The heli's on its way.'

'Brilliant. Let's go.'

We fell in with Whinger easily enough. 'Fucking missed!' he went.

'No sweat,' I told him. 'Where's the launcher?'

'I binned it.'

'OK, let's leave it. We've got problems enough already.'

Little did I know the validity of what I was saying.

When we reached the OP — our first EP, V — there was no sign of Pat. He should have been there by then.

'Pat,' I called over the radio, 'EP, V One, now.'

No answer. I called again, and waited with anxiety mounting fast. Then at last came an answer.

It was Pat all right, but not the jaunty, cortfident response we were used to hearing. His voice sounded weak and slow. 'Problem,' he slurred, 'I've been hit.

Can't move.'

'Jesus!' I cried. 'Where are you?'

'Main gate. Five o'clock, two hundred metres.'

'Hang on there. We're coming.'

We started running in his direction, parallel with the wire, a couple of hundred metres out. Bursts of automatic fire came cracking out over our heads, with the odd red tracer round looping past to show us it wasn't all that high. Whinger kept yelling 'FUCKIN' AISEHOLES!' like a lunatic. I nearly shouted at him to shut up, but decided he'd pay no attention.

Whether or not the defenders could see us it was impossible to tell, but I guessed not. I reckoned they were just loosing offrounds into the desert to raise their morale. They had plenty to keep them occupied. The blaze started by Pat's distraction charge had died out, but the accommodation block was well alight, with flames spreading along it from the right-hand end. I could see figures running about outside the building, and hear men yelling in high, harsh voices. Vehicles were on the move, headlights sweeping the desert. I tried not to look at the lights or flames because the glare destroyed my night-vision.

The ground was uneven enough to make searching difficult, the hollows containing pools of deeper darkness.

'Spread out,' I called. 'Get a line. It's the only way to find him.'

We fanned out to twenty metres apart in a line end- on to the wire, tripping and falling in the sandy hollows.

Whenever headlights swung in our direction, everyone went down and stayed flat until the beams had passed.

This made progress ercatic, and confused our eyes still more. I was beginning to think we must have gone past Pat when Norm suddenly called, 'Here he is.'

We were round him in a flash. He was lying in a bit' of a dip, on his right side, with his left leg curled up but his right leg straight out beneath it. As we huddled round he didn't speak. With my back to the camp I switched on my torch and immediately saw blood gleaming in the sand.

'Right leg,' I said. 'Turn him over.'

He groaned and blasphemed as we got him on his back. With my knife I cut his trousers and slit upwards.

One look told me that a bullet had gone right through his leg and caught his femur just above the knee. A splinter of bone was protruding from a bloody opening.

I whipped out my shamag and twisted it up into a sausage to make a tourniquet above the wound.

'Get on the radio to Stew,' I ordered. 'Tell him we need the trailer forward, as close behind the OP as he can get it.'

I got the tourniquet in position, broke out two thick wound-dressings from my emergency pack and bound them into place with Norm's shamag, one on either hole. When I shone the torch on Pat's face he looked deathly pale, and his eyes moved slowly. I felt round his neck for the sachet of morphia. It was still in place, so I jerked the cord in half, pulled off the cap and banged the needle into his good thigh.

'He's lost a lot of blood,' I said. 'He needs an IV, fast.'

Suddenly a brighter glare blazed out of the camp, and the beam of a searchlight swept over the desert to our right. 'For fuck's sake!' called Whinger. 'Let's get him into a deeper hole.'

He and Norm took Pat by the arms and began dragging him backwards over the sand, ignoring his protests. I picked up his rifle and went after them. Then I saw the beam of the light swinging fast towards us.

'On the deck!' I snapped. 'Down!'

Down we went, but not quick enough. The light beamed on to us, swung past, then checked and came back. The operator had seen us. A second later rounds came flying down the line of the beam. The air all round my head was suddenly full of vicious snapping and crackling. It was a machine-gun, firing long bursts.

We were pinned down fifty metres short of the dunes and good cover. If we'd all been fit we could maybe have rolled into hollows and got away with it.

But Pat couldn't move on his own. To me his body showed up as big as an elephant's, caught in that lethal beam. If anyone had good binos at the other end, they were bound to see it.

There was only one thing to do. I rolled a couple of metres to my left, came up in a firing position and let drive at the light with my AK-47: one, two, three short bursts, raising my point of aim slightly each time. I was aware of someone else firing too, on my right. At my fourth burst the light vanished, but rounds were still snapping close overhead.

'Keep down!' I yelled. 'Give 'em time to lose their point of aim.'

In a few seconds the firing stopped.

'OK,' I called. 'Let's go.'

Whinger got hold of Pat again, but Norm wasn't with him.

'Norm!' I called. 'Where are you? Norm?'

I scuttled four or five steps to where I'd last seen him, and there he was, flat on his front, slumped face-down over his rifle. Feeling desperately exposed, I knelt with my back to the camp and flicked on my torch. Blood was welling from a hole at the base of his neck. A bullet had gone in on the inner end of the collar bone, killing him instantly. The round must have raked through his chest and-out through his spine.

I found I was shaking. 'Norm's gone,' I said.

'Want me to carry him?' Tony was lying beside me.

Tll manage him. You help drag Pat.'

The volume of incoming fire increased again, green tracer now added to the red. There must have been twenty or thirty guys loosing off from various areas of the camp, and now two machine-guns were firing.

Praise be, the whole lot was going high. Looking back, I saw that the power had been partially restored: a few lights were showing dimly, as though w.orked by emergency generators. More sinister was the fact that vehicles were lining up one behind the other, facing the centre gate, as if a sortie was about to be launched into the desert.

With the air full of lead, everyone's instinct was to stay on the deck and crawl into shelter. But you can't crawl in soft sand dragging a heavy weight. Scary as it was, the only thing to do was to stand up. With Tony's help I got Norm over my shoulder in a fireman's lift, his arms hanging down my back. Even though Tony had taken his Nile, he seemed a hell of a weight. I started taking very short steps, but my feet slid in the sand and I made practically no progress.

Then out of the air came Stew's reassuring voice: 'On the move with the trailer. Can you give me a steer?'

I was panting so hard I could hardly speak. 'Stew,' I gasped, 'we're in the shit. Norm's been topped. Thirty seconds, someone'll be on the back of a dune. Give you two flashes, repeated.'

I struggled on a few more steps. I could feel Norm's warm blood dripping down the backs of my legs. The other two were dragging Pat on, drawing ahead. Tracer was still sailing high over us. Somehow we had to make the back of the first big dune, in dead ground from the camp.

No breath left. I had to put Norm down. I got hold of his limp left hand and started trying to drag him, but in the deep sand his weight and the pouches of his belt- kit made it almost impossible.

Dimly I realised that Tony and Whinger had got Pat over the lip and into a temporary refuge. A second later Whinger was back beside me. He grabbed Norm's other hand, and the two of us got the body moving. By the time we had it in dead ground Tony had started giving Stew double flashes. With incredible relief I heard the engine of his quad, purring towards us. In a moment he was alongside.

'What happened?'

'Norm got one smack in the chest,' I said.

'Instantaneous. Pat's got a gunshot wound to the right leg. He's lost a lot of blood.'

I knew we ought to put more ground between us and the enemy before I started work on the casualty. On the other hand, I didn't think Pat could last very long.

'Get the body in the trailer,' I said. 'And Pat. I've got to give him an IV right away.'

While the others lifted Norm and lowered him into the bottom of the trailer, I broke out the med pack and sorted an IV drip. My hands were shaking so much I had trouble with the packaging.

'Watch that fucking gate for me, Whinger,” I said.

'Tell me if the bastards start out.'

I slit away the sleeve of Pat's shirt and got the needle in his arm, but I had nothing to hang the bag of fluid from, so I handed it to Stew and said, 'Hold that a minute.'

'Watch it, Geordie,' called Whinger, who was observing from up on the mound. 'They're at the gate now.'

'Tell me when they've got it open.'

'Wait out.'

We got a minuteor so's respite. Then Whinger called, 'They're coming through. Six, seven, eight vehicles.'

'Head for the LUP, then. Gimme the bag, Stew. I'll ride with him.'

But could we move? When Stew went into gear and revved up, his wheels just spun in the sand. The weight in the trailer was too great. I leaped out, preparing to walk beside Pat, holding the IV above him. But still the trailer wouldn't shift.

I pushed as hard as I could with my free hand. Tony was on the other side, heaving like he was in a rugger scrum. Whinger was still up top, observing the enemy.

The temptation was to call him down and get him pushing too, but we needed him where he was.

We made maybe fifty yards at a desperately slow speed, before the quad slewed sideways and slid, dropping into a deep, steep-sided hole, with the trailer jack-knifed round against it. The fall had jerked the needle out of Pat's arm, and I was left with it dangling on the end of the tube. At that very instant Whinger called down, 'Watch it, Geordie, they're turning to come in along the new road ahead of us.'

I took an awful decision: we had to ditch Norm, and Pat we must save at all costs.

'Where's yur Semtex?' I asked Tony.

'Some here,' he patted his pouches. 'Most of it's in the trailer. Why?'

'I want you to get rid of Norm's body.'

'Aw, shit!'

'I know. But we've got to do it. Those are our orders. If we keep him with us we'll put everyone at risk.'

By then we were in one hell of a mess. Our only hope of getting the trailer out of the hole was to empty it. But Pat was lying on top of the heap, and before we could get Norm clear we had to shift Pat back on to land, causing him horrendous pain.

I broke out a fresh wound-dressing, wrapped the IV: needle in it and laid the whole kit on top of my AK-47.

Then I went to work. The body was still warm as in life.

Holding it under the arms, I hauled it out and dragged:, it ten yards clear. Tony came with me, carrying his gear.

'What shall I do?' I asked. 'Put him on his side in a fetal position?“ '

'I guess. I've never done this before.'

'How much Semtex have you got?'

'Twelve pounds.

'Put five in his midriff, and we'll wrap him round it.

Tie his hands behind his knees.'

'What about the fuse?'

'Wait till We've got the trailer sorted. Then give us fifteen minutes.'

'OK.'

'Can you manage?'

'I guess so.'

'Sorry, Tony.'

I felt round Norm's neck to make sure he wasn't wearing his ID discs on a chain, then scuttled back to the quad. Stew had already unhitched the empty trailer and pulled it up on to level ground. I broke out a rope and called Whinger down to help pull. With Stew driving and us two heaving, the bike scrabbled its way back on to the flat. All the time I was working, my mind was on Tony and his horrible task.

We were all moving fast and silently, shocked by the realization that Norm, our taciturn but ever-reliable mate, was about to be blown to eternity. We also knew that we were rapidly being surrounded. Still not speak ing, we hitched up again, reloaded Pat and the two spare weapons into the trailer, and tried another start.

This time the quad went forward without anyone pushing, and I knew We'd made the critical difference to the load.

I got the IV needle back into Pat's arm and told him to hold the bag up above his head with the other hand.

'Keep it up as long as you can,' I told him. 'Then have a rest, and up again.'

Turning to Tony I called, 'How are you doing?'

'Finishing now. What about the fuse?'

'Start it going.'

Whinger had scrambled back to his lookout post.

'Lights moving out,' he said. 'Coming across our line of retreat.'

'Shit!' I muttered. 'Let's go.'

We reached the LUP without further incident. Stew had already ripped down the cam-netting, so we folded it over into a makeshift blanket, to give Pat some padding from the bumps and insulation from the air. In the distance behind us the Libyans were still filling the air with lead.

'Booby trap both spare quads,' I told Tony. 'Pile most of the Semtex on them, and put a jerrican of petrol underneath. Quick as you can.'

I put my head close to the casualty's and said, 'Pat?'

'Yeah.'

'You hear me all right?'

'Sure.'

'Listen. We've got to motor. Keep the bag up for as long as you can, OK?'

'Right.'

I turned to Tony and said, 'Pat's pulled back a bit already. I reckon he's stable now. How are you doing?'

'Matter of seconds. I'm giving this one fifteen minutes of det cord.'

'How long till Norm goes?'

He shot a quick glance at his watch. 'Eight minutes.'

'Let's get moving then.'

'OK. It's burning.' Tony stood back for a second, then crossed to his own quad and jumped aboard.

At last we were properly under way, heading due south, myself in the lead. Already the sand was firmer, the going faster. With every minute that passed, the noise of firing faded behind us. I uttered a silent prayer of thanks for the Magellans. With the coordinates of ER.V Six punched in, the needle on my little illuminated dial was giving me our course, and warning me every time I deviated to right or left.

Yet as the seconds ticked away, I felt terrific tension rising inside me. Norm was about to be vaporized. The idea was disgusting, incredible. I thought of the bomb at WarrenPoint which had killed nineteen Paras. Two of them had literally disappeared into thin air; no trace of them was ever found.

Lights! Lights ahead of us and below, maybe three hundred metres from us.

'Everyone stop,' I called. 'Standby to see how far they're going.'

Like the twats they were, the Libyans were driving slowly along the new road with headlights full on. The vehicles were maybe a couple of hundred yards apart, engines and gearboxes grinding in low gear.

'First explosion imminent,' said Tony's voice in my ear — and then, before I had time to agonise any more, it came. A terrific flash split the sky behind us, and a heavy booth! buffeted through the air. Norman was gone. I tried to shut my mind to details about which bit of him might have been blown where; I just hoped there was nothing whatever left. Annihilation.

When I tried to swallow, my throat felt desperately dry, and I was shaking with reaction. Concentrate on the job in hand, I told myself.

I looked at the road and realised something was wrong with the picture I could see.

'Whinger,' I called softly, 'you said you counted eight vehicles through the gate?'

'Correct,' he answered. 'There's only six still mov ing. Two of the bastards have stopped off somewhere.'

'Wait one.' I pulled up my kite-sight and switched it on. Sure enough, I picked up the two delinquents, one a couple of hundred yards to the left of our line of retreat, the other twice that. 'They're putting out a cordon,' I said. 'The next one will stop in a moment…

There he goes.'

A third vehicle came to a halt and doused its lights.

Scanning the ground with the night-sight, I saw that fortune at last was favouring us. From where we were a shallow gully ran down to the new road; rolling down it we would be invisible, and the sides would contain the sound of our engines.

'We'll slip through between them,' I said. 'How long till the next bang, Tony?'

'Four minutes.'

'We'll use that as a diversion. Give us a countdown.

All stations get your eyes shut before the flash. As soon as it goes, we roll. Whinger, stay back to cover the rest of us across. Once we're over, we'll stop and cover you.'

Roger.'

While we waited, I kept scanning with the sight. As I had expected, Gadaffi's fearless warriors preferred to do their soldiering from the safety of their vehicles.

Nobody got out and started to walk about.

'One minute,' Tony announced.

I tucked the sight down the front of my shirt and settled my PNGs back over my eyes. At fifteen seconds I closed my eyes — and it was lust as well, because the flash and bang came fractionally before Tony called them.

This second explosion, being much closer, sounded far more dramatic. Anyone looking back towards the camp would have got an eyeful. Before the echoes had rolled away we were bobbing down the gully and across the road. I held my breath and kept going steadily until we were well clear, then stopped everyone and turned to cover the crossing while I called Whinger on.

Now we were on the hard ground and up to full speed. We had a much shorter way to go than on the run-in, because our pick-up point was only a couple of kilometres beyond the south bank of the big wadi.

After twenty minutes of steady travel, I called, 'M1 stations — comms halt now. Close on me.'

With pickets out ahead and behind, Whinger set up his Satcom and started aligning the little dish-aerial. I thought of the big aerial in the camp, still functioning, and tried to put that minor failure behind me. As Whinger fiddled, I took another look at Pat. When I loosened the tourniquet, blood started to seep through the wound-dressings, so I tightened it again and got another IV going. I stayed with him while Whinger was getting through to Hereford, chatting quietly to encourage him, trying not to think about Norm.

'Fucking great bang,' Pat muttered hazily. 'What was that?'

'Tony put your quad into orbit, to stop anyone else getting their hands on it.'

'Shit hot!'

'Going through,' said Whinger.

I passed the IV bag to Tony and took the handset.

'Zero Alpha, Zero Alpha, this is Delta Four. How do you hear me?'

'Zero Alpha. Loud and clear. Over.' It was Mac's voice, his Glasgow accent unmistakable even via the satellite.

'Delta Four. I confirm the bird is down. We're clear of the target area and heading for the pick-up point.

ETA there between figures four zero and figures six zero minutes from now. Repeat from four zero to six zero minutes.'

'Zero Alpha. Roger. Your transport is en route to you. Will confirm your timings to Captain Steve.

Over.'

'Delta Four. Roger. We have one casualty. Bravo Seven has a serious leg wound. He's stable, but we need a doctor soonest. Best if we can have one on the Here.

Over.'

'Zero Alpha. Roger. We'll do what-we can.'

We found a different way down into the wadi and picked out a path across its boulder-strewn floor without difficulty. After a quick run across the gravel plain, we were on the pick-up location well within the window I'd given. The ground there was flat and hard, with a bit of sand on the surface, but no obstructions, so that the heli would be able to land anywhere. Having chosen the best-looking spot, we spread out in all round defence and listened for the sound of engines.

The night was utterly quiet, with just a breath of wind from the south-east. Looking back to the north, I could see no lights in the sky, no sign of vehicles moving, and I guessed that after a token watch in the desert the Libyans had retreated into camp. I imagined a fire-crew fighting the blaze in the accommodation block. If the whole building had gone up and Khadduri's body had been incinerated, the home team might never realise that he'd been assassinated.

Scanning through my PNGs, I could make out the other quads dotted round in a circle. It was difficult to sit still and wait, so hyped-up did I feel. Every minute or two I had a word with Pat, lying in the trailer beside me. During one of the longer silences, the idea of meeting Norm's next-of-kin began to bug me. Because he came from so far away — Glasgow — and spoke so little, I didn't know much about his family. I had the impression that his father was dead and his mum had married again. What was I going to say to her?

I kept trying to work out when our Chinook would have taken offfrom Siwa and how long it might take to reach us. As we had no solid information, everything was guesswork. From their pre-briefing, the crew knew that EtV Six was twenty kilometres due south of the camp perimeter, and I was confident they were heading for us.

It was Whinger, with his very sharp ears, who heard the sound first. 'Aircraft engines east,' he announced. I switched my radio to the channel I expected the chopper crew to be using and called, 'Hello Steve, hello Steve, this is Geordie. How d'you read me? Over.'

'Hi, Geordie. You're loud and clear. I'm heading two-six-zero. Estimating six minutes to the LZ. Over.'

'Roger. That's great. Keep coming. We can hear you due east of our position. The deck's clear for you to land. We've got i firefly on now.'

'Roger. Do my guys need any particular instructions for loading your casualty?'

'No, thanks. We've got him laid in the trailer, so he can be driven straight in.'

'Roger. Standby.'

'And… Steve?'

'Yes?'

'We've only four quads left. Had to bin the others.

So the loadies'll only need to count four in.'

'Roger.'

It was a fantastic relief to know that the chopper was on course. Again I gave thanks for the existence of the Magellan and the pinpoint accuracy it offered us. No doubt the crew of the Chinook would have found us in the end by using old-fashioned methods of navigation, but almost certainly the recovery would have taken longer. Most of my anxieties fell away; now the main worry was Pat.

For three or four minutes the engine hum grew steadily louder.

'We're hearing you stronger,' I called. 'Keep coming.'

'Roger,' Steve called, and then, 'OK, OK. I've got you. We were almost spot on. Turning towards you now. OK, the firefly's on the nose. All clear to land beside it?'

'Perfect. We're standing off.'

'Roger. I'll come straight in.'

I went back on to our chatter net and called to Whinger: 'Pull away from his line of approach or you'll get your bloody head cut off. All stations, start up. He'll be here in under a minute. Stew, you'll be first on with the trailer.'

'Roger.'

Pulling the PNGs down on to my chest, I replaced them with ordinary ski goggles, started the quad and turned to face into the circle. For a few moments I could hear the noise of my own engine. Then the thudding of rotor blades and the scream of turbines blotted it out, and all at once a great black monster was looming towards us out of the night, practically at ground level, with a dark sand-cloud seething behind it.

Without wasting an instant, Steve hovered, turned in the air and put his arse down right beside the firefly. In the last few seconds the noise became overwhelming.

Sand and dust boiled up furiously, and as I drove into the cloud I found the ramp already down, and there were the loadies, beckoning Stew on. In less than a minute all four quads were safely aboard, and we lifted away.

In the dim light of the hold I could see that Tony's face and hands were smeared with dried blood.

Khadduri's. My hands were the same, but the blood was Pat's. The blood all down the backs of my legs was Norm's.

For our lads, the relief of being airborne was overwhelming; we felt we were already half-way home, our troubles behind us. For the crew, though, things were different. From their strained faces I could see they were shitting themselves with the possibility of going down in alien territory. Not until we'd cleared the Egyptian border would they be able to relax. Engine failure, or a SAM from a trigger-happy sentry in some Libyan frontier-post — either would spoil the party in a few seconds. In my mind I ran through the emergency drills we'd talked about in Hereford, what we'd do in the event of a forced landing. We still had enough explosive to destroy the Chinook if need be, but that would be the last resort.

As for Pat, I knew the important thing was to make him keep fighting. On other operations I'd seen guys who'd been wounded hold out well until they thought they were in safe hands, and then suddenly slide downhill as they stopped making a positive effort to survive. When that happens, shock can take over.

I went and looked down over the side of the trailer.

Pat's eyes were shut, so I gave him a tap on the arm and shouted, 'Stick at it, mate. There's going to be a doctor on the Here. Only an hour to go.'

The morphine had put him half-under, but he mustered a bit of a smile and muttered, 'Fuck 'em all!'

I raised a thumb, held my fist above his head for a moment, gave him a tap on the shoulder and moved away.

When I called the head-shed on the secure radio link, I was put straight on to the CO. I told him about Norm and Pat, but there was only one subject he seemed interested in: was I sure that the target was dead?

'As fucking mutton, Boss,' I told him. 'He had two rounds through the head, one from the front, one from the side. His brains are spattered half-way across Libya.

We've got photos to prove it.'

'Good work,' he conceded. 'And nobody got a good look at you?'

'Only the target. No one else.'

'Brilliant. We'll see you back here presently.'