Back on the ground Lt Brooks used his binoculars to check that everyone on the face was as near invisible as possible, but the major and Alladay were still in clear view.
The sound of the helicopter was growing louder and his Stinger men were looking over their shoulders at him for permission to activate the weapons infrared seekers. If the aircraft happened to be equipped with a sensor suite the super-cooled ‘eyes’ could register upon it, giving away their presence as surely as actually loosing off a missile at them, so he shook his head emphatically before again raising his binos. Richard had gained the lower reaches of the chimney and was squeezing himself inside, hollering down the face
“OFF BELAY…FREESTYLE IT, ALLADAY!” informing the NCO that he was safe to release himself but that he himself was not belayed-on, so putting weight on the rope that connected them would result in Richard being pulled bodily from the rock face. Alladay untied himself and went up the face, moving as quickly and surely as had his officer.
Appearing at first as a small dot, the Chinese helicopter gradually grew in size as it flew toward them between towering rock walls. Garfield looked desperately up at the Royal Marine Commando, willing him to climb even faster than he presently was.
Garfield had to make a decision, the aircraft was fast approaching minimum engagement range and the Stingers needed a few moments to acquire their target. He could stand down the Stingers and trust that Alladay would be able to get into cover by the time it arrived. Otherwise Garfield would probably blow the entire operation by ordering the men holding the weapons to engage and destroy.
“Sir?” one of the men asked, wanting to know what they were to do.
Now I know why they pay me more than a trooper, Garfield thought.
“Stand down and get into cover.”
The approaching light helicopter looked remarkably similar to a French Aerospatiale AS355 Twin Ecureuil, the military version of the ‘Squirrel’, but was in fact a Chinese copy, the Z-11.
Until a couple of weeks before, the main natural hazard of operating helicopters in the region had been the dust and heat. The aircraft were all equipped for those conditions, with dust filters for the intakes and hot weather lubricants for the engines. The snow and plummeting temperatures had brought to a halt the increased patrolling that had become the norm since the start of the war. The sub-zero temperatures turned the lightweight lubricants into heavy treacle and the dust filters iced over, starving the engines of oxygen.
The Z-11s pilot was not ecstatic about being a guinea pig, flying the first sortie since the arrival of arctic standard lubricants. The dust filters had been replaced and a crew chosen to carry out a test flight, which proved to be the ones least in favour with their commander.
Two hundred feet up the face the commander of the SAS Mountain Troop detachment pressed himself as close to the rock as he could. Lt Shippey-Romhead could not see the Z-11; he had left the traverse to climb into shadow around a corner of rock, away from the approaching helicopter. The only holds here were widely spaced and his rope, tied off at the belay point below did not allow him sufficient slack to accomplish it easily, it was pulling him sideways. The young officer was spread eagled across the rock, uncomfortably overstretched and silently urging the PLA aircraft to hurry up and bugger off. The involuntary tremors began in his right leg, a phenomenon known to climbers as ‘Elvis leg’, where tired or over-stressed leg muscles display disquiet at the treatment demanded of them. The SAS officer cursed the rope that was contributing to his discomfort and concentrated on stilling the tremors in his limb, willing it to behave but his left leg came out in sympathy, trembling in unison to the right limb. Removing his right hand from its hold he eased it between his body and the rock, his fingers unscrewing the locking carabiner at his waist and releasing the rope. Breathing a sigh of relief he replaced his hand back into the fracture it had left, and noted with satisfaction that the tremors were already abating.
Corporal Alladay reached the shadow beneath the overhang and clipped himself onto a runner before assuming an attitude of absolute stillness. The helicopter was almost upon them, the beating of its rotors a physical thing that buffeted the senses. The British and American troops held their breath lest the fog of their breathing catch the eye of an alert crewman, but on board an aircraft never equipped with heating the door gunners sat behind closed side doors, peering disinterestedly through Perspex windows as they shivered in the cold and drafts of freezing air that streamed through the joints of the side door.
A clod of snow struck Richard on the shoulder, loosened by the vibration of the helicopters passing it fell down the chimney from the mass of wind-blown snow and ice that overhung the face, a fore runner of the tons that were to follow. He had just enough time to brace his arms and legs against the side of the chimney, pressing his back against the opposite side with all his strength before he was engulfed.
Garfield was following the helicopter with his eyes, the beat of the blades drowned out all other sound but a white, fast moving mass caught the corner of his eye. A falling wall of ice and snow blotted out the rock face and he shouted an alarm to the men closest to the base of the canyon wall where the bergens were stashed, but they were watching the PLA machine and his shout was drowned out by the beating blades. Two men disappeared before his very eyes, one moment they were there and the next they were buried under tons of snow and ice.
During an avalanche or rock fall down a vertical face the safest place to be is as tight against the rock face as possible. The falling mass has achieved a degree of forward motion, which will carry most of it outwards, not in towards the face.
Lt Shippey-Romhead had no warning at all until a whiteout replaced the view he had had of the rock face across the canyon they had descended earlier. Sucking in his stomach and expending the air in his lungs he made himself as flat as possible but could still feel the wind of the avalanche against his back. Just millimetres separated him from the down rush of snow and he clung with desperation to his hand and toeholds. A lump of ice about the size of a coconut struck the back of his helmet a glancing blow and his head rebounded off the rock and into the downfall, which dragged his body from its tentative perch.
Situated as it is between Peckham and Brixton, two of the more violent suburbs of the British capital, the hospital that lay three quarters of the way up Denmark Hill have a staff with vast experience and expertise in dealing with gunshot wounds and stabbings. Those skills made Kings College Hospital an obvious choice for dealing with many of the more serious cases arriving back in the UK from the fighting in Europe. One such patient arrived under guard; the military policemen of his escort being exceedingly closed mouthed about their charge.
That he was a soldier seemed obvious from the remnants of camouflage cream that still adhered to his skin, clearly missed by the medical staff in Germany. However, the RMPs would not reveal his identity or the circumstances of his receiving his injuries.
A doctor in triage was beginning to get extremely frustrated with the lack of forthcoming information, such as the date of the injury, the dimensions of the blade and was it possible that any of the knife or bayonet’s blade could have been broken off? Whether morphine had been administered, and if so then how much and when? She couldn’t even get them to admit that the casualty was a serviceman. A Warrant Officer was in command of the escort but the doctor was being blanked in her attempts to do an accurate assessment.