Unexpectedly, we gained a temporary respite when a strange lull descended on the battlefield. The Adoo troops had faltered and fallen back into the shallow wadis that interlaced the plain leading up to the fort. The heavy concentration of automatic fire they had earlier employed had emptied their magazines, and in the excitement and desperation of the assault, some had forgotten to carry out their magazine changes. Others had not had time to reload from the bandoliers of ammunition they carried across their chests. The firing had become spasmodic; only the mortars kept up their relentless bombardment. More ominously, though, there was a lack of return fire from the twenty-five-pounder and the DG fort. Bob and I tried to raise them on the walkie-talkie several times, but it remained silent. Maybe they had discarded the walkie-talkie in the heat of the moment. Maybe their set had been blasted apart by a bullet. Maybe Tak and Laba were taking advantage of the temporary lull to replenish their ammunition from unopened ammunition boxes. Or perhaps the silence was more sinister.
‘And don’t forget to change into your desert boots.’ Bob’s parting words to Mike as he left the radio room for the roof interrupted my increasingly busy train of thought. I looked across the room at the two figures preparing themselves for the mercy dash to the fort. Mike had retrieved his dusty desert boots from under his camp bed against the far wall, and was kneeling down and pulling very tightly on the laces. Tommy stood patiently watching Mike, steeling himself. He had a calm, totally committed look on his face. All his doubts, his fears, his private thoughts had retreated far within. Between his index finger and thumb he held the cocking handle of his SLR. He eased the breechblock back slightly to confirm that he had chambered a round. He fingered his belt kit and the patrol medical pack slung across his back.
Just then a long burst of machine-gun fire from the GPMG on the roof above us shook the room violently, adding renewed urgency to the situation. ‘OK Tommy, it’s time to go,’ said Mike quietly. They were through the door and gone without another word.
Racing back up to the .50-calibre Browning, I noticed Roger disappearing down the steps to the front door. He must be going to the beach to retrieve the casevac chopper, I thought, as I flipped the safetycatch on the machine gun to ‘fire’. My mind settled on the task in hand. It was my job to give covering fire. The palms of my hands began to sweat. For the next few minutes the lives of two of my comrades rested on my shoulders. I prayed I would be switched-on enough to carry the burden. I watched intently as Mike and Tommy began edging their way past the mortar pit. Once around it, they sprinted for a shallow wadi about ninety metres on the right. The wadi ran roughly in the direction of the fort and would afford some cover from the machine guns outside the perimeter wire. Bullets were still zipping by. They came in flurries, but the fire lacked intensity and direction. So far, the Adoo had not noticed Mike and Tommy. I held my fire. I did not want to draw attention to the two running figures. I felt the belt of incendiary resting easily in my left hand. I feathered the cold metal of the trigger with the index finger of my right hand. I watched nervously as the two figures worked their way towards the fort, moving in short rushes, ten or fifteen metres at a time, pepperpotting forward, one man running, one man covering. So far so good. Their luck was holding. My grip on the ammunition belt became tighter.
They had gone about halfway to the gun pit when the whole battlefield erupted. The Adoo had spotted them. Where minutes before the firing had been spasmodic and half-hearted, there was now a delirium of noise: the crack of rifles, the rattle of machine guns, the crump of detonating mortar bombs. A heavy machine gun barked over to the east of the fort, the taut lines of tracer zipping across the path of the two moving figures. Like a dragon belching fire, the gun spat hot tracer closer and closer to its prey.
I had to act quickly and decisively. There wasn’t a moment to lose. I lined up the sights of the .50-calibre on the tongues of flame sparking from the flash-eliminator of the Adoo machine gun. My breathing got quicker – short, sharp and controlled. The skin on my forehead tightened. The pressure of concentration felt like a thumb-press on my third eye. I took careful aim and squeezed the trigger. The gun jerked and ejaculated its seeds of destruction, and I watched with professional satisfaction as the Adoo machine gun disappeared under a stream of red tracer and exploding incendiary rounds. My body relaxed with relief. There would be no more trouble from that quarter.
The inferno of fire raged on. The two figures were surging outwards in short rushes across the bullet-swept plain. The closer they got to the gun pit, the faster they ran. Onwards, onwards, stop, cover, rush. The bullets hissed and spat around them; the breath rasped in their windpipes and burned their lungs. They ran faster than they had ever run in their whole lives, their limbs pumping like pistons in full-throttle combustion engines. Then Tommy was up the slope to the fort and vaulting the sandbagged wall into the sangar, with Mike hot on his heels.
A quick look at the chaos in the gun pit told Mike that there was more advantage to be gained by making for the ammunition bunker a few feet to the right. As he jumped down into the bunker bottom, he felt something soft and fleshy under his desert boots. He glanced down. To his horror he realised he was standing on the mangled body of a DG soldier, his foot squelching in the bloody peach-pulp of guts where the stomach used to be. He shrank back in disgust as if he had just turned back the sheets on a lover’s bed and found a rotting corpse crawling with maggots. A movement caught his eye. Squinting through the dust and smoke that hung in the air dirtying the lenses of his glasses, he discovered he had company. Wideeyed, trembling and half paralysed by fear, a DG soldier cowered in the far corner of the bunker like a snared rabbit. The Omani was shaking in every limb. ‘Pull yourself together and move the body,’ snapped Mike as he stared across the gun pit, already assessing the situation.
The battle reached a crescendo, the air thick with splinters of steel and lead. A hurricane of fire whirled and roared across the Mirbat plain. Flash followed flash followed flash, as bright as the flares from an arc welder’s torch. Before one explosion of light had travelled down the optic nerve and burned itself on to the brain, another followed in instant succession, creating a stroboscopic display of agonizing intensity. Tak, totally resigned, his face misshapen with pain, was still propped against the sangar wall, his SLR still hurling hot lead. A short, stocky guerrilla straddled the perimeter wire, his snarling mouth hollering and gesturing towards the fort. The silver whistle around his neck made an excellent aiming marker. Tak’s rifle kicked. With a scream of pain, the man slumped across the wire, lifeless like an old rag, still holding his AK-47 in the grip of death.
The twenty-five-pounder, though silent, was still under concentrated fire. The hail of bullets sparked and ricocheted off the barrel and armoured shield as if the gun had just been cast in a foundry and was being smoothed off by heavy-duty abrasion wheels. Tommy was crouched attending to the body of Laba. He straightened slightly and half turned towards the medical pack. It was his last, fatal movement. If the medical pack had been an inch nearer, or if it had been lying to his right instead of his left, or if he’d checked Laba’s wounds for a split second longer, his head would not have crossed the path of the murderous Kalashnikov round spinning its way faster than the speed of sound. A casual stoop saved de Gaulle from the assassin’s bullet. Tommy was not so lucky. His time had come. He tumbled forward, scattering the spent shell-cases, and then lay motionless.