'You will need these, if there will be a sandstorm.'
I slung them round my neck. The rigger was helping me to adjust the 'chute-harness and we pulled it too tight and a flash of pain burned in the nerves of my shoulder where the ricochet of the sixth bullet had left bruising.
'Ca va, mon ami?'
'Oui.'
I dropped my flight-bag into the cabin and climbed aboard and buckled the restraint-belt. Chirac called something to the ground-crew, I didn't catch what, then he followed me in and settled his feet on the rudder-bar and checked the four instruments: airspeed-indicator, spirit cross-level, compass and variometer.
He raised his hand.
'Allons-y!'
The rigger stood away and lifted both arms in a signal to Batagnier and then walked to the wing-tip, waiting. The revs went up and the airstream began fluttering at the hood of the glider as the Fauconnet rolled cautiously, taking up the slack in the towline. A jerk came as it tautened.
Chirac was peeling some silver paper.
'You want some gum?'
I shook my head and he put the strip into his mouth and flicked the paper into the air current and slid the hood shut as the Fauconnet gunned up and we began rolling. A haze of sand came flying. against the Perspex and the man at the wing-tip broke his run and fell away as the speed rose and the vibration hammered under our seats and Chirac felt the resistance coming into the controls and brought the stick back gently, feeling his way, gently again until the vibration died out and the sand-haze cleared and the mission was airborne.
The first derrick-light came into view on the starboard side. Chirac couldn't see it from his seat but he noticed me watching the light and said above the windrush:
'South 5.'
He'd clipped a chart on the facia but never looked at it.
When the light came abreast of us north-east I checked the time at 00.13 hours. The silver-painted storage tanks were distinct and I could see a truck on the move.
Ahead of us we could see the navigation lights of the Fauconnet and the short bright flames from its exhaust-stubs. Its engine noise was steady, drumming at the hood above us, and the smell of exhaust gas had seeped into the cabin.
South 6.
00.27.
Altitude 1300 metres.
The detail was less distinct: the ash-grey sheen to the west of the drilling-tower could have been storage tanks or the semi-domed roofs of the living-quarters. We were now picking up No. 2 Philips radio beacon, its red warning-lamp shifting slowly across the desert floor as we overflew it.
The air was cool.
Monoxide and spearmint and above our heads the stars in their millions flowing peacefully across the curve of the Perspex. Course north-east.
Overflying the Roches Vertes drilling-camps at two thousand metres I thought I heard a change in the Fauconnet's engine-noise: a slight increase in volume and pitch. I waited for Chirac to remark on it but he said nothing and I looked at the instruments.
Airspeed unchanged at 110.
Angle of climb unchanged at 18°.
They were the only two that would reflect the altered note of the Fauconnet ahead of us but they remained constant. Batagnier hadn't increased his speed and he hadn't pushed up his angle of climb and I didn't like it.
Red light moving below, very distant on the starboard side.
No. 3 Philips tower.
Impossible to tell whether a new sound had come into the immediate area. There should only be one source: the 1000V twin-engined Fauconnet.
No mirrors, either inside the cabin or outrigged in nacelles.
The blindspot rearwards of this pod-and-boom design was rather large. The air was cold now but I was beginning to sweat because London had done their best but it might not be good enough, not quite good enough. If their decision to charter a glider for final access to the target area meant that the opposition had set up listening-posts to monitor aircraft movement in this region, then the sound of the Fauconnet was at this moment being registeredon their scanners. There hadn't been anything we could do about that: Chirac had ordered this course north-east from South 4 because it was an established airlane across the drilling-complex and if we'd made any kind of circuit to avoid the camps our sound would still have been picked up and we would have been immediately suspect.
The probability that theywere picking us up now was all right because they wouldn't investigate every aircraft movement across this region provided it followed a routine pattern: what they were listening for was unusual traffic and especially an unscheduled flight from any of the strips near Kaifra in the direction of the open desert. Each post would essentially have its own facility for the immediate investigation of suspect aircraft movement: a machine standing by with its engine warmed and a pilot ready for take-off.
The danger wasn't there. It was in the possibility that our own operation had been penetrated without our knowledge. It had been necessary to engage people outside our own cell and although Chirac and Batagnier must have been screened it wouldn't have been advisable to let the ground-staff at South 4 know that this flight had a clandestine aspect, even though there had been no secrecy about the take-off.
London had done its best but if the change in the engine-note of the tow-plane was in fact an illusion created by the additional noise of another aircraft flying behind us the mission would end here, two thousand metres above the desert and a hundred kilometres from the target: Tango Victor.
The aft structure of the glider provided a blindspot big enough to conceal a bomber, The glider itself provided a blindspot for the Fauconnet even if it carried outside mirrors. If there were a third aircraft now flying a north-east course towards No. 3 Philips tower only the pilot of that aircraft would know.
'Chirac.'
'J’ecoute.'
'Have you noticed any change in the engine-note?'
'When?'
'A minute ago.'
'Oh yes — he went into coarser pitch.'
'He's got variable props?'
'But yes. And we are quite high now.'
'Isee. Have you got any spare gum?'
Altitude 3000.
Chirac watched the instruments.
Thirty seconds later the Fauconnet began levelling off.
I couldn't see the No.3 tower light any more from starboard: over the past ten minutes it had been drifting slowly out of sight towards our midline as Batagnier changed course to overfly it directly.
The engine-noise was flattening to a steady drone as he throttled back to compensate for the increase of speed at level flight.
It was now very cold in the cockpit.
'You will please check your seat-belt.'
He went on watching the instruments.
I checked and reported.
'Very well.'
He pulled the release and the cable snaked awayand the force of the deceleration thrust me hard against the belt as the nose went down. I caught sight of the tow-plane once more, quite small as it wheeled against the horizon to retrace its course, then we were drifting, alone in the night sky.
9: DROP
There was only the wind's sound.
Sometimes it changed, subtly or grossly, as. Chirac searched the heights for their currents. The air rushed inaudibly over the wings and the sound was not from there but from imperfections in the streamlining of the cabin: the landing-gear housing, the flanges of the hood-runners, the edge of the drop-trap.
A sibilance came from them, a whistling through the teeth, then as we swung to meet the wind and headed into it the sound changed to a low fluting, eerie and musical, then died to a whisper as we drifted across the current, the long wings lying against it.