And fight now? I had a sudden, horrible thought that his captors would be trying to indoctrinate him against me, teaching him foul language and filthy ideas. I remembered how kids his age in Belfast shout 'Fucking pigs!' whenever they see a Brit soldier come past, and hoped to hell that the PIRA wouldn't have time to corrupt Tim's mind in that way.
After a while, unable to relax let alone sleep, I went up on the flight deck, and I was there when we crossed the Egyptian coast. Far off to our left a spread of lights was twinkling hazily in the dusk.
'Alexandria,' said the skipper.
Beneath the nose the odd cluster of lights marked smaller towns along the shore, and the occasional flares we saw were from oil wells burning off gas; but beyond them, inland, the desert stretched away black as night, with nothing to break its monotony. At this point our target lay about eight hundred kilometres away to the east. Pity we can't just fly across and drop a bomb on the bastard, I thought — and I was on the point of saying as much to Pete when I remembered that he knew nothing of our operation, and had been too professional to make the smallest enquiry about what we were up to.
So for the time being I returned to my hammock but half an hour later Pete called me back to the fligh deck to say he'd been in touch with an 1LAF liaiso officer in the control tower at Siwa.
'Your Chinook's ready for you,' he said. 'God know where it's come from, but it's parked on a pan near the western perimeter of the airfield. As soon as we hit th, deck they're going to send out a vehicle to lead us to it.
'That's excellent. Will there be other Hercs on the field?'
'Absolutely. It's just like Akrotiri. The place i heaving with them — all part of Bright Star.'
'That's what the chopper's been on too,' I said 'Officially it's gone tits-up and been retired sick fron the exercise for a few days.'
Full darkness had fallen by the time we began ou descent. The loadies helped us unshackle the quads an get ourselves organised. Without head-sets on it wa impossible to hear spoken orders, so Big Alf, who w listening in to the flight deck, resorted to his usu system of hand-signals as we were coming in.
At five minutes to touch-down he gave us fly fingers outspread, then three two minutes later. Wit two minutes to go we started our engines and sat ther with the quads ticking over, ski goggles on in case gr: flew about when we landed. With all the noise it w hard to tell if the individual engines were still runnin so I reached down with my right hand to feel m exhaust. Exhaust fumes began to fill the hold, but befor they built up to a serious level we were getting on finger. I realised I needed a piss, but told myself it would have to wait.
The top half of the tail-gate rose slowly, letting in rush of warm, fresh air, and with it an even fierc engine scream. Through the rectangular opening a could see lights shining from latticed towers are vehicles moving. Then, with a thump, the plane was on the deck and rolling.
The bottom half of the tail-gate began to go down while we were still taxiing. The Here made a couple of turns, left and right — I guessed it was following a lead vehicle — and we had barely come to a standstill before Alf was waving us off. First down the ramp was Tony, and the rest of us followed swiftly in single file, Stew and his trailer bringing up the rear.
Outside, the first thing that hit me was the smell of an African settlement, the inevitable stink of heat and drains and dust hanging in the hot night air. The Chinook was within fifty metres of us, tail-gate down, rotors whirling. In seconds all six quads were at the bottom of the ramp, and we leapt off to manhandle the trailer backwards up the slope — first on, last off. Then, one after another, with Stew leading, we reversed into the belly of the chopper and parked in another zigzag alongside the big, black rubber sausage of an extra fuel tank.
Our new head loadie was sitting in the hatchway of the partition that separates the hold from the flight- deck. He twisted round to get a look at us, and the moment I gave him the thumbs-up he hit the button to raise the ramp. He also passed word to the pilot, who immediately revved up his engines, put on pitch and lifted away.
The transfer couldn't have been accomplished any faster. I didn't believe that anyone could have seen us, but even so for the first few minutes the captain headed due south, to confuse anyone who might be watching, and made sure that he was out of sight before he swung on to an easterly heading. When I waved at the cockpit to indicate that I wanted to make contact, the head loadie pointed to a head-set, which I plugged into a socket on the wall.
I had to think for a moment who our new skipper was. Then I remembered him and his crew coming to Hereford. Of course: it was Steve Tanner, another Geordie, a small, dark fellow with sticking-out ears.
'Evening, Steve,' I went. 'Geordie Sharp here.'
'Hi, Geordie,' came the reassuring voice. 'Good to have you aboard. We've crossed the border already.
Welcome to sunny Libya.'
'Great! That was a neat pickup.'
'Not too bad.'
'What's our flight time?'
'We're estimating one hour fifty. There's no wind to speak of, so you should be on your location just after midnight.'
'That'tl do well. Can we just make sure we're all agreed about where we're going?'
We spent a few minutes double-checking not only that night's destination, but also the precise location of EPV Six, the spot in the desert from which the Chinook would recover us once the operation had gone down. There seemed to be no problem: the figures tallied, and I was able to relax for the time being.
All the same, I stood for a while, peering out of a porthole. The night was clear, the moonlight bright. I knew that the crew's PNGs must be giving them an excellent view ahead — and they needed it, because they were skimming the desert at 150 m.p.h, and at no more than fifty feet, low enough to stay” beneath any radar, and seemed confident that no obstructions lay in-our path. lather them than me.
'As far as we know there's nothing whatever between us and the MSR,' Steve said, 'and that's nearly an hour ahead. A hundred and thirty miles of f-all but sand. '
In the back the guys were sorting out their weapons and ammunition and re-lashing the remainder of their kit. I followed suit, loading one full magazine into my AK-47 and sliding four more into the pouches of my belt-kit. These final preparations didn't take up much time, and there was still an uncomfortably long wait ahead. My mouth felt dry, as it used to before football matches at school, so I ate one of my oranges to slake the thirst.
As we flew, Steve kept up an intermittent com mentary over the intercom. 'Got a fire to our left,' he said suddenly. 'Looks like a bedouin encampment on our port front. We'll give that some space, I think.'
The heli took a violent heave to the right and climbed, then, a minute later, another to the left as we straightened back on to our true course. Presently Steve said, 'There's the MSP now. Not much moving on it.
One set of lights heading north to starboard, and that's all… unless some mad bugger of an A-rab is driving without lights — which is quite possible.'
I felt the Chinook climb again, and imagined the thick red line on the map, which ran across our line of advance almost at right-angles. Then, as Steve banked right, I knew he was swinging north to keep away from three small settlements that lay either side of a kink in the road.
'That those villages on the MSI?' I asked.
'Clearing them now.'
A few minutes later he came on for the last time and in his best railway official's poncified tones announced, 'This is your next station stop. All passengers prepare to alight.' Then he reverted to his normal voice and said, 'When we're on the deck, Geordie, I'll wait for sixty seconds to make sure you're OK. Then, if you don't shout, assume there's no drama and we'll be off.'