Zero Option

'Roger,' I answered. 'That's fine.'

'Good luck, then. See you in a couple of days.'

'Thanks,' I said. 'Nice trip.'

Once more we settled ourselves on our quads. I ran over my equipment mentally, also feeling everything I could: AK-47 slung on my back, spare magazines in belt-kit, Browning in waist-holster, knife in sheath, water bottle on belt kit, ski goggles on forehead, PNGs round neck. I tugged at all the straps on my racks, fore and aft, to make sure they were secure. Looling round, I saw that everyone else was doing the same. Tony, who was behind me, gave a wink and a grin, sticking up his right thumb.

At the two-minute signal we started our engines, wound our shamags round our heads and settled ski goggles over our eyes. I switched my radio to the copilot's channel and said, 'OK, Gerry. I'll call if there's any problem. If I don't come on in sixty seconds flat, it'll mean we're OK.' 'loger,' he answered.

At one minute, the Chinook started settling into a hover with the tail-gate descending. A blast of sand and grit came flying into our faces and there was a bump as the wheels touched; out of the corner of my right eye I saw the tail-gate loadie give me a raised thumb, and a second later I was rolling down the ramp.

Our plan was to fan out in an instant bomb-burst. I aimed forty-five degrees to the left through a storm of dust and sand. Tony did the same to the right, Pat at sixty degrees behind me, Whinger behind Tony, and Stew and Norm straight forward With the trailer to a position in the centre of our circle. In that mass of flying shit it was impossible to tell how far I'd gone, but when I reckoned I was seventy metres out I stopped, brought my rifle to the ready and sat facing outwards with the engine ticking over. Out there, I was clear of the dust- ball, but when I looked back, all I could see was a huge cloud seething and heaving in the moonlight.

If there'd been any sort of drama I'd have called the co-pilot, put a couple of bursts in the direction of the trouble, and driven straight back up the ramp. But after a minute, when no SOS call came, Steve built his revs back to a peak and the aircraft lifted away. In a few seconds the heavy, thudding beat of its rotors had faded into the night, leaving us alone in the desert's tremendous silence.

There was sand beneath me — I could feel it shift under my toes — but it seemed quite firm, as if there was a hard bottom a couple of inches beneath the surface.

That augured well for our run in. So did the three- quarter moon, which was on its way down. The air felt warm on my face, and out here, away from civilisation, it smelled completely clean.

My watch was reading eight minutes past midnight.

I waited, watching the dust-cloud settle and disperse.

Then I switched my radio back to our chatter channel and jabbed the pressel. 'Everyone all right?' I asked.

'Tony?'

'Yeah.'

'Pat?'

'Yep.'

'Whinger?'

'Yep.'

'Norm?'

'Aye.'

'Stew?'

'Fine.'

'OK. Check Magellans.'

I switched mine on and pressed the button for the light that illuminated the little screen. Stuck in its special holder above the handlebar panel the instrument was at easy reading height, but we still had to sit and wait for a satellite to come over the horizon and pass within range.

Because the satellites are all in different orbits, they come past at irregular intervals: sometimes you have to wait half an hour, then get three in twenty minutes. We could have moved off right away, and I knew that the guys must be itching to go, but Tony had agreed that it was better to get an accurate fix before we started. With luck, the Chinook should have dropped us right on the spot, but if we were a bit off target we might be all to cock in our navigation.

Five minutes passed. Ten. 'Come on, you son of a bitch,'

Tony muttered over the radio. 'Shift your butt.'

I knew how he felt. We seemed to be very exposed, sitting there in the moonlight with the desert stretchin away level all round and not a stitch of cover in sight, l tried to imagine the next satellite, zooming round th earth at 17,500 m.p.h., and smiled at the thought ofi shifting its butt in response to Tony's exhortation. The Whinger came on the net with, 'Oh, for fuck's sak Let's let going.'

'Chill out,' I told him.

A moment later Tony said, 'There we go. Thaf number one. It's looking good. We just need two mol for a triangle.'

The second and third satellites came up within couple more minutes. 'OK,' I announced. 'We're twenty-one East, twenty-four thirty-four. Twenty eight North, fifty-nine twenty. Everyone agreed?'

Skipper Steve had done us proud. We were withil few yards of the drop-off point chosen in Herefo Now all we had to do was follow our pre-set course the location of our lying-up point, about sixty-f kilometres due north — and navigation was dead e because the displays on our screens showed us if were on track, or deviating to right or left.

'tight,' I said quietly, 'we've all got the anything happens. Pat, you do lead scout to start w Go as fast as you can manage comfortably. Prob.

Stew and the trailer will set the limit at the back, ' weight of the stores will make him the slowest — see how it goes. The rest keep in line ahead, at whatever interval we can see at. Try it out. Keep fight in each other's tracks if you can. When we get nearer the target, we'll put pickets out.

'On this first leg there shouldn't be anything ahead of us for fifteen ks. Then there'll be a road across our front.

After that, nothing till we come in sight of the high- ground feature. Skirt that fight-handed, then start looking for the big wadi. Once we're through that it should be only half an hour to the area of the LUP. OK?

Let's go.'

Pat led off, with me next and the others following.

The combination of moonlight and PNGs gave a good view — I reckoned I could see some detail at nearly three hundred metres — but of course, in those conditions anyone on the move is at a big disadvantage versus anyone stationai'y. It's always movement that takes the eye, whereas men lying or kneeling on the deck can easily pass for stones… until it's too late. Thus we were all well aware that we could ride into an ambush at any moment.

All the same it was great to be moving, the warm air flowing past my face. R.iding in second place I had a chance to relax and think while the lead scout carried the biggest load. He had to keep his eyes skinned for dips, hollows and rocks — to say nothing of possible nomad encampments or even Libyan army positions. It was also down to him to hold the right course and keep the speed up. All this put him under heavy stress, and I'd planned in advance to switch the lead every half hour.

Pat looked like a solid black blob bobbing on ahead of me. His wheels raised a small dust-cloud, which a breath of wind from the west was carrying off to our fight. At first the going was good: the terrain was flat, with outcrops of rock here and there, and the quads ran easily over the turn sand. I'd taped over all the lights on my handlebar panel, but the needle of the speedometer was still visible, and from its angle I could see that we were maintaining a steady thirty k.p.h. Every now and then I pushed the light button on the Magellan to check our heading, and kept finding that Pat was sP0t-on.

We were running through shallow sand, and inevitably leaving tracks. Behind the trailer, which was last in line, we'd rigged up a primitive sweeper-rake some hessian sacks lashed to a cross-bar — to obliterate our individual wheel-marks so that, even if the Libyans did spot the trail during daylight, they wouldn't be able to tell what sort of vehicles had made it. Even so, it would be easy enough for the pilot of a jet or hdicopter to follow the trail and see where we'd gone. I just hoped that a strong wind would blast all our traces into eternity — or else that, in the immensity of the desert, nobody would fly over or come past until we had done our business.