The Tracker spent some minutes watching the red blobs of the pye-dogs, ranging between the dark squares of the houses.
“Do you have anything for alarm dogs, David?”
“We shoot ’em.”
“Too noisy.”
“We don’t miss.”
“One squeal and the rest will scatter, barking.”
He turned to the master sergeant.
“Will you send someone to the med center? Ask for the strongest and fastest-acting edible anesthetic they have. And from the commissary, some packs of raw beefsteak.”
The sergeant got on the phone. The Pathfinders exchanged glances. Tracker moved to the still photos, the last taken in natural daylight.
The hamlet was so crusted with desert sand that, being built of local sandstone the same color, it had virtually disappeared. There were a number of scrubby trees around it, and in the center of the square, its life-source: a well.
The shadows were long and black, thrown from west to east by the setting sun. The three technicals were still clear, parked next to one another near the well. There were figures around them, but not sixteen. Some must have gone straight inside. There were eight photos from different angles, but they all told the same story. What was of most use was to learn the angle from which the attack should come—the south.
The house to which the Marka party had gone was on that side, and there was an alley that led from it into the desert. He moved to the large-scale map pinned to the wall beside the photos. Someone had helpfully marked with a small red cross the speck in the desert on which they would be dropping. He gathered the six Pathfinders around him and spent thirty minutes pointing out what he had deduced. They had seen most of it for themselves before he arrived.
But he realized they would all have to sandwich into three hours the sort of detail absorption that could take days of study. He glanced at his watch. It was nine p.m. Wheels-up time could not be delayed beyond midnight.
“I advise we aim to drop five clicks due south of the target and tab the rest.”
He knew enough to use British army slang: click for “kilometer” and tab for “forced march.” The captain raised an eyebrow.
“You said ‘we,’ Jamie.”
“That’s right. I did not fly down here just to brief you. The leadership is yours, but I’m jumping with you.”
“We don’t usually jump with passengers. Unless, of course, the passenger is in tandem, strapped to Barry here.”
Tracker glanced at the giant towering over him. He did not fancy plunging five miles through freezing blackness harnessed to this human mastodon.
“David, I am not a passenger. I am a U.S. Recon Marine. I have seen combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. I have done deep-dive scuba and free falling. You can put me where you like in the stick, but I’ll go in with my own canopy. Are we clear?”
“Clear.”
“How high do you want to exit the plane?”
“Twenty-five thousand.”
It made sense. At that height, the four roaring Allison turboprops would be almost inaudible, and to any alert listener it would still sound like a passing airliner. Half that height might sound alarm bells. He had only ever dived from 15,000 feet, and there was a difference. At fifteen, you do not need thermal clothing or an oxygen bottle; at twenty-five, you do.
“Well, that’s all right, then,” he said.
David asked the youngest, Tim, to go to the Hercules outside and come back with various pieces of extra kit. They always carried spare equipment, and because they were returning home from a fortnight in Oman, the hull of the Hercules was stacked with things that might otherwise remain on the ground. A few minutes later, Tim came back with three extra men in army fatigue overalls; one of them was carrying a spare BT80, the French-made canopy the Pathfinders always insisted on using. Like all British Special Forces, they had the privilege of picking their own stuff on a worldwide spectrum.
In this manner, apart from a French chute, they chose the American M4 assault rifle, the Belgian Browning thirteen-shot sidearm and the British SAS combat knife, the K-bar.
Dai, the comms man, would be packing the American PRC-152 TacSat (tactical satellite) handheld radio and the British FireStorm video-downlink optical sensor.
Two hours to wheels up. In the operations room, the seven men dressed themselves, piece by piece, in the equipment that would finally leave them, like medieval knights in armor, hardly able to move unaided.
A pair of jump boots were found for the Tracker. Fortunately, he was of medium build, and the rest of the clothing fit without a problem. Then came the Bergen haversack that would contain night vision goggles, water, ammunition, sidearm and more.
They were assisted in this, and most of all the Tracker, by the three new men, the PDs, or parachute dispatchers. These, like squires in the days of old, would escort their Pathfinders to the very edge of the ramp, locked to tether lines in case they slipped, and see them launch into the void.
In dummy runs, they pulled on both BT80 and Bergen, one on the back side, the other on the chest, and tightened the straps of both until they hurt. Then the carbines, muzzle pointing downward, gloves, oxygen bottles and helmets. The Tracker was surprised to see how similar to his motorcycle helmet was the Pathfinder’s, except that this version had a black rubber oxygen mask dangling beneath it, and the goggles were more like the scuba version. Then they undressed again.
It was ten-thirty. Wheels up could be no later than midnight, for there were almost exactly five hundred miles to cover between Djibouti and the speck in the Somali desert that they intended to attack. Two hours’ flying time, the Tracker had calculated, and two hours’ tab to target. Going in at four a.m. ought to catch their enemies at the deepest depth of sleep and at slowest reaction time. He gave his six companions the last mission briefing.
“This man is the target,” he said and handed around a postcard-sized portrait. They all studied the face, memorizing it, aware that in six hours it might show up in the glow of their night vision goggles inside a stinking Somali shack. The face staring out of the postcard was that of Tony Suárez, presumably enjoying the Californian sun eleven time zones to the west. But it was as good as they were going to get.
“He is a very high-value al-Qaeda target, a practiced murderer with a passionate hatred of both our countries.”
He moved over to the photos on the wall.
“He arrived from Marka in the south, al-Shabaab territory, in a single pickup truck, or technical. This one. He had with him seven men, including a guide who went off to rejoin his own group—of that, more later. That leaves seven in the target’s party. But one won’t fight. Inside the bastard’s group is a foreign agent working for us. He looks like this.”
He produced another photo, bigger, a blowup, of the face of Opal in the Marka compound, gazing up at the sky, straight into the Hawk’s camera lens. He wore the red baseball cap.
“With luck, he will hear the shooting and dive for cover, and, hopefully, he will think to pull on the red cap you see here. He will not fight us. Under no circumstances shoot him. That leaves six in all and they will fight.”
The Pathfinders stared at the black Ethiopian face and memorized it.
“What about the other group, boss?” asked the shaven Curly, the motor vehicles man.
“Right. The drone watched our target and his team billeted in this house here, on the south side of the village square. Across the square is the group they came to meet. These are pirates from the north. They are all of the Sacad clan and fight like hell. They have brought with them a hostage in the person of a young Swedish merchant marine cadet. This one.”
The Tracker produced his last photo. He had got it from Adrian Herbert of the SIS, who had obtained it from Mrs. Bulstrode. It was taken from his merchant marine ID card application form, delivered by his father Harry Andersson. It showed a handsome blond boy in a company uniform, staring innocently at the camera.
“What’s he doing there?” as
ked David.
“He is the bait that lured the target to this spot. He wants to buy the kid and has brought with him a million dollars for the purchase. They may have made the swap already, in which case the boy will be in the target’s house and the million dollars across the square. Or the swap may be scheduled for the morning before departure. Whatever, keep all eyes peeled for a blond head and do not shoot.”
“What does the target want with a Swedish cadet?” It was Barry, the giant. The Tracker framed his answer carefully. No need to lie, just observe the rule of need to know.
“The Sacads from the north who captured him at sea some weeks ago have been told the target intends to hack his head off on camera. A treat for us in the West.”
The room went very quiet.
“And these pirates, they’ll fight as well?” David, the captain, again.
“Absolutely. But I figure when they are woken by shooting, they will be bleary from the aftereffects of a gut full of khat. We know it makes them dopey or ultra-violent.
“If we can put a long stream of bullets through their windows, they will presume not that some free fallers have arrived from the West but that they are under attack from their business partners, trying to get the boy for free or their money back. I would like them to charge across the open square.”
“How many, boss? The pirates?”
“We counted eight climbing out of these two technicals just before sundown.”
“So fourteen hostiles in all?”
“Yes, and I’d like half of them dead before they are vertical. And no prisoners.”
The six Brits gathered around the photos and maps. There was a murmured conference. The Tracker heard phrases like “shaped charge” and “frag.” He knew enough to know the first referred to a device to blow off a stout door lock and the second to a high-fragmentation grenade. Fingers tapped various points on the blown-up photo of the village by last daylight. After ten minutes, they broke up, and the young captain came over with a grin.
“It’s a go,” he said. “Let’s kit up.”
The Tracker realized they had been agreeing to proceed with an operation that had been requested by the President of the United States and authorized by their own Prime Minister.
“Great,” was all he could think to say. They left the operations room and went outside, where the air was still balmy. While they had been studying the mission, the three PDs had been busy. Bathed in the light from the open door of the hangar were seven piles of kit in a line. This was the line (in reverse) in which they would march into the belly of the Hercules and the order in which they would hurl themselves into the night at 25,000 feet.
Assisted by the PDs, they began to climb into their equipment. The senior PD, a veteran sergeant known only as Jonah, paid special attention to the Tracker.
The Tracker, who had arrived in the tropical-weight uniform of a U.S. Marine colonel, into which he had changed in the Grumman, was instructed to pull on the spare desert cammo jumpsuit that the other six already wore. Then came the weight, burden by burden.
Jonah hoisted the thirty kilos of parachute onto his back and buckled the array of broad canvas straps that keep it in place. When he had the straps in place, he tightened them until the Tracker felt he was being crushed. Two of them went around each side of the groin.
“Just keep the nuts free of these, sir,” Jonah murmured. A faller with his family furniture inside these straps will find life very unfunny when the chute jerks open.
“I surely will,” he said, feeling down below to make sure nothing was trapped behind the straps.
Next came the Bergen haversack, hung on the chest. This was forty kilos and pulled him into a forward stoop. The straps of this were also tightened to chest-crushing levels. But from his U.S. Marine parachuting school, he knew there was a point to all this.
With the Bergen on the front, the faller would have to be diving chest first. When the chute finally streamed, it would be out the back and away above him. A faller on his back could go straight through his opening chute, which would literally wrap around him like a shroud as he died on the ground below.
The Bergen’s weight was mainly made up of food, water and ammunition—the latter being extra clips for his carbine and for grenades. But also in there was his personal sidearm and night vision goggles. It was out of the question to wear these while diving; they would be ripped away by the slipstream.
Jonah attached his oxygen canister and the array of hoses that would bring the life-giving gas to the mask on his face.
Finally, he was given his helmet and tight-fitting visor that would protect his eyes from being blasted out by the 150 mph airstream he would experience in the dive. Then they took off the Bergens until jump time.
The seven men had been transformed into extraterrestrials from the special effects department. They did not walk; they waddled, slowly and carefully. On a nod from the captain, David, they made their way across the concrete pan to the gaping rear of the Hercules, which waited, doors open and ramp down.
The captain had decreed the order of jumps. First out would be Barry, the giant, simply because he was the most experienced among them. Then would come the Tracker, and right behind him the captain. Of the remaining four, the last man out would be one of the corporals, Curly, also a veteran, because he would have no one to watch his back.
One by one, the seven jumpers, helped by the three PDs, stumbled up the ramp and into the hull of the C-130. Twenty to midnight.
They sat in a line of red canvas seats along one side of the hull while the PDs continued to run through the various tests. Jonah took personal care of the captain and the Tracker.
He noticed it was now much darker inside the aircraft, with only reflected lights from the arcs above the hangar doors, and he knew when the ramp came up, they would be seated in utter blackness. He also noted crates of the unit’s other equipment lashed down for the journey back home to England and two shadowy figures up near the wall between the cargo and the flight deck. These were the two parachute packers who traveled with the unit wherever they went, packing and repacking the chutes. The Tracker hoped that the fellow who had packed what he now wore on his back knew exactly what he was doing. There is an old adage among free fallers: Never quarrel with your packer.
Jonah reached over him and flipped up the top of his para rucksack to check that the two wires in red cotton were present and correct. Seals unbroken. The veteran RAF sergeant clipped his oxygen mask into the aircraft supply and nodded. The Tracker checked his mask was a snug and airtight fit, and took a breath.
A rush of near-pure oxygen. They would be breathing this all the way to altitude to flush the last traces of nitrogen out of the blood. This prevents diver’s bends (nitrogen bubbling in the blood) when they hurtled back down through the pressure zones. Jonah switched off the oxygen and moved on to the captain to do the same for him.
From outside came a high-pitched whine, as the four Allisons turned on starter motor and then coughed to life. Jonah stepped forward and buckled the safety strap across the Tracker’s knees. The last thing he did for him was to plug the oxygen mask into the C-130’s onboard supply.
The engine noise increased to a roar as the rear ramp rose to shut out the last of the lights of Djibouti air base and closed with a clunk as the air seal locked in. It was now pitch-dark inside the hull. Jonah broke out Cyalume light sticks to help him and his two fellow PDs take their seats, backs to the wall, as the Herc began to roll.
The seated men, leaning back into their chute packs, forty-kilo Bergens on their laps, seemed to be slumbering in a nightmare of pounding noise, plus the whine of hydraulics, as the aircrew tested the flaps, and the scream of fuel injectors.
They could not see, but only feel, as the four-engined workhorse turned onto the main runway, paused, crouched, then leapt forward. Despite its deceptive bulk, the Herc accelerated fast, tilted its nose up and left the tarmac after five hundred yards. Then it climbed steeply.
The
most frills-free airliner cannot compare with the rear of a C-130. No soundproofing, no heating, no pressurization and certainly no beverage service. The Tracker knew it would never get quieter, but it would become savagely cold as the air thinned. Nor is the rear leakproof. Despite the oxygen-delivering mask on his face, the place was by now redolent with the odors of aviation gas and oil.
Beside him, the captain unhooked his helmet, took it off and pulled a pair of earphones over his head. There was a spare pair hanging from the same socket, and he offered them to the Tracker.
Jonah, up against the forward wall, was already on earphones. He needed to listen to the cockpit to learn when to start preparing for P-hour—P for “parachute”—the jump time. The Tracker and the captain could hear the commentary from the cockpit, the voice of the British squadron leader, a veteran of the 47th Squadron, who had flown and landed his “bird” into some of the roughest and most dangerous airstrips on Earth.
“Climbing through ten thousand,” he said, then “P-hour minus one hundred.” One hour and forty minutes to jump. Later came: “Leveling at twenty-five thousand.” Eighty minutes passed.
The headphones helped muffle the engine roar, but the temperature had dropped to near zero. Jonah unbelted himself and came over, holding on to a rail running down the side of the hull. There was no chance of conversation; everything was hand signals.
In front of the face of each of the seven, he went through his pantomime. Right hand high, forefinger and thumb forming an O. Like scuba divers. You OK? The Pathfinders replied in kind. Hand held up, fist clenched, then a puff from the lips to blow the fingers open, then five raised fingers. Wind speed at touchdown point, estimated five knots. Finally, fist held high with five fingers splayed, four times. Twenty minutes to P-hour.
Before he finished his odyssey, David grabbed his arm and thrust into his hand a flat packet. Jonah nodded and grinned. He took the packet and disappeared into the flight-deck area. When he came back, he was still grinning in the darkness and resumed his seat.
Ten minutes later, he was back. This time, ten fingers held up in front of each of the seven men. Seven nods. All seven rose with their Bergens, turned and placed the haversacks on the seats. Then they hefted the forty-kilo burdens onto their chests and tightened the straps.