Zero Option (13 page)

Once mor6 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.
Twenty minutes into our first run, Pat came up on the chatter net. 'Geordie, I'm stopping. There's something ahead of us. I can't make it out.'
'All stations stop,' I replied. 'Switch offand wait out.
OK, Pat, I'm coming up to have a look.'
I cruised up beside him and shut down my engine.
'There,' he whispered, pointing ahead and to the right.
'Something black.
I thought I saw it move.'
Peering through my PNGs I irrimediatdy spotted what he meant: a black shape, possibly two hundred metres off, with an irregular outline, its left side low and its right taller and pointed. It could have been two men close together, one kneeling or sitting, the other standing.
'Can't get it,' I murmured.
'It's the right-hand bit that I thought I saw move.'
I pushed the PNGs up on to my forehead and
brought out my binoculars, but the ambient light was so faint that they were no help. With the PNGs back on I watched again. It was quite eerie, sitting there in the great silence of the desert, the gentle puffs of wind coming in over our left shoulders and I felt myself getting jumpy.
'Chill out,' I said under my breath. 'You're doing fine.' I knew from past experience that when you're out at night, almost anything will move in the end - or seem to - if you watch it for long enough. Whether your eyes deceive your mind or vice versa I'm not sure, but if your nerves are on edge even rocks appear to take on a life of their own and start shifting stealthily about.
'Anyone back there make it out?' I asked over the net. '
Two o'clock
to our line of advance.'
'Thorns,' said Whinger. 'Couple of thorn bushes.'
'You
sure?'
'Reckon so.
The right-hand one/s moving.
The top of it's blowing in the wind.'
'OK,' I said. 'I think you're right. We'll carry on.
Head left, Pat, and give it some room. I'll cover you until we're past.'
I unslung my AK-47 and sat with it at the ready as Pat set offleft-handed. Whinger had been right. The clump of thorns waved in the wind as we passed, and we left it to its own devices in the dark.
After another twenty minutes without incident I decided to bring Pat back. I knew he wouldn't want to give up lead scout - being mustard keen, he'd carry on all night if I let him - but I also knew that he'd inevitably get tired, and that the edge would go off his vigilance.
'Tbin out,' I told him over the radio. 'Norm, move up front.'
'It's no sweat,' Pat called back. 'I'm fine here. D'you
want
me to go faster or something?'

'Not at all.
Y6u've done a great job.
I just want everyone to rotate.'
'OK, then.'
As he fell back past me and Norm went forward, I gave them both thumbs up.
Soon the sand seemed to grow deeper; I could feel it dragging at my wheels. The quad started to slew about, the steering grew heavier, and I needed more power to maintain speed. Then Stew, at the back, called to say that he was falling behind; the trailer wheels were digging in, and even on full power he was losing us.
'Ease off, Norm,' I instructed. 'Aim for twenty rather than thirty.'
'Aye, OK,' said Norm. 'I'm throttling back.'
'Good,' I went. 'See if you can hold that, Stew.'
I could feel my adrenalin flowing fast now. At all costs we had to be on target by first light, predicted to be at 0445; by then, we needed to have found a suitable lying-up point and to have built an OP. If we main tained our present speed we'd reach the area of the LUP inside another hour, and we'd be OK. But if we had to start winching our bikes up and down the walls of the wadi our speed of advance could drop
from twenty k.p.h,
to one, and we could well end up in the shit.
When we'd been running for an hour I called a refuelling halt. I couldn't tell how much petrol we'd used, but it obviously made sense to top up our tanks while nobody was harassing us; also, it took a few kilos off the load on the trailer. Two of the guys assumed defensive positions, twenty-five metres out on either side, while the rest of us tanked up, then two others took over from them while they came in and did the same. Although the desert seemed empty, we couldn't be sure that the Libyans weren't out on night exercises, that a patrol might have heard us coming.
Soon we were rolling again, with Whinger now in the lead, and after only ten minutes we seemed to begin to emerge from the deep-sand belt, the bikes starting to move more easily. But then
came
a sudden call from the rear.
'Geordie,' said Norm, and from the way he said my name I knew there was something wrong.
'What is it?'
'I've dropped a bollock.'
'How?'
'My fucking Magellan.'
'What's happened to it?'
Tve left it behind.'
'Don't
be stupid.'
'I have.'
'Where?', 'At that halt.'
'Bloody hell! All stations stop!' A surge of alarm drove down into my guts. Again and again I'd harped on the importance of not shedding any item of kit, however trivial, in case it betrayed our origins and a Magellan, programmed up with our courses and way- points, was the worst possible object to leave lying in the desert. Norm was usually the most careful member of the whole team. 'What the hell were you doing, taking it off the bike anyway?' I asked.
'I didn't want to risk splashing petrol on it, so I took it out of the holder and put it on the ground while we were gassing up.'
I felt exasperated - but Norm knew he'd screwed up, and I saw no point in mouthing offat him. So I just said, 'You'll have to go back. There's no alternative. We can't risk leaving it. D'you
think
you can find the place?'
'Dunno. Have to try. How long is it since we restarted?'
'Eight minutes,' said Stew. 'We were rolling for eight minutes exactly.'

'Time yourself-back,' I told Norm. 'You should be able to see the marks where we did the refueling.
Whinger, go with him. The rest of us will wait for you here. And take it easy - we're still all right for time.'
So we were, but not by much.
Two of us sat in a hollow, with the other two posted out on either flank. It was reassuring to find that the noise of the quads' engines died away quickly into the night, but tension built up as the minutes ticked by.
Feeling restless, I got off my bike and walked away to have a piss.
'Stupid cunt!'
Stew muttered as I came back, voicing the anxiety that all of us were feeling.
'Easily done,' I said. 'You might drop the next bollock, Stew. Give him a break.'
Presently in my ear-piece I heard Norm say, 'Back on site.'-Then, a moment later, he exclaimed, 'Got the fucker!' and everyone relaxed.
With the party reunited, we rolled forward again to the north until, from in front, Whinger called, 'Stopping, stopping. There's an obstruction ahead.'
'OK,' I answered.
Tm closing on you.
Everyone else, wait out.'
I cruised up beside him.
'See it?' he said quietly. 'Like a wall.'
'It's the road, but it's on an embankment. In the desert they're often built like that, to stop sand drifting over them.'
'Yeah, but there's something this side of
it
.'
'Wait one.' I reached forward to the top flap of my
bergen
and undid the straps, feeling for my binoculars.
The 10 x 50 lenses, bloomed for light-gathering, instantly revealed the nature of the problem.
'Shit and derision!' I cried. 'It's a fucking pipeline!
Two-deck, each pipe about a metre diameter.
There's no way we can ride over that.'