Authors: Chris Ryan

Tenth Man Down (42 page)

BOOK: Tenth Man Down

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The doors were too heavy to slide. They swung outwards from the centre, each on a broad metal wheel which ran along a curved rail. Somebody, presumably Rasputin, had already scraped most of the accumulated sand out of the first couple of metres of the track; I cleared the rest with the toe of my boot, and then with a big heave got the right-hand door open enough to slip through the gap.

Inside, I immediately became aware of a sharp, acidic smell. At first I could see nothing. Then, at the furthest reach of the torch beam, something light-coloured showed up. A few steps forward, and I made out pointed white nose-cones facing towards me.

A shiver went down my back. Shells about six inches in diameter had been stored on heavy-duty wooden shelves, a honeycomb with partitions like a giant wine rack. The top shelf was half empty and carried only five, but the other four shelves were full: forty-five missiles in all. At the right-hand end of the stack some of the lower woodwork had collapsed, so that all the rows were tilted, on a slope, and the missiles in the bottom corner had been forced down into a tight-packed heap. Even from a distance I could see that liquid of some kind had seeped out of one or more of them and had crystallised on the casings.

I stood and stared at them, holding my breath, hoping that would protect me from the worst of the radiation. The points of the warheads were within fifteen feet of me.

I backed out, hauled the door shut behind me and turned the key in the lock. My mind was moving at speed. I assumed Rasputin, or the South African, had radioed news of the cache back to base the moment they’d checked it, and that Muende’s snatch party was already well on its way. Back in the chopper, I greeted Stringer with a non-committal ‘okay’ and said to Rasputin, as a matter of fact, ‘Muende’s force is coming to pick these things up.’

He nodded.

‘When?’

‘They are coming now.’

‘What time will they arrive?’

‘One hour, two hour.’ He pointed at his wrist, with circling movements of his forefinger.

‘Is Muende with them?’

Rasputin shook his head.

‘What’s he doing, then?’

‘He goes to other place.’

‘What about the white woman?’

‘She goes with him.’

‘So neither of them’s in the convoy?’

‘Nyet.’

I took a deep breath. They must have gone looking for the diamond. I felt a stab of disappointment. I’d really been hoping to clobber the pair of them. Too bad. Sod the diamond. That was only a personal vendetta. We were on to something bigger now. We’d committed ourselves to the nuclear snatch and had to go through with it.

‘Start up,’ I told the pilot.

The guy seemed to have run out of arguments; this time he went through his checks without protest, and only when he had the engines running did he ask where he was to go.

‘Back to the place you found us.’

The flight lasted no more than two or three minutes. Throughout the short transit Stringer stared at me as though I was lit up by radioactivity. All I could manage in return was a sickly grin. Was I feeling ill already, or was it my imagination? I had a headache, for sure, but I’d had that ever since I could remember. Also, I had that leaden feeling brought on by prolonged loss of sleep. But was this lethargy something worse than mere exhaustion? Don’t be stupid, I kept telling myself. Even if you are contaminated, you wouldn’t be feeling the effects yet.

Morale lifted when I saw our two vehicles side by side on what we’d called the football field. Pav had done his stuff and brought the mother wagon forward, and Danny had driven the pinkie out beside it. Someone had dragged the two black bodies out of sight.

‘Over there!’ I shouted to the pilot, pointing at the far end of the open space. He put down in the usual cloud of dust.

As the rotor slowed, I told Stringer to stay put, jumped out and ran across to the mother wagon. There, perched on the passenger’s side of the bench seat, was Jason. In the general panic I’d forgotten all about him.

‘Mabonzo!’ I went. ‘What the hell are you doing there?’

‘I come with you, sir. I help.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. Get out! It’s far too fucking dangerous. You’d risk getting contaminated.’

‘I have medicine.’ He gave a slow smile and patted the breast pocket of his DPMs. ‘Medicine make me safe.’

‘No!’ I told him. ‘You don’t understand. Radiation can kill you. You can’t see it, but still it can kill you.’

‘I know,’ he said calmly. ‘We have lecture on atomicals. Sir take medicine.’

He was holding something out in his long, thin fingers. Abruptly I felt on the verge of tears, choked by this man’s loyalty, his determination to stick with me. Jesus, I thought, never mind the warheads, it’s me who’s going unstable. I took the offering – a small, grey, rough-cut block the size of one square of chocolate. What if it’s hyena shit? I thought. But I put it in my mouth and took a gulp of water to wash it down. For a second I had a sharp, bitter taste, and then it was gone.

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘You’d better come as co-driver and security, on the basis you don’t go into the silo, and don’t try to touch the warheads. All right?’

Jason nodded, again giving that secret smile. There was something about his unshakeable confidence that bolstered my morale. Even if his imperturbability was based on ignorance, it was still reassuring. I felt that, whatever happened, he would never panic.

I noticed a few odd looks as I joined the rest of the team. There was evidently something about my appearance that spooked them. But I ignored it, and said, ‘Right. We’re going for the weapons.’

‘Who’s going?’ Pav demanded.

‘Me and Jason. We’ve captured two Russians. We’ll take them with us and make them do the loading. I’ll keep one tied up while the other works.’

‘
What?
’ Pav spoke for all the lads when he yelled. ‘You’re fucking mad!’

‘Don’t touch that stuff!’ said Phil. ‘Geordie, you’ll kill yourself. No kidding. Blow the dump up. Booby-trap the doors. Let the villains blow it up. Anything but go back in there.’

‘What?’ I said. ‘And let loose a bloody great cloud of nuclear fall-out over half of southern Africa? Forget it, lads. Anyway, I’m not going to touch it. Rasputin’s going to handle the warheads. Him and his pilot.’

There must have been something about my manner that cut argument short. Normally, if one of us had made a proposition as outrageous as that, the rest would have ganged up on him and suppressed the idea. For a brief moment I thought Pav was going to come at me physically, but I think he saw that if he did, I’d put him on the deck, and he checked himself.

Everybody was staring at me. I glared back at them.

‘The plan is this,’ I said. ‘The Herc’s due overhead the Mall at 1430 our time. We drive the mother wagon from here to the dump now, load it as fast as possible, bring it out and head for the Mall. The rest of you go back on the pinkie. Get on the OP and position the vehicle so you can cover the road junction with the .50. Get the best protection you can. If Muende’s convoy appears, you’ve got to hold it up at least until the Herc’s on the deck and loading. Then break, belt for the Mall, jettison the vehicle and get aboard the aircraft. Any questions?’

‘Comms,’ said Chalky.

‘We’ll keep the vehicle link open. You’ll have the satcom. You’ll need to keep Hereford briefed on progress. Get a frequency for the Herc and talk to the pilot.’

I looked round, and asked, ‘Anything else?’, but everybody seemed to have been struck dumb. ‘Okay, then,’ I said. ‘Let’s raise the Kremlin on the satcom.’

The call went through without a hitch.

‘We found the stuff,’ I told the Ops Officer. ‘Forty-five warheads.’

‘Christ! How big?’

‘Six-inch diameter. Six feet long.’

‘Weight?’

‘About seventy-five pounds, something like that.’

There was a short pause. Evidently he was doing calculations. ‘Under two tons in all, then,’ he went. ‘Okay. The Herc’s standing by.’

‘Does it have permission to land?’

‘Negative. It’s coming anyway.’

‘What’s its estimated flying time?’

‘One hour twenty to an LZ overhead at Ichembo.’

‘In that case, it wants to take off soonest.’

‘Where’s your present location?’

‘Just north of the town. But listen. The cache is in an old training area. There’s nowhere to land round here. The terrain’s very uneven, all low hills and reentrants. We’re going to bus the stuff out to the LZ we gave you. The Mall. Okay?’

‘Yeah, yeah. I have that.’ He read off the coordinates we’d passed him. ‘But wait a minute. You can’t handle stuff like that without protective clothing.’

‘It’s okay,’ I lied. ‘We’ve nicked some gear off the Russian mercenaries who came out on a recce.’

‘You sure? Can’t you wait till the Herc comes in? They’ve got spare suits for all you guys on board.’

‘Not a chance. There’s a rebel column on its way up from the south to grab the warheads. If we hang around here, the odds are we’ll get into a big fire-fight. It’s touch and go whether we can swag the stuff away quick enough as it is. We haven’t the fire-power to hold anyone off for long.’

‘Well, it’s your decision. What are your timings?’

‘Half an hour to load. Half an hour to drive back to the Mall. One hour from now, we’ll be on the LZ.’

‘Roger. I’ll pass that to the captain of the aircraft. Have you marked the strip?’

‘Not yet. We’ll need to get some smoke going. The strip runs east and west, and we’ll have smoke going at both ends. Wind state zero. Ground temperature around thirty-six. Wait one.’ I did another calculation in my head, and added, ‘Better allow another twenty minutes. Make it ninety minutes from now to the LZ overhead.’

‘Roger. I confirm ninety minutes. And take it easy.’

Dave Alton was a sound enough guy, but the poor bugger could have no idea of the true situation. I expect he had visions of our lads lining up on the edge of the runway, all nice and clean, like a rugby team before kick-off, to receive their poncy new NBC suits from the head loadie before they tackled the cache all together and drove in convoy to the Mall.

I switched off the set and looked round the anxious faces. ‘That’s it, then,’ I said.

‘What about the chopper?’ Phil asked.

‘Torch it.’

‘What, now?’

‘Why not? White phos into the cockpit.’

Phil wasn’t the man to miss an opportunity like that. He dived into the back of the mother wagon, came out with a white phosphorus grenade, ran the fifty metres to the Hind and tossed his little bomb through the pilot’s open door. Moments later there was a hefty
crump!
Dense white smoke erupted from doors and windows, followed by brilliant sparklets of flame shooting out in all directions. In another couple of seconds the front half of the aircraft was in flames.

‘Okay guys, let’s do it. And good luck.’

FIFTEEN

We tied the two Russians together with their hands behind them, hoisted them on to the front seat and jammed them in between myself and Jason. Then I started up and rolled the heavy truck forward. Black smoke from the burning Hind was billowing over the track, and I crawled through it in second gear until we reached the main drag. There I turned left, accelerating out through the wilderness.

‘Number twenty-one,’ I told Jason. ‘Keep your eyes skinned for a sign. That’s the branch we need.’

‘Yassir,’ he went, and I knew that if anybody could find the way, he would.

Soon, however, I began to be alarmed by the distance we were travelling. In the chopper, the journey had felt like nothing; in the lumbering seven-ton truck, the pitted dirt road seemed to stretch for ever.

Minutes flicked away. Five had gone before we reached the first junction. There, four minor tracks converged on the main route, but only one signpost was still standing: it pointed vaguely to the left and said ‘12’. Ours, I knew, would be to the right.

‘Is there a sign?’ I shouted above the noise of the engine. ‘Number twenty-one?’

‘
Nyet
,’ went Rasputin, but he nodded to the right.

Three more minutes brought us to the next junction. This time the markers were intact: Routes 16 and 18 went off to the left, 17 and 19 to the right.

‘Next crossroads,’ I told Jason. ‘It should have six side tracks.’

It was already 1342 when we reached the key junction: twelve minutes gone. I retained a mental picture of the intersection from flying over it, and I recognised it the moment I saw it from the ground. But where the hell were the sign posts? Not one survived.

On our right we had three possibilities. Without hesitation, Jason pointed to the first track, and said, ‘This one.’

‘Okay?’ I asked.

BOOK: Tenth Man Down

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