Resurrection, p.6
Resurrection, page 6
Raglan stood a short distance apart from the other men and watched as they double-checked and loaded their weapons. Then he turned and stared into the gloom. Trying to see beyond the perimeter of light. The bulk of the C130 hemmed in the men. In the distance a man emerged from the darkness, moving through the shadows, totally at ease. The certainty of Dragonovic´’s movements was of a predator completely at one with its surroundings, confident of its own power and stature. Raglan saw him more clearly now. Still distant but a threatening presence. There would be no time to avoid this man if he decided to kill. Unsmiling and seemingly unaware of his status among his men, he moved slowly. A word, a gesture. A comment about a piece of equipment. Thirty metres. Twenty. He reached the end of the stick of men. Ten metres. Close enough to see the eyes. Unyielding. And then Dragonovic´ stopped and gazed directly at him. The Englishman answered with an unblinking stare.
Dragonovic´ had been briefed less than twenty-four hours before. He was to lead a strike team into the heart of Africa. His mission: to secure certain information known only to the man in charge of the mission – Raglan – a specialist used by British intelligence. The commander’s task was to keep the Englishman alive. And Dragonovic´ would not like risking his men for a mystery passenger. ‘You follow my orders, Raglan. I know my team: I don’t know you.’
‘You do your job and I’ll do mine,’ Raglan answered.
Dragonovic´ ignored him and checked his watch. ‘Time to go.’
A ground crew’s tractor eased the lumbering aircraft into the open. Raglan could see the two special forces pilots in the cockpit, faces caught in the glow of their instrument panels. The heads-up displays were sophisticated electronics whose computers had already been fed the exact position of their proposed landing strip. Raglan had enormous respect for these pilots: if anything went wrong it was their flying skills that had to get them out of trouble.
The two Land Cruisers were strapped securely by their running gear, held by their restraints on their axles which stopped them rolling, effectively tying them to the aircraft itself. The twelve men who were to keep Raglan alive settled back into the netted webbing that served as body support behind the canvas seats that ran along each side of the aircraft. As the engines rotated, the smell of Avgas permeated the bare metal interior, triggering Raglan’s memories of past descents. He would have preferred to have jumped rather than risk a landing in hostile territory.
Raglan thought Jarnac had been right to question landing this brute of an aircraft in the desert. Better to get the men on the ground rather than risk anything unforeseen on the LZ. Did any of those who’d planned this happy excursion know that it’s impossible to spot a concrete-hard termite mound from the air? Even from cockpit-level height they’d be hard to see. Hit one or put a wheel in a pot hole, and one Super Hercules and its cargo would be cartwheeling from the desert to the coast. Raglan would have taken either option of a low-level parachute drop or a HALO descent on to the target. To hell with the vehicles – they would buy or steal what they needed from villagers. But then he settled back. It was no good worrying about decisions already made.
The tailgate closed. The outside world shunned. Raglan couldn’t help but feel the long arm of his father’s mission reach out to him from all those years before. Not just his mission. His father had unknowingly left him a legacy. Now Raglan was travelling into the past to retrieve it.
The C130 surged into the sky, the deafening noise of its four Rolls Royce turboprop engines making normal speech inside impossible.
Once the aircraft reached its cruising altitude, four of the men clambered to the Land Cruisers, one in each of the front seats, the third and fourth men squeezing into the rear amid the stored rucksacks. There was a tussle for the best seat: riding out the journey in a Land Cruiser was a damned sight more comfortable than the standard-issue bone-aching seats. The dim overhead lights threw shadows across the remaining men’s bowed faces as they rested, determined to grab sleep. Raglan stayed close to the cockpit where he could check with the pilots cocooned in their own green glow from the instrument panels.
From the belly of the aircraft Dragonovic´ sized up the Englishman. No clues yet as to how good he was, but Dragonovic´ never underestimated anyone, and certainly no one with a man like Raglan’s background.
Raglan looked over his shoulder as a shadow cast across him. He knew Dragonovic´ had been watching him; now the Serb turned to move along the men and equipment. Jarnac accompanied him and glanced briefly at Raglan with a bemused smile, because he sensed there could be bad blood between the man he followed and the Englishman. A mission commander and a team leader. Who would prevail when the shit hit the fan? He had no desire to get caught in the middle when that blood came to be spilt.
Raglan watched the solid-boned team leader move away. Dragonovic´ was the toughest-looking bastard he had seen in a long time.
A thoroughbred killer.
11
The black snub-nosed Hercules pushed through the night sky, the four turboprops driving the aircraft at a buffeting speed close to 650 kilometres per hour. In the French-supported, mid-African state of Chad, a mobile communications centre sat in the exposed desert. Camouflaged and protected by three sandbagged machine-gun positions, it was designed to be moved quickly. Inside, the green glow from the tracking screens seeped into the corners of the cramped control centre. A lieutenant, a career legionnaire, chain-smoked and paced. The tattoos needled into his arms years before were now fading, subjugated by age and the weathering effect that desert soldiering has on the skin. He was waiting. His orders: to get from the Legion’s base in Chad to this position on the Sudanese border and transmit the arrival of the attack team as they swept low across the horizon flying an evasive course between the mountain valleys. The signal would be transmitted directly back to British GCHQ in Cheltenham, England, and Action Division HQ north of Paris. It was early yet. But they would be in range soon. He smoked, and waited, fingering one of the tattoos and trying to remember in what sweat hole of the world he’d had it done.
South of the mobile unit’s position, between Chad, the Central African Republic and Sudan, is a once-disputed strip of land fought over and won, with French help, from one warlord after another. And this was where the mission was heading. Politics and money chose the strong-arm men of the region. The passage of time produced warlords ever more brutal than their predecessors in this blistering country of concrete-hard desert, towering sand dunes, and swamp, the natural seepage of the Kotto River. The mountainous region is an immense rolling plateau along a crest south-west to north-east. A vast central plain rises 1,330 metres near the border with South Sudan where the river separates the Tondou Massif from the higher Bongos chain to the north. Savanna vegetation covers treeless hills, scorched by hot desert winds. A region practically devoid of people and resources. An unforgiving place where men die and secrets lie buried with them.
‘C’est eux?’ asked the tattooed lieutenant as a blip appeared briefly on the console. Was that them?
‘Yes. Now they’ve gone below the radar,’ replied the radar operator.
The officer nodded. That was their job. ‘Anything else?’
The operator shook his head.
The officer chain-smoked another cigarette. He knew that Sudanese radar might pick up the skirmishing aircraft before too long. Djibouti and his own unit had tried to block their radar as best they could but the attempt was a calculated risk. He paced behind the operators, their six screens reflecting the aircraft’s intermittent blips. It was getting close now, he thought, knowing the aircraft would have to rise above their operational height to clear the low hills. It would be as clear to an enemy as it was to the control centre.
*
The sun probed a laser of light through the crags still shrouded by an early morning blue haze. Into that mountain pass flew the Hercules, skimming below the sunbeam. Engines thundered and reverberated across the mountains. The men had been entombed for hours and as the pilot hauled the aircraft over low peaks and plunged back down to the desert floor again, they cursed and grabbed whatever stanchion was near enough to stop them losing their balance.
One of the men he hadn’t been introduced to almost fell into the seat next to Raglan. ‘Better to have jumped than this, eh?’ he shouted over the aircraft’s racket, bending his head close to Raglan’s ear defenders so he could be heard.
Raglan nodded. ‘You a Brit?’ he shouted back.
The man nodded and extended his hand. ‘Jordain. I joined the Legion five years ago. Infantry. Rest of this lot are French regular army. Except Dragonovic´. Same as me. Infantry. But everyone in our lot do their jumps. None of them were with your crew though.’
The man’s approach had been friendly enough and Raglan knew he might need someone on his side by the end of the mission. It was worth a few minutes’ conversation.
‘British Army beforehand?’
Jordain shook his head. ‘Marines. I was drunk one night and slugged a major. Didn’t fancy going inside so I went AWOL. Wasn’t a police matter, so I got in the Legion without much bother. Changed my name to Jordain so the other Brits called me Geordie.’
Raglan realized the ex-legionnaire had a Newcastle accent. The name he had taken made sense.
‘I’m with you in your vehicle,’ he said. He pointed to one of the men in his designated Land Cruiser who stretched out asleep. ‘Me and Rico. He’s my mate. Two of us been together for a while. We watch each other’s back.’
‘Best way,’ said Raglan.
Jordain pulled a wallet free and showed Raglan a picture of a woman and three young children. Raglan held it closer in the dim light and saw that Dragonovic´ was watching.
‘Nice kids,’ said Raglan.
Jordain leant closer and pointed. ‘Not mine. I’m not married. This is my mate’s wife and kids back home. I carry it with me in case I get nabbed so I can plead that I’m a family man.’ He pushed his face closer to Raglan’s ear. ‘Thought you should know, I overheard that French intelligence bloke telling Dragonovic´ that he wants whatever is in the plane. So watch your back. Yeah, lovely kids.’ He smiled and took back the wallet.
Jordain went back to his place. Dragonovic´ showed no sign of interest.
Now Raglan knew there was a chance he might not survive the mission, but whether Jordain would be prepared to help him against his team leader was another question.
Raglan climbed up into the cockpit, pulled on a headset and plugged the jack into the plane’s communications system. ‘How long?’ he asked, bending forward to view what the pilots saw through their narrow cockpit windscreen. The pilot was skimming the desert floor along the breadth of the valley. The co-pilot, a young woman whose slight frame suggested she was little more than a teenager, though Raglan guessed she was early twenties, held up her hand and spread her fingers. Five minutes. Raglan took off the headset and microphone and turned back to where the men watched and waited. He showed the palm of his hand with outspread fingers. He sat down and strapped himself in. The men who had been sleeping in the Land Cruisers turned the ignition keys and checked that everything that was supposed to light up on their dashboards did so with no warning lights. Dragonovic´’s men made last-minute adjustments to their webbing, an extra cinch, a tighter helmet strap and a final assurance that their assault rifles were ready. The loadmaster checked the Land Cruisers’ straps. No one knew how hard the aircraft might hit and a 4x4 breaking free would act like a blade in a blending machine.
*
In the unforgiving wilderness an old man was lifting his water sacks from the well he used to survive, as had his father before him. It was sheltered in the lee of the shadowed mountains. He did not know what lay beyond those mountains, nor how far the valley extended. The needs of his goats defined his territory. He stopped as he heard the distant echoes of a low, rolling thunderstorm. He waited, unmoving, as a man learns to do in the desert in order to conserve energy, gazing towards the distant horizon that was still a deeper blue from the night’s darkness. Behind him, and to his left, glowed the first touches of the sun’s rays.
Thunder. Louder now. An invisible storm. A dark bird of prey cut towards him from the horizon. He had never seen anything like this. The raptor was closer now. Shimmering. The hovering wingtips clearer. He gazed in uncomprehending wonderment as the hunched silhouette of the Hercules bore down on him at ground level. He threw himself flat, spilling the water from the hessian sacks as the thunder enveloped him. He rolled, his arms covering his head, air shuddering as the aircraft swept past him. Despite his terror he leapt to his feet and watched as the low-flying machine bore away from him, wallowing with power and intent, the black smoke burn-off from the engines corkscrewing behind it.
*
Inside the aircraft the loadmaster braced himself against the rolling aircraft and listened to the pilot’s instructions through his headset. He raised an arm in warning to the men. The secured Land Cruisers would go out as quickly as possible after Dragonovic´’s team formed a protective cordon for the aircraft on the ground. Two of the men clambered into their respective driving seats. The loadmaster nodded as the pilots gave him the two-minute ‘ready’ into his headphones. He indicated to the men. There was tension now, but they were smiling, some laughing: it was all part bravado, except for their commander – this was one of the few times he was smiling and clearly meant it. Raglan had served with men like that before. They enjoyed it. Dragonovic´ belonged to the same tribe.
The younger man next to Raglan folded back his girly magazine to a page showing a full-frontal nude of a girl lying back on her elbows, her legs spread apart. He showed the picture to Raglan, seeking camaraderie; Raglan looked and smiled at the youngster’s enthusiasm. Dragonovic´ shouted from across the aisle as he notched in his webbing: ‘Regarde bien – ça sera la dernière fois!’ The young man cupped his hand to his ear. Dragonovic´’s words had been lost under the roar of the engines.
Raglan leant in closer to him and yelled, ‘He told you to take a good look – it’s the last you might see.’
He smiled in acknowledgement and kissed the girl between her legs then reverently folded the magazine and pushed it into his smock.
Dragonovic´ strapped in. Raglan steadied himself as the aircraft lurched, gaining height as it rose above an escarpment before dropping to begin its landing approach. The pitch of the engines altered. The loadmaster, one hand pressing the headset closer to his ear, gestured for the men that there was one minute to landing.
12
In the no-man’s-land mobile tracking unit the Foreign Legion lieutenant flexed the faded dragon on his arm. Its jaws stretched wider. He stubbed out the cigarette.
‘Fighter!’ cried one of the controllers. ‘Sudanese. Their radar must have pinged them. Looks like it came out of Nyala!’
The lieutenant stepped quickly to the console and followed the man’s indication on the screen.
‘How soon?’
‘High and fast – two minutes.’
He shouted commands to various controllers. ‘Break radio silence! Alert the plane! Tell them they’ve got less than a minute and a half!’
*
Inside the C130 the loadmaster covered his microphone and yelled into Raglan’s ear, ‘Evasive action!’
The aircraft lurched, climbed and banked, throwing those men not yet strapped in across the space. Raglan realized the mission might be over before it had started but he prayed to God not to let them be caught in the air because there was only one reason the aircraft was now flying an evasive course. Adrenaline coursed through the men as they gripped the webbed seats, planting their feet to balance against the bucking aircraft. Sweat glistened on their faces. Another engine-howling lurch and Raglan steadied the young soldier next to him. Raglan looked across at Dragonovic´, who was staring out of one of the small windows. Raglan forced himself against gravity to reach the cockpit. He pulled on the headphones.
‘MiG-21!’ the co-pilot yelled once she saw Raglan hanging on, as the pilot scanned sky and instruments, searching for the fighter. He didn’t want to die no matter how vital the mission. He banked around a rocky outcrop – no mean feat given the weight of the Hercules. Damned if he was going to be caught like this: a sitting target. He glanced at the co-pilot, whose face was as fearful. But it was their job to make sure the aircraft and the mission survived. Evasive action and then bank and turn back for the landing strip.
‘Incoming!’
The co-pilot hit the controls to release the infrared counter-measures. How long could that fighter stay in the air? And how damned old were its air-to-air missiles?
Two missiles swerved, struck the flares trailing behind the aircraft, the blast tilting the big beast almost on her nose. The two pilots were shouting information to each other, technical stuff Raglan did not understand. What he did understand was that they needed to be as manoeuvrable as possible.
‘Drop the ramp!’ Raglan shouted into his mic. The co-pilot turned and looked at him.
‘You need to dump the vehicles. Give you less weight.’
There was no argument. Raglan saw the pilot nod his understanding. Hands flicked levers. The ramp began to lower.
Raglan pulled off the headset and staggered back towards the buffeting slipstream and glaringly bright light assaulting the men from the ramp’s gaping maw as they held on, knuckles white against the bucking of the plane. Dragonovic´ glared at Raglan. It took only a second for Raglan to point at the two Land Cruisers and cut his palm across his throat. It was a vital decision if they had any chance of survival. The terrain below was a death trap if they crash-landed. Dragonovic´ nodded and steadied himself, ready to help undo the restraints. The two drivers clambered free of the vehicles. The loadmaster held on to his safety strap as he reached for the release mechanism on the first vehicle but fell against the bulkhead as the pilot banked. Raglan slammed hard into a steel rib. Pain shot through his shoulder. He wished they had the chance to parachute, to throw themselves into the light and noise. If he was going to die, he at least wanted a chance against the enemy who was trying to kill him.
