Bad Soldier: Danny Black Thriller 4 (20 page)

‘Clear,’ Caitlin said.

‘Once we’re under canopy, we’ll orientate ourselves using the GPS. With a bit of luck, we’ll have eyes on the storage drum’s chute and we can follow it down.’

‘One minute to decompression,’ the loadie shouted. ‘Let’s get those oxygen masks on.’

Danny, Spud and Caitlin grabbed the aircraft oxygen masks and fitted them to their faces. Hammond sat with the rest of the crew on the opposite side of the aircraft. They also had their masks fitted as the aircraft decompressed. Danny put his head back against the side of the aircraft and concentrated on breathing normally. He was nervous about the jump. He knew that Caitlin was extremely capable, and he’d done enough freefalling himself for it to be second nature. But one of the main reasons for performing a HALO jump was to reduce the window of time during which any enemy forces on the ground could spot you under canopy. There was still, however, a short period of time when you were an easy target, unable to defend yourself effectively or put in any kind of countermeasure against enemy fire. It was a prospect that always sharpened Danny’s senses in the moments before an operational HALO insertion. He found that his best strategy was to clear his mind and focus carefully on getting safely to the ground.

Twenty-five minutes passed quickly. The turbulence was bad enough for his head to jolt solidly against the side of the aircraft. Suddenly, there was a rush of deafening noise. Danny looked right and saw that the aircraft’s tailgate was lowering. The lower it got, the louder the noise. Speech was now impossible. But that was OK. They knew what they needed to do. Each member of the unit disconnected themselves from the aircraft’s oxygen system, before placing their freefall masks over their faces and engaging their oxygen tanks. They breathed normally for thirty seconds to verify that their breathing apparatus was working correctly, then stood up. Danny approached Caitlin and carefully attached himself to the back of her harness using a series of sturdy metal clips fitted to the front of his own freefall rig. Now that he was close to her, he could feel her deep, careful breathing, which told him that despite her outward appearance, she was nervous about the jump. A couple of loadies approached them. They each wore thick web belts with lanyards connected to the side of the aircraft to stop them falling out. They positioned themselves on either side of Danny and Caitlin – for whom walking was difficult as they were strapped together and overladen with kit – and ushered them towards the open tailgate. Spud positioned himself alongside them, next to the freefall container. Outside, in the middle of a turbulence bump, Danny caught a brief glimpse of a crescent moon.

A red light appeared at the back of the plane, above the tailgate – the pilot’s signal that they were to get ready to jump. They shuffled forward, closer to the edge of the tailgate. Danny caught another glimpse of moon, and gradually became aware of stars in the night sky. As he peered downwards, however, he saw nothing but blackness. No lights on the ground. No topographical features. It meant there was cloud cover, which they’d have to penetrate.

A minute passed. Then, suddenly, the green light came on. Danny heard a loadie screaming at the top of his voice: ‘
GREEN ON! GO!
’ There was no hesitation. There couldn’t be, since a delay of just a few seconds could mean missing their landing zone by a substantial distance. Spud pushed the freefall container out of the aircraft before immediately following it. At the same time, Danny and Caitlin tumbled out.

The rush of wind against Danny’s face was sudden and intense. The cold was shocking. It almost knocked the breath from his lungs. He concentrated hard on breathing steadily, sucking down the oxygen from the canister at his chest. At the same time, he pulled one of his two ripcords. He didn’t see the drone chute engaging, but he felt a slight upward force as it slowed their rate of acceleration. He arched his body firmly against the strong air currents that were buffeting them around. Caitlin did the same. He had to hand it to her. She was a natural.

The scream of the wind grew louder as their speed increased. Danny could make out Spud. He was about twenty feet below them. From the shape of his body, he could tell that his mate was trying to de-arch a little bit in order to slow down his rate of descent and keep close to Danny and Caitlin. And a little below him, little more than a smudge against the sky, was the weapons canister, hurtling down to earth.

Suddenly everything went black. They were in the clouds. They were no longer accelerating – they’d hit terminal velocity, the point at which they’d reached their maximum speed – and the shockingly icy temperature had eased a little. But now the moisture of the clouds seemed to saturate every part of him. His clothes were soggy. He almost felt like he was inhaling water, not oxygen. The altimeter on his left arm was only a faint glow in the thick mist.

As quickly as it had arrived, the blackness disappeared. For the first time since they’d jumped, Danny saw the terrain below.

He knew that their LZ was a long way from any built-up areas, and his vista confirmed this. There were barely any ground lights for miles in any direction. To the north, on the horizon, he saw a glow that he took to be the Turkish town of Silopi. Elsewhere, he saw the occasional line of an arterial road, and here and there the headlamps of a car. But in the immediate vicinity, nothing.

It was much warmer now. He checked his altimeter. Six thousand feet.

Five thousand feet.

Below, he saw the sudden eruption of the weapons canister’s rectangular chute. It had obviously hit the 3.5k altitude. At the same time, he saw that his own altimeter was about to hit 4,000 feet. He tapped Caitlin on the shoulder in the prearranged signal. He felt her tensing up slightly as he pulled the ripcord for his main chute. He felt the familiar sensation of his chute opening, then the sudden upward jolt as their velocity dramatically reduced. The rush of wind in their ears disappeared. Danny grabbed the brake lines and checked for Spud’s position. He was close – about twenty metres to the west, and at approximately the same altitude. Danny could tell that he was positioning himself to follow the weapons canister down. Danny did the same.

Forty-five seconds passed. The weapons canister hit the ground – Danny could see its chute starting to deflate. ‘Loosen your pack,’ he shouted at Caitlin, while releasing the strap that bound his own bergen to his legs. Both packs fell, suspending in the air beneath them for a moment, before hitting the earth. Seconds later, Danny and Caitlin made landfall, running in tandem as they touched the earth.

As the chute deflated behind them, Danny quickly unclipped his rig from Caitlin’s harness. He spun round and started dragging his chute towards him as quickly as possible, aware that Spud was doing the same thing twenty metres to his nine o’clock. HALO jumps were dangerous, but this was by far the riskiest moment. They needed to collect up their gear quickly so it couldn’t be seen. And they needed to scan the immediate area for threats. Danny saw, from the corner of his eye, that Caitlin had thrown herself on to the ground in the firing position, weapon engaged, as she did just that.

Within thirty seconds, Danny and Spud were in exactly the same position, their chutes bundled up beside them, their masks and visors disengaged. Each of them were pointing out in a different direction, covering the three vertices of a triangle. There was complete silence. Danny could feel his heart thumping behind his ribs as he took in the terrain.

It was hard, rocky ground. Desert-like, though it was clear that it had rained lately, because there was a slight moistness to the earth. The air was chilly – five degrees C, perhaps, though the slight breeze made it feel colder. The ground itself undulated quite heavily, so it would have been difficult to see more than about twenty metres in any direction even during the day. Danny remained completely still for a full minute, scrutinising the landscape and listening hard for any sight or sound of movement. There was none.

‘Where’s the weapons drum?’ he heard Spud hissing.

Danny allowed himself to look around. Spud was right. There was no sign of it. ‘Stay put,’ he said. ‘I’ll look for it.’ He slowly pushed himself to his feet, orientating himself and trying to fit their position to the mental image he had of the mapping they had been studying for the past twelve hours. Off to his three o’clock, there was a rough road. Danny thought this must be the track that would lead them to the RV point. He’d double-check that in a minute, but for now he needed to locate the weapons drum. At first glance, he couldn’t.

It didn’t take him more than a few seconds to see what had happened. Thirty paces to his seven o’clock – a quick glance at the compass on his wrist told him this was a south-westerly direction – the terrain fell away over a kind of cliff. Danny ran towards it, got to the ground again and carefully peered over. The canister was five metres below him, completely covered by its chute. He spent a moment checking for threats or other movement again – nothing – then hurried back to Spud and Caitlin. ‘This way,’ he hissed.

They followed him back to the cliff, each of them now carrying their packs on their backs, Danny and Spud with armfuls of bundled-up chute and para cord. The cliff was not entirely sheer – a moment’s examination and they located a narrow gulley that they could scramble down. They lowered their gear over the cliff, then climbed down it and hurried towards the weapons container.

‘We lucked out,’ Caitlin whispered. She pointed to the base of the cliff. There was a cave here – a narrow entrance about two metres wide. It was cold inside the cave, and there was a horrible smell, like something was rotting inside. ‘We can stash our freefall rigs in there.’

Danny shone his flashlight into the cave. It was deep – at least ten metres, although parts of the back were still hidden in shadow. They didn’t, however, seem to have disturbed anything or anyone.

‘We’ll store the weapons canister too,’ Danny added. He stepped back outside the cave and checked his GPS device. ‘We’re approximately two klicks east of the RV location. We can’t move covertly across this terrain if we’re carrying that.’ He looked at his watch. 2203 hours. The RV was at midnight and they wanted to be in position well before then. They were behind schedule already, and needed to move fast.

Danny turned to Caitlin. ‘Wait here with the drum. We’ll make the RV, then get them to drive here and pick it up.’

A shadow crossed Caitlin’s face. She obviously didn’t like the idea of staying back to babysit the hardware, but she didn’t complain. She quickly went about the business of stashing the freefall rigs far into the back of the cave – by the time anyone found them there, the unit would be long gone. Danny and Spud removed the remainder of their HALO gear and stashed it with the chutes, before manoeuvring the weapons drum quickly into the cave.

Caitlin took up position inside the cave mouth. She was clutching her rifle, which was strapped across her body, and had an unflinching, resolute look on her face that for the briefest moment reminded Danny of Clara back home. He pushed that thought from his mind. ‘We RV at midnight, expect us back here at approximately 0030 hours, assuming there’s no delays. If anyone else passes this way, stay hidden as far as possible. We don’t want things to go noisy on us.’

Caitlin gave him a withering look. ‘And if I want to kill someone, which end of the gun do I use again?’

Danny ignored that. ‘We’ll be in radio contact. We’ll check in every thirty minutes, on zero hundred and zero thirty. Otherwise keep transmissions to a minimum.’ He turned to Spud. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

They shouldered their bergens, checked that their personal weapons were cocked and locked and engaged their radio equipment. Spud took a moment to check over his 66 Law, and they both fitted their regular Kevlar helmets with NV goggles fixed to the top. Danny dropped a pin on his GPS unit so that they could quickly locate Caitlin’s position when they returned. Then they moved silently away from the cave mouth. It was very dark – cloud cover obscured the moon and stars. That suited them fine – it made it easier for them to cross this rough, rocky terrain without being seen. Danny knew, from his examination of the GPS device and the mental image he had of the maps they’d been studying, that if they travelled approximately 500 metres at a bearing of thirty degrees, they would hit a small road. Two klicks further along, the road hit a T-junction. Their RV point was 500 metres directly north of this junction – the kind of location where it was extremely unlikely that anyone would randomly show up.

They would not, however, be following the road itself towards the junction. If the Kurds, or anyone else, had eyes on it, they’d spot Danny and Spud immediately. And while Alice Cracknell, safe in the belly of a C-130, might be calmly confident that these Kurds were on the level, Danny knew they’d be making a massive strategic error if they trusted them blindly. Just because they were enemies of Islamic State, it didn’t mean they were friends of the SAS.

Instead, they kept a good 350 metres to the west of the road. They travelled side by side, with a gap of approximately ten metres between them, in order not to present a bunched-up target to any potential shooters. They jogged, clutching their personal weapons across their chests, but scanning for movement all the while. Every couple of minutes they came to a halt, went to ground and listened hard. But so far as they could tell, the area was deserted.

After twenty minutes of jogging, Danny checked his GPS unit again. They were seventy-five metres from the road junction. They went to ground and waited for a couple of minutes, watching and listening. There was no sight or sound of any traffic, so they continued to the junction itself.