‘I guess it’s not perfect for either of us. I thought this was a chance for you to prove yourselves.’
‘And for you too, perhaps,’ Rowena added. ‘After your last cock-up.’
Stratton clenched his jaw. The woman was an arse, to be sure, but he was not going to let her get to him this time.
‘That’s irresponsible, isn’t it?’ Jason asked, pressing the point.
‘Look who’s talking,’ Stratton responded.
The scientist remained unsure. This was the opportunity he had been waiting for but the question was: could he achieve his aims under these conditions? ‘How do we get on board the helicopter?’ he asked.
There was a moment’s silence while everyone took in the likely reality of the situation. It was a serious step in itself to try, even if they didn’t get out through the door. If London knew they were even considering it they would not be amused.
‘We get fully rigged and walk on board,’ Stratton said. ‘Leave the rest to me.’
‘The crewman will know we’re not the same team,’ Smithy said.
Stratton had been aware of an air of nervousness surrounding the tall, skinny, pale-looking man. Now that they seemed to be going ahead with the task it was getting even more noticeable.
‘Obviously,’ Stratton replied. ‘So we don’t try and pretend otherwise. We tell them the truth.’
‘Tell the crew that the SBS team are stuck in the airlock, you mean?’ Jackson asked. Jackson was bigger than all of the others but none of the man’s bulk tended to fat. He looked the type who liked to take supplements and press weights, and he did not look apprehensive in the least. He held Stratton’s gaze.
‘Won’t they want to verify any changes with the operations officer?’ Smithy asked, looking to the others for agreement.
‘That’s the bit we need to delay,’ Stratton said.
Jason nodded his understanding. ‘What’s the lost-comms procedure?’
‘They’ll proceed with the plan,’ Stratton replied.
Jason faced Binning. ‘We need to block their comms.’
‘That’s easy enough,’ Binning said. ‘Would they go all the way without comms?’ he asked Stratton.
Stratton shook his head.
‘Then what do we do?’ Jason asked.
‘Baby steps,’ Stratton said. ‘Options may present themselves.’
‘Rather like a trapeze artist releasing the swing without knowing where the other swing is,’ Rowena offered.
‘Welcome to my world. You sure you still want to play in it?’ Stratton asked.
Jason had heard enough. ‘Are we agreed?’ He looked at the other four scientists.
Binning nodded. ‘Most definitely.’
Smithy nodded.
‘Yes,’ Jackson said.
Rowena hesitated. The others waited for her answer.
Her stare was fixed on Stratton. It was him she was unsure of.
‘We need you,’ Jason said.
‘Got to have a babe in the team or they won’t make the movie,’ Binning said, grinning.
Rowena eventually lowered her eyes and remained where she was.
Jason knew her well enough. ‘We’re all in,’ he announced.
Stratton felt his awareness of the insanity of it all rising up in his consciousness once again but he suppressed it. ‘Just one thing,’ he said. ‘I’m in charge, all the way. No arguments, deals, negotiations. I want that understood.’
Jason accepted the condition without hesitation. ‘Agreed. You’re the boss.’
Stratton checked the others to ensure that it was unanimous. There did not appear to be any objections apart from the unvoiced ones from Rowena who remained looking at the floor. ‘How do we get up to the chopper?’ he asked.
‘Same way you came down,’ Binning replied.
‘Then let’s get rigged,’ Stratton ordered.
‘Do you mind if I have a brief word with my troops first?’ Jason asked. ‘Kind of a pep talk, really. You’re welcome to stay.’
Stratton checked his watch. ‘One minute. Let’s not keep the crew hanging around much longer or they may start making calls before we can get up there.’
Jason understood and faced his colleagues with some urgency. ‘You too, Rowena,’ he insisted.
Rowena got to her feet to join them, although a level of reluctance from her was still evident.
‘Up until now we’ve only fantasised about going live, as it were . . . getting stuck into a real operation,’ Jason began. ‘There’s a good chance it will now happen. Granted, it isn’t because of our renowned capabilities but due to a series of unexpected events. Nonetheless, it could put us in the spotlight as a team of operators as well as the boffins we already are. But I want you all to be aware of the risks involved. This may be a surveillance task but it is the nature of this business that when things go wrong it can be costly. I want you all to be completely sure that what it is you’re about to attempt is dangerous and that it could cost lives as well as save them. Frankly, if you’re not prepared to take such a risk for this opportunity you should not be embarking on this task. Am I clear?’
They all nodded.
‘Are you prepared to carry on with this task with the understanding that some of us may not come back?’
They each nodded in turn as Jason looked at them, Rowena last. She made him wait.
‘Good,’ Jason said, straightening up. ‘I’ll take you to the equipment room,’ he said to Stratton who was waiting by the door.
The storeroom was packed with special-forces operational equipment: a rack of hanging dry-suits, fireproof undersuits, a box of harnesses, boots, leather gloves and so on. ‘You guys are well stocked,’ Stratton said.
Jackson, a head taller than Stratton, was beside him, attaching a flare to a diving-knife sheath with a thick rubber band. ‘We trial every piece of equipment we design for special forces and the other clandestine departments in the conditions in which we expect them to get used. That means having similar operational equipment.’ He took his dry-bag and left the room to get rigged.
Stratton searched along another shelf. ‘Do you have any karabiners? ’ he asked the figure in the next row. As he looked between the boxes he realised it was Rowena. She pushed a box towards him through the shelving, gave him a cold look and went out.
Stratton sat alone on a chair. He pulled off his boots, followed by his outer garments, and climbed into the one-piece under-suit. After putting on a pair of rubber-soled climbing boots he got to his feet, ready to go. He picked up the bag containing his dry-bag and harness and looked for somewhere to leave his civvies. He spotted an empty shelf at the top against the far wall.
As he reached up and shoved the bag onto the shelf he heard someone talking softly on the other side of a door. He was about to step away when he recognised Jason and Rowena’s voices. Something about the situation, maybe a defensive suspicion of this crowd, and also the lowered voices, stopped him from leaving. He moved so that he could see through the narrow opening. Rowena and Jason stood close to each other, unaware of Stratton’s presence.
Jason placed his hands on the young woman’s hips and wrapped them around her waist, pulling her against him. She rested her arms on his shoulders, her fingers entwined behind his head. Their lips came together and they kissed passionately, their hold on each other tightening.
It was the point beyond which Stratton felt uncomfortable.
He headed back to the theory room, where he bumped into Smithy.
‘Hi,’ Smithy said fumbling with the fingerprint analyser. ‘I’m excited to be coming along.’
Stratton doubted that very much.
As they went in they saw Binning and Jackson in fireproof suits, looking ready to go. Binning held up a rigid laptop-sized plastic box. ‘This is the G43 overlook device.’
‘How will we block the Chinook’s comms?’ Stratton asked, interested in the more immediate problem.
‘Same device,’ Binning said.
‘You can do that from here?’
‘No. Nothing can transmit from down here except through the secure cabling. It’s already active. Soon as we’re through the screens it’ll block all comms.’
Jason and Rowena walked into the room wearing firesuits and carrying kitbags. It didn’t surprise Stratton that Rowena’s suit fitted her shapely body very well. ‘What else are we taking apart from the G43?’ he asked.
‘Nothing,’ Jason replied. ‘We’ve taken your advice and gone for lightness.’
Stratton nodded. ‘Okay. Look after your kit. Make sure it works. In the middle of the North Sea in the dark when the chopper has left is not a good time to discover you have a leak.’
‘We’re ready,’ Jason assured him. ‘Let’s go,’ he said to the others, forgetting for a moment that Stratton was in charge.
As they walked, Binning came alongside Stratton. ‘Do you mind if I ask you a question?’
Stratton glanced at the man he didn’t think he could ever warm to. It was more than Binning’s cocky, condescending attitude. The scientist had an underlying greyness, an indistinctness about him. Stratton couldn’t put his finger precisely on it but it was ever-present. ‘What?’
‘The story between you and this Mackay chap who’s on the platform. What is that?’
Jason overheard the question and glanced back as if he too was interested to know the answer. Stratton didn’t particularly want to talk about it, not with this lot. ‘It was just an operation in Afghanistan that didn’t go to plan.’
‘Rowena found a watered-down report on the incident,’ Jason said. ‘It implied that some bad decisions were made but did not lay blame. You were the team commander.’
Stratton suspected they were trying to wind him up.Yet a twinge of guilt rippled through him. ‘If you’re wondering whether or not it was my fault, the answer is yes, it was.’
‘You made a mistake?’ Binning asked.
‘I made a decision. There are always choices in any operation. Sometimes none of them are any good.’
Stratton had never explained the incident in detail to anyone, other than in the clinical post-operational report he had written. He was suddenly attracted to the notion of telling the MI16 lot about it. There was no harm in them knowing. He thought back to that dark and dangerous night. ‘It was in Helmand. We went into a village a few hours before sun-up to lift a guy, a warlord,’ he said. ‘He was a grower - heroin - and he’d kill anyone, coalition forces, locals, to protect his business. He paid off the Taliban, who also protected him.
‘We knew where he was. A small army, three fifty, four hundred men, surrounded the house. Our surveillance showed they weren’t very alert at night. Sentries slept at their posts. We went in on foot, walked right into the village. We took out anyone in our way . . . At the first sentry position half a dozen Taliban lay on the ground, sleeping. We killed them all. The next lot in our way were talking and smoking around a fire. We took them out, too. The silenced weapons we used weren’t really silent. You can’t hear the bullets coming out of the muzzles. But you can hear the machinery, the clatter of the working parts inside the weapon, pushing the next round into the breech before it fires. Click, click, click. That became our catchphrase for killing. Click-click.What are you doing tonight? Click-click. We did a lot of that over there.
‘We went in through the back door of one of those mud-walled houses, a bungalow filled with the smoke from kerosene lamps. They were sleeping on the floor. People all over the place. We divided up and shot every one of them simultaneously, except in the end room where the target lay. We gagged him and he woke up and we bound his arms. Our Afghan guide told him we would kill him if he tried to raise the alarm. He understood.’
They had stopped walking now, a few steps from the compound’s lift. Stratton had the scientists’ attention.
‘I went to the front door and looked out onto the street. We intended to walk on out of the village with this worlord. But men were up and walking about in every direction. We didn’t know why. Maybe they’d found bodies. A couple of men approached the house. We let them enter and then we killed them. Click, click, click. But we couldn’t do that all night. If one of them had managed to get off a round none of us would have got out of there alive. They would have hit us with everything they’d got, even if it meant killing their warlord. We could only carry so much ammunition and no one would have been able to get to us in time.
‘I had two options, as I saw it. We could walk out of there and hope we didn’t bump into anyone. Or we could call in our vehicles. That was Jordan’s team. In the original plan he would pick us up beyond the village, when we were clear. But we had discussed the possibility of him driving through. The white Toyota pick-ups we used were the same as the Taliban used in that area. Convoys of them came through the village at any time of the day or night. We felt we could get away with it. A one-off. When I signalled Jordan he asked if we could get closer to the edge of the village. He could see movement on the road and thought he might be challenged. Once the Taliban got a look at the occupants of our Toyotas there would be a battle. I said no. He had to come in and get us. I thought he had more chance of success that way than us going to him.
‘Jordan wasn’t the type to argue, not in a situation like that. So he came on in - the three pick-ups, loud as hell, headlights cutting through the blackness. A handful of Taliban challenged them on the edge of the village but they pushed through. The Taliban didn’t fire, they hadn’t seen enough. Jordan kept on coming. Men walked out of houses as the pick-ups passed, or stood where they had been sleeping, wrapped in blankets. They always had AK-47s, as if the guns were part of their bodies.
‘It was obvious it had to be a moving pick-up. We moved out of the house. A couple of Taliban came towards us. The warlord decided this was his best chance of surviving. We took the Taliban out. Click-click. Others came. We took them out. As the pick-ups arrived we ran to them and dived into the backs. The warlord began to scream, he could see we were succeeding. We shot him through the head. The op was over. We’d failed. It was survival time. It’s not unusual. Not every op is a success. You can only plan for so much. You let go of the trapeze a hundred feet above the ground and look for another.’ Stratton glanced at Rowena.