Foster looked at Tip, still unsure, and sat back to mull over the future of his jacket.
Stratton struggled to pull the suit on over his torso, pushed his arms into the sleeves and zipped up the front to his throat. He strapped up his boots, pulled on his harness, sorted out his weapons, put his helmet on his lap and clipped his throat mic around his neck. The final piece of clothing was a pair of leather gloves, which he pulled on tightly, sealing the Velcro around his wrists. He was ready.
He leaned forward to zip his civvies inside the bag when he thought of something. Remembering Scouse’s great appetite he took the sandwich out of his jacket pocket and offered it to him. Scouse took it, looked inside and stuffed the entire thing in his mouth.
‘Thanks,’ he said, munching it. The others looked at him. ‘What?’ Scouse said with an innocent expression, still chewing, spitting a bit of bread out as he spoke. ‘It was only one bite anyway.’
The Lynx flew at maximum speed 5,000 feet above the countryside and it was not long before the coast was in sight. They passed over Exeter and followed the River Exe to the sea.
‘CTC,’ Scouse said, indicating the Commando Training Centre on their left, the camp at Lympstone where they had all joined the Royal Marines as recruits, some much longer ago than others.
Stratton looked down on the huge complex and picked out the Tarzan course, weapon training huts and the route up to Woodbury Common and the endurance course. Memories of life as a young, innocent recruit scrolled through his mind, a time when he could never have even begun to guess what the future held for him. He had lived from day to day through the six months of arduous training while the vestiges of civilian idiosyncrasy were gradually stripped from him to be replaced with those of a soldier.Then as soon as it was over and he had earned the title Royal Marine, it was not enough. He wanted more intensity, tougher goals and a smaller, more exclusive group, and so he applied to join the SBS. As he looked out of the window he thought about his life since then and what he had achieved. He could think of nothing now that seemed worthy though some had at the time. He often doubted his chosen career. As he got older he began to believe that soldiers throughout history had never really achieved much. If the definition was true that the quality of a war was judged by the resulting peace then he had failed in everything. The wars he had been involved in were in the same old places against the same old enemy and fighting for the same old thing: power and control, and the soldiers fuelled the war machines.
Stratton felt a tap on his shoulder and looked away from the window to see it was the co-pilot. They were moving beyond the estuary and he was indicating ahead. Stratton took a headset off the panel beside him and put it over his ears.
‘There it is,’ the co-pilot said, pointing.
Stratton looked below the horizon to see a tiny cluster of ships still quite far out to sea. The tanker was easiest to make out and the other specks were no doubt the coastguard and some police boats.
Scouse was listening on his SBS network radio and nudged Stratton. ‘Team Bravo and Charlie are in the water and closing on the tanker. They’re waiting for us.’
‘I want the other boats out of the way,’ Stratton said.
‘They’re getting the order now,’ Scouse said.
There was a possibility of an explosive device on board and there was no longer a need for the boats to be there anyway. The thought of a greater threat such as an atom or even a dirty bomb had occurred to most but that was not worth talking about at this stage. If there was a serious device they wouldn’t know anything about it a second after it went off.
Stratton leaned forward to get a look at the pilot but didn’t recognise him. ‘Who’s the pilot?’ he asked Scouse. The pilot and co-pilot could only hear him if he spoke through the intercom headset.
‘Ah. One small problem,’ Scouse said. ‘He joined the branch a couple of weeks ago and he was the only pilot available at five minutes’ notice.’
‘You’re kidding me.’
‘He’s obviously good or he wouldn’t be here.’
‘Has he done an eagle feast before?’
‘One, and not at max speed.’
‘I wouldn’t describe that as a small problem, Scouse.’
An eagle feast was part of a simultaneous two-pronged assault on a ship at sea: one from the water, the other from the air.To approach from the air unnoticed a craft had to be high, but then to take part in the assault it had to cover the distance down to the boat in the fastest possible time. The best way the Special Forces naval pilots had come up with was simply to take the wind out of the rotors and let the helicopter drop like a stone. The hard part was controlling the drop and getting the wind back into the rotors at the end of it.
Stratton put his cabin headset back on and pushed the mic in front of his mouth. ‘Pilot? What’s your name?’
The pilot glanced back for a second. He looked very young. ‘Robert,’ he said into his own mic. He was an officer but had been around long enough to know it was first-name terms among all ranks in the SBS working at the sharp end, including attached ranks such as he was.
‘Good to meet you, Robert. I’m Stratton. Is that right you’ve only done one eagle feast before now?’
‘Yes, a week ago,’ he said, doing his best to sound confident, but Stratton was not so sure.
‘You happy with the procedure?’
The pilot paused a moment and Stratton thought he caught a slight change in his expression.
‘Well . . . to be honest, not really,’ he said. ‘Wish I’d had the chance to practise a couple more before my first live one.’
Stratton glanced at Scouse who was listening through another headset and wearing a concerned expression, which was more put on than genuine - cavalier humour was the norm in the SBS, especially when tension was mounting. But there was something to be worried about since there was not any room for error on the manoeuvre.
‘Too late to worry about that now,’ Stratton said to the pilot.
‘Rubbish,’ Scouse chimed in. ‘There’s plenty of time to shit yourself.’
‘They’re waiting on us,’ Stratton continued. ‘Let’s get to the drop height.’ Then aside to Scouse: ‘He can only get it wrong once.’
‘True enough,’ Scouse said.
The pilot eased up the blade pitch control and the Lynx started to climb.
‘How long to eighteen thousand feet?’ Stratton asked him.
The pilot glanced quickly over at Stratton, looking more worried. ‘You mean twelve thousand feet.’
‘I like to come in from eighteen. Hardly any chance of being seen or heard at that height. How long?’ Stratton asked again.
The pilot glanced at his co-pilot who shrugged helplessly. ‘Em . . . three minutes,’ the pilot said awkwardly, his mind starting to race.
‘What’s six thousand feet between friends,’ Stratton said to Scouse. ‘Where are the boats?’
‘A mile in rear of the tanker,’ Scouse said.
‘Tell them to start their run now.’
Scouse relayed the order as the Lynx shuddered, straining to climb as fast as it could.
A mile behind the tanker the pair of 22-metre-long grey-and-black VSVs cruised gracefully through the water at quarter speed. They were unusual boats, shaped like a cross between a slim wedge of cheese and the nose of a Concorde supersonic jet, and virtually undetectable by radar due to their stealth construction. The boats were designed to cut through the waves not ride over them like every other high-performance speedboat, and in rough conditions they could pierce a swell and disappear beneath the surface for a short period of time. The boats were fully enclosed with a cabin capacity of twenty-six operatives packed tightly together and an optional pair of twin 50-cal. machine guns in the bows. Their maximum speed was confidential and far in excess of the maker’s advertised 60 knots.