There was something I ought to be checking on but it didn't matter for the moment, couldn't be expected to look after everything when there was this Godawful sensation across my shoulders. Be easier when the harness was off. Swinging gently, the rhythm soothing, the night air soft against my face.
It does matter.
Bloody well wake up and have a look, can't see it, don't panic, use your suspension lines, pivot full circle, none too easy, monkey on a string, now keep looking because it's very important indeed.
Couldn't see the bloody thing anywhere.
Rest. Relax. Watch the ground.
The whisper of wind in the shrouds.
He couldn't have forgotten to pull the release. You think of such extraordinary things when your life's on the teeter, of course he'd pulled it, he was an experienced flyer and he'd dropped people before. But he'd had to give me five seconds to get clear so that the 'chutes wouldn't find each other and I couldn't see it because it would be above me and the canopy was in the way, thirty feet across and right over my head, what the hell would you expect.
A lot of pain, it wouldn't go.
Then bloody well shut up about it.
Nothing below with any definition: it just didn't look like empty sky, that was all, the desert was there all right.
If I hadn't punched an 8 instead of a 9 and if some slipshod instrument-basher hadn't left enough dead flies in the pitot-head to affect the airspeed reading and if the wind hadn't changed I was now floating above the only point on the surface of the earth describable as Long. 8°3′ by Lat. 30°4′ and it was less than forty-eight hours since they'd put on the show for me.
Run it back, will you?
Stop.
Back another fraction.
Stop.
Yes, that's the one. I've got it now.
An ash-grey smudge on the photograph.
Tango Victor.
Somewhere below me now but very difficult to believe because Loman had said flexible and Chirac had said fifty-fifty and that meant the margin of error was horribly wide and although the wreck of the twin-prop short-haul freighter was certainly within a few kilometres of the point where I was due to come down I might never reach it, never see it, because this was the desert.
Look, they don't do this to you without thinking about it first: even those arthritic old tarts in London aren't as bad as that. When they send a ferret down the hole they don't tell him much but they've done it with me so often that I've managed to pickup the odd clue about the way they think. It wasn't lack of planning in the advanced pre-briefing phases that had left us with a critical margin of error at the access point, and it wasn't indifference to the question of my survival or otherwise that had let them send me out here where the chance of life was small. They just had to do what they could.
This was thebest they could do, not the worst. This wasall they could do, instead of nothing.
They hadn't been able to turn this one down. I think they'd probably tried but the pressure had been too great and they'd been forced to set up the op. I'd only known it to happen twice before since I'd been at the Bureau and in each case the decision-making had been at Prime Minister level.
He wished to inform me personally that your mission is the key to a critical situation of the highest international proportions.
If he didn't talk like a bloody schoolmistress he could have put it rather more concisely.This one's shit-or-bust.
We call it a one-shot mission and it means if you don't pull it off the first time you don't get another go. You can refuse it if you like but if you accept it you've got to play it their way and put up with panic directives and dodgy communications and makeshift access lines and do what you can with what you've got and somehow get in there and do the job and bring back the goods. It means more than just the increased risk of your losing your life: it means that if you can't complete the mission it's the last chance anyone's going to get. There are various factors governing this but the most common one is time.
Time governed the Tango mission. In London they'd been pushed for time but they'd set it running as best they could and provided superlative access lines right into the target area: my final approach to the objective was being made invisibly and in perfect silence. The margin of error was deadly but if they'd narrowed it the invisibility and the silence would have had to go: we would have brought a powered aircraft and searched the area with flares and landing-lights and made a direct drop on to the target but I wouldn't have had five minutes to work in before the opposition arrived.
The margin of error had been unavoidable. That didn't make it any narrower: but it made it more acceptable.
Air spilling from the canopy. Its dark fabric was spread above me, filling the sky. I couldn't see the supply 'chute but I believed it was there, following me down, had to believe it was there because if it wasn't I would already have begun to die.
The senses were coming back and I had the impression that each swing was taking me more and more to one side: the canopy was restless and I could hear the rising sibilance of the airstream through the suspension lines. There was a lateral force operating and this must be the south wind, theGhibli, that Chirac said he hoped to find blowing when he made his attempt to reach the South 4 strip. It didn't feel very strong; I wished for him that it would be enough.
Warmth was touching my face and I looked down. The heat of the sands was rising and I reached for the lines and held them, waiting, seeing nothing but knowing that land was near.
Important to remain conscious.
The chances were that I'd hit sand and the impact would be cushioned but if Chirac's dead-reckoning had been accurate enough to bring me down on a radius of five hundred yards from the centre of the target area I could hit the rock outcrop and if a spur caught one of my shoulders I'd flake out again and that would be dangerous.
The canopy. above me had been blocking my view and when I hit ground and the nylon collapsed I must get an immediate visual fix on the supply 'chute. I would be able to see it while it was still airborne because when I'd baled out the airspeed had been 99 kph and Chirac was going to wait five seconds before he released and with a wind-factor common to both drops the supply 'chute would come down approximately a hundred and fifty metres from where I landed. But if I didn't see it before it struck ground and the canopy collapsed it would be hidden by the dunes: and I wouldn't know its direction.
With our bearing of 225° from the radio tower we'd flown with Pegasus directly ahead and I could see the constellation now but Chirac had made a right-hand bank when I'd jumped and I didn't know if he'd resumed his course before levelling up to make the second drop or if he'd simply pulled out of the turn and levelled at a tangent. If I didn't see where the supply 'chute came down it would mean a search in the dark among the dunes with no certainty of ever finding it.
Warm air against my skin.
The lines whispering: I could feel their fine vibration.
Sudden inundation of optical stimuli and the world filled with contrasts — the far horizon-line where the stars met the rim of the earth and the rising undulations of the dunes blotting it out as I pulled on the lines to break the impact and then went limp and rolled once on my shoulder with the harness wrenching, dragged the release and tried to get up, couldn't.
Everything kaleidoscopic and the pain like a furnace roaring in my bones, try to see where it is, most important, the high stars sliding down the wall of night and sand in my mouth,get up, not really important yesvery, spitting the sand out, a dark shape moving over there where there's nothing, nothing to mark it, the canopy lowering, lowering,yes got it, the roaring and the red of stars flying, fall this way then,this way, fall with your head towards it and remember, remember when you wake, yourhead is towards it, the black sand bursting against my face.