There'd been no time to put out even a token announcement of a “routine exercise” and this fact alone meant either that Libyan Intelligence was fully aware of the situation or that the Algerian government was so anxious to locate Tango Victor that it had risked embarrassment at high level between the two countries.
In addition to this was the indication that it was their last throw and that they were confident of locating the objective before anyone else: because if they failed, and if an opposing network succeeded, they would have made it obvious that their search had been for the crashed freighter, whose cargo was so politically explosive that the armed forces of two countries had been called in to assist the intelligence services.
The Bureau itself was intensely active and within a matter of days had brought its support communications to the pitch where half an hour ago Local Control could give me full details on the desert-reconnaissance operation including the precise area and width of sweep.At the same time the entire network was under general monitoring and if Analysis Section thought I'd be interested to know that an attempt had been made to assassinate General Chen Piao or that a missile-to-missile device had just come off the drawing-boards in Smolensk or that the Brazilian Minister for the Interior had handed in his resignation three weeks after accepting the post they'd pass it to Control for Local Control and the executive in the field and I'd get it almost as fast as a phone-call from London to Crowborough onthe priority line.
I wouldn't get it in so many words. The original data would go through filters until the essence was extracted and made available. Even if support communications hadn't been energized then general monitoring would have reported sudden air movement in Algeria by desert-reconnaissance units and Analysis would have jumped onit straight away because they had Algeria as thelocale of one of the listed ops currently running.
Behind me, as I stood here isolated in the desert wastes, was an organization striving to inform, direct and support me as I went deeper into the mission and closer to the target area; but now that I was here there was nothing they could do for me, and nothing I could do for them.
Loman had predicted a forty-five minute deadline for the arrival of the Algerian squadrons in this area and there were fifteen minutes to go in terms of their ETA. In terms of the actual mission my time ran out to zero as I stood here listening for their rotors, because even if I climbed the nearest dune and saw Tango Victor deadin front of me it was no go. London wanted photographs and a full radioed report of the freighter's cargo and fifteen minutes wasn't long enough for me to go back for the transceiver and bring it here.
The sands were quiet.
My shadow' lay prone, a spirit felled by the heat.
Something in my mind was trying to attract my attention and I was aware of it but unable to read its significance: it was like a sound heard but not identified. I let all thought subside, leaving the way open, while my body and its senses remained where they were as my mind ranged, released, finding images for me: the low wind and the pattering of the sand on the side of the box, the folds of the parachute half-covered, and the unexpected word in my head- beware — without either reason or coherence.
Drawn blank.
I turned back towards the rock outcrop and the sand hissed faintly across my boots. Halfway there I stopped and drank the rest of the water and left the cap of the flask dangling on its lanyard. Then the sky became gradually filled with infinitesimal vibrations, so faint that I thought the sound was only in my head, but as it strengthened I began moving faster and when I was certain what it was I broke into a clumsy run through the sand's obstructive softness, worried now that I'd left it too late to reach shelter before they came.
There seemed to be no particular direction to the sound: it was a steady thrumming under the sky as if the air itself had started to vibrate, to shake with some kind of cosmic disturbance. The vultures had broken their circling flight and were drifting southwards, driven away by the noise. It was loudening quickly now and for a moment I didn't see the helicopters because I'd been looking for them too high. They were detaching themselves from the skyline and growing bigger and I went into the niche I'd made for myself among the stowed 'chute canopies and lay flat with my legs drawn up, and waited.
Once they'd seen the freighter and landed near it I wouldn't be so exposed, but while they were still airborne they'd be checking this outcrop and for the moment I wanted to remain unseen. I didn't know what kind of orders Loman would give me when our mission ended a few minutes from now: it was just possible he'd ask me to observe the activities of the opposition at the site of their objective in case there was anything we could usefully tell London.
He would probably leave it to me, when the time came, to decide whether I should expose my presence and hope to live as long as the first implemented interrogation or crawl from here to the open desert and cut a vein. All London would require was that the opposition shouldn't learn anything from me and that was easy enough to arrange.
The noise was very loud now and the rocks were trapping the echoes. I pulled my legsup a bit more and managed to crawl another inch into the narrowing gap. Something was in here with me but I didn't know what: something alive and I suppose sheltering as I was from the throbbing sky outside. Telepathy at its lowest level is emotional and I was aware of fear, not my own but another creature's. There wasn't anything more for me to fear because neither I nor the mission were any longer under attack.
The camouflage was highly-developed and only the glint of a gold-ringed eye gave it away. It was about two feet in front of me and almost on a level with my face: probably I'd driven it in here unknowingly when I'd stowed the canopies and provisions and it had been afraid to clamber across the strange terrain they'd formed on the rocky floor. Its forefeet were splayed on each side of the scaly bulk of its body and its head was lifted to watch me, the black iris glistening within the ring of gold. It kept utterly still, afraid of me because visually I menaced it gigantically, almost filling the niche, and possibly afraid of the helicopters: it had no sense of hearing but it was probably picking up the vibrations in the rock.
I had positioned the transceiver so that I could use it if I wanted to, and I ought to tell Loman the situation even though he couldn't do anything about it.
Tango.
The form of the pointed head was prehistoric: it was a descendant of the lizards that had been here before man.
Tango. Tango.
The motors chopped heavily at the air and I was tempted to move my head and take a look but there wasn't any point; they were military desert-reconnaissance aircraft making an area sweep at low altitude and there wouldn't be anything in their shape or colour that could tell us anything we didn't already know. The chance of their catching the movement if I turned my head was one in a thousand but I might just as well not risk it.
Teach me, my small and ancient friend, how to keep still.
I didn't call up base again because it was obvious now that Loman had decided to keep radio silence. I got a lot of squawk and tried two channels and came back and found them quite close at 6 MHz.
113: ihtafidou bi kasdikoum i — la mitine oua sabina degre.
The volume of sound from their rotors was making the frame of the transceiver vibrate and I could feel it under my fingers. Shadows swept across the mouth of the niche where I was lying, and the lizard appeared to move slightly but I knew it hadn't: it was just the shift of the light-contrasts as the shadow passed over us.