‘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.
‘The Taliban opened up on us. Our vehicles weren’t armoured. All we had was the dust we kicked up and the rounds we could put down. Every vehicle got hit but somewhow we all made it out of the killing zone. We lost one vehicle with a stalled engine outside the village but everyone managed to get into another Toyota. Two of my lads were hit - nothing serious. I didn’t know Jordan had been shot until we got to the air-extraction RV. He’d driven without a complaint for twenty minutes until he lost so much blood that he started to fall unconscious.
‘He kept quiet, hoping it was nothing serious so that I wouldn’t get blamed for it. When he told me this later it was his only admission that he thought I’d made the wrong call. Within months he’d been invalided out of the service.’
The lift doors stood open before them and they stepped inside.
‘Do you still believe you were right?’ Jason asked as the doors closed.
‘That’s not the point,’ Stratton said.
‘What is the point?’ Jackson asked.
‘If you need to ask you wouldn’t understand.’
The lift came to a halt and they walked out into the tacky lobby. The others were dissatisfied with Stratton’s answer. ‘Was Jordan a good operative?’ Jason asked.
‘Very.’
‘Did he get the point?’ Jason persisted.
It was an interesting question. That was Stratton’s only complaint about his old friend. ‘You know how beekeepers deal with getting stung? They can’t blame the bees.’
Stratton left them to ponder the comment and he opened the exterior door enough to look towards the helipad. The sound of the helicopter’s purring engines increased measurably. ‘That thing working?’ he asked Binning.
Binning held the plastic case in his hand. ‘I promise you it is.’
Stratton opened the door fully. ‘Give me one minute.’
As the operative closed the door behind him it aroused Rowena’s suspicions once again. ‘Have you considered the possibility that he’ll simply tell the helicopter crew what we’re doing and bring this to an end?’ she said.
‘Don’t you believe him?’ Jason asked.
‘Does he need us to achieve his mission?’ she wondered.
‘I think he needs us - for the initial stage, at least.’
‘Want to bet he doesn’t plan on taking us all the way to the platform, though?’
Jason opened the door enough to let the noise back in and saw Stratton walk up the steps of the helipad and out of view. ‘We’ll have to watch him.’
With the rotors unengaged only the hot exhaust from the engines bothered Stratton as he entered the Chinook. The relatively spacious cabin had a line of hammock seats halfway down one side, while on the other dozens of various-sized plastic moulded boxes were lashed to rings on the bulkhead. Taking up most of the centre of the floor was a reinforced fibreglass SBS mini-submarine that looked like a fat and stubby black cigar, rounded at the front like a revolver bullet. The propeller, at the rear, sat inside a housing designed to protect a diver from swimming into it. Directly behind the nose was the open cockpit with seats for pilot and navigator. A compartment behind that, separated from the cockpit by a grille, was just about large enough to accommodate four people. The craft had breathing umbilicals attached along the inside of the bulkhead with nozzles for six divers. With no doors in the cabin or cockpit, just gaps where the crew climbed in and out, the sub was termed a ‘wet ride’: it flooded fully when it was underwater.
As soon as Stratton saw the sub he had a fairly good idea what the SBS plan was. In the cockpit the pilots and the crewman were in a discussion about something. Stratton put down his bags, reached inside and tapped the crewman on the back.
The man looked around and broke into a broad grin on seeing the face he instantly recognised. ‘Stratton. What’re you doin’ ’ere?’ he asked, immediately wondering why he was wearing a firesuit.
‘How’s it going, George? You well?’
‘Not bad. Not bad. Chaz didn’t mention we were picking you up.’
‘Who’re the drivers?’ Stratton asked, trying to get a look at the faces inside the helmets worn by the two guys sitting with their backs to him.
‘Charles and Steve,’ George said, tapping both men on the shoulders and indicating the new visitor.
Charles, the pilot, smiled a hello on seeing Stratton and Steve gave him a wave. ‘What are you doing here?’ Charles shouted.
‘Complicated story,’ Stratton said.
‘Got a comms problem,’ the pilot continued. ‘We were in the middle of a sitrep from ops when everything shut down.’
‘Can you fix it?’
‘It’s not us. I’m certain of that.’
‘Maybe it’s this complex.They have a lot of security here. Haven’t you spoken to ops at all?’
‘Told them we arrived.’
‘Did they mention our situation?’
Charles shook his head. Stratton got a little closer. ‘There’s been a security breach inside the complex. One of the team tripped a lockdown.’
The pilot’s gaze moved to look beyond Stratton at the bunch of new faces outside, all wearing firesuits and carrying kitbags. ‘Who are they?’
Stratton glanced over his shoulder to see Jason and the others. ‘What I thought you’d already know by now. Chaz and the others are stuck in a security vault for the next twenty-four hours. They took something into the complex that tripped the lockdown. London has given us the okay to continue with the task. These guys are up to it. Luckily enough I happened to be here.’
The pilot looked from his own crew to the newcomers. It was definitely an odd situation. ‘I need to confirm this with ops.’