The Sixteen (33 page)

Dynamo and I followed them with Greg closely behind us and, as we rounded the base of the hill, the others caught up with us.

‘Take your time,’ someone muttered. ‘They must think there are hundreds of us!’

‘Well, they certainly don’t seem to have much transport left!’ Royston laughed, because we’d destroyed every vehicle in the compound. We briefly grouped together at the side of the road as Reg and Den removed their CTCs.

‘You could have let me know they were down there,’ I said to Dynamo. ‘I nearly bagged one of them!’

‘They went down there when you were watching by the roadside. Bloody good camouflage though, isn’t it?’ He laughed as we put our gear into our bags.

‘Is everyone here? Everyone accounted for? Right, let’s get the hell out of here and back to that damn river!’

As we made our way along the road we heard several explosions behind us – the lads’ booby traps on the hillside were obviously working!

Back at the river, we headed slightly further upstream of where we believed the old bridge and our ropes were, then worked our way down so we didn’t pass them. We didn’t want to miss them in the dark. Without any great difficulty we found the spot, and were surprised to see that the river had risen by almost another two feet in the short time we’d been away. We were lucky that it hadn’t washed our ropes away, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. We carried plenty of others and would have had no problems in repeating the process.

We swiftly crossed the river and the last man over tied the heavy line to both the wooden post and the ‘H’ girder as we set up the pulley wheel system on the other side and tightened this to enable him to cross safely.

Meanwhile he had tied a light line to the dog-clip on the heavy line and brought the light line across with him. We then released
the pulley wheels, slackened the line off, which enabled us to retrieve the dog-clip with the heavy line attached. Again, the whole process was accomplished in a matter of minutes and there was no trace left behind that we’d ever been there.

Once on the other side, we briefly discussed the operation with Royston as we packed up our gear.

‘Well, what happened?’ Spot asked.

Royston grinned broadly and quietly began to recount what had taken place in the building. ‘I couldn’t believe it!’ he exclaimed. ‘When you lot opened fire, I followed the guards into the building and got to the top of the stairs before the lights went off, so I managed to get a quick look around. I was lucky: there was such a commotion and racket going on that no one in the other rooms took any notice of me, they were all too busy trying to get you lot, so I just ran along to the end of the corridor and took out the guy guarding the room. They’d locked the door so I blasted the lock off and lobbed in a grenade,’ he said in a matter-of-fact way. ‘Sorry I took so long but I wanted to make sure that I’d got them all before I left and it took a few minutes to check them, using my torch. The five targets were definitely in there and I’m positive the other three were European!

‘There was so much noise and confusion I could have taken out everyone in the building – they just didn’t have a clue what was going on,’ Royston continued. ‘On the way back, I think I took most of them out in the rooms along the corridor. They were all firing out of the windows so it wasn’t a problem; besides, with all that racket going on they wouldn’t know whether the bullets were coming from the outside or not,’ he added. ‘I definitely got all of them in that last room with a grenade just before leaving. I thought I might as well keep the numbers down and help you chaps out a bit,’ he said, laughing.

‘So that’s why that guy came flying out of the window and landed on the top of that burning truck,’ I said quietly to Dynamo, who then turned to Royston and demanded: ‘Well mate, where is the bloody thing?’

‘It’s in my bag,’ Royston replied in a quiet matter-of-fact tone.

‘Well let’s have a look at it then!’ Dynamo demanded.

‘Can’t do that, Top Secret stuff, don’t you know.’

We all just stood there, staring at him in disbelief until eventually he burst out with a small laugh, saying finally: ‘Well, alright, if you insist.’ Then he bent down and took a small oblong box out of his bag and held it out in front of him, while we stood looking at it in disbelief. It was a small highly lacquered black box, approximately three by two by eight inches in size.

‘Bloody Hell! Is that it?’ someone burst out in disgust.

Royston slowly smiled. ‘Advanced Technology, that’s what’s in there lads,’ he briefly explained.

Chalky was standing next to me. ‘I’m dying to see this,’ he quietly muttered. ‘Come on open it up and it had better be good!’

For a while Royston struggled with it but couldn’t find a way to open the box.

‘Here, give it to me,’ Dynamo said, holding out his hand into which Royston placed the box. Dynamo examined it briefly then he gently squeezed both sides of the box simultaneously and suddenly with a slight click it slowly opened as someone quietly said: ‘I think he’s done this before.’

Dynamo paused for a moment then passed the opened box back to Royston, who looked into it briefly before he carefully lifted out and unwrapped its contents. In the light from our torches we all saw what appeared to be two ordinary flat pieces of glass. He let out a long sigh then quietly exclaimed with obvious relief: ‘Yes! Great! They’re both OK!’

‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ Dynamo spoke our thoughts.

Just then, as we all turned our torches on to the two bits of glass lying in Royston’s outstretched palm, it seemed as if the torch beams had charged them up and they began to emit a dazzling brilliance of myriad different colours. Royston swiftly rewrapped them and carefully placed them back into the box, saying as he did so: ‘Well done, lads, a good night’s work, now all you have to do is to completely forget what you saw.’

Well, I thought, that shouldn’t be too hard, after all what did we see? Just two pieces of brightly coloured glass!

Royston was speaking again: ‘I suppose you know what they do? Well, actually they don’t do anything on their own. You see they’re not much good without the other four pieces.’ We were all watching him closely, listening intently as he continued: ‘Don’t worry, no one knows where they are.’

Chalky interrupted him, saying, ‘Well at least we got the job done thanks to you and your lot, Royston! I guess that’s what we were looking for in Egypt!’

Royston did not reply but simply smiled slowly at Chalky as we all crowded around Royston to congratulate him, slapping him on the back and shaking his hand.

‘Well, lads, this is where we part company,’ Dynamo told us, ever eager to be on the move. ‘We can’t stay here chatting all night.’

Royston nodded in agreement. ‘No, that’s right.’ He turned towards me. ‘Well, Geordie, we didn’t get our little chat but I’m pleased we met at last.’

‘Well at least we got the job done!’ Greg said to me with a wink.

The guys all shook hands, then picking up our holdalls, we split up into our teams, each heading off in a different direction. I’d no idea where the others were going and by now I knew it was a pointless exercise to ask. Besides, all I was really interested in now
was getting back to the truck and on to the helicopter. Dynamo, Chalky, Spot and I merely had to retrace our steps back across the valley to the rendezvous point on the top of the hill, where Bren would meet us later with the truck. We didn’t expect to encounter any problems on the way and had plenty of time to get back. As we moved away from the riverbank, we heard a commotion some distance away on the opposite side.

They were apparently searching the area for us but we knew that there was no way they’d be able to follow us across the river at this point, even if they had any idea where we were, which they obviously didn’t.

Although the trek back into the mountains was a steep climb, the four of us did not take long to reach the rendezvous point near to the ruins that Bren had pointed out. With plenty of time to spare before he was due, we sat down for a well-earned rest and after a short while I needed to take a leak.

‘I won’t be a minute,’ I told the others as I got to my feet.

‘Just make sure you’re down wind,’ Chalky called after me.

‘And watch out for those snakes,’ Spot sniggered.

‘Oh, very funny,’ I called back over my shoulder. ‘You and your flaming snakes!’

‘And scorpions!’ Dynamo added.

The nearby dirt track ran between the steeply sloping hillsides and on the other side of it, at the base of the hill, I spotted a clump of convenient bushes and made my way across to them. Further down the track I saw a flash of light.

Bren must be early, I thought and carried on with what I was doing.

As I started back across the track, I heard the sound of an engine then saw another flash of light as a truck slowly made its way around the base of the hill. I stopped where I was in the middle
of the primitive road and waited while the truck drove right up to me then stopped a few feet away. I couldn’t make out the driver with the headlights shining in my face but I heard the sound of the door opening and someone making their way towards me. To my surprise, a voice called out to me in Arabic.

Very funny, Bren, I thought.

Again, the voice called out. I hadn’t a clue what he was saying.

I called back. ‘OK, OK, cut the joking, Bren. You know I can’t understand a word you’re saying.’

The man was fairly close to me by now and I suddenly realised that it very obviously wasn’t Bren. The passenger side door opened and the guy turned to jabber something to another guy behind him. There were two of them!

Just as I was about to take the first guy out, I noticed that the second man was holding something in his hand; it looked like an iron bar but I couldn’t quite make it out because of the headlights behind him. By this time, I was standing directly between the men in front of the truck and where I’d left the others.

I knew they wouldn’t be far away but wouldn’t want to show themselves at this stage. They wouldn’t be able to use any firepower either because I was in their line of fire. Besides, we didn’t want to draw attention to ourselves – a gunshot could be heard a long way off.

So I quickly decided to let the second man get nearer to his mate so that I could deal with them both at the same time – I knew I could handle the situation easily. At that moment, I saw a glint of metal in the headlights and realised that the second guy was actually holding a knife. The first man spoke again, then the second guy lunged straight at me. In that instant, The Machine took over!

I blocked the knife with my left hand and swivelled on my left heel in order to swing my right leg behind me. But my right heel
caught on a large stone and I couldn’t get it completely out of the way. The knife was longer that I’d originally thought and I felt a sharp agonising pain as it thudded into my thigh, penetrating down to the bone. Despite the acute pain, I hit underneath the man’s nose hard with the base of my right hand, pushing the nose bone towards his brain. He instantly crumpled to the ground pulling the knife out of my leg as he fell. In the seconds it had taken for this to happen, the lads had quietly despatched his mate.

Chalky and Dynamo grabbed my shirt then dragged me off the track towards a pile of rocks and lay me against them.

‘Kill those bloody lights on that truck, Spot,’ Dynamo said, as Chalky ripped open the top of my trouser leg, which by now was saturated in blood. The pain was excruciating, waves of nausea and dizziness washed over me and my leg felt like a solid lump of lead.

‘This would happen, when everything’s gone perfectly so far,’ Chalky commented wryly as he closely examined the wound.

‘Trust me to mess things up,’ I moaned back at him.

‘Don’t knock yourself, Geordie, this could have happened to any one of us. None of us are that clever, we’ve all got scars of some sort. Besides, it’s the other guy who’s dead not you!’ he reassured me. ‘The trick is to get back alive.’

‘Come on, Dynamo, give me a hand,’ Spot said, dragging one of the bodies towards the truck. ‘If we shove this lot over the side it’ll look as though they’ve had an accident.’

They loaded up the two bodies and pushed the truck off the track where it quickly disappeared and crashed down the steep hillside. They had just reached Chalky and me as we heard the sound of another truck, its headlights flashing off and on as it rounded the bend in the road. It stopped quickly and Bren jumped out.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ Dynamo asked him.

‘What do you mean, I’m early?’ Bren replied cheerfully.

‘Not early enough. Shame you didn’t get here ten minutes earlier.’ Spot told him. ‘Never mind, you’re here now, give us a hand to get Geordie on to the back of the truck.’

‘What happened?’ Bren asked, concerned.

‘We had a bit of bother with a couple of locals and Geordie’s been stabbed in the leg, we’ll tell you about it on the way back,’ Chalky said.

Bren produced a small first-aid kit from the truck, which he gave to Chalky. ‘Let’s get out of here quickly, then,’ he said.

Dynamo and Bren climbed into the cab of the truck while Chalky and Spot jumped into the back with me. Chalky gave me a couple of painkillers and then got to work on my leg.

The journey back seemed to take forever, and I felt every bump and jolt, but by the time we reached our drop-off point near to the railway embankment the painkillers were working and my leg didn’t feel too bad. Bren stopped the truck and came around to the back to help Chalky and Spot get me down as Dynamo took the guns out of our canvas bags and left them in a sack on the back of the truck.

‘Take care, Geordie,’ Bren said. ‘Got to go, catch you later!’ And with that, he jumped back in the cab and drove off.

Dynamo rushed ahead with the bags as Chalky and Spot hoisted me up, one arm around each of their shoulders, and dragged me along. My leg couldn’t take any weight, which made getting back through the stinking sewer pipe incredibly difficult. It was pitch black and we had to go through it sideways, as it was only wide enough for one person to walk through properly. The stench seemed to be even worse this time, and for a moment I thought I was going to vomit. Dynamo came back after dumping
our bags on the beach and shone a torch in front of us, which made it easier.