Okay, so I understand some of you are going to ask where I've been. To be honest, I don't really feel like telling you the full story, we'll just leave it as a family event. Anyway, moral of the story is, I didn't feel much like writing for a few weeks, but now I'm back and better than ever... hopefully. As always, please read and review!
It was not difficult to spot the enormous US transport plane as the car pulled onto the runway. It simply dwarfed everything in sight. It was 55 feet high, 175 feet long, and wingtip to wingtip could comfortably accommodate half a football field and then some. It was a true behemoth, and Alex was surprised that it could even land on the small runway of the almost obsolete RAF base.
The car coasted towards the plane, and Alex noted that the base was completely empty aside from the activity that was occurring at the rear of the C-17. Compared to the monstrously large aeroplane, however, the people surrounding it appeared to be specks, like ants furiously working around their queen.
The Mercedes pulled up and Alex stepped out, leaving the folder on the back seat, without even having seen the drivers face. It was the way things worked, so he was not perturbed as the vehicle simply turned around, and drove away.
The first thing he noted was the smell of freshly cut grass assaulting his nasal passages, and he smiled, as he heard the barked commands coming from down the runway. He rubbed his arm gently, and languidly made his way towards the voices.
"Get a move on! Come on; unless you want to swim to Gibraltar, I suggest you put your bloody back into it!"
Alex could only smile. He hadn't seen them for months, but nothing changed. Even from a single sentence, he could tell K-Unit were still exactly the same as when he'd left them last, which coincidentally had been on the banks of the Dasht River, right on the border of Pakistan and Iran.
Alex stopped and observed the quad working to load the aeroplane.
"I didn't think it was possible for you four to get any uglier," Alex commented in a stage whisper, his smile stretching from ear to ear, as the four men turned around. Bear dropped the box he had just been being shouted at for not loading fast enough, and laughed loudly.
"Clearly I was wrong."
"Come here you mutt!" shouted Bear with a massive grin stretched across his face, his arms outstretched.
Members of the public often found K-Units fourth member intimidating when he was off rotation. Standing 6 feet, four inches tall and weighing in at over 250 pounds probably had something to do with it. Also the fact that his arms were bigger than most people's midriffs could have also been a contributing factor.
The bottom line, though, was that Bear was fun. Certainly the most fun of the team, anyway, despite them lightening up considerably since Alex had known them. Alex was almost certain that Bear had been added after the departure of Ben Daniels to MI6 for exactly that reason, to encourage the other three to ease up every now and then. To a degree it had worked, they were still coarse and fiercely independent, but Alex knew he qualified as a special case. After everything they had all been through, they treated him like an honorary fifth member.
"Cub, you've arrived," Wolf said, clasping his hand firmly, letting a smile slip through the stony facade. The comradeship the five of them felt for one another was unspoken, not that there was any need. Each had saved the others neck at some point during their long history, and the bond they all shared would be impossible to break. Alex couldn't envisage them coming around for a Sunday roast any day soon, but then again, no one did anything like that in the service. MI6 rules clearly stated that no unwarranted personal contact outside the workplace was permissible. The less they knew about each other, the better.
The loading ramp of the Globemaster III was lowered, and the enormous planes hollow interior was on show for all to see. There was space for 135 troops, or alternatively, a 65 ton Abrams M1 tank. All this particular flight would be carrying, however, was four men and a one almost-man, and a few caseloads of equipment on its roundabout journey to bring back troops on rotation in Afghanistan.
"What can I do?" Alex asked, looking around for something to help carry.
"You can change out of your civies," Wolf replied, gesturing at his clothing, and then to one of the few remaining crates. "You should find fatigues in that one."
Sure enough, Alex found a pair of desert camouflage cargo pants and a matching shirt, as well as a pair of Magnum combat boots, Alex's operational footwear of choice
"So... how was school today?" Bear asked, his voice laced with sarcasm, as they loaded the final crate into the hold.
"Probably better than spending my afternoon shelf-stacking," Alex retorted, as he folded up his civilian clothing.
"Alright!" shouted Wolf over the top of Alex and Bear's bickering. "Let's lock and load gents. We are airborne in five minutes, get your shit together!"
"Yessir!" Alex and Bear replied. There had never been any confusion in the team about who was leading, on any of the missions. Alex was on SAS turf, so Wolf pulled rank on him, and he had no arguments about it.
The five of them hopped onto the massive rear hatch of the Globemaster III, as it slowly began to close up, shutting out the last of the natural light. Outside, the four Pratt & Whitney engines began to throb, and then growl. The beast was awakening.
"Ladies and gentlemen, please fasten your seatbelts and fold your flip down trays into the seat in front of you. Please ensure all electronic devices are either switched to aeroplane mode or to off, and we hope you enjoy a safe flight courtesy of Samuelson Airways."
The voice of the loudspeaker made Alex chuckle slightly, as Rodger Samuelson, an RAF transport pilot that K-Unit was very familiar with gave them a tongue-in-cheek welcome aboard.
"It would be funnier if he hadn't done it the last twenty times," Bear said loudly, his voice echoing off the cavernous walls of the hollow aircraft. Aside from the seven crates of equipment that K-Unit had loaded onto the pallets and tied down, the space was empty. Alex could have started a game of football in the hold, and had plenty of room left to play with. Not that he was considering it, of course.
"Just for you Bear, I think I'll try out a couple of barrel rolls over the Mediterranean," came the reply over the speakers.
"No barrel rolls!" barked Wolf, slightly louder than Alex assumed he intended, and the other three struggled to hide their smiles. It was no secret that Wolf was not a fan of air travel.
Nevertheless, the five of them found pallet seats; fold out chairs attached to the walls of the aircraft, and they strapped themselves in with chest harnesses. This was no commercial flight; takeoff and landings were not performed to maximize comfort and pleasure, they were done to minimize flight delays and threats. Despite them presently sitting on a runway in the centre of the United Kingdom, RAF pilots never deviated from their protocol. It was part of what made them amongst the best pilots in the world.
The process of going from being stationary on the ground to airborne at a cruising speed of 515 miles per hour would, for any normal human being, be considered a fairly exceptional day, especially when the cavernous space inside the aircraft should have made the entire experience rather more frightening.
It was another reminder that this was no passenger flight. The angle of ascent was like nothing your average British Airways 747 had ever seen. Alex slid sideways on his seat, and he suddenly realised why K-Unit were sitting so far apart; it was to avoid awkward moments of undesirable contact with each other.
It was a two and a half hour flight, and once the cruising altitude had been reached, the members of K-Unit immediately unbuckled themselves and began unlocking crates and checking equipment. When they were satisfied that everything they required had been brought, they clustered around a box where a printed out blueprint of the complex had been placed by Wolf for their initial mission briefing.
"A hundred yards wide by eighty yards deep," Snake said, indicating to the perimeter wall, "and nearly three metres high. It's an old World War II remnant from the campaign in North Africa. Bad news; it's heavily fortified, and it seems probable that the politically motivated kidnappers hired a band of roving mercenaries that were heading for Libya in its present state of crisis."
Wolf took over. "The good news is, however, that since they've taken one of our 70 year old fortified positions, we have the complete plans to the layout of the complex, barring any significant changes. Therefore, we can be almost certain that the hostages are being held in the basement of this building, which from now on is designated building A. Got that?"
The team nodded, and Alex followed suit, studying the plans carefully. He knew this was mainly for his benefit, and he needed to compensate for being the most underprepared by being the most studious.
"We have a basic strategy," Wolf continued, looking around the makeshift table at them. "We are relying on Cub to provide a distraction long enough that we can. You, I am reliably informed, speak Arabic?"
Alex looked up.
"Yeah I speak Arabic, but I hope you're not asking me to give a soliloquy," he replied, looking slight perturbed, "Tunisian Arabic is a whole other ballgame. They'll understand me, but I'll sound like a foreigner from a mile away, ignoring the fact that I have light skin, blonde hair and blue eyes. I might deceive a blind mercenary whose hearing isn't wonderful," Alex added slightly venomously. He wasn't pleased with the simplicity or lack of planning that had gone into the operation, and it showed.
Wolf frowned but ignored the acerbic comments of the team's youngest member. "You are taking the guise of a small-time arms dealer's employee and front runner; however you want to play it. Point is, if there are two things guns for hire can't resist its more guns and women."
"So you've stuffed a couple of crates full of women?" Alex asked.
"We've brought you a full body disguise to cover up your obvious deficiencies, and a cache of weapons an arms dealer in North Africa could believably get his hands on yet are still attractive enough to catch a mercenaries eye," Bear responded, pointing to a locked crate.
"And what, I'm supposed to spruik my wares to a group of mercenaries while you lot sneak in a side door?" Alex asked incredulously.
"Haven't met too many mercenary crews apparently then Cub?" Bear laughed. "They tend not to be receptive to spruiking, or any sought of sales pitch for that matter. They're more in the taking without asking nicely business, if they think you're vulnerable, and you're going to be very vulnerable looking," Bear said.
"You will adopt a disguise, and hopefully draw the attention and firepower away from patrolling and give us time to infiltrate and attack the complex," Wolf finished off.
"So basically I'm the sacrificial lamb," Alex replied.
"Of course not, at the first sign of oncoming danger, your mission brief instructs you to seek cover and safety," Wolf replied.
"...in the middle of the desert," Alex finished off. "Basically I'm just going to have to shoot them before they shoot me. I'll just keep it simple."
"You do what you have to do to stay alive. That is priority one here, making sure our team gets home all in one piece."
"Out of interest, who designed this mission brief?" Alex enquired, staring at it again.
"I'm not sure exactly, but I received it indirectly from Jonathon Matthews-Prosser, the National Securities Advisor."
"That figures."
The airstrip at Gibraltar was about as impressive as it got when it came to landings and takeoffs. The famous rock stuck out of the sea many hundreds of feet into the sky, and the runway ran horizontal to it, across the strip of land north of it, from one side of the coast to the other.
The landing was not particularly smooth, but it was quick. They were disembarking from the plane in no time, and Alex helped unload the crates as best he could. The heaviest ones were naturally left to Bear, who despite them having a trolley on hand, simply raised them to chest height, and carried off the aircraft.
The runway was completely clear, aside from one other vehicle; A very strange looking aircraft that appeared to have a massive circular dish on its back, and was completely dwarfed by the Globemaster. It would, however, be the platform from which their mission would be launched, and they loaded up an airport tow trolley and sat on the crates as they zoomed down the runway towards it.
The aeroplane was a Sentry AEW1, and the dish on the back was an enormous radar dish. The plane had been pulled out of service over Libya, especially for the operation. It would fly overwatch, and provide instant updates from the air as to what was occurring on the ground. It would also be the point from which Alex and then the members of K-Unit would launch themselves from and skydive 25,000 feet to the desert floor, roughly an hour apart.
Alex was not feeling at all like himself. For one, he was standing at the exit lock of an aeroplane, hanging on to the edges, staring out into the pitch darkness, punctured only by a small set of dim lights way down below. Secondly he was about three times as heavy as he normally was, what with his special flight suit being weighed down by five rifles and an RPG launcher, which were tightly strapped to the outer of his special wing suit. On his arm, there was an illuminated GPS which could measure to the square foot of sand he was about to crash in to, and underneath all that gear, he had on a specially selected Tunisian desert travellers garb on, or so he had been informed.
Thirdly, and most pressingly, however, the air lock was open, and the only thing holding him from being sucked out of the plane was his iron grip on the handles around the doorway. Sensing the moment to have come, he leaned forwards, making sure his extremities were clear of the door before launching himself out into the early morning darkness.
Falling was not a sensation one ever got used to. Even with the winged suit, Alex felt like his control over the situation was tenuous, but if he pulled his chute early, it was be as good as done. He wouldn't land for hours and would instead be buffeted by the high altitude winds. So he pulled his wrist microphone as close to his face as possible and shouted "Make Wolf jump first!" as loudly as he could manage, and he thought he was rewarded with a chuckle from Bear, but he couldn't hear as the piercing whistle of the wind became deafening as he plummeted to the earth.
He then turned his attention to the altimeter on his GPS, the device that told him just how far away the earth was exactly, because as he had been informed, darkness and BASE jumping do not mix. The reliance on the GPS device working scared Alex more than anything like flinging himself out of a plane more than four and half miles in the sky.
Alex's other problem was that the air was so thin at that height that he found himself extremely short of breath. The further he fell, however, the easier it became, and once he crossed the barrier to 15,000 feet after just 50 seconds of freefalling, the air thickened, and his lungs relaxed slightly.
His heart, though, did not. He had reached a speed of five hundred miles per hour according to his GPS tracker, but in the darkness, he had little concept of speed. All he was watching was that little meter ticking through the feet as he fell towards what, one way or another, could very well be his death.
Darkness did not make things easy. The sun was starting to show some life to the East, but not enough to help Alex. He had deployed his chute at 3000 feet, which was considered unusually conservative in most skydiving circles, but he was taking no risks. With little to no visibility and a complete reliance on electronics to keep him safe, Alex wanted no part in any risk-taking.
When his altimeter read only 100 feet away from the designated height above sea-level of the landing point, Alex looked down and realised his vision area wasn't as bad as he had initially feared, but then, as he got closer, things suddenly became darker again. After the instant surge of panic where he suddenly thought he'd misjudged, he remembered the ground rush theory that he'd learned way back when he'd first night jumped with John Rider as a boy.
As the angle of reflection decreased from the ambient light, the ground appeared to become pitch black after a period of illumination, which was what had shocked him. It was this mathematical realisation that was running through his mind as his feet, then his knees and elbows, collided with the Tunisian desert.
So you know I love your opinions on stuff yeah? Well I need help again. I'm strongly considering upping the rating of this story from "T" to "M" to better reflect the path I foresee it taking. However, I don't want to do it if it means I'm going to lose half my readership, because you're all offended/put off by it. Anyway, let me know if you'd keep reading, or any other thoughts you've got!