ADAM HALL - Quiller Salamander

'Is this aircraft armed?' I asked him.

Khay shrugged. 'Normally we carry 30mm barbette-mounted cannon, but it was taken off before I assumed command.' He dropped his cigarette and flattened it against the concrete with his flying-boot. 'In any case we are not going to hang around the target area long enough for them to send up a helicopter. We go in, we come out, and if the camera does not jam we get some pictures.'

This was at 19:00 hours, and by 20:00 we saw a drenched moon floating in the night sky as the wind shifted again and then died, leaving the airfield steaming. There was still a light rain coming down at 21:15 but Khay said it didn't worry him, and climbed onto the seat of the work-horse and pulled the Sikorsky out to the tarmac.

We took off twenty minutes later into dead air with the rotor blades churning the puddles into mist as we became airborne and headed south-west towards the sea.

He'd had this helicopter standing by for days, Pringle, on instructions from London; for a week, ever since I'd made contact with him for the first time at the airport in Phnom Penh. He must have.

Because Flockhart was smart.

'ETA ten minutes,' I heard Khay calling above the crackling of the rotors.

'Roger.'

Flockhart was smart enough to know that if I took Salamander on at all I would hit the first objective before long: information on Pol Pot. And he'd known it might have to be confirmed by air reconnaissance, and so had made overtures through Sihanouk's intelligence arm to secure an aircraft and have it put on readiness. Flockhart, I was beginning to understand, left nothing to chance, providing he had control. But he was in London now, with the buds of the daffodils just beginning to show in the pale March sunshine at three in the afternoon as the buses rumbled past the black iron railings, and here it was different, as we skated across the crests of the mountains below a reef of cloud, the land dark below us and the clock on the instrument panel flicking the minutes away to zero; here Flockhart hadn't the slightest control, and could only wait by the telephone for whatever Pringle might signal. My evaluation of this sortie hadn't changed: this was a suicide run.

'Nine minutes,' Khay told me, and took us down to three thousand feet as the mountains gave way to jungle. 'If there is any wind still blowing down there it will be from the west, and so I am going to turn now a little and approach the target from the east, so they will not hear us so soon.' With a shrug — 'It will make only a very slight difference, but we need all the advantage we can get.' His eyes studied my face. 'And how are you feeling, mon ami?'

'Everything's set up.'

I'd checked the camera three times on our way here, for something to do. It was a 1,000-frame Hartmann-Zeiss with a twenty-five degree omnidirectional sweeping capacity, and I'd set it at base maximum, which was where we'd start taking pictures.

'It is not what I mean,' Khay said, still with his eyes on me. 'I ask you how you are feeling.'

'Oh. Quite confident.'

That wasn't what he meant either but it was all he was going to get. The guards down there in the camp would start picking us up acoustically very soon now, and we'd be on a collision course governed by our airspeed and the time it took the Khmer Rouge to man their guns. So how would you feel, for God's sake?

Khay looked away and checked his instruments.

'Seven minutes.'

The moon was behind us now, and I thought I could see our shadow crossing the jungle below, but it must have been an illusion: at this altitude it would be too far ahead of us, nearing the camp, a ghostly harbinger.

'You have other children?' I asked Khay. 'Daughters?'

He turned his head. 'No.'

'Still have a wife?'

He looked away. 'She is missing. She is missing since fifteen years.'

I shifted in my seat, getting more control of the camera, pressing the button, shooting a few frames, watching the counter running, shutting down again.

'You have children?' I heard Khay asking.

'No.'

'Wife?'

'No.'

His eyes were on me again. 'You are lone wolf.'

'Not quite. Stray cat.'

He looked at his instruments again. 'Five minutes. Do you mind if I smoke?'

'Go ahead.' I hadn't expected him to have held out this long.

He lit up, using his blue Bic lighter.

Below us the jungle flowed in the night; we could tell it was there only by the faint sheen on the leaves cast by the moon. Occasionally there was a clearing, and I saw one with a dark line crossing it, some kind of track.

'Four minutes,' Khay said, and drew on his cigarette, narrowing his eyes in the smoke as he let it curl from his mouth; then he dropped the stub and put his boot on it. 'We will make our turn now, and go in from the east.'

The ocean of leaves swung beneath us, the horizon tilting, flattening out again as the compass spun and settled. At three minutes to zero Khay turned his head again. 'We will be moving into earshot quite soon now.'

I gave him a nod and shot another dozen frames, watched the counter, released the button.

'It is okay?'

'Perfect.'

'Two minutes.' He checked his bearings again and changed course by a degree, brought the Sikorsky back, dropped it a hundred feet, two hundred, until the heads of the palms showed up in clusters with a gap here and there where some of them had died off, their trunks leaning.

'We have one minute to go,' Khay said, raising his voice now, wanting to make sure I heard and understood.

'Roger.' I watched the jungle ahead. 'Give me thirty seconds, will you?'

He nodded, and I was aware of the environment suddenly, sharply aware as the senses became fine-tuned, aware of the vibration of the seat under me, of the floor under my feet, of the steady beat of the rotor and its deep and incessant throbbing, aware of the dry mouth and the adrenalin flush and the need to breathe slowly, keep still, keep patient as we settled again by fifty feet, settled again until the leaves were streaming below us, dark,rushing -

'Thirty seconds.'

I hit the button and swung the camera down a degree at a time as we moved into the target area, seeing gaps in the trees, a small lake, but nothing that looked like -

'Zero.'

Felt the slight vibration in the body of the Hartmann-Zeiss, swung it lower, lower again by another degree, keeping my eyes on the leaves below in case there were anything I could pick out, a truck, a half-track, huts, whatever was there, moving the camera to the base end of its travel and then up again as Khay banked the Sikorsky and brought it round in a tight turn and dropped and levelled out and began a second run in and a faint rattling began and I hunched into myself and concentrated on the camera as something hit the Sikorsky, nothing big yet, they needed time to roll out of their sleeping bags and lurch to the guns and swing them into the aim and fire, the Sikorsky lifting now, my knees pressing into the floor as a longer burst came this time, heavier, the flash of its detonation flickering among the leaves.

Khay jerked a look at my face. 'We go in again?'

'Yes.'

There wasn't any choice: with only a twenty-five degree angle on the camera there was no point in circling the target; all we'd get on film would be the camp's perimeter.

Medium turn this time at the end of the lift, then we dropped again and Khay brought the speed up and I tilted the Hartmann-Zeiss to maximum high and pressed the button and started bringing it down by degrees as we ran in and fetched a barrage and the cabin roof took on a glare and the fuselage felt the shock and Khay half-turned his head to listen and then dismissed it, concentrating on the controls as another barrage crackled from the trees and I released the button and looked at him.