Chris Ryan - Who Dares Wins

His camouflage gear was packed up in his metal locker. The digital camouflage was made up of tiny squares, like a pixelated image in the familiar browns, greens and khakis. Sam was relieved to pull it on.

08.50. The kit was packed and double checked. RV in the briefing room in ten minutes. As he walked across the courtyard he saw two unmarked white minibuses parked up. Craven and a couple of other guys loaded heavy flight cases into the back of one of them. Away from Credenhill you wouldn’t give these vehicles a second look. If you did, you’d probably think they were transporting a school football team. But the flight cases didn’t contain sports gear. Far from it. These were the support weapons – a light machine gun, most probably; perhaps a mortar.

Unlike last time he had been here, the corridors of the Kremlin were now buzzing with activity. There were perhaps twenty-five guys in the briefing room and there was a low murmur of voices. Not rowdy, but not subdued either. The first thing Sam did was seek out Mac. The troop sergeant was up front with Jack Whitely, a sheet of plans in front of them. When he saw Sam enter, Mac raised a hand in greeting; Sam returned the gesture, but made a point of sitting at the back. Was it just Sam, or had Mac given him a penetrating kind of look? Ordinarily he would have told himself to stop being so paranoid; but just at the moment, paranoia seemed to be the sensible option. Someone knew more about his operation than they were letting on. Someone had tipped him off by posting that letter. Was it someone currently within the confines of RAF Credenhill?

09.00 precisely. Whitely did a head count. ‘All right,’ he said with brisk, military authority. The buzz of conversation immediately died down. ‘Looks like you all made it out of bed. Transport leaves in twenty minutes. No further briefing till you reach your forward mount position. Let’s get moving.’

The sound of scraping chairs as everyone in the room stood up. Sam led the way, walking decisively to his bunk to pick up the gear, then heading to where the buses were parked up. On the tarmac several hessian sleeves were laid out. Sam was the first to place his Diemaco on the sleeve – the others behind him did the same. When there were enough weapons on the hessian, it would be tied up into a bundle ready for transportation. Sam left it for someone else to do that, though. Next to the weapons bundles were the parachute rigs, straight from the para store – chutes, oxygen, goggles, helmets, straps. Sam had done enough high-altitude jumps in his time, but you never got blasé about making them and he felt a little surge – somewhere between apprehension and excitement – at the sight of the gear. He placed his tightly packed bergen in a pile ready to be loaded, and was first into one of the buses, taking a seat up front.

Tyler sat next to him. ‘Nothing like an away break,’ he commented as he settled into his seat.

‘Yeah,’ Sam replied, looking over his shoulder to see that the bus was full and the back doors were being secured. No sign of Mac. He must have got into a different bus.

‘Yeah,’ he repeated, his voice a bit distant. ‘Nothing like.’

Brize Norton. 12.00.

As they arrived, it was clear that the squadron was coinciding with another movement of troops. The airbase was full of soldiers. Soldiers leaving, soldiers coming back. Sam watched them from the window of the white van as it drove up to the bland terminal building. Some of them would have just landed in the UK for their R and R package in the middle of their tours. They were the ones with smiles on their faces. The glum, serious-looking ones would be returning by the same flight, most likely to one of the war zones of the Middle East. Kandahar, maybe, or Baghdad. No wonder they looked so fed up.

The squadron’s convoy of white vans pulled up outside the terminal and the men de-bussed. Once they were all out, the vans drove away. They would be approaching the special forces jet that was flying them to Bagram so that the gear could be swiftly loaded without having to go through the regular check-in process. Like a swarm of camouflaged bees, the Regiment men headed into the terminal. From the looks they were attracting from the uniformed squaddies all around, it was clear that everyone could tell they were not regular soldiers. And it was true: there was an aloofness about the SAS guys. Everyone in that echoing terminal building was on the same side, but that didn’t prevent a feeling of ‘them and us’. Sam just kept his eyes front and ignored the looks he was getting. The sooner they got on the flight to Bagram, he thought to himself, the better.

He queued to check in behind Craven, Tyler and another air troop member, a hard-nut little Scot called Cullen. Nobody knew his first name, or if they did they had long forgotten it, because Cullen was the only name he answered to. Cullen curtly answered the routine questions of the RAF soldier at the check-in desk before flashing his military ID and moving through to the lounge. Craven and Tyler did the same as Sam fished into his pocket for his own ID. It was a small, battered card, about the size of a driving licence, with a grainy, somewhat out-of-date picture of Sam and the few details that were deemed necessary for someone in his line of work. Name: Redman, Sam. Rank: Sergeant. Blood Group: AB. Religion: C of E. Sam snorted slightly as he read it for the millionth time. If he came home in a body bag they could say whatever prayers they liked. It made no difference to him.

There weren’t many people in the departure lounge, but they were all in camouflage gear, idling on the uncomfortable chairs and staring up at the departure screens and televisions dotted around the place. Out of one of the windows Sam saw pallets of cargo being loaded into the belly of an aging Tristar. That elderly war horse of an aircraft was for the regular troops or for their supplies. The Regiment guys knew they could expect something else – a C-17 – manned by special forces crew; but until its departure was announced, Sam would be staying here. He bought scalding hot, tasteless coffee in a plastic cup from a machine and stared blankly up at a news programme on one of the television screens. The hawk-like face of the Russian prime minister beamed the smile of a politician.

Sam found a deserted corner of the lounge and settled down to wait.

The cabin smelt of that mixture of grubby upholstery and air conditioning that clings to aircraft the world over; the engines were already humming. The squadron spread themselves out – there was plenty of room to do so. Almost immediately several of the guys started pulling hammocks from their bags and pinning them to the side of the cabin. Once take-off had been completed, they would knock back a sleeping pill and use the seven-hour flight to get some shut-eye. Along one side of the cabin there was a double line of stretcher beds. The first time Sam had ever been on a military flight – years ago, now – the sight of these beds had been more than a little unnerving. Now they were just part of the furniture, despite the fact that he’d seen plenty of guys unconscious, dripped up and full of morphine on those things. Some of them had survived; some of them hadn’t. You didn’t think of the ones who never made it when you were preparing to go out into the field. Do that and you’d never go anywhere, or do anything.

He chose a window seat over the wing and buckled himself in as soon as he sat down. He turned to look out of the window, but almost immediately he became aware of somebody taking a place in his row of seats. Sam turned to look. It was Mac. His friend was eyeing him a little suspiciously.

‘You all right?’ he asked.

Sam sniffed and looked away. ‘Course,’ he replied, aware how disagreeable he sounded. ‘Shouldn’t I be?’