The Sixteen by John Urwin

Author:John Urwin [John Urwin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784183073
Publisher: John Blake Publishing
Published: 2014-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

PART 2

OPERATION PINPRICK

As usual, we travelled looking as much like the locals as possible, dressed in jeans, a shirt and boots, I also wore an old combat-style jerkin. The only things we carried apart from our sashes were our boot-knives.

‘Here, Geordie, you come from Newcastle!’ Dynamo said, mimicking my accent as he threw what looked like a black-and-white checked tablecloth towards me. It was a large fringed scarf, of the type worn by men in the Lebanon, which would help to cover up the best part of my face.

‘Before we go anywhere we’ll have to get to work on Blue Eyes here!’ he said to the others.

I’d noticed when I’d arrived the previous day that they’d all allowed a few days beard to grow and looked a bit scruffy, obviously in readiness for this mission, whereas I was clean shaven. This, of course, was a requirement of the regular army where special permission had to be obtained in order to grow a beard, but already they looked pretty much like natives and by comparison, I thought I looked like a mannequin in a tailor’s shop window.

They quickly set to work changing my appearance and although I was fairly deeply tanned by this time, they darkened my skin even more by applying some kind of cream, which to me resembled ‘gun blue’, in order to make me look as though I had a ‘blue’ beard or seven o’clock shadow (now called designer stubble). Another cream mixed with a black powder was applied to my hair, which made it very black and shiny and caused my scalp to feel incredibly itchy. Spot told me that all of this would wash off fairly easily and I noticed that when I scratched my scalp the colour rubbed off onto my fingers.

‘Make sure you don’t get wet, Geordie, we don’t want your make-up to run, now do we?’ Chalky joked.

By 0215, we were all ready, fully kitted out with our weapons, rope harnesses and ‘dog-clips’ attached. Spot glanced at his watch and went outside to watch for the hack. At about 0225, we heard the noise of it approaching but, as it was still dark, we couldn’t see anything yet. Chalky, Dynamo and I quickly followed Spot outside, taking the hurricane lamps from inside the hut to put out in a square as a landing guide.

Suddenly, the helicopter seemed to be right on top of us, and its black outline looked huge to me as it hovered deafeningly above us for a brief moment. The downdraught from its blades sent choking clouds of dust flying, which knocked over the hurricane lamps.

As he prepared to land the pilot switched on a spotlight and, blinded by both it and the thick swirling dust, we stumbled around grabbing up the lamps, then quickly extinguished them before throwing them into the hut. I could barely see a thing and the noise was unbelievable.

Bent double, I dashed forward to the helicopter and scrambled on board just as the thing started to leave the ground – the noise was deafening.

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