The Tango Briefing (q-5) by Adam Hall

Author:Adam Hall [Hall, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: love_contemporary

21°.

Now go down, go down and drink. And open up.

Tango.

Tango receiving.

I want to confirm that I am in fact in the target area.

You've seen the plane?

No. But I've sighted a rock. It should be the shale outcrop. According to the RAF people there's no other rock visible within seven miles of the objective and even on dead-reckoning Chirac couldn't have dropped me so wide.

He considered.

I would agree. How far away are you?

It's difficult to tell because the air's so clear. I'd say about two miles: it looks like one but I've doubled it.

What bearing is it?

Twenty-one degrees.

He was looking at the photograph and its annotations.

Then you should find the aeroplane almost directly in your path when you head for the outcrop. Its bearing from there is two hundred degrees.

I'll make my heading twenty. Change frequency?

Yes, to 7 MHz. Please repeat.

I repeated and asked for twin-synchro and we ended.

Then I did what I knew I would do: I went to the top of the dune and put up the Zeiss and looked again at the distant tip of rock. My life had depended on sighting this single landmark, and I wanted to be sure I hadn't dreamed up a mirage.

Their mass had been thrust upwards from the earth's crust to leave them standing reared and angular against the sky, their strata sloping at twenty or so degrees from the horizontal and their base littered with brittle fragments that had broken off. In several places a whole shoulder of rock had foundered, making an angled arch and giving shade, and under one of these I made my camp.

The flooring was the canopy of the supply 'chute and the roof was provided by my own, propped and draped with the help of the telescopic tubing that was part of the survival gear.

Lizards had run from the area of shade, skittering so fast across the sand that they seemed to float on its surface. I watched them, encouraged by the evidence of life in this region where I'd thought that nothing could hope to live.

For an hour I slept, in the heat of the noon. The distance had been nearer two miles than one and I'd had to make two trips, each time bringing a parachute and half the gear and provisions: four hours' work including rests in the shade of the rocks before I set up camp. Earlier, even when it had been cooler, this degree of effort would have been beyond me: it had been the sight of the tip of rock, the knowledge that it was there, that had given me the strength.

At 12.34 hours I made a signal.

He had to be told, before I decided what kind of effort was needed. Effort used up water and it used it up very fast. He had to be told, although there wasn't much he could do about it. The first thing was to get him to believe it.

Can I have that bearing again, from the rocks to the freighter?

Two hundred.

I checked the compass.

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