Boat Troop by Johnny "Two Combs" Howard

Author:Johnny "Two Combs" Howard [Howard, Johnny "Two Combs"]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McBooks Press
Published: 2022-04-18T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

Sitrep A: 12/5/82 17.30 hrs: B: Delta Two Four: C: Pebble Island installation not, repeat not radar: D: aircraft facility offensive: E: Support troops battalion plus.

The recce team from B Squadron were parachuted into the sea, picked up by Rigid Raiders from a patrolling frigate, which immediately closed on Hermes. What followed was really hairy, being winched over a heaving sea, singly, by crossdeck jackstay. It didn’t matter what the Chief Petty Officer strapping them in said: there was no way anyone felt safe suspended between two heaving ships on a single cable.

Once aboard the command carrier, they were given another briefing. Not that it added much to the sum of knowledge. The Green Slime officer from Fearless was waiting with some pretty indistinct aerial shots of the place they were slated to land.

The task had already been discussed, both in Hereford and on the way down, with only the method of entry left to be decided. So the actual final briefing was short. Above their heads, on the top deck, explosives were being packed into the floor of a Sea King, stripped of everything that was superfluous to save weight. They had their transport. The only problem was the weather.

This was a one-way trip. The heli didn’t have the range to get to the mainland and back again. So any heavy headwind cut into their ability to run the distance. The patrol was tasked to go in on the ground, collect the information that the rest of the squadron needed about the Rio Grande air base, Satcom it back to Hereford and then be there to assist when the assault went in. They were under no circumstances to be captured. And if the Sea King looked as though it might fall into enemy hands, it was to be destroyed. Thinking about that, as they sat around waiting for two days, did nothing to engender a jolly mood. But there were other factors to add extra worries.

The officer leading them, the Air Troop commander Captain Ralph Heering, was not the most popular Rupert in the world. For a start he was Blues and Royals, the Household cavalry: skinny, elegant and as stiff as a board. He wasn’t a talker, easy communication being beyond him. And he had an annoying habit of looking at anyone who asked him a question as though the speaker had committed some terrible mistake. His answer, when it came, only reinforced this. It was delivered in a voice that sounded as though he was straining at the arse.

The sergeant for the operation was Lofty Glynn, a six-foot-four bruiser from the slums of Salford, who never stopped asking Ruperts what they were up to, on the very good grounds that he suspected they rarely knew. Lofty had won a DCM in Dofhar, which he thought gave him great moral authority. What it did give him was battle experience. His main interest was in gardening. Not the Kew variety, which might have interested Heering, but in the produce from his allotment.

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