The Pinky was now overloaded by any standards. Designed to carry only four or five, it currently had nine on board, one of them dead and another badly injured. The rest hung on as best they could as the driver pushed the vehicle to its limits, the Land Rover bouncing and jolting alarmingly over the rough surface.
But hanging on was the least of their worries. About five hundred yards behind them, and gaining steadily, was the remaining Algerian jeep. Its driver clearly knew the terrain, and was currently following a parallel route across the desert that looked a lot smoother. His machine-gunner would fire occasional bursts after the fleeing Land Rover, with almost no chance of finding his mark in those conditions and at that range.
Half a mile further behind, two other sets of headlights bored through the morning twilight. The three-ton trucks had not given up the chase.
‘Foxtrot November, Alpha One,’ said Dekker into his radio microphone, almost having to shout over the roar of the turbo-charged diesel and the rattling of equipment. ‘We’re heading back, with hostiles in pursuit. We’re now in one vehicle only. I say again, one vehicle only. Our estimate is minutes zero six. Get those engines started, and drop the ramp.’
‘Alpha One, roger. Call when you’re thirty seconds out, and we’ll hit the lights and start rolling.’
The Algerian jeep had closed to less than three hundred yards, and its machine-gun started up again, bullets striking the rocks around them, uncomfortably close. Though none actually hit the Land Rover, Richter guessed it was only a matter of time.
‘We’re not going to make it unless we stop those bastards,’ Dekker called out.
‘Fucking risky. If we slow down they’ll be all over us.’
‘Yes, but if we don’t they’ll catch us before we get to the plane. John, next big clump of rocks you see, dive behind it and stop. Then kill the lights.’
‘Got it, boss.’
Two minutes later the headlights picked out a handful of large boulders off to the right of their path.
‘That’ll do,’ Dekker called, and the Pinky changed course slightly to make towards them. ‘We’ll try to discourage them a bit, so use grenades.’
Richter, Dekker and two of the troopers began loading forty-millimetre grenades into their 203s. Then, on Dekker’s command, they fired them back towards the vehicle in pursuit. There was no chance of hitting it, but this sudden display of firepower might make the Algerians back off.
The driver braked hard – the vehicle had no rear lights, so the pursuers wouldn’t notice it slowing down – and slewed the Pinky around in a circle behind the rocks. He switched off the headlights as he came to a halt.
‘Dave, you take the Browning. Everyone else, spread out. Don’t fire until I give the order.’
Richter checked the magazine on his 203, found he had only four rounds left. He paused to change it, then ran over to a boulder looming by itself. He aimed the assault rifle towards the approaching jeep and waited.
The Algerian vehicle had already slowed down, and it suddenly veered off, heading away from their location. Somebody on board must have noticed that their quarry’s lights had vanished, and guessed they could be driving into a trap.
‘Fuck, these guys are good,’ Dekker muttered. ‘Dave, hit them with the Browning. Everyone else, get back in the Pinky. John, take us out of here – no lights.’
Wallace fired off several short bursts from the machine-gun, but the enemy jeep was already virtually invisible behind a rocky outcrop.
‘Grenades, go,’ Dekker ordered, and the night air filled with the sound of explosions as the Land Rover accelerated away.
They’d covered only about a quarter of a mile when Richter spotted the jeep behind them again, with its headlights switched off. The sky was lightening almost by the minute, and the Algerians had obviously seen the Land Rover get moving again. And now the visibility was good enough to enable fast driving without any lights at all.
‘How far to the Herky-bird?’ Richter inquired.
Dekker checked his GPS. ‘Around a mile and a half.’ Just then the machine-gun mounted on the pursuing jeep began firing again.
Wallace immediately stood up, grasped the Browning, and began returning fire. Meanwhile, two of the SAS soldiers loosed off with their 203s. As before, the Pinky kept bouncing around too much for accurate shooting, but their onslaught might help keep the Algerians at a suitable distance.
‘Foxtrot November, Alpha One. We’re approaching one mile. Are you ready for us?’
‘Affirmative, Alpha One. We’re turning and burning, ramp down, lights off.’
Dekker looked back to check the position of the Algerian jeep, then focused forward, searching for the C- 130. ‘There it is.’ He tapped the driver on the shoulder and pointed.
‘I see it now.’
The Land Rover swerved slightly so as to approach the Hercules from directly behind.
‘Foxtrot November, thirty seconds.’
‘Roger.’
In front of them, the cargo-bay lights of the transport aircraft suddenly flared into life, so they could see the steel ramp clearly now. They could also see the four Allison turbo-prop engines, with their propellers spinning ever faster as the pilot opened the throttles to start the seventy-ton aircraft moving across the rock-strewn surface of the desert.
Behind them, the Algerian soldiers had obviously also spotted the aircraft, and their jeep now began closing the gap. Wallace quit firing in controlled bursts and let loose an almost continuous stream of bullets at their pursuers. One or two seemed to hit the jeep, but it didn’t slow down, and still the Algerian machine-gunner kept shooting at them. More in hope than expectation, Richter aimed another three grenades at the vehicle, following those with a couple of bursts of 5.56-millimetre bullets.
‘Foxtrot November, twenty seconds,’ Dekker estimated. ‘John, better get this right or else.’
The Hercules was already accelerating away from them, its speed rising steadily. They were now looking straight at the lowered ramp, the two loadmasters standing either side of it at the top, carefully watching their approach.
‘Ten seconds.’
A long burst of fire from the pursuing vehicle raised clouds of dust just to the left of the Land Rover. The driver flinched, twitching the wheel momentarily to the right before resuming his course.
‘Five seconds.’
The Hercules was accelerating through forty knots as the Pinky hit the ramp at fifty miles an hour. Its front wheels bounced, and for a sickening moment Richter feared that the vehicle might lose so much momentum that it wouldn’t make it. But as their driver kept his foot flat on the accelerator, the four-wheel drive kicked in and the Land Rover lurched safely into the cavernous hold, slewing sideways as he hit the brakes.
Almost before it had halted, Richter could hear the whine as one of the loadmasters pressed a button to raise the ramp behind them. The aircraft instantly began accelerating faster, blowing clouds of desert dust and sand behind it.
The Algerian jeep stopped a couple of hundred yards away, to allow the machine-gunner a stable platform. He took careful aim and fired one long continuous burst straight at the rear of the departing aircraft’s fuselage.
The first bullets impacted as the ramp slammed shut, punching easily through the thin aluminium and ricocheting off anything solid in their way.
‘Get down,’ Dekker yelled, and the SAS men tumbled out of the Land Rover and threw themselves flat on the floor of the hold. The two loadmasters moved to follow their example, but one of them got caught in the leg by a couple of the bullets and screamed in agony.
Then the Hercules bounced twice and lifted into the air. Climbing swiftly away, it turned south-west, heading for the safety of the Moroccan border.
Yi Min-Ho crouched low on the rocky ledge he’d selected as his observation point, having checked that it wasn’t easily visible from either above or below. It was hardly a comfortable location, but offered an unrivalled view of the air base below him, essential to allow him to complete his mission.
