Danger Close by Charlie Flowers Page A

Army never, ever, let you forget where you were from. Could have been worse though. Could have been Royal Signals.
    ‘OK Tel, come over here and have a look at the maps.’
    We pulled our comms leads behind us and inched inwards to a set of aluminium cases with large-scale maps spread on them. We gathered round.
    Swallow was OC for this mission. This was an SAS Revolutionary Warfare Wing gig. I recognised the two other guys. Dinger and Briney. They were from Twenty-Four (Air) Troop, G Squadron, also known as Lonsdale Troop for their tendency to fight amongst themselves. Both had black hair, seasonal tans, and nobody had shaved for several days. Blending in. Briney was wrapping two sets of NVGs in foam cut from a mattress, to cushion them and prevent breakages. I knew that these NVGs would have been bought in Peshawar or taken from captured insurgents’ inventories.
    ‘Guys. Listen in. The mission is to get Rizwan here to the perimeter of Bagram airbase. The mission… is to get Rizwan here to the perimeter of Bagram airbase.’
    In Britarmylese, you always stated the mission twice.
    ‘Here’s how we do it. We traverse ISAF airspace as a normal RAF scheduled flight. Southeast of Bagram we climb to oxygen level. One piece of luck is that Bagram’s aerostat, or the big Yank balloon with cameras to you and me, is down for repairs this week. We bang out at 25,000 on a standard HAHO profile and track in. Our DZ is… here…’
    He indicated a point on the map and rattled off the lat and long. ‘We stash our kit, raghead up, tab northwest and lay in Riz’s cache… here…’
    He pointed to an overhead blown-up photo of what looked to be a burnt-out car. ‘Then we move again. Two clicks from the Bagram fenceline. We brass up that fenceline and bug out. Riz stays.’
    He looked at me.‘And good luck with that one, Riz.’
    In my headset the whole team started laughing.
    ‘OK weather over the target area tomorrow.’ Swallow consulted a printout. ‘Visibility good, light cloud cover, wind speed 6 kph direction west north west. Humidity 74, night time temp 13 degrees C. Moon sets at 02.53 local. And that’s when we bang out. Sunrise is at 05.15 local. That gives us an hour to glide down to the DZ and then an hour to get on target and get the attack on.’
    Swallow spoke again. He was speaking to me alone. ‘Go get her, Riz. We all miss her. Bang-Bang was a funny girl. OK. Listen in. I’ve been to Bagram. I’ve walked the perimeter. There are two Bagrams. South Bagram is super-organised, ISAF and US Air Force, you get me?’
    I got him.
    ‘Exactly. But North Bagram is total chaos. It’s meant to be run by the Afghan Security Forces…it’s a madhouse. If your fiancée is in it, she’s probably running it as we speak.’
    Another voice came in. Briney. ‘Her mate punched me. That mad bird with broken teeth.’
    I snapped my head right. ‘Hello Briney. That was Fuzz.’
    A wave back. ‘Awight Tel. That bird’s got a punch on her.’
    Swallow click-clicked the pressel to clear the channel.
    ‘OK lads. Let’s get Terry here trained up on tandem-rigging.’
    He looked at me. ‘Don’t worry mate, doesn’t take more than twenty minutes. And it’s, oh, about four hours to Cyprus. And another four hours from there to Afghan.’

 
     
    12
     
    27th September
     
    ‘Final drills. Check weapons. Check air. Aircrew. How long, guys?’
    Swallow was speaking in our earpieces. We’d climbed to 24,000 feet and gone to oxygen masks an hour ago as we passed 10,000. And we were still climbing, high above the clouds and out of sight and earshot from anybody on the ground. We were all on pure oxygen from the machine on the pallet as we waited. Breathing pure oxy was to reduce the risk from “the bends”, or nitrogen bubbles forming in the blood, as we climbed to drop altitude.
    Aircrew replied in our earpieces in scratchy tones. ‘Twenty minutes. Go to carried air.’
    We unplugged ourselves from the pallet and switched