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 to the small oxygen bottles on our
belts. The loading bay lights were dim red, and had been for a while. Swallow
and I now began to buckle ourselves together into the tandem harness. It was a
good thing he was a big lad, I was basically hanging off him. Damn this rig was
awkward. We were going to fling ourselves into the Afghan airspace from four
miles up, so high that no-one on the ground could hear the plane, and Swallow
was going to do all the steering. We both made sure everything was strapped
down tight, AKs made safe, racing jockey goggles on, oxygen masks clipped
snugly. We were all wearing insulated jumpsuits made of special radar-absorbent
material.
A loadie held up a
flashcard. That was the signal. The team waddled down the fuselage to the
carrier ramp in a close file like penguins. The loadies stood around us,
holding cards which they illuminated with red orienteering torches strapped to
their heads. They presented the cards just like in playschool, in a set order
to make sure no-one had missed an item. The loadies also checked their
harnesses were attached to the webbing on either side of the fuselage. Nobody
wanted to fall out of the plane without a chute. We watched the jumpmaster.
The ramp whined
open. We shuffled forward until the team was on the edge. I could hear and see
nothing but howling blackness. The four turbines roared. Red lights went on on
the left and right of the tailgate.
‘Red on! Red on!’
everybody shouted.
The lights went
green.
‘Ready… set…GO!’
We flung ourselves
out and off the ramp.
‘Enjoy the ride,
Tel’ said Swallow in my headset. Above us, our drogue chute deployed. Around us
in the blackness, the other team members would be forming up in a loose diamond
pattern around us, watching the tiny glowfly lights on their helmets and
grabbing each others’ flightsuits to hold onto that formation. I tried to
remember the drills and kept my limbs as straight as possible in the buffeting
air. I looked down and around as the howl of the C130’s turbines faded and was
replaced by the rushing wind. Now I could see a sprawl of lights through the
clouds. Maybe Kabul. If it was, that other cluster would be Bagram to the
north. Hello, Afghanistan, here we come, I thought.
At 15,000 feet the
diamond formation separated as the team checked their altimeters. Seconds later
Swallow’s AOD went and our main chute deployed. THUMP. It was like being on the
end of a bungee. We seemed to rush to a halt in the sky and the howl of air
stopped. The harness bit into my thighs. Now we would all glide in a series of
long curves in the air, down to the landing zone. Above me, I could hear
Swallow putting on his night-vision goggles. He’d be looking for the firefly
sparks of the other team members’ infra red strobes and watching his
chest-harness GPS display, tacking left and right as we went to the little blip
of the landing zone, many miles ahead.
‘Got ‘em.’
We trailed down
through the night sky, gently forming up into a stack, Swallow and me on the
top and bringing up the rear. I tried to relax and enjoy the ride as Swallow
had said. I looked around. It was just past three in the morning local time.
The moon had just set. We had a good twenty miles to fly and it could take over
an hour, depending on the winds.
RIZ 2
THE FOX PRINCESS
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Princess-Rizwan-Sabir-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B00A29O546
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