The Fist of God

The two corporals got the task of obtaining and checking all the remaining stores that would be needed.

These included four sets of clothing, four big Bergen rucksacks, water bottles, helmets, belts, weapons, HVCs—the high-value con

centrates, which would be all there was to eat—ammunition, first-aid kits ...

the list went on and on. Each man would be carrying eighty pounds in those Bergens and might need every ounce of them.

Fitters and mechanics worked on the Hercules itself in a designated hangar, overhauling the engines and servicing every moving part.

The squadron commander nominated his best aircrew, whose navigator accompanied Colonel Craig back to the Black Hole to select a suitable drop zone, the all-important DZ.

Martin himself was taken in hand by six technicians, four American and two British, and introduced to the gizmos he would have to operate to find the target, locate it to within a few square yards, and relay the information back to Riyadh.

When he had finished, his various devices were security-packed against accidental breakage and taken across to the hangar, where the mountain of gear for the four men grew and grew. For extra safety, there were two of each of the scientific devices, adding again to the weight the men would carry.

Martin himself went to join the planners in the Black Hole. They were bent over a large table strewn with fresh pictures taken by another TR-1 that morning just after dawn. The weather had been clear, and the photos showed every nook and crevice of the Jebal al Hamreen.

“We assume,” said Colonel Craig, “that this damn gun must be pointing south to southeast. The best observation point would therefore seem to be here.”

He indicated a series of crevices in the side of a mountain to the south of the presumed Fortress, the hill in the center of the group within the square kilometer that had been designated by the late Colonel Osman Badri.

“As for a DZ, there’s a small valley here, about forty kilometers south. ... You can see the water glinting in a wee stream running down the valley.”

Martin looked. It was a tiny depression in the hills, 500 yards long and about 100 wide, with grassy banks strewn with rocks, and the rill trickling its winter water along the bottom of the dip.

“It’s the best?” asked Martin.

Colonel Craig shrugged. “Frankly, it’s about all you’ve got. The next is seventy kilometers from the target. Get any closer, and they could see you land.”

On the map, in daylight, it would be a cinch; in pitch darkness, plunging through freezing air at 120 miles per hour, it would be easy to miss. There would be no lights to guide them, no flares on the ground. From blackness into blackness.

“I’ll take it,” he said. The RAF navigator straightened up.

“Right, I’ll get going.”

The navigator would have a busy afternoon. It would be his job to find the way without lights and across a moonless sky not to the drop zone but to a point in space from which, bearing in mind wind drift, four falling bodies could leave his aircraft to find that tiny valley. Even falling bodies drift downwind; his job would be to estimate how much.

It was not until the hour of dusk that all the men met again in the hangar, now banned to everyone else on the base. The Hercules stood ready, fueled. Beneath one wing was the mound of gear the four men would need. Dawlish, the RAF jump instructor, had repacked every one of the eight forty-eight-pound chutes as if he would be using them himself. Stephenson was satisfied.

In one corner was a large briefing table. Martin, who had brought enlarged photographs from the Black Hole with him, took Stephenson, Eastman, and North over to the table to work out their route from the DZ to those crevices where they intended to hole up and study the Fortress for however long it took. It looked like two nights of hard march, resting in place in the intervening day. There could be no question of marching in daylight, and the route could not be direct.

Finally each man packed his Bergen from the bottom up, the last item being the belt order, a heavy webbing belt with numerous pockets that would be unpacked after landing and worn round the waist.

American hamburgers and sodas were brought from the commissary at sundown, and the four men rested until takeoff. This was scheduled for 9:45, aiming for a drop at 11:30P.M.

Martin always thought the waiting was worst; after the frantic activity of the day, it was like a long anticlimax. There was nothing to concentrate on but the tension, the constant nagging thought that, despite all the checks and double-checks, something vital had been forgotten. It was the period when some men ate, or read, or wrote home, or dozed, or just went to the lavatory and emptied themselves.

At nine a tractor towed the Hercules out onto the apron, and the crew of pilot, copilot, navigator, and flight engineer began their engine run-up checks. Twenty minutes later, a black-windowed bus entered the hangar to take the men and their gear to the drop plane, waiting with rear doors open and ramp down.

The two PJIs were ready for them, with the loadmaster and chute rigger. Only seven walked up the ramp on foot and into the vast cavern of the Here. The ramp came up, and the doors closed. The rigger had gone back to the bus; he would not fly with them.

With the PJIs and the loadmaster, the four soldiers strapped themselves to the seats along the wall and waited. At 9:44P.M. the Hercules lifted off from Riyadh and turned her blunt nose to the north.

While the RAF plane rose into the night sky on February 21, an American helicopter was asked to stay to one side before coming in to settle close to the American sector of the air base.

It had been sent to Al Kharz to pick up two men. Steve Turner, the squadron commander of the 336th Tactical Fighter Squadron, had been summoned to Riyadh on the orders of General Buster Glosson.

With him, as ordered, he brought the man he considered his best pilot for low-level ground-attack sorties.