Chris Ryan by The One That Got Away Page A

couldn't get through to base within the next few hours, we would have serious problems. For the moment I didn't say anything. Instead, I went back and sat down beside Vince. When I told him what the others were planning, his eyes bugged out like a frog's. Contact!53 Then, after half an hour, I decided, `Ah, bollocks. We can't do this.' So I went back round the corner and told Andy it wasn't on. 'If there's something big there,' I told him, 'we're going to end up in the shit. Especially if that chopper doesn't come and get us. We're banking everything on that. If we can't raise base on the radio, or the heli can't get in, we're going to be screwed. Judging from what's hap�pened so far, our comms are screwed anyway, so we're not going to get through.' Dinger said, 'Yeah � you're probably right. We'll cancel that one.' `And besides,' I told him, 'it isn't our mission to go and take out an AA position. Our mission's here, in the OP. Ifwe can't stay here, we'd better go back.' The others continued to fart around, and it wasn't until 1400 that they decided to drop the idea of attacking the AA site and go for a relocation. Having spent hours encoding a long message about the plan, they began to make up a new signal. But we still couldn't get through on the radio; by then the ionosphere had dropped, and contact was impossible. We also tried using our Satcom telephone. We didn't want to speak for long on it, because we'd been told that it threw off an enormous electronic splash, and that any call which lasted more than twenty seconds was liable to be picked up by direction-finding apparatus. So we switched the set to listening-wait, hoping to hear a call from base. Then occa�sionally we would come up on the call-sign with a quick request for a comms check: 'Hello Zero Alpha, this is Bravo Two Zero, radio check, over' � but nothing happened. It looked as though we were going to have to rely on our Lost Comms procedure. That would mean pulling back down the wadi to the drop-off point, and being there when the chopper came in at midnight. Naturally we hoped that it would lift us out to somewhere more favourable, but, more likely, it would bring us a new radio: the CO would be advised that our set had gone U/S, and he would naturally want us to continue our mission. Either way, after dark the whole patrol was going to move back, and we sat there think�ing what a pain in the arse it would be to walk that distance 54The One That Got Away humping our kit, and then hump it all the way back, just to pick up a new radio. We weren't looking forward to making the effort. Then, about four in the afternoon, everything went to rat-shit. Once again we heard the herder boy calling his bloody goats. This time he sounded closer, and coming directly for us. I'd been talking to Andy and Dinger about the radio, and I was under the overhang when the boy started shouting, from a point directly above my head, but some way out behind me. The three of us lay rigidly still � but when I looked across at Vince, on the other side of the rock, he was craning his head to see if he could spot the boy. Mouthing at him furiously, and giving tiny, frantic movements of our fingers, we tried to make him keep his head down. If we'd all stayed still, we might have been OK. Nine times out of ten, if hidden people don't move, they get away with it. What betrays them is shape, shadow, shine, and above all movement. It's the same with birds and animals in a wood: as long as they keep still, you don't see them, but the instant one moves, that's it. It was Vince who moved. At the time he didn't admit it, but later he came clean. Overcome by the temptation to see what was happening, he eased his head up until the boy caught sight of him. At the time we weren't sure what had happened. All we knew was that the shouting stopped. There was no particu�lar cry of alarm, but the sudden silence itself was ominous. It was pretty obvious that the boy had run off. I crawled round