Fire Force(46)
‘What the hell’s that?’ asked Nick.
‘Batota is a high country - the greater part of it is over two thousand feet above sea level - and it’s hot as well, so most of it is unsuitable for conventional military helicopters,’ Chris explained. ‘But in the mid-sixties, a French company called Société Turboméca started developing small gas-chamber engines that would work in a chopper. You could use them even at these altitudes and temperatures. Once the Batotean Army got hold of some Alouette choppers fitted with the new type of engines, they were in business. The Fireforce units consisted of four or five men. They’d be on standby waiting for a guerrilla attack, or any intelligence on the location of the rebels, then they’d scramble into action, come blasting in with the chopper, and inflict some heavy casualties on the enemy. The Fireforce boys scored more kills than any other unit of the Batotean Army.’
Steve was looking at him closely. ‘You’re saying we come in by chopper?’
Chris took a sharp intake of breath. ‘We kit out the right kind of machine, so there’s room for the men and at least one machine gun. But there’s no point in trying to parachute down into the fort - they’ll just shoot us to pieces. Instead, we take advantage of the fact that, at these altitudes, a chopper can drop very fast out of the sky. We come in high, then drop down suddenly to about thirty feet over the parade ground. We roll out ropes, and scale right down into the centre of the fort, our guns blazing on automatic . . .’
‘Chopper and boat,’ Ollie interrupted. He stood up and walked towards the map, tapping it with his finger. ‘Chris is right about the Fireforce units. Nobody knew better how to fight in this kind of territory than they did, and we should use the same tactics.’
He pointed to the lake. ‘The fort’s other vulnerability is its proximity to the water. We’ve already bought ourselves a KPV and that’s one of the most lethal machine guns ever built. We strap it to the front of a boat, and come in close from behind, with the engines switched off so we can’t be heard. We stay in constant radio communication with the chopper . . .’
He paused, looking around the room, the plan forming in his mind as he spoke.
‘Five men in the air, and five in the boat. The boat opens up first, laying down a barrage of fire into their arses. While the boys in the fort are running around trying to find out what the hell is happening, the chopper drops out of the sky, four guys jump out and let them have it hard, straight into their backs.’
Ollie punched his fists together. ‘They’ll be dead before they know what’s hit them.’
Steve nodded, listening to every word. Maximum speed, maximum aggression, the motto of the Regiment. It was the way he’d always fought, the way he liked to fight. ‘It might just work,’ he muttered.
And even as he spoke, he knew he was reflecting the views of every man in the room.
None of them minded risking their lives so long as they had a plan they believed in and which gave them a chance of getting out alive.
‘What about Tshaka?’ demanded Wallace. ‘How will you get him out alive? It’s going to be like a slaughterhouse in there.’
‘He’s the commander,’ said Ollie. ‘He’ll stay inside the officer’s mess, and once we’ve dealt with his men, we can bring him out and get away in the chopper.’
‘You can’t be certain. He might be killed—’
‘It’s a battlefield,’ said Ollie with a shrug. ‘Nothing’s ever certain. There’s no way of capturing this man without a risk of him being killed.’
Wallace lit his cigar with a greasy lighter that smelled of fuel. ‘To the Fire Force then,’ he said, blowing a plume of smoke up into the air. ‘And may God be on your side. Because you’re bloody well going to need all the help you can get.’
Nineteen
STEVE CAST HIS EYES OVER the machine. The Alouette III was a stubby little helicopter with a thick, bulbous nose and a short tail - a design that made it perfect for high-altitude flying. It was fitted with an Astazou XIV engine, designed to perform even in intense heat, and although it was built to run on jet fuel, if you ran out of that, it would run on petrol as well. In an emergency, you could even get it into the air using diesel. Like the men inside it, it could live off the land. Which was what made it right for the job.
At Steve’s side, Chris was running his hands along the exterior of the chopper. He’d never piloted one himself, but he’d spent plenty of time in the back of an Alouette: the South African Air Force had bought dozens of them. Steve was used to the machine as well. The Pakistani Air Force used them to patrol the al-Queda-controlled wild, mountainous borderlands between their own country and Afghanistan, and back in the Regiment he’d been on joint missions with them. It wasn’t the most modern chopper in the world - the first Alouette had been designed in 1959, and the III first came into service in 1970 - but it had been used in countless combat zones and to Steve that meant it was reliable, tested and rugged.