Read Online Danger Close by Charlie Flowers - Free Book Online

protective taping. We both dropped to one knee and tuned into our surroundings.
    Immediately in front of us the rest of the team had landed in puffs of dust, their packs thudding in ahead of them, and they’d done the drills we had. Their chutes and lines were gathered in and they were facing outwards in a loose semi-circle. And now we waited, waited for the night air to envelop us and ambient noises to return. Nothing.
    After five long minutes had passed Swallow and Dinger made slow hand signals and we gathered on them. They took fixes of our position on their GPS sets. We took off our flightsuits and laid them in a pile along with the parachute rigs, headgear, goggles, and oxygen masks, and stashed them in a dry culvert nearby. Swallow and Dinger got some brushwood, piled it on, and then laid down something extra we’d brought with us. Desert camouflage netting liberally dressed with local thorns and leaves over it, that the team had spent a day or two making and painting back at Credenhill. We fussed with it for several minutes then stepped back and checked. Invisible for now. Eventually, the gear would be discovered by an ISAF sweep, but that would be after the event. We walked one hundred metres away, regrouped, and took the time to check each other over. We were all dressed Taliban-style, with turbans and scarves to conceal our faces. We looked at each others’ beltkits and I was shown the first aid pack. We then checked our AKs again and moved out north, beginning the walk to the cache, Bagram, and then our attack point.
    After an hour’s slow, careful march Swallow held up his hand and we stopped and all dropped to one knee. The team leaders checked with their NVGs, sweeping slowly from left to right.
    Before us, like a pale ghost in the pre-dawn gloom, was the hull of the wrecked car we had viewed from the overheads. Swallow came and murmured in my ear ‘we dig the packets in now, under the car’, and then went and muttered the same in Dinger’s ear. We edged forward to the car body and began digging with two entrenching tools. After ten minutes we had a good hide - hole and they placed my two kitbags inside and covered them with earth. But not before Dinger placed a two - kilo PETN explosive charge on top of them and hooked a tripwire into the nearest tyre with some fishing line and hook attached to a ringpull-fuze.
    Dinger looked at me and nodded downwards. He had my attention. Any random person investigating this cache would be blown into the stratosphere, and with the amount of unexploded ordnance lying around the Afghan countryside, it would fade into the background.
    Swallow took another GPS fix, then took a reading on his Silva compass to be sure and gripped my shoulder. He spoke quietly in my ear again. ‘The cache is 2,110 metres south east of Bagram airbase’s southern fence line corner, heading 2755.5 mils… which is 155 degrees, that’s one-five-five degrees. I’ve already reversed it for you. When you break out, get a fix, and tab two klicks and a bit south-south east.’
    I nodded. We moved out again. Every now and again I turned and walked backwards, to look the way we’d come, burning the terrain into my memory as much as I could. The sky was beginning to lighten in the east.
    We walked slowly and carefully north alongside irrigation ditches for half an hour. All I could smell was the pervasive stink from the ditches. Ahead of us was a bright glow on the horizon that became a brightly-lit fence line in the distance. An airport, no less. As we watched, a plane came in to land, blacked-out and silhouetted against the base lights.
    Swallow spoke. ‘The Emerald City, lads. Here we are.’
    He looked at me.‘Now we start the attack on the Septics, mate. OK, stay low, here we go.’
    We jogged towards the target until we were roughly three hundred metres away. Close enough to cause a ruckus, not too close to trigger alarms.
    I handed my AK to Swallow and hit the ground. I knew what was about