Three Kings

“Off you go, Cobber, ahead one third. Gunners ready! I don’t want to be surprised by one of those bloody Egyptian T-72s. Watch that infrared, boys, the night vision is all dodgy in this blowing sand.”

The surprise he hoped to avoid was out there, just a few hundred yards ahead, but it was not a T-72-far from it. He was about to run up on a heavy squad of Russian Marines who had just landed here in a helicopter, and he would get the surprise of his life soon after.

Chapter 27

Popski had seen the cool precision of the Russian Marines, and his opinion of the men ticked up a notch when they deployed. Zykov’s humor was well stowed, and he was all business now, seeing to the proper sighting of the squad’s machine guns. He had aBullpup on each flank, satisfied that they had good overlapping fields of fire. So Popski found Fedorov near the KA-40, and waved him away.

“You won’t want to be anywhere near that thing,” he said in a low, urgent voice. “Get over here. Quickly!”

Fedorov ran for the covered position where Popski huddled behind a large boulder. “I hope your men don’t get trigger happy,” said Popski. “We don’t know what’s in front of us yet.”

“Troyak!” Fedorov hissed. “Weapons tight. We fire only if fired upon.”

The Sergeant signaled he understood, and then passed the word to his men, though he didn’t like the order. He knew how vulnerable they were now on the ground, and he had taken everything Popski had said about the dangers of the desert to heart. The KA-40 was sitting there like a fat cow, an easy target if this was enemy armor. Like a good sonar man, he had filed away his own inner recollection of various vehicle sounds, and this one gave him a shiver. There were tanks out there, and they sounded like heavy tanks, something he had not expected he would encounter here. So now he knelt by the mortar team and waited, the tension building with every second.

The wind… it was cold and biting now, and the blowing sand seemed strangely luminescent. Troyak had a very bad feeling about it, and then he heard the higher whine of wheeled vehicles, closer, wafting over the deep growl of the tank engines. He enable the grenade launching function on his assault rifle, his finger at the ready near the trigger.

“Nobody fires a single round until I do,” he rasped. And they waited.

Reeves could see it clearly now on his infrared screen, a massive heat signature on the ground, dead ahead. “Something big out there, he said aloud, and began tuning his image to get a better picture. It looked for all the world like…

“We’ve got company. Anyone hear about a helo scheduled in tonight?”

Nobody said anything. “I didn’t think so. Well that’s one fat helicopter sitting about 300 yards out, or I’m a Leprechaun.” He was on his radio set at once, speaking through his headset microphone.

“1/12 Lancers on point. We have a helicopter on the ground out here, about seven kilometers outside the perimeter, over.”

There was some wait, and nothing came back, so he tried again.

“1/12 Lancers on point. Lieutenant Reeves reporting. Please respond, over.”

“HQ Staff. Say again, 1/12. What’s that about a helo?”

“1/12 on point, sir.” And he repeated his report, hearing a lot of talk in the background when the HQ Staff returned.

“Sorry 1/12, there’s a bit of confusion here. Bloody sand storm is thick as pea soup. Can’t see three feet here, but we copy on your helo report. Nothing scheduled. Proceed with caution and ID contact, over.”

“Copy that, HQ, advancing to point of contact. Over.”

Reeves tapped his driver on the shoulder. “Ease us on up to that contact,” he said. “Nice and slow.” He was reaching for his external megaphone to broadcast a warning. “Helicopter on the ground, please identify. This is the British Army.” His voice boomed out on the external speaker.

It was a well rehearsed procedure the unit had developed in their dealings with the locals here. They would ID themselves as British Army, which was usually enough to quell any trouble or disturbance they might come upon during a patrol. By day it didn’t matter, for their vehicles and insignia were now well known to the local Berbers. By night they used the megaphone to warn anything they came upon, and if they didn’t get a satisfactory answer he would fire a warning shot and repeat his challenge. That was usually enough to settle the matter, but this was a hair-trigger situation now with a squad of Russian Naval Marines training every weapon they possessed in his direction.

“British Army?” Popski heard the challenge and had his wits about him. “Anyone have a lantern handy?”

“In the helo,” said Fedorov, and he led their guide back to the KA-40 to fetch a beacon lantern from the side supply compartment. “Now you tell your boys to just lay low and keep cool while I flash our recognition signal.”

He stepped well away from the helo, and flashed out some light signals, simple Morse Code for L.R.D.G., the Long Range Desert Group. Anyone in the British Army should know what that meant.