Crisis Four by Andy McNab Read Free Book Online

by holding the hanging loop in his mouth.
    It wasn’t a tactical move to the wagons, it was a case of getting out of there as fast as we could, bearing in mind the weight of the casualty and his comfort. I didn’t know what was going on behind me, back at the target area, and I didn’t really care.
    We reached the vehicles about thirty minutes later. I grabbed Sarah and took her to one side. There was no point getting involved in what these blokes were doing; we were just passengers. That wasn’t good enough for Sarah. ‘Come on,’ she hissed, ‘why aren’t we moving yet?’
    I pointed at the rear Previa. They had got the back door open and were pulling the seats down to create a flat space for Glen. Looking beyond them I noticed that the town was still dark. I was right, the industrial units must have had emergency power.
    The driver of our vehicle retrieved the key, opened the door and motioned us inside. Another of the team got in the front. He leaned back towards us. ‘As soon as they’re ready we’re going to move to the ERV (Emergency Rendezvous).’
    We were sitting in darkness, the driver with his NVGs on. There was tension in the air; we needed to get going. If not, it wouldn’t just be Glen who’d be in the shit. I didn’t talk to Sarah; I didn’t even look at her.
    At last, the other vehicle started to move off slowly and ours manoeuvred in front of it and took the lead. It wasn’t long before we hit the metalled road. Behind us headlights came on, and Sarah took this as her cue to get out her laptop. A few seconds later she was going shit or bust on the keyboard. The screen glowed in the darkness, lighting up her sweaty, dirty face. My eyes moved to the maps, diagrams and Arabic script in front of her, none of which meant anything to me, and then down at her well-manicured fingers which were tapping away furiously on the keys and smearing them with Glen’s blood.
    We drove like men possessed for twenty minutes. Then, after an NVG drive into the desert with IR filters on the wagons’ lights for another ten, we stopped.
    Apart from the engine gently ticking over and the noise of Sarah’s fingers hitting the keys and her mumbling the Arab script she was reading, there was silence. A beeping noise came from the laptop. She muttered, ‘Fuck it!’ Her battery was running out.
    There were shouts from the other Previa. Somebody was working hard on Glen, yelling at him, trying to get a response. Silence was obviously out of the question now. It’s hard to be quiet when you’re fighting to keep a man alive.
    The driver looked at his watch after about five minutes. He opened the door and shouted, ‘Lights!’ then started to flash the wagon’s IR light between dipped and full beam as he hit the Firefly and stuck it out of the window. Even as this was being said, I started to hear a throbbing noise in the distance, and less than a minute later the sky was filled with the steady, ponderous beat of an incoming Chinook. The noise became deafening and stones clattered against the windscreen and bodywork as the Previa rocked under the downwash from the rotor blades. The pilot wouldn’t be able to see the vehicles or the ground now due to all the sand and crap his rotors were throwing up.
    A few seconds later a figure loomed out of the dust storm, bent double, his flying suit whipping around him. He flashed a red light at us and the driver shouted, ‘That’s it, let’s go.’
    Our vehicle edged forwards. We drove for several yards into the maelstrom of wind and dust before things started to calm down. Red and white Cyalume sticks glowed around the open ramp and the interior was bathed in red light. Three loadies wearing shoulder holsters, body armour and helmets with the visors down were beckoning to us urgently with a Cyalume stick in each hand. As if we needed any encouragement.
    Our Previa bumped up the ramp as if we were driving onto a cross-Channel ferry, and one of the loadies signalled us to a