Bravo two zero by Andy McNab Page A

you soon" and "Hope it all goes well."
        The aircrew came round for a final quick chat in their body armor, and we climbed aboard.
        Nobody flies Club Class in a Chinook. The interior was spartan, a bare hull with plastic coating over the frame. There were no seats, just nonslip flooring to sit on. The deck was littered with sand and grease.
        A large inboard tank had been fitted to allow us to carry extra fuel.
        The stink of aviation fuel and engines was overpowering, even at the back near the ramp. It was like sitting in an oven. The loadies kept the top half of the tailgate down to circulate air.
        The engines sparked up, coughing fearsome clouds of fumes to the rear.
        From our position on the ramp we saw blokes dropping their kecks and mooning in the heat haze, and the Spandau Ballet gang were giving it some again. As the Chinook lifted, its downwash created a major sandstorm. By the time the dust had settled we had reached a hundred feet, and soon all we could see were the flashing headlights of the pinkies.
        It was hot and I started to sweat and stink. I felt tired, mentally as well as physically. So many things were running through my mind. The infiltration worried me because we had no control over it: we'd just have to sit there and hope for the best. I've never liked it when my life was in somebody else's hands. There were Roland antiaircraft missiles along our route, and the bigger the machine, the bigger the chance of getting shot down. Chinooks are massive. There was also the added risk of getting hosed down by our own aircraft, since we were going in with the cover of three air raids.
        I looked forward to getting on the ground, however. It felt good to be in command of such a classic SAS task. Everybody hopes for a major war once in his life, and this was mine, accompanied by a gang that the rest of the squadron was already calling the Foreign Legion.
        The berg ens were strapped down to stop them flying through the air and landing on top of us if the pilot had to take evasive action or crashed.
        Just before last light, the loadies cracked cyalume sticks and put them around the kit so we could see where it was, mainly to prevent injury.
        The sticks are like the ones kids buy at fun fairs-a plastic tube that you bend to crack the glass phials inside and bring two chemicals together to make a luminous mixture.
        I put on a pair of headsets and talked to the pilot while the rest of the blokes rooted through all the R.A.F kit, sorting out the crew's sandwiches, chocolate, and bottles of mineral water.
        We had a brief recap on the landing scenarios. If we came into a contact as we landed, we should stay on the aircraft. If we were getting off the aircraft, we should jump back on. But if the heli had already taken off and we had a contact, the Simplex radio gave us about a range of a mile to talk to him and summon him back.
        "I'll just turn the aircraft and come screaming back in," he said, "and you just get on it however you can, fuck all the kit."
        The R.A.F are sometimes thought of as glorified taxi drivers, taking you from point A to point B, but they're not: they're an integral part of any operation. For a pilot to bring in a Chinook like that would be totally outrageous. It's a big machine and an easy target, but he was willing to do it. Either he had no idea what would be happening on the ground, or he was blase because that was his job. He obviously knew what he was talking about, so he was blase\ And if he was willing to do it, I wouldn't give a damn: I'd jump back in.
        As we were flying across Saudi, we started to appreciate the lie of the ground. It looked like a brown billiard table. I'd been in the Middle East lots of times, but I'd never seen anything like this.
        "We're on Zanussi," Chris said into his headset, using the Regiment term for somebody who's so spaced out and weird