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trouble if they’d stayed, but then, as yet, they didn’t know what sort of trouble the major was taking them into. Chances were it would be a hundred times worse, a thousand times more deadly. Maybe down there was a frying pan they’d soon be happy to leap back into, those of them still able to leap.

    THREE

Sergeant Hyde stood at the foot of the steps and scanned the distant gate in the perimeter fence as the first of the Starlifter’s engines burst into life. He checked his watch for the tenth time in a minute and pretended not to see the flight crew urgently beckoning him to board from the cockpit window. They were cutting it fine. The timing had to be precise if they were to slot into the air traffic pattern in place of the scheduled civilian flight without attracting attention.
    He was aware of Revell standing in the doorway at the top of the steps and knew that he too would be counting off each second until the moment when they would be able to delay no longer.
    There was a freezing wind whistling across the open ground at the end of the taxiway, but Hyde made no concession to it by pushing his hands into his pockets or pulling up the hood of his parka. He liked the cold, and besides, he hardly felt it on his face as it struck at the deadened nerves in the rebuilt tissue.
    ‘Can’t leave it much longer, Sergeant…’ He heard the major’s shout at the same moment as he spotted the jeep that was racing and bucking across the grass towards them in defiance of every airport regulation. As the distance narrowed he made out Burke behind the wheel, and a sullen-faced Libby sat in the back, flanked by Clarence and Dooley.
    The ground crew were finishing their work and boarding their transport as the jeep rocked to a stop, cutting four brown gashes in the soaked and ice particle- laden grass at the edge of the concrete. Even as Hyde followed the others up into the aircraft, the steps were being hitched for towing, and he had to jump a widening gap to board.
    ‘I always say, if you got to go to war, then if you can’t do it in style at least do it comfort.’ Ripper slumped in the seat and put his feet up on the back of the row in front.
‘You’ve got a funny idea of being comfortable.’ A dozen cigarette stubs and matches were strewn about Burke’s feet on the floor of the sled-mounted cabin. An echo of the vibration from the aircraft’s hull kept them in slight but perceptible motion. ‘Mind you, one of these would make a nice bingo hall.’ He surveyed the serried rows of safety harness equipped seats. ‘You could even strap the old girls down, make sure they stayed for an extra card and stop them collecting their winnings.’
    ‘Where’s everyone else?’ Arching his back to relieve the aches caused by an abortive attempt to sleep stretched out along a row, York peered around.
    ‘The artillery lads are scrambling about on the two sleds at the back. They’ve got a real eager beaver of a captain and a sergeant-major who looks like he eats privates for breakfast.’ Yet another spent match was flicked away as Burke finished the second packet of the day, and sent it, crumpled, in its wake. ‘The others are in the crew room behind the flight-deck, they’ve got coffee there.’
    ‘So long as the sergeant-major only eats his own privates, or beavers, I ain’t bothered, and I’ll wait for the crowd to clear around the coffee.’ York dipped his hand into Ripper’s bag of large white mints and helped himself. The moment he tasted the first one, he put the others back. ‘This is a heck of a long hop. I thought we were going into action on the west coast of Sweden, not the other side of Mongolia.’
    ‘The major says we’re taking a scenic route, just to make sure we get thoroughly lost among the civvy traffic’ With three vigorous puffs Burke reduced the king- sized cigarette’s length by half, bringing its glowing tip that much nearer his heavily nicotine-stained fingers. ‘We’re just as bloody