Venom Squadron Read online

  Venom Squadron

  Yeoman in the Suez Crisis

  Robert Jackson

  © Robert Jackson 1983

  Robert Jackson has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1983 by Arthur Barker Limited.

  This edition published in 2016 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  There was the desert, and there was the sky; two vast areas of loneliness, mingling on the far horizon in a haze of shimmering heat.

  The desert was reddish in colour, dotted with clumps of tawny grass and bush, sprinkled with black flint stones that glistened in the strong sun. Some of the stones moved a little, and were not stones at all, but desert Horned Larks, their dark plumage blending in exactly with their surroundings. Something had disturbed them, but the danger, if indeed danger it was, was still a long way off, and there was not yet the need to take flight.

  The solitary black speck, drifting high in the brazen sky, presented no threat to them. It was an imperial eagle, and its purpose was single-minded: to escape the onset of approaching winter in the mountains of eastern Turkey, where it had first seen the light of the sun in the spring of that year, and find its instinctive way to a warmer climate in the hills of Baluchistan, north of the Arabian Sea. It moved along swiftly, several thousand feet above the reddish plain, its great wings stiffly outstretched in gliding flight as the rising currents of warm air carried it south-eastwards.

  It had already crossed Syria and Iraq, and off its left wing-tip lay the glassy waters of the Persian Gulf, stretching eastwards almost beyond the bird’s keen vision to where the Zagros Mountains of Iran swept down to meet its far shore. Off the opposite wing-tip stretched the vast desert tracts of Saudi Arabia, while directly below, sandwiched between that kingdom and the Gulf, sprawled a patchwork of smaller states, all blending into the same featureless vista of reds and browns.

  Only at one point within the range of the eagle’s vision was any kind of definable land frontier to be seen. It was in the form of a low mountain range, perhaps seventy miles long, curving sickle-like from the Gulf shore towards the south-west. It separated two Arab states, one large, the other small, each bordering the Gulf on its eastern side. The larger state was named Khorat, the smaller Muramshir, and there had been no friendly contact between the two for as long as anyone could remember. This had never mattered particularly, for neither state had had much to offer the other. In each case, society had been feudal for centuries, with a large part of the respective populations tied to the land, mainly along the fertile coastal strip, but also in the foothills of the mountains.

  It was as though someone had slashed at the mountains with a giant blade, creating a series of deep, yawning chasms which were filled with streams that cascaded between walls covered with maidenhair ferns. The streams were fed by torrential rain in the winter and agriculture thrived on the lower slopes where the streams debouched into the plain to north and south of the mountain range. The plots of land were in tiers, cut into the steep gorges and irrigated by water from large storage tanks which controlled waterfalls from one level to the next to bring life to the groves of fruit trees.

  Two principal tribes tended the crops, one on either side of the mountains, each split up into a dozen or so splinter factions, each with its sheikh or headman. Each tribe was the sworn enemy of the other; the enmity went back as far as the tenth century, when the tribe on the Khorat side of the mountains had helped the Persians to undertake a brief and bloody invasion of Muramshir. Ten thousand Muramshiris had fought with desperate valour, but in the end had been overwhelmed and subjected to bitter and humiliating defeat, their wives and children becoming the property of the invaders.

  A thousand years later, the score still remained to be settled. But there had been other invaders since then, among them the empire-building Portuguese, on both sides of the mountains, and although the deep hatred between the opposing sides still existed, it had turned into a kind of co-existence, a status quo with clear demarcation lines. If rival tribesmen met one another by chance in the no-man’s-land of the central mountains, the result would most likely be sudden and violent death for one or the other; yet neither, in obedience to an unwritten law developed over the centuries, would venture with hostile intent into the other’s territory.

  That remained unchanged; but other things were changing, and changing fast. Some of the changes, at least, were within the sweep of the eagle’s vision as the bird floated on.

  North of the mountains, deep in Khorat territory, a cloud of dust rose from the desert, drifting in the morning air. There was movement there, intensive movement, as tractors and bulldozers crawled across the rock, scooping and levelling to form a pattern that was already identifiable as three airfield runways, intersecting one another. It was a carbon copy of a similar pattern, a few miles away, but in that case the airfield was completed, and the sunlight glittered on the wings of aircraft that were dotted around it.

  There was an airfield on the Muramshir side of the mountains, too, but it was by no means an elaborate affair; just a simple strip less than a mile long, levelled out of the desert, with none but the most rudimentary facilities adjacent to it. It had been constructed hurriedly, apparently in the middle of nowhere, but the reason why it had been built was not hard to find. Everywhere around the strip there was evidence of modern technology in the shape of oil rigs, their derricks stark and black against the desert backdrop; the strip existed to serve the needs of the technicians and engineers who worked on the oilfield, and to enable spares and supplies to be airlifted quickly to the site. The future wealth of Muramshir was measured here, in a few square miles of barren waste.

  The eagle sailed on high above the mountains, unnoticed except, perhaps, by one pair of eyes. In the shadow of some rocks within Khorat territory a man lay, gasping for breath, his eyes upturned to the sky as though in supplication. The speck that was the eagle drifted into his field of vision and he followed it for a few moments, without recognizing it for what it was; the movement of his eyes was purely automatic, for all his consciousness was directed towards the searing pain in his left leg.

  He had hurt his knee somehow; every faltering step he had taken had sent a wave of agony lancing through him, but he had gone on nonetheless, and after a while the spreading numbness in his brain had mercifully dulled the pain to a degree. The numbness, he knew, was caused by loss of blood, for his leg below the knee was badly gashed, and this worried him more than the pain itself. The gashes had stopped bleeding now, and the leg of the flying overall he wore was caked in black, congealed blood, sun-dried and stinking. Nausea rose in his throat as he waved a hand feebly, dislodging the cloud of flies that had been gorging themselves on the mess; they returned a moment later to resume their feast and he gave up the unequal struggle, and lay motionless to conserve his strength.

  He was a young man, in his early twenties, with blond hair that was now darkened and matted with sweat. The sweat had dried, because he was now so dehydrated that fluid no longer came out of his pores. There were white salty patches where the sweat had stained his overall. He knew that his only chance was to reach the mountains, where there would be water; equally, he knew that the mountains were miles away, and that even if he summoned the strength to drag hims
elf on he would be dead long before he got anywhere near them.

  Like all RAF aircrew posted to the Middle East, Flying Officer Stephen Armstrong had been through the Desert Survival Course. It was full of useful hints on how to find water, such as how to dig a hole in the bend of a dried-up watercourse until you reached a moist layer of earth. You could then stuff a handkerchief into it until it had accumulated sufficient moisture to enable you to wet your lips, so staving off inevitable death by another minute or two. Alternatively, you could place a pebble under your tongue to stimulate the flow of saliva; this worked quite well at night but not so well during the daytime, when pebbles in the desert tended to be red hot.

  Armstrong had no clear recollection of what had happened. It had been an operational sortie, but one that should have presented no problems; none, at least, that could not have been handled by himself as navigator or by his pilot, Flight Lieutenant Mark Webster.

  In their Canberra PR3 photo-reconnaissance jet, they had taken off from Aden into the darkness, setting course northeastwards and climbing to fifty thousand feet over Saudi Arabia. They were crossing Saudi air space illegally, but that had not worried them; there was no radar to detect them, no fighters to intercept them, and even if there had, the chances of catching the Canberra at that height, and at night, would have been very remote.

  Their briefing had been very comprehensive — astonishingly so, considering the relative simplicity of the task in hand. The requirement had been for a descent to fifteen thousand feet over the eastern border of Saudi Arabia, followed by a 150-mile run into Khorat on a heading of 050 degrees, taking in the two new airfield complexes, and then a climb back to fifty thousand feet on a reciprocal course.

  Everything had gone according to plan. The photo-flashes had been released from the Canberra’s bomb bay, turning night into day over the desert for a few seconds while the cameras whirred; their vivid magnesium light would have been visible for hundreds of miles, but no one would know who or what had dropped them.

  Neither Armstrong nor Webster had had any idea why they had been ordered to make this brief sortie into the air space of Khorat; they could only imagine that the target airfields presented some sort of threat to British interests in the Gulf area. In any case, they were not unduly concerned about the purpose of their mission; operations of this kind were going on all the time in secret, and the less the aircrew knew about the true nature of things the better.

  The explosion had come without warning at thirty-five thousand feet, while the Canberra was still climbing towards the Saudi frontier. Or rather, it had come as a series of rippling explosions, blending into one, accompanied by a terrific shock and a red glare that momentarily filled the cockpit.

  The Canberra had gone out of control almost immediately, breaking up as it fell with a hellish noise. To Armstrong, everything had seemed to happen in slow motion; the dark spray of blood, dimly visible in the reduced cockpit lighting, that spurted from the pilot’s body over the instrument panel; the slumping of his body in the safety harness.

  Armstrong did not remember pulling the face-blind handle of his ejection seat. He remembered only relief, a feeling that was almost bliss, as he tumbled through the freezing night sky five miles above the desert, still strapped in his seat. There had been time for sad reflection over the fate of his friend later, as he drifted earthwards after his seat dropped away and his parachute opened automatically, and he saw the bright flash far away and the orange glow that marked the Canberra’s point of impact.

  He had landed among some jagged rocks, tearing his leg, with a shock that knocked him senseless for a long time. When he finally came to, the rising sun was a red ball on the eastern horizon. To the north, a thin column of smoke, presumably from the crashed Canberra, rose stiffly into the morning air. He must have drifted a long way during his descent.

  The agony of his injured leg had hit him at once, as he undid his parachute harness; the canopy had wrapped itself around some rocks, deflating itself, and he was able to release himself without difficulty. Apart from the pain, his first sensation had been one of shock and dismay as he inspected his torn leg, but then he had realized that the damage looked worse than it actually was; the limb had been partly folded under him as he lay, and this had helped to stem the flow of blood. Nevertheless, the wounds were serious enough, and he knew that it would be a long, hard struggle to the mountains he could see away to the south. They seemed close, an illusion that did not deceive him.

  So, filling his pockets with survival rations which had been stowed in the seat pack of his parachute, Stephen Armstrong had set out for the southern horizon, his leg strapped tightly with makeshift bandages torn from the parachute canopy. All that long day he struggled on, dragging his leg behind him, often falling, sometimes dragging himself along on all fours, tortured by thirst as the merciless sun slowly dried his body to a husk. The rations in his pockets went untouched; it was water he craved, not food, but there was no water, and to add to his misery the mountains seemed to get no nearer.

  Only the thought that they would be searching for him spurred him on. Local security forces must by now have found the wreck of the Canberra; there was a slim chance that they would think it had carried only one crew member, but he was not banking on it. His only hope was to find water, and somehow get through the mountains into Muramshiri territory, which he knew to be friendly.

  He almost made it. Dragging himself into the foothills shortly before sunset, he imagined that he could hear the sound of running water ahead. Almost crazy with thirst, he stumbled on as fast as he could, only to fall headlong into a small gully, stunning himself.

  It was there, a few minutes later, that they found him. They had been trailing him for miles, watching his progress to see which way he would turn, biding their time before they picked him up.

  Dispassionately, they spread-eagled him among the rocks and a man who spoke English softly began to interrogate him, whispering into his ear. Three hours later he was incapable of saying anything, for they had set to work on him with knives, and he no longer had even the strength to scream. His strong constitution prolonged the agony, and they were expert torturers. Mercifully, he was unconscious before they hacked off his genitals in a final gesture of contempt, but it took him two more hours to die.

  Chapter Two

  The same red sun that rose over the mutilated body of Stephen Armstrong, crumpled where his tormentors had left it among the rocks, pushed its glowing arc over the eastern rim of the Mediterranean a few minutes later, its early rays flooding out over Cyprus and the Nile delta, two hundred miles to the south. As the gathering light stripped away the last vestiges of darkness, an extraordinary sight was revealed: a great armada of ships, stretching from horizon to horizon. There were merchantmen of all kinds, shepherded by sleek grey warships, all churning through the sea towards a single focal point some fifty miles off the Egyptian coast.

  It was the biggest assembly of vessels seen since the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944, or the American assaults on the Pacific islands in the push towards Japan. But the Second World War had been over for more than a decade. The date was 1 November 1956, and the time was exactly 0350 hours GMT.

  Forty thousand feet over the armada, the sun also caught the vapour trails that streamed out in the icy stratosphere behind several aircraft. They were Vickers Valiant jet bombers of the Royal Air Force, machines that normally carried atomic bombs in their bellies on round-the-clock alert at their airfields in the United Kingdom, ready to strike a retaliatory blow at any aggressor. During the darkness before dawn, they had on this occasion unloaded conventional thousand-pound bombs on several Egyptian airfields in the neighbourhood of the Suez Canal. Now, their task over for the time being, they were heading back to their temporary bases in Malta and Cyprus.

  Higher up still, at sixty-five thousand feet, a single contrail spun its thread, unnoticed by the returning Valiant crews, across a sky so dark that it was almost black, so rarified was the atmos
phere at that height. The rising sun here was no red ball, but a white light with a glare so intense that it would have instantly seared any unprotected eyes.

  The aircraft that pulled the high contrail had long, slender wings, like a glider’s, spanning eighty feet. The fuselage was slim too, fifty feet long, with a cockpit perched well forward on the nose. A single Pratt and Whitney turbojet drove the machine through the air at 460 miles per hour. The curious aircraft belonged to the 4080th Strategic Reconnaissance Squadron of the United States Air Force; its name was the Lockheed U-2.

  The pilot of the U-2 was not a serving USAF officer, although he had been until some months earlier, retiring at the age of forty-five with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He was now a civilian, employed by the us Central Intelligence Agency, and his reconnaissance flights in the U-2 had already taken him twice across the western part of the Soviet Union at eighty thousand feet.

  The Russians had nothing to touch the U-2 at that height, as far as he knew, but there had always been the nagging fear that they might come up with something unexpected. His instructions in that eventuality had been very precise; he was not to permit himself to be taken alive. To make sure of that, he carried a special poison-impregnated pin, tucked in a special pocket of his pressure suit.

  Today’s mission should not be accompanied by any special perils, he told himself. In fact, it ought to be a piece of cake: a simple curve over the Canal Zone and the Sinai Peninsula, cameras and other sophisticated data-recording instruments working flat out, then back to the USAF base at Incirlik in Turkey for ham and eggs and waffles with maple syrup and coffee.

  Like all the small band of CIA U-2 pilots, he had a thorough knowledge of the circumstances leading up to his mission. His bosses in the CIA, he was aware, were worrying themselves silly about the situation in the Middle East, which had blown apart just at the time when Hungarian freedom fighters were hurling Molotov Cocktails at Russian tanks in the streets of Budapest. A lot of people thought World War Three was just around the corner, but he himself was not so sure. Maybe the Brits and the French, together, would sort out this Egyptian business to everyone’s satisfaction, except the Egyptians’ and the Russians’.