Excerpt
Taking a side track that brought them out to the car park, they sat laughing as they watched the mad scramble of the others. After an hour, in which Alistair told the others of how when he first came up here, practically every one of the Mess members were Geordies and you needed an interpreter to follow what was being said, they started on the journey back to Salalah as the last rays of the day were setting and the darkness of the night began its relentless march from the East. They sped across the flat stony plain towards the distant Jebal, behind which the sun was setting. It was just as they were approaching the high sided Ambush Bend, so called because it was the favourite ambush point on that road during the Dhofar war, that a small desert fox ran out across the road and Tom swung the steering wheel in an attempt to miss it that the unmistakable sound of a light machine shattered the quite of the evening. In one fluid movement that came from years of training Tom drove the truck off the road and up to the steep side of the hill, thus giving some protection to the people in the truck. As the vehicle came to a halt Tom had grabbed the small Heckler & Kock MP5 sub-machine gun that unknown to the others had been hidden under the seat for just an occasion as this. Shouting to the others to get down between the truck and the face of the hill he jumped out and ran to an outcrop of rock that afforded some protection but, at the same time, allowed him to see in the direction from which the shots had come. This he made just as the next volley of shots were in bound. Looking quickly around him he could see somebody up in the rocks and yet another a short distant away on the other side of the road. He realised the only way they could get out of this was to neutralise the person opposite and hope that it would frighten the others away, they he figured would be unwilling to spend to much time here in case other vehicles should happen along. Tom shouted across to Alister using German a language, which they both knew, and hoping against hope that their attacker would not.