‘Spread out. We go on three.’ The pale face of one young soldier turned towards him. Mike shook his head. ‘Don’t think about it. We’ll be all right. This is what we have to do.’
He watched as they spread out among the rocks, spacing themselves at roughly ten-yard intervals. As soon as the last was in place, he shouted a countdown, his words barely audible above the endless percussion of the machine guns.
‘Three, two, one. Go!’
Then he was off, firing a fierce burst from the hip as he sprinted across open ground, dodging and weaving as he ran. He hurled himself flat behind a rock barely bigger than his head, fired another burst, rolled sideways a few yards, sprinted forward once more, then dived into the cover of the peat overhang as a line of tracer burned its way towards him through the night.
The soldier to his left and a couple of paces behind him was caught in the open, frozen for a second like a dancer in a strobe light, his arms thrown high above his head as the tracer punched a jagged line across his chest. Then he toppled backwards.
The adrenalin surge of exertion, fear and danger made Mike’s heartbeat sound like thunder in his ears. Every sense was heightened. The distinct smells of cordite and phosphorus mingled with the sweet, sickly smell of his own blood trickling from the cuts on his face, and the stench of scorched fabric and charred flesh from the dead man lying nearby.
As other members of his platoon dived for cover around him, he rolled over and peered up the hillside, half-screened by the peat bank. The flares dimmed as they drifted down into the battle smoke. The machine guns spat and chattered incessantly, the flash of each round so close to the one before that they seemed to emit a constant stream of light.
The hail of fire intensified, ripping and tearing at the ground, eating away the peat bank which shielded him. Mike pressed himself against the face of the cliff, breathing in the smell of peat and mud.
An image flashed into his mind of Passchendaele and the Somme. Soldiers like him rising from a trench into a hail of fire, each yard of ground gained marked by a funeral cross.
The hillside below him was strewn with the dead and the dying. Beneath the crash of shells, the rattle of machine-gun fire and the high-pitched crack of rifles, there were other sounds that none who heard them would ever forget.
A young soldier flattened himself against the ground near Mike, pressing himself into the peat as if, mercifully, it might swallow him whole, while a torrent of fire raked the ground around him. Mike could hear him screaming over and over again, ‘Make it stop. Make it stop.’
Mike loosed a burst towards the skyline, drawing the fire back towards his position. He screamed at the soldier: ‘Get a grip. You have to follow me up there. The only way to end this is to silence those guns.’
The soldier swung his head to look at him, his camouflage paint streaked by tears. He gulped down a lungful of air, his mouth framing a ragged O. Then he gave a small nod and Mike saw his knuckles tighten around the stock of his gun.
Mike glanced to right and left. The black-streaked faces of his men looked back at him, waiting for the command. He hesitated for a moment, realising how many familiar faces were already missing, then cursed himself and forced the thought away.
He took several deep breaths and yelled, ‘Three, two, one. Go!’
Again they rose and scrambled over the top together. Stumbling forward, the young soldier was hit immediately and tumbled back down the slope. But Mike ran forward, darting and jinking to left and right, firing as he ran.
It seemed impossible that anything could survive the avalanche of fire. From the corner of his eye he saw another man fall, and another, then he was thrown flat as a round clipped the side of his helmet. He lay still for a second, vision blurred and head ringing from the impact, then he rolled over onto his back and fumbled at his belt. He pulled a pin from a grenade and lobbed it towards the trench barely twenty feet above him. It clipped the edge of the sangar, hovered there for a moment, and then fell back, gathering speed as it rolled down the slope. Mike buried his face in the earth. There was a flash and an explosion, and he heard the howl of shrapnel skimming his head. He fumbled for another grenade and hurled it upwards. He watched it arch into the air. It seemed to freeze in the flash of another flare bursting overhead, then it plummeted into the trench. Almost immediately there was a blast that rocked the earth beneath him and the machine gun fell silent.
Mike was already on his feet, sprinting the last few yards. He hurdled the low wall of the sangar and raked the bunker with fire. The machine-gun crew already lay dead, but he saw the barrels of two carbines swinging towards him and cut the two enemy riflemen to pieces with short, controlled bursts before either could get off a shot.
He crouched in the trench, surrounded by the four motionless bodies. The remnants of his platoon joined him a moment later, a Lance Corporal – Jack – blood pouring from a wound in his upper arm, and three privates. All the other men lay somewhere on the slope below them, dead, wounded or still pinned down by fire.
Mike and Jack exchanged a momentary, weary look. Then they prepared to move forward again. They were almost out of ammunition and liberated the guns and ammunition belts from the enemy riflemen before they advanced.
They cleared two more bunkers with grenades and automatic fire. A body lay at the end of the third trench covered by a blanket. Mike stepped over it, his eyes already moving to the next objective. Then he froze. Nobody covers a body with a blanket on a battlefield.
As he began to turn back, swinging his rifle up, the blanket was ripped apart by a burst of automatic fire. The force of the bullets hurled Mike back against the side of the trench.
Jack emptied his magazine into the enemy soldier, continuing to fire even when the man’s body and the blanket that had covered him had disintegrated.
Mike slid slowly down the side of the trench and slumped in a sitting position, his head lolling to one side.
Black… A roaring sound drowned the noise of battle in his ears.
He was freezing.
He thought of his family standing on the dock as he sailed away, and saw his kid brother waving a flag, his eyes glistening with excitement.
Black… He felt Jack’s cold fingers scrabbling at his neck, searching for a pulse.
Black…
* * *
‘Sean?’ A voice shouted at me and a rough hand shook my arm. ‘Sean! Are you all right?’ Jack’s face swam into focus in front of me. ‘Bloody hell, you had me worried for a moment there. You’re as white as a sheet.’
His big clumsy fingers loosened my collar and felt for my pulse. I shivered and struggled to sit upright. ‘I’m – I’m all right, really. What happened?’
‘You keeled over. Don’t move for a moment, just lie still.’
‘Shit, I’m sorry. I feel so stupid.’
‘Forget it. Being up here in the mist is very disorientating, it’s easy to get a touch of vertigo and lose your balance.’
We both knew he was just being polite, but I gave him a grateful smile.
He fumbled at his belt, unclipped his water bottle and made me drink. ‘Take your time, but when you’re ready, we’ll move on. We’ll have to get down below the cloudline before the chopper can pick us up.’
I sat up and looked around. We were on the ridge of Black Mountain, in the middle of a network of weather-worn sangars and crumbling, water-filled trenches gouged out of the peat. In one of them, as I now knew, Mike had lost his life.
Jack had been walking among the trenches as he waited for me to recover. I saw him stop and pick up something half-buried in the peat. He walked over and tossed it to me. ‘I tell the tourists not to pick up anything from the battlefields, but I think we can make an exception for you. It’s the casing from a carbine round, if you want a memento. If you don’t, just throw it away.’
I slipped it into my pocket. ‘I’ll keep it. Thanks.’ I stood up and took a few paces. ‘Okay, I’m fine now.’
‘Sure?’ He pulled out
his radio. ‘Bristow control? Jack Stubbs and one passenger. Black Mountain’s fogbound, but the ceiling’s fairly high. We’ll come off the top heading south-east and I’ll confirm RV as soon as we’re below it.’
He checked his map and compass again, and then set off down the slope at an oblique angle to the ridge.
I took a last look around the summit. It was a bleak, unlovely place for a life to end. I stood for a moment in silence looking down into the trench, as I fingered the bullet casing in my pocket, but already the image of Mike I’d held in my mind was fading. I turned away and before I’d gone twenty paces, the mist had swallowed the summit.
We came out of the bottom of the cloud half an hour later, but the visibility was little better, the view across the plain to Mount Pleasant masked by the rain driven on the freshening wind. Jack led us down to a flat area of exposed rock on the east bank of a fast-flowing stream.
We sat down in the lee of a large boulder. He checked his map again and then reached for his radio. ‘Bristow control, we’re ready for collection. We’re at 387426, near the head of Spaniard’s Creek… Right.’ He broke the connection. ‘He’s already airborne. Five minutes.’
We sat in silence as we waited for the chopper, lost in our thoughts. ‘Jack? When you were telling me about the battle, you never mentioned the civilians.’
‘Who told you about that?’
‘I met one of them a couple of days ago.’ I waited for a few seconds. ‘Why didn’t you mention them?’
He didn’t answer, and after a moment I tried again. ‘The woman – she was a young girl when it happened – told me that Mike risked his life to save her and her family. She said he stood up, unarmed, in full view of the Argentinians to get them to stop firing and then led them to safety. Is that not the way it happened?’
‘That’s the way it happened.’ There was weariness in his voice.
‘I don’t understand.’
The sound of the helicopter’s rotors broke the silence. Jack stood up, pulled a strip of light-reflective material from his rucksack and waved it over his head. The helicopter altered course slightly and came in to land less than half a minute later. Well aware of the danger of peat bogs, the pilot kept it in the hover, its wheels barely touching the ground. We ran for the side door, bending double to keep clear of the rotors.
‘Mount Pleasant or Stanley?’ Jack said as we settled into our seats.
‘Mount Pleasant.’
‘I’m going back to Stanley. We’ll finish the conversation some other time.’ His tone showed it was not open for debate.
As the helicopter rose into the air, I glimpsed the roof of Rose and Bernard’s farm in the middle distance, but the upper slopes of Black Mountain, high above it, were still swathed in cloud. The pilot swung the chopper in a wide loop to the south, steering clear of the line of the main runway at Mount Pleasant.
Looking east, I saw the silvery glimmer of the wings of the biweekly Tristar as it came in on its final approach. I felt a pang of homesickness at the thought of how far it had travelled. As I looked away, back towards the coast, I saw movement on the shoreline, dark shapes diving for cover at the approach of the helicopter. ‘What was that?’
Jack shrugged. ‘Probably only the local wildlife. It takes a while to adjust to it. When we were advancing on Goose Green during the war, one of our patrols spotted what they thought was a group of Argentinians in balaclavas, creeping along the shore. They opened up with everything they had, including a Milan missile and a few grenades from an M203.’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘The men in balaclavas turned out to be sea lions. There were no survivors.’
The Tristar had already taxied to a halt by the time we came in to land at Mount Pleasant. The helicopter pilot kept the rotors turning as I thanked Jack and shook his hand. ‘I won’t insult you by offering you money. You’ve already chewed out one customer for that today, but if there’s anything I can do for you here or in the UK, or anything you need that I could send you when I get back there, just let me know.’
His powerful fist closed around my hand. ‘Thanks, but there’s nothing I need. A pint in the Mess or the Victory Bar in Stanley some night will settle all debts.’
‘And maybe we can finish that conversation then?’
‘Sure.’ He paused and glanced back down the line of hills, still capped with cloud and fading into the dusk. ‘And Sean? Your brother did all right up there, plenty did worse. Don’t lose any sleep over it.’
I jumped down from the helicopter and by the time I had ducked beneath the arc of the rotors and scrambled clear, it was already rising into the air again. I caught a glimpse of Jack’s face framed in the window, then it had wheeled away to the east, speeding downwind, its tail light blinking bright in the dusk.
The first passengers were beginning to disembark from the Tristar, one or two visibly flinching at the strength of the wind. As I watched them, I became aware of the noise of it for the first time in days.
There was a note pinned to the door of my room. ‘Unfinished business with a bottle of Chardonnay. Drop round as soon as you get back. J.’
I hesitated, unsure whether I was ready to talk about it before I’d had time to collect my thoughts, but as I stood there, a warm arm slid around my neck.
‘You took your time. Another ten minutes and I’d have had to delete the bit about the Chardonnay. Your place or mine?’
‘Yours.’ I followed her down the corridor, took the glass of wine she handed me and sat down on the chair while she sprawled across her bed.
‘So, how was your day?’
‘So-so. All I managed to persuade myself to buy in Stanley was a pair of tights and a postcard of a penguin. I was back here by lunchtime and spent the rest of the day warding off Shark attacks.’ She studied me for a moment. ‘You don’t look like your day was too much better.’
‘It was mixed. The guy leading the tour was that survival instructor, Jack Stubbs. He was in the same platoon as my brother. He told me a lot about the night he died.’ I hesitated. ‘Although, I felt he could have told me even more. He was definitely holding back something. He never even mentioned Rose and her family until I brought it up.’
‘As you do,’ she said with a smile. ‘Sorry, go on.’
‘When I asked him about it, he was quite evasive. In the end he just said we’d have to finish the conversation some other time.’
‘It must be painful for him too.’
I bowed my head in acknowledgement of the reproach. ‘I know, but I felt there was more to it than that.’
I described the battle to Jane, as Jack had related it to me. When I’d finished, she sat silent for a minute. ‘So how do you feel?’
‘I’m not sure yet; better for knowing what happened once and for all, I suppose, and better for having seen the places myself and walked the same ground.’
She divided the rest of the bottle between us and sipped her drink, nursing the glass in her cupped hands. ‘And are you walking it again tomorrow?’
‘No. I’m going out, but I think I’ll stick to the shoreline. I’m not going up on the battlefields again. Maybe I’ve laid that particular ghost now.’
She scrutinised my face before replying. ‘But not entirely. No doubt you’ll still be calling in at Black Beck House.’
I shrugged. ‘I suppose so. I said I would.’
She hid a smile. ‘So you did. Just make sure you’re back by six. In case you’ve forgotten, we start QRA duty tomorrow night.’
Chapter Seven
The same dreams and nightmares haunted my sleep again that night, and I was awake and out of bed at dawn. I showered and dressed quickly and walked towards the Ops Centre to collect the squadron taxi. The runway lights were on and I could hear the drone of an incoming aircraft. I stopped and waited as it circled and came into land. Then I saw the Argentine markings on the side of the jet as it rumbled past me and taxied back towards the tower.
The door banged behind me and Noel appeared, dragging heavily on hi
s first cigarette of the day. I waited until the coughing had subsided. ‘What’s the story with the Argentine plane, Noel?’
‘Must be some relatives of their war dead. There’s a flight every couple of months or so.’
‘At dawn?’
‘They’re only given certain very restricted slots, supposedly to avoid confrontations with the Falklanders.’ He shrugged. ‘It seems a bit petty to me, but those are the rules.’ He coughed and spat. ‘Another triumph for some desk-bound, constipated bureaucrat in Whitehall.’
We walked across the runway together as the aircraft halted outside the main building. The Argentinians were just disembarking as we passed the jet. Most were middle-aged or old women, clad in headscarves and cheap-looking coats, and shivering in the cold. There were a handful of old men as well, and a couple of younger ones.
‘They don’t look much like your average grieving relative,’ Noel said.
‘Nor do I, but I went to see my brother’s grave the other day.’
He nodded, still staring suspiciously at them.
‘They only let bona fide close relatives of the dead come here, don’t they?’
‘That’s the theory, but we have to rely on Argentine documentation. If they say someone is a father, mother, brother or sister of a dead soldier, we pretty much have to take their word for it. Half their war dead were unidentified and are buried in unmarked graves. Anyway, if they’re here on a recce, they won’t learn much that they don’t know already.’ He ground out his cigarette under his boot and we walked across to the Mess.
I drank some coffee and grabbed a handful of toast, then went to pick up the keys to the Land Rover. The sky was streaked with red as the sun crept above the horizon, but the dirt road to Goose Green still lay in the dark purple shadows cast by the hills. The shoreline away to my left was bathed in light and alive with movement as seals and penguins dived among the underwater forests of kelp, and armies of seabirds took flight.
I stopped at the foot of the Wickham Heights, pulling off the track on to a rare patch of firm ground. I leaned against the bonnet for a while, watching the birds wheeling and diving against the brightening sky, their cries filling the air. I took my bearings and set off across the plain, picking my way around the pools and tarns that littered my path, dark, peaty water shining silver as it reflected the sky. The dry, spent stalks of the tussac grass seemed to glow as the pale sunlight struck them. It remained a desolate and empty land, but it also had grandeur and beauty.
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