Exclusion Zone

by Exclusion Zone (retail) (epub)

  I followed a meandering westward path for an hour or so, crossing a dozen creeks and dark streams flowing silently between steep banks towards the sea. My feet were soaked and my leggings black with peat and eventually I turned inland, seeking firmer going on the higher ground.

  As I squelched through yet another bog, feeling more icy water seeping through my laceholes, I came across several sets of fresh bootprints. I stopped, surprised that others had chosen to walk in this bleak and lonely place. I looked around, but I appeared to be alone in the whole vast sweep of landscape.

  A few hundred yards further on, I saw a movement just at the periphery of my vision. I swung my head to stare at the ridgeline of Black Mountain high above me and saw – or thought I saw – figures outlined for a moment against the sky. Then they were gone.

  I paused. There was no official battlefield tour scheduled, but perhaps there were other servicemen out exploring the battle sites or a couple of the birdwatchers I had seen in Stanley, festooned with binoculars and cameras. I watched the ridge for a couple of minutes, but I was unwilling to venture back onto the boulder-field just to satisfy my curiosity, and eventually I moved on. My eyes kept straying back to the skyline, hoping for confirmation that there really had been people there, but it remained empty.

  Half an hour later I climbed a spur of the foothills flanking Black Mountain and as the valley beyond opened up in front of me, I saw Black Beck House. A thin plume of smoke was rising from the chimney and as I neared the farm, a faint whiff of peat smoke was carried to me on the wind.

  There was no sign of Bernard or Rose and no barking dog as I approached the house, only an oppressive silence. I knocked on the door and waited, but there was no reply. I walked around the farmyard, looking in all the outbuildings, and found their Land Rover parked in a shed. As I turned to look back at the house, there was a movement at the window as a curtain dropped back into place.

  I walked back and again banged on the door. A couple of minutes later the door opened a crack and I saw Rose’s face. She looked even more pale then before and kept half-glancing behind her.

  ‘Hello, I said I’d call in.’

  ‘Yes.’ She made no move to open the door wider.

  ‘Is now a bad time?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is everything all right?’

  Again there was the terse reply. ‘I’m sorry. I…’ Her voice trailed away into silence.

  ‘It’s all right. I can’t stay anyway. As I told you the other day, we start our spell on Quick Reaction Alert tonight. If I get out this way after that I’ll drop by again.’ It was more a question than a statement.

  She nodded, saying nothing, but her eyes seemed to be pleading with me.

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

  Once more the half-glance behind her. ‘Yes. I’m fine. Really.’

  I searched her expression. ‘Something’s wrong, isn’t it? What is it?’ I tried to push my way past her, but she held the door shut with surprising strength.

  ‘No. There’s nothing the matter, honestly. Please go.’ Her voice caught as if she was close to tears, and again I hesitated, but she seized the chance to close the door. A moment later I heard the sound of the heavy bolt sliding home.

  I stood staring at the house for a few moments, then walked slowly away down the hill, pausing frequently to look behind me. The door remained closed and there was no further movement to be seen at the windows. I picked up the track at the bottom of the hill and followed it back towards the place where I had left the Land Rover.

  I shook my head, angry with myself that I hadn’t insisted and pushed my way in. I was sure that Bernard had been bullying her, perhaps even hitting her. Yet even if I had forced my way inside, I was unsure what I could have done. Bernard’s powerful frame suggested that he would be more than a match for me in a fist fight and in any case, unless I was going to carry Rose off on a white charger, my intervention would only have made things worse for her after I’d gone.

  I passed below George and Agnes’s farm and as I crossed the head of an inlet a few hundred yards further on, I stopped to watch a group of penguins surfing the waves as they returned to shore. There was a sudden flurry in the water, and one disappeared beneath the surface, then reappeared in the mouth of a leopard seal. It thrashed the surface, beating the water into a pink foam.

  A black bar, one of the penguin’s flippers, spiralled through the air and landed in the water. The seal gave the penguin a final convulsive shake then, bored of its sport, submerged and disappeared. The penguin lay motionless, a thin slick of its oil spreading slowly across the surface of the sea. The first scavenging gulls were already circling above it.

  Indifferent to the commotion, a huge bull elephant seal was shepherding a harem of wives along the beach. I glanced at my watch then dropped down from the track and walked towards the shore. As I neared the edge of the shingle beach, the bull seal reared up and roared.

  I froze for a moment, but the seal’s defiance was not for me. Following its gaze, I saw another, smaller male elephant seal. The two creatures circled each other warily, like boxers looking for an opening, then with another roar the larger bull launched itself at its rival.

  The confrontation was brief but conclusive. The mauled bull reeled and ran, blood pouring from a gash in its neck. The older bull pursued it a short way down the beach. It crashed across a bank of shingle, its flippers struggling for grip, and sent pebbles flying in every direction.

  It ran on, leaving a smooth, black, rounded shape exposed behind it. When the old bull seal was certain that it had driven off its rival, it threw back its massive head and roared its triumph. I watched its swaggering return to its harem, then walked along the upper edge of the beach to the site of its battle.

  A curve of black rubber, like the inner tube of a tractor tyre, protruded from the shingle. I scraped more of the pebbles away with my foot, gradually exposing a rubber Zodiac. There was no outboard motor or paddles in it, no equipment of any sort and the Zodiac itself had no distinguishing markings. There was nothing to say when it had been concealed there. It could have been buried for months, but it might also have been hidden as recently as the previous night.

  I walked along the margin of the narrow beach in both directions, digging my feet into any suspicious-looking mounds of shingle and scraping it aside as I searched for anything else hidden there. I could find nothing.

  I began to search the banks of peat just inland from the shoreline. There were no footprints, other than my own, impressed in the black glistening surface, but one area of peat was marked with faint striations, as if something had been dragged along the ground or swept across it to obliterate any tracks. It was possible that the marks were just made by the elephant seals hauling themselves to and from the shore, but I had the uneasy feeling that they were man-made.

  I returned to the Zodiac and squatted on my haunches alongside it, staring in silence as I tried to piece together a jumble of apparently unconnected events. I got to my feet and scrambled back up the inlet, then set off at a loping run along the track.

  As I ran, I kept my eyes moving over the hillside rising to my left and the broad expanse of shoreline to my right. I had been running for a few minutes when I glanced down towards the shore. A low hill rising from the water-filled plain partly obscured my view, but I could see the still, dark water of a tarn, and beyond it, a long bank of shingle, separating it from the open water of Choiseul Sound.

  The track climbed to cross a spur of the foothills and as I ran on, a sleek, black shape previously hidden by the shingle bank, came into view. It had to be the prow of a boat or a submarine. I dived forward and hit the dirt.

  I worked my way along the ground, crawling off the track and into the cover of some tussac grass. I lay still, drawing air deep into my lungs as I tried to slow my breathing and my heart rate. Then I parted the tall, bleached stems of grass and peered out towards the shore. The black shape had not moved. Still and sinister, it
either lay in the shallows close to shore, or was drawn up onto the beach itself. There was no sign of any movement around it, save for clouds of seabirds, which circled and swooped down on it, fiercely disputing the right to land.

  I rubbed my eyes and stared again. I was now almost sure it was not a submarine, but I could still make no sense of it. Then I saw a skua drive off a rival with a slash of its beak and then plunge it down into the massive, rounded prow. A thin filament came free in its beak. It jerked and tugged, heaving backwards and beating its wings as the filament stretched and then snapped. As it took to the air with its trophy, I heaved a sigh of relief. I was looking at the massive carcass of a beached whale.

  Feeling both foolish and relieved, I scanned the hills and the skyline, then picked myself up and began to move off again along the track. Another twenty minutes’ running brought me to the Land Rover. It was parked as I had left it, apparently untouched, but I approached it cautiously. Unsure if I was being prudent or merely paranoid, I peered inside the bonnet and lay full length in the dirt to examine the underside before I unlocked the door. I worked the Land Rover around, too scared of bogging down to reverse more than a few inches over the edge of the track, then drove back towards Mount Pleasant.

  The track dipped and weaved, following the wavering boundary line between the waterlogged plain and the steeply rising slopes. It was rare for more than a one-hundred-yard stretch to be visible, before the next bump, dip or bend hid it from view. Soon even that limited view ahead was lost.

  A bank of cloud had already shrouded the summits of the hills. Now mist rolled in over the lower slopes, closing in around the Land Rover, diffusing the daylight and muffling the engine note. The air became cold and clammy, heightening my feelings of unease. Dark shapes – rocks, a minefield warning, a broken wooden signpost pointing a jagged finger at the sky – loomed suddenly out of the mist and then were gone. I peered through the windscreen, trying to focus only on the dark line of the track as it disappeared into the grey tunnel ahead, but ghost images moved constantly at the periphery of my vision.

  A black shape flew out of the mist in front of me and I almost cried out in alarm. I glimpsed the talons and sharp, curving beak of a bird of prey as it twisted in the air, beating its powerful wings to lift clear of the Land Rover. My heart was thumping as I drove on.

  I was still some way from the base and took risks, accelerating hard and braking late, trying to cut a few minutes from the journey. As I bucketed over the brow of another rise, a khaki-clad figure materialised. He sprang from the side of the track and raised his hand, motioning me to stop. A gun rested in the crook of his other arm.

  I started to brake, then stamped on the accelerator, spinning the wheel towards him. As he jumped back, I realised my mistake and stamped on the brakes again. The Land Rover screeched and skidded, sliding to a halt a few yards past him.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ he shouted. ‘You could have killed me.’ His clothes were threadbare army surplus gear and his weapon was a single-barrelled shotgun.

  ‘I’m sorry. I – My foot slipped off the brake.’

  ‘You’re not in England now. Show some respect for the place. I lose enough sheep and lambs already to joyriding soldiers.’

  ‘Why were you trying to stop me?’

  ‘To save your neck by telling you to slow down. There’s a landslip just around that bend.’

  ‘I, er – I know. I came past here the other day.’

  ‘Then you’re an even bigger fool than I thought.’ He spat and then turned to whistle for his dog. I put the Land Rover in gear and accelerated away. I could see him staring after me until he was swallowed by the mist.

  I reached the base half an hour later. The guard swung up his rifle at my high-speed approach, but lowered it when he recognised me, and waved me through.

  I screeched to a halt in a flurry of gravel by the Operations Centre and sprinted inside. ‘Get the Base Commander. Tell him I need to see him.’

  ‘But it’s the weekend,’ the Duty Officer said.

  ‘So if the Argentinians attack today, you’ll ask them to come back on Monday, will you?’

  He stared at me incredulously for a moment, then reached for the phone.

  I had to pace up and down the corridor outside the Boss’s office for ten minutes. Finally I heard footsteps and looked up to see him coming down the corridor in his full-dress uniform. ‘This had better be important, Sean, I’ve had to leave a party of Falkland VIPs.’

  ‘It’s important, Boss. I’ve been walking down towards Goose Green. There were some tracks of military boots in the peat and I saw some figures briefly on the skyline.’

  ‘And you’ve dragged me out to tell me that?’

  ‘There’s more. On the way back I went to look at some elephant seals on a beach. One of them disturbed a pile of shingle. There was a Zodiac buried underneath it.’

  He gave me a doubtful look. ‘That could have been here since the war.’

  ‘It’s not been there that long. I couldn’t be sure, but I doubt if it’s been there sixteen days, let alone sixteen years.’

  He chewed his lip for a moment, staring past me out of the window. ‘It could be a Marines or Special Forces exercise.’

  ‘Possibly, but we haven’t been told of any, have we?’

  He shook his head, still staring out of the window.

  I waited as the seconds ticked by. ‘Boss, I’ve seen tracks of what could be Argentinian Special Forces, there’s an unexplained Zodiac hidden on a beach, and the Trident is missing, probably sunk. What?’

  He held up a hand to silence me. ‘The Trident is now off the missing list. It made contact with Northwood this morning. It appears that the commander had simply misunderstood his orders. The Trident had just completed a week-long tactical readiness evaluation and had been ordered to resume its prescribed patrol – unspecified, but presumably shadowing the Argentine naval manoeuvres involving the Eva Peron.

  ‘For some unexplained reason the commander thought those orders had been countermanded and he put the sub into a state of high alert, rigged it for silent running and dropped it close to the ocean floor. It was at such a depth that it was unable to send or receive signals traffic. He only realised his mistake when he took the sub off alert seven days later, brought it back to periscope depth and signalled a report to Northwood.’

  ‘But how could he misunderstand his orders? There are checks and fail-safe systems.’

  ‘Indeed there are, but the commander apparently failed to carry them out. He may have been radio silent for the past week, but there’s been no shortage of signals between Northwood and the Trident since this morning.’ He smiled. ‘I think it’s fair to say that the commander of the Trident will be an ex-commander about ten seconds after it next docks. Meanwhile, it’s back on patrol, with unambiguous orders to remain in constant radio contact.’

  I was silent for a moment, marshalling my thoughts, wanting to make certain that I was right, rather than reluctant to admit that I’d overreacted. ‘But even if the Trident has been found, it doesn’t alter the fact that there’s an unexplained Zodiac and suspicious signs that could well point to the presence of Argentine Special Forces. If they are here, shouldn’t we be requesting Cobra Force?’ I hesitated. ‘It’s your decision of course, but—’

  ‘No, Sean, unfortunately it’s not my decision at all. I’ll certainly be reporting it to London immediately, but I can tell you now what the answer will be. I’ll put in a request for Cobra Force and I’ll be told that a deployment will cost a minimum of two million quid and before they agree to it, they want something a bloody sight more significant than two or three figures on the skyline and an empty Zodiac on a beach that might turn out to have been left by a group of our blokes on exercise.’ He paused to check my expression. ‘I’m sympathetic, believe me, but we’re not dealing with military logic, and we’re not just up against the usual budget problems. There’s also a faith in Whitehall in the value of SIGINT that bor
ders on the religious. If GCHQ have intercepted an unusual level of Argentine signals traffic, then they might just do something, but if GCHQ says nothing’s happening, then nothing’s happening. The fact that Argentina might deploy in total radio silence doesn’t seem to have occurred to any of the geniuses at the MoD.

  ‘I’ll heighten the alert level, report to London and send a party down to recover the Zodiac. And I’ll get the Marines to put out some recce patrols in the area where you saw the figures. For the moment that’s all I can do. Wait in the Ops Room,’ he said. ‘I’ll get someone from the Marines to debrief you.’

  ‘I’m due on QRA at six, Boss.’

  He checked his watch. ‘You should just make it. And, Sean? Thank you.’ He hurried away, shouting orders to the Duty Officer.

  A Marine sergeant arrived within minutes to debrief me. I watched the flurry of activity as the guard was strengthened. A few minutes later, three hastily assembled patrols headed out of the main gate. I felt a selfish reassurance at the sight. Whether they found anything or not, it was now their responsibility, not mine.

  The only vehicle left outside the Ops Centre was the Boss’s blue Land Rover Discovery, so I jogged across to the Death Star. I threw together my toothbrush and shaving gear and enough T-shirts, socks and underwear to see me through the next few days.

  The transport laid on to take the aircrew down to the Quick Reaction Area had already left. I looked at my watch, swore, and then began to run down the runway. It was over a mile and painfully hard going into a strengthening wind. It reduced my speed almost to walking pace. Chest heaving, I finally reached the QRA area and pushed open the door of the Q shed.