Exclusion Zone

by Exclusion Zone (retail) (epub)

  ‘Too big a risk. We’re only a few miles from Mount Pleasant. Our chances must be better if we walk in.’

  ‘Even though we might blunder into one of their positions?’

  ‘We might, but I think it’s better odds.’

  Jane hesitated, then shrugged her shoulders. ‘I hope you’re right, Sean. I hope you’re right.’

  I turned to Rose. ‘Any ideas on the best route?’

  She thought for a few moments. ‘We’ll come to Swan Inlet a couple of miles east of here. It’s too wide to ford there but we could follow it inland towards the ridge and cross near Swan Inlet Ditch. That runs out of the main channel, almost due east. It leads into Mocho Pond. The road from Mare Harbour runs along an embankment just above it, near the junction with the Stanley Road.’

  I frowned. ‘That’s one place the Argentinians really will be watching.’

  ‘Then we could still follow the ditch,’ she said. ‘But move north, parallel with the road. There are lots of streams and creeks there, there must be a culvert under the road we could use. That would bring us close to the perimeter of Mount Pleasant.’

  ‘And that’s where our troubles will really begin,’ Jane said. ‘If the Argentinians don’t shoot us, there’s every chance our guys will’ – she paused – ‘if there are any of our guys left. What if they’ve been overrun?’

  ‘Then we’re fucked whatever happens.’

  We moved off in single file towards the east. We reached the inlet in an hour and turned north along the bank. Every few hundred yards we had to cross a stream feeding into the main channel. Some were tiny, a few were deep, fast-flowing creeks, and we were all soon drenched to the bone again.

  Scudding clouds blocked most of the light from the rising moon, but each break in them bathed the land in grey cold light. We flattened ourselves against the sodden land and wormed our way into cover until the cloud returned. Snow flurries blew through on the gusting wind, chilling us to the bone.

  At length Rose caught my arm and pointed down the bank. ‘This is the place.’

  I looked doubtfully at the broad expanse of water that lay between us and the far bank.

  ‘It’s the best place,’ Rose said. ‘A broad arm of the inlet runs a good half-mile west just above here. It’ll force us right off track.’

  ‘Do we wade it or swim it?’

  ‘Swim.’ There was a catch in her voice. ‘It’s probably too deep to wade and anyway the bottom is sure to be soft mud.’

  I hesitated for a second. ‘Okay, let’s do it. One at a time. As soon as I reach the other bank, come straight after me.’

  I stripped off my clothes, bundled them into what was left of the backpack and held it above my head as I lowered myself into the water. It was an icy, heart-stopping shock. I pushed off and began swimming, trying to make no sound or splash. By the time I was halfway across, I felt drowsy despite the exertion, and a voice in my head kept telling me to stop for a while and rest, just for a few moments.

  Then I choked on a mouthful of filthy water. In a panic I struck out for the far bank again, flailing like a drowning man. Even when I reached the far side, I struggled to crawl up the slimy bank, twice slipping back.

  At last I reached the refuge of a grassy ledge. I no longer felt cold and the voice still kept telling me to rest, but I knew where that would lead. I forced myself to my feet and gave myself a ferocious rub down with my shirt and then dragged my clothes back on.

  I turned and saw the white figure of Rose already halfway across the black water. She reached the bank coughing and spluttering, and clung to me as I hauled her up the bank, racked by shivers that shook her like a dog. I began rubbing her down, forcing circulation back into the skin. Jane slipped from the water a moment later, as sleek and silent as a seal.

  As soon as they were dressed again, I leaned over to whisper in Jane’s ear. ‘We need to move faster for a while, she could die of exposure.’

  ‘We need to stay alive too. If we move too fast, we could blunder straight into a patrol.’

  We tracked the shore of the inlet northwards towards the black mass of the ridge. I could see no difference in the terrain, but Rose suddenly caught my arm. ‘Go slower, the ditch is quite close now.’ Her teeth were still chattering with cold.

  I scanned the flat peaty ground ahead of us, the quartz pebbles glowing faintly. Just at the limit of my vision was a broader band of black, running at right angles to our track.

  We reached the edge of it a few minutes later, a dark, rank-smelling ditch with a ribbon of water in the bottom. Clumps of coarse grass clung to the upper banks of the ditch, while the lower half was slimy with mud.

  We moved forward along the bank for forty minutes. Jane was now leading, while Rose and I covered her. I saw her rise to peer past a clump of tussac grass, then flatten herself against the ground. I laid a warning hand on Rose’s arm and pressed a finger to my lips, then inched forward to join Jane. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Enemy position.’

  I slowly parted the strands of tussac grass and peered into the darkness. For a moment I could see nothing, then I picked up the dull sheen of a steel helmet on the ridge ahead of us. As I scanned left and right, I saw three other soldiers, their rifle barrels glinting. At the centre of the arc of figures, shielded by a rough sangar, was a heavy machine gun.

  I looked to the north beyond the ditch, and caught glimpses of a similar huddle of forms, on the ridge above it. ‘Move back.’ My voice was so low I could scarcely hear my own words.

  We crawled backwards for a hundred yards then held a whispered conversation. As I spoke to Jane, I kept shooting anxious glances at Rose. She was tired and listless and seemed to struggle to follow the conversation.

  ‘The only way through is the ditch.’

  ‘If there’s nobody down there,’ Jane said.

  ‘Would you be if you didn’t have to be?’

  ‘You’ve got a point.’

  ‘Come on then, I’ll go first. Rose in the middle. Jane, you take the rear.’

  She glanced at Rose and shook her head. ‘I’ll be the hero this time, Sean. You might need to keep Rose moving.’

  ‘I’ll be all right,’ Rose said, her words almost lost in the wind. ‘I just need to rest for a while.’ Her head drooped towards her chest.

  ‘No!’ My voice was low but insistent.

  Her head snapped up, startled. ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘I’m just terribly tired.’

  I felt her skin. She was frozen. ‘No, Rose, you must keep going. If you stop you’ll die.’ I led her a little further back into a hollow and roughly rubbed her arms and legs again.

  I moved back to where Jane was waiting, restlessly scanning the ground ahead of us. ‘Jane…’ I groped for the right words. ‘Please be careful. I…’ My voice tailed away.

  She turned back towards me, searching my face. Her eyes widened in surprise at what she read there. She leaned towards me for a moment and her fingers brushed against my cheek. Then she slid silently down the bank of the ditch and began to move away.

  I waited a few seconds then helped Rose down the bank. The bottom was slimy, stinking mud. As she began to crawl forward, I held her back for a second. ‘Smear some more mud on your face and hands.’ She did so mechanically, and I darkened my own face and then followed behind her.

  We tried to keep to the muddy bank above the rivulet of water but it made very little difference; we were soon soaked once more. After we had crawled fifty yards I tugged her ankle, then crept forward to whisper in her ear. ‘Belly crawl from here until you see Jane do any different.’

  I lost all track of time as we inched forward through the mud only yards from the Argentinian soldiers on either bank above us. My flesh crept. There would be no shouted challenge if we were spotted, only high velocity rounds tearing into our flesh. We would not even hear the sound of the shot until after the bullets had hit us.

  If there was a patrol in the ditch, or they had booby trapped it… I forced myself to conc
entrate only on the next few inches to be covered. My arms ached from the effort of hauling myself forward and twice I saw Rose stop and lower her head to rest it in the mud.

  I crawled alongside her and whispered, ‘Keep going, Rose. Keep going. Not much further.’

  At last we reached a bend. Jane was huddled in its shelter, waiting for us. ‘We’re past the main danger, I think. All we have to worry about now is our own side.’

  I took the lead again as we moved another few hundred yards, then I led them up the opposite bank, on to the north side. The cloud had thickened again and the night was even darker, but I could just see an outline on the low rise ahead of us. It was the size and shape of an upturned dustbin.

  I stopped and stared. Jane crawled up beside me. ‘What the hell’s that?’ She frowned, then I saw her shoulders relax. ‘It’s all right; it’s the navigation beacon for Mount Pleasant. We’re only a couple of hundred yards from the road.’

  We crawled over the rise, flattening ourselves against the ridgeline to avoid giving ourselves away, either to the watching Argentinians behind or the British forces ahead of us.

  After more than twenty-four hours out of contact with the base, anything could have happened, but I had been oddly reassured by the sight of the Argentine position. If the base had already been overrun they would have been facing outwards, not inwards.

  We inched our way down the far side of the rise. The line of the road showed as a pale ribbon, running due north along an embankment of rock and shingle bulldozed out of the surrounding plain.

  We worked our way around the foot of it until I heard a whisper of water. Ahead of us was a circular opening set in the face of the embankment, a concrete storm drain. I worked my fingers slowly around the edge of the opening, feeling for booby traps, then I crawled through it. The wind whipped around me as it forced its way through the narrow opening.

  I inched my head out at the far end of the pipe and looked around. To my left the road curled away in a loop towards the west before swinging back to the main gates of the base. Ahead of me, only four hundred yards distant, lay the perimeter fence.

  Beyond it I could see the outline of the tower, but the massive block of the Tristar hangar had disappeared. All that was left were two broken pillars jutting into the sky and a twisted section of roof that ended in mid-air as abruptly as a ski jump. The entire base was in darkness.

  The other two joined me just outside the mouth of the storm drain. ‘Don’t relax yet. This is the most dangerous time.’ I squeezed Rose’s shoulder. ‘But we’re almost there; hold on.’

  She turned her face towards me and tried to smile. ‘Now what?’

  ‘Now we wait and watch a little longer.’

  We moved away from the embankment and crouched down a hundred yards from the fence, lying in a hollow that gave us some protection from all directions.

  We waited for fifteen minutes and then I heard the rumble of an engine. Two armoured Land Rovers were moving along the perimeter track, separated by about four hundred yards. I waited until the lead vehicle was almost level with me, then stood up, my hands held high.

  As I did so, the night erupted with gunfire. I dropped like a bag of cement, landing across Rose and crushing the air from her lungs. Bullets thwacked into the peat around us, cutting through the tussac grass like a buzz saw. A blizzard of shredded grass settled on my skin.

  Then the firing stopped. There was an eerie silence. I eased the battered pack from my shoulders and searched through it for something white to wave. In the end I dumped the mangled contents and gripped the pack itself.

  I started to raise it in my right arm, thought better of it and transferred it to my left. I reached up slowly, waving it above my head.

  Nothing happened. I took another deep breath and then with agonising slowness I rose to my knees and then my feet, keeping my arms high and well clear of my body. ‘We’re British. 1435 Flight.’

  There was a brief pause. ‘Stand still. Give the number of the day,’ a voice shouted.

  ‘I don’t know it. We were shot down the night before last. There are three of us, two downed aircrew and one civilian.’

  ‘Stand up, come forward, and keep your hands up.’

  Jane and Rose stood up alongside me and we began to stumble forward over the rough ground.

  ‘Stop. Move left fifty yards.’

  We came to a narrow gate in the fence.

  ‘Down on the ground. Face down, flat out, arms spread.’

  We dropped to the ground and I heard a clang as the gate opened, and the sound of boots crunching over the gravel.

  Rough hands searched me and took my pistol. Then my hands were jerked up behind my back and I was handcuffed, hauled to my feet and manhandled through the gate and into the back of one of the Land Rovers.

  Rose and Jane were dumped alongside me and two Marines clambered in to guard us.

  ‘We’re aircrew. Tempests. We were shot down.’

  ‘Shut up.’ There was a pause. ‘Jesus, what a fucking stink.’ They leaned out over the tailboard of the Land Rover, gulping in fresh air as it sped back across the base. As soon as it stopped, we were hustled out and pushed through a doorway. As the steel door clanged shut behind us a light flared.

  I bowed my head, trying to shield my eyes.

  ‘Who are you?’ The disembodied voice came from somewhere beyond the lights.

  ‘Flight Lieutenant Sean Riever and Captain Jane Clark, 1435 Flight, and Rose Calder, a Falklands civilian.’

  ‘Thanks, Sergeant, I’ll vouch for them.’

  I almost wept with relief at the Boss’s urbane tones. ‘Welcome back, Sean and Jane. We’d given you up for lost.’

  The blinding light was dimmed and our handcuffs were removed. He stood facing us, among a group of officers and half a dozen Marines. He wrinkled his nose. ‘You’re a little ripe, to say the least.’

  I glanced round at Rose and Jane. Their hair, faces and clothes were slimy with dirty yellow whale oil and streaks of stinking blubber, and I knew I was in no better shape.

  Rose stared straight ahead, as if hearing and seeing nothing. ‘It’s okay, Rose, we’re safe now.’

  She turned her blank face towards me. Then she swayed, her knees buckled and she collapsed on the floor. I touched her face, her skin was blue-tinged and icy cold to the touch.

  A medic pushed me aside. ‘She’s hypothermic.’

  He called for a stretcher. As Rose was carried away, the Boss looked from Jane to me. ‘You two don’t look too good either. We’ll debrief you in the Medical Centre.’

  We were led through the doors and down into the basement. Rose was carried into a side room and I heard the sound of running water as medics scurried to and fro. After we’d been examined, we sat huddled in blankets, drinking hot soup as we talked the Boss through the last thirty-six hours. Two Ground Force commanders sat on either side of us, occasionally interrupting to ask a question.

  When we had finished speaking, he glanced at them. ‘All right?’

  They nodded and moved away.

  ‘Now I’ll bring you up to speed with the situation here. There’s good and bad. The Argentinians have lost an awful lot of aircraft: eight Super Etendards – that’s two-thirds of their total force – ten, perhaps eleven Mirages and four Hercs.’

  ‘What about our own losses?’

  ‘Severe. We’re down to three serviceable jets. Four were destroyed on the ground and two, including your own, were shot down. The other one would fly if we had the spares.’ His face was haggard. ‘We don’t. Not that that matters. We only have crew for two of them anyway – Noel, Rees, Shark and Jimmy.’

  I felt sick. ‘What about the others?’

  ‘We lost ten aircrew – six dead, four seriously wounded – in the direct hit on the Q shed and the attack on the Operations Building. Two more aircrew were in their jet inside the Tempest shack when it was hit by an antitank missile, and another two were shot down over the sea. There’s been no trace of them.’r />
  He fell silent, staring at the floor. ‘The Rapier sites have taken a pounding but four are still active, and there were no raids at all last night. We think we may have beaten off the air threat.’ His tone remained bleak.

  ‘What about their ground forces?’ Jane said.

  ‘It’s a bit of a stalemate. We think they’re too short of men and ammunition to launch another attack, but they’re dug in and holding a line extending from the Wickham Heights down to Swan Inlet’ – he gave a grim smile – ‘as you discovered. The Marines are aggressive patrolling to deter any further incursions, but we don’t have the men to push the enemy back any further. We’ve lost a hell of a lot of ground troops, including our Forward Air Controller.’

  ‘Jack Stubbs? What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know. We haven’t even been able to retrieve the bodies yet.’

  He rubbed his face with his hand. ‘Reinforcements are on their way, the Cobra Force of Tempest squadrons and ground troops.’ He met my gaze. ‘I know, I know, but the time for inquests will be when this mess is over, not now.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Deploying the tankers from the Gulf to refuel them has been a nightmare. They will be here in’ – he paused and consulted his watch – ‘around fourteen hours.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘The Eva Peron has put to sea with its guardship and is less than six hours sailing time from us.’

  ‘What about our own guardship?’

  He shook his head. ‘Hit by an Exocet. It’s crippled, unable even to fire its guns or missiles.’ He put the tips of his fingers together and thought for a moment before speaking again. ‘As I said, help is on the way, but unless we can stop or sink that Argentine cruiser, the reinforcements will arrive too late.

  ‘We don’t have enough ground forces to hold off a determined assault. Even if we did, the Argentinians could lie up off shore and destroy the runway with their guns.’ Once more he paused, pinching the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and thumb. ‘You know the equation: if we lose the runway, we lose the Falklands. There’s no Task Force to save us this time. We don’t have enough ships in the entire UK fleet to form one. We have one last chance.’ He glanced from me to Jane. ‘This is asking a lot after what you’ve both been through already.’