Exclusion Zone

by Exclusion Zone (retail) (epub)

  I interrupted him. ‘We’re both fit and ready to go.’

  Jane nodded.

  ‘Good.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s nearly three o’clock. Get a hot shower, some food and what rest you can. We’re briefing in an hour. Take-off will be at dawn.’

  Jane got to her feet and followed him out of the room. I hung back and looked into the bay where Rose was being treated. She was lying back in a bath. A medic was bending over her, taking her temperature, and she did not see me at first.

  I stood in the doorway for a moment, looking at her. As the medic moved away she caught sight of me. The faintest hint of colour touched her cheek, and she moved her hands to cover herself, then sank back into the bath with a weary smile.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  She gave a slow nod.

  ‘I have to fly a mission, but these guys will take good care of you.’

  She saw the shadow cross my face. ‘Sean?’ Her voice was almost a whisper. ‘Is it over? Are we safe now? Both of us?’ She held my gaze.

  Finally I nodded. ‘You’re safe now.’

  ‘That’s not what I asked.’

  I shrugged. ‘Like I said, I have to fly a mission.’

  She reached out and took my hand. There was another, unspoken question in her eyes.

  I couldn’t meet her gaze and looked away. I stood helpless before her, unable to say the words she wanted – or thought she wanted – to hear.

  After a moment she released my hand and let her arm fall back into the water. A tear trickled down her cheek.

  ‘Bernard loves you, Rose.’

  She shook her head. ‘He sent me away.’

  ‘You didn’t see the look in his eyes after you’d turned away. He sent you away to keep you safe.’ There was a long silence. ‘You must rest. I’ll come and see you as soon as I get back.’

  The tears still tracked silently down her cheeks.

  ‘Rose, I’m not my brother. I—’ I paused, helpless. ‘I’m sorry. I have to go.’

  I walked out of the sick bay and along the corridor to the showers. There was still a smell of smoke in the building, and piles of debris in the corridors had been roughly swept to one side, but the only damage I could see – in the basement at least – were a few cracks in the walls and some patches of bare blockwork where the plaster had fallen off.

  The changing room was heavy with steam. There were clean flying suits hanging on the hooks and I could see the faint outline of Jane’s body through the half-drawn plastic curtain of one of the shower cubicles. I stripped off my stinking clothes and kicked them away across the floor.

  I walked towards the showers, but paused, my eyes drawn towards Jane’s cubicle. I could see her through the gap in the curtain. She stood with her arms raised, letting hot water cascade over her body. Her eyes were closed and a smile of pure pleasure was playing around her lips. I had always looked away before when she was changing into her flying clothes. Now, feeling like a thief, but unable to stop myself, I let my eyes travel down over her body.

  Her long blonde hair, darkened by the water, clung to her neck and shoulders. Her tanned skin seemed to glow with the warmth of the shower and her bikini marks showed a vivid, glistening white. Rivulets of water traced the smooth lines of her body. She soaped herself, arching her back like a cat, her hands moving down over her strong shoulders, her breasts and flat stomach, and over the soft curve of her hips.

  I took a step towards the shower, then paused, fighting the urge to step into the shower and slide my arms around her. I hurried away into a cubicle on the opposite side of the room. Shuddering in the unaccustomed warmth, I washed my hair and body over and over again, trying to rid myself of the cloying whale oil. I heard the other shower stop and the slap of Jane’s feet across the floor. I shut my eyes as I rinsed the shampoo from my hair and reached for the soap.

  My fingers touched warm flesh.

  I opened my eyes, shaking my head to clear the water from them. Jane stood there, naked and glistening.

  She reached out and took my hands in hers, pressing them into her shoulders. I felt her hands tracing the outline of my body, stroking my neck, my shoulders, working down around my hips. I could not hide how aroused I was. ‘Jane, I—’

  She silenced me with her lips and I crushed her to me, the touch of her skin one continuous caress of my body. We kissed hungrily, clinging to each other as the shower cascaded around our shoulders. She pulled away a fraction, her eyes unfocused, the pupils dark pools, then pulled me towards her again.

  A smile lit up her beautiful face. I opened my mouth to speak again, but she laid her fingers on my lips. ‘We nearly died out there. In less than two hours time we’re going to be in another dark place, with people trying to kill us. We may not come back. I don’t care about anything else. Only the present, this moment, matters. The future can take care of itself.’

  She slid her arms around my neck, her mouth hungrily seeking mine. I kissed her mouth, her neck, her breasts, and as I gave myself up to her, she wrapped her thighs around me, arching her back against the wall. We stared into each other’s eyes and our bodies moved together, deep and slow. I felt the climax building within her, and lost myself too, crying her name as I came.

  I held her as the waves ebbed away, the shower water as warm and soft on my skin as summer rain. I looked into her eyes, imprinting every detail of her face on my mind.

  Then there was the sound of footsteps in the corridor. She kissed me once more, then slid past me, out of the cubicle. There was a knock on the outer door. ‘Briefing in twenty minutes.’

  I called an acknowledgement and heard Noel’s footsteps disappearing down the corridor.

  We struggled into our clothes, but just before we left the changing room, I locked her in my arms. ‘Jane?’

  ‘I know.’ She turned to push the door open, then checked and swung back to face me. ‘But the sooner we blow the bastards out of the water, the sooner we can be back here.’ She smiled. ‘Now let’s get some food, while we still have time. I’m starving.’

  One wall of the Mess was pockmarked by bullet holes and the windows had all been blown out in the air raid. Rough sheets of plywood filled the empty frames.

  We sat facing each other across a table. Her hair was damp and her face still flushed.

  ‘What about Geoff?’ I said.

  ‘I’ve already told him.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I phoned him the afternoon before we went into QRA. I didn’t want to send him a Dear John letter. I wanted to do it face to face really, but it felt like I would be cheating him if I waited till we got back to England.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I just told him it wasn’t working. But you know what he said straight away? “It’s Sean, isn’t it?” I denied it, but…’ She shrugged. ‘I never was much of a liar.’

  We sat in silence, studying each other’s faces. I felt strangely at peace, even though I knew that the minutes were ticking away to the briefing. As long as we neither moved nor spoke, I felt that nothing could break the spell.

  Finally Jane squeezed my hand and murmured, ‘Look out, here comes Shark.’

  He stopped by the table, looking uncertainly from Jane to me. His eyes were deep-shadowed and his previous brash assurance had been stripped away. He looked suddenly vulnerable. Jane glanced at me, then slid along the bench to make room for him.

  He gave her a brief smile of gratitude, then sat down heavily. ‘Are you two all right?’

  ‘As all right as we can be,’ Jane said. ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’m okay.’ He paused, then shook his head. ‘No, I’m not. I wish those reinforcements would get here. I wish it would stop.’

  ‘It will – one way or the other.’

  He glanced across at me. ‘Do you think we can do it?’

  ‘Why not?’ I said, faking a confidence I was far from feeling. ‘It’s a big target.’

  He nodded absently, his mind on something else. He turned to l
ook at Jane. ‘If – if anything happens to me, would you go and see my parents, tell them what it was like? I don’t want them just to have some anonymous officer turning up on their doorstep, telling them how sorry he is, and then leaving them with nothing more than a brown paper parcel of my personal effects.’

  She laid a hand on his arm. ‘If you want me to go and see them, of course I will. But it’s not going to be necessary, Shark. We’ve lost a lot of friends, but we’ve come through the worst now. We’re not going to fail now.’

  ‘You’re right,’ he said, without conviction. ‘Sorry to lay that on you. Thanks.’

  He stood up and walked slowly away, his shoulders hunched.

  ‘Poor bastard,’ I said.

  She nodded, her eyes following him across the room. ‘He’ll be all right though, once he gets back in the cockpit.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  Even the limited warmth in the Mess had made me feel drowsy and I drank several cups of black coffee. Jane eyed me narrowly. ‘Do you want some speed? We’ve some in the escape kit.’

  I shook my head. ‘Sheer terror’s the only stimulant I need. I’ll get through this on adrenalin. And don’t worry, I won’t fall asleep at the wheel.’

  She rewarded the feeble joke with a smile, but there was a long silence. ‘What do you really think?’ she said finally.

  I shrugged. ‘We’ve got them outnumbered, three aircraft to two ships.’

  ‘If only it were that simple.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  I carried another cup of coffee with me as we moved through to the briefing room, which was undamaged save for a huge jagged crack across one wall, running from floor to ceiling. The four other aircrew were already seated on the benches.

  Jimmy sat there in silence, his features cast in perpetual gloom, stoically awaiting his fate. Shark was pouring out a stream of nervous chatter to Rees, who barely seemed to register a word. He stared at the floor as if it might open up and swallow him. Noel sat slightly to one side. He looked to be simmering with suppressed anger, clasping and unclasping his hands, impatient to be airborne, to get it over with, whatever the outcome might be.

  The Boss led the briefing, but before he spoke, he looked each of us in the eye. Then he leaned forward, resting his knuckles on the podium. ‘You guys have worked miracles already, but now I’ve got to ask you to dig even deeper. I won’t underplay in any way the difficulty of the task that faces you, but you already know how vital it is that you succeed.

  ‘The Argentinians have committed acts of unprovoked aggression against us. They landed forces on the sovereign territory of the Falklands. They attacked this base and killed thirty-seven people, including several good friends of yours and mine, and they murdered Falkland civilians, as Sean and Jane saw for themselves. They also sank the Trident, and no death could be more terrible than to be trapped in a steel coffin deep below the ocean. The lucky ones would have died at once, but some men might have survived the initial attack, closing the hatches to seal off their part of the sub as the sea poured into the rest of it.

  ‘They would do it instinctively, without thinking, but it would condemn them to an even more horrible death. As the sub sank to the bottom they would face the choice of slowly suffocating as the oxygen dwindled and ran out, or of opening the hatches and being squashed like worms by the pressure of the ocean floor. That is what the Argentinians have done to your comrades.’ He took a deep breath. ‘The odds are stacked against you. We’re not sure what air cover they’ll put up to protect those ships, but we do know they’ve taken a mauling already and are running scared of us. We can only hope they don’t know how few aircraft we have left. Even without air cover, however, those ships are more than able to defend themselves. But whatever they throw at you, you have got to get through.

  ‘If that cruiser is allowed to shell the airfield and get its combat troops ashore, the game’s up. The garrison will be overrun and wiped out, and by the time those Tempest squadrons get here, they might as well ditch in the sea. There’ll be nowhere to land and neither they nor the tankers will have enough fuel to get back to Ascension.

  ‘In short, we’re in the shit and we’re looking to you to get us out of it. The fate of all of us here, the whole garrison and two-and-a-half thousand Falklanders, is in your hands.’

  He let the silence build, then nodded curtly to the Intelligence Officer. She stood up and took his place at the podium. ‘We estimate a force of three thousand crack troops and equipment was embarked on the two ships. A flotilla of lesser craft has been marshalled in the inland waters just off Rio Gallegos ready to convoy a further five thousand troops.

  ‘The Argentinians have learned the lessons of last time. These are not raw conscripts; they are tough, well-trained regular troops. If they’re allowed to land, the battle for the Falklands will be over.’ Her voice cracked. She paused and pushed her glasses back on to the bridge of her nose, a characteristic gesture.

  ‘The Eva Peron is a former Royal Navy cruiser.’ She gave a grim smile. ‘Just another of life’s ironies. It dates from the Second World War, but should not be underrated because of that. It has been recently and expensively overhauled and its engines and armaments are far from antique.

  ‘The guardship is a Meko type 360 destroyer, La Argentina, length 125.9 metres, beam 14 metres, range 4,500 miles at its eighteen-knot cruising speed, top speed just over thirty knots. Armament includes eight MM40 Exocets in two quads, eight Aspide SAMs, one five-inch turret forward, four twin 40mm Bofors, six Mark 32 torpedoes – two triples – and two twin ASW rocket launchers.

  ‘Your main worries are obviously the SAMs and the Bofors guns. The cruiser was designed to survive the impact of a single torpedo strike or several hits by bombs. Its most vulnerable areas are the magazine – obviously – and the bridge, but taking out the bridge would not only require great accuracy, it would also not be enough in itself to stop the ship, or destroy its fighting potential.’

  She nodded to a member of the ground crew waiting by the door, who dimmed the lights. She switched on an overhead projector and a cross-section of the ship appeared on the screen behind her. ‘The magazine is three decks down, in this section’ – she tapped the image with her wooden pointer – ‘and as you would expect, it’s armoured. Six inches of best Sheffield steel.’

  She signalled to the crewman who turned the lights back on. She looked around, muttered, ‘Good luck,’ and almost ran from the room.

  ‘Weather brief.’ Jimmy uncoiled himself from the bench and stood up. His normally sallow features were grey with fatigue. ‘It’s marginal. If this was an exercise, we’d already have called it off. Wind speed sixty-five now and strengthening every minute, westerly, veering south-west and building, showers, sleet, hail, the works. Visibility two to three miles maximum, much less in the squalls.’

  As he sat down, Noel strode to the podium. ‘We’re airborne at 0600 hours, aiming to come out at them out of the sun while it’s still low in the sky.’ He paused. ‘If there is any sun. The guardship is obviously not the prime target, but it will offer a very convincing defence. I’m reluctant to waste time and weapons on it, but if we can take it out in a couple of strikes, our chances of landing the killer punch on the cruiser will be at least trebled.

  ‘I’ll be leading us in, Shark, you’re number two, Sean, you’re number three. We’ll take one pop each at the guardship, and whatever the results, we’ll then switch to the cruiser. The best hope of achieving the velocity to penetrate through three decks and armour plate is to go for a high-level LGB attack.’

  I saw Rees’ eyes light up. Using laser-guided bombs from twenty-thousand feet would almost guarantee success.

  ‘Sadly, we’re not going for that option,’ Noel said. ‘With no air cover, nor any defence suppression aircraft to counter the ship’s SAMs, the target marker would be a sitting duck. We just can’t afford to lose another jet.’

  ‘What about Sea Eagles, then?’ Shark said.

  Once more
we were offered a glimmer of hope. It had been some time since I’d used the antiship missiles, but they could be relied upon to do the job, and their stand-off capability would keep us out of harm’s way.

  Noel fell silent and glanced towards the Boss. As he stood up, his eyes already told the story. ‘I’m sorry, guys. Because of the cost, the MoD would only let us have four Sea Eagles. We lost the lot when one of the bunkers went up.’

  I could see Noel’s jaw clench and his knuckles whiten. ‘I’m sure we’ll be taking these matters up in due course… if we get the chance.’ He paused. ‘So, in case you haven’t guessed, we’re back to a lay-down attack – one hundred feet, fast and low, straight into the lion’s den.’

  I looked around at the faces of the others. They told the same story. It was almost impossible to believe that we were reduced to the tactics used by the Harriers during the Falklands War, sixteen years before.

  ‘You’re going with iron bombs. That’s two 1,000-pounders per jet, six shots at sinking two ships.’ Noel’s expression showed that he fully shared our concern. He turned over his hands and stared at his palms. ‘We also have no Herc to refuel from and we’re at extreme range, so we haven’t got much gas to fool around with.’

  He broke off as Shark raised a hand. ‘What about Argentinian air cover?’

  Noel shrugged. ‘As you’ve heard, we’ve inflicted severe damage on them, but they’ll be just as aware as us that this is the last chance. They’ve had Migs on intermittent patrol and I’m sure they’ll put everything they’ve got in the air as soon as they realise the ships are under attack, but they don’t have enough assets left to mount a constant CAP over the ships and they don’t have radar or satellite overview. As soon as the guardship makes radar contact with you, they’ll scramble everything they have… but, with luck, by the time they arrive it should be too late.

  ‘If there is air cover, we’ll have to deal with it. And just to make you feel even better, we’ve only got three Skyflash missiles left – one per jet. It’s just like the Sea Eagles, the MoD didn’t want to waste money by letting us have too many of them.’ I saw a muscle twitch in his cheek. ‘But our task is to take out those ships, no matter what the distractions.’ He paused and glanced at each of us. ‘Nor the risks to ourselves.’