Exclusion Zone

by Exclusion Zone (retail) (epub)

  ‘What can we do? We can’t sink it with Sidewinders.’

  ‘We’ll have to reload, refuel and come back.’

  ‘Have we got time?’

  ‘We don’t have a choice.’ I thumbed the radio. ‘Returning to base.’

  ‘Keep formation with me.’ Rees’ voice sounded even weaker.

  Noel took over. ‘We’ve got some damage. We’re losing power and fuel and part of the wing’s been shot away.’ A moment later I heard him put out a Mayday call to base.

  We sped away from the cruiser and out of immediate danger. I formated with the other jet and flew around it, assessing the damage. It was a frightening sight. The end of one wing had been ripped away like a shark bite out of a surfboard. The tail was also damaged and a thin plume of vapour – leaking fuel – was streaming from the wing. Lines of holes up the fuselage and through the canopy showed the track of the gunfire that had wounded Rees.

  ‘What’s your situation?’

  There was a pause before he replied. ‘We’re fuel critical and it’s a pig to keep straight and level. It would be a struggle even without the shoulder.’

  ‘How bad is it?’

  ‘Bad enough. I’ve staunched it as best as I can, but I’m still losing blood.’

  ‘Hang in there. We’ll be down in less than ten minutes.’

  It was clear from his voice that he was already badly weakened by loss of blood, but there was nothing we could do to help him except to fly alongside, talking, cajoling and encouraging him.

  As we crossed the coast of West Falkland we were rocked by the turbulence from the air rising up its sheer cliffs. I saw Rees’ jet yaw dangerously and pulled a few more yards away from him to give him – and us – a bigger margin of safety.

  Flying the crippled Tempest one-handed would be taking every ounce of strength he had. I offered a silent prayer that he would make it.

  The Rapier site on Byron Heights swivelled to track us as we passed. At that moment I would have swapped every Rapier missile on the Falklands for one Sea Eagle.

  The flight back to Mount Pleasant seemed to take for ever. Rees’ jet constantly lurched and dipped, stumbling through the air like a drunk, while his voice grew fainter and weaker.

  ‘Come on. Just two more minutes, we’re over the Sound.’

  ‘Yeah, s’all right,’ he said, his words slow and slurred.

  ‘Descend five hundred. Keep under the cloud layer… Rees!’

  ‘Yes… Descending.’

  At last I could see the runway ahead of us in the distance. ‘We’re on finals now.’

  I saw the flaps inching out of his wings. There was an agonising pause before the landing gear came down. Closer to the base, I could see the emergency vehicles lining the runway. I flew in with him, wing to wing. As we crossed the perimeter, his damaged wing dipped and almost clipped the fence. He levelled, overcorrected, and then levelled again.

  The jet crossed the apron. It seemed to hover and then dropped like a brick, clouds of blue smoke bursting from the tyres. It bounced back into the air, then touched down once more. The thrust buckets deployed and I saw the nose dip as the brakes started to bite. Then we were past him.

  I pulled a long left turn to bring us back to the start of the runway for our own approach. As soon as we ground to a halt on the apron outside the Tempest shack I hit the canopy release button. I scrambled out of the cockpit and ran towards the other jet, with Jane a half pace behind me.

  Rees was being lifted from the cockpit, his head slumped forwards on to his chest. A dark stain had spread from his right shoulder down to his waist and his face was as grey as the sky. Noel remained in the back seat, his normally ruddy face pale.

  The Boss stood nearby, watching Rees being carried to the ambulance. He went across and put an arm around Noel’s shoulders as he finally made it down the ladder. Then he walked across to speak to the ground crew already clustered around our aircraft, and finally turned to us. ‘An hour, Sean and Jane. Then we’ll have you airborne again.’

  The ambulance revved up and drove slowly away. He glanced at it, then back at us. ‘I’ve been watching the whole thing on data link. You’ve done brilliantly already, but.’ He paused, ‘I don’t need to tell you this, but you’re the last chance we’ve got. It’s up to you now.’ He turned away.

  I watched Noel for a minute, then walked over to him. ‘Rees will be okay, Noel.’

  He nodded. ‘I know. It’s the risk we take. But all the way back I’ve been wondering if he got hit because I fucked up somewhere along the line.’

  ‘He got hit because he happened to be in the wrong place and copped a round or a piece of shrapnel, but your navigation didn’t put him there. It’s just the luck of the game.’ I pointed to our wing. ‘A few feet left and I’d have been the one bleeding… or worse.’ I paused, checking his expression. ‘Noel? Are you fit to go back up?’

  He turned to look at me, puzzled. ‘You mean if the jet wasn’t knackered and there was a pilot available? Why?’

  I hesitated, then blurted it out. ‘I want you in the back seat with me for this mission.’

  He was silent for a moment, staring at me. ‘I’m not stupid, Sean. I know what this is about. It’s a very flattering vote of confidence but it would be a mistake.’ His voice was sympathetic, but firm. ‘This isn’t about wanting me in the back seat, it’s about wanting to keep Jane safe, isn’t it?’

  I looked away, but he’d already read the answer in my eyes. ‘I’m sorry, Sean, but she has to go with you. She’s a good nav, better than I am, and right now, that’s the only thing that counts.’

  I hesitated for a second, but I knew he was right.

  He forced a smile.

  ‘What was that about?’ Jane said, as I walked back to her.

  ‘Just making sure he’s all right.’

  ‘He’s better than Shark and Jimmy, that’s for sure.’ She gave a slow shake of her head. ‘Poor Shark. His premonition was right, wasn’t it?’

  We stood close together, not speaking, staring at the ground. I was bone-weary and soaked with sweat, and I shivered as the wind gusted around us. The Boss called us into the shelter of the Tempest shack as a Land Rover screeched to a halt and one of the cooks ran in with a Thermos of tea and some sandwiches. I sipped the scalding liquid and tried to eat one of the sandwiches, but it felt as dry as chalk in my mouth and I laid it aside.

  The ground crew were swarming over the jet, pumping in fuel and opening the engine covers. I heard one curse as he fumbled with the oil filler cap and burned his arm on hot metal. Two more stripped the damaged panel from our wing and began replacing it with one from the unmarked left wing of Rees’ jet. They sprinted to and fro between the Tempests, shouting to each other, cannibalising whatever parts they needed, or searching through the mounds of spares cluttering the sides of the shack. As they worked, the armourers hauled two iron bombs from the dump and loaded them into position under the wings. Finally, the ground-crew leader shouted and waved his hand towards the cockpit.

  The Boss tapped his fingers against his leg and glanced at us once or twice, as if he had something to say, but was not sure how. His gaze flickered away again before it came to rest on us. ‘I’ve no words left. You know what has to be done and how much we’re counting on you. Good luck.’ He turned aside and rubbed at his eyes, then walked away without looking back.

  I put my arm round Jane’s shoulders. ‘Do you know what my mother said to me, when she saw me off at Brize? “Be careful, Sean, I’ve lost one son out there. I don’t want to lose another.” I’m not making a very good job of following her advice, am I?’

  We walked over to the jet. She turned to face me at the foot of the steel ladder. ‘Last time pays for all.’

  I nodded. ‘Crazy, isn’t it? All those millions of pounds, all those troops and all that equipment, and in the end it comes down to just one jet and two people.’

  Her wan, tired face creased in a smile. ‘It’ll be okay,’ she said. ‘I’ve been wait
ing for you too long to lose you now.’ She touched my cheek with her gloved hand, then clambered up the ladder and began strapping in.

  As soon as we were airborne again, Fortress flashed us an update on the cruiser’s course and speed. The first bomb strike had slowed the ship a fraction, no more. It was still making eighteen knots. It would be in a position to start landing its troops inside four hours, long before Cobra Force could get here.

  We flew north-west over the mountains and out over the sea. The cloud was now broken and patches of sunlight struck the water, turning from pewter to jade. Jane and I barely spoke, lost in our thoughts.

  No serviceman or woman would willingly return to the scene of an earlier firefight; to do so was to push your luck one notch too far. Now we were doing it, heading back to where the wounded but still potent enemy lay in wait for us.

  ‘Okay, Sean,’ Jane said. ‘Contact fifty miles, locked up. It’s down to us.’

  Even without the patches of sunlight throwing the cruiser into sharp relief, the black smoke still coiling upwards from its bomb wound was an unmistakeable signpost.

  ‘If the guys with the SAMs react like they did last time, they’ll probably blast every missile they have on the first pass.’ I could hear my voice shake as I said it.

  ‘Sean? We’ll do it. They can’t stop us.’

  Jane began calling the range, speed and bearings, as I pushed the throttles forward into combat power. The Tempest leapt forward, pinning me back into my seat. The attack sequence began again, like a recurring nightmare. The green symbols marched across the HUD, the sky above the ship erupted with Triple-A and small-arms fire and the flash of SAMs pierced the fog of smoke.

  I kept the jet ducking and weaving in evasion, but returned again and again to the attack line. As we neared the ship, I fired the cannons. The jet shuddered and slowed a fraction. Plumes of water rose into the air as the first shells hit the sea. I held the button as the twin lines of fire bit through the waves, climbed the side of the ship and raked the deck.

  It sent a few of the enemy troops scattering for cover, but the volume of return fire barely slackened. Rounds stitched lines across the wing and there was a rattle from the rear of the fuselage as shrapnel smacked into it. A caption lit up on the panel.

  ‘Radar warner’s gone,’ Jane yelled.

  The warning was almost lost among the cacophony. Then the symbols intersected in the HUD and I hit the bomb release.

  There was the familiar heart-stopping pause before it came off the pylon. The jet bucked up and away and I banked hard left, forcing my head round to watch for the impact. There was another crack and a round ripped into the bottom of the cockpit, tearing a hole through which cold air rushed in a torrent.

  Then the bomb detonated. The cruiser’s deck just aft of the bridge lifted then fell back. A cloud of smoke and steam poured from the gaping hole. I watched and waited, holding the turn as the seconds ticked by. Incredibly the ship seemed to have lost no headway at all. The wake stretching out behind it barely deviated from the straight track towards the Falklands.

  ‘What the hell does it take to sink that thing!’

  ‘Shit, shit, shit.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘The radar’s out. That Triple-A must have punched a hole straight through it.’

  I gave a weary shake of my head. When we trained on the ranges, we progressively degraded our equipment, one stage at a time, until we were left to drop bombs like a Second World War pilot, lining it up by eye and pressing the trigger. It was not a scenario I had ever envisaged having to use in combat.

  I scanned the warning panel, thought for a moment, then hauled back on the stick, pulling the jet into a steep, climbing turn. We spiralled upwards, the rush of the clouds across the nose visibly slowing as we washed off speed and energy.

  ‘What’s the story?’ Jane said.

  ‘We’re going to do this as a dive and put the next bomb straight into the same spot as the last one. If that doesn’t stop it, nothing will.’

  ‘It’s a hell of a shot to take. We’ll be sitting ducks up here.’

  ‘Maybe, but I can’t think of a better option, can you?’

  There was no answer for a moment, then Jane yelled a warning. ‘Two bogies, two o’clock high, descending.’

  I cast a despairing glance towards the sky, then hauled the jet back and left, flicked back the safety cover and stabbed the firing button twice, sending the last two Sidewinders off the rails. Without a lock they were all but useless, but I hoped the launch would at least force the Argentine jets to manoeuvre and buy us a few more precious seconds.

  I put the nose of the jet into a dive and jammed the throttles forward. ‘We’ll have to chance it. Commencing attack run. Chaff. Flares.’

  The airspeed bulleted upwards as the altimeter unwound faster and faster. I could hear Jane punching out the chaff and flares as swiftly as her fingers could hit the buttons. My flesh crept. Without the radar warner the first sign of a missile launch against us might be the flash as it destroyed us.

  The deadly blossoms of Triple-A began to open again ahead of us and the cruiser zoomed into focus, seeming to leap to meet us as we accelerated downwards in a screaming dive. Vibrations rocked and shook the jet.

  ‘Bogies in your four… In your five.’

  ‘Arming stick top.’ My right index finger rested lightly on the firing button. I tried to blank my mind to everything but the cross hairs of my sights and the root of the column of steam and grey smoke rising from a jagged black hole just behind the bridge of the cruiser.

  Ground fire and tracer ripped the air around us, and again I heard the crack as rounds or shrapnel pierced the Tempest’s thin skin. The airspeed was close to maximum, the altitude dropping like a stone.

  ‘Five thousand feet… four… Bogies in your six. In your six!’

  The cross hairs met at last on the edge of the jagged hole. I squeezed the trigger and felt the lurch of the jet as the bomb came off, one thousand pounds of high explosive, falling towards the cruiser at close to the speed of sound.

  I heaved back on the stick and jerked hard right.

  ‘Three thousand… two… one…’

  For a moment the blurring motion seemed to slow. I even had time to look into the eyes of the gunners on the deck. Then the whole world erupted in flame. There was a single massive explosion from the cruiser, then a series of blasts, one after another, ripping it apart. The port side of the ship blew open, the thick steel curling back like burnt paper. The doomed cruiser wallowed, its wake turning back on itself as it circled, helpless. Then a massive cloud of steam engulfed the whole superstructure, as seawater poured in through the rent in the side.

  The bridge began to rise into the air. The steel prow sliced through one wave, buried itself in the next and never rose again. The whole forepart of the cruiser disappeared, plunging beneath the water as the ship broke its spine.

  The stern section remained afloat a few seconds longer, then it turned turtle and slowly slipped beneath the waves. A vast bubble of air broke surface a few moments later, then there was nothing but a steadily widening circle of thick, black, viscous oil.

  A heartbeat later I heard Jane’s warning cry. ‘Missile lau—’ There was a blinding flash and a roar. I grabbed for the handle beneath my seat and heaved. I felt the straps lashing tight around me and then the blast and the headlong surge. A sharp edge slashed my cheek and I felt a burning pain as the ejector seat was hurled up into the air.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I hit the water with a jolt that felt like solid ground. Then I plunged under, fumbling with the chute release on my chest as I sank lower and lower. There was a roaring in my ears. I looked up towards the pale green light of the surface in despair, then there was a crack as my life jacket inflated. The yellow collar swelled around me and I felt myself propelled upwards.

  I burst above the surface gasping for breath. I swivelled my head from side to side, but could see nothing for a moment as I lay
in the trough of a wave. Then the swell pushed me upwards and I saw the yellow life raft a few yards away. I hauled on the cord attached to my life jacket and pulled myself over to it.

  I hung panting from the side of the raft for a moment, salt water stinging the gash in my cheek, then I dragged myself over the side. I got to my knees and began searching frantically for Jane. She was floating, half-submerged, in the water twenty yards away, tangled in her chute.

  I dug the paddle into the water, battling against the waves. It took an age to cover the few yards to her, my muscles screaming with the effort. I leaned over the side, grasped her hand and began to pull her upwards. She was banging at the chute release on her chest as water slopped over her face.

  She choked and spat. ‘The chute. I can’t get it free.’

  Still holding her with one hand, I reached for the button and pressed and twisted it, my fingers clumsy in the icy cold, but it was jammed solid.

  ‘It’ll be all right, Jane.’ I tried to keep the panic from my voice, but felt the strain on my arm increase as seawater flooded the billowing chute and pushed it beneath the waves.

  The weight of it dragged at Jane and I saw the terror in her eyes. I ripped my right glove off with my teeth and again tore at the harness, my fingers starting to bleed, while still holding her grimly with my other hand. She sank lower in the water, more and more waves breaking over her head.

  I dragged her back towards the raft. ‘Hold on.’

  She spat the water from her mouth and shook her head. ‘Let me go, Sean. You’ve got to let me go…’

  ‘NO!’ I pulled the survival knife from my jacket and began slashing at her harness straps, struggling desperately to keep a grip on her arm as I did so. Then the harness twisted as another wave slapped against the raft. The knife slipped from my frozen fingers and disappeared into the depths, glittering mockingly as it dropped from sight.

  Her words echoed in my head: ‘I’ve been waiting for you too long to lose you now.’

  I swung back, seized the harness again and hauled on it with my last reserves of strength. Jane’s face came clear of the water again, but her lips were already turning blue. She gave me a look of infinite sadness. ‘My suit’s split, Sean, it’s leaking. You can’t save me. Let me go.’