Soldier K: Mission to Argentina

by David Monnery

  ‘Who are the other lucky bastards?’ Razor asked.

  Strachan looked at Weighell, who shrugged. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any harm in your knowing. Assuming we can get them out of West Falkland in one piece, it’ll be one of G Squadron’s patrols: Major Brookes, plus Troopers Matthews, Laurel and Moseley.’

  There were good-natured groans. ‘And where are they going to find a helicopter large enough to carry us and Hedge?’ Wacko wanted to know.

  ‘If we’re going in by helicopter, why can’t we be taken out that way?’ Docherty asked.

  ‘It’ll be a one-way trip going in,’ Strachan admitted.

  ‘So what happens to the crew?’ Ben asked.

  ‘That’s still to be decided,’ Weighell butted in. ‘As is the question of uniform. How would you four feel about going in without uniforms, knowing there’s a risk the Argentinians might treat you as spies?’

  ‘I’ll wear pyjamas,’ Wacko said, ‘if it gets us to do something other than sit around in England.’

  ‘Why would we not be wearing uniforms?’ Docherty asked. This was beginning to smell a little, he thought.

  ‘Because the Government may want to disown you,’ Weighell said bluntly. ‘There’s a lot of political ramifications to this, as you can guess. The Foreign Office is worried about losing friends if we look too aggressive …’

  ‘Jesus Christ, boss, this is a war, isn’t it?’ Wacko wanted to know.

  ‘To us it is,’ Weighell said drily. ‘The Foreign Office likes to think it’s considering the long-term implications. Trade, that sort of thing …’

  ‘Money,’ Razor said disgustedly.

  ‘Not just,’ Weighell said. ‘They have to keep our allies sweet, too, or the enemy will find it a lot easier to replace and upgrade its weaponry – particularly the Exocets.’

  ‘The fucking French,’ Razor said with feeling.

  Great, Docherty was thinking. We put our lives on the line and the fucking Government is not prepared to even admit we’re British soldiers. ‘What are we supposed to be, if we get caught?’ he asked. ‘Albanians?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Weighell said, as honestly as he could.

  ‘I guess the trick is not to get caught,’ Ben offered.

  ‘Right,’ Wacko agreed.

  Docherty looked at them. ‘Razor?’ he asked.

  The Londoner shrugged. ‘Let’s worry about it when we have to. It sounds like an important job, boss,’ he added quietly.

  Docherty smiled inwardly. ‘Aye, it does,’ he agreed. And why the hell not, he told himself. He smiled at Weighell. ‘Looks like we’re your men, boss,’ he said quietly.

  ‘I thought you might be,’ Weighell said.

  ‘Your transport leaves for Brize Norton in a couple of hours,’ Strachan added. ‘I doubt if any of you have loved ones, but if you have you can use the Admin Office phone to give them the good news.’ He stopped at the door. ‘You lucky bastards,’ he said affectionately, and disappeared.

  Weighell wished them all good luck, then drew Docherty aside. ‘Just wanted to make sure you know,’ he said, ‘that if the Government disowns you the Regiment won’t.’

  Docherty nodded. ‘I’ll tell the others,’ he said.

  When Weighell had gone the four of them stood there looking at each other. ‘Just when I was getting used to the idea of a long and boring life,’ Razor said. ‘I’d better ring my mum.’

  ‘I’m off home,’ Wacko said. ‘I’ll be back in an hour.’

  The other three trooped across to the Admin Office, and took turns using the phone and flirting with the secretaries. Razor woke his mum up, and spent ten minutes telling her not to worry. When he came off the phone there were tears in his eyes, which he tried, unsuccessfully as far as Docherty was concerned, to conceal. Ben spoke to his mother as well, though it seemed as if she did all the talking.

  Docherty spoke to one of his sisters, who said she would pick a good time to tell his mother. He then decided, on the spur of the moment, to ring Liam McCall, but the phone rang and rang until a woman he did not know answered. ‘Tell Liam that Jamie rang,’ Docherty told her. ‘Tell him I’ve gone to feed the penguins and exorcize a few demons.’

  4

  Staring into fog was almost hypnotic, Hedge thought. Since the onset of daylight banks of the stuff had drifted up Falkland Sound, as if taking over the night’s job of rendering the world less visible. And if the experience of the last few days was anything to go by, it would hang around until night came back on shift.

  ‘Another busy day dawns,’ he murmured to Mozza, who was taking his time retreating to bed. ‘At least we can all have a decent meal.’

  There were compensations for the grey-out. Each man could spend time conceiving and preparing his own gourmet feast from the dried menu available, and cook it up on the tiny hexamine stove each carried. It tasted good, it warmed him up, and the whole process consumed time which might otherwise have been given over to boredom. On clear days and nights, by contrast, the fare was all cold: biscuits, chocolate and cheese. Or, for variety, cheese, chocolate and biscuits. The preparation time was what it took to remove the wrappers.

  ‘I’d like my steak medium to well done,’ Hedge whispered after the retreating Mozza. ‘With chips and mushrooms and a pint of red plonk.’

  This reminded Hedge of his full bladder. Another of the advantages of fog, he thought, as he relieved himself on the open hillside a few yards away from the OP, was an honest-to-goodness natural piss. On cold, clear mornings you had to do it inside the hide, and let it out in dribs and drabs to minimize the telltale plume of steam. If the Argies were watching they would think they were encircled by men with prostate problems.

  Hot meals, flowing piss – you’re really grasping at straws, he told himself, as he eased his bulk back into the hide and double-checked that the camouflage netting was correctly in place. Let’s face it, Hedge, he reminded himself, everything you’re wearing is wet and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future, your feet are either numb with cold or feel like they’re sharing your socks with a pair of dead fish, and you’ve no idea how much longer you’re going to be stuck in this God-forsaken hillside on this God-forsaken island in this God-forsaken ocean. Your boat home is probably being sunk even as you think, and your PC has probably just woken up with the idea of checking out the enemy minefields tonight under cover of fog. Is this what you joined the fucking SAS for?

  It probably was.

  After all, what else would he be doing? If he was not in the Army he would be either unemployed or bored out of his mind. Or in prison like two of his schoolfriends, both of whom had hated their working lives so much that they had lost any idea of self-control at the weekends. They had half-killed some poor Paki just because he gave them the wrong sort of smile.

  Hedge sighed to himself. He had never liked Pakis much himself, but since being in the Army, and particularly since being in the SAS, his feelings had changed, at least a bit. He supposed being in close contact with the Gurkhas in Hong Kong had made him think about such things, but he had the feeling that the more important changes were in how he felt about himself. People picked on others when they were scared or feeling hard done by, he reckoned, and he felt pretty satisfied with the way his life was going. He might not like sitting in a cold puddle for days on end but he had no doubts about what he was there for. And in his experience that was something really worth knowing.

  At least this fog would clear, he thought to himself, staring out at the giant shroud. He remembered an Incredible Hulk story in which the hero found himself trapped in a parallel universe that was contained in a speck of dust on someone’s knee, and idly wondered whether he had been miniaturized and dropped into the head of a dinosaur’s Q-tip.

  They had been the only passengers on the coach from Stirling Lines to the RAF base at Brize Norton, and they proved to be the only human cargo carried south by the Hercules C-130 to Ascension.

  ‘I begin to understand why Ascension hasn’t be
en developed for tourism,’ Docherty said nine hours later. The fuel tanks which had been added to increase the C-130’s flight range made the aircraft even more cramped than before, and the web seats had lost none of their capacity to torture each and every limb.

  ‘That and the fact that there’s fuck-all there,’ Razor agreed.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Wacko wanted to know, ‘the place is full of history.’

  ‘I don’t think G Squadron’s Wankathon counts as real history,’ Razor said.

  ‘Napoleon was exiled here, you ignorant bastard.’

  ‘What, the Man from Uncle?’ Ben asked deadpan.

  ‘No, you moron, the French guy. Napoleon Bonaparte.’

  ‘Is he still around?’ Razor wanted to know.

  Docherty smiled to himself and refrained from pointing out that Napoleon had been exiled to St Helena, 800 miles away. Sometimes the three of them seemed so different, but at others they had an uncanny knack for following the same thread of absurdity. And usually in the same depraved direction. Their mothers probably loved them.

  ‘Napoleon had one thing on you,’ Wacko was saying, ‘he could show a bit of restraint. When was the last time you said “not tonight” to yourself? Or to a woman, even?’

  ‘No, no,’ Razor insisted, ‘you’ve got it all wrong. When he said “not tonight, Josephine” he meant no TV tonight, because he wanted to get her straight to bed.’

  ‘They didn’t have TV then, you idiot.’

  ‘Yes, you idiot, it was the radio,’ Ben said. ‘Josephine was an Archers addict.’

  And so it went on for most of the remaining hour of the flight. It took up the time, it stopped Wacko thinking about Anne and Brendan, stopped Razor worrying about his mum, and pushed Morag’s ultimatum to the back of Ben’s mind. It stopped them all from thinking about their aching limbs or the war awaiting them.

  At Ascension’s Wideawake Airfield the four of them stepped almost buoyantly onto the tarmac and surveyed the surrounding scenery. It was only just after dawn, but already they could feel the heat building, and there was no shortage of activity across the airfield. Supplies and aircraft seemed to be competing for space, and the one long runway looked more like a corridor than the usual road set on a large lawn. In one direction the remains of the volcano which had created the island rose up behind the various buildings ringing the airfield; in the other a multitude of naval vessels were rolling in the blue Atlantic.

  ‘That way, chums,’ the pilot told them with an airy wave of the hand, and they eventually managed to locate a less than enthusiastic welcoming committee in one of the temporary offices. He was not expecting any more SAS men, had nowhere to put them, and thought they must be joking if they thought a plane would take them on south. The whole fuckin’ Army’s leaving tomorrow, and some of them are having to use rowing boats.’

  ‘No wonder Napoleon died here,’ Razor muttered.

  The sergeant eyed them all fondly. ‘Why don’t you go and find some breakfast in the Volcano Club while I get your gear out of the plane and try and sort something out,’ he suggested.

  It was not a bad idea: the steaks were thick and juicy, the fried eggs all unbroken, the chips elegantly poised between too crisp and too greasy. After demolishing their plates all four of them laid themselves out for sleep on rows of chairs, and Wacko at least was soon snoring with enough gusto to frighten the Navy.

  Docherty found himself unable to doze, and sat back up, gazing out of the wide windows at the Vulcans, Nimrods and Starlifters strewn across the airfield. For a moment he thought he was in one of those old war films, and that at any moment they would be trooping out to their planes, revving propellers, trundling up into the sky. But this was real, he thought, looking around at his comatose companions. All this effort to put right what a few moronic generals probably thought up over breakfast one morning. What a farce.

  But at least it was their own farce, Docherty thought. And he had no problem with the idea of using force to show that walking into other people’s countries was beyond the pale. It was just that somehow this all seemed a bit like overkill, and it worried him a little. Not a lot, but a little. Which was still too much.

  Docherty had always thought the phrase ‘yours not to reason why’ was one of the dumbest things a soldier could ever tell himself. It made a lot more sense to spend some time working out why, because then it became a hell of lot easier ‘to do or die’.

  On Friday 7 May the day dawned on the hillside above Port Howard without any accompanying fog. There seemed to be a pattern, Brookes thought – one day with, one day without. He could think of no conceivable reason why this should be so, but then he did not understand how flicking a switch could fill a room with light either. Science was for the scientists to deal with.

  It was by no means as bright as the day before yesterday had been, but he could see all he needed to of the settlement and camp below. Not much had happened since the visit of the inspection team – if that was what they were – two days previously. That day there had been a lot of standing in line, a lot of polishing weapons, a lot of salutes. In the hour before dusk there had even been a football tournament, with four teams playing three games on a sloping pitch beyond the camp. Brookes’s knowledge of football was almost non-existent, but according to Stanley the level of technique had been high.

  Which was hardly the sort of information the Task Force needed. Nor did Brookes feel that Stanley’s masterplan – ‘Let’s go down and steal their ball’ – would inspire much support in the ladies’ toilet aboard the Resource.

  The information they did need had mostly been gathered, and transmitted in code by short burst on the patrol’s Clansman the previous night. It would have been a miracle if the Argentinians’ Direction Finding (DF) equipment had picked up the transmission, let alone pinpointed its source, and as yet there were no signs in the camp below of any patrol activity.

  Mozza’s original guess-timate of the enemy’s strength had been almost spot-on. There were between 920 and 950 men in the camp below, constituting, if the flag flying rather foolishly from one building had any validity, the 5th Regiment of the 3rd Brigade. The men were well armed, with rifles and SMGs comparable, if not superior, to those carried by the British, and they were energetically adding new trench positions and minefields around the settlement to those already dug out and laid.

  A gun emplacement had appeared during the previous day’s fog, complete with a 105mm artillery piece now pointing out into the Sound. It had presumably been stored in one of the outhouses, most likely with the aim of concealing it from satellite or other high-altitude surveillance. Now, with the prospect of a British landing drawing nearer, it was being made ready. Brookes thought that probably meant there were no others hidden away, but at some point he would have to decide whether the element of doubt necessitated a closer look.

  He watched through the telescope as one of the enemy soldiers emerged from one of the sheds with a bucket and tipped what looked like vegetable peelings onto a growing pile. There was no doubt that their camp was growing dirtier and more untidy by the day, a fact which Brookes considered highly significant. On paper the Argentinians were numerous and well armed, but this unit at least was lacking in the sort of self-discipline which made for an efficient fighting force.

  It was hard to put his finger on it exactly, but there was a general sloppiness about it all. They did not want to be here, that much was clear. Smiles were few and far between, scowls worn almost as part of the badly-kept uniforms. And the ordinary soldiers seemed incredibly young; hardly beyond the pimple stage. That was it, Brookes suddenly realized: this was an adolescent army, which might prove long on courage but would almost certainly prove woefully short on concentrated or prolonged effort.

  This was one of two fatal weaknesses in the Argentinians’ position. The other was the troops’ lack of mobility. Maybe the enemy had 100 helicopters ready to transport this regiment to where it might be needed, but Brookes very much doubted it. When the Ma
rines came ashore in a couple of weeks time, across the Sound 20 miles or so to the north and east, these troops would simply be stuck here in Port Howard, 1000 helpless and probably thankful spectators.

  Brookes was smiling to himself at this prospect as he noticed the patrol leaving the camp below, obviously headed up into the hills. He watched for some fifteen minutes as the line of twenty-two men, sometimes visible, sometimes not, steadily climbed an invisible track which would take them a quarter of a mile or so to the east of the hide.

  Then their line of march veered towards him.

  He woke Hedge, and told the big man to wake Stanley and Mozza. When they were all assembled – as much as any four men could ‘assemble’ in a cross-shaped hide only 30 inches deep – he told them why they had been woken. ‘There’s an Argie patrol headed this way,’ he said softly. ‘Twenty-one of them. In another couple of minutes we’ll have to go over to hand-signals, so …’ He took a deep breath. ‘It’s just gone three o’clock,’ he went on, ‘so there’s only about two more hours of light. If they spot the hide I’m for taking them on. With any luck we can get ourselves back over the ridge, and it’ll be dark before they manage to get any reinforcements up here. What do you think?’ he asked, in the democratic way the SAS took for granted.

  ‘Sounds good to me, boss,’ Hedge answered.

  ‘Piece of cake,’ Stanley agreed.

  ‘What should we try and take with us?’ Mozza asked, and wondered why his voice sounded so calm when the rest of him suddenly seemed anything but.