‘Right, boss.’
Docherty resumed his watch, and noted down the return of an Aeromacchi reconnaissance plane. Behind him Wacko was tapping lightly on the PRC 319’s keypad, while Razor and Ben were gathering up the patrol’s gear. He had to admit it, Docherty told himself: coping with life behind enemy lines was a damn sight easier than coping with life at home.
A hundred miles to the south Brookes’s patrol had received the same news of the Sea King’s discovery, and drawn some of the same conclusions. They too had witnessed an upsurge in helicopter activity over the environs of the base, and although the siting of their hide precluded any knowledge of arriving troops, the prospect of such had entered their heads before Docherty’s info was relayed on to them by Hemmings.
The major difference in their situation concerned the surrounding terrain. From what they had been able to gather, the area of pocked, lunar grassland seemed to cover at least a dozen square miles. Searching it thoroughly would require both a very large number of men and an inordinate amount of time. The odds against their being found seemed good to Brookes, and the others concurred.
To pull back, as North was doing, seemed more dangerous than staying put. There was nothing behind them but more of the same and the sea. To reach relative safety they would have to move back inland, along the same difficult route through populated country they had used on their way in.
The clinching argument, though, was the existence of the concrete aircraft shelters. Brookes suspected they contained Super Etendards, and unless and until he discovered otherwise the PC could see no justification for removing the patrol from its observation duties. When those planes took to the skies the Task Force would have to be waiting for them, or who knew what fresh disaster might occur.
South would sit out any search.
7
The following day clouds filled the skies over both airbases. From North’s original OP, Razor watched through the telescope as the Argentinian troops conducted a systematic sweep of the hills around the airbase. A long interval of rain did nothing to quicken their step, and after a while Razor began to feel almost sorry for the bedraggled lines in the distance.
The rain must also have helped mask the edges of their second OP, because the line of troops edged its way past the turfed-over roof of the empty hide without a second glance.
The whole scene reminded Razor of the hunt across the heather in the original film of The Thirty-Nine Steps. Even the countryside looked similar. He wondered if he might end up like Richard Hannay, handcuffed to a beautiful woman. Some hope, he thought. Some fucking hope.
A hundred miles to the south, Hedge was wondering whether there was a pizza delivery service in Rio Grande and coming up with much the same answer. The rain was falling on South as well, and with rather more venom.
As for the real enemy, the helicopters had been active overhead again that morning, but no Argentinian troops had so far crossed the OP’s line of vision. Which did not mean very much. In such country, and in such a noisy downpour, they could be 20 yards away and nobody would know the difference. Hedge was not fond of this particular site: he would have preferred one with a wider field of vision, even at the inevitable cost of greater visibility. It was just too nerve-racking, not being able to see anything.
Still, Brookes was a good bloke and a much more experienced soldier than he was, so …
‘Penny for ’em,’ Mozza whispered to his left. One advantage of the rain was that it made whispered conversation safe.
‘I was just wondering what Johnny Gaucho’s doing out there.’
‘Probably drinking hot tea in front of the canteen TV,’ Mozza said.
‘Go on, rub it in.’
Soon after dusk, Brookes decided they needed a check on what was happening at the airbase. Stanley and Mozza were dispatched, travelling light, wearing PNGs and with only their Browning High Powers for armament.
Shortly after they had left, a message from Hemmings came through: the landing force would be hitting the Falklands beaches the following morning. ‘Just thought you’d like to know,’ Hemmings signed off, but Brookes, mulling over the message, wondered whether the Green Slime man was obliquely trying to say something else. Something like: ‘if you’re going to have a go at those Super Es, then tonight would be the night to do it.’
But if they had a go and failed, then who would be there to give advanced warning of the planes’ arrival over the Task Force?
And yet, and yet … The Argentinian security looked pathetic, the chances of success good. He still had a couple of hours to make up his mind.
Mozza and Stanley, meanwhile, had reached that vantage point which Brookes and Stanley had occupied two nights before, and removed the PNGs. The scene looked much the same to Stanley, except for the fact that all three of the concrete shelters were now open. And inside each one, brilliantly illuminated in white fluorescent light, stood a gleaming Super Etendard jet. ‘Geronimo,’ he muttered under his breath.
‘There’s another two parked outside the far hangar,’ Mozza whispered, handing him the night-sight.
Stanley saw them for himself. Four Skyhawks were lined up behind them. The two Aeromacchis were parked in the same place as they had been before. The helicopter had acquired a twin.
He gave Mozza the thumbs up, then jerked both thumbs in the direction of their OP. Both men slid back down the slope they had been lying on, put their PNGs back on, and started for home across the patchwork of hummocks and hollows, Mozza in the lead.
They had gone hardly 100 yards when a quietly spoken fragment of Spanish seemed to rise out of the silence, like a record fade-out in reverse. At almost the same instant a figure appeared above them, a blue silhouette against the night clouds, not more than 10 feet away.
Stanley’s Browning made a sound like a stuttering cough and as the figure began to collapse another appeared, like the second in a line of ducks in a fairground booth. Mozza sent three bullets into the shadowy mass of the man’s trunk, and he folded with a sickening groan.
Silence reasserted itself. The two SAS men stood motionless, eyes and ears straining for sight or sound of other enemy soldiers. For a moment there was none, but a slight scraping noise beyond the two corpses betrayed the third Argentinian.
He could have run off into the dark or started shouting, but he ran straight over the rise towards them like a lunatic, waving his gun around in search of a target. The combined power of the two Brownings threw him backwards in a tangled heap.
‘Christ almighty,’ Mozza murmured.
Stanley was already working out what to do with the bodies. The only digging tools they had were their hands, and it would take longer than they had to bury three men in such a manner. But just leaving them where they were would invite discovery. Once they failed to report in, a search would be mounted, and before too long helicopter searchlights would be beaming down on the corpses.
‘We’ll have to cover them somehow,’ he decided. ‘With grass.’ He pulled the three bodies down into the hollow while Mozza tore out clumps of tussock grass. Somehow they managed to weave the long grass around and between the dead men in such a way that the first gust of wind would not blow it away.
‘Good enough,’ Stanley said. ‘Let’s go.’
They regained the OP without further mishap, but one look at the two men’s faces told Brookes that something had happened.
‘Trouble,’ Stanley told him. ‘We ran into three Argies. Could have been a regular patrol or maybe not – there was no way of knowing. But they were armed. We took them out and covered them up, but they’ll be missed sooner or later.’
Brookes looked at Mozza. ‘You OK?’ he asked.
‘Yeah,’ Mozza said, nodding. It had all been so quick. He was not sure how he was.
‘The kid was brilliant,’ Stanley said.
‘What now, boss?’ Hedge asked.
Brookes looked at his watch. It was 1913 hours. He told the other three about the message from Hemmings, and what he ha
d read between the lines.
‘I think you’re wrong about that, boss,’ Hedge said. ‘Hemmings didn’t strike me as the sort of guy who’d go in for hints – he’d just say it straight out. But …’
‘You may …’ Brookes started to interrupt.
‘But having said that,’ Hedge went on inexorably, ‘I still think it’s a fucking good idea, no matter who had it.’
‘It’s got my vote,’ Stanley agreed. ‘If we stay here they’ll keep looking till they find us. So, if we’ve got to go, then we might as well take in all the sights on our way home. Like those concrete shelters.’
‘The landing’s tomorrow,’ Brookes argued. ‘The fleet will be at its most vulnerable. It’s the one day they can’t afford to be surprised by those Super Es.’
‘They can’t be surprised by planes that we’ve already blown up,’ Stanley said emphatically.
‘I know,’ Brookes agreed. ‘But it’s a risk nevertheless. If we fail …’
‘Who dares wins, boss,’ Hedge said straight-faced.
‘OK. We’re all agreed? Right. Next question – do we seek approval from the Green Slime?’
‘The way I see it, boss,’ Stanley said, ‘is that we’re the ones on the spot, and we’re the ones who’ll be playing beat the clock with the Argies out there. We know what’s what. And we don’t have time to fuck around with politics.’
‘Agreed,’ Hedge said. ‘At least, mostly. But why not tell them what we’re about to do, preferably just before we do it? If they agree, great. If they don’t, we’ll have to think up some reasons why we had to go ahead and do it anyway.’
Brookes smiled. ‘Very pragmatic,’ he said.
‘That’s me, boss,’ Hedge agreed.
‘OK,’ Brookes said decisively. ‘I’ve been thinking this over for a couple of days now, and there are certain obvious problems. First off, the subs are busy looking after the Task Force till the landing’s over, so they can’t come for us before Sunday at the earliest. Our only other escape route is across the Chilean border, which, as you all know, is about 40 miles the other side of the airbase. But we can’t go rushing round the airbase with 90lb bergens on our backs, so we’ll have to leave them somewhere for the duration. If we leave them this side of the base we’ll have to work our way right round the place after all hell has broken loose, so it seems better to move everything across to the far side first. OK? Is that all clear?’
They all murmured assent, their faces deadly serious. Each of them was beginning to realize just how difficult getting away with it was going to be.
‘So,’ Brookes continued, ‘we’ll pack everything up and start off around nine, which will give us three hours to get round the base with all our kit, stash it somewhere, and be ready for a midnight start. Any questions?’
There were none. Or at least none of the sort Brookes intended.
‘We could set up in competition with Pickfords,’ Wacko muttered, as the patrol prepared for yet another move, this time back to the forward OP. It was two hours after nightfall.
The shower promised them by the Task Force’s meteorological experts had lasted about seven hours, and showed no sign of giving way to one of the promised bright periods. ‘It’s going to be more like a swimming pool than a home,’ Ben complained.
‘A man’s castle is his swimming pool,’ Razor added helpfully.
‘Keep it down, lads,’ Docherty admonished them. He was beginning to worry that the sheer incompetence of the enemy’s search that day had engendered a dangerous overconfidence.
‘Sorry, boss.’
And then again, Docherty thought, he was probably overreacting. They had seen the Argentinians wend their way back into the base, and in any case the rain and wind were more than loud enough to drown out the sound of lowered voices. Even so, bad habits were catching.
He considered the latest fruit of Razor’s new preoccupation with mixing proverbs – ‘Don’t cross a bridge with a stitched chicken’ – and smiled to himself.
‘We’re ready, boss,’ Ben whispered.
They started off down the hill, and Docherty had a last look back at the OP site before putting on his PNGs. From 10 feet away there was no sign it had ever existed. And until someone or something had the misfortune to fall through the turf roof there would not be.
It took them a couple of cautious hours to cover the two miles to the forward OP, and another hour to bale it out sufficiently for any sort of even vaguely comfortable occupation. At least the rain had stopped by the time they finished, and over the next two hours a sky of broken clouds gave way to a cold and welcome clarity.
Docherty reported their move back to Hemmings, and had the following morning’s landing on East Falkland confirmed. Tomorrow, he thought, as he lay back in the theoretical pursuit of sleep, tomorrow a lot of kids who had never seen real action would find out something about themselves they had never known before. That their instinct for survival was stronger than they had thought, or, more frighteningly, that it was a lot weaker. That a grown man’s bladder really did have a will of its own. That time was as elastic as any dope-smoker knew it was. That nothing could be as ugly as death. Or as peaceful.
The smell of the damp earth walls was heavy in his nostrils. It was a good smell, he decided. The smell of life. As he drifted into sleep he saw one last picture in his mind: the myriad floating candles on the moonlit Lake of Patzcuaro, a fragile flame for each and every ancestor on the Mexican Day of the Dead.
Raul was again late arriving at the Rakosi, and this time the long wait wore more heavily on Isabel, who looked up each time the door opened, hoping for Raul, but half-expecting Tomas Solanille. When Raul did finally appear he was with several of his fellow pilots, and already the worse for drink. He greeted her with a kiss and the usual smile, but she could immediately see that he was in a bad state.
It did not take long to find out the reason: the next day the English were probably going to land, and the Air Force was supposed to stop them. The Rakosi was full of pilots who thought so and said so, loudly. The Army would do nothing, the Navy would do nothing. Fucking eunuchs, every last one of them. The Air Force had to do it all. If it was not for them the nation would have no honour.
One man who claimed to have a son in the Navy, and who objected to the pilots’ blanket condemnation of all things naval, was hurled out into the street.
Isabel managed to get Raul away from his companions, and into one of the booths. His aggressiveness vanished, and he became desperately maudlin. ‘This will be our last meeting,’ he said. The next day he would be killed, and he wanted her to write to Mariella, but not to sign her real name, because Mariella might not understand his knowing another woman, so it would be better if she signed herself Pablo, or something like that.
Eventually she managed to persuade him that his chances of survival on the next day would not be improved by dulling his reflexes with an excess of alcohol, and that she was hungry, and that there was a nice restaurant in Calle San Martín where she could eat and he could drink coffee.
He sheepishly agreed, and an hour later was compos mentis enough to provide the information she most wanted. She had seen Solanille again, she said.
‘The friend of your family,’ he remembered.
‘Is he based here?’ she asked. ‘I would like to pay my respects.’
He was based in Rio Gallegos, Raul thought. And in the town, not at the airbase. He was something to do with Intelligence, so he was probably based at their HQ on Calle Zapiola, opposite the police station.
They went for their usual walk through the park by the river, though the conversation seemed more stilted than usual. She was thinking that maybe he was right, and that this would be the last time she would see him. He now seemed preoccupied with the day to come, almost eager to be on his way.
‘Thanks for looking after me,’ he said when they parted, throwing her one more sad smile as his taxi sped off back towards the airbase.
She walked down Avenida Julio Roca, pa
st her hotel, and for another couple of blocks before turning left down Calle Ameghino. From the next corner she could see across Calle Zapiola to where several lights blazed in an elegant three-storey building. Maybe Solanille was in there now, writing his memoirs.
She turned and started walking back to the hotel, telling herself she was being foolish. The man had not laid a finger on her, turned any electric switches, forced her to eat her own shit, or raped her on a rack.
He had just sent her to those who had.
Shortly before 2100 hours Mozza encoded Brookes’s message – BELIEVE DISCOVERY IMMINENT STOP RELOCATING TO CHILE STOP FIVE SUPER ETENDARDS EYEBALLED STOP WILL ATTEMPT DEMOLITION EN ROUTE STOP OUT – transmitted it by ‘burst’, and then closed down the PRC319’s reception capability.
A few minutes later the four fully loaded men were making their way in single file across the dark and broken landscape, wearing PNGs, silenced MP5s at the ready. There had been no audible outcry from the airbase during the last few hours, no sign whatsoever that the three men now wearing grass shrouds had been missed. So far fate seemed to be smiling on the SAS.
The weather too was lending a hand, in the form of a cold, persistent drizzle. Besides reducing visibility, such conditions were likely to reduce the enemy’s enthusiasm for setting foot outdoors. If it stayed like this, Brookes mused hopefully, they might even get away.
But first things first, he told himself. First we get the planes, then we start worrying about saving our own skins. Even all four of their lives would be a cheap price to pay for saving a ship.
He wondered, not for the first time, if having such thoughts merely demonstrated a propensity for stupid heroics. He knew that was what his wife would think, and probably his sons would come to think so too, once they had had all sense of honour knocked out of them by either business or university. What the hell. It still seemed real to him, and where else on earth could he go for judgement other than to his own conscience?
Soldier K: Mission to Argentina Page 15