Behind him Mozza’s watchful countenance also hid a turbulent state of mind. The killing of the Argentinian – the first man he had ever fired on in combat – had left him … well, it was hard to say. His senses seemed heightened, but that might have more to do with the danger they were all in. He also felt a dull ache in his stomach, but Hedge would say that was just hunger. Mozza did not know. He wanted a chance to think it all through, but it looked as though that would have to wait.
They were skirting the western end of the runway now, the nearest airbase buildings half a mile distant. Somewhere ahead of them was the main highway, and just as that thought came to Mozza the lights of a car appeared, and began working their way across the patrol’s line of march.
They crossed a rough fence which seemed to separate a sheep meadow from airbase property, and five minutes later reached the road. They crossed close to a stream bridge, and followed the stream up a shallow, rock-strewn valley for a few minutes more before Brookes called a halt and indicated a particular tumble of rocks. ‘This will do,’ he whispered.
The drizzle had stopped. They removed what they would need and stashed the bergens in convenient crevices. Each would carry a silenced MP5 and Browning, but only two men were carrying anything on their backs: in Stanley’s case a canvas bag packed with explosive devices; in Hedge’s a lethal crossbow.
They moved back down the valley, crossed the highway and traversed the long stretch of rough grassland. As they neared the end of the long runway cloud-reflected light from the airbase allowed them to dispense with the PNGs.
The previous night they had failed to find any sign of an alarm mechanism in the wire fence, but Brookes still had his heart in his mouth as he bent down to begin cutting. He could hardly believe their security could be this lax.
But it was. A minute later they were all through the flap, and Brookes was doing his best to render the break invisible with wire clips. The runway stretched towards the distant cluster of faint lights, and the four men began advancing alongside it in single file. It was ten minutes to midnight.
They had gone barely 100 yards when the lights on either side winked on. For a moment Brookes thought they had been seen, but the sound of an approaching plane provided a more reassuring reason for the sudden illumination. The four men spread themselves out flat on the grass and waited.
The plane – a Pucara – roared past, its wheels touching down alarmingly near them, sending spray into the air. Almost instantly the runway lights were extinguished. At least someone was awake in the control tower, Brookes decided. It was not exactly a comforting thought.
He wondered whether to wait until the airbase’s sudden burst of activity had died down, and decided not to. For all he knew a whole squadron of planes was on its way to Rio Grande.
The patrol resumed its progress, and after a few minutes the blaze of something like a camp-fire became visible in the vicinity of the concrete shelters. On West Falkland the Argentinian sentries had often hunkered down around such fires, and Brookes thought that was probably the case here. He hoped there would not be too many of them.
The patrol moved away from the side of the runway and veered out onto open ground, so as to give themselves a line of approach to the rear of the concrete shelters. As they approached the built-up part of the airbase the ambient light grew slightly stronger, to the point where the PNGs again became as much of a hindrance as a help. Brookes found it hard to understand the overall level of illumination; it was as if one person had demanded a blackout for security against air attack, another had demanded bright lights as protection against a ground incursion, and the two of them had been forced to compromise on the sort of dim lighting that would have graced a Victorian street.
Still, he was not complaining. The first of the half-built concrete shelters was only 100 yards ahead, and there seemed nothing to prevent them rendering at least three of the Super Etendards incapable of inflicting any damage.
They reached the rear of the first completed shelter, and Brookes hand-signalled Stanley and Hedge to reconnoitre around either side. While Brookes and Mozza waited for them to return, the PC gently ripped several clumps of grass from the sandy soil, smoothed out the surface with his hand and etched out a plan of the three shelters. When the other two returned five minutes later they were able to fill in the exact placing of the fire and four sentries.
The fire was more or less midway between the first and second shelters, and almost level with an imaginary line drawn through their front walls. Three men were sitting around it. Stanley raised one finger and then put his hands together behind one ear to show that one of them was asleep. The fourth man was slowly pacing to and fro along the line of the three huts.
Brookes thought for a moment then indicated on the diagram what he expected from the others. They all nodded.
Stanley went down the side of the shelter furthest from the fire, while Mozza took off on a long semicircular walk which would take him down between the second and third shelters, where he would be able to intercept anyone running towards the centre of the airbase. Brookes and Hedge waited by the corner of the space between the first and second, taking turns to keep the men around the fire under observation.
Five long minutes passed, and it was beginning to seem as if the walking sentry had stopped walking when Hedge saw him emerge from the other side of the second shelter, exchange some undecipherable pleasantry with his two conscious comrades, and disappear behind the front of the first shelter.
Stanley, concealed behind the far corner, listened to the sound of the Argentinian’s boots on the gravel growing slowly more distinct. Then he could hear breathing, the sharp intake of someone dragging on a cigarette, and the man was there, not four feet away from him, a black shape against the grey night. As he turned Stanley stepped forward, one hand reaching round to cover the mouth, the other drawing the sharp blade across the bare throat.
There was rush of blood, a slight, almost inaudible gurgle. Stanley lowered the body carefully to the ground, removed the man’s peaked cap, and placed it over his woolly hat. Then he picked the cigarette up from where it had fallen and started walking back towards the fire some 40 yards away.
Something in his walk must have been wrong, because one of the men by the fire suddenly looked up suspiciously. ‘Sal?’ he asked.
‘Sí?’ Stanley said.
The man went for the rifle beside him, but his fingers were nowhere near the trigger when Stanley’s Browning put a double tap through his upper torso.
His companion was quicker, ducking out of Stanley’s sight as he grabbed for his M16, but any sense of self-congratulation was laid to rest by the crossbow bolt which Hedge put through the back of his neck.
The third man, rudely awakened by the violent demise of the first, did not even bother to go for a weapon. He just launched himself out of his chair and into the possible salvation of the darkness. Stanley’s Browning stopped him dead in his tracks.
The SAS men held their positions for a moment, ears straining for sounds of an enemy response.
There was none. Stanley and Hedge propped up the three Argentinians by the fire, and even added some broken packing cases to the flames. They did not exactly look real, but they would fool the eyes of any pilot coming in to land.
Brookes meanwhile was checking out the doors of the concrete shelter. His heart sank when he saw a state-of-the-art combination code plate beside it, but tried simply sliding the door anyway. It opened.
Inside his narrow-beam torch picked out the familiar nose-cone of the French-built jet. There was no sign of missiles, either Exocet or any other kind.
Stanley appeared beside him, the bag of explosives held loose in his right hand. ‘How long, boss?’ he asked softly, removing the time fuses and packets of C4 explosive.
‘Say half an hour for this one. The same minus the time elapsed for the next, et cetera. OK? And keep it simple – just the nose-cones will do.’
He went back outside, hoping that half
an hour would not be too long, or too short. They needed their presence to remain undetected at least long enough to find the other Super Etendards, and a few minutes extra for getting away would do no harm at all. On the other hand, if their presence was detected before the half hour was up then the enemy would have a chance to defuse the explosives.
There was no correct answer to this one – only the interplay of judgement and luck.
Stanley came out and they moved on to the second shelter, passing the three dead men around the fire. For some reason Brookes was reminded of the three trolls turned to stone in The Hobbit, a book he had often read to his boys when they were young. He had enjoyed them then, he thought, and maybe they had enjoyed it too.
Hedge had moved on up ahead, covering their front, while Mozza had been sent back to cover their rear. He took up station on the corner where Stanley had cut the guard’s throat, his eyes drawn against his will to the pool of blood which had once sustained a life.
Stanley finished fixing the second plane, and Brookes waved Mozza up one shelter. Five minutes later all three fuses were burning, and the four men were gathered together in the shadow of the farthest shelter wall. Ahead of them a small parapet wall marked the perimeter of the large expanse of tarmac fronting the main hangars and, further on, the civilian airport building. There was precious little cover.
They had only twenty minutes before the explosives detonated, but there was always a chance no one would hear the small charges.
Two Aeromacchis were parked almost within spitting distance. ‘Should we take them out?’ Stanley asked.
‘No,’ Brookes said. ‘At least not until we’ve made sure we’ve got all the Super Es.’ There was no sign of any more guards, which did not mean there were none. Once the four of them moved out of the shadows they might be visible from the control tower away to the left, but at least it was lit within, which would make it difficult for anyone inside to see out.
The fuses were burning away. ‘OK,’ Brookes decided, ‘let’s take the hangars one by one.’
He led off at a canter, swinging across the parapet wall, and the others followed. For the first time they were out in the light, and it felt like it.
They reached the first hangar door, and Hedge started sliding open a large enough gap for them to enter by. There was a harsh screeching sound of unoiled wheels, which seemed to hang in the damp night air. They all froze, but there was no indication anyone else had heard it.
The hangar contained several Pucaras, and Brookes shook his head to Stanley’s gestured enquiry.
They moved on to the next, where Hedge took his time with the door, and managed to ease it sideways in virtual silence. Brookes was just squeezing through the crack when a voice rang out in the distance.
‘Control tower,’ Mozza whispered. ‘He wants to know if we’re “Diaz”.’
‘Díaz has changed shifts,’ Brookes shouted back in Spanish. He could see a figure standing at the top of the control tower steps, a cigarette glowing as he took a drag.
‘Who are you?’ the man wanted to know.
‘Gómez,’ Brookes shouted back, raising his MP5. As the man backed through the doorway both he and Stanley opened fire with their silenced SMGs. The man seemed to leap from sight, and the sound of glass breaking carried across the intervening space.
Please be alone, Brookes pleaded, and for a few seconds an unbroken stillness and silence seemed to answer his prayer. Then the light in the control tower abruptly went out, and the sound of a swelling air-raid siren filled the air.
For a few seconds they seemed paralysed by the sound.
‘Any ideas, boss?’ Hedge asked.
Brookes awoke from his momentary trance. ‘Let’s keep moving,’ he said. ‘Stanley, take the front. Mozza, Tail-end Charlie.’ In the distance they could all hear motors revving.
They ran forward along the front of a third hangar, and Brookes looked inside as the others listened to the growing tumult of the enemy’s awakening. Brookes was just re-emerging when a jeep loaded with men careered round the far corner of the building. Stanley and Hedge opened fire, sending the vehicle spinning out of control and into the corrugated hangar wall with a sound like a giant gong being struck.
No one emerged from the wreckage.
Stanley walked forward, and then ducked back quickly as someone opened up in his direction with an automatic rifle. He took cover behind a fork-lift truck loaded with empty pallets.
The PC looked at his watch, and turned to Hedge and Mozza. ‘Hedge, get behind the parapet. Mozza, get back towards the shelters in case they try and outflank us. We’ll be joining you shortly.’
He took cover himself behind the tailplane of a parked Aeromacchi, conscious of enemy movement on the tarmac ahead of them. ‘We have to hold them for three minutes,’ he shouted to Stanley.
‘Piece of cake,’ the Brummie shouted back. ‘By the way,’ he added almost conversationally, ‘there’s another couple of Super Es just round the corner there. I’d just seen ’em when the bastards opened fire.’
‘I think they’ll probably object if we walk over and plant some plastic on their noses,’ Brookes observed. He fired a burst with his MP5, and there was a crash of someone diving, or falling, back behind cover.
‘If I can get behind that truck,’ Stanley shouted, indicating the fuelling tanker to his left, I can at least put a few holes in them.’
‘Wait till we hear the others have gone up,’ he ordered, and checked his watch. They should have blown by now.
He looked back just in time to see a flicker of light and to hear the first of the slight whooshing sounds he was waiting for. That was one Super Etendard which would not be launching an Exocet against a British ship. And that was another. And another.
Three down, two to go. He could see Argentinian troops moving up on the far side of the runway, and knew that there was no way they were going to get away from the airbase. They might as well do all the damage they possibly could.
‘I’ll cover you,’ he shouted, knowing full well – and knowing that Stanley knew full well – that any covering fire he could provide in this situation was about as useful as a paper umbrella. Still, he began spraying three bursts in a random pattern across the entire front.
Stanley catapulted out from behind the fork-lift, took seven or eight running paces and launched himself into the roll which would take him behind the truck. As he disappeared from Brookes’s sight the truck exploded in a huge sheet of flame, hit by Argentinian fire. Brookes bowed his head, blinding lights dancing on his retinas. Then, seduced by the sudden thought that everyone would be equally blinded, he launched himself in a slalom-like run across the tarmac, his MP5 waiting for its target.
Ten paces, twenty, and there was the nose-cone …
A violent pain in his chest seemed to come from nowhere, to well up and engulf him, and the lights went out.
Hedge saw him go down. He knew Brookes and Stanley must have had some good reason for doing impersonations of the Charge of the Light Brigade, but whether he would ever find out what it was seemed open to question. Still, he had to try.
He eased himself across the parapet with the intention of advancing in a crouching run. He had hardly gone two paces when the burst of fire hit him, and knocked him down like a skittle. With a supreme effort, and the good fortune of some poor enemy shooting, he managed to lever himself back across the wall.
Neither Brookes nor Stanley had moved out on the tarmac, and there seemed to be a lot of troops milling around beyond them. Hedge took as good a look at his wounds as he could manage in the dim light. It seemed like one bullet had shattered the shinbone, another had pierced the knee. He would not be going anywhere under his own steam for quite a while. It also hurt like hell.
He tried to lever himself up onto one leg, and sank back with a grimace of pain. He exhaled noisily and examined the darkness behind him, just in time to see Mozza materialize out of it. ‘They haven’t got round behind us yet,’ Mozza said. ‘Let�
��s …’ His voice trailed off as he saw the body of Brookes stretched out on the distant tarmac. And failed to locate the fourth member of the patrol. ‘Where’s Stanley?’ he asked.
‘Somewhere under that truck,’ Hedge said brutally. ‘And …’
‘Is the boss dead?’
‘Dunno. But it doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere, and neither am I, so you get the fuck out of here, Mozza, while you still can.’
‘I’m not deserting you,’ Mozza insisted. He listened for sounds of pursuit but could hear none.
‘The hell you aren’t,’ Hedge said, grabbing Mozza’s sleeve. ‘Listen to me, you numbskull,’ he hissed. ‘We’ve sent a few Argies to meet their maker here, and their mates are not going to be very pleased. Plus, we’re not wearing uniforms and they’re going to think they don’t need any more excuse. And if they get all of us then there’s no witnesses, right? They can do what they want, and when the time comes make up some cock-and-bull story about us all being killed in battle or lost at sea. But if you get away then the rest of us have got a chance of getting out of this alive. Got it?
‘Yeah, I …’
‘Then fucking go!’
Mozza went.
Ten rapid strides took him behind the hangar, and hopefully out of sight of the enemy. In the darkness he stopped to put on the PNGs, took a deep breath, and told his feet to be still while he spent ten precious seconds of running time in coherent thought.
There was no hope of retracing the patrol’s entry route along the runway – that direction would take him back into the light, and back into the arms of the Argies. His best bet was to head in the general direction of the road, and hope he could find some way under, over or through the fence without any cutting equipment.
He moved off at a run, along the back of the hangar, and across an open stretch of darkened ground between a stagnant-looking lagoon and several lighted barracks. No shouts pursued him – only the distant sound of gunfire: Hedge must be still drawing fire and holding up the advance.
Soldier K: Mission to Argentina Page 16