Land of Fire Part 10

"There's a chance the major may have reached land somewhere alive, but his radio isn't working. We've searched the beach along the lagoon, without result."

"I will send people out to scour the sh.o.r.e as soon as dawn breaks. They are Yaga indians, a despised minority in these parts who can be trusted not to talk. If they find your major they will bring him to me; if there is only a body they will bury it on the beach."

I radioed in to Doug a pre-arranged code to summon the other three to join us at the RV point, and we settled down to wait in the shelter of Seb's Toyota. As he lit a cigarette, I made out his face for the first time, bearded as before, harsher and more gaunt than I remembered. I dare say the same was true of mine. The intervening years had been hard for both of us.

We talked of the previous mission.

"After we parted, I made contact with the pursuing patrol," he told us. "They accepted my story and moved off towards the south as I hoped. Very soon afterwards though there came the sound of heavy firing and I heard later that you had run into an ambush."

I told Seb how the Argentines had laid a trap for us on the other side of the border. I described the battle and how Andy and Guy had died.

"I am sorry," he said. "If I had come with you the odds would have been better."

"You did everything you could," I told him. "You risked your life to try to draw the other patrol off."

"I was born not far from this estancia. As a boy I learned to know this sector of the coast well. Not till I was twelve did we move to the Falklands."

"Then you came back?"

"Yes, my mother was Spanish, from an Argentine family. She felt trapped on the islands."

"How long ago was that?" I asked him.

"Thirty years near enough. There was no work on the Falklands except sheep or fishing. Here I am a geologist. I do consultancy work for the oil companies." He shrugged. "It's a useful cover."

Doug and the others made good time even though they were burdened with packs, and were with us in not much over an hour. I went out to meet them. I wanted to break the news of Seb's return to Doug personally.

In the intervening hours Doug had been brooding on our current position and now he was tired and edgy. "They sent who?" he said incredulously when I gave him the news. "Seb? But that's the b.a.s.t.a.r.d who steered us straight into a f.u.c.king ambush, man! If he's not working for the Argies, then he's f.u.c.king useless."

"He did his best to save our lives, for G.o.d's sake. He's come out here to meet us. He has a vehicle and says he can take us to a place where we can lie up in safety, close to the airbase."

"How do we know we can trust the b.u.g.g.e.r?"

"We don't have any choice, dammit. He's all the help we've got. We have to trust him."

Doug curled his lip. "You trust him if you want. So far as I'm concerned he's an Argy."

In the end Doug consented to meet Seb and he shook hands with ill grace. I could see that his hostility was being picked up by n.o.bby and Kiwi, who were becoming suspicious in their turn. If Seb noticed this att.i.tude he did not let it show. At his direction we stowed our kit in his Land Cruiser and climbed aboard ourselves. The snow was getting thicker now, driving in from the sea. Seb told us to take off our ponchos and put on some civilian coats he had brought along so that we would not seem obviously like soldiers to a pa.s.sing vehicle. When we were all safe aboard he spread a rug over our kit to conceal it.

He kept his lights off as we b.u.mped along the farm track, explaining that he did not want to attract the attention of any vehicle pa.s.sing on the main road. I offered him my night-vision goggles, but he declined. He seemed to have eyes like a cat, for he never once missed the way. He said the estancia was one of many abandoned when the bottom fell out of the sheep market two decades ago.

I asked what he made of the political situation here now. Was there a strong likelihood of war?

"I will tell you," he said. "These people are desperate. The economy has broken down. There are no jobs, there is no money. The banks have shut up. Ordinary people's savings have been wiped out. All that is left are debts. We are reduced to a barter economy. Even the foreign oil companies cannot get currency to pay their workers.

"People have lost their jobs, their pensions; they have lost faith in the government, lost faith in each other. They live day by day with no idea how they will feed their families. New administrations are formed and fall within hours. There are strikes and demonstrations every day. The people are desperate."

"Desperate enough to go to war?"

Seb lifted his eyes from the track a moment to look at me in the darkness. "Understand this, my friend among all the quarrels and political divisions that are tearing this unhappy people apart, one topic only unites them. Socialists, communists, Peronists, right wing, left wing, from the gutter to the mansion, there is one common cause: the Malvinas a belief that the islands are rightfully Argentina's and should be returned. The militarists have taken over power; they will s.n.a.t.c.h at anything that will bring the country behind them again. Some of them believe that if they could pull off a great coup, somehow seize the islands and hold them, it would act as a catalyst, healing the nation's wounds."

"Have they forgotten what happened last time?"

Seb glanced back towards the track, twisting the wheel gently as we ground forward up the snow-covered surface. "You forget, this is South America, where memories are short and pa.s.sions hot. Anything is possible."

We reached the blacktop road and turned south. Seb switched on the headlamps. The beams shone on the driving snow and the screen wipers worked steadily.

"There is another thing you should know," he said after a while. "Tierra del Fuego is the territory of the Argentine Third Marine Division, officered by fanatical supporters of the military coup. The division fought fiercely in the Malvinas war. It has re-equipped with modern arms and there are many in its ranks who would leap at the chance of a second invasion."

We drove on along the highway. I a.s.sumed it was the same road Doug and I had followed on our epic trek twenty years before. Then, though, it had been composed entirely of gravel. Now it was half and half- one lane was made up with tarmac, and a gravel bed ran alongside.

We had covered three or four miles when suddenly, about two hundred yards ahead of us, the lights of a vehicle clicked on.

Seb let out a curse. He slowed and dropped a gear to bring the revs up. "All of you, quickly, get down below the seats and cover yourselves." The guys in the rear squirmed down under the rugs Seb had provided, and I curled myself up in the foot well The lights evidently belonged to a big truck, because we pulled over on to the gravel to get by.

"Military?" I said to Seb.

He nodded. "Almost all traffic is army. No one else can afford the gasoline. I use this vehicle to drive survey parties for an oil company. It provides useful cover."

My rifle was stowed in the back. I drew my automatic pistol from its holster. It was a Sig-Sauer P228, designed in Switzerland and made in West Germany, and probably the finest weapon of its kind ever produced. It could be chambered for 9mm parabellum, 0.45 automatic Colt or .357 magnum, and was the pistol of choice for the US Secret Service as well as the SAS. My particular model carried nine 9mm rounds plus one ready in the breach.

I could hear the boys in the back releasing safety catches and slotting rounds into their grenade launchers. Doug was swearing in a monotonous undertone, as he often did before going into action. "f.u.c.king Argies, f.u.c.king country, f.u.c.k the lot of them!"

Seb kept the Toyota moving at a steady, slow pace on the gravel surface. If the truck flagged us down or tried to pull across us, our best bet was probably to use our manoeuvrability to pull a J-turn and hare off back the way we had come, trusting our greater speed to outrun them. If for any reason that was not possible and we were forced to stop, we would burst out from the doors either side, firing as we ran. I would let the others go first; my pistol was chicken-feed beside the ma.s.sive firepower of their C-5s firing on full auto. A single salvo of grenades from four weapons would take out the truck and all its occupants. Chances were there would be no more than ten men facing us; I was confident we could cut them down before they realised what had hit them.

If that happened, though, there could be no question of continuing with the mission. It would be a case of high-tailing it for the border with all possible speed before the inevitable helicopters had a chance to get on our track.

The truck stayed where it was while we ground slowly towards it. A hundred and fifty yards now. Was it a regular roadblock with orders to stop and search suspicious-looking vehicles on the roads at night, or was it hunting us?

Seb spoke. "It's a checkpoint to catch smugglers from over the border." His voice was flat, without emotion. He reached down into the glove pocket and took out a big automatic. It looked like a Colt or Browning High Power. He thrust it into his waistband without taking his foot off the accelerator. The distance between the headlamps was under a hundred yards. "With luck they will not bother us. If they wave us down I will get out and speak to them. Do not move unless I call to you to join me, then come out shooting."

"Don't worry about us, mate," Doug growled. "We've done this before."

One time in Ireland he and I had run into a paramilitary roadblock manned by the Continuity IRA. The usual trick when encountering one of these was to spin out and disappear. On this occasion things had happened too fast we came around a corner and there was a farm trailer backed across the road, and four guys in balaclavas manning it with AK47s. Doug hadn't hesitated. He'd put the car into a broadside skid that sent it sliding towards them at fifty knots. I would never forget the expression of the nearest player as two tons of vehicle came slicing down on him, catching him by the knees and pitching him over the bonnet. A second later I was de bussing rolling out of my door and laying down bursts of fire from my HK53 as I hit the ground. I dropped two guys and the last one had just time to throw up his hands and shout, "Don't shoot!" Result: two players dead, one maimed, and a prisoner so s.h.i.t scared he'd wet himself. Only one of them even got a shot off. Doug was a good soldier even if he was a prat.

While all this was running through my head we were closing on the truck. It was now only about thirty yards off. There was a ditch running along the side of the road. If it came to a fight, when we had killed the soldiers we could throw the bodies in there and take off in the truck.

The lights of the truck were muted by the falling snow. "A five-tonner, canvas topped, maybe half a dozen men with light automatic weapons," Seb called out softly. "They will not be expecting to meet resistance." He was keeping well over to the right-hand side of the highway and the gravel rattled against the underside of the Toyota. As we drew close, the driver of the opposing vehicle suddenly let out a double toot-toot on his horn that made me jump.

"Steady," Seb said between his teeth. "It is only a greeting. They recognised the vehicle. I am known on this road." He pumped his own horn twice and next moment we were back in the darkness, moving past the truck's length with snow spraying up against our sides. Even if they had wanted to, no one could have seen how many of us there were inside.

"Sometimes they stop cars to demand bribes from drivers," Seb said as we slowly relaxed. "Tonight we were lucky the weather is bad. The soldiers wanted to stay under cover."

I snapped the safety back on the Sig and restored it to its holster. Behind, Doug and the others were picking themselves up from the floor.

Seb turned on the radio. A girl's voice came on, crooning in Spanish, a sad song. I asked Seb about the security around the airbase at Rio Grande.

"In recent days security on the military sector has been tightened considerably and is now very intense indeed. All vehicles have to show pa.s.ses at the gates and there are regular patrols of the perimeter fences." He shook his head. "I do not know why London has sent you in to do this when I could have given them all the information they needed."

"Maybe they'll want us to take these planes out," said Doug.

Seb drew on his cigarette, dragging the smoke deep down into his lungs before he replied. "Madness," he said finally. "What are they trying to do, hand the Argentines an excuse for war?"

"We just obey orders," I said.

Seb let out a mirthless laugh. "It is OK for you boys. You will do your job and get out. I have to live here."

I told him about the salmonella outbreak in Port Stanley, and the Tornado crash we had witnessed. Seb let out a low whistle.

"We have heard nothing of this. They must have imposed a blackout on the news leaving the islands. You think these incidents are connected to the current crisis?"

"I'll tell you what I reckon," I said. "I think the epidemic has got worse. So bad maybe that most of the garrison is down and that includes the remaining pilots. The only way replacements can be flown in from the UK is by using the refuelling tankers at Mount Pleasant. With those out of action the islands are cut off. I think London is terrified that if the Argies learn how bad the situation is they might be tempted to seize the opportunity to invade. How quickly could the marines here act, do you think?"

Seb shook his head. "This is winter time, there is no shipping down here to transport large numbers of troops. They would have to come from further north, on the mainland."

"What about transport aircraft?"

"None that I have seen. Rio Grande is a bomber base. Always has been."

Seb was straining to see the road ahead as if searching for a marker. Whatever it was he must have seen it, for he slowed the Toyota and cut the headlights again. "We are near the airfield now."

Another minute and we were b.u.mping along a disused track with thick undergrowth either side. Seb stopped the vehicle. "We are less than half a mile from the airfield," he said. "From here on we proceed by foot."

It was half-past three five hours to set up the lying-up point before first light.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

Before we set off for the base, Seb produced a detailed map. We squeezed round to study it in the light of a small torch.

"We came in along the main highway here," Seb indicated. "And we turned off down this track, like so. We are now at this point on the north side of the field," he tapped the map. "The entire airfield is protected by a high wire fence. The military and civilian sectors lie on opposite sides of the single, shared runway. A secondary inside fence topped with razor wire prevents access to the military side with its hangars and revetments. The s.p.a.ce between is patrolled, and there are also minefields covering access routes from the sea."

A couple of the lads chuckled but I was impressed. Seb had done a thorough job. The map was beautifully marked out with the minefields indicated by rows of little crosses. "How accurate is the position of these fields?" I asked him.

"They are taken off a map issued to officers on the base," Seb answered. "Even so, you will need to exercise great care. Some of the minefields may be dummies, others left over from the earlier hostilities may be unmarked. The route I will show you is safe. I have watched soldiers moving along it."

"You're coming in with us this time?" Doug inquired sarcastically. He was letting him know he still wasn't trusted, but Seb didn't rise to the bait.

"I will guide you as far as the inner fence and leave you there. I suggest you set up your observation point as close to the fence as possible. You should have a clear view of all the activity on the base from there. The guards patrol round the inside of the fence. In general they avoid the zone between the fences for fear of mines. So you should be undisturbed."

"Do the patrols have dogs?" Kiwi asked.

"I have not noticed any, and I think they would be little use in the winter. Be warned, though, the guards are all drawn from the Third Marine Division. Whatever your general opinion of Argentine troops may be, do not underestimate these. They are highly motivated and well disciplined. Expect patrols to be vigilant and to pursue intruders aggressively."

I studied the layout thoughtfully. He was right. The zone between the fences would be a good place to lie up. Fear of mines would deter pursuit and the undisturbed vegetation would provide good cover. It was a question of locating a good spot from which to observe the runway. We would also need to survey a quick escape route in case we had to exit in a hurry.

We established communication procedures. Seb gave me a cellphone I could use if we needed help or evacuation. We would use agreed code words in Spanish to convey messages. "I have been instructed that when the mission is complete I am to drive you to the border, where a helicopter from the Chilean side will rendezvous for a pick-up."

Doug grunted at that. No more border crossings and ambushes on this trip. And no more yomping out across the freezing pampas either.

We also agreed a fallback a.s.sembly point two kilometres north of the base, to meet at if we had to abandon the LUP, and an emergency rendezvous point we called the War RV; on the edge of town for use in the event anyone became separated. Seb wanted to know how we would transmit reports back to the UK. "I recommend great care. Restrict communications to urgent messages only," he said. "The territory is considered a frontier zone and the authorities monitor all transmissions very closely. They can home in on you within seconds."

I shrugged. We had our own rules for transmitting messages and they were none of his business. Our orders called for us to check in with a status report twice daily. We also had to report any contact with the enemy or significant intelligence on the target. As soon as we reached the airfield and established our LUPI would set up the 320 set and inform Hereford that we were in position to begin observations.

With Seb's help we disembarked from the Toyota and shouldered our berg ens and weapons. Doug and n.o.bby had no packs, so we loaded them up with the heavy weapons, including the GPMG, and the satcom set. We were all now wearing winter white camouflage smocks and trousers. One side was all white for use in the arctic; the other was a mix of white slashed with black for use where there was a tree line. Tonight we were wearing all white. Seb carried no weapon but he brought along a set of long-handled bolt cutters. "For the gate," he explained grimly.

Then we set off. I went in front with Seb. The night-vision scope made the track easy to follow. All of us were vigilant in case someone was following. Seb evidently found our operations procedures strange, but said nothing and tagged along.

Nothing happened to raise an alarm, and after about an hour we came over a low rise and saw the lights of the airfield shimmering through the falling snow. After a few more minutes the outer wire fence loomed up. The track running outside it looked to be in regular use. "How often do they patrol this?" I asked Seb.

"The outer fence is checked at dawn and dusk, but the inner fence is patrolled at two-hourly intervals around the clock. A Jeep with a driver and observer. They look mainly for holes in the fence."

I glanced at my watch, and reckoned we had four-and-a-half hours till dawn. The falling snow would obliterate any traces of our pa.s.sage well before the next patrol showed up.

The track led down to a set of double gates, firmly padlocked. Seb applied his bolt cutters to the hasp and together we heaved on the handles. It took our combined strengths to shear through the toughened steel. Seb slipped the lock off and pushed the gate open enough to let us through.

"This is as far as I go. You are on your own now. Watch for mines and remember the patrols. At first light I will check the beach for any sighting of your comrade and contact you over the cellphone."

He closed the gate behind us and padlocked it shut with a fresh lock. He handed me a spare bra.s.s key with a plastic tag. "This exit is rarely used. Anyone trying to get through will a.s.sume the keys have become mixed up."

I pocketed the key and nodded. "Thanks for your help."

"I will call you," he said and vanished away into the snow.

I turned to study the situation. The two fences were approximately a hundred metres apart. On the plan the strip between where we were standing was shown as being sown with anti-personnel mines and the area was thickly overgrown. Just to make the point, there were signs fixed to the wire with a skull and crossbones.

"b.l.o.o.d.y typical of the Argies," Doug grunted. I agreed with him. If they were going to have a mine barrier, they should have done it the East German way spray the ground with weed killer and rake it over regularly, then there's no vegetation to hide behind and any tracks show up.

The map showed that the mines were cl.u.s.tered in the centre, leaving pathways along the fences where repair parties could work in safety. If we crawled along the edge of the inside fence until we reached a spot from where we could observe the runway, we should be okay.

As I looked, details of the airfield started to become clearer. According to the map it was about two miles long by a mile wide. The fence here ran parallel to the main runway, which was laid out east to west. The military sector where we were lay to the north of the runway and the civilian side to the south. The military installations were grouped in two sections; what looked like the control tower and mess blocks could be made out almost directly opposite where we had come in. A little further on and closer to the edge of the field stood the dark silhouettes of aircraft revetments and hangars. Seb had done a good job of leading us to the target.

On the far side of the inner fence a road ran around the airfield perimeter, presumably the one used by the patrols. We had no means of knowing when the next patrol would be round. Hopefully, though, any check in the current weather conditions would be cursory.

"Doug, take Kiwi with you and do a recce," I told him. "Keep close up to the inner fence to avoid mines. See if you can find a spot where there's a good view of the landing strip and all the main buildings."

My intention, if we weren't all blown up in the process, was to establish the LUP not far from the gate in case we needed to get out in a hurry, then set up an observation point about a hundred metres further in, from where we would monitor activity on the base. Two of us would man the OP around the clock on two-hour shifts, while the others rested up.

"Got it," Doug said. He handed n.o.bby the GPMG, which he had been carrying to give Kiwi a break, and took n.o.bby's rifle. There was a narrow path, presumably used by fatigue crews carrying out routine maintenance. The pair of them dropped on to their bellies and crawled off into the darkness.

n.o.bby, Josh and I crouched down out of the wind to wait in the darkness. I set Josh to watching the gate and the way we had come, in case a vehicle on the road noticed the Toyota tracks before they were covered by snow and decided to follow them down, while n.o.bby and I scanned the airfield before us. The wind was blowing gusts of snow in from the sea, at times obscuring the control tower completely. At other times we could make out the gleam of headlamps moving between buildings, which may or may not have been patrols.

On the ap.r.o.n in front of the tower half a dozen aircraft were drawn up. As far as I could make out at this distance through the night-vision scope, they were jet trainers and ground attack machines. I had spent some time studying an Argentine aircraft recognition manual, and had a pretty fair idea of what planes to expect. Presumably the bombers were all safely snugged down in their revetments.