Land of Fire Part 11

"No runway lights," n.o.bby muttered. It was true. The approach lights looked to be switched off too. Evidently no aircraft movements were antic.i.p.ated in the near future. The tower still appeared to be manned, though but that would be standard procedure at all times.

There was a scuffling in the gra.s.s and Doug reappeared. "I found a good place about 300 metres up," he reported. "There's what looks like an old light array or windsock post located between the fences a f.u.c.king great wooden thing set in a concrete base. It looks unused now and all grown over with gorse and c.r.a.p, but I reckon there can't be any mines there and the five of us could hide up behind the concrete. Beyond that the path goes on the same and you come to a drainage channel running out from the base. I reckon we could use that as a means of entry."

He led the way back along the inside of the fence, the rest of us following in single file. We moved on our bellies at a crawl, trusting our winter whites to camouflage us against the snow-covered undergrowth behind. It was cold going, but better than standing waiting and shivering. The gra.s.s under the wire had grown long over the years and, provided we kept low enough, we were effectively crawling along a narrow trench between areas of vegetation.

The spot Doug had chosen was just as he had described a concrete platform set back twenty-five metres from the inner fence, surrounded and overgrown by heather and gorse. As Doug said, it was a safe bet that no mines had been set in the immediate vicinity in case access was needed. Even so it was worth taking precautions.

"I'll go first," I announced to the others, telling them to stay well back. Facing outwards from the fence, I extracted my combat knife, parted the tough stems of gorse and pushed the blade into the ground ahead of me. The earth was hard and tangled with roots, but there was no obstruction that I could feel. I drew the knife out and moved it over to the side a few inches. Modern anti-personnel mines are no bigger than a saucer, but they contain enough explosive to blow your legs off. I slid the knife in again, and this time the tip came up against something strong. From the slight sc.r.a.ping sound it made I was fairly certain it was only a stone, and a couple more prods with the knife a little further over met no resistance so I judged it safe to ease forward on my elbows a few inches.

Again I repeated the process, starting at my right and working across methodically. Minelayers almost always work to a pattern so many mines to cover a given patch of ground. Mines achieve their effect by fear; once a platoon has seen one of their number blown up, they become very reluctant to move until engineers come up with detecting equipment. There's no sense in sowing the d.a.m.n things too close. The idea is that you don't find out about a minefield until you're in the middle of it.

It was a slow business, but we still had a few hours before dawn and it was better than someone losing a foot through being in too much of a hurry. I got into a routine of feeling ahead and inching forward, ignoring the cold and numbness in my fingers, concentrating only on the sensation at the tip of the knife as it slid under the topsoil. I tried to remember all the training courses I had attended in mine and demolition clearance. Sometimes, I knew, minelayers would plant a few mines out of pattern to deceive the clearance team but this was airfield defence and I figured they wouldn't bother with tricks.

Within a few minutes I was hidden from view under a canopy of gorse. It was hard stuff to work in, but it kept the wind off and provided cover from any observer. As far as I could, I tried to bend the stems aside rather than cut them and run the risk of chucks carrying away in the wind. Swath by swath I edged onward, scanning a track as far as I could reach either side of me. I was three metres short of the concrete plinth when the knife blade slid a fraction deeper than before and I felt the tip skim the edge of a curved shape. Instantly my heart-rate leapt. Carefully I withdrew the blade a fraction and probed to left and right. Each time the point connected with the same smooth surface. It felt exactly like the hard ceramic sh.e.l.l of a modern antipersonnel device. s.h.i.t, I thought. Whoever laid this was smart enough to guess an intruder might make for the plinth as being a safe spot and planted a mine to catch him. b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

I lay still a minute, wondering what to do. The obvious course was to back off and try somewhere else to hide up. That wasn't going to be so easy though. This was our best chance. If the minelayers had been as thorough as this there would be precious few other options. In all probability we would find ourselves reduced to using the pathway and trusting our camouflage nets to cover us.

On the other hand I was close up to the plinth now. If this was a mine there was a strong possibility it was the only one. Maybe the layers had one too many in the batch and had stuck it in here without thinking.

"Doug," I called behind me.

"What's up?" he whispered back.

"I think I've found one!"

"f.u.c.k!" There was a moment's pause, then, "What you going to do?" he asked.

"Christ knows. Lift the b.a.s.t.a.r.d thing I suppose."

"You want help?"

"No, just tell everyone to keep well back. And hunt around in case there are any others back there I missed."

Most mines require a certain minimum pressure to set them off, generally around five kilograms otherwise they could be detonated by every pa.s.sing rabbit. So you have a bit of leeway to play with. Not much, but some. Generally, so long as you are careful, it's a fairly straightforward matter to dispose of them. I set to, sc.r.a.ping away the soil and working as gently as if I were a palaeontologist uncovering a piece of a dinosaur. It didn't help that the ground was frozen hard and I had to prise the earth away in lumps. Behind me I could hear the rest of the team prodding away to either side to locate the edges of the minefield.

After ten minutes' cautious digging and sc.r.a.ping I had the top of the thing uncovered. I started excavating away around the edges, trying to get the blade of the knife underneath. There was a danger it was fitted with an anti-handling device, but they take time to rig up and are dangerous to set they're just not practical when you're laying hundreds of the f.u.c.kers. In spite of the cold my hands were clammy and beads of sweat were trickling down my face into my eyes.

"How's it going?" Doug called softly.

"Nearly got it," I told him. "Just a little bit longer." I glanced at my watch. It had taken us an hour and a half to get twenty-five metres.

"We can't find anything back here. Looks like yours is the only one."

That wasn't a lot of comfort. If this thing went off it would take my hands and probably my head with it. Everything considered, it would be better all round if it took my head. At least it would be a quick way to go. I sc.r.a.ped some more earth away from around the back of the mine and prepared to lift it.

At that moment there came a warning hiss from Doug behind me. "Lights! s.h.i.t, there's a patrol heading this way!"

CHAPTER TWENTY.

Every muscle in my body went tense instantly. We were lying out in the open in single file. The wind was driving snow in great gusts and we were clad in winter whites with hoods pulled over our heads, but if a torch beam were played in our direction we'd be picked out for sure.

I didn't dare look round in case my face showed up. "How far off?" I called softly.

"Four hundred metres," Doug whispered back. "Coming alongside the nearest hangar now. Estimate another four or five minutes till they reach us."

f.u.c.k, I told myself angrily. There was only one thing I could think of to do continue. I slid the blade of the knife underneath the base of the mine and levered slowly upwards. After a brief resistance the black ceramic casing freed itself from the surrounding earth and came smoothly out. I picked it up gingerly and laid it as far away to one side as I could reach. Taking up the knife again, I started to probe the short strip of ground remaining between me and the edge of the concrete plinth. I thought it unlikely there would be another mine placed so close to the previous one but it was necessary to make sure.

I kept at it while behind me, Doug relayed a soft-voiced commentary from the others on the patrol's progress. "Heading down towards the gate we came in by ... turning right ... coming in our direction .."

I felt a gentle clink as the tip of the blade touched the concrete foundation of the plinth base, and a wave of relief swept through me. "All clear," I whispered to Doug. "Make sure you keep in my track." I wriggled forward, forcing the remaining stalks of the gorse apart with my bare hands. The ground cover arched over the concrete slab, forming a natural cavern some two feet high. I scrambled on to the plinth. Doug followed, with Josh behind him; Kiwi and n.o.bby brought up the rear. Carefully, so as not to betray our presence, we pulled the gorse stalks down behind us. With luck, anyone seeing our tracks would reckon it was only a fox or some other wild animal.

"Here they come," muttered Doug.

"Keep still," I growled.

The long beams of the headlights came into sight, probing through the snow. The driver was moving cautiously, probably more on account of the atrocious weather conditions than because they were searching for anyone. It was some kind of military four-wheel-drive with a spotlight mounted on the roof, but the beam was trained ahead on the track rather than swinging to each side. It drew level and ground on past us, the red tail-lights disappearing into the murk.

Heaving sighs of relief, we took stock. The concrete slab was around three metres square with two ma.s.sive wooden posts rising from it. The surface was cushioned with a thick layer of moss and dead leaves. Gorse and gra.s.s had grown up on all sides so thick that it was almost impossible to see out or be seen from inside.

"Jesus, but I hate f.u.c.king mines," n.o.bby said under his breath with feeling as he wiped snow from his eyes. "Give me a clean bullet any day."

"You'll get one if you don't shut up talking." I hate idle chatter on a mission. Andy never used to allow it, and I tried to follow his example. "Three of us can kip down here while the other keeps watch out the front," I went on. "We'll take turns, an hour each. Josh, you stand first watch with me. Take the Spygla.s.s with you."

"Gotcha, boss. "Josh squirmed back along the tunnel, clutching the handheld thermal-imaging observation sight. Mounted on a tripod, it combined with a laser rangefmder and was designed to let mortar teams direct fire accurately day and night in all conditions.

Kiwi and n.o.bby were clearing s.p.a.ce for the bivvy bags and laying out equipment. "Doug, make a sitrep," I told him. "Use the patrol set, not the satcom." The 320 patrol set was a VHP radio that communicated with the guard net at Hereford. Messages could be pa.s.sed but it could take as much as twelve hours to get a reply back, depending what was going on at the other end. But the unit had a much smaller splash-out than the satcom, and was less likely to be detected. I didn't want to run any more risks than we had to. "Inform Hereford we are in position on the target with no air movement observable as of current time and date. Then you can all three get your heads down. I'll send Josh back in an hour and n.o.bby can relieve him."

Josh and I wriggled our way up the tunnel through the undergrowth till we reached the path along the fence. For some minutes we occupied ourselves constructing a hide around the entrance and camouflaging all traces of our presence. Luckily for us the falling snow was rapidly obliterating any tracks we had left.

We set up the Spygla.s.s on its tripod, and with the help of the rangefmder I measured distances to points of interest. The tower was 900 metres off- long rifle shot with the main runway beyond. The same distance again beyond that, shrouded from view by falling snow, were the buildings of the small civilian terminal. On this side of the tower we could make out some humped shapes, presumably the revetments housing the bombers. Nearby were the main hangars, their ma.s.sive roofs blanketed with snow. Closer, only about 200 metres away, were some half-buried structures that I took to be fuel bunkers with pipes running in a ditch back towards the ap.r.o.n. Snow was piling up on the lip of the ditch and the pipes stood out in a dark line. I reckoned it was the same drainage channel that Doug had spotted on his recce.

There were lights burning in the tower. Otherwise, aside from the single patrol that had just pa.s.sed us, there was no sign of life. It looked as though the whole base was shut down for the night.

I rubbed my hands to warm my numbed fingers. It was getting on for six when I checked the time. "Your watch is about up," I told Josh. "Better get back up the tunnel and send n.o.bby down to take over."

Josh didn't answer straight away. After a moment he said, "I think I can see lights over on the runway."

He moved away from the Spygla.s.s to let me take a look and I lowered my head to the eyepiece. He was right. Intermittently through the snow I could make out the glimmer of green and white lights twinkling along the strip.

"I'd have sworn they weren't there five minutes ago," Josh said.

I trained the Spygla.s.s on the tower and buildings nearby. It was hard to be certain but it looked to me as though there were more lights showing over there too.

"Let's wait a bit longer and see if anything happens," Josh said. "Maybe they're expecting something."

"Either that or they're getting ready to send a flight off," I agreed. It was more likely an arrival expected; we would have noticed more activity on the ap.r.o.n otherwise.

We listened for any sound of a plane overhead, but there was too much wind to hear anything. After a wait of some minutes, headlights could be seen in the distance moving off down the runway. "Fire tender," Josh reckoned.

We kept the Spygla.s.s focused on the end of the runway, taking turns to watch. Even so we almost missed the plane. It was flying without lights, and slipped in almost soundlessly through the driving snow to touch down at the eastern end of the base. It was only the sight of the fire tender chasing down the runway that alerted us. Josh was at the eyepiece and he let out a quiet yelp of triumph. "Got it! There, look! Just turning on to the taxiway. You can see it when the fuselage blocks out the lights on the ground."

He pa.s.sed me the sight and a moment later I had it too. "Looks big a bomber? No, a transport more likely."

"I thought Seb said there were no transports down here?"

"He meant not permanently based here. They must have to fly in stores sometimes."

We watched as the plane taxied off the runway on to the ap.r.o.n on the military side. As it did so the runway lights clicked off as someone turned a switch. "Saving power, do you suppose?" said Josh.

"Perhaps. More likely they don't want to draw attention to what's going on."

We continued observing. The arrival aircraft came to a halt in front of the tower. Looking through the sight I made out figures moving around on the ground with hand torches and vehicles circling.

After a few minutes the aircraft started rolling again, but this time it was preceded by a vehicle. "What do you make of that?" I asked Josh.

Josh took a quick squint through the sight. "Tow truck," he said. "They must be bringing it in to shelter."

Together we watched the truck move nearer, dragging its huge tow. From one giant hangar a sudden shaft of yellow light spilled out on to the snow-covered ap.r.o.n and grew rapidly larger. "They're opening the doors," I said. "They must be going to bring the plane inside."

"b.l.o.o.d.y big whatever it is," Josh whispered back.

Excitedly we waited as the truck and aircraft approached the patch of light. Identification was going to be difficult because of the distance and because the hangar was between the aircraft and us. As the convoy rolled towards the light it vanished from view. Peering through the flying snowflakes I made out a swept-back T-tail but no markings that I could distinguish.

"A civilian airliner?" I hazarded. "A 747?"

Josh shook his head. "No windows that I could see. More like a freighter being brought inside to off load That made sense. The question was, what cargo was it carrying? Were the Argentines flying in consignments of missiles? That would explain the night flight and secrecy. On the other hand it was equally possible that it was an ordinary freight delivery. With weather like this it was hardly surprising that the ground crews elected to unload under cover.

Josh rubbed his hands to warm his fingers. "I wish we could get inside that hangar and take a look."

I was thinking the same, but there was almost a kilo metre of open ground between us and the hangar. The fuel bunkers were quite close, though if we could somehow make it across to them it might be possible to crawl along the pipeline ditch until we were within reach of the hangars.

It was time to change over the watch. I sent Josh back up the tunnel to get some rest. n.o.bby appeared to take over. "Doug's having some problems with the radio. Can't establish com ms "What's the trouble?"

"He can't seem to get a message received back. He's tried tweaking the aerials but all he gets is static."

f.u.c.k, I thought wearily. It seemed that however sophisticated communications systems became they remained a pain in the a.r.s.e. Leaving n.o.bby on watch, I crawled back up to see how Doug was doing.

Up on the plinth, Kiwi was asleep in his bivvy. He had an amazing facility of being able to switch off and sleep whenever he wanted. Josh had climbed into the warm bag just vacated by n.o.bby. Doug had the 320 set out with the aerials stretched up in a Y shape. He was staring at the LCD message screen and swearing under his breath. He had been sweating away at it for an hour in the freezing cold.

"n.o.bby says we're not getting an answer."

"Stupid f.u.c.king thing," Doug grumbled. "All I get is a bunch of f.u.c.king static. There's no way of telling if the message has gone through or not."

"Maybe the net is down for some reason."

"Yeah, and maybe this p.i.s.sing set is bust for all we know." He glanced up at me. "You want me to try with the satcom?"

I shook my head. "No, it's too risky. We'll wait and try again in the morning."

"Aye, well good luck to you then," Doug said, and scrambled into his bivvy.

I wasn't too concerned. It was common not to get an acknowledgement on the first attempt. Atmospheric conditions, pressure of traffic at the other end there could be any number of reasons why Hereford was not responding. Anyway, we had nothing urgent to report so far. They knew we were on the ground, that was enough. If the 320 set was damaged and not transmitting at all, then in an emergency we would just have to get through on the satcom and hope we weren't picked up.

I was more concerned that if the set was damaged Jock might not be able to get through to us. He would be left on his own with no choice but to bug out for Chile.

I left the 320 set up, and was scribbling down a note of what we had seen to go into the operational log later, when there was a warning hiss from behind and n.o.bby came squirming up the tunnel from the OP.

"Mark," he called. "The landing lights are back on. Looks like the Argies are expecting another flight."

I forgot about the log and hurried back down to join him. The wind had eased off a trifle and there was less snow blowing. Consequently we could make out the runway lights quite distinctly.

"Why do they turn them off and on each time?" n.o.bby wondered aloud. "They must be trying to hide something."

We waited in the cold, rubbing our hands to keep the blood flowing in our fingers. Just as before, we saw the headlights of the fire truck as it took up position at the end of the runway.

This time I heard it, faint but distinct, the roar of aircraft engines coming in over the sea.

The procedure was exactly the same as before. The aircraft taxied to the ap.r.o.n underneath the tower and was then towed out to one of the enormous hangars on this side of the runway.

"I'll tell you one thing," n.o.bby said, peering through the sight. "That's one big f.u.c.ker of an aeroplane. Those hangars must be a good five storeys high and a hundred metres long."

I was wishing we could see more. To identify the type of aircraft that were being flown in under such secrecy was important. Maybe daylight would give us a better view of what was going on. But in winter in these high lat.i.tudes, dawn was not due for another two hours with fifty minutes of twilight after that.

The thought gave me an idea. I checked my watch, and a plan began to take shape inside my head.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.

Leaving the LUP behind us, Josh and I wormed our way eastwards along the fence path on our stomachs, heading in the direction of the fuel bunkers. According to Doug the drainage ditch from the refuelling area ran out under the fences approximately 200 metres away. My plan was for the pair of us to enter the ditch and crawl along it till we got to within twenty metres of the hangars.

"We've more than two hours till dawn and weather conditions should continue to screen us for some while afterwards," I had told the others when outlining what I proposed. "The rest of you will wait behind and cover our retreat if necessary."

"Taking a f.u.c.king risk, aren't you?" Doug had said. "The mission briefing was to observe and report. They didn't say anything about breaking into hangars."

"Something is going on, and unless we find out what it is we may not be in time to warn Hereford."

To cover myself I had prepared a situation report for Doug to send to Hereford, outlining my intentions. I also left him the cellphone. I would take one of the UHF handsets with me and give him a regular update on our progress. If for some reason we lost contact and failed to return by an hour past dawn, his orders were to call Seb and arrange an immediate pull-out.