Land of Fire Part 16

I sent Kiwi and n.o.bby on ahead to scout the buildings. Together with Josh, Doug and I prodded the reluctant prisoners to their feet. "Hurry it up," I snapped. Any moment, I thought, the b.l.o.o.d.y helicopters will come back.

Kiwi came on the radio. "Looks all clear up here."

"Right," I said to the others, 'get 'em moving."

With our packs b.u.mping on our shoulders, we ran the prisoners across the gra.s.s and up the slope. We were about fifty metres from the buildings when I heard the sound I dreaded.

"Helicopters!" I shouted. "Everybody down!" I grabbed the nearest Argentine and hurled him bodily to the ground.

The engine noise swelled and grew louder and nearer, coming directly for us. It was plain that we had been seen. We would have to make a fight for it. Our anti-aircraft missiles had been lost on the boat but we still had our personal weapons. Rolling over, I raised my rifle.

A burst of automatic fire crackled overhead. Bullets zipped and pinged all around our position. More guns opened up from the flanks. The fire was coming from both sides and ahead. From behind the tops of the buildings and from the flanks to either side the helmeted heads of combat troops were aiming heavy calibre weapons at us. I estimated a company of infantry with light automatic weapons, firing from fifty to a hundred metres' range. Now the helicopters were sweeping in beneath the overcast, stooping low for the kill. A machine-gun mounted in the side hatch of the lead aircraft winked at us like a red eye, and more bullets thudded into the ground nearby. The troops must have been lying in wait on the other side of the hill. They had called in the air power the moment they saw us start to move. We had walked straight into an ambush. Perhaps the prisoners had led them to us.

"Pull back!" I shouted, but before we could move, from the direction of the road came a rumble of diesel engines. A troop of infantry fighting vehicles had broken cover and was closing in, the muzzles of their cannons swivelling towards us. Any moment now we would have 30mm sh.e.l.ls bursting around our ears. A patch of gorse burst into flames as incendiary bullets zipped through. We were pinned down and surrounded, under attack from air and ground.

Josh was carrying the light anti-armour weapon, a 94mm anti-tank missile in a single-shot tube capable of taking out a main battle tank at 500 metres. Ignoring the bullets whipping past, he ripped the launcher off his back, snapped the tube out to its full extent and crouched, aiming at the nearest IFV. A huge smoke plume belched from the rear of the tube and there was a swoosh as the missile ignited. The rocket scorched across the ground, arrowing towards the lead vehicle. It impacted against the offside track near the front with a boom that echoed across the clearing. The vehicle swung round and stopped, rocking on its tracks, smoke pouring from its engine compartment.

The turrets of the two other machines barked angrily. Sh.e.l.ls smacked into the earth among us, exploding with showers of dirt. Splinters of steel sang viciously overhead and the air was filled with the stench of cordite.

"f.u.c.king great shot," Doug was yelling. But next moment there came an ominous double thud and the whine of 81mm mortar bombs descending. More explosions fountained up as bombs and sh.e.l.ls searched the hillside.

We had shot off our only missile, and the enemy had us at their mercy. They could sit back and blast us to pieces at their leisure.

The marines had been waiting. We had fallen into the hands of the enemy.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT.

The sh.e.l.ling stopped. The machine-gun fire slackened off. An officer's voice crackled over a loud-hailer. "British soldiers. Put down your guns and raise your hands. If you attempt to escape you will be shot."

The guys were looking at me for guidance.

"Sod the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. Let's make a run for it," Doug growled. "Some of us should make it."

I looked around. The prisoners had scattered and were lying shaking on the ground. They seemed unhurt. The Argy armour had paused on the track leading down from the road, and squads of infantry were dismounting to move across country and surround us from the rear. The helicopters were beating the air overhead. "No," I told Doug. "Sorry, but it's a bust."

"f.u.c.k them!" Doug snarled. "The f.u.c.k I'm going to surrender to f.u.c.king Argy c.u.n.ts!" He jumped up, clutching his C-5, and instantly a machine-gun opened up from one of the vehicles, sending a stream of tracer winging towards him. The rounds, clearly visible, seemed to start slowly then speed up with a sudden rush as they got closer. The stream of bullets reached Doug, there was a terrific smacking sound, and he was knocked flying off his feet and on to his back.

He lay there, seemingly stunned. "Doug!" I shouted. I crawled over to him, keeping my head against the ground as more rounds went screaming overhead like angry wasps. There was blood on his hands and face but I couldn't see exactly where he had been hit. I ripped open his jacket to check for chest wounds, but couldn't see any. His rifle was lying nearby, almost split in two across the middle. It looked as though Doug's gun had taken the main impact.

The voice with the loud-hailer was shouting something else about resistance being futile. I was in agreement with him.

Kiwi crawled over as Doug gave a grunt and stirred. "How bad is he?"

"OK by the looks of him," I replied. "He was f.u.c.king lucky. Those marines aren't p.i.s.sing about. If we give them any trouble they'll let us have it."

"Looks like we're in the s.h.i.t then." "Fraid so," I said. "Better tell the boys to do as they say. We don't want anyone else hurt."

I was ripping open Doug's medical pack as I spoke. His injuries were just scratches, splinter wounds where the bullet that hit his gun had shattered. Like I'd said, he had been very lucky. An inch either way and the slug would have gone clean through his body.

He groaned and rolled over, rubbing his head. "Jesus," he coughed, squinting at me. "Am I hit?"

"Not as badly as you should've been," I told him. "Next time, keep your stupid head down." Now I knew he was OK I felt a sudden burst of comradeship for him. Doug and I had had our differences and he was a difficult b.a.s.t.a.r.d to live with at times but we had been through a lot together.

"Here they come, boss," Kiwi called. "Better throw down the weapons and show our hands."

I saw the woman nearby and she was looking scared. I wondered what the Argies had in mind for her, and resolved to make it clear that she and her friends had been our prisoners. I would say we had stumbled across them in the woods and leave them to invent their own story.

All I could think was that I had blown the mission and got the lads caught. I felt gutted. The worst of it was that thanks to the communications failure we hadn't been able to contact Hereford, and now there was no way of warning them of the Argy plan for invading the Falklands.

Argentine marines were moving down the slope fifty metres away, weapons at the ready, to take our surrender. Doug reached into his pack for the satcom set. Slung over his shoulder was a Claymore bag with an anti-personnel mine in it. He stuffed the satcom set inside and the 320 VHP set with it. All the encryption gear went in too, along with the codes. I added the maps I was carrying, the GPS and my UHF handset no sense in making the Argies a present of them. Doug set the tinier to fifteen seconds, closed the canvas flap and fastened it down. I could see his lips move as he counted off the seconds. Then, lofting the bag briefly, he flung it away from him down the hill. There was a loud explosion as it hit the ground, and a pall of smoke rose into the air. Bits of debris rattled down on top of us.

There were shouts of anger from the marines, and a volley of shots cracked over our heads.

Doug grinned.

Then I remembered the cellphone Seb had given me. If the Argentines found that it would be a dead give-away. They would work me over until I gave them the name of our contact out here. I slipped it out from my pocket and prised it apart with my knife. Then I snapped the SIM card and broke the circuit board apart so that they couldn't be used again. I shoved the bits into a hole in the ground and pressed some mud down over them. With luck they would never be found.

The marines came doubling up now. They pushed us roughly down on the ground again, kicking our legs apart and forcing us to put our hands behind our necks. They patted us down, searching for weapons and equipment. They took away my pistol and fighting knife. They made us strip to our vests one by one to check our clothes for anything we might have tried to conceal. My watch was taken and the dog tags ripped from my neck.

The Argies were in a state of high excitement, whooping and laughing as they squabbled over our possessions. They evidently considered they had won a great battle and everyone wanted a souvenir.

"SAS?" they kept jeering. "SAS?" They evidently knew who we were, and were over the moon about their cleverness in catching us. There seemed to be the best part of a company of them, fifty at least so we had been outnumbered by a good ten to one. This made me feel better.

When the searching was complete our hands were tied behind our backs with plasticuffs and we were placed face-down on the ground. The civilians were subjected to the same treatment; we heard them protesting their innocence to the officers, but with no effect. They were cuffed too and thrown down with us. Some of the men were slapped around roughly in the process evidently the marines had no love for dissidents.

There was a long wait then, of an hour or more. From the little we could see, it appeared the Argies were conducting a fingertip search of the ground, looking for any fragments of our com ms gear and encryption equipment. I doubted if they would have much luck a Claymore mine packs a pretty big punch.

My real fear was that they would turn up the remains of the cellphone, in which case I was in for a rough time. I figured I could handle that if I had to, at least hold out long enough for Seb to get clear. In a small community like Rio Grande, news of the capture of five SAS troops would spread rapidly, and a man like Seb would have his escape plans prepared in advance.

They made us all sit up and identify which was our equipment and our individual weapons. I couldn't make out what this was for apart from a bit of general intelligence. The officer in command, a major who spoke some English, tried his hand at a spot of questioning, but we had all done the interrogation courses at Hereford and pretended we didn't understand him.

This p.i.s.sed them off, so they brought the woman out.

They stood her up in front of us, and though she was doing her best to be brave about it one of her legs was shaking uncontrollably. She was Argentinian, and she knew what was coming all right. The major took his time, letting the fear get to work. He was a small man, olive-skinned with very white teeth, broad in the shoulders and smartly turned out a typical officer, in fact. He said in English his name was Oliveras. He explained how he understood that we couldn't talk, that we were forbidden to give more than our names and numbers, all that c.r.a.p. It was a pity, he said, because in the absence of help from us he would be forced to make his own deductions.

"We know you have been on the base at Rio Grande," he smiled. "Oh yes, we know all that. We know you were in the hangar and this woman was with you. If you will not tell us how you entered the hangar and what you saw, then we shall have to conclude that it was this woman and her friends who helped you. Which makes her a traitor. And that is a very serious matter, oh yes."

He paused to let us think about the seriousness of it, and lit a cigarette. "I wonder," he went on, 'have any of you ever witnessed the interrogation of a woman?"

There were sn.i.g.g.e.rs from the men, who obviously felt they were in for a good show. The woman stared straight ahead stonily, but her leg was still shivering. The young boy, Julian, was looking white in the face. The major drew on his cigarette, then said something in Spanish to the woman. She replied in a harsh, clipped tone, from which every emotion had been ironed out. Pleading would do no good with this man; her fate depended on whether or not we were prepared to let her be tortured.

"So it is down to you English," the major said evenly. "You brave SAS will decide if this woman is to suffer and how much." He signed to two of his men standing behind the prisoner, and they seized hold of her by the arms. She stiffened but did not struggle. It would have been pointless anyway, they were huge men and she was slight.

The major unzipped her parka and pulled it down from her shoulders. He did it deftly and his movements, the way he touched her, were obscene. He was demonstrating his complete dominance. I can touch her any way I like, he was indicating to us. Underneath the coat she wore a black shirt and a grey turtleneck sweater. Reaching behind her neck, Oliveras grasped her hair tightly with his right hand. It was black hair and springy with a wave in it, and he wound a bunch tightly in his hand to get a good purchase.

From where I was sitting to one side, I could see the tears coming into her eyes as he jerked at her head. "Still," he commanded. He drew on his cigarette until the end glowed red, then took it in his free hand. "Do not struggle. One touch of the tip on your eye and phut you are blind."

He tightened his grip on her hair. As the glowing cigarette end approached her face, she fought to turn away but he held her firm. He was a strong man. The marines either side had her pinned between them. Oliveras brought the cigarette closer. There was a sharp intake of breath from the woman and her body went rigid, but no scream came.

After what seemed an endless moment the major stepped back. An ugly red burn sat at the corner of her left eye, no more than a centimetre from the eyeball itself.

Oliveras turned his flashing smile on me. "So, you are the senior man in this band of pirates. Are you going to tell us what you saw in the hangar, or must I put the next cigarette in the eye itself?"

I had already realised that this was a man for whom the act of inflicting pain on a woman was an active pleasure. He was going to hurt her whether we answered him or not. Once he had finished with her it would be our turn, probably beginning with me. There was nothing to be gained by helping him along. I shook my head. "I have nothing to say."

Oliveras shrugged. He produced a gold lighter, and with deliberate carelessness selected a fresh cigarette from his pack. "Imagine," he said holding it up. "This red tip is the last thing she will ever see. Red fire, and then ... darkness." He gripped the woman's hair again. She fought against him with all her strength this time, twisting her head from side to side. Oliveras laughed and jabbed at her face with little stabbing motions. "There and there. Ah, so near that time. You make it worse for yourself when you struggle."

My stomach knotted. The guy was sick and there was nothing any of us could do about it. The woman was going to lose one eye at least. It was just a question of how long Oliveras wanted to prolong the agony.

"Are you ready, Concha?" he grinned as if addressing an old friend.

I gaped. How did he know her name? Of course, he was an intelligence officer stationed down here. As dissidents, the faces and details of all her group would be familiar to him. The marines must have tracked them from the vicinity of the base to lay the ambush. They evidently figured we were working together.

And then, suddenly I saw it. It must have been the way the woman was standing, her arms behind her, fear and courage mingled in her face, that same face that had hurled defiance at her enemies two decades ago in another war.

Concha, Oliveras had called her. The name Jenny had told me the spy on the Northland had given. Suddenly I saw her as she'd appeared to me some twenty years before naked, outstretched and lashed to ring bolts in the ship's bulkhead while smoke from the Argentine bombs billowed through the deck. The girl spy who had come nearer than anyone to taking out the British fleet. I had been walking beside her all this time in the darkness and I hadn't guessed.

So, she had escaped from the ship. I had only seen her for a few minutes on board in the gloom below deck; and last night it had been dark it was hardly surprising that I hadn't recognised her. She would have been young then eighteen, perhaps. I remembered how we had fought in the back of the truck, how I had forced her down and pulled her sweater up to check she was a girl. Now she must be in her late thirties; she looked younger.

Back on the march I had almost guessed but the light had been poor and I'd had too much to think about. Now I was certain. It was as if I were back on the Northland once more with the bombs falling and my brother Andy shouting at me to get a move on.

But how was this possible? Then she had been an Argentine patriot, a heroine of the war on their side. If anyone could be expected to back the attack on Port Stanley it would be her. And yet now here she was being tortured by her own people! None of it made sense.

I was still trying to take all this in when there was an interruption a truck came lurching down the track from the road. A marine NCO came up and said something in Spanish to Oliveras, who glanced up at the truck and scowled. He gave an order and turned back to us.

"It seems transport has arrived to take you back to Rio Grande. We shall have to terminate our little experiment, but only for the present, you understand? We shall resume the investigation in due course." He patted Concha tenderly on the cheek and turned away.

At gunpoint we were prodded towards the truck and helped aboard. Once inside the rear we were handcuffed back-to-back in pairs, with steel cuffs this time in addition to the plastic ties already binding our wrists. Concha and I were the last to be put aboard. Her head was drooping and she was evidently in pain. Had she recognised me? Probably not I would have been just one face among her English captors. And I'd changed too.

As soon as we'd climbed aboard Major Oliveras called a halt. Pointing at Concha and me, he rapped out an order and the guards pulled us out again. We were put into the back of Oliveras' personal Jeep, handcuffed together like the others. Evidently the major had not finished with us yet.

The other truck set off, accompanied by a marine escort in a second vehicle. Oliveras had a few words with his junior officers, slapping their backs in high good humour. Capturing us was apparently a real coup for him. After a few minutes he climbed into the front seat beside the driver. Vamos," he said, then leaned over into the back and grinned at us. In his hand he held a .45 automatic. "Just in case," he said, his teeth gleaming.

We b.u.mped along the track till we reached the road and turned south. This was the road we had travelled on last night with Seb. I struggled to remain upright while supporting Concha as the vehicle lurched across the potholes.

Oliveras was chatting away in Spanish telling Concha, I imagined, of the treats he had in store for her. The burn by her left eye was deep into the flesh and looked horribly painful.

I was still trying to figure out her part in all this. Julian and her friends had implied that they were a group opposed to the military. It occurred to me that Seb might know. The overriding urgency at the moment was somehow to get a message through to him, warn him of the Argentine plan, but I couldn't think how that was going to be possible. We hadn't even been interrogated yet, and I couldn't see Major Oliveras permitting us any kind of consular access until after the attack on the Falklands had gone ahead.

We jolted along for some minutes. It had come on to rain again. I was sitting behind the driver where Oliveras could cover me with the gun. The other truck had a good start and was lost in a cloud of dust. In the side mirror I could glimpse the road behind the rest of the task force had not yet begun to pull out. We had the road to ourselves.

Looking ahead I could see that the land fell away to the left. A bridge was coming up on a bend; the road crossed a fair-sized river that ran in a steep ravine between thick stands of pine trees. Oliveras was telling the driver to hurry up evidently he was impatient to get back to work but the road approaching the bridge was badly worn. We were travelling at around fifty-five kilometres per hour.

It was now or never. I had to act before the driver took his boot off the accelerator to stand on the brake. I brought my knees up sharply to my chest and rammed the soles of my boots into the back of his seat with every bit of strength I had. The seat support snapped and the back part smashed forward, pinning the driver against the wheel. He could only scream as the Jeep crashed through the safety railing at the foot of the bridge and pitched over the edge into the ravine.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE.

The Jeep was skidding down the steep slope in virtual free-fall. The rear end was toppling outward; at any moment it would crash over on to its back. None of us was wearing a seatbelt and we were being hurled about inside the cab, bouncing off the seats and against the roof. Major Oliveras was clinging on to the dashboard and trying at the same time to get a shot off at me with his pistol. I was hampered by being handcuffed to Concha who had fallen forward on her face. I managed to free my left leg and launched a kick which by luck caught Oliveras under the chin, knocking his head back against the door pillar.

From then on everything became a blur. The drop was much worse than I'd guessed, and the Jeep pitched over on to its near side. Stones and gravel showered inside as the windows shattered. I fell into the rear foot-well, dragging Concha down on top of me. The Jeep rolled again, tumbling over on to its roof. We hit a large rock, bounced and hit the ground again with a bone-jarring crash. The driver was still screaming, or maybe it was Oliveras this time. The roof buckled and the interior filled with sand and dust so we could hardly breathe. I prayed it wasn't smoke. All we needed was a ruptured fuel tank spraying vaporised gasoline across a hot engine and we would end up in a fireball.

Dimly through the flying dust I was aware that one of the doors had been torn off. We seemed to be sliding backwards down a steep drop on one side again now, and I could feel the roof pressing down on us. There was another spine-breaking crash as we hit another rock and slewed round to roll again. The world was spinning; there was mud in my mouth and on my clothes. I could hear Concha gasping as the b.u.mps knocked the breath out of her body. I was trying to hold us both wedged in between the seats. In car accidents it is the ones who are thrown clear who die.

The car seemed to roll over and over; I didn't think we could endure much more of it. Surely we must have reached the bottom of the ravine by now? Then I remembered the river Christ, suppose we roll into mid-stream and sink? We'd never manage to get out with the cuffs on and the roof squashed in.

I didn't know where Oliveras and the driver were, but I couldn't hear them screaming any more.

And then, suddenly, it all stopped. The jarring and crashing ceased, and in its place there was a blessed stillness. My ears were still ringing but we were no longer being tumbled about and hammered from all sides. The interior of the Jeep was so full of dust that I couldn't see anything at all, just greyness in front of my eyes like smoke. The stuff caught in my throat, making me choke as I struggled to right myself.

The Jeep was lying right side up, tilting over to the near side, and my head was facing downward. I was squashed hard down between the seats, which had collapsed on to us, and Concha seemed to be lying inert across me. I tested my limbs, and as far as I could tell nothing was broken, though my head was splitting where I had banged it against something. It seemed a miracle I could still be alive.

I called out to Concha and got a moan back. Evidently she was more or less conscious. Carefully I started to heave myself free, pushing up with my elbows till I was crouching on my knees. She was half lying on the back seat with the roof pressing down on her. I bent my legs up and kicked at the door above me. To my relief it swung open with a sc.r.a.ping sound.

"Concha!" I called. "Can you hear me? We have to get out of here."

I got another groan in answer but I felt her stir. At least she was responding. "Are you hurt?" I called.

There was silence for a moment, then she spoke in a weak voice, choking on the dust. "I don't think so."

That at any rate was a miracle and I felt encouraged. "We're going to have to get out of here. The Jeep could catch fire. The door is open see if you can't wriggle your legs out."

I felt her squirm on top of me, trying to get clear. "I think my legs are in the door," she said eventually, sounding a little stronger.

My hands were still handcuffed behind my back to hers. The only way I could move was by twisting my shoulders, working them against the seats, and kicking with my legs. After considerable effort I managed to get my knees out. That gave me more of a grip. I was able to kneel down outside and, by lifting Concha with my arms, work her out through the door.

She subsided into a sitting position behind me. "We need to stand up," I told her. "Push against me with your back." I had practised this on escape-and-evasion exercises, but she had never done it before and it was difficult for her. Nonetheless, somehow we tottered to our feet.

The Jeep had ended up at the bottom of the ravine, under the bridge and just a few metres from the bank of the river. We had come nearer to falling in and drowning than I liked to think. The front of the car was badly smashed in and the driver appeared to be dead. The door on the other side had been torn off, and there was no sign of Oliveras.

"Come over this way," I said to Concha. There was a piece of torn metal sticking out from the crumpled side of the Jeep. Rain was still falling steadily but we hardly noticed. By squeezing ourselves alongside and manoeuvring our locked hands, I got myself into a position where I could saw at the plasticuffs on my wrists. The metal was jagged and cut into my skin, but it was razor sharp and in a couple of minutes I had one hand free. The other was still shackled to Concha.

"Now your turn," I told her. This was easier because I could use my free hand to help. I hardly cut her at all, and soon we each had a hand free.

She looked at the metal cuff that still joined our two wrists. "What about these?"

I looked around inside the wrecked Jeep. I had hoped to find an axe or saw but I could see no tools that might hack through a steel chain.