Land of Fire Part 3

"Maybe they'll change their minds and send in another Sea King to lift us out," suggested Tom as Doug snapped shut the 320 set and unfurled the satcom dish. This transmitter was more risky because the satellite communications system made a bigger splash-out, and its transmission was easier to detect, but it was imperative that we let Hereford know as soon as possible that the mission had aborted. The coded message was recorded and sent in a high-speed burst. It took just seconds for a transmission to be made once a connection had been established.

Doug dispatched the message and got a bald acknowledgement back. It would take Hereford a few hours to figure out an extraction. The probability was that we would have to leg it for the border. In the meantime we had to operate on the a.s.sumption that the Argies had heard the helicopter land and were searching for us. That meant finding a safe hiding place to lie up until nightfall.

"Right," Andy ordered. "Shoulder packs and move out. Hard routine." Hard routine meant no fires so no hot food, nothing to eat or drink in fact but a mouthful of water from our canteens and some chocolate to keep us going.

Andy and Guy studied the map. The shortest route to the border was due west, but the country was mountainous and cut by rivers. We would do better to take the longer route across the pampas to the north.

"It's about forty miles," Guy said. "If we follow the line of the main coast road, travelling by night it should take us four days, a week at the outside."

That didn't sound too bad. The road looked pretty straight on the map with only one village which we could bypa.s.s. Otherwise all we would have to watch out for were a few isolated estancias.

We set off in single file, Taffy leading. It was his job to scout out the route ahead and see we didn't walk blindly into a trap. It was almost 5.30 and still dark, so we had to use the night-vision scope. It was imperative that we find an isolated spot to hole up in before daylight. The country was flat and bare with thick spiky gra.s.s and shrubby trees and bushes, mostly bent double by the wind. There was no sign of human habitation or animal life except for the occasional bird that flew up as we neared. I walked with my rifle c.o.c.ked and cradled in my arms, head moving from side to side as I swept the ground ahead. This was my first major mission in enemy territory and I was anxious to acquit myself well.

We had been trudging for about an hour when we reached the highway. It was a gravel road, unfenced but flat and straight, running almost due north. By chance it seemed like a quiet road the lights of a heavy truck came grinding down towards us but we lay flat in the gra.s.s and it went past in a cloud of dust without seeing us. Then we jogged across while Andy stood guard and dived into cover on the far side.

We were in open country now, a succession of shallow ridges covered with heather and tundra-like gra.s.ses. There were traces of snow about, but not enough to leave a trail. We tabbed on for another thirty minutes till Andy found a shallow depression on a rise from which we could watch the road about a thousand metres away. It was sheltered from the wind and there were some sc.r.a.ppy bushes to give cover. He examined the land on every side with care through binoculars before giving it the OK.

"This'll do," he said finally, unslinging his pack. "It doesn't look like anyone comes here. Doug, you take the first watch with me. The rest of you into your bivvy bags. Snap to it."

He wanted us under cover while there was still some darkness remaining. I shed my pack and pulled out my light camo net. I knew exactly where it was stowed. I could find any item of kit blindfold at night. Using my field knife, I worked a rough sc.r.a.pe big enough to take my body. It took some doing; the vegetation was incredibly tough. I spread out the net and plaited it with gra.s.s. Swiftly I pegged it down around the sc.r.a.pe and wriggled underneath with my rifle.

I pulled my bergen in after, working myself further in under the netting until everything was out of sight. It had taken me less than a minute and I would be completely invisible from the air. The others had done the same. On a flat gra.s.s plain an entire section of men had vanished into the ground.

Hidden under the net, I extracted my bivvy bag, crawled inside and zipped it up. Now I was warm and sheltered from the cold and wet. I could lie here all day if necessary.

Dawn came, creeping slowly over the flat landscape, revealing saw-toothed mountains to the south-west. Soon the first alarm came a light plane pa.s.sing overhead half a mile away to the south. It was flying low and we hoped it was a rancher's private aircraft. In this remote land, with few roads and some ranches extending over hundreds of thousands of acres, aircraft were essential vehicles. We watched it pa.s.s away in the direction of the border. The sun was over the horizon now, but obscured by dull cloud.

Moments later, Taffy reported vehicles approaching from the south-east at high speed.

"Firing positions!" Andy called. In seconds we were out of our hides, packs closed, our weapons c.o.c.ked, crouching at the edge of the rise, ready to move out at the run.

The trucks drew level with our LUP and continued without pause, trailed by clouds of spiralling dust. We counted six four-tonners, ten to twelve men apiece, probably with a weapons platoon among them. Evidently the helicopter had been detected. Their job, if they didn't run down their quarry on the road, would be to set up a patrol line ahead of us. The main force would follow behind like beaters driving us on to the guns.

Most soldiers are unwilling to dismount from vehicles unless they have a positive sighting of the enemy. Our tactics would be to stay where we were and wait till nightfall. Then we would tab out and work our way around any roadblock. Only very experienced troops can handle night operations. What worried us was the aeroplane. The country we were in was featureless, a succession of shallow hills covered with long gra.s.s. It was easy to move across but it gave little cover. If we were to move an observer in an aircraft could spot us miles away, even at night.

Leaving Andy and Taffy on watch again, we crawled back inside our hides. After two hours Taffy would come back and one of us would take his place. Another two hours and it would be Andy's turn to rest. Before long it came on to sleet. The cold ate into my bones as I lay there unable to move. Through the holes in the camo netting I could periodically make out the plane in the distance. It was working back and forth along our track, flying north and south in long slow loops at an alt.i.tude of around 1000 feet. They were obviously searching for us and had guessed that we would be making for the border. I wasn't particularly worried at the thought escape and evasion was a major part of our training. There was nothing we didn't know about hiding up or slipping past cordons. Come nightfall, I was confident, we would find a way through. The majority of Argy troops were barely trained conscripts; they'd be no match for our skills.

It seemed like an age before the sound of the plane's engine finally faded away to the west. Even then we didn't move Andy wasn't taking any chances. The plane was still around and we were better off staying where we were for the present. It is the hardest thing in the world to lie still and wait. We could do it though; we could wait all day if necessary.

The sleet fell, but still we lay in our gra.s.s hides. My thoughts wandered about in a vain attempt to keep my mind off the cold and damp. Other fellows I know count to a million. Some claim to run blue movies in their heads. The day seemed endless, but Andy knew we were better off lying up like this than running around in the open.

It was late afternoon, and the winter sun was below the horizon when I heard Andy's voice calling us. I was so stiff my body could hardly move; every muscle in my limbs ached. I ripped off my canopy and struggled out, pulled on my pack and slung my rifle, ready for action. Without a word we formed up in open order and started moving again, as if nothing had happened.

Doug got the satcom set out and we made contact with Hereford again. This time there was a response: the abort was confirmed. There were no recriminations; they would come later at the debriefing. We were to tab out northwards as planned. The agent would rendezvous with us in a day or two at a spot to be arranged and lead us to an unguarded crossing. Nothing was said about a helicopter extraction.

We ate a bar of chocolate each and drank a little water, then Andy led us back down to the highway.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

We were chilled, stiff and hungry, but it was a great relief to be out and moving about after the endless hours lying still. We marched rapidly, revelling in the open air. The wind was biting but the sleeting rain had eased off. Our boots crunched on the frosted ground. We walked like automatons, leaning forward to balance the weight of our packs, eyes constantly checking the sector that was ours to watch, covering each other's arcs. The secret of survival is to see the enemy before he sees you.

We walked parallel with the road, about twenty metres out. It gave us a useful navigational aid and we would have plenty of warning from the headlights of vehicles approaching. Andy was leading this time; he had the night-vision scope and the GPMG carried on a sling around his neck. We were ready to react to any threat. All it would take was one shout: "Contact!"

As the night wore on we grew more confident. We were covering ground at a steady pace of between two and three kilometres per hour. Our only problem was with the compa.s.ses they were designed for use in the northern hemisphere and were p.r.o.ne to erratic readings this far south. We had to keep stopping to identify features, which wasn't easy in an essentially flat landscape, but night travel was something we had practised a lot and were good at. In this country with few obstacles it was relatively easy. Occasionally we struck patches of bog and marsh, but in general it was all good firm gra.s.s.

The downside was the weather, which was deteriorating again. Before very long it was sleeting a blizzard, an unremitting blast of freezing cold that must have come straight from the Antarctic ice cap. It sliced through our wet clothes. There -was nothing to do but clear it out of your mind and carry on. I tried to empty my head of everything except putting the next foot on the ground in front of me. The j.a.panese have a saying, "Step by step, walk the thousand-mile road." I practised repeating it to myself over and over, slipping into a hypnotic rhythm as we tramped on and on across the pampas.

The sleet stung my eyes and my rifle weighed like lead in my arms. Of course Andy was carrying the gun, and I kept telling myself it was worse for him. The GPMG weighs over thirty pounds, three times the weight of my rifle. Andy always was a tough b.a.s.t.a.r.d, but I wasn't going to let myself be beaten by him. If he could keep going without complaining, so could I. I thought about the girl on the ship again. The image of her naked under interrogation was burned into my mind. Then I reran the helicopter crash in the sea, replaying it in my head like an endless loop. The sensation of drowning, the moment I felt Nick's hand release my trapped foot.

Whenever truck lights showed up in the distance we flung ourselves flat until the headlight beams had pa.s.sed. Vehicles were scarce, though; most drivers had the sense to keep off the road in the hours of darkness in winter.

Andy set a good pace. When his eyes tired he handed over scout position to another of us. We changed over every thirty minutes or so any longer and our eyes became exhausted staring through the scope. There's no depth perception in the green-tinted field of view, which makes it hard to judge distance.

For hour after hour we stumbled along, bent double under the load of our huge berg ens picking our way by the dim shape of the man in front. Several times we encountered bridges but they were unguarded and we crossed them on the road, keeping in the tracks of vehicles to disguise our own. Occasionally we saw the lights of homesteads in the distance, but they were well back from the road and caused us no anxiety.

At around four o'clock, after about ten miles, Tom, the lead scout at the time, halted suddenly and held out his hand. We all stopped, crouching low, weapons ready.

Was it a patrol or what? Andy went forward to confer. After a minute he came back. "It's a village," he whispered. "Half a dozen shacks beside a crossroads. We're practically on top of it."

This was serious. We couldn't risk walking through for fear of arousing dogs. The only way round was to cut across country, making a wide circle.

"We'll double back a quarter of a mile and head west," Andy ordered. He took the lead and we set off. The wind was in our faces now, and once we turned away from the road the going became much harder. It was all up and down, shallow rises followed by wide gullies that were confusing and made it hard to keep a bearing.

I was walking behind Andy when I heard him curse. At the same moment my right foot plunged through a layer of ice into deep mud. We had walked into a half-frozen swamp in the darkness. It was too deep to wade through; there was nothing for it but to feel our way around.

"Back and turn south," Andy ordered.

We turned into the wind again, ducking our heads against the driving sleet. "Give me the Beacons any time," Taffy grunted.

"You've gone soft," said Doug.

"Quiet, both of you!" snapped Andy.

We moved south a hundred yards before turning cautiously west again. This time the going was firmer, consisting of tussock gra.s.s, but slow to move over. After about half an hour of this Andy judged it safe to head north. We plodded on till at last we struck a smaller road running east west. This must lead to the village again, we figured. We crossed over, trusting to the sleet to obliterate our tracks before morning, and circled round to pick up the highway again half a mile from the far side of the village. The detour had taken us an hour and a half.

But it was a relief to be following the highway again. "We'll crack on now," Andy said and he set a pace of around three kilometres per hour. It was gruelling going with our heavy packs bouncing on our shoulders, but we kept our spirits up with the thought that we were covering ground to our destination. Traffic on the road seemed to have thinned out and we went for an hour at a time without having to duck for cover.

We kept going in this way throughout the night with just two fifteen-minute stops. By the time dawn finally broke we were tuckered out, but we had covered a good fifteen miles and were well satisfied. At this rate we would make the border in another two days, a good forty-eight hours less than Guy had originally estimated.

We found a place to lie up and made contact again with Hereford over the satellite set. Hereford gave us coordinates for a rendezvous with the agent. It was the site of a cave in a prominent rock formation at a crossroads some five miles short of the border.

Then we crawled into our bivvy bags and tried to sleep in spite of the cold. During the day there were more convoys of troops on the road pa.s.sing in both directions, but no foot patrols, which was a relief. We heard the plane again: it seemed to be searching the ground in our rear still, so we judged we were moving ahead of any cordons.

The next twenty-four hours were a repeat of the first, lying up during daylight and marching through the night, the same wind howling across the unrelenting tundra. The march followed the previous pattern a mix of following the road and detouring around unmarked hamlets, only there were more of these and it took us longer to cover the ground. By dawn we had covered another eleven miles and were more than half-way to the rendezvous point. The effort had left us drained, our feet were sore from pounding on the iron-hard ground, and we were tired and edgy as we prepared the lying-up point.

"One more slog should see us to the border," said Guy. From now on though, he warned, we'd have to proceed carefully as it was likely that the border zone would be patrolled.

"Doug, you take first watch," Andy ordered as we spread out our biwies.

"s.h.i.t, how come it's always me has to stand first watch freezing my b.a.l.l.s off?" Doug grumbled. "Why doesn't Mark do a stint for a change or are you going easy on him in this too?"

"He'll take his turn when the time comes along with the rest of us. Who he is doesn't matter a d.a.m.n," Andy responded.

"Oh yeah?" Doug sneered. "So how come he's only been scout once all night? You know f.u.c.king well you always put him in the middle of the line where he can't get hurt. f.u.c.king baby brother."

Andy's face darkened. "Shut the f.u.c.k up!" he snapped. "If you're knackered, say so and someone else can stand first watch."

It was just the way to needle Doug and his temper flared instantly. "Don't come the tough guy with me. I'll f.u.c.king drop you any time!"

Guy intervened hastily. "Knock it off, the pair of you. I'll take the first watch and leave it at that."

Andy turned away and Doug subsided, growling. I climbed into my bivvy bag seething with anger. Not at Doug, because he had a point I hadn't been given my fair share of scout duty. That was Andy's fault. He was up to his old trick, trying to protect me again. The others resented it, and so did I. We had been down this road before. Though Andy had resisted me joining the army and tried his hardest to prevent me joining the SAS, he had been proud when I was finally badged. The real trouble began when we were sent to Northern Ireland.

I had done the NI course at Llangwern Army Training Area in Wales, where you'd spend four months learning the tradecraft necessary for undercover operations in the Province, including skills like lock-picking and covert photography as well as the surveillance and combat driving techniques, such as drills for approaching a hostile VCP, J-turns and ramming. We had received instruction on the operational structure of the Provisional IRA; we'd learned about b.o.o.by traps, counter-sniping and urban area fighting. After that we'd exercised field scenarios, setting up OPs and ambushing terrorists. These would be followed by realistic debriefings, to the extent of mock court inquiries into how the terrorists had died.

On completing the LATA course I'd been a.s.signed to Andy's troop. This was unusual, though not unheard of. There were other examples of brothers working together in the Regiment, but now I was fully operational Andy's att.i.tude towards my protection became obsessive. I rapidly realised that he must have engineered my a.s.signment so he was able to keep a close eye on me.

Our first major operation together involved an ambush. A surveillance aircraft had spotted two figures behaving suspiciously near a road in South Armagh bandit country.

RUG and army intelligence suspected an attempt to place a roadside bomb in a stream culvert, a well-established PIRA tactic. If so, the terrorists would most likely return at nightfall to detonate it, taking out a pa.s.sing patrol. We were ordered to check it out and apprehend the bombers before they could act.

The orders reached us at four in the afternoon. There was very little time for preparation. A couple of RUC liaison officers briefed us on a large-scale map. The Land Rovers of the patrol were due to pa.s.s the site around midnight, so it was likely the bombers would loiter in the area until they received the go signal from one of the d.i.c.kers part-time scouts twenty minutes or so back along the route. They would then creep out to the firing position in time to trigger the ambush.

In order to bring the bombers on, it was necessary to have the patrol keep to its designated schedule. We couldn't let the regular unit take the risk so they were replaced with an SAS team in two armoured Land Rovers in the dark the d.i.c.kers wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Three pairs were detailed for the ambush: a hit team, consisting of Andy and an old hand named Lewis, whose job it would be to nail the bombers; and two back-up teams in case the bombers managed to evade their fire. I was detailed to ride one of the Land Rovers. The moment we heard over the radio that the trap had sprung we would de bus to prevent the bombers escaping over the road. At the last minute, however, Andy ordered Lewis to swap roles with me, saying he wanted me to have experience on the killer group.

We moved in just as dusk was falling. A vehicle dropped us off two miles from the target point and we tabbed it across country by a route carefully designed to avoid detection. The land was all narrow fields intersected by thick hedges ideal for ambush. It was another bitterly cold night with a freezing wind and bursts of drenching rain. We made a lying-up point about 500 yards from the stream, and Andy and I crawled forward on our bellies to reach the culvert.

Andy had a small torch with black tape over the lens, leaving just a tiny hole for the bulb to shine. The culvert was just wide enough to crawl through and running a foot deep with water. We approached it tensely. If there was a bomb and the IRA were watching they would detonate it without hesitation. Taking out a couple of SAS troops would be reckoned a big coup.

Andy stuck his head inside the mouth of the culvert, shining his torch carefully. PIRA bombs routinely contained anti-handling devices, some sensitive enough to be set off by a torch beam touching a light-sensitive cell. He emerged again and tapped my shoulder, indicating that I should take a look. I took the torch and squirmed carefully inside. The water was freezing cold and running so deep there was hardly any room to breathe. Working my way forward I suddenly saw the bomb and my heart rate leapt.

It looked enormous. Wedged across the culvert, slightly over to the far side, was what looked like a large metal pipe. PIRA bomb-makers generally favoured old steel milk churns as containers, but on this occasion they appeared to have gone to the trouble of welding up a section of wide steel tubing. This bomb looked as if it contained enough high explosive to rip open the roadway and hurl a Land Rover into the neighbouring field.

b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, I thought.

I tried to memo rise a description of the container and its position to give to the technical people.

Squirming back outside again, I found Andy feeling around with his fingers at the mouth of the culvert, trying to locate the command wires. There would be a pair of these running out to a firing point two or three hundred yards away. The firing team would carry a battery pack with them. A touch of the bare ends of the wires to the terminals and bang!

It took Andy some time to locate the wires leading to the firing position, buried in the bed of the stream. The bombers had run the wire up the stream in a waterproof covering to keep it hidden from view. We now saw that the stream fed in through a rough pasture to a gap in a dilapidated stone wall at the far end, which was surmounted by a thick hedge. Standing in the hedge, the look-out would have a clear view of the patrol as it approached. And the bombers could duck down after detonation and run, out of sight behind the wall and out through a gate into another lane at the bottom of a neighbouring field.

Andy set out the ambush quickly. One team was placed to cover the gate and cut off the bombers' escape. The second pair he stationed out on the far wing, in case one of the players broke the other way. He and I took cover behind some tussocks some thirty metres back from the wall. The gra.s.s gave good cover without being obvious.

We worked our way as deep as we could into the ground, getting our heads well down. We were carrying Heckler & Koch G3 7.62mm a.s.sault rifles, as issued to the West German Bundeswehr. As a weapon it is a whole generation ahead of the standard SLR carried by the green army. It is deadly accurate and packs a heck of a punch, and unlike the SLR it can be fired on full automatic. There are few moving parts so stripping and maintenance are simple. We were using the LMG version with a bipod and a twenty-round box magazine.

Fixed to the top of my G3, where the telescopic sight would go, was a kite sight. About the size and shape of a pint gla.s.s, the kite sight was an image intensifier that magnified ambient light to show an image so distinct, it was like looking at a green TV screen. Through it, the gap in the wall showed up clear and sharp.

Having got ourselves comfortable, Andy and I settled down to wait. It was eight o'clock. The patrol wasn't due till midnight, so we guessed it would be at least a couple of hours before the players showed up. We couldn't be sure though, so it was essential to keep dead still and silent.

The night was very dark, rain fell intermittently and we were both wet through and frozen from playing in the stream. From time to time I flicked on my kite sight, checking the gap in the wall.

We each carried a radio with an earpiece and throat mike, plus a transmit b.u.t.ton clipped to the smock. If it was dangerous to speak, Control could question us over the earpieces and we could reply in b.u.t.ton clicks one click for no, two for yes.

Andy bleeped his radio to alert the command vehicle a couple of miles down the road. Control responded immediately.

Two hours slid slowly by. Our guys would be in the Land Rovers by now, trundling through the darkness towards the culvert, knowing that if we b.u.g.g.e.red this up they could all be blown to pieces.

An hour later we were still lying in the gra.s.s. I was starting to worry. Had we got it wrong? Had the wires been a dummy, laid to deceive us, while the bombers sneaked into another firing position on the other side of the road? No, they wouldn't risk an attack knowing that the SAS were in the area. This had to be the firing point. Had we been spotted by a d.i.c.ker on the way in? That was possible. Or a d.i.c.ker might have clicked the command vehicle or one of our OPs further back, or spotted the QRF the quick reaction force, a regular army team standing by to cordon off the area the moment the balloon goes up.

Operations like this were complex; a hundred things could go wrong.

Twice Control came on the air with information that someone had been seen moving in the area, but each time it was a false alarm. Then, at a quarter to midnight, the radio bleeped again. "Alpha Charlie. Three patrol Charlies mobile, direction target."

We stared into the darkness. Somewhere out there the three Land Rovers containing the patrol were moving down the road towards the culvert. No lights yet, but it wouldn't be long now. We waited, but still there was no sign of movement by the gap in the wall. By now we should have been hearing from our own observers covering the approaches to the target, warning us that the players were moving into position.

"Looks like this one went t.i.ts up on us," Andy muttered.

If the bombers didn't show, we'd have to let the patrol pa.s.s and remain on station all night and through into the next on the off chance the bombers might return.

Suddenly I picked up the dim glow of sidelights on the road. I nudged Andy and he bleeped Control. "Eyeball patrol Charlies."

I switched on my kite sight again. It was trained directly on the gap, and everything immediately leapt into sharp focus. I was getting really worried now. If the players were there they could take out the Land Rovers in the next couple of minutes. I heard Control come over the air again, asking if we had any eyeball on the terrorists. Andy answered with a single click of his b.u.t.ton. Negative.

The sidelights of the convoy were moving up the road. The lead vehicle was no more than five hundred yards from the culvert. Another thirty seconds and it would be on top of the bomb. Four hundred yards ... three hundred ... I checked the kite sight again and suddenly my pulse hammered. Rising above the rim of the hole in the wall was the outline of a head. It was turned towards the road and as I looked another one came up to join it.

The terrorists were here. With a shock the appalling truth jolted home. We had expected the bombers to come up the same way we had, from the rear along the lane and through the gate. Instead they had crept along the bottom of the wall till they reached the gap and pulled the wires through to connect them up. They had no idea we were here, and any second now they would touch the contacts and blow our boys to h.e.l.l.

I whacked Andy's arm and in the same moment snapped the safety on the G3 to auto. My sight was centred on the right-hand head. According to the rules of engagement I should shout a warning but there wasn't time for any of that c.r.a.p. I let go with three short bursts. Almost at the same time Andy opened up beside me. Both heads dropped down out of sight. At the same instant a t.i.tanic explosion split the night.

They said afterwards that there had been more than thirty pounds of Semtex inside the bomb. It erupted with a thunderclap of sound and a brilliant strobe of light that momentarily whitened out my kite sight.

Andy and I were already jumping up and sprinting for the wall, firing as we ran. There were flames burning on the roadway, lighting up the scene. I jumped through the gap in the hedge and landed on something soft. A man was lying curled up in the stream, unmoving. I spun right, my weapon up, searching for a target. There was no one else in sight. I heard Andy fire two quick bursts behind me and swung around in time to see a dark figure drop to the ground twenty yards along the hedge to the left. Andy fired another burst into the body to make sure, waited a few seconds, and then called in over the radio to confirm the killings.

I was staring at the culvert. The roadway was shattered from side to side. The bomb had dug out a crater twenty feet across. The lead Land Rover was halted a dozen yards from the lip. The occupants must have had the fright of their lives. The bombers must have been holding the wires over the terminals when we opened fire, the shock causing them to touch off the detonator. Another second and they would have taken the patrol with them. We had brought it off, but only just and at the risk of several lives.

No one in any of the vehicles was hurt, and we had killed two terrorists. The only casualty was the road surface. It was an excellent result for the team.

Andy subsequently received a medal. I told him I was applying for a transfer to a different squadron, and we had a stand-up row, one of many. Then Andy was posted on a course for a year but at the time war broke out in the South Atlantic we were back together again.

And now the same problem was starting over. The fact was, Andy didn't trust me to take care of myself.