Land of Fire Part 5

We came to a fair-sized lake, fringed with marsh and rushes, and tabbed round it till we encountered a gravel track leading in the general direction we wanted to go. There were signs of sheep here and a few birds, but no other wildlife. The whole land was eerily quiet save for the occasional hum of a vehicle on the road. We paused a moment to catch our breath. After a minute I looked back and saw something moving along the gully we had just come from. Signing to Doug to cover me, I dropped back to take a closer look.

Whatever it was moved very cautiously, keeping in the rushes. I squatted under a bush, the L42 at the ready. If there was any doubt I would shoot first and no questions. The shape edged closer. It was a figure in camouflage carrying a long weapon. Too close for comfort. If I took out this one, his buddies would slow down a while. I raised the rifle and centred the cross hairs. Fifty metres, an easy shot.

My finger was tightening on the trigger when he moved out from behind some gra.s.s. In the circle of the sight I saw he was wearing civvies under his camo jacket. s.h.i.t, I thought. Now what?

"Hey, you!" I called out. "Halt!"

He spun around, the hunting rifle in his hands training towards me a tall, sunburnt man, bearded, with harsh, gaunt features, what I could see of them. His face was taut with suspicion. For a moment I actually had the impression he was about to fire, then he lowered the barrel.

"Tienne una habitation?" he called out in Spanish. "Have you a room?"

With a shock I realised this must be the agent sent to meet us. I tried to make my brain work. There was supposed to be a response to the codeword recognition system but for the life of me I couldn't recall it.

He must have understood my confusion because he added, "SAS? My name is Seb."

"Jesus," I whispered, "I almost shot you."

Slowly, he relaxed and stood up. He was a big man, dressed like a hunter, and swarthy, his wrists and the backs of his hands matted with dark hair. He looked like someone who spent much of his life outdoors, a man who could take care of himself. His expression was closed and hard. A loner, I thought.

"I did not see you properly for a moment," he confessed, lowering the rifle and coming over to join me. "I thought you were an Argentine soldier. I'm sorry I couldn't reach the rendezvous; the roads were crawling with soldiers. I managed to work my way round and pick up your trail."

Doug moved up to join us. "Welcome, friend," he said drily. "We missed you at the rendezvous." Doug mistrusted spooks.

Seb shook his head as if he had no time for pleasantries. "The Argentines know you shot down a plane. There's a patrol right behind me. Fifteen men with a light mortar."

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

Seb didn't need to say more. A platoon of men with a mortar could sit out of range of our weapons and blow us to pieces. Then they could pick off the survivors at will. The three of us scrambled back to the others. We had two options: to lay an ambush and take them out or to quicken our pace and try to lose them. Ambush would've been the preferred option, but with the possibility of other patrols in the vicinity it was too risky. We could delay them a bit, though. Tom and Taffy, our demolitions experts, rigged up a couple of grenades on tripwires across the path it took them no more than a minute then we moved out at a run.

We jogged on in single file, Taffy leading this time, Seb following to give directions and myself bringing up the rear. I had been worried about whether he could keep up but Seb ran easily. He wore hiking boots and carried a hunter's light knapsack. He steered us unhesitatingly through a confusing tangle of small intersecting valleys. It was a relief to feel we were in safe hands. We splashed across a small river that chattered over its rocky bed, and Seb paused to check out the country beyond.

We had come out on to open ground again. In front of us stretched undulating ridges of pampas with tall gra.s.ses waving in the wind. Silently Seb pointed to a line offence posts marching across the horizon half a mile off.

"The border?" Guy asked after a moment.

Seb nodded.

"Is it guarded?"

He shook his head. "Not here. Further up where the road crosses the frontier there is a customs post."

I turned around to scan back the way we had come with the scope sight on my rifle. It looked as though we had shaken off the pursuit. Then abruptly I spied a cautious movement among the trees along the stream, about 500 metres off, long gunshot range. "Andy," I called softly, 'that patrol is moving along our trail. They'll be up with us in the next ten minutes."

"Do not shoot," Seb whispered. "If you do they will claim hot pursuit and follow you across the border into Chile."

"Will they respect the frontier line otherwise, do you think?" Guy asked.

"They have instructions not to cross unless fired upon," Seb answered soberly. "If you six will go straight on over now, I will try to delay the patrol."

"How will you do that on your own?" Andy wanted to know.

"I will tell them that I saw your party, numbering twelve or fifteen men, heavily armed, heading north-west towards the border," he said simply. "These are conscripts, not regular troops. They will not hurry to catch you up if they think you are so many."

We looked at the border, half a mile off, and back in the direction of the pursuing enemy. "You sure you wouldn't rather come with us?" Guy asked him. "You're taking a risk going back."

"I know what I am doing, trust me," Seb told him. He shook hands briefly with the six of us. "Now go quickly," he said. "Five hundred metres beyond the fence posts you will come to a track leading south-west. Follow that for two miles and you reach a village. There you can get transport to San Sebastian."

With a quick wave of the hand he strode away into the bush, vanishing rapidly among the trees. I felt an obscure sense of loss at his going, this stranger who had risked his life to help us and was now putting himself on the line for us again.

"Come on," Andy said. "Let's do as the man said."

We tabbed forward at a rapid pace, bending low to keep from being spotted. Luckily the tall gra.s.s provided plenty of cover. It took us only ten minutes to reach the fence. There was no wire, just a line of weathered posts set at twenty-yard intervals running straight across the pampas and disappearing into the distance. As we pa.s.sed through I felt a huge sense of achievement. We had made it. The mission had been a failure, but that was not our fault. We had tramped forty miles across enemy territory in wartime, evading capture for four days. We had fought a successful contact engagement and shot down an enemy aircraft sent to strafe us. Truly I had been blooded in combat.

A few hundred yards on, we came across the track Seb had described. Andy ordered a halt to get the satcom out. The rest of us stood guard while Doug checked in with Hereford, letting them know of our safe arrival on Chilean territory. It led in the right direction and we followed it cautiously in single file, still keeping our eyes peeled and our weapons at the ready. Any soldiers we ran into now would probably be Chilean and friendly but even so we were careful. I thought about Seb and wondered how he was doing. He was a brave man.

We had covered about a quarter of a mile when I heard a sudden shout from Tom in the lead, followed by a burst of machine-gun fire from a low ridge ahead. My heart leapt into my mouth. s.h.i.t. Seb was wrong the Argies weren't respecting the frontier. They had guessed our route and laid a trap for us on Chilean soil. We had run straight into a well-laid ambush.

There was no hesitation now and no question of breaking contact or withdrawing. With another patrol on our heels our only chance was to fight our way through. The unit went into action as smoothly as a machine. The GPMG team moved out fifteen metres to the flanks and opened a storm of covering fire. Tom and Doug were hurling smoke and firing grenades from their 203s, laying down an accurate barrage upon the enemy who were shooting back from the small ridge to our front. Taffy and I moved up at the run, opening up with our own weapons, leapfrogging our buddies, while the machine-gun kept the enemy's heads down as we advanced. Five metres on and we flung ourselves down to take up firing positions from which to cover the next wave as they came running through. More smoke was thrown, and 40mm grenade rounds thudded against the enemy line as the machine-gun hammered away.

Everything was happening by the book. We were working by standard operating procedures just as we had been trained, and it gave me a degree of confidence.

The firing was very heavy though, zipping over our heads and cutting up the turf around us. Some of those rounds were coming from behind and I thought, s.h.i.t, those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds in the other patrol we saw are moving up to take us from the rear. We were in a bad situation, outnumbered more than three to one and pinned down with enemy forces preparing to surround us.

The shooting grew more intense still. Through the gunfire I could hear orders being yelled. They must think they had got us cold. Andy was still rattling away with the GPMG, firing back at the enemy machine-gun. I saw Guy swing round, a.s.sessing the situation rapidly. We were in a bad spot; it was urgent that we break out somehow before the enemy overwhelmed us with sheer numbers.

Guy came to a decision and jumped up. "Come on!" he shouted. "We've got to push through. Follow me!" And leaving Andy with the GPMG, he grabbed his 203 and charged ahead straight for the ridge, yelling at full pitch.

For f.u.c.k's sake, no! I thought, but I knew Guy was right. We were pinned down and it was crucial that we somehow gain momentum, otherwise we were knackered. It took a brave man to show that kind of leadership.

"He's doing it, follow him!" I shouted to the others, springing to my feet and running after him. Tom and Doug had jumped up too and were tearing forward. I triggered my grenade launcher, saw a round go arching into the rolling smoke, and heard the crash of the explosion. Taffy was with us now and we were all firing as we ran.

Tracer from the GPMG swept the ridge like a storm. I saw Guy turn for a moment to urge the rest of us on. In the same instant a bullet hit him. It spun him round like a toy and he pitched on to his side on the ground at the foot of the ridge. "Man down!" I shouted and sprinted over. Guy was lying hunched up with his knees against his chest. The front of his camo jacket was soaked with blood. There was so much of it everywhere it was impossible to see where he had been hit. His eyes were dull with pain and terror. I s.n.a.t.c.hed the field dressing pack from his harness. At first I thought it was a chest wound, then I saw the huge hole in his throat. Snipers are trained to go for a throat shot and with good reason. There's almost no way to stem the blood flow. I grabbed the sides of the wound, attempting to hold them together while warm blood spurted through my fingers. "Taffy!" I shouted. "Man down, for Christ's sake!"

Doug and Tom took up positions a couple of metres in front of us, putting down sustained fire from their weapons. Taffy doubled over. He and I grabbed Guy by his harness and dragged him into the shelter of a nearby hollow. Doug and Tom moved across, continuing to cover us. Taffy ripped open the dressing pack and stuffed a big cotton wool pad into the wound. It turned red instantly and went sloppy to the touch. Guy's carotid artery was ripped to fragments. The blood was emptying out of him in a flood we couldn't stop. His breathing had stopped and his eyes had rolled up. He was in shock, dying in front of us. The gush of blood ceased as the internal pressure fell and the heart ran ragged for a few seconds, then seized.

"Fluids!" I screamed to Taffy. "Get fluids into him."

Taffy was fumbling with the plasma bottle filled with colourless, coagulable liquid that will bulk out the remaining blood in the veins and keep the heart beating. You insert it through a vein with a catheter. We had practiced this dozens of times on the first aid course. Seal off a wound and replace the fluids and the victim will survive till he gets to hospital that's what they taught us. Except that Guy's wound was too huge to seal, and all the plasma in the unit wouldn't replace the blood he had lost.

But I couldn't get my head around that. I kept shouting at Taffy to set up the plasma tube.

"Mark," Taffy yelled at me. "Mark, for G.o.d's sake. It's no use. He's gone."

"f.u.c.k you!" I shouted. "Just try!"

A rocket came whizzing overhead and smashed into the ground close to us, bursting in an explosion of fiery fragments. More shooting erupted. The second enemy patrol must have been closing on us. Seb must have failed in his effort to head them off. We were caught between two pincers.

The GPMG fell silent suddenly. That couldn't be a stoppage too the gunner must be hit. s.h.i.t, that was Andy's gun!

The attack was faltering. With Guy down and our heavy firepower out, the enemy to the front had a chance to regroup. Another anti-tank rocket came whizzing over, and the blast knocked me sideways away from Guy's dead body. Grenade fragments zipped and pinged off the ground around me. I picked myself up. Blood was welling from cuts on my hands. There was no time to think about Guy or Andy. Up on the ridge, twenty metres away, the enemy machine-gun chattered from a sandbagged emplacement. At all costs we had to regain the momentum. Andy wasn't here; it was up to me to give a lead now. The vital thing was to take out the GPMG that was pinning us down so we could break through the enemy line between us and freedom.

"Smoke!" I yelled. "Now let's get the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!" I dumped my rifle and grabbed Guy's 203. It would be more use in this kind of battle. A phosphorous grenade exploded just below the ridge. Another followed and the smoke blew back into the machine-gunner's eyes. I loosed off bursts in his direction, crawling across the two dozen yards of dead ground below the ridge, zigzagging to throw off the gunner's aim. Taffy, Doug and Tom, the only others left on their feet, were crawling after me, covering me with bursts from their weapons. We had momentum going again now.

Smoke and fumes tore at my lungs and eyes. All I could see was the flame from the gun, stabbing out through the belching whiteness. I reached the ridge and flung myself flat. Taking an HE grenade from my pouch, I pulled out the pin and posted it over the sandbags into the emplacement. I saw the handle fly off and a second later came the hollow boom of the explosion. The machine-gun stuttered to a halt and someone close by began screaming loudly.

Before the smoke from the blast had time to clear, I jumped over the sandbags into the gun position. I landed on something soft though there was no time to see what. I squeezed off half the mag to my left, swung around and squirted another burst to the right-hand side. The weapon let out three or four rounds then jammed. s.h.i.t!

The enemy machine-gun lay abandoned, a dead man slumped over it. Amid the smoke dim forms were clambering out of the hollow, running away. A burst of automatic fire sprayed overhead and I ducked down hurriedly. There was another gun lying at my feet an FN with a bayonet fixed. The Argies were using the same weapons as our regular guys. I s.n.a.t.c.hed it up and tried to fire it. Empty. "f.u.c.k!" I shouted.

Panicking and still holding the FN, I scrambled my way to the rear of the dip. It was piled with junk, weapons, ammunition boxes and a couple of bodies. Another shot whined past me, and then I saw the solitary Argentine, a terrified young conscript. He was shaking with fear so much that he could hardly hold the gun. I had no ammunition. The only thing for it was to go for him with the bayonet.

They teach you this kind of fighting at training school but no one takes it seriously. No one imagines they are going to have to stab somebody in the belly with a pike which is what it amounts to in a modern war. You go through the motions, running up to the stuffed figure and jabbing at it, competing to see who can scream the loudest. Afterwards everyone has a good laugh.

It's different in real life. For a start this guy wasn't standing up ready to receive the point of the bayonet in his belly the way all armies practise. He was squatting curled up on a level with my knees with his back against the rear of the trench. He held a loaded FN in his hand and if I stopped for long enough to let him get his wits about him he would blow me away with a single burst at point-blank range.

So, springing towards him, I whacked him in the chest with the point. The boy screamed and writhed. I pulled it out and stabbed him again. Still he wriggled and cried. I was sweating and cursing. He slid forward and the next thrust struck him in the head. The point of the bayonet went into his cheek and he shrieked, a high-pitched squeal like a pig. But he still kept a hold of the rifle. I couldn't work out what had gone wrong. According to the training he should now be dead. I pulled the bayonet out again and gave it another go. This time I stabbed him in the shoulder, just nicking him. Now he seemed to find the trigger of his weapon, and he let off a burst that sliced through the sleeve of my coat. I jabbed at him again with all my strength; he flinched away as he saw me coming, and the point went into his ear. It sank deep horribly easily with a crunching sound. I pulled it out again and torrents of blood squirted from the wound. It ran over his tunic and legs, soaking them. The boy gave a convulsive shudder and went floppy as if his strings had been cut. The gun fell from his grasp and slithered down into the crimson pool at the bottom of the trench.

I stared down at his torn and bloodied face. Both the other kills I had made had been clean. I hadn't even been close to the victims. But this was butchery.

The rest of the team were charging past me, blazing away at the fleeing Argentines who had no fight left in them now the trench had been taken. All they wanted to do was get back across the border to safety. A few shots were still coming our way from the platoon behind us. I ran back to the machine-gun and pushed aside the gunner I had killed. It was a 7.62 American M60, a reliable weapon we often trained with. There was half a belt still left in the feed and more ammo in a box nearby. I rec.o.c.ked and started spraying the ground behind us with short bursts. The Argies on that side weren't using their mortar; I guessed they couldn't for fear of hitting their own people.

The others came running back. Doug was holding his left arm. He had stopped a round in the last minute of the action, but he could still fight.

When the belt on the machine-gun ran out, I dug another out from the box and fed it in.

Soon the firing from the other side diminished and stopped. The Argies there were falling back too.

And then I remembered Andy. I had been so caught up in the momentum of battle I had forgotten all about him.

I left the gun and scrambled back down the ridge into the long gra.s.s. Taffy and Tom were cl.u.s.tered around the GPMG, and I could tell from the way they were moving that it was bad. They had a poncho stretcher out and were rolling someone into it. No one was holding a plasma drip or working on his breathing, and the figure on the stretcher was inert a dead person, a battle casualty. I knew it instantly. And Andy was nowhere to be seen. It had to be him.

As I came running down, Taffy stopped me. "Mark, I'm sorry. We did everything we could. It was a head shot. He never had a chance."

Tom was kneeling by the body, arranging a camo net over Andy's face. Another sniper round, I thought sickeningly. It must have hit him in the back of the head and taken off half his face. They didn't want me to see.

I knelt and took one of Andy's hands in mine. It was all I could do. The tears were streaming down my face and I couldn't find words. He had tried hard to keep me safe. We had rowed about it, because I couldn't get my head around the fact that to him I was always the little brother. Now he was gone.

Tom stood up. He had picked up the GPMG and slung it around his neck. "We can't stay out here," he said grimly. "The Argies may regroup."

I slung my rifle and took one side of Andy's poncho. I was d.a.m.ned if I was going to leave him here. Taffy was fixing a dressing on Doug's arm.

Together we started to carry Andy out. There weren't enough of us to carry Guy as well. We would have to leave him where he lay and come back for him.

On the way up the ridge we pa.s.sed the hollow where I had killed the boy. I felt cold and drained of all feeling.

We saw nothing else of the enemy. We reached the village, and two hours later found ourselves in a small Chilean town. Hereford had been to work and the military attache from the British emba.s.sy was waiting for us with transport. He took charge of everything and saw to the recovery of Guy's body.

I slept most of the next day, which was just as well. Then I tried to find out if Seb had got away or been caught, but they don't tell you things like that.

The Chileans were decent. They kept the press off us. The Argies imposed a complete blackout on news of the battle in their media too. I guess they were embarra.s.sed that a bunch of half a dozen SAS on foot could fight their way fifty miles across the country and not be stopped.

After two days' rest we were flown up to Santiago and repatriated to the UK on a civilian flight.

Andy's and Guy's bodies were brought back for burial with military honours. I stood with Jemma and Andy's two little girls at the funeral, and the experience was almost as bad as seeing him dead.

The projected SAS a.s.sault on Rio Grande never went ahead. Argentine air attacks continued, and by the end of the fighting hardly a single British ship of the task force remained undamaged. The Argentine navy and air force lost over a hundred aircraft.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

The news broadcast from London was short and to the point: "The political situation in Argentina has deteriorated further in recent days, and the danger of a takeover by nationalist elements in the armed forces grows. However, any threat to the Falkland Islands has been discounted."

There were no medals for the Rio Grande mission, not for the living nor the dead. It seemed that Whitehall and Buenos Aires both wanted it buried. The only memorial was a painting that a war artist completed privately for the Regiment of the "Battle of the Border', as it was known. The picture now hangs in the mess at Hereford. It shows the charge on the ridge held by the enemy with Guy, the lieutenant, being hit. Andy is still alive at that moment, visible firing his machine gun. It's a picture I like a lot because it represents my last memory of him. He went down fighting, which is how he would have wanted it.

I spent the next two decades in the Regiment. I fought terrorists in Ireland and drug lords in Colombia. There were wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and clandestine operations that I still can't talk about in other parts of the world. I married and divorced, saw my nieces, Andy's girls, grow up into fine young women.

It was twenty years before I returned to the South Atlantic.

This time I was thirty-nine, and a senior NCO with the mountain troop of D Squadron. There was an SAS exercise planned that included a night landing on South Georgia, and it was my troop that had been picked. We flew into Mount Pleasant, the big new airbase outside Port Stanley, on an R.A.F Hercules from Ascension Island. Ascension is near the equator, and the twelve-hour flight to the Falklands was only possible with midair refuelling. We had a special forces crew, and the flight was part of their training package.

There were six of us making the trip. Major Jock Duggan, the Rupert commanding the expedition, was one of those small men who take on any challenge for the heck of it. He was a pa.s.sionate outdoorsman and explorer, who had climbed Everest and trekked across the southern ice cap. Like me, he was approaching forty and had pretty much reached the end of the line as far as special operations were concerned. The two of us had been planning the South Georgia trip for a year. It was to be a last great yomp, a final test, measuring ourselves against the very worst that nature could throw at us.

South Georgia is a dependency of the Falkland Islands, separated from Stanley by 800 miles of hostile ocean. A bleak, glacier-encrusted island, riven with steep fjords, it resembles Antarctica more than South America. In 1982, an SAS patrol had been dispatched to South Georgia to expel a group of Argentines who had established a base on the island at the outset of the Falklands War. Set down high on the Fortuna glacier in atrocious weather, the advance party had struggled to drag their equipment through a nightmare landscape of savage creva.s.ses, beset by continuous white outs and wind strengths exceeding 100 knots. After five hours, in which they progressed just 500 metres, a decision was taken to withdraw the patrol a rare case of the SAS admitting defeat. Two helicopters sent in to recover the patrol crashed on the glacier, and it was only heroic flying by the pilot of a third that completed the rescue. Since then South Georgia has come to be regarded as the ultimate test in human endurance.

With us in the party was Juan Dimitrikov, an American on secondment from the US Delta Force. A great, smiling bear of a man, Juan had been a close friend of mine ever since we fought together on a mission against the drug lords in Central America. Juan had trained extensively in Greenland and the Canadian Shield and was an expert in Arctic medicine. We counted ourselves fortunate to have him along.

The rest of the six-man team consisted of n.o.bby Clark, a c.o.c.kney always ready with a joke or a bit of crack; my troop sergeant Kiwi Dave, from New Zealand, who stood six foot six in his socks, and was immensely strong and reliable; and Josh Brown, son of my old friend Nick, who'd died in the helicopter crash in the Falklands. Josh was now a twenty-something trooper who had only recently pa.s.sed selection into the Regiment. I had chosen him for the trip at his own request. Although there had never been any proof, I was certain that his father had saved my life in the crash during the war, and I wanted to do what I could to further the boy's career. He was a bright lad, already qualified in Spanish, and would probably make officer before very long. All together we made good mates and a well-balanced team.

"Christ almighty!" n.o.bby exclaimed as we clambered out of the aircraft, dizzy from the ear-shattering noise of the trip. It was his first visit here. "Where is everybody?"

I saw what he meant. Mount Pleasant was enormous and empty. There were only a handful of aircraft stationed here: four Tornados, about the same number of helicopters and a couple of VC10 tankers. The vast runway looked as if it was built to handle an armada of aircraft as indeed it was. In an emergency the revetments and hangars would accommodate scores of fighters and strike planes flown out from England, and the runway would take the heavy transporters flying in reinforcements for the garrison.

A couple of R.A.F trucks trundled out to pick us up. We unloaded our berg ens and Lacon boxes full of weapons and ammunition and other equipment from the plane, checked all the items off on the manifest to make sure nothing was missing, and slung them in the back of the truck for the trip up to the barracks.

It was strange to be back again among the low, treeless hills and the settlements with their tin roofs. Ironically the Argentine invasion of twenty years before had sparked off an economic boom in the islands. Cruise liners disgorged 40,000 tourists a year on sh.o.r.e excursions to Stanley. Now, alongside the timbers and corrugated-iron cottages, there were expanding suburbs of new semi-detached homes for contract workers. But the streets were still full of Land Rovers and the weather remained the same: ceaseless, freezing wind and a dusting of snow on the heather and gorse.

The emptiness of the islands this time round came as a shock. When I had been here last, San Carlos Water was filled with shipping and 3000 men had been camping out on Suss.e.x Mountains. Now there were many civilians but hardly any military to be seen. The current garrison for the islands consisted of a reinforced company from the Royal Green Jackets and a token force from the R.A.F regiment guarding the airfield a total of no more than 500 men and women, of whom 150 were combat troops.