Land of Fire Part 6

Our schedule called for us to spend a couple of weeks getting acclimatised to the South Atlantic winter before setting off for South Georgia. Major Jock and I immediately inst.i.tuted a punishing regime of route marches and cliff-climbing exercises. In the evenings, apart from watching videos of films we had seen before, there wasn't a whole lot to do except party. A submarine was paying a visit to Port Stanley HMS Superb, one of the big hunter-killer nukes and we took to joining up with her crew.

"Jesus, Mark, "Juan said after our first night in the mess, during which we had witnessed a submariner take in a gallon of beer via a stirrup pump. "Your sailors are something else."

"I guess when you've spent three months underwater in a steel tube you have just two things on your mind," I agreed, 'to get p.i.s.sed and to s.h.a.g everything that moves."

All the different service messes were part of the same complex. We were bunking with the Green Jackets in the army section, which was joined to the R.A.F and naval messes by miles of internal corridors. The barracks were designed to hold several thousand in the event of some future conflict, and covered an acre with the effect that it was easy to become lost. Late-night muggings were not uncommon, and we were warned not to walk the pa.s.sages alone after dark. This of course was an affront to the manhood of any SAS trooper, and when we were bored we would roam the uninhabited regions in the hope of starting a fight. The only excitement we had, though, was when two MPs jumped on Dave, our giant New Zealander, mistaking him for a sneak thief, and they landed up in the base hospital with a fractured skull apiece.

There was television beamed out from England via satellite, and we avidly watched the world news. In Argentina the left-wing government in power had run into difficulties: a nationalisation programme that had seized heavy industry and large farms had failed to stimulate the economy. A slump had turned into a recession, complete with ma.s.s layoffs and queues at soup kitchens. Bank defaults were adding to the chaos. As always in South America, extremist factions were exploiting the situation and right- and left-wing groups were battling one another in the streets. On the screen we saw pictures of tanks defending government buildings against stone-throwing crowds.

One night after we had been on the Falklands for about a week, I went down to the sergeant's mess. Jock was in there because he'd got bored drinking with his fellow officers. It was a submariner's birthday, and his buddies were mixing champagne and Guinness in a bucket and pa.s.sing it round. There were a few women, too sergeant signallers who seemed to be having a ball with so much male attention.

One of the girls was a blonde, my height, with a ponytail and a pert little body. Her name was Jenny and she looked about twenty-four. She wore dark ski pants and a pale embroidered sweater that showed off her figure. She kept darting me little sideways glances and tossing her hair about.

Jock noticed. "You're in there."

"She must go for older blokes."

She was talking to a couple of mate lots I knew, so I wandered over to join them and introduced myself. "Hi, I'm Mark from Hereford."

"Jenny," she grinned, holding out a hand. Her accent puzzled me was it laced with London estuary? I was surprised when she told me she was an islander and had been here during the war.

"I don't remember much. I was only four at the time. We were living at San Carlos. Planes and loud bangs and lots of soldiers. My mum saw it all. She helped arrest an Argentine spy."

Her words jolted me. "A spy?"

She grinned. It was obviously one of her party pieces. "A woman spy. Off the container ship Northland."

"The Northland. That was one that was bombed." I had sudden images of the gaping deck, flames pouring up. And the naked girl below.

She must have spotted my look of recognition because she nodded. "The spy was on board when it happened. They caught her but then the ship was. .h.i.t and she ran up on deck and jumped into a lifeboat."

"What happened to her?"

"She got ash.o.r.e. Our house was in San Carlos settlement, close to the beach. Mum saw someone sneaking into a shed and thought it was a squaddy on the scrounge. She went to look, found this girl hiding under a trailer and handed her over to the soldiers, who took her away."

"Who was she?"

"Some Argentine who'd stowed away on the ship in England. One of our lads found her down in the hold with a radio transmitter and pulled her out."

It was strange hearing myself talked about like a character from history. Which in a sense I was. It made me feel old. I wondered what the girl would look like now. Would I recognise her if we met again?

We talked a bit more. I asked Jenny what made her join the forces. Was it the war?

She shook her head. "Only way of getting out of this f.u.c.king hole except now they've sent me back again."

I couldn't resist changing the subject back. "What did your mother think about her, about the spy?"

Jenny glanced at me as if I'd said something stupid. "Said she was guiding in the planes that bombed our ships. A lot of lads got killed that night. Why? Does it turn you on a female spy?"

"I was on the Northland too."

She was drinking rum and c.o.ke. I bought her another at the bar and a pint for myself with a whisky chaser. "You're wasting your time with Jenny," one of the submariners at the bar told me. "Strictly officers only." Jock caught my eye and winked. I wanted to talk to the girl some more but the racket of the drinking games in the mess made it hard to hold a conversation.

"You married?" she asked. I thought the enquiry hadn't come out quite as casually as she would've liked.

"Divorced," I said, trying not to smile.

"Same here."

She didn't look old enough, but the services are like that. Relationships are hard to keep together. Your mates are the only constant.

"So, did you come with anyone?" If there was going to be a fight, I'd like to know who with.

She jerked her head towards one of the other girls, who was holding her sides laughing at something a mate lot was saying into her neck. "My friend's dating one of the Superb lads. We came over for the party."

"I'm only here a few days."

"I know. You're one of the SAS troop. I've been sending signals about you people all day."

An hour later I was on my sixth pint. She had been keeping pace. The bar was filling up and the atmosphere was growing more boisterous. A bunch of lads had got up an impromptu game of indoor rugby at one end of the room grunts versus mate lots and crabs. Juan was leading one of the teams. The air was blue with smoke and a raucous crowd was egging on the players to greater excess.

"I sleep somewhere round here," I told her. "But if I drink any more I won't be able to find my way back."

"I'd better come along in case you get lost," she said. "You know it's not safe to walk the corridors alone at night." It was the first time she'd shown a hint of humour. She was slow to come round, and I liked that.

The cubicle I had been a.s.signed had posters on the wall left by some other occupant and exuded the temporary feel of barracks blocks the world over. Jenny tied a T-shirt round the lamp to soften the light as we undressed each other slowly. Beneath her bra her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were small and high and delicate, and she shivered when I touched them. I thought of how the girl aboard the Northland had shivered from the cold twenty years before.

This one was a good girl though, warm and soft with a throaty chuckle that escaped when she was aroused, which made me laugh. We made love slowly at first, then with increasing urgency.

After the second time we fell asleep in each other's arms. When I woke it was seven in the morning and still dark. She was gathering her clothes quietly.

"I'll walk you back to your quarters," I said.

"I'll be quite safe. It's only men who get attacked round here." She leaned down to kiss me. "By the way," she said, 'her name was Concha."

"Who are you talking about?"

"The spy. The one you caught on the Northland. Mum told me they found out her name. Don't ask me how. It was Concha. That means sh.e.l.l in Spanish."

I shook myself fully awake. "How did you know?"

She chuckled again. "I told you, I've been reading all the signals about you."

And she was gone.

I lay awake for some time thinking about Jenny's words and about the girl on the boat. Now I had a name for her, the spy seemed real again.

But when I finally fell asleep it wasn't her I dreamed about. Or Andy. It was the face of the man I'd bayoneted in the Battle of the Border.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

"No need to ask if you scored last night, "Juan said next morning in the mess as I downed a hearty breakfast.

I grinned. To pull a girl in Stanley, especially a sharp looker like Jenny, was a real achievement. No wonder the submariners were looking p.i.s.sed off at me.

"How did your game end?" I asked Juan in turn.

He let out a deep American rumble of laughter. "Boy, you missed a show there. It was a gas. One of the guys decided to break up the sc rum by diving in off the piano only he missed, hit the floor and fractured his collar bone. He just gulped a gla.s.s of scotch and kept on playing."

"So did you win?"

"Well, I was the only guy still standing upright at the end."

Easy to see why everyone liked Juan.

I felt a hand fall on my shoulder and looked up. It was Major Jock. He looked serious. "We need to talk, Mark," he said.

I followed him to the secure briefing room set aside for our use. It had a high-security lock on the door, and when there were no SAS on station the key was kept in the custody of the garrison commander. There was a military policeman on guard outside. He stood aside to let us in Inside I saw n.o.bby seated at the desk, pencilling in the decode of a message that had just come in over the secure fax machine. The message was headed "SAS EYES ONLY' in big letters. I noted the reaction on n.o.bby's face as he scanned the text. "Read this, boss." He thrust the flimsy paper at Jock.

Jock studied the message. I saw his jaw tighten and he flung it over to me without a word.

"They're cancelling the exercise?" I said in dismay.

"Read on," Jock said.

I scanned the message. With immediate effect the exercise was cancelled. We were ordered to draw up a plan to land our party on the Argentine coast in the vicinity of Rio Grande and secretly reconnoitre the airbase there to discover what preparations the Argentine military were undertaking.

"Jesus," I muttered. "They're not serious. Do they think there's going to be a war?"

Jock shrugged and sighed. "What you and I think isn't important. Mutual mistrust is all it takes to start a war."

"The Argentines wouldn't be such fools, surely?"

"Whitehall doesn't want to take chances. How d'you feel about going back? "Jock was familiar with my past, including the expedition that had resulted in my brother's death.

It was my turn to shrug. In this job you do what you're told. "I never even got to see the base. Let's hope the Argies won't be so alert this time."

Our minds were racing ahead, thinking and planning. We had on the boat all the kit necessary for a prolonged recon op. Weapons we could obtain from the stores here. There was enough material in the depot to fight an all-out war.

"Maps," I said. "We need maps and decent satellite photographs before we start to plan properly."

Jock agreed. "I already thought of that. Complete sets of the latest intelligence data and mapping software is being flown out by fast jet tonight." His eyes were glinting with excitement now. This was a last chance of action for the pair of us. I was feeling the same way.

I asked Jock how close he thought Superb would drop us in. She was a hunter-killer submarine rather than one of the huge fleet ballistic missile Trident cla.s.s, but she was still 4500 tons displacement, the same as a Type 22 frigate; the Navy wouldn't want to risk her close insh.o.r.e.

Jock reckoned we'd have to count on at least three miles' ride in by Gemini inflatables. "If the Argentine navy detects a British submarine that close to the coast, they'll do their best to sink it," he said.

There was a silence in the cabin as we speculated on the possible consequences of the destruction of a British nuclear sub at the hands of the Argentines. The hard liners would have their war then.

"This is crazy," I said. "Superb has Tomahawk missiles. Why doesn't she lie off out of range and blast the airfield to h.e.l.l?"

"Because they can't risk doing that until they know for sure the bombers are going to be used. We supply the proof. It's that simple."

"s.h.i.t. They can't be serious?"

"They're deadly serious," Jock said. "Apparently the Firm believes a military coup is imminent in Buenos Aires. They want us over there to watch the base. Superb will take us in, and we'll do the job."

"When?" I asked.

We drove down to the harbour together to discuss the details of the insertion with the submarine's skipper. It was snowing again outside it snows for eight months of the year down in the Falklands. HMS Superb was moored against the mole. Submarines look black and sinister out of the water, nuclear subs especially so. There is something evil about the way their deadly weapons are all concealed. There was around 200 feet of her hull length showing above the water, with probably half as much again beneath, and her conning tower stood up from the middle like a two-storey block.

The quay side was empty. A grizzled chief petty officer and a rating with an SA80 combat rifle stood guard at the foot of the gangway. The CPO checked our warrant cards and went back below to confirm that we were allowed aboard. The rating stayed on the gangway with the rifle across his chest. The Navy doesn't take any chances with its subs.

Finally the CPO came back with the officer of the watch to conduct us inside. We entered through a hatch at the base of the conning tower what Juan would call the sail and down a ladder to the main deck. The big nukes are huge inside, with multiple decks and crews of a hundred and more.

The commander was waiting for us in the operations centre. He was a short, fit man with hard grey eyes, and his manner was brisk. Commanders of nuclear subs are G.o.d Almighty on their boats, and with good reason. He couldn't talk openly in front of me, because operational details about the boat could only be revealed to an officer, so I waited outside his cabin while he told Jock who would tell me later. Jock had no inhibitions where rank was concerned.

The gist of his report, when he came out, was that the skipper was deeply unhappy about the prospect of risking his precious submarine anywhere near a foreign coast. It would take a direct order to make him do so, and even then ten miles was as close as he could go. Jock and I tried to imagine doing ten miles of open sea in a Gemini.

Jock was more worried about getting out again. The usual procedure would be to hide the boats so we could use them to ride out and rendezvous with the sub again. We would fix a spot with GPS and pa.s.s on our co-ordinates for the RV. If the Navy thought that too risky, an alternative was to have them send a helicopter in through Chile to exfiltrate us. "Otherwise, in an emergency," he told me, 'we can hijack a truck and drive like h.e.l.l for the border."

I chewed my lip. I had had experience of trying to make that border against opposition.

Back at the barracks, Jock called a full briefing for the whole team. Juan, Josh, n.o.bby and Kiwi Dave gathered round the table with us. The other four were as surprised as I had been, but equally eager to go for it. Juan was especially keen to play his part in a genuine SAS mission. There was a brief discussion of the deteriorating political situation in Argentina. "What it comes down to," Jock said finally, 'is that the militarists among the Argentines are on top again, and the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds are crazy enough to start something."

Jock and I took an inventory of the weapons and equipment we had brought with us, trying to figure out what else we needed to take. We had all our winter warfare kit as well as stores to keep us supplied for a fortnight and our own satcom set. For personal weapons most of us carried the C-5, the Canadian built version of the 203 'over-and-under' 5.56mm a.s.sault rifle with a 40mm grenade launcher attachment. It's a well-made system, light but extremely robust. As a sniper, my own weapon was now the Accuracy International rifle, firing a 7.62mm cartridge. This was a superb weapon capable of achieving a first-round hit at over 600 metres, and a big improvement on the old L42 of two decades before. What we lacked, though, was ammunition and the heavier weapons -GPMGs and anti-armour and anti-aircraft missiles.

"We'll have to break into the war stocks," Jock said.

The garrison on the islands maintained huge amounts of equipment, including arms and ammunition for use in case of hostilities. In the event of a threatened invasion all they needed to do was fly in the bodies the guys would pick up their kit at Stanley and be ready to fight. The SAS maintains war stocks of weapons and equipment at strategic locations around the world. The Falklands is one of these points. These stocks are held separately from the general armouries and can only be accessed by the SAS as needed.

We piled into the Land Rover they had given us and drove over to the armoury compound. Jock saw the quartermaster-sergeant on duty and obtained from him the key to our war stock building. We followed the QMS through the gate to the inner compound. The truck drove down long lines of warehouse sheds and dome-shaped magazines. There were hangars full of vehicles, ACVs and light tanks, trucks and jeeps, artillery pieces and missile launchers. It was eerie to see all this equipment needing the soldiers to man it, waiting for a war that might just come again.

Finally we drove through into a separate fenced-off area, with its own armoury shed and low-roofed ammunition bunker. We dismounted, and Jock unfastened the lock.

Inside, I switched on the lights and whistled. A real treasure house. There was enough weaponry to outfit a couple of squadrons for any conceivable mission. There were racks of the superb American 81mm mortar, LAW anti-armour missiles and 7.62 calibre GPMGs. Row upon row of C-5s and Heckler & Koch G3 a.s.sault rifles along with MP5s, the sub-machine-gun version. The regular stores would be full of the standard SA80 rifle as issued to the average grunt and useless from day one. It couldn't be fired by left-handers, of which there are any number in the military. In tough conditions and of course most combat takes place in less than ideal conditions the SA80 was p.r.o.ne to jamming. The army had spent a fortune trying to rectify its faults, without success. In my view it would have been cheaper to ditch the lot and re-equip the entire force with C-5s. The civil servants in the MOD and Treasury don't understand that the rifle is a soldier's single most important item. If it's no good, he has no faith in the rest of his kit.

"Hurry up!" Jock said. "No time for gawping."

Quickly we started helping ourselves to what we needed. Big Kiwi Dave chose his favourite weapon, the GPMG, for firepower support. This was the same weapon we had carried in Argentina twenty years before, still used by the British army, as well as by the Israeli forces and a host of other countries, including Argentina itself. Extremely st.u.r.dy, it can stand rough treatment in the field and will work for long periods without maintenance.

I was looking for belt ammunition and 40mm grenade rounds for our C-5s. Jock wanted explosive charges in case we were called upon to destroy the bombers in their revetments. Juan selected an American LAW launcher to deal with any Argentine armour we might come up against, and I took a couple of Starstreak anti-air missiles, remembering how we had defended ourselves against air attack the last time.