Sitrep A: 12/5/82 17.30 hrs: B: Delta Two Four: C: Pebble Island installation not, repeat not radar: D: aircraft facility offensive: E: Support troops battalion plus.
The recce team from B Squadron were parachuted into the sea, picked up by Rigid Raiders from a patrolling frigate, which immediately closed on Hermes. What followed was really hairy, being winched over a heaving sea, singly, by crossdeck jackstay. It didn’t matter what the Chief Petty Officer strapping them in said: there was no way anyone felt safe suspended between two heaving ships on a single cable.
Once aboard the command carrier, they were given another briefing. Not that it added much to the sum of knowledge. The Green Slime officer from Fearless was waiting with some pretty indistinct aerial shots of the place they were slated to land.
The task had already been discussed, both in Hereford and on the way down, with only the method of entry left to be decided. So the actual final briefing was short. Above their heads, on the top deck, explosives were being packed into the floor of a Sea King, stripped of everything that was superfluous to save weight. They had their transport. The only problem was the weather.
This was a one-way trip. The heli didn’t have the range to get to the mainland and back again. So any heavy headwind cut into their ability to run the distance. The patrol was tasked to go in on the ground, collect the information that the rest of the squadron needed about the Rio Grande air base, Satcom it back to Hereford and then be there to assist when the assault went in. They were under no circumstances to be captured. And if the Sea King looked as though it might fall into enemy hands, it was to be destroyed. Thinking about that, as they sat around waiting for two days, did nothing to engender a jolly mood. But there were other factors to add extra worries.
The officer leading them, the Air Troop commander Captain Ralph Heering, was not the most popular Rupert in the world. For a start he was Blues and Royals, the Household cavalry: skinny, elegant and as stiff as a board. He wasn’t a talker, easy communication being beyond him. And he had an annoying habit of looking at anyone who asked him a question as though the speaker had committed some terrible mistake. His answer, when it came, only reinforced this. It was delivered in a voice that sounded as though he was straining at the arse.
The sergeant for the operation was Lofty Glynn, a six-foot-four bruiser from the slums of Salford, who never stopped asking Ruperts what they were up to, on the very good grounds that he suspected they rarely knew. Lofty had won a DCM in Dofhar, which he thought gave him great moral authority. What it did give him was battle experience. His main interest was in gardening. Not the Kew variety, which might have interested Heering, but in the produce from his allotment. The combination looked like chalk and cheese.
Concorde Tucker was there, with the other Boat Troop member Craig Walker, moaning that the mix was a less than brilliant idea. OK, so they’d shared the risks out amongst the four troops. And all SAS men were trained to work together. But he would have been happier with his own mates around him, the guys he knew and trusted enough to get pissed with. For all of the men it was an odd feeling. Having been at the briefing for the air assault, they half-figured that this operation was a bit of a lifesaver. But when you stood back and looked at what they were about to do, no one was quite so sure.
The wind dropped finally, leaving one of those long brilliant sunsets that made you forget how bad the weather had been. The last of the twilight was fading as, muffled up in full Arctic clothing, they boarded the chopper. Carrying extra fuel and loaded with nine men plus crew, there was a very serious discussion about takeoff. None of the troopers were left in any doubt that it was going to be hairy, that they ran the risk of going for a swim. The pilot revved up the engines to maximum power, which only managed to get them about two feet off the deck. He took them forward, more like a fixed wing than a heli, then hauled on his stick to take them out over the side.
‘Jesus, Holy Mother of Christ!’ yelled Concorde as the heli dropped.
It was like the worst kind of stomach-churning fairground ride, except you would drown in a thousand fathoms at the bottom. Most of the guys had their eyes tight shut, and a silent prayer in their heads. Tucker didn’t. If he was going to die he wanted to see it coming. So did Heering, sitting next to him, although the expression on his face was unconcerned. He was staring straight ahead, his slightly bulging blue eyes calm and indifferent, no doubt thinking that they wouldn’t have the damned cheek to even wet the feet of someone as well bred as him.
The nose hauled up, seemingly just a few feet from the waves. The pilot skimming the black surface so close that he was throwing up heavy spray. Slowly the Sea King lifted, and began to achieve a bit of forward motion, the nose being hauled round on to the heading for Tierra del Fuego. As it gathered speed, the heli lifted slowly clear of the water, until it was flying high enough to relax the passengers. Not that they were comfortable. The cabin lacked any doors or heaters, having had them removed to save weight. It filled with a freezing, howling gale more than strong enough to penetrate the clothing they were wearing.
There was nothing that could be done about it. All the men could do was huddle down in their Arctic suits and think about what lay ahead. The plan was to run in over the coast, just out of radar range. The pilots would set the chopper down outside that, where its landing and takeoff could not be observed. Then the troopers would do a recce with the hand-held alarm that would confirm the radar window. Once they’d got the information back to the Headshed, the next task was to infiltrate close enough to the Rio Grande air base and gather some intelligence regarding the numbers and readiness of the defenders, this to be relayed to the rest of the squadron in the air. Then it was pick a target of opportunity, like a Roland battery or an AA gun site, and slam the bastard when the planes arrived.
Concorde Tucker sat right behind the pilot and co-pilot, a hand-held radar detection device on his lap. Even though they were a long way from contact it was set, ready to ping if the mainland air defences picked up the Sea King. Not that they expected them to! Their job was to stay just outside it. Given that arc of safety, the time it would take a C130 to close the same distance could be determined. Headwinds or tailwinds were not part of the chopper party’s job. That was for the Hercules pilots to deal with. Westerlies were the prevailing winds in these parts, and a strong one could slow the close-in time for the squadron attack by as much as a minute. He was fairly relaxed, although frozen as the hours went by. They were still over water, heading east at full speed, daydreaming, thinking about the FA cup, when the loud ping filled the helicopter cabin.
‘Fuck!’
‘That’s not supposed to be there!’ shouted the pilot.
The remark was directed at Heering, who just stared back at the Navy officer. It was Lofty Glynn who answered, his voice rough, grim and loud. ‘You’re telling me, mate.’
‘They must have coastal radar as well.’
‘Then it’s new,’ Heering responded, uselessly.
‘Do we go on or bail out?’ shouted Lofty.
‘We can’t bail out now,’ the pilot called back as he dropped even closer to the water. He gestured for both Heering and Lofty to lean towards him so that he could talk in a near-normal voice. Tucker was so close he heard every word.
‘We’ve come in too far to turn back. We can’t even stooge about with the fuel we’ve still got. The biggest problem is that if they’ve locked on to us this early, they can scramble night fighters. They might pick us up on their own sets, and come low to take us out over the sea.’
‘So?’ Heering asked after what seemed, given the circumstances, a very long pause.
The pilot waved an impatient hand, and holding his in-flight radio mouthpiece close to his mouth, started an animated conversation with his oppo. The pilot then leant back to talk to the troopers.
‘Our best bet is to carry on. Get in close to the land and stay low. Jets will never pick us up against a solid background. If we can get down into a fold of hills and out of the radar picture we can figure out what to do next.’
‘Will they know it’s a chopper?’
‘Yep.’
Lofty spoke while Heering thought on that. ‘We have to get a signal off about the radar, boss. That at least will give the guys coming in the true picture.’
‘Of course.’
‘Then you might as well tell them that we’ve decided to take our annual leave.’
‘Coast,’ the pilot shouted, pointing towards the black line of solid earth, barely visible ahead.
His co-pilot was already taking the ship down. He put on his PNG kit. Once he had it in place, he took back the controls, and dropped even further. It’s hairy being in a helicopter, close enough to look out the front screen, and not be able to see a fucking thing as the craft swoops over the terrain. Tucker went back to his detection set, so that he could tell them when they were below the electronic horizon. It wasn’t looking good. They’d known the place was pretty flat, but not this barren. And it was a contingency for which they hadn’t reckoned. They’d assumed they’d be able to set down at their chosen location near the coast and carry out their task.
‘We’re going to get clobbered if we put down around here. We might as well send them an official invite.’
‘Try it?’ suggested Lofty, looking to Heering for confirmation, which was given with a sharp nod.
The pilot didn’t argue, didn’t tell Sergeant Lofty Glynn that this was his chopper and he’d make the decisions. When it came to survival he was with the experts. He was happy to take instructions from a guy who was nominally his inferior. The Sea King floated down and hit turf, with Lofty spinning round to look at Concorde Tucker. He didn’t need to ask him anything: the detection light was still on, glowing bright orange. The guys at the controls were looking at Lofty, not Heering, waiting for him to say what to do next. He held up one finger, to tell them that he wanted one minute to think it through. There wasn’t a lot of choice. They were in flat terrain with no place to hide north and south. The Andes were right to the west, in Chile, and the foothills of those might give them a chance to at least stop and consolidate.
‘Go west,’ said Heering, a newly decisive note in his voice. ‘Full throttle.’
The ship, lighter now that it had used up most of its fuel, was moving forward before the words were out of his mouth, while Heering and Lofty, heads together, tried to work out the next bit of the problem. The guy sitting at the console watching them would be able to tell where they were going, and pinpoint the exact location at which they’d hit the Argentine/Chile border. That was not good news. They had to sow some confusion.
Heering lent forward again to shout in the pilot’s ear. ‘We’re going to have to put down from time to time, just to keep them guessing. Then when we lift off again we need a few changes of course until we can find some cover. I need a location to call my HQ and ask for instructions.’
‘They might put choppers up too. But we will soon be beyond the base so they will be chasing us. Stripped down as we are we should have the edge. The only way to stay ahead of them is to go for it.’
‘How long do you reckon we have before the ground changes?’
‘Twenty minutes at least.’
‘And they can’t catch us in that time?’
‘No way!’
‘OK. Let’s give them a run for their money.’
The pilot raised his thumb.
‘What’s it like out there?’ Heering asked.
‘Put it this way. The PNG kit is unnecessary. I can’t even see a bloody tree.’
Lofty had gone back and got everybody’s head close to his, so he could tell them the plan. Not that it was one – just a series of not very good alternatives. Nobody talked back or asked how the fuck they’d got in this mess, they just listened to Lofty as he talked loudly over the thudding noise of the rotor blades.
‘The Headshed have got to give us the good news on this. Let’s hope we get the time. If we’re compromised we try to evade. If we have to we fight. The chopper is our base, and when the main man lands us the first thing we do is fan out to protect it. We need to establish an east-facing perimeter wide enough to keep it secure. We need a way of calling everybody back in to either defend or bug out. The Argies might be using choppers too. If one gets too close to us for comfort, take it out.’
That was easier said than done. For what was a fast recce patrol, nobody had brought anything heavier than a single GPMG. The Sea King, before it had been stripped, was rigged for lift, search, rescue and Special Forces duties, not as a gunship. All the armament she might have carried had been taken out to increase the load capacity and airtime.
‘Even if we can’t shoot the bastards down, we’ll make them want to be somewhere else.’
‘Just like us,’ said Concorde Tucker.
‘Ground changing,’ shouted Heering, who was still close to the pilot.
‘Concorde, get on that set and tell us the second we’re out of the headlights. The rest of you get by the doors and take up firing positions.’
The Sea King started to weave as the pilot sought dead ground. It wasn’t as simple as finding some and setting down. They had to find enough to make the Argies doubt their actual location. Dodging in and out of the radar picture was better than nothing. But it wasn’t really what was needed. The ground was still too flat. Certainly there were folds now, shallow valleys. But they only lasted for seconds, and following the contours was slowing them down. The co-pilot was concentrating on the radar, waiting for the telltale ping that would say they had a tail. If that happened they were in deep shit, because a following helicopter could pursue them and would still have them on screen as they tried to touch down.
The pilot made a decision without consulting Heering. Nobody could see jack shit, but the man at the controls could. They’d trusted him to get them here; it was time to trust him to get them out. Tucker was still bent over his glowing detector. Everyone else was jammed in a position that would keep them aboard but allow the use of their weapons, glancing occasionally at both Heering and Lofty Glynn, who were talking, trying to figure out the tactics.
Was it better to send the guys out light, or to tell them to take their Bergens? In an emergency, where one trooper was too far away to be brought in without compromising the group, they would have to lift off without them. That would leave them stranded without any kit at all. But moving around in a Bergen, in a situation where everybody might have to leg it for the chopper at maximum speed, caused problems too. It didn’t only slow the runner down: it hampered the loading procedure.
‘No Bergens,’ Heering yelled, having made his decision. ‘Leave them on the heli. If we have to lift off and leave, we’ll chuck one out’
‘I hope nobody ain’t left their dirty socks in,’ shouted a disembodied voice, in a strong Cockney accent
Lofty Glynn spun round as the chopper’s speed slowed again, grabbing hold of a strap as the pilot began to weave. The light went out on the radar detector, then came back on again after about thirty seconds. The co-pilot was watching it, talking to the man at the controls through his mouthpiece, as the light blinked on and off. Concorde Tucker found himself holding his breath as it stayed off for a whole minute. The helicopter was bucking and weaving, over now-broken terrain; the only man who knew what they were skirting was the pilot. Suddenly he killed the forward speed, and settled the chopper down. Then he turned and yelled back to Heering.
‘We’re in good dead ground here, out of view. Do I kill the engines?’
‘Not yet,’ said Heering, edging towards the exit. ‘But keep them as quiet as possible.’
They were out and in a defensive ring within seconds. There was no panic, no looking for instructions. Everybody knew what to do. It was SOP and had been discussed during the patrol briefing as the routine for their original drop. Heering moved faster than anybody had ever seen him do before, signalling to the radio operator to follow him towards some higher ground that would give him a good comms point. Lofty Glynn took charge of the search for a better defensive position, the soft swish of the idling rotor blades in the background.
The noise they made provided a good mark for the perimeter. The guys could move out in a defensive ring until it faded. That meant the enemy couldn’t hear it either. The question was how to call them in if a patrol suddenly turned up searching for them. They had to be able to stay still for a while, to take the certainty out of the search and send back to the Headshed for orders. That wasn’t all. The Argies and the Chileans had been arguing about territory for years, and they both probably had some good kit on the border. The enemy must have shifted some of it because of the Falklands invasion. But the Argies didn’t trust their neighbours, and there was no way they were going to denude Tierra del Fuego of troops and equipment in case they were stabbed in the back.
What did that mean? Good air defence systems to discourage overflights. Perhaps even missile batteries – though they were not too much of a problem since the Sea King would stay low. Artillery, yes – though it should be long-range stuff. Trench systems, perhaps not manned, but minefields would be a certainty. That didn’t matter if they weren’t walking. Fencing did. Mobile radar? In broken country that would be mounted on hilltops. If they had radio detection gear they could fiddle with it forever and never pick up the Satcom transmissions. There was only a risk in telling base they were safe and evading if they used the normal high frequency. PNG was unlikely, since only the big powers carried that kit up to now. Soldiers? Troops to hold the border. Quality unknown! Quantity? Lots, but it was a fucking long border. So mobility had to be good. The way to hold the line was a concentration of troops in strategic points, men who could be deployed rapidly over a wide area.
‘We have to keep that chopper whole, sunshine,’ whispered Lofty Glynn to Tucker, ‘or we’ll have a fuck of a job getting out of here.’
‘We was goin’ to have that anyway,’ Concorde replied.
The Satcom operator had calibrated the kit and Heering was busy giving Hereford a real-time sitrep, adding a request for instructions. The reply, which he’d been told to wait for, wasn’t long in coming. The Captain, after a quick talk with the heli pilot and his navigator, called everybody back for a briefing. When they arrived, the first thing they noticed was that the rotor blades were still and silent.
‘Our orders are to try and continue the operation from here.’ Heering stopped, waiting for the objections. None came. ‘Two patrols. Sergeant Glynn and I will lead, using the PNG goggles to search for the opposition. This is our main LUP, and our ERV in case of trouble. The Sea King crew will stay here, ready to evade on their own or blow the ship if they are compromised. Should that happen, I am assured there is enough explosives in the flooring to guarantee that we know about it. We have to cover a lot of ground. It is very unlikely that we can do so without some form of contact, and I anticipate that we will need to set up temporary LUPs before we can recce the Rio Grande air base.’
Concorde Tucker was looking at Lofty Glynn as Heering spoke. The Sergeant said nothing to check the officer’s orders. But the eyes, bright orbs in a blackened face, spoke volumes. Basically, even if he wasn’t saying so, Lofty thought the whole notion crap. What foxed Tucker was the fact that a man not noted for keeping silent wasn’t saying so. He was proved right quick enough. They didn’t cover even a third of the ground between the LUP and Rio Grande. In fact they spotted the searching Argies within an hour and a half, on their third listening halt.
Once they looked hard it got worse. There were lights ahead and behind them, criss-crossing the edge of the Andean foothills. That meant troops on their way to the target and more on the ground on their route out. Those guys to the west didn’t have to move. Just wait until the pursuit pushing out from Rio Grande flushed them out, and drove them like gamebirds into the waiting line. Concorde Tucker was trying to think what he’d do if he was in command of the Argie border force. Take the last known sighting, draw an arc of evasion from that, then place my counter-measures accordingly. Troops in the centre, the heaviest weaponry and any mobile AA stuff on the edges. They must have guessed by now that they were Brits, and already be anticipating the medals that would be flying about if they could be captured.
‘D’you think they’ll believe us, Craig, if we say we were aiming for the Falklands and just got lost?’
‘They will if they try you at map reading.’
‘Cheeky bastard.’
Craig Walker looked over his shoulder to where Heering and Lofty Glynn were crouching. The tall Sergeant was animated, the officer less so. ‘I don’t think our leaders are in agreement.’
‘That’s not surprising. Heering’ll be thinking about his VC and Lofty will be on about getting back to his runner beans.’
Whatever else, they agreed that the patrol should stay still. The ground they’d covered had brought them to the edge of the foothills. In front was a flat, featureless plain, not something to move across in daylight. That came slowly, the passive night goggles, which had proved of limited use, being replaced by binoculars, and each man took a look at what they faced. There were hundreds of Argies spread out in long lines, tramping across the flat terrain, weapons up and looking very professional. Off to the right lay a road, with the flickering red taillights of trucks moving west to east. That had to mean troops dropping off to the south, and even if they couldn’t see them they could well be to the north as well.
They’d moved fast, getting troops from the border area behind their last known position, so that they could sweep forward into what they assumed was a cul-de-sac. Heering watched them for another twenty minutes, trying to assess their abilities. They kept station on each other and their guns up and sweeping, so that anyone taking on one was going to get a lot of fire put down as soon as they opened up. You can tell a great deal from just watching soldiers. It’s in the body language. These guys had to be afraid – they’d be fools not to, edging forward with nothing but a bit of early morning light to see by. But they were doing their job, and doing it well enough to make the conclusion obvious. Heering had another animated discussion with Lofty Glynn, before the patrol commander finally did the obvious.
‘Set up the Satcom again,’ he said. ‘Let’s tell them what we’re up against.’
Tucker reckoned Heering didn’t want to make the decision. He wanted the Headshed to make it. So he told them about the flat terrain, no cover and an alert enemy. Yet those that overheard his conversation knew he was being circumspect. The Blues and Royals Captain was going to be the last to admit on an open line the plain truth: that the whole-squadron operation had been a no-hoper from the minute that radar detector lit up. They were being asked to recce a target that the boys on Ascension couldn’t attack. The choice was either to get out by heli or evade on foot. There was no point in going forward. The Argies were too numerous. They couldn’t even stay where they were and wait the day out.
They didn’t run, but they moved faster than the pursuit, which had to be cautious. And no helicopter was a real bonus. Even with one of them the Argies could have covered half the landscape. The whole patrol was back in the ERV in an hour, with Heering quizzing the Sea King pilot.
‘Do we have a route?’ the flyer asked
It was Lofty Glynn who replied. ‘Stay in the hills, out of radar profile, and go like shit for the border.’
‘These hills are getting steeper. It could be dangerous.’
‘So is taking incoming,’ said Heering. ‘And I don’t think we’re going to get over the ground without somebody shooting at us. And the really worrying part is some of them might be Chilean.’
‘All aboard,’ quipped the co-pilot.
Suddenly the valley they were in was full of sound. There was a procedure for this – a hairy one but something the pilots had trained for. And the guys hadn’t wasted their time chewing the fat while the patrol had been away. They’d had a good look round to pick a safe route out of the drop point, one that they could hit at speed knowing there was no wall of rock in the way.
The heli weaved and spun through the increasingly broken terrain, twisting and turning, sometimes practically on its side as the pilot flew it through narrow gorges. The silver thread of river shone in a valley, and the pilot took the Sea King down to within twenty feet of the surface. It was a shrewd move. Any river here had to be running west to east from the high Andes. They drew fire all right, a short burst of automatic with tracer, responding through the door with little prospect of hitting anything, but just trying to disrupt the men on the ground. But with the Sea King going full tilt at 138 knots, the deflection required to hit it was beyond the Argies on the ground. The co-pilot turned round and whooped, pointing first to his map, then to the snow-capped mountains to the north.
‘Welcome to Chile.’
‘Find a place to get this crate down,’ Heering shouted.
They were on soft green grass, beside seawater, lapping the shore of a deep inlet, everything from their Bergens spread out on the ground. Heering had talked to Hereford again and given their position, as well as agreeing his intentions.
‘No ammo, no guns, not even a knife. We’re tourists now.’
‘What about the Satcom?’ asked the patrol signaller, unhappily.
‘Sling it in.’
Everybody had a bit of moan: they all had things they wanted to hang on to. But it was just that. There was never any doubt that they’d off-load all their compromising kit, because there was no way they’d get across the border without the Chileans knowing about it. The people looking for them now might be less dangerous, but that could change if they were found to be armed.
Finally, with everything stacked in the middle of the cabin, Heering turned to the pilot, then pointed to the switch that would arm the timer on the explosives.
‘Do you want to do this?’
‘Bollocks,’ the pilot said. ‘You Special Forces prats are the spoilt ones. If I do it they might ask me to pay for the damned thing.’
Heering smiled, his face grey and stubbled in the morning light. ‘You’re right old boy, we are spoilt.’
They were all well away when it went off. The boom of the first explosion was followed by all the others, as every grenade in the pile detonated, that followed by a whoosh as the vapour from the practically empty fuel caught light. They stayed only long enough to make sure it was truly torched, before donning lightened Bergens and heading north, looking for the road that would take them to Porvenir and the ferry to Punta Arenas.
Their contact found them as they sat at a pavement cafe in Punta Arenas. Nine unshaven men, with such an air of self-assurance they’d made the owner of the small cantina very nervous, even when Heering politely ordered tea. The man who approached was like a character from a novel by Graham Greene, a deeply tanned individual dressed in a white suit and a Panama hat that had some kind of club insignia round the rim.
‘Good morning,’ he said. Every one of the troopers had stiffened, except Heering, who was stiff already. ‘I wonder if you’d mind if I joined you.’
‘Be our guest,’ Heering replied, indicating a free chair at another table. It was a measure of their interloper’s self-confidence that he stood still until one of the men fetched it for him. Then he sat down, and smiled.
‘There are some nasty rumours of explosions on the border. The local military are quite up in arms about the whole thing. In fact some of them are watching you at this very moment I doubt that they are fooled by the way you’ve reversed your own clothing to make it look less like that of fighting men.’
‘Who are you?’ asked Heering.
‘Your guide, Captain.’
That made Heering even more rigid. How did the man know his rank?
‘I have come to take you to safety.’
‘And the guys across the road?’ demanded Lofty Glynn, his Mancunian voice rough and uncompromising.
‘They are your escort.’ The smile that followed was thin, the shake of the head that of an individual who cannot comprehend what he’s witnessed. ‘Believe me, the local commander is incensed about what has happened. Bombs going off, burning helicopters, frightened farmers. But he’s prepared to turn a blind eye as long as we get you out quickly. I am therefore charged to offer you a lift to Santiago. There you can not only be comfortable but debrief us on all your exploits.’
‘How do you know it’s not a trap?’
‘If you think the Chilean commander is unhappy, you should hear his Argentine opposite number. The way he feels will earn you nothing but undying gratitude in this country.’
Three range rovers slid up beside them. Their interloper stood up and gestured. Heering, whose decision it was, made the right choice and nodded. It made no difference what their reception was: they couldn’t start anything in Chile. As they moved towards the door, a couple of jeeps appeared, the men in them relaxed, unarmed, but clearly soldiers.
‘You are a cavalryman, Captain.’ It was a statement, not a question.
‘I’m a simple tourist.’
‘I am a member of the Santiago Polo Club. I know that you will enjoy it when I take you there.’
‘What about me?’ asked Concorde Tucker.
Their self-possessed escort looked him up and down. The smile didn’t fade but the eyes changed to a mixture of sadness and rejection.
‘I think not. You would only be embarrassed.’
‘We’re safe, boys,’ Tucker said. ‘It’s just like fuckin’ home.’
‘We calculated the time at nine minutes, minimum,’ said David Lowry. ‘They’ve obviously moved some air defence missiles to very near the actual coast. That more than doubles the risk to the Cl30s.’
Cornelius Hosier didn’t respond; he just stared at the map Lowry was pointing to, as if willing him to continue. The preference that he should say something positive was palpable. But there was nothing the Captain could add that would alter such a bleak assessment. The team had been sent in to find out this very information, and they had reported back what they’d discovered. No amount of wishful thinking would change that. Vere Symington, just as glum, added his view.
‘We’ve got to assume that the radar contact was a missile battery. We wouldn’t even get the C130s to within ten miles of the end of the runway. They’d be blown out of the sky halfway between there and the coast.’
‘All right, dammit!’ snapped Hosier, leaving David Lowry to wonder what had happened to the gentle appellation ‘Vere, old chap’ which had been so frequent on the Brigadier’s lips these last ten days. ‘I think I have the picture. What I don’t have is an answer to a very pressing question, one that I have to provide when the PM asks.’
That was another expression that had been on Jock the Sock’s lips since he’d come in from the UK. It was PM this and PM that. It was as though Hosier had become her most intimate adviser, and could read the lady’s innermost thoughts. David Lowry didn’t know what the man had said, but he’d obviously promised something spectacular. The expression on Hosier’s face said it all.
‘We must wait to find out what Heering discovers on his recce.’
‘With respect,’ Lowry said. ‘They will not even reach that for at least another twenty-four hours. And what information they give us will only serve to confirm the negatives. The whole base must be on alert by now.’
‘All information is of value. There is a patrol in on the ground. It would be folly not to use it. Who knows? Despite the difficulties, we may still have to risk it.’
It was now Lawry’s turn to snap. ‘Risk it?’
Vere Symington went rigid as Hosier’s voice took on an unctuous tone, as if he was addressing a nice but dim nephew. The prospect that the Major might be faced with the same fate as Gerry Tooks must have suddenly occurred to him.
‘We still have capital ships out there, and they are still at risk. Perhaps even more so now than they were before. The Argentines must have concluded by now that the landings are only days away. If our troops get ashore they are going to realize that, despite their numerical superiority, they stand to lose. If 5 Brigade gets ashore as well1 it will quadruple the odds against them. That introduces the need for a desperate counter-stroke, and the only one which will even remotely achieve anything is to take out one of our carriers.’
‘They are very rarely in range,’ said Symington, his voice no longer loud and confident.
‘That all depends on whether the pilot wishes to come back.’ Hosier sat forward, his voice slightly desperate. ‘Just because they look vulnerable on the ground, we must not assume that they have no one in their air force brave enough to make the ultimate sacrifice.’
David Lowry listened to Vere Symington put the knife in with consummate ease. Perhaps it was fear that made him so calm. If not that, it was the fact that he’d found a very good escape route from what could be an exceedingly tricky situation.
‘Well, Director. The only thing to do is put it up to the Defence Staff. Should they order us in, regardless, I have no doubt that B Squadron will go.’
Hosier suddenly looked tired. He was certainly glum. There was no point in putting such a plan up to the Army Command. They would throw it out. And he, in the process, would be made to look like a fool for making the suggestion. On top of that, he risked a full-scale mutiny if he put this to the men. They would suffer for it certainly. But so could he, in the way it would blight his prospects.
The signal, relayed through Hereford, about what Heering and his patrol faced in the way of Argentine opposition, came in, casting further gloom. No one spoke as the Director mulled over the alternatives. But at some point Lowry sensed that he’d made a decision. The curious thing was that doing so seemed to lift his spirits, not depress them.
‘Rio Grande is cancelled,’ he announced, standing up. ‘But I want the men back on training tomorrow, Vere. If you need me, I will be in the comms centre.’
The approaching footsteps had the same quality as those of the two previous nights. There was no pace in them. The voices from the lead truck had spoken in the same urgent tones that had been used before. Sam Clark knew they were being stood down again before David Lowry spoke. But he wasn’t prepared for what he heard.
‘Scrubbed!’
‘Yes. The operation is off. Our recce patrol hit a signal nine minutes out. Coastal radar or a missile battery that we didn’t know was there. That definitely made it suicide to go in.’
Sam didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. That wasn’t something that the others troopers felt. The subdued mood evaporated in seconds, to be replaced by quiet grins and reassuring nods. They were off the hook. Why didn’t matter.
‘Did our boys get out?’
‘I don’t know, Sam. What they do next is being handled from Hereford.’
They knew the next day, by the time they’d finished training. What they were not sure of, with Rio Grande binned, was what they were doing rushing around carrying out the same drills that they’d performed for the last two weeks.