He’d started within a second of the sentry going out of sight, actually launching himself out while he could still see him. Because you had two and a half minutes now — it was a realistic estimate, not a minimum. If the sentry paced faster than usual, you’d have less. But one hundred and fifty seconds, to get in there and out of sight. Cloudsley sprinted; crashing down the slight incline, the noise of it well drowned by the generator: seventy yards through darkness, then about twenty through semi-dark and finally in the glare of the arc-lamp from the left as he pounded across the road and over the rough verge between it and the wire. No shadow, no cover, and the light dazzling after the long wait in pitch dark. The other two behind him would have stopped short of the floodlit area and dropped flat. Seconds ticking by and that sentry pacing southward… Cloudsley dropped his pack at the foot of the wire and flung himself upward, a scrabbling climb on yielding mesh before his gloved hands grasped the barbed strands at the top. Over it, then — and a lot to be said for the thickness of a poncho with a padding of leather and fleece inside it — into a vaulting action that carried him clear in a spectacular boots-first arc of movement, landing on his feet inside the compound. Still in the floodlighting, of course. Tony Beale was at the foot of the fence on the outside, two packs lying there now, Beale taking off like a giant spider-monkey and ending full-length along the spiky top; Hosegood arriving in a slithering rush, slinging the first pack up, Beale receiving it and passing it over his own body — so the pack’s material wouldn’t snag on the wire — all one swift continuous flow of movement (as practised on a specially erected fence, a copy of this one, on the range at Eastney) and the pack briefly in Cloudsley’s embrace on its way earthward. It was on the ground and he was straightening to catch the second one, like a sackful of bricks thumping into his chest and in the back of his mind a snapshot image of the sentry encircled in that little telescope’s lens as he rounded the southeast corner post and started westward… Third pack. He’d at least broken its fall before it hit the ground, and in that stooped position he’d grabbed pack number one and slung it on to his shoulders as he trotted through the shadowed area towards the corner of the hangar. Beale crashed down on the inside, scooped up one of the other packs while Hosegood was doing his flying body-roll over the top, landing in a crouch a foot or two away from pack number three, hoisting it and following Beale who by this time was dumping his load in deep shadow between the generator shed and its fuel-tank, dropping beside it and beginning to dig, using his gloved hands first to clear surface rubble, then the pick end of the shovel and his hands alternately. Hosegood dropped the third pack beside Beale and ran on — at a crouch, the way a baboon runs — to join Cloudsley who was held up at the little half-size door inset in the nearer of the pair of huge sliding ones. The tool that would open this or any other lock had been looped to his wrist, was in his fingers — in the lock… wouldn’t bloody turn…
The sort of delay this carefully timed scheme of entry could not survive. Sweat bathing his skin under the layers of heavy clothes. Fingers sticky inside the glove; he’d torn his wrist on the wire. He twisted the tool the wrong way; and it turned. Lock had not been locked, for Christ’s sake… Unlocking it again, he pushed down on the metal handle, ice-cold even through a glove; the door stuck at first, metal-bound from the frost, gave way inward when he put his weight on it. Several seconds had been lost and Hosegood was already right up behind him. Cloudsley had to double himself up to duck in, shoulder-first with the little door half open, Hosegood following and kicking the door shut against the flood of yellowish light, staying there while Cloudsley moved on into the hangar’s depths with the thin beam of a flashlight probing. Outside, Tony Beale dropped flat, face down, head and shoulders in the hole he’d been scraping for the second pack. A little west of due south and about ninety feet away the sentry had appeared from behind the hangar’s southwest corner, pacing westward, approaching that corner light. He’d pass out of sight again before he reached it, line of sight interrupted then by the diesel-tank on its breezeblock supports. Beale counted the sentry’s paces, seeing them in his mind’s eye and counting four — five — six… before he raised his head.
Gone. He’d be halfway up the western end of the compound before he was in sight again. Then he’d be just about literally within spitting distance. Meanwhile — digging, finishing this job. Gloved hands were more effective than the entrenching tool, which was awkward to use when you were lying full length. One pack was already buried, close to the concreted base of one of the pillars. Couple more inches of excavation and he’d have the other one in. Soaking wet from sweat; and with an eye on the section of fence where the sentry would reappear. It happened also to be the point where they’d come over. He couldn’t see any signs of entry, any pieces of ripped cloth on the barbs, for instance. He reached for the second pack, to pull it into the hole, having good reason to want it in and covered before the Argie showed up and he’d have to pause again.
He’d got it in. Using both hands, then, to scoop dirt in around it. Burying the digging tool as well.
The sentry sloped into view. Round-shouldered, slouching, rifle slung. Green fatigues under an overcoat, field-boots, kepi-shaped cap; after one glimpse Beale was face-down again, flat on the shadowed ground, part of that shadow and as motionless as the ground itself. Counting the man’s paces again, knowing it would need six to take him to the corner and that the shed would then be between them.
Five. Six…
And OK. One last arm-scrape of loose soil before he gathered himself to run like a big dog, fingers touching the ground, to the corner of the hangar. Not the front where the door was; there wouldn’t have been time to reach it — might not have been time — and get inside and the door shut before the sentry’s line of sight to it was clear from beyond the other side of the generator shed. One chance sight of movement — if he’d happened to glance this way and you’d taken a chance on it — would have been enough to blow the whole operation, costing three lives here and God knew how many more at sea. The sort of chance you therefore did not take, for want of a little extra care… Beale was at the corner of the hangar, flat on his stomach at the foot of its end wall, on the west side of the corner, absolutely still again half a second before the sentry reappeared, taking his measured treads eastward along the front of the compound. A dozen or fifteen of those treads would put him out of sight behind the guardhouse; you didn’t have to count or guess at it, you could watch him all the way, eyes over one forearm like a crocodile’s just out of water, watching the distance shorten between him and that last stretch of cover. He wouldn’t be behind it for long, and when he got to his position at the gates he’d turn for a routine glance inside, a look at the tall sliding doors. You’d have ten or at the most twelve seconds to be inside by then, to have vanished.
Starting now.
Doubled, and running. Noise didn’t matter, thanks to the generator’s. As he got to the little door it opened as if by electronic eye, actually by courtesy of Marine Geoff Hosegood, who pushed it shut again as Beale fell in. Cloudsley told him matter-of-factly, ‘We’ve struck lucky, Tony. OK out there?’
‘No problems.’
Except for the sweat that had become a coating of ice on his skin inside the padding of heavy clothes. He saw that Cloudsley had a silvery-blue AM39 in front of him on a wheeled trolley; there was another six feet away, also on wheels. Both of those were in position to be hauled out through the big doors at a moment’s notice, whenever the boys in blue came for them… Pencil-thin torch-beam swinging away and the big, silent-moving figure of Harry Cloudsley prowling deeper into the icy, echoey cavern, tin walls and domed roof strutted with angle-iron, new-looking concrete floor, the generator’s roar reverberating through it like a booming inside a drum… ‘See here, Tony?’ Six more missiles, but those were in racks. You could bet the pair on trolleys would be the first to be deployed, should therefore be the first for treatment. Cloudsley, having shown Beale the extent of the work ahead of them, wasn’t wasting time on any more detailed viewing of the interior; his torch-beam had travelled across a work-bench with tools in racks and some bins, other odds and ends, but he’d turned back now and was bending over the number one pack, pulling out the stuff he was going to need. Beale joined him, lifted out the batteries, putting them to the side and clipping a pair of leads to the terminals of one of them. Cloudsley muttering as he worked, ‘Jackpot. Worth the effort, after all.’ Beale wasn’t aware that anyone had doubted it would be; except for the gamble of whether or not they’d be here in time. Hosegood had come from the door to position himself in front of the first patient’s gleaming snout, his hands flat on the smooth curve of its homing head, keeping out of the way for the moment but ready to help shift it when Cloudsley gave the word. It had to be right-way-up to start with, anyway, and when you turned it you’d do it from the tail. Cloudsley had set a torch down with its light shining away from the hangar’s front wall. It wasn’t going to be any problem, moving these things around, because this airborne version of the Exocet was the smallest of the family — fifteen feet long, with a wingspan of three feet. Cloudsley stooping over its middle section to push a multi-pin plug into a socket from which he’d unscrewed the cover: the socket was actually on top of the dividing space between the cruise motor and the booster motor, and when the missile was loaded in an Etendard’s rack ready for launching this socket would take the plug from the firing-control in the aircraft, wrenching away when the launch was triggered. In the present set-up, however, it led to a black box which the boffins had referred to rather unscientifically as a ‘liner-upper’, and which was already connected to a battery. Cloudsley said, ‘Switch on,’ and put his ear to the missile’s body like a doctor who’s left his stethoscope at home; he heard a humming noise in short, pulsing jerks, the whole thing lasting about three seconds and then clicking off. So it did work; and that was all there was to that part of it. He pulled out the plug and refitted the screw cover, doing this while Hosegood and Beale, together now at the tail-end, lifted that end shoulder-high so that the wings were clear of the trolley, then turned the missile around to a belly-up position and eased its end down again. Cloudsley had now fitted one of the short steel bits into the drill, but he put it down on the concrete now and with one of the little Space-Age torches between his teeth crouched over the patient to measure — using a strip of metallic tape graduated in millimetres — an exact distance behind the lower wing, for his first incision. He scratched a cross there, over the guts of the booster motor compartment. It happened to be the largest compartment in the missile — unlike the ship-launched MM38s and MM40s or the submarine-launched SM39s, in which the cruise motor took up more space — and it was also, the experts had decided, the only place where this kind of rough-and-ready surgery could effectively be performed. You had the homing head — radar — up front, with the computer and radio-altimeter behind it and the vertical and directional gyroscopes crowded in there too, but none of this ultra-sensitive stuff, which might have been the easiest to screw up, could have been got at (with such limited expertise, time and facilities) without the interference being obvious at a glance. And next to that nose compartment came the warhead — which nobody had even considered messing with — then cruise motor, and booster motor…
‘Here we go.’
Proof of the pudding. Culmination of a lot of hard work and arm-chancing. Which might — if you weren’t lucky now — finish in one super-colossal bang. Explosion of the booster motor detonating the warhead, of course. Cloudsley had looked round for some wood to touch before he started, but there wasn’t any.
The drill had its own built-in light, a tiny spotlight shining straight down the bit. It came on as soon as he pressed the trigger and the silent-running power tool began to eat, very finely and gradually indeed, into the missile’s outer casing. This was as much as it would penetrate in this stage of the thrilling, the plain steel bit being of a length that would only reach into the paper-thin air gap between outer casing and motor casing. This was so you couldn’t foul-up right at the beginning by breaking through so fast that the hot drill-tip would ignite interior gases. If you did this, you could be certain of an explosion, so they’d made sure it would be impossible to achieve. To continue into the next stage, the puncturing of the booster casing which was what would cause the missile to malfunction, you had to change to the other type of bit, longer and diamond-tipped and thus less heat-prone, and then still take it — as they’d said in Bristol — very, very carefully. Because the steel behind the diamond point wouldn’t be exactly cool by the time it got in there: you’d be aiming to have the diamond through but only just through.
Hosegood had gone back to the door to keep an eye on movements outside. Beale was connecting the liner-upper rig to the missile on the other trolley, getting that one ready so that when Cloudsley was ready to move over he could do so without pause. He was bent awkwardly over the job, his height a disadvantage now; eyes slitted, peering myopically at the disc of silver brilliance around the spinning needle, his big hands holding the drill firmly enough to ensure it didn’t slip or slant off-course but applying hardly any pressure. They’d said in Bristol, ‘The weight of the drill’s about enough on its own, all you need do really is guide it.’ But when you knew you were working against time it took a lot of self-control not to try to hurry it along.
Hosegood joined Beale at the second missile’s tail. They lifted it at that end and then turned it, twisting it round by using the tail-fins for leverage, then letting it down on its back.
Beale fetched the measure from Cloudsley’s pocket and marked the drilling spot. Cloudsley hadn’t noticed his pocket was being picked; he was concentrating hard on the physical job and also coping with mental arithmetic while the drill bit finely into the bright circle that was mesmeric to the point of being dangerous. You had to keep watching it, but he’d found it was important to blink, shift your point of focus from one side of the drill to the other — to counter the threat of an hypnotic trance. Mental figure-work served a similar purpose, initially: first stage drilling 60 minutes, cooling period 30, second stage 45, total 135 – 2 hours 15 minutes… But you wouldn’t waste the half-hour cooling time: it was the casing that had to cool, not the drill; the drill would have a new bit in it for each stage, each hole. During the cooling period you’d be working on another missile, making that first hole then returning to number one for the second stage. And so on. End result, allowing some time for changing over and for switching bits, ought to be two missiles doctored in about 240 minutes, four hours. So you might get four of the eight patients fixed up tonight; two nights’ work to complete the whole job. Which would be a lot better than he’d dared hope.
The circle of light rose from the blueish steel: incandescent and expanding, growing towards him, a vortex of brilliance, blinding… just as it was about to burst in his face the drill seemed to shriek a warning, a whine that set his teeth on edge; but he’d been practically over the edge, took some moments to react while the drill still screamed. Jerking awake, pulling back — a moment ago he’d been swaying forward… Tony Beale had a hand on his arm, having grabbed him to pull him back; the whining shriek had come from the nozzle of the drill hard up against the missile — because the bit had gone in as far as it could reach, its tip spinning in the air gap between inner and outer casings. Cloudsley said evenly as he withdrew the bit from the hole, ‘Lucky it was a short one. Might’ve busted right through.’
Beale said, ‘Let’s have a go, Harry. You take a breather.’
‘Why not.’ Handing him the drill. ‘The light gets to be hypnotic.’
‘Yeah,’ fitting a new bit and tightening the grip on it: ‘But I slept today.’
After this the three of them took it in thirty minute shifts. Hosegood completed the first incision in the second missile, then Cloudsley and Beale shared the second stage on number one. Hosegood took over again. Cloudsley had a tube of dental filling material which had been adulterated with colouring matter to match the missiles’ bluey–silver surface shine; he pressed a small pellet of it into the drilled hole before they turned that first patient the right way up again. The plug was practically invisible, and it would blow out when the booster fired.
Outside, sentries relieved each other, paced around the wire every fifteen minutes. Generator rumbling on, hour after hour. Within a couple of hundred yards up to about a hundred Argies — base staff, aircrew and off-duty guards – dreaming the night away. Among them — maybe — Roberto MacEwan…
It had taken nearer five hours than four, when the second missile was finished. Hard to know where the extra time had gone. In change-overs, replacing drilling bits and shifting from one patient to another, and maybe in some excessive caution in the handling of the drill. But by that time, with the pair on trolleys doctored and guaranteed to malfunction, another two had been prepared for surgery.
‘Right. Two more…’
Another five hours — or a little less… Beale nodded; Hosegood tightened the drill’s snout: ‘Start this bugger, shall I?’
Taking it for granted they’d get the four done. For one thing, it would be unproductive to stop at three, because of the thirty-minute cooling period which could be spent working on the other missile of each pair. For another, although they’d got off to a good start, progress since then had been disappointing. You had to allow for hold-ups, get the best mileage you could out of each hour on the job. Because — third and most basic reason — the Argies might be about to start deploying these missiles. It was sheer luck they hadn’t already.
Cloudsley murmured, ‘Imagine us sitting up there, having come all this way, watching ’em ship the bloody things out!’
‘Sooner not.’ Hosegood’s pupils burned like a cat’s, reflecting that spot of light with the bit spinning in its centre so fast you could detect no movement, only see the slow build-up of steel dust around it, fine as pepper. He repeated, to himself, ‘Sooner not…’
When it was finished they were bug-eyed, grey. The other two, Cloudsley noticed, looked as if they’d been crying. He was checking that everything looked exactly as it had when they’d got in here, and Hosegood was stowing the two nearly-spent batteries and the other gear in the pack. The batteries had performed as predicted by Aerospace technicians, each having powered the vasectomies on two missiles. If the same results were obtained tomorrow night — tonight — there’d be two batteries unused, and they’d be left buried. They were of Italian manufacture. Six had been brought along in order to allow for finding a dozen missiles here, the most one could have catered for or expected the Argies to have scrounged.
Beale was at the door. Withdrawal from the compound was going to be near enough the reverse of the entry routine, except there was only one pack to take out. Spots of fire behind the eyeballs weighed nothing; the sensation of a drill at work behind them, drilling into the brain, was something you couldn’t do anything about. In any case — Cloudsley struggled to complete a thought he’d started a moment ago — re-entry tomorrow night — correction, re-entry tonight — would be really quite easy. There’d be a pack to bring in, but no weight in it, only the drill and the liner-upper.
Hosegood clipped the pack shut and carried it to the little door where Beale knelt with his eye to the crack in its hinged side. You had only to open it about an inch, to expose that gap. Cloudsley, inspection completed, joined them. He’d be the last out: he’d be bringing the pack as far as the wire.
‘How long’ve you been watching the señor, Tony?’
‘Three or four minutes.’
Could be at least twelve minutes to wait, then. He stooped beside Beale for a look at the outside world, the bone-chilling Patagonian night. It wasn’t snowing, and that was a relief. If snow came before this job was finished he hadn’t the least idea what could be done about it, about three men’s tracks approaching a twelve-foot fence and continuing the other side, either inward or outward. The solution might be to send up a concerted prayer for more snow to fill the tracks as soon as they were made. He thought, Anyway, play if off the cuff; and it may never happen… And meanwhile all was well — sentry outside the gates, generator pounding steadily, pale-yellow light reaching along the wire but leaving that blessed shadow. He’d glanced back at the sentry just as he began to shuffle off on his rounds.
‘Goon’s going walkabout.’
Beale took over as observer again. From here you wouldn’t see the sentry as far as the corner post, you’d need to open the door an inch or two. Then when he went round the corner and you lost sight of him you’d do it by numbers, counting his next eight paces.
As long as nobody else emerged from the guardhouse, meanwhile. Relief sentry, whatever — like yesterday morning, when he’d seen a second one there suddenly. But that had been nearer dawn, the whole base had been stirring… Barring the unforeseen, this should be simpler and quicker than it had been on the way in.
Beale said, ‘I’m opening the door a bit.’
Left side of his whiskered and grease-blackened face close against the metal, left eye on the sentry’s back.
‘He’s at the corner — almost… Yeah, turning south.’
Breathing hard as he watched one-eyed. Breath might even be visible out there,’Cloudsley realised — like puffs of steam through the crack… Beale began his count-down: starting at eight but warning first, ‘Stand by, Geoff…’ Muttering: ‘… seven — six — five — four — three — two — one and go!’
Hosegood burst out, sprinted for the fence. Beale gave him a start of five yards, then dived after him, running hard. Cloudsley ducked out, shut the door from the outside but didn’t lock it, ran at a crouch with the pack on his shoulders into the cover of the generator shed. Pausing there for long enough to see Hosegood landing on the outside and Beale launching himself upward; then he broke cover, dashed for the wire. Beale was lying on its top; he caught the pack as, Cloudsley slung it up to him, and tossed it over to Hosegood, who took off with it, across the road and away into the darkness, Beale rolling off the wire and following him with the style of an Olympic medallist, Cloudsley jumping for the top of the fence, pivoting on the top on his gloved hands and flying over, landing on all fours before he recovered and sprinted into the dark where the others had already vanished.
They’d gone straight to the rear hide. Cloudsley stopped at the OP, though, to check through the periscope that all was serene in and around the missile compound.
The sentry was plodding up this near side. Slouching past the point where within the last two minutes three men had charged out of the compound he was guarding, having neutralised half his country’s reserves of their most potent weapon.
Other half tonight. After which — Adios, señores…
Controlling the sudden glow of satisfaction; reminding himself, Long way to go yet… He climbed out, paused to look back and see the sentry shambling on around the corner; then crawled across fifty feet of frozen earth to the other hide. Shivering inside his heavy clothing. Same thing every time you took a little exercise: you worked up a sweat and then it froze.
‘Haven’t you even wet the maté, yet?’ He asked a second question although the answer wasn’t hard to guess: ‘Where’s Geoff?’
‘Give us a chance…’ Beale glanced round from the little burner. ‘Only just got the bluey lit.’
‘It’s not a bluey, it’s some Jap product.’
‘Yeah, well.’ A ‘bluey’ was a Service-issue cooker, the kind they usually had with them. Beale told him, ‘Geoff’s gone for a crap.’
Officially speaking, one of the others should have gone with him. That was the standard drill: one with his pants down, the other with sharp eyes and ears and an Armalite. Squatting, you couldn’t do much to defend yourself. But there’d be no patrols out there, Cloudsley thought, these Argies didn’t have the imagination to think of Bootnecks defecating around their airfields. He let himself down on one of the sleeping-mats. Not a bad night, Tony.’
‘One more like it — home and dry.’
Wanting to touch wood, and not finding any. Shivering, instead. Beale had the cooker going now, steam rising. ‘Might soak some of them little rocks in this stuff. Soften ‘em up.’ He meant the galletas, so-called bread rolls, which were as hard as rocks. Hosegood arrived, entering feet-first and looking happy: ‘Where’s this cuppa, then?’
Andy told Strobie over breakfast, answering a comment about Harry Cloudsley and others like him, ‘They don’t think of themselves as special. The SB squadron’s just one of several things a Marine can go in for if he’s up to it. They have their own helicopter pilots, for instance, and a landing craft company. And an outfit they call MAW — stands for Mountain and Arctic Warfare.’
‘They seemed special enough to me.’ Strobie poured coffee. ‘How did you come to get mixed up with them?’
‘Through a girlfriend.’ Andy realised as he said it that he hadn’t been thinking much about Lisa lately. ‘Her father’s in the Navy — captain of a ship in the Task Force, as it happens. I’d met him through his daughter, and he told someone he knew this guy who knew the country. Next thing was, I had this phone call. But you’re right, they impress me too.’
‘What’s the difference between them and the SAS?’
‘Plenty. For one thing, the SBS specialise in beaches and harbours and underwater action. Aquatic operations generally. They’re parachutists too, of course. The SAS is a much bigger concern, isn’t it? It has the whole Army to draw on, it’s a regiment.’ He put down his knife and fork. ‘That was great… Tom, what does Francisca do with herself all day, when she’s on her own at the estancia?’
‘Takes a hand running the place. Gets around a bit on horseback, sees to this and that.’ Strobie shrugged. ‘When she’s here.’
‘And you don’t know whether she is now?’
‘No way I would, unless she came to see me.’
‘You don’t ever call there? Or call up on the radio?’
‘What for? Cosy chat to your brother — or bloody Huyez?’ The question had annoyed him. ‘If she was there she’d either ride over or she wouldn’t. If for her own reasons — as I explained — she’s staying away, that’s her own business, isn’t it?’
‘Wouldn’t your people here — Torres, for instance — get to know when she comes or goes?’
‘They may do.’ Strobie gulped down the last of his coffee. ‘But they’d have no reason to talk to me about it.’ He pushed back his chair, reached for his stick. ‘Listen, now. I’ll be down in the south paddocks all day. I’m taking the pickup, and I could be late back. Help yourself to whatever you want — food, or Scotch. You may find something worth reading in those shelves. But stay out of sight, eh?’
Cloudsley was asleep, and Beale squatted at the periscope. After a burst of activity before and for maybe an hour after sunrise, the airfield had gone quiet again. Maybe the pilots went back to bed… Hosegood was having his day of rest in the other hide, having first buried the two used batteries in the bottom of it. While he’d been doing that, Cloudsley had taken some water-bottles down to the stream and filled them, getting it done before the sky began to lighten and while the Pucarás were warming up across the road. You added things called puri-tablets to river water, to play safe. Also playing safe, they’d all used antiseptic ointment from their first-aid packs on cuts and scratches caused by that wire.
The floodlighting had gone out when they’d stopped the generator, and soon after that the compound gates had been opened to let in a truck, tanker, for topping up the diesel tank. That had been some time ago, but the gates were still standing open. Some of the aircraft which had taken off before dawn and been gone a long time, but he thought he’d counted them back now. Seven machines were drawn up in echelon on the far side of the service road, and ground staff with a tractor and trailer were working on them. Beale didn’t know whether they were the same ones, refuelled, or another lot. He wanted to know, to have a count of how many aircraft there were on this base and whether they were permanently here or different lots flying in for short periods. He’d done some study of the Pucará and of the Aermacchi and Etendard as well, those two being planes used by the Argie naval air arm, the ANA, and therefore aircraft that might be encountered on this trip — and he’d have liked a closer view. The periscope’s magnification helped, but not all that much. He knew there were two kinds of Pucará in service, for instance, the IA 58A and the later 58B which had a deepened forward fuselage to take heavier armament, and from here it was impossible to see whether they were As or Bs. Scaning back, wiping the lens and resting his eyes a moment… His interest in the matter wasn’t academic: everything you saw here would have some Intelligence value, and having penetrated this deeply it would be a waste of unusual opportunity if you didn’t memorise it all. Like the arial numbers — all starting with the letter ‘A’ — on the sides of the Pucarás’ fuselages where they narrowed towards the tails. Intelligence already knew that the Pucarás of IV Escuadron here being reinforced by some from III Brigada Aerea at Reconquista, but whether or not the navy was getting them from that same source…
Those were armourers.
He’d realised it suddenly. Recollecting that a Pucará’s twin 90-mm cannon were loaded from below the fuselage; which was what those overalled characters were doing. Browning machine-guns in the sides of the fuselage, and cannon Hispanos — underneath. The ammo would have come out in that trailer.
He looked round at Cloudsley’s poncho-covered, heavy-breathing body and decided against disturbing him. The only importance of the information lay in the possibility that those 3 aircraft were being readied for deployment operationally. But there was no way to get the information out, anyway. Radios having been banned, all you could do was take it out.
As Harry would have said — Touch wood…
Helicopter arriving?
He loosened an ear-flap, heard the racket growing. Direction uncertain. Worrying things, helicopters; hovering overhead, maybe seeing the signs of excavation… He glanced around at Cloudsley again. Snoring, now. Needing his sleep, at that, having had none in this past night or yesterday or the previous night; and in a team like this one each man’s fitness was important to the others. Eye back at the periscope; tilting it to and fro as well as swivelling it, he spotted the source of the noise and recognised it instantly. A Chinook. No mistaking that very large and distinctive shape. It was coming from the north and obviously intending to land. Extremely loud, as it closed in and lost height, but the skull-thumping racket wasn’t disturbing Harry Cloudsley. Turning to its left now across the front of the line of parked Pucarás. And transport coming, welcoming committee — one khaki-painted van, one pickup truck also khaki, and a camouflaged saloon car… Men in overalls were dropping out of the back of the van, and a naval officer had got out of the staff car. The armourers working on the Pucarás had gathered in a bunch to watch the big helo setting itself down. It was huge, with twin rotors on twin engine—turrets and the word ARMADA in white capitals on its side. ‘Armada’ meaning ‘fleet’ or ‘navy’, even Sir Francis Drake had known that much.
Movement in the missile compound now. A tractor with three soldiers on it turning in through the gates. Beale guessed now what was happening or about to happen; he’d have captioned his report, Deployment of AM39 missiles by helo.
They weren’t wasting time, either, weren’t leaving the Chinook to hang around. Cloudsley, he decided, did need to witness this. It directly affected them, their half-completed operation… He saw the tractor swing round, its driver reversing it as the other two men disappeared towards the front of the hangar. Beale knew he’d soon be treated to the sight of one or both trolleys being towed out to the Chinook, complete with doctored missile or missiles.
‘Harry.’ He reached, pulling at the poncho. The snoring stopped instantly and Cloudsley rolled up on to an elbow, asking, ‘Yes, what’s up?’ Wide-awake: bearded face still streaked with the camouflage cream, whites of eyes and teeth gleaming in the half-light. Beale told him, ‘Deploying our missiles. Chinook just landed.’
‘Bloody hell…’
Beale surrendered the periscope to him, but before he took his eye from it he’d seen crates being carried out of the helo and dumped in the pickup, and two of the helo’s crew on the ground talking to the officer who’d got out of the staff car. The other thing he noticed — it sank in only after he’d stopped looking — was that the naval officer was wearing the gold-peaked cap of a commander or captain.
‘Question is’ — Cloudsley muttering, at the scope — ‘how many they’ll take?’
‘Well,’ Beale pursed his lips, pretending to consider it. ‘Might see my way to letting ’em have four, today.’
‘And the right four, please God…’ He was silent for a minute, watching avidly. Then: ‘Looks like the Chinook’s brought wines and spirits for the mess. And that fellow there’ — he whistled — ‘Shit, alors, could be Roberto!’
‘What I thought. Big sod, brass hat.’
‘Right.’ Shifting the scope again. ‘Nothing much like Andy, is he? They’re bringing out both trolleys. One astern of t’other.’
Ground staff were doing something under the Chinook’s fuselage. Preparing racks or cargo nets, Cloudsley guessed. They’d finished loading the pickup, it was leaving… That commander and the two pilots were pacing up and down, the two in flying gear only shoulder-high to the man between them. ‘Which direction did it come from, Tony?’
Beale told him, from the north. Which gave quite a number of options. El Palomar, the military airbase at BA, wasn’t a bad bet, since it had brought stores down. But an even better bet was that it would be taking the missiles down to Rio Gallegos. And when it took off, twenty minutes later, it certainly did continue southward. The trolleys were towed back into the hangar and the tractor parked itself inside the compound, on the concrete forecourt. Cloudsley said, ‘Nick of time, Tony. Bloody lucky.’ He looked pleased with himself as he lay down and wrapped the poncho around himself. Meaning, of course, that if they’d been one day later getting here, those would have been two lethal missiles that were being hurried south, instead of two that would take nosedives into deep water. He went back to sleep immediately. He had two hours’ rest time left now, before he’d be due to take over as lookout, but in fact it would be time then for a maté break, first him and then Beale crawling back to the other hide for a hot drink and a snack, after dragging Geoff Hosegood out of dreamland by a sharp tug on the string.
During the next hour the Pucarás took off in groups and flew westward. Beale had memorised their serial numbers. The machine left after six had taken off had a pilot waiting beside it, kicking his heels until the staff car came back and ‘Roberto’ got out of it — a burly figure in flying gear topped by the gold-peaked cap. He handed the cap to the car’s driver and received a white flying helmet in exchange, and as he walked over to the aircraft the co-pilot saluted him. They both climbed in; Roberto was fixing his helmet while the other man, in the seat behind him, pulled the hinged canopy down over them both.
Half an hour later all the planes came back, but only that one stopped at this end of the field. Roberto walked to the waiting car, and his co-pilot taxied the machine away. At the car, same routine with the cap… Whether or not it was Roberto MacEwan, Beale thought, he certainly didn’t like his rank to pass unnoticed.
From midday onward there were intermittent Pucará sorties, some with napalm bomb loads. Cloudsley was on watch then, fully rested by his forenoon’s sleep and impatient to get going, get the night’s work done and clear out. There couldn’t be any move out until the night after, even then… Time dragged, with nothing of interest happening. Individuals and transport moved around, there were repeated take-offs and landings — obviously by learner pilots — and the napalm flights returned, went to refuel. There were ground-staff in the missile store, had been since the Chinook’s visit. They’d have two missiles to shift from racks to the trolleys, obviously, but that shouldn’t have taken more than a few minutes. Boredom contributed to anxiety; he comforted himself with the thought that if they’d found anything wrong in there, the afternoon would hardly have remained this tranquil.
Early in the afternoon he began to notice visual signs of the wind’s strength increasing. You didn’t feel it in this burrow, but it was no less cold. He was keeping an eye at the periscope — thinking about the snow problem, how to cope with it if the blizzard weather started before this job was finished — and at the same time rubbing his hands together to encourage circulation, when he heard the Chinook coming back.
A helo, anyway; he assumed it would be the Chinook. Then realised the sound was different — the difference between two big engines and rotors and just one small one. He had it in the periscope’s lens then; a helo about as big as a Chinook’s chicks might be, if a Chinook ever got pregnant.
‘Tony.’ Reaching over to shake him. ‘Wake up. Tell me what the hell this is.’
Beale crawled to the periscope, bleary-eyed. He mumbled, ‘Helo’s landing in the compound, by the looks of it. I mean it’s about to.’
‘What kind of helo, damn it?’
Sucking at his teeth. Foul taste, no doubt. Only to be expected, after maté and cold mutton… He nodded. ‘It’s an Alouette. Made by Aerospatiale, our Exocet chums.’
Its arrival had obviously not been unexpected. Taking over the scope again, Cloudsley saw the staff car turning in at the gates of the compound, soldiers appearing from the guardhouse and ground-staff from the hangar. The car stopped near the guardhouse, then moved again to make way for a tanker which then reversed in and parked. To refuel this Alouette, of course. The Alouette landing now, on the concrete. Roberto — back in naval uniform — was out of the car, posing with his hands on his hips, feet wide apart, watching the pilot climb down and then come towards him.
Ground-staff were really bustling around…
‘Harry, what’s going on?’
He told him; and added, ‘Helo pilot seems to have flown here solo. He’s saluting Roberto now.’
‘Ah. Goes a bundle on that.’
‘Huh?’
‘Roberto. Likes the saluting bit.’
The deployment of missiles was evidently continuing. And in a rush: the refuelling was already in progress.
‘What’s an Alouette’s range, Tony?’
‘Roughly the same as a Lynx. Say three hundred miles.’
They were manhandling one trolley plus missile across the concrete. Half a dozen men manoeuvring it towards the helo while others spread a cargo net on the ground beside it. Cloudsley saw a motorbike swerve into the compound from the service road… He asked Beale, ‘What sort of payload?’
‘Considering it’s supposed to be general purpose, bloody small. Half a Lynx’s.’
‘Couple of thousand kilos?’
‘Not much more, yeah.‘
You had to relate load to range: if that pilot was flying solo it indicated they were cutting weight to a minimum for the sake of the load/range factor. If for instance this Alouette had come all the way up from Rio Gallegos, a load of just one of those missiles would be stretching its capability to about the limit.
Supposition, no more. But you had to make guesses, to try to understand what might be happening. For instance – Chinook in transit from A to B, picks up two missiles en route, Chinook having other cargo on board already. Now the little fellow flies up from aforesaid point B to collect another. Short of helos, scraping the barrel, needing AM39s down there fast?
The motorcyclist had reported to Roberto, who’d now turned back to the pilot, was beckoning to the other naval men. Beyond them, the missile was being transferred from trolley to cargo net. Roberto acknowledging salutes as he went to his car and slid into it. Despatch rider leaving too, kicking life into his bike.
‘Roberto’s going home for his tea.’ Cloudsley glanced round at Beale. ‘OK, Tony, go back to sleep.’
Ten minutes later the Alouette took off, flying south with an AM39 under it liked a netted salmon. But the tanker — it was a massive one — was staying where it was, on the concrete area inside the compound; its driver strutting out through the gates, which were being left open.
This time yesterday, he’d watched them locking up. Well before sunset, which by local time would come at about four-fifteen. And no reason they shouldn’t pack up quite early, considering they started their day’s work well before dawn… But from Cloudsley’s point of view, by say an hour after sunset or 1800, say, at the latest, he needed to be in that hangar and starting another ten hours of drilling. Which with the hangar still open and Argies still hanging around — for some damn purpose…
The purpose was clear enough. He cursed, under his breath.
‘What’s up, Harry?‘
The colour sergeant’s bearded face looked as if it might have been carved out of bone. Deepset eyes fixed on Cloudsley’s profile at the periscope… Cloudsley taking a long breath, like a swimmer about to duck under.
‘Could be a shuttle operation. Another helo coming. Or helos, plural. Maybe your Alouette coming back. Whatever they’re waiting for, they’re leaving the place open for it. Leaving the refuelling truck inside there too.’
That was the clincher. You couldn’t explain it any other way.
‘Well, if we can’t get in there tonight—’
‘Christ’s sake!’ Cloudsley hissed it through gritted teeth. ‘They’re deploying the missiles, Tony — and four of ’em are still intact! We bloody well have to get in there tonight!’