Shropshire pitched heavily, rolling too, wind and sea on her quarter. Her gun had thudded once, one dull crack’s vibration punctuating weather noise and ship noise, and now after a pause the distant flash of the shell’s airburst explosion flickered in the dark circle of Saddler’s binoculars. It wasn’t snowing at the moment, but at any moment visibility would be down to zero again; there’d been showers on and off all through the early part of the night, snow and sleet driving horizontally over black, wind-whipped sea… He lowered the glasses, hearing over the Tactical Line the echoey distant crackling of the FOO’s voice — forward observation officer, somewhere on the eastern shoulder of Mount Kent — ‘Bang on target. Twenty salvoes now, airburst, fire for effect!’ A flow of gun-control patter followed, over the Command Open Line, the other ear-phone in his headset, before the 4.5” turret’s twin guns began a regular pulsing discharge of high-explosive shells. Unless the crew of that turret had cast-iron insides, Saddler guessed, they’d be puking all over its bright paintwork by this time — contending not only with the ship’s violent motion but also with the constant to-and-fro jerking of the turret as the computer kept it lined up on target; and at that, in close confinement…
‘Airburst’ meant shells fused to explode fifty feet above the ground — in this instance above an enemy artillery position overlooked from the FOO’s perch and most likely pinpointed by SAS reconnaissance in recent days. That mountain top was crucial, and a force of Royal Marines was in the process of occupying it at this moment, knowing that whoever held it would dominate the approaches to Stanley and the other hilltops and ridges, the battlefield of the coming days or weeks.
Days, please God…
‘Stop loading, stop loading, stop loading!’
‘Rounds complete…’
The patter included some interjections by the FOO’s link-man, a warrant officer who was with the gun director down in Shropshire’s radar-glowing Ops Room. These bombardments were conducted according to pre-arranged fire plans, lists of coordinates as aiming points fed into the computer and then corrections to fall-of-shot coming by radio from the man ashore — who’d be exposed to all the worst of this weather, working in sub-zero temperature tonight and no doubt soaking wet… Saddler heard the soldier’s voice again, a muffled but astonishingly cheerful tone: ‘We’ve malleted that lot, all right!’ There’d be a fresh target selected in a minute. Shropshire was off Bluff Cove, ‘on gunline’ and tonight at the service of ‘K’ Company, 42 Commando RM, who’d have been deposited on Mount Kent by two PNG-equipped Sea Kings flying from San Carlos, their object being to seize and hold the summit.
David Vigne murmured, ‘Come ten degrees to port, John,‘ and Holt, officer of the watch, passed the order via the wheelhouse microphone. The ship had to be close offshore for this gun-support job, but she had also to be kept clear of known or suspected concentrations of kelp. At this moment she was inside the range of Argie coastal howitzer batteries, but if any of them woke up to her presence the FOO on Mount Kent might be in a position to ‘mallet’ them as well.
Everything was on the move now. 2 Para had taken Darwin and won their battle at Goose Green — against odds of four to one, and at heavy cost. On the twenty-seventh, when 45 Commando and 3 Para had started out from San Carlos, stomping — because of the loss of the Chinooks in the Atlantic Conveyor — to Douglas and Teal Inlet, the SAS had already begun to invest the lower slopes of Mount Kent, preparing the way for tonight’s capture of the summit. A Chinook would be going in behind the Sea Kings, lifting in some 105-mm guns and ammunition.
‘Course two-four-five sir…’
Shropshire’s action damage had been patched or plugged, and all her systems were operational. Saddler was very concious of the element of luck, supplementing reasonably good management, that had left his ship fighting fit and her crew’s morale as high as ever. In contrast, the list of casualties in his diary now read: SUNK/Sheffield, Ardent, Antelope, Coventry, Atlantic Conveyor. DAMAGED/Glasgow, Antrim, Brilliant, Argonaut, Broadsword, Shropshire. AIRCRAFT LOST/7 Harriers, 4 Sea Kings.’ Despite the fact the act was holding together pretty well, the Royal Navy of 1982 wasn’t big enough to stand such a rate of loss and damage.
A new call for fire was coming through. Loading with HE; airburst; a multi-figure set of coordinates to be punched into the computer and pinpoint a new target… Snow plastering the glass screen again as Shropshire pitched bow-down, ploughing her stern in deep.
‘Salvoes — airburst — fire for effect…’
He’d had a letter from his daughter, and begun to answer it earlier this evening while they’d been fuelling. Early tomorrow there was to be a RAS(S), a rendezvous with a fleet auxiliary mainly to replenish ammunition, and outgoing mail would be passed over then, mailbags being dragged over on the hawser to start their long, slow journey back to the UK… Lisa had written, ‘I’m really fed up with Andy. He’s been gone ages and I haven’t had even a postcard from him. He takes me so much for granted I don’t suppose it would be anything but water off a duck’s back if I were to tell him how sick of all this I am, but it adds considerably to one’s frustration not to be able to. All I know is he’s in America, but no address at all, he might as well be on the moon. His office people say they’ve no idea where he is or when he’ll be back or anything. It’s really too bad and very inconsiderate, and I suppose I’ve got to face it — better late than never — accept the fact he doesn’t give a damn and there’s no point going on trying, he’d better leave me to get on with my life instead of wasting time like this. Don’t you agree? You don’t give your opinions much in this kind of thing and I’d very much like to know what you really think. Sorry, I know I’m being terribly self-centred, burdening you with such petty problems when you’re out there coping with heaven knows what awful—’
In the back of his mind he’d counted ten rounds as they’d left the gun; now in the lull he heard Vigne suggest, ‘Might come about, sir, steer the reciprocal, before the next call?’
‘Yes. Bring her round to port.’
He’d answered that part of Lisa’s letter in stone-walling fashion: ‘You have a good man there. You may not think so at the moment, and I can well understand how you feel — I sympathise, and appreciate you’re going through a rotten time, but my advice — since you ask for it — is don’t burn your bridges yet. Not if you really do care for him, I mean at heart, which I think you must do or you wouldn’t have put up with it as long as you have. You’re a very special girl and you have a great deal to offer any man, you don’t have to tolerate casual treatment from anyone at all; all I’m suggesting is you might give him a chance to explain himself to you when he gets back — have a showdown, lay it on the line, etc, but I’d say don’t commit yourself to paper before then…’
Except, of course, Andy wouldn’t be able to say a word about where he’d been or what he’d been doing. If he got back… Saddler put a hand out to the console for support as his ship swung her beam to the direction of wind and sea, rolling practically on to her beam-ends, hanging there for some taut seconds before she began the slow swing back the other way… There’d been no explanation of the Sea King that had been found in Chile, and no word at all of the SBS party from any source here either. For all anyone could know, they’d flown into the back of beyond and disappeared; Andy MacEwan could be dead, might have the best excuse in the world for not writing postcards.
This time, when the moment had come to start running for the fence, Cloudsley had led but with Beale right on his heels, taking a race of it. They got to the wire in a dead heat and far enough apart to swarm over it side by side but without getting in each other’s way, landing just about simultaneously in the compound — Cloudsley facing the wire, staying there long enough to catch the pack with the drill and liner-upper in it which Hosegood slung over, lobbing it clear over the fence’s barbed top and Cloudsley catching it like a rugger player taking the ball from a long, high kick, turning and running as his hands folded it against his stomach, and Hosegood on his way over the wire by then, Beale flat on the ground between the generator shed and its fuel-tank, unearthing one of the other packs. Beale and Hosegood made it to the little door in a photo-finish, the door being open for them to dive straight in and out of sight, Cloudsley having unlocked it with his burglar’s tool and left it open for them. Hosegood pushed it shut — nearly shut — and stayed there long enough to be sure no alarm had been raised, while Beale took the batteries out of the pack and clipped the liner-upper’s leads to the terminals of one of them and the drill’s leads to the other. Cloudsley meanwhile on his back under first one trolley and then the other, with one of the little torches between his teeth and the millimetre measure in hand, checking the undersides of the missiles and finding the almost invisible scar on one of them. He was back at the first one now, unscrewing the cover of the plug socket, taking the multi-pin plug from Beale then and shoving it in… ‘Right.’ Beale switched on, and Cloudsley heard the whirr and click of the booster motor moving into line: if you hadn’t done this first, the second drilling would have gone into some area better not penetrated. Hosegood was tightening the drill’s snout on one of the short drilling bits; he put the drill on the ground beside the first patient, and when the cover had been screwed back over the socket he and Beale were ready at the missile’s tail-end to raise it and twist it around, belly up. Cloudsley did his measuring and marking then, handed the measure to Beale and picked up the drill. Checking the time: he was starting the first incision at four minutes past ten. It had been ten o’clock exactly when the sentry had been going out of sight and he’d pushed himself out of the hide. Urgency, after the hours of waiting and frustration, was like a clamp in his gut.
He put more weight on the drill than he thought he had last night. It wasn’t easy to judge, and he was aware of the penalty for overdoing it, but it was plainly essential to get the job done faster this time. Hosegood and Beale were at the back of the hangar, at the racks, checking the other three missiles to make sure none of them had been one of last night’s patients. If one had been, it would have meant the Alouette must have taken one that had not been doctored. This wasn’t likely, the overalled men who’d brought the things out would have had to shuffle these racked ones around instead of taking them as they came; there could have been some reason for doing so, so you had to make sure. In fact all was well. Beale and Hosegood used the liner-upper on all three, then turned them and did the measuring and marking.
At ten thirty-five Hosegood took over the drill from Cloudsley. But at the end of this thirty-minute stint he wasn’t through to the air space, and he stayed with it because it would have consumed some time changing over for just a minute or two. In fact that first stage took nearer seventy than sixty minutes, finishing at 2313. Then that missile had to be left to cool, and Beale started on the first of the three in the racks.
The first pair were finished at 0244. So it had taken four hours and forty minutes. It wasn’t good enough. It was better than the first night’s result, but they were going to have to do better still. Cloudsley had thought he was pushing it along as fast as he dared, and he was sure the others had been doing the same, but it was still unacceptable. He’d been doing the last half-hour’s drilling himself — actually more than half an hour but roughly the last two-thirds of the second-stage drilling on missile number two — and while Hosegood now started the first stage on number three he went to the door to clear his head with some cold night air while he thought about it, got the situation in perspective.
Snow.
It took him by surprise. He’d envisaged it as a possibility, before this, but tonight he hadn’t; he’d been looking at the problems they actually had already. So now here was a new one: snow swirling pale yellow in the beams of light and lying tinged yellow along the lines of the fence, but white in the shadows. It was settling as it fell on pre-frozen ground; and clinging to the sentry’s overcoat, glistening on his cap as he paced at a hunched angle with his nose down in the coat’s upturned collar; you could have walked up and poked a finger in his eye before he’d have known he had company… But by the time they were ready to duck out of here — four and a half hours, say — if the snow kept on throughout those hours there’d be quite a lot of it lying around. The only hope — he’d thought of this before — was that it might be coming down fast enough to cover tracks very quickly.
Second hope, though: that with the sentries as half-baked as they seemed, more useless than ever in these conditions, they wouldn’t see footprints if you rubbed their noses in them.
Back to the question of timing — the importance of getting the job done before the pre-dawn flying circus got going… In the back of his mind — this was primarily what he’d needed to sort out — had been the possibility of the base coming to life even earlier than usual, if the postponed helo lift was also going to be resumed before dawn. But the snow might be a new factor too, might delay them even more, might induce them to cancel the early flying…
Hope for that, then. Hope, but of course not count on it. Meanwhile, except for putting more muscle on the drill you didn’t really have much choice. The job had to be completed even if it took longer than you’d have liked, even if finishing it meant you’d get trapped here. One AM39 left in working order might take a hell of a lot more than three lives. It could even — if it sank Hermes or Invincible, for instance, the Harrier platforms — lose the war.
But — four and a half hours, say. From 0244 — quarter to three, the time it had been five minutes ago when they’d finished the first pair — well, you’d complete at 0715.
His nerves were on edge. He wasn’t used to it, and disliked it. It was unproductive and — he told himself — unwarranted. Things were a lot better than they might have been. At least you were in here, getting on with it — and you could have been still sitting in the OP watching helos fly in — missiles fly out… He went back to the others. Hosegood was drilling, Beale standing by for the next shift. Cloudsley put a hand on Beale’s shoulder: ‘Listen, we have to get this moving faster. The last pair took four hours forty minutes, these we’ve got to do in four hours no minutes. Lean a bit harder on the drill, Geoff. Let up right at the end, just the last few minutes of stage two.’
Hosegood shifted his feet, adjusting his posture and then bearing down on the drill. Eyes narrowed, fixed on the dazzling spot of light which most of the time was the only point of illumination in the hangar’s icy darkness. Cloudsley told Beale, ‘I’d like to be out of here by seven, Tony. But we’re here until we finish, no matter what.‘ He added as he turned away, ‘It’s snowing, out there.’
They’d brought him to the meathouse and pushed him inside. Three sheep’s carcases hung in the main working area, the big outer room with its blood-stained concrete floor. Huyez nudged him forward, through that part and into the storeroom at the back that had no window. Juan Huyez was standing in the doorway now with his Winchester levelled, Paco Huyez behind his father with the flashlight shining past him into Andy’s face.
When they’d jumped him he’d been so completely taken by surprise that he’d forgotten he had a knife on his belt and had been taught how to use it. By the time he’d begun to think coherently Paco Huyez had switched on that torch, a probe of light blinding him through the dense curtain of falling snow while the rifle barrel prodded from behind. If the barrel had been pressed against him steadily he’d have known for sure where it was, might have been able to duck round and tackle the man holding it, but he’d guessed the mayordomo was holding back, reaching forward with it now and then to let him know how things were.
But also, in the first seconds he’d assumed it must be a mistake, that when they saw who he was they’d apologise… ‘Take the horse, Paco. Turn to your right, Don Andrés. To the carnicería, if you please.’
‘What the hell is this?’
‘We speak when we are inside. Your hands high, now!’
A jab with the gun; and Huyez had only just thought of the ‘hands up’ bit. All parties concerned in this were amateurs, Andy realised. But his brain was beginning to tick over and he was remembering that the Royal Marine instructors bad taught him a few tricks.
‘Are you under some impression you’re protecting the señora?’
‘I am doing what has to be done. In…’
Facing him now, in the square, windowless store, with the searchlight outlining the mayordomo’s wiry, slightly stooped figure… ‘Don Andrés. I am authorised to kill you, if necessary. If you make no sound and no trouble, it should not be necessary. If others do not get to know you are here, you will have a better chance to stay alive than if you were so misguided as to shout for help or try to escape… Do you follow me?’
‘I’d better warn you, before you go any farther—’
‘I warn you… I will take the key of this door, so nobody can enter. You may hear some person try to open it, not knowing it has been locked, or why. If you call out to them’ — the rifle moved — ‘you get this, and a hole in the ground. Understand, Don Andrés?’
‘I’ll freeze, in here.’
Paco laughed. Paco’s father nodded. ‘You’ll be cold, sure.’
‘I’ll die of cold. You know it.’
‘I may provide a blanket. I’ll think about it.’
‘Why?’ Paco spoke close to his father’s ear. ‘What does it matter if he’s so cold he dies?’
‘Why are you doing this, Don Juan?’
His guess was they must have overheard Francisca’s radio call to him. They’d either be acting on their own initiative, guessing what Robert would have wanted them to do, or they’d reported to him and this was being done on his orders. That was the likely scenario: Huyez had said, I am authorised…
‘I have a question to ask you, Don Andrés.’
‘Ask it, then.’ Might dive under the gun’s barrel. Pulling out knife en route. Drawing the knife would be a clumsy business, though, since it was under the heavy poncho. And there’d have been a better chance if Paco hadn’t been so close up behind his father. On the other hand, Juan Huyez’s reactions weren’t likely to be very quick. He put his question now — the obvious one — ‘What have you come here for?’
‘To see the señora, of course. You must know that. You were waiting for me , obviously you heard her call me on the radio.’
‘The señora called him.’ Glancing back at his son. ‘From Buenos Aires she calls, to invite him here!’
They both laughed: Huyez senior in a low, rough chuckle, Paco rather hysterically.
‘Summon him here, calling from the residence in Buenos Aires of Alejandro Diaz! And he comes running like a little dog to a bitch on heat!’
Or a little vizcacha?
‘Don Andrés — can it be that you have come all the way from England to visit the señora?’
That other bit, about BA, her being at her father’s house, was beginning to sink in. It felt as if the world was in the process of turning upside-down. If she’d called from BA, pretending to be here, she’d set him up for this. Or helped in it. Presumably at Robert’s insistence. Or ‘instigation’ might be a better word, maybe Robert hadn’t needed to insist. She’d certainly made it sound good.
Christ. Of all the bloody fools…
‘From England, by avion —so far, to visit her?’
Paco sniggered: ‘Or lie with her.’
‘Señor, this is the truth?’
He nodded. Mind already beginning to firm up to this, to harden. ‘She wrote imploring me to come.’
Paco giggling again. Huyez had his finger inside the trigger-guard of the Winchester and its barrel lined up on Andy’s gut. Paco sneered, ‘Implored him, so she could deliver him to her husband? Could it be the patron instructed her to write such a letter to his brother?’
Huyez said, ‘You have come a long way at huge expense to accomplish your own destruction, Don Andrés.’
‘Destruction? I thought you said—’
‘Papa.’ Paco pawed at his father’s shoulder. ‘You have the information the patrón said he wanted, so why not finish it? It would be less simple to keep him here, and no risk at all, if tonight he can disappear?’
Huyez was thinking about it. Paco, encouraged, gabbling an, ‘Better not with a bullet. A knock on the head — then into he river. A peón from nowhere, drowned…’
Andy could see Juan Huyez liked it. He asked him, ‘What do you stand to get out of this, Don Juan?’
‘Can you not guess?’
‘I suppose what you always wanted, what the old woman promised.’
Old family intrigue, to result in murder this long after? He had a sudden sense of total unreality; as if this couldn’t possibly be happening. On the other hand it was happening, and it fitted the family background, a postscript perfectly dovetailed to everything that had gone before… Paco had prompted, ‘Papa?’ and Huyez was shuffling backwards through the doorway, rifle still aimed and steady. ‘Come. Out here.’
Intending, obviously, to kill him here. But in fact there’d be a better chance in that larger room, more room to manoeuvre.
‘I’m to ride with you to the river, that it? So you can bash me on the head and throw me in?’
Paco said, ‘Right here would be best.’ He’d whispered it. Moving forward, watching the gun, Andy decided he disliked Paco profoundly. Despite the fact that hatred had never been an emotion he’d gone in for. He’d never hated even Robert, or his grandmother. Disliked, and feared; not hated. Perhaps it was Francisca he really hated, but right now it looked like Paco Huyez. Who’d turned, going to the outer door. He guessed they’d do it here, not risk him getting away from them in the open and with the cover of a snowstorm to help. Paco shut that door; Juan Huyez was backing round, with the gun on him, motioning with his head that he should pass him, approach the door. It would put him between them, of course. But also it would involve his passing between two of the slung carcases, through a gap between them where there must have been another quite recently; an unoccupied meathook hung there, its S-shaped steel gleaming dully in the light of Paco’s torch.
‘Ride to the river? Moving me as it were on the hoof?’ Moving the way Huyez had told him to move. ‘Ever murder anyone before, Don Juan?’
Paco said, ‘You present us with a wonderful future. We are grateful to you.’ He smirked. ‘And to the señora, of course.’
‘Will you give her a message for me?’
He was sure this would hold them for a few moments. Whatever the message might be, for these two there’d be a joke in it. This was vizcacha country, all right. Moving with his hands up towards Paco, between the hollow, bloody carcases of the sheep, his right hand was about to pass within inches of that hook. Double-ended, S-shaped, each end a curve of spike kept sharp to penetrate carcases or hunks of meat.
‘What should I say to the señora, your brother’s wife?’
‘First, that I was fool enough to love her—’
‘Si.’ They both smiled. ‘It has not been entirely a secret. But surely, Don Andrés’ — Juan Huyez put it to him — ‘the foolishness was in believing the señora might love you?’
‘That could be so; and I want you to tell her that now I’ve woken up to the truth, that she’s a cold-blooded, murderous bitch—’
On the word ‘murderous’ he’d lifted the hook smoothly from the bar on which it hung, ducked around the carcase on right and swung the heavy steel implement into the mayordomo’s face. Huyez reeled back, off-balance, dropping the Winchester as his hands went to his bloodied face. The hook was so light in Andy’s hand it felt virtually weightless as he swung it again but this time with one of the spiked points leading, slashing downwards — as Paco rushed forward, going for the rifle, the hook’s point embedding itself in the side of Juan Huyez’s scrawny neck, blood spurting in a fountain as it skewered through into his throat. Andy unsheathed his knife as he went after Paco — who’d let out a high, womanish scream, having failed to reach the Winchester, met Andy’s foot instead and turned to run, Juan Huyez convulsing in death throes and gushing blood, Andy close behind Paco slamming him against the door and pushing about an inch of knife-point through the boy’s poncho, puncturing flesh in the region of his kidneys. Paco screamed again — twisting round, a vain attempt to see his father…
‘Be quiet!’ Mouth close to an ear… Then: ‘Tell me all about it, Paco.’
‘Señor, I beg you—’
‘But a minute ago you were so happy.’ He slammed his face against the door again. ‘Get your hands right up, palms against the wall.’ Paco obeyed, whimpering. ‘I’ll give you a start, then you go on. You saw me at Señor Strobie’s, and you told your father about it. What then?’
‘My father radio’d to the patrón—’
‘Where was the patrón?’
‘At the airbase, señor!’
‘Go on.’
‘He told him that you were here. He had to, it was his duty—’
‘What did the patrón say?’
‘That he would arrange for you to visit this estancia. He said you would come either tonight or tomorrow.’
‘How was he intending to arrange this?’
‘I think he did not say, señor.’
‘I see.’ It would have been difficult not to see. ‘What were you to do when I arrived?’
‘We were to keep you until he could come. For weeks, he said it might be. But, if necessary, to kill you.’
‘What kind of necessity?’
‘He said if there was — an accident — my father would not be blamed for it. This was the patrón’s order, señor — my father believed his true wish was that you should be killed.’
‘Your father was most likely right, at that.’
He withdrew the knife and sheathed it, picked up the rifle, Seeing it all clearly enough now — except for Francisca’s degree of involvement, degree of either willingness or compulsion. But she’d managed to act it out pretty well, managed to stifle any compunction she might have felt; so count her in, right in…
It was still like the old world having gone, a new one forming round him.
‘Señior, I personally had no wish at all to harm you or—’
‘Shut up!’
Thinking it out. Putting his mind to an entirely new situation, trying to do it urgently but also logically, the way he’d seen certain others operate in recent weeks. But feeling, also, like a stranger to himself… ‘Who else knows what you were doing, Paco?’
‘Nobody. My father wished it to remain secret.’
‘So no one would ever know I’d been here.‘ It made sense and he thought he might build on it… ‘Where does your mother think you are at this minute?‘
A sigh… ‘At the estancia El Lucero — there is a young lady—’
‘Check. Where would your mother think your father might be?‘
‘Maybe in the office, or the big house. He works sometimes on accounts at night…’
He had one dead Huyez and one live one. His own presence known only to this snivelling boy and to Robert and Francisca. They wouldn’t admit having conspired to murder, so could hardly admit knowing he’d been in the country. In fact his having been here was a secret that would have to be kept both for his own sake in the long term and right now for the sake of Cloudsley and the others and their operation, including their safe withdrawal. But if he killed this boy — who did undoubtedly have to be silenced — then no one could doubt there’d been a third party here tonight. There’d be a country-wide hunt despite the fact they wouldn’t know it was Andrés MacEwan they were hunting; it would be a disturbance of a major and — for the SBS team — highly unwelcome kind.
Patrols on the roads, for instance. Roadblocks…
He saw the beginnings of an answer.
‘Señor, please—’
‘Shut up.’
Paco standing with his face against the door, arms straight to with their palms against the timber above his head, no deathook within ten yards. One vizcacha was as good as another, Andy thought. In fact this one was quite deserving. Roberto wouldn’t have baulked at it; and Francisca, if she’d seen it as contributing to her own interests, wouldn’t have hesitated to connive at it. Come to think of it, what Francisca had demonstrated tonight from a distance of about a thousand miles was a quality that had always been visible in her. Until now, he’d mistaken it for strength of character, a kind of directness and élan which he himself, he’d felt, sadly lacked. But he could see now that what he’d admired in her had been only a working combination of self-interest and amorality.
And — when in Rome…
‘Paco. Grab hold of the legs, drag the body in there.’
Into the small storeroom where they’d intended keeping him — until Paco had come up with a better idea. He was weeping now, crossing himself…
‘Get on with it!’ Lifting the rifle… ‘No — by the feet…’ Watching him do it; with head averted, eyes streaming… Now clean up, with the hose.’
It was a convenient place for murder, with a drain in the floor and a hose for sluicing the blood down it. Juan Huyez had bled profusely, the hook having ripped through his jugular. Watching the boy carry out his orders, sick-looking and shaking violently all over, Andy deliberately recalled to mind his laugh and the question, What does it matter if he dies? Even then, you had to suppress what might have been — described as ‘finer feelings’. Euphemism, he told himself, for the streak of softness, the soft core he’d always been scared Francisca might see and sneer at; which perhaps she had seen, and in consequence preferred Roberto… He’d need to suppress it now, all right, because there was a long, long way to go yet.
While Paco was using the hose, Andy locked the storeroom door and pocketed the key.
‘All right, that’ll do.‘ Even to start with the floor hadn’t been exactly immaculate. ‘Where’s my horse?’
A nod towards the door. Paco in tears still, shuddering with the sobs. Andy kept the rifle aimed at him, opened the door and saw Strobie’s bay mare tethered close to it, already plastered in snow although this was the sheltered side. He turned back to Paco. ‘We’ll need a horse for you too. Is the nochero in or out?‘
‘Stabled, señor, but—’
‘We’ll go get it.’ They’d have known the snow was coming, of course… The nochero’s tack had been left handy in the outer part of its stable, but he told Paco not to bother with a saddle. These people often didn’t; and a lad who’d just murdered his father and was so crazed as to be about to take his own life in an utterly bizarre manner wouldn’t have given it a thought. Paco was fastening the throat-strap of the bridle, his hands shaking so much it wasn’t easy for him… ‘All right. We return now to the carnicería. Bring the horse.’
Inside again, in the sweetish reek of blood, having tethered the other horse beside his own, he told Paco, ‘Now strip. Take all your clothes off.’
‘My — clothes?’
‘Do it. Take all your clothes off, then roll everything up in the poncho.’
The boy hadn’t moved. Andy pointed the Winchester at his lower abdomen: ‘I don’t care if you live or die. As you didn’t care if I froze in there or drowned in the river. I’ll count to three. One…’
Paco stripped. He was crying, and he stopped twice as if he couldn’t believe this was for real.
‘Bundle it now. Boots too. Tie it with the belt.’
Francisca’s voice in his memory: Little boys pull wings off flies, don’t they?
He motioned with the rifle in his gloved hands: ‘Out.’
A step forward, pleading: ‘Don Andrés — señor — out there I’ll die!’
Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings… Andy reached, pulled the bundle of clothes out of the boy’s arms, gestured again: ‘Outside.’ He pushed the door open, saw the two horses snow-covered and miserable; he felt sorry for the horses… ‘Out, damn you!’ Using the rifle as if it had a bayonet on it, slamming the door shut behind them both and unhitching his own horse. ‘Mount!’ He grabbed the nochero’s reins. When the naked, mewling boy was up, he turned the mare and urged her into a trot, leading the other.
‘Don Andrés — in the name of Christ and the Holy Virgin—’
‘Ride!’ He threw him the reins. ‘Stay in front now. If you want a chance of staying alive, do exactly what I say!’ Paco had no chance whatsoever of staying alive but if he’d guessed it he might have made a break, risked a bullet. Not that he’d have got far. The snow was thick, blinding, driven on an icy, gusting wind, the cold would be eating into the marrow of his bones. Andy handled both gates, making Paco ride through and then following, shutting them; even though a madman might have left them open. Conceivably — he thought, herding the boy along — he was the madman in this party. But he’d never thought more clearly or acted more resolutely in his life; this was what he had to do, he knew it and he was doing it, having no alternatives and his mind as it were anaesthetised… It occurred to him that she might have admired this if she could have seen it, seen the absolutely new Andrew MacEwan?
A mile from the estancia he called, ‘Stop, Paco!’
He’d thought the boy might not have lasted this far, might have slipped off sooner, might have died by now of the cold or of his own terror. He rode at him, cannoning his horse into the other, reaching to grab one long white leg and yank it upward, tipping the boy off then snatching the nochero’s reins and trotting clear… ‘Run! Run, Paco!’
On his hands and knees in the thorn scrub. His scream was thin, a cat could have made more noise. Andy rode at him again, swinging the rifle as a threat but careful not to touch him with it. ‘Run!’
He’d got up: fallen… Scrambling up again, stumbling a few steps then collapsing, up again as he heard the thudding hooves approaching. Stumbling forward… The thorns ripping at his feet and legs would be nothing, numbed by the cold he might not even be feeling them. He’d covered a few hundred yards, part of that distance crawling, before he went flat again and this time stayed there. Andy put the reins back over the MacEwan horse’s neck and gave it a whack across the rump; it trotted away into the whirling snow and he forgot it. He threw the rifle down, then opened the bundle of clothing and began dropping it item by item in a circle round the body, pausing only to take the storeroom key out of his own pocket and push it into one in the boy’s bombacbas. Why would a kid who’d slaughtered his own father ride out in a blizzard — with a loaded Winchester — and divest himself of his clothes?! Remorse, a madman’s torment? Only God himself, the peóns would say, crossing themselves, could answer such a question… Andy leant from the saddle for a final look at what was already only a hummock in the snow; then he turned his horse towards Strobie’s.
You couldn’t lean on the drill all that hard, they’d found. A little weight on it was OK, caused the heap of metal dust in first-stage drillings to pile slightly faster, but overdoing it was counter-productive. You could only experiment in this way in the first-stage drills of course, because when you were cutting into the inner casings you didn’t see it happening. But either the boffins had rounded off their stopwatch figures to provide those sixty-minute and forty-five-minute timings — which surely wouldn’t have been very scientific — or the missile casings on which the experimental drillings had been carried but had been of a different tensile strength. Presumably inner and outer casings were made of the same steel alloy, but Cloudsley had no recollection of this being mentioned.
With a hundred per cent concentration, no hold-ups and tightening changeovers between operators and from one missile to the next, plus nobody allowing themselves to get hypnotised, he reckoned as the hours passed that they had a reasonable chance of just about making his 0700 deadline.
Tony Beale finished stage one on missile three at 0355. Ten minutes outside the schedule. Cloudsley’s turn then, starting on number four and handing over after half an hour to Hosegood, who drilled into the air gap at 0504. About twenty minutes over, then. At 0540 Beale handed over on stage two of missile three to Cloudsley; and this was the part where you had to ease up as you came near the end. The diamond tip of his drill broke into the booster motor’s guts at 0602: he knew it was through because of the feel of it and the faint hiss of escaping gas; he pulled back quickly to get the hot probe out of it and to let it vent, also so as to move without delay to missile four for the first part of stage two. By this time they’d broken all the boffins’ laws on caution but it was still taking longer than it should.
‘Snow’s stopped.’ Beale added, ‘That’s not all, Harry. There’s Pucarás being moved out.’
He’d been at the door, and made his announcement quietly, breaking foul news so gently it was — in the circumstances — ludicrous… Cloudsley stooped over the missile, sliding the bit in through the stage one hole, aiming for the geometric centre as he set the diamond tip against the inner casing. Hearing Beale mutter, ‘Lying real thick now. Suppose they can still get off the ground.’ He shut his mind to it — tried to, while Beale was packing the hole in missile three with the dental filling. In fact an early start to the pre-dawn flying was less of a menace — touch wood — than the snow was, snow thick enough to be imprinted with boot-marks but the snowfall finished, leaving the marks clear and the sky clear too for helos to come shuttling in. But forget it; forget everything on the outside, concentrate on this, just get on with it… He heard the other two checking over their Ingram pistols. It was two and a half minutes past six when he triggered the drill for the start of the last stage, last missile, the tiny spotlight focusing along the invisibly-spinning drill as he applied what experience suggested was about optimum pressure. Hosegood would have the tricky part on this one, when he took over in half an hour.
At 0633, in fact. The change-over didn’t take more than a couple of seconds because the bit didn’t even have to be removed from the hole for it. Beale murmured, checking his watch, ‘Near done it, Harry.’ Cloudsley nodded. He’d taken the magazine out of his Ingram and checked it; now he slid it back in again. ‘Let’s have the rest of the gear packed up.’
One battery was already finished with. They’d take these two out, but the spares buried out there in their Czech-made pack would have to be left. Might lie there for years. Cloudsley went to the door and opened it an inch. Crouching with his eye to the crack, seeing aircraft moving on the field but needing to get the foreground picture into focus first. Snow lying deep and unmarked under the flood of light; and a dark streak around the outside of the wire where sentries’ boots had transformed snow into mush. A double-take on this; and a spark of hope. You’d land in that beaten track — OK, there’d be tracks on the inside of the fence, you’d have to trust to luck on that — land in the sentries’ pathway, and then numbers two and three would follow in father’s footsteps across the slip-road and into the dark. One smudged lot of boot-prints might pass for the spoor of a sentry who’d been taken short, retired into the dark to relieve himself. These characters weren’t expecting trouble; they’d think at least twice before annoying their NCOs by raising a false alarm.
He felt better. In good heart anyway for knowing the object of the operation had practically been achieved.
The fuel-truck, almost end-on from this viewpoint, was a dome of white under its heavy thatch of snow. Beyond it — a long way beyond it — he saw moving lights.
Headlights, blinding… He took his eyes off them. Lights on the airfield were tractor headlights, tractors parked to provide light for ground staff working around the Pucarás. One trailer to each group of aircraft. Bombing-up, he guessed, to herald the new day with napalm. Allowing himself to look back at the other lights… Hosegood must have seven or eight minutes’ work still to do on that last missile, he thought. The thought linked directly to what he almost knew he was about to see — and did see now, with sweat ice-cold on his tense, crouched body. It was the van, the one in which the Argies moved personnel to and from this compound, coming slow speed along the snow-packed road.