Saddler ordered, ‘Stand by State Three.’
Getting dark. Shropshire at dusk action stadons, rolling hard to the southwesterly blow. She was leaving the northwest rim of the Exclusion Zone on a heading of 302 degrees, preparing for fast transit to the mainland coast. Darkness was arriving here about ten minutes before it would spread itself across that coast, and in his mind’s eye he could visualise the SBS team stirring after a day in hiding, making their own preparations for the rendezvous.
Expecting a submarine, not a County-class destroyer.
They’d done their job, all right. He’d seen the proof of it — yesterday and last night. At which time he’d had no idea he was about to be given this job…
Radar had had a contact: closing, on bearing three-four-eight.
Like tonight, last night had been pitch dark. But the sea had been moderate and sleet-showers temporarily in abeyance. Shropshire had spent the preceding hours on gunline, and at this point — when she’d picked up the radar contact — had been in transit to join the carrier group southeast of the islands.
‘Action stations. Air warning red…’
‘Range three-six miles!’
Ops Room patter gathering shape and density over the Command Open Line as men had hurried to their action stations, pulling on anti-flash gear as they ran…
‘Echo Nine Tango has hostile three-three-zero, forty!’
‘That’s Boreas.’
‘Same hostile. Track 2801.’
‘Seacat red and green, sharp lookout for low-level missile attack!’
Under helm: turning stern-on to the threat…
‘Missile-head radar on three-four-nine!’
Then EW had it identified: an AM39. Closing, therefore, at a speed of Mach 1.2… Saddler ordered into the Command Open Line, ‘Window Charlie two-seven-zero, fire!’
Firing chaff, the Charlie — ‘C’ for confusion — type meaning shells stuffed with metal foil, fired from the gun to explode way out on the beam, confuse the missile’s radar by offering it a new point of aim. He heard Knight’s broadcast warning: Impact imminent — brace, brace, brace… Shropshire plunging to the quartering sea — a fine, live ship and within seconds she could become a mass of flame, gutted and foundering, a funeral pyre in the wind-torn night… The thud of the 4.5” gun had followed so closely on his order that he knew the AAWO, Ian Prince, must have anticipated it. He ordered now, ‘Fire four barrels chaff Delta, bows and quarters!’ The ‘D’ of Delta stood for ‘distraction’ and again the Ops Room was on the ball, the EW director must have had the control box already set and his thumb close to the firing button. The warning hooters blared almost before Saddler had uttered the last word, and precisely two seconds after that klaxon roar the chaff-launchers, situated just abaft the bridge, blasted a protective screen all around the ship. It was only a momentary protection, in this wind, Saddler suppressing in that same moment a chilling vision of the AM39 impacting in or under the main Seaslug missile magazine, explosions ripping his ship apart; and the re-play then, the horror of flame, gushing smoke, the struggle to save life…
‘Green system fired!’
Starboard Seacat. The Seacat transmitting station would have locked the director sight to it: one anti-missile missile with an effective range of three miles had scorched away astern and the operator — one of the late Able Seaman Pitts’ chums — would be holding the Seacat missile’s tail-flame in the centre of his binocular sight. He had only to keep it there, steering it by means of his thumb-operated joystick, to achieve an interception. If two and two equalled four, tonight. Sometimes they seemed to make five. Twenty seconds had elapsed since the call to action stations.
‘Radar lost target! EW reports missile-head radar faded!’
Seacat hadn’t done it. Either Seacat had missed, or the AM39 had made its dive into the sea before they’d got together. Otherwise, there’d have been an explosion out there. Saddler had looked round at his white-hooded, white-gauntleted bridge staff — cautious about speaking too soon, tempting the Fates which time after time in recent weeks had kept his ship afloat and most of her men alive. Man proposed, but they’d all seen enough just lately to know that disposal was quite another matter… Anyway, Bernard Knight the PWO had been less hesitant: his voice had come over the broadcast right away, telling Shropshire’s crew at their various stations around the ship, ‘An Exocet missile was launched at us from a range of about thirty miles, but it must’ve gone in the drink. Third dud today.’ Then he was on the Open Line to Saddler: ‘Relax the air warning to yellow, sir?’
‘Yes please. And thank God.’
‘Amen to that, sir.’
He told the OOW, ‘Bring her back on course. One-four-seven, was it? Pilot, adjusted course?’
He’d discovered as he spoke that he was short of breath. In a period of tension, of course, your lungs worked harder without your knowing it, to supply oxygen for a faster heart beat. He’d begun taking deliberately long, slow breaths, to slow it all down; and thinking that Knight had spoken nothing but the truth when he’d said ‘third dud today’. Two other missiles which had been launched at the Task Force’s ships earlier — one in the afternoon, and the other after dark which seemed to have been aimed at Broadsword — hadn’t stayed in the air even as long as this last one had, had vanished from the screens right after they’d been fired. This, incidentally, had been the first appearances of Etendards in action for quite a while. The daylight attack had been a joint effort by a single Etendard and some Skyhawks, the Etendard’s target being the carrier Invincible while the Skyhawks had picked on Avenger as a target for their bombs — all of which had missed. Exeter had splashed one Skyhawk with Sea Dart. The postscript to the abortive attack had come as a news bulletin from Buenos Aires claiming that Invincible had been hit and disabled. This was the third time they’d claimed to have hit her; on a previous occasion she was supposed to have been sunk.
A shrug was more appropriate than a laugh. A fourth time, it could be true.
Except — Saddler had reasoned — that so far all attacks on the carriers had been by Exocet-armed Etendards, and if all the Argies’ remaining AM39s had been so to speak rendered sterile — three failures in one day did seem a bit much to be coincidental, he thought — well, a minute earlier he’d said ‘Thank God,’ and he had no intention of retracting that, but he’d wondered whether it might also be in order to thank the SBS…
‘Course should be one-four-five, sir.’
‘Steer that.’
When he’d drafted a signal about the attack and the dud missile, he’d checked his Night Order Book to make sure he’d put down as much as needed to be there, then paid a short visit to the softly lit, electronic-humming Ops Room before retiring to his little hole of a sea-cabin in the hope of getting a few hours’ sleep. In about one hour Shropshire was to have been taking station in the defensive screen around the carrier force as it withdrew from its own night’s engagements off East Falkland, but he’d seen no reason to be on his feet for that. With luck, he’d thought, he might get to sleep right through to 0600, the time he’d put down to be called.
Everyone was getting a bit tired. Not least, the ships — weapons, sensors and machinery. The weeks were wearing on, they’d been a hell of a long time at sea and the weather wasn’t getting any better. But it might not be much longer now, he thought. In the last two days 5 Brigade — including Scots and Welsh Guards, and Gurkhas — had been disembarking at San Carlos, were probably all ashore by now, and there could only be the logistical build-up to complete before the big advance began. Once it started, repossession of the island should be quick, with the ground already so well prepared. Like 45 Commando on Mount Kent, 3 Para on Mounts Vernet and Estancia, SAS on the Murrell Heights north of Stanley harbour. There were SAS and SBS teams in other places too: Shropshire had put some of them in.
A week or two — then home?
Well, hardly. Everyone couldn’t buzz off at once. The ships in worst shape, presumably, would be the first to go, and Shropshire was in better nick than some.
Anne had written, ‘Lisa has a new boyfriend. A young merchant banker. She says he’s not a boyfriend, only someone she happens to have seen a few times, but I think it’s a bit more than that. I may be wishful-thinking, of course, because I should really be delighted if she showed Andy MacEwan the door, after the way he’s treated her. This disappearing trick of his really is the last straw!’
He’d drifted into sleep. Missiles — strangely shaped ones with deadpan MacEwan-type expressions on their faces — were fizzing into the ocean all round. Someone was quite unnecessarily trying to draw his attention to them: a voice repeating over and over, ‘Captain, sir…’
‘I’ve seen the damn things!’
‘Captain, sir… You’re wanted in the flagship, sir.’ A faraway voice was booming ‘Flying stations. Flying stations…’ Then the nearer one with its nagging tone again: ‘Captain, sir…’
‘All right.’ Up on one elbow, blinking at the messenger and the orange glow like disco lighting seeping from the Ops Room outside this cubicle. The boy said, ‘The Admiral requests your presence in Hermes, sir.’
‘Yes. Yes.’ Saddler nodded. ‘Tell the commander and the flight commander.’
‘Aye aye, sir. Helo’s been piped, sir.’
Checking the time. Awake now, swinging his legs down from the bunk. ‘All right. Thank you, Hayes.’
He’d guessed, on his way over in the Wessex, that the Admiral might be wanting more detail about that Etendard attack. It was of vital interest, of course, directly affecting the security of the Task Force, the Navy’s ability to last out and continue support of the land campaign. But if this was it, it was a waste of good sleeping time, he’d said it all in his signal… Then abruptly the fast cross-decking was over, and within minutes, still in his goon-suit, he was in an office full of chart displays and his old shipmate Willy was telling him, ‘It’s about the SBS team you had with you a while ago, John. The group you flew-off by Sea King.’
‘News of them, is there?’
‘They’re ready to come out, and you’re the man who’s going to perform the extraction. Your orders are here — Operation Sandbag, we’re calling it. I’ll run over the main points — OK?’
‘But — surely they’ll be brought off by submarine?’
‘Would have been.’ The balding head nodded. ‘But they’ve warmed the bell somewhat. Several days ahead of the projected schedule. Incidentally, there are indications of a job well done – eh?’
He’d nodded. ‘Certainly today’s attacks…’
‘Right. But you see, we have only one SSK on station. Onyx — arrived a few days ago. The fact is, she’s not available for this one. Couldn’t get there in time even if she was. It’s come up so much sooner—’
‘Have they signalled?’
A nod. ‘Catching us rather with our pants down.’
‘So I’m to — Christ, take Shropshire right up to the bloody mainland?‘
A five-thousand-ton destroyer and her crew of five hundred, to be risked within a stone’s throw of that coast?
‘It would have been done by SSK, John, as you say. For the simple reason we don’t have one available, it can’t be. And we have no way of contacting them to delay things, so — this is what we’re stuck with… Here, take a look.’ He’d pointed at the appropriate chart. ‘The submarine was to have surfaced about here, launched a Gemini, then dived and waited. The Gemini’s task is to rendezvous with the SBS team in their own inflatable at this point here — Islote Negro. Risks of outboard motor failure are halved — either could take the other in tow, if necessary.’
‘What coastal defences or patrols might we run into?’
‘No patrols. Where they exist at all they’re sporadic, and in bad weather — which the forecast suggests you’ll have — you won’t see one… Look, the R/V at the islet is for midnight, Zulu time, twenty-three hours from now, so—’
‘Shore defences, Willy?’
‘Well.’ A hand rose to stroke the pink skin of his scalp. ‘As far as anyone knows, none at all…’
John Saddler prayed — Shropshire leaving the TEZ behind her now, beginning her transit in towards the mainland — Please God…
But there were other worries too, now that the moment had come. Such as the weather, which wasn’t in the least bit suitable for excursions in small boats. Willy had been dead right about that, last night.
‘Ready for State Three, sir!’
The gas boost: four gas turbines ready to add their power to that of the ship’s main engines which were also turbines but steam-driven. He told Holt, the Aussie, ‘Revolutions two-eight-two.’
The extra revs would push her along at thirty knots: and she’d need every knot of it, at that. He only hoped she’d stand up to the strain of prolonged high revs — after six weeks at sea, bits and pieces falling off with greater frequency than they’d been doing even a week ago.
‘Secure from action stations, sir?’
‘Yes… And pass the word to the flight commander I’d like a word with him, would you?’
Shropshire would be in position — if all her machinery kept going — at 2330: the position in which the orders laid down that she should launch her Gemini. In a sea that might be even worse by that time, he guessed. Fifteen miles offshore, and the inflatable with its not-always-reliable outboard motor would have five miles to cover, to reach the RN position where it was supposed to join up with the SBS boat. You could hardly launch a rubber boat over any greater distance, he thought, in such conditions, and even fifteen miles offshore would put Shropshire well inside the twenty-six mile range of any shore-mounted Exocet. Studying the chart, Saddler had decided that if he’d been in the Argies’ shoes and had a missile to spare he’d have sited it on the headland slightly to the north of the beach, where it would cover the widest possible are of sea approaches. His ship would be lying at about the same distance from the headland as from the beach.
So he wasn’t planning on hanging around in there any longer than he had to.
‘Two—eight-two revolutions set, sir.’
He’d felt it: the surge of power, and the sea’s fiercer resistance to Shropshire’s bomb-scarred hull… A voice asked from behind him, ‘Wanted to see me, sir?’
Robin Padmore, the helo flight commander. Stocky, bearded, a lieutenant-commander with one year’s seniority in that rank and thirty-two years of age. He was an observer, not a pilot. Short legs braced apart, his body jammed against the side of the bridge close to Saddler’s console.
‘Yes, Robin. I did… How long would it take to remove the sonar gear from the Wessex?’
A moment’s hesitation suggested surprise at the question. Then the flight commander answered with another, in his West Country burr: ‘Whole works, sir? Body, drum and winch?’
‘No.’ He knew the answer to that. It would have been a good twenty-four hours’ work. ‘No, leaving the winch.’
‘Well, maybe three hours, sir. Allow three and a half, when we’re banging around like this.’
‘And how much weight would it save?’
‘Four hundred pounds, sir. With the winch as well we’d save more than twice as much.’
Four hundred would compensate for the weight of two additional, large passengers. Saddler had been told there’d been six in the SBS party — although he was only aware of five having flown in — but if he needed to use the Wessex at all it would be in some kind of emergency and he’d have his own two-man Gemini crew to take care of as well. Might have. Shropshire’s helo was a Wessex Mark III, an anti-submarine helo as distinct from a Wessex V which was a commando carrier, and with two pilots and one observer on board — none of them could be dispensed with — winching up another eight bodies might come close to overloading. He wasn’t prepared to reduce the two-thousand-pound fuel load, either — for several sound, precautionary reasons.
‘All right. Have the body and drum removed. This is only an emergency back-up, Robin, I may not use you at all… Look, I’ll brief you at 2300, up here. Better bring Anstice and Lincoln with you.’
George Anstice and Sam Lincoln being respectively the first and second pilots. Behind Saddler in the darkened bridge watchkeepers were changing over as the ship relaxed to the second degree of readiness. Jay Kingsmill busy organising special lookouts in the bridge wings and up on the GDP to make up for the fact that electronic silence was now being observed: no beams or pulses would be emitted that might be picked up on the mainland, and this included radar.
Geoff Hosegood was in the hide’s entrance keeping lookout: all the rest of them crammed into the dark, cold hole. In the hours since last night’s planning session they’d been in their separate hides, but now with new darkness to cloak movement in the open, string signals had brought them together again. Tea was being brewed. And there was plenty of time in hand. The beach party consisting of Start, West and Andy would be moving out at 2045, and the other three an hour later so as to be in position on the headland by 2200. Three dry-suits, one abseil rope and two body harnesses had been brought up here last night from the gear stashed on the beach; Cloudsley had had his plan pretty well firmed-up in his mind when he’d returned from the night’s recce, and he’d brought this stuff back with him.
There’d been several alarms during the day, one particularly tense moment when a four-man patrol had passed right between the hides. Four Argies in file, carrying rifles and looking more alert than in fact they could have been. Enfilading fire from machine-pistols would have cut them to pieces if they’d had the bad luck to notice anything, but luckily the snow on the ground last night had been only patchy, and since noon more of it had been driving in from the southwest, so there’d been no tracks to see. One other foot patrol had passed, but at a safer distance, and there’d been several helicopter transits. In each hide one man had slept while the other kept watch, and there’d been enough alerts to keep the watchkeepers awake and edgy. Andy had done his share of guard duty.
‘You’ll be pulling your weight tonight, too,’ Cloudsley told him. ‘It’ll be hard work while it lasts.’
He nodded, feeling the tea’s heat permeate through his body, and munching biscuits and chocolate. ‘OK.’
‘And be warned — it won’t be comfortable. We wouldn’t be going out in a little boat in this weather if we didn’t have to. Quite likely, Andy, we’ll have to improvise, when things don’t go exactly as they should. Like the outboard, for instance… Just take your cues from the rest of us — and bear in mind this is our element, the kind of action we’re trained for — OK?’
‘Sure. I’ll do what I’m told.’
Hosegood said from the entrance, ‘Couldn’t‘ve done it without him, could we?’
Cloudsley agreed: ‘We could not.’ He shrugged, a movement under the tent-like poncho. ‘At least, we might’ve busted in there somehow. Or someone else might’ve. But I doubt whoever did it could’ve got out again.’ His hand moved, to touch the wooden haft of his knife. Because they weren’t out again yet anyway…
‘I suppose the submarine may be out there already, lying doggo, waiting for the time to surface and send its boat in?’
‘Very likely.’ Monkey added, ‘Warm, dry and on an even keel. They don’t rock about, you know, once they’re under the rough stuff near the surface. So around 0100, Andy, with any luck we’ll be sitting down to a good meal in the greatest luxury — including a tot or two, bet your boots!’
The bluey’s glow lit Beale’s bony, bearded face. Deepset eyes gleaming… ‘Drink old Tom’s health, shall we?’
At eight-forty-five the beach party crawled out into driving sleet and moved off southwestward. Start leading, Andy between him and West. They’d timed this trip carefully and Monkey knew every bush along the way. Scheduled ETA at the cache above the beach was 2115, but they got there a few minutes early; he’d allowed extra time in case the ‘guest artist’ slowed them down. The wind was gusting strongly with sleet in it, a wind straight from the Antarctic, and down at this level there was salt spray in it as well. First job was to dig out the inflatable and other gear, unpack three dry-suits and pull them on over the top of all other clothing except ponchos. In such bulky clothes, getting the thin rubber suits on was a performance like that of fat women struggling into girdles — in pitch darkness, hopping around on a wind-swept, spray-lashed beach… Ingram pistols were strapped on outside the dry-suits. Then the boat was inflated and fitted-up, and its paddles and other gear — PNG equipment, tow-rope, balers, strobe beacon, lifejackets — stowed inside it. The outboard, stripped of its sand-proof bag, was carried with its separate fuel-tank down to the launching point, and a second trip had to be made to bring down the boat. A minute or so after ten o’clock they were ready, sitting or kneeling on the boat’s blisters with a white wilderness of icy, leaping sea in front, blackness of the empty land behind, Monkey’s voice shouting over the roar of surf, ‘Ten minutes’ breather! Nice going, Andy!’
A pat on the head for the civilian…
They had to be off the beach, afloat and on the way, by a quarter past the hour. Time in hand had certain advantages over a shortage of it, but it wouldn’t have been wise to start too early. Hanging around close off the rocks below the promontory might not be too easy; you wouldn’t want to try it for longer than you had to. Outboard motors did break down, and paddles, Monkey had pointed out, weren’t going to be a lot of use in a sea like this one. Exactly how long they’d have to wait off the headland would depend on the headland party’s being able to keep to the planned timing. They’d be in position by now — ought to be — ready to start their action at 2205. In two minutes, in fact… Monkey was taking the lifejackets out of the boat: he pushed one at Andy and yelled at him to put it on. Spray or sleet or both made for a solid, continuous icy rain, and the sea’s noise was deafening. Monkey and Jake, who’d been wearing their riding-boots until now, rather incongruously over the dry-suits, discarded them and put on swimming fins instead.
Cloudsley had dumped the coil of abseil rope where he wanted it. The other two were already wearing their body-harness over dry-suits. Ponchos over the top of everything else were already whitened by the wet, clinging sleet. There’d been only one abseil rope with two sets of harness and Holk pieces, because Monkey had had to leave some gear with the party he and Jake had looked after down in the south, and one rope had been wanted in the inflatable. But Cloudsley had decided this was OK, all they needed.
The sentry was to his right now, pacing towards the rear of the hut. The other one was on the far side of the radar van: Tony would be taking care of him. The Exocet MM38 container on its flatbed truck was a rectangular mass about ten yards on Cloudsley’s left, and there was a tractor parked close to its rear end. The tractor would have been used to tow the truck here from the road, and its use now would be to drag the flatbed around to point in any desired direction. From this headland there was an arc of open sea of about 135 degrees, NNE to SSE, which might call for some rudimentary aiming, certainly if there happened to be any choice of targets.
The wind, with sleet and snow in it, was gusting across the headland strongly enough to rock the radar van on its springs, loudly enough to drown out any smaller sounds. More good luck, he thought: up at the airbase they’d had the generator to cover whatever noise they made, and here they had the beginnings of a storm. Although the luck in that might be somewhat less obvious once they were out there in the inflatable.
No ‘might be’ about it, actually. It was going to be bloody awful. He’d tried to warn Andy but he hadn’t told him the half of it.
Four minutes past the hour. The sentry was pacing back this way. Cloudsley waited for him, watching meanwhile for other movement in the darkness. But in present conditions it wasn’t likely that anyone who was entitled to remain indoors would think of shoving his nose out. Monkey had been right — there was a smell of paraffin around the hut. Most likely paraffin lamps in there too, going by the weak light that showed under the door.
The hut’s door wasn’t visible from here, it was on the sheltered, inland side. Beyond the hut, to the west of it, the bulkier shape of the lighthouse rose, black and unlit.
The sentry came into the open, halted and faced right. His back was this way now, face toward the radar van. His pacings and turns were exactly as his (or another’s) movements had been last night — when Cloudsley had lain in this same spot, working it all out. He thought — moving forward at a crouch, swiftly and quietly, with the sleet a solid whiteness driving from his left: Silly sods… Geoff Hosegood, also moving forward, saw the tall, wide shadow rise, two shadows then merging into one, and knew from the sudden, convulsive jerk that Harry’s left forearm had clamped itself across the Argie’s throat, the man’s helmet then knocked forward; he heard the thud and then saw the shadow separate into its component parts, one part slumping to the ground and the other moving left to join up with Tony who’d have dealt similarly and simultaneously with sentry number two. As he crossed over Cloudsley tossed a rifle over the cliff to his left, slid the weighted blackjack into his poncho and drew and cocked his Ingram. The two sentries wouldn’t be left lying around loose for long, but in the meantime Geoff would be keeping an eye out for any movement from either of them as well as standing guard on the door of the hut.
Cloudsley opened the back of the radar van and slid in with Beale close behind him. One man on a mattress on the floor and two in wall-mounted bunks stirred, muttering to themselves as they woke slowly. The fourth, on a stool set in front of a flickering green radar screen, sat with his mouth open and his head twisted almost completely round; his eyes were fixed on the levelled machine-pistol. Cloudsley asked, ‘Any of you speak English?‘ Even without the gun in his hands he would have been an awe-inspiring sight. Beale was pulling the other two off their bunks, putting them down with the one on the mattress. They were all dressed, in the usual green fatigues, had shed only their boots and overcoats. The one who’d come off the starboard bunk said, ‘I speak…’ and the radarman on the stool — a scrawny man with greying hair and a pleasant expression now he’d mastered his initial fright, said surprisingly, ‘I am as fluent in English as I am in my own tongue, señor.’
‘You’ll do nicely, then,’ Cloudsley told him. ‘We don’t want to harm any of you. We’ll be here about one hour, and if you do what I say you’ll be OK. You’ll be joining your friends in the hut now. Tell them this, please — if they sit quiet they’ll be safe, but anyone who tries to get out, tries anything, is likely to be shot. After one hour, you’ll be on your own. Got it?’
The radarman nodded, almost a bow… ‘I will tell them, señor.’
Beale had taken a knife from one man. He said, ‘That’s all, Harry.’
‘So now move!’
Hosegood was ready at the hut’s door; he pulled it open, glanced inside, stepped back to allow the four men to be pushed in, the radarman already yelling in Spanish, answering a flood of questions, protests. Door shut — but Beale and Cloudsley had each retrieved his own sentry, and Geoff opened up again while they slung them in. By the time the door slammed shut Beale was back inside the radar van, smashing the screen and circuitry and wrenching wires out. It took only a few seconds; then he’d jumped out, shut the rear door and run to the front, climbed into the driving seat. The engine fired immediately, gears grated into reverse and he backed it up against the hut, slamming hard up against the wall that had the door in it. It was an outward-opening door and so was the one at the back of the van, so to get out they’d have to smash through the door and the van too. By this time Hosegood was on the tractor, having a tougher job than Tony had had, but after a struggle the engine started. Cloudsley had meanwhile fixed its towing chains to the flatbed truck and unplugged a power cable that led to it from the direction of the lighthouse. Hosegood pushed the tractor into gear and eased it forward to take the strain…
No good. Revving harder: the truck still wouldn’t move.
Concrete blocks were serving as chocks under the flatbed’s double tyres. Beale’s flashlight found them; he ducked under, dragged the blocks clear… Cloudsley’s original idea had been to put the truck with the missile on it over the cliff, but he’d decided against this because he wasn’t sure it wouldn’t explode, which might attract attention from far and wide. Instead, Geoff got the whole assembly rolling the other way — inland — over uneven ground into the dunes. A slight downward slope now, the container jolting and swaying, Geoff having to accelerate to stay ahead of the lumbering mass behind him. Then he was angling round behind the lighthouse, round in a half-circle until the assembly was pointing the wrong way entirely. If the missile could be fired now, it would fly inland; and they wouldn’t be able to move it without this tractor, so the tractor was now to be immobilised. Geoff left its engine running, jumped down, used one of the tiny flashlights to locate a water-trap on the fuel line, and smashed its glass bowl with the butt of his pistol. The diesel would run for a minute or two, but after it stopped it wouldn’t be starting again.
Beale had secured an end of the abseil rope to the front axle of the radar van: the rope was the standard number 4, 11-mm nylon with a breaking-strain of 4200 pounds, and there was plenty of it to spare. The cliff here was about 130 feet high and almost but not quite sheer. Cloudsley yelled into the howl of wind, ‘Away you go, then!’ He thought he’d done it — this part of it — couldn’t be much more except convince the occupants of the hut they weren’t being deserted yet. He went back there, hit the side of the van a few times, shouted some orders like shoot to kill if you have to, Tony. He thought they’d have heard, all right, although from outside with the noise of the wind and the deeper, more distant roar of the sea you couldn’t hear voices from inside. Anyway, the SSK could surface in safety now — instead of being blown out of the water almost before its hatch was open. He went to the rope, waited until he felt it go slack when the second man got off it, then grasped it in both hands, facing inland. He was edging backwards over the cliff edge when he saw the car’s lights coming.
Up the track from the road, the track skirting the north side of this promontory. It was a rough track and the lights were bouncing as they approached, but the car — transport of some kind, anyway — was coming quite fast, the skeletal lower structure of the lighthouse already starkly black in silhouette against the glare.
A moment for thought. He could stay here, ambush them, cut them down… Then leave. Or — just slip away. And he had to decide immediately.
Not much to be gained by killing them. Whoever they were, they couldn’t do much harm. And killing had never been on the agenda for this trip. So — OK… He flattened himself on the wet, scrubby cliff edge, slid backwards over it with his legs dangling into the noisy darkness until he was right over and could swing his feet up against the rock-face. Then down — weight on the rope, and walking down the face. Cautiously, not fast and swooping as the others would have done it, obviously; they’d be on the fringing reef now, locating the inflatable — please God — and giving Monkey a torch-flash to show him where they were and let him know it was running to time. By the time Cloudsley joined them they should be all set and ready to go. The wind howled in his ears, buffeted and clawed at him, sleet plastering him, the rope wet and slippery and tending to swing like a pendulum as he shifted weight from one foot to the other. Below him the South Atlantic was a white maelstrom thundering as it fought to tear rock from rock — as it had been doing, successfully, for centuries, millennia…
Of course if Monkey hadn’t made it, if the outboard had refused to start or the boat had come to grief in the surf, you’d be stuck down there on the rocks with a whole crowd of ill-disposed Argies loose on the clifftop; you’d have pretty well had it. It made him think Should have taken out that carload or whatever, then hands grasped his shoulders, Geoff taking some weight while he got himself to rights, Geoff shouting in his ear, ‘They’re here, Harry, twenty yards out, maybe thirty!’ He saw them as he left the rope and turned — a flash of light and the torch’s glittery-wet reflection on one gleaming blister of the inflatable as it tilted almost to the vertical. He shrugged off his poncho: the others had left theirs on the clifftop or maybe thrown them over. The inflatable couldn’t be allowed in any closer than it was now, one reason being the array of sharp-edged rock and the enormous strength of wind and sea that would fling the comparatively flimsy craft on to it, another the kelp which even if it hadn’t been here before would be now with the southwesterly driving it in to fringe the reef. The thing was to get out there, quickly, while the outboard was still doing its stuff, get the boat out to sea where breaking down would be bad enough but not as bad as it would be here, particularly with Argies up above. He yelled, ‘Go on, Tony!’ and saw Beale lunge forward and flop in like an outsize seal: they were all ludicrously swollen by the clothes inside their dry-suits. He gave him a couple of lengths’ lead then banged Geoff on one rubber shoulder, shouted, ‘Go!’
Into their natural element — tougher than usual, too rough for a long haul in a rubber boat, but he’d swum in worse, and colder than most; but they’d all swum in and under ice, before this, and for a lot longer than this little clip was going to take. The kelp was like nets trying to hold you, and the turbulence did its best to wrap it round your arms and legs… Tony was in the boat, Geoff now launching himself up and into it, the boat half on its side and white water seething over. The others were baling — there’d be a lot of baling to do before they made it to Islote Negro. Cloudsley was up, half out of water, forcing his rubber-enclosed bulk over the port-side blister while Tony kept his own weight on the other side. Others baling furiously as the inflatable turned its bow seaward, motor’s note rising as one thin, foreign element in a deafening roar of wind and sea. Looking up at the headland, Cloudsley saw the loom of the car’s headlights: he was edging into the stern, squeezing between Jake and Andy who were doing the baling — hanging on with one hand and working with the other, crouching as low as possible as the boat pitched and swung; Cloudsley shouted close to Monkey’s ear, ‘Transport of some kind arrived when I was leaving. Lights — see?’ Monkey glanced round and up just as a small searchlight — something like an Aldis, a spot, maybe part of that vehicle’s equipment — flared out, silver beam lancing the snow-filled dark then dipping to finger the wilderness of sea. Monkey having seen it was ignoring it, concentrating on his job as coxswain. The plan was that having got a few miles out they’d use PNG to locate the islet, but this weather hadn’t been in the reckoning, this amount of wet… The light found them after less than a minute’s search. It had passed over them, one dazzling flash in Cloudsley’s eyes then travelling on, apparently not having seen them, but then it had paused, swung back. Cloudsley had been getting ready for it, he had his Ingram out, its stock extended, and he’d switched to single-shot action; now he was sighting on the light.
Trying to… The Ingram was reputedly accurate up to fifty metres, which he guessed was about the slant-range now. A rifle bullet cracked past his head, the light holding the boat as if it was a spear in a fish, and there were several rifles in action up there now — men shooting from solid ground — probably prone on the edge — instead of a roller-coaster… Two single shots banged away not far from his right ear — from Beale or Hosegood, West was still shovelling out the water, getting it out about as fast as it was coming in — before Cloudsley squeezed two off without observable result and decided to switch to automatic, spray the clifftop with the rest of the magazine. They didn’t seem to have automatic weapons up there, thank God. He had one spare magazine in its slot on his holster and he’d have no other use for it, and with lengthening range chances were lessening fast — but not so for those riflemen, who’d have plenty in hand yet: A rifle-shot hit the outboard’s fibreglass pod, a sharp thwack of impact — and that was all, the plastic must simply have absorbed the bullet. He’d had visions of the outboard being hit, also of the boat’s blisters being punctured: the blisters were subdivided, of course, but it wouldn’t have helped, exactly, and it could still happen, in fact the odds on getting away didn’t look so hot unless someone could hit that light, and quickly… The shooting from the headland was slow and steady, apparently unhurried — which was the best way to do it if you could afford the luxury; even if they were cross-eyed the laws of chance had to pay off for them soon. On target suddenly, he squeezed his trigger, sent twenty-eight rounds in a swathe across the light, but he’d only been on target before his finger had tightened, the boat had tilted bow-down and dropped like a stone, noticeably flexing itself as it toppled over the crest of a shoreward-bound roller. This sea, he’d already begun to appreciate, might turn out to be a bit too much for them. They’d taken in a lot more water and the balers were working frantically as he began reloading, feeling the sluggish motion that came from having so much weight in her; he was banging in the only accessible magazine he had, the light still blinding him and the riflemen still taking regularly-timed pot-shots; then a single shot cracked out close to his already singing right ear, and the light went out, smashed. Beale whooped, ‘Nice one, Geoff!’
Immediately you knew that your real enemy was the sea. As it had been before the searchlight had come up as a more immediate threat.
He could see the headlights again now. The beams were swinging, a swathe of yellow in distant, slanting sleet. He guessed they might be trying to use whatever kind of vehicle it was to tow the flatbed truck and its missile back into a firing position. Might make it, too. It could be a four-wheel drive, and they’d have that whole hutful of soldiers to add muscle power. Might well set the bloody thing up again…
Should’ve killed them. Should also have punctured the flatbed’s tyres.
But — this hit him suddenly, relief as the inflatable crashed down into a trough, water-walls towering all round — it wouldn’t help them to get it back in place, because they still wouldn’t have radar. OK, so they might fire blind, assuming there had to be a target out there somewhere, but it was highly unlikely they’d happen to catch the submarine in one of its two five-minutes appearances on the surface. So forget it. There were two hazards that were worth worrying about — one, the sea, and two, danger of the outboard failing.
They’d been fighting their plunging, jolting way out to sea for half an hour before the motor began to stutter.
As if they’d all been expecting it as well as dreading it, all heads turned, faces staring aft. Hanging on two-handed — except for the balers, who were having to take their chances: baling had to be continuous because shipping water was continuous. But the outboard had suddenly picked up again — was back on its high scream of full power, Monkey straightening from its controls and turning to check the course. Then it faltered again, the boat lifting vertically as a wave ran under its flat, flexing bottom, tilting it end-up and slamming it down again with the starboard blister almost under water; in that position all you’d need would be one really solid, swamping sea, and even as it was the balers had been put back on the wrong side of square one now. Cloudsley and Beale were using their own body-weights as balances, throwing themselves this way and that to counter the sea’s efforts, and Monkey was working the throttle, cutting to half power and pausing there, then revving up again, varying the speed because it might have been too long a period at constantly high revs that had started the motor oiling-up. It had been OK on the lake for hours on end, but conditions here weren’t comparable with that. Full revs again now, and for the moment smooth-sounding. Slewing back on course. Cloudsley grabbed the baler from Andy, and Tony Beale followed his example, taking over from Jake.
It was a relief for Andy to be able to use both arms now for holding on, despite having no feeling in his hands. He was sitting in swirling, icy water, keeping low, centre of gravity as low as he could make it, to reduce chances of being flung out. There’d been several times already when ejection had seemed both imminent and inevitable. It had also seemed likely that the boat would be hit by rifle—fire from the headland, and it was surely only a matter of time now before the outboard would start backfiring again and this time not recover. So that the end of this whole extraordinary episode might be six rubber-suited bodies washed up on an Argentinian beach. He recognised — without enjoyment — that such an end would be justified by the accomplishment, by much larger numbers of other lives having been spared. That phrase — consequences accepted — still applied. And in his own case, although obviously he’d do anything he could to stay alive he had to admit objectively that there’d be no huge loss involved for anyone else. He couldn’t think of anyone who’d weep for long, if at all. Probably not at all — because Lisa Saddler, who in any case hadn’t been exactly exuding affection the last time he’d seen her, wasn’t likely ever to hear anything about this. Andrew MacEwan would remain her most unpleasant memory, the rat who’d run out on her. As for Francisca — well, until a week ago, up to which time you could say she’d been the secret mainspring of his life, he’d have reckoned on some tears from her. Not too many, at no time would he have mistaken her for what might be termed a serious mourner; but some little show of grief.
In fact she wouldn’t know about it either. Wouldn’t even get the chance to laugh.
Unless she heard of it through her father? If the body was identified as his? It was a possibility… But new images succeeded that one now: Paco’s body naked and frozen in snow, his murderer’s frozen on a beach. Poetic justice: an entire family wiped out, its hirelings too… Both arms wrapped round the starboard blister, his forehead pressed against its cold, wet rubber: still here, not drowned yet, with thoughts very much like fragments of a dream, entirely visual while breaking into them now was Cloudsley yelling at Beale to let Geoff take over baling while he, Beale, got cracking with the PNG. It was like waking up, as if he’d been a long time hidden in his own imaginings. Monkey had the PNG beside him in its waterproof container, and he passed it forward now via Andy to Beale, Cloudsley shouting, ‘God’s sake try to keep it dry!’ Cloudsley had to be out of his mind too, Andy thought, to imagine any such thing was possible; he was also surprised that it could be time to start looking for the islet. Cloudsley’s voice again: ‘Sixty feet high and smothered in birdshit, Tony — should be easy to pick up!’ Rocking over — sliding down edgeways, more sea slopping in… But the submarine’s inflatable, Andy thought, that wouldn’t be easy to pick up. Another boat like this one, more inside the sea than on it, hardly visible from more than a few yards away, he guessed — except when it was thrown up on a crest — hanging there for seconds before it was sucked down again — like now…
Both boats would have to be on wave-crests simultaneously, at that. Otherwise they could be within a short distance of each other and still not know it. In the troughs, you saw nothing. You were deafened by the noise, the incredibly loud roar of it, and you were buried. You could pray, if you hadn’t run out of prayers… Climbing: the outboard driving them up a sheer incline of black ocean towards a whitish, towering, curling ridge. Hanging on tight and praying for the noise of the outboard, a harsh scream piercing the sea’s thunder, to continue without faltering… He was looking astern when the inflatable again rushed upward to its zenith and began to swing over, toppling in preparation for the next roaring schlüss. He glimpsed, miles astern now, as small as an image seen through a telescope the wrong way, faint light flickering on the headland. And from Cloudsley another bellow suddenly — ‘Sea’s getting easier, Monkey! More regular, d’you notice?’
‘Some damn thing going on…’
John Saddler had shouted it over the howl of wind and the racket of the sea, his ship’s groans and rattles as it tore and battered at her. He was in the open wing of the bridge, starboard side, binoculars at his eyes, having come out into the freezing dark for a clearer view of the lights and activity on that headland fifteen miles away. Shropshire was lying stopped — stopped in the navigational sense, her screws turning at slow speed to hold her in position stemming the weather while her stabilisers fought a losing battle to hold her still. He’d sent the Gemini away half an hour ago and half a mile nearer inshore: they’d been too close in there, though, too close to possible drifts of kelp — on which the inflatables were going to have to take their chances. David Vigne was beside him now, Jay Kingsmill also out here, all three with glasses up and braced against the ship’s violent motion while they studied the shoreline and in particular that headland.
It wasn’t comfortable, to have to sit still and wonder what was going on ashore there. Particularly when you had an idea what the answer to it might be. But there wasn’t a damn thing else to do but wait.
Well, there was, actually. But—
He shook it out of his mind. Necessarily, but unwillingly. He had to resist the temptation although it seemed to him the only alternative to leaving his ship exposed to danger: the ship, and the five hundred lives which through six long, hard weeks now it had been his primary concern to safeguard.
At least no hostile radar was illuminating them — yet. Electronic silence applied only to emissions, and the passive systems were still operative. If there’d been radar on them the EW department would have known it, and if there’d been a Guppy around passive sonar would have heard it. Theoretically the absence of radar transmissions from shore should have been reassuring, but those lights were still keeping him on edge. The lighthouse itself was unlit, but the headland had light and movement on it, shifting patterns of light indicative of work in progress. It wouldn’t take very long, he guessed, to haul an MM38 or MM40 on to a headland site, set up a portable radar — a small, short-range set would do — switch it on, find a target, press the firing button…
Damage control parties were closed up and alert to the danger. Saddler had briefed his engineer commander on that basic fear of his, and Chamberlain was now at his usual action station, HQ1, the damage control headquarters just across the gangway from the Ops Room. From there he had open lines of communication to his teams in all parts of the ship; and pumps, hoses, emergency leads all in place. You couldn’t specify action to be taken until the emergency actually arose, but at least they were alert to the fact this wasn’t any sort of routine situation, that missile attack from shore was an immediate threat. The damage control slogan displayed in the Ops Room was FLOAT — MOVE — FIGHT — the aims in order of priority. If Shropshire should be hit by an Exocet here off the mainland coast you’d have to settle for the first and second — keep her afloat, get her away… And be damn lucky if you managed that much.
The Gemini should by this time be getting close to the R/V position. Saddler had added a third volunteer to its crew, an MEM1 — marine engineering mechanic 1st class — who was said to be a genius with outboard motors. He was also a strong swimmer, which was an essential qualification. It meant there’d be nine men instead of eight to be lifted if the worst came to the worst and he had to send in the helo, but having removed that much of its sonar gear — the job had been completed in less than Padmore’s estimated three and a half hours — and with more than ample wind-speed for hovering under something like maximum load, the flight commander had agreed that he and his pilots would be able to handle it.
There were two main problems in using the Wessex: one, the SBS team were expecting to be picked up by submarine and their reaction to a helo’s appearance would be to assume it was hostile and shoot at it, and two, in this weather and total darkness, without PNG or other equipment such as a thermal imager, searching for two very small, dark-coloured rubber boats in several square miles of rough sea would make looking for needles in haystacks seem like child’s play.
The lights on the headland were making him sweat. Radar or no radar. This close to the mainland and this far from any chance of support of any kind, and with certain recent scenes still only too vivid in memory… It brought him back to the temptation which he’d been resisting and had to go on resisting. A quick and easy way to remove that source of anxiety would be to use the gun, plaster the headland with high explosive, douse the lights and break up whatever it was they were preparing. But to bombard the mainland of Argentina was unthinkable, would alienate the entire world — most of which at this stage of events was still well disposed.
Islote Negro was about two hundred yards on their right. Monkey had throttled down, to cope with a new outburst of stuttering, and with reduced power the wind had gained the upper hand and pushed them back, farther away from the little island with its peak of guano-whitened rock than they’d been ten minutes ago. It was something like half an hour since Cloudsley had made that surprising observation about improving sea conditions; Andy was sure he’d said it only for his benefit, by way of morale-building, and that it had been totally unfounded. But since then he’d kept his head up, and Cloudsley had later come out with another one, a shout to Start to the effect that this prototype inflatable had certainly proved its capabilities: even the fucking outboard—
He’d lost the end of it, in the howl of icy wind as the boat had risen into the lashing sleet.
Engine-note rising again; Monkey cautiously re-opening the throttle. Gas might soon be running low, Andy thought. They had only the one tankful, having left the jerrycan on the beach to save space and weight. And the PNG was useless, could not be kept dry. Beale had abandoned attempts to use it, now. It had been Cloudsley who’d sighted Islote Negro with his naked eyes, but how anyone could hope now to spot another inflatable, about as prominent as a floating log…
‘Light!’
A scream from Jake West. But they were submerging again; crests all around rising higher, enclosing, drowning… Andy wasn’t sure now that the word had been ‘light’: it could have been ‘right’ or ‘Christ’ or—
‘Starboard beam, Harry! Saw a flash, I’d guess the loom of a strobe, just as we—’
Words lost on the wind again. Lifting: starboard blister down, climbing on a steep slant and with the stern being pushed around as she rose; they’d be near-enough bow-on to the rock now… Then he saw it, they all did, blinding bright and flashing in three short bursts, then one long flash before it was gone again, the inflatable still up high for another few seconds but the light had vanished. Then they were blind again as they swept downward, thump and swirl of sea crashing in over the port side, the SBS men agreeing that the SSK’s Gemini was roughly a hundred yards away, midway between themselves and the rock and almost certainly flashing SOS, therefore in trouble and most likely outboard trouble, but they’d be drifting this way, downwind. Cloudsley yelled, ‘Steer straight towards them, full throttle if she’ll take it!’
‘OK!’
‘Where’s our strobe? Someone gimme the bloody…’
Lifting…
Even on a crest you wouldn’t always see them. The other boat had to be on a crest too. Every third or fourth surfacing, but sometimes two consecutively… He was used to the stomach-churning motion now. Or numbed to it. Hosegood passed the strobe light aft to Cloudsley. Andy thinking it would be this outboard giving up the ghost next. The only real hope would be if the submarine came in and picked them up.
Which presumably it would not do, or the arrangements wouldn’t have been made the way they had been: no doubt for good reasons, but—
‘Read that?’
‘K – E – L – P –’
‘Stuck in kelp there!’
He heard Cloudsley shout against the gale as they shot up again — white sea swamping in over the port blister, Beale and Hosegood baling — Cloudsley had yelled, ‘Monkey, I’ll need your fins!’ And Start was groping one-handed in deepish water, then he’d found the fins and he passed them over. For the job on the headland of course they hadn’t had any with them, and their short swim from the reef had been made without them, but Monkey and Jake had worn fins when they’d swum out from the beach, swimming alongside the boat to get it out through the surf without impinging on rock; then Monkey had slid in over the blister and got the outboard started before Jake had come in over the bow where he’d been steadying her. Cloudsley was putting the fins on now; then knotting an end of the tow-rope round his waist. Thick waist, massive body, all the clothes inside the dry-suit bulging it out, and in all that clobber swimming surely wouldn’t be too easy. Shouting something about a signal to look out for and not to let this boat get any closer to the kelp. Which was why he was taking to the water, Andy realised: splashing over, now… He’d disappeared. Hosegood was letting the nylon rope run out steadily through his hands, Andy having taken over the baling chore from him. Of course there would be kelp this side of the islet, the stuff would be growing all around it and the wind and sea would be trailing it out this way; on the weather side it would be packed in densely against the rocks. Beale was waiting with the strobe as the inflatable rose again; he began flashing fast morse, SWIMMER — and then they were down in a trough, Jake West shouting something, words indistinguishable, Beale waiting again with the light ready for the next upward rush. Then, on the crest again — just catching a flash from the other boat’s strobe — he was winking out the second word so fast that only an expert could have a hope of reading it, the word, COMING. So if they had read it the submariners would be looking out for Harry, ready to get him inboard… Monkey had his boat back on a seaward course, outboard at about half-speed. Climbing — hanging on one-armed, baling furiously, having some catching up to do, Jake working at it just as hard — climbing into bright light, the glare of the other boat’s strobe at a range of maybe sixty yards, a beacon for the swimmer they’d been told was on his way.
Cloudsley got his arms over the Gemini’s blister, lashed out with his fins and at the same time felt hands grasping his shoulders and hauling him in. The dry-suit hadn’t stayed dry, maybe because it was under such strain from the padding of gear inside it, and all that padding was now soaking wet, adding to the enormous weight being dragged into the boat. He sat up, asking ‘Kelp? Round the screw, or—’ Choking then, coughing up pints of the South Atlantic, and with a feeling he was enclosed in frozen lead; he heard the answer in a scream against the wind, ‘Screw’s gone! Hit kelp, got clear, tried her again and she raced… No bloody screw — pin sheared, see?’
He could breathe again. In the centre of the boat as it hurtled down a wave, dug its snout in and scooped in a lot more sea… ‘No spare screw, I suppose?’
They did have one. The sailor shouting answers in staccato bursts against the wind and between inrushes of ocean was an MEM. He’d brought various bits with him in his pockets, including a spare prop and boss and a pin for it, but he hadn’t wanted to lose this one as well so they’d been paddling to get clear of the kelp before he fitted it. Listening to the explanation Cloudsley had unhitched the rope from his waist and passed the end to the crewman in the bow; he hung on to the bight until he knew for certain it had been made fast. He yelled, ‘OK… Signal — one word – T – O – W!‘
‘Aye aye—’
‘How far out is your submarine?’
He’d shouted his question to the boat’s coxswain as a sea crashed and flooded aft; the man yelled back, ‘Submarine? We’re from Shropshire! Destroyer, not submarine!’ Then the strobe flared into brilliance: Cloudsley had his back to it, turning to look for the headland, see if the lights were still visible. The Gemini tilting, rushing downward stern-first and swinging fast: with no motive-power there was nothing to hold her against the wind. He could still see light on that clifftop: he groaned, ‘Oh, Jesus Christ…’ Thinking of the Exocet back in place and Shropshire lying out there, awaiting the Argies’ convenience… The boat soared up an incline of toppling wave and the strobe’s brightness broke out again, snowflakes whipping through the brilliant aura spreading round it as it flashed, T — O — W… Do that two or three times, he thought; they’ll see it at least once. Please God. They’d be waiting for it, anyway, they’d have been ready for it from the moment when the rope stopped running out… Down again, steeply and abruptly into the abyss. Saddler could have no idea what was on that headland, and he might find out the hard way, any moment; and it would be one’s own fault, for not having made a proper job of it. Shropshire, though, for God’s sake, what a risk to run for just six guys! The wind hit the Gemini’s up-raised forepart as they shot up into its full force, flung up and then that huge thrust of gale-force wind threatening to turn her over end-over-end; Cloudsley launched himself forward, sprawling beside the crewman as a counterweight just in time. Behind him as he edged back again the strobe was repeating its urgent message, T — O — W…
After a quarter-hour of effort which in the first few minutes had seemed likely to pay off, Monkey realised they weren’t going to make it. Every time he opened the throttle to anything like full power the motor threatened to choke off and he had to cut back again to such low revs that with the weight of the tow dragging on them he doubted if they could be making as much as one knot. He knew that on this coast, this close in, there was a half-knot tidal stream setting southward, a set they’d known about before they’d left England but which they’d discounted because in a flat-bottomed boat with no keel it was the wind you had to reckon with mostly, and when you could make eight or ten knots such a small drift wouldn’t count for much anyway, over a short transit. It counted now, though. If he eliminated the lateral effect of the wind by steering right into it, he’d drift back into the kelp, tow and all; and if he didn’t steer into the wind in this handicapped condition he’d be blown back towards the headland.
Beale was in the stern with him now, keeping the nylon rope clear of the motor and its screw. Monkey shouted, ‘I’ll steer into the wind while you haul in on the tow! When we’re round, get Jake on it with you, haul ’em in close — over the beam, OK?’
Beale yelled back, ‘But they’re under way!’
Monkey felt it too, in that moment. What Tony had already felt because he’d had his hands on the rope. The strain had come off it… Andy, baling, heard Beale’s voice high and thin across the wind and the roar of sound that was part of the icy oblivion surrounding him, ‘—no weight there at all!’ He wondered almost detachedly, Rope parted? All that for nothing? Working at the baling process like a machine. It was all he could do. He wasn’t even a passenger, he was cargo. Cloudsley had spoken nothing but the truth when he’d said this, the sea, was their element: a boatload of Andrew MacEwans wouldn’t have survived the first ten minutes, they’d have been swamped, the boat turned over a hundred times, the beach obscenely littered in the dawn. Beale’s voice again, Beale handling the nylon rope like an angler playing a big fish, his tone exultant as the inflatable tipped forward and plunged over a rising crest, ‘—still there!’
The outboard faltered — picked up — stammered, died…
The MEM had accepted Cloudsley’s urgings to take a chance on having got clear of the kelp. He’d leant out over the Gemini’s stern with the coxswain hanging on to his legs, and fitted the spare screw and the boss and cotter-pin by feel, with his head and shoulders intermittently under water. Now they were overhauling the SBS inflatable, guiding themselves to it by the nylon rope, the leading hand gathering it in yard by yard as they closed up. Monkey was obviously driving at half-speed or less, Cloudsley realised. And there was still a five-mile stretch of ocean to cover, which was going to take a dangerously long time, with Shropshire wallowing out there — a sitting duck waiting for the Argies to let her have it, right on their doorstep… He shouted in the coxswain’s ear, ‘There’s an Exocet missile on that headland! We fucked it up but they’ve been working on the bloody thing for hours!’ The Gemini stood on its tail, climbing a dark mountain that broke back over them in a torrent before they’d reached its summit. It was a minute before anyone could speak again or think about anything much else; then the coxswain told Cloudsley, ‘Skipper has the helo standing by. Might see the strobe, if—’
Sea sweeping over, interrupting…
‘—hold it up high, flash ’em an SOS?’
Saddler had waited too long already. Whatever was happening on that headland, it wasn’t a welcome-to-Argentina party. The threat seemed to him to have become both intense and imminent: he could feel it in his bones, his gut. The order burst out of him like something under pressure: ‘Action helo!’
Then to Holt, the Aussie OOW, ‘Stand by State Three, revolutions two-eight-two.’ He’d told Padmore in his briefing that as soon as he’d got the helo off the deck Shropshire would start moving east, to wait thirty miles offshore.
In less than one minute the Wessex was clattering up into the night, banking away towards the land. Shropshire under helm and gathering way, Saddler telling his PWO over the Command Open Line, ‘Warn Seacat port and starboard that the threat sector will now be astern.’ This hadn’t been an easy decision to take: the urge to ensure the safety of his ship was one thing, the knowledge that the inflatables and their human cargo might be well on their way out from the R/V and that the Wessex might fail to locate them was quite another. You had to balance one set of risks against another. He’d told the helo crew, ‘If I have to order you away, it’ll be in your hands from there on. Has to be.’
Padmore, in the lurching helo’s main cabin — entirely separate from the cockpit where the two pilots sat — had a gull’s-eye view of the ship turning, thrashing round, curve of broad white wake disappearing only yards under her stern in that boil of sea — his view of it receding, turning on end and withdrawing as the Wessex lifted, swung away… Landing-on wouldn’t be any problem: once Shropshire was out of range of any shore-mounted missile her flight-deck lights would be switched on when they were needed. The only tricky thing about landing-on would be the load, and that was going to be OK too, thanks to having shed some other weight. Padmore only hoped to God he’d have a load — nine live men. Finding two small boats somewhere on or near a line five miles long between the take-off point and Islote Negro was going to take some doing.
So he’d reckoned. But they’d only been in the air about four minutes when George Anstice’s voice came explosively over the intercom: ‘See what I see, Robin?’
Lights…
He’d seen them at about the same moment, and hardly dared believe in them. Fixed, blazing, right in the sea, as if the lights themselves were floating, the waves rising close to them actually throwing shadows. The one to the left went out while he was looking at it. Sam Lincoln muttered into his helmet mike, ‘Oh, shit, what’s—’ and then the strobe came on again, flashing: S — O — S… A pause, that one extinguished again while the other burnt on steadily, and the morse letters were repeated. Anstice had been angling the Wessex out to starboard but now he was turning in, upwind, the helo juddering to strong gusts as it banked and began a gradual descent. Padmore was on the point of moving from his seat — with work to do now, safety-harness to put on before he could open the cabin door — but as he turned his eye was caught by a blueish flash — from that headland, a tiny fizzing streak instantly disappearing seaward. His heart raced and he couldn’t breathe for seven, eight, nine seconds — until the explosion, vivid double flash splitting the darkness maybe three-quarters of the distance out to where the ship would be now: scorching the sea’s surface, flaring upward and then dying, leaving the scene pitch-black again. He whispered in a sort of gasp — forgetting his throat microphone — ‘Oh, lovely Seacat!’ then heard Sam Lincoln ask, ‘What say?’ George Anstice told him, ‘Something about a Seacat… We’ll take the boat with the five guys in it first, right?’ Neither of the pilots could have seen it, Padmore knew; didn’t need to have their concentration interrupted with the news now either. Anstice had begun muttering to himself, ‘OK, you guys, now keep your peckers up and hold your water, here come the Queen’s Navee…’ Murmuring gibberish to himself at such times, all of it coming over the intercom of course, was an antisocial habit about which the flight commander had remonstrated with him on previous occasions, but he didn’t now because he’d just transgressed similarly himself and also because it was all beginning to turn out rather marvellously and he knew George was simply happy — as they all were, at having found the boats so quickly, being about to lift nine lives out of the sea. Padmore was standing by to open the cabin door as soon as the helo was in position over the first boat and hovering; the lever for operating the winch was above the door, and there was no need to go down on the wire because those were all trained men, quite able to hitch themselves on. George Anstice was actually singing as he went into the hover — singing for joy, although from the dirge-like sound no one who didn’t know him could have guessed it.