Land of Fire Part 7

The Starstreak is a hyper-velocity missile carrying three dart-like projectiles specifically designed to combat high-performance, low-flying aircraft and helicopters. Each dart has a chemical and kinetic energy penetrating sh.e.l.l, and the missile has a single-shot-to-kill probability in excess of 95 per cent.

We were like kids in a toyshop, all picking out the bits of kit we fancied. Josh turned up a Spygla.s.s thermal imaging sight. It had a nifty laser rangefmder which would be useful for plotting the layout of the base from a hide.

"f.u.c.king h.e.l.l, look at this!" n.o.bby Clark was chuckling over a 51mm light mortar, a platoon-level indirect-fire weapon that could be carried and fired by one man and could lob a 1kg bomb almost a kilo metre It had a useful short-range insert that enabled it to be used in close-quarter battle situations with accuracy. "With a couple of these b.u.g.g.e.rs we could take out every b.a.s.t.a.r.d bomber on the base if it comes to a war."

"Yeah well let's hope it doesn't," I said.

The QMS stood by, looking amazed as we fetched out brand new flak jackets, medical packs, wire cutters and third-generation night sights costing 5000 a pop. We also needed survival suits for the boat ride. We scribbled them all down on the requisition sheet and Jock signed it happily.

In the afternoon I took the team on a run to blow the cobwebs away. Nothing too punis.h.i.+ng, just a twelve-mile trot up the hills and back to get the blood circulating. There was no point anyone breaking an ankle at this stage. Afterwards I had a shower and was catching a few minutes' kip in preparation for a reunion with Jenny in the bar later, when there came a tap at the door. It was Jock. Juan was with him. The looks on their faces told me something was wrong.

I let them inside and Juan sat heavily on the bed. All the bounce was gone out of him. Wordlessly Jock handed me another signal flimsy. It was short and to the point. Attached Master Sergeant (US), Juan Dimitrikov was ordered to return to the UK by first available transport. His replacement was flying out tonight.

"The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!" I exclaimed furiously. "They can't do this to us. Juan is all trained up. It'll hammer the troop's morale!"

"Easy, Mark, "Jock said.

But I -wouldn't give up. "It's crazy. Juan is a Spanish speaker. He can pa.s.s for an Argentine. It makes no sense at all."

"Josh has Spanish too."

"Josh can get by, but no one would take him for a South American. Juan here is f.u.c.king bilingual."

Jock didn't answer. He felt the same way, I knew, but the decision had been made back in England. We could say all we liked and it wouldn't do any good. That's what was making me so mad.

"You can't blame them," Jock said when I had calmed down. "This operation is near enough the edge as it is. If we get taken and it comes out there's an American involved, the s.h.i.+t will really fly."

"I could exchange IDs with one of your squad dies Juan suggested hopefully. "Then no one would know."

But we were p.i.s.sing in the wind and he knew it. Jock tried to soften the blow. "There's no one in the Regiment we'd rather take with us than you, Juan. I want you to know that. You'll be a real loss to the team."

Juan screwed up his face. He was an emotional guy. More than any of us he had been looking forward to taking part in a piece of real action after all the training. It was true what Jock had said Juan was hugely popular in the Regiment. He had taken to the training like a natural; no test was too tough for him. He was a crack shot and skilled with weapons of all kinds, particularly missiles, and on this mission his language skills would have been vital. We would be very hard put indeed to replace him.

"To h.e.l.l with it," Juan said resignedly. "Let's go out and get p.i.s.sed."

We went back to the mess, where Jenny and a friend were waiting at the bar. We teamed the friend up with Juan, and paired off.

Over beers I told Jenny that this was my last mission with the Regiment. In September I would be leaving the army and going back to civvy street.

"What will you do then?" she asked.

"On the outside? G.o.d knows go into the security business, I suppose. Bodyguarding and the like. It's well paid."

"I want to get out too," she said. She meant away from the Falklands she was ticking off the days till she could return to UK. "A whole f.u.c.king year," she said. "Another whole year of my youth spent down here on the a.r.s.e-end of the world." We were both smiling.

She wanted a life, any life, and I was looking to start afresh. Was it just coincidence that had placed us together? It all seemed so natural. I imagined settling down with Jenny in a farmhouse in life. Maybe civilian life wouldn't be so bad.

I woke in my room to a thunderous noise. Someone was banging on the door of my cubicle. A familiar voice: "Mark, you sheep-s.h.a.gging b.a.s.t.a.r.d! Drop your c.o.c.k and grab your kit, we're sailing at eight hundred. a.s.semble out the front in thirty minutes."

I leapt out of bed and unlocked the door. In the pa.s.sage stood Doug Hatton, veteran of the Rio Grande trek twenty years before. He was a troop sergeant now.

"Christ, where'd you spring from?" I said, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. Last I'd heard, he was in Norway.

His eyes lit up lecherously as he looked past me to Jenny's form under the sheets. "How's about you and me have a quickie while he takes a shower, love?"

"f.u.c.k off, Doug," I snapped. "What are you doing here?"

He grinned. He knew I never liked him. "Flew in last night. Replacement for the Yank. Ain't you glad to see me?"

I slammed the door in his face. "Give her this one from me, mate!" he yelled back and hooted. f.u.c.k, I thought. This was all I needed. It was bad enough losing a bloke like Juan. Having him replaced by a nutter like Doug made me want to bang my head against the wall.

I turned back to look at Jenny. She was pulling on her T-s.h.i.+rt.

"Last night," I said, 'you knew we were leaving today."

She put a finger to my mouth. "There was a signal yesterday evening putting Superb on standby. Confirmation must have just come through."

I was moving about the room mechanically. She didn't ask when she would see me again. She knew the score. She slipped on her knickers and b.u.t.toned up her skirt. With a deft movement of the fingers she made a ponytail and pushed it through an elastic band.

She was almost ready to go. A low-maintenance woman. I liked that.

We went to the door together. "I know a little," she said, 'about where you're going. Take care of yourself. Some of us might miss you if you didn't come back." Her lips tightened.

"This is peacetime," I reminded her. "I'll be back."

"For you it's never peace, is it?"

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

HMS Superb's surface route followed the usual track taken by other naval vessels leaving Port Stanley. After exiting the port, she steered north-east on the surface as though clearing the islands for Ascension. To cover our departure, two of the garrison's four Tornado fighters flew a sortie, making sure no Argentine reconnaissance aircraft were in the vicinity.

Air movements around the islands were monitored by radar sites on mountains ringing Stanley. From these, operators could watch planes taking off from Rio Grande, 300 miles away on Tierra del Fuego, and from other bases along the coast. As the two Tornados became airborne they reported in to Mount Kent and turned west to check if any fis.h.i.+ng craft or other small vessels were in the vicinity.

It was a grey and gusty day with white caps riding up from the south. Modern submarines, even ones as big as Superb, do not handle well on the surface, and the rolling motion after we left sheltered water was unpleasant.

The planes were still flying protective cover overhead, watched by the radars. Jock and I went on to the bridge to play at sea dogs with the skipper in the cold and spray. n.o.bby and Josh were aft in the ops room where the radio operators were listening in to the pilots' commentary. Doug was getting in a kip after his long flight last night, and Kiwi was stripping down the GPMG. We had been allocated a secure cabin for our kit on the upper deck, and we pretty much had the freedom of the s.h.i.+p with the exception of the code room.

One of the operators turned to the officer of the watch. "Sir, I can't make it out. I think one of the guys is in some kind of trouble."

They patched the radio link through to the bridge and we listened to the transmissions. The two pilots were talking between themselves, breaking off occasionally to speak to the controller at Mount Pleasant. It wasn't easy to hear what was going on because the transmissions were fragmented, but the concern in the voice of one of the fliers was apparent.

"He reckons his mate's been taken sick, I think, sir," the operator said.

We heard Mount Pleasant asking if the patrol was returning to base. "Affirmative," came the response from the other pilot, the one who was OK. "Turning two-four-zero inbound at one-five thousand." Then we heard him say something to the one in trouble that I couldn't quite catch but sounded like, "Follow me. I'll see you home."

There were further exchanges between the planes and Mount Pleasant and between the pilots. The planes had evidently come round on to a new course and were returning to base. From what the pilot in the lead plane was saying it seemed his partner had been taken ill suddenly. Both planes descended to 10,000 feet about twenty miles out, and we heard them confirm they were descending into their approach pattern.

The lead pilot was encouraging his pal to hang in there. "Just another few minutes, Paddy, and you'll be OK."

"What's the matter with him, do you think?" Jock whispered.

I shook my head. It sounded serious, but it couldn't be a heart attack, surely. These guys were young and fit.

Then we listened to the air-sea rescue crew becoming airborne, and minutes later heard them clatter overhead on their way to take up station. Mount Pleasant reported the base on full emergency station with fire tenders and ambulances standing by and a doctor in readiness.

Then another report came in that was just as disturbing. In the control room of one of the radar stations on the hills, an operator at one of the screens had suddenly clutched at his stomach, doubling up in convulsions. As his colleagues had cl.u.s.tered round, he'd pushed his chair back and scrambled to his feet, chest heaving, and vomited explosively across the floor Out on the submarine's sail, we had visual sighting of the returning planes descending from the south-west. One of them was wobbling badly, weaving around the sky as if the pilot was having trouble holding it steady.

Our radio operator reported hearing gagging sounds from the sick pilot, as if he were choking or having difficulty breathing.

Mount Pleasant control came on speaking urgently to the stricken plane, warning the pilot that he was dipping below his safe angle of descent.

Abruptly the airwaves filled with transmission noise. Mount Kent, Mount Pleasant and the other pilot were all talking at once. The radar screens at both facilities had lost the second plane's trace. The healthy pilot was screaming to his buddy, "Pull out! Pull out, for G.o.d's sake!" From where we were we could no longer see the planes through the hale. I heard someone below shout up, "He's going down!" The sound of aircraft engines was increasingly loud the dreadful noise of a plane diving, a long sickening wail that ended suddenly.

The silence told us all we needed to know. Moments later came the shocked voice of the first pilot: "Alpha two-zero flown into the sea."

We altered course towards the scene of the crash, but we were too far away to be of any help.

The Sea Kings were on the scene within half a minute. The plane had broken up on impact and there was very little wreckage. If there was an attempt to eject it had been too late.

"Poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Jock said. We all felt sickened. The guy had gone out to fly us cover, and now he was dead. It was an ominous start to the mission.

In sombre mood, the captain ordered the tanks filled and we slid down to periscope depth. A short while later we reached deep water and descended to 100 metres cruise depth as we swung on to our new course towards Tierra del Fuego.

Steaming at twenty-plus knots, it would take us around sixteen hours to reach our drop-off point. After two hours elapsed, the skipper streamed an aerial and took a radio message confirming that salmonella had struck at the airbase. A second pilot had reported symptoms, and all flying was now prohibited. Medical facilities were on full alert and the hospital was being cleared to receive casualties.

The bug seemed to have struck at the airbase first, and by midday there was hardly a person left unaffected. The staff at the hospital were run off their feet. The infection was extremely virulent, inducing stomach cramps and projectile vomiting. At one point there were over fifty patients on intravenous drips. Standard antibiotics seemed to bring limited relief, and further supplies were being rushed over from England. The garrison commander put in a request for replacement pilots and reinforcements, which was denied on the grounds that there was no point flying in replacements until the source of the infection had been traced, though medical help was promised.

One problem was the huge distances involved. The Falklands are over 8000 miles from the British Isles. A radio blackout on the epidemic was being enforced until such time as it was brought under control. Whitehall did not want it known in Buenos Aires that the islands were virtually defenceless all of a sudden. So it was necessary that all a.s.sistance be routed via Ascension Island in the South Atlantic instead of by the civilian route through Montevideo or Rio de Janeiro. This involved fifteen-hour flights supported by half a dozen tanker aircraft, an amazingly complex procedure even in normal circ.u.mstances. With Mount Pleasant's own tankers grounded for fear of another accident, a mercy flight of doctors, nursing staff and more potent drugs would take at least twenty-four hours to set up.

Food poisoning aboard a submarine is every naval officer's nightmare. There were the inevitable jokes about the filthy habits and hygiene standards of the Falkland Islanders, but we were all b.l.o.o.d.y glad that the sub's food had come out from England.

By noon we learned that the bug had spread to the army garrison as well. I thought of my poor Jenny with her head stuck down a lavatory bowl.

Shortly after midday there came a knock on the door of the cabin we had been allocated aft of the ops room on the main deck. Kiwi opened up and the s.h.i.+p's medical officer entered with an orderly bearing paper cups and a water container.

"What's this?" Jock demanded.

"Captain's orders," the MO told him. "All personnel to receive broad-spectrum antibiotics as a precaution against salmonella poisoning though the amount you people have probably been drinking no bugs would stand a chance in your stomachs." He started to pa.s.s out packets of b.l.o.o.d.y great capsules. "Take two now and two four times a day for the next six days."

"f.u.c.king h.e.l.l," n.o.bby said, looking at them. "These aren't for humans!"

"Get 'em down, you great t.w.a.t," I told him. "I'm not sharing a hide with you c.r.a.pping yourself all night."

A little later the sub's captain sent for Jock and made it clear that if salmonella struck aboard he would abort the mission immediately. He was not risking his s.h.i.+p insh.o.r.e with a crew down with sickness.

Because there are just sixteen nuclear subs to command, an RN submarine commander is a very rare beast indeed. No other western nation is more exacting in its selection process for these officers. This results in extremely determined and aggressive skippers, willing to take risks when necessary. The question today a.s.suming his crew remained fit was just how close in he was prepared to take us.

In part the answer would depend on the weather. The forecast for the next twenty-four hours indicated heavy seas and force-seven gales. High seas would make it harder to pick up a sub's conning tower on radar and hamper any sonar listening devices. Nuclear submarines are not silent machines; the pumps that circulate coolant around the reactor core give out a steady sound recognisable to a trained operator on another sub. In shallow water too, cavitation noise from the screw becomes a problem. Heavy waves would blanket these factors to some extent but they would also greatly complicate the process of launching the Gemini boats.

The fifty-metre-depth line ran approximately ten miles out from the sh.o.r.e. Fifty metres was the absolute minimum as far as Superb was concerned, so ten miles was as close in as we could go. The plan was for us to loiter out beyond the 200-metre line till dusk, then make a high-speed run in, float off the boats at around midnight, and dash out again at thirty knots to reach deep water by daylight.

The truth was that this was a mission ideally suited to a small diesel-powered boat, drawing much less water, that could slip in close to the coast using her battery-powered electric motors and remain almost undetectable. The same submersible could lie offsh.o.r.e until our mission was completed, then slide in again to take us off. But due to cutbacks in the defence budget, the Royal Navy had done away with its fleet of conventional boats, leaving it dependent on big noisy nukes.

The Argentine navy was known to possess two ultra-quiet German diesel submarines. If one of these came after Superb in insh.o.r.e waters it would be at a considerable advantage. It would be able to hear the big s.h.i.+p coming and lurk invisibly in the shallows, while manoeuvring silently into a firing position. The first we would probably know would be the alarm cry, "Torpedo in the water!" And a torpedo fired by a diesel electric was every bit as deadly as one fired by a nuke.

No doubt there were plenty in the Argentine navy who still carried a grudge against the British for the sinking of the cruiser Belgmno during the Falklands campaign, and no doubt either that some of them would leap at the opportunity to nail a Royal Navy submarine close insh.o.r.e.

So all day we loitered at around a hundred metres depth, streaming a ma.s.sive array sonar from our stern, alert for any indication of hostile wars.h.i.+ps. Our listening devices could pick up moving vessels a hundred miles off. Mostly it was fis.h.i.+ng boats and insh.o.r.e traffic, occasionally bigger s.h.i.+ps heading up for Drake Pa.s.sage into the Pacific.

We pa.s.sed our time in the cabin, organising our kit and making it watertight. Nuclear subs are huge, but they cram a lot in. The pa.s.sageway floors were stacked with crates of tinned food, so we had to watch our heads wherever we went. Our cabin was small for six men and all their equipment, and the crew got used to stepping over some trooper lying out on the deck checking the sights of a GPMG, or seeing us casually handling missiles capable of blowing a hole in the hull.

The day pa.s.sed slowly underwater. Some of the guys s.n.a.t.c.hed a bit of kip while they could. Jock and I spent a lot of time studying charts and maps. The plan was that on going ash.o.r.e we would meet up with a guide, aUK national attached to one of the oil companies prospecting in the region. He would take us to a safe lying-up point. A lot was going to depend on his reliability.

Meantime, Doug had woken up and was back to his old trick of needling other members of the team. First he had a go at me about Jenny.

"So what was she like, Mark? Gagging for it, was she?"

It made me mad to listen to him harping on about Jenny like she was some scrubber, but I'd learned that it made his day if he got a response, so I held my tongue.

Then he tried it on with Kiwi. "Reckon Stanley must be like home to you. All them farmers s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g their frigging sisters and mothers. Just like back in New Zealand, eh?"

But Kiwi just laughed amiably. "Yep," he said, 'that's farmers." Doug left it at that. Maybe he knew that Kiwi might thump him one.

So it was Josh's turn.

I guess he thought that because he was a new boy, Josh was fair game. As troop sergeant, Doug had authority over him that he proceeded to use mercilessly. He kept inventing little tasks for him. "Fetch me out the night sight, I want to check the batteries," he'd say. Josh would jump up and dig out the night sight and bring it over. "No, I didn't mean that, I meant the Spygla.s.s." So Josh would go back to the mound of equipment and fetch that out. Then Doug would want something else. Or he would send Josh down to the ops room to synchronise his watch. This went on and on through the afternoon.

Like a lot of younger guys fresh out of training, Josh had all his kit together, everything in its right pouch. I remembered being like that, checking my kit over and over again when we'd flown out to the last mission.

Josh's face fell when casualties were mentioned. "So where does the rescue come from if we're compromised?" he asked at one point.

"There isn't going to be any rescue, you p.r.i.c.k," Doug jeered. "If we're busted we fight our way out on foot. Same as we did last time, eh, Mark?"

"That's about the size of it," I acknowledged. "Well, if you guys can handle it, I guess I can," Josh said.

"The f.u.c.k you can! When we were slogging it across the pampas you hadn't even made it to primary school. College boys like you don't know they're born. You only pa.s.sed selection because they needed to get the f.u.c.king numbers up. I know that 'cause your instructor asked me to keep an eye on you."

"Jesus, Doug, when are you going to give it a rest?" n.o.bby said wearily.

But Doug wouldn't give up. The numbers game by which SAS selection standards were being lowered was his pet hate. He went on needling Josh for his perceived lack of soldiering skills. And when he got bored of that, he started to get personal. "You got a sister, ain't you? What's her name then?"

"My sister's called Judy."