Land of Fire

by Chris Ryan

  "It seems transport has arrived to take you back to Rio Grande. We shall have to terminate our little experiment, but only for the present, you understand? We shall resume the investigation in due course." He patted Concha tenderly on the cheek and turned away.

  At gunpoint we were prodded towards the truck and helped aboard. Once inside the rear we were handcuffed back-to-back in pairs, with steel cuffs this time in addition to the plastic ties already binding our wrists. Concha and I were the last to be put aboard. Her head was drooping and she was evidently in pain. Had she recognised me? Probably not I would have been just one face among her English captors. And I'd changed too.

  As soon as we'd climbed aboard Major Oliveras called a halt. Pointing at Concha and me, he rapped out an order and the guards pulled us out again. We were put into the back of Oliveras' personal Jeep, handcuffed together like the others. Evidently the major had not finished with us yet.

  The other truck set off, accompanied by a marine escort in a second vehicle. Oliveras had a few words with his junior officers, slapping their backs in high good humour. Capturing us was apparently a real coup for him. After a few minutes he climbed into the front seat beside the driver. Vamos," he said, then leaned over into the back and grinned at us. In his hand he held a .45 automatic. "Just in case," he said, his teeth gleaming.

  We bumped along the track till we reached the road and turned south. This was the road we had travelled on last night with Seb. I struggled to remain upright while supporting Concha as the vehicle lurched across the potholes.

  Oliveras was chatting away in Spanish telling Concha, I imagined, of the treats he had in store for her. The burn by her left eye was deep into the flesh and looked horribly painful.

  I was still trying to figure out her part in all this. Julian and her friends had implied that they were a group opposed to the military. It occurred to me that Seb might know. The overriding urgency at the moment was somehow to get a message through to him, warn him of the Argentine plan, but I couldn't think how that was going to be possible. We hadn't even been interrogated yet, and I couldn't see Major Oliveras permitting us any kind of consular access until after the attack on the Falklands had gone ahead.

  We jolted along for some minutes. It had come on to rain again. I was sitting behind the driver where Oliveras could cover me with the gun. The other truck had a good start and was lost in a cloud of dust. In the side mirror I could glimpse the road behind the rest of the task force had not yet begun to pull out. We had the road to ourselves.

  Looking ahead I could see that the land fell away to the left. A bridge was coming up on a bend; the road crossed a fair-sized river that ran in a steep ravine between thick stands of pine trees. Oliveras was telling the driver to hurry up evidently he was impatient to get back to work but the road approaching the bridge was badly worn. We were travelling at around fifty-five kilometres per hour.

  It was now or never. I had to act before the driver took his boot off the accelerator to stand on the brake. I brought my knees up sharply to my chest and rammed the soles of my boots into the back of his seat with every bit of strength I had. The seat support snapped and the back part smashed forward, pinning the driver against the wheel. He could only scream as the Jeep crashed through the safety railing at the foot of the bridge and pitched over the edge into the ravine.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The Jeep was skidding down the steep slope in virtual free-fall. The rear end was toppling outward; at any moment it would crash over on to its back. None of us was wearing a seatbelt and we were being hurled about inside the cab, bouncing off the seats and against the roof. Major Oliveras was clinging on to the dashboard and trying at the same time to get a shot off at me with his pistol. I was hampered by being handcuffed to Concha who had fallen forward on her face. I managed to free my left leg and launched a kick which by luck caught Oliveras under the chin, knocking his head back against the door pillar.

  From then on everything became a blur. The drop was much worse than I'd guessed, and the Jeep pitched over on to its near side. Stones and gravel showered inside as the windows shattered. I fell into the rear foot-well, dragging Concha down on top of me. The Jeep rolled again, tumbling over on to its roof. We hit a large rock, bounced and hit the ground again with a bone-jarring crash. The driver was still screaming, or maybe it was Oliveras this time. The roof buckled and the interior filled with sand and dust so we could hardly breathe. I prayed it wasn't smoke. All we needed was a ruptured fuel tank spraying vaporised gasoline across a hot engine and we would end up in a fireball.

  Dimly through the flying dust I was aware that one of the doors had been torn off. We seemed to be sliding backwards down a steep drop on one side again now, and I could feel the roof pressing down on us. There was another spine-breaking crash as we hit another rock and slewed round to roll again. The world was spinning; there was mud in my mouth and on my clothes. I could hear Concha gasping as the bumps knocked the breath out of her body. I was trying to hold us both wedged in between the seats. In car accidents it is the ones who are thrown clear who die.

  The car seemed to roll over and over; I didn't think we could endure much more of it. Surely we must have reached the bottom of the ravine by now? Then I remembered the river Christ, suppose we roll into mid-stream and sink? We'd never manage to get out with the cuffs on and the roof squashed in.

  I didn't know where Oliveras and the driver were, but I couldn't hear them screaming any more.

  And then, suddenly, it all stopped. The jarring and crashing ceased, and in its place there was a blessed stillness. My ears were still ringing but we were no longer being tumbled about and hammered from all sides. The interior of the Jeep was so full of dust that I couldn't see anything at all, just greyness in front of my eyes like smoke. The stuff caught in my throat, making me choke as I struggled to right myself.

  The Jeep was lying right side up, tilting over to the near side, and my head was facing downward. I was squashed hard down between the seats, which had collapsed on to us, and Concha seemed to be lying inert across me. I tested my limbs, and as far as I could tell nothing was broken, though my head was splitting where I had banged it against something. It seemed a miracle I could still be alive.

  I called out to Concha and got a moan back. Evidently she was more or less conscious. Carefully I started to heave myself free, pushing up with my elbows till I was crouching on my knees. She was half lying on the back seat with the roof pressing down on her. I bent my legs up and kicked at the door above me. To my relief it swung open with a scraping sound.

  "Concha!" I called. "Can you hear me? We have to get out of here."

  I got another groan in answer but I felt her stir. At least she was responding. "Are you hurt?" I called.

  There was silence for a moment, then she spoke in a weak voice, choking on the dust. "I don't think so."

  That at any rate was a miracle and I felt encouraged. "We're going to have to get out of here. The Jeep could catch fire. The door is open see if you can't wriggle your legs out."

  I felt her squirm on top of me, trying to get clear. "I think my legs are in the door," she said eventually, sounding a little stronger.

  My hands were still handcuffed behind my back to hers. The only way I could move was by twisting my shoulders, working them against the seats, and kicking with my legs. After considerable effort I managed to get my knees out. That gave me more of a grip. I was able to kneel down outside and, by lifting Concha with my arms, work her out through the door.

  She subsided into a sitting position behind me. "We need to stand up," I told her. "Push against me with your back." I had practised this on escape-and-evasion exercises, but she had never done it before and it was difficult for her. Nonetheless, somehow we tottered to our feet.

  The Jeep had ended up at the bottom of the ravine, under the bridge and just a few metres from the bank of the river. We had come nearer to falling in and drowning than I liked to think. The front of the car was badly
smashed in and the driver appeared to be dead. The door on the other side had been torn off, and there was no sign of Oliveras.

  "Come over this way," I said to Concha. There was a piece of torn metal sticking out from the crumpled side of the Jeep. Rain was still falling steadily but we hardly noticed. By squeezing ourselves alongside and manoeuvring our locked hands, I got myself into a position where I could saw at the plasticuffs on my wrists. The metal was jagged and cut into my skin, but it was razor sharp and in a couple of minutes I had one hand free. The other was still shackled to Concha.

  "Now your turn," I told her. This was easier because I could use my free hand to help. I hardly cut her at all, and soon we each had a hand free.

  She looked at the metal cuff that still joined our two wrists. "What about these?"

  I looked around inside the wrecked Jeep. I had hoped to find an axe or saw but I could see no tools that might hack through a steel chain.

  "Come on," I told her, dragging her up the slope.

  "Where are we going?"

  "To find Major Oliveras. Now hurry." It was just possible that Oliveras might have a key on him. I also had hopes of finding his pistol. With a weapon we might hold up a car and get a ride out of the country. The border was only an hour away.

  We scrambled up the face of the ravine, clawing at the loose shale with our hands. We found Oliveras twenty-five metres up. He was not a pretty sight. He had been flung out of the Jeep and fallen a long way. His neck was broken, and I wondered if I had done that when I kicked him. If so, no regrets. I checked his pockets swiftly. There was the lighter, which I took, but no pistol it must have fallen out somewhere and no key to the handcuffs.

  "We need to get out of here. That convoy will be coming across the bridge."

  "I need a drink," she said.

  "Later," I told her. "Unless you want to face your interrogators again."

  Pulling her after me, I set off westwards along the riverbank. If we could reach the fir trees we would at least be out of sight.

  The wreck had rolled in under the bridge; it might not be seen by following vehicles, in which case it was possible that Oliveras' disappearance might escape notice for some little while. Then they would have to search the road to find the Jeep. All that might take hours if we were lucky.

  We had only gone a few paces when Concha let out a cry and pointed. She had spotted Oliveras' pistol lying in the dirt. This was a piece of luck. I stuffed it in my waistband and immediately felt better. At least now we had a weapon.

  After ten minutes of hard scrambling we were inside the belt of trees. They were tall and gloomy, great timbers stretching to the sky, covering scant undergrowth. Our feet crunched on a carpet of pine cones and broken twigs. Occasionally we had to clamber over rows of trunks felled by the wind. There was no animal life, and we moved in silence broken only by the noise of our own footfalls and the sighing of the branches overhead.

  We had been walking silently for around twenty minutes when we came to a stream running down towards the river, and stopped to drink and wash the dirt from our faces. It was icy cold but it washed the dust from our throats. I wiped some over my face and head and felt better.

  I was trying to formulate a plan. In case of just this sort of emergency we had agreed with Seb a special rendezvous point, the RV, by the ruins of an old copper mine close to the railroad, about two kilometres north-east of the town. Anyone becoming lost or separated during the mission was supposed to make for this RV and wait there. Seb would check the place every day between six and seven pm.

  Concha guessed I was deciding what to do. "I have friends still in the area," she suggested. "They would help us perhaps."

  I thought about it and shook my head I didn't want to trust anyone I didn't know. If we could only reach the RV we would find food there and perhaps shelter. Assuming Seb was still able to move around freely, I was sure he would keep the rendezvous.

  It was around ten o'clock in the morning there were at least six hours to go till dusk. The army would undoubtedly be out searching for us before long, and they had the advantages of helicopters and vehicles at the first sighting a stick of airborne commandos would be dropped in to round us up. At all costs, therefore, we had to stay out of sight. If I had been on my own I would have struck out for the border and trusted to my survival training to get me through, but shackled to this woman that was impossible.

  I wasn't sure how far I could trust her anyway. However badly the marines had treated her, she plainly had no great love for the British. If she knew I was trying to frustrate an invasion of the Falklands she might try to turn me in along with herself.

  Again I thought about running for the border. That was what the Argies would expect me to do, so it would be better to take the opposite direction back south, across the river and towards the town. If I could keep the rendezvous with Seb he should be able to get a message out to the islands warning them of the invasion plan.

  I dragged Concha down the hill, back towards the river. We needed to find a way across. I searched along the bank until we came to a narrow bend, where I weighed the situation up. The river was about ten metres wide, fast flowing but not too deep. We could wade it, I decided.

  "Collect sticks," I told her. "Hurry."

  "Sticks? What for? Are you going to make a fire?"

  "No, a raft," I said. "We're going to swim the river."

  She gaped at me, then her gaze swung back to the water, racing between the high banks. "You are crazy. No one could get across there. We will drown."

  "Not with me along you won't, girlie."

  She glared at me, white with anger. "I am not your girlie," she said. "And I tell you we will drown."

  Ignoring her, I went about gathering a bundle of dry wood and lashing the pieces together as best I could with bits of ivy and bark. When I judged I had enough, I marched Concha down to the bank. I sat her down, undid my boots and started peeling off my trousers. She stared at me, bug-eyed.

  "Get your kit off," I told her.

  "What?"

  "Get undressed. We'll wrap up our clothes tight to keep the water out and put them on top of the raft."

  A look of horror came over her face. "Take off my clothes? You are not serious!"

  The water looked very cold and dangerous; I didn't blame her for being scared, but I hadn't time to argue. "Hurry," I told her. "Otherwise you won't have anything dry to put on when you reach the other side and you'll catch pneumonia."

  "And if I refuse?" she said stiffly.

  "If you refuse, I put you on the raft and carry you over. You'll get twice as wet and a lot madder but like it or not you are going across. We don't have time to fuck about."

  She stared at me for a long moment. She must have seen I was deadly serious because finally she took a deep breath and sat down to unbuckle her boots. "This is how I am going to die -naked, drowned by a crude idiot of an English," she said bitterly. I liked the crude bit. It showed that I was getting to her.

  It was impossible to undress completely linked together with handcuffs. The best we could do was to strip off our bottom halves and tug our jackets, shirts and underclothes down on to our shackled arms.

  Naked, she was no longer the skinny teenager of the war years, but her figure had a litheness that would have taken my breath away if I hadn't been too intent on what we were doing. I shooed the image out of my head and concentrated on the task in hand.

  I told her to put her boots back on to protect her feet from the stones in the river. I pulled my own kit off, and we wrapped the garments as well as we could, given that we couldn't get them over the handcuffs. Then we put everything on top of the raft.

  "Just walk into the water steadily," I told her. "Don't fight the current. It will carry us across further down. If you get out of your depth, kick with your legs. Keep your head, hold on to me and I'll get us across."

  She glanced down ruefully at the handcuffs linking us. "I have no choice," she said through chattering teeth.


  Side by side we walked out into the river. It was bad, much worse than I had thought. Well before we reached the middle of the channel the water was up to my neck. It was freezing too I felt as if I had stepped into a solid block of ice and the cramp in my chest was terrifying. I remembered the time twenty years before when Andy had made us swim a river in the middle of the night. That had been rougher, but I had been part of a team then.

  Concha was out of her depth already, paddling with her feet like a dog. The current was sweeping us along it in midstream, and I prayed a helicopter wasn't going to choose this moment to over-fly us. The other bank still seemed as far away as ever.

  My feet were only just touching the bottom; this must have been the deepest part of the channel. Waves were swirling down on us, and I did my best to shield Concha with my body from the worst of them.

  Just when I was beginning to think we would never make it, the riverbed began to shelve again we were nearing the far side. "Only a little further," I gasped.

  But just then something huge and heavy struck me in the back. I lost my footing and the water closed over my head. Instinctively I opened my mouth to gasp for breath and felt icy water gushing into my throat. I fought to reach the surface with my free hand, but somehow I couldn't find it.

  I could feel the strength ebbing from me. Darkness closed in on me from all sides. There was no pain, just a sensation of cold and numbness.

  The next thing I knew, I was on my back and vomiting, and the vomit was gushing over my face and across my chest. I was lying in the mud on the shoreline, and the woman Concha was kneeling on top of me, pumping my chest. Her body was blue with cold, and we were still handcuffed together, along with half our clothes.

  "What the fuck happened?" I said weakly.

  "A piece of wood, a log. It hit you on the back and you went under." Her breath was coming in gasps. She had been giving me mouth-to-mouth. For a woman of her size, hauling me out of the water must have taken some doing. She climbed off me and I hauled myself on to my knees. "Are you OK now?" she asked.