Land of Fire

by Chris Ryan

  "Yeah, I'll be fine," I told her, even though I felt weak and ill. My back was sore too, I was freezing cold and my heart was beating ragged. But I was coming out of it.

  "What happened to our kit?" I asked.

  "Kit?"

  "The raft? Did we lose it all in the river?"

  "Oh no, when you fell under the water I kept hold and the current pushed us in to the shore."

  I stood up and saw the raft with our trousers and stuff still on it, bobbing among the flotsam at the edge of the water. A keen wind was blowing and Concha was shivering. "Shake the water off yourself and jump around," I told her. "It'll warm you up."

  I reached for the raft and pulled it ashore. I was weak, but I had survived.

  Concha was still standing shivering. I slapped her on the bottom to get her moving.

  "Cabronl Don't you dare hit me!" she snarled, lashing out and catching me on the cheek with a bony fist.

  At least I'd got her leaping about.

  "Ahh!" she cried as the circulation began to return to her limbs. I told her the pain was a good sign. It meant she hadn't got frostbite. She said something savage in Spanish. "I was calling on God to strike you dead," she answered when I asked what it was.

  "Get dressed," I said. "We've a lot of ground to cover and you can't do it naked. And if you want to take a piss, now's the time because we're not going to be stopping for a while."

  "Hijo de puta! I am not one of your stupid soldiers," she said. "Stop giving me orders."

  Before I could think of a response we heard shouts from the woods on the other side of the river.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  I grabbed our clothes and pulled Concha towards the trees. Fifty metres in we found a hollow in the ground and flung ourselves down, out of sight. We dragged our clothes back on, yanking ill temperedly at one another as we struggled to button ourselves up.

  The enemy seemed to have got on to our trail even more quickly than I had feared. Maybe someone from the main convoy had noticed the gap in the railings where the Jeep went over.

  I peered between the trunks of trees, but couldn't make out any figures on the far bank. It looked as if the pursuit had moved away to the north, the direction they would expect us to take.

  Taking Concha by the arm, I hustled her up the slope to the top of the ravine.

  Then we ran on, stumbling over tree roots and dead branches, the handcuffs biting into our wrists, till we came to the edge of the wooded area where we paused to get our breath back.

  My body was warming up again after the river, but I was feeling deadbeat. I'd had no sleep for twenty-four hours and little food apart from a few chocolate bars wolfed down on the march. Concha looked in bad shape too. She leaned her back against a tree and closed her eyes.

  It wasn't safe to remain this close to the crash.

  Sooner or later someone might take it into their heads to search this side of the river. But attempting to move across country would expose us to the danger of being spotted from the air. Already I could hear the thud of helicopter blades in the distance.

  I studied the landscape beyond the wood rolling pampas, tall grass and patches of scrub, with here and there a few isolated stands of crooked trees. The wind sighed in the long grass and made the stalks rattle. In the distance was what looked to be a fair-sized lake. Overhead the sky was darkening.

  "There is a storm coming." Concha had opened her eyes again.

  "Can you be sure?"

  She jerked her chin at the sky. "You live down here, you recognise the signs. The clouds are full of snow."

  That was good news if it was true. A blizzard would give us cover to move and keep the searchers off our backs.

  "We'll wait here till the snow begins," I decided. "Then move out. So long as it's falling it'll cover our tracks."

  She eyed me suspiciously. "Where are we making for?"

  I hesitated I couldn't afford to give away too many details of my plan, such as it was. "If you fall in with enemy civilians," our escape-and-evasion instructor had emphasised, 'it's vital you establish immediate control." I had engineered our escape from the Jeep; I had swum us across the river it was necessary for me to demonstrate continuing leadership if I was to retain her allegiance. At the same time she knew the area far better than I did, and her help would be invaluable. That she was still talking about 'we' in this context was significant.

  "We need to put ground between us and any pursuit," I told her. "The further we move out, the wider the search area becomes and the better our chances become."

  "And then what? Do we just run until we drop dead from cold? This is the pampas in winter. How long do you think we can last outdoors?"

  If we could survive till nightfall, I told her, then I had a friend who would help us.

  She took this on board. "A friend. Someone who you have bought." Her lip curled in contempt. "Stupid English soldiers, what are you doing here? Don't we have enough troubles without you?"

  This stung. "So you're with those marines back there who are preparing to start a war?"

  "War," she sneered. "War is all you people care about. What do you English want with the Malvinas anyway? A few fragments of rock 12,000 kilometres away."

  I was pretty much in agreement with her on that. All I said, though, was, "You were happy enough to do your bit then. A lot of British sailors died in the air attacks you helped guide in."

  She glared at me. "A lot of Argentinians died too. My brother lost his life flying a bomber shot down by an American missile fired by an English pilot."

  "My brother was killed too. Fifty miles from here, across the border in Chile. He thought he had made it out safely. I saw him die."

  Her face twisted with bitterness. "Your brother, my brother ... I suppose you think that makes us equal. Well, it doesn't. It makes me hate you more than ever."

  "As soon as it starts to snow," I told her. "We'll move out from here and head south."

  The snow started a quarter of an hour later thin, bitter flakes falling fast, driven hard by the wind. We buttoned up our clothes and headed out from the wood, striking a course for the lake I had spotted. Concha still had her parka, but the Argies had taken my jacket and I was down to my camouflage fleece. The snow fell on our shoulders and swallowed our tracks swiftly.

  At first the going was not too difficult. There seemed to be narrow paths, possibly worn by sheep in the past, winding across the pampas and threading in and out among the scrub bushes. Occasionally there were streams to leap across and once we had to wade a small river, but nothing as large as the one we had crossed earlier.

  Concha followed me like a prisoner, wrapped in bitterness. When she spoke it was only to vent her hatred at me, the British, and soldiers in general. "We are pacifists," she told me fiercely, 'me and my friends." I did gather that the marine division had been deliberately stationed here to repress dissent. Concha's network was coordinating the southernmost resistance to the coup.

  Her attitude pissed me off. Apparently it was OK for her group to interfere in the invasion plans, but not for the British. But to her, I presumed, I was just an ignorant soldier whose only purpose in life was killing people. Even if we could contact her supporters, there was no guarantee they wouldn't turn me in.

  Twice we heard helicopters and burrowed into the grass till they had passed but visibility was so poor there was little risk that we would be spotted. I could imagine the search parties cursing the weather.

  With every hour that passed they would have to widen their search area. Once we heard the wail of a locomotive. According to Concha the line ran just west of the road which suited us because we needed to find the emergency rendezvous, which was located close to the track.

  The snow fell more thickly. The lake was further off than I had realised. Distances were hard to gauge in this flat landscape. I judged we had around two kilometres to go, and I worried about losing our direction. It's easy to become disorientated in snow when there are few reference points. We had to be a
ble to navigate our way to the RV somehow, and that meant finding the railway track in the dark.

  The suddenness with which the weather had worsened was alarming. The temperature was right down and we were burning up reserves of energy just trying to stay warm. It was so cold and dark. It was hard to believe it was the middle of the day. Concha was lagging behind; I had to tug her along like a dead weight. Then she started retching, a sign that her body was running low on sugar and starting to burn fat. She had reached the point that marathon runners call 'hitting the wall'.

  At one point I stumbled on a tussock and fell. She flopped down next to me on the snowy ground, and I stooped to pick her up. "I'm so tired," she pleaded. "I need to rest." I was tempted we still had about a kilo metre to go. Maybe, I thought momentarily, if she had a short sleep she would get some of her strength back. But experience told me that she would never get up again if I let this happen. There is no warmth to be had outdoors. She would sink into a coma as the afternoon wore on, and die. With difficulty I got her up and we staggered on.

  I was navigating by the wind on my face as long as we were walking into it, I assumed we were going south.

  I reckoned we were covering half a kilo metre an hour at most. Probably we were not very far from the outskirts of the town, but it might have been a lifetime away as far as we were concerned. Ice was crunching under my boots and I could hardly feel my feet any more. The temperature was plunging. It was midday, and we were freezing to death out in the open. Combining the chill factor of a forty-mile-an-hour wind, no food and wet clothing, it was clear that neither of us would be able to endure much more. At this moment a prisoner of war camp seemed preferable.

  I guess we had been walking about two hours when we hit the edge of the lake. I was half supporting Concha. She had had no sleep the previous night; she had been beaten and abused and forced to swim a freezing river. I was tired too, though I knew I could keep going all day if I had to. But she needed warmth and rest or I would be carrying a corpse by nightfall.

  One option was to turn away from the lake, put the wind on my right side and try and make for the railway. It was possible we might find some sort of shelter nearer to the town, albeit with an increased risk of capture.

  A while later on, while I was still supporting Concha, I crashed full-length into a pool. This was madness; we had to take shelter soon before one or other of us broke a leg then we would be truly finished. I rubbed Concha's hands and slapped her face in an attempt to get her blood circulating. "Come on, you stupid Argentine bitch! Are you going to let yourself be whipped by an Englishman?" I jeered.

  "CabronV She pushed me away and tried to stagger on. She had guts all right but within a few more minutes she was buckling at the knees once more. I picked her up, but she went down again.

  The wind whipped round us, cutting through our damp clothes like knives. The snow was blowing almost horizontally; walking ahead into it was agony. My eyes were continually blocked, the skin raw from scraping away the frozen crusts that accumulated on the exposed flesh of my face. Concha's hair clung to her face in frozen streamers. The sheer effort of lifting our feet though the snow and the clinging canopy of frozen grass was draining us of energy. Time and again I thought I'd stumbled on shelter, but always what looked like a hut at a few metres in the swirling snow proved to be a clump of gorse or the stump of a wind-blown tree.

  I had been half hoping that the lake would be fringed with trees and undergrowth, perhaps with some huts used by fishermen. Instead we found ourselves plunging through vast reed beds and attempting to detour bogs. Visibility was down to a few metres. By now I was having to carry Concha for ten minutes at a time, supporting her across my shoulders in a fireman's lift. Even though she was slightly built she weighed twice as much as a bergen. When I put her down to rest and stretch my back she'd be falling asleep on her feet. Her mind was wandering, and I knew she was in the first stages of hypothermia.

  The shore of the lake traced a line towards the east either that or the wind was veering westward, I had no way of telling. Still, instinct suggested that we were heading towards the railroad. We moved on, and I was stumbling along half-blinded by the snow when the ground in front of my feet suddenly fell away without warning. I found myself sliding down a slope into a wide ditch of some kind. I flung myself backward, clawing for purchase with my free hand. Concha hit the ground behind me and lay where she had fallen.

  The grass on the bank was thickly overgrown. By twisting on to my front and clinging on to a tuft I managed to save us both from sliding down into the ditch. But the snow was several inches deep and the ground was frozen hard. Concha was sprawled next to me and any movement I made only succeeded in making her slide further down into the ditch. The ditch probably contained at least a metre of water and liquid mud. She would never survive another immersion, and if I couldn't get her out she was done for. If she died on me I'd have no choice but to try and rip her arm off to free myself.

  I was clawing on to the grass for handholds, but now her weight was dragging at my left wrist and the steel edge of the cuff was cutting into the numbed flesh. In another minute she would tear my hand loose and we would both subside into the ditch.

  I kicked with the toe caps of my boots, trying to make a foothold. If I could take some of my own weight, then I could lift Concha and push her back up the bank. I got both hands under Concha and by brute force heaved her up the bank, the handcuffs cutting agonisingly into my wrist as I did so. I moved sideways and, after some fumbling about, found a secure footing against a stone. Wiping snow from my face, I now saw that further along some rushes grew up the bank. Transferring my left foot to the stone, I hacked another hole with the toe of my other boot and shifted closer. Another step or two and the rushes would be within grasp.

  Stretching up as far as I could reach, my numbed fingers encountered the stalks of the nearest reeds and I dragged myself back up. It was only a momentary respite. Already I could feel the roots being torn out under my weight. I jabbed my feet into the earth bank and snatched another hold. Concha was leaning heavily against me. There were more reeds within my grasp now, and I found I could stand among the lower roots. Slowly I clawed my way up the slope, shoving Concha in front of me like a sack. It seemed to take for ever to reach the top, but at last I made the crest and squirmed over on to the flat again.

  I felt shockingly weak. My feet were blocks of ice and the feeling had gone from my hands. My whole body was pleading for rest, but I knew that if I gave in I was finished. Either I got myself up now and carried on or we both lay down to die right here. Concha was too far gone to help me. She was a dead weight and I had to get her up if I was to save myself. I hunched myself on to all fours and dragged her into a sitting position against me. I let her flop on to my shoulder, and somehow staggered upright beneath her.

  "Fuck you!" I shouted at her. "Fuck all you bloody Argies! Fuck your sodding weather and your lousy country and your fucking Malvinas!" Rage was all that was keeping me going. Rage against the country and the mission that had gone wrong; above all rage against the useless, ungrateful lump I was shackled to.

  I had no idea where I was headed now. I was past caring. All I could do was keep walking. Oddly, the handcuffs were a help for the first time; they kept Concha fixed over my shoulder and rested my left arm.

  Together we staggered on into the blizzard.

  How long we kept going I had no idea. It may have been a few minutes; it could have been as much as half an hour. I seemed to have left the lake behind, and now was following a path. The snow was blowing as thick as ever, and I was blundering along three-parts blind when something made me stop. We were in a fold in the ground, sheltered slightly from the worst of the wind. A stunted tree, bent almost double by the wind, loomed ahead. To one side, half hidden by drifting snow, was a shed of planks with a corrugated iron roof and a stove chimney sticking out of the side.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  I don't know how long I stood staring. I was so c
onvinced it was a hallucination, I hardly dared believe my eyes. But it was real. It was shelter.

  There was a padlock fixed to the door, which burst open under a heave of my shoulder. At that moment I could have broken through a steel hatch, such was my desperation. I lowered Concha off my shoulder and dragged her in after me like a sack. The relief to be out of the wind and snow was indescribable. I stood shaking, revelling in the blessed silence. There was no window, but a dim light filtered through a snow-covered plastic panel in the roof, enough to make out the interior. It was larger than I had realised. There was a fold-out table against one wall with a crude bench beside it. At the rear was a wide shelf with some sort of bedding on it. In the other corner stood a crude stove made out of an oil drum. The floor was made of heavy timbers that looked like wooden sleepers looted from the railway. The general construction was solid and workmanlike. I guessed it belonged to a hunter; a place where he could shelter overnight before getting up at dawn to shoot duck on the lake.

  I propped Concha against the wall and started searching for firewood with my spare hand. Eventually I located a store beneath the bunk, together with a supply of kindling. Thank God I'd had the presence of mind to bring away the major's cigarette lighter. The only paper I could find was damp, but there was a bundle of string on a hook that would serve instead. I laid the fire carefully.

  There was a hand-axe beside the stove and I split a couple of logs. Everything had to be done one-handed. I toyed with the idea of trying to chop through the chain of the handcuffs but I decided the axe was too small.

  I applied the major's lighter and the fire took hold. I nursed it carefully, adding more kindling and split logs as it grew. The stove may have been primitive but it gave out a good heat and cast a cheerful, flickering glow inside the hut. The wind and snow would dissipate the smoke, so for the present we were safe enough.

  Outside it was still light. The marines had taken my watch, but at a guess it was between one and two pm another couple of hours before dusk. And when night came the atrocious weather would continue to screen us from view. As the hut began to warm up I peeled off my soaked boots and set them to dry. I did the same for Concha. She was semi-conscious still, and her flesh was ice cold. I rubbed her hands and feet to aid the circulation.