Prince Hunter

by Garrett Russell

  The board rider turned his attention back to the wind and waves.

  A quick check towards the fast-setting sun confirmed that the wind was still from the same direction, though dropping in force. He adjusted his course a little more towards the north east to pick up maximum planing speed. He had no delusions that the Bertram crew would give up the chase and he desperately needed as much water as he could gain behind him before they got under way again.

  He could never hope to outrun them, he knew. His only fighting chance lay in the fast approaching darkness, where with luck he could elude them long enough to make the Uruguayan shore. For he already knew that north was his only refuge. Nowhere back in Buenos Aires would now be safe, least of all his home.

  He also knew that escape was possible as long as he could stay out of grappling range of the men on the Bertram. They wanted him alive, not dead. Otherwise it would have been easier and more efficient to shoot him and quietly recover the body of yet another discreet desaparecido.

  Another quick check of the enemy over his shoulder. The boat was now lifting onto the plane, its powerful engines digging the stern deep into the water, pushing the bow up and over a mound of foam turned gold by the afternoon light. They could overtake him in five, maybe seven minutes at the most.

  He scanned the waters ahead. Nothing. No crowd of pleasure boats to hide amongst. No single boat, a potential ally, except a sole coastal freighter off his port bow, churning its way eastward.

  It was the only chance. He kicked the board around a few degrees, sacrificing precious speed as he headed up into the wind to aim straight for the freighter’s bow wave.

  As he closed on the freighter, he recognised its colours. Argentine. So, he did not know whether he could rely on refuge from the crew or not. He drove on regardless, arms aching with the strain. At least he may be able to put the freighter between himself and his pursuers, gaining a few more vital minutes before darkness.

  The Bertram was still well behind but gaining fast. He could see signs of clumsy activity as other figures joined the helmsman on the fly bridge, but they were still too far away to see what they were doing. He found out soon enough.

  The faint sound of an insect buzzing overhead was followed by a sharp ‘crack’ which penetrated the wind behind him. Instinctively he ducked, dropping into a hunched reflex to evade the second bullet he knew would be coming. He lost valuable seconds wallowing in the water, mind racing frantically for a new escape plan.

  The second shot came, and he realised he was not dead yet – they were shooting high, trying to intimidate him into surrender.

  As he picked himself up to full speed again, he caught a glimpse over his shoulder of the Bertram bearing dangerously close. Two of the men struggled to aim automatic rifles over the heaving fly bridge coaming.

  ‘Dios mio, let them be good enough shots to miss when they want to.’

  Every nerve in his body tingling, he turned his back on them and sailed away.

  Another rifle shot cracked, louder now. Then the terrifying ‘tac-tac-tac’ of a rifle on automatic fire, the sound no sane man turns his back to. Shoulders hunched involuntarily, he pressed on.

  Another burst of automatic fire, and the marksman found his range. A ragged row of holes stitched its way across the top of the sail, the rounds making a drum roll of hollow thumping sounds as they tore through the straining sailcloth.

  There was another pause, then a barrage of viciously concentrated automatic fire. Where there had been a neat row of holes became an ugly gash. The whole upper section of the sail disappeared in a storm of shreds. And then they hit the mast.

  It folded over with a brittle crack, spraying a shower of sharp splinters and toppling like a sapling struck by an axe.

  That was the coup de grâce.

  What was left of the sail flopped into a useless mass of cloth. The sailboard sank tail first under the weight of its rider and he snapped himself free of his crippled rig. He turned towards the freighter, now a monstrous wall of iron and surging white water not three hundred metres away. But it showed no sign of concern. No drop in speed, no men scrambling nets down its side, not even the silhouette of an officer on the wing of the bridge. Not a hope.

  He turned and kicked clear of his wreckage.

  In the dwindling light he would be harder to find, and he was already calculating likely wind and current directions that he could use in a long swim to safety. But the men on the Bertram were taking no chances. They were already close enough to keep him in almost constant visual contact, broken only when his head dipped below the peak of a wave. He was dazzled by a sudden piercing brightness. The man on the fly bridge trained a spotlight on him, so powerful it turned his part of the twilight into full day.

  He ducked quickly under the water, fighting against the buoyancy of his wetsuit to stay below the darkening surface as he stroked powerfully away. But he had been too quick. With only a small breath, he managed no more than twenty metres before his screaming lungs forced him up for air. They were ready for him. This time two wide beams locked on his position before he could take another breath.

  He heard the distinctly close metallic click of a gun being readied to fire. Squinting against the glare of the spotlights he could see the man in the stern taking precise, professional aim. He recognised the silhouette of the weapon: a PA3-DM sub-machine gun, made by the Fabrica Militar das Armas Pontatiles only for the Argentine forces. He knew that despite its compact size its heavy 9mm rounds have a killing range of more than 200 metres, lethally powerful on automatic fire and chillingly accurate on single shot. At the range between him and the Bertram, even poor accuracy would be crippling, and the man with the gun gave every indication of higher than average proficiency.

  So, he slid both hands out of the water and high in the air.

  The two deckhands hauled him aboard under the intense vigilance of the man with the gun. Only when he was fully aboard and firmly in the grip of the two sailors did their leader ease his military at-the-ready stance. He stepped forward and snapped an arrogant military salute with a hand still red and bloody from its encounter with the boathook handle. He failed to stop a cruel smirk of victory from playing across his otherwise sternly NCO face.

  ‘Capitán Paolo Hawker,’ he said in broad South American Spanish, accenting the words so heavily that Hawker came out as Orkair. ‘I have the pleasure to welcome you aboard the Armada de la Republica Argentina vessel Resistencia. And to inform you that despite being the senior officer present, you are not in command. You are under arrest for treason to your country and your service.’

  ‘My name is Paul Hawker,’ the captive spat back in perfect English, then in equally educated Spanish, ‘Capitán, Navy of the Argentine Republic, retired. Your service ceased to be mine when it was taken over by woman-murdering soft-handed boy-fucking scum like you.’

  The cruel smirk collapsed. The NCO swung his rifle butt hard into Hawker’s groin, doubling him over with pain. The two sailors jerked him back upright as their leader stepped forward to strike at his face. But then he stopped. With a visibly difficult exercise of discipline, he brought the rifle stiffly down to the deck.

  ‘Lock him securely below,’ he barked.

  As they shuffled Hawker towards the companionway the commander was already turning his attention to the helmsman, who had been watching the show from above on the fly bridge.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing up there?’ he roared. ‘Running a moonlight dancing cruise? Make way immediately! You know where to go.’

  Hawker woke to the change in pitch of the engines. He sat up, instantly alert. The boat was no longer pitching with the jolt of the waves, and he could tell by the sound of the water against the hull that she was sitting low, idling into a dock.

  He had allowed himself to drift off to sleep after the two seamen had professionally frisked him and shoved him into the small unlit forward cabin, slamming the door locked behind him. There were no portholes or deck hatches, nor was there
any light fitting, so he had felt his way onto the large V-berth and sprawled wearily across the soft mattress. With no delusion of overpowering the two guards he knew would be on the other side of the bulkhead for the duration of the voyage back to Buenos Aires, he had forced himself to relax, blocking out the pain still throbbing in his groin and the aching strain of exertion which still numbed the muscles of his arms and legs. The time for energy would be when they reached land.

  He heard the thump of footsteps on the deck above. Ears straining in the darkness, he could hear the muffled voice of the leader barking commands to the helmsman. There were other voices, distant, more muffled and indistinct.

  Suddenly there was silence. The hum of the motors cut abruptly away to an emptiness which almost rang in his ears. They weren’t at dock yet, he was sure he could still feel the boat moving forward. Then he knew why. He felt the bow lift slightly under his feet at the same time a soft scraping sound came through the hull. They were running her up on a beach. Probably a dark, remote beach.

  The other voices were more distinct now, but still too muffled to comprehend. There was a short conversation between the boat commander and another man, then more orders and scraping as some kind of plank was rigged to the bow. Even the orders were indistinct and subdued: whoever they were meeting was at pains to not be observed.

  He weighed the odds. There were now more enemy to escape from, but their desire for a secret landing was in his favour. Men keeping their voices so low would be reluctant to shoot, and with luck there would be good tree cover almost to the water line very close to the beach. And it would be fully dark by now.

  He felt a soft thump through the deck as the other man climbed aboard, then footsteps as the two men moved aft.

  Two bolts rasped open and one of the guards flung the door wide, flooding the small wedge-shaped cabin with dazzling light. They had a portable deck spotlight trained through the door, catching him like a dazed animal transfixed in the glare of a truck’s headlights. The other guard stepped in and swiftly aside, disappearing in the darkness framed by the door as he grabbed Hawker’s wrist, twisted his arm behind his back and snapped a handcuff closed. It was such a fluid movement that Hawker was too slow to resist. The guard reached for the other wrist, moving behind Hawker to gain better purchase but exposing his own eyes to the direct dazzle of the light.

  Hawker feinted in the heartbeat of hesitation he felt from the other man and pulled his free arm away. The guard leaned closer in, savagely twisting the handcuffed arm further back, but moving exactly where Hawker wanted him. Groping with his manacled hand, he felt the bulge in the man’s denim jeans come into his grasp and struck with all the force he could muster. Fingers made iron-hard by years of hauling on sheets and cranking winches closed in a vicious grip, grinding the testes together like grain under a stone. The man yelped in agony, writhing away from Hawker and scratching with both hands against the agonising grip.

  ‘Okay, Hawker, you’ve proved your point. Let the miserable bastard go and we’ll settle this with the dignity of officers.’

  The familiarity of the voice so stunned Hawker that he immediately eased his grip, ignoring the guard who fell back on the V berth, face contorted and red with pain and his hands clutching gingerly at his crotch. The voice had come from the blackness behind the spotlight. It was a cool voice, impeccably cultured and laced with rigid authority, the voice of a man who is used to being obeyed absolutely, the man who had been waiting for them on the beach.

  ‘Grivas. Capitán Raoul Grivas,’ said Hawker.

  ‘Comodoro de Marina Grivas now,’ said the voice in the dark.

  ‘Promotion always suited you,’ Hawker allowed the trace of a sour smile across his face. ‘But why go to all this trouble to tell me?’

  ‘Why?’ echoed Grivas, his voice now a little more relaxed, losing the brittle tension of a few seconds before. And then, in too-perfect English, ‘Ours is not to reason why. Ours is but to do …’

  ‘Or die?’

  ‘Ah, I knew you would understand.’ Grivas slipped back to the comfort of Spanish. ‘There was always a lot of the English about you, Paolo. Sometimes, I think, a little too much. Let us just say that a very senior officer wishes to speak with you. I have orders to fetch you in a manner which, ah, guarantees your cooperative attendance.’

  ‘And I suppose you’re well experienced in this kind of,’ Hawker paused, deliberately giving a dramatic punctuation to the word which had become one of the most emotional in Argentina, ‘disappearance?’

  There was another pause before Grivas’ reply.

  A sharp metallic click came from the darkness beyond the spotlight and Grivas stepped forward into the glare. His silhouette cut the intensity of the light in Hawker’s eyes so that he could now see some of the detail in the main cabin. The second guard was off to the right, backed up against the galley bench, PA3-DM jutting forward from his hip. Grivas stood square in the centre of the cabin, a man as big as Hawker, athletic build spreading in the gut with onset of comfortable middle age. He was dressed in casual civilian clothes, but he held a heavy service handgun cocked and menacing in his right hand.

  ‘Do not think you are not expendable, my friend. We take great care to carry out these missions, but sometimes there are accidents.’

  ‘Sometimes I’ve fished your accidents out of the Plata.’

  Grivas moved forward again, swiftly this time, lifting the handgun. Hawker tensed, sub-consciously shifting his weight to the balls of his feet and prepared to parry the blow.

  But the guard on the V berth behind him had come to his senses and came out with the rage of a fighting bull. He swung both feet hard up off the bunk, smashing Hawker in the small of the back with a force that sent him staggering forward. Hawker whirled round as he struggled to hold onto his balance, swinging a punch at the guard now on his feet and hunched like a rugby forward in the cramped V cabin door. Grivas checked himself until precisely the right instant. When Hawker had swung completely away from him, he brought the heavy gun down, aiming the butt at the exposed square of flesh between the hairline and the wetsuit collar at the back of Hawker’s neck.

  Hawker crumpled. The man in the V cabin doorway sprang forward with a guttural growl of revenge, aiming a vicious kick at the downed man’s unconscious face.

  ‘No!’ Grivas barked. ‘This one I need fit and alive.’

  Hawker came to with his head lolling drunkenly on his shoulder. Something lurched his skull to the other side and he felt a sharp stab of pain from his neck to his temples.

  He was in a car, in the back seat, and he’d been cradled against the door when the violent swerve had brought him back to consciousness.

  Raoul Grivas was lounging on the seat opposite him, and Hawker knew the car would be a Ford Falcon. It would be a standard Falcon, painted in a plain blue or green or brown. There would be nothing to distinguish it from hundreds of other Falcons in the traffic of Argentina. It was the most common car on the road and the armed services kept large conveniently anonymous fleets of them.

  Hawker tried to sit upright, and then realised why he had been lying in such an ungainly position against the car door. He felt the cold bite of stainless steel manacles around his wrists and a tingling sensation through the arm he’d been leaning on. His hands were tightly and uncomfortably cuffed behind his back.

  Grivas turned to look at him. They were driving illegally fast down a wide, tree-lined boulevard, lit bright as day by a blaze of neon and street lights. Hawker craned to see over the top of the door. On either side of the road were broad islands of trees and beyond them more lanes of traffic before the sidewalks and brightly lit shops and cafes. So they were racing down Avenida 9 de Julio in the heart of Buenos Aires.

  The 70 metre high obelisk of the Plaza de la Republica loomed out of the night sky ahead. On any night, the Plaza would be full of life and activity but now, as they approached, Hawker could see thousands of people swarming around the base of the monument. Most of the crowd w
aved blue and white banners above their heads. Here and there, an effigy of Margaret Thatcher or the red white and blue colours of Britain were set ablaze by dozens of wildly waving torches. Even through the tightly closed car windows the crowd’s throaty chant, ‘Mal-vi-nas! Arg-en-tina!’ drowned out any other sound.

  Grivas smiled broadly.

  ‘A sight to stir the blood of any patriotic Argentino,’ he crooned with glowing pride. ‘How appropriate that we are able to share it. But now, alas, I am compelled to send you back to darkness.’

  He covered Hawker’s eyes with a blindfold, securing the knot against his twisting resistance with an efficiency that indicated plenty of practice.

  Hawker slumped back. No use struggling now. He’d need all the strength he could muster when his chance came.

  ‘I can guess where I’m going,’ he said.

  ‘Perhaps you can,’ replied Grivas, ‘but I have my orders. You have given me a lot of trouble, Paolo. Three good men injured.’

  ‘My name is Paul. I thought I’d taught you that the hard way at the Academy.’

  ‘Ah, yes. The gringo midshipman, showing the rest of us how to fight. I suppose that’s why they selected you for the Special Boat Service.’

  ‘You speak as if I’m still in service. I resigned my commission in 1978.’

  In 1978 the Argentine military regime had been in power for two years. In 1976 an already tattered national economy was under dire threat from extreme left wing terrorist activities, both in the cities and rural production areas, and no thinking person could object to the coup that toppled the previous civilian government. In fact, many intellectuals and influential community leaders had actively promoted the thought of a return to military rule, to give the nation time to shake itself out of the political and economic mess it was in.

  Paul Hawker, half Argentine, half English and fiercely proud of his heritage, was one of thousands of middle ranking officers who supported the coup with the highest sense of duty to their country.