‘That won’t be necessary at all, my old salt,’ gloated Gaffney as he slipped a second sheet from behind the one he had been reading. ‘Here is a list of candidates who I’ll vouch for to the last one. You can meet them all tomorrow.’
‘They are already in Buenos Aires?’ Hawker did not attempt to hide his incredulity.
‘Close, amigo. Uruguay.’
Hawker scanned the page. It had just four lines typed on it:
Sean O’Hara;
Linda Kelly;
John Sullivan;
Wolfgang Kreuzer.
‘You don’t give me much choice. I asked for three men.’
‘Don’t be too hasty in your opinions, skipper. I warrant you’ll change them after you meet this lot.’
‘If I am not satisfied that they are right for the task we don’t go.’ Hawker turned to Anaya, using rapid Spanish.
‘They will be right. You will go. I have great faith in what Señor Gaffney’s organisation can do for me.’ The threat in his words slashed straight to Hawker’s gut like a cutlass blade.
‘Then the sooner I meet them the better. The final crew must appear to know each other very well for the deception to run its full course. That makes every hour of preparation precious. Gaffney and I had better be in Montevideo this afternoon.’
‘Absolutely out of the question. You think I have kept you locked up here for four days, to allow you out of my grasp the moment we have a sign of progress?’
Hawker bluffed. ‘You damned well will if you want any further progress. This is my mission, handled my way. I will have to make my assessment of Gaffney’s candidates on the basis of just one interview. I will test my judgement when I see how they perform sailing back to BA.’
‘The dogs of war are howling, and he wants to go yachting,’ Gaffney snorted.
‘Keep your lap dog leashed,’ Hawker kept his focus firmly on Anaya, speaking in Spanish, ‘and tell him the boat I have in mind to be our Trojan Horse is moored in Montevideo. I will make the necessary arrangements to acquire it before we go over there. But not until I make my phone call.’
The sun was setting crimson and pink, livening the drab exterior walls of the Naval School of Engineering, before Gaffney announced he was ready.
Hawker picked up the phone and started to dial the complicated ISD code.
0011.44.736. Then the local number.
The clicks and whirrs coming through the hum of static as electronic equipment thousands of miles away activated in response seemed to last an eternity. He found his hand slipping, moist with a warm film of sweat, on the smooth plastic handpiece despite the white knuckle grip he had on the instrument to keep his nerves under control.
He took a deep breath to calm himself down. This is madness, he told himself. In a few seconds he’d be talking to Anne. Anne, whose image in his mind was all that had kept him level through the last lonely days.
But he also knew that Gaffney had a phone to his ear on the other side of the table. He was already connected to a house not 50 yards from Anne’s cottage, so close that the man on the other end could probably now hear the ringing of Anne’s phone. He was, Hawker knew, sitting in a darkened room. Close by and within whispered earshot was a second man positioned at a window with a night sniper’s rifle aimed at the cottage window next to the phone Anne would pick up to answer. He knew all this because Gaffney had made the arrangements crystal clear to him before allowing him to dial.
‘Hello? House of Hawker.’
Hawker’s heart jumped at the familiar greeting.
‘Buenos noches, Señora Hawker.’ He forced his voice to be bright and unconcerned.
‘Paul, darling! How lovely to hear you. What time is it down there now?’
Why do people always think of such banality to waste time on when each word is costing them so much?
‘About five.’ Which would make it eight in the evening in Dorset. ‘How’s Lizzie?’
‘Asleep, poor angel. We’ve had quite a big day in the garden.’ Then a sudden note of panic tinged her voice. ‘Paul, you’re alright, aren’t you? I hope …’
‘I’m fine.’ Hawker shot a nervous glance at Grivas, who held a headphone to his ear, concentrating on the husband and wife conversation.
‘I just thought for a terrible moment … with the Belgrano and the Sheffield … and you sounded so tense …’ she started to sob.
‘Hush, hush my honeybunch,’ Hawker tried to sound soothing. ‘I’m not tense at all. Probably sound a bit tired because I am. We’ve been busy. I’ve another boat to deliver now, so I’ll be away for a few days. That’s why I called, in case you wondered …’
‘You’re not going to sea with all that’s going on. Promise you’ll be careful.’
‘You know I’m always careful.’
‘But what about the war? They’ve extended the exclusion zone.’
‘That’s a long way south and east of here. Anne, please listen. You must be careful too. I …’ Anaya interrupted him with a mimed order to cut the call ‘… look after Lizzie …’ Anaya signalled to hang up again, then waved a cue to Gaffney. The Irishman pulled his mouthpiece closer to his chin and muttered with a soft growl into his phone.
‘I’ve … I’ve got to go now. Off to Uruguay tonight and it’s past time to leave.’ At least he could tell his love that much truth. ‘Look after yourselves and don’t phone me. I’ll call when I get back.’
‘How long?’
‘Not certain. Got to go, the car’s here for me now. Bye …’ He blew her a kiss that was still echoing down the intercontinental lines when Grivas reached over and clicked the call off with his thumb.
‘Paul, darling?’ Anne jiggled her phone but knew he was gone. There was nothing now but the burr of disconnection.
‘Stand down,’ said Gaffney in a voice of crisp command and he, too, hung up.
In the dark room in Dorset a burly man stood up and stretched from where he had been hunched over his end of the line.
‘Stand down,’ he repeated and then, seeing the silhouette of the sniper with the rifle still firmly held between his shoulder and the windowsill, ‘I said at ease, Fegan. That means now, or it’s your own shite-filled head you’ll see blown off.’
The rifleman eased his finger away from the trigger, his hand twitching dangerously. He lifted his eye from the night sight and reluctantly shifted his gaze away from the window across the road where the woman was still perfectly framed.
‘Pity. It would have been a fine clean kill.’
Friday 7 May 1982
The pilot in the left hand seat of the Sea King HAS.5 cockpit looked at the wave. It was not the wave closest to him, it was three or four swells away, and he could see its peak rising higher than the general pitching level of the sea. He waited, counting the waves between him and the big one until he sensed the apparent rise in altitude as its deep trough rolled under his aircraft.
‘Up, Skipper. Up!’ he called into his microphone, his own hand twisting in reflex on the throttle. The other pilot’s reaction was instant and smooth. Juggling engine power against rotor blade angle, he swept the big dark grey helicopter up and away from the towering face of the wave. The wall of water tumbled through the air space they had been in just seconds ago. At the level where the cockpit had been, a white crest of foam boiled as the wave peak collapsed on itself, crashing down with a force that would have rolled the nine ton bulk of the helicopter as easily as a child spinning a top.
Both pilots watched the wave surge below them and onwards in it relentless north eastwards track.
‘Blimey that was a big bugger,’ the voice of the aircrewman crackled over the intercom from his station aft in the fuselage.
The co-pilot’s eyes crinkled with a cheeky grin.
‘Just like surfing,’ he said. ‘You always look for the big seventh swell.’
‘As our resident beach boy, can you advise when it’s clear to resume our patrol station?’ The senior pilot’s voice came in with the same ton
e of banter, underlined by a slight trace of authority.
‘Right now,’ said the co-pilot.
‘Then take her down, your royal highness. You have control.’
His Royal Highness Prince Andrew Albert Christian Edward responded with a crisp ‘I have control’ and deftly balanced the power and control surface inputs as his skipper called the falling readings on the altimeter. He was calling in single feet, if he could have called inches he probably would, because they were aiming for a height above the mean sea surface of precisely 10 feet.
Andrew brought the machine to a smooth hover, feeling the power of over 3,000 horsepower from the two Rolls Royce Gnome gas turbine engines respond to the slightest movement of his wrist.
‘Established at 10,’ said the senior pilot with a professional satisfaction. ‘How much longer do we have on station?’
There was a brief pause before a fourth voice came through the intercom.
‘Another hour,’ said the navigator, ‘then home for lunch.’
Then there was silence, each man alone in his own thoughts and duties, their concentration heightened by the relief of the small break of jovial banter.
They had been on the same station for about three hours now. To the right and ahead of the Sea King, almost lost against the grey horizon despite how close they were, loomed the dark bulk of HMS Invincible. Other Sea Kings, they knew, were sitting in similar positions on every flank of the ship and had been since the first leaden glimmer of dawn. They all sat 10 feet above the chill dark South Atlantic waters with the same mission: to protect their mother ship from the threat of an Exocet missile.
The theory was simple. Ten feet is the Exocet operating altitude. It appears over the sea at that height at close to the speed of sound, its on-board radar homing in on its target. If the helicopter was in the right quarter between the missile and the ship, it would appear on the radar as the bigger target and divert the missile off its true deadly track. Andrew and the rest of his crew had personally tested that theory often in the past few days. They knew it worked and they knew it depended on only one factor for total success, simply defined as survival of both the ship and helicopter. That factor was how quickly the pilot flying at the critical moment could react to lift his Sea King clear of the missile’s path.
‘Contact!’ the navigator called from his post at the radar desk. A small blip had appeared at one edge of the screen and was moving toward the centre frighteningly fast. Forty nautical miles away and less than two minutes ago, an Argentine pilot in a Dassault Super Etendard had identified the blip on his radar screen as a major warship. One second after he loosed the sleek missile from the pylon holding it under his wing, the Exocet’s first rocket motor had flamed into life. Two seconds after that its main motor had fired and now it was closing on its target at Mach 0.93.
‘She’s ours!’ the aircrewman’s voice came through the intercom like a high voltage shock. From where he sat scanning the wild empty sea, he had seen the twist in the contrail as the missile jinked to the left off its course towards Invincible and came straight towards the exposed flank of the helicopter. Andrew’s hand tightened on the throttle control. Not yet, not yet. He had to be sure the missile was committed to them.
‘Now! Up, up, up!’
Andrew’s hand twisted without conscious thought. The hum of the machinery coming through his flight helmet surged to a high pitched scream. The tachometer needles quivered and spun around their dials. The three massive rotor blades overhead clawed savagely at the air, spinning fast to their maximum revolutions. The altimeter needle lifted reluctantly, shivering as the whole airframe vibrated under the strain. The Sea King shot up like a bubble. The Exocet stayed true to its course, now too close to be anything but a slim dark blur of destruction and death that streaked under and away from the Sea King.
‘Missed our puckering arses by a good eight feet!’ called the aircrewman from his observation post.
‘Comfortably more than that,’ laughed the skipper, whose eyes were fixed on the altimeter for the whole duration of the action.
They watched it fly on, its rocket afterburn flaring like a torch, reflecting vivid orange in a wild pattern on the choppy water close below. Andrew could feel the slight buffeting on his controls as he dropped back down into the cone of turbulent air behind the missile, then saw the orange pattern on the water die. The rocket’s two and a half minute store of fuel was gone. At the limit of its endurance, the Exocet slowed and dipped to the sea. A wave crest caught its nose, sending a startling white tower of spray into the air. And then it was gone, swallowed by the waves.
There was a change in the background hum of the intercom as four sets of lungs returned to normal breathing patterns. Andrew didn’t need to see the grins under the helmets of the navigator and aircrewman.
‘Well done, chaps,’ said the skipper. ‘Now let’s drop back to station. The Argies might have got smart enough to send a salvo.’
He read off the altimeter heights as Andrew brought her through the short descent.
‘On station.’
And they sat there to concentrate and wait again.
Hawker recognised the boat before he recognised the man on its deck.
‘What is this, your own private admiral’s barge?’ he said. ‘Maybe a bonus for dirty jobs beyond the call of duty? Much more useful than a medal.’
‘Sick jokes are not useful,’ Grivas replied uncomfortably. ‘She was the only suitable craft available in time.’
Hawker stepped from the naval dockyard pontoon on to the deck of the Resistencia, the same fibreglass Bertram cruiser he had boarded in rather different circumstances just five days earlier.
‘How’s your hand, amigo?’ he called out to the crewman he recognised from that previous encounter. The man scowled but said nothing as he fiddled sulkily with the controls on the flybridge, hampered by a stiff bandage protecting his palm.
‘I’m warning you, Hawker,’ Grivas hissed. ‘Like it or not, we’re working together now. That means you, me, the rest of the Argentine Navy if necessary – of which that man is a fine serving member – and whoever of those Irish thugs you choose for your crew. So let us leave our personal preferences ashore.’
‘Irish thugs?’ Hawker gave Grivas a sour smile. ‘Do I hear a trace of criticism? Does my old shipmate still hold a scrap of conscience in his heart?’ Then switching to English and turning back to the dock, ‘Get a move on, Gaffney. You’re slower than an old woman with a dicky knee.’
Gaffney wheezed with the exertion of clambering across the Bertram’s gunwale. ‘I wasn’t bargaining for this, now, was I? Me with a return air ticket to Montevideo going to waste.’
‘You’ve been through all that with your good friend the admiral,’ Hawker said cheerfully. ‘No more appearances at places as public as an air terminal until after this task is completed. Now be a good boy and settle yourself below. Unless you plan to be seasick, in which case I’m sure Commander Grivas would rather you stay on deck, close to the rail.’
Hawker sprang up the ladder to the flybridge, taking it two rungs at a time. He paused at the top to sniff the fresh sea air. He was about to embark on a less than legal voyage with a group of men he had good reason to loathe and was not sure he could trust, yet he felt light and free. And why not? This was his first day under the open sky in almost a week. The sky was a clear and luminous blue, as it always is when the pampero has blown itself out. It was the kind of crisp day with a light wind chill that the English would call perfect in their summer.
‘Let’s get going,’ he called in Spanish. ‘I’ll take the helm.’
The bandaged crewman scowled quizzically down at Grivas, who nodded his head.
Hawker had already started both engines and was standing by to ease the throttles forward by the time the man clambered down to the foredeck. He slipped the bow line off its bollard at the same time Grivas let go at the stern and Hawker nosed away from the dock.
Out in midstream of the Rio de la
Plata the boat’s bow tossed in the light chop as Hawker pushed the twin chromed levers to their forward stops. The foredeck reared, bucked once or twice, then settled forward as the boat lumbered onto the plane. Hawker pulled the levers back a touch, settling the twin tachometers on 2,500 revolutions and swung the bow smoothly around until the compass showed 100 degrees, the heading he knew without need of a chart for Montevideo.
The crewman slipped aft to where the Argentine naval colours fluttered from a stubby staff on the transom. As the skyline of Buenos Aires shrank in their wake, he struck the colours and raised the Argentine civil ensign.
They were three hours out, a little less than halfway along their slanting track across the broadening expanse of the Plata, when Gaffney emerged from the cabin. The Bertram was heaving in long, lazy movements over the sea swell they were now exposed to from the vastness of the South Atlantic Ocean. It was an ideal day for this kind of trip – crisp rather than cold autumn air under an arc of clean blue sky, a sea breeze not strong enough to ruffle the tops of the swells, and a gentle dry ride for the powerboat.
Hawker had relinquished the helm to Grivas and his henchman in favour of one of the seats in the open aft cockpit below. In the lee of the coach house there was enough warmth from the sun for him to strip off his thick woollen pullover. He had just opened his second can of beer.
‘Cerveza?’ He offered the fresh can to Gaffney.
‘Eh?’ The Irishman lurched on rigid legs from the cabin door to the companionway ladder leading up to the flybridge. He was lucky to make it between swells. He clutched the ladder rail as if he was about to be tossed overboard.
‘Cerveza. Beer. I’m offering you a drink you thick plank of wood.’
Gaffney’s cheeks puffed and he lurched for the gunwale, but he managed to hold it in. He sank gratefully to the bench seat beside Hawker, shifting his death grip to the cockpit coaming.
‘No, thanking you kindly anyway. I’ve not got me sea legs yet. This boat’s a bit on the wee side for my liking.’
Prince Hunter Page 7
