Prince Hunter

by Garrett Russell

  ‘They’re wetsuits,’ Kreuzer answered.

  ‘Top marks,’ said Hawker, already pulling his own jumper off. ‘Get them on quickly. We’re starting to run out of time.’

  ‘I know what they are,’ said Sullivan. ‘What I meant was why.’

  ‘Because the water will be cold,’ Hawker used the tone of voice a parent uses with a difficult child. ‘If there’s any delay in the crash boat reaching you the wetsuit could save your life. I presume you all know a bit about hypothermia.’

  ‘Crash boat!’ O’Hara’s voice had a disturbing tone of panic.

  ‘Just a term of speech,’ Hawker said soothingly. ‘The pickup boat.’

  ‘Crash! You said crash.’ O’Hara made the sign of the cross and sat still for a moment, his eyes closed tight, his face turned the white-grey colour of marble.

  He opened his eyes and they flared from terror to anger.

  ‘You knew it! Something’s gone wrong so we’re going to crash in the sea and you didn’t do a bloody thing to save us!’

  He sprang out of his stupor and lunged with both huge hands for Hawker’s naked throat. Hawker blocked with his fore arms. He swept his arms up and outwards, using O’Hara’s own momentum to take him off balance. The Irishman stumbled and fell to the deck. Spinning around with surprising flexibility for his bulk, he pushed himself forward in a low rugby tackle towards Hawker’s legs.

  Unprepared for such a quick recovery, Hawker found himself flying backwards down the cabin to land in a grappling heap with O’Hara on top of him dangerously close to the netted doorway. He was pinned to the deck, desperately trying to squirm away from the big man’s force which felt all the more powerful, fuelled by the adrenaline of his terror. The veins stood out on O’Hara’s temples like the surface roots of a giant tree.

  Enough was enough. Hawker had hoped to prove a point by winning this without reinforcement. He knew he could outlast O’Hara in a contest of stamina as long as he could twist away from the most powerful punches, but time was not on his side.

  ‘Help me now!’ He called in parade ground Spanish and O’Hara paused his next blow with his fist in the air. He wasn’t so far lost in fear that he couldn’t feel the cold metal on the back of his neck.

  ‘Now get off me and do as you are commanded,’ Hawker hissed into his face in English.

  O’Hara sat back. The airman moved with him, keeping the barrel of a heavy service side gun pressed hard into the flesh of his neck.

  ‘All of you!’ Hawker barked back up the cabin at the others. They sat frozen like dummies. Hawker doubted that any of them had moved a muscle since the skirmish began. He wondered if any of them would have come to his assistance if the airman hadn’t been there.

  He unzipped his jeans, gathered his own wetsuit from where it had dropped to the deck and slipped it on with the ease of long practice. He looked at his watch, the waterproof Rolex Submariner. Time was now getting short.

  ‘We’re not going to crash in the sea,’ he said calmly. ‘We’re going to jump into it. Get into your wetsuits quickly enough and you’ll have about eight minutes to learn how to do it. And we are all doing it.’ He looked hard at O’Hara.

  ‘Jump. As in jump with parachutes,’ said Sullivan flatly.

  Hawker nodded and pointed to the second pile of canvas and webbing in the tail of the aircraft.

  ‘Then the sooner we’re ready the more time we’ll have to learn how to,’ Linda stood up decisively. Her voice, though, was shrill with tension. She pulled off her polo neck sweater and jeans with a few fluid movements, revealing a trim figure in simple white cotton bra and briefs.

  Kreuzer followed, pulling his wetsuit on with the same practised ease as Hawker. Sullivan was less assured. He started after Linda had pulled the zip up on the back of her suit and was pulling on a pair of bootees in the same foam rubber.

  Sullivan struggled into his suit awkwardly, avoiding Hawker’s eyes, his brow creased in deep thought.

  O’Hara was the last to move. He sat immobile and sullen watching the others, his expression frozen in a scowl except for the moment he saw Linda’s half-naked body. Then his scowl had twisted to raw, lustful scrutiny, his eyes flickering like a lizard’s from her breasts to the tiny triangle of her briefs. He looked to Hawker like all the desperates he had been disgusted by at the front of the crowd in every strip club he had ever been cajoled by his shipmates to go into.

  ‘O’Hara! Move your arse!’ Hawker barked in his parade ground voice. The airman stepped back a pace and held the pistol in a double-handed grip close to O’Hara’s head the whole time that it took him to strip and struggle into the rubber. He made Sullivan look like an expert at pulling on a wetsuit.

  Hawker beckoned them aft and, hefting a parachute pack onto his shoulders, showed them how to buckle the harness. He double checked every harness when they all had them on, making sure of the tightness on their shoulders and crotches.

  He showed them a card with a diagrammatic drawing of a paratrooper swinging under a canopy, pointed out the control lines and said, ‘We’re going off static lines, so you don’t have to worry about ripcords. These are how you control your direction once your canopy is deployed. This is important because you’ll be aiming for a marker buoy. The closer you land to it the less time you freeze in the water waiting to be picked up. We’re also going from a bit more height than the altitude for a standard static line drop so you’ll have time on descent to practise. You pull gently on this right-hand control handle to turn right, the left to turn left. Simple as that. Pull on this,’ he indicated the release buckle on his own harness below his chest, ‘to ditch the chute only after you’re in the water. Any questions?’

  ‘One big one,’ said Sullivan. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I still have to make the decision on which three of you make the crew for this mission. This is the quickest way I can think of to see how you might face up to the immediate danger of coming under fire if and when we get the chance to grab our boy Andrew and his Sea King,’ Hawker lied. His eyes flickered surreptitiously from one face to another, searching for any sign of doubt. They all seemed to buy it so he allowed himself a small smile of relief. They would discover the truth when the time came and not a second earlier. He had made sure that Grivas understood and agreed with this and that the secret would be theirs alone until the moment of final commitment.

  A yellow light flicked on over the doorway. Hawker noticed it at the same time as the airman, who did not let his eyes off O’Hara otherwise.

  ‘We’re approaching the drop zone. The pilot will do one low pass to check the wind. Look out to your left side and you’ll see your target buoy and the crash boat.

  They pressed their faces to the port windows. Even O’Hara moved quickly enough to see a large yellow buoy that looked like an old fuel tank bobbing in the swell below. A plume of sulphur yellow smoke gushed from its centre, slanting away as it rose above the waves to indicate the direction and strength of the surface wind.

  Fifty metres away from the buoy bobbed a chunky looking power boat with white hull and bright yellow decks. Its crew waved as the Dakota flew past close enough for Hawker to see the stream of white bubbles trailing from under the stern as the helmsman used low propeller revs to hold it on station against the current and wind.

  The Dakota banked steeply right then levelled slightly into a series of wide, rising circles around the buoy. When they had climbed another two thousand feet the aircraft levelled out and flew downwind from the buoy. The airman eased the concentration of his aim which he had maintained at O’Hara’s head. He handed the gun to Hawker, who kept it pointed at O’Hara in a more casual stance, strapped himself into a parachute and removed the netting barrier from the door.

  Suddenly the roar of the combined 28 cylinders of the Dakota’s two Pratt & Whitney radial engines died to a spluttering rumble. They all lurched where they were standing as the aircraft felt like it had run into a soft cushion. Another banked turn brought them onto a heading str
aight into wind.

  The airman moved in a well-practised drill to stand by the door. He steadied himself in the slipstream that roared and eddied around the doorway and sorted five long webbing straps which dangled from an anchor point beside the door. He separated one from the bunch and held it so that a metal snap connection at the strap’s loose end was ready in his hand to be quickly attached to the first parachute’s opening system.

  The yellow light flashed to green and the airman held the static line out towards them, indicating he was ready to start the jump sequence.

  ‘Right, this is it,’ Hawker urged his crew towards the open door. ‘We go out one at a time, two on each pass. So now,’ he held the gun closer to O’Hara’s head. ‘Who’s going first?’

  ‘I wonder if it is wise to let Hawker so far out of your sight,’ said Jorge Anaya. He was sitting in his office in the Naval School of Engineering. Sitting opposite him, looking splendid in a dark blue commander’s uniform of the Argentine Navy, was Raoul Grivas.

  ‘There is no risk, I can assure you, Almirante,’ said Grivas. ‘He is under the direct surveillance of excellent and trustworthy officers at every phase of the exercise. I personally briefed both the aircraft commander and the crash boat captain regarding the, ah, special nature of their guests. On top of that, Hawker is painfully aware that I maintain regular telephone contact with Gaffney and he with his men in England. This is one of the reasons I could not go with him on his little flying adventure today. I made a particular point of reminding him. And furthermore,’ Grivas’ face folded into an oily smile, ‘I believe Hawker is now honestly committed to this operation. He sees it as his only way to cut short the conflict between his mother and father countries.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Anaya smiled back. ‘He is conforming to my plan as you predicted. But Raoul, you just mentioned one of the reasons you stayed behind today. I know you well enough to know you would not have chosen those words unless you had other reasons you wish to discuss with me.’

  Grivas feigned a look of surprise.

  ‘You are very perceptive and astute, Almirante.’

  ‘Then spit it out, man.’

  Grivas turned his look of surprise to blank innocence.

  ‘The intelligence on Invincible. We now need it urgently for the mission to proceed as planned.’

  Anaya’s right eye gave a small tell-tale twitch. His hands quivered as he looked quickly down and started to fidget with papers on the table in front of him.

  ‘Hawker said he would need it tonight. I have several hours yet.’

  ‘So, we will have it in good time,’ Grivas went on with his act of naivety.

  ‘It is not so easy to obtain,’ Anaya came as close to confession as his hubris would allow. ‘As I informed you, our own air forces are prevented by circumstances beyond our command from sending out the reconnaissance sorties on which we could normally rely. My intelligence officers have had to look … elsewhere.’

  ‘The North Americans?’ Grivas pressed on, hoping he wasn’t pushing his luck too far.

  ‘You joke!’ Anaya looked up sharply, his eye twitching more now. ‘Reagan is too deeply entrenched with Thatcher. Even as Haig played tennis here with Galtieri, I could see whose side they were on.’

  ‘The Russians then. Their trawlers are everywhere.’

  This was where Grivas had wanted to appear to be led. He privately knew Anaya had attempted direct and desperately indiscreet contact with the Soviet Embassy two days earlier. He knew the Russian response had been negative. He also knew that the Soviet Union had put six spy satellites into orbit over the South Atlantic in a flurry of activity starting on the second of April.

  ‘I don’t deal with communists.’ Anaya raised his voice to make the lie sound convincing.

  ‘They are in our debt. They survived their last winter only because of Argentine grain and beef,’ said Grivas, trying to keep his own voice flat. He knew he was pushing his act to the limit.

  ‘Yet they refuse to cooperate,’ Anaya hung his head down again. ‘Point blank. They will not give any information.’

  ‘They told you that?’

  Anaya nodded his head. Grivas could feel his heart racing. This was the turning point for him.

  ‘Perhaps we need to ask them again. In a different manner.’

  Anaya looked up at Grivas, staring hard into his eyes, challenging.

  ‘I mean,’ said Grivas nervously and this time it was genuine, ‘whichever officer you assigned to the task has obviously failed. If, however, another officer was to approach the Soviets again. If he were to succeed in obtaining the information you need. I imagine that officer should be very well rewarded.’

  Anaya sat up straight, the power of absolute authority sweeping back into his face.

  ‘No officer in my command ever fails. I do, however, recognise degrees of success. If an officer, whoever he may be, were to have the initiative to provide such a vital piece of intelligence, I would see that he was appropriately awarded.’

  ‘Promotions are better than medals, Almirante.’

  ‘I see,’ said Anaya. ‘Rewarded then. Provided that the intelligence would be gathered discreetly. Do you understand what I mean, Grivas?’

  ‘I know exactly what you mean, sir.’

  ‘In that case,’ Anaya had regained his imperious composure now, ‘what reward would you suggest as suitable under such circumstances?’

  ‘At least a double increase in rank,’ Grivas replied without even a pretence at hesitant thought. No sense in pussyfooting around now. He had just gambled his career and he had won. Provided he could now deliver as he was implicitly promising.

  Anaya’s bushy grey eyebrows arched sharply. A two-rank promotion would make Grivas a Vicealmirante, elevated as a rear admiral to the same social class as himself, with the same privileged entrée to the rarefied circles of power and wealth that controlled almost everything in Argentina. Once established in that world, Grivas would manage to rise rapidly. He would find his way onto boards of directors so fast he could soon pose a threat to Anaya’s own position of power.

  But to reject him now would mean an almost certain and almost instant fall from that power for Anaya himself. Already the navy’s inaction over the Malvinas had caused too much caustic comment around the most influential tables in the country. Better to accept Grivas now and deal with him as almost equals later.

  ‘I take your point, Comodoro. Consider yourself understood’ Anaya said finally.

  Grivas pulled an envelope from his tunic pocket and smiled the same oily-smooth smile of satisfaction he had used when he spoke to Hawker earlier.

  ‘Then I know you will understand, Almirante, my position in asking you to sign this short agreement to that effect.’

  Anaya briefly scanned the single page document Grivas produced from the envelope and reached into his own tunic pocket. He brought out a ribbed gold Cartier pen and signed the paper. He gave it his full, swashbuckling scrawl of a signature, with an extra flourishing stroke on the final “a.” Given no other option, he may as well bow down with style.

  ‘Tell me, Grivas, how you intend to obtain such an elusive piece of intelligence.’

  ‘I have already identified my source,’ said Grivas. ‘I will never divulge who, but I will tell you how after I have it.’

  He folded the paper back into the envelope, saluted and left the room.

  Hawker watched one, then two sea grey parachute canopies flutter like butterflies before collapsing on themselves and settling on the waves.

  Sullivan and Kreuzer had been the first two to jump, Sullivan as an unhesitating volunteer to be the first out of the aircraft and Kreuzer, in a fit of Teutonic bravado, literally falling over himself to be number two.

  Hawker suspected that Sullivan had stepped forward purely to bolster O’Hara’s morale and his respect for the little man’s innate leadership increased proportionally.

  They had hooked up their static lines and been pushed out by the airman with a ten se
cond interval. O’Hara had shown no sign of movement as he watched them go but menace still glowed in his eyes. Hawker had handed the gun back to the airman with renewed orders to kill if necessary and held tight to the door as he leaned out to watch the descent.

  Both seemed to master the basics of controlling the canopy, gently warping the panels to alter the airflow on one side or other and effect the turn. Sullivan played with the lines enough to line up with the buoy and set himself up for a straight approach into wind. Kreuzer was a different matter. He spun wildly at first, testing the feel of the control lines far more aggressively. He appeared to have his technique worked out several hundred feet earlier than Sullivan. Instead of contenting himself with the same cautious approach he twisted and jived around the sky like a hotdogging skier. He was clearly enjoying himself and Hawker could see how the sailboarding in Kreuzer’s background gave him an advantage in learning the feel of what was fundamentally just a different kind of sail.

  ‘Smart ass Kraut,’ yelled Linda Kelly, who had crowded behind Hawker to get a view of the action through the door.

  The Dakota had turned downwind to set up for its second run back along the drop zone by the time the two tiny figures below had detached themselves from the tentacles of the canopies that trailed like bloated sea creatures on the water behind them. Sullivan was within a few easy strokes of the buoy, Kreuzer at least 30 metres further downwind. So much for smart arse manoeuvres.

  The airman hooked Linda, then O’Hara, and Hawker onto their static lines. He had handed the gun back to Hawker.

  Linda’s face glowed with the excitement and vigour Hawker remembered from over a decade before. She was livelier than he had seen her at any stage since their reunion, as jumpy as when she went up in the bosun’s chair into the teeth of a Gulfstream gale. She waited impatiently for the airman’s push in the middle of her back.

  ‘Geronimo!’ she screamed as she fell away into space.

  Hawker prodded O’Hara hard with the gun barrel and he shuffled to the doorway. The airman put his hand firmly on O’Hara’s back but as he came to the edge panic seized the Irishman again. He grabbed frantically at the doorframe, connected with one hand and reeled himself around to face inside the aircraft with his feet perched on the ledge. He grasped both sides of the doorway with a fierce gorilla grip. The airman threw himself gamely against O’Hara’s chest, but he was a good foot shorter than the Irishman. He bounced back and fell sprawling on the cabin deck.