Prince Hunter

by Garrett Russell

  This distracted Hawker for an almost fatal second. He glanced with concern at the airman, then caught in his peripheral vision the blur of a massive fist smashing towards his head. O’Hara had risked releasing one hand’s grip on the door to connect with a crushing blow on Hawker’s cheek. It threw him off balance enough to give O’Hara a chance at the gun. He lunged for it with his one free hand, but Hawker recovered ahead of him. He tossed the gun fast to his right. It spun out of his hand and past O’Hara’s desperate grasp to clatter on the deck just inside the aircraft.

  O’Hara lurched after it, using his other hand’s grip on the doorframe to pull himself in. In that split second he left himself open.

  Hawker drove forward hard, lifting his knee sharply into the gap between the big man’s legs. He pulled back and drove his knee at the same spot again, putting all his body weight behind it.

  He needn’t have bothered. O’Hara had buckled with the first blow. The second sent him sent him flailing back out through the doorway, his hands frantically grasping at nothing but air. Hawker steadied himself against the doorframe and watched O’Hara drop until his static line yanked taut. The webbing was stiff as a rod for the fraction of a second it took for the release to work, then it sprang back and trailed fluttering upwards to tangle with the other three lines streaming aft along the fuselage.

  Hawker watched O’Hara’s canopy open and fill. He glanced back into the aircraft to check the airman, who was now back on his feet and rubbing the back of his head. He grinned sheepishly and waved a casual salute as Hawker launched himself out of the doorway.

  When Hawker oriented himself after the jolt of his canopy opening had brought him to a vertical position, O’Hara was a few hundred feet below and to his right, the drumming of his canopy easily heard in the eerie silence of the air. This was the sensation of parachuting Hawker had always found to be the most enjoyable – the sudden contrast from the high decibel howl of the aircraft and the jumper’s own slipstream buffeting his ears to flight as silent as an albatross.

  Their Dakota was now back to cruising power, its throaty drone fading away to the west. Another few hundred feet and he would be able to hear the throb of the marine diesel as the crash boat positioned itself for the pick up.

  ‘O’Hara!’ Hawker called loudly enough for the Irishman to easily hear him. ‘If you don’t control your drift, you’ll miss the buoy by too much.’ He waited for a reply and when none came called again, ‘Okay, freeze your balls off. I’m going for the buoy.’

  ‘Wait!’ O’Hara’s voice trembled through the air. ‘Tell me what I’ve got to do.’

  Hawker talked O’Hara down all the way to the water. The Irishman proved to be better than Hawker had expected him to be and after his first faltering attempts on the control lines he came to a reasonably controlled splashdown with some semblance of authority.

  Hawker splashed down about 15 seconds later and 15 metres closer to the buoy, still calling instructions to make sure O’Hara freed himself from the drag of the harness properly. The big man’s face was split with a huge grin, the same grin of relief Hawker remembered seeing in photos of monkeys returned from the early experimental space flights.

  ‘Well done, that man,’ Hawker cheered across the waves, then in a harsh rasp, ‘Show me that kind of insolence again and I’ll shove you out without a parachute.’

  The boat picked them up and they sat shivering with the others around steaming mugs of thick, dark coffee while the boat crew dragged the parachutes aboard. Linda and Kreuzer giggled like kids after a roller coaster ride. Sullivan was quiet and remote, showing a trace of emotion only when he snapped sharply at O’Hara in support of Hawker’s authority.

  With all five parachutes stowed in an untidy wet mass on the deck of the boat’s cockpit, they ploughed back towards the coast where they eventually nosed into a secluded little inlet some way distant from the towers of Mar del Plata. The skipper nudged the boat right up to the beach and Hawker hustled his crew up across the foredeck and down to the sand before they could ask any questions. They were alone on the beach, at the base of a steep cliff as the boat reversed powerfully away in a flurry of white foam, before anyone spoke.

  ‘What the hell now?’ Sullivan demanded wearily.

  ‘We wait,’ said Hawker.

  Fifteen minutes later the cove was filled with a high pitched scream and the thump of long thin wings hammering the air.

  A Sikorsky Sea King SH3 helicopter roared over the edge of the cliff, wheeled in a tight bank over the water and settled onto the sand of the cove’s just-big-enough beach. The side door slid open and an airman waved them across. Hawker quietly watched the reaction of each of his crew, then sauntered to follow them under the beating blades and into the spacious cabin.

  In another 20 minutes they were on the tarmac of the air base at Tandil, inland from Mar del Plata. The same Dakota was there waiting for them and the Sea King pilot brought them down close alongside it. Within seven minutes they were back in the air, flying towards the afternoon sun and Buenos Aires. The airman handed each of them a solidly warm pack of canteen food.

  ‘Not quite the lunch by the beach I promised you,’ Hawker said without a hint of apology in his tone. ‘But it’s got the heat and nutrition you need.’

  He hoed into his own meal pack with the gusto of well earned hunger and smiled with satisfaction. A good day’s work. He had now seen as much as he needed of these people provided by Gaffney. He knew which three he would take into the South Atlantic.

  Thursday 13 May 1982

  ‘You’ll have to tell Anaya the whole thing is off. Impossible. Cannot be achieved,’ Hawker said to Grivas. They were in the mess room near their sleeping quarters at the Naval School of Engineering. It was early in the morning, so early that no one else was awake yet. Grivas had roused Hawker quietly and told him in murmured Spanish they needed an urgent conference. Hawker now sat drowsily in an armchair while Grivas paced the floor nervously. They were still speaking Spanish and in the same hushed tones that Grivas had started with.

  ‘You tell him,’ said Grivas.

  ‘I’m not the one who promised him the intelligence.’

  ‘He failed before I did!’

  ‘It doesn’t matter who failed,’ Hawker yawned his exhaustion and exasperation. ‘The essential point is that we are no closer to the information most critical to this operation than we were two days ago. I’ve delivered on my end of the bargain.’

  Grivas nodded agreement. ‘The boat, the troops, the plan that, should it succeed, will be taught in military academies for a century.’

  ‘Cut that bullshit flattery,’ Hawker’s eyes flared awake with anger. ‘You insult me if you think it will work. I am not Anaya.’

  ‘You are better,’ said Grivas. ‘You have made miracles.’

  Hawker’s eyes flared like torches.

  ‘No, no, I am serious,’ Grivas raced urgently to placate him. ‘What you have achieved in such a short time is beyond all rational expectation. Is it beyond hope that you could achieve the impossible again?’

  ‘Land a raiding force within a critical radius of five thousand metres on a target whose location I only know to an accuracy of 50 kilometres?’

  Grivas slumped into the other armchair in despondent defeat.

  ‘There is only one rational way out of this for all of us,’ said Hawker. ‘Make your glorious leader see reason and cancel this whole bloody operation before its stupid failure brings him down further than he already is. Convince him to give up. Let Gaffney go back to his drug running and let my family go free.’

  ‘And you think I dream of miracles?’ Grivas abruptly stood up in alarm. His dark eyes darted with agitation and Hawker thought he saw something else, something new and strange in them. It was terror.

  ‘Paolo listen to me as an old friend, please. If you think Anaya would ever allow you to walk away from all this as if it never happened, civvie street has softened your brain more than I thought. Cancel? Yes, he could d
o that. But never with you and your family alive. Your chances of that are as slim as my own.’

  Hawker scoffed, ‘An admiral would have you shot just because you couldn’t deliver a piece of intelligence?’

  ‘No,’ sighed Grivas. ‘He would destroy me because I have threatened him. That is why I had to take you into my confidence like this now. Survival for both of us depends on your helping me.’

  ‘You have the entire navy to help you. I heard Anaya give you that authority.’

  ‘I can’t trust them. This is too,’ Grivas hesitated, ‘too sensitive.’

  ‘You must be desperate if you’re starting to trust me,’ said Hawker as he looked pointedly through the door to the barbed wire and broken glass encrusted wall and the armed guard standing by it.

  ‘I trust you only because you have as much to lose as I,’ replied Grivas. ‘I also respect your tactical prowess. I come to you not just for assistance but for advice.’

  Grivas sat down beside Hawker and dropped his voice lower, even though they were still speaking in Spanish.

  ‘Listen carefully, my old friend. You are the first I have ever told this to. I seized the opportunity to find Invincible’s location and elevate myself above the whole of Anaya’s intelligence corps because I have a contact in the Soviet embassy. A contact I have been grooming for some years.’

  Hawker made no attempt to hide his surprise. ‘The Russians? Dangerous friends for an officer in a semi-fascist military government.’

  ‘There’s more to it than that,’ Grivas paused to gulp, ‘and no one would ever have known if the bitch had not turned out to be so treacherous.’

  ‘Your contact is a woman?’

  Grivas nodded. ‘A cipher clerk. No big deal but in a position to get her hands on satellite information I know they’re sending here from Moscow. She told me quite early in the conflict that her ambassador was taking a deep personal interest in the Malvinas affair. Hardly surprising, I suppose, when one considers how heavily they rely on us for their wheat and meat.’

  ‘So, you know a Soviet cypher clerk,’ said Hawker. ‘Whatever inspired you to think she would breach her embassy’s security on your behalf?’

  ‘Simple. Blackmail.’

  ‘You’ve been working too much with Anaya.’

  ‘No, listen,’ Grivas dropped his voice again. ‘I had the simplest of levers on her. I thought it was foolproof. You see, I know her particularly well. I know what she is.’

  ‘You’re lovers?’

  ‘Hardly. She’s a lesbian.’

  Hawker whistled softly. ‘That’s good blackmail ammo all right. I thought the Russians would have screened their overseas personnel better than to let that through. So why did it not work?’

  ‘It backfired. Listen, Paolo, how do you think that I know she’s a lesbian when her own embassy security does not?’ Grivas paused. ‘It’s because she and I mixed in the same social circles. It’s because …’ he paused again, longer this time and with a deep sonorous breath. ‘Because I am maricón.’

  The shock hit Hawker as if Grivas had poured iced water on his balls. Shock so great that he broke into messroom English almost instinctively.

  ‘Poofter! You’re queer?’

  ‘I know you never suspected,’ Grivas said, the fear now fading from his face. ‘College room-mates and all that. I learned early to disguise it. A matter of survival. I guess that’s why Olga and I could get on so well, both hiding in systems which would crush us if we ever admitted who we really were.’

  ‘She understood that well enough to threaten you back when you tried to heavy her,’ Hawker went back to Spanish, the shock now fading from his voice as well.

  ‘Yes. I tried the friendship angle first,’ Grivas forced an ironic smile. ‘The great gay camaraderie. She wouldn’t buy it. And when I threatened to expose her, she came straight back at me with the same weapon.’

  ‘Which is why you can’t afford to admit your failure to Anaya. He might probe.’

  ‘You see why I say all our survival, your family’s and mine, is linked to the success of this mission,’ said Grivas. ‘That is why I sought your help, to see if you can think of another way to extract the information from Olga.’

  ‘Maybe what you need is stronger blackmail,’ a third voice said softly in educated but slightly stilted Spanish. Linda Kelly walked into the room.

  Grivas gave a yelp of fright and embarrassment.

  ‘How much did you hear?’ he said in English, his voice cracking.

  ‘Enough,’ said Linda. ‘I’ve been at the door a couple of minutes.’

  Grivas looked as if he could kill her. Hawker stepped quickly between them and said, ‘How do you mean, stronger blackmail?’

  Linda had the dreamy look of all attractive women when they have just woken up. Her hair was ruffled, her eyes slightly puffed. She wore oversized men’s pyjamas that flopped open provocatively when she walked, which she did now, brushing past Hawker and flaunting herself at Grivas as she stretched like a cat before sitting cross legged in one of the old broken leather armchairs.

  ‘I’ve seen it before in some of the work we did in England,’ she said casually. ‘The sexual blackmail trick is like a national sport over there and from what I’ve seen a bit of good hard evidence beats a whole shipload of accusations any day.’

  Hawker looked back at Grivas, who now appeared less angry.

  ‘In other words,’ Linda continued languorously, ‘show this Olga whatever-her-name-is a couple of hot compromising photos of herself and you’ve got her by the balls. Figuratively speaking, of course.’

  ‘She’s making sense,’ Hawker said to Grivas.

  ‘Could be,’ replied Grivas, and to Linda, ‘You’ve done this before, you say.’

  ‘Not personally,’ she said. ‘I think Sullivan’s been involved a few times. It would suit his dirty little mind and I do know he has some photographic experience.’

  ‘What do you propose?’ asked Grivas. ‘That we burst into her bedroom with flashbulbs popping like sleazy Hollywood private eyes?’

  ‘No,’ Linda shook her head. ‘A set up. We lure her somewhere that we’ve set up with hidden cameras and all, we get pictures of the action, we squeeze her with the evidence the next morning.’

  ‘Very neat,’ Grivas said. ‘All we need is to find a cosy boudoir, a well-equipped and experienced photographer, and at least one other lesbian who’ll work as bait for us, no questions asked. Now where do we get all that by tonight?’

  ‘The boudoir is no problem. You must have an apartment, or there’s Paul’s place at Olivos. I saw it when I raided his wardrobe for clothing labels the other day and it could work fine. I already told you Sullivan is all the photographer we need so it’s simply a matter of buying the right camera. Or renting one, for chrissake, if the Argentine economy is so godamned desperate. And for your bait, as you so delicately put it,’ Linda paused for a long breath. ‘I volunteer.’

  Grivas was unmoved. He was thinking hard about it. Hawker was the one who reacted.

  ‘You can’t be serious,’ he blurted.

  ‘Deadly serious.’

  ‘But you’re not a … I know you could never …’

  ‘Never have, until now. That’s no reason I can’t do it. A little play acting, is all,’ she said, and the words sounded more businesslike than Hawker was used to hearing from her. ‘You learn to act a lot in the coke business. Anyway, if I muff it I can cover with the truth. Tell her I’m a virgin, with ladies at least.’

  ‘Yes, she’d go for that,’ mused Grivas. His eyes were still glazed deep in thought. He snapped back in a moment, a sly smile spreading over his face. ‘Yes, a virgin is just right. Irresistibly right. Your place is perfect for it, too, Paul. All we need is to set up the right equipment. We must speak with Sullivan urgently.’

  ‘Not so fast,’ Linda interjected. ‘I haven’t finished. There is one condition you have to agree to before I commit to this.’

  ‘Name it,’ said Grivas.
r />   ‘Paul takes me in his mission crew.’

  Hawker started, but she hushed him with a wave of her hand.

  ‘Don’t deny it, Paul. You had already decided to leave me out. I could see it in your eyes after yesterday’s fun and games. You just wanted to assure yourself that you could get those three stooges to do anything you commanded.’

  ‘You’re guessing,’ muttered Hawker.

  ‘I know you, Paul, from way back. And you haven’t changed. You’re too much of a chauvinist to want me along. God knows what you would have done if you couldn’t get O’Hara to jump through your hoops on that plane. Come up with some reason to take a crew of two only, is my guess.’

  ‘It will be dangerous,’ said Hawker, trying to muster back the authority he seemed to have lost in the last few seconds. ‘It’s no place for a woman.’

  ‘Danger of dying means nothing to me,’ Linda sneered back at him. ‘Can’t you see I’m half dead anyway? That’s how I’ve lived my lousy life since my husband was killed. It’s nothing if I can’t serve the cause he died for.’

  ‘No place for a woman,’ Hawker persisted.

  ‘Then don’t think of this woman. Think of your wife and daughter,’ Linda’s face softened. ‘You don’t guarantee I’m in, I don’t do this lesbian thing, you don’t get to go with any hope of success. It’s like signing their death warrants for Anaya yourself.’

  ‘What do you know about that?’ Grivas asked quickly, suspiciously.

  ‘Just what I’ve gathered by putting two and two together,’ Linda replied. ‘I couldn’t figure why Paul, one of the most limey guys I’ve ever met, would be doing something like this against the British. I also knew he had some worry on his mind, even back in Montevideo. It fell into place when I saw his apartment. That’s a family home, but it hasn’t had a woman in it for weeks. Then I saw the family photos around. Cute, and English, I’ll bet. Your navy has them hostage, doesn’t it? In one of its famous dungeons.’