He relaxed his grip on the gun, keeping it aimed at Hawker’s chest with only one hand. He stepped closer, but still outside striking range. ‘There was a diversion arranged to cover my boarding at Galegos, but we didn’t have to use it. You cooperated magnificently when you took your troops for a stroll.’
‘If my cooperation means so much to you, why not simply fly down with us in the first place?’ Hawker puzzled. ‘I am quite used to your foul breath over my shoulder by now.’
‘I am disappointed in you, Paolo,’ Grivas tutted. ‘You miss the point. I did not want you to know I was with you at all. I wanted to keep the element of surprise until the very last minute.’
‘Surprise?’ Hawker frowned suspiciously, ‘You know the mission plan as well as I do. Between us there are no surprises.’
Grivas sighed like a school master with a particularly dull pupil. ‘You still do not see it. I have not gone through such an elaborate deception to merely observe you. I am going, Paolo, on your mission.’
‘Madness! We agreed at the beginning that this must be a strictly non-Latin crew, right down to the false passport you yourself got Gaffney to arrange for me. In any case, five is too many. You …’
Grivas cut Hawker short with a jab of the pistol and a suddenly angry sneer.
‘You are the one who is mad if you thought for a moment that we would let you loose among the British. You were never intended to go on this mission. We have permitted you to come this far only to ensure the integrity of your execution of the plan. You have shown us it works, now I will take it over.’
‘Lying bastards!’ Hawker lunged towards Grivas but stopped in the face of the pistol barrel. ‘You had my word that I will go through with it.’
‘And betray your father’s country? We could never take that risk, Paolo.’
‘You have my family. Or do you have another plan for them you’ve been hiding as well?’
Grivas relaxed, as if he realised the power over Hawker’s wife and child was all the control he needed. He dropped the pistol and held it casually at his side. He smiled, smooth and oily. ‘Please, we are gentlemen of honour, the admiral and I. Your family is still safe enough under the watchful eye of Gaffney’s men. You will be returned from here under guard to headquarters, where you will wait with Anaya for confirmation of the mission’s success. When that comes, your wife and little girl will be released from any threat as agreed. You, unfortunately, will have to remain under open arrest with us until the prince’s ransom negotiations are concluded and we have seen the British away from the Malvinas forever. If all goes well, you should be able to see your family again within two weeks.’
‘And if it doesn’t go well?’
‘What becomes of you or your family will be no concern of mine,’ Grivas shrugged his shoulders. ‘I will be dead or disgraced, which amounts to the same. You see, Paolo, you are not the only one with a personal stake in this.’
He chuckled, the way a gambler chuckles at the thought of a big win in front of him. It was the opening Hawker had been waiting for.
The instant Grivas’ eyes narrowed with his smile, Hawker moved with the speed and power of an uncoiled spring. He threw his left leg in a vicious karate kick. His heel smashed into the hand holding the gun. It spun free of the hand and landed with a clatter inside the tangle of the boat cradle, and Grivas let out a howl of pain.
Hawker kicked again, this time at Grivas’ head. He missed. Grivas had moved with surprising agility and now lunged back, leading with his left arm out straight to rest his savaged right hand. He caught Hawker off balance and drove him sprawling on his face to the floor. By the time Hawker twisted around Grivas had launched himself in a headlong dive that would pin Hawker to the floor. He twisted again but too late. Grivas was already on top of him, grasping with his good hand for his throat. Hawker jabbed savagely with both hands at the sides of Grivas’ face, his lungs screaming for air and his throat aflame with the pain of being choked. Grivas was an expert. He kept the crushing pressure on even though his face was badly bruised from Hawker’s desperate battering. Blood ran freely from his nose and dribbled out of the corner of his mouth. It dropped onto Hawker’s face and neck and oozed warm and sticky under the grip of Grivas’ fingers.
Hawker stopped punching. He concentrated all his waning energy and aimed both hands in a flat bladed blow at Grivas’ neck, letting out a strangled cry from deep within him as he struck. Grivas’ face contorted with agony. His grip eased on Hawker’s throat and his lungs filled with a rush of air. He struck again and Grivas recoiled. Now Hawker was up, first on his elbows, then on his feet, as Grivas turned away and seemed to retreat. Then Hawker saw why. The pistol glinted dully from where it lay in a shaft of light under an angle iron crossbeam of the boat cradle. Grivas was clawing his way across the deck towards it and he was almost within reach.
Hawker launched himself into a tackle that brought Grivas down against the frame. He grunted and fell flat to the floor, but still kept his back to Hawker. He could almost touch the pistol now, and he thrust his arm in between two sharp angles of iron to reach it. His fingers were brushing the butt when Hawker got hold of his wrist and wedged his arm into the iron frames. Grivas struggled on. He forced his arm further into the wedge, his fingers scrabbling for the gun.
Hawker let him go until he judged the leverage would be just right. Then he hauled back on Grivas’ arm as savagely as a fisherman driving the hook into a marlin, pulling the arm at ninety degrees to the angle iron. He released for a beat and hauled back again, focussing all his adrenaline fuelled power on that one point of cold hard contact.
There was a sudden jerk as Grivas’ muscles contracted against the iron, then a sudden crack and his arm went limp. It was a dull splintering crack, pulpy and organic, like the sound of a green branch being torn from the trunk of a tree. It was the sound of the ulna and thin radius bones in Grivas’ forearm snapping in two and tearing their jagged ends against the flesh and nerve tissue between his wrist and elbow.
Then there was silence.
Hawker let go of the wrist and Grivas’ hand fell straight to the floor, at almost ninety degrees to the rest of his arm.
Hawker reached past the carnage, grabbed hold of the pistol, sat back away from the framework, and for the first time heard Grivas’ agony. He stuck the gun in the back of his belt and reached back into the frame to delicately draw the dangling arm out. He had to straighten it to clear the wedge and Grivas screamed louder. The pain was seared on his face as he slumped back on the floor. Hawker settled the broken arm across his chest with as much care as he could muster.
Hawker unbuckled Grivas’ thick webbing belt and pulled it out of his trousers, trying not to transfer too much movement to the injured arm. He folded it to a thick wad and eased it into the wounded man’s mouth. Grivas bit hard on it gratefully, but his eyes flared with hatred rather than pain. Hawker looked around for the intercom he knew would be somewhere near the ramp. He would have to get the loadmasters down here with a first aid kit and he was starting to think about how to manoeuvre Grivas across the deck of the yacht when a red light flashed overhead in alternating beats with a metallic hooter. They were on top of their target!
He grabbed Grivas by the collar, ignored the sudden scowl of agony and said urgently, ‘Listen, there is no question of your going now. You have no choice but to trust me.’
He heard other noises. A change in the pitch of the engines and the rising voices of the two loadmasters. They were making their way across the yacht. Hawker shook Grivas hard, until his eyes were wide open and locked on his own.
‘Grivas, listen! My family. You must guarantee me time, for their sake. 36 hours. Keep Gaffney’s dogs leashed for 36 hours and I will deliver Andrew to Menendez, I promise.’
The voices came closer, and now the noises of clumsy movement across the boat deck.
’36 hours. Do I have your word on it?’
Grivas nodded his head slowly.
‘Do I have Anaya’s
word too?’
Grivas held his head rigid. Hawker shook him harder. His eyes jammed closed and his teeth tightened on the wad of webbing.
‘Do I have Anaya’s word?’
Grivas nodded.
‘Good.’ Hawker let Grivas slump back to the floor, reached for the pistol behind his back, and stood to face up to the stern of the yacht. The loadmasters’ faces appeared over the edge of the transom and froze in shock when they saw Grivas, Hawker and the barrel of the gun aimed straight at them.
‘A change in orders,’ Hawker barked in his parade ground voice despite the rasping it produced in his raw throat. ‘Comodoro Grivas has suffered an accident. Get down here and get him out of the way. I’m going forward to muster my crew.’
The airmen looked anxiously to Grivas. He nodded and closed his eyes painfully. They looked at each other for a second, then leapt down from the yacht and gave Hawker a brisk salute.
Kreuzer, O’Hara and Linda were wide awake when Hawker climbed down the forward end of the cradle. Their eyes opened wide when they saw him, and he realised his face must be covered in Grivas’ dried blood. He could feel it caked and matted in his beard. It would have to be washed out before contact with the British but that could wait.
‘Don’t ask. A minor complication that is now fixed,’ he said when he saw the inevitable question forming on Linda’s lips. He eased past them in the narrow space between the yacht and the bulkhead and opened a locker in the crew rest. He pulled out four bright yellow foul weather overalls. They were British made, the type developed for round the world yacht races. They had tight elasticised seals at the neck and wrists and the trouser legs ended in rubber boots with non-slip treaded soles.
‘Get these on quickly,’ he said as he stepped into the first leg of the suit that seemed to best match his size. ‘When you’re dressed, wait here. I’m going to the flight deck.’
‘Señor Hawker, we thought you would never come,’ the navigator smiled broadly as Hawker, looking like a deflated and jaundiced Michelin man, stepped through the narrow door.
‘How far away are we?’ he asked.
‘We’re there. We’ve been orbiting the coordinates you gave us for two minutes now,’ Rodrigues replied from his pilot’s seat. ‘I’m spiralling down as close as I dare to sea level. Some of those swells trick you with their height.’
Hawker looked through the windscreen and it was like looking out from the bridge of a small ship. The wavetops came at them almost at eye level, so close he could see detail in the foam on their crests. The weak autumn sun was up now, hidden behind a mass of grey cloud to the north east. The horizon was nothing more than a smudge between the variations in grey from sky to sea.
‘Conditions?’
The navigator plucked a piece of jotting paper from his chart table.
‘Wind fifteen knots one hundred and ninety-five degrees. Swell estimated five to six metres,’ he read. ‘You’re lucky, it’s the best weather we’ve had out here for the past week. Outside temperature …’
‘Don’t tell me,’ said Hawker curtly. ‘Enemy contact?’
‘Nothing,’ said Rodrigues. ‘We’re too low for radar. But I have a good nose for it by now and I’d say you’re right. There should be British ships within twenty nautical miles north east.’
‘It’s not ships I’m interested in. It’s one ship,’ Hawker said to himself as much as to anyone. And then, louder, ‘There’s a change to your brief. Comodoro Grivas has suffered an accident and is unfit to proceed. You will now take him home with you, not me.’
He backed out of the cockpit, not waiting for a reaction. When he got back to the cargo bay one of the loadmasters was hunched on the floor, unshackling the wire rope from the front of the yacht cradle.
‘What’s going on here?’ O’Hara demanded.
‘You’ll find out soon enough.’ Hawker dismissed him with a commanding glance. He noted that O’Hara’s face was flushed with nervous tension, but his eyes still held their fanatical fire. Linda’s eyes, too, shone with an adrenaline high that made their sea green colour seem jewel bright. Kreuzer was the odd one out. He appeared as casual as the others were edgy. He stood erect and cocksure, full of superior confidence. He reminded Hawker of so many officers he had grown to despise in his last few years of service.
‘All ready aft?’ Hawker said in Spanish to the loadmaster.
‘Yes, sir. Manuel remains there with the Comodoro. We managed to strap him upright in the space between the rib and fuselage skin at the ramp control station. It is not comfortable, but he will be safe even when the cargo moves. Manuel is standing by there to open and control the chutes.’
Hawker clapped him on the shoulder and stood aside as he stowed the heavy cable on the winch drum, then spoke into an intercom panel mounted in the centre of the bulkhead.
Rodrigues in the cockpit acknowledged the loadmaster’s message, snapped a short call to the second loadmaster in position at the other end of the cargo bay and glanced at his co-pilot.
‘Commence LAPE,’ he commanded.
The two pilots worked together in a well-oiled sequence of procedures for the Low Altitude Parachute Extraction they now initiated. Each knew his role as they made deft changes of control inputs, working levers and switches on the panel and the console between their seats. The big Hercules heaved as if it had run into a giant feather mattress as the engine revs reduced, the big flaps extended out to the limits of their travel on the wings and the air speed washed away.
‘250 … 200 … 180 … 150,’ the co-pilot read the air speed down, freeing Rodrigues to keep his eyes on the sea outside.
‘Drop ramp,’ Rodrigues called to the loadmasters and powerful hydraulic rams cracked the tail ramp open, then smoothly lowered it all the way.
‘Ramp down and secure,’ the loadmaster called from the tail, where he huddled at his station with Grivas strapped beside him.
Rodrigues kept his concentration on the waves ahead as he levelled out of a slight bank to fly parallel with the line of the swell, across the wind. He eased the control column gingerly forward, bringing the nose even closer to the sea.
‘Chutes away!’ he called and tensed for the drag he knew he would feel on the aircraft in the instant that the three huge parachutes on the ramp streamed out to snap open in the slipstream.
The loadmaster anticipated the command perfectly. From where he stood in his confined space between the load and the fuselage, he saw the parachutes flutter and open like a cluster of ten metre diameter mushrooms. He knew from experience there would be an instant of inertia before the cargo yielded to the pull of the canopies and started to slide backwards, but this time the instant seemed to last forever.
‘Come on, come on,’ Rodrigues muttered. He was subconsciously sitting forward in his seat. Small beads of sweat covered his upper lip. Then he felt a small jolt of movement, transmitted from the weight shift in the tail to his flying controls.
The loadmaster and Grivas cringed instinctively as twenty tonnes of steel and timber and fibreglass began to slide past only millimetres away from their noses, and then pick up speed to a frightening blur.
It had only taken a second or so. To Hawker at the bow of the boat it had also seemed an eternity. Now he let out a whoop as he saw the yacht in its cradle slide away from him and accelerate down the barrel of the cargo bay.
‘Go straight, please dear God, go straight,’ he wished out loud as he followed the cradle, heedless of anyone or anything else.
Suddenly the cargo bay filled with the soft grey light of the South Atlantic morning. The cradle cleared the cargo door with one last scream of metal where a frame at the side grated against the rib dangerously close to Grivas and the loadmaster, but Hawker noticed neither the noise nor the terror on their two faces as he stood at the threshold to the sky and watched Sleipnir plunge towards her own element.
There was about 50 feet between the floor of the Hercules and the trough of the seas. Fifty feet for the yacht to fall and survi
ve, at a speed of 150 knots when it left the aircraft. There were two factors in favour of Sleipnir’s survival: she had the enormous stopping power of the three parachutes; and the cradle didn’t.
The moment it dropped off the lip of the cargo ramp, the cradle started to fall away from Sleipnir’s hull. They separated like stages of a rocket. The cradle continued to fall straight down. Sleipnir slipped out behind and above it, stern first, and seemed to hang in space as the cradle fell clear. They hit the water a second or so and barely three metres apart, the cradle first with a pluming splash that showered across the yacht’s deck as her bow and keel made the first jarring smash into the water.
Hawker lost sight of the boat for a moment. The white hull ploughed deep into the side of a swell and the drag chutes behind started to flutter as their lower edges folded into the sea.
‘She floats!’ he found himself screaming at the top of his voice.
Sleipnir came surging out of the water on the other side of the swell. Her decks streamed solid water and she rolled violently as she slid down into the trough. By the time the next swell was on her, she had shaken off the burden of water and floated on her lines, her bow bobbing and dancing as the drag of the chutes in the water pulled her stern around into the wind and sea.
The floor of the cargo bay tilted as Rodrigues powered away from the waves, then banked into a tight turning climb. Hawker felt a slap on his shoulder and turned to see the beaming face of the loadmaster.
‘Magnificent, sir,’ he called out over the buffeting noise of the slipstream. ‘A great drop. Something for you and the Comodoro to be proud of!’
Hawker glanced to where Grivas was now slumped between the rib he was still strapped to and the cargo bay floor. Was that a smile he saw around the webbing still clenched in his teeth?
‘It’s not over yet,’ Hawker said to the airman. ‘Check your side arm and stand by for trouble.’ He beckoned towards the waist of the cargo bay, where Kreuzer, O’Hara and Linda stood together in a yellow clump. O’Hara’s eyes blazed bloodshot. His face was contorted with horror. The other two were on either side of him, poised like trainers around a wild and unpredictable animal.
Prince Hunter Page 22
