Prince Hunter

by Garrett Russell

Gaffney nodded his assent, then said, ‘I trust this boat is loaded in accordance with every detail of our agreement.’

  ‘See for yourself,’ Anaya said, and pulled a photograph from a file on his desk. It showed a sleek Argentine Navy fast patrol boat tied up alongside the dock at the Darsena Norte naval base. Lying on the flat expanse of the deck aft of the bridge housing were what looked like two oversized orange and white darts, about six metres long, with sharp noses and finely tapered fins at their waists and tails. Behind them, also lashed flat to the deck, was a comparatively clumsy looking metal box painted in the same grey as the boat. It was a little longer than the missiles, and almost as slim, with large square ribs standing out at regular intervals along its length. At one end was what appeared to be a hatch, at the other were massive mounting brackets. All three objects were obviously loaded as temporary cargo.

  ‘The third Exocet is in the launcher,’ said Anaya. ‘They have, since this picture was taken, been secured under tarpaulins where they sit.’

  ‘Good and fine,’ nodded Gaffney. ‘It follows that we can terminate our interest in the Hawker woman now.’

  Anaya looked startled. ‘We need Hawker’s cooperation for another 30 hours. We still need your threat.’

  ‘Hawker hasn’t a clue what we’re doing,’ said Gaffney. ‘He’s out in the middle of the bloody ocean, incommunicado, as you might say. So long as he thinks my lads still have his wife in their sights, it doesn’t matter a damn what we do. We could all save ourselves a lot of bother by just blowing her away now.’

  ‘No, not that. Never.’ Anaya’s chest heaved with imperious stature. ‘I do not want – I never wanted – the woman and child killed, whether we succeed or fail. That is why I insisted on surveillance and not the outright abduction you originally proposed. Your value to me was always as a credible threat to control Hawker with, and I hoped nothing more. But you are right. This aspect of the operation has succeeded, and the surveillance is rendered redundant. Dismiss your men in England, Gaffney.’

  ‘As you wish, Admiral.’ Gaffney put his hand out. ‘This will be our farewell, then.’

  ‘Via con Dios,’ said Anaya, shaking Gaffney’s hand and resisting the urge to give him the hug of abrazo, a civilised gesture this uncouth Irishman would never understand.

  ‘Dithering old fool,’ Gaffney chuckled to Sullivan in the corridor outside Anaya’s office.

  ‘Are you going to call the boys off, as he demanded?’ asked Sullivan.

  ‘Not bloody likely,’ said Gaffney. ‘They’ve been sitting on their bums itching for something to do for too long. I doubt they’d take any notice if I did tell them. Anaya’s gone soft with delusion. He can’t see that the fewer survivors there are to tell tales, the better all of us will come out of this. We go ahead as planned,’ he paused and chuckled dryly. ‘Unless I’m a poor judge of my men, the little Mrs Hawker would only live to be a weeping widow anyway.’

  ‘But what if Anaya finds out? These spicks live by funny honour. He could make things sticky for us.’

  ‘You have a point, me boy,’ said Gaffney, chewing thoughtfully on the end of his moustache, and then, after a lengthy pause for thought. ‘Yes, that could be a complication. You’d better make a call to Devon while I check us out of the hotel. Tell them “Emerald.” That’s the code. But tell them I’ll have their balls for marbles if they act before ten thirty tomorrow night. Work it out first in English time so there’s no mistake. Send a message to Uruguay, too. They’ll need all the time they can get to make the rendezvous time in that old tub.’

  Sullivan grinned. ‘By the time the old Almirante wakes up to us, we’ll be hundreds of sea miles out of his reach.’

  ‘Aye,’ mused Gaffney. ‘Did you get a good look at this boat he’s booked us on?’

  ‘It’s perfect,’ said Sullivan. ‘A TNC45 class fast attack craft. The Argies have a good few of them, all from Lürssen in Germany, so it should be well built. It’s about a hundred and fifty feet long with four thumping big diesels. Top speed would be about forty knots, cruising at twenty. Full tanks would give it a range of fifteen hundred nautical miles, give or take.’

  ‘And the missiles?’ asked Gaffney.

  ‘The Exocets aren’t part of its normal armament. It should have torpedoes, machine guns and that cannon in the photo looks to be a forty millimetre. I’d reckon they ripped the launcher and missiles off one of their destroyers. But other navies have Exocets mounted on almost identical attack boats. It will have the right radar for that.’

  ‘Excellent,’ beamed Gaffney, and he laughed out loud and danced a little jig. ‘The Argies will never know what hit them.’

  ‘Nor will the English.’

  ‘Aye, lad. Nor will the bloody English. Gaffney stopped dancing and slammed his fist into his hand.

  Darkness came early and suddenly to the bleak shroud of sky over the South Atlantic.

  Hawker’s arms still ached from hours at the helm of Sleipnir, gripping the wheel and feeling each wave lift the stern as it charged the yacht from behind. The bow would plough down into the water, foam hissing along the sides as Sleipnir picked up to the speed of the swell, and there would be a brief moment of equilibrium when the boat was poised at the base of a wall of water before the force of the wave went beyond control and came crashing down in a fury of foam and chopped water. The stern would slew savagely to one side as the pressure of tons of water tried to broach the yacht broadside on to the path of the wave. The helmsman had to haul the wheel hard in the opposite direction and struggle to hold it there as the roaring crest loomed up behind him. The deck would tilt forward to a frightening angle. The yacht would threaten to roll on its ends. Then she would be at the peak and the helmsman would feel the sudden blow of the wind’s full force on his back, tearing at his hair and drenching him with bullets of spray. It was like riding a dragon’s tail. The helmsman would tighten his grip on the bucking wheel and hang on with fingers beyond pain with cold until the wave finally overtook Sleipnir and they dropped down the back side like a child on a slide. In the gloom of the trough he had only seconds to centre the helm and check his course on the wildly swinging compass and steel himself for a repeat of the same torture in the next wave’s assault.

  It would be tedious soul sapping work shared by a crew of four. On Sleipnir there were only two helmsmen to share the watches. Hawker had ordered O’Hara to relieve him after his first two hours of this hell.

  Two hours on, two hours off, all through the long cold night. There was no other way to close on the British fleet if it was going to be where Hawker and Grivas had estimated it should be.

  Now it was the end of another two hour break for Hawker. He was preparing himself to climb out of the cosy warmth of the cabin into the icy blackness of the cockpit. At night it was worse because the helmsman couldn’t see the waves coming. The only light in his world of hissing roaring water and wind was the orange glow from the compass binnacle.

  ‘You look beat,’ said Linda Kelly.

  ‘You should see yourself,’ Hawker forced a smile.

  ‘Stay a while longer, Paul. Give that asshole another hour at the wheel.’

  ‘He needs to rest as much as I do,’ said Hawker. ‘Otherwise we risk losing concentration and running off course.’

  He opened the hatch and the icy wind whistled in. Then he was gone in the darkness. A few seconds later O’Hara stumbled down the companionway ladder. He slammed the hatch shut behind him and sprawled on the nearest bunk with a loud groan.

  Linda left him to sleep for an hour and a half. She was working on her own schedule of taking catnaps between making radio transmissions for ten minutes at every hour and half hour on the international distress frequency. She finished her transmission, her voice dry and croaky from repeating “Mayday” endlessly into the microphone, her nerves tingling with the strain of listening for the response which, once again, had failed to come. She struggled through the pitching cabin to the galley where she put another can of soup on the g
imballed stove to heat.

  ‘More bloody soup,’ O’Hara said sourly when she shook him awake and thrust a steaming mug into his hand.

  ‘If you don’t like it you can do your own cooking. Otherwise shut up and drink it now. You relieve Paul in thirty minutes.’

  O’Hara looked at his watch and scowled. ‘How long is this going to go on for? The way I’m feeling now I won’t be worth a pinch of shit by the time we come to blows with the English.’

  ‘You should have thought of that before you ditched Kreuzer,’ Linda said icily. ‘Paul’s plan was based on having three of you to share the steering watches.’

  ‘So, you’ve talked about it, him and you?’ O’Hara sat up so sharply he spilled some precious soup. ‘Well let me tell you straight from my side. It was him or the both of us out there.’

  ‘You think I was born yesterday? You’re strong enough to pull two men out of the water.’

  ‘But not a bloody parachute as well.’

  ‘You didn’t have to pull it. Just hang on long enough for Kreuzer to reach the lifelines.’

  ‘I couldn’t!’ O’Hara’s eyes shot red with fury. ‘I tell you I couldn’t, woman. And anyway, I had my orders, didn’t I?’

  ‘Orders?’

  O’Hara slumped back to the bunk. His brow puckered into deep worry furrows. He knew he had said too much and didn’t have the wits to cover it up.

  ‘Orders? Whose orders?’ Linda hissed. ‘Gaffney’s? What has that shitbag told you that has to be a secret from me?’

  O’Hara was shaking his head. ‘Not Gaffney, not his orders. Through him, to be sure, but from higher up. A bloody sight higher.’ He sat up and his chest puffed out. ‘The IRA Supreme Command has made me responsible.’

  ‘Responsible to do what?’

  ‘To spill that shitty English prince’s guts and rub all those snotty English noses in it.’

  ‘But we’re to take him hostage.’

  ‘And so we will,’ smirked O’Hara. ‘That’s the only reason I’ve been a good boy and put up with all of Hawker’s bullshit blather. I’ll follow what he says all the way to when I can get that poncy prince and a chopper together, then watch me take over.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Linda’s head shook.

  O’Hara smiled evilly and his eyes were glinting with it. ‘Oh, yes I do, lassie. Sullivan and me went through it a hundred times over. It’s all in here.’ He tapped his forehead.

  ‘Killing Prince Andrew aboard his own Royal Navy ship is the quickest way I can think of to get killed yourself.’

  ‘Not killed. Martyred.’

  Linda felt the chill as the blood drained from her face.

  ‘You’re mad,’ she half-whispered, half-screamed.

  O’Hara sat back calm and relaxed. It was as if sharing his secret had relieved all the tension in him. ‘No madder than a hunger striker, and I’ve a bloody sight better chance of survival.’

  ‘Like a snowball in hell.’

  The tension came back on O’Hara. ‘You think I care whether I live or die?’ He spat the words viciously. ‘Me with a father and brother and two cousins cold in their graves for the cause, and a poor old mother who’ll never see me again on account of there’s nowhere in the British Isles that I’d be safe from the bastard English police to visit. You think my life’s not a worthy barter for one of their precious royal family?’

  ‘You’re still talking out of your depth,’ said Linda. ‘It’s not just the Royal Navy you have to overcome. What about Paul Hawker? You have no idea how much he has riding on keeping that prince guy alive.’

  ‘Fuck Hawker. Him and his Argie mates have lost this war anyway.’

  ‘You’re forgetting one thing. He’s the only one here who’s armed. You have no weapon.’

  ‘Don’t I indeed?’ O’Hara’s hand whipped inside the zipper front of his sailing suit. When he brought it out, something flashed golden in the faint cabin light. It was the cold bright stainless steel blade of a commando throwing knife. He hefted it lovingly in his right hand.

  ‘That’s great, just great,’ Linda sneered. ‘You’re going to take on half the British fleet and Paul Hawker single handed. Just you and your Boy Scout knife.’

  ‘Not alone,’ O’Hara’s voice was like ice. ‘You and me. If you’ve got half the guts of your convictions.’

  ‘I don’t recall guts being high on the list of requirements for a double crosser.’

  O’Hara moved with the speed of an angry cobra. He grabbed her by the hair at the back of her head and pulled back with crippling strength before she had time to even flinch. He waved the knife blade slowly in the air, an inch from her nose.

  ‘Don’t you dare to accuse me of treachery, you treasonous little whore,’ he said low and menacing. ‘What have you got going between you and Hawker that puts him above all that’s holy in Ireland?’

  He made an obscene phallic gesture with the knife and pulled back savagely on her hair, exposing her neck above the thick wool of her roll neck sweater in a delicate, vulnerable curve. He put the flat of the blade against her nose, ran it across her cheek, down under her jaw, and pressed the point into the strained muscle of her gorge. He pushed on the knife, just hard enough to indent her flesh without puncturing the skin.

  ‘I’m telling you now,’ he said close to her ear, ‘if I get even a whiff that you’ve told the half-Spick prick anything about this, he’s a dead man before we get off this boat. Do you follow?’ He pulled her head harder, so hard she could feel herself starting to black out. Then he suddenly let go. She fell gasping down to the bunk.

  ‘Now, what are you going to tell Hawker?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she croaked.

  ‘Swear it.’

  ‘I swear it.’

  ‘In the blessed name of the Holy Virgin.’

  She crossed herself and swore it again.

  ‘It’s a pity, really,’ O’Hara said almost to himself. ‘I would have liked a good reason to cut him down.’

  He flicked the knife flat into the palm of his hand, pointed to a duffel bag at the far end of the cabin, and his hand blurred in a swift, fluid motion. The knife thudded up to its hilt in the dead centre of the bag.

  He pulled the knife out, wiped the blade on the torn cloth of the bag and slipped it carefully back inside his suit. He handled it the way a craftsman handles a cherished tool.

  ‘By the faith, look at the time,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Poor Mr Hawker will be wondering where I’ve got to. And isn’t there another radio call you’d better be making?’ He bared his teeth in a smile, stepped up the companionway and snapped the hatch.

  Linda rubbed her neck tenderly, took several deep breaths and stumbled down the cabin to the radio desk. At least it would give her an excuse not to look Paul Hawker in the eye when he came back in, and each extra second she could gain to compose herself was precious. She knew she would blow it if she spoke to him now.

  She put on a set of headphones, switched the radio to transmit and started in a hoarse monotone. ‘Mayday … Mayday … Mayday.’

  Twenty-five nautical miles to the north east an intense young man with close cropped fair hair and a tattoo on his forearm suddenly clamped his headset closer to his ears.

  ‘Blimey!’ he blurted and flicked a switch to stop the frequency sweep mechanism in the complex array of radio equipment that made up the work station in front of him.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ he wheezed when he had listened for fifteen seconds. He pulled the headset off, twisted in his seat and called, ‘Chief, you’d better hear this.’

  A ruddy faced Chief Petty Officer leant down to the desk and slipped the headset over his ears.

  ‘Call the Officer of the Watch,’ he said urgently after his own few seconds of listening.

  He was still listening with intense concentration when a man with the shoulder flashes of a Lieutenant Commander strode into the room.

  ‘What is it, Chief?’

  ‘A woman, sir.
An American woman.’ The Chief handed the officer the headset. ‘What on earth would she be doing in trouble down here?’

  Tuesday 18 May 1982

  10:20 Argentina Time

  Linda Kelly came up on deck with the first grey glimmer of dawn. She clambered over the jumble of tangled ropes and smashed blocks and sat down beside where Paul Hawker stood at the wheel. She clipped the short line from her safety harness onto the rail next to where his was clipped. Her eyes were sunken deep and rimmed with bright red and she no longer made any effort to hide it.

  ‘I’ve just finished the twenty-fifth transmission since we started,’ she shouted wearily into the wind.

  ‘And no response, right?’ Hawker shouted back.

  ‘You don’t seem too perturbed about it.’

  ‘That’s because I don’t expect any response. They’ll be observing radio silence. Just because we haven’t heard from them doesn’t mean they haven’t heard us,’ he gave her a reassuring glance. ‘If they’ve picked us up, they’ll be vectoring our position from your radio signals.’

  ‘You could at least have told me that last night,’ she shouted. A touch of colour came back to her cheeks with the anger she vented.

  ‘I wanted you listening to keep you sharp,’ he replied simply. His arms ached from the tips of his fingers clenched around the wheel through his forearms and all the way up and across his shoulders as they had done for hours. The strain was now spreading further down to the small of his back, but he forced a smile through it. Somehow the first light of morning, weak as it was, had lifted his spirit. He also felt that the wind and the sea had abated somewhat since his previous watch, though he couldn’t be sure. Perhaps he was just getting used to it.

  ‘So, what now?’ Linda shouted through a wide yawn.

  ‘You get back on the blower for the next sched same as always. O’Hara and I will keep driving the boat on course and we hope for …’ the words died on the wind as his voice trailed to silence and he squinted into the misty blur of the horizon over Linda’s shoulder.

  He focussed on two tiny anomalies he thought he had seen in the otherwise fluid grey that surrounded them. Two hard edged dots that didn’t belong until …