Prince Hunter

by Garrett Russell

  They were suddenly on top of the yacht before he could say another word more. Two Sea Harriers, sleek and lethal and dark as sharks in their grey war camouflage paint. They shot over Sleipnir at neck snapping speed, so low that the blur of their pale grey underbellies seemed to fill the sky overhead. They flashed past, soaring skywards and filling the air with the thunder of their jet exhausts and the whip crack of their slipstreams.

  Hawker threw his arms in the air and let out a yell of joy and relief. But only he heard it. Linda had her hands cupped tightly over her ears against the deafening roar of the jets. She was huddled down in the instinctive position she had cringed into with the first sudden shock of them. They had come from behind her, overwhelming her senses as she now felt the heat of their exhausts burning against her face and hands. Shock turned to comprehension as she saw them blur away into the distance and a smile full of tears spread on her face.

  The companionway hatch burst open and O’Hara came out at a sprint. He gazed into the sky with bleary sleep filled eyes as one of the Harriers disappeared into cloud and the other banked sharply around to the right, put its nose down hard and plunged towards Sleipnir in a straight strafing run.

  ‘Wave!’ Hawker screamed. ‘Wave like you’ve never waved before,’ and he waved his arms above his head, forgetting the wheel and allowing the yacht to broach around to starboard. It rolled drunkenly to its gunwales, side on to the waves.

  The Harrier shot past their bow, wheeled steep and low to the sea and came back at them. It slowed incredibly until it came to an almost complete stop as it swung around their stern and hovered in the air behind them less than a hundred feet above the level of the transom.

  ‘We should be waving a British flag,’ Linda yelled.

  ‘No need,’ Hawker kept waving as he shouted above the jet noise. ‘He’s reading the boat’s name and home port. That’s why he’s burning up so much fuel in the hover. Probably on the radio right now calling it in to his ship.’

  ‘The Invincible?’

  ‘Don’t know. I don’t have any reference to aircraft numbers to know if it’s from 801 Squadron or not. Just hope it is and look grateful like the shipwrecked sailors we’re supposed to be.’

  They waved frantically and kept on waving when the Harrier broke out of its hover and climbed to the level of the cloud base. It stayed there and orbited them in wide lazy circles.

  ‘We’re almost there!’ Hawker turned and hugged Linda with spontaneous joy. His voice was hoarse from shouting over the jet noise and the words came out ragged and rough in the comparative quiet of the Harrier whining 300 feet overhead. ‘He must be staying here to guide a ship or chopper to us. We’ve made it to the British fleet!’

  ‘And now,’ said O’Hara hard by Linda’s ear, ‘our real work begins. Isn’t that the truth?’

  He looked sharply at her and crossed himself solemnly, holding her eyes in a callous unblinking gaze.

  10:33 Argentina Time

  The fast patrol boat ARA Inconquista sliced through the gunmetal blue ocean swells at 20 knots, throwing solid walls of white spray high into the air on both sides of its pencil thin bow.

  John Sullivan paced the cramped space behind the panels of instruments in the compact bridge and glanced across the coxswain’s shoulder to check the compass heading for what must have been the tenth time since the change of watch. Teniente de Navio Sergio Roca noticed from the corner of his eye and bridled inwardly for the tenth time. Lieutenant Roca did not like this voyage at all. There were too many things about it that made him uneasy and the arrogance of this Irishman was at the top of that list. He did not like the secrecy surrounding the trip. They had departed from Darsena Norte with no notified destination and orders to follow the course Sullivan gave them. He did not like sailing with a skeleton crew. He only had seven men to run the boat instead of his normal operational complement of 35. He did not like the cargo. The Admiral of the Fleet, Jorge Anaya, had briefed him personally that delivering these missiles to some clandestine mid ocean rendezvous was a vital contribution to winning the war over a thousand kilometres south in the Malvinas, but he said no more, and Roca could see no connection. And most uneasy of all, he did not like the detachment of Marines who had been hiding in the bilges since before the Irishmen came on board. They were three tough looking men under the command of a cocky young lieutenant called Astiz.

  ‘Perhaps now you can inform me of our destination,’ Roca said to Sullivan.

  ‘You’ll learn soon enough,’ replied Sullivan in his liltingly accented Spanish.

  Roca took a step to the chart table.

  ‘We’ve been out of Argentine waters for hours and we’ll soon be closer to Brazil,’ he said as he examined the thin blue lines pencilled in by his navigator. They were now running north east, parallel to the Uruguayan coast and about 30 nautical miles out.

  ‘When will we be abeam Rocha?’ Sullivan asked.

  Roca raised his eyebrows in question to the navigator. He was an intense young man with dark skin and coal black eyes, a Teniente de Fragata, taking his first sea posting as a sub-lieutenant very seriously. He had the makings of an excellent officer. He had been recalled from leave for the birth of his first child for this voyage and he had not so much as mentioned it once.

  ‘Forty-five minutes, sir,’ he said after punching some numbers on an electronic calculator.

  ‘Excellent,’ Sullivan said with a smug smile. He tried to look at his watch without showing it, but Roca noticed.

  ‘What’s the hurry?’ he said stiffly. ‘My orders – the only thing I know about this damn cruise – are that your rendezvous is not for another twelve hours. If we keep going on this heading and speed, we’ll be halfway to Rio Grande.’

  ‘Never you mind,’ said Sullivan. ‘You’re under my command for navigation, Teniente Roca. Just be sure you maintain course while I go and fetch Señor Gaffney.’

  ‘What’s going on, skipper?’ asked the navigator when Sullivan was gone.

  ‘I’m not at all sure,’ said Roca. ‘But I know it’s not good. Take over the bridge, Teniente. I’m going below decks for a short while.’

  10:58 Argentina Time

  The Sea King came in on Sleipnir at under 100 feet and well over 100 knots.

  Hawker saw it first. Without a word to the others, he snatched up the pair of binoculars he had instructed O’Hara to bring up from the cabin and focussed on the big helicopter. It was already close enough to fill the field of view of the glasses. He scanned quickly along its side under the huge flashing rotors.

  ‘Damn it all!’ he shouted and put the binoculars down.

  ‘Don’t tell me, wrong chopper, wrong ship, probably wrong bloody navy,’ said O’Hara. He spat over the side. ‘You’ve buggered it up royally, haven’t you, Capitán Hawker?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ mused Hawker. ‘I just don’t know. They painted out all the markings.’

  The Sea King was close enough now to see its markings with the naked eye. Hawker had been hoping to find the insignia of Invincible’s Sea King 820 Squadron – a circular crest of a flying fish soaring over stylised waves on a brilliant blue background, with the traditional crown of sailing ships sitting proud at the top of the encircling ring of rope. It should have been painted on the helicopter’s fuselage, on the forward flank not far from the cockpit window. Instead there was a rough daub of grey paint that had obviously been slapped on to blank out the bright colours of the badge. All over the aircraft, where there should have been bright colours were patches of the same hurried paint job. Even the white of the British roundel was now painted dark blue.

  ‘All we can do is hope the Russian intelligence was correct,’ said Linda. ‘God knows it took enough trouble to get it.’ And Hawker noticed that her eyes went as blank as the sky that surrounded them for a moment. But she sprang back to life with frantic waving as the helicopter hovered closer.

  The Sea Harrier was still circling lazily around them, like a shark stalking shipwrecked sailors
, but they could no longer hear it. The sky was now filled with the deafening whine and whack of the Sea King’s turbines and rotors fifty feet above their heads.

  The wavetops around Sleipnir flattened out and a new pattern of foam started to form as the rotors beat down on the sea. The Sea King lumbered into position directly overhead and Hawker could see the winchman’s head peering over the edge of the big door which gaped open on the starboard side of the aircraft. He was guiding the pilot in towards the cockpit of the yacht and the huge dark belly twisted about above them until they were looking straight up at his face. Without a second’s pause the man’s face disappeared, then a body stepped out of the aircraft and began to spiral painfully slowly down to the yacht.

  ‘I never thought I’d say this, but you’re the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen,’ Hawker yelled as soon as the airman’s feet touched their deck. Now the play acting must begin, the part of the plan he was most worried about. ‘How far are we out of Port Stanley?’

  ‘Oh, you can’t go there, mate,’ said the crewman, and when Hawker managed to look puzzled, ‘You mean you haven’t heard?’

  ‘Heard what?’ said Hawker. ‘We reckon we lost radio reception about sixty days ago. That was before things really went bad and we lost our mast rounding the cape.’

  ‘Cape Horn?’ gasped the airman, glancing around at O’Hara and Linda, taking in their bloodshot eyes, their matted hair, the dishevelled mess of ropes and tackle around the yacht. ‘That explains it then. You’re lucky you ran into us. If you had made Stanley you would have got a bit of a shock. There’s a pack of bloody Argie cowboys invaded the Falklands.’

  ‘Argie? Argentina?’ Hawker paused to look puzzled, as if thinking through a fog of fatigue. ‘Then where did you come from?’

  ‘From the Task Force, didn’t I? We’ve got a war going on down here. Get your ship’s papers together and we’ll have you warm and dry aboard HMS Invincible before you can say Jack Robinson. How long since you lot have had a nice shower and hot meal?’

  There was no acting in Hawker’s smile now, nor Linda’s, nor O’Hara’s. They let the airman snug them in turn into the second sling attached to the end of the winch line and haul each of them up to the Sea King with genuine relief beaming all over their faces. Despite all his planning, Hawker had to work hard to convince himself that he had really got them this far, this close to the bullseye. Only one step more to go before he could end his pact with Anaya. He could already taste the revenge.

  Linda went first, then O’Hara struggling to stay calm on the way up, and finally Hawker with the ship’s papers tucked into his sailing suit. When he came over the lip of the loading door, he could see Linda and O’Hara huddled in navy blankets, holding steaming mugs of something hot, being fussed over by a medical officer. There were six Royal Navy men in the aircraft – the man on the winch line, another operating it, the doctor, the navigator sitting at a blinking array of instruments at the far end of the cavernous cabin, and the silhouetted figures of two pilots forward of him.

  ‘Skipper’s compliments, sir. Welcome aboard 820 Squadron,’ yelled the man who had operated the winch. ‘I’m afraid I have to tell you we intend to scuttle your yacht.’

  Hawker nodded, making it slow, and finally said, ‘I understand.’

  ‘If you don’t want to see it …’ the airman put his hand under Hawker’s arm as if to help him forward to where the others sat.

  ‘No. It’s okay. I’d rather see her through to the end,’ Hawker yelled back, and he still wasn’t acting.

  The helicopter had risen astonishingly quickly and was moving away from the yacht. The airman slipped his helmet mike up to his lips and dropped his voice from shouting over the cabin noise to normal conversation level. Hawker could not hear what he said, but the helicopter slowed and swung around, so that the big loading door framed a grandstand view out to the right of Sleipnir, looking insignificant and vulnerable 300 feet down and a quarter of a mile away.

  ‘I told the skipper. We understand.’ The airman’s voice went back up to a shout.

  The Sea Harrier was level with the Sea King, a long way off to the left. As if it had been waiting for its cue from the helicopter’s turn, it dropped its nose and streaked straight towards the yacht. The pilot flattened out at fifty feet, flying straight at Sleipnir’s side. The water between the aircraft and the yacht exploded with tall plumes of spray. Two parallel lines of the plumes traced their way through a trough, up the wall of a wave, and caught Sleipnir with her side bared to below the waterline as she heeled over the crest of the wave. Hawker winced as huge gashes tore into the side of the hull and his yacht heeled further, recoiling like a stricken animal to the shock of the rounds. He could imagine the skin of fibreglass splintering and splitting under the impact of each 30mm round from the fighter’s two Aden cannon, but seeing it from the cabin of the Sea King was as remote as watching a piece of silent newsreel footage. He could not hear the cannon. He could only imagine the shriek of the hull as the shells pierced it and exploded out through the other side. He had always known it could come to this, but he had the superstitious sailor’s dread of seeing a good boat destroyed. That was why he had forced himself to see and share Sleipnir’s pain.

  The Harrier shot past the yacht, banked tightly and lined up for a second pass. It was no more than a coup de grâce. Sleipnir was already low in the water. In another ten seconds she was gone.

  ‘You’ve got a bit of news to catch up on, I believe,’ said the medical officer when Hawker moved up the cabin, accepted a steaming mug proffered by one of the airmen, and sat on a nylon sling seat a little way from the others. He thrust out a hand and said, ‘Harris. Lieutenant Commander Ian Harris. How do you do?’

  Hawker was taken aback by such oddly English formality in the situation.

  ‘Paul Asher,’ he said, using the name on the fake British passport tucked in with the rest of the papers and still sitting inside his waterproof suit.

  ‘I must say you people are a bit of news yourselves,’ said Harris. ‘Come around Cape Horn, did you? There are all sorts of theories buzzing about the ship. Especially about your rather pretty crew member there,’ he inclined his head towards Linda, who was getting particularly close attention from the two airmen. ‘Imaginations have been ignited in all the messes by what the radio lads have had to say about her voice. It’s about the closest anyone has been to female company in the forty-three days we’ve been at sea.’

  ‘Damn!’ thought Hawker. He had not considered that complication of having a woman in the team.

  ‘You’ll get quite a welcome when we land on Invincible,’ Harris happily bubbled on. ‘In fact, you might say the red carpet treatment’s started right on board here.’

  Hawker’s senses snapped to alert. ‘What do you mean, red carpet?’ he asked, hoping it sounded sufficiently casual.

  ‘Your aircrew, old boy. When word went around there was a damsel in distress, Air Ops had a positive rush of volunteers to fly the sortie. So they did what you’d expect and sent the crew who were rostered anyway. Which is funny really, considering one of them is considered to be the fleet’s most famous skirt man.’

  ‘I don’t follow,’ said Hawker. But he did. His heart was pounding at the thought of his astonishing luck.

  ‘The co-pilot,’ Harris smiled as he gestured forward to the flight deck, ‘is HRH Prince Andrew, no less. You have been rescued by the Royal Navy, old boy.’

  11:17 Argentina Time

  ‘Radar reports a contact, sir, dead ahead on our present bearing,’ said the young navigator on the bridge of ARA Inconquista.

  ‘Range?’ said Lieutenant Roca.

  ‘Seven nautical miles. It’s a small echo, probably a timber trawler, and it appears to be stationary.’

  ‘That’s unusual this far out to sea,’ mused Roca. ‘Coxswain, alter course five degrees to starboard. We’ll give it a wide berth.’

  ‘We’ll stay exactly on course,’ said Sullivan.

  ‘Se�
�or Sullivan,’ Roca said absently as he lifted a pair of binoculars to his eyes and scanned the sea ahead, ‘I will follow the headings you give me as long as I still have fuel in my tanks. Those are my orders. But if your course puts my command in danger of collision, I will take evasive action until such risk has passed. Those, too, are my standing orders and I …’ his words died in his mouth. He had turned back from the windscreen and found himself staring straight down the barrel of a snub nosed Smith & Wesson .38 calibre revolver.

  ‘Command your man to get back on course or one of you will lose his good looks,’ growled Sullivan. Beyond his shoulder the young navigator stood by the chart table. The dark skin of his face drained to a pale muddy colour. Under his chin was an identical Smith & Wesson, only its bullet chamber and barrel visible in Patrick Gaffney’s pudgy red hand.

  ‘I would advise you to do what my young friend says,’ Gaffney said in broken Spanish.

  ‘That trawler on your radar,’ said Sullivan. ‘It’s our rendezvous. It would be a shame to miss it now, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Your rendezvous is not for another eleven hours,’ Roca decided to call their bluff. ‘Coxswain, stay on the heading I commanded.’

  With a glance to confirm that the terrified seaman had obeyed him, he turned back to the windscreen, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck standing as stiff as if Sullivan’s revolver had them in a magnetic field.

  The shot thundered in the confines of the bridge like a bomb going off. Roca instinctively ducked and spun at the same time and felt the first wave of bile burn the back of his throat.

  The low metal ceiling above the chart table was splattered with blood and pulpy grey. The navigator was still standing there, in the instant that Roca turned around, but his face was gone. His body had jolted into the air with the force of the shot. Now it dropped back down, his knees folded, and his torso slumped onto the chart table with a sickening thud. His faceless skull slewed across the table, smearing the charts and instruments with the same red and pulpy grey mass that splattered the ceiling. His neck was darkened with powder burns. From the jaws up, where the bullet had first torn through the soft flesh under his mouth, there was nothing to recognise the young officer by.