Prince Hunter

by Garrett Russell

  Gaffney had not moved an inch. He stood where he had been, his leg brushing against the dead man. He swung his revolver, its look of ugly menace now embroidered with fragments of sticky skin and flesh and splinters of bone and aimed it at the coxswain.

  ‘Now you know we’re serious.’

  Gaffney’s face and shirt were also splattered but he did not appear to notice or care. Roca fought down a second wave of nausea. His whole body quivered like a man with a fever. He opened his mouth but for a few seconds no words would come.

  ‘Retur … return to original heading,’ he finally stammered to the coxswain, but the man’s white knuckled hands did not move on the wheel.

  Gaffney cocked his revolver.

  ‘Wait,’ said Sullivan in English. He stepped behind the wheel and glanced over the man’s shoulder at the compass binnacle.

  ‘No need for your orders, teniente,’ he said with a thin smile. ‘Your man has already returned to my course.’

  11:36 Argentina Time

  ‘It’s perfect, Paul. You’ve got to do it now,’ Linda Kelly pleaded.

  ‘No,’ said Hawker.

  They were in a huddle together in the mid section of the Sea King, grabbing a moment of relative privacy while the crew were out of earshot – which meant being anything more than a few feet away in the din of the helicopter cabin. The crew, who each had his own intercom headset built into the helmet he wore, had apologised for the lack of guest headsets among their military equipment. But that suited Linda and Hawker, who could retreat to an innocent looking conversation by cupping their mouths close to each other’s ear while the crew busied themselves with their individual flying tasks. O’Hara sat in his own private world a few feet further away, wearing the same trance-like expression he’d had since he first heard his royal target was aboard.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, it’s everything you wanted served on a silver platter,’ Linda said into Hawker’s ear. ‘The prince, the chopper, the whole enchilada without even trying.’

  ‘Not even halfway whole,’ said Hawker. ‘To have a halfway decent chance of making it anywhere on the islands the aircraft will need a full load of fuel. But we don’t even know how low its tanks are now.’

  ‘Can’t you somehow find out?’

  ‘It wouldn’t make any difference. Even a litre less than maximum endurance could force us to ditch in the sea. That’s why I have no choice but to wait until we reach Invincible.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Linda. ‘Get them to check the oil and wash the windshield, too.’

  ‘You don’t understand. This aircraft and crew are on roster. They’ll be refuelling hot, engines still running, as soon as they hit the deck. That’s when we strike.’

  ‘And if we fail?’

  ‘We become prisoners of war. You lose your freedom for a time. I lose more than that.’

  ‘Exactly why you should do it now, Paul. You don’t know what you’ll be up against on the ship.’

  ‘What is this, woman’s intuition?’ said Hawker. ‘You sound as if you know something I don’t.’

  He saw her eyes flicker across his shoulder and stare at O’Hara for a long silent pause.

  ‘Paul, I …’ she hung her head. ‘No, there’s nothing I know.’

  Hawker twisted around and saw O’Hara staring at them. O’Hara waited until Linda brought her head up again and Hawker turned back to her. He locked his eyes on hers and made the sign of the cross over his face and chest.

  11:39 Argentina Time

  ‘All engines stop,’ Lieutenant Roca called down the intercom and an eerie silence fell on the Inconquista as the throbbing exhausts of four 3,000 horsepower diesels died away. The only sound now was the hollow slap of the waves on the hull as the boat slewed around and drifted broadside on to the swell.

  The boat would roll heavily, Roca knew, and he braced his leg against the side of the bridge housing. Perhaps the change in motion could catch the Irishmen off guard.

  It didn’t. Sullivan’s pistol barrel stayed as firm as before, pressed into the base of Roca’s skull. Gaffney stumbled a little where he stood, covering the door with his gun, but not enough for the coxswain to take any initiative.

  There was a dull thump then a thud as the navigator’s body slid off the chart table. The blood that had gushed from his artery was still fluid enough to slosh and spill over the raised edges of the table.

  ‘Here they come,’ said Gaffney.

  A grimy high bowed trawler that had been wallowing on the waves half a mile away was now powering its way towards them, trailing a thick black plume of diesel exhaust behind it.

  ‘Get on the all stations intercom,’ Sullivan said to Roca. ‘Order all hands to the foredeck.’

  Roca obeyed instantly, desperately searching in his mind for an innocent phrase that could alert the marines officer, Astiz. Where in hell were Astiz and his gorillas, anyway?

  Astiz was standing in the forward storage space stretching his legs and getting his eyes accustomed to the brightness of the lights after 18 hours cramped in the bilge.

  ‘It sounds like the skipper was right,’ he said to the sergeant stretching beside him. ‘We might have a bit of trouble ahead.’

  ‘Two Irishmen won’t be much trouble, sir.’

  ‘But how many and who on whatever they’re making rendezvous with? Follow me closely and quietly. The engines shouldn’t be stopped even if they are closing on another vessel. I want to see what’s happening on deck. Ready?’

  The sergeant glanced over each of the other two men’s kit with a sharp and practised eye. Like the lieutenant and himself they were armed with the PA3-DM submachine gun, short and stubby with its sliding butt retracted. Each gun was loaded with a 25 round magazine, a second magazine joined with black masking tape to its base for reloading another 25 rounds as quickly as a man can flick his wrist. Each marine had another two taped pairs of magazines bulging in the pockets on his trouser legs.

  ‘Ready, sir,’ said the sergeant.

  ‘Let’s go,’ snapped Astiz. ‘And remember, sergeant, if anything happens to me our orders are to prevent them unloading the Exocets at any cost. Understand?’

  ‘Understood, sir.’

  ‘You’d better. I received them directly from the Admiral in Chief himself,’ Astiz said, and silently opened the door.

  11:40 Argentina Time

  It was mid afternoon in England and golden spring sunshine danced across the budding blooms of the first of the season’s flowers in the cottage garden at Devon. The sunshine danced, too, in the blonde woman’s hair as she strolled down the patch to the letter box. She pulled out three letters, sifted them anxiously, and her smile dropped to blank disappointment.

  She ambled slowly, pensively, back up the path to a spot where the sun was caught and reflected back off a corner of the whitewashed brick wall. She said something to the young girl who sat with a doll on the lawn and tossed the envelopes unopened onto a bright yellow plastic patio table. She turned and gazed out over the cliffs towards the sea. She was looking south, and she bit her lip as if to hold back tears. She looked up at the sun and it seemed to snap her out of the mood.

  She unbuttoned her blouse, unzipped the back of her skirt, and slipped out of her clothes in an elegant movement that revealed a startling white bikini, cut with string ties high on the hips from a tiny triangle in the South American style. The dazzling white of the tiny patches of fabric seemed even more so against the deep brown of her skin. It glowed with a tan that could only have come from a full southern hemisphere summer. She settled down on a deck chair and closed her eyes.

  ‘If ever a bitch was begging for it, she’d be the one,’ muttered the man looking at her through a slit in the curtains of the cottage fifty yards up the road.

  ‘Leave off, Jack,’ growled the second man in the darkened room. He stood up from the creaking old sofa where he had been lying, stretched his legs and paced the width of the room. ‘You’ve been cooped up in this shit box for too long. You’re going st
ir crazy.’

  ‘No, I’m not, man. Come and see for yourself,’ the man at the window slid aside and beckoned the other to peer through the slit.

  ‘Jezuuuuuz Christ.’ It had taken him a few seconds of squinting to get his eyes used to the bright outside light and now he crouched with his face pressed hard to the window. ‘It’s a crying shame to think what we have to do to such a magnificent creature.’

  ‘We can have our bit of fun with her first,’ chuckled the first man.

  ‘And pay for it with our balls tomorrow,’ the second man moved reluctantly back from the window. ‘You heard the orders clear as I did. A clean kill and piss off, and not a second before one thirty tomorrow morning. That’s what they said.’

  ‘Then you’d better just slide back there and take over surveillance. If I see much more of that I won’t be able to control myself as far as nightfall.’ With a last lingering gaze through the slit he moved away from the curtain, picked up the M-16 propped against the wall, and fondled it like a woman’s body.

  11:42 Argentina Time

  The Sea King came out of cloud almost on top of Invincible.

  They flew down the flank of the ship a hundred feet above the activity on the long flat part of the flight deck. Sea Kings and Sea Harriers were scattered about with crew in their vividly coloured identification vests scurrying like ants between them. One of the Harriers stood well clear of the rest. It stood poised on its undercarriage on a clear space of the deck forward of the towering bridge structure. As the Sea King flew past, the Harrier suddenly shot forward, up to the lip of the clumsy looking tilted ramp at the bow and was airborne. By the time it flew through the Sea King’s altitude, its sharp snout pointing high to the swirling mist of the cloud base, a second Harrier was lining up in the same launch space. It, too, shot up the ramp and followed the first one to disappear in the grey obscurity of the sky.

  ‘Combat air patrol,’ Hawker explained with his mouth cupped close to Linda Kelly’s ear. ‘Pray that Anaya got the cooperation he requested from Dozo’s air force. We need those Harriers to be kept very busy all day.’

  He looked down through a window as the big helicopter swept around the stern of the ship and straightened for its final descent. A space was cleared ready for their landing on the after deck not far back from the dark oil stained square that marked the second aircraft lift. Men in a kaleidoscope of different coloured vests crouched, waiting for the landing, in the shelter of the bridge housing. Among them were the red crosses of medical orderlies, huddled around a small stack of stretchers, but they were not what Hawker was looking for. He allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction when the helicopter banked further around and he could see at the edge of the window another group of men standing some distance away from the rest. They wore bright red vests and helmets and they were clustered around a coil of thick black rubber hose, looking ready to hook up and refuel the Sea King as soon as it was established on deck.

  Hawker glanced up the cockpit to where he had left the bundle of ship’s documents. He had taken them out of his sailing suit and placed them up there as his excuse to linger after the door was opened. He carefully felt inside the suit and slipped off the safety catch on the slim Browning HP 9mm pistol he had hidden in the bulk of his thick wool jersey.

  The Sea King sank to the deck and settled on its squat rubber tyres. The enormous rotor blades sighed their relief at giving up the ten ton weight of the aircraft and their rapid drumming against the air wound down to a deep, slow swish overhead.

  One of the airmen stood up and cracked open the five foot wide cargo door through which Hawker, Linda and O’Hara had been winched aboard. Harris, the medical officer, picked up his compact blue kit bag and moved towards the door. He turned, waved for Hawker and the others to come, and jumped down to the deck. The two airmen followed. All three turned their backs on the helicopter and sprinted, in that peculiar semi crouch people instinctively adopt under the rotor blades, towards the small crowd by the bridge housing forty feet away.

  That left only the navigator, the command pilot, and HRH aboard with Hawker, O’Hara and Linda. Three against three, the best odds Hawker could hope for. He was making a mental calculation of the time it would take to dump a full load of fuel into the Sea King’s tanks when tiny alarm bells suddenly started jangling in the back of his brain.

  No one had come near the Sea King. Not even the refuelling crew.

  Hawker looked back inside the helicopter and up the length of the cabin towards the cockpit. He saw an arm reach up and flick off a series of switches on the overhead console. He recognised the action. It was part of the standard shutdown sequence.

  Beyond the cockpit, through the windscreen, Hawker could see the rotors of another Sea King spinning up. They were changing guard from this to the other aircraft.

  The scream of the two Rolls Royce Gnome turbine engines was already dying inside the airframe. It was wrong, all wrong.

  Hawker whipped around to face Linda and O’Hara.

  ‘Quick!’ He yelled while there was still enough engine noise to mask his voice this far from the cockpit. ‘We have to get Andrew onto that other chopper. This one’s a dead duck. Linda, come with me. O’Hara, cover our backs.’

  ‘What with?’ O’Hara asked sourly.

  ‘Your fists if it comes to it. God knows you can use them well enough.’ Hawker glanced back towards the cockpit. He saw the two pilots slipping off their harnesses. The navigator was opening the personnel access door on the port side of the cabin to the cargo door, just behind the cockpit.

  There was no time left for stealth. Hawker reached inside his sailing suit and pulled out the Browning.

  ‘I’ve got a better idea,’ he heard O’Hara’s voice behind him. ‘You give me the gun and you take up the rear.’

  Hawker spun around. He saw the knife flash in O’Hara’s hand, and it was gone in a blur that came straight at him. He swerved, but not nearly fast enough. There was only six feet between him and O’Hara’s throwing hand. The knife slammed into Hawker’s chest high on the right. The blade tore through muscle, glanced off bone, and buried itself up to the hilt in his shoulder. Hawker felt the whole of his right arm jerk in an agonising spasm. The pistol spun out of his stiff fingered grasp and fell with a clatter on the cabin deck. Hawker sagged and fell after it. His shoulder and arm buzzed with numbness now and he saw everything as if in slow motion, through a pale red mist.

  O’Hara dropped to the floor, scooped up the pistol and lost crucial seconds searching for the safety catch. He propped himself up on one knee and swung the Browning up in a double handed grip towards the cockpit.

  Linda Kelly came back from a trance in the same beat of time. She had been frozen still, her eyes wide open in horror. Now she leapt forward, stumbled across Hawker’s slumped body and up the cabin towards the light of the crew exit door. Two men were standing there, their faces under their heavy browed flying helmets showing the same stunned incomprehension. One was the navigator. The other, as easily recognisable as a pin up idol, was Prince Andrew.

  ‘No!’ Linda screamed as she stumbled forward. ‘No more blood. For God’s sake no more blood.’

  ‘For Ireland!’ bawled O’Hara, taking his time with his aim. A sick grin filled his face and he squeezed the trigger.

  The cabin filled with the sound of the shot. Suddenly there was no one standing near the door or the cockpit.

  Linda had fallen forward, her shoulders hunched in a cringe. The navigator and Andrew had both dropped like stones to the deck with an identical reflex action. Their faces no longer looked stunned. They both now knew very well what was going on.

  O’Hara stood up and steadied himself to take aim again. His first shot had been high and to the right. It had smashed through the windscreen, shattering a small section of glass near the centre frame. The shot still echoed off the sides of the fuselage. It must have sounded almost as loud outside the aircraft, even over the buzzing background of the flight deck, because O’H
ara was distracted for another vital second by a sudden flurry of movement through the frame of the big cargo door. The crowd of men near the bridge housing was now running towards the Sea King.

  O’Hara turned back towards the cockpit and aimed.

  ‘No!’ Linda jumped to her feet an instant before O’Hara squeezed on the trigger. She threw herself towards the crouching figure of Andrew, then seemed to jump a second time in mid air as the bullet caught her in the middle of her chest. O’Hara fired quickly again, but Linda was still in a direct line between him and his target, falling like a broken doll. The second shot tore into the soft flesh below her rib cage. She jerked over double and fell backwards to the deck with a muffled thud. The front of her yellow suit was patched with red and a trickle of thick red blood ran out of the corner of her wide open mouth.

  Chaotic reaction filled the immediate area of the flight deck. At the second shot most of the men had thrown themselves down to the deck. By the third shot the experienced hands had realised the bullets were not coming at them. Now they were at the cargo door, peering around from the cover of the fuselage. O’Hara turned and fired two loose shots at the opening of the door. Heads ducked out of sight. He turned back and fired two more wild shots at the forward crew door, where the two figures in light brown flying suits were scrambling to get out of the trap of the cockpit.

  O’Hara fired again and the bullet whined in a lethal ricochet off a fuselage frame. His eyes flared with the fire of the fanatic, but his face showed the realisation that he had lost the element of surprise. His target was getting away, and he had only five rounds left in the clip of the Browning.

  He fired again through the cargo door behind him and ran up the full length of the cabin, past Hawker and over the still form of Linda Kelly.