Soldier K: Mission to Argentina

by David Monnery

  ‘Well, would you like to go out for a drink? Or I have some in my room.’ She did not bother to wait for his answer. ‘Manuel, can I have my key.’

  A minute later she was closing the door behind her and looking at him with a mixture of exasperation and anger. She did not need this, she thought, not today. Nor did she really want to know what he wanted from her.

  ‘Can I pour us a drink?’ Docherty asked, still speaking Spanish, and indicating the whisky on the bedside table. He felt he had earned it, after the last week or so.

  ‘Just for yourself,’ she said. ‘What is your real name?’ she asked, also in Spanish.

  ‘Docherty. Jamie Docherty.’

  Her lips creased in a faint smile, as if she was remembering something. She really was beautiful, he decided, but there seemed to be only sadness in her eyes.

  ‘Miss Rodriguez,’ he began, ‘I have simply come to warn you. Our other patrol, outside Rio Grande – there has been no radio contact for almost twenty-four hours, and there is a good chance that they have been captured.’

  She looked at him steadily.

  ‘They have your name,’ he said, ‘as I think you know.’

  ‘I was told.’ She shrugged, and decided to pour herself a drink after all. ‘Will they betray me?’ she asked.

  He started to say no, but stopped himself. If Wacko’s feelings were reflected anywhere in Brookes’s patrol, then maybe they would not be as careful as they should be. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, looking straight at her. ‘I doubt it, but I don’t know.’

  ‘Not even under torture,’ she asked, almost aggressively.

  ‘You probably know the answer to that better than I do,’ he said simply. He put the empty glass down and got up. ‘I just came to tell you what has happened. We are leaving tonight, for Chile. You can come with us if you want.’

  Isabel studied his face, thinking that he might be a good man, without knowing why she thought so. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I’ll be all right.’ The faint smile appeared again. ‘Or maybe not,’ she said, more to herself than to him. ‘This is my home,’ she added, realizing that some explanation was required.

  ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘I’ll be on my way.’

  She started to move aside, but suddenly the thought of being left alone in that room was more than she could face. ‘I can drive you out of town,’ she said. ‘It’ll be safer.’

  He hesitated. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure it will be safer? Yes.’

  ‘Not for you.’

  Maybe the SAS were English gentlemen after all, she thought. And maybe the Junta sent donations to Amnesty International. ‘Let me worry about my safety,’ she said brusquely. ‘Do you have a map?’

  He took it out, and showed her the spot where the road ran closest to the OP. ‘I’ll drop you there,’ she said, as if they were popping into town together for a Saturday morning’s shopping.

  9

  Once Docherty had disappeared into the darkness, Ben and Wacko had dozed off while Razor kept watch. Every few minutes he would diligently scan the distant airbase with the telescope, but the day’s activity seemed over. Maybe they were simply licking their wounds, Razor thought. A lot more aircraft had flown out that day than had returned, and though it was possible that the missing planes had landed elsewhere, the messages from Hemmings suggested that most of them were headed for the ocean floor.

  ‘There’s no smoke without valour,’ Razor murmured to himself, and smiled in the dark.

  He thought about home and his mum and the house in Walthamstow. He wondered if she would like Corinna. Probably – his mum had a do-gooder streak in her about a mile wide, and she was getting pretty choosy about food these days. All those unsaturated poly-somethings. He sighed. It probably all made a lot of sense, but there was no doubt in his mind that beans on toast tasted better with white bread and proper butter.

  He picked up the telescope again, just at the moment the noise of the helicopter became audible. The airbase still looked dead to the world, but the scrape of the chopper blades was growing louder. And then he heard what sounded suspiciously like a cough somewhere out on the hillside.

  It was too early for the boss to be back. Razor used his foot to wake Ben and Wacko. By the time they had joined him, their heads almost side by side to see through the observation slit, the helicopter was less than 200 yards away, trailing a spotlight beneath it, as if looking for the star performer on the huge stage of the Patagonian hillside.

  It came to a hovering halt directly above them, flooding the roof of the hide with light.

  But the voice, when it came, seemed to come from further down the slope. ‘English soldiers,’ it said, with a clarity of amplified sound which put Spurs’ PA system to shame. ‘You must leave your weapons and come out of your trench,’ the voice went on. ‘There are 100 soldiers all around you, so please do not try to be heroes.’

  ‘Are there?’ Razor muttered. ‘Shall we try the back way out?’ he asked the others.

  ‘Yeah, let’s be heroes,’ Wacko said.

  Ben nodded grimly.

  ‘Ready?’ Razor asked, as the amplifier began booming once more.

  They were.

  ‘One, two, three, go,’ Razor barked, and all three men launched themselves through the turf roof and out onto the hillside, rolling free of the hide and springing to their feet in what seemed almost one continuous motion.

  They were barely on their feet when one searchlight went on behind them, another burst into blinding light directly in their chosen path of escape, and someone opened fire with an SMG. Wacko went down like a sack of potatoes, two bullets in his chest and shoulder. The other two threw themselves down beside him to avoid a similar fate.

  Two more searchlights burst into life on either side, and the helicopter seemed almost close enough above them to touch. When the Argies surround you, Razor thought, they do it with a vengeance.

  Wacko was still conscious, but he seemed to be gritting his teeth with pain.

  ‘Why spend the night out here when we have beds waiting for you?’ the amplified voice boomed, just about audible above the helicopter.

  ‘I’m going to stand up,’ Razor told Ben. ‘If the bastards shoot me, then try and take a few of them with you. If it comes to talking, don’t let on we speak Spanish.’ He took a deep breath and lifted himself slowly to his feet, hands held high, half-expecting any moment to feel the bullets cutting through him.

  None came.

  Ben stood up too, but still there was no gunfire. The helicopter was now moving away, its work apparently done.

  ‘Our amigo is injured,’ Razor shouted in English.

  A couple of enemy troops rushed forward, SMGs at the ready, to cover them. The officer in charge, a paunchy colonel, followed at a more leisurely pace, growling orders at his subordinates, two of whom started tearing off the roof of the hide. He was accompanied by a cold-eyed man in plain clothes, and it was the latter who did the talking.

  ‘You are so confident, you English,’ Solanille told them in their own language. ‘You think we are a Third World country, we cannot have thermal imaging, so you are quite safe in the dark.’

  He walked over to look down on the exposed entrails of the hide. ‘Impressive,’ he said, and turned back to them. ‘A cross has four arms, and there are four large bags here. But only three of you.’

  ‘Our friend needs medical help,’ Razor told him.

  ‘Yes, he does,’ Solanille said, looking down at Wacko without sympathy. He gestured to the colonel to do something, and turned back to Razor. ‘He will receive help. Now where is the fourth man?’

  ‘There is no fourth man,’ Razor said. ‘We have one bag each for our kit, and one for the radio.’

  ‘And that is standard practice?’ Solanille asked.

  ‘It is standard practice,’ Razor replied. SAS men were taught not to use simple yes or no replies, since these could be most easily used for the doctoring of tapes. Razor doubted whether this conver
sation on the hillside was being recorded, but he was not taking any chances. He did not want his mum listening to him apparently admitting to some atrocity or other on the BBC news. She was ambivalent enough about the SAS as it was.

  ‘Ah. Then perhaps you can explain why the other patrol had four men?’

  ‘Which other patrol?’ Razor asked. He did not like the sound of all this one little bit, and he liked the look of this man even less. Still, he thought, at least they were lifting Wacko onto a stretcher rather than shooting him.

  ‘The Rio Grande patrol,’ Solanille said. ‘One man is dead, two captured, one … we don’t know. He is probably hiding in a hole like this one, wondering what to do next.’

  ‘We have no knowledge of another patrol,’ Razor said.

  The Argentian smiled at him coldly. ‘And I suppose your Queen Mother is a virgin,’ he said contemptuously. He turned away. ‘We shall continue this discussion in a nice warm room,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘Bring them.’

  They drove slowly out of Rio Gallegos and onto the road signposted for Cabo Virgenes. Docherty found himself conscious of the movement of her thighs as she changed gears, and wondered whether she had had a boyfriend in England. If so, he guessed, then she must have left him without much explanation.

  ‘Where are you from?’ he asked

  ‘Originally? Ushuaia, it’s in Tierra …’

  ‘I know where it is.’

  ‘Have you ever been there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s the end of the world,’ she said, almost proudly.

  ‘Oh, I’ve been to several of them,’ he said, with a lightness which seemed to emphasize its opposite.

  She found herself believing him. This was not the sort of man she had expected from the SAS. ‘Did you serve in Northern Ireland?’ she asked, switching to English.

  ‘Aye,’ Docherty said. It seemed churlish, not to say childish, to deny the truth to a woman who was driving him around behind enemy lines.

  ‘Don’t you think Ireland should be one country?’ she asked, and immediately wondered why she was asking such a man such a question in such a situation. It was completely crazy.

  He seemed not to mind. ‘I understand the desire,’ he said. ‘I’m a Glasgow Catholic – how could I not? But I guess … I guess I’ve come to believe that fighting to get things changed often ends up causing more harm than just learning to live with things the way they are.’

  Isabel thought about it.

  ‘And I think people who blow up pubs should be locked up,’ he added, almost as an afterthought, ‘no matter what they kid themselves they’re doing it for.’

  ‘Sometimes the way things are …’ she began. ‘Sometimes it’s so bad that there’s no choice but to fight.’

  ‘That I can believe,’ he agreed. ‘I guess wisdom is knowing which is which.’

  ‘A soldier-philosopher,’ she said, only half-ironically.

  He chose to take it straight. ‘We are all many things,’ he said. He could feel Liam McCall looking over his shoulder.

  ‘We must be nearly there,’ she said.

  ‘About another half a mile,’ he said. ‘Over this …’

  He was silenced by the array of lights visible on the road ahead.

  ‘They’ve seen us, so we have to go on,’ she said calmly.

  ‘OK,’ he said, feeling for the Browning’s grip in his pocket. The next few hundred yards seemed to take forever. Slowly the details behind the lights became clearer. There were several vehicles and a multitude of men in uniform.

  A soldier stepped out to check them, but waved them on when he saw Isabel’s worried face, and they drove slowly past the two armoured personnel carriers drawn up by the side of the road, and the two cars beyond them. Two men were being hustled aboard one of the former, and Docherty recognized Razor’s unmistakable profile. In the light offered by one car’s headlights Isabel saw Solanille standing talking to another officer.

  ‘Your companions?’ she asked, as the car crested the next shallow rise and began down another long slope.

  ‘Aye,’ Docherty said bitterly.

  ‘I’m going to keep going for a mile or so,’ she said. ‘And then we’ll have to sit for a while. I don’t want to have to pass them again – it’ll look too suspicious.’

  ‘I can’t believe they didn’t stop us anyway,’ Docherty said.

  ‘In England they would have,’ she said. ‘Here they prefer to keep the ordinary citizen as far away as possible from such things. Once he saw I was a woman – and therefore nothing to do with anything military – he just wanted us out of there.’

  A couple of minutes later she pulled the car over and switched off the lights. ‘We can just keep going,’ she said. ‘I can get you to within a couple of miles of the border, and you can be across before first light.’

  ‘No,’ he said, almost absent-mindedly. Christ, what a cock-up, he thought. All their gear would have been taken, except for what he was carrying himself: one pair of PNGs, a telescopic night-sight, his knife, the Browning High Power, and the contents of his escape belt. ‘Have you any idea where they’ll be taken?’ he asked Isabel.

  ‘Maybe the airbase. Maybe the Intelligence HQ in town. You’re not thinking of trying to rescue them?’ she asked incredulously.

  ‘I’m not leaving until I’m sure it’s impossible,’ he said.

  She did not know what to say. Or do. Think, she told herself.

  ‘Is there another way back into the town?’ he asked.

  ‘No. We’ll have to wait. And I’m not at all sure I want to drive you back into town. Or myself, for that matter.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ he said. ‘And I can walk if necessary. But I’ll need some directions.’

  ‘Let me think for a minute,’ she said, wishing she had some alcohol in the car. She had a definite feeling that time was running out for her in Rio Gallegos, but where was the feeling coming from? Several directions. There was the possibility that the captured SAS men would give her away, the fact that her face had been seen driving past by the soldier, Docherty’s visit to her hotel. When Menéndez heard the news the next day that English spies had been captured would he start putting two and two together? Probably not, but still …

  And anyway, what was the point of her staying? At the rate the English were shooting down planes the war could not last much longer. And her primary source of information was probably dead. Unless she had a death-wish – a not inconceivable hypothesis, she admitted to herself – it was time for her to get out.

  Would she have a better chance with this man or without him? That was hard to say. With him, probably – at least until they were clear of Rio Gallegos. Then alone

  In the seat next to her Docherty was also wondering what he should do. As he saw it, he had three options: to head for the border with this woman, to head back into town with her, or to send her on towards the border while he headed back into town on his own. The last option, while the least appealing from most points of view, unfortunately seemed the one demanded by his sense of duty.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘If they catch me there’s a good chance I’ll be treated as a prisoner of war, or at the worst as some sort of hostage. If they catch you they’ll probably hang you, or whatever they do to traitors in this country. So you should keep going, and try and get across the border. I know where the airbase is, so just tell me where to find this Intelligence HQ.’

  This, she thought, was one of those rare moments when you got to choose. It was like a fork in the road of her life. If she went one way she would have one type of life, if she went the other it would all turn out completely differently. Crossing the border might mean safety, but it would also mean the end of any chance for her to resurrect her soul.

  It was melodramatic as hell, she thought, but true all the same.

  She turned to face Docherty. ‘I’m not going to try and explain,’ she said, ‘because there isn’t time and I don’t think you’d understand in any case. But this i
s my war too, and I’ve been fighting it, either here or in my head in England, for ten years. Most of my friends are dead, and the thought of joining them lost its sting a long time ago. You see, I could cross ten borders and not leave this war behind, so let’s just get on with it.’

  In the gloom her face was decidedly madonna-like, he thought, all holiness and suffering and self-denial. He felt infinitely sorry for her, and, at the same time, drawn to her to more strongly than he wanted to be.

  ‘I hear you,’ he said. ‘So which do we go for first – the airbase or town?’

  ‘Town,’ she said decisively. ‘If we go cruising round the airbase at this time of night there’s a ninety per cent chance we’ll be stopped by someone or other. And I think it’s more likely they’ll be taken into town,’ she added. With Solanille, she told herself. With Solanille.

  She started the Renault, did a U-turn, and set off slowly back the way they had come, all lights off. At the top of the rise they could see that the APCs and cars had all gone, leaving just the open lorry. But there was no sign of human life.

  ‘They must be waiting for you,’ she said. ‘You’d better get in the back seat, as far down as you can.’

  Docherty packed as much of himself into the narrow gap as he could and waited, Browning at the ready, as they descended the slope.

  ‘Nobody there,’ she said a few moments later.

  He climbed back into the front seat and watched the few remaining lights of Rio Gallegos draw steadily closer.

  Razor and Ben had endured a long, jolting ride in the back of an armoured personnel carrier, surrounded by Argentinian soldiers who obviously felt they had accomplished the moral equivalent of kidnapping Mrs Thatcher. Still, they were obviously not a bad bunch of lads, Razor thought, listening to them chatting excitedly to each other. He would have liked to have thanked them for giving Ardiles and Villa to Spurs, but the need to conceal his knowledge of Spanish rendered a harmless conversation about football impossible.

  He wondered how and where Wacko was. The head honcho in plain clothes had told them their comrade was being taken to the local hospital, but Razor and Ben had no way of knowing if he was speaking the truth. The only certainty was that Wacko was not with them.