Noise dying, smoke clearing. End of round one, and in Shropshire no damage or casualties. Three Seacat missiles had been fired. One of the Oerlikon gunners was sure he’d hit an A4, he’d seen his 20-mm shells impacting on its wing, then lost track of it as it swept over and he’d switched to a new target. There was no indication that the Seacat which had splashed the other Skyhawk had been Shropshire’s, neither the Red nor Green director would claim it. Radar, Nicholson reported from the Ops Room, had been confused by land clutter.
Argonaut had three men wounded, one seriously, and a chunk of her ‘bedstead’ 965 aerial blown away. Harriers of the CAP has splashed two Mirages, bringing the CAP’s score to three.
Kingsmill came back to the bridge. He’d been up top, visiting the Oerlikon gunners and organising what he called the ‘for’ard battery’ — sailors with rifles and one machine-gun to join in the close defence. Saddler thought, glancing at his executive officer, Why not bows and arrows? Thinking also about one very near squeak, a bomb that had passed about ten feet from the front of the bridge and exploded in the water thirty yards to port; HQ1 — damage control headquarters — had reported only minor shock-damage. But as to the men up there with self-loading rifles and a GP machine-gun — well, you could say every little helped, that the more lead went up in the faces of Argie pilots, the tougher — slightly — their job would be. Shropshire was under helm again, heeling to the turn: Holt, who was OOW at action stations, conning her under the navigating officer’s watchful eye, keeping her on the move but out where she’d help to block attacks coming into San Carlos Water at low level and on straight courses for the ships anchored farther in, off the beaches; and if this was where you had to be you might as well muster every pea-shooter you could find. Playing Aunt Sally was what it amounted to — particularly with radar so useless in here that visual sightings were the first warnings you could expect.
‘Eyes open, west!’
That would be a pre-recorded, automatic transmission, he guessed, triggered by take-offs at the end of some runway, or ends of runways. More specific alerts could only come from live, human observation. Maybe they — observers — were alerted by that call and then stood ready to amplify it. Maybe…
Vaughan reported that the White system, the gun, was now operational. Some defective piece of circuitry had been located and replaced. Saddler initiated a signal reporting this — to Broadsword, senior ship in this group, and to the Admiral. The 965 radar still wasn’t functional though, Vaughan said. In fact it wouldn’t have been a lot of use in any case; going by other ships’ reports it seemed that attacking formations were dipping to sea-level when they were still a hundred or more miles short of the islands, and only an airborne warning system — aloft and looking downwards, the kind the Task Force didn’t have — could have countered this tactic.
‘Eight Mirages taken off from Rio Gallegos…’
Hold muttered, ‘Any advance on eight?’
Because it was the largest formation so far reported. And there were at least two attacks en route ahead of that one.
Saddler told Vigne, Holt and the PWO, Jardine, ‘I’ll be taking a walk round the upper deck now.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’ Vigne watched him remove his headset and put it on its hook on the command console. He suggested, ‘Five minutes before the next lot, would you say, sir?’
It was a hint, of course. Tactful way of asking Do you think you should? He checked his watch. ‘If the CAP don’t intercept it. But I’d think more like ten minutes than five.’ He was thinking of those intervals between take-offs. He met Kingsmill outside; the commander reported, ‘I’ve set up an after battery, sir, on the flight deck. Flight deck party, plus some odds and sods.’
‘I’ll pay them a visit.’ More riflemen, for God’s sake. Even in World War Two they hadn’t found it necessary to resort to rifle-fire for AA defence, he thought. But then they’d had a better profusion of close-range weapons, hadn’t placed so much reliance on the high-tech stuff which didn’t always work or suit all circumstances… ‘I’m going aft, Jay, for a chat with the Seacats.’
He went aft ‘over the top’ — from the bridge wing, up fixed rungs on to the bridge’s roof, aft across it and along the starboard side to the signal deck and gunnery defence position. The riflemen were GDP crew and signalmen; they looked self-conscious, Saddler thought, clutching their SLRs, but glad to be visited. The Oerlikon gunners had some yarns to tell: one gun had jammed just at the moment he would have scored. Saddler told him, ‘Better luck next time. It won’t be long.’ Thinking that it was fairly ludicrous to be defending a modern, missile-armed destroyer with SLRs in the hands of signalmen — then qualifying the thought, because it was twenty years since Shropshire had been ‘modern’ — but wondering how long it might be before the Marines ashore were issued with pikes and halberds.
He was talking to the port Seacat operator when the next assault came in. The operator was a seventeen year old named Pitts; he had bright yellow hair under his tin hat — which made him look rather like a mushroom — and a face scarred by acne, with dark, quick eyes. His job entailed sitting inside the director, which was a structure about the size of a telephone kiosk with a seat in it and a binocular sight mounted on top where his head protruded. The launcher, loaded and ready, was below him and to his left. The way the system worked was that the Seacat transmitting station on 01 Deck locked the director to its target, and when the missile was launched Pitts had to hold it in the centre of the binoculars, steering it by movements of his thumb on a joystick control not much bigger than a matchstick.
‘It’s this side we had a defect on recently, isn’t it?’
‘Yessir.‘ Pitts nodded. ‘OK now.’ He grinned. ‘I ’ope.’
‘Did you get any shots away, just now?’
‘One, sir.’ He added, ‘But I lost it. Gets confused like when there’s all the smoke an’ that.’
‘Easier at night.’
‘Oh, yessir. See the tail-flame, then.’
‘Is it impossible to see it in daylight, if you could concentrate on just that and nothing else?’
‘Well, I dunno—’
‘Aircraft! Aircraft!’ The broadcast, booming excitedly. ‘Red and Green systems, for’ard and after batteries, stand by!’
Saddler shouted to Pitts ‘Good luck!’ and ran — into a mounting blur of noise, gunfire and already the screaming approach of aircraft. Vigne had been right — five minutes… He saw Antrim hit. She’d launched a Seaslug, then two A4s swept over her in close succession. He had only an impression of it as he ran for’ard, but he thought they’d hit her with bombs and rockets too — or that might have been cannon… A deafening blast of sound as a Mirage crashed over, drowning the snarl of Oerlikons and the random popping of SLRS; cannon-fire was part of the bedlam as he raced up a ladder, rushing for the bridge. Splinters flew from hits along the port side of the upper deck where he’d passed only seconds ago; he was in the bridge then, his eyes on smoke pouring from Antrim’s stern. Reaching for his headset and binoculars. Shropshire’s Seacat had fired; a report of ‘Birds away!’ from the Green system, the side he hadn’t had time to visit. Then the explosive roar of the last of this particular bunch of attackers flashing over — bombs falling, whacking in and raising spouts close to the ships at anchor inside there — Canberra and Norland — much too close… The Argie pilots had flown right through that curtain of fire and now as they swooped away Seacat, Blowpipe, Seawolf, Seaslug and Rapier missiles streaked after them, curving their trails across the sky, cats’ tails of flame and smoke that became static, hanging and then thinning, the wind wiping the sky clear again.
‘Eyes open, west!’
More coming. Showing their hand now, all right.
Jay Kingsmill came to the bridge to report. Cannon shells had punctured the hangar on the starboard side, wounding three men inside it and one member of the ‘after battery’ on the flight deck. The after first aid party had taken care of them, and two men had been transf
erred to the wardroom where the doctor, Alec Claypoole, aided by a team of assistants which included Peter Ridpath the chaplain, had set up a dressing-station and temporary hospital. Apart from these casualties, damage was superficial and the Wessex helo hadn’t been touched. Whereas Antrim — reports were coming in now — had lost the use of her Seaslug and Seacat systems, had virtually no defence left with which to resist the further attacks now on their way. One bomb had penetrated her Seaslug magazine, but, thank God, failed to explode, although it had done a lot of damage. It was fairly plain that the ships, not the beachhead, were today’s prime targets.
*
The last attack of the day was the worst.
By that time Broadsword had been strafed and suffered casualties — and splashed two Mirages with her Seawolf — and Argonaut as well as Antrim had sustained major damage. Brilliant had been hit in her Ops Room, important cables had been cut and she’d lost all her weapons systems except the after Seawolf. The CAP Harriers had splashed several of the attackers, mostly on their way home.
But in the last assault of the day, they got Ardent. She was mobbed by a mixed force of Mirages, Skyhawks and Aermacchis; bombs plastered her stem, knocking out all her weapons systems. Helpless to defend herself, listing to starboard from flooding on that side, she was out of control and heading for the shore; Saddler saw men running for’ard over her foc’s’l, then an anchor going down just before another wave of attackers hit her. This time it was the kill. Yarmouth closing in to help… Smoke poured from Ardent’s stern, which looked as if it had been destroyed internally — gutted, and the glow of fire inside her plainly visible — oily black smoke oozing like blood and against it the day-glo orange of men in ‘once-only’ survival suits on her canted decks and in the water. Yarmouth ran in alongside the dying frigate and embarked survivors over the port side for‘ard before she sank.
*
That night Saddler summarised the day’s action in his diary. Shropshire was steaming south at fifteen knots, after a bombardment of the Goose Green area, to rendezvous with the oiler Tidebreak for a liquid RAS. He added on that page of the diary, having listed the ships sunk and damaged — and knowing he ought now to be starting a letter to Anne, who’d be getting fragmentary news of the fighting and would be trying to convince herself and Lisa that she wasn’t worried sick — ‘Tense and tiring day. Morale however still high. Landings successful, 17 enemy aircraft destroyed.’
‘May I come in, sir?’
Jay Kingsmill, in the doorway. ‘Of course, Jay.’
‘Sir.’ He shut the door; Saddler waved him to a chair. ‘News flash on the BBC, sir, thought you’d want to hear it. I sincerely hope it’s not as rotten as it seems to be, but — well, the Chileans have reported a Sea King crashed and burnt out. On Chilean territory, near Punta Arenas.’
The words in his own neat hand in the diary blurred, out of focus. Visualising the crash, the fireball on some lonely mountainside. Kingsmill’s voice adding, ‘Of course, doesn’t have to be that one, I suppose—’
‘No. It doesn’t.’
Might have delivered its passengers to the LZ before the crash? Might have been on its way back?
If it had had a way of getting back. How this was to be accomplished was a question he’d raised when they’d given him his orders before the rendezvous for the para drop. Knowing a Sea King’s fuel capacity, and the weight factor which if they’d fitted it with extra tanks would impose another limitation, and the distances involved; also wondering whether, if its crew did have some facility for refuelling — Chilean help, perhaps — it might become his task to move out to the western edge of the TEZ, or beyond that, to make the recovery. But the answer had been dismissive: ‘All taken care of, John. Not your pigeon.’
In other words, Mind your own business…
7
It was getting dark when Félix, who’d ridden on ahead to find the lake and the O’Higgins puesto, returned to meet them and guide them to it. For several hours, having left the plateau behind, they’d been crossing greenish, quite fertile country, land watered by overspill from the Andes rains. The lake, stream-fed and in a slight depression, wasn’t visible until you were right up close; there was no track to follow to it, from this direction, no way a stranger would have found it except by stumbling into it. Besides which, the light had gone now. While Félix had been scouting ahead, the two groups — Torres and Beale with half the sheep, and Andy with Cloudsley and Hosegood driving the rest of them — had been converging; Torres had organised this, getting them integrated into one flock while it was still just light enough to see. But now from the right there was a drumming slither of hooves, then Félix calling in Spanish to Torres: he’d have them in silhouette against what brightness remained in the western sky.
On Andy’s right, Cloudsley reined in. Torres kicked his nag into a trot, slanting to the right, towards the voice.
‘Qué tal, Félix?’
‘Not so far. This way, a little!’
Shouting across the cutting, constant wind.
‘Did you speak with him?’
‘Si. All is well, and he has a pen we can use. But no entry to the puesto, not even for you, my friend! He has a new woman — eh?’
‘Old Agustín, a new—’
‘Believe it!’
Wheezy laughter. ‘Not quite new, I’ll bet. But she’ll still break his spine!’
Andy was pushing his horse out to the left, to turn the flank of the milling crowd of sheep and edge them the other way. He told Hosegood as he crossed ahead of him, ‘Félix says it’s not far now. Want to get down and walk?’ Hosegood had been pretending to have saddle-sores. Beale called over, ‘Sleep on your face tonight, Geoff…’
They’d seen no other human being, in all the hours of riding. No aircraft either. He’d noticed Cloudsley keeping a constant lookout for them, watching the sky more than the barren landscape. They’d chewed mutton on the march, and drunk from their water-bottles. A condor had dived on some small prey almost under the hooves of Andy’s horse: swooping red-eyed, talons lowered and hooked, tail-feathers down for an air-brake. Hosegood had muttered, staring after it as it flew away, ‘Now I seen it. “Nature red in tooth and claw”…’
‘Plenty of that hereabouts, Geoff.’
‘Yeah? What else besides eagles?’
‘That was a condor, not an eagle.’
He’d told them about other predators. The carancho, for one — a carrion hawk that specialised in killing lambs and pecking out sheep’s eyes. El Carancho had been a nickname — spoken invariably under a man’s breath — for Alejandro Diaz, at the time Andy had left the Argentine for good. Or had thought he was leaving for good. The recollection had turned his thoughts back that way — via Diaz to his daughter — when the nature-study talk had died away.
The sheep were moving the right way now, and he and Torres had them between them. Félix, invisible from here, was leading. Tony Beale — he had the pack-horse on a rope behind him — called, ‘Andy, what’s a puesto?’
From the left, a fox screamed. He waited for the eerie sound to fade, then told Beale, ‘Shepherd’s house. Shepherd is a puestero. Each one is way out on his own, in these outlying paddocks, has to live on the job.’
‘Must be bloody lonely.’
‘It’s a life they’re used to.’
Lonely for their wives, or women, he thought. It would be lonely enough even for Francisca on a large, comparatively civilised estancia like La Madrugada, particularly if Robert was away. There’d be only the mayordomo and his family, and the peóns and theirs, sometimes a neighbour passing by. Francisca hadn’t been brought up to the farming life. Despite her father having his own sheep-station, Estancia Santa María, her stays in the wilderness had never been protracted. She was a town girl at heart, a bright lights girl. Buenos Aires and these remote provinces of Patagonia were different worlds, and however much she’d enjoyed some aspects of the country life she’d always been a visitor in this one.
She mig
ht well be living in BA now, he guessed. In his mind he’d pictured her as being at La Madrugada, he supposed, because he’d been coming to the neighbourhood himself and — facing it honestly — because there’d never been a time when she had not been in his thoughts. Since heaven knew how long ago; it felt like for ever — and thoughts of the future, despite all that had happened, had always had her in them, however vaguely… But it was more likely she’d be in the capital now, he guessed, using her father’s big, ritzy house. Very much a different world: not just comfort but luxury, and drenched now in the Junta’s propaganda, bombast and heroics — one of the heroes being her bloody husband, no doubt, while here the hero’s brother, dressed as a peón, rode with his head down through a freezing, wind-swept night behind a bunch of stinking sheep.
A shout from up front: ‘Holá!’
A light there; a lantern swinging, held aloft by a horseman spectrally illuminated under its pale glow. The puestero had ridden out to meet them; he and his ‘new’ woman would doubtless welcome a break in their isolation.
*
‘Tastes bitter. What’s it made of — or shouldn’t I ask?‘
Tony Beale passed the gourd of maté to Hosegood. Andy explained: it was tea made from the leaves of Ilex Paraguayensis, Brazilian holly. In fact the tea itself was called yerba and maté was the gourd in which they served it. You drank it through a straw; this one, belonging to Pepe Torres and before that his father, was silver tipped with ivory. There was a ritual involved: for instance the water, heated in a tin kettle, had never to be allowed to boil; and the first man drank, spat it out, refilled the gourd, drank this time without spitting and then passed it on.
Special Deliverance Page 10
