Special Deliverance

by Special Deliverance (retail) (epub)

  He could be right, Andy thought. They’d have been making less than three miles an hour with these sheep, and the Pucarás would have been flying at more like three hundred.

  Hosegood pointed: ‘There’s Señor Whatsit.’

  Félix: on a rise, static, horse and rider in profile as he stared back at the smoke-trails. Hosegood added, ‘Him Big Chief Pissing Bull.’ It did look a bit that way: posed for the long-shot, Noble Savage in silhouette on the skyline… But in the sector where the Pucarás had now disappeared Andy’s eye was caught by a spark like a match not quite igniting; then it did ignite, flared, turned into a fireball. He’d shouted, pointing at it, the first thought in his mind being that one of those aircraft had crashed, but now you could see the fire spreading, separate outbreaks starting and spreading to link up, merging into a solid band of flame low and day-glo bright on that far-off rockscape.

  Not that from here you’d know it was rock, if you hadn’t been there.

  ‘Napalm?’

  Cloudsley said grimly, ‘Right…’

  Félix had gone on, out of sight. The horses were restive, dancing. The fire still bright and a black smoke cloud above it streaming diagonally on the wind. He asked Cloudsley, ‘Monkey and Jake wouldn’t have been in that area, would they?’

  ‘No.’

  Of course they wouldn’t. Crazy thought anyway. Who’d drop napalm on horsemen in a wilderness, for God’s sake?’

  Well, Robert might. If be’d run out of vizcachas… Cloudsley said, ‘Could have a target marked out, on that escarpment.’

  ‘But the rock’d be blackened. It’d stink too, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Now, it will, but they might not have used it before. And I’d guess that’s to the north of where we came over. Wouldn’t have to be marked, anyway, they could be given a map reference and told to plaster it with that filthy muck.’ He looked over at Hosegood. ‘Something new, Geoff. Those were navy flyers. Training with napalm.’

  ‘Could napalm be used against ships?’

  ‘Those fat-looking bombs were finned.’ The big man nodded. ‘So I dare say they could.’ Scowling, thinking about it… ‘Napalm bombs are only containers, dropped with very little aim, as an anti-personnel weapon. But if you could use it more precisely — well, yes…’

  The image in mind then was of a warship smothered in napalm: any hit on any part would be enough for the liquid to spray all over her. Then she’d be coated in fire. And aluminium, of which modern warships’ upperworks tended to be made, did burn — as the Task Force had recently been learning. You might have a frigate or destroyer with her entire upper deck, superstructure and top hamper ablaze; the men inside cooking, unable to get out.

  Or a troopship, for God’s sake.

  Riding on: glancing back to where the burning had now died to a glow like a fading sunset. The Pucarás were evidently taking a different route back to their base: northward, one might guess. Cloudsley said, ‘Tony may have a view on this. He’s our aviation expert.’

  Beale told them — later, at dusk when they were resting briefly at the waterhole — that a Pucará’s normal warload would be six 110-pound bombs all on a centreline rack, below the fuselage. But he hadn’t heard of napalm in bombs with fins, either. From what he’d seen as they’d passed over, the two finned cannisters on the wing pylons had been smaller than the one in the centre; he estimated 500-kilogramme bombs under the wings and one twice that size in the rack.

  ‘What makes you a Pucará expert, Tony?‘

  ‘Told to bone-up on ’em, wasn’t I? Before we left.’

  Hosegood said, ‘Got his wings, an’ all.’ Pointing with his chin at the colour sergeant. ‘Intrepid birdman, is our sarge.’

  They were drinking coffee. Standing around the fire, as a rest from sitting all day in saddles, while Torres and Félix saw to the sheep. Half an hour’s break, Cloudsley had ordered. Beale explained to Andy, ‘Got a private pilot’s licence, that’s all. Not unusual, two or three pals of mine done the same… Pucará means “village”, right?’

  ‘More or less. Sort of fortified settlement, antique Indian.’ He asked Cloudsley, ‘We might leave the pack-horse for Torres to bring along tomorrow?’

  Cloudsley said no, he wasn’t going to risk being separated from the gear. Without it they’d be hamstrung, and if Torres was delayed tomorrow they’d have to sit around and wait for him. It made sense, of course. Andy went to find Torres, down by the water marshalling sheep, and asked him whether there was a padlock on Strobie’s number five gate now. Torres confirmed that there was. He’d put a new one on it on his way west; number five was the gate from which these sheep were supposed to have wandered.

  ‘Better let me borrow the key, then.’

  ‘You will leave the gate unlocked for us?’

  ‘No. I’ll lock it, and bury the key beside the hinge post.’ Beale was saying as he rejoined them, ‘The napalm thing could be very useful intelligence, Harry.’

  ‘It could indeed.’ You could see he didn’t like it, either. Changing the subject, asking Andy, ‘Are we going to find the way there now, straight line and no messing?’

  He nodded. ‘There’s a track to the gate in Tom’s fence, and it runs on from there to the estancia. I have a key to the padlock on the gate too.’

  ‘Do they lock their gates?’

  ‘Gates in boundary fences, sure. Not invariably, but—’

  ‘As I’ve observed before, Tony, this is a useful guy to have along.’ Cloudsley’s hand gripped his shoulder. Lifting a mug of coffee in the other, tipping it back, Andy thinking, But you’ll be shedding me, soon as I’ve served your purpose… Cloudsley shook dregs out of his mug. ‘Now we’d better hit the road.’

  Andy led the cavalcade. After a warm farewell with Torres, who asked him to inform the patrón that he’d have the sheep back in the home paddock, God willing, by tomorrow’s sundown. ‘You will still be there when we arrive, Don Andrés?’

  He nodded. ‘If you do get there before dark.’

  ‘Then you go where? Estancia La Madrugada?’

  ‘No.’ He shrugged. ‘Well, I don’t know. Maybe.’

  ‘Qué va…’ A shrug of the heavy shoulders, meaning in effect What the hell… And adding: ‘You will remember the matter of the horses and their tack, Don Andrés, before you depart? In case we do not meet at the time?’

  Three of Tom’s horses, he meant, to be paid for. Plus their saddles and bridles. Andy had assured him, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll remember.’ He turned now in his saddle, looking back to the others who were riding in his tracks — four men now, live horses. They’d redistributed some of the loads, to give the pack-horse a break; each rider had some gear up behind him now. The fire was a tiger’s eye glowing back there in the dark, throwing them into tall relief. ‘OK to speed up, Harry?’

  ‘Yeah.’ A long arm lifted, from that dark, gigantic shape. ‘Let’s step on it… Geoff, hold on now!’

  Pulling his leg. After two days in the saddle Hosegood was quite competent to stay on.

  The track was easy to see and follow. Andy put his weight back, pushed his horse into a slow canter, the sort of easy ambling gait that could be kept up across this kind of open country for hour after hour. Hunched against the wind, eyes slitted against the cold but still tending to weep, breathing adjusted to the rhythm of thudding hooves. An eye on the trail — knowing that if he lost it he could have the devil of a job to pick it up again — and looking back from time to time to check the others were still with him.

  The first time he looked at his watch it showed a few minutes past two, and he felt he’d been riding for a week. In fact this was the fourth night since taking off in the Sea King from John Saddler’s destroyer, and it was one week since they’d left England for Ascension Island. They’d spent only one hour on the air base, Wideawake, transferring from a VC1O to a Hercules; at the time he’d had a hollow feeling in his gut at the prospect of the para drop looming closer every minute. Now, it was the pleasure of reunion with old To
m that was approaching; and thinking beyond that — across Strobie territory to the MacEwan boundary, just a few hours’ longer in the saddle — well, if she was there, and not in BA…

  It was only — oh, a daydream, an idea to toy with. Not to do anything about. But still, after so long, to be so close — maybe…

  Better, he told himself, not to know whether she was around or not. Not even to enquire. Then he saw the posts — Strobie’s wire — and called back to the others to ease up: reining in, and the rest of them bunching up behind him. He told them, ‘That’s Tom’s fence. Less than an hour from here to his estancia.’ Pulling his horse to a stop, feeling for the key in a pocket, then finding the padlock by feel in the dark. Unstable on his feet, after the hours of riding.

  ‘What’s this fence made of, Andy?’

  ‘Ever hear of wire?’

  ‘Oh, very droll…’

  ‘It’s high-tension wire, eight strands — maybe ten, if you want to count them. The posts are made of a wood called quebracho, comes from the north of the country and the word means ‘axe-breaker’. In other words it’s as hard as iron. The posts last sixty years without attention.’

  Beale was at the fence, leaning from his saddle to examine it, what he could see of it. Andy fitted the key in the padlock and was relieved when it turned. Beale said, ‘Post here doesn’t reach the ground.’

  ‘It’s not a post, then, it’s a dropper. There’s a post every fifteen metres, you’ll find, with a dropper between them — a spreader to keep the gaps between the wires regular. If you look closer you’ll see that’s only a two by one, something like that. But the fence is about as strong as you could make it, and still flexible.’

  ‘Must cost a bit. Hundreds of bloody miles of it?’

  ‘Well, nobody’d invented inflation when they put these up.’ He swung the gate open. ‘Come on. Straight up the track, Harry, I’ll catch you up.’ He had to lock the gate and bury the key, using his sheath knife to make a hole for it, for Torres to use tomorrow. Then he swung himself up, trotted after the others, and forty minutes later saw the gleam of a light from the estancia El Lucero.

  8

  Walking into Tom’s shack was like action in a dream. Unreal, timescale gone crazy… Apart from which, his own performance in getting here felt out of character, beyond his own known capabilities, so that he felt like a stranger to himself. Not to old Tom, though: the smile of welcome on the old man’s face might have looked to the others like a fixed grimace of pain, but the warmth in the old man’s eyes, above a tangle of grey beard, was intense, movingly real. He’d aged, of course. The surgeon’s stitchings around his mouth, for instance, had ribbed the lips in vertical corrugations which hadn’t been as prominent before. His lips, like other areas, had been reconstructed, forty years ago. Tom Strobie was a man of medium height but he was shortened by a stoop: wide at the shoulders, thick-bodied, but very little belly noticeable. He had a stick in his left hand and he was wearing his old reefer jacket with the black buttons instead of brass ones.

  They’d unsaddled the horses and turned them out to graze, joining a lot of others on the flat, grass area called the mallin. First thing in the morning, the horseboy would ride the nocbero out to round them up and put them in the horse corral.

  ‘This is unbelievable, Tom.’

  ‘Makes me happy too, boy…’

  He had one short eyelid. They’d done a poor job on that. And he’d developed an old man’s way of staring — peering, with a big effort in it. He wouldn’t have considered going to a doctor, of course; he’d always said he’d had enough of doctors to last a lifetime, if what they’d already done to him didn’t keep him going he was damned if he’d let them have another go… He was looking out into the dark as Andy moved inside: ‘Four of us, Tom. Bit of a crowd, I’m afraid, but only until this evening. Torres said to tell you he’ll be here by then, incidentally. And Tom — thanks. Thanks a hell of a lot.’ He introduced the others as they crowded in: Harry, Tony, Geoff… Cloudsley had suggested during the approach to the estancia that there’d be no need for any surnames.

  ‘You’re very welcome, boys.’

  He wanted them inside quickly, Andy could see — and the door shut. Partly to keep the cold out, but also because he wouldn’t want to advertise their arrival, not even to his own employees. Cloudsley was saying as they shook hands, ‘But look, sir — rather than crowd you out’ — his eyes had done a quick recce of the shack’s interior — ‘an outhouse would do us very well. As Andy said, we’ll only be here for the daylight hours. Just somewhere we can flop — and of course if you could run to a meal—’

  ‘Bloody oath…’ Strobie swung his stick-hand towards the door; telling Beale, ‘Shut it before we freeze, lad!’ He asked Andy, with a jerk of his beard towards Cloudsley, ‘Who’s this midget, anyway, laying down the bloody law?’ Glaring up at the SBS man’s towering bulk… ‘Cupboard under the bunk, Andy – you’ll find some Scotch. Glasses on the shelf. Food’s ready when you are – but sit down now…’

  It was about three a.m. by Andy’s watch, but a ship’s chronometer in a wooden case showed nearly midnight. Cloudsley saw it too, and nodded: ‘We’d better change to local time. Your clock’s right, sir, I take it?’

  ‘Don’t call me “sir”.’ Tom let himself down into a sagging armchair and dropped his stick beside it. ‘Of course it’s right.’ Peering at Andy: ‘Go on, fill ’em up. And listen’ — using his chin again as a pointer. ‘There’s one bed and spare mattresses in that room. Door off it leads to heads, wash place and shower. I sleep there.’ A bunk, recessed and curtained, with drawers and the liquor cupboard under it. ‘Carpentered that myself.’ He swung round towards another door: ‘Kitchen, and rear exit. And that’s the lot. Not much of it, but you’re better here than anywhere else. I’d have put you in the big house, but it’s crawling with the Torres brood.’ He was groping for his glass; Andy put it in his hand… ‘See if I’ve any memory working, now. I live here like an old fox in an earth, surprising I can still talk English. Talk it to myself, I suppose, that’s all it can be… But now — you’re Geoff, right?’

  ‘Dead right, Tom.’

  The pointing right hand was blotched purple — from burns, or grafting, whatever. Eyes moving from face to face: ‘You haven’t changed much, Andy… Now the little feller — you’re Harry. And you — Tony… Right.’ He lifted his glass: ‘Here’s to you, boys, you and whatever you’re here for… flew in by helicopter, did you? Type they call a Sea King?’

  There wasn’t a sound, while they all stared at him. He let it last a few seconds, then chuckled, took a swig of whisky… Cloudsley asked him flatly, ‘Why would you suppose—’

  ‘Suppose fuck-all, old cock.’ Wiping his mouth on the back of a hand. ‘I listen to the BBC, that’s all. Our Chilean neighbours have announced they’ve found a burnt-out Sea King down near Punta Arenas. Close to the border there, d’you see. Crashed, burnt out. I thought maybe you’d have been in it and I might not have the pleasure of your company.’

  Tony Beale murmured, ‘Could’ve been…’

  ‘Take it as read.’ Cloudsley pointed out. ‘It takes the heat off us, doesn’t it? That’s to say, if there were any to start with, if anyone had reason to believe a helo had flown some of us in — could’ve seen or heard it from the Argie side when we flew in over the Strait… They find the wreck right down there, they wouldn’t guess it might have gone right up north and then back again, would they?’

  Andy asked him, ‘Throw away a Sea King? Just for that?’

  ‘This job is not small beer, Andy.’

  He looked at Beale. Hearing Geoff Hosegood murmur, ‘Cheers then, Tom…’ Andy began, ‘I know, but—’

  ‘If we pull this off‘ — Cloudsley was telling Strobie — ‘we could be saving literally hundreds of lives. And ships. It’s worth a hundred Sea Kings, on that basis… But anyway’ — looking across at Andy—– ‘that Sea King needed extra gas tanks just to get us to our LZ and then fly south. Coul
dn’t have got any farther — unless the Chileans had refuelled it, which as neutrals obviously they couldn’t. So having to ditch the helo anyway, they’ve done it where it points anywhere but in this direction. OK?’

  Hosegood said, ‘They’d reckon there’d been blokes going to Rio Gallegos. Just a stone’s throw, innit?’

  Strobie asked Cloudsley, ‘What is your objective, Harry?’

  ‘Well.’ Cloudsley smiled. ‘Mind if I ask a question first? We’re all a bit thirsty for news — I mean we’ve been out of touch, the last few days. Have our lot landed, yet?’

  ‘Lord, yes.’ Strobie nodded. ‘Must’ve been — oh, three days ago… Were you with the Task Force?’

  ‘Only briefly. Hello, goodbye… A week ago we were in England.’

  Andy noticed the slow blink of one working eye. To Strobie that statement would have been akin to saying, We were on the moon. The old man growled, ‘You’ve moved fast, then.’

  It hadn’t felt like it, and didn’t now. But maybe they hadn’t done so badly, Andy thought. Cloudsley prompted, ‘Tell us about the landing?’

  ‘San Carlos Water.’ The old man nodded. ‘Early morning, the twenty-first. Royal Marines and Paras. No opposition, no casualties.’ He went on, over their mutters of satisfaction, ‘Then later in the day there were air attacks and a frigate was sunk. Quite a few Argentinian aircraft shot down, too.’

  ‘Have they moved out of the beachhead yet?’

  ‘No. They have not,‘ Strobie said. ‘That frigate was the Ardent. Rotten news today was a second one’s been hit. Might be my bad memory but I don’t think they named her… But I’ll tell you, it’s a lot better than listening to the BA radio, they sink a ship a minute; if you believed them we’d have no bloody Navy left.‘

  ‘What sunk the frigates?’ Cloudsley asked, ‘Bombs, or missiles?’

  ‘Both by bombing. Sheffield’s the destroyer that was done in by an Exocet. But that was earlier on, wasn’t it…? Tell me what you’re here for, Harry?’