Special Deliverance

by Special Deliverance (retail) (epub)

  Beale was at the door. Withdrawal from the compound was going to be near enough the reverse of the entry routine, except there was only one pack to take out. Spots of fire behind the eyeballs weighed nothing; the sensation of a drill at work behind them, drilling into the brain, was something you couldn’t do anything about. In any case — Cloudsley struggled to complete a thought he’d started a moment ago — re-entry tomorrow night — correction, re-entry tonight — would be really quite easy. There’d be a pack to bring in, but no weight in it, only the drill and the liner-upper.

  Hosegood clipped the pack shut and carried it to the little door where Beale knelt with his eye to the crack in its hinged side. You had only to open it about an inch, to expose that gap. Cloudsley, inspection completed, joined them. He’d be the last out: he’d be bringing the pack as far as the wire.

  ‘How long’ve you been watching the señor, Tony?’

  ‘Three or four minutes.’

  Could be at least twelve minutes to wait, then. He stooped beside Beale for a look at the outside world, the bone-chilling Patagonian night. It wasn’t snowing, and that was a relief. If snow came before this job was finished he hadn’t the least idea what could be done about it, about three men’s tracks approaching a twelve-foot fence and continuing the other side, either inward or outward. The solution might be to send up a concerted prayer for more snow to fill the tracks as soon as they were made. He thought, Anyway, play if off the cuff; and it may never happen… And meanwhile all was well — sentry outside the gates, generator pounding steadily, pale-yellow light reaching along the wire but leaving that blessed shadow. He’d glanced back at the sentry just as he began to shuffle off on his rounds.

  ‘Goon’s going walkabout.’

  Beale took over as observer again. From here you wouldn’t see the sentry as far as the corner post, you’d need to open the door an inch or two. Then when he went round the corner and you lost sight of him you’d do it by numbers, counting his next eight paces.

  As long as nobody else emerged from the guardhouse, meanwhile. Relief sentry, whatever — like yesterday morning, when he’d seen a second one there suddenly. But that had been nearer dawn, the whole base had been stirring… Barring the unforeseen, this should be simpler and quicker than it had been on the way in.

  Beale said, ‘I’m opening the door a bit.’

  Left side of his whiskered and grease-blackened face close against the metal, left eye on the sentry’s back.

  ‘He’s at the corner — almost… Yeah, turning south.’

  Breathing hard as he watched one-eyed. Breath might even be visible out there,’Cloudsley realised — like puffs of steam through the crack… Beale began his count-down: starting at eight but warning first, ‘Stand by, Geoff…’ Muttering: ‘… seven — six — five — four — three — two — one and go!’

  Hosegood burst out, sprinted for the fence. Beale gave him a start of five yards, then dived after him, running hard. Cloudsley ducked out, shut the door from the outside but didn’t lock it, ran at a crouch with the pack on his shoulders into the cover of the generator shed. Pausing there for long enough to see Hosegood landing on the outside and Beale launching himself upward; then he broke cover, dashed for the wire. Beale was lying on its top; he caught the pack as, Cloudsley slung it up to him, and tossed it over to Hosegood, who took off with it, across the road and away into the darkness, Beale rolling off the wire and following him with the style of an Olympic medallist, Cloudsley jumping for the top of the fence, pivoting on the top on his gloved hands and flying over, landing on all fours before he recovered and sprinted into the dark where the others had already vanished.

  They’d gone straight to the rear hide. Cloudsley stopped at the OP, though, to check through the periscope that all was serene in and around the missile compound.

  The sentry was plodding up this near side. Slouching past the point where within the last two minutes three men had charged out of the compound he was guarding, having neutralised half his country’s reserves of their most potent weapon.

  Other half tonight. After which — Adios, señores…

  Controlling the sudden glow of satisfaction; reminding himself, Long way to go yet… He climbed out, paused to look back and see the sentry shambling on around the corner; then crawled across fifty feet of frozen earth to the other hide. Shivering inside his heavy clothing. Same thing every time you took a little exercise: you worked up a sweat and then it froze.

  ‘Haven’t you even wet the maté, yet?’ He asked a second question although the answer wasn’t hard to guess: ‘Where’s Geoff?’

  ‘Give us a chance…’ Beale glanced round from the little burner. ‘Only just got the bluey lit.’

  ‘It’s not a bluey, it’s some Jap product.’

  ‘Yeah, well.’ A ‘bluey’ was a Service-issue cooker, the kind they usually had with them. Beale told him, ‘Geoff’s gone for a crap.’

  Officially speaking, one of the others should have gone with him. That was the standard drill: one with his pants down, the other with sharp eyes and ears and an Armalite. Squatting, you couldn’t do much to defend yourself. But there’d be no patrols out there, Cloudsley thought, these Argies didn’t have the imagination to think of Bootnecks defecating around their airfields. He let himself down on one of the sleeping-mats. Not a bad night, Tony.’

  ‘One more like it — home and dry.’

  Wanting to touch wood, and not finding any. Shivering, instead. Beale had the cooker going now, steam rising. ‘Might soak some of them little rocks in this stuff. Soften ‘em up.’ He meant the galletas, so-called bread rolls, which were as hard as rocks. Hosegood arrived, entering feet-first and looking happy: ‘Where’s this cuppa, then?’

  *

  Andy told Strobie over breakfast, answering a comment about Harry Cloudsley and others like him, ‘They don’t think of themselves as special. The SB squadron’s just one of several things a Marine can go in for if he’s up to it. They have their own helicopter pilots, for instance, and a landing craft company. And an outfit they call MAW — stands for Mountain and Arctic Warfare.’

  ‘They seemed special enough to me.’ Strobie poured coffee. ‘How did you come to get mixed up with them?’

  ‘Through a girlfriend.’ Andy realised as he said it that he hadn’t been thinking much about Lisa lately. ‘Her father’s in the Navy — captain of a ship in the Task Force, as it happens. I’d met him through his daughter, and he told someone he knew this guy who knew the country. Next thing was, I had this phone call. But you’re right, they impress me too.’

  ‘What’s the difference between them and the SAS?’

  ‘Plenty. For one thing, the SBS specialise in beaches and harbours and underwater action. Aquatic operations generally. They’re parachutists too, of course. The SAS is a much bigger concern, isn’t it? It has the whole Army to draw on, it’s a regiment.’ He put down his knife and fork. ‘That was great… Tom, what does Francisca do with herself all day, when she’s on her own at the estancia?’

  ‘Takes a hand running the place. Gets around a bit on horseback, sees to this and that.’ Strobie shrugged. ‘When she’s here.’

  ‘And you don’t know whether she is now?’

  ‘No way I would, unless she came to see me.’

  ‘You don’t ever call there? Or call up on the radio?’

  ‘What for? Cosy chat to your brother — or bloody Huyez?’ The question had annoyed him. ‘If she was there she’d either ride over or she wouldn’t. If for her own reasons — as I explained — she’s staying away, that’s her own business, isn’t it?’

  ‘Wouldn’t your people here — Torres, for instance — get to know when she comes or goes?’

  ‘They may do.’ Strobie gulped down the last of his coffee. ‘But they’d have no reason to talk to me about it.’ He pushed back his chair, reached for his stick. ‘Listen, now. I’ll be down in the south paddocks all day. I’m taking the pickup, and I could be late back. Help yourself to whate
ver you want — food, or Scotch. You may find something worth reading in those shelves. But stay out of sight, eh?’

  *

  Cloudsley was asleep, and Beale squatted at the periscope. After a burst of activity before and for maybe an hour after sunrise, the airfield had gone quiet again. Maybe the pilots went back to bed… Hosegood was having his day of rest in the other hide, having first buried the two used batteries in the bottom of it. While he’d been doing that, Cloudsley had taken some water-bottles down to the stream and filled them, getting it done before the sky began to lighten and while the Pucarás were warming up across the road. You added things called puri-tablets to river water, to play safe. Also playing safe, they’d all used antiseptic ointment from their first-aid packs on cuts and scratches caused by that wire.

  The floodlighting had gone out when they’d stopped the generator, and soon after that the compound gates had been opened to let in a truck, tanker, for topping up the diesel tank. That had been some time ago, but the gates were still standing open. Some of the aircraft which had taken off before dawn and been gone a long time, but he thought he’d counted them back now. Seven machines were drawn up in echelon on the far side of the service road, and ground staff with a tractor and trailer were working on them. Beale didn’t know whether they were the same ones, refuelled, or another lot. He wanted to know, to have a count of how many aircraft there were on this base and whether they were permanently here or different lots flying in for short periods. He’d done some study of the Pucará and of the Aermacchi and Etendard as well, those two being planes used by the Argie naval air arm, the ANA, and therefore aircraft that might be encountered on this trip — and he’d have liked a closer view. The periscope’s magnification helped, but not all that much. He knew there were two kinds of Pucará in service, for instance, the IA 58A and the later 58B which had a deepened forward fuselage to take heavier armament, and from here it was impossible to see whether they were As or Bs. Scaning back, wiping the lens and resting his eyes a moment… His interest in the matter wasn’t academic: everything you saw here would have some Intelligence value, and having penetrated this deeply it would be a waste of unusual opportunity if you didn’t memorise it all. Like the arial numbers — all starting with the letter ‘A’ — on the sides of the Pucarás’ fuselages where they narrowed towards the tails. Intelligence already knew that the Pucarás of IV Escuadron here being reinforced by some from III Brigada Aerea at Reconquista, but whether or not the navy was getting them from that same source…

  Those were armourers.

  He’d realised it suddenly. Recollecting that a Pucará’s twin 90-mm cannon were loaded from below the fuselage; which was what those overalled characters were doing. Browning machine-guns in the sides of the fuselage, and cannon Hispanos — underneath. The ammo would have come out in that trailer.

  He looked round at Cloudsley’s poncho-covered, heavy-breathing body and decided against disturbing him. The only importance of the information lay in the possibility that those 3 aircraft were being readied for deployment operationally. But there was no way to get the information out, anyway. Radios having been banned, all you could do was take it out.

  As Harry would have said — Touch wood…

  Helicopter arriving?

  He loosened an ear-flap, heard the racket growing. Direction uncertain. Worrying things, helicopters; hovering overhead, maybe seeing the signs of excavation… He glanced around at Cloudsley again. Snoring, now. Needing his sleep, at that, having had none in this past night or yesterday or the previous night; and in a team like this one each man’s fitness was important to the others. Eye back at the periscope; tilting it to and fro as well as swivelling it, he spotted the source of the noise and recognised it instantly. A Chinook. No mistaking that very large and distinctive shape. It was coming from the north and obviously intending to land. Extremely loud, as it closed in and lost height, but the skull-thumping racket wasn’t disturbing Harry Cloudsley. Turning to its left now across the front of the line of parked Pucarás. And transport coming, welcoming committee — one khaki-painted van, one pickup truck also khaki, and a camouflaged saloon car… Men in overalls were dropping out of the back of the van, and a naval officer had got out of the staff car. The armourers working on the Pucarás had gathered in a bunch to watch the big helo setting itself down. It was huge, with twin rotors on twin engine—turrets and the word ARMADA in white capitals on its side. ‘Armada’ meaning ‘fleet’ or ‘navy’, even Sir Francis Drake had known that much.

  Movement in the missile compound now. A tractor with three soldiers on it turning in through the gates. Beale guessed now what was happening or about to happen; he’d have captioned his report, Deployment of AM39 missiles by helo.

  They weren’t wasting time, either, weren’t leaving the Chinook to hang around. Cloudsley, he decided, did need to witness this. It directly affected them, their half-completed operation… He saw the tractor swing round, its driver reversing it as the other two men disappeared towards the front of the hangar. Beale knew he’d soon be treated to the sight of one or both trolleys being towed out to the Chinook, complete with doctored missile or missiles.

  ‘Harry.’ He reached, pulling at the poncho. The snoring stopped instantly and Cloudsley rolled up on to an elbow, asking, ‘Yes, what’s up?’ Wide-awake: bearded face still streaked with the camouflage cream, whites of eyes and teeth gleaming in the half-light. Beale told him, ‘Deploying our missiles. Chinook just landed.’

  ‘Bloody hell…’

  Beale surrendered the periscope to him, but before he took his eye from it he’d seen crates being carried out of the helo and dumped in the pickup, and two of the helo’s crew on the ground talking to the officer who’d got out of the staff car. The other thing he noticed — it sank in only after he’d stopped looking — was that the naval officer was wearing the gold-peaked cap of a commander or captain.

  ‘Question is’ — Cloudsley muttering, at the scope — ‘how many they’ll take?’

  ‘Well,’ Beale pursed his lips, pretending to consider it. ‘Might see my way to letting ’em have four, today.’

  ‘And the right four, please God…’ He was silent for a minute, watching avidly. Then: ‘Looks like the Chinook’s brought wines and spirits for the mess. And that fellow there’ — he whistled — ‘Shit, alors, could be Roberto!’

  ‘What I thought. Big sod, brass hat.’

  ‘Right.’ Shifting the scope again. ‘Nothing much like Andy, is he? They’re bringing out both trolleys. One astern of t’other.’

  Ground staff were doing something under the Chinook’s fuselage. Preparing racks or cargo nets, Cloudsley guessed. They’d finished loading the pickup, it was leaving… That commander and the two pilots were pacing up and down, the two in flying gear only shoulder-high to the man between them. ‘Which direction did it come from, Tony?’

  Beale told him, from the north. Which gave quite a number of options. El Palomar, the military airbase at BA, wasn’t a bad bet, since it had brought stores down. But an even better bet was that it would be taking the missiles down to Rio Gallegos. And when it took off, twenty minutes later, it certainly did continue southward. The trolleys were towed back into the hangar and the tractor parked itself inside the compound, on the concrete forecourt. Cloudsley said, ‘Nick of time, Tony. Bloody lucky.’ He looked pleased with himself as he lay down and wrapped the poncho around himself. Meaning, of course, that if they’d been one day later getting here, those would have been two lethal missiles that were being hurried south, instead of two that would take nosedives into deep water. He went back to sleep immediately. He had two hours’ rest time left now, before he’d be due to take over as lookout, but in fact it would be time then for a maté break, first him and then Beale crawling back to the other hide for a hot drink and a snack, after dragging Geoff Hosegood out of dreamland by a sharp tug on the string.

  During the next hour the Pucarás took off in groups and flew westward. Beale had memorised their
serial numbers. The machine left after six had taken off had a pilot waiting beside it, kicking his heels until the staff car came back and ‘Roberto’ got out of it — a burly figure in flying gear topped by the gold-peaked cap. He handed the cap to the car’s driver and received a white flying helmet in exchange, and as he walked over to the aircraft the co-pilot saluted him. They both climbed in; Roberto was fixing his helmet while the other man, in the seat behind him, pulled the hinged canopy down over them both.

  Half an hour later all the planes came back, but only that one stopped at this end of the field. Roberto walked to the waiting car, and his co-pilot taxied the machine away. At the car, same routine with the cap… Whether or not it was Roberto MacEwan, Beale thought, he certainly didn’t like his rank to pass unnoticed.

  From midday onward there were intermittent Pucará sorties, some with napalm bomb loads. Cloudsley was on watch then, fully rested by his forenoon’s sleep and impatient to get going, get the night’s work done and clear out. There couldn’t be any move out until the night after, even then… Time dragged, with nothing of interest happening. Individuals and transport moved around, there were repeated take-offs and landings — obviously by learner pilots — and the napalm flights returned, went to refuel. There were ground-staff in the missile store, had been since the Chinook’s visit. They’d have two missiles to shift from racks to the trolleys, obviously, but that shouldn’t have taken more than a few minutes. Boredom contributed to anxiety; he comforted himself with the thought that if they’d found anything wrong in there, the afternoon would hardly have remained this tranquil.