Special Deliverance

by Special Deliverance (retail) (epub)

  It wasn’t comfortable, to have to sit still and wonder what was going on ashore there. Particularly when you had an idea what the answer to it might be. But there wasn’t a damn thing else to do but wait.

  Well, there was, actually. But—

  He shook it out of his mind. Necessarily, but unwillingly. He had to resist the temptation although it seemed to him the only alternative to leaving his ship exposed to danger: the ship, and the five hundred lives which through six long, hard weeks now it had been his primary concern to safeguard.

  At least no hostile radar was illuminating them — yet. Electronic silence applied only to emissions, and the passive systems were still operative. If there’d been radar on them the EW department would have known it, and if there’d been a Guppy around passive sonar would have heard it. Theoretically the absence of radar transmissions from shore should have been reassuring, but those lights were still keeping him on edge. The lighthouse itself was unlit, but the headland had light and movement on it, shifting patterns of light indicative of work in progress. It wouldn’t take very long, he guessed, to haul an MM38 or MM40 on to a headland site, set up a portable radar — a small, short-range set would do — switch it on, find a target, press the firing button…

  Damage control parties were closed up and alert to the danger. Saddler had briefed his engineer commander on that basic fear of his, and Chamberlain was now at his usual action station, HQ1, the damage control headquarters just across the gangway from the Ops Room. From there he had open lines of communication to his teams in all parts of the ship; and pumps, hoses, emergency leads all in place. You couldn’t specify action to be taken until the emergency actually arose, but at least they were alert to the fact this wasn’t any sort of routine situation, that missile attack from shore was an immediate threat. The damage control slogan displayed in the Ops Room was FLOAT — MOVE — FIGHT — the aims in order of priority. If Shropshire should be hit by an Exocet here off the mainland coast you’d have to settle for the first and second — keep her afloat, get her away… And be damn lucky if you managed that much.

  The Gemini should by this time be getting close to the R/V position. Saddler had added a third volunteer to its crew, an MEM1 — marine engineering mechanic 1st class — who was said to be a genius with outboard motors. He was also a strong swimmer, which was an essential qualification. It meant there’d be nine men instead of eight to be lifted if the worst came to the worst and he had to send in the helo, but having removed that much of its sonar gear — the job had been completed in less than Padmore’s estimated three and a half hours — and with more than ample wind-speed for hovering under something like maximum load, the flight commander had agreed that he and his pilots would be able to handle it.

  There were two main problems in using the Wessex: one, the SBS team were expecting to be picked up by submarine and their reaction to a helo’s appearance would be to assume it was hostile and shoot at it, and two, in this weather and total darkness, without PNG or other equipment such as a thermal imager, searching for two very small, dark-coloured rubber boats in several square miles of rough sea would make looking for needles in haystacks seem like child’s play.

  The lights on the headland were making him sweat. Radar or no radar. This close to the mainland and this far from any chance of support of any kind, and with certain recent scenes still only too vivid in memory… It brought him back to the temptation which he’d been resisting and had to go on resisting. A quick and easy way to remove that source of anxiety would be to use the gun, plaster the headland with high explosive, douse the lights and break up whatever it was they were preparing. But to bombard the mainland of Argentina was unthinkable, would alienate the entire world — most of which at this stage of events was still well disposed.

  *

  Islote Negro was about two hundred yards on their right. Monkey had throttled down, to cope with a new outburst of stuttering, and with reduced power the wind had gained the upper hand and pushed them back, farther away from the little island with its peak of guano-whitened rock than they’d been ten minutes ago. It was something like half an hour since Cloudsley had made that surprising observation about improving sea conditions; Andy was sure he’d said it only for his benefit, by way of morale-building, and that it had been totally unfounded. But since then he’d kept his head up, and Cloudsley had later come out with another one, a shout to Start to the effect that this prototype inflatable had certainly proved its capabilities: even the fucking outboard—

  He’d lost the end of it, in the howl of icy wind as the boat had risen into the lashing sleet.

  Engine-note rising again; Monkey cautiously re-opening the throttle. Gas might soon be running low, Andy thought. They had only the one tankful, having left the jerrycan on the beach to save space and weight. And the PNG was useless, could not be kept dry. Beale had abandoned attempts to use it, now. It had been Cloudsley who’d sighted Islote Negro with his naked eyes, but how anyone could hope now to spot another inflatable, about as prominent as a floating log…

  ‘Light!’

  A scream from Jake West. But they were submerging again; crests all around rising higher, enclosing, drowning… Andy wasn’t sure now that the word had been ‘light’: it could have been ‘right’ or ‘Christ’ or—

  ‘Starboard beam, Harry! Saw a flash, I’d guess the loom of a strobe, just as we—’

  Words lost on the wind again. Lifting: starboard blister down, climbing on a steep slant and with the stern being pushed around as she rose; they’d be near-enough bow-on to the rock now… Then he saw it, they all did, blinding bright and flashing in three short bursts, then one long flash before it was gone again, the inflatable still up high for another few seconds but the light had vanished. Then they were blind again as they swept downward, thump and swirl of sea crashing in over the port side, the SBS men agreeing that the SSK’s Gemini was roughly a hundred yards away, midway between themselves and the rock and almost certainly flashing SOS, therefore in trouble and most likely outboard trouble, but they’d be drifting this way, downwind. Cloudsley yelled, ‘Steer straight towards them, full throttle if she’ll take it!’

  ‘OK!’

  ‘Where’s our strobe? Someone gimme the bloody…’

  Lifting…

  Even on a crest you wouldn’t always see them. The other boat had to be on a crest too. Every third or fourth surfacing, but sometimes two consecutively… He was used to the stomach-churning motion now. Or numbed to it. Hosegood passed the strobe light aft to Cloudsley. Andy thinking it would be this outboard giving up the ghost next. The only real hope would be if the submarine came in and picked them up.

  Which presumably it would not do, or the arrangements wouldn’t have been made the way they had been: no doubt for good reasons, but—

  ‘Read that?’

  ‘K – E – L – P –’

  ‘Stuck in kelp there!’

  He heard Cloudsley shout against the gale as they shot up again — white sea swamping in over the port blister, Beale and Hosegood baling — Cloudsley had yelled, ‘Monkey, I’ll need your fins!’ And Start was groping one-handed in deepish water, then he’d found the fins and he passed them over. For the job on the headland of course they hadn’t had any with them, and their short swim from the reef had been made without them, but Monkey and Jake had worn fins when they’d swum out from the beach, swimming alongside the boat to get it out through the surf without impinging on rock; then Monkey had slid in over the blister and got the outboard started before Jake had come in over the bow where he’d been steadying her. Cloudsley was putting the fins on now; then knotting an end of the tow-rope round his waist. Thick waist, massive body, all the clothes inside the dry-suit bulging it out, and in all that clobber swimming surely wouldn’t be too easy. Shouting something about a signal to look out for and not to let this boat get any closer to the kelp. Which was why he was taking to the water, Andy realised: splashing over, now… He’d disappeared. Hosegood was letting the
nylon rope run out steadily through his hands, Andy having taken over the baling chore from him. Of course there would be kelp this side of the islet, the stuff would be growing all around it and the wind and sea would be trailing it out this way; on the weather side it would be packed in densely against the rocks. Beale was waiting with the strobe as the inflatable rose again; he began flashing fast morse, SWIMMER — and then they were down in a trough, Jake West shouting something, words indistinguishable, Beale waiting again with the light ready for the next upward rush. Then, on the crest again — just catching a flash from the other boat’s strobe — he was winking out the second word so fast that only an expert could have a hope of reading it, the word, COMING. So if they had read it the submariners would be looking out for Harry, ready to get him inboard… Monkey had his boat back on a seaward course, outboard at about half-speed. Climbing — hanging on one-armed, baling furiously, having some catching up to do, Jake working at it just as hard — climbing into bright light, the glare of the other boat’s strobe at a range of maybe sixty yards, a beacon for the swimmer they’d been told was on his way.

  *

  Cloudsley got his arms over the Gemini’s blister, lashed out with his fins and at the same time felt hands grasping his shoulders and hauling him in. The dry-suit hadn’t stayed dry, maybe because it was under such strain from the padding of gear inside it, and all that padding was now soaking wet, adding to the enormous weight being dragged into the boat. He sat up, asking ‘Kelp? Round the screw, or—’ Choking then, coughing up pints of the South Atlantic, and with a feeling he was enclosed in frozen lead; he heard the answer in a scream against the wind, ‘Screw’s gone! Hit kelp, got clear, tried her again and she raced… No bloody screw — pin sheared, see?’

  He could breathe again. In the centre of the boat as it hurtled down a wave, dug its snout in and scooped in a lot more sea… ‘No spare screw, I suppose?’

  They did have one. The sailor shouting answers in staccato bursts against the wind and between inrushes of ocean was an MEM. He’d brought various bits with him in his pockets, including a spare prop and boss and a pin for it, but he hadn’t wanted to lose this one as well so they’d been paddling to get clear of the kelp before he fitted it. Listening to the explanation Cloudsley had unhitched the rope from his waist and passed the end to the crewman in the bow; he hung on to the bight until he knew for certain it had been made fast. He yelled, ‘OK… Signal — one word – T – O – W!‘

  ‘Aye aye—’

  ‘How far out is your submarine?’

  He’d shouted his question to the boat’s coxswain as a sea crashed and flooded aft; the man yelled back, ‘Submarine? We’re from Shropshire! Destroyer, not submarine!’ Then the strobe flared into brilliance: Cloudsley had his back to it, turning to look for the headland, see if the lights were still visible. The Gemini tilting, rushing downward stern-first and swinging fast: with no motive-power there was nothing to hold her against the wind. He could still see light on that clifftop: he groaned, ‘Oh, Jesus Christ…’ Thinking of the Exocet back in place and Shropshire lying out there, awaiting the Argies’ convenience… The boat soared up an incline of toppling wave and the strobe’s brightness broke out again, snowflakes whipping through the brilliant aura spreading round it as it flashed, T — O — W… Do that two or three times, he thought; they’ll see it at least once. Please God. They’d be waiting for it, anyway, they’d have been ready for it from the moment when the rope stopped running out… Down again, steeply and abruptly into the abyss. Saddler could have no idea what was on that headland, and he might find out the hard way, any moment; and it would be one’s own fault, for not having made a proper job of it. Shropshire, though, for God’s sake, what a risk to run for just six guys! The wind hit the Gemini’s up-raised forepart as they shot up into its full force, flung up and then that huge thrust of gale-force wind threatening to turn her over end-over-end; Cloudsley launched himself forward, sprawling beside the crewman as a counterweight just in time. Behind him as he edged back again the strobe was repeating its urgent message, T — O — W…

  *

  After a quarter-hour of effort which in the first few minutes had seemed likely to pay off, Monkey realised they weren’t going to make it. Every time he opened the throttle to anything like full power the motor threatened to choke off and he had to cut back again to such low revs that with the weight of the tow dragging on them he doubted if they could be making as much as one knot. He knew that on this coast, this close in, there was a half-knot tidal stream setting southward, a set they’d known about before they’d left England but which they’d discounted because in a flat-bottomed boat with no keel it was the wind you had to reckon with mostly, and when you could make eight or ten knots such a small drift wouldn’t count for much anyway, over a short transit. It counted now, though. If he eliminated the lateral effect of the wind by steering right into it, he’d drift back into the kelp, tow and all; and if he didn’t steer into the wind in this handicapped condition he’d be blown back towards the headland.

  Beale was in the stern with him now, keeping the nylon rope clear of the motor and its screw. Monkey shouted, ‘I’ll steer into the wind while you haul in on the tow! When we’re round, get Jake on it with you, haul ’em in close — over the beam, OK?’

  Beale yelled back, ‘But they’re under way!’

  Monkey felt it too, in that moment. What Tony had already felt because he’d had his hands on the rope. The strain had come off it… Andy, baling, heard Beale’s voice high and thin across the wind and the roar of sound that was part of the icy oblivion surrounding him, ‘—no weight there at all!’ He wondered almost detachedly, Rope parted? All that for nothing? Working at the baling process like a machine. It was all he could do. He wasn’t even a passenger, he was cargo. Cloudsley had spoken nothing but the truth when he’d said this, the sea, was their element: a boatload of Andrew MacEwans wouldn’t have survived the first ten minutes, they’d have been swamped, the boat turned over a hundred times, the beach obscenely littered in the dawn. Beale’s voice again, Beale handling the nylon rope like an angler playing a big fish, his tone exultant as the inflatable tipped forward and plunged over a rising crest, ‘—still there!’

  *

  The outboard faltered — picked up — stammered, died…

  The MEM had accepted Cloudsley’s urgings to take a chance on having got clear of the kelp. He’d leant out over the Gemini’s stern with the coxswain hanging on to his legs, and fitted the spare screw and the boss and cotter-pin by feel, with his head and shoulders intermittently under water. Now they were overhauling the SBS inflatable, guiding themselves to it by the nylon rope, the leading hand gathering it in yard by yard as they closed up. Monkey was obviously driving at half-speed or less, Cloudsley realised. And there was still a five-mile stretch of ocean to cover, which was going to take a dangerously long time, with Shropshire wallowing out there — a sitting duck waiting for the Argies to let her have it, right on their doorstep… He shouted in the coxswain’s ear, ‘There’s an Exocet missile on that headland! We fucked it up but they’ve been working on the bloody thing for hours!’ The Gemini stood on its tail, climbing a dark mountain that broke back over them in a torrent before they’d reached its summit. It was a minute before anyone could speak again or think about anything much else; then the coxswain told Cloudsley, ‘Skipper has the helo standing by. Might see the strobe, if—’

  Sea sweeping over, interrupting…

  ‘—hold it up high, flash ’em an SOS?’

  *

  Saddler had waited too long already. Whatever was happening on that headland, it wasn’t a welcome-to-Argentina party. The threat seemed to him to have become both intense and imminent: he could feel it in his bones, his gut. The order burst out of him like something under pressure: ‘Action helo!’

  Then to Holt, the Aussie OOW, ‘Stand by State Three, revolutions two-eight-two.’ He’d told Padmore in his briefing that as soon as he’d got the helo off the
deck Shropshire would start moving east, to wait thirty miles offshore.

  In less than one minute the Wessex was clattering up into the night, banking away towards the land. Shropshire under helm and gathering way, Saddler telling his PWO over the Command Open Line, ‘Warn Seacat port and starboard that the threat sector will now be astern.’ This hadn’t been an easy decision to take: the urge to ensure the safety of his ship was one thing, the knowledge that the inflatables and their human cargo might be well on their way out from the R/V and that the Wessex might fail to locate them was quite another. You had to balance one set of risks against another. He’d told the helo crew, ‘If I have to order you away, it’ll be in your hands from there on. Has to be.’

  Padmore, in the lurching helo’s main cabin — entirely separate from the cockpit where the two pilots sat — had a gull’s-eye view of the ship turning, thrashing round, curve of broad white wake disappearing only yards under her stern in that boil of sea — his view of it receding, turning on end and withdrawing as the Wessex lifted, swung away… Landing-on wouldn’t be any problem: once Shropshire was out of range of any shore-mounted missile her flight-deck lights would be switched on when they were needed. The only tricky thing about landing-on would be the load, and that was going to be OK too, thanks to having shed some other weight. Padmore only hoped to God he’d have a load — nine live men. Finding two small boats somewhere on or near a line five miles long between the take-off point and Islote Negro was going to take some doing.