Land of Fire

Land of Fire.

by Chris Ryan.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.

To my agent Barbara Levy, editor Mark Booth, a.s.sistant editor Hannah Black, Charlotte Bush and the rest of the team at Century.

CHAPTER ONE.

"Air raid warning red!"

Autumn in the South Atlantic. 3.32pm on 25 May, a bright, cold afternoon in the narrow inlet of San Carlos Water, East Falkland. The alarm call sent a shiver through the British fleet and my war turned b.l.o.o.d.y.

This was Argentina"s national day. In enemy sorties before lunch, missiles from HMS Coventry had shot down two A4 Skyhawk bombers over the sound, with a third destroyed by small-arms fire. But an hour later the bombers had returned to exact revenge, damaging Broadsword and hitting Coventry with three bombs, capsizing her and killing nineteen men.

Now the bombers were back again.

This new message meant that the long-range radar of a ship on the forward picket line had detected hostile aircraft in descent towards the island on a strike mission profile.

Minutes earlier a Sea King helicopter from HMS Invincible had set me down on the main deck of the SS Northland, a 15,000-ton roll-on roll-off container ship. There were four of us there from D Squadron SAS, under the orders of my brother, Troop Sergeant Andy Black. The other two were Tom one of my great mates, a huge and unflappable Fijian corporal and Doug Easton, the troop troublemaker, who had just made selection. Doug was a bullet-headed tear away from east London, violently aggressive and forever forcing his opinions on people. He and I had never hit it off.

The squadron was scheduled to undertake a major operation in the next couple of days, and now we were hunting for a missing container of stores. Some clerk in Portsmouth had screwed up on the cargo manifest and our vital laser target designators had ended up on the wrong ship. I was twenty years old, and the operation would be my first time under fire in a real war; so I was quite nervous about how I would perform in a major action.

A stench of diesel and avgas. The cavernous main hold was jammed with giant helicopters and ma.s.sive crates holding spare engines for Harrier jump jets. Teams of R.A.F technicians" crabs in our language were labouring to bolt the rotors into place on a twin-engine Chinook. Andy sent Torn and Doug forward, and took me aft with him to check the lower vehicle deck. He purposely wanted to keep me apart from Tom when the order to leave for the Falklands came through, Tom and I had been out drinking. We had ended up p.i.s.sed in some stinker"s house and missed the flight out to Ascension Island with the rest of the squadron, and had to catch a later plane Andy hadn"t forgiven me yet. A veteran of the Oman campaign, he sported the droopy tash and long hair of a seasoned SAS operator, and took no nonsense from anyone, officer or ranker.

As we searched for a stairwell we met a couple of airmen coming forward. "How do we get down from here?" Andy asked. One of the men jerked a thumb over his shoulder and hurried on without stopping.

"f.u.c.king crab," Andy grunted. "s.h.i.tting himself in case the Argy planes come back."

You couldn"t exactly blame him, though. It was bad enough being on a troop ship, but with holds full of fuel and ammunition these guys were sitting on a bomb literally.

The war at this point was becoming very real. I had seen enemy aircraft blown out of the sky over the anchorage, and ships burning from missile hits.

We clattered down into the bowels of the ship. The lower deck was shadowy, crammed with long lines of all-terrain vehicles, Land Rovers and eight-ton medium trucks packed to the roof with stores and chained to the deck by their axles.

"Take f.u.c.king hours to search this lot," Andy said. "We"ll need more light. Hang on here, Mark, while I go back for a couple of torches. And keep your eyes open for anything worth nicking if the crabs haven"t got there first, that is."

Hampered by my bulky life vest, I squeezed past a rank of bucket loaders belonging to the Royal Engineers and a grim contingent of battlefield ambulances. From up above came the sounds of a Tannoy blaring: probably another aircraft warning -the Argies were throwing their full weight against the landings.

Andy returned with torches, and we set to work. As we moved along the lines I was quizzing him about the forthcoming mission. Rumour had it the squadron was to send a patrol into the Argentine mainland. If true, it would be a major escalation of the war. I knew Andy was bothered by it because it was a four-man patrol, and I was listed number six in reserve which meant I was unlikely to be picked, a fact that was p.i.s.sing me off a lot.

I made out four of the squadron"s trucks among a fleet of BV lightweight tracked vehicles the kind that can go across the ice cap if you need to. The first contained bivvy bags and ground sheets as listed. I counted the bundles as best I could in the semi-dark. The canvas flap at the back of the second truck was partly unsecured, and I squirmed underneath to take a dekko inside. Jesus, I thought disgustedly as I played the torch around. The neat packs of arctic clothing and spare sleeping bags had been hollowed out in the middle to make a hiding place, and some p.i.s.ser was kip ping down in there. I pulled the canvas back for a better look. Whoever it was had dug out a sleeping bag and there was a torch ready to hand, an army-issue water bottle and the remains of a meal from a ration pack. f.u.c.king crabs, I thought, they get better fed than we do, and still they nick our grub.

Feeling around among the bundles, I turned up a camera and a miniature tape recorder, quality-looking items both. Along with them was a piece of electronic kit I didn"t recognise, a flat grey plastic box around six inches long by two-and-a-half wide, with an extendable aerial like a transistor radio but no tuning dial, only a tiny red b.u.t.ton that glowed to show it was switched on.

I was about to go back and show Andy what I"d found when there was a rustling noise from the front of the truck. A rat after the remains of the food? But it seemed like too much noise for a rat. A man and whoever had been living here was still around, by the sound of it.

Right, I"ll have you, I thought, and launched myself across the piled stores. There was a frantic scuffling as a body tried to get away. I got a hand around a limb in the darkness arm or leg I couldn"t tell.

"Come on, get the f.u.c.k out of there," I said, heaving.

A foot came out of the blackness and connected with my face with a force that rocked my head back against the steel frame of the roof. The torch went flying and the crack I"d taken felt as if it had broken my jaw. My head was singing and I could taste blood in my mouth. I was angry now.

OK, I said to myself, if that"s how you want to play it, fine. I let fly a punch with all my twelve stone behind it. My fist connected with something solid. There was a gasp and a whimper and the struggles ceased. This was better.

Locating a foot, I dragged my opponent into the half-light near the truck tail to take a look at him. The guy was wearing army combat fatigues. I"d been expecting a crab or a sailor -maybe he"d nicked the gear too. He was so slight he looked more like a boy than a man. "Who the f.u.c.k are you?" I demanded.

The little b.a.s.t.a.r.d struggled violently and tried to knee me in the groin, unsuccessfully. I figured he had to be some kind of cabin boy, someone from the crew probably scared to death by the bombing, hiding down here when he should be topsides.

He twisted like a snake, diving under my arm to reach the roof flap. I was ready for him, though. Flinging myself after, I dragged him back, rolling him over and pinning him down. He fought and squirmed; it was a while since I"d fought with a kid his size, and it didn"t feel right somehow. I was worrying I"d break a bone or something. Eventually, though, I got him pinned down by sheer weight. I straddled him between my knees and laced his hands across his chest so he couldn"t move.

though he continued to snarl and wriggle like a wildcat.

"What"s your name then, a.r.s.e hole His response was to spit in my face. I cuffed him a couple of times across the mouth to teach him manners, and he shut up. His wrists were so thin I could hold them together one-handed while I searched his tunic for ID.

It was while I was patting him down that I realised something was wrong and not in the way I had been thinking before. In addition to a combat jacket several sizes too large, he had on a roll-neck sweater with a T-shirt underneath. Ignoring his squirmings I pulled these up to reveal a narrow ribcage and a flesh-coloured sports bra hiding a pair of adolescent t.i.ts.

My cabin boy was a girl.

I let go her hands and sat up. The torch was lying nearby and I snapped it on definitely a girl. The dark hair was ragged and plastered to her grimy face, she was unkempt and pale but the dishevelled appearance and dirt could not disguise the fineness of the features or burning intensity of the eyes. A bit younger than me; seventeen or eighteen at a guess.

There was a reddening mark on one cheek where I had hit her. I reached down to touch the place. Her eyes flashed hatred. A hand swept out of the gloom, fingers curled like talons to rake my face, but I knocked the hand aside. "I didn"t mean to hit you!" Well, I hadn"t - I"d thought she was a bloke. "What are you doing down here anyway?"

"b.a.s.t.a.r.do?

A girl, I was thinking. How she had got here I couldn"t imagine unless maybe she was some crab"s bit of fluff smuggled aboard at Portsmouth. I hadn"t seen a girl in six weeks. We"d heard rumours that a few were serving on the Canberra, but we"d never got near enough to find out. Or could she be a journalist stowed away on board to get a scoop on the campaign ...?

Then it dawned on me that she"d spoken in Spanish. I ran my gaze around the nest in which she had been lying up, taking in the items I"d found the camera, the tape recorder, the radio-type device.

And it hit me. Jesus, I thought, the b.i.t.c.h is a spy. She"s down here vectoring the bombers in on us.

That moment she flew at me again.

I called Andy over. Even against the two of us she continued to put up a fight; she could kick and punch like a bantamweight. My teeth were aching and Andy took a poke in the eye that left him gasping, but eventually we got her tied down with some straps off a vehicle, and Andy told me to watch her while he went off to find the ship" sops officer.

After that, everything started to go rat s.h.i.t The ship"s captain and the ops officer took one look at the girl still spitting and snarling and the kit she had with her, and told Andy and me that on no account should we talk to anyone. I described to them the scene in the back of the truck, how I"d guessed she had a homing device which was what it seemed the thing was -and there were long faces as the officers tried to figure out how an enemy agent had managed to breach their "impenetrable" security cordon. No one knew how she had got on, or whether it was at Portsmouth or Ascension Island where the ship had stopped en route. Small wonder we had been taking such losses to air attack.

By this time they had brought a couple of seamen down and told them to get the kit off her. These boys set to work grinning. The prisoner fought and kicked, but it didn"t do her any good. In a trice she was shackled to a bulkhead and every shred of clothing was ripped away. It was freezing cold down below decks, but in the overhead light her olive skin was beaded with sweat.

Front on, she looked pathetically young and emaciated. I felt no anger now, only pity and disgust. I wondered what they were going to do with her. This was war, and in war spies are shot. I knew the procedure. I"d been through it myself on an escape-and-evasion exercise during the SAS initiation test in the Brecon Beacons before the war. Next she"d have the full treatment: the body cavity searches, the physical and verbal abuse, the threats, the hooding, and banging on the walls and door to induce disorientation. I could have told them they were wasting their time; she was never going to talk but it wouldn"t have done any good.

The two seamen stayed in attendance to see that she didn"t kill herself. Though G.o.d knows how she was going to manage that, the way they had her trussed up.

I felt sick as we climbed back topside, the captain explaining that we weren"t to talk about this, not to anyone. It was all top secret. In other words, a cover-up was in force. We were to forget the girl, forget the homing device none of it had ever happened. But I couldn"t get the image of her spreadeagled against that bulkhead out of my mind.

Tom and Doug were waiting on deck. The ops officer told us to get our kit together before our regimental helicopter flew us back to rejoin the unit.

That was when all h.e.l.l broke loose.

CHAPTER TWO.

The attacking aircraft were A4 Skyhawks belonging to the Argentine navy based at Rio Grande on Tierra del Fuego. Equipped with a pair of 500lb free fall iron bombs each, the planes" targets were the closely packed transport vessels moored in the narrow inlet of San Carlos Water off the beachhead.

It was a dangerous mission. Our ships were protected by radar-controlled anti-aircraft guns and state-of-the-art missiles, including the deadly Sea Dart which was carried aboard the Type-42 destroyers positioned at the mouth of the inlet. The Sea Dart was a fifteen-foot-long missile weighing half a ton. On firing, the rocket booster accelerated it up to twice the speed of sound within three seconds, and it could pluck an aircraft out of the sky at forty miles" range. By this stage of the war the Sea Darts had claimed three attacking jets, and the pilots were under no illusions as to the risks they faced.

But the Sea Dart had one weakness. It was primarily designed to fight the Russian navy in an open-sea war. But against a low-level target, operating against a background of clutter from the land, it was less effective. And this afternoon the Argentines had exploited that weakness to deadly effect. Screaming off the land at near wave-height, their aircraft had hit the destroyer HMS Coventry, capsizing her with a loss of nineteen men.

The catastrophe left a yawning gap in the air de fences of the San Carlos beachhead. The only guard vessel left was the smaller frigate HMS Broadsword, herself damaged in an earlier attack. Her Sea Wolf missiles were of an advanced type designed to counter sea-skimming missiles fired by submarines, so new they were still under test. They were highly accurate, but their range was just two-and-a-half miles: no time for a second shot.

As the low hills and fractured coastline of the islands loomed ahead, the lead aircraft dropped to three hundred feet and commenced its run up the coast. The pilot twisted and turned his craft, weaving among the valleys. His instruments would be able to detect the pulse of enemy radar beams feeling for him, striving to pick out his plane from the jumble of returning echoes bouncing off the hillsides.

Travelling at 500 knots, the four aircraft split into two sections for the final attack to divide the gunners" attention. The lead aircraft appeared to be heading directly for the centre of a ma.s.sed group of store ships.

An urgent warning pealed from the on-board speakers: "Air raid warning red!" There was a panicked rush for the upper decks by some of the civilian seamen. They had seen the Coventry turn into a fireball and go down, and they didn"t want to be caught below when it happened to their own ship.

From previous drills I knew we had about a minute and a half from the warning before the bombs started to fall. I looked towards the south-west and saw a dark shape loose itself from the land and come streaking down the sound. The next instant the twin 20mm WW2-vintage Oerlikons opened up, barn, barn, barn, barn. From all around, guns on ships and land were firing and the air was full of smoke bursts, but the planes flew on unscathed. I saw a rocket plume flash up from one of the hills. Someone having a go with a Blowpipe, but Blowpipes didn"t engage crossing targets well and this one ran wild on to a hillside.

Four-and-a-half miles out, and the lead planes were so low the wash from their jet engines was striking spray from the surface of the inlet. The firing became a crescendo. The racket was unbelievable; the deep boom of the 4.5-calibre main guns of the warships was joined by the hammer of cannon fire and the shrill stammer of GPMGs. But all the gunfire seemed to be falling short, bursting in front of the planes and making the water dance. To me, watching from the deck of the Northland, it seemed incredible that planes could fly through flak that thick and survive.

The ships that had way on them were manoeuvring frantically to get clear. Northland, though, had no steam up. She was a sitting duck. Four hundred yards short, the pilot of the lead Skyhawk released his bombs. I saw them fall clear, dropping towards us as the jet screamed away overhead, two black dots growing larger by the second, and I thought, f.u.c.k, they"re coming right at us. We were the target. Doug had thrown himself flat on the deck; he hated air attacks and didn"t like ships much better. I was thinking, this is where we all die yet I couldn"t tear my gaze away.

The first bomb hit the water twenty yards from the port quarter with a mountainous splash. "Missed, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" I shouted aloud. I knew that these bombs had a delay function, an impeller in the tail that had to spin a set number of turns after dropping to release the firing pin, so that it could move forward on impact and trigger the detonator. Flying so low meant that they had to be released at exactly the right moment or the sods wouldn"t go off.

It was my last coherent thought before the world burst in around me.

In fact the first bomb flew so fast I didn"t have time to see it bounce off the surface like a skimmed stone and strike the ship"s side, piercing it. It pa.s.sed upwards through the engine room, killing three men, and emerged through the deck without exploding.

I don"t recall anything of the impact because a fraction of a second later the second bomb struck us amidships, and this time the impeller did its stuff. The firing pin released and the bomb exploded in the main hold with a force that burst open the deck where I was standing and threw everyone nearby off their feet.

I remember a bright flash and then I must have been knocked unconscious for a few seconds. When I came to I was lying on my front. My clothes were blackened and I was surrounded by smoking wreckage. The decking was all ripped and a roaring jet of flame licked upwards. Ammunition was popping off down in the holds, punctuated by the heavier whoomp of petrol tanks going up.

I stood up, and realised the ship had taken on a list. It was like walking uphill. A hand grabbed me; it was Andy. His hair was all singed and I remember wondering if mine was the same. He was shouting at me but I couldn"t make out what he said because of the noise and because the explosion had left me temporarily deafened. He thrust a survival suit into my hands and pointed to the side. Time to abandon ship. A survival suit was a once-only garment you pulled on over your outer clothes before jumping into the water. Its seals were supposed to keep you dry and alive long enough to be rescued provided help came pretty quick. Without a suit the average person had a fifty-fifty chance of swimming fifty yards in these waters before hypothermia got him.

I was about to put it on when I saw the two seamen who had been guarding the girl come tumbling up a companionway from below. There was no sign of the girl with them. The bomb must have shattered the lower deck level and those guys had legged it. They weren"t about to risk their lives for the sake of a spy.

I don"t know why I should have done either, unless it was because I was the one who had found her and started it all. I looked around for Andy but he had disappeared. Presumably he figured I could look after myself. The ship didn"t seem to be about to go down this second and the fire hadn"t reached the forepart yet. I decided I had a good chance to reach her and fetch her out.

In a way it was easier than I had thought. I nipped down the ladder on to the cargo deck level. There was a lot of smoke eddying around but no actual flames yet. One guy pa.s.sed me carrying a kit bag; he must have been back to his cabin. I went down two more ladders. The emergency lights were on here, but there was less smoke. All the alarm bells were ringing. The noise of firing was m.u.f.fled but I could hear big thuds of mortar bombs or gas tanks going up, which kept me moving forwards and down. The tilt on the deck didn"t seem to be getting any steeper so I figured I wasn"t about to drown yet.

When I reached the stern, there she was where they had left her, still lashed to the ring bolts I ripped off the hood and untied her wrists and she sagged against me like she was all in. Her clothes were in a heap on the deck. I started pulling them over her arms and legs. There didn"t seem much point in rescuing her if she was going to die of cold the second I dropped her in the water. She got the message and inside a couple of minutes I had her more or less dressed. I gave her the survival suit it made one less thing to carry and hustled her back to the ladders.

There seemed to be a lot more smoke and heat around now. Also the angle of the deck was suddenly worse. I pushed the girl ahead of me up the ladder. She had either recovered some of her strength or she was scared, because she went up like a squirrel. I guess after six weeks aboard she knew her way about.

Half-way up the next ladder conditions were vile. Flames were spreading into the stairwell. The ladder had broken free from several of its supports and swayed ominously as we went higher. The girl was slowing down because of the flames. I was having to climb one-handed, using the other to push her on. Another explosion shook the hold more ammunition going up. Bits of debris were raining down from overhead and the bulkhead next to the hold was smoking or steaming, I couldn"t tell which. I concentrated on trying to breathe in shallow gasps to keep the smoke out of my lungs. The ladder seemed endless and the handrail was hot to touch.

Somehow we reached the landing at the top, only to find the door leading out on deck wouldn"t open; the watertight latches were closed fast. Some b.u.g.g.e.r had sealed us in to die.

The girl was going limp as she suffered the effects of the smoke. I propped her up against the wall and took a hold of the top latch. It didn"t budge. Heat or the ship"s list must have wrenched the frame out of true. I looked around but the pa.s.sage behind was filling with flames. There was no other way out. I heaved on the latch again and was rewarded with a slight movement. A series of violent tugs at last worked it free. Now for the bottom latch. This was worse. It was so tightly jammed nothing I did seemed to make it move. Inky smoke was belching up the stairwell, making it impossible to breathe. In desperation I pounded on the steel door with my fist. "Let us out, you f.u.c.kers!" I might as well have been p.i.s.sing into the wind for all the chance there was of being heard.

I grabbed the handle of the top latch again with both hands, swung myself out over the stairwell and crashed both legs together against the jammed hatch. The impact jarred my spine but I thought I felt the latch move. I pushed off again with my feet, praying I wouldn"t somehow fall off and drop twenty feet into the burning hold, and gave a second mighty kick and this time the handle snapped free with a clank.

Out on deck things weren"t a whole lot better, except that it was possible to breathe more freely. The ship was burning furiously amidships and listing heavily. Secondary explosions were shaking the hull as fuel tanks continued to detonate below decks. It was obviously only a matter of minutes before she was going to go down. A few disciplined types were trying to run hoses into the flames but most of the crew were launching life rafts and jumping overboard in their haste to get off in case she blew. Many of the floats were overcrowded and men were being washed into the sea. A frigate nearby had boats in the water picking up survivors, and helicopters were swooping down to pluck people off the deck.

I pushed the girl ahead of me along the deck. Now I could hear men screaming down in the hold. She stood, swaying with exhaustion, surveying the scene of devastation. In her eyes was a glow of triumph. Something inside me snapped. They could be my mates down there. I seized her by the scruff and forced her to the edge of the shattered deck, made her look down into the inferno. "Now it"s your turn!" I yelled.

A hand caught my shoulder. It was Andy again, his face blackened by smoke and flames. "What the f.u.c.k are you doing, Mark?" he yelled. "Come on, we"ve got a boat waiting."

The adrenalin rush had left me light-headed. If she was a spy, then this girl was more valuable alive.

I was turning back from the fire when the ship gave a sudden lurch that sent us all sprawling. A burst of flaming smoke spewed out from the burning hole amidships. I felt my hair crackle. Andy pulled me to my feet and dragged me back out of harm"s way.

Gasping, I looked around. "Where"s the girl?"

But she was gone.

CHAPTER THREE.

The capsized hulk of the Northland was still visible out in the sound the next morning. How they had managed to stop her sinking I couldn"t think. There was a big tug fussing about; maybe they intended towing her out to sea to clear the way for other vessels. The sun glistened on a big oil slick that was being washed in towards the sh.o.r.e.

Andy and the rest of us had got off the wreck with no trouble. He had found us places in a lifeboat but, as we were about to get in, a Wess.e.x helicopter had come spinning down, lifted off our whole party and dropped us on to Fearless, our own ship, with minimum fuss. What had become of the girl I didn"t know. Maybe she had been rearrested or else drowned. Either way, I had done my bit.

Andy was p.i.s.sed off with me though. All he could think about was that the quartermaster was giving him grief because we had failed to bring back his precious laser target designators. Andy reckoned it was my fault for getting tangled up with the girl. He wouldn"t listen when I pointed out that we had never located the missing container, and so had no idea if the f.u.c.kers were ever aboard the Northland. As far as big brother was concerned I had screwed up yet again.

Right now Andy was in the CO"s office, a Portakabin welded to the after deck, with Captain Guy Litchfield, our troop Rupert, being briefed by the ops officer on the forthcoming mission. Apparently this was a proposal to insert an observation team on to the Argentine mainland at Tierra del Fuego to mount a watch on the big airbase at Rio Grande. Overnight the operation had firmed up to the extent that it now had a code name: Dynamo.

At least, that was the rumour. Officially we had been told nothing, but three members of the squadron who had been on Invincible reported seeing a Sea King being stripped out and fitted with ultra-long-range fuel tanks. Andy knew more, but he wasn"t telling. I already knew he didn"t want me along.

Either way it was clear we would be going into action soon.