Land of Fire (19 page)

Carefully we backed out from the reeds and surveyed the land. The reed beds appeared to extend in a broad triangle to the south-east of the remains of the farmhouse and were bounded on the north by a stream. The house itself stood in a small dell, giving shelter from the wind, with a few stunted trees nearby. Otherwise it was all open grassland. I tried to imagine what I would do if I were planning an ambush. The best tactics, I

decided, would be to hold one's forces back to the north and east and wait for the target to approach. They could spring the trap as soon as we got in among the buildings, opening up on us from two sides to catch us in a crossfire, while the stream and reed beds would hinder our escape.

I signed to Josh that I wanted to circle around the lip of the dell to check if anyone was lying up there with a GPMG targeted on the RV point. At a rough estimate the dell was some 600 metres across, meaning we had a distance of about two kilometres to traverse before we would know for sure whether there were troops up there waiting to ambush us.

We started off anticlockwise, moving past the reed beds and across the stream. It was not deep, but it made up for that by being agonisingly cold. We crossed it in absolute silence, without a splash or a clink of stone, crouching low, moving on all fours like animals through the water and into the grasses on the far bank. An ambush party would most likely lie up on the reverse slope with a couple of look-outs forward. At every step we scanned the skyline with our night sights, looking to catch a glimpse of a head lifted above the grass, a rifle barrel carelessly handled, anything that would give away the presence of a chilled soldier tired of waiting.

The wind was now blowing towards us, and we kept our ears alert for the slightest sound. We had to assume the enemy was here. There is no other way to handle a situation like this. So we crawled through the long grass, telling ourselves that somewhere up above us in the waving blackness a platoon of Argentine marines crouched with GPMGs poised to let rip at the first sound an enemy as tough and ruthless as ourselves, prepared to wait all night if necessary for a kill.

An hour later we had made about a mile, and we came to a halt. I was leading, and as I stretched out my hand in front of me my fingers touched a strand of wire. My pulse gave a sudden jump. Had I touched the trip-wire of an Argentine anti-personnel mine placed on a tripod a couple of metres ahead, ready to sweep the grass with a deadly hail of ball bearings? The Argies loved mines. The Falklands were lousy with ones they'd left behind. Or was it an alarm wire that would send phosphorous illumination rockets blazing into the sky and bring down crashing mortar rounds about our heads? I waited tensely but nothing happened, and I began to breathe again. Withdrawing my hand and parting the grass carefully, I saw that I had run up against a sagging barbed wire fence abutting an overgrown track.

I squirmed around on my stomach to warn Josh. For all we knew there might be a sniper lying up the slope with one hand on the wire waiting for the tug that would tell him someone was trying to slide through. We found a point where the wire was broken, checked that no one had stuck a mine in the gap, and wriggled through.

The track leading down to the estancia was deeply rutted. It looked to have been used by vehicles within the past few days, whether going or coming there was no way of telling, but there was fresh snow in the tyre marks. We crossed over, dragging some grass behind us to hide our footprints, and dived into cover again on the other side.

It was 3.00am by the time we arrived back at the reed beds. We had found no indication of an ambush, but there still remained the possibility that the Argentines might have opted for the simple tactic of holing up in the ruined barns and were waiting for us to show. The only way to find out was for one of us to go in. And that person had to be me.

In sign language I indicated to Josh that I was going in to the chimney and he was to follow and cover me over the last stage. In single file we crawled to the edge of the farmyard. From here it was apparent that the place had been deserted for a long time. There was no roof to the main house and most of the walls were tumbled down. We waited a long time in perfect stillness. Nothing moved. Then I edged forward into the shadow of a collapsed shed and pushed my head through the undergrowth on the far side. I was now looking directly at the stump of the massive main chimney of the original house. Parked right up against it, in the centre of what must once have been the main living room, was a four-wheel-drive utility vehicle.

I trained the night sight on it. The vehicle was facing towards us and there was a man in the driver's seat. I could make out his head leaning back. He wasn't moving. Maybe he had fallen asleep. I swept the scope round the yard. There was no sign of other life in the vicinity. From my harness I extracted my GPS unit and pressed the button for my position. The coordinates exactly matched the RV point we had been given at the briefing.

It was now or never. If there were Argentines lying in wait among the ruined barns I would find out about it in another minute. Signing to Josh to cover me, I rose to a crouch and picked my way around the edge of the yard, my rifle at the ready. It must have been all of thirty yards to the far side and it seemed like the longest walk of my life. At every step I expected a bullet to take me.

A dozen yards from the line of crushed rubble that had once been the front wall of the house, I halted and rose to my full height. I wanted the agent, if it was him, to be able to see me clearly. For several seconds I stood there unmoving in the silence of the deserted estancia. Nothing in the car stirred. Maybe the guy was asleep. Maybe it was a dummy made to look like a man and the ambush party was playing a game

There was a metallic click and I stiffened. Slowly, very slowly the driver's door opened. "Buenos noces, senor," said a quiet voice. "Are you lost?"

My mouth was so dry I could hardly speak. "Buenos noces," I replied. "I am looking for a place to sleep."

"I know of a place. Are you alone?"

"No, there are others with me."

The car door opened further. "I am coming out," the man called softly. "I am unarmed."

I covered him even so as he emerged into the yard. He was a bearlike man in civilian clothes, his face shadowed in the moonless dark. He wore a long sheepskin coat against the cold and he held his arms in front of him so I could see he was not carrying a weapon. He was taking no chances. He must have known there were guns trained on him but he didn't seem nervous. He had made all the responses correctly. He was in the right place. He had to be our man.

I moved in closer, being careful not to block Josh's line of fire. "We are SAS."

He nodded. "I have come to meet you." His voice was low and even, remarkably composed, a Spanish accent overlaying the English. "My name," he added, 'is Seb."

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Seb! At the sound of the name a flood of images rushed through my mind: our first encounter twenty years ago in the valley near the border, when the two of us had almost shot one another; Seb's offer to lead the pursuit away from our trail, and the final ambush when Andy was killed. It had never occurred to me that Seb would still be active.

Seb seemed equally surprised to learn I had been on the earlier mission. Our meeting on that occasion had been so brief that he had scarcely had time to register faces.

I filled him in on the loss of the boat with Jock aboard, and he grew serious. "That is bad," he said. "The prevailing winds on this part of the coast mean that any drifting object will wash ashore at some point. If the authorities are presented with an inflatable boat containing military equipment they will draw the obvious conclusion that a clandestine landing has been attempted and the airbase is the only logical target."

"There's a chance the major may have reached land somewhere alive, but his radio isn't working. We've searched the beach along the lagoon, without result."

"I will send people out to scour the shore as soon as dawn breaks. They are Yaga indians, a despised minority in these parts who can be trusted not to talk. If they find your major they will bring him to me; if there is only a body they will bury it on the beach."

I radioed in to Doug a pre-arranged code to summon the other three to join us at the RV point, and we settled down to wait in the shelter of Seb's Toyota. As he lit a cigarette, I made out his face for the first time, bearded as before, harsher and more gaunt than I remembered. I dare say the same was true of mine. The intervening years had been hard for both of us.

We talked of the previous mission.

"After we parted, I made contact with the pursuing patrol," he told us. "They accepted my story and moved off towards the south as I hoped. Very soon afterwards though there came the sound of heavy firing and I heard later that you had run into an ambush."

I told Seb how the Argentines had laid a trap for us on the other side of the border. I described the battle and how Andy and Guy had died.

"I am sorry," he said. "If I had come with you the odds would have been better."

"You did everything you could," I told him. "You risked your life to try to draw the other patrol off."

"I was born not far from this estancia. As a boy I learned to know this sector of the coast well. Not till I was twelve did we move to the Falklands."

"Then you came back?"

"Yes, my mother was Spanish, from an Argentine family. She felt trapped on the islands."

"How long ago was that?" I asked him.

"Thirty years near enough. There was no work on the Falklands except sheep or fishing. Here I am a geologist. I do consultancy work for the oil companies." He shrugged. "It's a useful cover."

Doug and the others made good time even though they were burdened with packs, and were with us in not much over an hour. I went out to meet them. I wanted to break the news of Seb's return to Doug personally.

In the intervening hours Doug had been brooding on our current position and now he was tired and edgy. "They sent who?" he said incredulously when I gave him the news. "Seb? But that's the bastard who steered us straight into a fucking ambush, man! If he's not working for the Argies, then he's fucking useless."

"He did his best to save our lives, for God's sake. He's come out here to meet us. He has a vehicle and says he can take us to a place where we can lie up in safety, close to the airbase."

"How do we know we can trust the bugger?"

"We don't have any choice, dammit. He's all the help we've got. We have to trust him."

Doug curled his lip. "You trust him if you want. So far as I'm concerned he's an Argy."

In the end Doug consented to meet Seb and he shook hands with ill grace. I could see that his hostility was being picked up by Nobby and Kiwi, who were becoming suspicious in their turn. If Seb noticed this attitude he did not let it show. At his direction we stowed our kit in his Land Cruiser and climbed aboard ourselves. The snow was getting thicker now, driving in from the sea. Seb told us to take off our ponchos and put on some civilian coats he had brought along so that we would not seem obviously like soldiers to a passing vehicle. When we were all safe aboard he spread a rug over our kit to conceal it.

He kept his lights off as we bumped along the farm track, explaining that he did not want to attract the attention of any vehicle passing on the main road. I offered him my night-vision goggles, but he declined. He seemed to have eyes like a cat, for he never once missed the way. He said the estancia was one of many abandoned when the bottom fell out of the sheep market two decades ago.

I asked what he made of the political situation here now. Was there a strong likelihood of war?

"I will tell you," he said. "These people are desperate. The economy has broken down. There are no jobs, there is no money. The banks have shut up. Ordinary people's savings have been wiped out. All that is left are debts. We are reduced to a barter economy. Even the foreign oil companies cannot get currency to pay their workers.

"People have lost their jobs, their pensions; they have lost faith in the government, lost faith in each other. They live day by day with no idea how they will feed their families. New administrations are formed and fall within hours. There are strikes and demonstrations every day. The people are desperate."

"Desperate enough to go to war?"

Seb lifted his eyes from the track a moment to look at me in the darkness. "Understand this, my friend among all the quarrels and political divisions that are tearing this unhappy people apart, one topic only unites them. Socialists, communists, Peronists, right wing, left wing, from the gutter to the mansion, there is one common cause: the Malvinas a belief that the islands are rightfully Argentina's and should be returned. The militarists have taken over power; they will snatch at anything that will bring the country behind them again. Some of them believe that if they could pull off a great coup, somehow seize the islands and hold them, it would act as a catalyst, healing the nation's wounds."

"Have they forgotten what happened last time?"

Seb glanced back towards the track, twisting the wheel gently as we ground forward up the snow-covered surface. "You forget, this is South America, where memories are short and passions hot. Anything is possible."

We reached the blacktop road and turned south. Seb switched on the headlamps. The beams shone on the driving snow and the screen wipers worked steadily.

"There is another thing you should know," he said after a while. "Tierra del Fuego is the territory of the Argentine Third Marine Division, officered by fanatical supporters of the military coup. The division fought fiercely in the Malvinas war. It has re-equipped with modern arms and there are many in its ranks who would leap at the chance of a second invasion."

We drove on along the highway. I assumed it was the same road Doug and I had followed on our epic trek twenty years before. Then, though, it had been composed entirely of gravel. Now it was half and half- one lane was made up with tarmac, and a gravel bed ran alongside.