Land of Fire (30 page)

The voice with the loud-hailer was shouting something else about resistance being futile. I was in agreement with him.

Kiwi crawled over as Doug gave a grunt and stirred. "How bad is he?"

"OK by the looks of him," I replied. "He was fucking lucky. Those marines aren't pissing about. If we give them any trouble they'll let us have it."

"Looks like we're in the shit then." "Fraid so," I said. "Better tell the boys to do as they say. We don't want anyone else hurt."

I was ripping open Doug's medical pack as I spoke. His injuries were just scratches, splinter wounds where the bullet that hit his gun had shattered. Like I'd said, he had been very lucky. An inch either way and the slug would have gone clean through his body.

He groaned and rolled over, rubbing his head. "Jesus," he coughed, squinting at me. "Am I hit?"

"Not as badly as you should've been," I told him. "Next time, keep your stupid head down." Now I knew he was OK I felt a sudden burst of comradeship for him. Doug and I had had our differences and he was a difficult bastard to live with at times but we had been through a lot together.

"Here they come, boss," Kiwi called. "Better throw down the weapons and show our hands."

I saw the woman nearby and she was looking scared. I wondered what the Argies had in mind for her, and resolved to make it clear that she and her friends had been our prisoners. I would say we had stumbled across them in the woods and leave them to invent their own story.

All I could think was that I had blown the mission and got the lads caught. I felt gutted. The worst of it was that thanks to the communications failure we hadn't been able to contact Hereford, and now there was no way of warning them of the Argy plan for invading the Falklands.

Argentine marines were moving down the slope fifty metres away, weapons at the ready, to take our surrender. Doug reached into his pack for the satcom set. Slung over his shoulder was a Claymore bag with an anti-personnel mine in it. He stuffed the satcom set inside and the 320 VHP set with it. All the encryption gear went in too, along with the codes. I added the maps I was carrying, the GPS and my UHF handset no sense in making the Argies a present of them. Doug set the tinier to fifteen seconds, closed the canvas flap and fastened it down. I could see his lips move as he counted off the seconds. Then, lofting the bag briefly, he flung it away from him down the hill. There was a loud explosion as it hit the ground, and a pall of smoke rose into the air. Bits of debris rattled down on top of us.

There were shouts of anger from the marines, and a volley of shots cracked over our heads.

Doug grinned.

Then I remembered the cellphone Seb had given me. If the Argentines found that it would be a dead give-away. They would work me over until I gave them the name of our contact out here. I slipped it out from my pocket and prised it apart with my knife. Then I snapped the SIM card and broke the circuit board apart so that they couldn't be used again. I shoved the bits into a hole in the ground and pressed some mud down over them. With luck they would never be found.

The marines came doubling up now. They pushed us roughly down on the ground again, kicking our legs apart and forcing us to put our hands behind our necks. They patted us down, searching for weapons and equipment. They took away my pistol and fighting knife. They made us strip to our vests one by one to check our clothes for anything we might have tried to conceal. My watch was taken and the dog tags ripped from my neck.

The Argies were in a state of high excitement, whooping and laughing as they squabbled over our possessions. They evidently considered they had won a great battle and everyone wanted a souvenir.

"SAS?" they kept jeering. "SAS?" They evidently knew who we were, and were over the moon about their cleverness in catching us. There seemed to be the best part of a company of them, fifty at least so we had been outnumbered by a good ten to one. This made me feel better.

When the searching was complete our hands were tied behind our backs with plasticuffs and we were placed face-down on the ground. The civilians were subjected to the same treatment; we heard them protesting their innocence to the officers, but with no effect. They were cuffed too and thrown down with us. Some of the men were slapped around roughly in the process evidently the marines had no love for dissidents.

There was a long wait then, of an hour or more. From the little we could see, it appeared the Argies were conducting a fingertip search of the ground, looking for any fragments of our com ms gear and encryption equipment. I doubted if they would have much luck a Claymore mine packs a pretty big punch.

My real fear was that they would turn up the remains of the cellphone, in which case I was in for a rough time. I figured I could handle that if I had to, at least hold out long enough for Seb to get clear. In a small community like Rio Grande, news of the capture of five SAS troops would spread rapidly, and a man like Seb would have his escape plans prepared in advance.

They made us all sit up and identify which was our equipment and our individual weapons. I couldn't make out what this was for apart from a bit of general intelligence. The officer in command, a major who spoke some English, tried his hand at a spot of questioning, but we had all done the interrogation courses at Hereford and pretended we didn't understand him.

This pissed them off, so they brought the woman out.

They stood her up in front of us, and though she was doing her best to be brave about it one of her legs was shaking uncontrollably. She was Argentinian, and she knew what was coming all right. The major took his time, letting the fear get to work. He was a small man, olive-skinned with very white teeth, broad in the shoulders and smartly turned out a typical officer, in fact. He said in English his name was Oliveras. He explained how he understood that we couldn't talk, that we were forbidden to give more than our names and numbers, all that crap. It was a pity, he said, because in the absence of help from us he would be forced to make his own deductions.

"We know you have been on the base at Rio Grande," he smiled. "Oh yes, we know all that. We know you were in the hangar and this woman was with you. If you will not tell us how you entered the hangar and what you saw, then we shall have to conclude that it was this woman and her friends who helped you. Which makes her a traitor. And that is a very serious matter, oh yes."

He paused to let us think about the seriousness of it, and lit a cigarette. "I wonder," he went on, 'have any of you ever witnessed the interrogation of a woman?"

There were sniggers from the men, who obviously felt they were in for a good show. The woman stared straight ahead stonily, but her leg was still shivering. The young boy, Julian, was looking white in the face. The major drew on his cigarette, then said something in Spanish to the woman. She replied in a harsh, clipped tone, from which every emotion had been ironed out. Pleading would do no good with this man; her fate depended on whether or not we were prepared to let her be tortured.

"So it is down to you English," the major said evenly. "You brave SAS will decide if this woman is to suffer and how much." He signed to two of his men standing behind the prisoner, and they seized hold of her by the arms. She stiffened but did not struggle. It would have been pointless anyway, they were huge men and she was slight.

The major unzipped her parka and pulled it down from her shoulders. He did it deftly and his movements, the way he touched her, were obscene. He was demonstrating his complete dominance. I can touch her any way I like, he was indicating to us. Underneath the coat she wore a black shirt and a grey turtleneck sweater. Reaching behind her neck, Oliveras grasped her hair tightly with his right hand. It was black hair and springy with a wave in it, and he wound a bunch tightly in his hand to get a good purchase.

From where I was sitting to one side, I could see the tears coming into her eyes as he jerked at her head. "Still," he commanded. He drew on his cigarette until the end glowed red,

then took it in his free hand. "Do not struggle. One touch of the tip on your eye and phut you are blind."

He tightened his grip on her hair. As the glowing cigarette end approached her face, she fought to turn away but he held her firm. He was a strong man. The marines either side had her pinned between them. Oliveras brought the cigarette closer. There was a sharp intake of breath from the woman and her body went rigid, but no scream came.

After what seemed an endless moment the major stepped back. An ugly red burn sat at the corner of her left eye, no more than a centimetre from the eyeball itself.

Oliveras turned his flashing smile on me. "So, you are the senior man in this band of pirates. Are you going to tell us what you saw in the hangar, or must I put the next cigarette in the eye itself?"

I had already realised that this was a man for whom the act of inflicting pain on a woman was an active pleasure. He was going to hurt her whether we answered him or not. Once he had finished with her it would be our turn, probably beginning with me. There was nothing to be gained by helping him along. I shook my head. "I have nothing to say."

Oliveras shrugged. He produced a gold lighter, and with deliberate carelessness selected a fresh cigarette from his pack. "Imagine," he said holding it up. "This red tip is the last thing she will ever see. Red fire, and then ... darkness." He gripped the woman's hair again. She fought against him with all her strength this time, twisting her head from side to side. Oliveras laughed and jabbed at her face with little stabbing motions. "There and there. Ah, so near that time. You make it worse for yourself when you struggle."

My stomach knotted. The guy was sick and there was nothing any of us could do about it. The woman was going to lose one eye at least. It was just a question of how long Oliveras wanted to prolong the agony.

"Are you ready, Concha?" he grinned as if addressing an old friend.

I gaped. How did he know her name? Of course, he was an intelligence officer stationed down here. As dissidents, the faces and details of all her group would be familiar to him. The marines must have tracked them from the vicinity of the base to lay the ambush. They evidently figured we were working together.

And then, suddenly I saw it. It must have been the way the woman was standing, her arms behind her, fear and courage mingled in her face, that same face that had hurled defiance at her enemies two decades ago in another war.

Concha, Oliveras had called her. The name Jenny had told me the spy on the Northland had given. Suddenly I saw her as she'd appeared to me some twenty years before naked, outstretched and lashed to ring bolts in the ship's bulkhead while smoke from the Argentine bombs billowed through the deck. The girl spy who had come nearer than anyone to taking out the British fleet. I had been walking beside her all this time in the darkness and I hadn't guessed.

So, she had escaped from the ship. I had only seen her for a few minutes on board in the gloom below deck; and last night it had been dark it was hardly surprising that I hadn't recognised her. She would have been young then eighteen, perhaps. I remembered how we had fought in the back of the truck, how I had forced her down and pulled her sweater up to check she was a girl. Now she must be in her late thirties; she looked younger.

Back on the march I had almost guessed but the light had been poor and I'd had too much to think about. Now I was certain. It was as if I were back on the Northland once more with the bombs falling and my brother Andy shouting at me to get a move on.

But how was this possible? Then she had been an Argentine patriot, a heroine of the war on their side. If anyone could be expected to back the attack on Port Stanley it would be her. And yet now here she was being tortured by her own people! None of it made sense.

I was still trying to take all this in when there was an interruption a truck came lurching down the track from the road. A marine NCO came up and said something in Spanish to Oliveras, who glanced up at the truck and scowled. He gave an order and turned back to us.

"It seems transport has arrived to take you back to Rio Grande. We shall have to terminate our little experiment, but only for the present, you understand? We shall resume the investigation in due course." He patted Concha tenderly on the cheek and turned away.

At gunpoint we were prodded towards the truck and helped aboard. Once inside the rear we were handcuffed back-to-back in pairs, with steel cuffs this time in addition to the plastic ties already binding our wrists. Concha and I were the last to be put aboard. Her head was drooping and she was evidently in pain. Had she recognised me? Probably not I would have been just one face among her English captors. And I'd changed too.

As soon as we'd climbed aboard Major Oliveras called a halt. Pointing at Concha and me, he rapped out an order and the guards pulled us out again. We were put into the back of Oliveras' personal Jeep, handcuffed together like the others. Evidently the major had not finished with us yet.

The other truck set off, accompanied by a marine escort in a second vehicle. Oliveras had a few words with his junior officers, slapping their backs in high good humour. Capturing us was apparently a real coup for him. After a few minutes he climbed into the front seat beside the driver. Vamos," he said, then leaned over into the back and grinned at us. In his hand he held a .45 automatic. "Just in case," he said, his teeth gleaming.

We bumped along the track till we reached the road and turned south. This was the road we had travelled on last night with Seb. I struggled to remain upright while supporting Concha as the vehicle lurched across the potholes.

Oliveras was chatting away in Spanish telling Concha, I imagined, of the treats he had in store for her. The burn by her left eye was deep into the flesh and looked horribly painful.

I was still trying to figure out her part in all this. Julian and her friends had implied that they were a group opposed to the military. It occurred to me that Seb might know. The overriding urgency at the moment was somehow to get a message through to him, warn him of the Argentine plan, but I couldn't think how that was going to be possible. We hadn't even been interrogated yet, and I couldn't see Major Oliveras permitting us any kind of consular access until after the attack on the Falklands had gone ahead.