Exclusion Zone Read online

  Exclusion Zone

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Epilogue

  Next in Series

  Copyright

  In 1982, two hundred and fifty-seven British Servicemen gave their lives during the war to recapture the Falkland Islands. This book is dedicated to their memory and to the hope that history will not repeat itself.

  Chapter One

  Even after four thousand miles of unbroken grey ocean, the first sight of land appearing under the wing of the Tristar was something of an anticlimax. From five thousand feet the landscape looked as dull and monochrome as the water surrounding it, and the dun-coloured hills as barren as the desert I had just left.

  There was a stir among the other passengers as a shape as sleek and predatory as a shark appeared in the sky to the west. It rocketed towards the Tristar, shrinking the gap between us in seconds, pale sunlight flashing from its wings.

  The Tempest pulled a hard turn, then took up station on one side of us, the aircrafts’ wingtips no more than ten feet apart.

  Jane and the aircrew around me adopted poses of studied nonchalance, but there were gasps from the other passengers. Few of them had ever seen a fighter this close and there was a rush to one side of the jet to take photographs.

  The pilot’s face was invisible behind his dark visor, but he raised a gloved hand in greeting.

  Jane laughed. ‘Poser.’

  I shifted my gaze to the small town nestled around the harbour. It was a curious combination of the strange and the familiar. White houses were laid out in neat rows under a patchwork of red, green and blue tin roofs, but there was not a tree to be seen and the few roads looked to be dirt, not tarmac.

  I felt Jane’s hand warm against the bare flesh of my arm as she leaned past me to stare out of the window. ‘That’s the capital? Imagine what the rest must be like. Shit, it looks like New Zealand on a bad day.’

  ‘My God, we must be in Oz.’

  She smiled. ‘Very funny, Sean.’

  The Tristar swept over the hills and banked for its final approach. The main runway and the shorter emergency strip intersecting it formed a grey cross cut into the landscape. Towards the north, there was a white flash on the hillside, then it disappeared behind a line of cloud and a curtain of silver rain.

  Jane settled back in her seat. ‘Four months – Jesus, what have we done to deserve this?’

  I said nothing. I was staring out of the window at the ghosts in the clouds.

  Gusts of wind shook the plane on its approach. It yawed and slipped sideways as it hit pockets of turbulence. The red windsock at the end of the runway was taut and streaming parallel to the ground.

  Jane nudged me in the ribs. ‘It’s got to be gusting at least fifty knots. We shouldn’t even be trying to land.’

  I smiled. ‘If you aren’t happy, tell the Captain, I’m sure he’d love to fly us back to Ascension. We can always come back tomorrow and try again.’

  She laughed. ‘We could give Rio a shot instead.’

  I intercepted the anxious looks from an elderly couple across the aisle and gave them my reassuring face. Then I turned back to the wall of cloud and watched the raindrops streak the Perspex.

  That one brief glimpse of the hillside had been enough. Surprised at myself – it had been sixteen years after all – I tried to compose my thoughts, concentrating on the changing note of the engine and the rumble of the flaps and landing gear, until we were down with a thud that drew an involuntary yelp from the old woman across the aisle. The engines thundered, then the jet swung off the main runway and slowed to a halt.

  The engines wound down and stopped, and there was a moment of silence, broken only by the rustle of clothing as the passengers got to their feet. Then the door of the Tristar swung open and I heard a roar.

  ‘What’s that?’ Jane asked.

  The man across the aisle paused in his struggle with the overhead locker. ‘That’s the wind, my dear. Better get used to it. Whatever else, you always have the wind here.’ His clothes marked him out as a farmer and he addressed Jane as if they were separated by the width of a ten-acre field. I reached up and helped him free his bags, then headed for the exit.

  The rain had already stopped and patches of shadow chased each other across the glistening tarmac as clouds raced overhead. Rows of functional buildings clustered on the north side of the runway. The only trace of colour was the blue glass of the control tower.

  At the far end of the runway, mounds of earth and rubble, piled up like spoil heaps from a mine, hid the sheds housing the Tempests we had come almost nine thousand miles to fly. I let my gaze travel on over the surrounding hills, their peaks capped with snow, stark against the umber peat cladding the slopes.

  There was a gentle push in the small of my back. ‘Like I said, Sean, we’ve got four months for sightseeing, though four minutes would be plenty, as far as I can see.’

  The farmer pushed past, scowling.

  ‘Nice going, Jane. So much for hearts and minds. We’ve only been here two minutes and you’ve already pissed off one of the natives.’

  ‘Make that two,’ the man’s wife said as she passed us. ‘We don’t like swearing here and if you knew anything about these islands, you’d know that we don’t like being called natives either. We aren’t; we just happen to have been here longer than anybody else. When our ancestors came here, it was completely uninhabited. We built this place from nothing.’

  ‘Thanks for the history less—’ Jane began, but I cut across her.

  ‘So what do we call you?’

  ‘Kelpers is fine, or Falklanders. You could even use our names, if you like.’

  I held out my hand. ‘Sean Riever and Jane Clark. Pleased to meet you. And I’m sorry we—’

  ‘Riever? That’s an unusual name.’

  I smiled. ‘Not where I come from. There are hundreds of us in the west of Ireland.’

  She inclined her head. ‘I only know of one. You don’t have any connections here, do you?’

  ‘No, not living ones.’

  She seemed about to say more, then thought better of it. ‘George and Agnes Moore. We live at Clay Hill, a few miles this side of Goose Green. Be sure to call, if you’re passing. And I hope you’ll enjoy your time here. You’ll find we’re very like our islands. Some find us dull and cold’ – she glanced reprovingly at Jane – ‘but those who can get past the surface impressions find there’s no better place to be.’ She gave a brief smile, then turned and hurried away after her husband.

  I felt the familiar impact of Jane’s elbows in my ribs. ‘That put you in your place, didn’t it?’

  ‘That’s funny, I thought she was talking to you.’

  ‘Right,’ she said, linking arms. ‘That’s enough diplomacy for one day. Now let’s get out of this wind.’

  We came out of the lea of the Tristar and struggled towards the terminal, the gale snatching away the few words we tried to exchange. Even inside, the noise of the wind was like the roar of an idling jet engine. I found myself raising my voice just to make myself heard.

  The civilian passengers hurried away towards waiting friends and relatives. The men were all dressed in tweeds and battered Barbours. The
ir wives wore headscarves and thick quilted jackets, the colours as muted as the surrounding hills.

  ‘They all look like Irish farmers on market day.’

  ‘Except they’re not pissed.’

  ‘I said Irish, not Australian.’

  Two figures in RAF uniforms were waiting for us. The older man, a Group Captain, gave an uncertain smile as we strolled up to him arm in arm, then held out his hand. ‘Welcome to Fortress Falklands. I’m David Prince, Base Commander, but I answer to “Boss”.’

  ‘Sean Riever. This is my nav, Jane Clark. She’s on exchange from the Australian Air Force.’

  He noted my accent. ‘A blond-haired, blue-eyed Irishman?’

  ‘We’re not all beetle-browed Celts; the Vikings invaded Ireland too.’

  He flexed his fingers like a pianist. ‘I know Ulster well, it’s a beautiful countr—’ He flushed, ‘Province. What part are you from?’

  ‘I’m not. I’m from Kerry. And Jane’s ancestors were transported to Australia from County Wicklow… but don’t worry, we’ve both been positively vetted.’

  He gestured awkwardly to the man alongside him. ‘This is Flight Lieutenant Michael Halliday, better known as Shark. He’s been here for two months now, which makes him practically a veteran.’

  Shark smoothed his sleek black hair. ‘I’ll probably be taking you on your familiarisation flight tomorrow. I hope you like peatbogs, because there’s nothing much else to see around here.’ He favoured Jane with the predatory smile that had obviously earned him his nickname. ‘Or not until now anyway. This way to the squadron taxi.’

  Leaving the Boss to greet the rest of the guys, he led us to a battered Land Rover painted in the red and white squadron colours. As he went round to the driver’s side, Jane leaned across and whispered in my ear, ‘Jesus, that bloke fancies himself.’

  I nodded. ‘Someone’s got to; it might as well be him.’

  ‘I’ll take you over to the accommodation block first,’ Shark said. ‘We call it the Death Star. You’ll see why the first time you fly over it. The layout’s so confusing I guarantee you’ll get lost at least six times in the first twenty-four hours.

  ‘You’ll not have time to do much more than dump your bags in your rooms for the moment though. There’s a briefing with the outgoing crews at 1800 hours and they won’t want to be kept waiting.’ He grinned. ‘After four months here, all they want to do is get drunk and hit that homeward-bound Tristar as quick as they can.’

  We threw our bags in the back and jumped in as Shark gunned the engine. He drove straight across the runway towards the south side of the airfield.

  The Death Star was a two-storey wooden construction, put together from interlinked, prefabricated sections. Wings jutted out from the central hub like the spokes of a wheel. There were also some single-storey detached blocks around the edge of the domestic site.

  ‘What are they?’

  Shark followed my gaze. ‘Chalets for senior officers. They’re welcome to them, they have to do a twelve-month tour, poor sods.’

  The Land Rover screeched to a halt, throwing up a cloud of dust that was instantly whisked away on the wind. He led us into the lobby and waved his hand around. ‘See what I mean?’

  Eight identical corridors stretched away from us, painted dull red and cream and punctuated at precise intervals by slit windows like the embrasures in a medieval castle.

  ‘Think this is bad?’ Shark said. ‘It’s only half of it. Go upstairs and you’ll see exactly the same thing again. Okay, accommodation’s on the top floor. Any empty room is up for grabs. Take your pick. After that I’ll show you Fighter Town.’

  As he led us along one of the corridors, I could still hear the howl of the wind outside and the rhythmic creaking of the wooden building in response. Cold draughts whistled through every chink in the walls. Jane shivered and pulled her coat closer around her. ‘Not exactly Bondi Beach, is it?’

  Shark led us up a flight of stairs and along another featureless corridor, then waited as we chose our rooms. I took one looking north across the airfield towards the hills. Jane chose the one next door, flushing a little at Shark’s knowing smile. We dumped our bags on the beds then followed him back downstairs and along yet another corridor.

  The first interruption to the endless red and cream paintwork was a large, laboriously hand-painted sign: FIGHTER TOWN, MOUNT PLEASANT AIRFIELD – HOME OF THE FALCONS.

  ‘They wouldn’t let you spoil their paintwork back home.’

  Shark shrugged. ‘They couldn’t really stop you here, there’s nothing else to do except get drunk.’ He smiled. ‘And there’s no shortage of opportunities for that. At the last count there were three hundred and sixty bars – official and unofficial – on the base. Mind you, once the Mess has closed, any room with a fridge qualifies. The Boss keeps trying to shut down a few of them but he knows better than to mess with ours. The Herc, Tempest and Heli crew bars are always open.’

  We passed a few open doorways, glimpsing the usual chaos of maps, papers and polystyrene cups. The wall space between the offices was crowded with painted badges of every squadron that had served in the Falklands. Every crew member had signed his name underneath.

  I saw a few familiar ones enclosed in a coffin-shaped border – Drew Miller, Steve Alderson, Mark Hunter. Shark nodded. ‘They’re the dead ones.’ He pointed towards another wall black with RAF name badges. ‘Everyone pins up their badge before they leave. If people die, we turn them upside down.’

  None of us spoke as we walked past the wall. I knew most of the case histories; for every person who had died in combat, scores had been killed in training accidents, so routine they rated no more than a brief paragraph in RAF News.

  When we reached the end of the corridor, Shark threw open a door with a flourish. ‘This is The Goose, the bar for 1435 Flight.’

  The room appeared to have been furnished from a car-boot sale. There were knackered armchairs, sprouting springs and stuffing, two beaten-up cupboards and a chipped table. A small kitchen off to one side housed only a sink and three ceiling-high fridges.

  The walls and shelves of the bar were crammed with the usual collection of squadron photographs and plaques, augmented by a sizeable collection of captured Argentine badges of rank, helmets, weapons, and a wing section from a downed Pucara, its metal skin puckered by the blast holes that had brought it down. The effect was completed by a stuffed ginger tomcat on a wooden plinth, an old ejector seat from a Tempest and an inflatable sheep.

  Shark smirked. ‘That’s just for the guys who get desperate.’

  ‘It seems to recognise you,’ Jane said.

  I stifled a laugh. ‘What’s with the cat?’

  ‘That’s Rambo. He was the 1435 Flight mascot. He only came back from the taxidermist’s a couple of weeks ago. He was the last member of the squadron to die in combat.’ He stroked the cat’s fur as he waited for one of us to rise to the bait.

  ‘I give in,’ Jane said. ‘What happened?’

  ‘He lived up to his name. He attacked one of the police dogs and put it in the vet’s. The MPs insisted that he had to be destroyed. We gave him a funeral with full military honours, including a fly-past.’ He smiled. ‘Don’t tell the tabloids; it must have cost about ten thousand quid.’

  I strode to the window and looked out. ‘Why is everything built of concrete or wood? There aren’t any trees around here and it must be cheaper to build with local stone than import stuff from halfway around the world.’

  ‘There’s nothing here you can build with; it’s the wrong sort of stone apparently. The only other indigenous material is peat and that wouldn’t last long in this wind. They burn it on their fires; going into some of those settlements is like stepping back in time.’

  I glanced at the walls. Among the photographs were a few pictures painted directly on to the plaster: a couple of amateurish depictions of air combat and some cartoons of Falklands life, mostly featuring sheep, and an unfinished landscape, which was a wistful pai
nting of a misty English scene, its colours so faded that it must have been there for years.

  ‘This guy was obviously pretty homesick,’ I said. ‘Couldn’t he bear to finish it?’

  ‘Something like that,’ Shark said. ‘He died. Apparently he took off on a training sortie and just flew straight and level smack into the side of Mount Wickham. Killed himself and his nav. The painting was left unfinished as a mark of respect.’ He saw the question in my eyes and shrugged his shoulders. ‘The investigators called it pilot error; the implication was that it was suicide, but I can’t imagine anyone deliberately murdering his crewmate however rough things get, can you?’

  There was a long silence. He glanced at his watch. ‘Anyway, so much for the guided tour, let’s get over to the operational site for the briefing.’

  The wind knifed through me as we came out of the building. Flecks of sleet stung my cheeks. W e scrambled into the Land Rover and I had to drag the door shut with both hands as the wind tried to snatch it away.

  Shark glanced down the length of the runway. ‘We’ll have to wait for Fat Albert.’ A Hercules was coming in to land. The Land Rover rocked on its springs in the gusting wind. I watched the black, pregnant belly of the Hercules judder and yaw. ‘Rather him than me. Jesus! Look at that.’

  As it crossed the lighting stanchions, one of its massive wings dipped towards the tarmac. Then it swung ponderously back through the vertical as the pilot hauled on the controls.

  The opposite wing dipped, then it levelled and dropped like a brick onto the runway, its tyres adding more thick, black streaks to the scarred surface.

  Shark shook his head. ‘If the Argentinians ever want to stage another invasion they needn’t bomb the airfield, they could just send a Herc on a goodwill visit. If one of those went belly-up, it’d close the runway for a fortnight.’

  He put the car into gear and drove across the empty tarmac. The Tristar hangar was twice the size of any other building on the site and only the control tower was taller. An old Phantom jet was perched on a pillar nearby. Beyond it were the Fire Section, the Met building and the compound for the civilian helicopters. There was also a boiler house, dwarfed by its cooling tower and smoke stack.