Special Deliverance Read online

  Special Deliverance

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Copyright Page

  Special Deliverance

  Alexander Fullerton

  1

  The aircraft shuddered, lurching as it lowered its bulk through the last shreds of the clouds’ underlay, and the five men shifted their feet, reaching to the wire jackstay to steady themselves. But they were in level flight again now; and the hydraulic door at the tail end of the cavernous, thunderously noisy hold was swinging open. A light came on above it, glowing red. The process at this point took on a quality of inexorability that was terrifying: it was happening now, unstoppable, and Andy MacEwan found it impossible to accept that in about one minute he was going to walk out through the doorway, drop into wind-torn space four hundred metres above the near-freezing South Atlantic. Harry Cloudsley, glancing round and down at him, allowed him a brief, sympathetic grin, but said nothing — partly because anything worth saying had been said, maybe also because the lung power that would have been needed to make it audible would be better saved for use when he hit the water. Cloudsley would be jumping first, then Andy, then Tony Beale, Geoff Hosegood, and Jake West, finally, the three containers. Men and containers were already linked to the jackstay by static lines that would jerk their ‘chutes open as they fell. At Harry Cloudsley’s shoulder, dwarfed by Cloudsley‘s towering frame, the stocky Marine Sergeant who would not be jumping with them was standing with his feet apart, fists on his hips, eyes fixed on the red light which any second now would turn green. Despite the sense of unreality and the slight sickness induced by fear Andy knew there wasn’t a damn thing he could do except go through with it. He could throw a fit, but the stick of men would still move forward, carrying him with them — out…

  A voice — it was Colour Sergeant Beale’s — yelled into his ear, high-pitched to cut through the din but only saying what had been said, in so many words, a dozen times in the last hour: ‘Be OK when we move, Andy, you’re going to love it, right?’ Before he could even nod the light turned green, the stocky sergeant swung to face Cloudsley with his mouth open, shouting, but Harry was already on his way, striding out through the gaping doorway with Andy close behind him, actually in the frame, the wind’s suction, brain screaming protest but limbs ignoring it so that he was conscious of his own movements but as if he himself had no control over them; he’d felt a blow on his left shoulder and then the world was a grey-white seascape swinging, turning on its side as he fell into space.

  *

  The first parachute opened — khaki, a dun-coloured mushroom abruptly taking shape under the ceiling of grey, fast-moving cloud. John Saddler was in the wing of his ship’s bridge with binoculars trained upwards; he’d seen the first man tumble from the aircraft and the stream of the ‘chute before it flowered, but it was a white one he was watching for particularly. Everything around him meanwhile highly mobile and very noisy. Shropshire down to a few knots, plunging to the sea and to a northerly blow of force five to six, rolling hard. Clouds heavy, and under them the stout-bodied Hercules spewing its load like a fat fish shedding spawn. The white ‘chute came second, and now more khaki blossomings — a stick of eight in all, five men and three containers all out and swinging down towards an icy sea.

  Saddler thought, Sooner them than me, and called without turning his head, ‘Away Gemini.’ Shropshire rolling and plunging, with just enough revs on to hold her to this course. He’d heard his order being passed into the bridge, from where it would by now have been transmitted aft by telephone, and the Gemini inflatable would be pushing off from the destroyer’s side where it had been waiting. Its coxswain had been told he was to get to the white parachute first, if possible within seconds of its human load hitting the water.

  Before the load — lad — froze, or suffered damage of a kind that might not be in the best long-term interests of John Saddler’s daughter Lisa. Not that the parachutist would be getting this preferential treatment because he did happen to be Lisa Saddler’s boyfriend; it was because he was a civilian and straight from a City desk, an outsider whom the Special Boat Squadron had recruited and were now referring to as their ‘guest artist’. Captain John Saddler, father of Lisa, shivered inside his padded nylon jacket. Descent from cloud level into that turbulent ice-water might be no problem for the case-hardened SBS men swinging down under their khaki canopies, but in the few weeks they’d had Andy MacEwan with them in England they could hardly have raised him to their own incredibly Spartan standards. Lowering his binoculars he saw the Gemini just about standing on end as it climbed a morass of foam, white sea sheeting back, powerful outboard screaming, the coxswain crouching low over his controls and the other crewman hanging on tight, both men’s faces upturned to the white parachute — which wasn’t far above the khaki leader, the first of the SBS team splashing in — now…

  Above them, the Hercules was circling and climbing, thrusting up into the overhang of cloud for its return flight to Wideawake.

  Saddler saw all five men picked up before he went back inside. An hour or so later he was welcoming Andy MacEwan to his day-cabin, one level below the bridge. MacEwan in Royal Marine uniform now instead of a wetsuit under parachute overalls: not exactly spick and span, since he evidently hadn’t shaved for a day or two and could have done with a haircut, but with one pip on each shoulder representing the ultra-short Short Service Commission they’d fixed up for him — or rather for themselves, so they could see him and expect him to do as he was told. He saw Lisa’s father glance at the rank insignia, and admitted, ‘I’m an impostor, I know. Wasn’t my idea.’

  Twenty-six, rising twenty-seven. An inch or so below average height but ruggedly built, blunt-featured, with intelligent grey eyes. He might not have belonged in the uniform but he looked the part, he filled it. Except for the long hair…

  Saddler said, ‘All my fault, and I’m glad to have the chance to apologise. I only thought they might pick your brains, never dreamt they’d go so far as to co—opt you.’ He pointed at a chair. ‘Make yourself at home. Like some coffee?‘

  This was early afternoon. Sunrise in these remote Atlantic wastes came at about 11.30 a.m., by Greenwich Mean Time, which was what the Task Force was keeping. The SBS section had dropped out of the sky just in time for lunch, and they’d be on board for only a few more hours; Shropshire was hurrying them west now.

  MacEwan admitted, ‘It’s still a bit — surprising.’

  ‘I’d have thought the word might be “terrifying”.’

  ‘Well.’ A shrug. ‘Dare say it’ll have its moments.’

  He was no gas-bag, this MacEwan. His reticence, in fact, was a characteristic with which Lisa found fault — according to her mother.

  He added, ‘I’m only along as guide, you know. And interpreter.‘

  Shropshire pitched heavily, dipping her shoulder deep, trembling all through her 520 foot length as she recovered and her forepart lifted. She was in transit to the fly-off position, and the Sea King helicopter which would be taking the SBS party into mainland Argentina would be landing-on before sunset. Saddler said, ‘I have a broad idea of the objective, Andy, and it’s as worthy a cause as I ever heard of. All I can say is bloody good lu
ck to you, and the sooner it’s done, the better. If it can be done.’

  There was a scene in his mind’s eye as he said it, a memory two weeks old but still vivid. Men dead, bodies smashed, oily black smoke pouring from a ship’s split side, helos flying in extra pumps and medical aid, lifting out the casualties. Then the long fight to keep the ship afloat. The fight had been lost, and there’d be other losses yet, more deaths, you knew it and you had that image stamped in your mind, the reality of disaster and recognition that defence systems now being tested in battle for the first time were not infallible, were nothing like infallible — especially against sea-skimming missiles, the AM39s.

  He pulled his thoughts back.

  ‘I’d like to explain how I came to let you in for this, Andy. Even though I didn’t guess quite how far in. We were in Devonport — under sailing orders, tearing round like mad apes, half the ship’s company still not back from leave, blind rush to get to sea. Right in the middle of it a Royal Marine detachment rolled up with a truckload of stuff they wanted us to bring along. Which we did, naturally — I suppose that may be part of the reason that we were picked for this job now. But a visiting Admiral, also the Bootnecks’ officer, was having a coffee with me, and I was asked what I thought our prospects might be down here. I mentioned a couple of problems, one being our lack of any real defence against sea-skimming missiles, and the Admiral suggested it might be worth trying to nobble those — either the Exocet missiles or the Super-Etendard aircraft that carry them — before the shooting started. He looked at the Marine and added, “Right up your street.” He knew him, apparently, and from what was said then I caught on to the fact this lot were SBS. And of course they must have taken the idea a lot farther, from there on. But what I want you to know, Andy, is that when I told them about you — the fact I knew this chap who had intimate knowledge of the country and so on — I never dreamt they’d shanghai you. My only thought was they might usefully pick your brains.’

  ‘About all it was, to start with.’ MacEwan nodded. ‘I had a call at the office — from some guy in the PR department, Navy, Ministry of Defence — would I come along and answer questions on a subject of which he’d been given to understand I had special knowledge? He mentioned your name. Casual but guarded, was the tone of it — you know? Naturally I guessed — only one area where I’ve any “special knowledge”, and the Task Force was being mounted — you’d already sailed, Lisa told me — and it was all anyone was thinking about just at that time. So there I was — and at one stage I heard someone suggest, “Ought to take him along. Couple of weeks’ hard training, tone him up a bit.” They asked me what sort of swimmer I was, and that is something I’m not bad at.’ MacEwan added, ‘The idea seemed nutty, at first.’

  ‘Does Lisa know what you’re doing?’

  ‘God, no!’ His glance seemed to question Saddler’s intelligence. He explained, ‘She thinks I’m in the States. Business trip resulting from the temporary severance of our trading links. As far as the office is concerned, since we’re hamstrung as long as this lasts it’s a good time for me to be away, too. Nobody’ll be expecting to hear from me for a while.‘

  ‘You really think she won’t?’ Saddler smiled. ‘My daughter won’t be expecting you to write?’

  ‘Well, I — I explained I’d be on the move a lot.’ He shook his head. ‘It was left sort of vague, you know?‘

  Saddler could imagine. Andy MacEwan’s natural obduracy, reinforced by a need for blackout on this business; and Lisa’s frustration, which had been fairly evident even before this — Hhe’d seen it, heard it, more than once, and been careful to keep his head down, leave it to the women. The relationship between Andy and Lisa wasn’t as clear-cut as either she or — more outspokenly — her mother would have liked it to be. They’d been going around together for more than a year, and in recent months they’d been sharing a flat; Anne Saddler didn’t like this, wanted the relationship legitimised. If she’d been on board and could have met the dripping parachutist when he’d come up the Jacob’s ladder she’d as likely as not have asked him there and then what his intentions were in regard to her daughter; and she’d have expected her husband to be working round to some such question now, he guessed. He could almost hear the outraged tone: You didn’t even ask him?

  As if it mattered. Even back home, in its context. Except he did like what he’d seen of Andy, wouldn’t at all mind having him for a son-in-law.

  ‘Have you seen her lately?’

  ‘About — twelve days ago. Just for a few minutes. I haven’t been given much time off, you see. And of course she hasn’t been too ecstatic about that.’

  It wasn’t difficult to imagine. He acknowledged, accepting blame again as the telephone buzzed, ‘I have a lot to answer for.’ He got up, went to the desk. MacEwan meanwhile glanced round the cabin. It had been designed for occupation by an Admiral, but with none on board — thank God — Saddler had its spacious luxury for himself, while his executive officer had what would have been the CO’s accommodation.

  ‘Yes?’

  Ian Prince, operations officer, was on the line, telling him about a signal just in from Hermes concerning the change-over of helicopters. The Wessex was to be sent away to make room for the Sea King to land-on, and this was now to be brought forward by one hour because Shropshire and the carrier group would be passing within convenient range of each other at that time.

  ‘All right, Ian. Warn the flight Commander.’

  Hanging up, he checked the time, pausing to glance out for a moment at the wilderness of sea through which his ship was ploughing, plunging, with nothing in sight except salt water and a low roofing of cloud. The Wessex was on its pad now, chained down — sonar useless in this turbulence and also at this speed. But the wind might have dropped by a few knots, he guessed. This suite, on 01 Deck, one level below the bridge, occupied the whole width of the superstructure, so the day-cabin had this wide curve of windows — all of them now salt-streaked, running wet. Below him was the gleaming rectangular bulk of the quadruple Exocet mounting — the surface-to-surface type, MM38, each missile enclosed in its own steel container filled with an inert gas. No maintenance or pre-flight checks, you couldn’t get at the missiles themselves even if you wanted to; when the firing button was pressed, in the Exocet console down in the Ops Room, the front of the container would be blasted away, its securing bolts exploding a fraction of a second before the missile streaked out. Unlike the AM39, the airborne type, which was not enclosed, therefore could be got at — by men with the nerve and skills to attempt it.

  He came back to his chair. ‘I really should congratulate you, Andy — on being able to measure up to SBS requirements.’

  ‘Oh, well.’ A shrug. ‘All I had to do was sharpen up physically. And one or two things like parachuting. My value to them, as you just said, is that the area they’re interested in happens to’ve been more or less my back yard. I have contacts there — one in particular who’s important to us now — and of course I talk the lingo. It’s not plain Spanish, you know, the stuff they talk. So I can pass myself off as a local if I need to — which a real Spanish speaker couldn’t.’

  ‘Fantastic.’

  ‘Not really. Except for schooling — and recent years, of course — it’s where I’m from, what I am.’

  ‘And’ — Saddler remembered this suddenly, thinking of that family background — ‘where your brother still is?’

  He saw the wary look. Andy had never talked much about it, but one of the few things the Saddlers did know was there was an older brother who ran the family sheep station. Both parents being dead, and Andy having opted to join the wool-trading company in London which had his family name in it. But he owned half the property in Patagonia, Lisa had told her mother.

  He’d nodded. ‘Far as I know, yes.’

  ‘So how would this war affect him?’

  A slow nod. ‘Good question.‘

  Saddler frowned. Aware of the kind of irritation his daughter might sometimes
feel. ‘Is there a good answer?’

  ‘There isn’t an easy one. And it’s a subject I’ve been required to go into lately in what journalists tend to call “in depth”.’

  The SBS, of course, would have needed to know enough to be sure of his loyalties. Saddler said, ‘We’ll leave it then. Forgive my idle curiosity.’

  ‘The short answer might be — if this tells you anything — my brother won’t be talking about the Falklands, he’ll be calling them the Malvinas.’

  ‘I see.’

  But anyone born and raised out there, Saddler thought, surely would do. The loyalty factor might be more complicated, in fact, than he’d hitherto appreciated. Relevant to this thought was another fact passed on by Lisa — that Andy and his brother were the fourth generation of MacEwans to have lived and farmed there; and wouldn’t roots that long make them more Argentine than British? But the young man facing him neither looked nor sounded in any way South American. He’d been to school and university in the UK, of course — and then chosen to make his home in London. He asked him, ‘Any chance you might see your brother, on this trip?’

  ‘No.’ The headshake was quick, decisive. ‘No chance at all.’

  A double rap on the cabin door interrupted them. Saddler still watched the younger man, curious. Then he called ‘Yes?’ and Nettlefold, his secretary, pushed a prematurely balding head around the door. ‘Will you see Lieutenant Cloudsley, sir?’

  He didn’t have to answer that question. Cloudsley came in at a rush – a big man travelling fast and ahead of his feet, the ship having caught him wrong-footed as she performed one of her more spectacular lunges. Cloudsley fetched up hard against the bulkhead — apologising to Nettlefold, whose feet he’d trampled on in passing. Turning to Saddler: ‘Very sorry, sir. Believe me, I have not been at your wardroom’s liquor. Hello, Andy.’

  ‘Better sit down.’ Saddler pointed at an armchair. ‘Before you break a leg.’