Given that this particular stretch had to be covered in relative darkness and near-total silence, with 90lb on each back and a less than perfect map, Brookes fully expected the journey to take two whole nights.
He told himself to look on the bright side. At least it was a clear night – no one was likely to walk off a cliff or trip over a sheep. And what had he joined the SAS for if not to experience moments like this, dumped behind enemy lines in a hostile environment with only a few good mates and his own wits to keep him alive, the stars shining bright above? At his age there would not be many more of them. The Falklands might not be Tahiti, but they sure beat the hell out of south Armagh.
They were walking in a staggered version of the diamond formation generally favoured by SAS four-man patrols on open ground at night. Stanley was out front, the lead scout, picking out the required route, with Brookes himself some 20 yards back and to the left. He was the navigational backup, and responsible for the patrol’s left flank. Further back still, out to the right, Mozza was taking care of that flank, while Hedge was ‘Tail-end Charlie’, occasionally spinning round to check their rear. He was about 50 yards behind Stanley.
As was true of any SAS four-man patrol, each man had one or more of the four specialized skills: Brookes had languages and demolition, Stanley demolition and signalling, Mozza signalling, and Hedge medicine and languages. All but Stanley had some knowledge of Spanish, but there was not likely to be much call for it on this trip, unless they took prisoners. Or were taken prisoner themselves.
As an officer, Brookes was enjoying his second term with the SAS; in fact, his military career had become a series of alternating periods spent with them and his own parent regiment, the Green Howards. His first tour of duty with the SAS had involved active service in Oman and training secondments in two other Arab states, while the current stint, now nearing its end, had found him dodging bullets and bombs in Armagh’s ‘bandit country’ and dispensing advice to local defence forces in several newly independent West Indian countries. Hairy it might be, and often was, but service with the SAS had been a great deal more interesting than service with the Green Howards, whom fate had given a less than fascinating peacetime role. War games in West Germany were a lot less fun than he had at one time imagined.
His wife, Clare, had preferred life with the Green Howards, in the days when she had still cared. Now, with both the boys at Shrewsbury and her own small business taking off, Brookes did not believe she even noticed which unit he was attached to. She was too busy scouring the Welsh Marches for the antiques she flogged off to her fellow-countrymen across the Atlantic. Their Hereford house looked more like a museum every time he returned from active duty abroad. Even the Spanish villa they shared with friends of hers seemed like a little piece of Hay-on-Wye.
He found it all hard to think about, and wondered why he was doing so on a starlit stroll through the Argentinian-held Falklands. Where better? he asked himself.
He was not getting any younger – that was half the problem. Sure, he still had most of his hair, although no one would know it from the grey stubble which protruded skinhead-style from his head. And he was just as fit as he had ever been. But he was not Peter Pan, and maybe the bergen on his back did feel a bit heavier than it should. You could make up in experience what you lost in suppleness of limb, but only up to a point.
He was thirty-eight. What was he going to do in seven years’ time, when his active career ran out? Fight for one of the desk jobs? Not bloody likely. But what else? He had always vaguely imagined that Clare would be there to share their old age. He knew it had been completely unfair, not to mention stupid – after all, what possible reason could she have for putting her life on permanent hold while he had fun? – but he had somehow expected that she would. Now when she bothered to write letters they were full of Stephen, her semi-partner. He was queer, of course – ‘He’s gay, Jeremy, not queer!’ – but then again, what did it matter whether or not she jumped into bed with the bastard: the point was that she obviously found him more interesting than her husband.
And then there were the boys. Total strangers to him, and he really had no one to blame but himself.
This was his real family, he thought, this bunch of highly trained lunatics. Men who could mention Genghis Khan and Bruce Forsyth in the same breath. Unfortunately it was a family with a cut-off date.
Up ahead of Brookes, Stanley paused for a moment to check the map against the reading on his illuminated compass. Satisfied, he resumed his progress across the sodden heathland towards the distant silhouette of a low hill, the M16 with attached M203 grenade-launcher cradled in his arms.
How, he wondered, could a man’s mouth feel so dry in such a place? Walking across this island was like walking along the back of an enormous wet dog. He could feel the damp creeping up his legs and thought about the next few days of endless fucking misery in a damp hole. Worse than a Saturday morning in the West Bromwich Shopping Centre with his ex-wife.
The thought of Sharon cheered him up. With any luck she was having a worse time than he was since Brett – what a fucking name! – had been sent down for armed robbery. Stanley nearly laughed out loud. The prat had rushed into a local sub post office, waved a gun around, escaped with about fifteen quid, and then run out of petrol on the slip road to the M6. Brilliant! And this was the man she had left him for, the Inspector Clouseau of the West Midlands underworld.
Still, he had to admit she had been wonderful in bed. That tongue of hers would win the Olympics if they ever introduced it as a sport. He sighed. So it went. There were plenty more tongues out there.
And come to think of it, the hill ahead looked just like a breast. That was the trouble with the SAS: the old winged dagger was certainly a come-on in the pubs around Hereford, but wearing it seemed to involve long stretches of time in places like this where women were particularly thin on the ground. According to one of the sailors on the old ‘Herpes’, the members of Scott’s Antarctic expedition were away from women so long that they had started sleeping with penguins. ‘Not right away, of course,’ the sailor had said, ‘and only heavy petting to begin with. They just kind of slipped into the habit.’
Stanley had not believed a word of it, of course. But he could understand that sort of desperation, he really could.
About 30 yards behind him, Mozza was snatching glimpses at the night sky between watching the men ahead and the empty country on the patrol’s southern flank. This was undoubtedly the clearest night since his arrival in the South Atlantic, but the book he had brought all the way from England was back on the Hermes, and he was having trouble matching up his memory with the constellations filling the heavens above him.
Not that he supposed it mattered which was which. Though he had always liked the idea of the constellations, and as a kid often wondered who had first connected the dots and made them all up. After all, the stars in Orion did not actually suggest a hunter; it was possible to connect them up that way, that was all. In reality it was chaos, which was just as wonderful, and maybe even more so.
He glanced round to check that Hedge was still in sight behind him, then turned his eyes right again. It was funny: he had been really nervous in the helicopter, but now they were down on the ground and alone and in real danger he felt fine. He did not even feel homesick any more, though maybe he would once they got back to the ship.
Did the others feel like that, he wondered. Both Hedge and Stanley had several more years than his twenty-three, and of course the PC was almost middle-aged. It was not just the years, either: sometimes he felt like a real innocent in their company, although there was no real reason why he should. There were not many tougher places to grow up than Manchester’s Hulme estates, so he knew how to use the two great weapons of self-defence: fists and a sense of humour, and not necessarily in that order.
Sex was another matter. Stanley and Hedge hardly ever seemed to talk about anything else, but Mozza could not help wondering whether they actually enjoyed the act as much as the endless anticipation. According to Stanley there was only one difference