Shielding his eyes, Jonathan peered at the ridge overlooking the north side of the horseshoe. The control team was already assembling. Figures in white armbands and steel helmets were talking into handsets, peering through binoculars and studying maps. Among them, Jonathan made out Langbourne with his ponytail, wearing a flak jacket and jeans.
An incoming light aircraft skimmed low over the ridge on its way to land. No markings. The quality was beginning to arrive.
* * *
It's hand-over day, thought Jonathan.
It's the troops' graduation ceremony before Roper collects.
It's a turkey shoot, Tommy boy, Frisky had said, in the over-familiar manner that he had recently adopted.
It's a firepower demo, Tabby had said, to show the Colombian boys what they're getting for their you-know-what.
Even the handshakes had a finite quality. Standing at one end of the grandstand, Jonathan had a clear view of the ceremonials. A table of soft drinks had been set up, with ice in field containers, and as the VIPs arrived Roper himself led them to the table. Then Emmanuel and Roper between them presented their honoured guests to the senior trainers and, after more handshakes, escorted them to a row of folding khaki chairs set in the shade, where hosts and guests arranged themselves in a half-circle, talking self-consciously to each other in the way that statesmen exchange pleasantries at a photo-opportunity.
But it was the other men, the men who sat out of focus in the shadows, who commanded the close observer's attention. Their leader was a fat man with his knees apart and farmer's hands curled on his fat thighs. Beside him sat a wiry old bullfighter, as thin as his companion was fat, with one side of his face scarred white as if it had been gored. And in the second row sat the hungry boys, trying to look assured, in over-oiled hair and watered leather boots, and Gucci bomber jackets and silk shirts and too much gold, and too much bulk inside the bomber jackets, and too much killing in their fraught, half-Indian faces.
But Jonathan is allowed no more time to scrutinize them. A twin-engined transport aircraft has appeared over the northern ridge. It is marked with a black cross, and Jonathan knows at once that today black crosses are the good guys and white stars the bad guys. Its side door opens, a stick of parachutists blossoms against the pale sky, and Jonathan is rolling and spinning with them as his mind becomes a pageant of army memories from childhood till here. He is at parachute camp in Abingdon, making his first balloon jump and thinking that dying and getting divorced from Isabelle don't have to be the same thing. He is on his first field patrol, crossing open country in Armagh, clutching his gun across his flak jacket and believing he is finally his father's son.
Our paras land well. A second and a third stick join them. One team scurries from chute to chute, gathering up the equipment and supplies, while another team gives covering fire. For there is opposition. One of the tanks at the edge of the airfield is already shooting at the men ― which is to say its barrel is belching flame, and buried charges are exploding around the paras as they hasten into the pampas grass for cover.
Then suddenly the tank is firing no more and will never fire again. The paras have taken it out. Its turret is askew, black smoke oozes from its interior, one of its tracks has snapped like a watch strap. In quick succession the remaining tanks get the same treatment. And after the tanks the parked aircraft are sent skidding and reeling across the runway until, buckled and quite dead, they can move no more.
Light anti-tank weapons, Jonathan is thinking; two to three hundred meters effective range; the favoured weapon for killer patrols.
The valley splits again as defensive machine gun fire pours out of the buildings in a belated counterstrike. Simultaneously the yellow Alfa Romeo lurches to life and, remotely guided, races down the road in a bid to escape. Cowards! Chicken! Bastards! Why don't you stay and fight? But the black crosses have their answer ready. From the pampas, firing on settings of ten and twenty bursts, the Vulcan machine guns drive streams of heavy tracer into the enemy positions, cutting through the concrete blocks, plugging them with so many holes that they resemble giant cheese graters. Simultaneously the Quads, in bursts of fifty, lift the Alfa clean off the road and hurl it into a coppice of dry trees, where it explodes and bursts into flames, setting light to the trees also.
