Crown Jewel: The Battle for the Falklands (13 page)

“
Bastard
,” Albert exploded.  Although still bound to the chair, he pushed to his feet, and crashed back down as hard as he could.  The chair shattered under his body’s weight and his strength.  Albert stood again.  Coils of rope dangled from his wrists and ankles, and bits of wood from the chair fell free.  He seemed to grow bigger, inflated by anger, and looked to Vargas.  His chest barreled up, and his teeth clenched in an intimidating grimace.  The vision made Vargas hesitate.  Albert used the moment to throw his full weight and scorn at the smaller man, and he landed an elbow on Vargas’s cheek.

The hit shattered bone and threw Vargas’s head back with a snap, knocking him to the slab floor.  Vargas’s head hit hard and started to bleed.  Linda stopped crying as Albert shed the remains of his bindings, went to her, and lifted her up.  She immediately ran to Vargas and kicked his torso with all her might, breaking her big toe on his ribcage.  Albert pulled her off and she fell into an embrace.

“Kill him,” Linda begged.

“No.  We are not like him.”

“Annie…”  Linda had to find her daughter.  She had to find Annie, even if dead.  Albert looked at Vargas.  He was curled up on the floor, and his head had a big knot that protruded from his crew cut.  He bled from his mouth, too, and his bit tongue hung from between red-stained teeth.  Albert spotted an assault rifle propped up in a corner of the basement.

“Jackpot.”

It was Vargas’s personal rifle.  Albert picked up the cold weapon, released the magazine to check its load, smacked it in again, and cycled the charging handle.  “Nice.”  It was an FN FAL 50.61 with a folding-stock and shortened barrel.  “Fabrique Nationale de Herstal Fusil Automatique Léger.”

“Eh?” Linda was perplexed.

“A Belgian light automatic rifle.  Paratrooper version.”  Albert folded the stock and brought the weapon to his hip.  “Stay quiet and stay close.”

Linda grabbed some of Albert’s shirt and shadowed him as he moved up the stairs.  He hunched down, the weapon’s sight floating before his eye.  All British Army Air Corps pilots are infantrymen first, and Albert’s own Infantry Training Centre skills rushed back.  He could almost hear his trainer screaming in his ear.  Hundreds of years of warrior tradition flowed through him, from his heart, through his brain, to his legs and to his trigger finger.  With Linda in trail, Albert bounded up the stairs and through the cellar door.

The sudden look of surprise on the Argentine soldiers face forestalled any decisive action.  As he sipped a cup of coffee in the house’s kitchen, he never expected anyone other than Vargas to emerge from the basement.  The look on the soldier’s expression was priceless to Albert; almost comical.  That look was locked in by death when Albert put a single 7.62 x 51 millimeter NATO round between mister coffee drinker’s eyes.  Albert spun around.  He clicked his weapon to full automatic, and hosed the men standing at the farmhouse’s kitchen counter.  They had made sandwiches from the cold cuts in the refrigerator, and, now, slumped and fell against the cabinets.  Smeared blood marked the trail of their dead fall.  They all had the same look of surprise, a sickening realization that their days of glory had ended.  Albert and Linda heard the whimper of a child.  They looked to each other and grinned.

“Annie,” Linda exclaimed.

“It came from in there,” Albert said
as he gestured toward a door.  He went to it and kicked it in.

Annie was tied to a bed.  Linda rushed in, untied the ropes, and scooped her up.  Immediately, she covered Annie’s dirty face with kisses and squeezed her tight.

Argentine soldiers reacted to the ruckus downstairs, their boots stomping along the farmhouse’s second floor hall.  Linda looked to Albert; the look uniquely female: It asked: ‘Will you protect me and my little girl?’  Albert wondered if the mother of the child at Jugroom Fort had had that same look.  If she had looked that way as the men that had driven the SUV honked the horn outside her hut; and, had likely assured her that her little girl would be just fine, but then she spotted that missile that flew its way in to kill her family. .

“Don’t worry,” Albert assured Linda.  He picked up one of the dead soldier’s pistols and handed it to her butt first.  “Can you use one of these?”

Linda press-checked the chamber, found it empty, and cycled the slide to load a round.

Albert looked out the kitchen windows and then opened the farmhouse’s back door just a crack.

“Alright then,” he said.  “It looks clear.  Move out.  I’ll cover you.”

Albert knelt; his weapon aimed down the hallway and directly at the sounds that rushed at them.  Linda immediately complied and tugged at Annie.

“Mommy,” Annie mumbled, jerking this way and that.  The tone of the little girl’s voice made it clear how distraught she had become, and that she longed for the familiarity and safety of home.

Albert saw a face that peeked around a corner, and then an arm emerged, holding a gun that fired with a deafening flash.  The rounds ripped into the wood-paneled wall next to him.  Then Albert heard whispers in Spanish as Argentine soldiers stacked up and prepared to charge down the hall.  Somebody chucked a grenade that landed with a metallic clunk, and rolled at him.  Albert jumped out the open back door where he found Linda and Annie sitting in a car with the motor running.  The grenade exploded in the kitchen, blowing out the window glass.

“Get in,” Linda shouted.  Albert piled in and readied his rifle to cover their retreat.  “Keys were in it,” Linda said with a nervous laugh as she peeled out.

“Get down and stay down,” Albert told Annie who was in the back seat.  Linda spun the tires and revved the engine into its tachometer gauge’s red zone.  The car skidded along the muddy road that led from the farmhouse.  Extending the FAL rifle’s folding stock, Albert trained the weapon on the farmhouse’s back door, and fired when two soldiers rushed out.  Annie cried, covering her ears.  The Argentines ran smack into Albert’s bullets and fell back against the house.

“Bastards,” Albert yelled at the dead men and he then bounced into the car’s roof.  Annie giggled when he came back down and at his funny grimace.  The white farmhouse grew smaller in the car’s rear window.  Albert realized his adopted weapon was now empty.  He tossed it to the floor by his feet.

◊◊◊◊

Vargas went to the upstairs bedroom.  His sniper had his rifle poked outside, tracking the fleeing car.

“
Yo tengo una oportunidad
,
mayor
,”
the man reported that he had a shot.

“¿
De quién
?” ‘On who?’ Vargas asked.

“
El conductor
.
 La mujer
.”  The driver—the woman—was in his sights.

“
Alto el fuego
,” a frustrated Vargas told his sniper to hold fire.

“¿
Mayor
?” the man questioned the order.

“
Le dije
:
Alto el fuego
,” Vargas repeated the order.  He turned to leave and give chase once again. He stopped in the doorframe and turned back to the kneeling sniper.  “
Si usted recibe un disparo en el príncipe, llévelo
,” Vargas told the man to shoot if he got a clear shot on the Prince.

“
Si, mayor
.”

◊◊◊◊

The adrenalin waned and Albert became aware of the throb in his hand.  He looked at it.  The two punctures were caked with dry blood, and his palm was hamburger.  He opened the glove compartment and found a paisley scarf that he wrapped around the wound.

The dirt road pushed the car around.  Deep tractor ruts channeled its small wheels, and its nearly bare tire treads barely gripped the slop.  They reached the apex of a small hill.  Linda slammed on the brakes.  They locked up, and the car slid along a bit further before it stopped.  Ahead sat an armored vehicle, its cannon and missile launcher pointed their way.

“Out of the car, now,” Albert shouted.

8: TANGO

“
Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person
.”―Tennessee Williams

A
lbert did not wait for Linda to react to his order to vacate the car.  He reached back and lifted Annie into his lap, tucked her in tight, and tugged Linda along as he rolled out and onto the grass.  As they all hit the ground, it began to rain.  They rolled behind a rock, and Albert pushed Annie and Linda down.  Then he stole a peek at the Argentine Marder infantry fighting vehicle.

The Marder’s cannon muzzle flashed.  Sparks flew as the big rounds ripped into their little escape car.  The car jumped and shook as it was torn apart, and then it burst into flames when the gas tank was hit and ignited.  Albert felt the resultant heat dry his eyeballs.  Annie cried and Linda screamed.  Albert pulled them both on top of him and began to roll down a small embankment.  They landed in a streambed.

The icy cold water stole their breath.  Rain pelted them hard.  Albert sat up.
 
The rain became a downpour, falling in sheets.

“Not our day, is it?” Albert said to Linda, a crooked smile on his face.  Linda forced herself to smile back.  Even soaked, exhausted, and bruised, Linda was a beauty, Albert once again realized.  He leaned in and kissed her.  Then he offered a jealous Annie a compensatory peck on the cheek.  “Come on,” he said with urgent big eyes.  Albert tugged them along the stream, and started to circle to the side of the threat.  They heard and felt the rumble of the armored vehicle’s big engine.

The Marder rumbled along the road.  Its tracks spat rocks and mud, and the infantry fighting vehicle was soon alongside the stream, high above where Albert, Annie, and Linda snuggled up to an eroded bank.  Pebbles and clumps of dirt fell upon them, and they felt the reverb of the engine in their chest, smelled the sooty diesel, and crossed their fingers, hoping it would pass them by.  After a moment, they agreed that they had not been seen.

When certain that the vehicle had moved on, they clawed and slipped their way up the embankment, and peeked over the precipice through the tall grass.  Their car was still ablaze, but now a truck approached.  It stopped short of the wreck.  Linda gasped and Annie cringed as Vargas and several soldiers dismounted.  The infantry fighting vehicle had stopped several hundred yards beyond.  Albert saw terror in the eyes of Annie and Linda.

“Annie seems okay.  Scared, but okay” Albert whispered to Linda.  He smiled at Annie as she grasped a fist-full of mud and grass.  Albert’s face turned solemn.  He gently brushed a finger across Linda’s warm, rosy cheek, and ventured, “Did that bastard really…touch you?”

“Just what you saw.  Just my left knocker, there in the cellar,” Linda said with a crooked half-smile.  She saw the seriousness in Albert’s stare, and summarized “No.  He did not.  His men tried, but he stopped them.”  Albert looked again at Vargas, who scurried about the road, ducking between licks of fire and smoke, and giving orders.  Albert wondered about the man.  He saw him in the distortion of heat, and looked to be the demon Albert had accused him of being.  Then Albert realized this was too simplistic, and wondered about his enemy’s true nature. 
He is just a man
, Albert concluded. 
Just a flawed man...like me
.

Vargas shielded his face from the heat and inspected the interior of the charred car his prisoners had escaped in.  He saw only burning seats; no bodies.  Vargas straightened up and scanned the terrain.  Pointing, he ordered soldiers off in different directions.  The Marder’s turret began to scan the area as its imagery system was brought to bear.

Vargas’s boots clanged on a cow grate that spanned the road.  He ran his fingers through tall grass waving above the drainage ditch that marked the road’s edge.  He could sense his quarry.  Certain they were close by, he felt drawn to their presence. Vargas closed his eyes.  His mind’s eye was like a drone, flying over the undulating earth, scanning the folds and troughs of terrain, and zeroing in on where the man, woman, and child hid.  Vargas looked at the glass lenses of the Marder’s turret imaging system.  He knew this lifeless bug-eyed bank of lenses would not be the way to find those that had escaped him.

Vargas’s greatest motivation was not a hatred for the British Prince, not lust for the woman, nor jealousy of the innocent ignorance still prevalent in a pre-adolescent girl, it was that Doctor Amsel would not accept any excuses.  Vargas’s own reputation and standing stood starkly in jeopardy.  He knew that if he did not capture Prince Albert and bring him back to be used as leverage, he too might find himself in the basements of the old building at Avenida 25 de Mayo.  Vargas would rather kill the Prince than fail.  He would rather die himself than fail.  However, as he had learned unexpectedly, he would not harm the woman or little girl.

The ghosts of his own family had taught him this, as he stood over the bound child, his sharp V-42 combat knife in hand.  Those animals had wanted to rape and hurt the ladies.  Vargas, however, confirmed something he had suspected before: He had something in common with his British enemy, and had a semblance of chivalry.  Although he had killed men before—men he saw as soldiers in a war against his homeland and regime—Vargas realized he, too, was truly a soldier.  Tired of such musings, Vargas drew his Star pistol and strolled off.  Soldiers asked after him, and, like the dogs they were, Vargas told them to stay.

When the moment presented itself, and before the enemy spotted them again, Albert, Annie, and Linda ran for the next hill, slipping and sliding.  The rain was both a hindrance and a blessing.  It limited visibility, weighed down the grass, and concealed their passage.  They topped the hill and glided down the opposite side.  Albert stopped them when he saw a small, olive-drab disk sticking out of the mud.

“What?” Linda asked as she looked about frantically.  She tugged Albert’s shirt; her husband’s old one.  “Let’s go,” she insisted, ignorant of the potential instant death which surrounded her.

Albert held Annie still.  He raised his bloody hand up and signaled Linda not to move.  She recognized the earnestness of his facial expression and froze obediently.  Albert studied the ground.  He saw more of the disks poking up from the ground.  And then it hit him, others were arrayed behind them, between them, and where they had just been.  Albert gasped when he realized another was right next to Linda’s foot.