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lifted off our whole party and dropped us on to Fearless, our own ship, with minimum fuss. What had become of the girl I didn't know. Maybe she had been rearrested or else drowned. Either way, I had done my bit.
    Andy was pissed off with me though. All he could think about was that the quartermaster was giving him grief because we had failed to bring back his precious laser target designators. Andy reckoned it was my fault for getting tangled up with the girl. He wouldn't listen when I pointed out that we had never located the missing container, and so had no idea if the fuckers were ever aboard the Northland. As far as big brother was concerned I had screwed up yet again.
    Right now Andy was in the CO's office, a Portakabin welded to the after deck, with Captain Guy Litchfield, our troop Rupert, being briefed by the ops officer on the forthcoming mission. Apparently this was a proposal to insert an observation team on to the Argentine mainland at Tierra del Fuego to mount a watch on the big airbase at Rio Grande. Overnight the operation had firmed up to the extent that it now had a code name: Dynamo.
    At least, that was the rumour. Officially we had been told nothing, but three members of the squadron who had been on Invincible reported seeing a Sea King being stripped out and fitted with ultra-long-range fuel tanks. Andy knew more, but he wasn't telling. I already knew he didn't want me along.
    Either way it was clear we would be going into action soon.
    We were in our bunk room on the assault ship with the pipes gurgling overhead, busy shaking out our equipment, checking batteries on the night sights and missiles, bugging Cyril the quartermaster for more grenades and pistols to replace a bunch of weapons that had gone missing. Some of our arctic clothing had been lost and no one knew how it was to be replaced. The good news was that the squadron had received a consignment of the coveted 203 from America, the so-called 'over and under' Armalite with a grenade launcher slotted underneath the rifle barrel. We had been screaming for these for over a year, and they were like gold. Their sudden arrival was an indication of the importance attached to this mission.
    "How many Claymores?" Tom, the Fijian, asked Cyril. Claymores were American anti-personnel mines that could be deployed quickly to discourage pursuit. "One each," Cyril told him. Cyril was a small, curly-haired sergeant who had damaged a leg on an op over the Norwegian border into Russia at the height of the Cold War and been relegated to light duties.
    Taffy was our junior sergeant and doom merchant. "There's a full battalion of Argy marines guarding that airfield, so I hear."
    "Fuck them," Tom told him happily. "I faced more than that in Oman."
    "Yeah, but they were rag-heads," Doug put in with a jeer. Tom was a legend in his own right in the regiment for the time he had defended the base at Merbak from an attack by thousands of rebels. He had ended up working a 25lb howitzer alone, firing it at point-blank range. By the time reinforcements arrived he had been wounded in every limb and was still firing.
    "Tom's seen more action than you ever will," I told Doug.
    "Yeah?" he said. "So how come the two of you tried to miss the flight out then? No stomach for it?"
    Tom didn't rise to Doug's baiting though. He was so good-natured he was next to impossible to needle. You'd have to push him to the limit to get him riled but then it was hard to cool him down.
    It seemed to be accepted that I was not to be a part of this mission. Andy had always done his best to look after me in training, and found it hard to stop now. But I hated being singled out and did my utmost to avoid it. The other guys knew this perfectly well.
    I was an afterthought, fifteen years younger than Andy. Our father had died when I was ten, and Andy substituted himself in my upbringing. He was determined from the start that I should make something of my life and spent the little bit of capital my father