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foot out of the boot, but it was laced up too tight. Stupid, my brain was telling me stupid to lose your life because of a well-laced boot.
    If this is dying, I thought, it's not as hard as I'd imagined it would be. All I had to do was stop struggling and let it take over. It was simple, really. And just as I decided to give myself up, I
    felt another hand on my leg. Someone else was coming through the hatch after me and realised what had happened. His hand reached down, caught a hold of my foot and jerked it round, and I felt myself float free. The buoyancy of my life vest took over, and rushed me up towards the light.
    My head broke the surface suddenly, and with it the instinct for survival reasserted itself. I dragged in deep breaths. Nothing in my life had ever felt so good. The darkness cleared from my brain. I could make out a ship in the distance. It looked to my eyes like half a mile away, but perhaps in reality it was only a few hundred yards. The water was quite rough, but my life vest was supporting me. I looked round for the others, especially for whoever it was had saved my life. I could see heads bobbing among the waves, but it was too dark to make out faces. I was worried about Andy. Surely he would have made it. I had got so used to thinking of him as indestructible.
    There was a noise overhead and a searchlight beam cut through the dying daylight, dazzling my eyes. One of the ships nearby must have put a helicopter up the instant the accident occurred. The winch man must have missed me in the waves because he shifted the beam and I saw him drop down into the water a dozen yards away and return with a dripping figure.
    I pulled my knees up to my chest to conserve body warmth and checked my light was showing; I didn't want them to miss me.
    By the time my turn finally came I was so numb I could hardly think straight. They winched me up into the helicopter and someone wrapped me in a thermal blanket. It wasn't till we reached the ship that I recovered enough to take in what was happening.
    I became aware of Andy, standing over me asking if I was OK. He told me they were two bodies down and still looking. We were lucky that the Sea King's tail had broken off on impact, freeing everyone in the rear. According to eyewitnesses the cause of the crash was a sea bird ingested by the engine air intake.
    The missing men must have been unable to free themselves.
    One of them was the pilot, the other was Nick. As soon as I heard this news something inside me told me it was Nick's hand that had pulled my foot free. And if I hadn't blocked the exit hatch, he might have survived too.
    As soon as we had kitted ourselves out again, the survivors mustered in the Portakabin. Major Clayton stood up and spoke briefly. This had been a bad start but the mission was going ahead. It was not in the tradition of the Regiment to quit. Nevertheless, anyone who wanted to pull out could do so. There were no takers. I glanced at Andy and his face was expressionless. I knew, though, that he would go on doing what he could to look after me. He was a stubborn bastard, and so was I. It ran in the family.
    We replaced our kit from the stocks aboard and drew fresh weapons from the armoury. When the replacement Sea King arrived we flew out to the carrier, this time without incident. I couldn't stop thinking about Nick, though, and what his family would have to go through.
    CHAPTER SIX
    The carrier steamed through the night at high speed without radar. She would close to within 250 miles of the enemy coast, and the helicopter would fly a low-level, circuitous route south to the extreme tip of the continent and Tierra del Fuego. We would then turn north and fly for fifty miles over Chilean territory before making the final course change and head east, crossing the border into Argentina to approach Rio Grande from the north-west. With six men aboard and all their equipment, plus three crew, the helicopter would have only sufficient range to reach the