Choosers of the Slain

by James H. Cobb

  "The ice-operations vessel Alferez Mackinlay, the fleet oiler Luis A. Huergo, and the tank landing ship Piedrabuena are all fully loaded and standing by to sortie from Rio Gallegos. The First and Third Destroyer Squadrons and elements of the First Escort Group and the fast coastal attack force are standing by to provide convoy cover."

  "General Arco, status of the opposition?"

  "No major changes, sir. The British defensive buildup in the Malvinas continues. Elements of two additional fighter-bomber squadrons and the Paratroop Regiment have been positively identified. A small British task group consisting of the Port Stanley guard frigate, the ice-patrol ship Polar Circle, and a small fleet auxiliary are currently covering the offshore petroleum facilities.

  "The United States naval vessel is apparently holding on station in Drake Passage, three hundred and fifty kilometers south-southwest of Islas de Los Estados. Their nearest reinforcements are still more than a week's steaming time away."

  "Thank you. Admiral Fouga, what are the chances of slipping the convoy past this single-ship blockade?"

  "We don't need to slip past anyone. The fleet is fully capable of driving off this Norteno pest, or of sinking it, if necessary."

  Sparza drew on his cigarette and sighed. "Admiral, I did not ask if you could sink this ship. I asked if you could get past it undetected."

  The heavyset naval officer wilted. "No, sir. Given the Americans' extensive spy satellite network and their advanced seaborne sensor systems, it is unlikely we could reach the San Martin Peninsula without being observed and intercepted. As I have stated, however, if we sortie now, we could provide an escort of such overwhelming force that we could blast the Americans out of the water in seconds if they dare to interfere."

  "I am not so certain," General Arco said flatly. "This vessel, the USS Cunningham, is the most sophisticated warship of what is still the most potent naval power in the world. Its systems are at least a full generation in advance of the best that we have. We should not take its potential capabilities too lightly."

  "For God's sake, General. The damned thing is commanded by a woman!"

  "A gun does not care who pulls its trigger."

  "Gentlemen, let us leave the question of this ship's capabilities open for the moment," Sparza said, rotating his chair slightly to face his Minister of State. "Aldo, what is your opinion? Will the United States maintain the blockade? Will they open fire if we attempt to run a convoy through to our Antarctic bases?"

  Aldo Salhazar marshaled his thoughts before replying. He sensed that his next words might be critical, if not apocalyptic.

  "The United States is taking these events very seriously, very seriously indeed. Perhaps more so than we expected. Their deployment of a massive naval force, their attempts to mobilize world opinion against us, the presence of their Secretary of State in our capital, all indicate the depth of their concern. No doubt they perceive the political dislocation caused by our actions in the Antarctic contrary to American global interests.

  "The current U.S. Administration has shown itself willing to use armed force if required to defend those interests, as it has recently demonstrated in Peru and in Central Africa. I believe that the captain of that United States naval vessel has, or will have, authorization to stop our convoy using whatever means necessary."

  Sparza nodded. "General Orchal, a final question. Is it at all possible that we could carry through Conquistador South with the supplies available to us on the ice, plus what we can bring in by air?"

  "I would say that it is not feasible," the Army officer replied. "At best, our personnel would undergo extreme hardship. At worst, there could be a catastrophe of monumental proportions. Given a late spring, we could have dead and dying at every one of our outposts.

  "You do not play games with polar logistics, Mr. President. If we do not receive adequate supply, we must abandon the operation and recall our garrisons. There are no other options."

  Sparza found that he had about three good draws left on his cigarette. He decided to give himself that long to make the final decision. Deeply inhaling the rich smoke of the first of those draws, he considered the future of his nation and himself.

  Antonio Sparza was a fighting man. Throughout his life he had fought against poverty, against the prejudice triggered by the touch of Indian blood in his veins, and against the corrupt and deeply entrenched political machines that did not wish to make a place for the hard-driving outsider from the northwestern gaucho country.

  He had learned the secret of victory in the boxing ring of the amateur athletics club of the small parochial school he had attended as a teen. Always go on the offensive. Explode out of your corner and drive into your enemy, no matter what his size, no matter what blows you might receive in return. The defender is the loser. Only the attacker can win.

  That principle had stood him in good stead over the years. It had won him this seat in the Casa Rosada. He would not change his ways now. Deliberately, he snubbed out the butt of his cigarette.

  "General Arco, have an air strike readied. Sink the American warship."

  Shock rippled through the circle of men. Minister of State Salhazar half rose out of his chair. "Antonio, are you mad? That would be tantamount to a declaration of war on the United States!"

  "No, not necessarily. The United States is quick to anger, but slow to take action over a single incident. Consider the historical precedents: the Pueblo, the Liberty, the Stark.

  "I have no doubt that this will deepen the crisis, but we shall be able to perform damage control. We can claim it was an accident of some nature, a communications breakdown. Possibly we can shift some of the blame onto the American vessel itself.

  "Afterwards, we can issue a formal apology and an offer to make reparations. The important thing is that we will be able to get those supplies through to our garrisons and the Americans will be unable to stop us."

  "And what if they do not accept this apology, Mr. President? What if reparations are not enough!"

  "Even if this is the case, Aldo, the San Martin Peninsula will belong to us and the Antarctic winter will have locked and barred the gate. Even a superpower such as the United States will be unable to contest that."

  "The winter will not protect Argentina itself, sir," Arco said quietly.

  "No, General, but world opinion will. During our attempt to reclaim the Malvinas, Great Britain did not strike at our military installations on the mainland, even when it was to their military advantage to do so. They knew that such an escalation would turn the diplomatic tide against them.

  "The North Americans know this as well. Those actions they can take, the trade and economic embargoes, possibly a blockade of our coasts, we have expected these things and we have already made preparations to deal with them."

  Sparza looked around his circle of advisers. "Gentlemen, when we were forced to conceive of this venture, we knew that we would be taking grave risks. However, we also knew that if we did not, everything our nation has worked for and dreamed of in the Antarctic for sixty-five years would be lost. This situation has not changed. If any one of you has some new option to present, I will listen."

  His advisers could offer only silence.

  The Argentine President nodded. "Very well, then. We simply must dare a little more. Admiral Fouga, you will order the supply convoy and its escort to sail upon verification of the sinking of the American destroyer. General Arco, you will plan and execute the attack on this warship, the Cunningham, as soon as possible."

  The conference concluded and its attendees dispersed. As the Chiefs of Staff of the Army and Air Force descended the main stairs of the Casa Rosada, Juan Orchal glanced across at his compatriot.

  "You do not look happy, Marcello."

  "I'm not. It's happening again, Juan. Just like in '82, we are doing it to ourselves again. First, we assume that everything will go just as we have planned, and it does not. Then we assume that we will not have a fight on our hands and we do."

  "Yes, but
it's still not quite the same. We have learned a few things since Port Stanley, my friend."

  "Maybe. But there we were only tweaking the tail of the lion. Here, I suspect we may be biting an elephant in the ass."

  "I know that you were never as ardent about Conquistador South as some of the rest of us, Marcello. But you agreed to the strike commit at the last planning session. What else can be done now?"

  "Nothing, I suppose. Nothing but to live with it." As they reached the foot of the stairway, General Arco felt a sharp stab of pain across his lower back. He recognized the spasm as the flare-up of a spinal injury he had received many years ago, ejecting from a Rapier-blasted Skyhawk over San Carlos Bay. The Air Force officer grimly found himself wondering if its return might be an omen.

  DRAKE PASSAGE

  1231 HOURS: MARCH 25, 2006

  Some meteorologists theorize that the Antarctic continent doesn't have weather in the conventional sense. They believe that the prevailing South Polar climatic patterns are actually one titanic superstorm that has been raging continuously for the last ten thousand years-sometimes with greater intensity, sometimes with lesser, but perennially since the last ice age.

  Occasionally, though, rents and eddies form within its structure, and for the moment the USS Cunningham cruised within one such patch of calm.

  Corkscrewing easily through a steel-blue sea, the big destroyer ran beneath an open sky lightly streaked with frost-colored mare's tails. Twice that day, ice had been sighted to the south, great flattopped burgs riding low on the horizon, sea smoke of their own creation swirling mystically around them.

  The winds carried the mark of the Pole as well. They were the katabatics, gusting in from the southwest, fresh off the Antarctic Plateau. Chill, pure, oxygen rich, and seemingly denser than common air, breathing them was comparable to breathing the outflow of some icy mountain spring.

  Amanda Garrett relished the experience. Parka-clad, she had spent most of the morning out on the wings of the bridge, enjoying the sight of the snowy foam peeling away from the cutting edge of her ship's prow. However, the clear weather also brought with it a faint feeling of unease.

  "Hey, Skipper," Ken Hiro's voice sounded in her headset. "Have you decided about diverting south under that next storm front yet?"

  Amanda glanced up at the glowing sun and hesitated. They had been running under heavy weather for almost two continuous days, and certain maintenance tasks were best done on a stable deck. Besides, a rest would be good for all hands.

  "Negative, Ken. Hold your course. We'll be socked in again soon enough."

  Two hundred and forty miles to the northeast, over Isla Grande, the fair weather had already broken. Heavy cloud cover and turbulence were complicating an already difficult air-to-air refueling operation. Flying under total radio and radar silence, a flight of four Fuerza Aérea Rafales had located and made rendezvous with their C-130 Hercules tanker aircraft as it churned along just above the overcast.

  The flight elements were armed alike. The leaders mounted a drop tank beneath each wing and a slender, cigar-shaped pod on their centerline. The wingmen carried a single larger tank beneath their belly and a pair of 1,000-pound laser-guided bombs on their inboard pylons.

  The first element tucked in under the elderly Lockheed. Guided in by light signals from the pump boss's station amidships, the fighters skillfully coupled into the refueling drogues trailing aft from the tanker's wingtip pods.

  As they did so, a second strike flight closed and joined up. Two dark blue and gray Aeronaval Tornadoes. Like pale remora clinging to a shark's belly, each carried a brace of Exocet antishipping missiles.

  "Hey, Captain." This time, Hiro appeared in the bridge-wing hatchway. "I think you'd better come take a look at this."

  "Sure, Ken, what have you got?"

  She followed him back into the wheelhouse, flipping back the hood of her parka as she did. Inside, she found her exec and Vince Arkady intently studying the largest of the monitors mounted above the bridge windscreen.

  "We've got Lieutenant Beltrain on the squawk box from CIC. He says he has a funny contact on the board."

  "What's so amusing about it, Dix?" she inquired, raising her voice slightly to trip the sound-activated microphone of the com system.

  "It's funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha, ma'am. Have a look at your bridge repeaters."

  The flatscreen showed a computer stylization of the southernmost tip of South America and the Drake Passage environs, the Duke's position hack glowing blue in its center. Half a dozen other identified and innocuous surface contacts were scattered across the display, none of which were within a hundred miles of the destroyer. In the sky to the north, a Chilean passenger jet was descending toward Punta Arenas. To the northwest, "Pedro," the Argentine Atlantique shadower aircraft, circled repetitively. To the northeast, there was a third airborne target.

  "It's that new slow mover, ma'am. The one coded Contact Charley. He came into our coverage area from the north, turned southwest at Isla Grande beacon, and aimed himself right at us. Since then, two separate flights of fast movers have overtaken and joined up with him. Radar cross-section variance indicates a lot of close-in maneuvering, probably an air-to-air refueling operation."

  "Target identification?"

  "The big guy has to be an Argy KC-130. No doubt about it. No make on the small stuff yet. Could be two to four aircraft per flight and they're too far out to get a skin-track silhouette. These guys are being real quiet. Sigint indicates they're maintaining total EMCON. No radio, no radar, no transponders. Miss Christine's gang over in Raven's Roost says this is pretty damn unusual for this outfit."

  "Maybe it's just some kind of training exercise," Hiro commented. "None of the other Argy harassment flights have used aerial refueling. Their aircraft have range enough to reach us without it."

  "Not if it was an armed strike package," Arkady said soberly. "You'd be carrying ordnance on some of your hardpoints instead of drop tanks. You'd also want to top off on fuel before you went in over your target, so you'd have a big maneuvering reserve in case you had trouble. ... Hey, check this out."

  On the flatscreen, Contact Charley had fissioned just as it crossed the 180-mile ranging line.

  "Bridge," the squawk box sounded. "The fast movers have separated from the tanker. Estimate three two-plane elements, now coded as Contacts Delta, Echo, and Foxtrot. New targets have accelerated to six hundred knots and are closing the range. Target Charley is now turning away to the north."

  "He's not the only one. It looks like Pedro is bugging out."

  "I see it, Arkady," Amanda said. "Dix, what's going on with that Argentine Atlantique?"

  "He transmitted a nonscheduled position fix on us just before conducting his breakaway. He's descending and he's increasing speed."

  "He's hauling ass before he gets it blown off," Arkady murmured under his breath.

  On the repeater, the three fighter-bomber flights had fanned out into a broad triangle, an arrow fired from the Argentine mainland dead-on at the Cunningham. It would arrive on target in approximately sixteen minutes. Amanda shot a glance at each of the two officers that flanked her.

  "Gentlemen, I need your evaluations, right now."

  "We haven't seen anything like this before, Captain," her exec said quietly. "Something's up."

  "Arkady?"

  "If this isn't an armed Sierra strike, it's a helluva good imitation."

  "Right. Mr. Hiro, I'm shifting the con to CIC. You have the bridge. Sound general quarters."

  From bow to stem, all decks of the Duke were filled with the flat metallic honking of the GQ klaxons, the hammering of running feet, and the slam of watertight doors. Over all came the emotionless voice of the duty quartermaster. "General quarters. General quarters. All hands proceed to your battle stations. This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill."

  Down in the Combat Information Center, the systems operators began reciting the techno-litany that brought the destroyer's weapons
arrays fully to life.

  "Main turret indexing check, fore and aft."

  "I have green lights, fore and aft, elevation and traverse."

  "Phalanx safety interlocks off. Cycling to full autofire mode."

  "Confirm helm and lee helm control shifted to CIC. Bridge and Main Engineering control to ready-use standby."

  "All power rooms fully lit off and on-line."

  "Alpha, Bravo, and Charley ESSM flights selected and armed. VLS cell doors opened and visually verified. Confirm hot birds on the rails!"

  Amanda strode into the CIC to find her command chair empty and waiting for her. "Tactical Officer, status?" she demanded.

  "The ship is at general quarters, Captain," Beltrain replied. "All weapons and defense systems up and on-line.

  Condition Zebra set in all spaces. Awaiting your orders, ma'am."

  "What's the situation with the bogeys?"

  "Bogeys have descended to wave-top altitude and are currently below our radar horizon. As of last contact they were continuing to close the range. Given no change in speed or heading, Contact Delta will be reacquired in approximately twelve minutes. Targets Echo and Foxtrot will be reacquired and will cross our bow and stern respectively at about a five-mile range at about one-minute intervals thereafter."

  "Right. Where's our nearest heavy cloud cover?"

  The tac officer dialed a weather overlay in on the Alpha Screen. "The nearest squall line is about twenty miles to the southeast."

  Damn, damn, damn! A stealth warship must always seek out protective weather cover. She had helped to write that doctrine. Then, first crack out of the box, she had allowed herself to be seduced by a patch of blue sky.

  "We going to try and go stealth and evade, ma'am?"

  "It's too late, Dix. They have us fixed. We'll have to take it as it comes."

  "Aye, aye."

  "When the bogeys close to an estimated one hundred miles range, go to tactical on the primary display."