by Adam Yoshida
As Hennessy spoke an explosion shook the bunker, rocking both the Wing Commander and the General.
“How quickly can you rearm for another strike?” asked the General, his voice low.
A second explosion sounded in the background.
“By the time I’m done taking a piss,” he said, “the ground crew boys should have us ready to go back up and into the air.”
USS Cape St. George (CG-71), Seventy-Four Miles Southeast of the Falkland Islands
“There is air activity over the British base,” reported the radar operator.
“Make and type?” asked Captain Gilmer.
“Unknown,” said the operator.
Captain Gilmer turned to face Admiral Collins, as if to say, “this is your show.”
“Elements of the fleet within range are cleared to fire at anything over the Falkland Islands,” ordered Admiral Collins. The Captain gave her a glance.
“The moment that they began to use this island as a base of operations, the entire region became a war zone,” said the Admiral crisply.
“Launching,” came the call from the TAO.
Typhoon FGR4 9N1, Falkland Islands Airspace
As soon as the alarm sounded in his cockpit, Hennessy turned to evade and kicked in the afterburners on his Eurofighter, seeking to put as much distance between himself and the American SM-6s as physically possible.
It was too late, realized the Wing Commander as he took his fighter into a quick decent in an effort to get away from the Surface-to-Air missile that was pursuing him. A quick check of his heads-up display revealed that most of the rest of the squadron were engaged in exactly the same process. They had barely even gotten into the air before the Americans had fired upon them.
“Boys,” he said, broadcasting in the clear, “we’ve done our best, but I have no desire to die fighting the United States. Do any of you?”
The channel was quiet for a moment.
“Fuck no!” called out one of the other evading pilots. His sentiments were repeatedly echoed in the seconds that followed. Hennessy paused for a moment to collect himself before he broadcast again.
“U.S. Navy formation,” called out the Wing Commander, “this is the commander of the British fighter squadron broadcasting in the clear. Come in U.S. Navy.”
After a pause of nearly thirty seconds, during which time one of the Eurofighters was struck and destroyed by one of the American missiles, a female voice came over the line.
“This is Commander, Task Force 47,” said the voice.
“Commander TF 47,” said the Wing Commander, “this is Wing Commander David Hennessy. The force that I command is no longer capable of effectively engaging your force, so long as it remains in such close proximity to our own base of operations. Therefore, respectfully, I request your terms.”
“Jettison all ordinance and then standby and hold your position,” replied Admiral Collins.
“Message acknowledged,” replied Hennessy. He and the other ten surviving Eurofighters dropped their remaining missiles off their pylons, allowing them to fall harmlessly into the ocean below. Then, for two long minutes, they sat in silence and waited.
“RAF Squadron Commander,” came the voice of the Admiral over the radio, “you are to proceed directly to Port Stanley Airport and land there. If you deviate from such a course, you will be fire upon. Once you have landed, I will have it upon your honour as officers and gentlemen that you will not engage in further hostile action against the United States until exchanged and paroled.”
“Acknowledged, Commander TF 47,” replied Hennessy as he guided his fighter into a slow turn, “you have our word.”
RAF Mount Pleasant, Falkland Islands
“We should shoot the bastards down ourselves,” said the General as he watched the radar track of the Typhoons heading towards Port Stanley airport.
“I don’t think that we could ever go home if we did that,” said the Air Defense Officer quietly.
“Nonsense!” shouted the General, “we are dealing with mutineers… traitors even. The sternest response and punishment is merited.”
The General stormed over towards a radio console.
“Wing Commander,” he spoke into it, “I am ordering you to turn around and engage the enemy. I am ordering you in the name of His Majesty.”
For a moment static filled the open channel.
“Fuck off,” came the reply.
The furious General stormed back toward the station where Flight Lieutenant who served as the post’s Air Defense Officer was standing.
“Lock your firing control radar on the aircraft headed towards Port Stanley,” he ordered.
“With respect, General, I cannot do so,” said the Flight Lieutenant.
“That is a a direct order, Flight Lieutenant,” said the General stiffly.
“That being so, I nonetheless cannot.”
“MP!” shouted the General, pointing towards the Air Defense Officer, “please place the Flight Lieutenant under arrest.”
Two MPs who were waiting nearby moved over towards the Flight Lieutenant, who stood calmly and placed his hands behind his back.
“Alright!” continued the General, clapping his hands together, “now who can lock in our radars and prepare to fire?”
The men who stood around the computer equipment that controlled the SAM battery remained still and silent.
“Well?” asked the General, “let’s have at it.”
“Sir,” a young enlisted man volunteered, “only the commander had the correct codes to fully activate the system.”
The Flight Lieutenant, being escorted out of the room, suppressed a smile and deliberately avoided turning towards his men.
“Surely one of you has the ability to operate this machine,” said the General incredulously.
“That has been a problem,” one of the other enlisted men volunteered, “we’ve been meaning to fix that. But we hadn’t gotten around to it quite yet.”
“Damn you,” said the General, as he stormed out of the room.
USNS Medgar Evers (T-AKE-13), Shallow Water Near the Falkland Islands
The USNS Medgar Evers, a Lewis and Clark-class dry goods ship had been chosen for this particular mission on account of its poor physical condition. Over the last few months it had been one of the ships to break down most frequently and to hold up the fleet the most. In addition, when Admiral Collins and Captain Gilmer had conducted a quick review of what most of the ships of Task Force 47, the cargo remaining onboard the ship had proven to be of the least value, the provisions that it carried having already been heavily drawn upon.
Based upon this survey, Lieutenant Commander Dave Taylor was ordered to do something that would normally end his career: to beach his ship.
The Admiral hoped that it wouldn’t be enough to destroy the vessel altogether and that she could be recovered and put back into use after the war, but they were also more than willing to run the risk that a grounding off the shore of the Falkland Islands would be the end. The ship had also been chosen because she had a large deck that allowed a lot of helicopters to back a thousand volunteers from two infantry battalions onboard the ship, along with ladders and other gear that would allow them to quickly dismount the grounded vessel. The anti-submarine helicopters of the fleet were pressed into action as pseudo-attack choppers, moving just ahead of the ship as it moved towards the islands themselves. Cape St. George remained slightly in the distance, holding onto its last missiles lest there be some other hostile aircraft somewhere in the islands that might attack the fleet. The Coronado and Sioux City were closer to the shore, prepared to use their limited gunfire capabilities to support the Army soldiers if necessary.
“Well, here we go,” said Taylor from the bridge of the Evers.
“Slow us down to five knots, but keep going,” he ordered as the twenty-thousand ton ship moved ever closer, “the most gently that we bottom out the better this is going to be.”
Onboard the deck of the Medgar Evers,
just short of a thousand soldiers stood at the ready, clutching their personal weapons in their hands, waiting nervously for the first signs of resistance as the massive ship edged towards the shore.
“All hands, brace for impact,” announced the captain over the radio.
Fifteen seconds after the captain spoke over the intercom, the ship began to gently bottom out, making contact with the soft surface below. The ship jerked as it struck the surface and several of the soldiers were knocked off their feet. Within a few more seconds the vessel game to a complete stop.
“Alright!” ordered the Colonel who had been placed in command of the operation, “let’s do it!”
Within seconds, the ship’s lifeboats were being lowered into the shallow water and men began to scramble off the sides and into them, all the time looking warily for the British forces onshore to open fire.
“We’re still waiting for targets here,” the Captain of the Coronado called out over the radio net.
“We’ll give them to you if we’ve got them,” called back the Task Group commander.
From his temporary headquarters onboard the Medgar Evers, the Colonel who commanded the Task Group looked around quizzically.
“Still nothing?” he asked.
“Not a shot, not a word,” came back the call from one of the Platoon commanders who had taken the first men ashore.
“Keep me posted,” signalled the Colonel.
Seconds after the Platoon leader terminated his radio transmission, he spotted something along the tree line a few hundred feet ahead.
“Don’t fire!” screamed a shrouded voice, “we are unarmed!”
“Show yourselves!” replied the Second Lieutenant, raising his rifle to the ready.
A British Royal Marine officer stepped out into the field of vision of the US Army Platoon, his hands in the air.
“Welcome to the Falkland Islands, gentlemen,” said the Marine Captain, “could you kindly single to your commander that we are at their disposal? And please inform them that they’ve ruined a perfectly good ship for nothing.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The Crossing
No. 10 Downing Street, London, United Kingdom
“Well,” said the Foreign Secretary sanguinely, “I’m sure that they’ll give them back to us when the war is over.”
“If nothing else,” agreed the First Sea Lord, “it was a truly fine bit of seamanship. I don’t think that anyone would have expected the Americans do quite do the math and do something as bold as that. Brilliant. I wish I’d thought of it. Worthy of Nelson.”
“Gentlemen,” said Prime Minister Blunt, “If you’d kindly dissolve your mutual admiration society, that would be helpful. We have a major crisis on our hands now and all over those Goddamned islands again.”
“We hardly have grounds for complaint,” said the First Sea Lord, “seeing as we were using the islands as a base for attacks against the American fleet.”
“Nevertheless,” said the Prime Minister, “now we have a situation whose seriousness has escalated - and that is even without the public having knowledge of what really went on down in the South Atlantic.”
“We’ve already managed to find ourselves at war with most of the United States and with China aligned against us, I would think that the situation was already about as serious as it could get,” said the Foreign Secretary.
“Escalated from a public relations point of view,” clarified the Prime Minister, “the opposition is beginning to speak up and ask questions again, even with so many of their leaders in prison and that is without even considering the fact that a major British garrison has, in essence, mutinied and joined the enemy.”
“We could imprison some more of them,” said the Home Secretary in a helpful tone.
“I wish we could haul all of them in,” said the Prime Minister, “but I have a feeling that our civic institutions would not support such a move and, in any case, we have to face the reality that they reflect the real feeling in the country The British people mostly never wanted this war and turn against it even more harshly with each passing day.”
“A victory would cheer them up,” said the Defense Secretary.
“And what happens when - today or tomorrow or the day after that - the Americans put some fine-looking British officer in front of the cameras of the world and they explain how they refused to fight because we British and the Americans are brothers and so forth.”
“Right,” agreed the Foreign Secretary, “this has simply become, at this point, a question of determining which side is going to crack up first. If we can hold out through the American elections - and if they go our way - then we can negotiate a reasonable peace. If our side collapses militarily or politically before that point, then Rickover shall certainly win the election and we will lose. We all know this. What more can we do? We already acceded to the request of our representative in America and it cost us the Falkland Islands and a squadron of Typhoons.”
“The First Sea Lord has a plan, and I think that you need to hear it,” said the Prime Minister quietly.
“Thank you, Prime Minister,” said Admiral Thomas Yorke, the First Sea Lord, “ever since our side became involved in this war, we have based many of our calculations upon the notion that the American Fifth Fleet could only realistically be fought in a littoral area where heavy land-based air support is available. However, based upon our latest intelligence reports, we no longer believe this to be the case.”
The First Sea Lord pressed a button and a series of charts were projected up on the wall.
“Now, we all know that there are four American SuperCarriers with the Fifth Fleet: Ronald Reagan, John C. Stennis, Theodore Roosevelt, and Harry Truman. After the detachment of several vessels for the operation in the South Atlantic - designated as Task Force 47 - there are twenty-seven support vessels of various types accompanying this armada. In peacetime these four Carriers would, collectively, carry around two hundred and eighty combat aircraft.”
“However, these are not ordinary times. The Fifth Fleet was forced to stop at Diego Garcia to resupply and, based upon both human and electronic intelligence that we have obtained there, we know a great deal about the readiness and current equipment of that fleet. We know, for example, that there are, in fact, fewer than two hundred operational aircraft onboard that fleet at the present time. We know that their ships are undermanned. They actually flew sailors from the Pacific Fleet into Diego Garcia and used them to augment crews there. Most of these ships are in poor material condition after so long at sea and in serious need of refitting and repairs.”
“It’s a mighty force nonetheless, but its as much an illusion of might as a reality.”
“The clear American plan - for I worked with them for many years and know how they think - would be to dash in towards the coast and land their forces somewhere in the Carolinas. There are several naval facilities in the South that the U.S. Government now controls and those could be used to effect repairs on some of the ships in the worst possible condition. As well, by that point in time, most of the ships will be low on fuel and also need to re-provision.”
“Our ships,” continued the First Sea Lord, “are, in contrast, all freshly-repaired and well-maintained. Both of our Carriers are carrying wartime loads of fifty combat aircraft. As is the Charles de Gaulle and the Russian Admiral Kuznetsov. In fact, our best intelligence says that our naval aviation assets are carrying more total aircraft than the American fleet is at the moment. Admittedly some of these aircraft are of inferior types, but we enjoy something like parity. Likewise, we are at least equal in terms of our total number of escort ships, even if some of ours are of inferior types.”
“You want us to fight the U.S. Navy in a pitched carrier versus carrier battle somewhere in the mid-Atlantic Ocean?” asked the Foreign Secretary incredulously.
“Gentlemen,” said the Prime Minister, “I think that there’s a lot of sense in what the Admiral has to say. But we’re going to need to sell all of ou
r partners on this if we can make it happen. So the first question must be whether we may sell you upon it.”
USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76), Five Hundred Miles off the Coast of Brazil
“Well,” said General MacKenzie as he reviewed the latest reports from the Falkland Islands, “that is mighty fine work indeed. This Admiral Collins is a first-rate fighter. Absolutely first rate. Bold, decisive. I approve and will recommend to the President that she and her officers are to be rewarded some singular honors.”
“Thank you, General,” said Admiral Layton, “I am sure that they will appreciate that.”
“Have we considered…” said General King, formulating a thought, “…have we considered the implications of the fact that these British soldiers - mostly from smaller, more self-contained, and elite groups - mutinied at the time they did and what the wider implications of that might be?”
“I think that it’s probably an aberration,” said Layton, “after all, the British Army has fought us pretty tenaciously in the engagements that we’ve had in North America. The same is true of the RAF, for that matter.”
“Perhaps that is correct, Admiral,” said General MacKenzie, “but I am not so certain. I believe that the worm has turned and that we may expect others to defect to the holy cause of liberty that we have already served for so long.”
“I wish that I could share your confidence, General,” said Admiral Layton, “but before it comes to anything like that, we still have some very substantial work that must be done. Our latest intelligence indicates that the enemy fleet has turned to face us and may well even be headed in our direction.”
“I have absolute and unblemished confidence in your abilities and those of your sailors,” replied General MacKenzie.
Democratic Union, Temporary Office of the American Commissioner, Chicago, Illinois
