Ghost Force

by Patrick Robinson

  “Gentlemen,” said Admiral Bergstrom, “I think we should establish our strategy and size of force immediately. Commander Hunter and I are agreed that the submarine will deliver his eight-man team to this area, two miles north of the headland west of Goat Hill…right here…there’s a hundred feet depth through here…and the inflatables can run you straight through this gap, the Tamar Pass. You’ll launch your attack across the strait and return the same way.

  “Team Two is the underwater assault group that will hit the Argentine warships in Mare Harbor. According to our satellites, the Args often have two destroyers plus two frigates in there. They patrol in the day and return at night. That’s when we hit ’em, okay? That team will comprise eight swimmers, with four backup…landing right here from inflatables in East Cove…then it’s an overland approach, and an underwater, delayed-time hit. Escape from East Cove to the submarine.”

  “The question I have is this, are we capable of knocking out the Mount Pleasant air base, which is thick with Argentinian troops? And I should record, my instinct is no.”

  “What’s the size of the garrison, sir?”

  “There may be up to three thousand troops on the ground, plus maybe fifteen attack helicopter gunships, fifty-plus armored vehicles, and vast supplies of ordnance. They also have some heavy artillery and missile launchers in place, but that will not affect us.”

  “Jesus,” said Rick, “that’s not really our game, is it? We can’t send a dozen guys in to take down an army, sitting in the middle of an occupied island, with helicopters, rockets, and missiles at their disposal. I guess we might blast a few aircraft out on the perimeter, but I don’t think that’s a good use of our time and skills.”

  “I agree with you,” replied the Admiral. “I’m just looking for feedback.”

  “The real problem is,” said Dallas, “the first minute they even suspect we’re there, we’re likely to be real dead real quick. There’s too many of them, packing too much firepower. Mount Pleasant sounds like a job for an army, possibly a navy, never mind an air force. It’s not really for a dozen wild men with black faces and bowie knives.”

  “He’s right,” said Commander Hunter. “Pebble Island is our kind of territory. So is the lightly guarded, unsuspecting Mare Harbor. They’re places where we have a real good shot at success. I can’t see getting mixed up in the current headquarters of the Argentinian armed forces. Matter of fact, I think the place for us is the Rio Grande air base on the mainland. No one would dream we would turn up there, and it won’t be heavily guarded.

  “I think we should hit Pebble, locate Jarvis, pick up the SAS, and head straight down to the Magellan Strait, and I’ll take an eight-man recce team in to have a good look at the Rio Grande area. Meanwhile, the rest of the guys can land on the Chile side of the border and prepare for the hit on the base.

  “We should let Mount Pleasant go about its business, because if we want to bring the Argentinians to heel, victory lies in Rio Grande, where they have more than a hundred aircraft. Hit that lot and they’ll agree to anything.”

  “As ever, Commander Hunter, I agree with your assessment,” said John Bergstrom. “And my update from Washington this morning was very encouraging. The President of Chile has agreed to give us every support, from his airfields and military bases, and from his communications network.

  “It’s funny, the Args and the Chileans are near neighbors with much in common, but there’s never been much love lost between them. They helped the Brits last time and they’ll help us this time.”

  “How many guys will you need for the main attack on Rio Grande?” asked Dallas.

  “Probably forty.”

  “But we only have twenty.”

  “Correct,” said Admiral Bergstrom. “But we’ll send down another twenty to our forward base in readiness for the attack.”

  “Forward base?” asked Dallas. “Where’s that?”

  “Chile. We’ve been granted takeoff and landing facilities at the Chilean naval airfield in Punta Arenas. Heard that this morning from Admiral Morgan, while your boss was hurling himself into the stratosphere.”

  “So we all join the submarine,” said Commander Hunter. “Then my group leaves for Pebble Island in two inflatables, while the submarine continues on to land the underwater guys on East Cove for the Mare Harbor attack. Then my group finds Douglas Jarvis and his team, and we make our way to a rendezvous with the submarine, and haul the inflatables inboard again…if there’s time.”

  “Correct.”

  “And what about the East Cove guys? How far away are they? And when do they rejoin the submarine?”

  “Mare Harbor is approximately a hundred and thirty-five miles away from the eastern headland of Pebble. But the water’s relatively deep and the SSN will make it in a little over five hours.

  “The ship will pick up each group as it completes its task. Maybe it’ll be yours, maybe the others. Then, with all twenty-eight of you on board, including the SAS, it makes all speed for the Magellan Strait, four hundred and forty miles away, where we rendezvous with a Chilean freighter, which will land you all at Punta Arenas to prepare for Rio Grande. All being well, Rick, you and your guys will leave almost immediately, by helicopter.”

  “Time frame, sir?”

  “Both SEAL teams leave here by air tomorrow afternoon at 1600,” said the Admiral. “And that will put you over the drop zone north of the Falklands at 0700 Sunday morning, that’s first light. We don’t have a problem being seen that far north, and the submarine will have Group One right off Pebble Island by around 1700, just as the light starts to fade.

  “The Pentagon has no record of any Argentine patrol up there for the past week after 1400. And anyway, we got depth to stay submerged right up to a couple miles offshore. At midnight, there’ll be a HALO drop straight into your landing beach from a United States military aircraft flying higher than thirty thousand feet and transmitting only civilian radar.

  “Rick, you’ve done this before, so you’ll carry in the beam to guide the canister down. It’ll contain all the explosive and detcord you’ll need, timers, fuses, wire cutters, screwdrivers, shovels, extra food, a powerful satellite transmitter, and a big machine gun in case of emergency. You can bury the canister, and load the stuff into the inflatables for the outward journey to East Falkland, where you’ll find Captain Jarvis.”

  “Normally we’d carry a lot of this stuff, right, sir?” asked Dallas. “It’s just the ocean drop—can’t get too weighed down with the gear?”

  “That’s correct. None of you have made a drop like this and the planners decided to land the equipment separately. You won’t have any trouble. Commander Hunter knows all about it. He did it in darkest Russia, and no one caught him. Anyway, that’s the broad game plan, and now we better get down to details.

  “First off, there’s six A4P Skyhawks parked on Pebble Island with nine of those Israeli Daggers. These are the guys that delivered the big thousand-pound bombs into the Royal Navy Fleet. The air base has a new, extended concrete runway, installed a couple of years ago by a consortium of the oil companies exploring offshore to the north. The new buildings, like the runway, were unused and have now been converted into an Argentinian command headquarters. They were, of course, unharmed during the recent conflict.

  “There may be a seventy-five-strong force in there, that’s aircrew, ground crew, and guards. It’s really the only stronghold Argentina has in the north. But the last thing they’ll have on their minds is having the air base assaulted. Remember, their enemy, the Brits, have very publicly left the area, and the Argentinians still hold many prisoners of war.”

 
Rick Hunter nodded. “Sir, there’s four eight-man hard-deck inflatables on board this damn great Navy submarine, right? Two for us, two for the others. Now they are going straight into East Cove to do their business and then straight out again to the ship—that’s a round trip of less than ten miles.

  “On the other hand, according to this chart, our best place to meet the SSN, after we locate Douglas Jarvis, is going to be the south end of Falkland Sound, and that sucker’s fifty miles long, all the way down to Fox Bay.

  “Now, Captain Jarvis is almost certainly on the west coast of East Falkland, probably trying to find a boat he can commandeer to get the hell out of there. So we are faced with a journey of around sixty miles from our landing beach all the way down the Sound, in a couple of high-powered Zodiacs, which burn gas like a fucking 747. I just want to make certain we’ve got enough…”

  Admiral Bergstrom referred to his notes. “One of those inflatables, running at ten knots without making much noise, uses a gallon every forty-two minutes. You’ll hit the beach with full tanks—that’s twenty gallons—enough for fourteen hours or a hundred and forty miles. If, for any reason, you have to floor it to make some kind of escape, which is unlikely, both boats carry two full four-and-a-half-gallon spare cans. Basically the boats can make two hundred miles apiece.”

  “Thank you, sir. Just checking.”

  “You’re welcome, Commander.”

  “Tell you something,” said Dallas. “With full tanks those boats are going to be darned heavy to drag up the beach and conceal while we blow the airfield.”

  “We thought of that,” replied the Admiral. “The boats are each fitted with eight heavy-duty canvas handles. I agree they’d be darn heavy for a four-man team—no trouble for eight of you.”

  Dallas nodded. “Anyway, sir, I was forgetting. The Commander could probably carry the damn thing by himself.” The enormous strength of the SEAL Team Leader was still a well-known standard at Coronado; a standard that, it should be recorded, hardly anyone ever attained.

  Right now Rick Hunter was making careful notes. Without looking up, he asked, “We got an accurate GPS on the landing beach where the HALO’s coming in?”

  “It’s 51.21.50 south, 59.27.00 west.”

  “Midnight, right?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “We got a chart for the phases of the moon?”

  “Right here.”

  “What happens if the sea conditions are very severe and we have to hole up on the landing beach for a day or even two?”

  “Not a problem. Just keep the SSN informed on the satellite. And Captain Jarvis, assuming you find him right away, which I think you will.”

  The meeting had moved from a slightly haphazard beginning into a high-octane military planning session. And it stayed that way, an enclave of the most minute detail and forward thinking, until the five SEALs who would join Rick’s team arrived at 1600.

  There were two more demolition specialists, both Petty Officers First Class—Don Smith, from Chicago, another great bear of a man like the Commander, and Brian Harrison from Pennsylvania, whose exploits in the Iraq War had gained him a major reputation.

  Seamen Ed Segal and Ron Wallace, both from Ohio, had also served in Iraq and were experienced in combat and boat handling. The final man, Chief Petty Officer Bob Bland, from Oklahoma, was inevitably known as “Pigling,” but mostly behind his back, since he had won the station heavyweight boxing championship and was apt to react on a very short fuse.

  Bob’s specialty was breaking and entering. Any fence, wire, wall, door, or gate, old Pigling could get it open, quietly. His task was to silently cut the airfield fence and then move on to attack a metal gate that barred their exit point. He would again move out in front for the final stage of the operation.

  Everyone in the room knew of Rick Hunter, but of the five new arrivals, CPO Bland was the only one who had met him before. Admiral Bergstrom motioned them to be seated at the big table and intimated he required only a further twenty minutes, before Commander Hunter would take over and begin a thorough four-hour briefing of his team.

  The twelve-man underwater group was in another section going through the same process. They would not meet until the following morning shortly before final preparations for departure.

  1400, FRIDAY, APRIL 22

  EAST FALKLAND

  Douglas Jarvis and his team had walked south for about fifteen miles. It was a frustrating journey, carried out in wet, squally weather down the landward side of Carlos Water. The objective was to reach the coast, but not to become stranded on the western fork, which guards Carlos from the open twelve-mile-wide Sound. The SAS team did not on any account intend to be caught with their backs to the ocean.

  And that meant a walk of another few miles south to where the land became less of a peninsula, and where there was the prospect of a fishing boat in a little place called Port Sussex.

  They had arrived in wide grazing land within clear sight of Mount Usborne and stared down at the deserted harbor. They could see moorings, possibly four of them, but no boats, which Captain Jarvis remarked was “bloody dull.”

  It was already growing dark, and there was just a scattering of buildings around the harbor, two of them with lights on. And the problem that faced the young Commander was the same as always—could they bang on the door and announce themselves, running the risk of Argentine soldiers being in residence? Or even the risk of a swift phone call from the occupants to the military HQ at Mount Pleasant?

  Of course they could take out the enemy instantly. But what good would that do? The soldiers would be missed, then found, and a manhunt for the outlawed British Special Forces would surely begin. The men from Hereford were, as Douglas put it, buggered. Their options were narrow. There was little they could do, except feast on roast lamb, whenever possible, and try to steal, hire, or borrow a boat to get away at the earliest time.

  Tonight was plainly a roast lamb situation. And they also had to find shelter. It was raining like hell, and it would be completely dark inside an hour. Their waterproof clothing and boots had all held up well, and no one was suffering from illness or injury. But this was getting depressing, with no discernible enemy, the constant threat of an Argentinian manhunt being launched, and no sign of a proper objective. The only ray of hope seemed to be the vague, encrypted satellite promise from Hereford several days ago that a rescue operation was being mounted.

  Douglas dispatched Troopers Wiggins and Pearson to what he called the “local butcher,” the 4,000-acre pasture to the east, on which there were sheep and lambs as far as the eye could see. And while they were gone, the rest of them groped around in the sparse undergrowth for a spot to light the oven. In fact, they were getting very good at this, wielding the axe, chopping both the wide bushes and the carcass of the lambs, before lighting the fire in the hole they just dug in the damp ground.

  Douglas toyed with the idea of moving quietly down into one of the empty buildings on the quayside, but again the risk was too great. What if a fishing boat pulled in during the night and they were discovered? What if the fishing boats were accompanied by Argentinian Marines?

  The truth was, the SAS team could cope with anything except discovery, because that might very well mean death from an Arg helicopter gunship combing the area where someone had located them.

  No. Tonight looked like another night in the open. And thank God for the excellent waterproof sleeping bags, and may the morrow bring a ship into the hitherto deserted harbor of Port Sussex. Privately, Douglas thought it just a matter of time before some angry shepherd grew irritated by someone stealing his lambs, and reporte
d the matter to the authorities. They’d snatched eight of them by now, and a good detective might easily put two and two together and make four.

  He shuddered and checked the lamb, which was beginning to sizzle cheerfully, and once more they made their fast evening communication to their command HQ, and as usual there was only silence. But they left the radio switched on, ready to receive, although no one held out much hope. If they were going to be rescued, they would plainly have to rescue themselves.

  Dinner was again very good, and they supplemented the lamb with their own concentrated vegetable bars. But tonight there would be no walking, principally because there was nowhere to go. Captain Jarvis decreed this harbor with its obvious active moorings was as good as any. The best plan was to sit and wait, through the weekend, and hope to hell a boat came in.

  “We might even get a bit of fish,” observed Trooper Wiggins. “Make a change from lamb, eh?”

  And they drifted off to sleep under the bushes, leaving one man at a time on a one-hour sentry watch, just in case someone had spotted their fire deep in its roasting hole.

  And at thirteen minutes past one a.m., Trooper Goddard saw a sight that made his hair stand on end. Winding up the coastal track to the right of the long sea inlet of Breton Loch was an unmistakable pair of headlights, moving fast. He grabbed the night binoculars and stared at the green-hued landscape to the south.

  Jesus Christ! It’s an Army Jeep…and if it stays on that track it’s going to pass less than a half mile from right here.

  Trooper Goddard awakened Captain Jarvis, who almost leapt out of his sleeping bag in surprise, since long, undisturbed nights were the rule around here in this desolate southern wilderness.

  “What’s up, Bob?”

  “There’s an Army Jeep, sir, moving fast, coming more or less toward us. Right now it’s a couple of miles south of the harbor.”