by Stuart Slade
“That was decon. They’ve found the five gravity devices, all intact, on the edge of the fire area. Looks like the last thing the crew did was to dump their weapons before going in.”
“There’ll be ten more, Sir. Four AIM-54s and six AGM-76s, all nuclear-tipped of course. The Frisbees on board are explosive. Not nuclear.”
“I know tha …” Bennett stopped himself, remembering this woman had just watched her husband die. Just what in hell was she still doing here anyway? “Thank you Sergeant. You’re dismissed, you need to go home to your family.”
“Sir, there’s too much to do here. We need to get the investigation…”
“Into the hands of investigators. You’ve done your share, Sergeant Yates; done it above and beyond the call of duty under the circumstances. Now go home to your family, they need you. Don’t make me have you carried out.”
A fleeting grin crossed Selma’s face; a reflex to a General joking, nothing more. “That won’t be necessary, Sir.” She saluted and left.
“She shouldn’t drive in that condition.” The General spoke to Colonel Carson, the most senior of the pilots still on the base.
“She won’t have to Sir. Three of the guys are standing by waiting for her. They’ll stay with her while they pick up her kids from school. Fortunately, her parents and one of her in-laws are close by. They’ve already been told.”
“Her car be big enough for the family?”
“No Sir, but they’re taking your limousine.”
“Nice of me to have offered it.” The sarcasm was interrupted by another telephone call. Bennett listened again, his face grim.
“Right people, we have contamination. The smoke plume is hot; not very, but enough to cause problems. Get the emergency procedures started. The wind is taking it out to sea and a Navy P6M is monitoring it, but we can’t take chances. Move.”
Outside, Selma was walking dumbly towards the way out. Unobtrusively she was joined by three pilots from her husband’s squadron. They gently but firmly steered her to the waiting limousine. “One of the boys is picking your car up, Sellie.” The words were as quiet as all the other actions.
“Red Studebaker Eclipse. Sorry, you all know that.” Her voice was flat and neutral, as gray and washed out as her skin color. The men with her exchanged glances, it was obvious that Selma was in a state of severe shock. The only thing they couldn’t understand was how she was keeping going.
“We’ll go to the school first, pick up your children. They don’t know yet. Do you want us to tell them what’s happened?”
“No, no. I’ll do that. They’ll know a Valkyrie’s gone in; everybody for miles around can see that smoke and know what it is. They’ll be worrying and fretting. We have to tell them soon. Have our parents been told?”
“Yes, the base chaplain called on them. It was fortunate your parents were staying with Mike’s father. He’s staying with them now. Where to?”
“School first. Then can you take us all to my father-in-law’s house? The kids can stay there. I’ll go over to our quarters later.”
“No, Sellie, you won’t. Kit Carson was quite firm about it. We stay with you all the time, drive you around, whatever it takes. When our shift finishes, you’ll have a couple more of us to stay with you and the kids. We were told to make sure you take at least 72 hours leave; more if you need it. Look, that’s your car isn’t it? Better be because Kennie’s driving it. He’ll tail us over.”
Four hours later, Selma was in her married quarters. One of her companions sat in the car outside. The teachers guessed what was happening when the official limousine had pulled into the car park and Selma had been escorted into the building. The principal had given her his office to tell the children and she’d hugged them while she’d told them that their father wouldn’t ever be coming back. They were with their grandparents now; the enormity of what happened still hadn’t sunk in. Then, she’d been driven back to the quarters she’d shared with her husband. She knew the drill. With her husband dead, she had to vacate these quarters within 30 days. The waiting list for married quarters was too long to allow any exceptions. She’d checked her husband’s desk for any material there that should be returned to his squadron and started the process of clearing up.
Now, she was carefully packing the contents of the hidden compartment in her wardrobe into a suitcase. All her costumes, including the 1920s ‘gangster’s moll’ dress she’d bought on their holiday in Cuba. She’d worn them to please her husband; now she would never wear them for anybody else. She closed the case, locked it and took it downstairs. Then, in what had once been their living room, she sank to her knees and started a long wailing scream.
Casa Rosada Presidential Palace, Buenos Aires, Argentina
President Videla sat at his desk, watching the shadows lengthen as dusk fell. The Argentine Army was pulling back from the borders, the Air Force was on its bases and licking its wounds while the Navy was heading for port. The country’s air defense radars had picked up more than a hundred American bombers orbiting points surrounding the country. If the publications were true, they were one thousand miles from their targets. Or, put another way, 23 minutes from whatever it was they had been assigned to destroy.
A hundred bombers; a tiny fraction of the aerial might SAC could throw at its intended targets. The Americans had been serious. Whatever that bumbling fool Carter might have said or wanted, the iron fist was still there, still clutching its thunderbolts. All it had ever needed was a President with the will to use the power that iron fist provided. Galtieri had been wrong. He had made a mistake that all too many others had made when dealing with the Americans but Videla knew he would pay the price for the other man’s blunders.
There was a crash outside his office, shouting, the sound of people running. Videla sighed. He had guessed this was coming so the crackle of rifle and machine carbine fire came as no great surprise. It was a little sooner than he had expected but perhaps Galtieri had had this planned all along. Just as a contingency of course. The gunfire came closer then ceased. There was a brief period of silence, a few seconds, no more than that. Then there was another crash as his doors were kicked open.
The men who strode in, covering him with their machine carbines were naval troops. Probably some of Astrid’s swimmer-commandos. They had the look; the hint of mad dog in their eyes. They made a point of ‘clearing’ the room, throwing open doors and checking cabinets, presumably looking for hidden guards or concealed exits. Or, perhaps, just throwing their weight around. Behind them, Galtieri made his entrance with all the unnecessary flamboyance that was a part of his nature.
“You sniveling worm.” Galtieri’s voice was an odd mixture of triumph and loathing. “You sold out our men.”
“No, I saved our country. Operation Soberania was dead the moment the Americans decided to move. Would you rather see those Valkyries making their bombing runs on our cities?”
“Soberania is not dead. With your treason out of the way, we can move again.” The voice had changed. There was now anger in it; anger mixed with a good dose of insanity.
“You might think so, but nobody else will. Everybody knows those bombers are just waiting for a show of bad faith on our part. The Americans may even be hoping for it, so they can show their desire for a peaceful world, as they define it anyway, is unchanged and still has its teeth. In any case, Operation Soberania was based on us achieving tactical and strategic surprise. That has gone. The Chilean Army is guarding the passes. Their Air Force, backed by American carrier aircraft, is on full alert and their Navy is at sea. A war now will be long and bloody and that our economy cannot stand. We will not win that war. Operation Soberania is dead, Galtieri. Accept it.”
Galtieri waved to his men. They moved to the President and nudged him with their guns. He stood and smiled sadly at Galtieri: in a strange way Videla was relieved that he didn’t have to deal with this situation any more.
As the men took him out, Galtieri slipped behind the desk Videla had once oc
cupied and gave his first order as the new President of Argentina. “Do it in the courtyard. We don’t want the inside walls damaged.”
The commandos nodded and left. Galtieri looked around at his new office then picked up the telephone to the Operations Room. “Operations, cancel all remaining troop and aircraft movements. Operation Soberania is defunct. Say again, Operation Soberania is over, abandoned. Prepare to execute Operation Rosario in its place.”
PART TWO ROSARIO
CHAPTER ONE SECOND CHANCES
King Edward Point, South Georgia
HMS Collingwood rocked gently against the wooden wharf. The roller at the end of the brow rubbed against the rubber anechoic coating with a peculiar squeaking noise that put Captain Gregory Hooper in mind of his days at school long before he had joined the Royal Marines. Blackboards, and the sound of erasers being drawn across them. Looking ashore, the sight of the party of nine men who had gathered to greet them reinforced the memories. There was something about academics that never changed, even though their surroundings might rather drastically. Hooper was even tempted to look around for some old bomb sites for a quick game of “Resistance and Collaborators” but he restrained himself. In any case, if the situation blew the way everybody was expecting it to, there would be bomb sites enough in the not far distant future. Every time Collingwood had popped her satcom mast up, the situation had got worse.
“Pleased to see you and your men here Captain, although I’m not sure why you have made the trip down to this forgotten end of the world.” The man who appeared to be leading the party sounded as if the arrival of the Marines was a serious imposition.
“Just a precaution Sir. You are?”
“James Walsingham. I’m the Postmaster here and, in the absence of anybody else qualified, unfortunate enough to be in charge of this settlement. The Commissioner has been away for some weeks now.”
Hooper frowned, he hadn’t been aware of that. “Away Mister Walsingham? I didn’t know that.”
“He took ill about three weeks ago. There are twenty of your men here? I hope you brought supplies with you. We’re only fitted up to look after the British Antarctic Survey base here. Nine of them you know. We just don’t have the resources to look after all of your people. Especially since the rest of the Antarctic Survey team will be coming in when winter closes down. How long you staying here for?”
Hooper’s feelings deepened. He’d seen enough fouled-up situations in his time and this had all the hall-marks of being a real classic. “We’ve got some supplies with us, more will be coming in soon. Mermaid is on her way down to pick you all up and she’ll drop off everything we’ll need.”
“Pick us up? Why should we leave here? Just what’s going on?”
“We hope, nothing. But there’s a chance the Argentines will try to make a grab for this place and we want to make sure they get a suitably hot reception.”
“Ridiculous; absolutely ridiculous. I know the Argies here; damned fine group of people. Very friendly. Make a grab for the place you say? Stuff and nonsense!”
“Argies, here?” Hooper snapped on to the words, giving them the shaking and mauling that a rottweiler would have been proud of. “What Argies? How many? Where? How long?”
“Arrived about a month ago. Scrap merchants, come to dismantle the old whaling station at Leigh Harbour. Don’t know how many of them. What do you expect? We should have sent somebody to count them?”
“Actually, yes.” Hooper’s calm voice gave no outward sign of his feelings, most of which involved strangling the postmaster. “That would have been a good idea. And you didn’t tell anybody about their arrival?”
“Why should we? They wouldn’t have come here unless everything as in order. Just what is going on?” Walsingham was becoming belligerent, beginning to understand the true dimensions of the affair and just how negligent his own behavior had been.
“What is going on, Mister Walsingham, is that a full-scale war is about to start. We had hoped, although we’ve been planning contingencies, to avoid getting caught out. Our presence here is one of those contingency plans. Only from what you’ve been telling us, any hope that we could sit this out has been dead for more than a month. These Argentines, did they arrive after the Commissioner left sick?”
“Of course not. When Will Durand, he’s the Commissioner you know, got sick, the Argentines had just arrived. They had a doctor with them, well a medic they called him, and he said it was appendicitis. We all thought it was a gyppy tummy, but he was the doctor. So, they offered to fly him out. The trawler they came in on had a helicopter, you see.”
“Oh, I see all right.” Hooper was trying to absorb the situation and decide what to do. From what he could see, he was in the classic situation of not many options, all of them bad. “Stokes, get back on board the submarine, fast. Get the skipper to tell London what’s going on down here. We’ve got Argies already on the island and that the Commissioner is missing, presumed dead.”
“What!” Walsingham went bright red and appeared to be gulping for air.
“You don’t seriously think they took him to hospital do you? If he’s very lucky, he’s locked up in a store-room somewhere. More likely, they took him out on their helicopter and dropped him into the sea as soon as they were out of sight of here. For your information, civilian scrap merchants don’t have medics. They have doctors. Military units have medics.” Hooper thought for a second. His next priority made him feel cold. “According to our information, there are two women here. Where are they and please don’t tell me the Argentines took them away as well.”
“Those two? No. They’re off in the hills somewhere. Claim to be making a documentary film about the birds or something.”
“Did they leave a movement schedule?”
“I think so…”
“Didn’t you look at it?” Hooper almost screamed in frustration. “No, I thought…”
“Dear God, that’ll be a first. They left that schedule so you’d know where they were and then. That way, if they got into trouble, people would know where to start looking. And you never even looked at it?”
“Look, I’m just the postmaster here. I can’t be expected to… “
“You were quick enough to claim the leadership though weren’t you? Get me that schedule now. MOVE! Harry, get our stuff ashore. We’ve stepped right into the middle of a situation here. Curly, pick four of the boys; get started on your way to Leith Harbor and do a scouting job. Assume the opposition are Argentine Marines until we learn different. Dusty, get another four, then set off after those women as soon as we’ve found their schedule. What happens then, that’s up to you and what goes on here. Either come back in or go into hiding out there. That leaves us with ten of us here. Lofty, start working out how to defend this place.”
“Defend, Boss?”
“We’ve lost the initiative already. We have to assume they’ll hit us first, especially if they’ve got a spotter out there and see us arriving.” Behind him, an elephant seal on the beach roared its annoyance at the disturbance. Hooper could see his point.
Washington International Airport, Washington DC, USA
Supersonic airliners had made more of a difference to international politics than anybody might have suspected. It took a Fairey Aviation Concord just three and a quarter hours to fly from London to Washington; that made it possible for the Prime Minister to make this emergency trip over and return within a single working day. With the Anglo-Argentine confrontation rapidly reaching boiling point, that ability was of inestimable value. Exactly why that was so would be, the Prime Minister thought, an unexpected surprise to the Americans. Whether they would be relieved or concerned at the development would be an interesting question.
The sleek airliner was already parked in the VIP reception area, far removed from the big terminals where passengers were poured on to the waiting people-haulers. There were several other aircraft in the area including two of the new VC-170s, the military version of the North American-Boeing 37
07. One of them sported the blue-and-white paint scheme of the aircraft allocated to the President; the other was an Air Force VC-170A, presumably to move key staff around. The NAB-3707 had been one of the weapons used against the Fairey Concord in the bitter campaign waged to have the aircraft cancelled. After all, as the critics of the British program had pointed out, it was two thirds of the American aircraft at three quarters of the price. On paper that was true enough. It carried 120 passengers against 180, cruised at Mach 2.05 instead of Mach 3.15 and had a range of 4,500 miles as opposed to 5,750. What those numbers didn’t say was that the British aircraft also had a running cost that was also two thirds of its American rival. On lower-density routes, where an airline could find 120 passengers per aircraft but not 180, that meant it generated more profits. The Concord had done well on those shorter, lower density traffic patterns, vindicating Fairey’s faith in their design.
Newton reflected that it hadn’t been the first time Fairey had had to fight a determined campaign against those who wanted to shut one of their projects down. The memory of an older fight came back to him, one that had done much to shape the European aircraft industry. It was keyed by the Presidential Rotodyne that was already spooling up its engines. The VC-138 would fly him direct from the airport to the White House. There had been a grimly determined effort by parts of the British establishment to kill the whole Rotodyne project. What might have happened if it had succeeded chilled Newton, Fairey had fought off the attack and turned their concept into a spectacularly successful military and civil aircraft. It was hard to imagine a world without Rotodynes. How else would people get from their homes in the centers of cities and towns to the airports that lay well beyond the city limits?
Unlike the transports used by airlines and armies, the VC-138 had no rear ramp. Instead, it was fitted with large side doors that were served by retractable stairways. The British delegation filed on board and settled down in the well-upholstered seats. The doors slammed shut and the sound from outside diminished abruptly, even though the Kuznetsov turboprops that powered the Rotodyne were already reaching maximum power. With the odd whistling whine that was its characteristic trademark, the VC-138 took off and headed for the White House.
