by Stuart Slade
“The ship’s not here yet, and we have official property here, most valuable official property.”
“Mister Walsingham. We believe that Argentine ships are closing on South Georgia. Exactly how far away, we are not quite sure but the margin between the arrival of HMS Mermaid and the Argentine ships will be very small. Perhaps only a few hours. There is a grave danger that if her stay here is extended beyond the minimum possible, she may get caught in port by the arriving Argentine forces. We have to get the civilians here on board as quickly as possible and get her back to sea with the minimum of delay.”
“That’s not my responsibility. It’s more than my job’s worth to allow any of this material to be left here.”
“Mister Walsingham. Frankly Sir, I do not care in the slightest what you think your job is worth. What I do care about is getting the civilians on this island out of here before the Argentine invasion force lands and the fighting starts. I will do whatever is necessary to achieve that end. If that includes having you locked up in a temporary cell, then so be it. Mermaid will not be docking at this jetty for more than a few minutes. So, decide which of these bags you love the most and the rest go into the sea. Got it?”
Walsingham said nothing. Instead he stomped off and started rooting through the pile of bags. Hooper was amused to note that the bag he finally selected was his own personal property, not one of the ‘official’ crates he had expressed so much concern about.
Field Exploration Camp, Penguin River, South Georgia
“Ohh, look, Cynthia. The brutal and licentious soldiery have arrived.”
“At last. After six lonely months on this island we’re going to be brutally ravished.”
“That is as may be ma’am, were we soldiers. But we’re not, we’re Marines. You ladies are, I take it, Cynthia Paine-Williams and Georgina Harcourt?”
“We are.” Cynthia looked at the five Marines and dropped the dumb blonde act on the spot. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it? Badly wrong, Sergeant?”
“Sergeant Bill Miller, ma’am. Dusty for short. And yes, things have gone very wrong indeed. Have you been listening to the radio up here?”
“We tried but our set is out. Georgy here is a whiz with radios, but she couldn’t fix it.”
“Ham. Ranked as expert by the British Amateur Radio Association. Daddy was a radio operator in the Resistance and he taught me himself.” Georgina flipped her hair back and her smile faded as quickly as her friend’s had done. “But I lost contact with King Edward Point and Grytviken about three weeks ago. When I saw you, I thought Bill Durand had sent you up to find us. I’m going to give him a right telling-off, you see if I don’t. The agreement was, if we went off the air for 72 hours, he’d send a team up to find us. We’d left our movement schedule at the base and we stuck to it religiously. So he’s in trouble.”
“More than you can possibly know. Why didn’t you try to get back when your radio went down?” Miller was curious.
“We’re about ten miles out as the crow flies, not that any do down here, but it’s more like twenty when we go around the bay. And the weather has been frightful. So, we thought we would stay here where there is shelter and plenty of food.”
“We’ve done this kind of expedition before, Dusty.” Cynthia seemed on the defensive. “We’re not amateurs. First rule in a situation like this is to stay put where we can be found. But Bill let us down.”
“Quite right, ladies. But the situation has changed now. While you’ve been up here, there’s been a near-war in Chile with the Argies. Got to shooting it did, but the Septics stepped in and banged heads together. Now, we think the Argies will come here. They may have already started. The reason why nobody came to check on you is Bill Durand got sick and a bunch of Argie troops disguised as scrap metal merchants took him away to ‘treat’ him. Walsingham took over and my guess is that Durand isn’t breathing any more. So we need to get you out. Excuse me, Jacko, got the radio set up?”
“We have, Sarge. Got the Boss loud and clear. He’s not happy.”
“Ah. I was afraid of that. Gimme the set. Sir? Dusty here. We’ve got the girls, they’re safe and sound. Put on a bit of a dolly-bird act when we got here, but turned out there’s a couple of hard heads buried under the fluff…..Twenty miles back the girls reckon. 24 hours?” Cynthia shook her head vigorously and traced an x in the air followed by two fingers held up. “Wait one, the girls disagree.”
“Allow for two days. It’s ice-covered rocks all the way and Georgy and I will slow you down. You might make it in 36 without us.”
“48 hours, Sir. Yeah, I understand. Wait one.”
“How much food have you got here?”
Georgina laughed. “We provisioned for six months and we’ve been here five weeks. You brought some food as well of course.”
“Seven days for us. So we’re OK for what, another five weeks?”
“Easily.”
“Here’s the thing. The Argies are due in less than 24 hours and there’ll be a hell of a firefight when they land. The sloop picking you up will have to be here and gone in that time. We can try to hoof it back to the Point and risk getting caught in the open or hole up here. How many people know where you are?”
“Only Bill Durand and anybody who read our movement schedule.”
“So we can hole up here then. We’ll get picked up before the food runs out. If not, we can always shoot a few penguins.”
“No!” Georgina was horrified. “We’re here to study them, not eat them.”
“I wouldn’t say that ma’am. Roasted King Penguin is very tasty. Season the penguin breasts well with salt and pepper and dip each piece in melted fat. Roll in flour and fry to seal the meat. When each side is crisp, put the breasts in a tray and pour over the fat from the frying pan. Sprinkle with dried onion from a ration pack and roast until tender. If you want gravy, just stir a teaspoon of flour into the cooking fat then add a spoon-full of gravy granules, also from a ration pack, and sufficient water to thicken.” Miller had been through the Arctic Warfare survival cookery course.
“Anyway, we’ll talk about that later. Sir? Right, we can stay holed up here then.. Sir? … Better we stay put… . We’ve got food for five weeks and we can stretch that if we need to. Hut is pretty well hidden already and we can improve on that a lot. Yeah, that’s assuming Durand didn’t talk. Just come and get us ASAP, Sir.”
“So we’re staying here.” Cynthia sounded scared. “And you think they tortured Bill to find out where everybody is?”
“Oh no.” Georgina was nearly in tears. “And we were saying such nasty things about him. The poor man.”
“With your radio out, there’s no way you could have known. Let’s get settled down and see what we can do to make this place less obvious.”
Whaling Station, Leigh Harbour, South Georgia
“Scrap merchants.” Sergeant ‘Curly’ Carter loaded the words with contempt. “Sir, they’re flying the Argentine flag here. They have vehicles on-site. They look like Sno-Cats. I don’t think they’re armored. No sign of artillery. Estimated number is between 35 and 40. That makes them a platoon or so. I think they’re one of the Argentine Navy APCA swimmer-commando outfits.”
“Nasty bunch by all accounts.” Marine Patterson looked disgusted. In his eyes the behavior of the APCA units in Argentina was a stain on the reputation of every Marine unit everywhere.
“Very nasty. Is base on the line?”
“Here, Sarge.”
Carter took the microphone. “Sir, if they’re scrap merchants, I’m the flying Dutchman. We have a count of forty maximum and eight Sno-Cats… No, Sir, I don’t think they’re military Sno-Cats. They don’t seem to be armed. Swimmer-Commando unit we think. Yeah, if we get the chance, we’d be doing the world a favor. Wait one.”
“Sarg, there’s something going on down there. Take a look.”
Carter took the binoculars and watched the activity. “Sir, they’re fuelling the Sno-Cats. Definitely not military Sno-Cats for all they�
��re camouflaged. They’re using petrol not diesel. From 55 gallon drums. They’re coming your way, we can be sure of that. Looks like six of the ‘cats will be carrying the unit, the other two supplies… That would make sense, wouldn’t it, Sir. Landing force from the ships, these boys close the back door to stop us escaping into the island. .. We’ll do what we can, Sir.”
Carter closed the button on the microphone. “Boss wants us to set up an ambush, try and slow the Argies down a bit.”
There was a sound of teeth being sucked. Patterson voiced the collective opinion. “Going to be rough Sarge. We’ve got one rocket launcher and four rounds for eight ‘cats. And no machine gun.”
“We’ve got rifles and grenades. They’ll have to do. Whoa, what’s going on down there?”
“Just carrying on with the fuelling up Sarg. Take a look.”
Through the binoculars, Carter saw a pair of men rolling out another 55 gallon dram of gasoline. The angle of the sun, the position of the heavy cloud banks that marked the storm approaching from the east and the surface of the rocks all combined to give what appeared to be a snail-trail behind the drum the men were rolling on the ground. Then, Carter realized it wasn’t a trick of the light and shadow. There really was a trail of shining liquid behind the drum. It barely had time to register before fire streaked along the trail. The fuel drum exploded. A ball of smoky black flame engulfed the two men rolling the dram. They ran out of the fireball, alight from head to foot; their screams audible even at this distance. Behind them, the building that was obviously the fuel store was also burning. The fire had ignited the drums within and sent them through the air, trailing fire as the drums burst and the contents burned.
Carter watched in awe as the fire spread to engulf two of the Sno-Cats. The men surrounding them ran clear as the vehicles erupted into flames. The base was in chaos. Men ran with fire extinguishers; a hopeless gesture if ever there had been one. Others were trying to tend to the burned men. There were at least four on the ground and who knew who else had been inside the fuel store? Watching the scene, Carter imagined he could almost feel the heat of the fire on his face. The scene at the base had the same terrible fascination as a railroad wreck. He found it very hard to tear his eyes away from the sight. Carter forced himself to turn away and picked up the radio again.
“Sir, change in situation here. They’ve just had an accident down there. Bad one. Rolling a fuel drum and it caught light. Flashed forward to two of the ‘cats and back to the fuel store. Looks like they’ve got four badly burned down there….I guess sparks from a hobnailed boot set off the petrol vapor. Bad stuff petrol fumes. Only needs a slight spark to set them off.”
Carter was laying it on thick. Who knew who else might be listening to this and he didn’t want to voice his real thoughts. Because, to him, it had seemed as if the fuel store had exploded first and the fire flashed forward along the liquid trail to the men rolling the drum. There had been something odd about the whole incident. Professional units did not make mistakes as clumsy as the one he had just watched. He shook his head, dismissing the feeling there was more to the incident than met the eye. “That’s right, Sir. They won’t be moving from here for a day or so; not with their fuel gone.”
Carter put down the radio and looked at the scene below. Then, he scanned the low hills that overlooked the derelict whaling station. Suddenly, they didn’t seem as forbidding as they had before.
King Edward Point, South Georgia
“Lofty, we’ve heard from Dusty and Curly. Dusty’s staying put with the girls, they can’t get back here for a couple of days and we can’t afford to wait. We got a real break though, according to Curly. There’s an Argie unit at Leith Harbor right enough and they were getting ready to move over and shut the back door. Only they had some kind of fuelling accident with their Sno-Cats and they won’t be moving for hours.”
“A fuelling accident. Now that’s very convenient.” Sergeant Shorthouse spoke carefully and thoughtfully. “I wonder if we’ve got some friends on this island?”
There was a long, pregnant pause. Both men were thinking the same thing. Did the fabled Auxiliary Units really exist? The legends about them were always denied. The official explanation was that they were disinformation put out by the Government-in-Exile in Canada during World War Two. Part of an effort to get some of the German attention off the Resistance. That was the official line. There are no such things as the Auxiliary Units and there never have been. The stories are partly World War Two disinformation and partly the overheated imagination of tabloid journalists. And that is the end of the matter.
But a sudden, unexpected and completely deniable ‘accident’ that took out the fuel reserves of the most threatening Argentine unit sounded just the sort of thing that they might have pulled off. The German policy of massive reprisals against civilians had taught the resistance to disguise their attacks as deniable accidents, and taught them well. If the Auxiliary Units existed of course. Hooper shook his head. If they did, they certainly weren’t part of the armed forces. Anybody who tried to make inquiries about joining them found themselves the subject of career-ending ridicule. They’d get painted as gullible fools who got taken in by modern-day fairy tales and they’d end up in backwater postings where they had nothing to do and nowhere to go.
Hooper shook his head. Accidents happened. It was a mark of how desperate he was that he even took the legends halfway seriously. He had ten men left to defend South Georgia against a whole Argentine naval landing force. If Mermaid didn’t turn up in time, the situation was far beyond critical. It was no wonder he was seeking help from myths and shadows. Just where was Mermaid!
HMS Mermaid, North of South Georgia
“This bloody storm is slowing us down.” Saying the obvious was sometimes a cathartic release. This wasn’t one of those times. Instead, vocalizing the problem seemed to make it more pressing and dire. The storm was slowing Mermaid down sure enough. Every minute it did so cut into the margin of time she had available to get into South Georgia, lift out the civilians and get clear. Somewhere out there, lost in the storm front, was an Argentine task group whose orders were to land troops on South Georgia. What they planned to do with the civilians there wasn’t known. Given their behavior in their own country, it probably wasn’t good.
It wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Mermaid was a sloop; her hull was designed to deal with bad seas. She wasn’t fast, the book said 24 knots but that was on a good day with a smooth hull. Two years out of Britain, on a day that was far from good, she could make 22 at best. With this storm, she was down to 18 and had been for almost 24 hours. That put her almost a hundred miles behind her planned position. A destroyer or frigate, with its hull optimized for speed, would have been slowed down much more. The storm was easing at last. That was one good thing, but the damage had already been done. If it passed now and she strained her diesels, it would take her at least ten hours to get to her destination. Did she have that time?
Commander Michael Blaise knew that the answer to that question was unknown. It depended on too many variables, too much on what the Argentines had decided to do and how fast they could move. Reports were that a small assault group had been scheduled to carry out the attack on South Georgia; two destroyers, two frigates and a landing ship. A small assault group to be sure but one entirely adequate for the task at hand. Mermaid could put up a decent fight against one of the frigates, probably. Two would be desperate odds. Against the destroyers, she would need a miracle. “Anything on radar?” He was desperately hoping that the answer would be negative.
It was. Blaise sighed in relief. No news really was good news. That was when the electronic warfare systems operator called the bridge.
“Captain, we are picking up multiple search radars. D-band and E-band. We have the D-band set isolated as a Septic SPS-40. The E-band set we’re not sure of but we think it’s an Italian RAN-10S. Two of each Sir, and we’re picking up flashes of a Decca navigation radar, commercial type.”
“Number One, get our own radar offline now. I want full emcon, immediately.”
“Yes Sir.” Lieutenant Keighley rattled the orders out and Mermaid’s radar and communications systems shut down. “The Argies, Sir?”
“Two Septic radars, two Eye-tie jobs. That sounds like two destroyers and two frigates doesn’t it? And the civvy job, she’d be the transport. Sparky, got a bearing and track on those contacts.”
“Got bearing Sir. Abbey Hill gives us 180 degrees, almost exactly due south of us. No range data yet.”
Blaise drummed his fingers on the bridge console. Abbey Hill was the standard British electronic surveillance system. In his opinion, it was as good as any in the world and better than most. Its array of receivers wrapped around his foremast gave a fine directional cut. Against a stationary transmitter, he could get move a few miles to establish a baseline, get a cross bearing and pin down that transmitter accurately enough to engage it. But against radars on ships, it was much harder to get range data. It could be done, given time and luck, but Blaise had a nasty feeling he had just run out of both. That 180 degree contact bearing put the contacts directly between him and South Georgia.
“Sparky, any idea on range at all?”
“No, Sir. Well, in these conditions there’s only a limited chance of significant ducting. So, that would put them within radar horizon range. Less than 50 nautical miles certainly. Probably less than twenty. Signal strength is still below detection threshold but it’s climbing.”
“Close, Sir.”
“Too close, Number One. Bring her around to oh-eight-oh. Let’s stretch the distance a bit and get over the radar horizon before this clag starts to clear up.” Blaise guessed that it was only radar interference caused by the storm, the clag as the radar community called it, that had stopped the Argentine ships spotting him. They were in the trailing edge of the storm. The clag was dispersing slowly and the radars would be gaining in range and precision.
“South Georgia, Sir?” Keighley put the question as quietly as possible.
