by Stuart Slade
Catamarca was still raising steam but she had enough power to ease away from her berth at King Edward and start crossing the bay to the inferno that marked the spot Punta Alta had been moored. Leonardi could feel the heat from the fire through the open hatch that led to his bridge wing. He honestly doubted whether she could be saved. Even with Catamarca lending her help and her pumps to the battle, the frigate was already far gone. The funnel was surrounded by fire and that meant the machinery spaces underneath were already compromised.
“Captain, permission to enter the bridge?” Blaise’s voice cut through Leonardi’s contemplation of the disaster that had struck so unexpectedly.
“Granted. Commander Blaise, this is not a good time.”
“Sir, I would like to volunteer the services of my men to help treat the wounded off that frigate. We have our ship’s poiso…. the ship’s surgeon and all the crewmen are trained in first aid. We cannot help you fight the fire, but we can help save the wounded.”
“Thank you, God knows, there will be enough wounded waiting for treatment.” Leonardi winced as another explosion racked the burning frigate. The 47mm magazines? he thought. If they were cooking off then the ship was finished. Then, he turned his mind to bringing the Catamarca alongside the Punta Alta. As soon as he had the ships close, the jets of water started to arch over the gap, pounding down at the fires.
“Captain, Sir, message from ashore. The crew of Punta Alta are trying to fight the fires from quayside. They ask you to try and sweep the fire aft, at least to try and keep the forecastle deck clear.” The signals officer pushed the message into his Captain’s hands, but his eyes were riveted on the scene where Punta Alta was dying.
Leonardi nodded. The frigate was already settling in the water. The sea hissed and steamed as Punta Alta sank deeper. Given the depths shown on the charts and size of the ship, he guessed she would sink to main deck level before coming to rest on the bottom. Whether she would ever move from there or be scrapped where she lay was entirely another matter.
There was another brilliant white flare as an additional section of superstructure collapsed. The sight made Leonardi shake his head sadly. Building the upperworks of a ship out of aluminum had seemed such a good idea when it had first been proposed. It saved weight and that was an important thing in a generation of ships that had their superstructures enlarged to carry modern radars while the introduction of gas turbines meant they had also lost the weight of boilers and steam turbines deep in the ship. Now, looking at the sight of Punta Alta, Leonardi was very glad that his Catamarca was solid steel.
The power of his hoses was driving the fires back a little, but in his heart, Leonardi knew that the task was hopeless. The fires had spread too far, too fast. All he was doing was buying time for the remainder of the crew to abandon the doomed warship.
Field Exploration Camp, Penguin River, South Georgia
Even from ten miles away, it was obvious that the Argentine frigate was finished. Night vision goggles weren’t that useful any more. The intense light from the burning ship swamped the systems. It didn’t matter, even normal binoculars showed enough detail to make it clear that she was sinking. The big destroyer from King Edward Point had pulled alongside her and was dousing her with water, but it was too little, too late. It was a gutsy thing to do, though. Miller saluted the unknown Argentine commander who had risked his ship to aid another.
It was useless. That frigate was doomed. She would burn for hours and her wreck would be too hot to enter for days. She would settle on the bottom and the jagged rocks would finish what was left of her structure. Miller shook his head and dug out the status report he had yet to send. Carefully, he amended it.
“Two destroyers, one frigate, one transport.”
PART THREE CORPORATE
CHAPTER ONE STRIKING BACK
Darwin Road, Port Stanley, Falkland Islands
The fact it was obvious what had happened didn’t make the sight any less mournful. The truck had careered off the road at the start of the acute right-hand bend and hit the line of rocks that marked the start of the dip to the peat march below. The impact with those rocks had ruptured its fuel tank and caused the wreckage to be soaked with diesel fuel. The truck had ended its ride down the slope with its nose in the peat. There, the spilled diesel had ignited. Somehow, it had caught fire.
That was a bit of a mystery right there. Diesel fuel wasn‘t supposed to burn like that. A mystery? Major Patricio Dowling sneered to himself at the suggestion. He was rapidly coming to the conclusion that petroleum-based fuels and the Argentine armed forces didn’t mix very well. The three weeks that had elapsed since the invasion had been one long litany of accidents a good majority of which involved the negligent handling of fuel. Leaking fuel drams, ruptured pipelines, careless spills igniting; one incident after another. He looked up at the glowering bulk of Sapper’s Hill that overlooked the scene of the wreck. It was strange how even the landscape here seemed to be hostile.
“Any survivors?” Dowling snarled the question at a mud-soaked soldier who was struggling up the slope with a litter. The sheet on it covered the burned corpse of a soldier. He’d been found a few meters from the main burn site.
“No, Sir. The peat marsh stopped the men on board running away from the wreck fast enough. They all got caught when the truck burst into flames. This one got the furthest, poor devil. All it did for him was make sure it took him a little longer to burn.”
“The driver?”
“Still in the cab. Charred.” The two soldiers with the litter hurried off, before the notorious Major Dowling could develop more of an interest in them.
That made it fourteen dead. The two men driving the truck and the twelve in the back. Useless conscripts. Dowling had opposed the withdrawal of the Marines from the island while there were still British Royal Marines on the loose. They had started a guerilla war in the inner regions of the island and were proving disturbingly good at it. The Army conscripts who had replaced the Marines weren’t even in the same league. The rash of accidents wasn’t helping. It seemed as soon as the Army tried to push beyond its established perimeters, their ability to drive safely fell apart. As a result, the Argentine forces hadn’t even managed to push deep into the islands yet, let alone try and bring those areas under their control. With the exception of the big Air Force base at Goose Green and the armored units around Teal Inlet, the rest of East Falkland was still largely British.
“Your report?” Dowling snarled at the lieutenant who was scribbling notes on his pad.
“Routine accident, Sir. The driver hit the slope far too fast and lost control of the vehicle when he had to make the curve. He hit the rocks, rolled over and that was that. Going by the marks on the road, I’d guess he was doing at least 80 kilometers per hour when he started down. With the roads wet like this and all the mud, he’d had it from there.”
Dowling nodded. It was the most likely explanation. Poor driving skills shown by an inadequately-trained conscript. Only this one had taken an entire patrol with him. He looked again at the burned-out wreck of the truck. If the survivors of the British Marines out in the hills weren’t bad enough. Dowling was not a superstitious man, but he had suddenly had an uneasy feeling that there were ghosts on the island. Malignant, vengeful ghosts. He shook himself and angrily dismissed the thought before looking around for somebody to shout at. Above him, Sapper Hill glowered down.
Field Exploration Camp, Penguin River, South Georgia
What had started off as being something of an adventure had long ago turned into a frustrating and miserable endurance trial. Cynthia Paine-Williams hadn’t been able to wash properly for almost two weeks. Her hair had been cut down to a short stubble and her make-up had run out over a week before. She didn’t just look like a tramp; she was painfully aware that she smelled like one. The only consolation was that everybody else was in the same boat. There was another difference as well. She was carrying an L1 rifle and knew how to use it. As much as anybody could withou
t actually firing it. She found the stubby 7mm bullpup rifle remarkably easy to carry. Of that, she was glad. Hiding out from the Argies wasn’t a game after all; it was deadly serious.
She was the guard, watching the ground around them while Jocko ran his check on the port in the distance. The burned out frigate was still in its place, listing and half submerged with a small trawler-like merchant ship next to it. The big merchant ship was out in the middle of the bay with the other frigate and one of the very large destroyers anchored at Grytviken.
“The other destroyer’s not back then?” She kept her voice down to a very low whisper.
“Nope, no sign of it. Been away two weeks now. She’d be back by now if she was coming. Right, the radar station is still up on the hill over King Edward Point. They haven’t moved that yet.” He paused for a second. “Now that’s new.”
“What we got?”
“They’ve taken the anti-ship missiles off that burned-out frigate and set them up as a shore battery.”
“Where are they?”
Jocko handed her the binoculars and took over her job of scanning the hills for trouble. “See those long, red-roofed buildings on King Edward Point? Follow them across the water to the other shore. Now, up a touch and there they are. See them? Sort of buried in a square of rocks? That’s called a revetment. Where they are, they can take down any ship that tries to come through the harbor entrance.”
“That’s awful. You’ll tell London, won’t you?”
“Of course, Cyn, but it’s worse than you think. The position shows the Argies are working their way along this shore. Sooner or later, they’ll look at this outcrop and think what a wonderful place it would be for an observation point.”
“Oh.” Suddenly, being on the island was even less of a game than it had been before. “How long do you think it’ll be before they find us?”
“Depends on them really. We’ve had a pretty good run so far. They could start moving towards us any time. I just hope the Navy gets its finger out and gets us away from here.”
Civilian Camp, Deep Inside South Georgia
“All I can say is, thank God for bureaucracy.” Sergeant Harry Wharton spoke with fervor. The refuge was supposed to have been stocked with food to last ten people for ten days. Somehow, the paperwork had been fouled up. The food supply here was enough to last those ten people for one hundred days. It was a minimal diet for the climate and, oddly, most of it was Royal Navy survival rations that appeared to have been brought quite recently. Still, the food was better than nothing for there were fourteen people in the refuge; seven civilians, the two surviving SBS men from Grytviken and the five SBS who had been scouting Leith Harbor.
“Any word from Dusty over with the girls?” Wharton was de facto commander of the SBS unit survivors after Captain Hooper had been killed at Grytviken.
“Not directly, Sergeant, no. But the flash messages tell us something. Somebody’s keeping a regular watch on Grytviken and if it isn’t them, then who?”
“A good question indeed, Lofty. We can but hope the Argies can’t do decent intercepts, or if they can, they can’t read our codes. Because if they can, they’ll have come to the same conclusion and they’ll run some patrols along that coastline.”
“Foot? Or helo?”
“Could be either. They’ve got a helo. The book says they had one each on the frigates and one on the transport. Greg got one before the Argies killed him; the other must have burned out when the frigate blew up. So, they’ve got one left, probably a troop-carrying Puma. Bit surprising we haven’t seen it looking for us yet.”
“That’s Argies being smart, I reckon. We’re no threat to them out here. All they have to do is wait for our food to run out and we have to come in. They couldn’t know supply cocked things up and left ten times as much food as we can eat.”
“You’re wrong there, old son. Us being here is damned important just as the others loose on East Falkland are important. As long as we’re here, Blighty still has continuity of occupation and that’s a big thing when determining sovereignty. The Argies might not have come to mop us up yet, but they will. You can bet your own private coalmine on that, Lofty my boy. They’ll be coming out after us unless the Andrew turns up first.”
HMS Furious, Off South Georgia
“And now, fellow Furies, we have a special request from our colleagues over in the Grimy Glory. It’s that old Elvis Presley favorite
Are you lonesome tonight,
Do you miss me tonight?
Are you sorry we drifted apart? “
It was unlikely, Mullback thought, that Glorious actually has made a special request for Furious’s on-board ‘radio’ station. The two carriers had separated days earlier and had been maintaining absolute radio silence ever since. Furious had been pounding south as fast as her aging engines would allow, bringing her air group to support the amphibious assault force that was to recapture South Georgia. Or, as the ship’s orders were dogmatic in phrasing it, ‘to relieve the forces holding out in South Georgia and defeat the Argentine invading forces’. The fact that, as far as anybody knew, the forces holding out in South Georgia were five SBS men and two civilian women was a matter of supreme unconcern to anybody. International law had been swallowing elephants and straining at gnats for centuries.
Mullback opened a hatch, stepped through and dogged it behind him. Maintaining watertight integrity was a real pain, but nobody knew where the Argentine submarines were or what orders they might have. Knocking out one of the two available carriers at this early stage in the game would be a crippling blow. Courageous was working up in the UK after coming out of her accelerated refit, but it would be at least two weeks before she set sail south to join her sisters. That was too long and the brief campaigning season would be close to gone by then. So, the carriers were maintaining watertight integrity and radio silence. They were also thoroughly blacked out.
“Hi Jerry. What’s come over the radio people? Putting that blasted septic dirge on. Now, a quick blast of the pipes, that’s what we need at a time like this.”
The problem, Mullback reflected, is that Alasdair is right. A quick blast of martial music from the pipes would have gone down well right now. “Aye, you’re right Jock. Presley was never the same after he did his stint in SAC. I think the high altitude ruined his vocal chords.”
“Nah, it was spending all that time going around backwards. Bound to affect a man’s sense of values.”
Baillie and Mullback both nodded wisely at that. Elvis Presley had spent a much-publicized three-year tour of duty in SAC, technically as the rear-gunner on an RB-52. In fact they both knew full well that the tail gunner on an RB-52 did not sit in the tail, but they had also noted how the star seemed to have spent most of his time on public relations opportunities. That could affect a man’s sense of values as well.
Another hatch, this one to the pilot’s briefing room. Mullback stepped in and heard Baillie dogging the door behind him. A number of the pilots were already in their places. The two Buccaneer drivers joined them. A quick count showed that this was a big raid; there were twelve Buccaneer crews and four Sea Mirage F.2 pilots waiting to find out what was happening. The final attendees appeared and the hatch was dogged shut again.
“Welcome to this briefing, gentlemen.” Commander Frances looked at the assembled group. “I am pleased to inform you that the target for tomorrow morning is the Argentine invasion force currently in Grytviken. This strike will be the opening act in Operation Parakeet, the relief of the forces currently holding out in South Georgia.”
Frances threw back the sheet that was covering the map that dominated his end of the briefing room. “There are three primary targets. First will be the radar station here above King Edward Point. This will be the target for the first formation of Buccaneers. They will be flown by our four guests from the Yeovilton Operational Conversion Unit flying aircraft armed with ARMAT anti-radar missiles and 1,000 pound retarded bombs.
“Second formation will c
onsist of Mullback, Baillie, Johnson and Canfield. You are the four highest-scoring Highball crews in the air group. There are three ships in the bay. A frigate here, a destroyer behind her and a transport in the middle. Mullback, you take the destroyer, Baillie, you get the frigate. Whatever you do, don’t hit the frigate at the front of the line. She caught fire and is a burned-out wreck. Johnson, you take the transport. Canfield, you hang back and if anything goes wrong with the first three, fill in the gap.
“Third formation will consist of Carter, Kingsman, Williams and Tweed. Your aircraft will be armed with eight one thousand pound retarded bombs each. Your target is this battery of anti-ship missiles here. They’ll be hard to see and even harder to hit but you’ll have to do your best. I suggest you attack in two waves so that the second group can correct for any errors made by the first. That way, if the first wave gets the missiles, the second pair can bomb targets of opportunity.
“You’ll be escorted by four Mirages. Pilots Adams, Pickering, Hawkings and Snell. We don’t anticipate any hostile aircraft, but you’ll be there and loaded for bear just in case. Three radar homers and four heat-seekers each. There is reported to be a single Argentine helicopter in South Georgia. If you see it flying, discourage it from doing so again. If you spot it on the ground, make sure it stays there.
“We have detailed maps and the latest photographs available. Each team will inspect them and make up their attack plans accordingly. Any questions?”
“Flak, Sir?”
“Off the ships. Assuming they’re alongside and the destruction of the radar station gives them warning, count of three twin 47mms under radar control. We know of no missiles there. The infantry may have some shoulder-fired stuff, but that’s all.”
Baillie stuck his hand up. “Sir, what about the rest of the aircraft on board?”
