by FARMAN, ANDY
ARMAGEDDON’S SONG
Volume 3
‘FIGHT THROUGH’
Andy Farman
Copyright © 2013 Andy Farman
All rights reserved.
ISBN:1491012412
ISBN-13:978-1491012413
This book is a work of fiction and as such names, characters, places
and incidents are the products of the authors’ creation or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual persons, whether living or dead, is coincidental.
DEDICATION
There are two very special people who turned
my life around and are keeping it on the right track; therefore it is only fitting that the third volume, which was begun after our son was born, is dedicated to my
wife Jessica and Edward Eric.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I have had a lot of help and encouragement in writing this series, in particular with this, the third part of the series. Retired bomber pilots, snipers, SFX experts, current helicopter pilots, a glamour model, serving and retired coppers, ex-servicemen and a former company commander turned banker.
Oddly, suggestions for a fifth and sixth book have been trickling in, and you do not even know how the story ends. I may be reluctant to write out the appearance of last minute characters such as moody teenage daylight walking vampires, and good looking vegetarian High School zombies. You know how trendy I am!
My thanks go to my Father Ted Farman and Andy Croy for editing. Andy and I both served in the Wessex Regiment in the 1980’s, but we never met. To my niece Helena Brackley for research on Guiana and the European Space Agency. To Bill Rowlinson, Nick Gill, Tracey Elvik, Tobi Shear-Smith, Maxine Shear-Smith, Ray Tester, Steve Enever, Stuart Galloway and Chris Cullen for test reading; proof reading, advice on how to shoot, stab, blow stuff up and still show a well turned ankle. To my cousin David Farman, currently the only practicing Biggles with a current instrument rating in the family. I hope he settles into his new role of ‘Gentleman Pilot’ with ease, and a little élan. Thank you for the technical advice of the CH47 Chinook.
Finally, but by no means least, to Haydee Velasco Flores for generously offering to lower her professional fee in order to translate the books into Spanish. It is on my wish list Haydee.
Foreword
Well I am in a decidedly different place now to the one I was in back in 2002 when I first put pen to paper to scribble down the opening lines of ‘Stand To’ on the back of a blank antecedents form.
I was sat in the Police Room in the basement of the ILCC, Inner London Crown Court. It was bitterly cold outside, the cold and damp were having an adverse effect on my knees which had taken a beating when I was an infantryman, running up Welsh mountains carrying my own weight on my back. They ached eight months out of twelve, they were certainly aching that day and I had a cold. Hell, everybody had a cold, it was January in England.
Eleven years on and I’m not a copper any more, I did my thirty but I’m still working on the same book, just a different volume and four hundred and fifty thousand words further along with it.
It is 92° outside and my knees are fine these days as it is always summer here.
The first two books were something of a learning curve and I learned a few things about who likes what, and who does not.
Teachers concentrate on paragraph structure and syntax whereas their former pupils are happy just to read an entertaining story.
You may recall the foreword in volumes one and two about my reasons for writing this yarn? Well I did not know how the story would be greeted across the water in America. It is a global story and the USA shares the stage rather than being a one man band as she is in so many military fiction tales.
Helpful suggestions have been sent my way that I carry out a re-write for the American market with the Coldstream Guards becoming a US infantry regiment and HMS Hood as the US ____ have also included a wish that I would cease misspelling so many words.
Well if I did re-write the book somewhere down the line then I certainly would not keep the title in fact it would be an entirely different book.
I have made some good friends in America over the years and they come from various and diverse backgrounds, just like everyone else. They tend to come from law enforcement, the military and the film industry. They are capable, professional and heroic as are their opposite numbers in other countries and they have the same motivations and drives as their opposite numbers. This series however, Armageddon’s Song, is not about America saving the world it is a team effort that also shows the other guys viewpoints on occasion, and it is not full of misspellings either, it is written in English, not American, and it is staying that way.
When I started writing this tale I had an idea of what should happen, where it should happen and how it should end. I did not aim to write a standard 80,000 word novel I aimed to write a detailed story which people would enjoy. I just hoped it would reach 80,000 words.
My style of writing is to imagine a course of events and rough it out. For example, the cruise missile attack on London started off as less than one page, 321 words, simply that of Janet in her office receiving a summons to meet the of battalion wives who are on the death message rota, accompanying the Padre to break the bad news to wives who have become widows overnight. I added detail and conversation. What came next was the ‘how’ of the missiles arriving, which included the Spetznaz member carrying out ‘CTR’, a close target reconnaissance of Canary Wharf. Janet’s commute to work came next along with the collision with the spy, and finally the missiles effects on Canvey Island, the result of their arrival at Canary Wharf and what effect this had on Janet. That was 14,011 words.
It is the detail which takes time to add and the description which fills the pages.
Volume 1 was not 80,000 words, it was 150,000 words.
By the time I was a further 50,000 words along into volume 2 I was fairly certain I could bring in the story in three volumes but after six months writing it was clear the European war was only going to be done and dusted inside of three books and there was still China to address in full.
The physical realities of how many pages can actually be fitted in a 4’x6” paperback book became apparent. The answer is, less than volume 1. I had to set my paper size up to 6” x 9”, although the Easy Reader editions require 7” x 10” for the larger print.
Four volumes and not three will be required to finish this tale, without scrimping on the detail. It is no longer a trilogy, but now a four part series.
I will begin the final volume, ‘Crossing the Rubicon’ the day after I publish this volume, but the family, including the lively two year son, need a holiday as much as I do. All work and no play makes for dull prose.
For those posting grumbles about not realising volume 1 was not the whole story, I apologise, but you should go back and read the Product Description again, the bit that says ‘Stand-To' is the first book …. . The ‘Volume 1’ in gold lettering on the front cover is also a bit of a giveaway.
Volume 3 is a deal busier than the other volumes, indeed for some 200+ pages it felt a little as if I was writing ‘24’ as there is so much that is going on simultaneously in different international time zones on different parts of the planet as various threads throughout the previous two volumes come together.
Writing the operation orders for policing Europe’s largest Latin American Carnival was easy in comparison, and markedly less than the 490,000 words, 1360 pages this tale has so far taken to tell.
I hope I cannot be accused of short-changing anyone.
Andy Farman.
CHAPTER 1
Argentina: Atlantic coast.
Rio Gallegos was the home port for the 350 ton ocean going trawler ‘Maria III’ which had been enjoying a lean time of things in the Atlantic since the big battles between the Soviet submarines and the Americans, the Canadians and the British.
They had found fish, thousands of them, but all were dead and stinking on the surface. Silt stirred up by nuclear depth charges had not only ruined fishing around the Azores, ‘Maria IIIs’ normal fishing grounds at this time of year, but had spread south to Cape Verde, spoiling the waters there also.
With the East and West at war and the normal military presence in those sea lanes absent, piracy off the African coast was on the rise and her skipper, Carlo Duellos, had wisely steered clear of that side of the Atlantic.
No one would be feeding his and the crews’ families if they were being held for ransom in the African bush somewhere.
The British on the Malvinas had itchy trigger fingers as they half expected his country to take advantage of the war, by trying to retake the islands again. So an exclusion zone once more sat in place barring all but the foolish from those waters. No one was going to be feeding their families if the bastard British accused them of spying and locked them up.
Most of the local boats had gone west through the Straits of Magellan to fish off the Pacific coast, but Carlos figured that a lot of boats from Panama on down would be doing the same.
They had returned from the Azores with an empty hold and empty tanks, and Carlos was forced to go cap in hand to the local bank.
The bank manager was a reasonable man and he was a local too, but Carlos was not the only one having an unexpectedly bad season, the whole planet was, and that was likely to last at least as long as the war, he had pointed out.
Carlos went from the bank with only the manager’s best wishes and had arrived at the bar the fishermen used as a kind of base when in port. Getting the crew together he had laid it out for them, they had no line of credit and no gas so he, Carlos, was willing to sell his truck if the rest of them were also going to contribute something towards the expenses.
Their engineer quit, either unable or unwilling to take a gamble on them finding any live fish, and a gamble it was. Worldwide food prices had hit the roof, so a full hold would set them all up for the rest of the year, but another disastrous voyage such as their last one would be ruinous.
The remainder had borrowed from relatives or sold heirlooms for them to fuel the ‘Maria III’.
They had just enough diesel and supplies for about a week’s normal fishing, and so it was that they had set out once more, but with Carlos doing what he could to get the crew’s next most mechanically minded member familiar with the trawler’s elderly seven cylinder diesels.
They went from previously productive fishing grounds nearer home to those more and more distant, seeking the fish that had left without trace.
It took time and patience, going further and further south east with the crew sat about idle, becoming more and more despondent
On the fourth day, with the light fading and dark clouds threatening their sonar fish detector finally picked up a large shoal of whiting and the crew put ‘Maria III’s gear in the water for the first time that voyage.
The change in mood was palpable throughout the small vessel, from borderline desperation to one of desperate hope. It was food on the table for their families, but they had to fill the hold first and they were short-handed, so with rain setting in for the night they set to with a will.
The net came up full and the winch strained as it lifted the catch inboard to whistles and shouts of joy and relief. The gamble was paying off.
Again the nets went back over the side as Carlos stayed with the twisting and turning shoal.
By 3am the seas were picking up and the rain was gusting in horizontally but the hold was still only three quarters full.
Another full net with its flashing silver bounty was tantalisingly just below the surface when the winch jammed, and despite promises and threats it remained uncooperative.
Carlos called down to the make-do engineer to come up and take the wheel so he himself could try and fix the winch.
When the proper engineer had quit he had taken his tools with him, and he had also taken his ear defenders too, so Carlos was relieved on the wheel by a partly deafened novice ship’s engineer.
Carlos removed the housing from about the winch mechanism and cursed the rain and the rusty and frayed cable which had bunched and snagged. At least, he told himself, at least they could invest in a new one once they got back to port and sold this catch.
The radar proximity warnings strident tone registered only as a faint beeping to the only occupant of the wheelhouse and the large return which drew closer with every sweep of the radar repeater meant nothing to him, but similar warnings should have raised the alarm with the watch keepers aboard the bulk carrier ‘Istial Starwalk’ which was running without lights for fear of the submarine threat to shipping.
‘Maria III’ was reported overdue by Carlos’s wife when the fuel they had taken on board was obviously exhausted and neither she nor any of the other wives had received word from their husbands as they would have done had the their boat called into another port for some reason such as a medical emergency or a mechanical failure of some description.
The Argentine Naval Prefecture, as the Argentinian coast guard is known, called the harbour masters on the Atlantic coast as far away as ‘Maria III’s partially full tanks could have taken her and even lodged a request for information or sightings with the Anglos on the Malvinas, but the boat had not put into any port since leaving Rio Gallegos the week before.
Had the ‘Istial Starwalk’ immediately reported a collision which had been felt throughout the vessel, and which was subsequently found to have left her bow damaged and scraped then the search and rescue operation could have begun immediately, and with a precise location. However, her master did not heave-to and did not report any collision until the ship docked at Auckland a month later and even then the insurance claim merely stated ‘Colliding with unknown object’ at a position some twelve hundred miles further north than it actually had, closer to the recent fighting and therefore easier to justify his reluctance to stop and investigate.
Gansu Province, Peoples Republic of China.
Nothing could muffle the sound a piton being hammered into rock, and on the few occasions that it had been absolutely unavoidable Richard Dewar gritted his teeth in the expectation of their discovery.
With the latest piton securely in place Richard attached through its eye, one end of a quickdraw, two carabiners with spring loaded gates and attached together by a webbing strap, before clipping his line into the free end.
The ropes they were using were a far cry from the stiff half inch hemp ropes Richard had first used as a Boy Scout, cliff climbing at Black Rock Sands in Wales, these were 10.5 cm ropes made from semi translucent man-made fibres which though not invisible by any means, did allow them to blend more easily with the background.
Gripping the rope he leant outwards, allowing the piton to take the strain as he peered upwards at the eighteen foot overhang he had reached. About an arms width away a crack in the rock bisected the overhang, and he knew from a recce through binoculars whilst choosing this route that this led upwards, widening all the time to become a chimney. Richard felt around his harness for another quickdraw, but one with a locking gate to attach to his harness. The movements of a climber can inadvertently cause something to press against the outside of a carabiners gate, a jutting rock or another item of equipment can open a spring loaded carabiner causing the rope or harness it was holding to be released, so he always used locking carabiners next to his body.
Clipping the new quickdraw to the one attached to the piton, he spread his feet and braced them against the rock before leaning outwards, reaching up and back for the crack to explore it with his fingers. Ideally he hoped to find a suitable seat for monolithic protection, a solid tapered wedge or a hex to jam inside wh
ere a runner could support his weight, but its sides were too smooth and parallel. He wasn’t as fond of SLCDs, the mechanical, spring-loaded camming devices, or a ‘camm’ for short, which were the alternative to monoliths as they had a tendency to ‘walk’ when not under tension and work themselves free. He had no choice in this instance and at least the camm would be hanging vertically, a position from which it was least likely for it to work its way loose. Richard made his selection from the collection of various sizes clipped to his harness, and holding the device by its stem he pushed it up inside the crack as far as he could before releasing the four camm’s at the top end of the single SLCDs stem which sprung outwards, the teeth biting at the rock. Major Dewar clipped another quickdraw to the eye at the stem and tested it by applying increasing weight. It held, allowing him to attach yet another locking quickdraw to his harness and clip it to the free end of the one he held. Richard was now supported in place at two points and still had both hands free, his feet were only keeping him steady whilst he worked so should the piton and camm come loose then only the man belayed-on at the last pitch, seventy feet below could arrest his fall.
The wind was only blowing at about 10 mph, a pleasant change from the 80 mph winds of the previous two days, but its wind chill factor lowered the sub-zero temperatures even further. The snow had not abated until about an hour ago, reducing visibility but covering their tracks whilst it had fallen. Working in the shadow of the overhang he had removed his tinted goggles in order to better see what he was doing, but the cold and wind made his eyes water, causing his lashes to freeze into brittle whiteness. The only weapon he carried was an M4, the shortened version of the M16, hanging vertically down his back by the butt strapped between his shoulder blades, the weapons harness crossed over his shoulders and added to the weight he already carried and restricted his movements, but it was a necessity of the job.
