Ghost Force (30 page)

And Price called again,
“Agave regained!!
…bearing two-eight-four.”

The ship’s radar officers confirmed the contacts, range now only thirty miles.

“That’s two Super-Es just popped up,” called Captain Yates crisply.

“Chaff!!”
roared Harley. And across the room the hooded figure of a Chief Petty Officer slammed his closed fists into the big chaff fire buttons.

Harley again broadcast on the circuit to the whole Battle Group…
“This is
Daring
…Agave radar bearing two-eight-four
…
”
But the picket ships were all up to speed, Commander Hall’s ops room in
Dauntless
was instantly on the case, and Captain Day was only fifteen seconds behind as HMS
Gloucester
prepared to tackle the second pair of Etendards heading to their right, straight toward him.

For the next five minutes
Daring
had to place herself carefully between the four clouds of chaff that were blooming around her, taking account of the wind and the natural drift of the giant clouds of iron filings, which Harley hoped to Christ were confusing the life out of the radar in the nose cones of the incoming missiles.

Captain Yates called to the Officer of the Watch on the bridge, “Come hard left to zero-eight-four…adjust speed for zero relative wind.”

At 0638, the Argentine pilots unleashed their missiles and banked right, not knowing for certain at what they had fired. Their Exocets fell away, locked on to their targets, and the two Etendards headed for home, flying once more low over the water, but this time heading west.

And in the ops room of
Daring
, the familiar cry of a modern war
ship under attack was heard…
“Zippo One! Bruisers!
Incoming. Bearing two-eight-four. Range fourteen miles.” But the two amber dots flickering across
Daring
’s screen were so small they could scarcely be seen.

“Take them with Sea Dart,”
snapped Captain Yates, knowing his fire-control radar would have trouble locking on to the tiny sea-skimming targets at this range, but hoping against hope the missile gun director could get the weapons away.

Eventually he did, but only one of them struck home, blasting the Exocet out of the sky. The second one was completely baffled by the chaff and swerved high and left, crashing harmlessly into the sea six miles astern.

Commander Hall’s
Dauntless
never did get her Sea Dart missiles into action, but the chaff did its work and both missiles aimed at the destroyer passed down the port side.

Captain Day’s
Gloucester
, out to the left of the
Ark Royal
, found herself facing four incoming Exocets, and her Sea Dart missiles, given more choice, slammed two of them into oblivion. Again the priceless chaff did its work and the remaining two Exocets swerved right into a huge cloud of iron filings and careened into the ocean with a mighty blast, two miles away, off the destroyer’s starboard quarter, prompting a roar of delight from the seamen working on the upper decks. Argentina 0, Royal Navy 8.

But not for long. Two formations of four Skyhawks and four Daggers were on their way off the runway at Mount Pleasant. The British frigates, armed with only Harpoons as a medium-range missile, were still seventy miles too far east to attack the airport, and the GR9s were only just ready to fly off the carrier, thanks to an early morning fog bank.

The returning Etendard pilots, flying slower now, had already been in contact with Mount Pleasant and had passed on the range and positions of the three British ships they assumed they had located. They also alerted the base to the possible location of three, possibly four, other large Royal Navy ships anchored in Low Bay.

And meanwhile the Daggers and the Skyhawks continued their fast, low journey, flying fifty feet above the waves, well below the radar, straight at the Royal Navy picket ships, the Type-45 destroyers,
Daring
,
Dauntless
, and the older
Gloucester
.

They lifted above the horizon and into range of the ships’ missile systems at a distance of around ten miles. But the visibility was poor, and within sixty seconds they would have overflown the entire picket line.

All eight of the Argentine aircraft had their bombs away before the Sea Darts could lock on. Desperately the three commanding officers ordered their missiles away, and with mounting horror the observers on the upper decks saw the big thousand-pounders streaking in, low over the ocean.

That’s the way a modern iron bomb arrives. It travels too fast to drop. It comes scything in at a low trajectory, its retardation chute out behind it, slowing it down. The bombs are primed to blast on impact.

All Royal Navy Commanders know the best defense is to swing the ship around, presenting not its sharp bow to the incoming attack but its beam. That way there’s a fighting chance the damn thing may fly straight over the top, as such bombs frequently do.

But there is so often no time. And there was no time right now on Admiral Holbrook’s picket line. As the Skyhawks and the Daggers screamed away, making their tightest turns back to the west, eight miles from the destroyers, the lethal Sea Dart missiles came whipping in. The first one from
Daring
slammed into a Dagger and blew it to smithereens. The second smashed the wing off a fleeing Skyhawk and sent it cartwheeling into the ocean at five hundred knots.

Three more missed completely, but Colin Day’s first salvo downed another Dagger and blew a Skyhawk into two quite separate pieces. This was the very most they could do. They had no other defense, because, high above, they had no Harrier FA2 Combat Air Patrol, which would probably have downed all eight of the Argentine bombers twenty miles back.

Meanwhile the first two bombs from the lead Skyhawk slammed into HMS
Daring
with colossal force, one crashing through the starboard side of the hull and detonating in the middle of the ship, killing instantly everyone in the ops room and twenty-seven others. It split the engine room asunder, and a gigantic explosion seemed to detonate the entire ship.

The second bomb, meeting the ship on the rise, crashed through the upperworks, blasting the huge, pyramid-shaped electronic surveil
lance tower straight down onto the bridge. Everyone inside was killed either by the explosion or was crushed, which brought the death toll to fifty-eight, with another sixty-eight wounded. There were huge fires, the water mains were blown apart, and HMS
Daring
, shipping seawater at a ferocious rate, was little more than a hulk on her way to the bottom.

HMS
Dauntless
was hit by three bombs, two of them in the same spot, which just about broke her back, one single explosion destroying the engine room and causing an upward blast that literally caved in the entire upperworks. More than a hundred men were dead, and almost everyone else was wounded. The destroyer would sink into the freezing ocean in under fifteen minutes.

Captain Day’s
Gloucester
fared best. She took only one bomb, fine on her starboard bow. But it was a big thousand-pounder from one of the Daggers, and it smashed deep inside the ship before exploding with a blast that obliterated her foredeck, ripped apart her missile-launch systems, and blasted overboard the forward Vickers 4.5-inch gun. She, too, instantly began to ship water from the gaping hole on the waterline on her starboard side, and there was a terrible fire raging dangerously close to the missile magazine.

At this point hardly anyone, aside from the ships’ companies in the pickets, knew what had happened. There was no communication from either the
Daring
or
Dauntless
, but Captain Day sent a signal back to the flag reporting his own fairly drastic damage, which might yet cause the
Gloucester
to sink.

However, the loss of life on his ship was negligible compared to the others, just twelve men killed and fifteen wounded. It took only another minute for the lookouts on the frigate line positioned just a few miles behind them, to see three plumes of thick black smoke and flame on the horizon.

Captain Day, who was closest, now reported the
Dauntless
was sinking. He was out of contact with the
Daring
, and two of the frigates, the
Kent
and
Grafton
, were nearer. The CO of the
Gloucester
knew the fire was raging toward his missiles, which would blow the entire ship into oblivion.

His firefighting teams were down there trying to work in incinerating heat, but they were fighting a losing battle. At 0642 Captain Day
gave the order to abandon ship. And Admiral Holbrook ordered his frigates forward to assist with the rescue of the wounded.

The trouble was, information was very limited. And he was not to know that eight more Skyhawks were already in the air from Rio Grande, refueled and heading east at maximum speed. The Admiral, of course, understood the likelihood of further attack, but without a Harrier CAP, he was reliant on his downrange helos, and then the medium-range radar of his destroyers’ missile systems, and the Argentinian pilots were flying below that.

There was, however, quite sufficient information for one commanding officer. Captain Gregor Vanislav, still moving at minimum speed out to the east of the
Ark Royal
, had already picked up on his sonar the savage iron bomb detonations that had decimated the British picket line.

And now, shortly after 0700, he came quietly to periscope depth for a visual sighting of his quarry. He could see the
Ark Royal
out on the horizon through the telescopic lens, and there was no doubt in his mind. This was the Royal Navy’s only active aircraft carrier. He’d come a long way for this, and now he intended to carry out the instruction issued to him with such firmness and clarity by Admiral Vitaly Rankov in person.

The carrier had in fact moved three miles farther east and was now well astern of the other warships, in readiness for its lower deck hospital to begin receiving the wounded from the burning destroyers. Right now this was the only hospital the Task Force had since the other main medical facilities were on the
Ocean
and
Largs Bay
.

Captain Vanislav, now almost stationary, was no more than three miles to her southeast. His plan was to circle the carrier, staying deep and slow, five hundred feet below the surface, a depth at which his Akula was more than comfortable. He intended to launch his attack from two miles off the
Ark Royal
’s starboard beam, and it would be made easier by the fact that the carrier was scarcely moving, and that there would, he knew, be a great deal of diversionary action taking place. His last satellite communication, relayed from Moscow, had made that absolutely clear.

Down periscope…helmsman, steer course three-zero-five, speed four…bow down ten…three hundred…

At this speed, the
Viper
was absolutely silent, undetectable, as it crept through the water, slowly drawing a bead on the 20,000-ton Royal Navy carrier. The submarine was transmitting nothing, her Captain relying on a visual fix when his ship was in position.

At 0708
Viper K-157
was precisely where he wanted her. They came to PD and he took one final look. Even then, for the fleeting seconds his periscope was jutting eighteen inches out of the water like a telegraph pole, he was not detected.

Admiral Holbrook had already signaled for two escorts, the Batch Three Type-42s
York
and
Edinburgh
, to position themselves on his port and starboard quarters and use intermittent active sonar, since they were all alerted to the bizarre outside possibility of a submarine threat, from Russia! But there was plainly no point having both destroyers passive, eight miles up-threat from the bombs and missiles.

But the destroyers were still a couple of miles short of this new station, and the British Admiral had so much on his mind after the destruction of his picket line that he was giving scant regard to the very real danger of a torpedo attack on his own flagship.

Right now there was something close to havoc in his ops room. Everyone was handing out advice, how best to deal with the crisis on the picket line, the urgency of getting the GR9s into the air and launching a major bomb and missile attack on the airfield from whence, it was assumed, the Skyhawks had come.

No thought was being given to the classic evasive maneuvers a big warship might take to avoid a submarine attack—moving in a zigzag pattern, varying speed drastically from twenty-five knots to six, forcing any tracking submarine to show its hand by forcing it to increase speed.

Captain Vanislav intended to fire three torpedoes at his massive target from a range of 5,000 yards. Right now they were a little over five miles away, and ready for the final approach.
Viper
’s CO ordered her closer.