Lion Resurgent (33 page)

“I don’t think so, Major. It’s a pretty building and our Governor will want to stay there when he arrives. Anyway, it’s got the only long-range communication system on the Island. He’ll need that to speak with Buenos Aires.”

Dowling growled and stomped away. As he did so, there was a bang from inside the Governor’s mansion. It was followed by a whine as the bullet bounced off the armor of an amtrack.

“Have they hit anybody yet?” Caceres wanted that information immediately. It would have a profound effect on how he handled the situation.

“No, Sir. They’re not trying to. I think there’s four men with rifles in there and somebody with a pistol.”

“That’ll be the Governor.” Caceres was thinking over his options. “Is there anything behind the house?”

“Only scrub, Sir. If there is anybody up there, it’ll be plain bad luck on their part.”

“Then fire a burst from a .50 over the house. Short burst, we don’t want to waste ammunition.” The cupola-mounted machine gun on one of the amtracks snapped out a quick burst, the tracers just clearing the roofline. “Mount up, we’ll take the amtracks over the circular lawn up to the flower bed that divides it from the rectangular one. If anybody fires a shot, fire a burst over the house. If they hit somebody, then we take the gloves off. Spray the windows before taking the house by storm. But, I want to avoid that and talk these people out. Understood?”

“Yes, Sir.” The amtracks lurched as the Marines bordered them, then the bulky vehicles moved forward. The flower garden surrounding the circular lawn was crushed and the grass itself ruined by the tracked vehicles. By the time the LVTP-7s had stopped, they were barely twenty meters from the house. Dowling was nowhere to be seen, which didn’t surprise Caceres in the slightest.

“Governor, the position here is hopeless. Your Marines have surrendered and are being well cared for. There is no organized opposition on the island so please, lay down your arms. Further loss of life will be quite pointless.”

“I am not authorized to surrender my post except under duress.” The call came from inside the house and was quite indignant.

Caceres grinned to himself. He could understand the Governor’s position easily. “Governor, I have three M92 tanks, each with a 76mm high-velocity gun. Using them, I could chop out the ground floor of the house, causing it to collapse on those inside. You have no anti-tank weapons and have no way of stopping me from doing just that.”

“Ah.” There was a long pause. “That is, of course, different. My people here will be well-treated?”

“You and your staff will be transported aboard our cruiser to meet with a Uruguayan ship. You will be held in neutral territory until this.... this matter.... is concluded. Along with the survivors of your Marine garrison and from HMS
Mermaid”

“Very well. We will come out.”

Governor Hunt left the mansion with his wife beside him. He walked up to Caceres and handed over his pistol, an antique .455 Webley. Caceres took it, broke the action open and dropped the rounds on the grass. Three had been fired; there were three left. “You want to keep those rounds of ammunition Major. They’re the real thing from before the First World War. We found the pistol and a box of ammo in the safe. It will be a good memento for your family.”

“Thank you, Governor, and thank you for not making me fire upon your house.”

“Well, it wouldn’t have done any good, would it? I told my people to be sure nobody got hurt. But we had to put up a good show.”

Caceres took the Governor and his entourage to an amtrack and saw them on board. Behind him, one of his Marines had picked up the discarded cartridges and brass. They would be given to Caceres later. Caceres himself was thoughtful. According to the plan, this affair was all over. The islands were back under Argentine control; the British would accept it. Only, he had a nasty feeling that this was where the whole plan was about to become unstuck.

Goofer’s Gallery, HMS
Furious,
Atlantic

“Glory is in position. We’ve got our full escort now.” The voice came from behind Mullback. He was enjoying a few minutes of peace on the Goofers Gallery before heading down to the ready room.  He could see HMS
Glorious
just over a mile away, running parallel with
Furious.
The destroyers were further out: six of the G-class ships. He took another look at her then turned around.
Heaven be praised, another Lieutenant Commander.
Not one he knew though.

“Hi. Mullback, Ernest Mullback.”

“Ah yes, I saw your wedding pictures in the papers. A Banana driver, aren’t you?”

“That I am for my sins.”

“Sea Mirage F2 here. Name’s Pope by the way, Nigel Pope. We just got on board.”

“Ah yes, the extra fighter detachment. Good to have you along. Have they found you a home yet?”

“Not yet, CAG was muttering about having us sleep in your bomb bay last I heard.”

“Attention all hands. Darken ship. Say again, darken ship.” The announcement came over the loudspeakers with a tangible urgency.

“We’d better get inside.” The two pilots left the island wing and made certain the hatch was dogged tight and the blackout curtain in place. “The brass are deadly serious about this aren’t they?”

“You can say that again. The amphibs are thumping along behind us and the cruiser squadron’s out there, well, somewhere. We’re all supposed to be meeting at Ascension Island in ten days time.” Mullback shook his head. “And do we have some sorting out to do first. By the end of the day, we were just throwing stuff into piles instead of stowing it. If it hadn’t been for the rotodynes, we’d never have got it all on board.”

“Or got it all off.” Pope spoke carefully.

“Sorry?”

“Our nukes. They’ve all gone. The Faireys took them on their return trips. Not a nuke in the fleet so I’ve heard. Septics put their foot down, so people say. Made some blood-curdling threats so everybody thought we’d be better off without them on board. Now, what’s on the Mess menu tonight....Ahh, sausages.”

Field Exploration Camp, Penguin River, South Georgia

“Two destroyers, two frigates, one transport.” Sergeant Miller spoke the words quietly to himself as he wrote down the status report. The Field Exploration Camp had proved remarkably well-sited as an observation point. The hut itself was tucked in a dip and had no direct line of sight from the bay around Grytviken. However, a few minutes scramble in the rocks allowed a watcher to gain an almost perfect view of the settlement. Even better, it was close enough to allow infra-red binoculars to see the heat pictures of the ships. That gave a good indication of their operational status.

The three ships anchored in the bay were cold and dark. Oh, there were traces of green that probably indicated moored power provided by a donkey boiler or diesel generator but their main machinery spaces were definitely not working. In the case of the frigate that would make little difference. The ship was diesel-powered and could get under way very quickly. The destroyer and the transport were steam-powered. It would take both ships time to get up steam and move out. That was a point worth including in his report.

Miller turned his attention to the other destroyer, the one anchored alongside at King Edward Point. Her engine rooms showed a dull green that indicated she was in the process of raising steam. Why was a good guess, but she looked as if the plan was for her to leave at dawn.
Well, that made sense.
The remaining ship was the damaged frigate alongside at Grytviken. Miller looked at her carefully, trying to assess how much work was being done to her. Quietly, he was proud of the job Hooper and the rest of the boys had done on her. They’d shot her up a real treat. They’d paid for it though. He hadn’t had any word from his captain but by the way the Argies had raked the town with gunfire, they hadn’t stood much of a chance.

Suddenly his binoculars showed a shower of brilliant white up by the funnel. Miller recognized the characteristic signature of a welding torch. Obviously, work was being done on the frigate, probably patching her up so she could head back for Argentina and a proper repair yard. He looked at the frigate more carefully. There was some additional evidence of work being done on her. The hangar looked slightly green, suggesting warmth there. Perhaps that was the workshop where the repairs were being supported? Miller noted down the efforts at repairs and slid out of his watch position. Time to get back inside and into the warm.

Inside the hut, a cup of cocoa was waiting for him. He drank it down, feeling the warmth spreading through his chilled body. A cup of cocoa was a prize for those who had to stay outside on guard; one that was valued for its morale as well as its warming effects. Miller had been expecting his men to assume all the burdens of protecting the two women in this isolated research station. He had been pleasantly surprised when the girls had insisted on taking their turns. It had made organizing a guard roster so much easier.

A rumbling explosion shook the hut taking him completely by surprise. He pushed through the blackout curtain and the door, then ran back up to the rim of the dip. Snow had already drifted to fill the patch where he had been laying just a few minutes earlier. He also saw a red glow from over the rockline that hinted of a serious fire somewhere. When he was back in his watch position, he didn’t need his binoculars to see where that fire was. It was alongside at Grytviken. The frigate Greg Hooper and his boys had shot up was blazing, her stern enveloped in an orange ball of fire. It was too far away for Miller to see what the Argies were doing about it, but from the look of this fire, they had to be in a terminal nausea about fighting it.

ARA
Punta Alta
Grytviken Harbor, South Georgia

The
Punta Alta
was in a sorry state. Bullets had torn through the thin aluminum plating of the superstructure, disfiguring what Sub-Officer First Class Lucas Fernandez regarded as the most beautiful ship afloat. He was a fair enough man to admit that he was prejudiced in the matter. He had been a plank-owner on
Punta Alta
when he had been a lowly seaman and had returned to her as an exalted Sub-Officer First Class a year ago. Tonight, he was in charge of the ship’s guard, responsible for maintaining the watch in a port that he still regarded as hostile. To a true sailorman with long experience of foreign ports, each had a character of its own. Some were friendly, some neutral, some hostile. Some harbors seemed to welcome visitors in and sorry to see them leave. Others exuded an air of resentment that others had dared to interrupt their slumber. Some were peaceful, others threatening. This one was hostile. Fernandez turned around and peered into the shadows that surrounded his ship. He had the uneasy, creeping sensation that he was being followed by unseen eyes. It was the port, of course. It was as unfriendly as any he had ever been in.

Shaking off the sensation that he was being watched, Fernandez continued to pace his rounds on the main deck. He passed the 14-inch torpedo tubes that constituted the ship’s primary anti-submarine armament and went aft to the hangar. The helicopter inside, an Agosta Panther, was too small for serious ASW work. Its primary role was spotting targets for the battery of four anti-ship missiles forward. There was always a slight smell of aviation fuel in this area; enough to tell a crewman that he was leaving the naval part of the ship and moving into flight crew territory. Still, the flight deck that filled the stern was useful for sports and exercises even if clearing it of foreign objects was a task that needed painstaking care. Then Fernandez stopped. There always was a smell of aviation fuel here but tonight it seemed stronger than most.

Strong enough to need investigating.
He opened the hatch into the compartments that formed the side of the hangar. The first one was for the general stores needed for the routine operations of flying the helicopter. The smell of fuel was much stronger here and Fernandez was suddenly a very worried man. There was another hatch in front of him. He undogged it. Then, he stopped in sheer shock at what was in front of him.

The Panther was riddled with bullets. That wasn’t surprising. The hangar was a big target and the fusillade of small arms it had taken would have damaged most things. Given time and a major maintenance facility, it could be repaired. Short of such capability, it was grounded. What had stunned him was that the deck of the hangar was swimming in aviation fuel, at least a centimeter deep. The smell was strong enough to make his eyes water. The only thing he could think of was that in the chaos of the battle, nobody had thought to defuel the ship’s helicopter. Then, the damage from the rifle and machine gun fire had caused a fuel line to break or a fuel tank to fail and the whole helicopter-load of fuel had been spilled on the deck. It could only have happened a few minutes before. Whenever the failure had happened, it had produced a desperate emergency.

Fernandez nearly slammed the fire alarm switch but he stopped himself just in time. All it needed here was one spark and the whole hangar deck would burn. He stepped out of the hangar, closing the hatch behind him. It was an agonizing choice.
Leave the hatches open so that at least some of the fuel vapor would disperse or close it so it wouldn’t cause the vapor to spread within the ship?
He ran out on to the main deck and then forward to an emergency telephone that was clear of the deadly vapor building up in the hangar.

“Captain Torres Sir. It’s Fernandez. We have a major fuel leak in our hangar. The deck is awash with the stuff.”

“Dear God.” Torres had sounded sleepy at first but the damage report woke him immediately. Fernandez could hear his Captain coming to life on the other end of the telephone. “I ordered the helicopter defuelled.”

“Sir, I went in the hangar myself. There’s fuel everywhere. The scavenging system must have failed as well. Probably, it was damaged in the fight.” The full enormity of the situation began to dawn on Fernandez. The hangar had become a floating bomb, one that could quite easily destroy the ship. He heard the bang as the telephone was dropped and the ship’s communications system sounded an alert. Then, he headed aft again, trying to work out the best way of dealing with the fuel flood without endangering the ship. In his mind was the lesson of the German aircraft carrier
Oswald Boelcke.
She had suffered a major fuel leak. One wrong move had spread the vapor through the ship. It had needed just one spark to set it off. When that happened, there had been no survivors. The only reason why anybody knew what had happened was the German Admiral in charge of the German carrier group had survived to tell the tale.