Lion Resurgent (34 page)

Just how in the name of God had this happened!
Fernandez asked himself over and over. There were a dozen reasons why things like this shouldn’t happen. There were purging and draining systems built into the hangar itself. There were procedures laid down for defuelling and securing the ship’s helicopters. Everybody knew that the helicopter had been badly damaged by gunfire, but nobody had reported a fuel leak of this magnitude. As his mind worried away at the questions, he was summoning the damage control teams and starting the process of making the hangar safe.

“Get the hangar door open.” Torres cut in on the stream of orders. “Manually. Don’t use the motors. All it will need is one spark in there. We’ve got to get the vapor out. What happened to the venting system?”

“It’s not working, Sir.” One of the seamen was unrolling firefighting hoses and had overheard the Captain’s question. “The fans just won’t start up. Electrician’s mate is checking it now. He thinks rifle bullets must have cut the power cables somewhere.”

“Pumps are out too.” Another seaman cut in. “We’ve got no high pressure water.”

“I’ve got portable generators on the way over, Sir.” Fernandez added. “They’ll set up a bit forward, away from the worst of the vapor.” He was interrupted by the rattle as some seamen began to work the emergency chain hoist that opened the hangar door. Once that was done, they could get rid of the accumulated fuel and fuel vapor in the hangar.

The damage control teams never got the chance. As soon as the hangar door started to roll upwards, there was an explosion. A flare of brilliant white light was quickly drowned out by the roaring fireball of a fuel-air explosion. The whole aft of the ship erupted into flame. The fire spread quickly as burning fuel flooded through bullet holes and opened hatches to engulf the compartments surrounding the aviation facilities. Fernandez picked himself up from the deck, noting that it was already beginning to heat up with the intensity of the fires underneath. He didn’t remember being thrown down by the blast but he knew that there was only a limited amount of time to prevent the fire taking hold.

“Wash the burning fuel over the side.” He rapped out the orders while grabbing a hose and playing it on the fire that was already spreading along the aft superstructure. “Get the foam generators working.”

The crew of the
Punta Alta
were already running to the scene of the fire. Captain Torres was assembling them into damage control teams as they arrived, but Fernandez already had a bad feeling about the fire. It was spreading too fast, overcoming efforts to set a perimeter for the blaze. The hangar was already on the verge of collapsing as the heat melted the aluminum. Sickly, Fernandez realized that the fire had to be claiming its first victims. The men who had tried to open the hangar door hadn’t stood a chance. Others would be trapped below decks by the fire and would either be burned or asphyxiated according to their luck.

“Flood the magazine.” Torres gave the order. The aft 76mm gun was mounted above and in front of the hangar. Its magazine was above the main deck and formed part of the aft superstructure. It wasn’t safely buried in the lowest areas of the hull the way older ships were arranged. Already the fire had spread to surround the turret and had made the glass-fibre shield start bubbling and cracking with the heat.

“There’s no water pressure!” The voice from the work gangs sounded almost desperate. Fernandez knew why. The torpedo storage area was only a little bit forward of the aft 76mm magazine. When the latter cooked off it would take the former with it. Together, the two blasts would devastate
Punta Alta.
They would also massacre the crew if they were in the way.

“Order all the men to abandon ship.” Torres gave the order with a sinking heart. Without water pressure to flood the magazines, they would explode. It was only a question of when. “Fire and rescue teams, we will fight the fire from dockside until the danger of explosion is past.”

By which you mean, when everything that can explode has exploded.
Fernandez thought. He grabbed the shoulders of his damage control team and pushed them forward, away from the fires. The only way off the ship was either forward and around the bridge or over the side into the water. It was a measure of how fast the situation was deteriorating that he seriously considered the latter option. The bitter cold would be fatal in just a few minutes but it was a better choice than burning. Anything was better than being soaked in aviation fuel and turned into a living torch. He shuddered at the thought and tried to remove it from his mind. The first job was to save the ship. To do that, he had to save as many of the crew as possible.

He and his men had just made it past the 47mm mounts. They were shielded by the mount trunking when the aft magazine exploded. He saw the fire turn from red to white, saw the great trails of flame as the cartridges cooked off, then heard the rolling thunder of the explosion. The ship’s masts and superstructure were silhouetted by the intense white glow for a few seconds, then the fire began to return to normal. Only for a few seconds. As Fernandez had expected, the torpedo storage followed a few seconds later. This was more of an explosion, less of an enhanced fire. He saw the vicious arc of fragments, steel from the hull, aluminum from the superstructure, scythe into the water. When the blasts had subsided, he risked looking past the 47mm mounting. The aft of the ship was tangled wreckage but the fire was still spreading forward.

ARA
Catamarca
Grytviken Harbor, South Georgia

“Get under way now. All search and rescue teams ready; damage control parties to midships. Engine room, we will need every bit of power we can get. Use the emergency generators, everything. All power to the pumps when we’re alongside
Punta Alta.”
Captain Leonardi was pleased that his ship had originally been designed as a cruiser for the Italian Navy. She had been built to proper Navy standards with tight subdivision and proper damage control facilities. That meant powerful pumps and strong hoses. For all their elegance, the Ushuaia class frigates were export designs. Their cost had been kept to a minimum. That meant the minimum standards had been applied to every part of their design.

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.”

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