Lion Resurgent (43 page)

“I thought the carriers were running ahead of us.” Shumba Geldenhuys looked at the two massive ships off to port with curiosity. “Are we to go in as a single group then?”

“Those aren’t carriers Shumba. They’re the assault ships
Albion
and
Bulwark.
They’re putting the AirMech brigade ashore. They’ve got the Rotodynes for the job. See over there? The two LPDs? They’re
Fearless
and
Intrepid.
They have the bulk of the armor on board for the landing at San Carlos. The infantry is aboard the two liners.” Rigsby waved at the two liners slipping through the waves behind the warships. Their elegance tended to emphasize the chunky functionally of the warships. The two liners were exuding a faint air of embarrassment, rather akin to two society ladies who had accidentally found themselves in a bordello.

“God have mercy on them if they are hit.” Geldenhuys spoke with deep sincerity. He suspected the ships had limited internal subdivision and were stuffed with inflammable materials.

“It’s not quite as bad as that. They were designed with experience from the
Titanic
and
Britannic
in mind, so the subdivision is a lot better than you might think. Also, they’ve been thoroughly stripped inside. Lord knows what Cunard will think when they get them back. It’s the size of the target they offer that worries me. An Argie pilot will be hard put to miss them. We’ll just have to hope they won’t get that close.”

Geldenhuys looked around at the six destroyers escorting the amphibious formation. “The big ones over there, the cruisers? Can we persuade them to stay close to us?”

Rigsby laughed. “Well, if your farms can get fresh steaks out to us, they’ll stay close all right. Best beef in the world so I’m told.” He’d done his research on the South Africans. One of the things he’d learned was that to the Boers, their farms held a special place in the national consciousness. Praising their produce was a sure way to make friends and influence people. “The two big ones are H-class destroyers.
Hero
and
Hotspur. Hero’s
in good shape but
Hotspur
is fresh out of the builder’s yard. Still got dockies on board finishing her off.”

Rigsby paused for a moment. Ugly memories tugged at his mind. “Last time we sent a ship to sea like that was during the Great Escape. The battleship
Howe.
She was only partially complete and the only operational guns on board were a few machine guns. The other battleships in the group were fully armed and could put up a pretty lethal barrage so the Germans picked on her. She caught hell from German Condors and only just made it out. The crew just had to sit there and take it. For hour after hour without any help. If the Condors had torpedoes, it would have been all over for them because the rest of the fleet couldn’t stop to pick up survivors and the Germans had no intention of doing that. But the Condors didn’t and so they made it to Canada.”

Geldenhuys spoke gently, understanding the depth of the memories being evoked and noted Rigsby’s age. He’d already noticed that the British Army was a young force. Its officers were, on average, five or six years younger than their equivalents in other armies. He still hadn’t decided if that was a good or a bad thing. “You sound like you knew this personally. Your father was on board?”

“My father. After they got to Canada,
Howe
was completed in an American yard and spent the first part of the war escorting convoys in the North Atlantic. Then she and the other members of the class went out to Singapore as the British Pacific Fleet and sort of deterred the Japanese. After the war, he came back to the U.K. He had the chance to go to Australia but he wanted to come home and help the old country recover. I remember waking up at nights, hearing him have nightmares about the Great Escape. Not about the Arctic Convoys; although Lord knows, they were bad enough. It was the Great Escape that haunted him. He didn’t talk about it until I joined up and then he spent a whole evening telling me the story. That’s one reason why I went into the Army, not the Navy.”

“I had no choice there. Our navy is too small to offer a worthwhile career. It was the Army. The only choice was whether to do three years as a conscript or volunteer and become a professional. Not much for me back home, so a volunteer I became. Good choice for a Griqua. Fighting is what we do best.”

“And very lucky for us.” Rigsby was fervent on that point. “You’ve brought good men with you and we need the expertise. Lord knows we’ve trained enough but we’re as green as grass compared with your boys.”

“You should believe me on this; the fighting on our northern border is no work for a real soldier. Fighting those gangs of murdering thugs is nothing like a real war. Take Lieutenant van Huis. Fighting the ‘Stams is the only thing Bastiaan has ever done. He knows as little of fighting a real army as your young Lieutenant Cross does. We’re all learning this together. Let us just pray there’ll be enough of us left to pass on what we have learned.”

“Amen to that. Cross comes from good stock though. His father was a German panzergrenadier.” Rigsby hesitated slightly. “There’s something a little odd there. His old man is a housepainter; nothing special, but some of the records are sealed. Something happened with that family back in the ‘50s that isn’t for publication.”

Geldenhuys shrugged. “Who knows? Bastiaan comes from the second richest family in the Republic and his wife comes from the richest. That’s why the men call him Lieutenant Geldsakke. Lieutenant Moneybags. He could have bought his way into a comfortable desk job in Pretoria, but he’s out here with us instead. Just like your Lieutenant Cross. We’re all here now. That’s all that matters. True my friend?”

“True.” Rigsby looked out at the amphibious squadron that was shifting positions to absorb the new arrivals from Simonstad. “And there’s no way we can get out and walk home if we change our mind.”

Sea Mirage F.2 XS-576. Over the South Atlantic

There were times when a fighter needed two crew members. One to fly the aircraft and another to watch the radar set. This was not one of those times. That was fortunate because the Sea Mirage was a single-seater. Lieutenant Commander Dudley Pope was flying his Sea Mirage with its radar emphatically turned off. He was relying on radar input from the ships to steer him in on his target, an Argentine Navy Superstream I executive jet that had been bought on the civilian market and converted for maritime reconnaissance. The equipment fitted to it had included an elaborate ELINT system, probably housed in the great pod that hung under its belly. That system was undoubtedly picking up radar emissions from the British warships. In fact, the crew were probably depending on those emissions to find the ships. If they detected airborne radar emissions coming for them, they would run.

The Superstream I was a derivative of the old RB-58C with its fuselage reprofiled to include a cramped cabin for eight passengers. It was still powered by the J-79 engines that could drive it up to Mach 2.4 at high altitudes but it would have to go to full reheat to do so. That meant that would burn its fuel fast. The catch was that if the Superstream I went to full speed, Pope would have to do the same. His Sea Mirage was barely 30 mph faster than the executive jet. In a tail chase, he would run out of fuel long before he got within missile range. So this intercept was an ambush. The plan was that by the time the Superstream detected his presence, it would be too late to ran. Idly, Pope gave thanks that the target was a Superstream and not a SAC RB-58G. Trying this on the latter would get a fighter pilot a nuclear-tipped air-to-air missile fired into his face. Ever since
Marisol
had gone down almost twenty years ago, the Septics had been very unforgiving about people trying to intercept their bombers.

“Target is 20 miles in front of you. Continue steering two-eight-zero. Target altitude is angels 35.” The voice from ground control was dispassionate.

“Acknowledged. Still in cloud layer.” Pope’s response was equally calm. The weather was bad, all right. The cloud levels were thick and stretched all the way up to 30,000 feet. The next part of the plan was to accelerate within the cloud layer and then zoom up to stage the intercept.

“Target is turning now.” The Superstream was on a racetrack; an oval holding pattern that allowed its sensors to scan a wide area of ocean. It was reaching the end of one of the long sides of that oval and would be turning towards him. Pope had the relative positions in his mind. This would be a collision course intercept. For that he would need the R-530 missiles hanging under his wings. He switched over to them so the electronics would start to warm up.

“Acknowledged. Starting bounce now.” Pope firewalled his throttles, feeling the two Atar 9 engines in his fighter surging to full power. The Sea Mirage surged forward, sliding through the sound barrier easily. It took only a gentle pull on the control column to cause the aircraft to leap upwards, breaking through the top of the cloud layer. Pope flipped on the radar set and saw the blip from the Superstream blossom on the scanner. The data from the contact was already being relayed down to his missiles and readying them for firing.

Something was wrong. The Superstream was there, all right, but it was a lot further away and a little higher than the ground controlled interception reports had suggested. Pope guessed what had happened.
The Superstream has a deception jammer on board to hide its true position in case somebody tried this.
The executive jet was already turning fast and diving away. Pope could see the misty concussion wave forming around its fuselage as it accelerated and the brilliant red flare of its afterburners shone against the sky. He quickly glanced down. The aircraft’s true position was painted on his radar screen and he was closing fast. The problem was the rate of closure was dropping quickly as the Superstream accelerated away from him.

He did the mathematics in his head. By the time the Superstream was up to full speed, he would be within eight miles of it. That was within the range of his R-530 missiles, but they would be in a tail chase and the margin of speed wasn’t that high. His two R-510 infra-red homing missiles were the better weapon for a tail chase. They were faster but shorter-ranged. On the other hand, the brilliant glow of the Superstream’s afterburners would be an easy target for them. He took a split second to decide and then flipped over to the infra-red missiles. In his earphones, the broken notes of the annuciator system wavered for a second and then settled down to a constant, steady tone. The missiles were locked on. Down on his radar screen, the dot representing the Superstream now had a diamond carat around it.

Pope exhaled, held his breath slightly and squeezed the trigger that sent the two R-510 missiles streaking off towards the fleeing reconnaissance aircraft. They wavered slightly, then settled down to track the Superstream in front of them. For a moment, Pope thought he had his kill but the Superstream crew had a few tricks left. One was a brilliant ruby-colored light that started flickering under the tail. Another was the mass of white trails that erupted from both sides of the aircraft, trails that terminated in glaring red flares. Pope knew what both were. The light was an infra-red jammer; it was carefully calibrated to burn out the guidance head on his missiles. The flares were decoys designed to lure the missiles away from their target. He didn’t know which system had worked, but his missiles went straight on when the Supertream made an evasive turn. Two clean misses. In the far distance, well away from his target, he saw the patches of cloud as they exploded at the end of their run.

To his frustration, Pope saw the Superstream pulling away from him. It was much heavier than his fighter and that gave it the edge in a dive. Given long enough he would catch it up but his engines were burning fuel at a prodigious rate. It wouldn’t be long before he had to pull away and return to the carrier. The Superstream was gulping fuel as well, but it had much more of it and its B-58 forebear had been designed to hold speed for prolonged periods under just these circumstances. Pope did the calculations in his head again. His R-530s were really marginal and he would be out of fuel by the time they got to be anything more than that.

One other factor ran through his head. The British carrier groups were fighting with what they had. There wasn’t any more. He’d already wasted two missiles. Throwing away two more would be inexcusable. As if to reinforce that thought, the red fuel warning light on his instrument panel clicked on. It was time to go home.

“Bandit got away. Used deception jamming to hide position. Flares and an IR jammer to evade two missiles. On bingo fuel and retuning home.”

“Acknowledged. At least you scared him off.”

Argentine Aircraft Carrier
Veinticinco de Mayo

“The reconnaissance aircraft has called in, Sir.” The communications officer had made it to the Admiral’s bridge in record time. They were chased off by a fighter but before that they got contact on the British carrier group. It’s almost exactly due west of us, 407 nautical miles out. A long way for our Skyhawks.”

Vice-Admiral Juan Lombardo gazed at the attack plot. “The Superstream spotted both carriers?”

“No, Sir. Just the one. Steering slightly north of west.”

“Then the one from South Georgia hasn’t had time to join up yet. Interesting. We still have a chance to catch them apart.”

The mathematics were easy and, as it happened, very convenient. The Skyhawk had a tactical radius of 340 nautical miles with four thousand pounds of bombs on board. That mean the British carrier would be on the edge of that radius in two hours. It would take two hours to get a strike ready. That meant that there was a good chance the
Veinticinco de Mayo
could get her strike in first. In carrier warfare, getting a strike in first was all that mattered. She had 54 aircraft on board, 24 Skyhawks and 30 F9U Crusaders. Six more Crusaders were overhead flying combat air patrol. Lombardo had read of how the American carrier
Shiloh
had been caught without her combat air patrol and had no intention of following the same example.