The White Vixen (22 page)

“Jawohl, Herr Oberstleutnant. Koch is returning fire now.”

One of the Chileans, a young corporal, was dead, shot in the throat. The corpsman had been hit in the left leg and had managed to field-dress his own wound after helping Arroyo, who had taken two rounds, one in the left shoulder, the other a grazing shot along his right ribcage. The corpsman was conscious, but Arroyo had gone into shock. Ian had to get him back to the ship as soon as possible, or the Chilean captain might not make it.

“Can you run?” Ian yelled at the corpsman above the chatter of gunfire.

“Si, mi Mayor,” the Chilean gasped. “My wound, it is not too bad.”

“Right, then, I’ll take Arroyo. We’ll make a break for that pile of rocks over there.” Ian pointed at the jumble some twenty meters away. “Follow my lead.”

“We must take the body of Corporeo Hernandez,” the corpsman said. “We cannot leave him here!”

Garrett dived to the ground next to them. “You all right, Major?”

“So far.” Ian quickly sketched the plan to the Welshman. “Can you bring this body back with you?”

“Yes, sir. We’ll get him home.”

“All right, then. Corpsman, you’re with me. Garrett, we’ll cover you when we get to the first spot of cover.” As best he could, Ian struggled to get Arroyo into position, looping the Chilean’s left arm over his shoulders. Ian grabbed Arroyo’s left forearm with his left hand, snugged the arm around his neck, and reached around Arroyo’s back with his right arm, hugging him tightly. Arroyo groaned in pain. “Go!”

Garrett fired a long burst at the Argentines as Ian hefted Arroyo and ran for all he was worth, knowing every meter was bringing him closer to safety, but was also exposing him to the Argentine sharpshooters.

Schmidt jumped down into the foxhole next to Koch. The sergeant was calmly directing his squad to fire on the Chilean position, covering the forward Argentine sniper’s post. Schmidt could see that the sniper was still in action, but the man next to him was down.

“What’s your situation, Feldwebel?”

“The enemy sent two men forward, Herr Oberstleutnant, possibly to retrieve their wounded. My sniper fired a warning shot, as you ordered. The enemy returned fire a moment later.”

Schmidt brought his grimy field glasses up. Three figures in enemy fatigues had just gotten behind some covering rocks, several meters behind the forward position. Now, there was the flash of rifle fire from the rocks. Schmidt saw another man, carrying someone, leave the forward position and run for the second.

“Hold your fire!” Schmidt yelled. “They’re retrieving their wounded! Cease fire!”

Koch repeated the order to make sure everyone in the squad understood. “Get some men down to that sniper post!”

Henkel crouched down as another volley of enemy fire ripped into his rocks. Thank God they were sturdy ones. If there was one thing this island had aplenty, it was rocks, plus the infernal penguins. Peering out between two of them, over the barrel of his weapon, Henkel saw some figures rise up from their cover. Were they going to open up on him? No matter, he was a sniper, and he would bring them down. He sighted on the middle of the three. They were moving, but away from him—

“Henkel! Hold your—“

The voice from behind startled him, and he jerked the trigger. The gun erupted, but Henkel knew it had not been a perfect shot; he’d moved just a centimeter or so when he’d heard his comrade’s voice from behind. But maybe it was good enough.

The sound and the pain registered on Ian’s brain as one. The sound was like the buzz of an angry bumblebee, Dopplering in with a high pitched whine and then passing him with a low burr. The pain was like nothing he’d ever felt, a hammer blow to the back of his left shoulder. It was like someone had rammed a hot poker into his flesh and through his body. He didn’t even hear the scream that escaped his lips, and his vision was already turning fuzzy when he saw the ground rushing up to his face.

***

Five kilometers out to sea, a periscope turned slowly, then vanished beneath the surface. Inside the submarine, the scope hissed its way downward. “Dive master, make your depth one hundred meters,” the captain said. “Helmsman, bring us about to course 045 degrees. Increase speed to one-third.”

The executive officer made sure that the orders were followed, then approached his captain. “What is happening, sir?”

“The English destroyer took a torpedo hit, but she is still afloat,” said Mikhail Ivanovich Govanskiy, Captain of
K-251
, attached to the Red Banner Black Sea Fleet. “Did we intercept any signals?”

“
Da
, Comrade Captain,” the XO replied proudly. “There has been some significant radio traffic between the ship and its headquarters, ship to shore, and from the Argentines ashore to their headquarters on the mainland. As well as short-range transmissions between the troops themselves.”

“Very good. When the transcripts are ready, send them to my cabin. Ask Lieutenant Commander Nevsky to bring them, in fact. I’m sure he will have some insights to offer.” Nevsky was the ship’s political officer, most certainly a KGB agent, but otherwise a likable fellow. He would look over the transcripts with the captain and might actually have something interesting to say about them, before they would be sent on to Moscow.

Well, something was happening down here indeed, Govanskiy thought as he walked through the narrow passageway to his quarters. This might not be a wasted cruise after all. He tried not to think of the long voyage back to the Black Sea and their home port of Sevastopol. It was a pity they could not make a stop first in Cuba to visit their fraternal socialist allies. In Cuba, the sun was warm, and so, as Govanskiy and his crew well knew, was the comradeship.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Ascension Island, Central Atlantic

February 1982

The Air Force C-135 touched down with a mild thump, jolting several passengers out of their naps. Captain Jo Ann Geary was awake and alert well before the jet started its descent. She’d seen the volcanic peaks of Ascension Island from the small window next to her seat, and the sight of the island actually brought a lump to her throat. Ian was down there. Until that moment, she hadn’t really believed she would see him again. But he was down there, and she was coming to him.

It had taken some doing to hustle a seat aboard this bird, but she’d managed. Colonel Reese pulled a string or two; he’d been glad to do it, since he’d gotten some very favorable comments from the Pentagon about Jo’s work in the capital a few weeks ago. A particularly troublesome member of Congress had quieted down considerably, and hearings that might’ve embarrassed the military had in fact turned quite favorable. So it was that Reese arranged for Jo to get a seat on this particular flight, which was stopping at Ascension only long enough to off-load two officers for the local Air Force base, then continuing on to Turkey.

Rain was falling on Wideawake Field as the plane landed. Jo hadn’t thought to bring an umbrella and her jog across the tarmac left her close to drenched by the time she reached the small terminal building. At least it was warm; she recalled that Ascension’s sub-tropical climate kept temperatures around seventy virtually year-round. It took her a few minutes before she found a way to get from the base to the island’s hospital, in the so-called capital of Georgetown. Half an hour after landing, she climbed aboard a converted school bus for the twenty-minute ride.

Three months ago she’d left Hong Kong thinking that her relationship with Ian, such that it was, might have run its course. By the time she’d arrived back in Florida, she was starting to think it was just a fling, a very pleasurable one to be sure, but a fling nonetheless. Then his first letter had arrived, and she’d written back, and their correspondence, uneven as it was because of Ian being at sea so much, kept Hong Kong alive for her. Much to her surprise, she found her feelings for him growing.

Then a friend in the base signals office alerted her of a battle in the far South Atlantic involving Ian’s ship, and even got hold of a message from the destroyer’s captain detailing the list of wounded men. Ian’s latest letter said it wasn’t serious, but of course she knew it could’ve been much worse. He’d been in combat. The thought of Ian being killed nearly brought her to tears. Was she really in love with him? She’d left Hong Kong knowing that she might be, but had worked hard to suppress that frightening emotion. Really, though, how hard had she worked? She’d answered Ian’s letters, she’d dated no other men—in fact, she’d refused a couple of quite tempting offers. “You’re hooked,” Kate Simmons told her. “Give it up, girl. Ol’ Cupid done shot you straight through.”

Jo had tried to get in touch with the ship, but the Royal Air Force liaison officer at Eglin who tried to help her ran into a brick wall. “The ship’s virtually blacked out,” he told her. “Only official communications with Admiralty are allowed until she reaches port. Something serious happened down there, to be sure.” He had, however, been able to find out when
Cambridge
would arrive at Ascension.

The small, two-story hospital came into view around a bend in the road. Jo tried to keep her heart from racing, but it was a losing battle. The rain had stopped and the sun was out. She really should have checked into her guest billet at the base and changed into a fresh uniform, but that would have meant another hour or two, and she just couldn’t wait any longer.

***

The pain was never far away, and after three days on medication he’d told them no more, he’d have an occasional aspirin and that was it. The nurses clucked at him but let him be, exchanging knowing glances that told him all he needed to know about what they thought. Another balls-to-the-wall officer, wants to tough it out. Well, he’ll see.

His meds finally wore off in the middle of the night, the third night after the surgery, his fourth on the island. It was like someone had stuck a combat knife into his shoulder and twisted it, slowly but surely, and his screams brought the nurse and then a doctor, who knocked him out with a shot of something. The next morning, the pain was back, but a bit duller now, and every few hours he’d pop a couple aspirin to keep it somewhat under control.

There was a patio of sorts here, and he came out after the rain shower and sat down wearily, his robe and gown sopping up the water. He didn’t care, not about the wetness or even the pain. He cared about his men, and his career, and Jo Ann, not necessarily in that order. The week on board
Cambridge
en route to Ascension had passed in a fog of pain only occasionally thinned by the drugs, but he’d been lucid enough to learn that his unit had sustained three casualties, including his, which was the most serious. The Chileans lost two men; Hernandez, the corporal, and Capitan Arroyo, who’d gone into cardiac arrest on the beach. The night he heard that news, Major Ian Masters, Special Boat Squadron, Her Majesty’s Royal Marines, waited until the ship’s sick bay was dark and quiet, and then he wept for his Chilean comrade.

As for his career, where that would go was probably being determined in London right now. Foreign troops had taken British territory, and the British force sent to retrieve it had failed. Someone had to take the fall for that, and Ian suspected that his neck, and Captain Stone’s, would soon be on the chopping block. In the past three days Ian had gone over the operation in his mind time and again. Could he have done anything differently?

He’d finally come to a conclusion. Given the tactical situation, and the political limitations he later learned were placed on the British captain, the answer was no. Ian’s mission was doomed from the start. Only a full-scale artillery barrage from the ship would have saved the day, and Stone had confided in Ian that orders from London to disengage had come through just as he was preparing to give that very command. The SBS and Chilean commandos on the island could not possibly have dislodged the dug-in, determined Argentines without supporting fire from
Cambridge
. Ian was forced to accept this last, and did so very reluctantly.

Acceptance of that conclusion didn’t mean he felt any better about it. Underlying it all was his anger at his own leaders. Sovereign British territory had been seized, and Her Majesty’s Government had the means at hand to rectify that situation. London had decided not to. Who had given that bloody order? Nott, the defense minister? The P.M.? Ian found that last easier to believe. “What can you expect from a woman, after all?” he muttered.

A voice came from behind him. “I hope you’re not talking about me.”

***

“Were you…”

“What?”

“Were you afraid?” she finally asked.

They sat on a bench, on a breakwater overlooking the Atlantic. Discovering that there were no taxis in Georgetown, Jo had borrowed a car from Ian’s doctor, who reluctantly gave his patient permission for a two-hour leave.

They were tentative, at first. The embrace on the hospital patio was tender, yet delicate, concerned as she was about his healing shoulder. Their kiss was warm, but lacked the fire she’d imagined it would bring. Her feelings for him were—what? She’d thought she might be in love with this man, back in Hong Kong and through his letters over the long winter, and she’d been frightened at the news of his combat and his injuries, but now that she was actually with him…was it really there?