The Pacific Rim Collection

by Don Brown

  “Please. Could you tell the cabbie I’ll be right there? I want to look in on Aussie.”

  “Certainly.”

  She pushed open the door to his bedroom. Tiptoeing across the carpet, in the soft glow of the light from the hallway, she saw he was still sleeping. She wanted to wake him to say good-bye, but her maternal instincts told her otherwise.

  She got on her knees and put her arm around him. She kissed him on his forehead and silently prayed. She stood and tiptoed out of the room.

  “Mommy?” he called as she stepped into the hallway.

  “Yes, Aussie?”

  “Are you going to find Daddy?”

  She stepped back into the small bedroom and kneeled beside him and hugged and kissed him again. “How did you know that, Aussie?”

  “I heard you and Aunt Shelley talking.”

  “Yes, sweetie, I will try to find your father. But you will have lots of fun with Aunt Shelley, and Mommy will be back soon.” She kissed his head.

  “Mommy?”

  “Yes, sweetie.”

  “When you find Daddy, will you tell him I love him?”

  Her tears flowed like a river. “Of course I will.”

  “I’ll miss you, Mommy.”

  “Mommy’s going to miss you too, Aussie.”

  “I love you, Mommy.”

  “I love you, baby.”

  She kissed and hugged him a final time, then rushed out of the room.

  She had to leave before she changed her mind.

  Belgrano II base camp

  Argentine outpost

  Antarctica

  Did you hear me, Sir Williams?” Montes snapped. “I told you to order your men to their knees.”

  “I . . . yes, I heard you.”

  “Well? What is your delay?”

  Anderson hesitated. “I’m sorry. I don’t think I can do that.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t think I can do that.”

  “Did you say you don’t think you can obey my order?”

  This time Anderson did not respond.

  “Not going to obey me, Sir Williams?”

  Still no response.

  “Perhaps you need to dance a bit more, Sir Williams!” Montes pulled his revolver out again.

  The first shot struck the snow to the left of Anderson’s foot.

  “Please!” Anderson pleaded.

  The second shot struck him between the eyes and blew the back of his head off. The force of the shot from the front knocked Anderson back, and his body sprawled faceup in the snow. Anderson’s mouth froze open, and his left eyeball protruded like a large white marble. Blood gushed from the bullet hole, from the eye socket, and brains and blood spread out from the back of his head.

  Three men started heaving. One down toward the end of the line, Rivers could not tell which one, bent over and vomited. And although the sight of death and gore did not shock Rivers, as he had seen such sights many times before, in Afghanistan and Africa, he felt himself seething. Montes had better hope he did not find himself one-on-one with Rivers.

  In the wind-filled moment, full of whistling howls, no words were spoken. In this surrealistic moment of death, the Argentineans stared at the body. And even the murderer, Capitán Montes, by allowing a spontaneous moment of silence, seemed to stop to pay a strange tribute to the dead.

  A whispering came from the British line. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside still waters. He restoreth my soul.”

  Bach’s voice. Reciting something. Perhaps a prayer. Perhaps something from the Bible. Austin wasn’t sure.

  “He leadeth me into the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. He restoreth my soul.”

  “Squad leader!” Montes yelled over the top of Bach’s prayer.

  “Si, Capitán!”

  “Lead the prisoners to their quarters!”

  “Si, Capitán!”

  “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For thou art with me.”

  “You heard the capitán!” the squad commander screamed. “Left face!” Soldiers moved into the line and turned the British to their left. “Forward march! Move! Move! Move!”

  They stepped forward, trudging across the snow, but not in any semblance of military precision.

  Captain Dunn walked at the head of the line. Rivers followed behind him. Bach, the self-anointed group chaplain, followed Rivers, still muttering that same prayer verse or whatever from the Bible.

  “Okay, drag the body out of the way and get the blood out of the snow!” Montes barked instructions as the group walked across an open space toward a white geodesic dome, the door guarded by two soldiers. Other armed guards, half a dozen altogether, stood guard around the perimeter.

  One of the guards opened the door and pointed inside. Dunn stepped in first, followed by Rivers. The dome, typical for this part of the world, housed a large open space in the middle with a few adjoining rooms. It had only one WC, a condition inadequate for ten men.

  Dunn walked over to Rivers, and they stood together as the others formed a semicircle inside. There had been twelve of them. And now, with Anderson dead and Gaylord possibly dead, ten remained.

  Rivers felt conflicted in his role, which felt like half SBS officer and half babysitter. He had not trained for this in Special Forces school. He was a trained killer. Not a babysitter. If these chaps had any military instincts at all . . .

  “Dunn?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but before we leave this place, I am going to kill that Montes chap.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Control room

  ARA San Juan

  South Atlantic Ocean

  50 miles southeast of the Malvinas (Falkland) Islands

  depth 100 feet

  8:00 a.m. local time

  The German-built ARA San Juan, identical in design to her sister boat, the ARA Santa Cruz, measured 216 feet in length, carried a crew of twenty-nine, and was powered by diesel engines and electric motors.

  By contrast, the more powerful Los Angeles–class nuclear attack submarines, the workhorse attack submarine of the US Navy, measured 366 feet in length, 150 feet longer than the Argentine boats, and carried 110 crew members.

  Pitted one-on-one against an American submarine, either the Santa Cruz or the San Juan would be at a significant disadvantage. But against any other ship in the world, including against a powerful American supercarrier, they were a powerful one-two punch for the Argentine Navy.

  With six torpedo tubes in her bow, the San Juan packed a deadly strike, carrying a total of twenty-two torpedoes and another thirty-nine mines.

  In command of the San Juan, one hundred feet below the surface of the chilly waters of the South Atlantic and fifty miles southeast of the Malvinas Islands, known by the British as the Falkland Islands, Commander Carlos Almeyda sipped black coffee and surveyed the flurry of activity in the control room. Ten miles off to his north, submerged at one hundred feet, the San Juan’s sister boat also lay in wait.

  Like wolves stalking their prey, the two Argentinean submarines had reached their patrol area. Their mission—to attack any British ships sailing to Antarctica to reinforce the British-Chilean oil exploration efforts.

  Britain had always been a sea power, and Britain would carry out her attempted power grab for Antarctic oil by the sea lanes, just as she had done in her embarrassing defeat of Argentina in 1982, delivered by the Royal Navy and Royal Marines.

  Now, on this submarine and from this control room, with an unfathomable weight of responsibility placed upon him, Carlos Almeyda and his men waited as a first line of defense in dangerous waters against the same enemy that had defeated his country before. Before history would again repeat itself, these men would sacrifice their lives if necessary.

  “Sonar Officer. Report.”

  “Still nothing, Ca
pitán,” the sonar officer said. “Except a couple of whales moaning in the distance. Other than that, only the gurgling sounds of the sea.”

  “Only the gurgling sounds of the sea?” Carlos sipped his coffee and smiled. “You have a poetic way with words, Lieutenant Fernandez. You should write a book when you retire from the Navy.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Fernandez said. “I minored in Spanish literature and would love to do that one day.”

  “I think you should,” Almeyda said. “But before you trouble yourself with such a laborious undertaking, I want you to continue to focus on those . . . what did you say? . . . ah, yes . . . focus your attention on those gurgling sounds of the sea. And when you hear something other than a couple of frolicking whales, something sounding like a British warship, notify me immediately.”

  “Si, Capitán. With pleasure.”

  Bridge

  M/S Thor Liberty

  British Registry cargo ship

  South Atlantic Ocean

  50 miles east of the Falkland Islands

  course 180 degrees

  8:10 a.m. local time

  From the bridge of the freighter Thor Liberty, Captain Bob Hudson looked out over the cold, gray waters of the South Atlantic.

  With her storage compartments loaded down with tons of petro-drilling equipment destined for the frozen Antarctic tundra, the Thor Liberty sailed in the center of a four-ship flotilla bound for the turbulent waters of Drake Passage between Cape Horn and the Antarctic Peninsula.

  Off to the left, sailing in front of the rising sun, the gray assault ship HMS Ocean, carrying more than eighteen helicopters and eighty-three Royal Marines, cut a course parallel to Thor Liberty.

  To the right, the British ship RFA Black Rover cut the same course, sailing under the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, a division of the Royal Navy.

  Black Rover: the civilian-manned naval vessel that supplied the Royal Navy with fuel and ammunition, and also transported a contingency of another two hundred Royal Marines to supplement those on board HMS Ocean.

  Out front of HMS Ocean, RFA Black Rover, and M/S Thor Liberty, the powerful new flagship of the British fleet, the HMS Queen Elizabeth, plowed through the waters, leading the British flotilla. The brand-new supercarrier gave Britain the most powerful warship in the world, with the exception of the American supercarriers.

  Somewhere out there, under the cold Atlantic waters, the nuclear attack sub HMS Astute patrolled nearby, packing tons of additional firepower in defense of the carrier and in support of the mission.

  The five-ship Royal Navy task force, including the Astute, would be the first to resupply and support the British expedition of Antarctica.

  All his life, Bob Hudson had wished for nothing other than a life in the Royal Navy. His father and grandfather were Royal Navy sea captains. And his father sailed with the naval task force that had emancipated the Falklands in 1982.

  Bob, hoping to follow in his father’s footsteps, had enrolled at the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth.

  There he excelled, and he fell in love with the great natural beauty of Devon County. But the beautiful countryside in southeastern England was not all that he fell in love with.

  Her name was Shelley.

  Her shiny black hair, which she would push flirtatiously across her forehead, glistened in the afternoon sunshine. Her dauntingly blue eyes and her pencil-thin waist would remain in his dreams years later.

  On their boat trips down the River Dart, when they snacked on a picnic basket full of champagne and olives on the grassy riverbank, he discovered for the first time the feeling of love.

  They discussed marriage and Navy life, and she had made clear her desire to become an officer’s wife.

  This budding relationship had seemed perfect in every respect. For it would take a rare and special lady to put up with a naval officer and to maintain a stable and lovely home and to care for children while the officer would literally spend years at sea over the course of a career.

  On a Saturday afternoon boating picnic trip during his final year at the academy, they had pulled the boat up to a private grassy area along the shoreline, and after two glasses of champagne, he asked her to marry him.

  She accepted immediately.

  They spent the rest of the afternoon on the grassy bank celebrating and sipping champagne.

  The next Saturday, after a week of exciting wedding planning, she sat dutifully in the stands of the athletic fields, watching his rugby league match. Though he often played the position of a winger, as he had one of the fastest foot speeds on the team, on this day he shifted to fullback because of an injured teammate.

  Their opponents from Sandhurst, the Royal Military Academy team, were out for blood against Bob’s Dartmouth team. Nothing like a feud between Army and Navy to get the juices flowing.

  Bob had dropped out of the defensive line to cover the rear from kicks and runners breaking the line. He converged on the Sandhurst runner advancing with the ball when a collision blindsided him.

  He saw a flash of stars and then fell face-first to the grass. Sometime later, he woke up to the blinding lights of the Naval College sick bay, battling knife-like pain in his kneecap and his head. He blacked out again, then woke up later at Dartmouth Hospital on the South Embankment, swarmed by nurses from the National Health Service. Bob recovered from the severe concussion. But the ligament and cartilage damage would have lifelong consequences.

  The Royal Navy frowned on such injuries and rejected his application for a commission.

  Unfortunately, the injury led to more than the loss of his naval officer’s commission. Within a few weeks, Shelley grew strangely cool. Shelley wanted to be an officer’s wife. Bob Hudson would never be an officer in His Majesty’s Navy. Within weeks, she terminated their relationship.

  With Shelley gone, Bob had to refocus. Though he could no longer join the Royal Navy, he still hoped to go to sea.

  At the end of World War I, King George V bestowed the title of Merchant Navy on the British merchant shipping fleets following their valiant service supporting the war. When a friend referred Bob to the offices of Thorco Shipping in London and helped him arrange an interview, he secured a job as a navigator on board the freighter Thorco Africa.

  He would later serve on a number of Thorco ships, including the Thorco Attraction, the Thorco Asia, the Atlantic Zeus, and the Thor Sapphire.

  Thorco paid well but required long periods—sometimes months—at sea. Yet the sea helped him keep his mind off of her, for the sea became a jealous mistress.

  Three months ago, Bob had gotten a call from Thorco’s vice president in charge of personnel assignment.

  He would never forget the question. “Bob, are you ready to assume command?”

  For a mariner, whether military or civilian, this would become one of those frozen-in-time moments—the moment he was offered command at sea.

  Due to an early retirement, an opening had come up aboard the freighter Thor Liberty to become the ship’s master, and Bob’s stellar service as first officer on the M/S Thor Sapphire made him the company’s leading choice to take command. The job was his—if he wanted it.

  Bob accepted the job and reported to Thor Liberty’s home port at the city of Douglas, on the Isle of Man, a British island in the Irish Sea between Ireland and England.

  There he learned that the ship’s first mission under his command involved the Royal Navy. Thor Liberty would sail in a four-ship flotilla along with HMS Queen Elizabeth, HMS Ocean, and RFA Black Rover on a top secret mission to the Antarctic region.

  While HMS Queen Elizabeth would pack most of the firepower with her air wing of brand-new F-35 attack jets, and HMS Ocean would bring additional firepower, including helicopters and Royal Marines, Thor Liberty would transport munitions and petro-drilling equipment owned by British Petroleum. Also on board Thor Liberty, a team of petro- and mechanical engineers who would be transported by helicopters to the drop site.

  Black Rover’s mission would be to
replenish the other ships and transport several platoons of Royal Marines to supplement the group on board HMS Ocean.

  This mission provided a level of excitement for Bob. Aside from the thrill of being selected to carry out a mission in service to the Crown, which fulfilled his sense of patriotism, Bob delighted in the fact that several of his classmates from the Royal Naval College were stationed on board both HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Ocean. This provided a personal sense of satisfaction. Unlike his milestone achievement, few of his classmates from Dartmouth had yet to achieve anything even close to what he had achieved—command at sea.

  This thought brought a smile to his face.

  And so did another thought.

  What would she think? Last he had heard, she had moved to London. And still had not married.

  After all these years, he still kept her photo in his wallet. He never knew why he kept it, but only that he could never rid himself of it.

  Oh well. It was jolly academic at this point.

  He took another sip of hot tea and looked out at the choppy waters of the South Atlantic.

  In a few hours, when they entered the waters of the Drake Passage, the swells would go from choppy to menacing.

  “Navigator! Updated course status.”

  “Holding at one-eight-zero degrees, Captain.”

  “Very well. Steady as she goes, Mister Smithwick.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  Control room

  ARA San Juan

  South Atlantic Ocean

  50 miles east of the Malvinas (Falkland) Islands

  depth 100 feet

  8:30 a.m. local time

  Even before Lieutenant Julio Fernandez became a physics major at the University of Buenos Aires, specializing in the physics of sound acoustics, he developed an insatiable fascination with submarines. This fascination grew when, as a teenager, he had become a fan of American submarine movies. Run Silent, Run Deep. The Hunt for Red October. Crimson Tide.

  His native Argentina had only three submarines in its fleet. Four others scheduled to be built were scrapped because of costs. Fernandez had considered moving to the United States to join the US Navy.