“Not to mention what’s left of the Royal Navy,” said the General.
“And yet,” said Admiral Jeffries, “we are sworn to duty, in an unbroken tradition of obedience to the government or the Head of State that goes back centuries. You and I are sworn to serve the Crown, and its elected government. And we ought not to be blind to the fact that we would both face lifelong disgrace if we quit and our successors somehow went down there and pulled the bloody thing off.”
“Rodney, despite this somewhat cathartic conversation, you and I are not going to quit. And we both know it. We’re going to dig in and go fight for the Falkland Islands as our Parliament has requested. We may think it’s a lunatic request, we may seethe with anger at the criminal destruction of the services, but we’re still going…”
“And if our enemy should be too strong, and our ship should be sinking, we’ll bring her about, and if she still has propulsion, we’ll ram them, correct?”
“Correct,” said General Brenchley, gravely. “We’ll both, in the end, do our duty.”
0900, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 15
NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY
MARYLAND
Lt. Commander Ramshawe had spent twenty-eight of the last thirty-six hours pondering the military brilliance of Argentina’s whiplash strike against the British defenses on the Falkland Islands. The operation had been carefully planned. No doubt of that. And anyone with a lick of sense must have seen it coming.
Certainly the U.S. Ambassador in Buenos Aires had seen it coming. His communique just before Christmas had stated he would be surprised if something didn’t shake loose in a couple of months. And Admiral Morgan had told him, Jimmy, that the observations of old Ryan Holland should always be regarded.
But here we are again. The ole Brits caught with their strides down (that’s Australian for pants). And everyone in a bloody uproar about who’s going to do what to whom. Are the Brits going to fight for their islands, or will they leave well enough alone?
“I’ve got a bloody powerful feeling the Brits are gonna fight,” he muttered to the empty room. “And then the shit will hit the fan, because we’ll be caught in the middle of it, and President Bedford will have the same problem as Ronnie Reagan—do we help our closest ally, or do we refuse because of our friendship with the Argentinians?”
Admiral Morris, Jimmy’s boss, was again working on the West Coast for the week, and Admiral Morgan had taken Kathy to Antigua in the eastern Caribbean for twelve days. Which left Jimmy bereft of wise counsel. So far as he could tell the United States must protest to the United Nations today about the seizure of the American oil and gas complexes in both the Falkland Islands and South Georgia.
“You can’t have U.S. citizens being frog-marched off the islands at bloody gunpoint, their equipment seized,” he muttered. “I mean Christ, that’s like the Wild West—Bedford is not going to have that. But that military strike was about oil. Buenos Aires thinks it belongs to Argentina and they won’t easily give it up. That damn newspaper the Herald laid it out pretty firmly.”
He took a sip of coffee and keyed in his computer to the section on the Falklands he had saved a couple of months ago. “Well,” he said, “ExxonMobil and British Petroleum have sunk a ton of money into those oil and gas fields. The question is, will we go to war for it? Bedford won’t, but Admiral Morgan might tell him to. And the Brits might think they have no choice. Streuth!”
Three hours later, the U.S. State Department formally complained to the United Nations about the willful, illegal seizure of the Falkland Islands by the Republic of Argentina. And two hours after that, Ryan Holland requested an official audience with the President of Argentina in Buenos Aires. Thirty minutes later the British Ambassador, Sir Miles Morland, requested the same thing. Neither embassy received a response.
In London, the Argentinian Ambassador was summoned to 10 Downing Street, and in Washington the Argentinian Ambassador was summoned to the White House. The former was instantly expelled and given twenty-four hours to vacate the building in Knightsbridge, or face deportation.
In Washington, the President gave the ambassador forty-eight hours to allow ExxonMobil execs to restart the oil industry in both East Falkland and South Georgia, or else the U.S. government would begin seizing Argentinian assets in the United States. In particular, the United States would take the grandiose embassy building on New Hampshire Avenue, Washington, plus the consulate properties in New York, Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, New Orleans, and Atlanta.
President Bedford also put in a call to the St. James’s Club in Antigua and requested Arnold Morgan to return to Washington as soon as possible, since the prospect of a war without the former National Security Adviser’s advice was more or less unthinkable.
Admiral Morgan agreed to come home a couple of days early, so long as the President sent Air Force One to collect him.
Meanwhile, back in Westminster, the English Parliament gathered to hear the Prime Minister speak at two p.m. on Wednesday afternoon. It was the first time in living memory he had attended the House two days out of three.
And he was not doing it out of a sense of duty. He and his spin doctors were desperately trying to halt the onrushing tide of editorials and features, which by now had convinced most of the country that he and his left-wing ministers had ruined the great tradition of British armed forces and that the UK might not have the military capability to fight for the Falkland Islands.
Defense correspondents, political commentators, editors, and newspaper proprietors were finally expressing the simple truth: if you want to live in strength and peace, you’d (A) better listen to your Generals and Admirals, and (B) be prepared for war at all times. It had taken the media a long time, but this second Falklands crisis had rammed it home, even to them.
The London Times had produced a scorching front-page headline that morning:
YEARS OF NEGLECT DISARMS BRITAIN’S MILITARY
Labour Ministers Stunned at Navy’s Accusations
The London Telegraph , a Tory and military stronghold, had talked to General Robin Brenchley:
TOP ARMY GENERAL LAMBASTES GOVERNMENT “STUPIDITY ”
Brenchley’s Warnings in New Falklands War
The following interview had nothing to do with the ability of the soldiers or their commanders. It had to do with equipment, air cover, missile defenses, and ordnance. What he called the “criminal neglect of our requirements.” Without fear for his own career, General Brenchley described this British Prime Minister and this British government as “the worst I have ever known, and, hopefully, the worst I ever will know.”
And his views were echoed over and over, in all the newspapers, and in all the television news programs, as if toadying up to Labour politicians was a thing of the past. It was as if the government had become a meaningless impediment to the gallant fighting men who would soon be sailing south to fight for the honor of Great Britain.
It was as if every chicken in the coop had somehow come home to roost. The media gloated, slamming into a Labour government that had thought it might somehow be able to wing it, feigning financial competence by increasing taxes and capping military budgets at well below required levels.
They had then handed over all of the saved money to state hospital bureaucrats, social security, disadvantaged gays, lesbians, the homeless, single-parent families, the unemployed, the unemployable, the weak, the impotent, the helpless, and the hopeless. Not until this day had they truly realized the stark naïveté of those policies.
And now the Prime Minister’s cronies sat packed into a tightly grouped little enclave of nervousness, while their leader stood before the House and tried to explain how Great Britain’s naval and military powers were not in any way weakened. And how the armed forces were absolutely ready to obey the will of the House, and head south to fight the jackbooted aggressors from the land of the pampas.
“I tell you now,” he said in his customary, shallow, cocksure way, “in our many years in government we have prepared the Navy and the rest of the military to fight a modern war. We have reduced numbers of personnel, but today we are more prepared for the kind of war we now face in the twenty-first century. Our professionalism is greater, our commanders have been given free rein to train our people to the highest standards.
“Our warships have state-of-the art weapons systems, and no one would dispute our aircrew are the finest in the world. I have spoken personally to all of our service leaders. I have explained the will of the House of Commons, expressed in this place on Monday afternoon, must prevail.
“And, Honorable Members, I can say with enormous optimism they were completely in agreement with our decision. Indeed, several of them thanked both me and my government for the farsighted changes we had made to the Navy—by that I mean the two new, state-of-the-art aircraft carriers, and the superb new Typhoon fighter jets, which will soon be developed to launch from their flight decks.
“I received nothing but gratitude from the Army for the new streamlining of the regiments, the foresight of our Secretary of State for Defense, Peter Caulfield, and the new twenty-first-century professionalism that we now enjoy.
“Honorable Members, the forthcoming conflict in the South Atlantic will be hard, as all wars are hard. But I have the utmost confidence in our commanders, and feel quite certain they will return victorious.
“We are at war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands. And at this stage I see no reason to extend that state of war to the Argentinian mainland. If, however, that day should come, then I am assured by all of our commanders that we are ready, capable, and certain that we shall prevail.
“But, like another Prime Minister, a lady from the opposite benches, who stood in this very place twenty-eight years ago, I say again to the House, we in government cannot tolerate a brutish, unprovoked attack on our islands. We cannot and will not put up with it.
“As in 1982, the Royal Navy will sail to the South Atlantic. The Admirals have told me personally of their total optimism. And they will bear with them a mighty Task Force. And either the Argentinians will surrender, or we will blast them asunder on the land, in the air, and on the waters that surround the islands. But they will not get away with this…”
At this point, the entire House erupted with a roar that must have been heard outside in Parliament Square. Members stood up, waving their order papers, cheering lustily, in perfect imitation of the football crowd, baying for revenge, as described by Peter Caulfield in Downing Street on Sunday night.
There was absolutely no political advantage for any Member to stand up and challenge the validity of the Prime Minister’s words. No one wished to hear them. This was an afternoon of the highest emotion, the hours of doubt were long gone. Britain’s naval and military commanders had told the government they would go and win back the Falkland Islands. Rule Britannia .
So far as the MPs were concerned, this was Super Bowl II in the South Atlantic. Older Members could somehow recall only the triumph, as Admiral Woodward’s flagship Hermes came steaming home to Portsmouth. There was the memory of the big Argentinian cruiser General Belgrano listing, sinking, in her death throes.
There were the pictures of the Argentinian surrender, thousands of troops lining up, laying down their arms. And of course the timeless vision of the men of Britain’s 2 Para, marching behind their bloodstained banner, into Port Stanley, their commanding officer, Colonel Jones, slain, but their victory complete.
Who could forget those distant days of pride and conquest? And who could resist a faint tremor of anticipation as once more the sprawling, historic Portsmouth Dockyard revved up for another conflict?
Not the veteran MPs of the House of Commons. Because the onset of battle seemed somehow to give them stature, to add to their sense of self-importance, if that was possible. But they left the great chamber that afternoon with their heads high, chins jutting defiantly, upper lips already stiffening. They were men involved with a war, a real war. They were men involved in life-or-death decisions.
But if the military were to be believed, it would be mostly death. After all, none of the MPs had sailed with Admiral Woodward into a gusting, squally Levanter off the Gibraltar Straits in the spring of 1982. None of them saw the entire ship’s company of a home-going British warship lining the port-side rails to salute the warriors heading south. None of them heard the singing, as Woodward’s armada sailed by…the achingly prophetic notes of the hymn that morning, “Abide With Me.”
None of them witnessed the paras, raked by machine-gun fire, fighting and dying on the flat plain of Goose Green. They never heard the cries and whispers of the injured and dying in shattered, burning warships. And they surely never saw the shocked faces of the doctors and nurses in the hospital on board Hermes as the horribly burned seamen and officers were carried in.
They didn’t. But Admiral Mark Palmer did, and the memory of lost friends stood stark before him as he stared at the television, listening to the hollow words of the Prime Minister. The Admiral winced at the sight of the ludicrous, complacent grins on the faces of the government ministers, nodding earnestly as their leader spun and distorted the naval and military picture to the House of Commons.
Admiral Palmer was sixty years old. He had served in the first Falklands War as a twenty-two-year-old Sub-Lieutenant in HMS Coventry before she was hit and sunk just north of the islands in the late afternoon of May 25, 1982. He recalled the helplessness, the desperation, as they tried to maneuver the ship, with its long-range radar on the blink, not knowing from which way the Argentinian bombers would come.
Twenty-eight years later, he still awakened in the night, trembling, his heart pounding when he heard again, in his dreams, the blasts of the bombs smashing into his ship, the screams of the injured. And he felt again the searing pain in his own burned face as the bomb blast hit him while he tried to supervise the 20mm gun on the upper deck.
Admiral Palmer was not afraid. His grandfather had fought at the Battle of Jutland in World War I. In truth Mark Palmer was a modern-day Roope VC. He’d have rammed an opponent when all was lost; he would most certainly have died for his convoy; and if required, he would have died to save this benighted British government, which, like all of his colleagues, he secretly loathed.
It was not a lack of courage, skill, or daring that in his mind doomed this new operation in the South Atlantic. It was the hideous truth that his men had been denied the correct resources to fight a new war by their own government. And Admiral Palmer turned his back on the television, and walked, coatless, out into the chill of the dockyard, appalled that somehow the very best of British people were being led by some of the very worst. The brave and the honorable, sent to the plate by a group of self-seeking opportunists with their limousines, chauffeurs, and bloated expense accounts.
“Christ,” he muttered, alone in the cold dockyard, “what a tragedy.”
He signaled for a driver, but first ran inside to collect his greatcoat. Five minutes later he was on the jetty where HMS Arc Royal had suddenly become the center of the universe. At least, the 20,000-ton light aircraft carrier was now the center of his own particular universe, twenty-six years old or not.
The good news was neither shaft needed replacing. The bad news was the spare part to replace a cracked mounting had to be flown from Scotland, but not until tomorrow. And that meant the repair crew, and the servicing engineers, were still operational while the gigantic task of storing the ship took place.
There was already an old-fashioned “humping party” passing boxes hand over hand up the starboard forward gangway. Alongside them was a mobile conveyer belt, with another crew loading enormous boxes of food—frozen, canned, dried, and fresh. And already the debris was mounting as the seamen ripped stuff out of the big outside containers, all of which were superfluous to the journey south.
In the middle of all this, the Fleet Maintenance Group and the carrier’s own staff were at work all over the starboard hull rectifying any defects, removing rust, repainting, checking every inch of the Battle Group’s flagship, which, within days, would be heading to a theater of war.
From all over the country, thousands and thousands of stores were arriving from various depots, by train, by the Ministry of Defense’s own transportation, and by commercial vehicles. And they were not just there for the Arc Royal . All over the dockyard there were ships lining up for the journey south. And all of them needed food, clothes, ordnance, ammunition, shells, and missiles.
Massive amounts of fuel were arriving, diesel for the gas turbines, Avcat for the aircraft. And it was not only the warships being fueled, it was also the huge replenishment ships of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary oilers, which would keep them topped up on the journey south and in the battle zone itself.
Personnel from every branch of the Navy were being drafted into Portsmouth, every available section of manpower was heading for the jetties, trying to clear the debris, helping with the loading, assisting the Supply Officers who paced the loading areas, checking off their “shopping lists” on big clipboards, calling out commands and instructions to the toiling, twenty-four-hours-a-day workforce.
Ghost Force Page 18