Ghost Force

by Patrick Robinson

  “I understand you do not want to take the United States to war,” said the Admiral. “But that is only the simple part of your problem. The difficult issue is that the Brits are plainly going to get beat. There’s no ifs, ands, or buts, they cannot win.

  “I know they pulled it off last time. But they had infinitely bigger resources then. Many more ships, fifty percent more fighter aircraft, all of them Harriers, which were vastly superior to these no-radar GR9s they’re fucking about with. And above all they had replacements. Sandy Woodward lost two of his major Type-42 destroyers, but they brought out more.

  “They cannot do so this time. They’re too small a fleet, too thinly stretched, and they cannot defend themselves against iron bombs. Quite frankly I’m astounded the Royal Navy agreed to go. As for the Army, God knows what’s going to happen to them. If they manage to land on the Falklands, to form an enclave preparing to march on the Argentinian positions, and the weather’s bad, they’ll get blasted out of sight, because those GR9s can’t stop an incoming enemy air assault.

  “In my view we’re looking at the most shocking military defeat for Great Britain since Dunkirk.”

  President Bedford walked across the Oval Office. He said nothing, but his concern was obvious. “Can we ignore it, if that happens?”

  “Christ, no,” replied Arnold. “Refuse to help our best friends in the international community? A nation that stood shoulder to shoulder with us, twice, in the Gulf? Our one completely trustworthy ally in Europe? Hell, no. We can’t just leave them to it. It would be construed as something close to treachery. No one would ever count on us again.

  “And, of course, the lion’s share of the oil and gas fields in the Falklands and South Georgia is held by ExxonMobil. That’s about as American as it gets.

  “Mr. President, I obviously appreciate your problems with taking this nation into a war. But it might be a whole lot easier to join the Brits right off the bat, in the hope we may frighten the shit out of the Args and they’ll withdraw from the islands in the face of American fury.”

  “Something tells me, Arnold, they’re not budging from that pile of rocks,” replied the President. “And I don’t think the oil and the wealth under the land is the true issue. I think they’re all nuts, and feel they are fighting some kind of a pampas jihad, battling for the birthright of every Argentinian. They’ve been simmering over their defeat in the Malvinas for nearly thirty years.

  “They have said, plainly, they would have fought for the islands even if the oil had never been there. In my view the oil and gas are merely the casus belli. Sooner or later the Argentinians would have attacked the pathetically weak British defenses in the Falklands. And then battled ’til the last drop of blood to hold on to their conquest. I agree with you. The Brits, and in a sense us as well, have our backs to the goddamned wall trying to fight these fucking fanatics.”

  Admiral Morgan nodded, in a clearly somber mood. He leaned back in his chair and suggested another pot of hot coffee. The President pressed a bell, then leaned forward to hear what the Admiral was about to say.

  When he finally spoke, it was more like a father to a son than an ex–submarine commander to a President. “Paul,” he said, “you and I have known each other for a while. We both served in the United States Navy. And I want to ask you one question…”

  “Shoot,” said the President.

  “What would you do if you were in command of the Argentinian military and wanted to win this forthcoming war in the fastest possible time?”

  “I’d take out the Royal Navy carrier, the one with the entire air force embarked on board.”

  “Correct. So would I. In fact I’d aim to hit the Ark Royal and about a half dozen other warships. I’d launch a hundred fighter-bombers and send half of ’em after the Ark Royal . That way I’d put her on the bottom of the Atlantic about four hours after the start of the war.”

  “Well, I guess they knew that last time, but they either could not or would not do it.”

  “Last time,” replied Arnold, “they had only five Exocet air-to-surface missiles. And Admiral Woodward kept the Hermes well out of range during the daylight hours. This time it’s all different. The Arg Air Force is much bigger, much more efficient.

  “They probably have two hundred Exocet missiles, because they’ve been stockpiling for this very day. However, the Brits have improved their antimissile systems and they might actually stop most of the Exocets, but they won’t stop the bombs from the A4s. They cannot stop them.

  “The Args will take their losses and in the end break through, and smash the carrier. And that, ladies and gentlemen, will be the end of the game.”

  “Christ,” said President Bedford. “Then what?”

  “Then what, indeed?” said the Admiral. “But in my view that’s where we’re likely to stand four weeks from now. So we better start thinking about it.”

  “You staying for lunch?”

  “Depends what you’re offering. Tuna sandwiches, forget it. Decent steak and salad, count me in. Tell you what, I’ll even go for a roast beef on rye, so long as you run to mayonnaise and mustard. But we better start thinking. This Falklands bullshit gets to be more of a goddamned problem by the day.”

  “If my wife catches me eating roast beef sandwiches with mayonnaise she’ll have a heart attack,” grinned the President.

  “Then I guess we’d better be good boys, and have two nice little grilled steaks with grass and fucking dandelions,” confirmed Arnold.

  “But what we really need to do is think. Because the day’s not far away when some comedian walks through that door and says the Brits just conceded defeat and left the Falkland Islands, which remain in Argentinian hands. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs wants to know where we stand, and the Chairman of ExxonMobil is fit to be tied.”

  “That,” added Admiral Morgan, “would be a darned awkward moment.”

  “You said that right,” said the President. “Let’s take a stroll along to the dining room, clear our heads and make a few decisions.”

  “We may as well,” replied the Admiral. “Because when this happens, it’ll happen real quick and the lines will be very clearly drawn. Do we or do we not help the Brits? And the answer to that one must always be yes. The question is, what do we do?”

  The two men stood up and pulled on their jackets. They left the Oval Office and walked along the West Wing corridor to the President’s small private dining room. The butler met them, and poured them each a glass of sparkling water, knowing that neither man ever touched alcohol during the day.

  “Well, Oh Great Oracle,” said the President, “what will we do?”

  “Dunno,” said Arnold, unhelpfully.

  “You mean I sent the most expensive jet aircraft in the country halfway across the world to some goddamned Caribbean paradise to drag you off the beach with that goddess who married you, and at the end of it I get ‘Dunno.’ Jesus Christ.”

  Arnold chuckled. “And the really bad news is I’ve just spent three weeks thinking about nothing else, night and day, and it’s still ‘Dunno.’

  “However,” he added, uttering the one single word the President was waiting to hear, “I know what we cannot do, under any circumstances. And that’s rustle up fifty thousand troops and somehow storm the place, with all guns firing, air, sea, and land.”

  “Why not?” said the President, with synthetic innocence.

  “Because we don’t even own the goddamned islands, and we would be universally accused of going to war over that oil
and gas, which is a charge we’ve heard quite enough of for one century.”

  “True,” said the President. “Well, what’s left?”

  “Dunno,” said Arnold.

  “Jesus Christ,” added the President.

  “Tell you the truth,” replied the Admiral, “I’d really like time to think about this, and I’d like to have a talk with some of the Pentagon guys, in particular the Special Forces officers.

  “Meanwhile, there is something that concerns me. And I’ve been trying not to dwell on it…but in the last few months we have been exercised by two substantial events.

  “The first was the murder in the White House of old Mikhallo whatsisname, the Siberian. And that was also a part of what the CIA believes was a massacre of Siberian oilmen and politicians in Yekaterinburg.

  “From that we must deduce that somehow Moscow is hugely concerned to the point of neurosis about developments in Siberia, and the possibility that in the end they may prefer to sell their oil not to Moscow but to their good and wealthy southern neighbors in China.

  “The second great event was the Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands, conducted with scarcely a warning, with massive confidence, and total disregard for the possibility of a vicious counterattack by the Brits.

  “Both of those drastic scenarios were conducted within weeks of each other. They were brutal, ruthless, and betrayed no apparent fear of consequences. And both of them were about oil and gas—the West Siberian reserves, which Moscow wants but may not keep. And the Falkland and South Georgia reserves, which Argentina has grabbed.

  “I’d sure hate to think that somehow those two events were in any way connected. Because that would sure as hell be bigger trouble than either you or I, or anyone else, could ever have imagined.”

  The Admiral’s global view invariably astounded President Bedford. And the two naturally garrulous men slowly ate their steaks and “fucking dandelions” in somber, uncharacteristic contemplation.

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  HMS Ark Royal crossed the fifty-degree line of latitude in the western reaches of the English Channel, twenty miles south of the ancient Royal Navy city of Plymouth. The weather was foul, blowing a force-eight gale, and the carrier pitched through ten-foot waves, the crests of which were beginning to topple, with dense streaks of foam marking the direction of the wind.

  Rain that had swept up the Atlantic in the approaching depression was light but squally, sweeping across the deck in lashing bursts against the base of the carrier’s island. The two Type-45s Daring and Dauntless ran a half mile off the carrier’s port and starboard bow.

  Two miles astern of the Ark Royal there were three of the frigate squadron, Grafton , Iron Duke , and Richmond , in company with a massive fleet oiler. Captain Farmer had the Ocean positioned three miles off the carrier’s port quarter, with Jonathon Jempson’s Albion a mile astern, all of them making twenty knots.

  Several hundred miles out in front were two 6,500-ton nuclear submarines, Astute and Ambush , both recently built in Barrow-in-Furness, as the newest, state-of-the-art improvements on the old Trafalgar class.

  Single-shafters with two turbines apiece, they each carried submerged-launch Tomahawk cruise missiles and thirty Spearfish torpedoes. They were equipped with the outstanding Thompson Marconi 2076 sonars, with towed array, and were probably the quietest attack submarines in the deep, quieter even than Viper K-157 , which right now was still fighting its way down the coast of Norway.

  The Astute was commanded by Captain Simon Compton, and the Ambush by Commander Robert Hacking, both men experts in navigation and weaponry.

  The surface Battle Group pushed on down the English Channel toward the Atlantic, through the now driving rain and plainly worsening weather. It was not yet storm force, but up ahead to the southwest the skies were darker, and the clouds seemed lower, and the warships seemed to brace for the rough seas before them.

  Admiral Holbrook had planned to visit the ships one by one and address the crews, but he elected to wait until the weather improved before making a succession of windswept helicopter landings on the flight decks of his various escorts.

  They were in open water now, and the waves were beginning to break over the bows of the frigates, but the forecast was pretty good, and the Admiral reckoned they’d be clear of the stormy conditions within twelve hours.

  With the coast of England finally slipping away behind them, the little fleet suffered its first equipment problem. Captain Yates’s destroyer, the Daring , developed a minor rattle in her gearbox, which was disconcerting though not life-threatening.

  The Daring ’s engineering team thought it was minor, and they elected to keep going until they reached calmer waters, where they were certain they could conduct the repair. All of the ships carried some spare parts for the routine running of a warship in rough seas at moderate to high speeds. The engineers would not, however, wish to cope with anything much worse while so far from a dockyard.

  One day later, on Saturday morning, March 19, they steamed out of the rain and gloom into much calmer waters and blue skies that would, with luck, hold fair for the thousand-mile run down to the Azores, which rise up from the seabed only just short of the thirty-degree line of longitude, the halfway point across the North Atlantic.

  Admiral Holbrook decided to visit the Dauntless and the Daring in the morning, and then fly back to the Iron Duke and the Richmond in the afternoon. And to each of those four groups of highly apprehensive sailors he delivered the same somewhat brutal message:

  “Gentlemen, there’s no point beating about the bush. We are going to war, and it is likely that some of us may not be returning. I expect to lose ships, and people. And I am obliged to remind you that for several years now you have been paid by the Royal Navy to prepare for events such as this.

  “I realize this is all something of a shock, but I am afraid you are all now required to front up, and earn it, perhaps the hard way. You may not have realized it before, but this is what you joined the Navy for.

  “To fight one day a battle on behalf of your country. Royal Navy seamen have long had a phrase for it— you shouldn’t have joined if you can’t take a joke.

  “With regard to our enemy, the Args have two twenty-six-year-old diesel electric submarines, both somewhat tired and slow. We ought to detect them far away, and deal with them accordingly. They also have an even older, even slower submarine that one of their commanders ran aground in the River Plate at the end of last year. I do not regard the Argentinians as a major subsurface threat.”

  This raised a tentative laugh, but Admiral Holbrook’s words had already had a sobering effect. “Their surface fleet is more of a problem,” he said, but added, more encouragingly, “although I expect our SSNs to have dealt with it before we get there.

  “I refer to their four German-built destroyers, all of them equipped with Aerospatiale MM 40 Exocet surface-to-surface missiles, which is not good news.

  “They have another couple of elderly destroyers, one of them a British-built Type-42 with Exocets. The other one, Santisima Trinidad , is probably out of commission.

  “They have nine frigates, mostly carrying an Exocet missile system. Two of them only ten years old. We must be on our guard at all times, absolutely on top of our game. And if we stay at our best
we’ll defeat them.”

  Admiral Holbrook saw no point in dwelling upon the awful discrepancy in the air war, Argentina with perhaps two hundred fighter-bombers, God knows how many Super-Etendards, all land-based, against the Royal Navy’s twenty-one GR9s with no radar, unable to find each other in bad visibility, never mind the enemy. All of them bobbing about in the South Atlantic with no second deck, should the Ark Royal be damaged.

  And each day the Admiral flew to address a different ship’s company, and to confer with his Captains. And they continued to make passage south, mostly in good weather, covering hundreds of miles every twenty-four hours.

  The aircrews continued to work up their attack force, with takeoffs and landings being conducted all day and into the evening. They were rarely interrupted, except, on several occasions, by Russian Long-Range Maritime Patrol Craft, known locally as Bears. Every time they visited, they just flew along the horizon watching the British ships, and every time they came, the Task Force Commander hoped to hell they were not talking to the Argentinians.

  However, they never came south of the Spanish coast, and eventually the Bears vanished altogether. Nonetheless, the deep frown on Admiral Holbrook’s brow never eased as he and Captain Reader discussed the appalling task that lay ahead of them, both men understanding this could be the last battle a Royal Navy Fleet would ever fight.

  231440MAR11 50.47N 15.00W

  NORTH ATLANTIC

  SPEED 7, DEPTH 500, COURSE 195

  Captain Vanislav had thus far conducted his long voyage with exemplary caution. He had run Viper K-157 swiftly for two days down the Norwegian coast, then cut his speed dramatically as he angled more westerly out into the Norwegian Sea, and delicately over the SOSUS wires of the United States Navy.

  They’d crept down through the GIUK Gap, making only seven knots as they moved over the Iceland–Faeroe Rise in only 850 feet of water, straight along the ten-degree westerly line of longitude. They had pressed on over the Iceland Basin, where the Atlantic suddenly shelves down to a depth of nearly two miles.