Ghost Force

by Patrick Robinson

  “If the British Army is already ashore, they’ll be massacred from the air and then taken prisoner. The fleet, with no air cover, will be hammered sideways and the survivors will be forced to return home…and no one will ever know what happened to the Ark Royal . At least no one who matters. The Russian SSN will never surface. She’ll just turn north and creep quietly home. And the world will believe the Brits lost a fair fight against Argentina, a fight she should never have entered.”

  “Fuck me,” said Jimmy, shaking his head, and then, hesitating, “You know the big trouble with that little scenario? It doesn’t have any weak points!”

  Arnold guffawed. “Except there’s not one shred of evidence that makes all those little facts and circumstances hang together.”

  “What is it you always say, Arnie? You do not accept incompatible facts, right? I’d say the lineup you just gave me is one highly compatible group of facts. I’d say those little bastards are harmonious.”

  “Jimmy, they are so far-reaching I hesitate to continue. But they have been on my mind. And they were on my mind in the days before you mentioned the submarine we picked up west of Ireland. I suppose no one from the Russian Navy has offered confirmation or even denial about the whereabouts of the Akula II submarines?”

  “Not a word, so far as I know.”

  “And there won’t be a word. Which of course makes me think I may be right. Because if they’d sent a nuclear boat on a training exercise down the Atlantic, they’d have told us. You know, the Cold War’s over. We’re supposed to be buddy-buddy with Moscow. But when the Kremlin starts clamming up, on any subject, you know there’s something going on.”

  “I guess there is,” said Jimmy. “But if you’re right, this is a huge development. I mean what if the Brits catch ’em, and sink the boat. I mean, where the hell does that put us?”

  “Jimmy, I’ll just have our sandwiches sent in—Kathy’s out, which means we get roast beef with mayonnaise and mustard. Our housekeeper is on pain of death if she mentions it…I’ll be right back…get some more coffee…and then I’ll tell you where we stand.”

  Jimmy took off his jacket, tossed it over a chair in the hall, and sat down again in the warm study. He glanced at the third lead story on the front page of the Times , its headline set in italicized type, which signified it contained nothing new.

  No Political Solution Yet—

  Argentina Occupies the Falkland Islands

  At that moment the Admiral returned. “Ignore that rubbish,” he said. “Kipper knows more about it than they do.”

  “Who the hell’s Kipper?”

  “Kathy’s new dog. A King Charles spaniel. I think he’s as silly as a sheep. But he might learn, which is more than they will at the NYT .”

  “Where is he?”

  “Gone out with Kathy. Virginia somewhere.”

  Arnold sat down, and said quietly, “This damn Russia connection could cause more trouble than anyone realizes, mostly because in the end we can’t leave the Brits to suffer defeat at the hands of an armed aggressor.

  “I know Argentina will blather on about the Malvinas belonging to them. But that’s just horseshit. The Falkland Islands are a legal British protectorate, full of British citizens, and they are ruled and financed by Westminster. The Argentine action, whether they like it or not, is that of a gangster.

  “And we cannot support that. Neither will the United Nations. Neither will the EU. The trouble is, we’ll be expected to do something about it, if the Brits are defeated. And we’ll have to do something about it, though I’m not sure what. Because Paul Bedford will not take this nation into someone else’s war, whatever the UN says.”

  “So what happens?”

  “I’m toying with the idea of forcing an Argentine surrender on the islands with Special Forces only.”

  “But they’ll need air cover, just like the Brits, won’t they? And now you’re talking aircraft carriers, fighter-bombers, and F-16s all over the place. That’s war, real war.”

  “Jimmy, I was actually wondering whether in this modern, high-tech age, we could not eliminate the Argentine Air Force and retake the island with just a force of landed U.S. Navy SEALs working with the British SAS.”

  “Where will the SAS come from?”

  “I’d be surprised if they were not already in there, or at least well on their way.”

  “You mean the SAS, in place, on the islands?”

  “I do. Plus the Brits’ other Special Forces. That’s the Special Boat Service, kinda SAS with flippers.”

  For five more days, the Royal Navy Task Force steamed south, running into relatively calm waters north of Ascension on March 28. At this point, Viper was still more than 2,000 miles behind. However, with SOSUS inactive in the southern half of the Atlantic, the submarine was now moving swiftly, often at twenty knots, five hundred feet below the surface, hugging the eastern edge of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

  Captain Vanislav had no intention of going anywhere near Ascension, and would pass its line of latitude, eight degrees south of the equator, some thousand miles to the west, off the jutting, most easterly headland of Brazil.

  Meanwhile, the Task Force was moving into the anchorage at Ascension Island, which had been rapidly transformed from a U.S. communications and satellite tracking station into a forward fleet and air base. President Bedford had been as good as his word… all the help they need, except actually going to war with them.

  There were literally piles of extra stores flown out from the UK, and within a few days the Royal Navy’s understrength Task Force would at least be equipped with everything they would need for the forthcoming conflict.

  The two nuclear submarines, however, Astute and Ambush , did not stop off at Ascension. They pressed on south for very good reason. Astute was carrying sixteen members of 22 SAS, and Ambush had sixteen members of the SBS on board. These were the iron men of the British armed forces, the force that would go into the islands alone under cover of darkness, equipped with radios, computers, and satellite communication systems.

  And for possibly two weeks, they would communicate back to the Task Force the troop placements of the Argentinians. They would work in conditions of extreme danger, perhaps the most lethal part of the operation being the night entry onto the Falklands.

  Because it would have to be by boat, fast, hard-deck rubberized Zodiac outboards, launched off the decks of the submarines, and driven in, from four miles offshore, possibly under Argentine radar.

  The SAS would certainly make a landing on the craggy coastline beneath the eight-hundred-foot-high Fanning Head at the northeastern end of Falkland Sound. They would work from there, moving around the island only after dark.

  The Special Boat Service troops were scheduled to go in somewhere on the coast of Lafonia, probably in Low Bay, which is situated to the south of Mount Pleasant Airfield across Choiseul Sound. Their task was to scout out the territory for the British military landing, perhaps 10,000 men. The land they would investigate was not hospitable; it was flat, with little cover, and rock-strewn, but a place from which the land forces could at least locate their enemy by air, sea, and land.

  The military chiefs in Whitehall had of course discussed the possibility of an entry by parachute drop. But the risk was simply too great, because no one knew quite what the Argentine troops could see and what they could not.

  Things were quite sufficiently tough without risking some of the best men in th
e entire landing force being shot to pieces immediately after they landed. The solution was obvious. If the advance Special Forces were going in at all, they were going in by sea.

  The embarked SAS troop was commanded by thirty-year-old Captain Douglas Jarvis, a member of a venerable racehorse-breeding family from Newmarket in Suffolk. He had considered becoming a bloodstock agent, but his elder brother had inherited the racing yard, and his elder sister, Diana, had insisted on selling the family stud farm, of which she owned 50 percent.

  Which left young Douglas with a bit of money from his quarter share of the stud farm, a diminished family, and not much career choice. Anyway, he was “fed up to the teeth with bloody racehorses,” and managed to pass selection for entry into the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst.

  He was commissioned into the Second Battalion Parachute Regiment, and five years after that he was accepted into the SAS, from an intake of only 6 out of 107 applicants. Douglas Jarvis was generally considered one of the toughest young officers who ever wore the beige beret of 22 SAS.

  A lifelong foxhunter, steeplechase rider, and amateur boxer, he once made the front page of England’s horseracing daily, the Racing Post , when, at the age of eighteen, he had forged his entry to the annual Stablelads Boxing Championship and flattened four stable-staff hard men from desperate inner-city council estates, to win the heavyweight championship.

  That was only a 138-pound weight class among the race of relatively small men who form England’s jockey population, but the committee took a poor view of the well-born son of a stable proprietor plundering the championship, which traditionally belonged to horse racing’s other ranks.

  Douglas was disqualified, and he somewhat grudgingly handed back his silver trophy. The authorities were not able, however, to take away his steam-hammer right hook, and years later he was narrowly defeated on points in the Sandhurst Middleweight Final, but won the trophy for the Royal Military Academy’s bravest loser.

  The lean, wide-shouldered Douglas somehow remained a legend in his native Newmarket, especially when he won a coveted Military Cross for leading his paras, fearlessly, in a pitched battle against insurgents in Basra during the 2003 Iraqi war. He shared the front page of the local paper with a sixteen-hand dark bay colt named Rakti, who had won Newmarket’s prestigious Champion Stakes, and was trained locally by his cousin Michael Jarvis. THREE HEROES FROM NEWMARKET proclaimed the newspaper, presumably referring to the trainer, the horse, and Douglas.

  “Jesus Christ,” said one of 2 Para’s best young commanders.

  The beautiful Diana Jarvis adored her kid brother. But in recent years she had become something of a socialite, foxhunting in Ireland, and occasionally assisting a French trainer with the purchase of expensive thoroughbred yearlings at the major sales in Saratoga and Kentucky. She and Douglas saw each other whenever possible, but stayed in touch mostly by e-mail.

  Neither of them married in their twenties, but then, suddenly, last year, Diana finally packed her bags, in order to emigrate to Kentucky and marry an American who owned a huge breeding farm in the heart of the Blue Grass. They had been meeting for a couple of years at the Keeneland Sales.

  When she left Newmarket, she rather carelessly told a reporter her only regret about leaving England was how much she would miss Douglas. This did not go down especially well with the rest of the family, which included about 7,000 uncles, aunts, and cousins.

  NEVER MIND 200 YEARS OF THOROUGHBRED TRADITION—

  DIANA JARVIS WILL MISS ONLY THE BOXER

  That was really great. Especially typeset over a double-page spread with photographs of the great Jarvis trainers and breeders of the past. And by that time, she was glad to board the aircraft to the USA.

  Six weeks later she became Mrs. Rick Hunter of Hunter Valley Farms, at a mutually agreed upon small ceremony in the Lexington registry office, and a reception for thirty or forty friends and neighbors. Douglas was unable to attend, and it took Diana five more months to realize her new husband, like her brother, had also been a member of his country’s Special Forces.

  The towering, superbly fit Rick had willingly told her he had been a Commander in the United States Navy, but only reluctantly admitted he had served a short tour in the Navy SEALs… just a small Special Forces group, kinda like your brother’s SAS guys .

  The enormity of that particular sin of omission was of course lost on the new Diana Hunter. But from time to time she picked up a few wry references to bygone conflicts, particularly when Rick’s Vice President of Thoroughbred Operations, Dan Headley, came to dinner. Apparently, he also had once been in the U.S. Navy.

  Anyway, that was the modern pedigree of Captain Douglas Jarvis, who right now was five hundred feet underwater, speeding south down the Atlantic, 1,500 miles off the coast of Brazil, locked in conversation with the Astute ’s commanding officer, Captain Simon Compton.

  They were in the ops area of the Navigation Officer, Lt. Commander Bill Bannister. Spread before them was a large Navy chart of the waters around East Falkland, and they were all looking at the northernmost points along the giant headland that guards the entrance to Falkland Sound.

  This is a great craggy coastline, with high cliffs forming a seaward crescent facing to the northwest. The outermost top end of the crescent is Cape Dolphin, which sits on the end of a barren peninsula some two miles long. “Militarily worthless,” in the judgment of Douglas Jarvis.

  The other end of the crescent is formed by Fanning Head, which really does guard the entrance to the Sound. It used to be 800 feet high with sensational views over the water. Today it still had sensational views, but stood only 787 feet high, its summit having been blown away by the guns of the Royal Navy frigate HMS Antrim during the first Falklands conflict.

  “You think the Args might be up there again?” asked Captain Compton.

  “They might,” said Captain Jarvis. “But only if they think we might do precisely what Admiral Woodward did last time—send the fleet straight under their Fanning Head garrison at the dead of night. All lights out.”

  “Hell, they can’t believe we’re that bloody dreary, can they?” said the CO. “They must think we’d try something new.”

  “You would think so,” replied Jarvis. “But all of our satellite interceptions suggest they know a lot about us. They don’t have much satellite observation themselves, if any, and we know the Americans are not helping them. But someone is, God knows who. And it would not be surprising if they closed Falkland Sound to us completely. They may have mined it, of course, but they did not do so last time, and all they need now is a powerful missile and gun position up on Fanning Head with modern radar.”

  “Yes, I suppose so. And where does that put us?” The CO had quickly grown to respect the SAS Captain, as had everyone on board.

  “Essentially we have to appreciate the logic of their position. An Argentine stronghold on top of that headland closes the north end of the Sound to us. It means we have to go right around the back of West Falkland or swing way south down the Atlantic and come at them from the southeast. If we want to make a landing, that is.

  “For very little time, trouble, and cost, they can establish a powerful position on Fanning Head, which would plague us throughout this conflict. Simon, we have to land at the base of that cliff and take the bastard out, not exactly by storm, but somehow to blow the fucker up.”

  “Christ, who’s going to do that?”

  “I am,” said Captain Jarvis. “With seven of my best troopers.”

  “You’re going to climb that rock face?”

>   “In the absence of a chairlift, I suppose so. Where do you think we are, Courcheval!”

  They returned to the chart. And Captain Compton began talking the SAS boss through their route into Falklands waters…

  “We come in from the northwest, dived in about two hundred feet of water, all the way to this light blue area where the ocean starts to shelve up…see these numbers here in meters…the ocean floor rises up to only a hundred twenty feet, then stays at around a hundred all the way in to Fanning Head…

  “This narrow seaway into the Sound is only seventy feet deep, so we can stay underwater only until we’re about a mile offshore…so long as we watch out for this fucking great rock marked here…only fifty feet below the surface with no warning light or even a buoy.

  “Right here we’re in the shadow of the cliff. And at 0200, it’ll be as black as your hat. I’d prefer to launch the boats in here, just behind Race Point…you’ll have a mile longer to walk, but that’s probably better than having your bollocks blown off by a radar-guided Argentine missile.”

  Douglas Jarvis grinned. “I assure you, Captain Simon, if anyone’s going to have their bollocks blown off, it will not be me. You think I could call my sister in Kentucky and tell her the Args have gelded me? That’d be a family disgrace where I come from.”

  “Well, I suppose you would have to be scratched from the Derby,” laughed the CO. “No geldings, right?”

  “Simon, could we change the subject from my bollocks to this load of cobblers you’re giving me about ocean depths.”

  “Certainly, Douglas. This submarine is seventy feet high, keel to mast. We need a hundred feet minimum depth. If it’s less than that, we surface, since I do not wish to see either you or your bollocks scraping along the seabed, ’specially if it’s rocky.”