Ghost Force

by Patrick Robinson

  The weather had palpably worsened since their arrival on the island nine days earlier. It was colder, wetter, windier, and the nights were closing in. Three weeks from now it would be winter, a vicious South Atlantic winter, with ice-cold gales and snow squalls sweeping up out of the south, where the Antarctic Peninsula comes lancing out of the Larsen Ice Shelf, only 750 miles from Port Stanley.

  We have to get the hell out of here was the only thought in the mind of Douglas Jarvis as they moved through the soaking landscape, the all-weather Gore-Tex smocks fastened tight around their hips, hoods pulled down, gloves and waterproof combat boots firm, heavy rucksacks weighing heavier by the hour.

  At 1520, Captain Jarvis raised his right fist in a signal to halt. The troopers, walking carefully in pairs, stared ahead across the rough country. In the far distance, still north of the river, they could see the lights of a farmhouse. At least they hoped it was only a farmhouse.

  Out to their left, beyond a line of gray jagged rocks, barely moving, they could just make out a large group of grayish, shadowy figures, woolly shadowy figures. “Thank Christ for that,” muttered Douglas. “A decent dinner. We’ve earned that.”

  And, not for the first time, he appreciated the long evenings of detailed, meticulous training the SAS instructors instill into every last one of their personnel before anyone leaves on a mission.

  Back in Hereford, they had undergone intense practice in survival for the Falkland Islands. And the one good lesson they had been taught was that around seven billion sheep regarded the Falklands as home, and had done so for more than a hundred years.

  This was a land of ranchers, with huge flocks of sheep raised by the thousands for their wool. For more than a century sheep had been the principal commerce of the islands; almost all the seaports were founded for the export of wool. In recent years, fishing and then oil had crowded into the economy of the islands.

  But there were still a zillion sheep grazing these rough but strangely fertile lands of damp grass and ever-flowing mountain rivers. Douglas Jarvis and his team had stumbled upon one of the historic areas of Falklands farming…north of the settlement on the San Carlos River, where sixth-generation shepherds patrolled the gently sloping land as it rose toward the hills.

  In their rucksacks, the SAS men had knives and razor-sharp butcher’s axes. They had been given specific lessons on how to skin and swiftly cut the carcass. Douglas himself knew how to sever the two hind legs and cleave out the shoulders. They all knew how to slice out the rack of chops.

  “Okay, Peter,” said Douglas. “Move up to that boulder over there and take out a couple of small ones. Remember Sergeant Jones told us they always taste best.”

  All eight men knew how to live off the land. That was a basic requirement for any SAS man. And the total silence from their satellite transmissions now made it clear something had gone drastically wrong with the Royal Navy’s attack, and perhaps even the landing.

  They therefore understood they might be there for a while before rescue, and it was no bloody good whatsoever being starving hungry in the kingdom of the roast leg of lamb.

  Trooper Wiggins shrugged off his bergan and unzipped the SSG 69, the renowned Austrian-built bolt-action SAS sniper rifle, which in trained hands can achieve a shot-grouping of less than forty centimeters at a range of eight hundred meters. Peter Wiggins’s hands were well trained, and to quote his mate, Trooper Joe Pearson, he had “an eye like a shit-house rat.”

  Of the 2,000 sheep quietly grazing in these windswept foothills, there were two that were essentially in real trouble.

  Trooper Wiggins moved swiftly through the grass to the boulder, and selected his targets, both of them within fifty meters. Two single shots, fired only seconds apart, cracked out from the rifle, and two good-sized lambs dropped instantly from a 7.62mm-caliber bullet slammed into the center of their tiny brains.

  Three more troopers raced out to help gather their quarry, and Douglas Jarvis pointed at a cluster of rocks and a few bushes farther north in the rapidly darkening hills. They moved fast, and no kitchen was ever set up faster.

  Using their one shovel, they dug a hole three feet by three feet by two feet deep. The wet earth moved easily, and while Troopers Bob Goddard and Trevor Fermer skinned and butchered the lambs, Trooper Jake Posgate found round stones and dropped them into the hole.

  Douglas lit a fire from brushwood, right on top of the stones, and they used their butcher’s axes to hack some bigger pieces of brush into slim but burnable logs. The entire operation took almost an hour, and when the fire began to die on top of the almost red-hot stones, they suspended two legs of lamb in the hole and spit-roasted them close to the stones for ninety minutes. The glow from the fire could not of course be seen from anywhere except directly over the hole…SAS survival manual, chapter three.

  No group of Special Forces had ever been hungrier, and no leg of lamb ever tasted better, despite being a bit burned on the outside. When they finished their supper, they dumped everything into the hole, including the remains of the carcasses, and the wool, and filled it in, rolling a rock over the fresh earth. Only a very highly trained tracker would ever have suspected they had once been there.

  By 2200 they were on their way, pushing through the darkness, heading south, down toward Carlos Water, hoping to locate a boat that would get them to the probably unguarded shores of West Falkland. They still carried all their camping gear, rifles, submachine guns, and, wrapped in clear plastic bags, four shoulders of lamb, two legs, and thirty-two chops. But they no longer had explosives, and there was no need to carry water. The wilds of East Falkland were awash with it.

  And every hour they fired up the comms system and tried to raise the command center in the Royal Navy ships and on the landing beaches, but it was only a cry in the night. There never had been a reply, and Douglas Jarvis understood there never would be.

  He did not dare attempt a direct communication with command headquarters in Northwood, because that would certainly have been located and monitored by the Argentinians. The last thing they needed was a seriously determined search party trying to hunt them down, and picking up a radio fix.

  They understood there was almost certainly a small, mildly serious Argentinian force looking for them already, but that was not a problem to eight of the most dangerous war-fighting soldiers on the planet…men who believed that odds of five to one against them in any combat was probably fair.

  0900, MONDAY, APRIL 18

  STIRLING LINES

  HEREFORD, ENGLAND

  Lt. Colonel Mike Weston, commanding officer 22 SAS, had been studying the POW lists from the Falkland Islands for three hours. They contained the names of all eight of the men who had conducted the airfield recce at Mount Pleasant under the command of Sergeant Jack Clifton, and all eight of them were in Argentinian custody, and now traveling by sea to the mainland.

  Lt. Colonel Weston had twice spoken to his opposite number at the Royal Marine headquarters south of Plymouth, and it seemed all of the SBS men who had landed at Lafonia under Lt. Jim Perry were also safe, and were also traveling by sea to the mainland with the rest of the landing force. The Argentine military had intimated they did not intend to detain them, although their weapons had been confiscated.

  An Argentinian ship would land them one month from now at the great Uruguayan seaport of Montevideo on the north shore of the River Plate estuary. The Royal Navy was welcome to pick them up there, and transport them home. The assault ships Albion and Largs Bay , which had been hit and burned in Low Bay, were to be scrapped, while the Ocean had been confiscated, punishment for the destruction of t
he eight Argentinian fighter jets in battle. She would be renamed Admiral Oscar Moreno . Captain Farmer and his crew would be going to Montevideo.

  But what was currently vexing Colonel Weston was the fate of Captain Douglas Jarvis and his assault group, which was last seen blowing the summit off Fanning Head. The Colonel knew that part of the mission had been accomplished, and he understood the impossibility of further contact since both SAS command centers at sea had been removed from the line of battle. He also doubted whether there was any form of communication between the various assault forces in the final hours before the surrender on the Lafonia landing beaches.

  Which all left Captain Jarvis and his team in a very uneasy form of isolation. Colonel Weston did not like it. But he understood the danger a long-range communiqué from Hereford via satellite might pose to the men. If the Argentinians picked it up, Captain Jarvis would be in serious trouble.

  Even the most highly trained SAS group could scarcely cope alone against a force of a thousand men in vehicles and helicopters, employing infrared search radars. Colonel Weston could not accurately assess the scale of Argentine anger about the destruction of their stronghold on Fanning Head, but he guessed they would not be overjoyed.

  Thus he did not dare open up a line of voice-contact communication to young Douglas, but he did enter a coded satellite communication urging Douglas and his team to keep their heads well down, and that a rescue operation would be mounted. He also instructed them to open up their comms for one hour at 1800 each evening.

  Which meant that, for the moment at least, the SAS team must survive as well as it possibly could. But this was an outstanding group, and Colonel Weston personally believed if anyone could stay alive in such a hostile environment, it was probably his guys, the ones who just blew up Fanning Head.

  The slight problem he had was if the Argentinians caught them, they might very well execute them and say nothing. That way Here ford would never know their fate. Although he did not believe them dead, Colonel Weston nevertheless listed Douglas Jarvis, and Troopers Syd Ferry, Trevor Fermer, Bob Goddard, Joe Pearson, Peter Wiggins, Jake Posgate, and the Welshman Dai Lewellwyn officially missing in action.

  There had been several communications from SAS families in the hours after it was announced the British had surrendered to the Argentinians. And the regiment was prepared to confirm those men who were in the custody of the new owners of the Falkland Islands, which brought immense relief to all of those waiting at home for news.

  “Missing in Action,” was, however, an entirely different problem, and no regiment likes to be drawn into these discussions. Thus the duty officers at Stirling Lines would say very little, except the regiment could confirm the surrender, confirm the SAS had knowledge of POWs, and were working to insure everyone returned home safely. For those for whom there was no information, dead or alive, they would confirm nothing, only stating they had no knowledge of the men losing their lives, and would try to keep everyone informed of future developments.

  When Jane Jarvis of Newmarket called to inquire about her second cousin Douglas, they said, with regret, they were unable to confirm anything except to the next of kin. Then she rang Douglas’s elder brother Alan, who had heard nothing. So she rang her other cousin, Diana Hunter, out in the lush grassland of Lexington, Kentucky.

  1100, MONDAY, APRIL 18

  HUNTER VALLEY THOROUGHBRED FARMS

  Mrs. Rick Hunter was reading the latest issue of the Bloodhorse , scouring the results pages for winning sons and daughters of the Hunter Valley stallions. Rick himself was in bed upstairs, having been up most of the night helping to foal a colossally expensive broodmare by the champion U.S. sire A.P. Indy.

  The mare, who in her day had won five Grade One stakes races at Belmont Park, New York, and Saratoga, had tolerated a long and arduous labor, but at six a.m. had safely given birth to a dark bay colt by the superb Irish-based sire Choisir, a charging Australian-bred champion sprinter who had once heard the thunder of the crowd at Royal Ascot and Newmarket.

  Diana had dressed and cooked Rick’s breakfast, taken a long walk through the paddocks inspecting the yearlings, and was now sitting in the high sunlit drawing room of the main house, with its views between the tall white Doric columns and out into the front paddocks, where several million dollars’ worth of broodmares and their foals grazed contentedly.

  When the telephone rang, the former Diana Jarvis was delighted to hear from her cousin back home, and the two of them chatted companionably for a few minutes before Jane came to the point.

  “Diana, I don’t want to worry you unnecessarily, but I think you know Douglas was sent to the Falkland Islands several weeks ago. Well, I expect you know all about the British surrender…but I just called SAS headquarters at Hereford and they refused to confirm one way or another whether Douglas was dead or alive.

  “In a sense that was good, but in another sense I thought it sounded a bit gloomy. They wouldn’t tell me more because I’m not next of kin. But they’d probably tell you…and I was calling with the number.”

  Diana’s heart missed about seven beats. She had seen on the twenty-four-hour Fox news channel that the British had surrendered, and all she could remember was that 1,500 men were dead.

  “Jane, is there any suggestion the SAS men may have been killed?” she asked.

  “Absolutely not. But I read they have lists of the men who have been taken POW, and from what I can gather, Douglas is not on those lists.”

  “Well, where do they think he might be?” said Diana, whose voice was rising, panic beginning to well up inside her.

  “They won’t tell me, Di. But they might tell you. They would not even confirm he was on the stupid islands. But it’s pretty obvious he was landed. There’s nowhere else to be down there in that awful place. I’m just hoping he was not still in one of the warships. I expect you saw the Royal Navy lost eight ships, including the aircraft carrier.”

  “Is that where most of the fifteen hundred were—the ones who died?”

  “Almost all of them. But I’ve read a lot of reports and no one mentions there were Special Forces aboard the ships. You know, they’re always the first ones off, first ones ashore. But I thought you might want to call and see if you can find out anything.”

  Diana wrote down the number and sat at the desk to the right of the French doors, her heart pounding, half with fear, half with shock. Douglas, her beloved Douglas, he couldn’t be dead, he couldn’t be…nothing could be that cruel .

  The call went through quickly. Diana announced herself as the sister, the nearest relative to Captain Douglas Jarvis, and she would like to speak to the commanding officer.

  Two minutes later, Lt. Colonel Mike Weston was on the line. “Diana,” he said, “we met a couple of years ago, at Douglas’s birthday dinner at the Rutland Hotel in Newmarket…”

  No one ever forgot meeting the vivacious whip-slim horsewoman from Suffolk, who rode with the maddest of the Irish foxhunters, and was rumored to have been pursued by at least three of the richest men in England.

  “Of course I remember,” she half lied, recalling vaguely a couple of very attractive, cool-eyed SAS officers at the dinner, and guessing he must have been one of them.

  “I was just inquiring about Douglas. I expect you guessed.”

  “Well, of course I did. But Diana, you will understand this is a very highly-classified operation, and I am limited in what I can say. And I should state right away we do have an eight-man recce team, led by Captain Jarvis, which is currently listed as ‘missing in action.’”

  “Oh my God! Does that mean you th
ink he’s been killed?”

  “No. Most certainly not. It means that team almost certainly went to ground after the surrender was announced. Their names simply do not appear anywhere on the casualty lists. That means dead or wounded. And they’re not on the POW lists sent to us by the Argentinian military.”

  “Is that encouraging?”

  “To the extent that none of their names appear anywhere. If they’d been caught, and killed or captured, we would have a report to that effect. We have nothing.”

  “If they are caught, will you be informed?”

  “I cannot say that. It rather depends how badly the enemy wants them. But our soldiers are not usually captured by any enemy.”

  “It’s just that god-awful island, isn’t it?” she said. “There’s no escape from it. I just can’t bear the thought of Douglas dying in such a terrible place without anyone knowing what’s happened to him.”

  “Give me your number, Diana. I’ll call you the first moment I hear anything. And please, don’t fall apart. Douglas has some of our best men with him, and no one’s yet mentioned any of them might be dead.”

  She gave the number of Hunter Valley Farms to the SAS chief, replaced the telephone, and raced upstairs to the bedroom with tears streaming down her cheeks.

  She awakened Rick and blurted out, “Ricky, the most terrible thing’s happened. Douglas is trapped on the Falkland Islands. He’s the leader of an SAS recce team, and he’s listed as missing in action.”

  Rick, who had never told her any details whatsoever of his own career in the U.S. Navy SEALs, opened one eye, and in his deep Kentucky drawl, murmured, “Well, that’s kinda bad luck on the Argentinians. Those SAS guys are tough. Real tough. Glad I’m not looking for those suckers.”