Ghost Force

Many licenses had been awarded, and indeed Occidental Argentina had been busy drilling in these waters, under licensing agreements with the UK and Argentine governments. To the north, fourteen companies were awarded Production Licenses, directly from London.

And to the south, in the Special Cooperation area, the governments of both Great Britain and Argentina were involved in granting drilling licenses. Although everyone knew London really controlled the whole operation, no one really cared until the big on-land oil strike in late 2009.

At that point it became very serious business, because oil located on land is about ten times easier to get at than deep-sea crude in offshore locations. It is thus considerably cheaper, and the Argentinian oil consortiums never got a look in.

Suddenly, there was no further bidding. ExxonMobil was in there, partnered by British Petroleum. Whatever oil there was immediately came under the control of the American colossus and the British giant.

By the end of the week Jimmy was clued up on the state of the Falkland Islands unrest. And since nothing was happening, he more or less permitted the subject to slip onto his personal back burner. The Siberian situation also died on him, and phone calls from Lenny Suchov dried up.

The first snippet of interesting news emerged a couple of days after the New Year, when Ryan Holland reported a massive New Year's Eve demonstration in Plaza de Mayo. A half million people had crowded into the square before midnight, and spent thirty minutes chanting Viva las Malvinas!! for no apparent reason.

It was just another wail of anguish from a people who believed a terrible injustice was being visited upon them. And their voices rang out, a mournful, tormented cry of fury and outrage, and shortly before midnight, they had their way.

The President of Argentina, in company with two of his most trusted commanders, General Kampf and Admiral Oscar Moreno, came out onto the balcony and faced the enormous throng of people, just as Juan Peron, and his widow Isabel, had done.

The President beckoned them to silence, and through a microphone wished them all the happiest and most prosperous New Year. He said, 'God Bless you all, and God Bless this great land of ours, this Argentina, this heaven on earth…'

And the crowd rose up and chanted, shouting his name, shouting their loyalty to the Republic.

And then, as the President turned away through the great door into the palace, he did something that stunned everyone in the square. He suddenly turned back and seized the microphone again. With his clenched fist held high, he bellowed, 'Viva las Malvinas!'

And what followed was nothing short of pandemonium, a scene of patriotic fervor unmatched in the Plaza de Mayo since General Leopoldo Galtieri had stood on that same balcony in 1982. No one ever forgot how that President faced one million people, and sent them into a patriotic frenzy that lasted for an hour, by shouting those very same words.

Viva las Ma-a-a-a-l-v-i-n-a-s!!

Ryan Holland had watched the scene on television, noticing how Admiral Moreno and General Kampf enthusiastically patted the President on the back when finally he turned back through the palace door.

And in his report, the U.S. Ambassador noted:

I thought the entire performance seemed preplanned. It was the most inflammatory action. The size of that crowd was too enormous to be ignored. And the photographs from the square were used on the front pages of all the Argentinian newspapers the following day.

Television channels led their news programs all day, and every single headline featured the word Malvinas. As I have explained, there has been nothing but official denials in Buenos Aires. Both government and military say simply that nothing is being planned. I'm surprised we haven't heard a word from London, but then, they didn't say anything last time, remember?

But I must say, I don't really believe them. Rumors here are rife. People seem to talk of little else except the recapture of those damn islands. I have not one shred of proof, but I will be most surprised if something doesn't break loose in the next couple of months.

As it happened, something broke loose precisely six weeks later, on Sunday morning, February 13. At first light, a United States — built A4 Skyhawk light bomber from Argentina's Second Naval Attack Squadron came screaming off the runway at Rio Gallegos and out over the Atlantic to make a rendezvous with a refueling tanker forty miles off the Argentina coast.

Full of fuel, with the sun rising way up ahead, the Skyhawk's pilot, Flt. Lt. Gilberto Aliaga, set a course 110 degrees, east-southeast, for the four-hundred-mile run to the Malvinas, and opened the throttles.

Flying at 30,000 feet, the bomber took thirty-five minutes to come in sight of the jagged coastline of the Passage Islands, fifty miles ahead, guarding the western approach to West Falkland. He immediately swerved southeast, and went almost into a dive, still making six hundred knots.

He made a great sweeping loop keeping his eye on the coastline of East Falkland on his port side. Now, coming in low-level, out of the southeast, right above the waves and below the radar horizon, he 'popped up' as he swung around the coastline, ripping through the radar, and taking a bearing on his target before diving back down.

Flying fast over open water, heading northwest, he flashed on his own radar, and spotted his target one and a half miles out. He released two deadly thousand-pound iron bombs, which came flashing across the surface straight into the harbor, where the only resident warship was in clear view. Instantly, he swung away to the southwest, completely undetected by anyone on land.

No one identified the bombs as they came hurtling at high speed across the water. The first anyone knew of it was when HMS Leeds Castle, moored alongside the jetty at Mare Harbor, exploded in a fireball at exactly 0755 on that bright, clear Sunday morning.

Actually, they did not know anything about it even then. A few Royal Navy personnel knew the ship had exploded, but they had no idea how or why. Almost everyone in the little HQ at Mare Harbor was asleep. Twenty- three others, who had been on board the ship, were dead. All of them had been instantly incinerated when the half-ton iron bombs had slammed into the hull and upperworks on the starboard side and detonated with savage force.

The blast tore the heart out of the ship, obliterated the engine room and the ops room, which is located midships, below the upperworks and the big radar mast.

HMS Leeds Castle was essentially for scrap. As warships go, she was very small, only 265 feet long, and the wallop in those big Argentine bombs could have sunk a man-sized destroyer. The few Navy personnel sleeping in the accommodation block were naturally awakened by the blast, and they came charging out onto the jetty, half dressed and absolutely stunned at the sight before them.

This was the only warship they had, and it was ablaze from end to end, a searing hot fire sending flames and black smoke from burning fuel a hundred feet into the air.

Plainly there was nothing that could be done, except to try and evacuate any wounded, but to board the ship would have been suicide. Anyway, no one could possibly have survived that fire. HMS Leeds Castle, already listing badly to starboard, was doomed. And the twelve sailors who stood on the jetty accompanied by two Petty Officers and a young Lt. Commander were completely astounded at what appeared to be a gigantic accident.

But this was no accident. The forces of Argentina had been preparing for this moment for almost three months. And the remnants of the warship's crew, now struggling to locate firefighting equipment, did not know the half of it.

Just for openers, Admiral Moreno had sent a Lockheed P-3B Orion to track the 4,200-ton British Type-23 guided-missile frigate St. Albans as soon as it left for the Caribbean. Right now it was four days out making twenty-five knots, 2,400 miles north of the Falklands, 300 miles off Rio de Janeiro. Irrelevant.

This was a proper military operation, conducted by excellent strategists, commanding officers who had weeks earlier placed their assault crews and selected aircraft crews on immediate notice to deploy. Since mid-December they had all been sealed from the outside world, in carefully guarded camps and buildings — waiting for the highly