Ghost Force

'You say carrier in the singular,' said General Brenchley. 'I thought we had two?'

'One of them, Illustrious, is more than thirty years old. We can't take her, she'd probably never make the journey, never mind a battle.'

'Can Ark Royal make it?'

'Just about,' said Captain Reader, 'but not for long. The wear and tear on any warship in a sea-battle environment, and that weather, is very high. I'd give her six weeks maximum, and that's only if our luck holds.'

'If anything,' said Admiral Palmer, 'the aircraft situation is even more serious. I suppose we could rustle up a couple of dozen GR9s, but they cannot fly at night, and in bad weather they can't see a bloody thing.

'Robin,' he added, 'we have no air defense. None. And the quicker everyone accepts that the better. This damn government has dug a bloody great hole for itself and jumped into it.'

General Brenchley, a powerfully built son of a Kentish pub owner, had fought his way up the ranks of the British Army to the very pinnacle of the service. He would have made it big anywhere. He was tough, inclined not to panic, inhumanly decisive, and had commanded his paras in both Iraqi wars. Also, he had been a close friend of Admiral Jeffries since childhood, both having attended Maidstone Grammar School, in Kent.

Never in their fifty-year friendship had Admiral Jeffries seen the bullnecked Army chief so utterly distraught. General Brenchley was pacing the room, shaking his head, torn between obedience to Her Majesty's government, which he had sworn to serve, and the shocking possibility of casualties beyond the call of duty.

'Rodney, old boy, I suppose we have to decide,' he murmured. 'Will we allow X thousand men to die, or do we all resign and let this witless Prime Minister and his shoddy little group of ex-communist friends get on with it?'

An appalled silence enveloped the room. 'It seems to me,' said the First Sea Lord, 'the PM is finished either way. If we, and our principal staff, quit, he'd have to resign because of the uproar. No politician could weather that storm. If we agreed to go and fight for the islands, and were defeated by a greater enemy, he'd also have to quit. Either way, he's done. But in the first instance we'd save many thousands of lives.'

'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