Ghost Force

experienced officer and Petty Officer in either ops room…young Price blew his whistle short and hard and snapped: 'Agave radar!'

Daring's AWO, Lt. Commander Harley, shot across the room and demanded, 'Confidence level?'

'Certain,' snapped Price. 'I have three sweeps, followed by a short lock-on — bearing two-eight-four. Search mode.'

Captain Yates and Harley swung around to stare at the big UAA 1 console, and they could both see the bearing line on Price's screen correlated precisely with two Long-Range Early-Warning radar contacts forty miles out.

'Transmission ceased,' reported Price.

Harley called into the Command Open Line, 'AWO to Officer of the Watch…go to action stations…!!'

And he switched to the UHF radio, announcing to all ships, 'Flash! This is Daring…Agave bearing two-eight-four…correlates…'

And Price called again, 'Agave regained!!…bearing two-eight-four.'

The ship's radar officers confirmed the contacts, range now only thirty miles.

'That's two Super-Es just popped up,' called Captain Yates crisply.

'Chaff!!' roared Harley. And across the room the hooded figure of a Chief Petty Officer slammed his closed fists into the big chaff fire buttons.

Harley again broadcast on the circuit to the whole Battle Group…'This is Daring…Agave radar bearing two-eight-four…' But the picket ships were all up to speed, Commander Hall's ops room in Dauntless was instantly on the case, and Captain Day was only fifteen seconds behind as HMS Gloucester prepared to tackle the second pair of Etendards heading to their right, straight toward him.

For the next five minutes Daring had to place herself carefully between the four clouds of chaff that were blooming around her, taking account of the wind and the natural drift of the giant clouds of iron filings, which Harley hoped to Christ were confusing the life out of the radar in the nose cones of the incoming missiles.

Captain Yates called to the Officer of the Watch on the bridge, 'Come hard left to zero-eight-four…adjust speed for zero relative wind.'

At 0638, the Argentine pilots unleashed their missiles and banked right, not knowing for certain at what they had fired. Their Exocets fell away, locked on to their targets, and the two Etendards headed for home, flying once more low over the water, but this time heading west.

And in the ops room of Daring, the familiar cry of a modern warship under attack was heard…'Zippo One! Bruisers! Incoming. Bearing two-eight-four. Range fourteen miles.' But the two amber dots flickering across Daring's screen were so small they could scarcely be seen.

'Take them with Sea Dart,' snapped Captain Yates, knowing his fire-control radar would have trouble locking on to the tiny sea-skimming targets at this range, but hoping against hope the missile gun director could get the weapons away.

Eventually he did, but only one of them struck home, blasting the Exocet out of the sky. The second one was completely baffled by the chaff and swerved high and left, crashing harmlessly into the sea six miles astern.

Commander Hall's Dauntless never did get her Sea Dart missiles into action, but the chaff did its work and both missiles aimed at the destroyer passed down the port side.

Captain Day's Gloucester, out to the left of the Ark Royal, found herself facing four incoming Exocets, and her Sea Dart missiles, given more choice, slammed two of them into oblivion. Again the priceless chaff did its work and the remaining two Exocets swerved right into a huge cloud of iron filings and careened into the ocean with a mighty blast, two miles away, off the destroyer's starboard quarter, prompting a roar of delight from the seamen working on the upper decks. Argentina 0, Royal Navy 8.

But not for long. Two formations of four Skyhawks and four Daggers were on their way off the runway at Mount Pleasant. The British frigates, armed with only Harpoons as a medium-range missile, were still seventy miles too far east to attack the airport, and the GR9s were only just ready to fly off the carrier, thanks to an early morning fog bank.

The returning Etendard pilots, flying slower now, had already been in contact with Mount Pleasant and had passed on the range and positions of the three British ships they assumed they had located. They also alerted the base to the possible location of three, possibly four, other large Royal Navy ships anchored in Low Bay.

And meanwhile the Daggers and the Skyhawks continued their fast, low journey, flying fifty feet above the waves, well below the radar, straight at the Royal Navy picket ships, the Type-45 destroyers, Daring, Dauntless, and the older Gloucester.

They lifted above the horizon and into range of the ships' missile systems at a distance of around ten miles. But the visibility was poor, and within sixty seconds they would have overflown the entire picket line.

All eight of the Argentine aircraft had their bombs away before the Sea Darts could lock on. Desperately the three commanding officers ordered their missiles away, and with mounting horror the observers on the upper decks saw the big thousand-pounders streaking in, low over the ocean.

That's the way a modern iron bomb arrives. It travels too fast to drop. It comes scything in at a low trajectory, its retardation chute out behind it, slowing it down. The bombs are primed to blast on impact.

All Royal Navy Commanders know the best defense is to swing the ship around, presenting not its sharp bow to the incoming attack but its beam. That way there's a fighting chance the damn thing may fly straight over the top, as such bombs frequently do.

But there is so often no time. And there was no time right now on Admiral Holbrook's picket line. As the Skyhawks and the Daggers screamed away, making their tightest turns back to the west, eight miles from the destroyers, the lethal Sea Dart missiles came whipping in. The first one from Daring slammed into a Dagger and blew it to smithereens. The second smashed the wing off a fleeing Skyhawk and sent it cartwheeling into the ocean at five hundred knots.

Three more missed completely, but Colin Day's first salvo downed another Dagger and blew a Skyhawk into two quite separate pieces. This was the very most they could do. They had no other defense, because, high above, they had no Harrier FA2 Combat Air Patrol, which would probably have downed all eight of the Argentine bombers twenty miles back.

Meanwhile the first two bombs from the lead Skyhawk slammed into HMS Daring with colossal force, one crashing through the starboard side of the hull and detonating in the middle of the ship, killing instantly everyone in the ops room and twenty-seven others. It split the engine room asunder, and a gigantic explosion seemed to detonate the entire ship.

The second bomb, meeting the ship on the rise, crashed through the upperworks, blasting the huge, pyramid-shaped electronic surveillance tower straight down onto the bridge. Everyone inside was killed either by the explosion or was crushed, which brought the death toll to fifty-eight, with another sixty-eight wounded. There were huge fires, the water mains were blown apart, and HMS Daring, shipping seawater at a ferocious rate, was little more than a hulk on her way to the bottom.

HMS Dauntless was hit by three bombs, two of them in the same spot, which just about broke her back, one single explosion destroying the engine room and causing an upward blast that literally caved in the entire upperworks. More than a hundred men were dead, and almost everyone else was wounded. The destroyer would sink into the freezing ocean in under fifteen minutes.

Captain Day's Gloucester fared best. She took only one bomb, fine on her starboard bow. But it was a big thousand-pounder from one of the Daggers, and it smashed deep inside the ship before exploding with a blast that obliterated her foredeck, ripped apart her missile-launch systems, and blasted overboard the forward Vickers 4.5-inch gun. She, too, instantly began to ship water from the gaping hole on the waterline on her starboard side, and there was a terrible fire raging dangerously close to the missile magazine.

At this point hardly anyone, aside from the ships' companies in the pickets, knew what had happened. There was no communication from either the Daring or Dauntless,