Ghost Force

but Captain Day sent a signal back to the flag reporting his own fairly drastic damage, which might yet cause the Gloucester to sink.

However, the loss of life on his ship was negligible compared to the others, just twelve men killed and fifteen wounded. It took only another minute for the lookouts on the frigate line positioned just a few miles behind them, to see three plumes of thick black smoke and flame on the horizon.

Captain Day, who was closest, now reported the Dauntless was sinking. He was out of contact with the Daring, and two of the frigates, the Kent and Grafton, were nearer. The CO of the Gloucester knew the fire was raging toward his missiles, which would blow the entire ship into oblivion.

His firefighting teams were down there trying to work in incinerating heat, but they were fighting a losing battle. At 0642 Captain Day gave the order to abandon ship. And Admiral Holbrook ordered his frigates forward to assist with the rescue of the wounded.

The trouble was, information was very limited. And he was not to know that eight more Skyhawks were already in the air from Rio Grande, refueled and heading east at maximum speed. The Admiral, of course, understood the likelihood of further attack, but without a Harrier CAP, he was reliant on his downrange helos, and then the medium-range radar of his destroyers' missile systems, and the Argentinian pilots were flying below that.

There was, however, quite sufficient information for one commanding officer. Captain Gregor Vanislav, still moving at minimum speed out to the east of the Ark Royal, had already picked up on his sonar the savage iron bomb detonations that had decimated the British picket line.

And now, shortly after 0700, he came quietly to periscope depth for a visual sighting of his quarry. He could see the Ark Royal out on the horizon through the telescopic lens, and there was no doubt in his mind. This was the Royal Navy's only active aircraft carrier. He'd come a long way for this, and now he intended to carry out the instruction issued to him with such firmness and clarity by Admiral Vitaly Rankov in person.

The carrier had in fact moved three miles farther east and was now well astern of the other warships, in readiness for its lower deck hospital to begin receiving the wounded from the burning destroyers. Right now this was the only hospital the Task Force had since the other main medical facilities were on the Ocean and Largs Bay.

Captain Vanislav, now almost stationary, was no more than three miles to her southeast. His plan was to circle the carrier, staying deep and slow, five hundred feet below the surface, a depth at which his Akula was more than comfortable. He intended to launch his attack from two miles off the Ark Royal 's starboard beam, and it would be made easier by the fact that the carrier was scarcely moving, and that there would, he knew, be a great deal of diversionary action taking place. His last satellite communication, relayed from Moscow, had made that absolutely clear.

Down periscope…helmsman, steer course three-zero-five, speed four…bow down ten…three hundred…

At this speed, the Viper was absolutely silent, undetectable, as it crept through the water, slowly drawing a bead on the 20,000-ton Royal Navy carrier. The submarine was transmitting nothing, her Captain relying on a visual fix when his ship was in position.

At 0708 Viper K-157 was precisely where he wanted her. They came to PD and he took one final look. Even then, for the fleeting seconds his periscope was jutting eighteen inches out of the water like a telegraph pole, he was not detected.

Admiral Holbrook had already signaled for two escorts, the Batch Three Type-42s York and Edinburgh, to position themselves on his port and starboard quarters and use intermittent active sonar, since they were all alerted to the bizarre outside possibility of a submarine threat, from Russia! But there was plainly no point having both destroyers passive, eight miles up- threat from the bombs and missiles.

But the destroyers were still a couple of miles short of this new station, and the British Admiral had so much on his mind after the destruction of his picket line that he was giving scant regard to the very real danger of a torpedo attack on his own flagship.

Right now there was something close to havoc in his ops room. Everyone was handing out advice, how best to deal with the crisis on the picket line, the urgency of getting the GR9s into the air and launching a major bomb and missile attack on the airfield from whence, it was assumed, the Skyhawks had come.

No thought was being given to the classic evasive maneuvers a big warship might take to avoid a submarine attack — moving in a zigzag pattern, varying speed drastically from twenty-five knots to six, forcing any tracking submarine to show its hand by forcing it to increase speed.

Captain Vanislav intended to fire three torpedoes at his massive target from a range of 5,000 yards. Right now they were a little over five miles away, and ready for the final approach. Viper's CO ordered her closer.

Meanwhile, the two flights of Skyhawks were clear of the Falkland Islands and headed at wave-top height toward the Battle Group, making in excess of six hundred knots. The frigates Kent and Grafton were still about two miles short of the disaster area, with the St. Albans and Iron Duke farther to the left, and about three miles astern of the other two.

The four lead Skyhawks cleared the horizon and could now see the blazing destroyers, but their targets were two miles back, and all four of the Argentinian fighters unleashed their thousand-pound bombs straight at the Kent and Grafton.

Both frigates acquired and opened fire with their Seawolf missile systems. They hit the first two Skyhawks, missed the others, and attempted to swing around to the right.

The Grafton was not in time and took two bombs hard on her port beam, both of which smashed into the interior of the ship, detonated, and blew apart the ops room, the comms room, and the engine room, killing thirty-two men and wounding forty. The ship was crippled. In fact she would never sail again. Like the Daring, like the Dauntless, she was on her way to the bottom.

Much luckier was Captain Mike Fawkes's Kent. She swung around fractionally faster, and while two of the bombs sailed right past, two of them came screaming over the top, fifty feet above the upperworks.

The second four Skyhawks now cleared the horizon, and the first ships they saw were the two frigates in the rear, Captain Colin Ashby's St. Albans and Commander Keith Kemsley's Iron Duke.

The very sharp, short-range Seawolf systems in both frigates locked on immediately, and both ops rooms had the missiles away in a matter of seconds. But again not before the iron bombs were released. And there was absolutely nothing the Royal Navy Commanders could do. The first two smashed into the St. Albans, one through the port-side bow, one amidships. The second two, on the rise, slammed down the communications tower and blasted the radar away from the Iron Duke.

The carnage in the St. Albans was truly shocking. Forty-seven men were killed instantly. Somehow the Captain survived, perhaps protected from the blast by his own high, television-style screen. But the ops room was on fire and three other survivors helped Captain Ashby to get out, leaving behind them a scene from hell as the bodies of the computer and missile operators burned.

The missiles from the two ships knocked down two more Skyhawks. The trouble was, without a squadron of Harriers, there was no early air defense from a high CAP, and no early warnings from the Harrier pilots. As General Sir Robin Brenchley had warned the Prime Minister not so very long ago in the small hours of a February morning in Downing Street, the loss of the Harrier FA2s represented the loss of the Royal Navy Fleet's ability to defend itself.

And with a total of six warships ablaze in the south Atlantic — four of them sinking — and at least 250 men killed and even more wounded, many of them badly burned…well, this was a catastrophe that had, perhaps, been