Ghost Force

actually carrying out a defense of their own country. That of course requires a different mind-set.'

'But surely, General, our casualties cannot be that unacceptable. I mean, my God! Do you have any idea what the media would do to my government if we suddenly ordered our forces to surrender?'

'Yessir. I imagine they would probably crucify the lot of you. And for that they would receive the inordinate thanks of every single man who has been obliged to fight this war for you — all of them were improperly equipped, insufficiently armed, and inadequately protected.'

'General, for the moment I will ignore your insolence, and remind you that I have been elected by the people of this country to look after their interests. I am the elected head of government, and I imagine the final decision on any surrender will be mine alone?'

'Absolutely, Prime Minister,' replied the General, 'but if you do not, you will have the resignations of all your Chiefs of Staff on your desk in a matter of hours. Which would make us free to explain to the media precisely why we had done so.

'My advice is thus to signal to the Argentinians, formally, that the armed forces of Great Britain no longer wish to pursue the war.'

The Prime Minister gulped. Before him he saw his worst ever nightmare — driven from office by the public, and the military, for failing in his duty to protect the country. Disgrace piled upon disgrace.

Nonetheless he elected to remain on the attack. 'After all, General,' he said, 'professional soldiers and sailors are paid to run these risks, and possibly face death. Are you quite certain they have done their absolute best? I mean, it must be centuries since a British Prime Minister was obliged to report the surrender of our armed forces to any enemy.'

'Would you care to know the state of the battle down there?' asked the General.

'Most certainly, I would,' replied the PM, a tad pompously. 'Tell me how it is, as we speak. And I warn you, I may judge the situation rather more harshly than you do. These men owe a debt of honor and duty to the country they serve.'

General Brenchley wasted no time. 'The Navy's flagship, the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, has been hit, burned, and sunk — no survivors among their thousand-strong crew. All three of our picket line destroyers are on fire, two of them sinking.

'The frigates Grafton, St. Albans, and Iron Duke have been bombed and destroyed. Admiral Holbrook and Captain Reader perished in the carrier. Altogether the Navy estimates twelve hundred fifty dead and possibly two hundred more wounded, many of them badly burned, many of them dying in the water. That's as we speak, by the way.'

The Prime Minister of Great Britain, the color literally draining from his face, put down the telephone, rushed from the room, and somewhat spectacularly threw up in the sink of the second-floor staff washroom, leaning there for fully five minutes, trembling with fear at what he now faced.

Back in Northwood, General Brenchley said, 'Something's happened. The line's gone dead.'

'Fucking little creep's probably fainted,' murmured Admiral Jeffries, not realizing how astonishingly close to the truth he was.

General Brenchley demanded to be reconnected, and when the Downing Street operator came on the line, he just said, 'General Brenchley here. Please put me back to the Prime Minister, will you?'

It took five minutes to locate the PM, who was now using the other washroom sink to wash his mouth out and his face down. And three minutes later, he once more picked up the telephone. 'I apologize, General,' he said. 'Been having trouble with these phones all morning.'

'Of course,' replied Brenchley. 'Now, let me inform you about the first-wave assault troop landing. In the hours of darkness we put twenty-seven hundred troops ashore, plus helicopters, vehicles, and a couple of JCBs.

'The Argentine bombers came in shortly after dawn and hit two of the big landing ships. We have no casualty reports yet, but both ships are burning. Right afterward the Arg fighter-bombers hit the beachhead with bombs and machine-gun fire, killing forty-seven men, injuring another fifty, and wiping out five of our six attack helicopters.

'We have no defense against their bombs. And if we continue to fight, I suspect there will be no survivors on that beach within two or three hours. They have no naval support, no air support, no possibility of reinforcements, and no means of evacuating a fortified island on which they are outnumbered by around seven to one.

'Prime Minister, we're looking at a massacre, and I will have no part of it. I'm a soldier, not a butcher. I am suggesting you contact the Argentinian government and request terms for the surrender of the British armed forces in the South Atlantic. And I suggest you do so in the next ten minutes.'

'But what about Caulfield? What does he have to say about it? What about my ministers? I must have a Cabinet meeting.'

'Very well, Prime Minister. You have thirty minutes. But, if by then we have taken significantly more casualties, we shall again advise most strongly that you contact Buenos Aires, and sue for peace on behalf of my troops, who should be ordered to raise the white flag. Any other course of action on your part will cause me to offer, publicly, my resignation. And perhaps you can talk your way out of that.'

'Don't do that, General. I implore you. Think of the government…think of the national disgrace…'

'Prime Minister, at this precise moment my thoughts are entirely with burned and dying seamen in the ice- cold Atlantic, and with mortally wounded young men dying on the beaches of Lafonia. I am afraid that at this time, I have no room in my heart for anything else.'

'I understand, General, I understand. But right here we're talking about the total humiliation of the government of Great Britain. And I must remind you of your troops' debt of honor to the nation, and of the courage our armed services have shown in conflicts of the past.'

'Prime Minister, I wonder how your beloved tabloids will treat those fifteen hundred heartbroken, devastated families, up and down the country, whose sons, fathers, husbands, and uncles were killed in the South Atlantic because we sent them to fight with inadequate air cover? Good afternoon, Prime Minister.'

In fact, the PM thought he might throw up all over again, right in the middle of the vast Cabinet table. But he braced himself and asked to be connected to the Ministry of Defense.

Back in Northwood, his eyes suffused with tears, General Sir Robin Brenchley put down the telephone and turned away from his colleagues, wiping his sleeve across his eyes. Everyone saw it and no one cared. He was by no means the only man in the war room so personally and overwhelmingly affected by this morning's events in the South Atlantic.

There was more information beginning to trickle through now from HMS Kent, the acting flagship for the remnants of the fleet. It seemed the warships' missile directors had downed six Skyhawks and two Daggers. But war of this type is about attrition. Argentina's big land-based air assault force, both Navy and Air Force, could afford the loss of eight fighter aircraft and their pilots.

It looked now as if Great Britain had lost its entire flight of GR9s, two ditched in the Atlantic and nineteen lost in the carrier; her two best destroyers, the Type-45s, were gone, plus the Gloucester; three guided-missile frigates were destroyed; two 20,000-ton assault ships, one of them brand-new, were ablaze; almost every attack helicopter was either on fire or lost in the assault ships; and the flagship, Ark Royal, which represented the only British airfield for 4,000 miles, was sunk in six hundred fathoms. Total casualties: 1,300 and rising by the hour. Great Britain could not afford that.

Perhaps in all the world, the only nation that could have absorbed that kind of punishment and still come back fighting was the United States of America. And right now she was not playing. The shocking news, flashing around the globe from the Falkland Islands, was that British resistance must be at an end. Which indeed it was. Almost.

Four hours earlier, three hundred feet from the summit of Fanning Head, Captain Douglas Jarvis and his seven-man SAS team were in their granite cave making satellite contact with the SAS Commander on board the carrier. They had been forbidden to attack anything until hostilities formally commenced. And, in the opinion of Major Tom Hills, currently masterminding the SAS reconnaissance operation, this was likely to happen in the next hour.

When news of the opening attack by the Super-Es was first transmitted on the fleet network, Major Hills