'Unless we got spotted by some goddamned shepherd, sir — isn't this place supposed to be covered in sheep?'
'Not in Many Branch Bay, Mike. It doesn't even figure on Coronado's Falklands farming chart — and the words settlement or sheep station do not appear in a fifteen-mile radius of the harbor. These Royal Navy charts are excellent, and this doesn't show even a dock, or a group of moorings.'
'Anyway, we land in the dark, and leave in the dark, right?' said Mike. 'How long are we in there for?'
'If we get through to Foxtrot-three-four — we'll be gone by 2030 tonight.'
The problem with that final piece of Argentinian naval intelligence was that it would never happen. Even as the radio communications flashed between Mount Pleasant and Goose Green, U.S. Navy SEAL Lt. Commander Chuck Stafford and his underwater team were edging their way back to their base camp meeting point on the shores of East Cove.
They had been holed up for three days, with all their gear and two inflatables in a deep cave right on the shore, which had the inestimable advantage of flooding to a depth of almost two feet at high tide. This meant they kept everything in the boats, and jumped aboard, all twelve of them, when the cave floor started to submerge.
Their getaway was timed for the rising tide at 1900 this evening, when there would be just sufficient water in the cave to escape fast, approximately ninety minutes before the tide peaked at 2030.
More significant, however, was the fact that the veteran explosives expert Stafford and five of his crack underwater crew had attached limpet bombs to all four of the Argentine warships currently moored in Mare Harbor, two old Type-42 destroyers and two guided-missile Exocet frigates.
They were timed to detonate at 2230, which gave the fleeing SEALs ample time to make the three-mile journey back to their cave, over very rough ground, and then get well under cover for the blasting of Mare Harbor.
Right now, Lt. Commander Stafford and his team were cooking hot soup on their Primus. And no one south of Coronado, except for the crew of USS
Forty miles away to the northwest, Commander Hunter's team were hunkered down in the long narrow landlocked bay that runs to a cul-de-sac, southwest out of the main harbor, following the line of the shore.
After a two-hour search they found this utterly desolate spot and chugged into a fifty-foot inlet surrounded by rocky cliffs perhaps fifteen feet high. Rick Hunter had taken one look at it and ordered Brian Harrison to jump out and see what he could see from the cliff top to the east.
The SEAL Petty Officer climbed the easy sloping rock face and was gone for fifteen minutes. When he returned, he told them, 'There's a line of low hills about two hundred yards from here. From the top I can see the Sound, way beyond the entrance to the harbor. Aside from that there's nothing, not even a house, not even a shed. And no sheep.'
Rick Hunter had already dismissed the idea of any warship coming after them because the water through the harbor entrance was too shallow, maybe eight feet. Even a patrol boat would think twice.
Which essentially meant that the two teams of United States Navy Special Forces, the specialists from SPECWARCOM, were, for the moment, safely in their daytime quarters, unseen, and unknown to their enemy. Which was the way they liked it.
On the other hand, on the far distant shore, Captain Jarvis and his team were slightly the worse for wear. They had made their way to a lonely hillside above Egg Harbor, and positioned themselves in a gully from where they could see down to the waters of Falkland Sound. However, the damn place had little vegetation, and they'd used up much of it on the first night, when they cut the gorse and pulled up grass to give themselves shelter from aerial search.
They'd twice almost been caught moving across the narrow causeway that passes Goose Green, both times by vehicle patrols, but each time they had gone to ground, flattened into the earth, machine guns primed in case they were seen. Both times happened in the late afternoon, and both times the patrols were moving too fast, but the second one passed less than twenty feet from where they were all prostrate, facedown in a ditch.
But the Argentinians did not see them, and when the night grew darker Captain Jarvis steered his men across the barren wasteland of East Falkland to the tiny harbor where he expected the American, Sunray, and his guys to show up.
The silence of Tuesday night, at least it was silent on East Falkland, was a major disappointment to the Captain. No radio communication had been received, and the SAS men were growing tired in their filthy, dirty clothes, totally without any form of washing kit, bereft of razors or shaving soap, no deodorant.
They had maintained fairly high standards of eating, and last night, against his better judgment, when it was clear Sunray had gone missing, Douglas authorized a new sheep raid, and at midnight they had all enjoyed excellent roast lamb and some kind of pressurized bars of spinach that tasted like cow shit. At least according to Trooper Wiggins they did.
But there was no injury or illness. Everyone felt fine, but disheveled. And up here in the hide above Egg Harbor they were nowhere near fresh water, and their supplies were running short. That night Troopers Goddard and Fermer went to sleep in the gully under the bushes with sheep's blood on their hands.
As Jake Posgate had remarked, 'It's like a scene from
'Just so long as it's not the revenge of Senor Alvarez, the Argentine monster, it's okay with me,' said Peter Wiggins.
And so they slept, aware only faintly of the Argentine search going on for them, because it was being conducted in a thoroughly halfhearted way. Just the occasional helicopter flying north, and nothing overhead along the Egg Harbor shoreline. Douglas guessed, correctly, the Jeep that contained the bodies of the four Argentine soldiers had not yet been found.
But this morning, Wednesday, the skies suddenly resembled World War III. It was now 0930 and three helicopters had taken off in quick succession from Goose Green headed due west, straight over the SAS hide at high speed, not slowing, heading up Falkland Sound.
Three fixed-wing military aircraft had also flown just to the north of them, heading the same way, at no more than 5,000 feet. In the distance they could hear more helicopters clattering, just west of Carlos Water, all apparently heading for the same objective.
'Jesus,' said Douglas, 'they must have found the bodies.' He was as yet unaware of the devastation on Pebble Island, and an hour from now he would be too far away to comprehend the ensuing chaos in Mare Harbor. Right now he was merely counting off the hours to 2000 tonight, when he prayed he would hear again from the elusive Sunray.
Rick Hunter, too, and all of his team, watched the helos thumping through the leaden skies directly overhead. But they were not surprised, only thanking God they had risked the heavy seas and put ten miles between themselves and the Pebble Island airfield. It was crystal clear to them where all of that Argentinian military hardware was headed.
Rick was very contemplative, as they sat in the lee of the rocky overhang in their tiny bay, within the big long
