'So he may have, sir,' said the Admiral. 'But he has big teeth, and he can be very vicious, especially when someone runs off with a couple of billion dollars' worth of assets that belong to a U.S. Corporation.'
'I am aware of that,' said the President. 'Nevertheless, I believe we have one chance, only one, to come out on top in this thing. We need to capture that Special Forces group that is rampaging around the Malvinas. If they will talk…under…er…duress, we just might be able to hang the Americans out to dry in front of the United Nations…you know, launching clandestine attacks on us, murdering our seamen in Mare Harbor, assassinating our soldiers in Port Sussex.
'But I am inclined to agree. If we don't capture these men, we would have a very difficult time persuading the Americans that the Malvinas, and the contents of the islands, rightfully belong to us.'
'Yes,' said Dr. Montero. 'And then they might get very, very angry, and that would not be to our advantage, either economically or militarily.'
'So what do you think?' asked the President. 'Do we continue to defy them, refuse to answer their communique, and double our efforts to catch those renegades in the islands?'
'That's a possibility. But if things do not work out, and the Americans demand justice for Exxon, what do we tell the United Nations?'
'We tell them as a result of a long-running territorial dispute between the Republic of Argentina and Great Britain, and as a result of broken-down negotiations, we found it necessary to assert our rights over our own sovereign territory.
'When the government of Great Britain decided to send a battle fleet down here, plainly to attack the brave servicemen of Argentina, we were obliged to sink it. This was a fair fight between two nations with very entrenched positions. In the end we won, the British were defeated, surrendered and went home. End of story.
'The assets of the Malvinas plainly belong to us in the ancient traditions of the spoils of war. And we are always open to talks with the Americans. However, we are not prepared to be blackmailed by them.'
'One thing, sir,' added the Admiral. 'What happens if our mysterious enemy strikes again, in secret, and vanishes just as comprehensively, as he has done this week? What then?'
'Well, that depends on the degree of damage.'
'Well, say he wipes out the Mount Pleasant air and military base — destroys everything?'
'That would be very serious. And if we still had no idea who the culprits were, I think we would have to give very serious consideration to the proposals put to us by the President of the United States. Assuming, of course, he possessed sufficient influence to put a stop to these…er…most unfortunate events.'
Admiral Aguardo smiled a slightly lopsided smile. 'I don't think you'll find he has much trouble doing that, sir.'
'No. Possibly not. But I think we should try to bring this entire business to a close as soon as possible, perhaps do nothing for a week, and then consider our position…but, Admiral, it is imperative you urge our forces to catch those intruders on the Malvinas. And catch them fast.'
Douglas Jarvis and his team were tired and hungry. Tired of roast lamb, and hungry as hell. The problem was, however, academic, because they had run out of lamb, and with the sudden increase in military activity in the air, the Captain had decided their regular evening pastime of rustling sheep was unwise.
All day long aircraft had been coming and going, and the SAS team was still unaware of the events on Pebble Island or Mare Harbor. Douglas was certain the Argentinians had now discovered the bodies in the Jeep, and this plainly made their position ever more dangerous.
So far he surmised they were confining their search to the immediate area around Port Sussex, but he expected the manhunt to intensify tomorrow morning at first light. He was confident in the camouflage that covered the hide. At least he was confident they could never be seen from the air. But they were vulnerable to a massed ground search by hundreds of troops.
The trouble was they had nowhere to run. They had no access to any aircraft, or any ship to get them off this confounded island. They had one chance, Sunray and his team, and if
Quietly, lying back on the ground sheet, he watched Trooper Syd Ferry switch on the satellite radio and pull the big padded headset down over his ears, like he did every night at this time. He saw Syd shake his head miserably, at the same old, same old — just that mushy background electronic noise.
Suddenly, at six minutes past eight o'clock on that chill Wednesday evening, Trooper Syd sat bolt upright. 'Fuck me,' he snapped. 'I'm getting something…there's a voice, sir…it's a definite voice…and I'm bloody sure it's not Spanish…wait a minute…it's American…
He whipped the headset off and handed it to Captain Jarvis…'It's an American, sir, asking for Dougy…dunno how he knows your name…'
Captain Jarvis came across the trench like a mountain lion, grabbed the headset and spoke into the comms system…
The response was all business.
The newly heightened radio surveillance system at Argentina's nearby Goose Green garrison picked up the signal. But it was heavily encrypted, both to and from the satellite. Doug Jarvis could hear a voice and its American accent, but the electronic words had been automatically dismantled, jumbled, and put back together again when they hit Foxtrot-three-four's receiver. It was a voice, but an unrecognizable voice, machine made, belonging to no earthly being.
Nonetheless, the radio operator at Goose Green had heard a transient satellite transmission at 2007, received not far away, somewhere on East Falkland. Of course, it could have been a straightforward communication from one farmer to another. Many of the islanders had quite sophisticated radio systems, but this had been encrypted, and sheep farmers did not need codes.
The operator reported the transmission to the duty officer, who reported it to the Mount Pleasant Air Warfare HQ. Immediately, the entire Argentine military surveillance system went on high alert, island-wide, with every possibly electronic sensor tuned to pick up and possibly identify the approximate position of the receiver, or maybe the transmitter, even if they could not decipher what the words were.
If Commander Hunter even looked at that comms system again, the entire island would quiver with electronic antennae. Commander Hunter, however, had no intention of even switching on his transmitter, much less speaking into it.
He and his team had cleared Many Branch Harbor at 1930 under cover of darkness, moving through the narrow seaway into Falkland Sound and making a hard right turn down the shoreline. When they contacted Foxtrot- three-four, they were running the inflatables south, with no navigation lights, three miles off the settlement of Port Howard, which housed a massive 200,000-acre sheep station, the oldest farm in the Falklands.
There was a slight chop to the water, but nothing of any consequence, and the helmsmen held their speed at seven knots, making for North Swan Island, which sits more or less in the middle of the Sound eight miles northwest of Egg Harbor.
Commander Hunter knew that one mile off the north coast of the island there was a submerged wreck, marked by a flashing white light. When he saw that, they would change course to one-three-five, which would take them directly down the two-mile bay into the free-range dockside. There might be a slight southward pull from the tide, but he would compensate for that, and keep one eye on the GPS, watching for the five flashes from Captain Jarvis's light.
They chugged on through the deserted water for another twenty minutes, until Rick's lookout man, Mike
