Eventually, shortly after 11:30 p.m., Ben decided to go out and take a look. He knew where they had gone, and he had seen their flashlights along the beach, but they ought to have been back by now, especially in this weather. So while Mrs. Carey went quietly to bed, Ben went down to the beach, using his stout walking stick to help him along the shingle.
Of course he found nothing, certainly not Ernesto and Carlos. So he walked back to the house, but decided to make radio contact with the Goose Green emergency number, which they had been broadcasting all day on FIBS (the Falkland Islands Broadcasting Service), which is heard
Ben poured himself a cup of cocoa, put another log on the fire, and sat down comfortably to wait. Nine minutes later he heard the steady beat of a low-flying helicopter.
He grabbed a big golf umbrella and his flashlight, and headed out into the belting rain, closing the door behind him. He aimed the flashlight up and began turning it on and off.
He could see the lights of the aircraft up there, and he saw it bank around and come into land following the position of his light. It touched down on the wide blacktop along the jetty. And he saw the pilot motion his thanks through the windshield.
What he saw next, however, surprised him. The load doors burst open and one by one Argentinian frontline troops, dressed in waterproof combat gear, came swarming out, machine guns ready. There must have been twenty of them.
The commanding officer shouted, 'Which way, Ben?' in English. And he pointed out along the beach, at which time the entire group headed down onto the shingle and began running along the shoreline. The CO walked across and asked him again what time the two young troopers had left the house, and Ben confirmed ten o'clock.
He went back inside and sat by the fire, until the CO knocked and came in. 'No sign of 'em, Mr. Casey. We're quite worried. But there's not much we can do until it gets light.
'Just to check, you saw nothing else out there, or heard anything?'
'Not really, but I did see lights on the beach. And come to think of it, I thought I heard a very dull crackling sound at one point, kind of like a firework, but not so sharp. The walls in here are very thick.'
'Could it have been gunfire? Machine-gun fire?'
'Well, I don't really know what that sounds like. But anyway there was not much of it. Just lasted a few seconds. Never thought any more about it.'
'Okay. Thanks very much, Mr. Casey. And good night.'
With that he was gone, and Ben heard the chopper clattering up into the skies. What he did not hear was the Argentinian CO open up the line to HQ Mount Pleasant
Weather conditions might have been bad in the helicopter, but they were a lot worse in the Zodiacs. For mile after mile Ed Segal and Ron Wallace drove the boats forward, their backs braced against the driving rain and cold. They made their sweep around Great Island, and set sail for the last twenty miles, now head-on into the wind, and against the tide, a buffeting combination.
By 0100 they were running down into the wide waters surging in from the Atlantic. Wide and deep, that is. They were driving into the wind and sea, using the kind of speed that would normally hold them at fourteen or fifteen knots, but here it just kept them at ten knots over the seabed.
At 0140 Rick checked the GPS and ordered a two-degree course change at five knots only, to bring them onto the precise position of the RV — two and a half miles west of the kelp-strewn Elephant Cays…52.11 South 59.54 West.
Ten minutes later the numbers on the little handheld GPS correlated. 'Okay, guys, we gottit. Any moment now the submarine should make contact, but I don't want to transmit anything above the surface of the water…I'm just gonna keep watching this thing…make sure the tidal drift doesn't drag us off our numbers.'
And there they sat, in the lashing rain, the pitch dark, the chill gusting wind off the South Atlantic. There were sixteen of them in the two inflatables, the bodies of Ernesto and Carlos having been heaved over the side a mile off Ruggles Island more than an hour earlier.
The eight Americans, even Dallas, were pretty fed up and wanted nothing more than to get off the decks of these freezing-cold, soaking-wet Zodiacs. Douglas Jarvis and his boys were as happy as any eight men could be, finally off the hellhole of East Falkland, where they had been effectively marooned since April 8, that Friday night below Fanning Head, nearly three weeks ago.
They were there for fifteen minutes more before Commander Hunter ordered a two-hundred-yard turn to the north. 'We're getting dragged off,' he said. But as the helsmen made the course adjustment, there was a sudden, massive roll on the surface of the water, as the 7,000-ton, 362-foot-long jet-black shape of USS
It was as if a full-sized destroyer had suddenly materialized from nowhere. Nuclear-powered, on a single driveshaft thicker than a telegraph pole, the submarine broke cover at an angle, its massive propeller thrashing below the surface. Then it seemed to lunge forward with a mighty
Captain Jarvis only just had time to mutter, 'Jesus Christ!' before the bulkhead door at the base of the sail opened wide, and the submarine's deck crew emerged carrying boarding nets, rope ladders, and harnesses…'
Dallas, Douglas, Ron, and Peter were first aboard the Los Angeles — class ship, being half hauled and half climbing out of the Zodiacs, which were now moored tight alongside. Four at a time was right, and the boarding operation took less than fifteen minutes, before Commander Hunter took out his combat knife and slashed four great gashes into each of the rubberized hulls on the port side.
Then he leaned out and cast off the second boat before stepping onto the rope ladder, no harness, and hauling himself up onto the casing with a shout of,
With one of the Zodiacs already sinking, the other began to ship water at a fast rate. Before Rick was inside the sail, with the door clipped shut, and making his way down the companionway, both the boats, which had served them so well, were on their way to the bottom in thirty-five fathoms, leaving no trace.
It was an expensive way to run a Navy, but not so expensive as it might have been hanging around on the surface for a half hour, trying to drag the heavy-engined boats inboard, and being picked up on Argentine radar. Submarines like the
Nineteen minutes after she had broken the surface, USS
Captain Hugh Fraser had one thing in common with Douglas Jarvis. He just wanted to get away from the Falkland Islands, or whatever the hell they were now called, as fast and as silently as possible.
