Lion Resurgent (22 page)

“So we’re staying here.” Cynthia sounded scared. “And you think they tortured Bill to find out where everybody is?”

“Oh no.” Georgina was nearly in tears. “And we were saying such nasty things about him. The poor man.”

“With your radio out, there’s no way you could have known. Let’s get settled down and see what we can do to make this place less obvious.”

Whaling Station, Leigh Harbour, South Georgia

“Scrap merchants.” Sergeant ‘Curly’ Carter loaded the words with contempt. “Sir, they’re flying the Argentine flag here. They have vehicles on-site. They look like Sno-Cats. I don’t think they’re armored. No sign of artillery. Estimated number is between 35 and 40. That makes them a platoon or so. I think they’re one of the Argentine Navy APCA swimmer-commando outfits.”

“Nasty bunch by all accounts.” Marine Patterson looked disgusted. In his eyes the behavior of the APCA units in Argentina was a stain on the reputation of every Marine unit everywhere.

“Very nasty. Is base on the line?”

“Here, Sarge.”

Carter took the microphone. “Sir, if they’re scrap merchants, I’m the flying Dutchman. We have a count of forty maximum and eight Sno-Cats. . . No, Sir, I don’t think they’re military Sno-Cats. They don’t seem to be armed. Swimmer-Commando unit we think. Yeah, if we get the chance, we’d be doing the world a favor. Wait one.”

“Sarg, there’s something going on down there. Take a look.”

Carter took the binoculars and watched the activity. “Sir, they’re fuelling the Sno-Cats. Definitely not military Sno-Cats for all they’re camouflaged. They’re using petrol not diesel. From 55 gallon drums. They’re coming your way, we can be sure of that. Looks like six of the ‘cats will be carrying the unit, the other two supplies. . . That would make sense, wouldn’t it, Sir. Landing force from the ships, these boys close the back door to stop us escaping into the island. .. We’ll do what we can, Sir.”

Carter closed the button on the microphone. “Boss wants us to set up an ambush, try and slow the Argies down a bit.”

There was a sound of teeth being sucked. Patterson voiced the collective opinion. “Going to be rough Sarge. We’ve got one rocket launcher and four rounds for eight ‘cats. And no machine gun.”

“We’ve got rifles and grenades. They’ll have to do. Whoa, what’s going on down there?”

“Just carrying on with the fuelling up Sarg. Take a look.”

Through the binoculars, Carter saw a pair of men rolling out another 55 gallon dram of gasoline. The angle of the sun, the position of the heavy cloud banks that marked the storm approaching from the east and the surface of the rocks all combined to give what appeared to be a snail-trail behind the drum the men were rolling on the ground. Then, Carter realized it wasn’t a trick of the light and shadow. There really was a trail of shining liquid behind the drum. It barely had time to register before fire streaked along the trail. The fuel drum exploded. A ball of smoky black flame engulfed the two men rolling the dram. They ran out of the fireball, alight from head to foot; their screams audible even at this distance. Behind them, the building that was obviously the fuel store was also burning. The fire had ignited the drums within and sent them through the air, trailing fire as the drums burst and the contents burned.

Carter watched in awe as the fire spread to engulf two of the Sno-Cats. The men surrounding them ran clear as the vehicles erupted into flames. The base was in chaos. Men ran with fire extinguishers; a hopeless gesture if ever there had been one. Others were trying to tend to the burned men. There were at least four on the ground and who knew who else had been inside the fuel store? Watching the scene, Carter imagined he could almost feel the heat of the fire on his face. The scene at the base had the same terrible fascination as a railroad wreck. He found it very hard to tear his eyes away from the sight. Carter forced himself to turn away and picked up the radio again.

“Sir, change in situation here. They’ve just had an accident down there. Bad one. Rolling a fuel drum and it caught light. Flashed forward to two of the ‘cats and back to the fuel store. Looks like they’ve got four badly burned down there....I guess sparks from a hobnailed boot set off the petrol vapor. Bad stuff petrol fumes. Only needs a slight spark to set them off.”

Carter was laying it on thick. Who knew who else might be listening to this and he didn’t want to voice his real thoughts. Because, to him, it had seemed as if the fuel store had exploded first and the fire flashed forward along the liquid trail to the men rolling the drum. There had been something odd about the whole incident. Professional units did not make mistakes as clumsy as the one he had just watched. He shook his head, dismissing the feeling there was more to the incident than met the eye. “That’s right, Sir. They won’t be moving from here for a day or so; not with their fuel gone.”

Carter put down the radio and looked at the scene below. Then, he scanned the low hills that overlooked the derelict whaling station. Suddenly, they didn’t seem as forbidding as they had before.

King Edward Point, South Georgia

“Lofty, we’ve heard from Dusty and Curly. Dusty’s staying put with the girls, they can’t get back here for a couple of days and we can’t afford to wait. We got a real break though, according to Curly. There’s an Argie unit at Leith Harbor right enough and they were getting ready to move over and shut the back door. Only they had some kind of fuelling accident with their Sno-Cats and they won’t be moving for hours.”

“A fuelling accident. Now that’s very convenient.” Sergeant Shorthouse spoke carefully and thoughtfully. “I wonder if we’ve got some friends on this island?”

There was a long, pregnant pause. Both men were thinking the same thing.
Did the fabled Auxiliary Units really exist?
The legends about them were always denied. The official explanation was that they were disinformation put out by the Government-in-Exile in Canada during World War Two. Part of an effort to get some of the German attention off the Resistance. That was the official line.
There are no such things as the Auxiliary Units and there never have been. The stories are partly World War Two disinformation and partly the overheated imagination of tabloid journalists. And that is the end of the matter.

But a sudden, unexpected and completely deniable ‘accident’ that took out the fuel reserves of the most threatening Argentine unit sounded just the sort of thing that they might have pulled off. The German policy of massive reprisals against civilians had taught the resistance to disguise their attacks as deniable accidents, and taught them well.
If the Auxiliary Units existed of course.
Hooper shook his head. If they did, they certainly weren’t part of the armed forces. Anybody who tried to make inquiries about joining them found themselves the subject of career-ending ridicule. They’d get painted as gullible fools who got taken in by modern-day fairy tales and they’d end up in backwater postings where they had nothing to do and nowhere to go.

Hooper shook his head. Accidents happened. It was a mark of how desperate he was that he even took the legends half-way seriously. He had ten men left to defend South Georgia against a whole Argentine naval landing force.
If Mermaid
didn’t turn up in time, the situation was far beyond critical. It was no wonder he was seeking help from myths and shadows. Just where was
Mermaid!

HMS
Mermaid,
North of South Georgia

“This bloody storm is slowing us down.” Saying the obvious was sometimes a cathartic release. This wasn’t one of those times. Instead, vocalizing the problem seemed to make it more pressing and dire. The storm was slowing
Mermaid
down sure enough. Every minute it did so cut into the margin of time she had available to get into South Georgia, lift out the civilians and get clear. Somewhere out there, lost in the storm front, was an Argentine task group whose orders were to land troops on South Georgia. What they planned to do with the civilians there wasn’t known. Given their behavior in their own country, it probably wasn’t good.

It wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
Mermaid
was a sloop; her hull was designed to deal with bad seas. She wasn’t fast, the book said 24 knots but that was on a good day with a smooth hull. Two years out of Britain, on a day that was far from good, she could make 22 at best. With this storm, she was down to 18 and had been for almost 24 hours. That put her almost a hundred miles behind her planned position. A destroyer or frigate, with its hull optimized for speed, would have been slowed down much more. The storm was easing at last. That was one good thing, but the damage had already been done. If it passed now and she strained her diesels, it would take her at least ten hours to get to her destination. Did she have that time?

Commander Michael Blaise knew that the answer to that question was unknown. It depended on too many variables, too much on what the Argentines had decided to do and how fast they could move. Reports were that a small assault group had been scheduled to carry out the attack on South Georgia; two destroyers, two frigates and a landing ship. A small assault group to be sure but one entirely adequate for the task at hand.
Mermaid
could put up a decent fight against one of the frigates, probably. Two would be desperate odds. Against the destroyers, she would need a miracle. “Anything on radar?” He was desperately hoping that the answer would be negative.

It was. Blaise sighed in relief. No news really was good news. That was when the electronic warfare systems operator called the bridge.

“Captain, we are picking up multiple search radars. D-band and E-band. We have the D-band set isolated as a Septic SPS-40. The E-band set we’re not sure of but we think it’s an Italian RAN-10S. Two of each Sir, and we’re picking up flashes of a Decca navigation radar, commercial type.”

“Number One, get our own radar offline now. I want full emcon, immediately.”

“Yes Sir.” Lieutenant Keighley rattled the orders out and
Mermaid’s
radar and communications systems shut down. “The Argies, Sir?”

“Two Septic radars, two Eye-tie jobs. That sounds like two destroyers and two frigates doesn’t it? And the civvy job, she’d be the transport. Sparky, got a bearing and track on those contacts.”

“Got bearing Sir. Abbey Hill gives us 180 degrees, almost exactly due south of us. No range data yet.”

Blaise drummed his fingers on the bridge console. Abbey Hill was the standard British electronic surveillance system. In his opinion, it was as good as any in the world and better than most. Its array of receivers wrapped around his foremast gave a fine directional cut. Against a stationary transmitter, he could get move a few miles to establish a baseline, get a cross bearing and pin down that transmitter accurately enough to engage it. But against radars on ships, it was much harder to get range data. It could be done, given time and luck, but Blaise had a nasty feeling he had just run out of both. That 180 degree contact bearing put the contacts directly between him and South Georgia.

“Sparky, any idea on range at all?”

“No, Sir. Well, in these conditions there’s only a limited chance of significant ducting. So, that would put them within radar horizon range. Less than 50 nautical miles certainly. Probably less than twenty. Signal strength is still below detection threshold but it’s climbing.”

“Close, Sir.”

“Too close, Number One. Bring her around to oh-eight-oh. Let’s stretch the distance a bit and get over the radar horizon before this clag starts to clear up.” Blaise guessed that it was only radar interference caused by the storm, the clag as the radar community called it, that had stopped the Argentine ships spotting him. They were in the trailing edge of the storm. The clag was dispersing slowly and the radars would be gaining in range and precision.

“South Georgia, Sir?” Keighley put the question as quietly as possible.

“The Argies are ahead of us. They’ll get there first now. Our best bet is to slip away, head east and then try to come in at night. The Argies have a base camp at Leith Harbour. It’s just possible they’ll go there. If they do, we can slide into King Edwards, pick up the civvies and run before they wise up. If they decide to go for Gyrtviken first, then we’re bollixed. We’ll have to slide off somewhere and ask for orders.”

“Sir, bearings on Abbey Hill changing. SPS-40s, now designated as Bandit-Able, are still on bearing one-eight-zero. RAN-10S and Deccas, now designated as Bandit-Baker, are on bearing one-seven-five. It’s within the error margin of the system but I think Bandit formation has split Sir. And Bandit-Able is coming straight at us.”

Blaise thought carefully despite doing so at frantic speed. Abbey Hill wasn’t accurate to within five degrees by any manner of measurement; twenty would be closer. On the other hand, a good EW operator would see things on the scanner that he shouldn’t be able to. It wasn’t just the contacts, but how they moved and changed that gave the clues. “On the other hand, Number One, we could be bollixed anyway. Hit action stations. Close up for surface engagement.”

ARA
Catamarca,
North of South Georgia

“Radar contact Sir. Nothing solid, could be atmospheric shadowing. In a storm like this. .. “

Captain Isaac Leonardi acknowledged the report by nodding his head briefly. Fleeting contacts were all too common in a South Atlantic storm. “Keep watching the bearing. If it appears again, alert me immediately.”

“Sir, communications report message from
La Plata
by signal lamp. Message reads ‘Transient radar contact bearing zero degrees.’ That’s all, Sir.”

Leonardi looked out of his bridge windows into the gloom that pervaded everything outside. The clouds were iron-colored; a blue-black shield against the light. Rain from them was lashing down across his ship, streaming off the decks and swirling as it made its way into the areas inside. The Italian-built destroyers had been designed for the Mediterranean, not the rigors of a South Atlantic that was almost in the Antarctic and had storms no other sea could match. Oh, other storms could be vicious, have stronger winds and heavier rain, but they passed. Here, in the South Atlantic, a good blow could last for weeks and was accompanied by a bitter, chilling cold. Leonardi corrected himself; by a bitter, killing cold. Go into the sea down here and a man could expect barely few minutes of life.