The White Vixen (59 page)

She heard another series of shots from the direction of the car, then a watery splat from Ian. He grunted, clutching his right side with his hand, grunted again. “I’m hit, Jo…” He collapsed onto his left side, dropping the launcher.

“I got one!” Schmidt yelled. He’d seen the English commando raise the rocket launcher and carefully sighted on him with the M16, squeezing off a four round burst. One had struck home for sure. Thank God he’d put two of the rifles in the back of the staff car, just in case. One never knew. “We’ll take them alive if we can, Winkler!”

All fatigue was gone now. The years had melted away in seconds, and he was a young Heer sergeant again, laughing with his friends Rudi and Manfred at a café in Paris while the sniveling French waited on him, rolling through the forests of Poland and steppes of Russia with his comrades, routing the Bolshevik sons of bitches. He charged ahead, his rifle held high.

“Look out, Herr Oberst!” Winkler yelled at him, too late. A form near the fallen Englishmen rose up and a weapon chattered, sending death their way. Schmidt took four rounds in the chest and went down, his rifle flying away, useless. Winkler stared at his commander in disbelief, but before his emotions could turn to sorrow, a round between his eyes ended all thoughts forever.

Jo held the MP-5 another two seconds, ready to fire again if the two Argentines moved, but they lay still, some forty meters beyond the smoking barrel of the gun. The roar of the jet engine grabbed her attention. The fighter-bomber was taking off, clearing the end of the runway and the encircling low hills easily, and heading east, so very quickly.

Only moments now. Jo dropped the rifle and grabbed the launcher. If any more enemy troops showed up, she knew she was dead, but she prayed for another few seconds of life, so that she could at least try to save the lives of so many young sailors over the horizon, and so many more that would die later if the war spread north.

She sighted on the flickering orange dot of the Argentine jet’s engine, shrinking ever so quickly. She held her breath and pulled the trigger. The launcher shuddered and she was nearly knocked down by the vibration and the roar of the rocket engine. The missile soared away, chasing the dwindling orange dot.

Hauptmann Hans Ritter felt a surge of elation as his aircraft cleared the end of the airstrip and the low hills just to the east. The landing gear thumped up into their wells right on command, and the trim of the aircraft instantly improved. The firefight had scared him, he could admit that now, and then there was that explosion to his left as the Super Etendard flashed down the last few meters of the runway before lifting off. But he was away now, and the English commandos had failed. Now he could just concentrate on his mission. He wished Oberstleutnant Steinhorst had been there to see him off. The wing commander had seemed on edge when they’d last talked. Was he worried about the mission? Well, no matter. Ritter was aloft, where he felt the most free.

Ritter’s joy lasted only a few seconds. The threat warning alarm beeped in his headset. MISIL DE ENTRADA flashed at the top of the green radar screen. Inbound missile! There it was, coming from the west, very fast. Ritter’s training kicked into overdrive. He jerked the control stick to the left and forward.

Two seconds after it cleared the launch tube, the Stinger’s launch engine fell away and the main rocket flared to life, driving the missile ever faster. Four small guidance fins snapped into place. The sensors in the missile’s nose, just ahead of the 2.2-pound warhead, focused on the infrared light generated by the exhaust of the fleeing Super Etendard. The Stinger’s onboard computer began sending a series of instantaneous course corrections to the guidance fins, which obediently adjusted the missile’s course. The target was accelerating, nearly 500 miles per hour now, but the missile was much faster. Ten seconds after launch the Stinger broke the sound barrier and began to close on the jet.

Ritter juked the aircraft again, this time to starboard, and pulled the nose up. He punched a button that ejected small bundles of aluminum chaff from the defense pods behind the cockpit, spraying the chaff into small clouds that he hoped would confuse the missile’s radar. His radar screen showed the missile coming on, inhumanly fast. Ritter had no time to feel fear. He concentrated every ounce of his will on saving his aircraft and himself.

The Stinger’s computer saw that the target was off-center in the image sensor. Using its pre-programmed proportional navigation software, the computer calculated the target was eight degrees off-center and ordered a course change of sixteen degrees to over-compensate, anticipating the flight path of the target. A tenth of a second later, the computer made another correction, and another, too fast for any human brain to follow. The Stinger could think much faster than a human pilot trying to evade it, and it could fly much faster than any jet aircraft in the world. The rocket pushed the missile close to Mach 2, nearly 1,500 miles per hour. The distance to the target was shrinking rapidly. The missile tore through the drifting clouds of chaff, ignoring them completely, its sensors focused relentlessly on the Super Etendard’s hot exhaust, which could not be disguised.

Ritter saw the inbound missile pass through the chaff clouds on his radar screen and instantly made a decision. His aircraft was doomed. If he’d only had another minute, even a bit less, he could have outraced the missile, gotten out of its range. But he had run out of time. He leveled out the aircraft and reached for the ejection handle. Only seconds now. His gloved hand gripped the handle and began to squeeze, but one more thought made him hesitate: the bomb.

Ritter made another decision. His weapons panel included the arming switch for the bomb and the release lever. Ignoring the arming switch, Ritter reached for the release lever with his other hand and pulled. He felt the aircraft shudder and bounce upward as the 500-kilogram bomb dropped away, harmless, falling toward the sea. Then Ritter pulled on the ejection handle. The canopy blew upward and explosive charges destroyed the bolts clamping his seat to the airframe. Rocket engines ignited and propelled the seat and its occupant straight upward into the night sky, so quickly that the G-forces rendered Ritter unconscious. Three seconds later the Stinger missile streaked
into the jet, colliding with the hull just to the left and forward of the port side exhaust, and the warhead exploded.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Chubut province, Argentina

Tuesday, April 27th, 1982

Jo couldn’t help but watch the missile chase the Argentine jet. She didn’t know the missile’s range, but the jet couldn’t escape, could it? The Stinger seemed to be closing the gap, but it was hard to tell in the darkness.

Beside her, Ian groaned, snapping her back to the here and now. Garrett had found a bandage in his medikit and slapped it on his forehead, but it was still bleeding a little. Jo would have to help him with that, but Ian was in serious trouble. The right side of his jacket was soaked with blood.

“Help me get to the wound!” Jo yelled at the corporal. Her training and discipline held, allowing her to stay focused. Together, they pulled Ian’s jacket off and Jo pulled up his shirt. In the dim light she could see the wound, dark and ugly, blood seeping out of it. “Got another bandage?” Garrett handed her one and she put it against the wound. It was enough to cover it, and she took a roll of white tape from the corporal and began wrapping it around Ian’s torso to hold the bandage in place.

“Is it bad?” Garrett asked.

“Yes,” she said, lips tight. “We need to get him to a hospital.”

“Fuckin’ Argies’ll let him bleed out,” Garrett said. “There’s a doc on the submarine.”

Jo was about to reply when a booming sound rolled in from the east. They looked off into the night, over the ocean, in time to see the expanding fireball of what had been the Argentine jet. “You got the bastard!” Garrett yelled, pumping his fist in the air. “Bloody hell, you splashed him good, Major!”

The relief Jo should’ve felt was pushed rudely aside by her fear for Ian. “We might not have time to get to the sub,” she said. “Maybe we should—” Her discipline nearly failed her. Surrendering to the enemy was something she never would have contemplated before, but now, things were different, weren’t they? They could get Ian to a hospital, save his life. So what if she never got back home?

“Hey, look, the Argies are running like hell!”

She looked back down toward the airstrip. Past the burning wreckage of the troop truck, she saw men running crazily across the airstrip, diving into ditches. Panicky yells reached her. “They must think the bomb’s going to go off,” she said. “That has to be it.”

Garrett looked at her, eyes wide. “It won’t, will it?”

“Not unless it was armed first,” she said, hoping she was right. She had an idea. “This is our chance, Garrett. Come on, give me a hand with Ian.” She struggled with his weight. “For God’s sake, man, if the damn thing goes off we’re all dead anyhow. We can get to the beach while the bad guys are still figuring it out!”

They had made it about a hundred meters, coming over the last hill with the ocean in front of them, when a large shape came out of the night to their right. “Ahoy there,” came a whispered voice.

“Bickerstaff! Is that you?” Garrett hissed.

“Right-o, mate. What’s this here now?” The huge Londoner came out of a shadow, sheathing his wicked knife.

“Ian took a round in the side,” Jo said, panting from the exertion. “The Argentines thought the bomb was going to go off when the plane blew up. We don’t have much time.”

“I got in a radio call,” Bickerstaff said. “We need to get two klicks north from here.
Reliant
picked up the other team and she’s on her way.”

“North?” Garrett asked.

Bickerstaff took Ian from them and hefted the wounded man over his shoulder like he was a sack of grain. “Right,” he grunted. “A bit out of the way but further from the Argie base. Once the buggers are done shittin’ themselves, they’ll get organized and be after us for sure. Come on, then, we got a yomp ahead of us.”

The beach, such that it was, offered plenty of hazards in the dim light of the moon. Jo took the lead, scouting a few meters ahead to warn of holes, tangling brush or other obstacles. Nimble as she might otherwise be, she stumbled more than once, painfully barking both shins. Bickerstaff huffed along behind her, carrying Ian, with Garrett providing cover from the rear. Jo had Ian’s MP-5, with the Luger tucked into the waistband of her borrowed trousers.

“Hold up,” Bickerstaff said, panting. “Gotta rest. Check the colonel.”

Jo came back to him as the sergeant laid Ian gently on the gravelly sand, propping him up against a fallen log. Jo felt for a pulse, and it was still there, thank God. Ian groaned. “Jo…Jo…“

“Hush,” she said, her voice quaking. “Save your strength. We’re almost to the sub.”

“Let’s have a look at that wound,” Bickerstaff said, pulling up his colonel’s shirt. “Bleedin’s stopped, looks like,” he said.

Garrett came up from the rear. “Got movement about two klicks back,” he said. “Dogs and lights.”

Jo stood up and looked south, back toward the airstrip, and saw the waving flashlights in the far distance. Over the rush of the surf she could hear a faint yelping. “Infantry,” she said. “Maybe they think we went south.”

“If Argie has any brains at all he’ll split his force and cover both directions,” Bickerstaff said. “Probably call in choppers from that air base. We’ll be in the soup then. No more Stingers, Garrett?”

“No, Sergeant. I took out a troop truck with me first, the major here brought down the jet with t’other.”

“Right, then. Well, let’s hope help arrives quick.” Bickerstaff crouched down and picked up Ian again. “Major, if you please…”

Jo squeezed Ian’s dangling hand, brought her MP-5 up and turned toward the north.

***

Aboard HMS
Reliant
, southwest Atlantic

Tues
day, April 27th, 1982

“How much further, Captain?”

Bentley looked sharply at the SBS officer. It was an effort to keep his voice calm. “About half a kilometer farther than we were last time you asked, Mr. Hodge.”

“Sorry, sir,” Hodge said. They were all under incredible strain. “Shall I ready the lads, sir?”

“That would be fine.” The captain turned back to the navigational table, huddling with his officers. He checked the map, then his watch. “Hodge, we’ll turn west in about ten minutes. After that, it’s another ten till we surface.”

“Aye aye, Captain. We’ll be ready.” Hodge hustled aft, where the exhausted SBS troopers waited anxiously in the mess hall. They’d been aboard only about twenty minutes, and had to wait another twenty until they could go after the colonel. It would seem like an eternity, unless he got them busy.

For a man used to traveling in helicopters and speedboats, the submarine seemed terribly slow to Hodge. Doubtless the rest of the lads felt the same way, but the skipper was being cautions. The waters where he picked them up were too shallow to allow much maneuvering, so he moved the boat a kilometer to the east before turning to the north. It all took time. Hodge was frustrated, but he knew the swabbies were doing the best they could. It wouldn’t do to run on the surface and expose the boat to enemy ASW fire.