Fight Through

CHAPTER 1

Rio Gallegos was the home port for the 350 ton ocean going trawler ‘Maria III’ which had been enjoying a lean time of things in the Atlantic since the big battles between the Soviet submarines and the Americans, the Canadians and the British.

They had found fish, thousands of them, but all were dead and stinking on the surface. Silt stirred up by nuclear depth charges had not only ruined fishing around the Azores, ‘Maria IIIs’ normal fishing grounds at this time of year, but had spread south to Cape Verde, spoiling the waters there also.

With the East and West at war and the normal military presence in those sea lanes absent, piracy off the African coast was on the rise and her skipper, Carlo Duellos, had wisely steered clear of that side of the Atlantic.

No one would be feeding his and the crews’ families if they were being held for ransom in the African bush somewhere.

The British on the Malvinas had itchy trigger fingers as they half expected his country to take advantage of the war, by trying to retake the islands again. So an exclusion zone once more sat in place barring all but the foolish from those waters. No one was going to be feeding their families if the bastard British accused them of spying and locked them up.

Most of the local boats had gone west through the Straits of Magellan to fish off the Pacific coast, but Carlos figured that a lot of boats from Panama on down would be doing the same.

They had returned from the Azores with an empty hold and empty tanks, and Carlos was forced to go cap in hand to the local bank.

The bank manager was a reasonable man and he was a local too, but Carlos was not the only one having an unexpectedly bad season, the whole planet was, and that was likely to last at least as long as the war, he had pointed out.

Carlos went from the bank with only the manager’s best wishes and had arrived at the bar the fishermen used as a kind of base when in port. Getting the crew together he had laid it out for them, they had no line of credit and no gas so he, Carlos, was willing to sell his truck if the rest of them were also going to contribute something towards the expenses.

Their engineer quit, either unable or unwilling to take a gamble on them finding any live fish, and a gamble it was. Worldwide food prices had hit the roof, so a full hold would set them all up for the rest of the year, but another disastrous voyage such as their last one would be ruinous.

The remainder had borrowed from relatives or sold heirlooms for them to fuel the ‘Maria III’.

They had just enough diesel and supplies for about a week’s normal fishing, and so it was that they had set out once more, but with Carlos doing what he could to get the crew’s next most mechanically minded member familiar with the trawler’s elderly seven cylinder diesels.

They went from previously productive fishing grounds nearer home to those more and more distant, seeking the fish that had left without trace.

It took time and patience, going further and further south east with the crew sat about idle, becoming more and more despondent

On the fourth day, with the light fading and dark clouds threatening their sonar fish detector finally picked up a large shoal of whiting and the crew put ‘Maria III’s gear in the water for the first time that voyage.

The change in mood was palpable throughout the small vessel, from borderline desperation to one of desperate hope. It was food on the table for their families, but they had to fill the hold first and they were short-handed, so with rain setting in for the night they set to with a will.

The net came up full and the winch strained as it lifted the catch inboard to whistles and shouts of joy and relief. The gamble was paying off.

Again the nets went back over the side as Carlos stayed with the twisting and turning shoal.

By 3am the seas were picking up and the rain was gusting in horizontally but the hold was still only three quarters full.

Another full net with its flashing silver bounty was tantalisingly just below the surface when the winch jammed, and despite promises and threats it remained uncooperative.

Carlos called down to the make-do engineer to come up and take the wheel so he himself could try and fix the winch.

When the proper engineer had quit he had taken his tools with him, and he had also taken his ear defenders too, so Carlos was relieved on the wheel by a partly deafened novice ship’s engineer.

Carlos removed the housing from about the winch mechanism and cursed the rain and the rusty and frayed cable which had bunched and snagged. At least, he told himself, at least they could invest in a new one once they got back to port and sold this catch.

The radar proximity warnings strident tone registered only as a faint beeping to the only occupant of the wheelhouse and the large return which drew closer with every sweep of the radar repeater meant nothing to him, but similar warnings should have raised the alarm with the watch keepers aboard the bulk carrier ‘Istial Starwalk’ which was running without lights for fear of the submarine threat to shipping.

‘Maria III’ was reported overdue by Carlos’s wife when the fuel they had taken on board was obviously exhausted and neither she nor any of the other wives had received word from their husbands as they would have done had the their boat called into another port for some reason such as a medical emergency or a mechanical failure of some description.

The Argentine Naval Prefecture, as the Argentinian coast guard is known, called the harbour masters on the Atlantic coast as far away as ‘Maria III’s partially full tanks could have taken her and even lodged a request for information or sightings with the Anglos on the Malvinas, but the boat had not put into any port since leaving Rio Gallegos the week before.

Had the ‘Istial Starwalk’ immediately reported a collision which had been felt throughout the vessel, and which was subsequently found to have left her bow damaged and scraped then the search and rescue operation could have begun immediately, and with a precise location. However, her master did not heave-to and did not report any collision until the ship docked at Auckland a month later and even then the insurance claim merely stated ‘Colliding with unknown object’ at a position some twelve hundred miles further north than it actually had, closer to the recent fighting and therefore easier to justify his reluctance to stop and investigate.

Nothing could muffle the sound a piton being hammered into rock, and on the few occasions that it had been absolutely unavoidable Richard Dewar gritted his teeth in the expectation of their discovery.

With the latest piton securely in place Richard attached through its eye, one end of a quickdraw, two carabiners with spring loaded gates and attached together by a webbing strap, before clipping his line into the free end.

The ropes they were using were a far cry from the stiff half inch hemp ropes Richard had first used as a Boy Scout, cliff climbing at Black Rock Sands in Wales, these were 10.5 cm ropes made from semi translucent man-made fibres which though not invisible by any means, did allow them to blend more easily with the background.

Gripping the rope he leant outwards, allowing the piton to take the strain as he peered upwards at the eighteen foot overhang he had reached. About an arms width away a crack in the rock bisected the overhang, and he knew from a recce through binoculars whilst choosing this route that this led upwards, widening all the time to become a chimney. Richard felt around his harness for another quickdraw, but one with a locking gate to attach to his harness. The movements of a climber can inadvertently cause something to press against the outside of a carabiners gate, a jutting rock or another item of equipment can open a spring loaded carabiner causing the rope or harness it was holding to be released, so he always used locking carabiners next to his body.

Clipping the new quickdraw to the one attached to the piton, he spread his feet and braced them against the rock before leaning outwards, reaching up and back for the crack to explore it with his fingers. Ideally he hoped to find a suitable seat for monolithic protection, a solid tapered wedge or a hex to jam inside where a runner could support his weight, but its sides were too smooth and parallel. He wasn’t as fond of SLCDs, the mechanical, spring-loaded camming devices, or a ‘camm’ for short, which were the alternative to monoliths as they had a tendency to ‘walk’ when not under tension and work themselves free. He had no choice in this instance and at least the camm would be hanging vertically, a position from which it was least likely for it to work its way loose. Richard made his selection from the collection of various sizes clipped to his harness, and holding the device by its stem he pushed it up inside the crack as far as he could before releasing the four camm’s at the top end of the single SLCDs stem which sprung outwards, the teeth biting at the rock. Major Dewar clipped another quickdraw to the eye at the stem and tested it by applying increasing weight. It held, allowing him to attach yet another locking quickdraw to his harness and clip it to the free end of the one he held. Richard was now supported in place at two points and still had both hands free, his feet were only keeping him steady whilst he worked so should the piton and camm come loose then only the man belayed-on at the last pitch, seventy feet below could arrest his fall.

The wind was only blowing at about 10 mph, a pleasant change from the 80 mph winds of the previous two days, but its wind chill factor lowered the sub-zero temperatures even further. The snow had not abated until about an hour ago, reducing visibility but covering their tracks whilst it had fallen. Working in the shadow of the overhang he had removed his tinted goggles in order to better see what he was doing, but the cold and wind made his eyes water, causing his lashes to freeze into brittle whiteness. The only weapon he carried was an M4, the shortened version of the M16, hanging vertically down his back by the butt strapped between his shoulder blades, the weapons harness crossed over his shoulders and added to the weight he already carried and restricted his movements, but it was a necessity of the job.

Pulling on the piton’s quickdraw with one hand he drew himself closer to the overhang, giving himself enough slack at that end to unclip himself from it with his free hand. It was that moment of truth which always made life interesting whilst climbing, discovering if the single SLCD was up to the task of supporting him above the abyss. Letting go of the piton’s quickdraw he swung away from the vertical face to hang suspended below the overhang, 400 feet above the valley floor.

Lt Garfield Brooks and six of the soldiers were still far below on the valley floor, forming a perimeter and guarding the kit that would be hauled up, pitch by pitch. They were the only ones still wearing white camouflage clothing; the remainder had stuffed them inside camouflage jackets that more easily blended with the buff tones of the rock face until the snow line five hundred feet above.

Garfield lay on his back peering up at Richard Dewar through his binoculars, admiring the almost effortless ease with which the Royal Marine repeated the high trapeze act a further six times to reach the lip of the overhang. No records existed of any climbs here and in all probability no one had ever scaled the rock face before them. It seemed to Garfield however, that Dewar had climbed it a dozen times, so confident and assured were his moves. The climber’s term for such a skilful climb up a virgin face is ‘A Vue’, a clean ascent first try, with no prior knowledge of the route.

The American lieutenant from Florida had never climbed anything more challenging than the trees in the family’s backyard, before joining the service. Like every one of the Americans he had since gone through the courses run by the US Army Northern Warfare Training Centre at Fort Wainwright, Alaska. He’d frozen his butt off on the Black Rapids training area completing his CWLC, the Cold Weather Leaders Course, but it was nowhere close to the — 40° he was currently working in. He had performed assault climbs in Alaska on the Gulkana Glacier, in Vermont and the Rockies, but Dewar on the other hand had hiked to both the north and south poles, climbed Everest three times, once without oxygen, and had two tries at K2, amongst other less well known expeditions to his credit. Any doubts Garfield felt about a Brit leading this operation had been dispelled within hours of their landing in China, the Royal Marine Commando wasn’t just competent, he was quite expert at working in sub-zero climes and on rock faces.

Garfield remembered the first time he had come up against an overhang of similar proportions; he had shaken his head in a very negative manner as his brain took in the near impossibility of negotiating it. His instructor, a Ranger of many years’ experience had climbed up beside him.

“Mr Brooks, sir…you ever hear of a guy called Winston Spencer Churchill?” and Garfield had frowned at the strange question.

“Do you mean the old wartime British PM?”

“Yessir that’s him, he was a good soldier before he was a politician, and he had a saying that the three hardest things to do in life are to climb a wall leaning towards you, kiss a girl leaning away from you, and to make an after dinner speech…now I know you got a girlfriend and as an officer you know how to make speeches, which just leaves the leaning wall thing for you to do…now git your butt in gear and get it done before I kick your pansy ass off my mountain, sir!”

The advice had been absolutely useless in helping him conquer the problem, but it served to remind him that defeatism was not acceptable in the eyes of the army.

He now shifted his gaze upwards, looking at the eighty or so feet of chimney that ended abruptly where snow and ice capped it sixty feet from the top. They had been socked in for two days by the storm that had blown straight across the valley, coating the rock face, which they had descended that morning with snow that had been wind blasted into ice. Rappelling, or abseiling as the Brits called it, down from the top of the ridge in four pitches had seen them all safely down on the canyon floor, before crossing the exposed area in groups, one group moving whilst the remainder covered them

The route the major had chosen, initially went straight up for about a hundred feet of un-technical climbing, that is to say without the need for pitons and artificial aids. From there came a traverse, up and to the left for another hundred and fifty, rounding a corner two thirds of the way along. From the traverse it once more went vertical until reaching a narrow ledge, which varied in depth from a foot and a half to mere inches. Above the ledge, the rock was as smooth and seamless as if a team of giant plasterers had prepared it for painting, and below it to the top of the traverse was as equally unhelpful. The major had used pitons to secure runners to the face from the traverse to the ledge, and then along the ledge to below the overhang. Theoretically they could simply have gone straight up, in a technical climb all the way to the top, but they did not have the time to spare to hammer in pitons every few feet, even if they had that many with them, which they did not. They had lost time due to the storm and could not afford to hang about any longer.

Garfield lifted his over-white top and undid his ‘yukes’ jacket or extreme cold weather clothing system, in storeman speak, and replaced the binoculars before rolling back onto his front. In the entire time they had been on the ground in China they had seen no trace of another human being, it was as if they were on another planet. He checked that his small mix of troops from two countries and three different units, were still alert and on the ball, covering their assigned arcs. It was odd, he thought, that whereas his guys mixed well with the Brits of both units, there was coolness between the M&AW Cadre, Royal Marines and the SAS Mountain Troop guys. ‘The Cadre’ didn’t consider themselves to be ‘special forces’ but they definitely looked down on the mountain troop soldiers.

To Garfield’s mind this frosty attitude was entirely due to the media’s love affair with the SAS. The Cadre were all instructors, in their peacetime role they taught the members of 3 Commando Brigade how to fight and survive in arctic conditions, how to climb, and how to operate far above the snow line where the air is thin. The Cadre did not wear any insignia or embellishments on their working or ceremonial dress, and even the Royal Marines own Special Forces, the little known Special Boat Service who received much of their training from the Cadre only wore a quaint little ‘Swimmer Canoeist’ badge, the letters SC and laurel leaves in gold on the right arm of their dress uniforms to set them apart. The American had seen nothing to make him doubt the Mountain Troop soldiers abilities, they were all very professional and good climbers, but the Cadre were very, very good. The levels of fitness were impressive in terms of stamina. He could beat the M&AWC’s ‘granddad’, the forty-something Glaswegian, Sergeant McCormack, by several minutes on a five mile dash but he struggled to stay up with the man when they each carried their own weight in kit on route marches.

The parting of the ways would occur once the force reached an east/west running ridge above them, at that point Mountain Troop would go east seven miles to place remote laser designators, targeted on the vehicle assembly buildings, launch towers and satellite communications dishes of the space centre.

The Cadre and Garfield’s men would turn west for the ICBM field where their designators would be sighted on the hardened silos. If all went to plan the troops would RV back at this spot before beginning the long hike to a disused mining strip, for a night extraction by the C-130 Hercules of 47 Squadron, Royal Air Force.

The extraction was totally dependent on the success of the F117As and B1-B Lancers accompanying the B2 bombers. Their job was to clear away enemy air defence radar from the target, and all the way back to the borders of India and Nepal.

Richard placed another camm into the crack running through the overhang, reaching across and upwards to position it six inches from the overhangs lip and attached his harness to it with a pair of linked quickdraw’s. When he released the quickdraw to the previous camm though, there was a screech like fingernails being drawn down a slate blackboard, as the camm near the lip shifted several inches downwards and outwards. Corporal Alladay was belayed on to a large boulder at the last pitch and immediately took up the slack, feeding rope back around his body and bracing, locking his arms in toward his torso.

The tight rope stopped the pendulum movement of the major’s body, and Richard held his breath, staring at the camm which had half emerged from the crack but had now taken a firm hold against a protruding nub. As satisfied as he could be that the camm was now secure he singled up on the quickdraw's securing him to the camm before reaching up beyond the lip of the overhang, his fingers feeling for a hold. Below him Corporal Alladay let out some rope, again allowing the major some freedom of movement.

Richard first found a finger hold, and then discarded it for a fracture coming off the crack, which afforded a better grip. To the left of the crack an angle of rock would afford him some purchase for his left foot. With his right hand in the fracture Richard wedged the fingers of his left into the crack and heaved, bringing up his left foot and planting the sole of the boot firmly before transferring his right hand to the crack. Bracing himself there he let go with his left hand and unscrewed himself from the remaining quickdraw, allowing it to fall way to hang from the stem. He was now out of sight of Alladay and tugged on the rope, signalling for more slack before working his body higher, hand over hand up the crack until he was able to jam the toe of his right boot into the fracture hold. With feet splayed and the fingers of one hand wedged into the crack and the other gripping the underside of an inverse lip.

Richard craned his neck to look for the next hold. Having got himself to this spot Richard now found that the next possible hand hold was a good seven or eight inches beyond his grasp, but after that the face promised easier going. It’s not a problem, he thought, I’ll use a camm in the crack to pull myself up. Reaching around to the back of his harness though he found that he had none left that would fit. His largest monolith was too narrow and he had used his last piton below the overhang, all he had left were ice screws, the hollow, rifled tubes for affixing runners once they reached the snowline. It was time to consider alternatives, and he unclipped his ice axe from his harness.

Through the eye on the helve’s butt end he threaded a length of line, tying it off on his harness with six feet of line connecting the two. As if about to try and lever off the inverse lip of rock Richard jabbed the picks business end upwards into the space previously occupied by his fingers. Without weight being applied to the picks helve the ice pick would simply fall away, so holding the pick in place with his left hand he brought up his left foot onto the moulded handgrip before shifting his weight to rest upon it. It was a variation on the Stein Pull and gave the commando a somewhat perilous perch on which he now placed his other foot also, and twisted his body at the waist to face the rock with the palms of his hands flat against the rock face. There wasn’t any way he could warn Alladay about what he was about to attempt, so if he screwed it up he would fall until the runner on the last camm caught him, and his momentum would then swing him into the rock face below the overhang with bone breaking force. Bending at the knees Richard steadied him before leaping, his arms outstretched and fingers already half hooked. As soon as his weight left the ice pick it came loose, tumbling way to dangle from the line tied to his harness. The fingers of both hands found the same lip of rock, but it was only deep enough for the tips. With his hands side by side Richard gritted his teeth and pulled, doing a chin-up until his eyes came level with his fingertips. He groaned with the effort and then let go his left hand, shooting it up into a narrow horizontal fracture. Gritting his teeth and with his biceps trembling the Royal Marine worked himself up hand by hand until eventually he could find purchase for his feet.

Garfield heard the beat of rotor blades first, echoing off the canyon walls in a way that made it impossible to judge the direction of the source of the sound. He had two men take up position with Stingers, finding spots where they could engage in either direction along the wide canyon, and where they would avoid causing friendly injuries with the weapons back-blast.

The FIM-96A had a maximum range of eight kilometres and a minimum range of one, the distance the missile would travel before it had armed itself. That minimum range could be a real hamper in the confined depths of the mountain canyon if they did have to engage, but that would be a very last resort, as it would announce their presence here.

Over four hundred feet up, Major Dewar felt the vibrations through the rock before he actually heard the sound of a helicopter, and breathed a savage

“Oh shit!” The only cover around was that of the chimney above him.

Up and down the rock face the troops pulled themselves into the cover of shadows and undulations in the rock before going very still, their camouflage clothing assisting in the deception. The men anchored to belay points tied off the ropes, before releasing themselves from their restraints and getting themselves concealed

Corporal Alladay however was stuck out on a protruding shelf in plain view until Major Dewar could signal he was safe to untie himself from his anchor point. Richard hauled his axe back up and clipped it to his harness before climbing as fast as he safely could toward the crack where it suddenly yawned to become a chimney.

Back on the ground Lt Brooks used his binoculars to check that everyone on the face was as near invisible as possible, but the major and Alladay were still in clear view.

The sound of the helicopter was growing louder and his Stinger men were looking over their shoulders at him for permission to activate the weapons infrared seekers. If the aircraft happened to be equipped with a sensor suite the super-cooled ‘eyes’ could register upon it, giving away their presence as surely as actually loosing off a missile at them, so he shook his head emphatically before again raising his binos. Richard had gained the lower reaches of the chimney and was squeezing himself inside, hollering down the face

“OFF BELAY…FREESTYLE IT, ALLADAY!” informing the NCO that he was safe to release himself but that he himself was not belayed-on, so putting weight on the rope that connected them would result in Richard being pulled bodily from the rock face. Alladay untied himself and went up the face, moving as quickly and surely as had his officer.

Appearing at first as a small dot, the Chinese helicopter gradually grew in size as it flew toward them between towering rock walls. Garfield looked desperately up at the Royal Marine Commando, willing him to climb even faster than he presently was.

Garfield had to make a decision, the aircraft was fast approaching minimum engagement range and the Stingers needed a few moments to acquire their target. He could stand down the Stingers and trust that Alladay would be able to get into cover by the time it arrived. Otherwise Garfield would probably blow the entire operation by ordering the men holding the weapons to engage and destroy.

“Sir?” one of the men asked, wanting to know what they were to do.

Now I know why they pay me more than a trooper, Garfield thought.

“Stand down and get into cover.”

The approaching light helicopter looked remarkably similar to a French Aerospatiale AS355 Twin Ecureuil, the military version of the ‘Squirrel’, but was in fact a Chinese copy, the Z-11.

Until a couple of weeks before, the main natural hazard of operating helicopters in the region had been the dust and heat. The aircraft were all equipped for those conditions, with dust filters for the intakes and hot weather lubricants for the engines. The snow and plummeting temperatures had brought to a halt the increased patrolling that had become the norm since the start of the war. The sub-zero temperatures turned the lightweight lubricants into heavy treacle and the dust filters iced over, starving the engines of oxygen.

The Z-11s pilot was not ecstatic about being a guinea pig, flying the first sortie since the arrival of arctic standard lubricants. The dust filters had been replaced and a crew chosen to carry out a test flight, which proved to be the ones least in favour with their commander.

Two hundred feet up the face the commander of the SAS Mountain Troop detachment pressed himself as close to the rock as he could. Lt Shippey-Romhead could not see the Z-11; he had left the traverse to climb into shadow around a corner of rock, away from the approaching helicopter. The only holds here were widely spaced and his rope, tied off at the belay point below did not allow him sufficient slack to accomplish it easily, it was pulling him sideways. The young officer was spread eagled across the rock, uncomfortably overstretched and silently urging the PLA aircraft to hurry up and bugger off. The involuntary tremors began in his right leg, a phenomenon known to climbers as ‘Elvis leg’, where tired or over-stressed leg muscles display disquiet at the treatment demanded of them. The SAS officer cursed the rope that was contributing to his discomfort and concentrated on stilling the tremors in his limb, willing it to behave but his left leg came out in sympathy, trembling in unison to the right limb. Removing his right hand from its hold he eased it between his body and the rock, his fingers unscrewing the locking carabiner at his waist and releasing the rope. Breathing a sigh of relief he replaced his hand back into the fracture it had left, and noted with satisfaction that the tremors were already abating.

Corporal Alladay reached the shadow beneath the overhang and clipped himself onto a runner before assuming an attitude of absolute stillness. The helicopter was almost upon them, the beating of its rotors a physical thing that buffeted the senses. The British and American troops held their breath lest the fog of their breathing catch the eye of an alert crewman, but on board an aircraft never equipped with heating the door gunners sat behind closed side doors, peering disinterestedly through Perspex windows as they shivered in the cold and drafts of freezing air that streamed through the joints of the side door.

A clod of snow struck Richard on the shoulder, loosened by the vibration of the helicopters passing it fell down the chimney from the mass of wind-blown snow and ice that overhung the face, a fore runner of the tons that were to follow. He had just enough time to brace his arms and legs against the side of the chimney, pressing his back against the opposite side with all his strength before he was engulfed.

Garfield was following the helicopter with his eyes, the beat of the blades drowned out all other sound but a white, fast moving mass caught the corner of his eye. A falling wall of ice and snow blotted out the rock face and he shouted an alarm to the men closest to the base of the canyon wall where the bergens were stashed, but they were watching the PLA machine and his shout was drowned out by the beating blades. Two men disappeared before his very eyes, one moment they were there and the next they were buried under tons of snow and ice.

During an avalanche or rock fall down a vertical face the safest place to be is as tight against the rock face as possible. The falling mass has achieved a degree of forward motion, which will carry most of it outwards, not in towards the face.

Lt Shippey-Romhead had no warning at all until a whiteout replaced the view he had had of the rock face across the canyon they had descended earlier. Sucking in his stomach and expending the air in his lungs he made himself as flat as possible but could still feel the wind of the avalanche against his back. Just millimetres separated him from the down rush of snow and he clung with desperation to his hand and toeholds. A lump of ice about the size of a coconut struck the back of his helmet a glancing blow and his head rebounded off the rock and into the downfall, which dragged his body from its tentative perch.

Situated as it is between Peckham and Brixton, two of the more violent suburbs of the British capital, the hospital that lay three quarters of the way up Denmark Hill have a staff with vast experience and expertise in dealing with gunshot wounds and stabbings. Those skills made Kings College Hospital an obvious choice for dealing with many of the more serious cases arriving back in the UK from the fighting in Europe. One such patient arrived under guard; the military policemen of his escort being exceedingly closed mouthed about their charge.

That he was a soldier seemed obvious from the remnants of camouflage cream that still adhered to his skin, clearly missed by the medical staff in Germany. However, the RMPs would not reveal his identity or the circumstances of his receiving his injuries.

A doctor in triage was beginning to get extremely frustrated with the lack of forthcoming information, such as the date of the injury, the dimensions of the blade and was it possible that any of the knife or bayonet’s blade could have been broken off? Whether morphine had been administered, and if so then how much and when? She couldn’t even get them to admit that the casualty was a serviceman. A Warrant Officer was in command of the escort but the doctor was being blanked in her attempts to do an accurate assessment.

“Listen mister, you people only police the armed forces so you must know something about this man…right?”

The military policeman answered with a half-truth, because he had been deliberately given the very minimum of information, and then warned that severe repercussions would follow immediately should even that small amount of knowledge be divulged.

“No doctor that is not right, we actually police the armed forces and their dependants, but we are here only to provide a guard for this prisoner until relieved by the civil authorities.”

The doctor resisted the urge to grind her teeth, and tried one last time to stick with the logical approach.

“So where is his paperwork, you must have something to hand over to whoever is relieving you?”

The Redcap shook his head.

“No doctor, perhaps our relief will know more.”

The doctor’s eyes hardened and she squared her shoulders, but before she could launch into a verbal assault a slightly flustered senior manager for the Hospital Trust arrived and thrust a scrap of paper with hastily written details upon it. The length and width of the type of bayonet that had inflicted the wound, the casualty’s blood group, and the details of his medication up to present time were all included. The doctor noted however that although his date of birth was shown, there was no mention of a name or next of kin for this man before her.

“Where did you get this?”

The manager was not about to reveal the identity of the very important person from whom the information had apparently originated. The patient, if he survived, was to be charged and prosecuted with a variety of serious crimes including cowardice, mutiny and war crimes. The media must be kept completely in the dark and as such the manager had been threatened with prosecution himself for breaching the Official Secrets Act if word got out. Such a prosecution, if successful, would of course void his pension rights he was reminded.

“That information is confidential and of a need to know nature. So, as you have all the details you need I suggest you get busy, doctor?”

As she had worked with less she put the annoyance and dislike of the National Health Services ‘Yes men’ behind her, and got on with the job.

The military policemen accompanied the unnamed casualty up to theatre, and waited away the hours as patients came and went from other OR’s. The afternoon became evening, and eventually their relief arrived in the uniform of Her Majesty’s Prison Service, but the surgical procedure dragged on.

There is a song about men joining navies to see the sea and getting their wish, seeing an unromantic Atlantic and a less than terrific Pacific but no mention is made of the wildest and stormiest of seas, those of the great Southern Ocean.

There are no land masses to buffer nature’s energies and the stormy seas percolate north to make life interesting at times for sailor men in the southern Pacific and Atlantic.

On the edge of the Southern Ocean, at the Falklands Islands in 1982, the Royal Navy Task Force had an unpleasant time of it in ships built for the less aggressive Mediterranean and north Atlantic.

Currently, there were ninety eight seamen who could not see the third ocean but who were of a similar opinion as the songsters about the water above their heads at that time.

At 55°47′26.48"S — 64°24′51.40"W the Admiral Potemkin’s coxswains fought to keep their charge on an even keel at a depth of one hundred feet as a floating antennae was streamed out behind them, dragged behind on the surface as they checked for any messages left them in the previous twenty four hours.

At 33,800 tons submerged the Admiral Potemkin was something of a lumbering behemoth in fact as well as looks. She had been laid down at the Rubin Design Bureau works at Arkhangelsk Oblast in 1993 designated as a raketnyy podvodnyy strategicheskogo nazhacheniya, a strategic missile cruiser, a ‘Boomer’ in western naval parlance and NATO called her a Typhoon, but when the Berlin Wall came down because the arms race had bankrupted the Soviet Union she was abandoned before her reactor or VLTs, Vertical Launch Tubes, for her twenty ICBMs could be installed.

Her rescue had come during the long years of planning, of placing human and materiel assets into the West and waiting for the espionage to produce fruit. The blinding of the West’s satellites without them realising had been an intelligence coup to cap them all, and also the signal to proceed with the many and varied parts of the next stage.

Neither Russia nor the People’s Republic of China had the infrastructure and resources to operate diesel submarines at sea over a protracted period of time or indefinitely over great distances. The German Kriegsmarine in the last world war had perfected the refuelling and victualling of submarines at sea and even undersea refuelling was possible, given the right circumstances. However, there exists no method for victualing another vessel beneath the waves, which therefore renders the covert refuelling of another submerged submarine an operation of questionable worth. A fully fuelled submarine crewed by a collection of starving individuals is of no use to anybody.

When a submarine leaves for a long voyage every inch of space is used for storage. Floor gratings are lifted and boxes packed alongside one another before the gratings are replaced on top to prevent trips and falls, whilst making life hazardous for the taller members of the crew. Walking hunched over may not look particularly martial but it saved on painful meetings between cranium, steam pipes and the like until the fresh food was used up and the tinned goods at floor level thinned out.

So the Admiral Potemkin became a Milchkühe, a milk cow which could carry out FAS and RAS, ‘Fassing’ and ‘Rassing’, fuelling at sea and replenishing at sea, resupplying and rearming with conventional weapons any submarine requiring such and any diesel electric boat in need of refuelling.

Five of her six 21” torpedo tubes were removed and all available space was incorporated into storage. The vast void of her launch tube chamber was split into three fuel bunkers for diesel fuel with each connected by valves and it was these fuel bunkers which were the cause of the crews unhappy state.

The original builders, the excellent Rubin Design Bureau, had not been involved in her conversion and were only consulted on limited matters such as the replacement of equipment either rendered defunct due to the role change or due to corrosion as she sat on the slips for years, her hull incomplete and exposed to the elements.

Had her bunkers been multi-layered cells and linked via high pressure pumps whereby trim could be easily maintained there would have been less of a problem, but the three bunkers were mounted lengthways, pointing fore and aft and they could not discharge independently. For practicality the bunkers were filled and discharged from the portside, either by tankers or pumps on the quayside, or at sea from an oiler.

Much juggling of valves was required to prevent a list developing as the portside bunker filled and its contents gradually shared with the centreline and starboard bunkers via a main transfer valve and a secondary, neither of which were as fast as they could have been.

When the bunkers were filled she sat low in the water but her handling characteristics were little different to those originally intended.

As soon as she began servicing the small flotilla engaged on what was named as Operation ‘Early Dawn’ those characteristics altered.

Once the Typhoon was no longer on an even keel it adversely effected the steering, making the tasking of holding a course difficult, and if the equilibrium within the tanks was not restored swiftly then over steering would follow until the bulky vessel began a noticeable zigzag course much to the annoyance of her captain and Lt Wei Wuhan of the Chinese navy.

They had taken the Chinese officer onboard soon after the modified Typhoon had been launched, and that was before the Chinese People’s Republic’s Politburo had even heard the sales pitch by Peridenko and Alontov.

Lieutenant Wuhan was the ship’s interpreter and dedicated OCE, Officer Conducting Exercise, for Underway Replenishment.

Quite apart from adversely affecting the steering it also caused problems with the equilibrium of the vessel when dived.

Even a vessel the size of Admiral Potemkin can be effected by violent seas when submerged, unless at great depth.

The best cure for sea sickness is to step outside and look at the horizon but that was not an option, so with no fixed horizon to stabilise the brain the inner ear slipped in and out of synchronisation. In particular for those crew members navigating a passage from fore and aft, or vice versa, it could be an uncomfortable experience when the Typhoon was running relatively shallow.

Admiral Potemkin was 577.7 feet in length so the boat was 4702.3 feet short of the title, but when under the influence of the waves above that journey still became known as Zhelchi Milyu, ‘The Bile Mile’.

Her primary role was originally to be that of supporting the inshore raiding flotilla in hit and run attacks on the Hawaiian Islands, before eventually heading to Australia for the fuelling and resupplying of forces seizing Port Kembla, south of Sydney, in the hours before China’s invasion of Australia.

The industrial port had deep water for the troopships and freighters to unload, and ferry docks for the Ro-Ro transports to land two armoured and two mechanised divisions of the 1^st Corps of the PLAN’s 3^rd Army. Its 2^nd Corps was already loading back in Shanghai, whilst the 3^rd Corps, largely reservists with second class equipment, was scheduled to use the shipping that was currently carrying 1^st Corps with the Sino Russian fleet.

However, the planned raids on Hawaii had been shelved as impractical once major units of the US 2^nd Army had moved into defend likely targets.

The 2^nd Army’s presence was not something that had been foreseen in the planning, but then there is one law of planning which never changes and that is ‘No plan survives first contact with the enemy’.

Only in B movies are the other people completely predictable.

Various factors had altered the original plan. Ninety nine cities and military bases around the world that were supposed to have been destroyed were in fact untouched. The destruction of Pusan and the 2^nd Army headquarters were expected to leave the US Forces in South Korea stranded and disorganised, left to wither on the vine and be easy pickings for later in the war.

The Hawaiian Islands and key points in Australia and New Zealand were now effectively hardened and no longer practical targets for small scale commando raids, which left Admiral Potemkin and the inshore raiders twiddling their thumbs in the wings awaiting a suitable specialist role to play in the war once the original missions were scrubbed or put on hold.

The French had also not behaved as predicted. Historically the greater good had only been a factor when the going was good, i.e., a benefit to the national good. Russia’s Premier confidently expected the French to declare neutrality and withdraw completely from NATO once the new Red Army began rolling westwards. Indeed they had in 1966 separated themselves from the command structure, if not the organisation, following differences arising during the Cuban Crisis. But after the opening battles the French had not scurried off home, they had dug in a fought as fiercely as the other armies in the alliance.

The French had proven themselves to be unpredictable in the Premier’s eyes and they also had a nuclear arsenal completely independent of NATO control along with the means to deliver those weapons, despite retiring and deactivating her land based tactical nuclear weapons. The army’s battlefield Pluton and Hadès mobile missile systems, and three IRBMs, Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles, in silos at the airbase at Saint-Christol were scrapped and their warheads recycled into nuclear fuel rods.

President Charles de Gaulle himself had been speaking directly, for he was always very direct, at the Russian people when he had famously said, with a Gallic shrug of the shoulders of course

“Within ten years, we shall have the means to kill eighty million Russians. I truly believe that one does not light-heartedly attack people who are able to kill eighty million Russians, even if one can kill eight hundred million French, that is if there were eight hundred million French.”

The French navy’s Force Océanique Stratégique comprising the SSBNs Le Terrible, Le Triomphant and Le Téméraire were all at sea and Le Vigilant, which had been undergoing a lengthy refit within the covered dry dock at Brest, had with much ceremony for the worlds press, been re-floated and towed to the old reinforced concrete U Boat pens to be moored in the open where her sixteen M45 ballistic missiles could be launched at both Russia and China if necessary.

The Premier believed that whereas the US President and the British would baulk at ‘going ballistic’ until the last moment, the French were an unknown quantity.

What was known though was her current ability to put up military satellites to replace those that Russia and China were destroying on an almost daily basis from their South American facility on the equator at French Guiana.

Both the Ariane, Italian Vega and now also, to add insult, the neighbouring Soyuz built launch facilities were being used solely for the launching of military payloads.

The French legionnaires guarding all three at the outbreak of the war had not only seized the Soyuz site and personnel not yet evacuated, but had also mounted an ad hoc resource denial operation. Augmenting their own tiny helicopter force of a Gazelle and Puma with a logging company’s Chinook they had boarded the freighter Fliterland on the open sea as she attempted to carry ten Soyuz-ST rockets and boosters back to St Petersburg, denying Russia the use of ten valuable launch vehicles whilst themselves benefiting.

The Vega’s carried smaller communications satellites aloft and the Soyuz, while they lasted, and Ariane rockets hoisted the RORSATs up into the desired orbits.

Taking down the launch facility would leave the West with only Canaveral, Kennedy and Vandenberg, as fear of China’s lack of inhibition in using nuclear weapons would deny them Asia’s launch sites.

All the Premier had to do was advise his partners to exercise restraint when dealing with French Guiana, at least until NATO was broken in Europe.

So Operation Early Dawn was devised.

The Russian Admiral Potemkin and the Chinese diesel boats of the Inshore Raiding Flotilla were off the south China coast near Zhuhai practicing replenishment and fuelling at sea, along with other more warlike drills as they awaited deployment.

They exercised initially by day in the full knowledge that the NSA had been penetrated and for a time the Americans could not trust what their satellites saw.

The drilling in daylight progressed on to working at night, at first under illumination until they had built up skills and confidence.

Finally the lights had been switched off and from then on refuelling and resupply was carried out under operational conditions.

Crewmen on the blacked out casing wearing passive night goggles and safety lines attached king posts to the fore and aft ends of the conning towers to hold STREAM rigs, or the ‘Standard Tensioned Replenishment Alongside Method’ because the navy loves an acronym that sounds cool until first explained. This complex mechanism was assembled to supply food using pulleys and loadbearing cables under tension for the transfers, and also to feed across the fuelling hose, clear of the waves, to the receiving submarine’s female receptor attached to her own conning tower.

Both vessels would have to exercise superb seamanship with expert hands on the helms as they ran parallel at thirty yards distant. Only the best coxswains’ hands will be steering each boat because at 12 knots a 1 degree variation in heading produces a lateral speed of 20 feet per minute initially, and that is before hydrodynamics is factored in, the suction caused by two masses in close proximity, particularly if at least one of them or the ocean is in motion. The suction increases exponentially and a collision may be unavoidable if that happens, as the captain of a luxury cruise ship recently found to his cost sailing too close to a small Mediterranean island.

Ram Tensioners and a series of saddle winches kept the cable taut and also allowed some leeway before the cable parted due to an error of diverging courses, but seamanship of a high standard made it work. Senior Lieutenant Wuhan of the People’s Liberation Army Navy would have the fate of the entire mission riding on his cool head and language skills on each occasion. No radios could be used without compromising the mission and so all instructions would have to be passed by voice, via megaphone until a shot line was fired over to the receiving vessel, and that is attached to a cable for a sound powered telephone. The telephone cable is itself attached to a heavier ‘Span Wire’ which is heaved over and clamped onto the receiving kingpost, and with that secure the ‘saddles’ bearing stores and the fuelling hose are strung beneath it and pulled over.

With Strela surface to air missiles at the ready they simulated coming under attack whilst coupled and joined by the fuelling hose, they simulated man-overboard drills whilst coupled and joined together and even buddy-buddy fire fighting drills whilst coupled together because there is really no such thing as an ‘Emergency breakaway’, instead the ‘Rasser’s’ and ‘Fasser’s’, the replenishment and fuelling parties, just have to get a hustle on to de-rig the complex apparatus that much faster than they normally would.

That the issue with steering and trim was one that only a refit would solve was quickly realised. Earlier on they also discovered that the spanwire visibly vibrated when taut, but it ceased vibrating completely when the helmsmen got it wrong and the courses began to diverge. When that happened you knew the 2500 lb. breaking strain was all but upon you! It became the job of one of the leading hands to do nothing except watch the spanwire and shout a warning when that vibration could no longer be seen.

They were relearning old lessons and they learned well. Some procedures they simply made up as they went along, and if it worked then that became the SOP, the standard operating procedure for fuelling and resupplying submarines from another submarine, something not practiced in over sixty years.

The technically much trickier replenishment at sea of torpedoes and torpedo tube launched anti-shipping missiles was practiced at anchor in a sheltered bay, and with oil being pumped out into the sea by both vessels for the purpose of water calming. Bow to bow and separated by heavy duty inflated bladders the submarines were made fast to each other as torpedoes were manually fed tail-first from the Typhoon’s torpedo tube and into the Chinese boat’s torpedo tubes.

Finding such a handy spot to carry out the task would not be an easy matter and both vessels would be open to attack, so quite aside from the back breaking toil involved it was an unpopular undertaking, made more unpleasant by the cleaning of the bladders, which was a filthy but necessary job as the oil would eat into them and perish the material within days otherwise.

Once their orders arrived the Admiral Potemkin slipped away south and avoided the main shipping lanes.

The Chinese boats continued their own role specific tasks for four more days of rehearsals near the uninhabited, sub-tropical Damang Island before topping off their tanks and following on initially diverse courses.

The converted Typhoon was waiting for them at the first refuelling spot, some six hundred miles south west of a tiny coral atoll.

That atoll was a circular ring of rock and sand that enclosed a freshwater lagoon, and a stagnant freshwater lagoon at that. Populated as it was by a quarter million bad tempered sea birds and one million inedible crabs only the most optimistic romantic, or a Frenchman, could have named it Ile de la Passion.

The trio of Chinese diesel submarines had almost dry tanks and the giant of a Russian must have been a welcome sight for each of them but they were barely one third of the way to their ultimate destination.

Again the quartet parted with the Typhoon running deep through the empty vastness of the Pacific to arrive ahead of them at the next scheduled rendevous.

The crew of the converted Typhoon arrived at their next assigned position 65 miles south of Isla del los Estados near the very southernmost tip of South America and settled down for a long and uncomfortable wait.

Bao was the first vessel to arrive, its bona fides established by Senior Lieutenant Wuhan on a dark night with a thankfully moderate sea. The transfer of rations as well as fuel went without hitch, but how they enjoyed the Russian rations was questionable. Tinned pork, tinned sausage and tinned fish were going to be pretty monotonous and peacetime rules in the Russian navy forbade continuous use of its tinned rations without added fresh produce in meals beyond eighteen days. The Russian tinned rations lacked the added protein edition of the western armies’ varieties.

The second customer arriving two days later was the curio of the Chinese flotilla, a type paid off from the Russian fleet decades before but her Chinese owners had maintained her well and added upgrades not available in her classes’ heyday such as western acoustic dampening tiles and the propellers of an Improved Kilo, the quietest and most efficient that technology could build.

Dai was an elderly Juliett, a diesel electric cruise missile boat built to be quiet enough to get in close to carrier combat groups and sink those carriers, but she was built small as well as quiet in a time when missile defence left something to be desired. She only carried a maximum of four cruise missiles in VTLs, vertical launch tubes, forward of the conning tower.

That operation had been far more difficult as the weather had been back to its usual wild self. They had eventually relocated a hundred miles north with the rocky expanses of the Isla del los Estados acting as a windbreak.

With nuclear detonations up north evaporating vast quantities of sea water to condense in the cold upper atmosphere, blinding photo reconnaissance satellites and reducing visibility it had become a more manageable risk remaining in the lee of the island for the third and final northbound customer of ‘Grigory’s Gas & Drive-Thru Mart’ as the crew referred to themselves.

The third submarine in the flotilla, Tuan, was early, only a day and a half behind the Dai and she had been in the area several hours before the Admiral Potemkin had risen up from the depths to check her messages.

The weather was far from placid and becoming progressively worse. The sun was an hour below the horizon before the submarines made contact and the complex ballet of matching course and speed could begin. No transfer of food and fuel were possible until Lt Wuhan was satisfied the helmsmen were ‘in sync’.

Tuan was one of the original Kilo’s, an elderly boat as were all of the submarines in the flotilla, but they were very well maintained. The life expectancy of a submarine working inshore and delivering the special forces to their targets was rather less than that of their conventionally employed sisters. China was not about to use more modern and less replaceable hulls whilst she still had a goodly number of the other variety on the lists.

Tuan she carried a small submersible piggyback upon her casing, as did the flotilla’s other two vessels, and anchor points on the submersibles casings were for the special forces troops of China’s army navy to be towed along clinging to the outer hull.

Both Typhoon and Kilo had their ECM, the electronic counter measure masts, and communications masts fully extended but EMCON was in force, no electronic emissions were permitted, all systems were set to passive/standby mode with the sensor arrays sniffing at the electronic airwaves.

The vessel’s towed sonar arrays were reeled in and housed for the duration of this surface activity as a precaution against being damaged, or even lost by becoming entangled, ‘run over’ or sucked in to the other boats screws. Only those sonar sensors incorporated into the hull design were deployed but all they were hearing was the thrashing of the other boats propeller and the racket of localised surface noise.

Admiral Potemkin and Tuan had ploughed into heavy seas at 12 knots holding station on one another despite twice almost losing the fuelling hose to giant rollers. The RAS and FAS procedures were taking longer than they had for either the Bao or the Dai. The weather gods were most definitely not with them this night.

In the Typhoon’s radio shack a blinking red light announced incoming flash traffic and the captain was immediately informed, but what could he do at that particular moment whilst dealing with the fuelling, break off until the transmission was complete? As per SOP’s the radar was switched from ‘Standby’ to ‘Off’ lest it interfere with the incoming signal which would also of course register on the ECM for ten seconds or ten minutes, however long the message may be.

In the warmth and dry of the Admiral Potemkin the engineers were juggling the flow between the three long bunkers of diesel fuel in order to stay as near to an even keel as possible, as the rolling of the vessel was having undue influence on their efforts to fuel the Chinese Kilo.

Up top, the rain was hammering in almost horizontally with each icy gust of wind onto the lookouts, Strela operator, captain and Lieutenant Wuhan, who was still directing the FAS and RAS parties of both vessels by megaphone until they had ship to ship telephone communication.

On the submarines’ casings the FAS and RAS parties looked like ‘Dr Who’ poor man’s aliens in their passive night goggles and Day-Glo orange immersion suits, but each man was securely tethered to safety lines.

Forward of the conning towers the RAS parties had it the worst as they were unprotected from the elements. Freak waves tried to snatch them away and only the safety lines saved them but their task was completed well before the fuelling, and their rig unbolted and stored below in under twenty minutes, such was their competence even on such an evil night.

Of the three PLAN diesels only Tuan had expended any munitions, sinking a New Zealand flagged bulk grain carrier that had been unwisely relying on speed rather than an escorted, but slower, convoy. However the replacement of those two torpedoes was neither requested nor suggested on a night like they were then experiencing.

Wind, spray and the rain were reducing visibility to zero for those without passive night goggles. They were also being deafened by the combined harsh roaring of the Kilo’s diesel exhausts, the crashing of the waves and the impact of a million raindrops on the boats casings and the surface of the ocean.

But someone still noticed the dark winged shape that emerged from the rain heavy cloud before it actually overflew them.

“Preduprezhdeniye…vrazheskiy samolet!”

Lieutenant Wei Wuhan repeated the warning to Tuan over the loudhailer but no sooner had he shouted “Enemy aircraft!” when their cloak of darkness was stripped away.

The P3 Orion of the Argentinian Navy had been performing a grid square search for the missing ‘Maria III’ when they had picked up a radar return and had naturally dropped flares to identify the vessel.

Had the Typhoon not been receiving flash traffic that was interfering with both submarine’s ECM threat detectors then the Orion’s crew would have found only an empty ocean illuminated by the flares.

The PNGs were now an unexpected hindrance and upon removing them the crewmen shouldering the Strela missiles took long moments to blink in the glare of the flare’s white light before acquiring the Orion.

Alarms screeched aboard the aircraft which went a fair way to dispelling the shock the Argentinian crew had experienced.

“Conqueror….it’s that murdering bastard Anglo, Conqueror!” a crew member shouted as the automated counter measure pods discharged more flares. The 1982 sinking of the cruiser Belgrano, though justified, was burned into the Argentine naval psyche, if not the nation’s.

The mis-identification of the submarines was not challenged by the pilots who relied upon the recognition skills of the observers in the rear, but the co-pilot reached for the intercom switch to ask that the identification be checked by replaying the images being recorded by the Orion’s video cameras in the belly and tail. But any thoughts of double checking and confirming the observers I.D of the surfaced submarines was forgotten by what happened next.

“Missile launch!” the observer at the rear shouted on seeing a flash as a Strela’s rocket motor ignited followed by a bright and fiery tail light.

“The Anglo’s are shooting at us!”

The missile, loosed by the Tuan, chased a flare and detonated harmlessly but on the Admiral Potemkin the Russian air sentry was still calmly awaiting a solid lock-on tone.

The cloud base beckoned just two hundred feet above but the pilot banked left, coming around and sending his contact report.

“Chato, Chato…Albatross Three… contact, contact, contact…53°44′22.97"south… 64°26′33.81"west… two British submarines on the surface…we are under attack by surface to air missiles….engaging with Harpoon and MK50!”

Argentina had declared neutrality at the start of hostilities but all the maritime patrol aircraft carried war shots as standard operating procedure on the underwing pylons in the form of a pair of AGM 84 Harpoons and MK50 torpedoes in the bomb bay.

“Cease pumping…close and secure master fuel pump valve!” Lieutenant Wuhan saw that the Tuan’s FAS party had jumped the gun, ejecting the fuelling probe before the flow had halted so that it was violently spewing greasy diesel onto an already slick and slippery casing as it left the receiver at their end.

“Haul back on the messenger return line…lively there; get that hose back aboa……” The firing of the Strela from Tuan’s conning tower drowned out his words and caused him to duck momentarily. He straightened up and leant over the conning tower’s coaming.

“Standby to haul in the master messenger once they strike free the spanwire or it’ll foul the screws.” he kept his voice level as he called down to their own men but then noticed the leading seaman whose job it was to watch the spanwire was instead lending a hand hauling in the fuelling hose, obviously as desperate as any of them to get below the surface and away from danger. Wei looked in alarm at the spanwire to see it was rock steady.

With a report like a gunshot the cable parted where it was clamped into the Tuan’s kingpost, whiplashing across the gap between the vessels, cutting in two the Strela operator as he was about to fire and decapitating Lieutenant Wuhan who was still leaning over the side.

With the supporting spanwire gone the hose and probe dropped into the churning water between both vessels where the wake swept it back into the Typhoons port propeller which tore the hose and messenger lines away. The fuelling hose was shredded and dispersing harmlessly in their wake but the messenger line was sucked in and wrapped itself around the spinning screw, a later job for the Typhoons diver, if they survived.

With nothing left to impede the two submarines they steered sharply diverging courses. FAS parties on both submarines casings hung desperately onto safety lines and clawed their way towards the hatches as the boats heeled over and diving alarms sounded.

The bodies of both Wei Wuhan and the Strela operator were abandoned as the bridge of the Admiral Potemkin was cleared. Both men were obviously very dead, no physician was required to tell the bridge party that.

The Strela launcher carried an armed and primed missile and was dumped over the side out of expediency and safety by the captain.

He slipped after he threw it, losing his footing in the blood to land heavily with an oath but gaining the hatch and pulling himself through despite a dislocated elbow, adrenaline providing the necessary anaesthetic.

The Orion lost height dangerously during its turn but as the wings came level the warbling tone in their headsets told them that despite being in relatively close proximity to their targets the Harpoons seeker head had acquired a radar lock-on to the largest vessel.

Both pilots closed one eye as the missile left its pylon to preserve their night vision.

They were now closing fast on the submarines and inside the minimum engagement range for the second Harpoon so two MK50s dropped from the Orion’s bomb bay with small drogue chutes deploying to give them controlled entry into the water. They were designed to destroy fast, deep diving submarines using a small shaped charge normally associated with anti-armour rounds, the sea water entering small apertures in the casings turned to fast expanding steam by a chemical reaction that produced a 40 knot speed which no conventionally powered torpedo could match at great depth.

The two submarines were less than a football field apart and still on the surface when the Harpoon released by Albatross Three penetrated the f casing of Admiral Potemkin and exploded in the diesel fuel bunkers. The Typhoon still carried 150,000 litres of diesel plus her entire inventory of reloads of 21 inch torpedoes and YJ-8 anti-shipping missiles.

Admiral Potemkin detonated like a grenade.

Titanium and steel burst apart, shards flying in all directions to pierce the Tuan’s pressure hull, starboard ballast tank and also the special forces submersible sat on the after casing. Her conning tower was peppered with shrapnel, seriously wounding the captain who was still half in and half out of the hatch being the last one to clear the bridge.

Roiling, angry reds and oranges of the fireball rose over three hundred feet, dumping blazing fuel over an equal area of the ocean surrounding it, engulfing the Tuan in fire.

Even had her hatches been shut, which they were not, she was mortally wounded and the arrival of both high speed MK 50 torpedoes merely accelerated her demise.

At only two hundred feet above the surface of the Atlantic Albatross Three bucked as it was lifted and buffeted violently by the blast of the Admiral Potemkin’s violent end. A heartbeat later both pilots ducked instinctively as the airframe was struck hard by more than one piece of shrapnel.

The port wing rose as the aircraft commander banked right as much as he judged it safe to do, avoiding the fireball but the airframe was now trembling, a harsh vibration shaking it spastically.

The master fire alarm sounded as the fire warning light for the port outer engine glowed an urgent crimson.

That engines misfires were clearly audible to all the crew, the loud reports sounding like random spaced gunshots, and it was coughing like a sixty a day nicotine slave.

There first appeared black, oily smoke, a precursor to the flickering tongues of flame which seconds later escaped from joints between inspection panels in the engine housing of a clearly damaged Allison turbo prop.

The pilots and flight engineer engaged the engines fire extinguisher, dumping a flame retardant compound onto the engine, shutting off the fuel supply and following the engine feathering procedure.

It was standard fuel management to patrol with one engine feathered anyway so the aircraft was not in danger of falling from the sky with the other three engines operating normally.

Just a single pass for damage assessment took place but no more flares were required as the burning fuel provided ample illumination.

With footage of the destruction for analysis Albatross Three reported both submarines sunk with no trace of survivors and turned west for Tierra del Fuego, trailing smoke as it headed home.

After three days awaiting the arrival of the Tuan, to rejoin with Dai and the Bao, the Juliett class missile submarine Dai sent a millisecond’s worth of burst transmission to Fleet and then her captain retired to his tiny cabin to give the impression of confidence and calm.

Captain Aiguo Li was the second senior officer of the small flotilla, commissioned a month and a day behind his long-term friend Chen Xinhua who commanded the Tuan, but it now seemed likely that some mishap, some accident, or incident was preventing Tuan from taking part in this operation.

He sat upon his bunk and raised his feet to rest up on the small folding writing table that acted as his ‘office’, before leaning back against the bulkhead, contemplating on the difficulties of fulfilling their mission with only two thirds of the necessary resources.

His musing was disturbed by a sharp rap on his door.

Lounging with his feet up was no way for an officer to be seen and he straightened up before barking a stern.

“Come!”

It was the Shui Bing, the ordinary sailor assigned as his steward, announcing a visitor.

“With respect Captain, Major Huaiqing awaits you.”

The ‘Major’ was actually a captain but a ship or submarine can have but one captain and for that reason Captain Huaiqing was given a ‘promotion’ for appearances sake and addressed as Major.

No salutes were exchanged below decks as the vessel was far too cramped for such martial niceties and Captain Li merely nodded an assent for the soldier to be admitted.

Their supercargo slept in tiered hammocks in the forward torpedo room where they managed to keep out of the way of his sailors going about their duties but those men represented eighteen pairs of lung and eighteen more stomachs than the boat had been built for.

A workable number in ideal situations, as the cooks just had an extra few mouths to feed, one hundred instead of eighty two. However, the air scrubbers had to work harder and that was just running close to the surface with the snorkel extended to run the diesels and keep the batteries fully charged.

Going deep and running on batteries and internal air supply was another matter entirely.

The week before, they had been pinged by an unknown maritime patrol aircraft when they were off Natal, Brazil, where it was a bit far off for the French Navy Atlantique IIs out of Cayenne. But it hardly mattered who they were, it had been the first brush with the enemy.

They had been snorkeling as they ran just under the surface with the ECM mast extended of course.

Now there are two dangers in that situation, the first time under fire, and only one is the enemy aircraft. The other is a panicked dive with the diesels still engaged because a torpedo may miss but a diesel will suck every breath of air out of the boat before the Diving Officer realises his error. It had happened to the ‘The Great Wall’ on a simple training exercise with students from the academy a few years before. She had been a Ming class, an ex-Soviet Romeo and someone probably ordered crash surface when they realised what was happening but a fishing boat found it drifting ten days later with all 70 students and crew dead from asphyxia.

Back to the Dai’s first time under fire, and the aircraft had been doing a MAD sweep, its magnetic anomaly detector had picked up the distortion in the earth’s magnetic field caused by the shallow running Dai’s metal hull

The executive officer had the watch and he had done it by the numbers as if it were a drill, shutting down the diesels and engaging the electric motor before diving.

Whichever nation’s aircraft it was, it had been known that either there was no friendly boat was in the area or they just did not care because they had immediately attacked with depth charges.

Luck had not deserted them entirely and the aircraft had departed, either low on fuel or suffering some fault but it obviously called for surface support because a half hour later a frigate, identified by the sonar as either the Brazilian Liberal or the Constitucao, had lobbed depth charges at them from its 375mm ASW mortar.

Sonar had first heard it thundering in at full speed from ten miles away and Captain Li had the two obvious choices, fight or flight. The first option was one he was confident he would win, but it would alert all the navies in the region that a submarine was in the area and that would hazard their mission. To run was not an attractive bet as more surface vessels and aircraft would join the hunt

A good look at the chart though had given him a third choice.

Captain Li settled the Dai into the mud close by the wreck of the U598, sunk seventy years before by US Liberator bombers, and there they waited out the depth charging.

There was doubtless an interesting exchange between aircraft commander and the ASW officer aboard the frigate as to the certainty of the aircraft’s contact, but they endured two hours’ worth of attention and twenty-three depth charges before the frigate departed. Fortunately, the aircraft did not return.

Quite apart from the terrifying experience everyone had endured, those extras bodies, the special forces troopers, had had a noticeably disagreeable effect on air quality. The carbon dioxide levels had been bordering the red line.

Today Captain Jie Huaiqing, second in command of the Zhōngguó tèzhǒng bùduì, the Special Forces Company, squeezed inside and once the steward had departed he sat upon the folding table’s stool. Both table and stool were spring loaded to fold up against the bulkhead. A functional design but the stool could be challenging as it would do so when not actually being sat on. It was another good reason why alcohol was not allowed on board.

In the full knowledge that the ordinary sailor was in reality a Lieutenant Commander in the Guójiā Ānquánbù, the Ministry of State Security’s naval division, the two officers exchanged formal pleasantries. On the captain asking him how he was filling his time the army officer produced a small book he had been reading from a map pocket. It was all about the life cycle of the genus Dermochelys coriacea, the Leatherback Sea Turtle, and he continued with the enthusiasm normally associated with train spotters rather than an officer in the Peoples Republics elite forces.

Outside the cabin the state appointed spy moved away back to his post in the small galley, satisfied that a regime toppling coup was not in the process of being hatched.

Indeed no insurrection was being planned, but nobody likes an eavesdropper so this game was played frequently.

“What news of the Tuan, Captain?”

The naval officer shook his head.

“None at all sadly, and I have sent a refueling query to our friends the Admiral Potemkin but they have not responded.” He picked up a pencil and tapped it idly against his knee.

“I had hoped that on answering I would be able to learn from them when… if… they had fuelled Tuan near the cape.”

After a few moments contemplation he shrugged to himself and then stood, retrieving a key from a chain about his neck with which he opened his small safe to extract his copy of the mission planning pack.

“I await instructions from Fleet but I think it sensible to work on a new plan that will also keep the Russians happy by not raising the target to the ground.”

The Russians were fairly certain that had the launch facility been on UK or US soil no tit for tat nuclear response would follow as they were holding back from escalating the use of nuclear weapons beyond that of depth charges, a situation China and Russia were capitalising on, but the French were the atomic wild card in NATO’s pack.

The original plan called for thirty eight SF operatives to sink the freighter Fliterland beside the purpose built dock at Kourou where the Ariane and Vega components were delivered by sea, thus severely delaying further launches as the satellites arrived by sea from France and Germany. They were also to drop the nearby bridge into the Kourou River to prevent the components being brought overland from more distant port near Cayenne.

At the launch pads, the approach ramps were to be wrecked with cratering charges because the rockets were transported erect from the final assembly building on roads that could not be more than 10° out of true.

Any rockets already on the pad could not be damaged without the risk of a catastrophic explosion but the same was not true of the sensitive payload sat on top and costing tens of millions of Euros. These could be rendered useless with a hundred Yuan’s worth of machine gun rounds.

The key to the operation was that of speed and surprise as the opposition were jungle warfare specialist units, the 3^rd Marine Regiment and the Foreign Legions 3e Régiment étranger d'infanterie. The Legion guarded the space centre and ran France’s jungle warfare school at Regina, 80 miles from the space centre and close to the border with Brazil. The marines themselves were all based along the borders with Brazil and Suriname.

The simplest of deception plans had ensured that the French regiments were being kept busy in the interior and along the border with Brazil two hundred miles from the Space Centre.

In time of war the price of gold goes up and an article planted in the popular Portuguese tabloid newspaper Correio da Manhã that told of a massive gold strike in French Guiana had been picked up by the Brazilian media and ensured that the always troublesome Garimpeiros, the illegal Brazilian miners, were considerably more numerous and more blatant in their trespassing than normal. This led to the Guiana Gendarmeries calling on the Legion and Marines for support as the miners were aggressive and often better armed than the policemen.

3e REI was effectively split in two by the Kourou River with its regimental headquarters near Cayenne airport and one of its two infantry companies at Regina, a few miles inland and in easy reach of the Brazilian border. These retained the regiment’s small air detachment of a Puma troop carrying helicopter and a small Gazelle for reconnaissance and communications (the Colonel’s taxi).

North of the Kourou, the legionnaires’ assault engineers and anti-aircraft detachments guarded the space centre with the remaining infantry company, although a militia-like reserve company made up of former Legionnaires had a platoon in Kourou and two more in Cayenne.

The marines were even more divided, working out of company and sometimes just platoon locations that were dotted along the border. They were completely independent and self-contained sub units though; they walked into the jungle and survived on what they carried on their backs and caches dropped by their own river patrol’s rigid raiders.

However, despite their abilities as jungle fighters, they were severely limited in their mobility having no air support and also a rivalry with the Legion that precluded their ever asking for assistance or support from that quarter.

The marines numbered five infantry companies, a Riverine Squadron and a heavy weapons company but they were not set up to quickly react to situations occurring outside their individual companies immediate areas of operations.

Between the small Chinese force and the shore were of course at least one suspected minefield and four surface threats in the form of a pair of D’Estienne D'Orves class ASW corvettes and two L'audacieuse offshore patrol boats which could make life interesting.

A flight of two Breguet Atlantique IIs had been stationed at Cayenne airport which would likewise serve to keep boredom at bay.

“My task of getting you close enough to launch your submersibles has changed little in real terms, but you are now light one third of the manpower and equipment required to complete your mission.” He looked at the soldier and smoothed out the map.

“You are the resident expert on anything that causes blistered feet Captain and I am but a humble squid, as the Americans say.” He tapped the map. “As I see it we have more targets than troops now, and for your information we have precisely three hundred miles worth of diesel fuel remaining so I am open to any suggestions you have on our completing the mission as well as a safe withdrawal that precludes walking as a means of escape and evasion.” He ended with a grin.

Captain Huaiqing smiled a little smugly.

“We foot sloggers think on our feet even when we are sitting on our arses…it is already done.” he removed from inside his shirts breast pocket a sheet of A4 sized paper with the brief outline of an alternative plan.

“It will, I promise you, require only that your delicate navy feet carry you up to your conning tower, and should you choose to stretch your legs on shore then that is up to you.”

Li’s eyebrows rose, intrigued, but he let the soldier continue.

“You will still endeavor to penetrate the minefields between the old French penal colony islands?”

Li nodded. “The ironically named Islands of Salvation; Royale, St Joseph and of course Devils Island…yes, it is impossible to mine the waters there. The tidal race would unseat mere weighted anchors even if it were deep enough to mine. But at high tide your submersibles have an hour’s window to get on the landward side of the islands where it is also unfriendly waters for mining operations.”

Li paused, glancing at the SF commander-by-default.

“Can you split your remaining forces and still complete all three primary goals?”

Jie Huaiqing shook his head.

“That would be highly unlikely, if not impossible.” He said emphatically.

“But, if Bao’s detachment attacks the Soyuz pad as planned and I take ten men to attack the Ariane and Vega pads and that leaves eight soldiers that the navy can carry into the mouth of the Kourou to the dock. They blow the bridge as planned and you torpedo the Fliterland and burgle the Paris Fire Brigade so we can all go home.”

Li coughed in surprise. “Paris?…what?”

“Health and Safety laws in the EEC decree that certain facilities be served by firefighting equipment and personnel of a very exacting standard. Those facilities are Class A international airports, fuel storage sites holding more than a quarter million cubic square feet of storage space for flammable gases and liquids, and…space ports.”

Li still had a blank expression on his face, clearly not getting the connection and wondering what in the hell Jie was jabbering about EEC regulations for?

“The Paris Fire Brigade was geographically the closest French firefighting unit to meet the strict requirements so they have a fire station at Kourou Space Port and a storage tank of high grade diesel fuel for their appliances at the docks because the local stuff cannot be relied upon.” He looked very smug as he continued.

“You really can’t have rockets blowing up because the fire engine broke down on the way because of dodgy diesel.”

Li shook his head. “I bet you were bullied at school for being a swat, weren’t you?”

“It was in the intelligence briefing we had back in April.” said Huaiqing waving a well-thumbed notebook.

“That doesn’t mean you had to write it down.”

“I had to…the snoring from all the naval officers was making it too hard to memorise.”

All armies have to have a structured method of passing on orders in a way that gets the information across in a logical fashion. Everyone has to know the ‘What’, ‘When’, ‘Where’ and ‘How’, and who does what, and when, and how.

‘Why’ does feature, but far less than a career civilian would expect.

Jie had written headings in his notebook, the Chinese military’s equivalent of ‘Ground’, ‘Situation’, ‘Mission’, ‘Execution’, ‘Service Support’ and ‘Command & Signals’ with sub-headings to those headings along with sub-headings to the sub-headings. The British call this ‘a set of orders’ and the process of briefing troops from them is known as an ‘O’ Group. China trains its leaders to brief troops along fairly similar lines.

‘Execution’ is all about who does what, and when, and this is a fairly comprehensive section. It includes a sub heading entitled ‘Actions on:-‘ which is meant to cover all eventualities, all possible scenarios that may occur and endanger the successful execution of the mission.

A further hour put finer detail onto the plan and they both agreed that fueling the two submarines before withdrawing to a safe distance and putting a pair of shallow set torpedoes into the Fliterland was a long shot, but Dai had a good chance of getting the bridge demolition team ashore and sinking the freighter at its moorings.

Li pursed his lips, frowning and looking at the map, folded to show the coastline from Kourou to the border with Suriname. It had been far easier being second-in-command, he decided as he tried to think of alternatives.

Jie reached across and unfolded the map fully.

“I find that looking at the big picture helps me put the little picture into focus, and the only truly accurate way to do that is for you to put yourself in the enemy commander’s shoes.” A big green mass with few roads once you got ten miles from the coast was what the map represented.

“As the French commander I have nearly one thousand two hundred kilometers of border to guard, including four hundred and fifty kilometers of beaches that are nearly all suitable for amphibious operations of one form or another, and I have two regiments, who don’t play well together, with which to do it… aussi facile que la peinture sur l'eau…‘easy as painting on water’, as the French say.” Jie explained. “The beach will be the easier part of my mission. I won’t have to deal with mines, wire and a whole regiment shooting at me…,” he grinned broadly and added, “…unless I’m really, really unlucky!”

He would of course proceed with caution as it would be a great shame to have come all this way just to be rumbled at the last by an OP, a sentry or a roving foot patrol.

There was of course the element of the bizarre which had a way of throwing spanners in the works too.

He knew all about the Israeli arrest operation of an Arab militant that had been compromised by five hundred novices and nuns at a convent’s beach barbecue.

Some things just aren’t catered for in the ‘Actions on:-’ section of an ‘O’ Group.

There was another knock on the door of the captain’s cabin and this time it was a signaler handing over a slip of message pad.

It was the response to his query to fleet headquarters.

Li read it twice and then with a regretful shake of the head he dismissed the signaler and handed the slip to Captain Huaiqing.

Al Jazeera News report: Argentina claims to have attacked two surfaced submarines south of Falkland Islands. Both vessels allegedly sunk. Salvaged items of wreckage displayed to media appear to be of Russian manufacture along with items of Chinese and Russian uniforms.

Proceed on assumption Tuan and Admiral Potemkin lost.

On conclusion, scuttle vessels and evade.

“Bao needs to be informed of the changes immediately.” Jie Huaiqing said.

Li nodded in agreement.

“High tide shortly after dusk tonight if memory serves, and I trust that coming ashore high up the beach isn’t going to put you in a minefield buried in the sand is it?”

“We will not be bothered by mines on the beach.” Huaiqing replied with certainty.

Li looked at him quizzically. Triggering a land mine on the beach would strip away the vital element of surprise that the operation relied upon.

“Another part of the briefing I slept through?”

“A little reptilian told me we will only have bored and sleepy sentries to contend with.”

Captain Li shook his head slowly. This soldier was an odd one, always with his nose in a book when not working out in the limited space of the torpedo room, absorbing the most random information like a sponge. Nevertheless, he was intelligent, resourceful, and well respected by his troops.

As this new plan was their only viable option at completing the mission with the remaining resources, he had to trust Jie’s abilities.

“Well I hope your reptile informant is correct or we are all screwed.” He gathered up the maps and documents and returned them to the safe.

“Tonight would seem to be the night then, Major.”