The Silent Sea

The Silent Sea

Chapter TWENTY-TWO

WELCOME TO THE CRYSTAL PALACE, MAJOR. I'M LUIS Laretta, the director.

Jorge Espinoza stepped off the rear ramp of a big C-130 Hercules cargo plane and grasped the man's outstretched glove. Laretta was so heavily swaddled, it was impossible to see his features or discern his stature.

Espinoza had made the mistake of not lowering his goggles before moving into the frigid air and he could feel the cold trying to solidify his eyeballs. The pain was like the worst migraine imaginable, and he quickly pushed the goggles into place. Behind him his men stood at attention, all of them kitted out for cold-weather combat.

The flight down from Argentina had been monotonous, as most military flights were, and, except for landing on skis on a runway made of ice, there was little to distinguish it from the hundreds he had taken before.

They were here to spearhead security in the wake of the annexation announcement. If the United States or any other power was going to attempt to force the Argentines out of Antarctica, it would happen soon, and most likely be attempted using commandos air-dropped by parachute. With a Chinese Kilo-class submarine recently purchased from Russia patrolling the choke point between the extreme tip of South America and the peninsula, an air assault was the only viable option.

Espinoza and a hundred members of the Ninth Brigade were sent southward on two transports to stop them.

The rationale was simple. When Argentina invaded the Maldives in 1982 the islands the British called the Falklands the English had telegraphed their intentions to retake them with a months-long deployment of ships from their home ports. This time, the Argentine high command believed, there would be no warning. The reprisal would be a lightning-quick attack by Special Forces troops. If they could be met with an equally prepared group of soldiers, the first attempt to retake Antarctica, if repulsed, would most likely be the last.

You have to love the Army, Lieutenant Jimenez said as he strode up to Espinoza's side. A couple days ago, we were sweating our butts off in the jungle, and today they're turning colder than frozen hams.

I was all that I could be, Espinoza replied, a private joke between them referencing an old American Army slogan.

Jimenez called out to a Sergeant to see to the men while he and Major Espinoza followed Laretta on a tour of the installation.

They had timed their landing in the brief period when weak sunlight poured over the horizon. It wasn't much more than twilight, but it was better than absolute darkness. The shadows they cast on the ice and snow were indistinct, more like murky outlines than hard silhouettes.

How many men are down here? Espinoza asked. Laretta had a warmed-up snowcat waiting at the edge of the airfield. The men would have to hike the mile to the facility, though their gear would be transported on towed sledges.

Right now, only four hundred. When we ramp up oil production, there will be better than a thousand here and out on the rigs.

Amazing. And no one knew a thing about it.

Two years of construction, under the worst conditions imaginable, and not a hint of rumor about what we were doing. There was well-deserved pride in Laretta's voice. He had been in charge since the beginning. And we lost only two men the entire time, both from the sorts of accidents you see on any large construction project. Nothing to do with the cold at all.

Laretta peeled down his goggles and pushed back his parka as soon as they were settled in the big-tracked vehicle. He had a wild mane of silvery hair, and a thick beard that spilled onto his chest. His face was pale from so many months without sun, but the deep wrinkles around his dark eyes gave him a rugged quality.

Of course the trick about building down here is fuel, and since we were tapping an offshore natural gas well almost from the beginning we had a steady supply. We were asked early on by the Antarctic Authority about the ship we used. We told them it was for drilling core samples, and they never bothered us again. He chuckled. They neglected to ask why it didn't move for more than two years.

It took just a few minutes to reach the base, and almost as long for Espinoza and Jimenez to grasp the scale of what their countrymen had accomplished. So cleverly camouflaged and so artfully laid out that even the keenest observer wouldn't see it unless they were right on top of it. The only thing out of place was the matte-gray Argentine warship sitting at anchor in the middle of the bay. There was a faint glow from her bridge, but otherwise the cruiser was dark.

Laretta pointed. Under those three big hills right on the edge of the bay are oil storage tanks big enough to fuel every car in Argentina for a week.

How is it the bay is free of ice so early in the summer? Espinoza asked.

Ah, my dear Major, that is my pride and joy. Parts of it actually never freeze. There is a series of pipes strung out along the bottom. It is very shallow, by the way. We pump superheated air through the pipes and let it escape out of millions of tiny holes. The bubbles not only heat the water but when they break the surface they crack any thin ice that's forming. You can't see it because it is too dark, but the bay's entrance is narrow enough for us to run a continuous curtain of hot air to keep the water mixing with the rest of the Bellinghausen Sea.

Incredible, Espinoza breathed.

Like I said, with limitless fuel anything's possible down here. You see where the buildings are set. It looks like ice, yes? It's not. The entire facility sits on a polymer-composite sheet with the same refraction spectrum as ice, so from the satellites it appears that the beach is frozen. It's a petrochemical we actually make here. After getting the natural gas plant up and running, it was our first priority. All the buildings are made of the same material, except for the large geometric tent that shelters our vehicles. That's woven Kevlar. We needed it to withstand the winds.

I feel like I'm looking at some kind of moon base, Jimenez said.

Laretta nodded. For all intents and purposes, it is. We have created a working environment in the most inhospitable place on the planet.

Tell me about the defenses, Espinoza invited.

I've got an eight-man security force. Well, seven men. One was killed in a Ski-Doo accident. They're all ex-police. They patrol the camp perimeter, break up fights among the workers that sort of thing. Then there's the Admiral Guillermo Brown out in the bay. She's loaded with antiship and antiaircraft missiles as well as two twenty-millimeter cannons. We also have four fixed antiaircraft missile batteries here on shore. And now we have all of you. The captain of the Brown is in overall charge of at least his ship and our missiles. I'm not sure about . . .

We take orders directly from Buenos Aires. The captain knows this.

Sorry, Laretta said, I don't know much about military command. When I was a kid and other boys were playing soldier, I sat in my room and read histories of Roman engineering feats.

Espinoza wasn't listening. He was thinking about what a big fat target the cruiser was, just sitting out in the bay. If he were the opposing commander, the first thing he'd do after his Special Forces made contact was to hit the warship with a cruise missile from a submarine and then take out the shore-based batteries with radar-homing missiles launched from an aircraft. Not a carrier plane. Sending an aircraft carrier would telegraph their intentions. No, he'd stage the plane out of McMurdo, using aerial refueling. If need be, then, the attacking commandos could be augmented with troops flown in on C-130s like the one he himself had arrived aboard.

He needed to discuss this with his father and have it relayed to the Brown's captain. Once the shooting starts, the ship should be moved and the shore batteries' radars turned on only intermittently.

This was all contingent on the Western powers responding to the annexation militarily, which wasn't a foregone conclusion. And that, he believed, was the genius of what they had pulled off. With China backing them, there was a strong chance that no one would send a force south to dislodge them and that his country had gained one of the biggest oil reserves in the world as easily as taking candy from a baby. The double threat of the Kilo-class submarine, and the ecological devastation if the base was attacked strictly by bombs and missiles and its oil spilled, was a strong deterrent to ensure they went unmolested.

Espinoza was torn. On the one hand, he wanted them to come. He wanted to test himself and his men against the very best in the world. On the other, he wanted to see his country's bold strategy so intimidate the West that they didn't dare retaliate. As director Laretta prattled on about the facility, he realized he had no right to be torn. He was a warrior, and as such he wanted the Americans to send their finest troops. He did not want merely to repulse them. He wanted to humiliate them. He wanted to turn the ice red with their blood.

Tell me, Luis, he interrupted, just to stop the director from speaking on and on about the facility, have our guests arrived?

Do you mean the foreign scientists from the other bases? Yes, they are being guarded by my small security force in a maintenance shed.

No. I mean our friends from China.

Oh, them. Yes. They came in yesterday, with their equipment. I assigned them a workboat. They've been getting it ready. Is there really an old Chinese ship sunk someplace in these waters?

If there is, Espinoza replied, then we can forget any chance of a reprisal. Our claims to the peninsula would be legitimized by history. I would like to meet them.

Certainly.

He steered the snowcat off the escarpment overlooking the base and down a track worn into the ice. When they were in the facility itself, Espinoza was amazed at the level of activity. Men in arctic gear were working on oddly shaped buildings and countless personal snowmobiles zipped about, many towing sleds laden with what he assumed was oil-drilling gear. Where the natural snow had blown away in spots, he could see the composite mats made to look like ice, fitted together like the artificial runways he'd seen erected in the jungle. It could easily take the weight of their big vehicle.

There were several workboats tied up on a quay easily large enough to accommodate the Admiral Brown. They were all about forty feet long, steel-hulled, with large open spaces on their sterns and blocky pilothouses hunched over their bows. They were painted white, though much of their cargo areas had been so scraped up by material they transported out to the disguised rigs that bare wood shone through. Service boats like these were ubiquitous at offshore drilling sites all over the world.

Laretta parked alongside one of the crafts. Men bundled against the cold were working on a torpedo-shaped device sitting in a cradle under an A-frame crane mounted to the stern. None looked up from his task as the three men approached. One of them finally glanced at them when their weight made the boat bounce as they stepped aboard. He detached himself from the group and came over.

Se+|or Laretta, to what do we owe the pleasure? The man was covered head to foot, and his voice was muffled by scarves wrapped around his face. He spoke accented English.

Fong, this is Major Espinoza. He's the commander of our augmented security force. Major, this is Lee Fong. He heads the technicians sent out to find the Silent Sea.

The two men shook hands so heavily gloved it was like grabbing a balled-up towel. Is that a sonar unit? Espinoza asked.

Side-scan, Fong replied. We'll tow it behind this boat, and it profiles a hundred-meter swath of the ocean floor.

You have a rough idea where the wreck is located, yes?

From what I understand, we have you to thank for it.

Espinoza wasn't sure if he liked the fact that the Chinese knew of his exploits, but then he realized his father had been bragging about him to their newest allies and he felt pride replace his trepidation. We got lucky, he said.

Let's hope we stay lucky. Wrecks are a funny thing. I've had GPS coordinates, loran numbers, and eyewitnesses, and I've still failed to find one. Other times, I've found them on the first pass with no information other than the ship had sunk in the general area.

Will the cold affect your gear?

That's the other factor. I've never searched in waters like this. We won't know how well the sonar will work until we get it in the water and test it here in the bay. We're hoping for today, but the light's going, so it will probably have to be tomorrow.

From what I gather of the situation, we have more than a little time, Espinoza said. The Americans are still reeling from our announcement, and they're too afraid of your country's reprisal if they launch a counterstrike.

Fortune favors the bold, Fong said.

That's attributed to Virgil, Luis Laretta told them. It's a Latin expression, Audentes fortuna juvat. There's another, by Julius Caesar, that's also apt Jacta alea est. He said it on his march to Rome when he crossed the Rubicon River.

Raul Jimenez surprisingly supplied the translation: The die is cast.