Authors: Patrick Robinson
Signal us in…flash three slow…two quick…copy?
Copy. Roger out.
The newly heightened radio surveillance system at Argentina’s nearby Goose Green garrison picked up the signal. But it was heavily encrypted, both to and from the satellite. Doug Jarvis could hear a voice and its American accent, but the electronic words had been automatically dismantled, jumbled, and put back together again when they hit Foxtrot-three-four’s receiver. It was a voice, but an unrecognizable voice, machine made, belonging to no earthly being.
Nonetheless, the radio operator at Goose Green had heard a transient satellite transmission at 2007, received not far away, somewhere on East Falkland. Of course, it could have been a straightforward communication from one farmer to another. Many of the islanders had quite sophisticated radio systems, but this had been encrypted, and sheep farmers did not need codes.
The operator reported the transmission to the duty officer, who reported it to the Mount Pleasant Air Warfare HQ. Immediately, the entire Argentine military surveillance system went on high alert, island-wide, with every possibly electronic sensor tuned to pick up and possibly identify the approximate position of the receiver, or maybe the transmitter, even if they could not decipher what the words were.
If Commander Hunter even looked at that comms system again, the entire island would quiver with electronic antennae. Commander Hunter, however, had no intention of even switching on his transmitter, much less speaking into it.
He and his team had cleared Many Branch Harbor at 1930 under cover of darkness, moving through the narrow seaway into Falkland Sound and making a hard right turn down the shoreline. When they contacted Foxtrot-three-four, they were running the inflatables south, with no navigation lights, three miles off the settlement of Port Howard, which housed a massive 200,000-acre sheep station, the oldest farm in the Falklands.
There was a slight chop to the water, but nothing of any consequence, and the helmsmen held their speed at seven knots, making for North Swan Island, which sits more or less in the middle of the Sound eight miles northwest of Egg Harbor.
Commander Hunter knew that one mile off the north coast of the island there was a submerged wreck, marked by a flashing white light. When he saw that, they would change course to one-three-five, which would take them directly down the two-mile bay into the free-range dockside. There might be a slight southward pull from the tide, but he would compensate for that, and keep one eye on the GPS, watching for the five flashes from Captain Jarvis’s light.
He’ll probably faint when he sees me,
thought Rick.
They chugged on through the deserted water for another twenty minutes, until Rick’s lookout man, Mike Hook, thought he saw something way up ahead.
“I thought it was a green light…but it’s a bit difficult through the night glasses…hey, wait a minute…there it is again…Christ! It’s a green running light about two miles south…”
Commander Hunter reached for the glasses and peered through the darkness into the greenish hue of the night glasses. “I can’t see
anything,” he said. And then, “Oh, Jesus. Yes I can. Mike, that’s not just a green running light, I can see a red one as well. Whatever it is, it’s coming dead toward.”
“Do we fight or run?” asked the Petty Officer, tightening his grip on his machine gun.
“Right now we run,” replied Rick. “Because we can’t just wipe out a local fishing skipper, who’s English.”
“What if it’s an Argentinian patrol?”
“We wouldn’t have time to take ’em all before someone hit the panic button to HQ. That would probably make life very tricky. That’s why we run.”
“Where?”
“We make a right swing, leaving that flashing light up ahead to port—we’ll get into the shelter of North Island and hope to Christ no one sees us.”
“Fast or slow?” asked Helmsman Segal.
“Slow. I just want to disappear quietly from their radar, which will be switched on for certain. Fishermen have radar as good as warships.”
“Please God it is a fisherman,” said Ed Segal.
Nine minutes later, tucked into the lee of North Swan Island, they could hear the beat of the oncoming diesel engines. They would not see the vessel until it was past. That’s, of course, if it didn’t come looking.
Well, it didn’t. It turned out to be a local trawler with better things to do, and it kept right on going, almost certainly into Port Howard on the West Falkland side of the Sound.
They waited for another five minutes and crept out, line astern, creeping past the marked wreck on the ocean floor, and then southeast toward Egg Harbor. The trawler had not been a problem. It was the time that was bothering Rick. The last thing he wanted was for Captain Jarvis and his boys to be exposed on a beach, a couple of hundred yards from the three houses close to the harbor jetty. Especially at this time in the late evening, when fishermen might be leaving for their night’s work.
And yet he dared not hit the throttle, simply because he had no idea of the Argentine surveillance in Falkland Sound.
Jesus, twenty-eight years ago they lost a war right here…right now they gotta have something listening to all traffic through here…
As it happened they did not. But still, Commander Hunter could not risk it, and the two SEAL inflatables just kept going at seven knots, knowing they would be nearly twenty minutes late at the RV.
Meanwhile, Captain Jarvis was leading his men softly down the hill to a point only thirty yards from the houses on the harbor. From there he would lead them down onto the beach, beyond the wall of the jetty, and out to the deserted stretch of waterfront where the SEALs would come in.
The curve of the shoreline was not perfect because it could be seen from the houses. But the other side was worse, because the beach angled outward and was in plain view of the occupants from their living rooms, never mind outside the front door.
And, unknown to Douglas, there was another much more serious problem. Major Pablo Barry had ordered four patrols out of Goose Green to drive to each of the harbors on that west coast, from Kelp Harbor twenty miles south to Flores, taking in Egg, Cygnet, Port King, Wharton, Findlay, and Danson.
At each of them Major Barry had ordered two armed troopers to disembark and take up station on the waterfront. He would deal with the rest of that long lonely shoreline at first light, with search helicopters, but for now the conqueror of the Malvinas was positive he had sealed up the most likely points of escape for the sheep stealers.
And he was no fool militarily. Guessing his quarry was in hiding somewhere in the rough hill country up behind one of the tiny seaports, he had the Jeeps pull up two miles east of each waterfront and make the two-man patrol walk the rest of the way.
Douglas Jarvis and his team, heads down in their hide, had no view of the ground to the south, no immediate view, that is. And the track along which the Argentinian guards walked was completely obscured from them. They might have spotted them on the jetties, but there had been a half dozen locals down there at various times, presumably waiting for the returning fishing boat.
And the two soldiers had arrived at twilight and somehow slipped into Egg Harbor unobserved. The SAS, however, moves very quietly in the dark, and Captain Jarvis had no intention of being spotted by anyone. They came down the hillside with the utmost stealth, in single file, staying low, crouching almost double, reducing any silhouettes
that might be seen should the moon make a sudden break from behind the cloud.
They reached the hard-top along the dock without being detected and made their way carefully down the rough track to the beach to the right of the jetty. There was light in the houses, but no sound, and Douglas led his team along the beach, trying to walk slowly, to avoid the crunch of the shingle.
It was five minutes before ten o’clock. The night was pitch-black, and there was as yet no sign of Sunray. Douglas let three more minutes go by, until they reached the spot he had chosen, two hundred yards from the jetty.
At 2159 he pulled out the flashlight, and with his back to the houses, shielding them from the beam, he aimed out to sea, and flashed the light five times, three long, two short. He did not expect a response, he expected a boat. And with his heart unaccountably pounding he strained his eyes into the night, strained his ears against the soft breeze for the sound of an engine. But there was only silence.
Like Rick, he had switched off the comms system, knowing the danger of the last transmission. If anything had gone wrong he could not have been informed. Troopers Wiggins and Goddard stood on either side of him. Joe Pearson, carrying the radio, was right behind, in a huddle with Fermer, Posgate, and the two unarmed combat experts, Syd Ferry and Dai Lewellwyn.
And the clock ticked on. At five past ten, Douglas again signaled the five flashes. And again there was nothing, no sight, no sound of Sunray.
Sternly trying to control his anxiety, fighting down a feeling of dread, Douglas Jarvis said quietly, “They’re just a bit late, only five minutes, but retreat up the beach a bit. I’ll stay here by the water with Syd and Dai, the rest of you get into those rocks behind. I’ll signal again in five.”
They dispersed quietly, Trooper Wiggins positioning himself alone halfway between the three men on the shore and the four men keeping watch behind the beach. At ten minutes after ten o’clock, Douglas signaled again. And this time the three long flashes were a little longer, and so were the two short ones. Douglas Jarvis was praying the SEALs would somehow see the light.
And, in fact, they did. Rick Hunter had ordered both engines cut, and the eight SEALs, about a mile offshore now, were paddling in, hard, with firm sure strokes, and they all saw the signal, the five distant quick-flicking lights, like a warning buoy on submerged rocks.
The trouble was, Argentinian Trooper Ernesto Frasisti, staring out the window of the house nearest the beach, also thought he saw a faint light on the water. He had seen nothing the first two times, but he most definitely saw something now.
“Carlos,” he snapped, “there’s something out there. I saw a light on the water, along there, right of the jetty.” The two elderly residents of the house, who had made coffee for their visitors, both stood up. The old Falkland Islander, Ben Carey, a retired seventh-generation fisherman, walked to the door and stepped outside, staring along the beach into the dark.
“Can’t see anything myself,” he told Ernesto, who spoke not one single word of English. “Might have been the moon or something.”
But Ernesto was certain. He called to Carlos. “Come on, we must check this out, bring a cell phone.”
The two Argentinian soldiers walked down the track to the beach, following the same route as the SAS men. And they crunched along the shingle, both of them carrying flashlights. Out at sea, Rick Hunter and his men, closer now, could see the extra lights.
“What the hell’s that?” muttered Rick. “Unscheduled lights. Don’t like it.”
On the beach Douglas was horrified, as the lights drew nearer. “Must be local residents,” he whispered. “I’m going to try and bluff this out, especially if they’re English.”
And he stood in the glare of the light as the two Argentinians approached, dazzled by the beams, and unable to see who was carrying them. But Trooper Goddard, using the night glasses, could see.
“Fuck me,” he muttered. “These guys are Argentinian military. Peter…Peter…they’re armed soldiers.”
Trooper Wiggins did not hesitate. Ernesto Frasisti was almost level with Douglas, who still could not see his uniform. And the Argentinians were baffled by the sight of this unkempt beachcomber. And that bafflement, that split second of confusion, cost them both their lives. Trooper Wiggins cut them down in their tracks with two bursts from
his machine gun. And the only other sound was the dull crunch of the pebbles as they fell.
But now all five of the rearguard SAS ran forward and gathered around the two bodies. Douglas, who was slightly shaken at his obvious brush with death, could only think,
What if they’d fired first?
Instinctively he swung around and shook the hand of Peter Wiggins. But other thoughts were cascading into his mind.
What if Sunray was out there, and had seen the lights and even heard the gunfire?
He grabbed for his flashlight and hit the buttons, firing five more quick beams out to sea. Still pulling hard on the oars in the inflatables, and still more than a half mile from the shore, Rick Hunter caught the message and made one of those decisions that had made him a legend in Coronado. Every impulse he possessed was telling him,
Speed, nothing more, just go, go, go!
“Fire up both engines!”
he yelled
. “And floor those throttles…make straight for that last signal…Now! Now! Now!”
Segal and Wallace hit the ignition and rammed open the throttles. The bows of the Zodiacs arched upward as the engines howled, as the two Yamahas forced them through the water. Seconds later both boats surged up over the stump and settled onto their fastest angle, flying across the top of the short, choppy waves. Don Smith and Bob Bland were both upside down, legs in the air, flung back by the sheer force of the power-drive to the beach alongside Egg Harbor.