Probationary

by Marko Kloos

Phase I: Hermes

South Atlantic, April 30th, 1982

THE SEA WAS AS grey as battleship steel, and it looked angry, white foam caps topping ten-foot swells. Sub-Lieutenant Rory Campbell knew that the large American aircraft carriers were so immense that you couldn’t feel you were at sea unless you drove through the middle of a hurricane. But HMS Hermes, the largest carrier of the Royal Navy, was only a third the size of one of those Yank monstrosities, and she bobbed up and down in the wave troughs as she made her way south into ever more atrocious weather. But to Rory, the frigid air and the salt spray out here on the weather passageway were preferable to the smells of jet fuel and engine exhaust on the busy flight deck above.

‘What dreadful weather to go to war in,’ he grumbled and flicked his cigarette over the steel cables of the safety railing.

‘On the contrary,’ said the man standing next to him. He was a full foot taller than Rory, and the turban he wore made him even more imposing. Major Ranjit Singh, the Lion, would have looked out of place on a Royal Navy ship even without the camouflage-pattern Army uniform he was wearing, or the large curved kirpan knife on his web belt.

‘It’s perfect weather to go to war in,’ Major Singh continued. His voice was deep and sonorous, and Rory suspected that his Silver Helix minder could probably sing very well. Not that this environment or the occasion called for any singing.

‘This? Glasgow in December is a tropical paradise compared to this shite.’

‘It keeps the enemy sentries under their ponchos and close to their warm gear,’ Major Singh said. ‘In the Army, we call that “recon weather”.’

Rory had been with the Lion for three weeks now, and the man never had anything but a calm and mildly pleased expression on his face. There were droplets of seawater spray in his bushy, chest-length beard, and his turban looked damp, but he looked out over the churning waters in Hermes’ wake with unperturbed serenity, taller than Rory even as he stood bent over a little, with his wrists resting on the safety rail and his palms pressed together. An iron bangle hung from one of his wrists and swayed softly with the movements of the ship.

‘Well, I hope it clears up by the time we get to where we’re going,’ Rory said.

‘I hope it doesn’t.’ Singh looked up at the gloomy sky. ‘I hope it gets worse. It will keep the Argentinian air force on the ground.’

Rory gazed back at the dirty-looking silvery wake of the carrier. In that direction was England, seven or eight thousand miles away. And they were steadily steaming on towards the Falkland Islands, now only a few hundred miles to their south, and whatever the Argentinian military had waiting for them there. It had taken the task force most of a month to sail this far from Portsmouth, and that was a long time for the Argies to prepare their positions.

‘We’re really going to do this, aren’t we?’

‘Go to war?’ Singh flexed his hands and looked at the bangle on his wrist. ‘They know we are on the way. If diplomacy hasn’t got them off those islands yet, I don’t think it will end without bloodshed. A foolish thing, this whole affair. All over a load of wind-blown rocks in the cold sea.’

‘I talked to a lad who served in garrison there once. Says it’s a lot like the Highlands. In parts, anyway. I suppose we’ve fought over less before, we Scots.’

Rory and Major Singh didn’t have much in common physically, but they shared a Scottish background. Rory had been pleased to find out that his mentor was also from Glasgow. Ranjit Singh was almost ten years older, but they had frequented some of the same stamping grounds back home in their youth, and it was always an easy bond when your histories shared landmarks and geography. Rory was from East Kilbride, Singh from Hillhead, and while these neighbourhoods were on opposite sides of the river, both men were Partick Thistle fans, and favouring the same football team was practically as good as sharing a religion. Rory liked the big, muscular Sikh, and he felt safer and calmer in his presence. He still didn’t really think of himself as an ace – he couldn’t fly, or bend steel bars, or shoot lightning from his hands – but the Lion was one without a doubt, and being teamed up with him made Rory feel legitimate.

‘That’s just my bloody luck,’ he said. ‘My first time out for the Silver Helix, and it has to turn into a shooting war.’

The Lion chuckled softly. ‘That is what we do. They don’t call on us unless things get ugly, my friend. But you are an officer in the Royal Navy. You would be here anyway, I think.’

‘Yeah.’ Rory tried not to sound defeated. When you sign up for military service, you have to expect the risk of having to go to war, but it’s all very abstract when you are just out of secondary school and looking for a way out of East Kilbride. The recruiters emphasized travel, adventure, and pay cheques. They didn’t talk about month-long journeys into frigid waters and enemy air forces looking to put anti-ship missiles into your conveyance. When you are seventeen, you think yourself immortal anyway. But the Lion was right, of course – if Rory’s card hadn’t turned a year and a half ago he would probably be on a ship in this task force anyway, sitting in front of a radar console on one of the frigates or destroyers steaming along with Hermes in the distance.

There were other sailors taking fag-breaks on the weather passageway, but they all kept a respectful distance from Rory and Major Singh. They were both aces and Silver Helix agents, but Singh was also an Army major, and to a professional sailor, staff officers were just a rank or two below the Almighty, even the ones from a different service. Rory appreciated the privacy perks his probationary Silver Helix status afforded him, because even on a warship as large as Hermes, space was a precious commodity.

The speakers up on the flight deck blared their announcement tone.

‘Now hear this: we are now entering the Total Exclusion Zone around the Falkland Islands declared by Her Majesty’s government. From this point on, there will be no drills. If you hear the action stations alert, it will be the real thing. Stand fast and do your duty. Announcement ends.’

Rory and Major Singh exchanged glances. Singh sighed and put his hand on the hilt of his kirpan.

Above, a pair of Harrier jump jets took off from the flight deck with their engines at ear-splitting full throttle. They came into view when they cleared the front of the flight deck ramp and turned west, then started the ascent to begin their combat air patrol, position lights blinking. Rory saw that both jets had missiles under their wings, white-painted war shots instead of the blue exercise missiles he usually saw on the Royal Navy’s Harriers. The sight of the live missiles increased the feeling of dread he had been nursing for a while. They were a wartime navy now.

‘So it begins,’ Major Singh said. ‘Let us hope it ends quickly. For their sake and ours.’

As the flagship of the task force, Hermes had a flag bridge. This was where the task force commander and his staff had their duty stations as they directed the dozens of Royal Navy and auxiliary vessels in the fleet headed for the Falklands, and Rory was the most junior officer in the room by age as well as rank. There were consoles and plotting tables and lots of ratings busy at all of them. Rory felt like the third wheel on a bicycle in this room, and only the fact that he and Major Singh had been ordered here specifically by the task force commander put him at ease. He still wasn’t used to being a command asset instead of a simple console jockey, and he doubted he would ever think of himself that way.

‘Hermes is on station, and we shall remain at spear length from the islands,’ Admiral Woodward told the assembled officers. The plotting table in the centre of the flag bridge had a map of the theatre under a sheet of Plexiglas, and the admiral tapped a spot to the northeast of the Falklands with a grease pencil. ‘It is my intent to send on the frigates and destroyers to provide an anti-aircraft and anti-submarine screen for Hermes and the invasion transports, and prepare the landings as we make progress against the opposition. Winter weather is coming, and our timetable is accordingly strict. If we do not have air superiority by mid-May or troops on the ground by the end of the month, conditions will not favour any further military operations.’

Rory looked out of the porthole on the hatch behind him. Outside, the rain had slacked off a little, but it still looked like the worst weather Scotland had to offer. If this wasn’t winter weather yet, they were in for trouble. He couldn’t quite understand how anyone would live in a climate like this, much less fight over it.

‘At no point will Hermes conduct operations closer than two hundred miles from the Falklands. I realize that this greatly limits the combat range of our Harriers, but this ship is too valuable to risk. There’s not a pilot in the Argentinian air force who wouldn’t love to put a few Exocets into her and win the war with the press of a button.’

There were murmurs of agreement, but clearly not every officer in the room seemed to concur with the admiral’s assessment. The naval airmen in particular looked less than happy. ‘The Harriers have short legs as it is, sir,’ one of the squadron commanders said. ‘The lads will have very little loitering time over the battlefield.’

‘Then we had best hurry and take the runway at Port Stanley. But this ship will be kept well away from the islands. If the Argentine air force sinks her they win the war, and we lose half of the Royal Navy’s force projection capabilities.’ Admiral Woodward turned and looked at Rory. ‘And that’s where you come in, Sub-Lieutenant.’

‘Sir?’ Rory felt intensely uncomfortable with the sudden undivided attention of so many staff officers.

‘Your job on this deployment is to do whatever you have to do to make sure that no enemy plane or missile gets close to Hermes.’ The admiral looked at Major Singh and back at Rory. Then he sighed and shook his head. ‘Admiral Fieldhouse asked the Silver Helix for force multipliers,’ he said. ‘He emphasized the critical nature of this operation for our national interest and prestige. I believe he even badgered the Prime Minister. Repeatedly. And they send two men. One of them an acting sub-lieutenant on probationary status with the Silver Helix. Hardly the war-changing arsenal of special abilities I had hoped for.’

Rory had only met the admiral in person once, at the end of a briefing back in Northwood naval headquarters before the task force sailed. He had decided on the spot that he didn’t like the man. He was abrasive and didn’t seem to care one bit whether he gave offence, and emphasizing the acting in Rory’s rank meant he was patronizing both Rory’s Silver Helix membership status and his military rank in one sentence.

‘Well, it is what it is, I suppose,’ Admiral Woodward continued before Rory or Major Singh could reply. ‘Major Singh will be going with the Royal Marines once the landings begin. We will be needing your abilities sooner, Sub-Lieutenant. Where do you need to be when action stations sound?’

‘I need to see the target, sir,’ Rory replied. ‘Line of sight, the longer the better. A line to the radar room so they can point me towards incoming threats. And a few sailors with binoculars to share the watch with me. In case I miss something.’

‘If we’re under attack, they will come in low and fast to avoid our radar. Intelligence says they mainly have Skyhawks armed with general purpose bombs, so they will have to do a terminal climb before they drop. Those we can handle with the Harriers and the Seacats. But they also have a few French Super Etendards with those blasted sea-skimming Exocet missiles. If the frigates and the destroyer picket don’t get those, you’ll be the last line of defence other than our Seacat launchers.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Let me make one thing clear about your rules of engagement, Sub-Lieutenant.’ Admiral Woodward tapped his fingers on the hard surface of the plotting table. ‘Disable or destroy whatever comes our way, whether the Seacats launch at it or not. Bloody things are too slow for Exocets anyway. If it comes down to it, you are to use area-of-effect EMP. I don’t care if all the lights and radios on this ship go out as long as we don’t have a few hundred pounds of high explosive warhead going through our hull and lighting up thousands of gallons of aviation fuel. Is that understood?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Rory replied. He knew that if he let loose an unfocused electromagnetic pulse burst with all his might, he would disrupt more than just lights and radios. Part of him almost wanted to have an excuse to do that, just to see what it would do to the superior expression of the admiral to find himself on an aircraft carrier with every single electronics circuit shut down.

‘Very well,’ Admiral Woodward said. ‘I’ll see to it that you get all the personnel and binoculars you need. Place yourself wherever you see fit. But don’t get in the way on the flight deck.’ He rapped the plotting table with his knuckles. ‘Five days ago, we took South Georgia back from the enemy. The Royal Marines got off to a good start on this one. Now we will do our part. Let’s get on with it, gentlemen.’

Rory’s first day at war was far less exciting and eventful than he had anticipated. They were two hundred miles from the Falklands and far out of reach of the Argentinian air force bases on the mainland, so the odds of an air raid were low. The Harriers flew regular combat patrols towards the islands, and the destroyers and frigates in the task force had started their screening deployment, interposing themselves between the valuable carriers and the likely directions of attack. Rory took up his post on top of Hermes’ island superstructure, high above the flight deck, to get a feel for his new action station. He could move from one side of the island to the other in short order to get a full 360-degree view of the ocean surrounding Hermes, but the top of the island was also the highest point of the carrier other than her radar masts and funnel tops, and the South Atlantic wind up here was like an ice-cold hand pushing him around. The sailors assigned to the watch with him had been excited at first, but two hours of scanning the austere grey seascape with binoculars in the cold wind had dampened their excitement somewhat. Rory didn’t know what Major Singh was doing right now, but he knew that the major would go with the marines of the invasion force when the time came. Whatever he was up to, he was down in the dry, warm ship somewhere instead of wiping freezing spray off binocular lenses.

The flight deck was packed from bow to stern with aircraft and equipment. Hermes had taken on more helicopters than she was designed to carry in her regular complement, in anticipation of Argentine submarines. With all the men and equipment on the deck below him, Rory didn’t think they’d be able to conduct any offensive operations before unloading some of the extra stuff. But around noon of their first full day in the exclusion zone, the ship’s Harriers started taking off one by one. They were laden heavily with bombs and missiles under their wings, so they had to use the ski ramp at the bow of the carrier to get airborne instead of taking off vertically. He watched them roaring down the deck and leaping into the sky, engines bellowing, their wingtips clearing the noses and folded rotor blades of the parked helicopters lined up alongside the take-off strip by what looked like just a few feet. The ground crews smartly saluted every Harrier pilot before each take-off run. Rory had been an enlisted radar technician before he became an ace and a minor Royal Navy celebrity, so tactical flight operations were out of his realm of expertise, but it didn’t take a master strategist to know that the Harriers were setting out for Port Stanley, the capital of the Falklands, currently under Argentinian management. The sailors on the carrier’s command island with him watched the small squadron struggle into the sky with their heavy ordnance loads and head southwest, disappearing in the low cloud cover after a few minutes.

‘I don’t really want to go to war, sir,’ the sailor next to Rory said without taking his eyes off the leaden sky.

‘I don’t either,’ Rory replied. ‘But the public have been paying our salaries. I suppose we can’t take the money and then complain when our number finally comes up.’

‘Yes, sir. I was just hoping mine wouldn’t come up while I was in.’

‘Everyone was hoping that,’ Rory said.

The Harriers returned a few hours later. Free of their bomb loads, they descended onto the flight deck vertically, hovering over their designated landing spots gracefully before settling down. Rory counted them and was relieved to find they were still the same number of planes that had taken off earlier. There was no cheer or jubilation among the deck hands as they chocked the Harriers’ wheels and helped the pilots out of their cockpits. It was just an efficient businesslike atmosphere, professionals at work, just like any other day in the service. Rory wondered what the bombs from those planes had hit, and whether it had made a dent in the Argie defences. Part of him still hoped that the Argentinians would back down after the first show of force from the Royal Navy, that they would see reason once they saw modern warplanes with live bombs overhead. They were the Royal Navy, not some third-rate corvette navy from a backwater nation. But after the return of the Harriers, an hour passed, then two, and by the time he ended his watch and went down to the officer wardroom for dinner, there had been no announcement from the commander that everything was over, that Argentina had decided they had lost the game of chicken. Still, it looked as if both sides had decided they weren’t bluffing after all.

Rory was in the middle of his meal when the commander finally did make an announcement, and everyone paused their conversations at once.

‘This is the commander. I am glad to announce we had a very good day today. We have started to soften up the defences at Stanley with no losses of our own. And earlier today, the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano was torpedoed by one of our submarines on station south of the Total Exclusion Zone. That removes the threat posed by the Argentinian navy to our southern flank. That is all. Commander out.’

This time there was some cheering going on in the wardroom, and the conversations that picked up again had a decidedly more excited note to them.

‘The Belgrano,’ the lieutenant across the table from Rory said. ‘That’s their biggest surface ship. She’s an ex-Yank cruiser. USS Phoenix, I think. Served in World War Two. Shame, really.’

‘Wonder if they sank her,’ Rory replied.

‘As long as she’s out of the picture and not pointing her guns at us. So what exactly is it you can do?’ the lieutenant asked. ‘I mean, if that’s not a state secret.’

‘It’s not,’ Rory said. He was a recent addition to the crew, a newcomer in a group of officers who had been working together for many months or even years, and he was glad whenever he had a chance to socialize with someone other than his Silver Helix minder. His story was well known in the Royal Navy – he was one of only a handful of aces who were on active military duty – but he also knew there were a lot of embellished versions of that tale out there, and he rarely had an opportunity to correct the rumour mill.

‘I make directional EMPs,’ he said. ‘I can turn off any electric system. Slag it, too, if I want.’

‘Anything? So, could you shut down this ship?’

‘Most of it, I suppose,’ Rory said. ‘Whatever I can see, anyway.’

‘That is bloody brilliant,’ the lieutenant said.

‘Small bits too,’ Rory continued. He pointed at the lieutenant’s wristwatch with his fork. It was one of the new digital quartz models, the ones that showed the time on a little display window. ‘I could focus and just pop the circuit board in that watch of yours.’

‘Please don’t,’ the lieutenant smiled. He put a protective hand over the face of his watch. ‘My wife gave that to me before we left Portsmouth. When did you find out you could do that EMP thing?’

‘I was on HMS Juno the year before last. I was an engineering tech. One day, we were working up on the dish for the anti-aircraft system. It was supposed to be de-energized, but it turned on while we had three lads in front of it. I could feel it somehow. Can’t explain it, but I knew how to shut it down, and I did. Just by thinking hard about it.’

‘Bloody brilliant,’ the other lieutenant repeated.

There were other officers at the table with them, and one of them looked rather sceptical at this pronouncement. ‘So when the Argie ships come into sight, you can turn their lights off. That will be useful. Right after they fire their Exocets at us.’

‘If I can see the missile, I can blow its guidance systems up,’ Rory replied.

‘Right,’ the other man said. He wore the flight suit of a Fleet Air Arm officer, which meant that he flew a Harrier or a helicopter. ‘I suppose we don’t have anything to worry about, then.’

‘I’ll do what I can,’ Rory said.

‘As will we all. It’s just some of us are going to go out to drop GP bombs on the Argies instead of sitting on a carrier two hundred miles away. Different risk factor. And my lads don’t get special perks for doing their jobs.’

‘Knock it off,’ the lieutenant across the table said. ‘The aces get their own berth because they’re bloody aces, mate. They hadn’t come along, you’d be whinging about them not sending any with us.’

‘The other guy’s all right. The Army major. He’ll be handy on the ground. I’ve seen him bench press five hundred pounds in the gym with the marines.’ The pilot turned his attention back to Rory. ‘But you’re going to be bored. With the Harriers, there’s no Argie plane getting close enough to this ship to launch anything. We’ll be getting it done the old-fashioned way. Guns and missiles.’

‘I do hope you’re right about that,’ Rory replied. The other man’s eyes narrowed, and Rory could tell he was looking for signs that Rory was being clever with him.

‘You’ll see,’ the flight officer said. ‘The Royal Navy hasn’t lost a ship in combat since World War Two. And that was before we had anti-air missiles and fighter jets.’

Their side has those too, Rory thought. But instead of voicing it, he just nodded and focused on his dinner again. He loathed conflict, whether it was a shooting war with Argentina or an argument over fish and chips in the wardroom.

‘Don’t mind that tosser,’ the other lieutenant said after the flight officer had left the table a little while later. ‘Those fighter pilots all think they’re special. Jealousy’s a terrible thing.’

‘I still hope he’s right,’ Rory replied. ‘And if we do lose a ship, I hope it won’t be my fault, he didn’t add.

Phase II: Sheffield

Inside the Total Exclusion Zone, May 3rd, 1982

The crew mess and wardroom had television sets mounted on the bulkheads, and they all watched the news during the next few days whenever they could. It was odd to catch up on events that had happened just a little over a hundred miles away, sent to the ships of the task force via satellite relay from BBC stations eight thousand miles to their north with a day-long delay.

ARA General Belgrano, the Argentinian cruiser, had been severely damaged by the torpedo attack, with substantial loss of life. Even as the BBC report was finishing, some of the officers in the room said they heard that Belgrano had been sunk, not just damaged. In the military, there was no communications system faster than the wardroom rumour mill, but Rory knew that some of the officers had their posts in Hermes’ Action Information Centre or on the bridge, and were privy to information the rest of the crew didn’t have. He didn’t know the exact complement of a cruiser like the Belgrano, but his lads in the wardroom had mentioned she had served in World War Two, and old ships like that needed a lot of manpower, many hundreds of sailors. Even if most of them got out of the ship and onto life rafts, the South Atlantic was freezing. If someone had to get sunk, he’d rather it be the Belgrano than Hermes or one of the other Royal Navy ships, but it was still not pleasant to think about sailors drowning or freezing to death, even if they were the enemy right now.

At the end of the news, the BBC reporter used the phrase ‘Falklands crisis’, and the lieutenant commander in the chair next to Rory’s huffed a little.

‘“Crisis”,’ he repeated. ‘We’ve dropped bombs on a town and sunk a cruiser. They shot down two Argie planes yesterday, too. If this is a crisis, I want to know what qualifies as a war.’

War came to Hermes the next morning for the first time.

Rory was on watch again on the command island. Several radar contacts had been spotted by the picket ships the fleet commander had sent out to screen the carrier from air attack, and Rory was the last-ditch insurance. It was a precaution because the contacts were too far away from Hermes to pose an imminent threat, so when the action stations alarm sounded, Rory jumped a little at the unwelcome surprise of it.

‘Action stations, action stations.’ The alarm blared, and all around him things got busy as crew members ran up and down stairs and gangways and slammed shut watertight hatches. ‘Silver Helix personnel to the flag bridge. I repeat, Silver Helix personnel to the flag bridge at once.’

Rory was already on the command island, so he didn’t have far to go to reach the flag bridge, where Admiral Woodward and his support staff were already waiting along with the ship’s captain. Rory’s mind raced as he stepped across the threshold of the watertight door and reported in. Major Singh, the Lion, had to come from much further below decks than Rory, but only twenty or thirty seconds after Rory stepped onto the flag bridge, a door on the opposite side of the compartment opened, and the big Sikh stepped through it. He didn’t even look particularly out of breath.

The admiral and several of his staff officers were still in the middle of a discussion at the plotting table, so Rory made sure he stayed out of the way of the sailors hurrying around and console operators delivering reports from the nearby Action Information Centre.

‘Glasgow announced “handbrake” at 1104 hours,’ one of the officers told the admiral. ‘Sheffield was in contact with Coventry at the time and signalled they were hit just two minutes later. No further details from Sheffield. Their UHF is silent.’

‘Send out Arrow and Yarmouth to Sheffield’s last known position,’ Admiral Woodward ordered. ‘And launch one of the ready helicopters to verify what the blazes is going on.’ He looked across the flag bridge and only now seemed to notice Rory and Major Singh. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, and waved them closer. Rory approached the plotting table, still unused to the sensation of senior officers making space for him in the confines of the small compartment. ‘We dispatched our three Type 42 destroyers as anti-submarine pickets between our position and the southeastern Falklands. A few minutes ago, we got a signal that indicates HMS Sheffield took a hit. We don’t know what exactly happened or the extent of the damage. It looks like it may become a busy day for you, Sub-Lieutenant. HMS Glasgow indicated that the attack came from Argentine Super Etendards. That means they have started using their Exocet arsenal.’

‘Do we know how many Exocets they have?’ Major Singh asked.

‘Not a terrific amount, but enough to make us lose this war by the end of the week if they use them well, Major.’

Admiral Woodward turned and looked at Rory.

‘Tell me how far out you can spot a sea-skimming missile moving at seven hundred miles per hour, Sub-Lieutenant Campbell.’

‘If I know the bearing from a radar fix, and if the seas aren’t too choppy, two miles, maybe more, sir.’

‘That’s a damned thin safety margin,’ Hermes’ captain said with a frown. ‘That gives you, what, ten seconds to bring it down? And that’s if you spot it as soon as the radar does.’

‘It beats relying on just the Seacats,’ the admiral replied. ‘Those can only get head-on kills. If we get an air radar contact within fifty miles of this ship, you are to be on your perch, Sub-Lieutenant, with a live comms link to the radar operator. Of course, plan number one is to not let the buggers that close to begin with.’

‘Radar contact bearing two-one-five, distance five-seven miles, sir,’ the radar operator called out, as if on cue. ‘IFF says it’s one of our Lynx helicopters.’

‘Get them on radio, then. Sub-Lieutenant Campbell, head to your action station right away.’

‘Aye, sir,’ Rory replied and left the compartment in a hurry.

The Lynx helicopter that had appeared on the radar screen touched down on Hermes’ flight deck half an hour later. Rory had a perfect vantage point from the command island to see them unload two officers and then several obviously wounded personnel. Some had parts of their overalls cut away, others had thick bandages on their faces or hands. The medical personnel of Hermes met them almost as soon as they set foot on the carrier deck and helped them to nearby stretchers. The officers engaged in some brief but heated conversation with the Hermes personnel who had met them and then went over to the command island. Rory picked up his radio.

‘Archimedes to radar ops. What’s the airspace look like?’ This was the first time he had used his official ace moniker. If he was to be a semi-permanent living weapons mount on this ship, he reckoned he ought to go by his ace name instead of his military rank, which didn’t have much clout on a ship with an admiral and dozens of staff officers anyway.

‘Airspace is clear of contacts, sir. We have a flight of Harriers out on combat air patrol eighty miles out at two-seven-zero degrees. You have a clean board for the moment.’

Rory went back down to the flag level, where the newly arrived officers were talking to the admiral and the rest of the ship’s senior officers. At first, he had felt like an interloper, going wherever he wanted on the ship if he wasn’t specifically ordered to be in a certain spot, but that was another perk of Silver Helix membership. If he deemed it necessary to be somewhere to accomplish his assignment, his ace status overrode even his military rank.

‘Sheffield’s a mission kill,’ one of the new officers reported. ‘We took an Exocet amidships. It knocked out our electric system and the water main. We have nothing to fight the fire. The way she’s burning, she’ll be gone by morning.’

‘What’s the casualty count?’

‘At least a dozen men, probably more. The missile hit the ratings galley and the computer room.’

‘Bloody hell,’ the Hermes’ captain cursed. ‘What about the Seacats?’

‘None were fired, sir. I think ops thought it was a false alarm again. They didn’t even have the gun ready.’

‘What a monumental cock-up. Get Arrow and Yarmouth out there on the flank to help put those fires out and get Sheffield under tow. I will not be the first task force commander to lose a ship in action since they signed the bloody armistice in Tokyo Bay,’ Admiral Woodward said.

He focused on the plotting table and pointed a finger at the point on the map marked with the icon for HMS Sheffield. ‘Shift Glasgow’s patrol pattern northeast so she can close the hole and give Arrow and Yarmouth air defence support. I want two more flights of Harriers going that way as well. One from us, one from Invincible.’

Rory cleared his throat. ‘Sir, I should go out there on a Lynx. Put me on Coventry or Glasgow. I can do a lot more good closer to the line than back here on Hermes.’

The admiral looked at Rory in unconcealed disbelief, then shook his head. ‘Out of the question, Sub-Lieutenant. You are one third of this ship’s air defence arsenal.’

‘This ship is over a hundred miles from the action, sir. I could be a much better picket against enemy aircraft if you put me in a spot where they are likely to be. Hermes has Harriers. They can intercept what comes past the destroyer screen.’

‘The destroyers are spaced out too far. If I put you on Glasgow and they engage Coventry next instead, there won’t be anything you can do about it because you’ll be thirty miles away. And then you’ll be useless to Hermes as well.’ He made a dismissive hand gesture. ‘Hermes carries half the task force’s air power, and she’s the most essential ship we have. I will not risk the Royal Navy’s biggest carrier to maybe keep an Exocet away from a Type 42. They can take care of their own air defence without you. If they’re not sitting on their bloody arses while other ships are broadcasting air-raid warnings. And lest you think me callous, I’ll have you know that I used to be Sheffield’s commanding officer. Now someone get me a strong coffee and some aspirin, please.’

There was nothing more dispiriting to Rory than having to witness the casualties from Sheffield being brought onto Hermes’ deck and not being able to do anything to help. A lot of the injured Sheffield sailors had obvious burn injuries. The helicopters came in intervals, in between take-off and landing operations for the Harriers. The fighter aircraft were out for blood, now that one of the task force ships had been hit, with British sailors killed and wounded. But hour after hour, the Harriers came back, trading spaces with newly rearmed and refuelled ones leaping off the ski ramp at Hermes’ bow, and Rory heard no reports of any air victories. The Argentine air force had got their bite out of them for the day, it seemed.

A few long, demoralizing days of monotonous watch-standing later, the commander made an announcement that didn’t do anything to lift Rory’s mood.

‘This is the commander. I regret to inform you that HMS Sheffield foundered today on the way to South Georgia while under tow by HMS Yarmouth. That is all. Commander out.’

Rory let the news sink in for a few moments. As Admiral Woodward had reminded him, the Royal Navy hadn’t lost a ship in action since the end of World War Two, thirty-seven years ago. Almost ten enlistment cycles had passed without one of Her Majesty’s warships getting so much as fired upon, and now one was sitting at the bottom of the North Atlantic. And not just an old, outdated ship like the Belgrano, but a modern state-of-the-art Type 42 destroyer, fitted with some of the best weapon systems in the Royal Navy.

If they can sink Sheffield, they can sink any other ship in the fleet, Rory thought. And here he stood, standing watch on the command deck of Hermes, a hundred miles from where the frigates and destroyers of the task force were shelling Argentine positions in preparation for the invasion, and he hadn’t seen so much as the contrail from an enemy plane this whole time.

Rory was at the end of his patience. He was still a Royal Navy officer, albeit only an acting sub-lieutenant and therefore at the very bottom of the commissioned pecking order, but he was an ace and a member of the Silver Helix. It was disrespectful to treat him like a stationary weapons mount out here when the real war was going on a hundred miles to their west. He hated confrontation, but nothing was worse than standing around in the cold on this carrier doing nothing.

He handed his binoculars to the sailor next to him. ‘You have the watch for a few minutes, Petty Officer. I am going to the flag bridge.’

The admiral wasn’t on the flag bridge when Rory stepped through the door, but Commodore Clapp and Major General Moore were there, discussing something in low voices while consulting a map. The Commodore was the commander of the landing fleet that would ferry the troops to the beaches when the ground invasion started, and Major General Moore was in command of the land forces, Royal Marines and Army alike.

‘Something on your mind, Sub-Lieutenant?’ Commodore Clapp asked when Rory stepped up to them.

‘Yes, sir. I was looking for the admiral, actually.’

‘He’s out on a Sea King headed for Invincible,’ the commodore replied. ‘Anything of concern we need to know about?’

‘No, sir,’ Rory said. ‘But that’s just the problem, see. I’ve been up there for a week with binoculars glued to my eyes while the lads on the frigates get bombs chucked at them. There has got to be something else I can do. I don’t think the admiral quite understands what I can bring to the field.’

‘So you want to be on the line,’ Major General Moore said in a tone that sounded almost appreciative to Rory. ‘And what is it that you can do that I can’t do with a squad of my Royal Marines commandos?’

‘Your commandos have to get close to the enemy. Close enough for rifle fire or anti-tank rockets. I just need to be close enough to see a plane. Even if it’s just through binoculars. And I can slag its radar and electronics in five seconds.’

The major general and the commodore exchanged a glance that looked meaningful.

‘Really now,’ the major general said. ‘That’s from several miles out. In any weather.’

‘As long as I can lay eyes on it,’ Rory said.

The commodore and major general exchanged another look, this one more poignant than the last, and Rory could have sworn that the Royal Marines general smiled a little.

‘Tell you what, Sub-Lieutenant. We will have a chat with the admiral and see where we can slot you in. There may be an upcoming opportunity for you to demonstrate your skill set. No promises, though.’

‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. I really don’t want the Silver Helix to think the armed forces are not using their special assets to best effect.’

Rory sketched a salute and walked back to the starboard door of the flag bridge.

‘Is that cheeky little bugger blackmailing us?’ Commodore Clapp asked the major general, who chuckled.

‘I believe so,’ Major General Moore replied. ‘Enough pluck for a Royal Marine, that one.’

Outside, the driving frigid Antarctic wind doused Rory with a fresh shower of seawater, but he found that his mood had improved just a little bit.

Just a few hours later Rory found himself in an air group briefing room filled to the last chair with some of the toughest-looking troops he had ever seen. Most were wearing the Army and Royal Marines DPM-pattern camouflage uniforms instead of Navy dress, and all of them radiated a mood that felt rather like what Rory sensed in his regular hometown pub when a particularly critical Partick Thistle match was about to start on the telly. Major Singh was in the room too, but he sat on the other side when Rory came in, and there was no way to make it across the compartment full of seated troops to join his Silver Helix colleague. At the head of the room, Major General Moore stood behind a briefing lectern.

When the general spotted Rory taking his seat, he nodded grimly. ‘You got your wish, Sub-Lieutenant. I rather hope you don’t come to regret it.’

Rory took his seat, one of the last two remaining ones. Behind the general a projector screen was set up at an angle, showing the white square of a blank slide. General Moore pressed a button on his wired remote, and the first slide whirred into position with a click. It showed an overhead reconnaissance photo of a grass airfield. Several aircraft of different types were parked to either side of the airstrip.

‘Our two Silver Helix guests were not present at the original mission briefing, so I will repeat the main details for their benefit.’ He extended a small pointer stick and tapped the projection. ‘This is a small Argentinian airbase on Pebble Island, on the northern tip of West Falkland Island. The Argentines set it up right after they moved in. It’s just a short grass strip, but it’s in a rather inconvenient spot for us.’

He moved the pointer to the Argentinian planes lined up on the grass above and below the runway. ‘The Argentine air force have about a dozen planes there. They are mostly Pucarás. Twin-engine turboprops, used for light attack and recon duties. The light attack capabilities don’t worry us too much because our Harriers can run rings around them if they try to make runs on the fleet. What’s more of a concern is their reconnaissance function. We are in full preparation for the landings, and reconnaissance by these aircraft will compromise our planned manoeuvres and give the enemy advance warning of our intended landing sites. Therefore, we have tasked D Squadron, 22 SAS Regiment, with the destruction of these aircraft and their support facilities.’

The general changed slides. The projection on the screen changed to a wider shot of the airfield. Several small structures were circled in various colours. ‘D Squadron will ingress by helicopter to a point five miles from the objective. The Boat Troop scouted the target last night. Due to the strong headwinds coming from the southwest, the range of our helicopters will be reduced, so we had to cut the window for offensive operations on the ground from ninety to thirty minutes. Therefore, the aircraft on the ground are top priority targets. The fuel and ammo dumps and the support personnel are secondary concerns. Take out targets of opportunity, but your primary objective is those aircraft. HMS Glamorgan will provide artillery support from offshore once the aircraft are destroyed or disabled.’ He looked over at Rory, who started feeling very out of place in a briefing room full of hardened commandos. ‘The original plan had Mountain Troop infiltrating the facility to lay explosive charges on the aircraft while the other troops provide overwatch. That is a risky endeavour because the Argies undoubtedly expect a raid and will have sentries out. Sub-Lieutenant Campbell over here will ingress with D Squadron and take up overwatch position with the covering team. If you can disable or destroy their planes from that position, infiltration won’t be needed, and the risk to D Squadron will be greatly reduced. I probably need not tell you that the lads would greatly appreciate it if they could remain out of small arms range.’

Some of the SAS men laughed. Most of them had shifted in their seats to look over at Rory. He saw the appraising glances from the commandos and wondered briefly if he should have kept his mouth shut on the flag bridge after all.

‘If Sub-Lieutenant Campbell – Archimedes – cannot disable the Pucarás from the overwatch position, we will go to Plan B, and things will get considerably noisier. But keep the timing in mind, because the window of operations is a small one. Do stick to the timetable if you want to get off that rock and back to Hermes, unless you have a desire to sample the quality of the cooking in an Argentine POW camp.’

There was more laughter from the troops. Rory smiled weakly at the joke. He was Navy, not SAS, but even he understood very well that having to spend time in a POW camp was not the worst possible outcome for anyone on this mission.

Major General Moore ran them through the timeline of the raid once more — undoubtedly for the benefit of Rory and Major Singh, the last-minute additions – and concluded the briefing a few minutes later. Rory didn’t feel any more prepared than before he had walked into the room.

‘A word, Sub-Lieutenant,’ the general said when everyone started filing out of the compartment, and Rory stayed behind. ‘I got Admiral Woodward to agree to this because it’s a nighttime raid, and there won’t be any air threat to Hermes while it’s dark. But we are taking a risk sending you out like that. Major Singh will come along and make sure that you come back in one piece. And please make it worth that risk. Don’t make me regret convincing the admiral to let you come along.’

‘Understood, sir,’ Rory said. ‘I’ll do my very best.’

Outside in the passageway, Major Singh walked up behind him and patted his shoulder. The Silver Helix agent was in his camouflage Army uniform, but tonight he had web gear on top of his jacket, and he had exchanged his blue turban for a black one.

‘Congratulations,’ he said. ‘You are a commando now. Let’s get you to equipment issue and dressed for the part. The mission starts at 2200 hours.’

Phase III: Pebble Island West Falkland Island, May 14th, 1982

After three years in the Royal Navy, Rory didn’t get seasick often any more, but riding in the back of a Sea King helicopter into forty-knot headwinds charted some brand-new territory for nausea in his brain. It didn’t help that the cargo compartment was crowded with battle-ready commandos and their equipment. The SAS lads looked calm and collected, but Rory could tell that everyone was tense, except maybe for Major Singh. The Lion sat in the jump seat next to Rory, his backpack and rifle upright between his legs, the fingers of his left hand lightly touching the pommel of the dagger on his web belt while the big Sikh looked at the helicopter’s bulkhead absent-mindedly. Rory would have liked a calming chat before the start of the action, but the interior of the Sea King was noisy, and conversations had to be held at near-shouting volume. Whatever space inside the helicopter that wasn’t taken up by a geared-up soldier was filled with ammunition and equipment. The Sea King had windows, but it was pitch dark outside, and the total lack of visual references combined with the buffeting from the winds made Rory queasy.

They flew through the darkness for what seemed like hours until the helicopter finally started a series of banking and descending manoeuvres.

‘Thirty seconds,’ the pilot called out towards the back.

All around Rory, the SAS troopers started readying their gear with practised movements. Rory tried to emulate them, fumbling with the straps of his assault pack and untangling the Sterling submachine gun they had issued him back on Hermes.

‘Relax,’ the Lion said next to him and reached down to free Rory’s gun sling from the support strut of his seat. ‘We are not doing a parachute drop. We are just getting off the normal way.’

‘In the dark. Onto enemy territory,’ Rory added, and Major Singh grinned. His teeth looked very white in the semi-darkness of the Sea King’s cargo hold.

‘That is how war works,’ he said. ‘Especially when the SAS is involved.’

The helicopter settled on the ground, and the troops opened the sliding doors to either side of the Sea King. The SAS men filed out of the cargo hold quickly and smoothly, and it was evident they had done this a thousand times. Rory tried not to hold up the egress too much and followed Major Singh as fast as he could. A few dozen yards away another Sea King landed, this one carrying the other half of D Squadron.

Outside, the SAS charged their L1A1 rifles, and some of them set up a security perimeter. Rory hadn’t realized just how much extra ordnance they had brought with them until the other troops and the Navy airmen had unloaded the helicopters completely.

‘Everyone check their loads,’ the officers announced. ‘Everybody will carry at least two rounds for the mortars in addition to their combat load.’

The SAS added the green plastic containers with the mortar bombs to their rucksacks and secured them with straps. Rory did the same. When he looked over to Major Singh, he saw that the Lion had lashed three double containers to his pack.

‘Mountain Troop, take point with the lads from Boat Troop. Keep your intervals. And don’t get distracted admiring the scenery. Once we get there, we have thirty minutes,’ the SAS major in command ordered.

They all synchronized their watches, and the SAS squadron marched off into the darkness. Rory wasn’t an infantryman, and the last time he had marched with a pack and a rifle had been during basic training. But these men were the best at this particular sort of thing, so he decided to stick close to Major Singh and do everything the SAS men did.

There wasn’t much scenery to admire on Pebble Island. Rory remembered the assessment of his Navy friend that the Falklands looked a lot like the remote parts of Scotland, and he had to agree. It was all rock-strewn and hilly, with very little vegetation other than grass. Doing everything the SAS men did turned out to be easier in intent than practice because even with all their heavy gear they were the fastest marchers he had ever seen. Rory puffed along behind Major Singh and the supremely fit commandos.

‘It’s just like Scotland,’ he said to the major as they were ascending a little hill, the wind whipping into their faces, making everyone pull the cords on their parka hoods tighter. ‘There’s even bloody sheep. Look.’ He pointed over to a herd of them, barely visible in the darkness a few hundred yards off their path on the slope of the hill.

‘Ten thousand sheep on this island,’ Major Singh informed him. ‘Been a sheep farm for a hundred and fifty years. I doubt the sheep care whether they get shorn by Argentines or British.’

They reached the summit of the little hill a few minutes later. On the plains ahead of them, maybe a mile or so in the distance, Rory could barely make out some structures, a few low buildings rising from the sparse grass. When he checked with his binoculars, he could make out the silhouettes of aeroplanes backlit by the moonlight reflecting from the nearby ocean.

‘Send a signal to Glamorgan and let them know we have the objective in sight,’ the SAS major ordered. ‘Mountain Troop, let’s get to work. Air and Boat troops, move out to the blocking and reserve positions. Ten minutes until go time, gentlemen.’

Rory and Major Singh went ahead with the Mountain Troop, whose task it had been to sneak into the Argentine installation and place demolition charges on the aircraft before Rory volunteered his talents. The SAS men moved silently and professionally, using hand signals to coordinate their movements. Major Singh stayed close by Rory’s side and directed him silently whenever Rory didn’t see or understand a hand signal. As a Navy sailor, he had only received minimal weapons instruction years ago, and he had forgotten almost all of his knowledge about infantry formation tactics from basic training. He had never been afraid of the dark, but this place was unsettling, especially given the knowledge that hundreds of armed men were camped out in that installation just a mile and a half away, ready and willing to kill them if they made their presence known.

Mountain Troop was five hundred yards from the edge of the airfield when the captain in charge ordered everyone to spread out and take up firing positions. He made his way back to Rory and Major Singh. ‘Can you do your thing from here?’ the captain asked Rory. ‘Any closer and we have to keep an eye out for their sentries.’

Rory checked his surroundings with the binoculars again. ‘I see three I can get for sure. But that low building there – I can’t see what’s next to that, or behind it. Too bloody dark.’

‘Try these.’ The captain opened a pouch on his web gear and handed Rory a set of goggles on a head strap. Rory put them on, and the captain reached out and turned a knob on the goggles. Rory’s field of view instantly turned from various shades of black to a grainy green, but everything further than fifty feet away instantly became visible as if it was merely the beginning of dusk.

‘Latest generation image intensifier,’ the captain said.

‘You SAS boys get all the expensive toys,’ Rory replied. He looked around at the men in their fighting positions, then back at the airfield. A few small lights were burning over at the installation, and even though they looked like little glowing pinpricks to his naked eye from this distance, they flared bright as stars through the night vision goggles. What had been largely a featureless expanse before now looked perfectly defined to Rory. ‘There’s the runway,’ he said. ‘And four … five … make that six Pucarás. There’s some sort of transport as well. And four more I don’t recognize.’

‘Let me see for a moment.’

Rory handed the night vision gear back to the SAS captain. ‘Looks like Turbo-Mentors,’ he said after looking at the field for a few moments. ‘Training craft. But they can still report back our positions once the invasion fleet starts moving.’ He returned the night vision goggles to Rory. ‘Question is, can you fry the bastards from this far away?’

‘Absolutely,’ Rory said. The captain grinned at the conviction in his voice.

‘That’s what I wanted to hear. Wait for my go. Confirm?’

‘Waiting for your go, sir.’

‘Good man.’ The captain got out his radio and spoke into it in a low voice. ‘We have positive ID on the primary assets. Our man is ready to turn them into lawn decorations. Lock and load, and prepare for a response from the garrison force.’

The troop leader radioed back their acknowledgements. For a moment, it was dead silent on their little hillock apart from the ever-present South Atlantic wind.

‘Glamorgan is standing by for bombardment,’ the SAS captain said. ‘You are cleared to engage, Sub-Lieutenant.’

‘Do your thing, Archimedes,’ Major Singh said next to him.

Rory took a deep breath. Then he scanned the line of ground attack craft parked five hundred yards away and focused his attention on the leftmost one, the plane closest to the end of the runway and therefore the one likely to take off first in the event of an alert.

Whenever anyone asked – and plenty of people had since his card turned – he never quite knew how to explain his ability. The closest he had ever come was to liken it to secondary school, to his biology classes. They’d had a human anatomy model in the classroom, a plastic dummy that had removable parts. You could strip all the layers away – first the pectoral and abdominal muscles, then the rib cage, then the internal organs. Heart, lungs, intestines, until you had the shell of half a body with nothing but the spinal column and the strands of the nervous system. Whenever he looked at a machine with electronics in it, he felt as if he was back in that classroom looking at the anatomical mannequin with its layers peeled away and the nerves sitting out in the open. He could feel the energy in the batteries and capacitors, sense the silica and copper pathways of the electrical systems. The Pucarás were over a third of a mile away, but he could still focus on each node in their artificial nervous systems in turn. They were simple machines compared to the Royal Navy’s Harriers, but they still had basic computers, gyroscopes, radios, inertial navigation devices, all sorts of things that required circuit boards and capacitors.

Rory concentrated on the plane in the centre of his night vision goggles’ field of vision. As always, he got just a little dizzy when the electromagnetic energy built up between him and his target. He directed it towards the nose of the plane and swept the electronics with a sharply focused pulse. Even from five hundred yards away, he could feel the pathways of the wiring and the circuit boards start to glow as he pumped a voltage into them they were never designed to withstand. It was silent and invisible to the commandos, and he reckoned they’d want tangible evidence that he was doing what he said he’d be able to do, so Rory focused again and doubled his effort. The second sweep had rather more dramatic results than the first. The overheated circuits were already damaged beyond repair, but now the wiring in the plane burst into flames. Rory gave it a third EMP pulse just to make sure the plane was thoroughly slagged.

‘Well?’ the SAS captain asked.

In the distance, flames started licking out of the crack between the Pucará’s avionics access panel and the fuselage. In the near-complete darkness, they were visible even without night vision goggles. Rory nodded towards the plane in response. ‘That one’s flown its last sortie,’ he said.

The captain trained a set of binoculars on the distant aircraft. Then he grinned and slapped Rory’s shoulder. ‘Bloody brilliant. Now do the rest, if you wouldn’t mind.’

‘Not at all,’ Rory said, feeling a little smug. He wished the admiral had come along for the mission, even though he knew that flag officers ordered commando raids, they didn’t join them. He turned his attention to the next plane and repeated the process, focusing a tight beam of electromagnetic energy and then sweeping it over the next Pucará in line, then the one next to that. The other two were lined up on the other side of the runway, so he got up and shifted his position a little to get a better viewing angle. Major Singh and the SAS captain moved with him and took up positions on either side of him again when he settled on the grass and adjusted his night vision goggles once more.

‘Movement,’ someone behind them called out in a low voice. ‘Sentry, single mover. Two o’clock, coming out from behind that low Quonset.’

Rory looked in the direction the other SAS trooper indicated. There was a lone Argentine soldier out there, walking from one of the few buildings on the airfield over to the fuel pumps, which blocked his view of the plane that had started to burn. In a few moments, he’d either see or smell the fire coming from underneath the Pucará’s hood.

‘Look lively, lads,’ the SAS captain said. ‘Things are about to get interesting. Do hurry up, Sub-Lieutenant.’

Rory swept the remaining two Pucarás. They were small, graceful aircraft, and they looked as if they would be a blast to go for a ride in. It seemed a waste to destroy them, but he remembered the burn victims from the Sheffield being offloaded on the Hermes, and what little regret he felt dissipated at once.

He had just disabled the sixth and last Pucará when the first one on the other side of the line exploded with a dull thunderclap that rolled across the dark glen. The fire he had set just moments earlier had probably spread to the fuel tank or loaded ammunition. The orange-red bloom of the explosion roiled into the night sky and lit up the airstrip. The sudden brightness washed out the display of Rory’s night vision goggles. When his vision returned, the Argentine sentry was no longer in sight.

‘They’ll be looking for us any second now,’ the SAS captain said. ‘Do the rest. Corporal Park, signal Glamorgan to commence bombardment.’

Rory’s heart pounded as he returned his attention to the rest of the parked aircraft. The four Turbo-Mentors were next. He swept them one by one, as hard and tightly focused as he could, and three of them caught fire almost instantly, one of them belching a tall jet of flames from its portside wing before disappearing in a bright orange fireball. The boom that followed was so loud that it felt as if it made the ground shake a little even at this distance.

Somewhere out over the ocean Rory saw what looked like lightning flashes. A few seconds later, another explosion threw up a geyser of earth and rocks near the fuel dump. This one looked a lot bigger than the one caused by the aircraft blowing up. After a few seconds more, another explosion followed, then a third. That one hit something unseen but volatile. Even the disciplined SAS men couldn’t hold back their astonished excitement at the fireworks display in front of them. It looked like New Year’s Eve over the Thames. Glowing bits of debris flew outwards from the explosion in a huge shower of sparks and smoke trails. The destroyer HMS Glamorgan, waiting several miles offshore, had started her planned bombardment with her 4.5-inch main battery guns. A second or two later, the heat from the explosion washed over them. It smelled like hot metal and gunpowder.

‘They hit the ammo dump,’ Major Singh said with satisfaction in his voice. ‘On the third shot. Good show.’

‘Are the planes all slagged?’ the SAS captain asked Rory.

‘All done for,’ Rory confirmed.

Glamorgan’s high-explosive shells came in with clockwork-like regularity, a round hitting the airbase every five or six seconds. It seemed extremely foolhardy to lie prone only a few hundred yards from an airfield that was being worked over by artillery from miles away, but the gunnery officer on Glamorgan knew his job. The destroyer’s big guns walked their fire all over the area of the base, but none of the rounds fell close to Rory and the SAS. After a few minutes, the bombardment ceased. The silence that followed was almost total. Only the crackling sounds from the fires on the airbase reached their ears.

‘Right, then,’ the SAS captain said into the silence. ‘Scratch one airfield. Everybody grab your gear and fall back for assembly. Mountain Troop, keep overwatch. And radio the mortar crews to leave their tubes. Ditch the bombs, too. We’ll go light and fast on the way back.’

Rory got up from his prone position with a little groan. Using his ace ability always tired him out. It usually felt as if he had just washed down a dose of sedatives with a dram of cask-strength Scotch. He pulled the night vision goggles off his head and held them out to the SAS captain.

‘Here’s your toy back, sir,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t mind a set of those myself.’

‘Tell you what,’ the captain said. ‘I’ll give you that set when we get back to Hermes and report them lost. You saved us a lot of blood and sweat just now.’

The captain reached for the goggles and started stowing them in their pouch again.

A few yards to their right, the Lion looked back at the airfield in the distance and sniffed the air. Then he held up a hand and froze. ‘Something’s not right.’

Rory followed his gaze. There was no movement he could make out with his naked eyes despite the illumination from the fires. ‘What—’ he began. Then a fusillade of gunfire from the direction of the airfield cut him off. Rory could hear the supersonic crack of bullets screaming past them in the darkness. A machine gun opened up, green tracers reaching out to them like laser beams from a science fiction film.

‘Down!’ Major Singh shouted. He whirled around and dived for Rory. The SAS captain was closer to him, though, and just a little bit faster than the Lion. He grabbed Rory by his web gear and yanked him down onto the ground. Rory saw some of the tracer rounds skip on the rocky soil nearby at a shallow angle and bounce off in various directions. The SAS captain let out a strained little grunt and tumbled to the grass with Rory. Next to them, the SAS men dropped prone again and started returning fire. The reports from their rifle shots were deafeningly loud. Rory groped for his submachine gun, but found that he had dropped it, and the rounds snapping past his head made him disinclined to look around for it right now.

‘I’m hit,’ the SAS captain said in an almost conversational tone. Rory looked over to the man to see the expression on his face. He didn’t looked panicked or in pain, but surprised.

Major Singh appeared next to them. He grabbed Rory by the belt with one hand and the SAS captain’s web gear with the other. Then he hauled them both off the ground and dashed away from the incoming fire. Rory didn’t even have time to yelp in surprise. Even with four hundred pounds to carry, Major Singh was twenty-five yards behind the line of SAS men in a matter of seconds. There was a little depression in the terrain, and the Lion deposited Rory and the SAS captain in it carefully. ‘Medic to my position,’ he shouted, a deep and sonorous roar that momentarily cut through the cacophony of the gunfire.

Two SAS soldiers came out of the darkness and dropped next to Rory and the captain. ‘You hurt, sir?’

‘I don’t think so.’ Rory patted himself down to check for bullet holes, but came up clean. ‘But the captain’s hit.’

‘The enemy has a concealed trench line parallel to the northern runway edge,’ Major Singh said. ‘A very well concealed trench. I didn’t see it until they moved their GPMG up into position, right before they opened fire. Contact Glamorgan and have them send a barrage. Tell them to shift their fire a hundred yards north from the last volley.’

‘Yes, sir,’ the SAS soldier said and dashed off. The other SAS man had taken off his pack and was already working on the captain, whose surprised expression had at last shifted to one of extreme discomfort.

For a little while when he had rendered the Argentine aircraft inert from a distance, Rory had felt as if he had his thumb on the scale, that he was making a difference. Right now, that feeling had dissipated completely. He tried to stay as low to the ground as he could. All around him, the SAS were shooting at the Argentinian defenders. The troop with them was made up of only a dozen commandos, and one of them was wounded on the ground in front of him, but it seemed implausible that eleven rifles could produce such world-ending noise. Rory felt as if he had been dropped into the middle of World War Three. He had no idea what to do or where to be.

Major Singh didn’t have any problem working out his role on the battlefield. With the captain out of commission and the major with another troop on a hill several hundred yards away, the remaining SAS men deferred to the Silver Helix agent without hesitation.

‘Fall back to Boat Troop’s position by squads, bounding overwatch. And what is that blasted destroyer waiting for?’

As if on cue, the first shells from Glamorgan’s renewed barrage exploded at the edge of the airstrip, and this time Rory felt the tremors of the detonations travelling through the ground below him. They were like hammer blows from a very pissed-off deity – the short, sharp whistling of an incoming shell followed by the concussion of the high-explosive fragmentation warhead. The small arms fire from the Argentinian defenders instantly slackened off and then faded into silence.

‘They’re getting back under cover,’ Major Singh said. ‘All squads, disengage and rally at the exfiltration assembly point. We have forty-five minutes to reach the aircraft.’

‘Come on, Archimedes.’ The big Sikh walked up to Rory and pulled him to his feet. ‘You made this a victory. Let’s not have the enemy turn it into a defeat.’

The SAS captain in charge of Mountain Troop had been shot in the lower back. He was unable to stand or walk, and they had brought no stretchers to carry out the wounded.

‘You lads get back to the helicopters and leave me here with a few flares,’ the captain said, his face a grimace of suppressed agony. ‘I’ll make sure the Argies find me. I’ll see you all in England when this bloody war is over.’

‘That is a load of noble nonsense, Captain,’ Major Singh said. ‘Corporal, give the man his second morphine dose. I will carry him back with us. And there will be no discussion about this. Now get a move on, everyone. There isn’t any time for St Crispin’s Day speeches right now.’

They speed-marched across the dark landscape faster than Rory had ever marched before. The SAS squads took turns guarding the rear of the spread-out column, and every five minutes they switched places. That meant they had to cover four times the distance Rory did, but he was still close to the limits of his physical endurance. Next to him, Major Singh strode along without any signs of fatigue, even though he was carrying the wounded SAS captain. They had left their mortars and all their heavy ammunition behind, and every other man just carried a weapon and a light assault pack. Nobody knew exactly how large the Argentine garrison was, or whether they had the fortitude to chase a squadron of elite SAS commandos across the island in the dark, but the SAS men all went by the book as though they had a thousand angry enemy marines on their heels.

They reached the helicopters with just ten minutes left in their exfiltration window. The major in charge held brief tactical counsel with the troop leaders and Major Singh, but everyone decided to proceed with the exfiltration rather than return to the airstrip to attack the defenders again and attempt to claim the field entirely. Rory had never been so relieved in his life as when they boarded the Sea Kings and took off for the relative safety of HMS Hermes.

The mood on the flight back to the carrier was very different from the ingress. The men were laughing and joking as if they hadn’t just exchanged live fire with the enemy in actual battle. The wounded SAS captain was doped up on morphine, but conscious, and he gave Rory a weak thumbs-up when he saw him looking.

‘You’re a bloody hero, sir,’ one of the SAS sergeants sitting across the troop compartment shouted to Rory. ‘You won’t have to buy a pint for yourself again until we’re back in Portsmouth. The Special Air Service will make sure of that.’

Rory smiled and returned the commando’s grin. He was glad to have played the role he had. It had felt good and right, exactly the sort of thing he had hoped to do when he had joined the Silver Helix. He had saved lives and used his ace power without hurting or killing anyone. But when he looked at the SAS captain who had taken a round to the back to keep him safe, his satisfaction was considerably tempered.

Phase IV: Bomb Alley North Falkland Sound, May 21st, 1982

During the days after the Pebble Beach raid, Rory was treated like a celebrity in the fleet, and for a little while he came close to believing that he deserved at least some of the applause.

The Pebble Beach mission had been a resounding success. Rory had destroyed all six light attack aircraft and four reconnaissance planes. The shelling from HMS Glamorgan had taken out the ammo and fuel dumps. There were still Argentine troops on the ground at the airfield, but those were of little concern to Admiral Woodward and his staff, now that the Argentinian air threat from that part of the islands was completely neutralized. And thanks to Rory – Archimedes, as everyone now called him without hesitation – the operation had gone down with no British casualties except the wounded SAS captain, who had been flown out to the hospital ship to be airlifted back to the UK.

‘The Black Buck raids tore up the runway at Stanley, and our lads are flying combat air patrol around the clock between us and there,’ the admiral told the assembled staff officers at the invasion briefing. ‘Thanks to Archimedes, the enemy will have no use of landing strips on the islands any more. Whatever airpower they bring to bear will have to come from the mainland, and they will be at the very limits of their operational range. Therefore, we are accelerating the invasion schedule to beat the winter weather. Operation Sutton begins tomorrow at 2300 hours. We will land 3 Commando Brigade as planned at San Carlos and work our way south from there once we have established a beachhead.’

He turned his attention to Rory, who was starting to get used to being the centre of attention. ‘Archimedes is going to land with the Royal Marines commandos on Fanning Head at San Carlos and take a position on the high ground overlooking Falkland Sound and the inlet of Port San Carlos,’ he said and indicated the places on the projected wall map. ‘They expect us to land at Stanley, on the other side of the island. It will take them until daybreak to realize that we’re coming from the opposite side. But once they do, they’ll send the rest of their planes from the mainland bases to bomb the landing craft. They will throw everything they have left at that beachhead. Your job is to make sure they don’t succeed. Our ships will have little space to manoeuvre in that narrow sound. You have demonstrated that you can disable those aircraft faster and more reliably than the Seacat missiles from the surface ships. Drop their planes out of the sky before they can release their bombs.’

This was on a different scale from Pebble Beach. That raid had been a squadron of SAS, only forty-five men and two helicopters. This was a full-scale amphibious landing, five thousand men plus equipment, ferried onto the landing beaches by dozens of ships. It would be a target-rich environment for the Argentines. But the admiral’s esteem of Rory had risen immensely since Pebble Beach, and the rest of the officer corps on Hermes had treated him with far more respect and deference than before. Nobody had addressed him merely as ‘Sub-Lieutenant’ since that night, and Rory didn’t want to give them a reason to doubt his abilities. Besides, the frigates and destroyers supporting the landing craft would have their own air defence missiles and guns, and the marines would bring shoulder-fired ones to shore when they landed, so he took comfort in the knowledge that he was far from being the only anti-air asset for the landing.

‘We’ll keep the lads safe,’ Rory replied. ‘Whatever it takes.’

‘You are an asset now. I will send you out with D Squadron again. They’ll be tasked with clearing your observation post and keeping you safe.’

‘What about Major Singh, sir?’

‘Major Singh will be needed to augment and assist 2 Para when they land at San Carlos. Have no fear, the SAS lads will take good care of you. Just make sure you make it worth the investment. We are scrapping one of the recon missions at Darwin to free up D Squadron for your use.’

‘Yes, sir.’ The thought of going into battle this time without the reassuring presence of the Lion nearby made Rory anxious. But Silver Helix or not, he was still a junior officer, and when the admiral told you to jump, it was best to be in the air before asking for an altitude parameter.

‘This is it. If we do this right, we’ll have the Union Jack flying over Stanley again within a week or two. I don’t know about you, gentlemen, but I’d rather prefer to be on the way home once the bad weather sets in down here. See to your units and prepare for executing Operation Sutton in twenty-eight hours. Dismissed.’

D Squadron, 22 SAS Regiment, seemed to have adopted Rory as their personal ace and good-luck charm. They kitted him out in the same gear they were wearing, which was considerably better than what the Paras or even the Royal Marines were issued with. The submachine gun he received was integrally suppressed, they fitted him for splinter protection armour, and – as promised – he got his own set of night vision goggles. When they boarded their helicopters for the main assault after nightfall the next day, Rory felt a little better knowing that he was protected by the best the British Armed Forces had to offer, but the memory of the brief but violent engagement at Pebble Beach kept the fear simmering in the back of his brain. The raid had been a prelude. This was full-out war, everything they could put on the board against everything the enemy had. Rory spent the last few hours before the start of the operation writing the letters he had been holding off on since they left Portsmouth. Before, he thought they’d bring bad luck and maybe cause the event for which they were contingencies. After Pebble Island, he had changed his mind. One letter to his parents, one each to his siblings, all crafted as well as he could to soften the blow of his death, should it happen, and give them something to remember him by. It was much harder than he had expected, harder even than gearing up for the battle itself, and when he had finished, he felt emotionally drained.

They took off from the darkened deck of Hermes an hour after local sunset. Before Rory stepped through the door of the Sea King, he looked out over the ocean to starboard, which was full of ships, all running with dimmed position lights. So many ships, so many lives at stake.

The weather was better on this flight. The Sea King didn’t get buffeted as it had in the raid a week earlier, and Rory kept most of his dinner in this time. He knew most of the men of D Squadron by name and sight now, but he still missed seeing Major Singh. This would be the first time out on his own as a Silver Helix operative, and naturally it would be in support of the biggest amphibious invasion the Royal Navy and Marines had staged in almost forty years.

Their target zone was a hilltop called Fanning Head. It overlooked the San Carlos estuary, where the amphibious landing ships would soon be making their way to shore, slow and vulnerable and loaded with hundreds of Royal Marines and Army paratroopers. As they approached the hilltop, their escorts, smaller and more nimble Gazelle helicopters, rushed ahead to scout the landing zone. Rory sat near the front of the Sea King’s cargo bay, close to the cockpit, so he could see outside through the front canopy. Out of the darkness, tracer rounds reached up, streams of glowing fireflies, and connected with one of the Gazelles just as it crested the hill. The Gazelle banked hard to the left and dropped out of sight.

‘Incoming fire!’ the pilot shouted. ‘Going evasive. Hang on to something, lads.’

The second Gazelle, somewhere out of sight on the port side of their Sea King, opened fire with its rocket pods. The unguided rockets streaked towards the hilltop, but Rory didn’t see the results of the impacts because their pilot had initiated a sharp banking turn to starboard. The helicopter raced down the slope of the hill, away from the incoming fire.

‘We’ll have to abort!’ the pilot shouted. ‘There’s Argie infantry on the hilltop.’

‘You put this son of a bitch down right now!’ the SAS major in charge shouted back from his jump seat just behind the cockpit bulkhead. ‘We’ll take care of the infantry.’

‘Ten seconds,’ the pilot replied without argument.

‘Lock and load!’ the major shouted. All over the cargo hold, SAS soldiers cycled the bolts on their submachine guns.

‘You stay between me and Corporal Park,’ the burly sergeant sitting next to Rory shouted. ‘Do what I say when I say it.’

The helicopter touched down hard. The corporal sitting next to the nearest sliding door was out of the craft even before all the wheels had fully settled, and the rest of the section piled out of the Sea King after him. Outside, there was immediate small-arms fire.

‘Come along now, right behind me.’ The burly sergeant pulled Rory along, and they left the cargo hold. As soon as they were outside, the sergeant pushed Rory into the prone position.

‘Don’t get up unless someone tells you to,’ the sergeant said as he took up a firing position close to Rory. ‘And you bloody well better hope they tell you in English and not Spanish.’

The fire-fight was brief. There was only a small Argentinian team on this hilltop, and they only put up token resistance in the face of opposition from a full SAS squadron. Some fell, most of the rest ran, and a few surrendered when they saw they were outnumbered and outgunned. The SAS men secured the hilltop and stripped the Argentinian soldiers of weapons. These were the first enemy troops Rory had seen face-to-face. They looked tired and haggard in the light from the SAS field torches.

‘Left us some gear,’ one of the SAS troopers said. The Argentines had set up an observation post – three tents, a few trenches, a mortar pit, recoilless rifle positions, and a number of radios connected to a twenty-foot antenna that was whipping in the stiff breeze.

‘Signal the naval gunfire support that we have control of Fanning Head,’ the major ordered. Everything the SAS did was efficient and businesslike, right down to collecting and stacking the discarded rifles from the surrendering Argentinians.

‘Two and a half hours until daylight,’ the major continued. ‘Time for you to set up your stuff, Archimedes. I guarantee you that these skies will be thick with aircraft as soon as the Argies work out where the landings are.’

They had brought three different sets of observation binoculars and tripods in the Sea King. The SAS unloaded the gear and helped Rory set everything up. This was equipment usually built for artillery observation, but today Rory had a different use for it. He lined one of the high-powered binocular tripods up so he could see down a large part of the length of Falkland Sound, the most likely approach route for enemy aircraft. The other two went to face to the west and northwest respectively. This way, Rory had two hundred degrees of magnified vision from this spot. The SAS manned a security perimeter, and three of them set up their own radio sets. They were ready for action just as the sky in the east started getting light. Overnight, dozens of amphibious ships had moved to the shoreline of the inlet below them, and almost as many frigates and destroyers were out in the Sound, screening the vulnerable troop carriers. The retaking of the Falklands had begun in earnest.

The sunrise was almost beautiful. Rory watched the scene in the Sound below from the hilltop observation post. Most of the troops had landed by the time the sun peered over the mountaintops to the east, and now the landing ships unloaded the heavy equipment, vehicles and light armour. Out in Falkland Sound, the frigates had taken up station in a rough line that extended for several miles. Any enemy plane coming up the Sound would have to run the gauntlet of their air defences before they got to the transports, but the frigates would also have to bear the brunt of the bombing runs.

‘Tea, sir,’ one of the SAS men said behind him. Rory turned to see that the commandos had set up their personal folding stoves to heat water. The soldier handed him a mess tin that had steam rising from it.

‘Thank you, Sergeant.’ Rory took the hot tin, grateful to have something to warm himself up. The wind up here bit even through the many layers he was wearing. It was bearable if you moved around, but standing still and watching the horizon was freezing business.

It was just after ten in the morning when the first Argentine plane appeared in the sky over Falkland Sound. A single jet popped over a mountain ridge to the southwest, changed course sharply, and dropped low over the water. The roar from its jet engines reverberated from the hillsides.

‘Light attack plane, bearing two-twenty, coming in right above the water,’ one of the SAS observers said, already tracking the target with the super-powered binoculars mounted on one of the tripods. ‘He’s got underwing ordnance.’

Rory got behind the eyepiece of his own stationary binoculars. It took maddeningly long to find the plane through the high-power optics. The Argentine plane was a light jet, slender and graceful, with a pointy nose and bulbous tanks on the wingtips. It roared up the Sound at what had to be full throttle. There were cylindrical objects under the wings, but Rory couldn’t tell whether they were fuel tanks, bombs, or rocket pods. He focused his attention and felt the familiar light dizziness as the electromagnetic energy between him and the distant plane built up. Just as he was about to direct an EMP blast at the nose of the aircraft, the pilot pulled up from his suicidally low approach run, and Rory lost him with the binoculars as the plane rapidly gained altitude in the middle of the Sound.

‘Fuck!’ Rory shouted. He didn’t bother trying to reacquire the plane with the optics. Instead, he shielded the left side of his face with his hand against the morning sun and looked out over the Sound with just his eyes. By now, the Argentine plane was within half a mile of the southernmost ship in the screen.

‘He’s making a run on Argonaut,’ someone said behind him. ‘Take him down, take him down!’

The Argentine plane levelled out and dipped its nose towards the water once more to line up whatever weapon he was about to release. There was a distant pop and a whooshing sound coming from the frigate, and an anti-air missile left the launcher mounted on the side of the ship. At the same time, Rory let loose a strong blast of EMP energy in the direction of the plane. It must not have been quite as focused as he had intended, because both the plane and the missile racing to meet it went haywire at the same time. The plane spun around its longitudinal axis until it flew inverted. The missile corkscrewed wildly and splashed harmlessly into the water five hundred yards from the frigate and its intended target. Rory knew that the pilot had just lost everything in his cockpit that had an electric wire connected to it – every screen, instrument, radio. He still had his flight controls, though, and he managed to roll the plane upright just a second or two before it hit the water. At this distance, Rory didn’t see the canopy blow off the plane’s fuselage just before the splash of the impact, but the orange and olive-green parachute canopy that bloomed in the sky a moment later was hard to miss. The pilot had managed to eject at the last second.

‘Splash one!’ an SAS lad shouted, and the rest of them cheered as if someone had scored at a football match. Except that Rory was trying for the opposite – he was there to stop anyone scoring. He was the goalkeeper right now.

‘Argonaut says they’ve lost their radar,’ the SAS radioman reported. ‘They are swapping positions with Antelope.’

Whoops, Rory thought. The Argentine pilot hadn’t gotten any ordnance off before Rory shut him down, but part of Argonaut must have been caught in the slightly unfocused blast he had panic-fired at the attacking plane.

The sounds of anti-aircraft gunfire and jet engines ebbed. Far out in the middle of Falkland Sound, Argonaut halted her forward motion, then started steaming backwards. Another frigate, presumably Antelope, had changed course and was heading towards Argonaut. The Argentine pilot’s parachute was in the water now, but the hull of Argonaut blocked Rory’s view of it. He hoped they were fishing the pilot out of the water before he drowned.

The respite did not last very long. Maybe ten minutes later, the next Argentine plane appeared, and this one had brought company. The two-plane flight came over the ridge that bordered Falkland Sound and banked and dived at the task force at a much closer distance than the light recon plane that had come before them. These were much more lethal-looking, with triangular delta wings that had big bombs slung underneath, fighter planes obviously built for speed. This time, Rory didn’t bother waiting for someone to call out a bearing or a type designation. He focused on the first plane and pushed all the energy he could muster into the pointed nose cone of the fighter jet. There was a bright flash and a muffled explosion. The sound only reached Rory a few seconds later, and by then the enemy pilot had pulled his jet into a steep climb. Presented with such an easy target, the frigates and destroyers of the screening force didn’t need a special invitation. Heavy gunfire thundered across the Sound, half a dozen warships opening up with their gun mounts. Two of the frigates launched their Seacat missiles, which homed in on the stricken jet from two different directions. One shot past the plane and flew down Falkland Sound, where it splashed into the water far in the distance. The white smoke trail of the other Seacat converged with the plume of black smoke in the wake of the Argentine jet, which was still heavy with the bombs the pilot had failed to jettison. This time, Rory saw the canopy fly away from the sleek fuselage, and the pilot ejected just before the Seacat struck home and blew the plane apart in a brilliant plume of sparks and smoking parts.

The second Argentine jet had barrelled on undeterred, and it was fast, so much faster than the little plane that had made the first attack run on the Argonaut. It banked to the right, fired flares, then banked to the left and past Argonaut, which was still going in reverse. Then the pilot pulled up the nose of his plane and pointed it at the next ship in the screening line on the Sound, a destroyer. Rory focused and blasted the jet like he had the first one, but he was a fraction of a second too late. Two bombs detached from the triangular wings of the Argentine jet and tumbled through the air towards the British destroyer. One bomb skipped off the water and bounced past the destroyer’s stern. The other one hit the hull in the aft quarter of the ship. Rory held his breath, expecting the huge explosion that was sure to follow. He could see the stern of the destroyer rocking from the impact of the heavy bomb, but it didn’t blow up. The Argentine jet, its nose section now on fire, made a valiant attempt to line up on another British ship, maybe to fire its cannon or ram it, but the plane was too low and the pilot had too little control of his craft left. One wingtip clipped the surface of the water, and the plane cartwheeled into the sea with an enormous splash. As quickly as this latest duo of attackers had appeared, silence descended over the Sound again.

‘Bomb didn’t go off,’ the SAS man next to Rory said in amazement. ‘They released too low. Didn’t give the fuse time to arm itself. Lucky buggers on that ship.’

‘Antrim confirms they got hit by a dud,’ the radioman called out. ‘No word on damage yet, but it holed the hull.’

Rory sat down hard on the sandbags next to him. He felt as if he had the world’s worst case of vertigo.

‘Splash three,’ the SAS sergeant said. ‘Good job, mate. You okay?’

‘I can’t hold them off if they keep coming in like that,’ Rory replied.

‘Can’t you blast them all at once?’

‘Focus is too wide,’ Rory replied. ‘It’s like a flashlight, see. The wider you make the beam, the more gets caught in it. I try to do two or three planes at once, I’ll catch one of our ships in it too. They’re coming in too bloody low.’

‘They’ve got some guts, all right. Didn’t think they had it in them.’

The battle had been on for fifteen minutes, and already Rory felt drained. Between him and the anti-air systems on the Navy ships, they had downed all three attacking aircraft, but two of the screening force ships were already damaged. Antrim had a hole in its hull, and Argonaut’s radar was out, probably because of his failure.

Overhead, two Royal Navy Harriers thundered past and headed down Falkland Sound. Rory and the SAS sergeant watched them climb as they flew over the formation of warships assembled on the Sound, then peel off to the southwest in search of targets.

‘About time they turned up,’ the SAS sergeant said.

The land battle around San Carlos was still being fought by the Royal Marines and the Army paratroopers. They could hear regular exchanges of small-arms fire from the hills on the far side of the inlet. The settlement of San Carlos wasn’t even big enough to be called a town. It was just a handful of buildings that looked like a very spread-out farm. Armoured vehicles in British camouflage were advancing past the houses and into the hills beyond, and the beach was bustling with activity.

In the distance, Rory heard jet engines again. He hoped they belonged to the Harriers that had overflown them on their way south just a few minutes ago, but when the planes came over the hills to the southwest, their wings had triangle shapes, loaded with bombs. Rory saw the puffs from the cannons of the frigates on the south end of the formation as they started pumping shells towards the new attackers.

‘Incoming air!’ the SAS sergeant shouted. ‘Two Daggers, bearing two-three-zero. Here we go again.’

Below them, Falkland Sound came alive once more with gunfire and the sound of anti-air missiles launching. Rory focused on the lead plane descending into the Sound and went back to work.

For the next two hours, the Argentines came in like clockwork, a new pair of planes every ten minutes, then flights of four. Rory had never expended so much mental energy. Focusing his EMP blasts at targets several miles away took an enormous amount of concentration. He knocked down plane after plane, frying their electronics to slag and setting their wiring harnesses on fire. Most pilots ejected, but some went into the sea with their planes. And despite his best efforts, some of the Argentine jets still got close enough to strafe British ships with their guns or drop bombs. Most of the drops were misses, and almost all the rest didn’t go off because the Argentinians came in low to avoid the curtain of gunfire and Seacat missiles the fleet threw at them. Rory dropped two planes from a four-plane flight into the ocean with one forceful EMP blast, but watched in horror as the other two Argentine jets lined up on a frigate and peppered her superstructure with cannon fire. Rory blasted one of the jets out of the sky just as it pulled out of its attack run and started to climb away. Then two missiles streaked in out of nowhere and connected with the remaining Argentine attack jet. It disintegrated in a thunderous explosion that echoed across the Sound. The remains of the wreck, carried by the momentum of the jet, ploughed into the hillside at the other end of the inlet. A moment later two Harriers streaked across Rory’s field of vision. They split up and banked away, one west and one east.

‘Antelope is hit!’ the radio operator in the tent behind them shouted.

‘We can bloody well see that!’ the SAS sergeant next to Rory shouted back. Out on the water, smoke came from the superstructure of the damaged frigate. The cannon shells had managed to set something on the ship on fire. But she was still in the fight, radar antenna spinning and gun turrets turning to point back towards the southwest end of the Sound.

Rory sat down on the sandbags with a groan. The SAS sergeant handed him a canteen, and he drank half of the water in one greedy gulp.

‘You’re doing brilliant,’ the sergeant said. He picked up a stick and pointed at a row of marks he had scratched into the earth next to his binocular tripod. ‘That was number thirteen out of fifteen.’

‘We downed fifteen planes this morning?’

‘You did. The Seacats and the Harriers got seven more. That’s twenty-two down. They really want us off this beach, don’t they?’

‘How many bloody aircraft do they have in their air force?’

‘I don’t know for sure, sir. But I think we’ll see most of them today at some point or another.’

By the early afternoon, the Argentine planes had stopped coming. When an hour had passed without any attack runs, Rory allowed himself a little flash of optimism. Maybe they did run out of planes.

The SAS captain in charge of the troop came up to Rory’s position.

‘The ships are offloaded. The marines are advancing south towards Goose Green. There’s a command post set up two klicks past the settlement,’ he said. ‘I suppose we can get off this hill now. Good work all round. You saved a lot of lives today.’

Rory thought about all the planes that had splashed into the waters of the Sound below them before the pilots had had a chance to eject. But their planes had been carrying bombs, and the British warships, for all their martial looks and intimidating weapons-bristling presence, were fragile and staffed by a lot of sailors. A few lives traded for many, but it was still a grim trade when you were the one whose thumb tipped that scale.

End Phase: Blood and Coffee Goose Green, East Falkland Island, May 25th, 1982

Back home in Scotland, Goose Green would barely register on a map. On the Falklands it was a town – its third-biggest settlement, in fact – but it consisted of only about two dozen buildings, clustered on a little peninsula jutting into Falkland Sound. It reminded Rory of the remote towns in the Highlands, the ones with one shop and one pub supporting populations of a hundred people and a thousand sheep. But after a whole week of camping out on wind-blown hilltops all along the shoreline as the British troops made their way south, the place looked like civilization to Rory.

While he was keeping away the Argentinian planes trying to make attacks on British ships and ground forces on their way south, the troops had prised Goose Green away from the Argentine troops that had dug in all around the town, and it had taken two bloody days and nights of hard fighting. But now the Union Jack was flying over the town hall again, there was a pile of surrendered Argentine rifles and machine guns sitting by the dock, and Rory stepped into a heated room for the first time since they had left Hermes to assault San Carlos.

‘There’s the walking weapons system,’ Major General Moore greeted him when he walked into the command post set up in an old farmhouse. ‘You have done fantastic work, Sub-Lieutenant.’ Instead of returning Rory’s salute, the general held out his hand. Rory accepted the handshake.

‘Thank you, sir. I think I could sleep for a month straight now.’

The other officers and senior sergeants in the room, Army paratroopers and Royal Marines alike, looked just as tired as he felt. They were all in battle fatigues and still decked out in combat gear, and most of them were dirty and still had camouflage paint on their faces. He didn’t dare ask how many they had lost in the fight, but he knew that medical evacuation flights had been leaving from the hills around Goose Green constantly since the end of the battle.

‘If you are looking for your Silver Helix colleague, he’s in the kitchen. You should get yourself some hot coffee while you’re here. You bloody well earned it, I’d say,’ the general said, but his smile looked hollow.

‘How is your war going?’ Major Singh asked when Rory walked in. The Lion sat on a kitchen chair that looked far too rickety for the weight of the big Sikh. He looked exhausted as well. The major’s boots and the hilt of his big knife were flecked with mud, and there were dark stains on the major’s uniform that didn’t look like sweat or spilled coffee. It seemed he’d had a very busy week with the Royal Marines.

Rory looked around for the promised coffee. There was a pot sitting on an electric heating plate on the counter nearby. The Lion pointed to a cupboard wordlessly. There were cups inside, and Rory took one out and filled it from the pot, trying hard to control himself and not just guzzle the stuff straight from the spout.

‘To be honest, it has been the most boring and most terrifying week of my life. Both at the same time, somehow, if that makes sense.’

‘Yes, it does. Long periods of boredom interspersed with moments of sheer terror. That’s what it’s like to go to war.’

Rory took a sip and promptly burned the roof of his mouth, but the taste was so decadently delicious after a week of horrible instant coffee that he didn’t care.

‘Thirty-nine planes,’ he told the Lion. ‘They just kept coming. And I kept sending them into the water. Why did they keep coming? They had to notice that none were coming back.’

‘They did their duty,’ the Lion said.

‘They fished out the ones that ejected. Some didn’t. I saw a few of them go in, and no chute. Pilot and all.’

‘And you find it bothers you.’

‘Yes,’ Rory said. ‘It does. I killed those men. Of course it bothers me. I used my powers to kill people.’

‘And it should,’ Major Singh said. ‘It will always bother you. Killing isn’t a natural act. We do it because we must, not because we like it.’

Rory’s gaze flickered to the kirpan on the Lion’s belt. He knew that the weapon wasn’t merely ceremonial, that Major Singh kept it honed to a shaving-sharp edge, and suddenly he found himself pitying the Argentine defenders who had stood between Singh and Goose Green. ‘You’ve been to war before,’ Rory said. ‘You’re used to it.’

‘You never get used to it.’ Major Singh stretched his legs with a sigh and took another sip of his own coffee. ‘I was in 1 Para ten years ago,’ the Lion continued. ‘I was just twenty years old. It was during the Troubles, right after Bloody Sunday.’

A shiver ran down Rory’s spine. Northern Ireland was still dangerous ground for British soldiers. Ten years ago it had been a free-fire war zone, car bombs and snipers and nighttime assassinations.

‘I went out on patrol with a few lads in a Land Rover, and we got lost in a very bad neighbourhood. Ended up in the middle of a crowd. They turned the car over and set it on fire. That’s when my card turned. I don’t remember how I got out of the upturned car. I don’t remember pulling everyone else out of the burning car. I don’t remember how long it took me to fight my way through the crowd, or how long it took for reinforcements to find us. But I do remember the faces on the bodies of those I killed that day to save my comrades. All nine of them. I pity them, and the families that must have mourned for them. But I do not regret it.’

Major Singh turned his cup in his hands and held Rory’s gaze with tired-looking but unwavering dark eyes. ‘The men in those planes were brave beyond measure, and they meant to kill you. You and the people you were charged to protect. You did what you had to do. That’s why you wanted to join the Silver Helix. To protect. To defend. And sometimes that means having to kill. That is something you must accept.’

The Lion got up and walked over to the counter to refill his cup. The top of his turban brushed the ceiling of the kitchen in the old farmhouse. ‘Most people hear “Silver Helix”, and they think of the flashy business they see on the telly. Aces flying or lifting girders off people. But most of what we do isn’t flashy. It’s going to ground with the lads and helping the cause. Think of all the men on those ships who didn’t die because you were there. I know the thought doesn’t help much right now, but it will. Later, after all of this is over. When you’ve had time to remember.’

He walked back to his chair and patted Rory on the shoulder on the way past. ‘It’s a good thing that you’re bothered. I wouldn’t like it much if you weren’t. It tells me that you are right for the Silver Helix. When we get back to England, I’ll tell Sir Kenneth that I endorse the removal of your probationary status.’

The news of his impending full acceptance into the Order, the professional validation he had sought ever since his card turned, would have made Rory feel proud and grateful at any other time than now, and anywhere else but this godforsaken, wind-beaten little patch of rocky ground in the North Atlantic. But after this week, his ability to feel anything but bone-deep tiredness seemed to have gone on extended leave.

‘Thank you, sir,’ he said to Major Singh. ‘I will not disappoint you or the Order.’

Major Singh sat down again and nodded. ‘You’re welcome. You’ve earned it. But make sure that this sort of thing is what you want to do with the rest of your life. Because what you have seen here is not the worst you’ll ever see. Not even close.’

Outside, the newly hoisted Union Jack on the flagpole in front of the town hall whipped fiercely in the wind. In the brief time Rory had spent in the farmhouse kitchen with the Lion, the number of Royal Marines and paratroopers in the town seemed to have tripled. Overhead, Navy Harriers roared past towards the hills in the east, where the Argentinians were still holding on to Port Stanley, even though Rory knew their chances of winning this war had gone in the sea with all the planes he had splashed.

In the distance, Rory heard the distinctive whop-whop-whop rotor noise from Chinook transport helicopters, and the sound made Major Singh smile.

‘It seems we will not have to walk all the way across this blasted island after all,’ he said to Rory. ‘Those are the transports from Atlantic Conveyor.’

A Royal Marines lieutenant came trotting up to them, one hand on his green beret to keep it from flying away in the wind.

‘If you don’t mind, sirs, General Moore is asking for you. Looks as if we’re accelerating the schedule and going for Port Stanley early now that the choppers are off the boat safely.’

‘We’ll be right in,’ Major Singh told the lieutenant, who nodded and trotted off without a salute. They were in the field, Rory reminded himself, in a shooting war. You don’t salute on the battlefield because you don’t want to tell the enemy marksmen who’s important.

‘Well then,’ Major Singh said. ‘Let’s get this unpleasant business over with. I’m ready to go home. Until the next war.’

They walked up the muddy path to the town hall, the Union Jack on its pole flapping an urgent beat, like a tied-up animal frantically trying to shake itself free.

Until the next war, Rory thought. Hope that one breaks out long after I’m retired.