Crown Jewel: The Battle for the Falklands (8 page)

The dawn’s early light painted Darwin Sound purple.  The helicopter reached the coast of the Argentine Sea.  Albert banked to follow the cliffs glowing gold in the new light.  The cliffs were licked by foam and seaweed-topped breaking waves.  The Apache’s thumping blades scrambled sea lions from their rookeries, flopping into the cold sea.  The scenery was beautiful and brought a moment of peace to Albert.  With the machine’s rhythmic vibration and the penetrating warmth brought by the new day, both men felt tiredness settle in.  Feeling his eyes drooping, and longing for a hot cup of tea, Albert made conversation.

“How have you been holding up?” he asked Donnan.  With these spoken words, Albert immediately felt his concentration and depth perception sharpen, and the hypnotic effect of speeding over white-capped waves diminished.

“I’m all right, mate.”

Albert should have known he would get nothing from the rock-of-a-man seated before him.  While he full well knew Donnan suffered under the burden of their shared memory, the Scotsman had a way of keeping it in, burying it, drowning it in liquid forgetfulness.  A beeping interrupted Albert’s thoughts.

“Air search radar off to the left,” Donnan read the computer warning.

“Give me a heading,” Albert ordered.

“Two-seven-nine.”

Albert threw the Apache over onto its side.  He pulled away from the shoreline and started out over deeper, darker water.

“Computer has classified the threat radar as a Thales track-while-scan,” Donnan announced.  On the horizon, a silhouette appeared.  It was small and dark-grey; a military vessel.

“Looks like a patrol or guided-missile boat.  Definitely not one of ours,” Donnan said.

“Yes,” Albert grunted.  He was focused on piloting.  Donnan zoomed in on the target with his imaging system.  He scrutinized the contact’s profile.

A high mast jutted from the vessel’s block of superstructure, topped by a big onion-shaped dome.  Then, as the boat turned toward them, a deck gun became discernible.

“Jammer on,” Donnan said as he activated systems that would confuse the enemy transmitter.  Albert increased speed.  “I take it we are engaging?”

“Warm up the Hellfires,” was Albert’s answer.

“Roger.  Longbow spinning up.  Hellfires coming online.”

The target vessel picked up the Apache’s electronic emissions.  Realizing it was being tracked, it lofted canisters full of zinc-coated fiberglass chaff.  The canisters bloomed over the boat and formed radar-reflecting clouds.  Despite the attempted deception, Donnan had already acquired a fix on the target’s hull.  They saw a puff of smoke from the boat’s deck gun.  The Apache shook as the shell air-burst just behind and to the side of them.

“Weapons free,” Albert declared.

Donnan wasted no time.  The Apache bucked with the shift in weight as the missile left its rail and fluttered across the water.  Firing and forgetting, Albert broke for the cover of shore.

The Hellfire bounced millimeter-wave radar off the Argentine guided-missile boat.  Skittering across the water, the missile zeroed in on the reflections, and flew itself directly at the target’s center of mass.  Moments later, the Hellfire slammed into the superstructure of ARA
Gómez Roca
.

Most of those on
Gómez Roca
’s bridge died fast as the vessel’s superstructure became an abstract flaming metal sculpture.  After a secondary explosion,
Gómez Roca
started to roll.  In the distance, as the small Argentine vessel began to sink, the black Apache hugged the coast and sped north-west.  Albert would use the sharp rocks to hide his radar signature from roving fighters and enemy search radars.  The helicopter soon crossed a spit of land.

The Apache broke the spit and sped over Bonners Bay.  Pokers Point was off to the left.  The aircraft zoomed over Blue Beach British War Cemetery where 14 Falklands War casualties were forever interred.  Both Albert and Donnan saluted as they passed over the stark isolated place.  Turning north, the Apache raced over heaving ground.  It flew on toward a collection of small, white structures astride a harbor.

“There,” Donnan said and pointed.  He could see Port San Carlos.  Immediately apparent were grey vessels tied up at the town’s single jetty.  Several landing craft had beached themselves past the settlement’s breakwater, too.

Smoke rose from the harbor’s warehouses.  Assault troops swarmed over the area like angry ants.  On the hills above, British artillery hammered away.  Their tubes flashed and smoked as they rained shells upon the intruders.  The enemy fanned out from the harbor and streamed up the hillside.  It became obvious that the precarious situation had the British positions in danger of being overrun.

“Sevens,” was all Albert said.

Donnan readied the rockets tucked beneath the Apache’s wing pod.  Per standard tactics, the helicopter would loop around from behind the British defenders and, once the friendlies were safely behind the aircraft, fire at the enemy.

The Apache ripped over the beach, the same beach that, long ago, 2 Para had landed upon.  Albert climbed the machine with the terrain, banked the helicopter over North Camp Road, and then back around toward the water.  The Apache came in low over cheering British forces.  It dropped, hugged the downward slope of the hill, and its panel light flashed green.  The CRV7s were ready for release.

“Igniter circuit open,” Donnan announced.

Albert used a fixed reticule to align the Apache’s flight path.  They sent a salvo of CRV7 rockets on their way.  There was a whoosh, bright flashes and trailing blue smoke as the weapons left their launch tubes.

Glowing like fireflies in the dawn, each of the rockets spun for stability and deployed small fins.  At a predetermined distance, their outer casing peeled away like banana skins, releasing a cargo of flechettes that formed black clouds of small tungsten darts that dove on and ripped into the Argentine marines.

Donnan added to the chaos on the ground by discharging his Chain Gun.  It rattled and Albert felt the Apache yaw.  He used the pedals to compensate, nullifying the increased torque with the tail rotor, and kept the Apache straight and level.  This gave Donnan a solid platform from which to rake the enemy with fire.

Earth and rock shot up from the ground.  Arms splayed and rifles dropped.  Men fell face first; their mouths filled with mud.  Men choked on the very ground they had wished to conquer.

“Hellfires,” Albert ordered as he jinked the Apache’s nose toward the enemy boats tied up at the jetty.

A small patrol boat was first to be painted by the laser beam emanating from the Apache’s gimbaled nose turret.  The three remaining Hellfires ripple fired, and, one after the other, the enemy vessels exploded.

Ammunition on one boat ignited with a torrent of sparks, a pyre of inspiration to the handful of defenders high on the hill.  Donnan let out a war-cry and Albert felt a warmth flow through his body. 
Perhaps the cure for the guilt of killing
, he thought,
IS MORE KILLING
. 

Albert giggled.  Not the giggle of a happy child, but a twisted, burdened giggle that would frighten anyone who heard it.  A radar warning sounded, interrupting his rapture.

Albert squinted and saw a small helicopter that had raced to the scene.  It had a diminutive silhouette when viewed head-on.

“Is that a Cobra?” Albert asked Donnan.  He believed it to be a US-built attack helicopter.

“Negative.  Too small.”

“’Kay…Stinger.  Shove it up his ass,” Albert ordered the air-to-air missile made ready.

“Roger,” Donnan acknowledge with a snort-of-a-laugh.

Tracer rounds zinged around them.

Albert cursed the small machine that dared to challenge them.

He loosed the Stinger.

The little missile’s smoke trail zigzagged away as it centered on the Argentine
Aguilucho
(Harrier) attack helicopter.

The Stinger found its target and swallowed it in a fireball, spitting out little metal bits that splashed into the water with boils of white foam.

This kill represented Albert and Donnan’s first air-to-air encounter; the cockpit restraints kept them from bouncing with excitement in their seats.  Albert pulled the Apache into a climb.  His half-baked plan was to loop around again and dive on the enemy as they clawed their way up the hill.  With nose-up attitude, the Apache reached the apex of its turn.  There occurred a deafening blast.

The Apache was slammed sideways.  Donnan hit his head against the canopy frame.  Albert lost his grip on the cyclic control.  The Apache rolled on its side and began to fall.  Cockpit lights flashed.  A whooping sound told of damage to vital systems.  Albert fought to right his spinning aircraft.

They were hit again.  This time, sparks cascaded from an overhead panel, and smoke announced a fire that had erupted in one of the engines.

Deep thuds.

This meant the helicopter had absorbed more hits.  However, with the crew compartment and electronic bays swaddled in Kevlar blankets, Albert and Donnan were kept alive.  The Apache: stayed airborne.

“Aircraft at six o’clock high.”  Donnan had spotted their prosecutor: a big twin-engine fighter.

“Flanker?” Albert recognized the silhouette from training, although he had not expected such an aircraft type in-theater.

Seeing smoke pouring from the British helicopter, Captain Moreno peeled off.  He was satisfied he had a kill, and he finally heeded his fuel level warning.

Albert watched RPMs in both engines fall off.  Oil pressure indicators had pinned at zero.

“Goddamnit,” Albert spat.  “Auto-rotating.”

Around them, the Apache died.

Albert dropped the collective and nosed the aircraft over as he disengaged power to the main rotor.  Using airspeed to control rate of descent, he pointed the helicopter at Falkland Sound.

“I think we can make the opposite shoreline,” Albert said as he fought to control the power-off glide.  The Apache fought back.  Albert chose the landmark of Chancho Point as an aim point, and worked hard to keep the rocky peninsula in the windscreen.  The tail rotor bled off energy.  The Apache, unable to fight the torque, began a flat spin.

Donnan reached up to brace against the rise in G-forces.  With hydraulics failing, it took all of Albert’s strength to
manipulate the flight controls.

He grunted against the strain.  The world outside spun faster and faster and became a smudge of blue and brown.  Donnan closed his eyes to fight off vertigo, and Albert leaned against the cockpit wall to brace against the rotation.  Every time the blue of water became the brown of land, Albert nudged his crippled Apache in that direction.

Land is better than water
, his mind rationalized as it clung to consciousness.  If they hit water and were knocked out, the Apache would sink like a stone
and
neither would escape.  Albert adjusted collective pitch to increase the driving region of his rotor.  The descent slowed.  Albert judged that they were near sea-level.  He spotted the streaked brown of solid ground and raised the collective.  The rotor stalled and the machine dropped hard.

A jarring crunch…

And blackness.

6: WHITE DOVE, WHITE HARE

“
Sometimes even to live is an act of courage
.”―Lucius Annaeus Seneca

A
fraid to see the little girl’s burnt blood-covered face, clot-caked hair, and judgmental coal-black eyes, Albert tried to turn away.  Despite the attempt, he could not, however, and as usual, he was forced to behold the horror.  She was a shadow at first.  Then, for a moment, she became aglow with freckled pale skin and long blonde curls.  Her eyes flashed bright blue.  They were piercing and welled with sadness.

“Wake up,” she whispered.  “You have to help me.”

◊◊◊◊

Albert gasped as he awakened.  Fumes and ozone burned his nose and throat.  He coughed.  The wrecked Apache hissed and smoked.  Its fluids leaked.  An arcing electrical panel sparked and zapped in the cockpit.  Albert moved achingly, his vision clearing.  Donnan was slumped and did not move.

Albert realized Donnan’s helmet was cracked.  Blood streamed from the torn opening.  Albert tried to raise his own head.  Sharp pain forbade it.

“Donnan,” he mumbled.  The toxic air made him cough again, his breaths poisoned by the slow-burn of materials that made up the cockpit interior.

Albert released the harness.  While the movement was minor, it sent him spinning with vertigo.  He threw up on himself.  Covered in a cold sweat, Albert fought to move within the cockpit chair.  He lifted himself from its confines.  On the verge of falling unconscious, he slumped back again. 
Concussion
.  Albert worried about Donnan; he still had not moved.

“Donnan,” Albert repeated.  The he tried yelling: “Lieutenant Bruce.”

The stabbing pain in his head told Albert not to do that again.  He groaned as he tried to keep himself from vomiting again, or, worse, from blacking out.  It would be up to him to get out and retrieve Donnan.  Albert reached for the Apache’s canopy release.

The mechanism’s red handle required more strength than Albert could summon.  He fished a knife from his flight suit pocket and used its shiny blade as a lever, working the canopy release until it clicked free.  Then, with dizzying effort, he rotated the release to the ‘Unlock’ position.

The canopy lifted a few inches.  Fresh salty air flushed the cockpit.  Its warmth blew away the chemical-laden fumes from within.  Albert’s head cleared, and his thoughts became less disjointed.

“Donnan.  Wake the hell up.”

Only seabird song answered, accompanied by the howl from wind forcing its way into the cockpit.  An acrid smoky smell came in, too.  Albert turned and saw the column of black smoke rising above the crash site, emanating from one of the engine pods.  He did not, however, see nor smell the fuel that had leaked out of the punctured tank.

Albert strained his aching neck to look past his other shoulder.  He saw that the Apache had broken in two; just where its tail boom had struck a big, immovable boulder.  He looked up and saw that one of the helicopter’s composite rotors had snapped, too, and only the thin titanium strip at the leading edge held the blade’s frayed carbon fibers.  His head movements did not bring spinning, confirming his vertigo had passed.  With a grunt, he raised his arm to press a hand against the canopy glass.