York still leaned over the sideband transceiver, glowering at it as it squalled in electronic agony.
"Evan, please, what is going on?"
"The damned Argentines are attacking Signy Base. They're jamming all the BAS frequencies. I can't get through to anyone!"
"What do they think they're doing?"
"I don't know. We can't get out of the bay past their ship, and they'll likely have a boarding party alongside us in a few minutes. We've got to get word out about what's happening here!"
The jamming warble from the speaker was cut off to be replaced by a calm voice speaking a mildly accented English.
"Motor vessel Skua, motor vessel Skua, secure your radio transmitters and make no further attempt at communications. I repeat, make no further attempt at communications or we will be forced to fire on you."
York wasn't listening. Instead he had started to flip feverishly through the pages of the radio log.
"We still might have something here, Bobbie," he said, not looking up. "The Yanks use a different block of frequencies than we do. We might be able get through to Palmer Station before the Argys can figure out what's up."
York began to key a new setting into the transceiver.
"Evan, if you transmit again they'll start shooting at us!"
"I know, I know!" York brought himself in check. "Look, we have got to let someone know what's going on out here. For our sake, and for the sake of the people at Signy."
The two could sense that the world they had so carefully built together was coming to its end. Their dream was suddenly going to hell around them, and they had only enough time left to speak as captain and first mate. All of the things they had to say as a man and a woman had to be said with their eyes in the few seconds they had left.
"Bobbie, you take the crew and head for shore. You'll be safer there. You'll have to surrender to the Argentines, but there's no other choice. Leave me the small life raft. I'll make one try to reach Palmer, then I'll follow you in. Get going now, everything will work out."
She was crying as she went forward. For a moment, York considered calling after her that he loved her, then turned back to the radio.
"CQ, CQ, CQ. BASK Skua calling USARP Palmer. Emergency, do you copy?"
On the farside of the bay, the bow turret of the Argentine warship indexed around and the gun barrel recoiled. Simultaneously with the flat crack of the cannon shot, a thirty-foot plume of water jetted into the air off of the Skua's bow.
"CQ, CQ, CQ. BASK Skua calling USARP Palmer.
Emergency, repeat, emergency! Do you copy?"
Dead air, unjammed but dead air, and then…
"BASK Skua, this is USARP Palmer. We read you four by four. What is your situation?"
He could hear the droning of the outboard motor of Skua's Zodiac and the sound of Roberta screaming his name. He could also hear the rhythmic coughing of the Argentine gun mount as it began to walk a stream of shells in on the anchored ketch.
"Palmer, this is Skua at Signy Station. The Argentines are landing here in force! I repeat, the Argentines are landing here in force! Armed troops are ashore at the station! It's a bloody invasion!"
York did not hear Palmer Station's reply. Nor did he hear the forty-millimeter shell that exploded through the side of the wheelhouse just inches from his head.
2
Amanda Lee Garrett had long ago learned that she required a certain amount of time to herself. Given her chosen profession, however, such time was hard to come by. When a chance at a free afternoon had presented itself, the first in several weeks, she had set out to make the most of it.
She had lunched at one of Rio's finest churrascurias, the steak houses that served the spicy barbecued cuisine of Brazil's southeastern gaucho country, a pleasantly old-school establishment where the staff apparently still considered a woman dining alone to be a little scandalous, or at least a pity. She had lingered for a time over a second glass of the good but rough local wine and then moved on.
She had wandered along the warm, tree-lined streets of the Ipanema district and had browsed in the shops and boutiques of the Rua Visconete de Paraja, looking at everything yet seeking nothing in particular. Eventually, gravitating eastward, Amanda had found herself on the famed black and white tiled promenade overlooking the beach at Ipanema.
The pale sands and low surf called to her, making the decision of how she would spend the rest of her afternoon an easy one. She hadn't really planned or prepared for a day at the beach, but it would make a good excuse to buy a new swimsuit.
That, in turn, had led to this soft and shaded patch of sand at the foot of the seawall. It was midweek and the seaside wasn't excessively crowded, just enough so that the air was filled with a happy jumble of samba and New Swing coming from a few radios and CD players. Her clothes, bundled into a plastic shopping bag, made a comfortable pillow and she was content to drowse lazily and people-watch.
Likewise, she was content to be watched. Aware of the occasional appreciative glances that came her way, Amanda gave the white satin one-piece she had chosen a surreptitious smoothing tug. The suit was staid compared to the locally favored tangas and monokinis, but the form that it sheathed was a good one, a trimly compact dancer's body, firm-breasted and flat-stomached. Her features were good as well, strong yet feminine, framed by thick, cinnamon-colored hair and dominated by her large-and, as one past lover had described them, dangerously hazel-eyes.
Amanda Garrett was an attractive woman, not classically beautiful, but attractive. At age thirty-five, she was also wise enough to know it. She was neither vain nor shy about the fact. She simply accepted it as a minor but pleasant part of her being. So she was neither surprised nor displeased when, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed another shadow flowing across the sand to merge with the patch of shade she was occupying.
"Hello, I really hope you speak English, because I think I'd like to get to know you."
Amanda came up onto her elbow a little faster than she had intended. Good Lord, this boy was beautiful!
"What would you do if I didn't?" she inquired curiously.
"Keep on trying, I guess." He shrugged and dropped down onto the sand a couple of feet away. "Things would be a little more complicated, but it'd still be worth it."
She would guess his age as being somewhere in the late twenties, but he had that kind of boyish grin that made her think of high-school-grad-going-on-college-freshman. On the other hand, he had obviously been around enough to be just a little bit bored with some of the more conventional male-female approach-and-contact rituals, much as she was.
"That was an interesting opening. Direct and with a minimum of cute."
"I've found that cute seldom works with the class acts of this world. Honest does."
Amanda nodded. "True."
He wasn't overly tall, not many inches over her own medium height, and he had a hard body. Not a muscle builder, but lean and whipcord wiry. Mediterranean dark, maybe with some Greek lineage in that black and curly hair. His eyes, though, were a particularly penetrating shade of blue.
Those eyes were also giving her a frank survey. Not an ogling that she found offensive, but more of a connoisseur's complimentary consideration. Amanda did suspect, however, that her new swimsuit had been mentally peeled off and tossed into the nearest trash can. Well, fair was fair. She'd had her own momentary visualization of slipping down those well-worn denim trunks to see if that wonderful tan went all over.