"Terrel? Hey, Terrel, you there?" Erikson's voice came weakly from out of the dimness and he shifted a few painful inches in his bunk. Moving swiftly, Amanda entered the bay and dropped down at his side.
"Are you all right?"
The young seaman must have been startled at having his commanding officer suddenly materialize at his call.
"Uh… yes, ma'am, I'm okay. I was just trying to get the Corpsman."
"He's out for the moment and I'm minding the store. What can we do for you?"
"It's nothing, ma'am. Just a little thirsty. I was wondering if I could get some more of that ice they've been letting me have."
"No problem."
Amanda got to her feet and filled a plastic cup from the ice dispenser on the forward bulkhead. Returning to the wounded man, she carefully fed him a few of the ice chips.
"Thank you, ma'am," he said, easing back down onto his pillow. "I didn't mean to cause you any trouble."
"You didn't. I did come down here to see how you were doing, after all."
"That was nice of you, ma'am. I'm doing okay. They're taking pretty good care of me, I guess." The seaman shifted in his bunk in weak discomfort. "It's just that I don't much like having to be taken care of in the first place."
"I know what you mean," she replied, sitting down on the deck and tucking her feet under her. "I hate being fussed over myself."
"Yeah. I guess I won't be able to get around for a while. This just lying here is gonna drive me crazy."
"I seem to remember that you were big into sports. Football, wasn't it?"
"Yes, ma'am. Fullback. My senior year, my team was runner-up for our state triple-A championship. I tried out for a couple of athletic scholarships, but I never made the cut. That's how I came to join up. Mom and Dad are divorced, and neither one of 'em have all that much money. I figured that the Navy would be my best chance for college."
"The Matching Funds Program?"
"Yes, ma'am. I've got a couple of thousand bucks riding the books already. I'm going to be signing up for some of the college-level correspondence courses, too. I'd really like to be a building contractor someday. Run my own outfit, you know. I figure that becoming an architect is my best first step…. Sorry, ma'am. I didn't mean to start carrying on like that."
"It's all right," she replied, letting her gaze drift off into the middle-distant darkness. "I've been there. When it's the middle of the night and you're hurting, sometimes you want to talk."
"Yeah….Captain?"
"Yes?"
"Have my folks been notified that I've been wounded?"
"I'd guess so. We notified Second Fleet about our damage and casualties before we went EMCON. Why?"
"I was just wishing that there was some way that I could rig it so they'd know that I was okay, that everything was going to be all right, you know?"
"I wish we could, but it's just not possible."
"I understand, ma'am." The young sailor hesitated for a moment, then went on. "Captain, could you do me a favor?"
"Like what?"
"If anything happens, could you tell my folks that I was okay, that I wasn't hurting or scared or anything?"
"I've got a hunch that's not exactly the truth."
"No, ma'am," the young seaman replied tightly. "It isn't."
Amanda came up onto her knees and took Erikson's hand in both of her own. "Look, you can tell your family yourself, because we are getting you out of here. I've never lost anyone under my command yet, and I'm not starting with you. You remember that, sailor. I'm taking us all home."
28
A brace of Fuerza Aérea Rafales blazed down the main runway at Rio Grande as President Sparza descended the short stairway from the door of his plane, the crackling roar of their afterburners echoing across the base. An Antarctica-bound C-130 followed within moments, its four powerful turboprops moaning as it lifted into the rain-swept sky. The backlog of aircraft that had accumulated on the taxiways while the Executive jet had been on approach were moving out, expedited by wartime urgency.
At Sparza's own insistence, there was no honor guard standing to on the parking apron, just a staff car with a small MP escort. Likewise, none of the base's senior staff had been called away from their duties, just a single junior officer who tried futilely to shield the Argentine President from the chill downpour with an umbrella as they dashed to the waiting vehicles.
"General Arco sends his respects, Mr. President," the young Air Force man stammered as they entered the staff car. "He is awaiting you at the operations building."
"Very good, Lieutenant. Let's carry on. We haven't a great deal of time to spare."
The same sense of crisis that had been present on the flight line could be felt in the base command-and-control center. Not since the Falklands War, when Rio Grande had been at the forefront of the strike operations against the British fleet, had the facility been pushed to the limits like this. As the southernmost of Argentina's major air bases, it had been serving as the departure node for the Conquistador South supply airlift. Now it had also become the keystone in the search for the Cunningham.
Sparza was ushered into a briefing room immediately adjoining the operations center itself and separated from the ranked workstations and map displays by a glass wall. General Marcello Arco joined him there a few moments later.
"Good morning, Mr. President. May I order something for you after your journey? Coffee? A cup of chocolate?"
"No, thank you, General," Sparza replied, shedding his damp raincoat and draping it across the conference table. "I am required back in Buenos Aires this afternoon, so I regret our meeting must be brief. Is there anything new to report?"
"No, sir. We still have not developed a fix on the North American warship. There have been no contacts since 1700 hours yesterday evening."
"And our lost satellite?"
"Nothing new to report there either. San Martin Base verifies that the Aquila B was on schedule as it passed over the Antarctic. However, when our tracking station at Comodoro Rivadavia endeavored to acquire the satellite for a data download, it was gone. A possible sighting report from the Brazilian Space Agency indicates that it may have deorbited and burned up during reentry over the Andes."
"An inconvenient accident, General?" Sparza said, drawing one of his chairs back from the table and seating himself in it.
"Unlikely," Arco replied. "The safe assumption is that the Aquila B was shot down by the North Americans as it passed over Drake Passage."
"Indeed?"
"It is open knowledge that the United States has antisat weapons. What was not known is that they had the ability to deploy them aboard their naval surface units."
"And they elected to reveal this secret capacity to us," Sparza mused, reaching into his inner coat pocket for his cigarette case. "They must have had reason to fear the Aquila."
"Its thermographic cameras may have been the only sensors we had capable of detecting the Cunningham."
Sparza paused for a moment to light a Players. "The North Americans' stealth technology. It is truly that good…or bad?"
"It is," Arco replied flatly, turned to face the glass wall of the briefing room, and gestured toward the CIC beyond it. "Since last night, we have conducted two full surface-search sweeps within the sectors of Drake Passage that must contain the North American vessel. We used a mixed force of our best radar aircraft, Aeronaval's Atlantiques, our 737s, and the Prefectura Naval's Dessault Falcons. Nothing.