Blue Blood

by Peter Tonkin

  ‘Rescue party up and out,’ he called, his voice echoing through the quiet of his ship as he talked to several men at once. ‘Bob, can you lead that? Take five men with you and your best medical book. Through the after hatch, I think. Sparks, get me base at your earliest convenience. Helm, how’s she handling?’

  ‘Vanes still wedged tight, Captain. I don’t know what in hell’s the matter...’

  ‘Very well, stop all. Let’s see how she sits. Chief, can you send a team to look at the vane-control servos ...’

  ‘I’ve checked the schematics on the diagnostic computer program, Captain,’ came Chief La Barbe’s reply. ‘There appears to be no mechanical or electrical malfunction....’

  ‘I’ve heard that one before,’ breathed Mark, swinging the periscope in a full circle, skipping nimbly round the deck as his feet followed his head and shoulders. ‘Son of a bitch!’ he said.

  The language was unusually salty for him and several of the crew looked askance. ‘Bob! Can you hear me? Damned if there isn’t another one!’

  ‘Another life raft, Captain?’ came the first officer’s voice through the intercom.

  ‘No. Just a man in the water. Looks all-in. Must be colder than a witch’s ...’

  ‘External temperature reading one degree Celsius, Captain.’

  ‘Make this guy your first priority then, Bob. He’ll be dead of exposure in a very short time indeed. Helm, propulsion, we need to come up to a quarter revs and prepare to swing twenty degrees left. Bob, I’m swinging round closer to this guy but if push comes to shove you’ll have to get out the inflatable - or send someone in for a swim.’

  ‘Right, Captain. Opening the hatch now. We’ll be up and out in a... Jesus Christ, what the f...’

  Quebec's first officer, Bob Hudson, stood at the head of a vertical ladder, at the mouth of the after hatch. He had just swung the hatch cover back and was preparing to step up on to the deck in short order with hardly a second glance. The captain’s command in any case had caused him to glance down to the bundle at the foot of the ladder, which was where the deflated inflatable was stowed. But now he looked up, in mid-conversation, to see that the bright blue ozone-smelling beauty of the sky was barred with a black grille.

  Lines of blackness crissed and crossed at right angles making squares of sky about thirty centimetres from side to side, edged in steely black.

  The submarine’s hull began to tremble as helm and propulsion obeyed their captain’s order.

  Bob gaped. ‘Just what in heaven’s name is that?’ he asked. But his voice was far too quiet even for the five men in his team to hear.

  As if in answer, the squares vibrated into life and their stirring caused a big dead cod fish a good deal more than a metre long to tumble in on Bob’s head, then slither on down the shaft like a flexible torpedo.

  ‘It’s a net! Captain! We’re wrapped in a fishing net here! Jesus...’

  Bob was up on the top rung in a twinkling, his hands thrust up to test the strength and thickness of the netting across the hatchway. What his nimble fingers told him was very bad news indeed. This stuff was state-of-the-art polypropylene, thicker than his thumb and stronger than steel. Indeed, it resembled dull steel for it was grey. Almost exactly the same grey as Quebec's hull paint, in fact. ‘Dumas,’ he called down to the crewman at the foot of the ladder, ‘get me some bolt cutters. Quick! And Faure, get that fish down to the galley.’

  While he waited, seething with frustration and all too well aware that there were at least two people dying just outside, Bob squinted up and tried to work out the best way to clear the hatch. The crosspieces between the strands were too thick for anything other than oxy equipment or power saws to cut. He would need pretty strong bolt cutters even to sever the individual stings, he thought. But they’d certainly need to do something for there was no way anyone could ease though a mesh designed to trap a North Atlantic cod.

  Up in the command area, Mark Robertson was back on the periscope, but for once that fine instrument let him down. To begin with, it was just slim enough to penetrate the weave of the netting. Secondly, as he had discovered while watching the life raft - but without quite grasping the significance - it did not show him certain areas of his command with any clarity. It was, of course, designed to scan the mid-distances of torpedo range, not the immediate proximity of hull and decking. Even the foredeck, sitting low in the water and restlessly awash, remained effectively hidden, for the sun was settling lower now, and it glittered off the water in front of Quebec with all the blinding dazzle it had used to hide the rogue wave creeping up behind Sissy.

  Such was the disposition of the net that was visible behind the fin - just visible, grey on grey - that it looked to the frowning captain that he might be lucky here and have just picked up one part of a trawler’s discarded net. That it might just be draped across the after hatch leaving the rest of Quebec uncovered, like a saddle cloth across the back of a thoroughbred.

  The next logical thing for Mark to do, however, was to go up into the little open cockpit atop the fin and take a good look for himself. To make doubly sure. Even in the face of the fact that he could see nothing too badly wrong. And that, even through the roller-coaster ride of the wave and the collision, none of his experiences or equipment had given even the slightest hint that Quebec might be almost entirely shrouded in La Carihuela's net.

  But even as Mark tensed himself to follow this most sensible course of action, the radio officer called, ‘I have the admiral for you, Captain.’ So Mark went down to make his report instead. Which is what he was still doing when disaster after disaster struck in such swift and devastating succession. ‘Admiral, I have to report that Quebec's current disposition is as follows. We are proceeding through secure sea area Tango Zero at one quarter revs, making less than one knot as we turn through twenty degrees on to a heading of 280 degrees magnetic. There are two people in the water, neither of whom are from this command, and we are in process of effecting a rescue...’

  Dumas brought the bolt cutters just after Faure returned with the chief’s heartfelt thanks and compliments. Bob soon had the first strand of the netting firmly between their jaws. A grunt of effort brought the blades together and the polypropylene strand snapped apart. A second shared its fate pretty quickly - for the cutters were heavy and Bob found it hard to be working above his head. Two strands were hardly enough to allow an easy exit, however, but Bob was as well aware as his captain of the humanitarian mission they had undertaken here. There were black spots and bright flashes obscuring his view by the time the third strand parted. He passed the cutters down to Dumas and pulled himself out on to the deck.

  Before Bob had time even to look around, the stranger hit him. The stranger was a slight man bulked out by survival gear and a life jacket, clearly the lone survivor the captain had spotted through the periscope. But that only became obvious to the lieutenant later, after the shock of their meeting had worn off. At that moment, Bob had an instantaneous vision lent overwhelming power by simple shock of a completely bald head and blazing brown eyes that glared at him with almost lunatic intensity. The stranger appeared so unexpectedly and devastatingly that Bob was knocked backwards. The two men fell together on to the netting on the deck. That netting told Bob at least how the stranger had pulled himself aboard. And that realization was all the information he was going to get for the moment, clearly, for the stranger went out as they hit the deck just as though he had been coshed with a baseball bat.

  Bob rolled the corpse-like body over to the hatchway as Dumas snipped yet another strand and opened the whole thing wide. Bob slid him in and he went on down, scarcely more safely than the cod fish. ‘Keep cutting, Dumas,’ he ordered. ‘We may need to get another one like that aboard. Tell the captain we need to reverse the heading now if we’re going to pick up the woman on the life raft.’

  Then the young first officer pulled himself erect and looked away starboard to the north. The life raft was actually surprisingly close at hand. The appar
ently lifeless body held at its side by a tangle of lines was on the near side. There was no doubt in Bob’s mind, as there had been no doubt in his captain’s, that the figure was that of a woman. And this certainty was nothing to do with the traditional lack of female company that fooled the eyes of sailors in legend. Fooled them so that the manatee, ugliest of creatures, became the basis of the legend of beautiful mermaids. For there were four woman aboard Quebec. Though none of them, to be fair, possessed such temptingly full hindquarters as Robin displayed in the wet-weather gear made almost skin-tight by the tension of the ropes that held her in place. Nor indeed, now he came to notice it, did any of the women aboard boast such a dazzling glory of guinea-gold ringlets. Only seaman Faure, indeed, had anything like that dazzling head of hair - a throwback to some long-dead Viking ancestor come ravishing into Vinland with Eric the Red, no doubt.

  ‘Have we a line?’ Bob called down to Dumas. ‘Given a weight or a grappling hook I think I could catch her and reel her in pretty quickly.’

  ‘Faure has a line down below,’ answered Dumas, breathlessly, dropping the heavy bolt cutters. ‘And I noticed a grappling hook in stores when I got the bolt cutters.’

  ‘OK,’ decided the first lieutenant. ‘Let’s go with that.’

  ‘If,’ continued Dumas, whose forebears were black-haired, black-eyed Provencal and noted for their dark views on life and so forth, ‘you want to use a grappling hook to secure an inflatable life raft...’

  But by this time Bob’s concentration had wandered very actively away. For he had at last looked around, and he had seen what Mark Robertson had not. The net which lay over the after hatch was not by any means an isolated phenomenon, like the saddle cloth lying across the back of a horse. The whole of the after area of the submarine was festooned with the grey web. And so, as Bob turned to look, was the fin itself. The whole of the ten-metre tower was draped with netting as though it were a fly in the grasp of some unimaginable spider. Through it thrust the suddenly frail-looking uprights of the periscope, the communications mast, the snorkel and the rest.

  Mind reeling with the implications of what he was seeing, the first officer reached for the walkie-talkie at his belt to report his all too disturbing observations to his captain. And as he did so, the vessel, on his order, reversed her heading and began to swing north towards the life raft and Greenland beyond. But the walkie-talkie was not there - knocked loose either while he was working with the bolt cutters or by the falling cod fish. He swung back, mouth open to call to Dumas or Faure, when both of them came up out of the hatch. Faure held the line and Dumas held the grappling hook. ‘Here you are,’ said Dumas. ‘Just what you need for pulling a balloon aboard.’

  Bob took the line and the hook at once. It simply did not occur to him that the situation was potentially fatal. He would report to the captain as soon as possible. In the meantime, if the woman on the life raft wasn’t dead already, she would be dead all too soon if he didn’t do something about it pretty quickly. His first cast reached the life raft and caught in the very apex of the inflated tent immediately above the woman’s golden curls. Bob tugged gently, then more firmly. The raft began to drift towards the submarine and Bob got the confidence to pull even harder still. But that proved a mistake, for the sharp hook simply tore the top of the little tent away, and, with it, the life raft’s automatic emergency beacon. Luckily, it slid off without puncturing the sides, but the inflatable spokes that held the tent erect slowly began to droop and the lifeless body topped decorously forward like a tree being felled in slow motion.

  Bob pulled the grappling hook back aboard as quickly as he could, freed the hooks from the ripped canvas and threw the beacon into the water without a second thought. Then he cast again. This time he managed to snag the tangled lines beside the almost horizontal woman. But as soon as he began to pull, a fearsome hissing told him that he had managed to puncture the topmost tyre of the side. He pulled the life raft towards the submarine, all too vividly aware that the section immediately beneath the comatose woman was deflating all too rapidly and there was a real - and increasing - danger that she would slide into the water. And from the looks of her, if that happened, she would soon be as dead as the codfish in the galley - if she wasn’t dead already. But finally, as he pulled the last of the line aboard, he felt the weight of the damaged raft come heavily on to the rope. ‘Dumas,’ he called, ‘Faure, see if you can get her free. I’ll hold her steady against the side.’

  It took all of Bob’s strength to do so, for the deflating life raft was a potent sea anchor - as it had been an all too lively kite. The collapsing vessel pulled against the forward motion and the steady turn of the submarine, almost pulling Bob into the rhythmically heaving water. Dumas and Faure used the netting as the other survivor must have done - but to let them down the side rather than to pull them up in the first instance. Then, as the first lieutenant really thought his arms were giving out, they had her. Whooping with Gallic victory they pulled her free and hefted her back up the side. ‘You can let the line go now, sir,’ called Faure. ‘We have her safe aboard.’

  Bob was glad to do what he was told, and he hesitated once his hands were empty, stretching his strain-stiffened shoulders as Dumas went down first and Faure lowered the still, corpse-like body down to him. Then Faure himself stepped down into the hatch. He paused there, looking up at the young officer. ‘Well done,’ he said. ‘You have saved two lives today.’

  But just at the moment that Faure paused to congratulate the first officer, the trawls at last wrapped themselves around Quebec's propeller. In an instant, the whirling single screw had gathered all the slack around itself. But the chief, inspecting the Vane servos, was too slow to cut power and disengage the propeller before disaster struck.

  The whole net section slid back as the lines tightened so fatally. The ropes of the net’s weave screamed with tension. Like the blade of a blunt guillotine, the strands round Faure slid inexorably towards the stem. The rope caught him immediately under the rib cage, and there was nothing in his torso but his spine to stop its sudden slide. The edge of the hatch was scarcely sharper - but the force they exerted between them was that of a pair of bolt cutters a thousand times larger than the ones Hudson had just used. Faure let out a kind of whistling wheeze. He didn’t even have time to scream - though the whole of the submarine seemed to be screaming now. His head and shoulders simply leaped upwards as though he were jumping up out of the hatch. But his hips and legs fell down on the unconscious woman below. In between, there was a huge explosion of blood and mangled organs as though the unfortunate submariner had swallowed a live grenade. Bob saw all too much of it, for the net that he was standing on jerked backwards with the rest. He was hurled, face down and puking helplessly, across the deck until he was looking down the hole where Faure’s legs and much of his blood had fallen. But there was a new net shrink-wrapped around the whole hull, taut as a vacuum pack and even stronger than steel across the gape of the hatchway. And, in the instant that he found himself looking down at Dumas’s stark white face, the power and electrics went as the main shaft shattered with the strain and the propeller snapped to a halt. The way came off Quebec at once and she began to settle instantly.

  Something massive fell on to the deck beside the sprawling man, clanged and clattered and rolled away. Out of the comer of his eye he recognized the communications mast beheaded from the top of the conning tower. The thought of it made him think of Faure once again and his stomach heaved helplessly. Something else fell down in exactly the same spot and rolled away in series. The snorkel. The periscope would be next, he thought almost dreamily. Christ, what a total mess this was!

  ‘Shut the hatch, Dumas,’ yelled First Lieutenant Robert Hudson with the kind of bravery that wins posthumous medals. ‘Dumas, for God’s sake shut the hatch!’ And the last thing that he saw before the first wave took him and washed the puke away at least was the crewman obeying his order faster and more efficiently than he had ever done before.

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nbsp; Then the periscope indeed came down on the deck beside him, chopped off by the power of the tightening net, and the brave young officer rolled away from the sinking vessel into the all too immediate sea. He hung there for a moment, terrifyingly aware of the vastness of the ocean in which he was so suddenly so alone. His instinct for self-preservation suggested with almost overwhelming power that he should pull himself back aboard like the first survivor had done.

  That he should clamber up the netting across the deck and up the fin like a kid on a climbing frame until the men trapped aboard worked out a way to bring him in. But his position so close and so low in the water simply emphasized the way Quebec was beginning to sink without power to move her forward and keep her pumps working. The thought of being trapped aboard the net-wrapped, dark and powerless, escape-proof vessel during the next few hours struck him with a shocking physical force, like the attack of a hungry shark. In an instant his imagination leaped back aboard the stricken vessel and foresaw its drawn-out future in a second or two of shocking empathy. He imagined every horror as she slowly settled to the bottom of the abyssal ocean.

  The men and women aboard her would become the centre of a grim race between the leaking water, the freezing temperatures and the thickening air. Would they suffocate or freeze before they drowned? Would his friends and shipmates run mad in the claustrophobic darkness, helpless and far beyond hope of rescue? Would they raid the galley looking for suicidally sharp knives? Would they break open the arms lockers looking for guns? What in God’s name would they do to themselves? What would they do to each other? As discipline, control - humanity, even - leaked away with the last of their hope. The thought of it simply made his blood run cold. A quick, clean death in the upper ocean suddenly seemed almost tempting and he was abruptly torn with bitter regret that he had taken the man and the woman aboard and robbed them of the lesser of two such terrible evils. He let the air out of his lungs and prepared to take the easier option at once.