Blue Blood

by Peter Tonkin

  Robin’s decision to join the team was by no means as casual or motiveless as it seemed to Pellier. It was, in fact, dictated by one of the strongest motives generally recognized: it was dictated by love. Hunter was asleep now, exhausted, shocked and sedated. There was nothing more she could do to help Doc Watson. And the little infirmary was depressing - filled with two and a half corpses as well as the wounded man, who, even drugged and comatose, was facing in his dreams the destruction of his most treasured ambitions. And in any case, she had become aware - for the news had gone through the vessel like wildfire - that Bob Hudson was up on the foredeck trying to close the escape hatch in question. And he had this big guy with an English accent with him whose name the captain somehow knew. Robin was sure she knew it too, though the accuracy of the scuttlebutt, like the availability of the power, was less than a hundred per cent.

  Robin had nothing in mind more fully formed than a certainty that if she wanted to talk to her husband before tomorrow, then she should at least put herself somewhere she might have the opportunity. For whether he closed the hatch or not, he was not likely to stay aboard Quebec for very much longer. It was now, in fact, or never. And she suddenly discovered that, after the far too numerous near-death experiences of the day, she did want to hear the reassuring grumble of his voice and she didn’t want to wait.

  There were six of them, therefore, who approached the bulkhead door beside the heads. They were crowded into a short corridor with another big bulkhead door behind them. Pellier’s team were more punctilious than Hunter’s had been so all the doors were closed and secured after them as they proceeded. The door on their right leading away into the heads was an ordinary one made of wood veneer on a hollow frame such as might be found in any modem house. If things got out of control here when the metal door into the weapons section opened, it was likely to fail, burst open and allow the room to be flooded. Pellier ordered one of his men to check if there was anyone in there, therefore. The crewman just popped his head round the door and called, ‘Anyone in here?’

  There was no answer, so he shrugged and closed the door again. So Gupta’s body remained undiscovered for the time being. And indeed, it would have remained so for some considerable time longer had not Robin had an idea. ‘Look, Lieutenant,’ she said suddenly, ‘I don’t want to tell you your job, but you’re just about to open a doorway into an area that may be flooded to some depth and here you have the one area conveniently to hand where water is not only expected, but is designed to drain safely away. Even the deck is extra strengthened and waterproofed in case the showers overflow. Instead of closing the door into the heads, wouldn’t it be a good idea to try and get any water coming out of weapons storage into here, so some of it at least can go safely down the shower drains?’

  Pellier shrugged in a way that betrayed his French ancestry even more clearly than his name. ‘Sounds like a plan,’ he said, rudely and almost dismissively. ‘Let’s go for it. We don’t have time for a long debate in any case.’ And so they proceeded, as Robin thought wryly, Poor love, he’s only so rude because I challenged his leadership. And his manhood.

  The British design team who had conceived these boats in the late 1980s had faced a bit of a quandary with this bulkhead door. On the one hand, there was a temptation to go for safety and put a strengthened glass window high in it, the same as in the other doors overlooking hatch areas - where safety after all should be the highest priority. But this hatch was in weapons storage and the bulkhead door would overlook that space. And here, of course, security was the highest priority. Even more important than safety.

  The result of this was that Pellier, hesitating with his hands out of his pockets and on the bulkhead door-opening mechanism, had before him only a metre and a half or so of blank white-painted metal, heavily bolted and massively hinged. It would open outwards when released, and, for all that it was notorious for the unforgiving stiffness of the hinges, that was at least partly due to the simple weight of the door. Weight which, if released into motion by the power of a roomful of water behind it, was likely to squash the man who opened it like a fly.

  ‘What I propose is this,’ decided the young lieutenant after a moment of thought narrowly observed by the men who formed his team. ‘Captain Mariner and Leading Seaman Li will take charge of the door into the heads and showers. You will open it outward and angle it as best you can to channel it into the room and along to the shower stalls.’ He nodded decisively, as though he and he alone had thought of this. ‘The rest of you men will position yourselves with me, and push with all your strength against the door as I release the mechanism. Once it is unlocked, we will be able to ease back and release any weight of water in a controlled manner. Then, as soon as possible, two of us will release control of the door to the others and go into the weapons-stowage area where we will aid the men on deck in securing the hatch. In the meantime the door will be closed behind us until everything is secure and we are able to proceed to drain the area with more safety and control. Is that clear?’

  The little command looked at each other and shrugged. ‘Clear,’ said one of them speaking for all, but he didn’t sound entirely convinced.

  ‘Sounds like a plan,’ said Leading Seaman Li, rudely, almost dismissively. He was very much on Robin’s side. Possessively so after his entrancement looking up at her all- too-tight white overall, and the way in which she contrived to fill it. But deep within the powerful little seaman the simple lust resulting from a long, lonely voyage was germinating into a genuine regard.

  Robin too was less than convinced. It might well take all four of them to control the door. And, if that was so, then every inch wider they had to open it would make things worse. Better by far for her and Li to position the door into the showers as Pellier had ordered - then squeeze their slighter frames through the smallest possible gap beside the bulkhead door then go and close the hatch themselves.

  ‘Mr Li, do you know how the hatch mechanism works?’ she asked, sotto voce as they went to the wooden door and swung it wide.

  ‘Naturally, Captain. I am as reluctant to drown as any man aboard,’ he answered equally quietly. ‘Therefore I know how all the safety features work.’

  ‘Right, men,’ ordered Pellier, oblivious to the muttered conversation at his back. ‘Prepare to take the strain.’ Four brawny shoulders pressed against the metal like a trainee rugby scrum.

  ‘Would you follow me into weapons storage and close the hatch there if need be?’ Robin persisted.

  And Leading Seaman Li was blessed with a sudden vision of how she would look with her overalls not only breathtakingly tight, but transparently wet into the bargain. ‘Of course, Captain,’ he answered at once. Motivated by simple lust, if not quite love as yet, as Li’s burgeoning regard and respect for the woman as a companion and leader was swept under in a flood of testosterone.

  ‘Releasing the mechanism... NOW!’ said Pellier, still oblivious to Robin’s careful plans. And, thankfully, like the rest of them, unaware of Li’s erotic fantasies.

  The bulkhead door slammed back five centimetres before the struggling quartet managed to bring it under any sort of control. Water cascaded out from shoulder height, and thundered across the little corridor. It swirled against the wooden doorway held open by Robin and Li standing shoulder by shoulder, and swept obediently past the cubicles of the heads and away into the shower stalls, hissing and foaming as it went. Tugging at Gupta’s ankles, and beginning the process that would upset the precarious balance of his corpse upon the toilet seat.

  ‘Jesus!’ hissed Pellier shocked by the weight and power of the monster he had just unleashed, hunching down to push back against the relentless pressure of the door with all his might. ‘What the f…’

  But Pellier never finished the word. For four white fingers suddenly came reaching out around the edge of the door exactly level with his face. Four white fingers closed into claws with square-cut nails gleaming like shards of glass. Reaching out at Pellier’s face as though trying
to claw at his staring eyes. It was so sudden, so utterly unlooked-for, that the lieutenant sprang back with a shout of surprise and fear. The only explanation available to his shocked imagination was that the madman must be in there after all and wildly trying to claw his way out of the room. The door slammed open fifteen centimetres more at once; the cascade of water grew in volume exponentially and, like some strange white spider floating in the topmost wave of it, came Leif Hunter’s missing hand.

  With all the rest, it swept past the shaking door and into the shower stalls. Here it actually grabbed at the knees of Gupta’s sagging body before it swept on into the nearest shower stall where it slid sedately down the inside slope of the whirlpool forming there, caught on the grate at the bottom and remained there through the rest of the incident.

  But the water from weapons storage was out of control now - for the moment at least. Even with Pellier, shamefacedly back in position, the depth of the flood round the feet of himself and his men made it almost impossible for them to keep firm footholds. And without that, their pressure on the door failed even further. The door swung relentlessly wider and it became all too obvious even to Pellier that he could only get his men into the room and over to the leaking escape hatch if he let the door go altogether - and risked whatever consequences this might bring. Something he was clearly - and wisely - hesitant to do.

  Robin tapped Li on the shoulder and waded forward. The water was at waist height now, so much of it had been released. The force was still considerable, but she could move against it. It was certainly strong enough to hold the flimsy thing of veneer and cardboard open as it swirled towards the showers and away down the drains. At the bulkhead door itself, she simply leaped up and in without hesitation, diving over the power of the out-rush. Completely unconscious of how revealing the soaking and transparent cotton of her overall had become. Particularly as the overall was actually over nothing - except her otherwise unclothed body. And Li followed her, eyes aglow and face fixed in an ecstatic grin.

  With a guttural grunt of sheer physical effort, Pellier and his men began to force the door closed behind them.

  Weapons storage was a large space fortunately empty at present, for it should have contained the sub’s full cargo of torpedoes. Under the pallid light, however, it revealed nothing but empty racks sitting like reefs half in and half out of the flood. And falling from the deck-head up above them a torrent that would have done credit to the fiercest tropical downpour. Side by side, Robin and Li splash-waded across the room, still up to their waists in water. The effort required to move through the current was considerable - but it eased almost magically when the door closed behind them with a disturbingly final clang. The rungs leading up the wall and into the throat of the escape hatch itself were not too distant, and Robin filled her mind as she heaved herself across towards them with a simple set of calculations. If she wanted a word with Richard, she would have to go up the ladder first for she would have to be closest to the hatch. But she didn’t really know how best to close it. So in actual fact Seaman Li should go up there first. He should be working on closing the hatch while she came up close behind him and tried to talk to Richard over the sound of the water - which she now realized would be very noisy indeed.

  It was the noise that decided her in the end, making her mind up just as she reached the bottom rung. If she did allow Li to go up first then she could never really hope to talk to Richard. They would never be able to hear each other - she under that relentless roaring downpour and he above a layer of thick green water. She had an instantaneous cartoon-vision of her words coming up to him in bubbles, bursting into communication as they popped in the cold night air. The vision served to take her up the white rungs until her face was as close to the hatch as she dared put it. She felt through some kind of empathy rather than through any of her actual senses that Li was swarming up the ladder immediately after her. And then, with shocking vividness, after a moment of hesitation, she felt him actually clambering over her to reach the hatch mechanism.

  ‘Richard!’ she screamed in a kind of panic, suddenly all too well aware that Li was planning to close the hatch as quickly as he could. Which was exactly what she should be doing herself, of course. ‘Richard! It’s Robin!’

  As Robin’s quarterdeck voice boomed around the throat of the escape shaft, the downpour seemed to ease. Outside, the sub, another wave was passing and the trough behind it promised to uncover the hatch altogether for an instant. So that Richard, still kneeling with his numb hands fastened on the exterior section of the mechanism, beginning to slip back into the almost self-pitying train of thought as to how life would be without her, heard her voice quite clearly. Disembodied, seeming to come from nowhere and everywhere. As though she were already dead and haunting him.

  ‘Robin!’ He glanced around, utterly disorientated. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Under the hatch, you great fool. Where else?’

  ‘My God! How could they let you ...’

  ‘They couldn’t stop me, Richard. I’m like a force of nature!’

  ‘Too bloody right!’ He had called her something like that often enough before. Her buoyant confidence filled him like a drug. ‘How are you, darling?’

  ‘Alive. And that’s saying quite a lot after a day like the one we’ve just had! How are you?’

  ‘Fine now. I was a bit worried earlier...’

  ‘So I should bloody hope!’

  ‘But I’m fine now. Big wave coming. We ought to get this hatch cover closed. I love you!’ He called the last words down to her as the next wave swept in. It must have been the last in a series of seven. It was certainly big enough. It crested at chest level and completed the destruction of the last dry clothing under his supposedly waterproof outfit.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ shouted Bob at his shoulder.

  Richard nodded grimly, thinking the lieutenant was talking about the wave, which had come very close to sweeping them both overboard.

  ‘That is some kind of woman!’ continued the submariner unexpectedly. ‘After all she’s been through today she still comes back for a goodnight chat. Jesus! If we could get this hatchway up you’d likely get a goodnight kiss!’ He grunted as he felt the hatch begin to move. And Richard suddenly felt a really painful stab of regret that it was swinging closed at last. He heard her calling once again, like a forsaken mermaid out of the depths. Then the hatch was closed tight and the wave was gone and the job was done.

  ‘Jesus!’ concluded Bob Hudson, babbling because of the strain and the excitement as much as anything else, his eyes bright in the arc light seeming to peer into Richard’s very soul. ‘I think you’d have done it, wouldn’t you? You’d have opened the hatch if she had asked you and drowned the whole damn lot of them for one last kiss.’

  ‘The things we do for love, eh?’ said Richard, pulling himself upright without either a yea or a nay. ‘The things we do for love.’

  Which was almost - if not quite exactly - what Seaman Li was thinking some three metres below Richard, as he looked lingeringly up at Robin while she climbed wearily down the escape hatch ladder towards his lustfully worshipping gaze.

  Eighteen

  Damage

  Richard greeted the new dawn by coming up on Sissy’s deck like something out of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea. He was kitted out in a drysuit and compressed-air breather, one of a team of three including the chief that Tom was leading down to assess the damage to the submarine’s hull. To be fair, Richard had not been first choice to take the third suit but after his all too brief talk with Robin last night he was burning to get involved in some practical part of her rescue - and in no mood to take no for an answer. And even Tom had to admit that Richard was so widely experienced in maritime disasters that he was more likely than not to come up with some useful ideas. Useful in terms of focusing wiser minds as they argued against his naivety at the least. If they were lucky he might even come up with something out of left field - something so outrageous or so
childishly obvious that no one else had thought of it.

  The tow had seemed to have settled well during a short night made shorter still by a series of negotiations and discussions, face to face and over the radio. Nothing definitive had been agreed - it seemed that nothing much could be agreed until Mark gave a full report to Halifax and got some direct orders from Admiral Pike. And even Pike, suspected Richard shrewdly, would have masters to answer to in the Canadian Treasury Department or the Naval Paymaster General’s Office if nowhere else. And in these days of twenty-four-hour media and knee-jerk politics where reputations could be made or marred in a sound-bite, there was always somewhere else. Sissy’s last job, for instance, an apparently simple mission that attempted to stop a burning tanker drifting on to an isolated rocky shore, had ended up splashed across the news worldwide with half the politicians in the European Union clawing to get involved, especially in front of the cameras, in awesomely uninformed comment and all too eager opinion-touting if in nothing actually practical or helpful.

  But all the negotiations - even a lengthy and utterly esoteric discussion between Richard and Tom about the salinity and specific gravity of Arctic water as opposed to tropical - came to nothing in the face of one overwhelming fact. The sub was simply refusing to sit on the surface of the sea. Even with her pumps working - if only at twenty per cent - and even with the tow fully under way and proceeding towards Cape Farewell with all the speed reasonable in the circumstances, the long hull sat stubbornly fifty centimetres or so beneath even the troughs of the waves.

  So, even if they could cut the nets away from above the escape hatches, it remained unthinkable that they should open them and try to get anyone out. Last night’s adventure with the forward escape hatch had established that if nothing else. The first thing they were going to do, therefore, was to assess whether there was any chance of repairing the damage to the bows from outside the hull.