Sea Leopard

by Craig Thomas

  The deck of the rescue ship heaved, and the light seemed to spill like liquid over the ship's side on to the surface of the water. The whitecaps opened like teeth in a huge black jaw. The sight of the water's distress and power was sudden, making the rescue ship fragile and the helicopter approaching it more insect-like than ever. It was a fly hovering above a motorway, awaiting an encounter with a windscreen.

  The helicopter flicked away, much like a gull caught by a gust of wind, and the pilot's voice was high-pitched, his relieved laughter unreal and forced.

  "Mishka, get away from there! We'll divert to the Kiev and winch them down. You'll never be able to use auto-hover, the deck's pitching too much."

  "Don't worry, Grandad," the voice of Orlov's pilot came back. "Just a temporary hitch. Watch this."

  The words now seemed to Ardenyev to have an empty bravado which he despised and which frightened him. Yet the rescue ship seemed to have settled again, the whitecapped waves to have subsided, slipping back into the shadows beneath the deck of the Karpaty. The MiL began to sidle towards the helipad again. Tiny figures crouched, as if at its approach, ready to secure the helicopter the moment its wheels touched.

  The pilot instructed the Karpaty's captain that he would switch to auto-hover just above the deck, which would allow the helicopter to automatically move with the pitching of the ship, so that the deck would always remain at the same level beneath the MiL. Ardenyev saw his own pilot shaking his head.

  "What's wrong?"

  "What?"

  "I said, what's wrong? You're shaking your head."

  "The deck's pitching and rolling too much, and I think he's out of the limits for auto-hover and height hold." The pilot shrugged. "Perhaps it isn't from where he is. I don't know." He glanced at Ardenyev as if daring him to comment, or inviting personal insult.

  "If there's any real danger, order him to divert — or I will."

  Creeping whiteness appeared at the edges of their canopy, like some cataract or a detached retina beginning to float. The sleet had returned. Ardenyev's pilot increased the beat of the wipers, and they watched, oblivious of everything else, even of attempting to interfere, as the MiL below them banked, levelled, sidled forward, moved above the white dish of the helipad. There was a long moment of stillness, accompanied by the breathy whispering of Ardenyev's pilot: "Go on, go on, my son, go on, go on —"

  The noise irritated and disturbed Ardenyev. The MiL was above the deck now, and lowering towards it. Stillness. A white-knuckled hand at the corner of his eye, whiteness creeping around the canopy, flying between them and the garishly-lit scene below. The navigation lights of the carrier, outlining a huge, safe bulk, in the distance. Ardenyev held his breath. They were going to make it. When they, too, had landed, Orlov would study his face; there'd better be no trace left of anxiety or doubt, or the young man would burst out laughing —

  Dropping slowly like a spider coming down its thread; very slowly. Ardenyev could see himself, years before, watching such a spider in his bedroom, coming slowly down its thread, confident, small, agile, an acrobat. And slowly he had begun to blow upwards, making the spider swing, making it uncertain, vulnerable, that tiny creature who had abseiled from the ceiling with such arrogance. It had crawled, scuttling upside-down, back up its rope of thread, then dropped again with slightly more caution. Blow again. He had blown again.

  The MiL hopped away from the deck as if electrocuted. Then it began to drop slowly, more slowly than before, towards the deck as it once more became level. The glimpse of the whitecaps vanished into the night.

  The spider had scuttled away, dropped again, but its weight now could not deaden or steady the swing of the thread to which it clung. It had been descending from the lampshade, like a small black god climbing out of the sun. Swinging, unable to control the motion.

  Ardenyev's hand touched his throat, feeling for the transmitter switch of his microphone. The spider was swinging across the ceiling above his bed, interestingly, helplessly. The helicopter shifted in a grumble of the wind, and the deck of the Karpaty shifted, too. Pitching towards the MiL, which hopped out of its way, then moved back down, drawn by magnetism, it seemed. The deck steadied. The spider swung across the ceiling, flying the landscape of cracks and damp patches, swinging to almost touch the shadows in the corners of the room. And nearing his face all the time as fear or instinct or helplessness made it pay out more of the rope of thread.

  Six feet. Stillness now. White knuckles, his own fingers dead as he fumbled with the microphone, tried to think what to say, why he was going to speak. Appalled and fascinated. Five feet, four —

  The spider just above his face. Cheeks puffed out, he waited to catch it at the optimum moment, blow it across the bedroom, perhaps at his younger brother's bed and his sleeping form. Cupping his hands round his mouth to direct the breath when he expelled it.

  Three feet, two —

  "Auto-hover — come on, come on —"

  A foot, then two feet, three, four — the deck of the Karpaty pitched again, the lights spilling across the angry sea. Five feet — spin, flick, twist upside-down, turning like a top. The MiL staggered with the blow of the helipad, and then the repeated punching of the wind. The spider flew through the air, into shadow, its rope of thread loose, wafting in the air's current he had disturbed.

  The MiL hung upside-down for a second or more, then drove back towards the port side of the ship, breaking its rotors then its back on the side of the Karpaty, just forward of the helipad. A billow of flame, incandescent and paling the ship's lights, a tiny figure struck like a match falling into the sea, the MiL's wreckage pursuing him into the whitecaps. Flame flickered over the wild water for a second, then the MiL was doused like a torch — and gone.

  Ardenyev came to himself, yelling into his microphone that the pilot should abandon his attempt and divert to the carrier. His words were clipped, orderly, syntactically correct, but he was hoarsely yelling them at the top of his voice. He must have begun shouting even before the MiL crashed.

  "Shut up, shut up —!"

  Ardenyev's mouth remained open, his throat dry and raw. There was nothing. On the pitching deck of the rescue ship, fire-extinguishers were playing over spilled fuel that travelled like lava along the deck and down the side of the ship. Slowly, the flames flickered and disappeared.

  "My God," Ardenyev breathed finally. Teplov was at his shoulder.

  "All right, sir?"

  "No, Viktor, it is not all right," he said in a small voice. "Tell the team that Blue Section have crashed and that we are diverting to the Kiev."

  "Sir." Teplov offered nothing more in reply. Ardenyev was aware of his departure to the passage compartment. Ardenyev looked at the pilot.

  There was a silence in which each man registered the other's pain, and guilt, then the pilot cleared his throat and spoke into his microphone.

  "Express One to Kiev — permission to land."

  "Permission granted." An older voice, senior. A commiseration of rank. The same voice went on to supply velocity and the effect of the sea and wind on the pitch of the Kiev's deck. As he acknowledged, the pilot continually shook his head. Then he looked at Ardenyev.

  "I was right — for fuck's sake, I was right!"

  "We can get down?" The pilot nodded. "Christ —"

  "Express One to Kiev — message received. We're on our way."

  Ardenyev sat in a misery of grief as the MiL increased speed and the Karpaty slipped beneath its belly. He was appalled at the deaths of Orlov and the others, his men, his people, his responsibility. And he was shaken and anguished at the ease with which it had happened and with which he had allowed it to happen. Distance, slowness, lights — it had all become innocuous, something for spectators, cardboard danger. He had meant to issue the order to divert, but he had not. He had not believed it would happen. A child stepping from a pavement, behind a milk-float, crushed like an eggshell by the car it had not seen. But the distance between the front gate and the road is so
small, it cannot signify danger —

  He wiped savagely at his eyes. Through the blur as he blinked, the shadowy bulk of the Kiev drew closer, then lights sprang out on her starboard after-deck. The superstructure bulked beyond these lights. Tiny pinprick men moved on the deck, bent and huddled to display the ominous force of the wind. Ardenyev wiped his eyes again. The pilot and the carrier were in constant contact, as if instruction and counter-instruction, speed, distance, altitude, pitch, wind velocity would all render the collision of the two objects safe.

  Ardenyev felt Orlov and the others in the burning MiL go away and his own fear for himself emerge, invading his stomach and chest and consciousness. The floor of the cabin under his feet was thin, so thin he could sense the buffeting air streaming beneath it, and anticipate the deck of the Kiev rushing up to meet them.

  The MiL drifted towards the Kiev, so like Express Two just before it collided with the Karpaty. The deck did not, to Ardenyev's comprehension, enlarge with proximity. It was a grey strip, angled across the substance of the carrier, all the lower decks between them and the sea.

  The pilot turned to him. "You'll winch down while the chopper's on auto-hover."

  "Can't you land?" There was a strange relief amid the surprise.

  “Yes — but I'm not risking it with you lot on board. You'll winch down. OK?"

  Ardenyev nodded. "We haven't got a winchman on board."

  "Can you do it?"

  "Yes."

  "Get back there and get on with it. I'll clear it with the bridge."

  Ardenyev paused for a moment, and then forced himself out of his seat and climbed over it into the passenger compartment. The imperatives of Dolohov's orders were insinuating themselves again, until he saw the blank, automaton faces of his team. Stunned into emptiness of mind, except where their own fears peered over their shoulders or crawled like indigestion in their stomachs. A sharp pain of fear, a bilious taste in their throats.

  "Viktor, we're winching down. Get the door open." Teplov looked up at him, acknowledging the necessity of the snapped order, resenting it, too. The offices for the dead, their mates, their importance to the operation; all clear in Teplov's eyes. Then he got up and went aft, unlocking the door and sliding it open. The wind howled amongst them as if Teplov had admitted an enemy already triumphing. "Get ready — one at a time." The helicopter lurched, one man getting to his feet was flung back against the fuselage, and his face revealed no pain, only a concentration of fear.

  Ardenyev lifted him to his feet and shuffled him to the door. They clung to the straps, watching the lighted deck beneath them edge closer, shifting as the sea willed. The young man looked into Ardenyev's face, and seemed to discover something he could trust there. A habit of obedience, it might have been. He allowed Ardenyev to slip the winch harness beneath his arms, and to guide him to the open door. His hair was blown back from his white forehead, and his hands gripped the edges of the doorway Ardenyev placed his hand against his back, and nodded to Teplov. The motor of the winch started up, and the man sat down, dangling his legs over the deck. He looked up as it swung away from the chopper, and then suddenly the MiL was moving with the deck, perhaps thirty or forty feet above it, swaying as in a breeze by virtue of the auto-hover matching its movements to the pitch of the carrier's deck.

  "Right, off you go." Ardenyev held the man's shoulders for a moment, and then propelled him through the doorway. He spun on the wire for a moment, then straightened and dropped slowly and smoothly towards the deck. Uniformed and oilskinned men waited in the downdraught, arms reaching up to him. His legs were held, he was lowered like a child or cat from a tree, then Teplov was recalling the winch harness. Ardenyev looked at him, and nodded. "Next."

  Shadrin, the explosives expert, was at his shoulder in a moment, grinning. "Let's get out of this bloody tin box, skipper," he said. There was a shadow in his eyes, but Ardenyev was thankful for the man's attempt at normality. A small re-establishment of cameraderie, teamwork. Sinkingly, Ardenyev realised that when he got them safely aboard the carrier, he had to rebuild them in his own image; an image in which he felt uncomfortable, even treacherous, at that moment.

  He strapped the harness around Shadrin, and slapped him on the shoulder. As Shadrin sat down, then dropped out of the MiL, Ardenyev recollected broiling flames and ignited, spilled fuel and a spider, and prayed that they would locate the British submarine soon. Very soon.

  * * *

  Aerial buoy, Lloyd scribbled on his pad. It rested on the chart table, beneath a dim emergency light. The temperature of the control room seemed higher, and could not be entirely discounted as illusion, which he knew it to be. Silence was humming in his ears.

  We can't, Thurston scrawled in ugly, misshapen capitals, and added two exclamation marks for additional emphasis.

  You were right — we must.

  Lloyd and his first-lieutenant stared at one another. The pads between them on the chart table were like scraps of food each of them envied the other. Thurston was now confirmed in Lloyd's original opinion that they must do nothing more that sit and wait out the vessels that searched for them. Lloyd — his calm eroded by the dead, limping passage of time, the slowness of clocks, and the sense that the forces mobilised against them could not indefinitely go on seeking and not finding — had now succumbed to the desire for action.

  There was an RAF Nimrod above them — twenty, thirty, forty thousand feet it did not matter — on station, not knowing where they were, what condition they were in. MoD had to be told they needed rescuing, otherwise the Russians would inevitably get to them first. Lloyd was utterly convinced that the Russians wanted "Leopard". He could not envisage how they intended obtaining it, or conceive the recklessness that must have led them to this course of action, but he understood their objective. MoD had to be told; there was no time to be lost.

  He scribbled again on a fresh sheet of the pad. It's an order. A helpless, obedient malevolence crossed Thurston's features for a moment, then it was gone. His face was blank of all expression as he nodded his acquiescence.

  They crossed silently to the bank of sonar screens. Two only in closest proximity, the other submarines further off, nudging their sensors into other corners of the box in which they had contained the Proteus. Lloyd read off distance and bearing. Both of the nearest submarines were, for the moment, moving away from the ledge on which they rested. Lloyd glanced at Thurston, and whispered: "Now."

  Thurston moved away, and Lloyd found the control room crew, almost every one of them, and Carr the navigator, looking in his direction. He nodded meaningfully, miming the sending up of the aerial buoy. Thurston, at the encoding console, gave the thumbs up — temperature of the control room suddenly jumping — and his hands played over the bank of switches which would release and direct the aerial buoy to the surface. Its journey would take it perhaps a whole minute. Depth figures unreeled on a tiny display unit near Thurston's hand.

  Breathing. Ragged, stifled, louder. The control room was full of nervous men trying to control their breathing. Lloyd, his arm draped around the periscope in the centre of the control room, felt hotter, less sure, supremely aware of the aerial buoy bobbing up through the layers of water to the surface.

  A small object, a tiny pinprick. Capable of receiving and bouncing back a sonar signal. Something solid that betrayed their location. A flare they had sent up — we're over here, can't you see us?

  Lloyd clamped down on the thought, and crossed to Thurston. He gestured for the first-lieutenant's pad and then wrote quickly, in block letters, the message he wished encoded and transmitted to the Nimrod. Thurston nodded reluctantly when he read it, and turned in his chair. The console operator beside him began typing at the keyboard, and the code-of-the-day card was automatically fed in. The operator added the transmission instructions — high-speed, frequency-agile. Lloyd watched the depth figures unreeling near Thurston's elbow. The aerial buoy was still twenty fathoms from the surface, almost twenty seconds still to run until it bobbed
up into the waves.

  Sweating, now. Cold sweat, surprising in the heat of the control room. Lloyd tried to control it, to calm his body. Ten fathoms. Nine —

  Someone clearing his throat, the noise of someone else scratching the cotton of his shirt. Six fathoms, five, four. Almost a minute since they had released the aerial buoy. Three fathoms.

  Lloyd broke away from the encoding console and crossed to the passive sonars. Pinpricks, distances, bearings. Still moving away. One moving back, one moving back —

  Bearing green nine-five, almost amidships, range two thousand yards. Speed eleven point two five knots. Lloyd looked over his shoulder. Thurston saw him, raised his thumb. The aerial buoy was transmitting the message, a split-second blurt of sound, repeated and repeated. They would have to repeat at least fifty times to be anywhere near certain their message had been picked up by the Nimrod. Ten seconds, no more.

  Speed twelve point three knots, bearing unchanged, range closing. Lloyd stared in disbelief. Twelve point seven knots and rising. Dead amidships, a Russian submarine. The buoy, or the message, untranslatable but audible to the Russians, had pinpointed them. Lloyd waggled his hand at Thurston, and the first-lieutenant ceased the transmission and began recalling the aerial buoy.

  Thirteen point six knots. Closing.

  Lloyd crossed to Thurston, and indicated in savage mime that he must release the buoy, a chopping motion of his hand, again and again. Thurston paused for a moment, then his hands flickered over the console's keyboard. The figures near his knuckles on the digital read-out slowed, then stopped. The buoy was gone, up to the surface again where it would be swept away from their position by the current. Lloyd wiped his forehead with his handkerchief in undisguised relief, not even beginning to think that they had now only the back-up aerial buoy.

  He hurried back to the sonars. Speed fifteen point nine knots, bearing unchanged, closing amidships. Range little more than a thousand yards. He realised he had been standing mopping his brow for almost a minute after they released the buoy. Speed fifteen point seven, fifteen point five.