Sea Leopard

by Craig Thomas

  "I got that," Clark snapped, wiping his forehead, then letting his hand stray to his eyes. He rubbed at them. They felt gritty with tiredness and concentration. He squeezed them shut and opened them again. He wanted another perspective. "Hold it, I want to talk to Lloyd again."

  He took the R/T from his pocket, and pressed its call button.

  "Yes?" Lloyd said quietly a moment later. Clark pressed the R/T to his cheek.

  "What's happening?"

  "I" ve just been on my rounds," Lloyd almost chuckled. There was a crackling, electric excitement in the man. He had swung away from the helpless depression of the prisoner. Now he was the schoolboy escapee. "I managed to brief one of my chief petty officers while I was doing it."

  "What about the gates?"

  There's a minimal guard outside, always has been. The repair crew won't be here before eight. The gates can be opened by two men, one to throw the switches, the other to guard him. I'll detail men as soon as we free the wardroom. Then they can smash the switches so the gates can't be closed again."

  "I agree."

  "Clark — can you give me “Leopard”? I can't risk my men and my vessel unless you do."

  "Can you kill the first guard, Lloyd, the one outside your door?" Clark snapped back at him. "Because if you can't, then Proteus goes nowhere!" Clark, in the silence which followed, imagined Lloyd reaching under his pillow for the tiny Astra pistol he had left with him. Everything depended on Lloyd being able to kill the guard outside his cabin, retrieve the man's Kalashnikov, and release his officers from the wardroom along the corridor from his cabin.

  "I — think I can," Lloyd replied eventually. "I'll have to, won't I?"

  "And I have to repair “Leopard”, don't I?"

  "Very well. Rumour has it that Panov, the scientist, is expected at any moment. The technicians on board have been informed to that effect. No later than eight o" clock."

  "It's all coming right down to the wire, uh?" When Lloyd did not reply, Clark merely added, "I'll call you." He replaced the R/T in his pocket. Even as he did so, he heard Aubrey's voice in his ear.

  "Clark, you must begin preparing to abort “Leopard”. It will take you at least thirty to forty minutes to place the charges. You must begin at once."

  "No, dammit!"

  "Clark, do as you are ordered."

  "Mister Quin gave me a job to do — maybe after that."

  "Now!"

  "Not a chance."

  Rapidly, he fitted the cable adaptor to the first of the power lines Quin had designated. Positive. He cursed under, his breath. Then the second. Positive. Then the third. Positive. He sighed loudly, in anger and frustration.

  "Fit the charges, Clark — please begin at once," Aubrey commanded with icy malice.

  * * *

  Ardenyev watched the MiL-8 transport helicopter sag down towards the landing pad. The down-draught, exceeding the wind's force, stirred the dust on the concrete. Behind it, the sky was beginning to lighten, a thin-grey blue streak above the hills, almost illusory beyond the hard white lighting of the helicopter base. Ardenyev glanced at his watch. Seven-ten. The admiral and Panov were almost an hour early. Viktor Teplov — face-saving, loyal Teplov — had picked up the information somewhere that Dolohov was on his way, and revived his officer with coffee and one large vodka, which Ardenyev had felt was like swallowing hot oil. Then he had commandeered a staff car and driver and accompanied Ardenyev to the helicopter base. The MiL-8 hovered like an ungainly wasp, then dropped on to its wheels. Immediately, ducking ground crew placed the chocks against the wheels, even as the noise of the rotors descended through the scale and the rotor dish dissolved from its shimmering, circular form into flashes of darker grey in the rush of air. Then they were individual blades, then the door opened as the rotors sagged into stillness. Dolohov's foot was on the ladder as soon as it was pushed into place for him. He descended with a light, firm step, inheriting a kingdom. Men snapped to attention, saluting. A smaller, more rotund figure in a fur-collared coat stepped more gingerly down behind him. Panov. Dolohov waited for the scientist, then ushered him towards Ardenyev.

  Ardenyev sucked spit from his cheeks and moistened his dry throat. He saluted crisply, then Dolohov extended his hand and shook Ardenyev's warmly.

  "May I introduce Captain Valery Ardenyev," he said, turning to Panov. The scientist appeared intrigued, his face pale, almost tinged with blue, in the cold lighting. He shook Ardenyev's hand limply.

  "Ah — our hero of the Soviet Union," he said with evident irony. Dolohov's face clouded with the insult to Ardenyev.

  "Thank you, Comrade Academician Professor Panov," Ardenyev replied woodenly. He was enjoying fulfilling Panov's prejudices, meeting one of his stereotypes. "It was nothing."

  Dolohov appeared bemused. "Shall we go?" he remarked. "Directly to the submarine pen, I think?"

  "If you please," Panov said primly.

  "This way, Admiral — Professor. The car is waiting."

  "I'm sorry you lost so many men," Dolohov murmured confidentially as they walked towards the car. Panov, who was intended to overhear the remark, appeared at a loss, even embarrassed.

  "So am I, sir — so am I." Teplov came to attention, then opened the rear door of the Zil. Ardenyev smiled wearily. "A ten minute drive, sir, and you'll be able to see her. HMS Proteus, pride of the fleet!"

  Dolohov laughed uproariously, slapping Ardenyev on the back before getting into the car.

  Chapter Fourteen: RUNNING

  Hyde woke, and reacted instantly to the cold air that had insinuated itself into their burrow. It was damp. He knew there was a fog or heavy mist outside, even though he could not see beyond the bush. There was greyness there, which might have been the dawn. He felt his shoulder protest with a sharp pain as he tried to rub his cold arms, and he stifled his groan as he remembered what had roused him. The running feet of deer along the track behind the rifle range, past the bush and the entrance into their hole. He looked immediately at the girl. She was soundly asleep.

  He listened. And tested his shoulder, moving fingers and wrist and elbow and forearm. Slightly better. He touched the crude, dirty bandage. Dry and stiff. He investigated his resources. His body felt small, shrunken, empty and weak. But not leaden, as the previous night. His head felt more solid, too, less like a gathering of threads or misty tendrils. There was some clarity of thought, some speed of comprehension. He would have to do as he was. He was all he had, all they had.

  The hoofbeats of the three or four deer who had fled past their hiding place died away, swallowed by what he was now convinced was a heavy mist. He listened to the silence, slow and thick outside the hole. He stretched his legs carefully, not disturbing the girl, felt the expected cramp, eased it away, rotated his pelvis as well as he could while hunched in a seated position. His back ached. He flexed his fingers once more, aware of the small of his back where the gun had been. Having completed his inventory, he pronounced himself incapable, with a slight smile. Some stubbornness had returned during the few hours" sleep he had had.

  Noises. Slow, regular, cautious footsteps outside. He reached up and pressed his palm flat against the roof of the hole. The sand was damp. He levered himself out of his sitting position, and stepped over the girl's drawn-up knees. Her head rested on her chest, and her blonde hair, dirty and hanging in stiff, greasy tails, was draped like strands of cloth over her knees. He leaned forward, then slid towards the entrance to the hole. The branches of the bush became clear, as if he had focused an inward lens on them, and beyond them the heavy mist was grey and impenetrable. One chance. Don't wake up, darling —

  The figure of a man emerged from the mist, bent low to study the track, the slim, pencil-like barrel of the rifle he carried protruding beyond the bulk of his form. He was little more than a dark shadow in the first light seeping into the mist. Then he saw the bush, and might have been staring into Hyde's eyes, though he registered no sign of having seen him. The gun moved away from his body, and Hyde recognised
it, with a chill of danger and a strange greediness, as a Kalashnikov. Stubby, with a folding steel stock and plastic grip and the curving thirty-round ammunition box beneath the magazine. It was infinitely desirable, and deadly. The small R/T set clipped to the pocket of the man's anorak was similarly desirable and dangerous. Hyde coveted them both.

  He held his breath as he felt one of the girl's feet touch his shin. Don't let her wake up, not now —

  The man moved closer to the bush, the Kalashnikov prodding out in front of his body. Hyde flexed his fingers, keeping his head as close to the lip of the hole as he could, watching the man intently. The girl's foot stirred again, and Hyde prayed she would not make a noise in the last moments of her sleep. He felt her foot shiver. The cold was beginning to wake her. The stubby barrel of the rifle moved among the leafless branches, disturbing them, brushing them to one side. He squashed himself flat against the damp sand. He felt, through her foot, the girl's whole body stir, then he heard her yawn. Immediately the man's head snapped up, alert, cocked on one side as he listened, attempting to gauge the direction of the sound, waiting for its repetition. His eyes glanced over the bank, the rifle's barrel wavered in the bush, pointing above the hole. The girl groaned with stiffness. Hyde reached out, grabbed the stubby rifle, one hand on the barrel the other on the magazine. The man jerked backwards in surprise and defence, and Hyde pushed with his feet and used the man's response to pull him out of the hole and through the bush. He cried out with the sudden, searing pain in his arm and shoulder, but he held on, twisting the barrel of the rifle away from him, rolling down the sand to the track, pulling the man off balance.

  The man almost toppled, then jerked at the rifle. Hyde had to release the grip of his left hand because the pain was so intense, but he had rolled almost to the man's feet. He kicked out, using his grip on the rifle as a pivot, and the man overbalanced as Hyde's shins caught him at the back of the legs. The Russian held on to the rifle, and Hyde felt the heat before he heard the sound of the explosion as a round was fired. Hyde used the rifle like a stick, an old man assisting himself to rise from a deep armchair, and as the man made to turn on to his side and get up, Hyde kicked him in the side of the head. The grip on the Kalashnikov did not loosen. Hyde, enraged and elated, kicked the man once more in the temple, with all the force he could muster. The man rolled away, his head seemingly loose on his shoulders, and lay still. Hyde could see the man's chest pumping. He reached down for the R/T, and a hand grabbed at the rifle again as Hyde held it still by the barrel. The man's eyes were glazed and intent. Hyde staggered away, taking the rifle with him. He had no strength, he should have killed the man with one of the kicks, it was pathetic —

  The man was sitting up. He heard Tricia Quin gasp audibly. He fumbled the rifle until it pointed at the man, who was withdrawing his hand from his anorak and the hand contained a pistol, heavy and black and coming to a bead. Hyde fired, twice. The noise of the shots seemed more efficiently swallowed by the mist than the cries of rooks startled by the gunfire. The man's pistol discharged into the earth, and he twitched like a wired rabbit. Hyde, angry and in haste, moved to the body. He swore. One bullet had passed through the R/T set, smashing it. Tricia Quin's appalled groan was superfluous, irrelevant.

  Hyde knelt by the man's body, searching it quickly with one hand. He had had to lay the rifle down. His left arm was on fire, and useless to him. He hunched it into his side, as if he could protect it or lessen its pain by doing so. He unzipped the anorak. No papers. The man didn't even look Slavic. He could have been anybody. He patted the pockets of the anorak. Yes —

  Triumphantly, he produced a flask of something, and a wrapped package of sandwiches.

  "Food!" he announced. "Bloody food!"

  The girl's face was washed clean of resentment and fear and revulsion. She grabbed the package eagerly. The sandwiches had some kind of sausage in them. She swallowed a lump of bread and sausage greedily, then tried to speak through the food.

  "What —?" was all he heard.

  Hyde looked around him. "Help me get this poor sod into the hole. It might hide him for a bit. Come on — stop stuffing your face, girlie!"

  Tricia put the sandwiches reverently, and with much regret, on the track, roughly rewrapped. He took hold of one arm, she the other, averting her eyes from the man's face, which stared up into the mist in a bolting, surprised way. They dragged the body to the bank, hoisted it — Tricia would not put her shoulder or body beneath the weight of the man — and Hyde with a cry of pain and effort tumbled the body into the hole.

  "His foot," the girl said as Hyde stood trembling from his exertions. Hyde looked up. The man's walking boot was protruding over the lip of the hole.

  "You see to it."

  Reluctantly, the girl reached up, and pushed. The man's knee seemed locked by an instant rigor mortis. The girl obtained a purchase for her feet, and heaved. The foot did not move. She cried with exasperation, and wriggled and thrust until the foot disappeared.

  "Bloody, bloody thing!" There was a crack from inside the hole. She covered her mouth, appalled. She turned accusing eyes on Hyde.

  "We can all be shitty when we try hard," he said, eating one of the sandwiches. Then he added, "Okay, pick the rest of them up — " He thrust the Makarov pistol into his waistband, and hefted the rifle in his good hand. The girl pocketed the sandwiches, looking furtively sidelong at him as she ate a second one. "Come on, then." He looked around him. "Bad luck and good luck. No one's going to find us in this."

  They walked up the track behind the bank. The girl looked guiltily back once, still chewing the last lump of the second sandwich.

  * * *

  Clark ground his teeth in frustration, and clenched his hands into claws again and again as if to rid them of a severe cramp. The sight of what he had done enraged and depressed him. The plastic charges were taped and moulded to the back-up system, lying across the wiring and the circuitry like slugs, the detonator wires like the strands of a net that had dredged up the equipment from beneath the sea. He had done as Aubrey asked — commanded — and then he had requested Quin to set him another task, like an over-eager schoolboy. More power lines, and still nothing.

  "Clark?" For a moment, he was tempted to curse Aubrey aloud. Part of him, however, admitted the correctness of Aubrey's decision.

  "Yes?"

  "It's time for you to rig the main “Leopard” system. Good luck." There was no sense of possible argument or disobedience. Aubrey assumed he would behave like the automaton he was intended to be.

  The bleeper on the R/T in his pocket sounded. He pulled the set out and pressed the transmit button. "Yes?"

  "Clark? I think Panov's about to make an appearance. The technical team are streaming out of the Proteus, lining up like a guard of honour. I" ve just seen them."

  "Where are you?"

  "Hurry, Clark. You do not have much time — " Aubrey said in his ear.

  The officers" bathroom."

  "Your guard?"

  "Clark listen to me —"

  "Outside."

  "Mood?"

  "Pretty sloppy. He's waiting for his relief at eight."

  "Clark, you will abort “Plumber” immediately and proceed to destroy “Leopard”. Do you understand me?"

  "Well?" Lloyd asked with a nervous edge to his voice.

  "Get as close to him as you can, preferably the side of his head or under the jaw, and squeeze the trigger twice."

  "Clark, you will rescind that instruction to Lloyd —"

  "What about “Leopard”?" Lloyd asked.

  "I'll give you “Leopard” in working order!" Clark snapped. "Where is Thurston, where's Hayter?"

  The First-Lieutenant's in the cabin next to mine, Hayter's in the wardroom with the others."

  Then —"

  "Clark —!"

  "Time for Quin to earn his money!" Clark almost shouted, with nerves and relief and the adrenalin that suddenly coursed through his system. "Help me get this fucking back-up workin
g, Quin!"

  "Clark — Clark!"

  "Go or no go?" Lloyd asked.

  "Go — GO! Kill the bastard!"

  "I'll be in touch."

  "Clark — you are insane. You will never get out of Pechenga without “Leopard”. You have not, you cannot repair it. You have just sentenced Commander Lloyd and his crew to imprisonment, possibly even death. You are insane." The last word was hissed in Clark's ear, serpentine and venomous.

  Clark felt a heady, dangerous relief, and a pressing, violent anxiety. "For Chrissake, Quin — help me get this fucking thing to work! Help me!"

  * * *

  Aubrey stared at Quin. He could not believe in what Clark had put in motion, could not apprehend the violent and dangerous half-motives that had prompted him. In its final stage, the Proteus business was escaping him again, running on its own headlong flight unhindered by reason or caution or good sense. In a split-second over which he had. had no control, Clark had made the decision not to abort. Now, everyone would face the consequences of that decision.

  "Quin? Quin?" he snapped at his companion. The scientist tossed his head as if startled from sleep.

  "What?"

  "Can you help him?"

  Quin shrugged. "We" ve tried everything we can. There's nothing wrong —"

  There must be, dammit!""

  "I don't know what it is!" Quin almost wailed.

  Aubrey leaned towards him. "That bloody American has set the seal on this affair, Quin. Lloyd will either kill his guard, or be killed. If the former, then they will kill others, picking up weapons at each death, until they can open the gates and sail Proteus out of Pechenga. Without “Leopard” in an operational condition, they will be a target for every naval unit in the port. I would not wish to assume that the Russians will be prepared to let her sail away scot free! What can you do? Think of something!"

  Quin began flipping through the "Leopard" manual, most of which he had written himself. Aubrey recognised an unseeing, desperate gesture. Quin knew the manual, nothing would come from it. The man's hands were shaking. He had collided with a brute reality. Aubrey shook his head with weariness. Tiredness, the sense of being utterly spent, seemed the only feeling left to him. Clark had reneged on reason, on authority. He could understand how it had happened. The American had simply refused to acknowledge defeat.