by Craig Thomas
He heard Eastoe's voice tinnily in the headphones resting around his neck. He placed the set over his head. The microphone bobbed in front of his mouth.
"Yes, Squadron Leader?" He had not meant his voice to sound so waspish and dismissive.
"Mr Aubrey. We're out of range again. I can try to get back, but I won't be able to hold station for very much longer. I can give you a couple of minutes, perhaps."
Aubrey wanted to rage at the pilot, but he acknowledged the weariness in the man's voice. The MiGs — there was one on the port wing again, turning silver in the beginning of the day — were making patterned flying impossible. Slowly, inexorably, the Nimrod was being shepherded away from the Soviet border.
"Do what you can, Squadron Leader. We're in your hands."
"Very well, Mr Aubrey. I'll give you as long as I can."
The nose of the Nimrod dipped, and then when Eastoe judged he had lost sufficient height, the aircraft banked savagely, rolling away towards the east and the sun. The porthole in the fuselage became a blaze of gold, blinding
Aubrey. He felt as old and thin and stretched as a ghost. Transparent in the sudden light.
"Quin, come on, man — suggest something. We don't have much time."
Quin groaned aloud, and rubbed his face with his hands, washing off his present circumstances. He looked Wearily at Aubrey, and shook his head.
"There is nothing."
"There must be. Some faulty system, something you disagreed with Plessey about, something you" ve always suspected or disliked about the system — anything!" Aubrey spread his hands around the communications console, which hissed at him. It was as if he were about to jettison it as useless cargo. A MiG, gold-bright, popped into his view, just off the port wing. Craning his neck, Aubrey could see the grey sea, the misted coast below them. The MiG ducked beneath the Nimrod, and Aubrey saw it bob like a cork into the starboard porthole opposite him. "Something —please!"
The console crackled. Clark's voice was faint. The coast and sea below moved, and Aubrey could hear the Spey engines more loudly. Eastoe was running for the border with the Soviet Union in a straight, desperate line.
"You must help —"
"For Chrissake, Quin — say something!" Clark bellowed from the receiver.
Quin's face was an agony of doubt.
"Come on, Quin, come on, come on," Aubrey heard himself repeating.
"I can hear shooting!" Clark yelled. Aubrey knew it was a lie, but a clever one. And perhaps it only described events that had already occurred. Lloyd dead, a guard dead, two guards, three?
"Change-over — automatic change-over," Quin murmured.
"What's that?" Clark snapped.
The MiG on the starboard wing — two of them now, one above the other, moving on a course to head off the Nimrod. There was a slim shadow taking and changing shape on the port wing. One of the MiGs was above them, appearing almost as if it might be lowering itself on to the wing, to snap it in half. Eastoe dropped the nose of the Nimrod again, dropping towards the sea and the rocky coast that seemed to lurch up to meet them. The port wing and the starboard window were swept clean for a moment. Aubrey felt Eastoe begin to turn the aircraft. He'd given up. They were on their way back, and out of range.
"The automatic change-over from the main system to the back-up. I argued time and again, with the Admiralty. No trust in completely automatic systems. They insisted —"
"Tell him!"
Quin leant towards the console. "Clark," he began, "you must check the automatic change-over on the power supply from the main system to the back-up. Locate the power supply box…"
Aubrey ceased to listen. The Nimrod had completed its turn, through the brief blinding sunlight on the porthole, and was now heading west once more. Eastoe had dropped the aircraft's speed, but it was a matter of mere minutes until they would no longer be able to talk to Clark.
And, in Pechenga, with whatever outcome, the killing had undoubtedly begun.
One of the MiGs bobbed back into view, off the port wing. The Russian interceptor appeared to be flying a little further off, as if its pilot, too, knew that the game was up.
* * *
Lloyd hesitated for a moment, on the threshold of the bathroom, straddling the body of the guard who had only had time to half-turn before the small Astra, pressed against his side, had exploded twice. Lloyd had had to take him into an embrace, feel the man's final shudder against him, and lower him to the deck. One guard only in the corridor. Lloyd had been surprised at the small, muffled sound the gun had made when pressed into the spare flesh the man was carrying. It was as if the pistol had been fitted with a silencer.
He saw the guard outside the wardroom door at the end of the corridor, and hoped, as he studied the man's movements and saw the Kalashnikov turn in the guard's hands and draw a bead on himself, that Thurston would not blunder into the line of fire out of the cabin next door to his own. Then he prayed his hands would move more swiftly to bring the small pistol up to the level of the guard's trunk.
He could not believe that he would move more quickly than the trained marine, but some realisation that the clock was ticking away precious seconds only for him, came to him as he fired. He had moved inches faster, reaction had been milliseconds quicker, because he had an imperative the Russian did not share. The guard thudded back against the wardroom door, and slid down, feet out, to a sitting position with his head lolling. The pistol now made much more noise, and would have attracted attention.
"Come on, come on!" he yelled, banging on Thurston's door as he passed it. Then he was stooping to retrieve the Kalashnikov, which felt immediately bulky and menacing in his grip. He flung open the wardroom door. Surprised faces, half a dozen of them, mostly unshaven, were grouped around the table above mugs of steaming coffee. Thurston was behind him now. He passed the Astra back to his first-lieutenant. "Get the others out — now!" he snapped, feeling the dangerous, elating adrenalin running wildly through his body.
* * *
Seven twenty-one. Clark had recognised, almost subliminally, the two shots, then the third after a slight delay. He imagined that the same small Astra pistol had made all three reports, but he could not quite believe it, until Lloyd's voice could be heard plainly, coming from the R/T which was clipped to the breast of his immersion suit, ordering his officers to remain in the wardroom until the control room had been recaptured. Then there was the awful, cloth-ripping stutter of the Kalashnikov on automatic — Clark presumed feverishly that it was the one Lloyd had taken from the wardroom guard. It was. Lloyd yelled at Hayter to recover the gun of the man he had just killed. Clark nodded to himself. Lloyd would go on now until he became exhausted or until someone shot him. He was high on escape, even on death.
Clark lifted the lid of the power supply box, as Quin had instructed him. LIFT HERE ONLY. He had undamped the lid, and obeyed its command, stencilled in yellow.
"Clark?"
"Yes. The box is open," he told Quin. Communications were already weakening as the Nimrod moved towards the fringes of reception. Aubrey had told him what was happening, then patched in Eastoe. The pilot did not enjoy admitting his weariness, his loss of nerve, his failure, but he had done so. The Nimrod was shot, finished. It was on its way home. Eastoe had dropped the airspeed as much as he could, but they were gradually moving out of range, taking Quin with his manual, his diagrams and his knowledge with them. He had, at the Nimrod's present speed, no more then five minutes. Seven twenty-two.
"Switch SW-Eight-R should be off." Clark followed Quin's instruction. Lloyd's breathing was audible to him in the confined, lamplit darkness from the R/T against the submarine captain's chest. Running —? Cries, yells —? Come on, Quin —
"Okay."
"Press the yellow button marked PRESS TO TEST. Have you got that?" A faint, weak voice, like a man dying in the next room.
"Okay?"
Firing.
"Lloyd, what's happening?" He knew he should not have called, that it might be fa
tal to distract Lloyd now. Yet the sounds tormented him, made his body writhe with an uncontrollable tension and anxiety.
Firing.
Quin said something he did not catch. He prayed it was only his inattention."… through top… cover?"
"Repeat, please," he requested loudly, holding his breath. Lloyd's breathing roared on his chest like an illness he had contracted.
"… contacts move… clear top…?"
"Repeat, repeat!" Clark shouted, almost as a relief for the hours of whispering and silence he had endured and partly because he was panicking. The irreversible had begun. Lloyd had killed, the officers were armed with two Russian Kalashnikovs and were in the control room of the Proteus. He had begun it — he had. "Repeat. I say again, repeat your message." The words were formal, the voice running out of control.
"Right. Hold them over there — no, get them off my ship, now!" Lloyd's elation, his success, drummed in the cramped space between the two hulls. "Clark?"
"Yes?"
"What's wrong?" Even in his excitement, Lloyd was responsive to tone, to nuance.
"Nothing."
"We have the control room in our hands again."
"Good —" Clark paused. There was a spit of sound, but when the tape had been slowed, there was only the ether, mocking him. A gauzy, sad, distant voice mumbled behind it. Christ, what have I done? "Outside?"
"Thurston's taking a look. I" ve despatched three men, two of them armed, to the control booth for the gates. A couple of minutes now —?" the statement ended as a question. Another spit of sound, Clark's heart pounding as he waited for it to replay more slowly in his earpiece, Quin's voice broken and racked by the interference.
"Can you see… through top… moving?"
Contacts, contacts, he recalled. Can you see the contacts moving through the clear top of the cover?
"Got you!" Then, immediately, he cried, "They're not moving!"
"Clark, what the devil's wrong?"
"I can't —!" Clark cried despairingly. "I don't know what's wrong!"
"For God's sake… " Lloyd breathed. "Oh my God!" Clark stared desperately at the contacts, which remained unmoving. Then he jabbed his finger on the test button again and again.
Spit of sound in his ear. What is wrong? What is the matter?
"Examine the relays," he heard Quin say quite clearly in a calm, detached voice. Then the interference rushed in to fill the small silence after he had spoken.
Relays, relays —
"What do I do?" Lloyd asked peremptorily, a sense of betrayal in his voice.
"Open the fucking gates!" Clark snarled. "You got nowhere else to go!" Relays, relays —
One of them is undamped, one of them is undamped.
"Chief — get the men to their stations, immediately. Engine room?"
"Sir, we're clear down here. "
"Run up electric power. Well done, Chief!"
"Thank you sir."
"Sandy, clear the ship of all Soviet personnel — all of them, mind you."
"One of them is unclamped!" Clark yelled into his throat-mike, as if he expected Quin to be able to hear him in an identical freak reception spot.
"What?" Lloyd asked.
"You do your thing, Lloyd — let me do mine!"
"Is it go?"
"It was go a long time past! Let's get out of here!"
"What about “Leopard”?"
"I'll give you “Leopard”, dammit!"
"What about you? You can't be outside the pressure hull when we dive."
"You worry about your business, I'll worry about mine."
"Very well. Thurston's opening the gates now."
"Get with it."
Faulty fitting, he told himself. The relay, one single fucking relay, lying there on the base of the case. His fingers trembled as he reached down to it, touched it almost reverently, fearfully. His fingers stroked, embraced, lifted it. The vibration caused by the torpedo damage had shaken it out of place, disabling the back-up system, preventing the automatic change-over from working.
There was another spit of sound in his ear, but he ignored the slowed-down, true-speed voice of the storm and the air. Quin was invisible, inaudible somewhere behind it, but he no longer mattered.
Clark pressed home the detached relay, flipped over the retaining clamp, then removed his fingers from it. They came away clammily. The electric motors of the Proteus thrummed through the pressure hull.
His back ached. He groaned with the sudden awareness of it and of his cramped and twisted body and the rivulets of perspiration running down his sides and back.
Lloyd's stream of orders continued, murmuring on his chest like the steady ticking of his heart, slower and calmer and younger then his heart felt.
"Slow astern."
"Slow astern, sir." Thurston's voice was distant, but Clark could still hear it repeating the captain's instructions. They'd got the gates to the pen open, they'd cast off their moorings at bow and stern. How many men had they lost, just doing that?
"Clark?"
"Yes."
"Have you finished?"
"Yes. I hope to God, yes."
"Get back in here — now."
"Aye, aye, sir."
Clark turned, still on his knees. He could hear a siren through the outer hull of the Proteus. "Leopard" had to work —
He turned to look at the back-up system — the grey carapace lay behind it. He tore at the wiring and at the wads of explosive, huddling them into his chest then thrusting them back into the pack in pure elation. Then he lifted the grey metal casing, fitted it, fidgeted in his pocket for the screws, fixed them one at a time, feeling the submarine moving slowly backwards on her batteries, out of the pen. Yes, yes.
Pack, pack — left hand bad. The other could stay. Whatever happened, he would not be coming back. He took hold of the pack, and turned once more to make his way back to the hatch following the wire of his aerial. He shunted the pack and his lamp in front of him, hurrying now, winding through the tree-like stanchions like an obstacle course.
The Proteus lurched forward, as if freed from some constraint.
Clark slipped, and began to slide into the abyss, into the dark. His lamp slid away, wobbling its light back at him for a moment before leaving him in entire darkness, his body weighted by the pack in his right hand — left hand bad — beginning to pursue the fallen lamp. He crooked an arm round one of the stanchion trees, heaving his body into stillness, into a quiver that was devoid of downward movement. He felt sick. He felt exhausted.
"Clark — Clark, where are you, man?"
Clark groaned. He swung the pack until it rested on the level top of the pressure hull, then grabbed the stanchion with his right hand, changing the agonising hold of his crooked arm for a two-handed grip. He heaved at his leaden body, feeling the revolutions of the motors rise in speed. Proteus must be almost out of the pen.
He pulled himself up, aided by scrabbling feet and knees, and lumbered along the top of the pressure hull, reached the hatch and thrust it open. He hefted the explosives through, and let them roll away down the outer hull. Then he clambered after them, closing the hatch and locking it behind him.
The stern of the submarine had already passed into the concrete tunnel leading to the harbour. On her docking prop, Proteus was sliding through the tunnel, out to sea.
He watched as the sail of the submarine slid into the shadow of the tunnel. Above the bellow of the siren, he could hear shooting in the distance, like the pinging of flies against a windscreen. Then he ran crouching along the hull, almost slipping twice, until he reached the aft escape hatch, lifted it, stepped on to the ladder inside the chamber, closed the hatch and locked it. Then he felt his legs go watery and he stumbled to the bottom of the escape chamber, bent double with effort and relief.
"Prepare to dive," he heard Lloyd saying, then: "Clark? Clark, where are you?"
"Inside."
Thank God. Well, does it work?"
"Switch on, and pray."
"You don't sound too hopeful —"
"Switch the damn thing on!" Clark bellowed with rage and relief and tiredness.
* * *
Valery Ardenyev instinctively placed himself in front of Dolohov and Panov. The scene in the pen had no precise focus, nor did it possess a great deal of movement — certainly not sufficient to suggest panic — yet Ardenyev knew what was happening. One guard was firing, the technicians who must have been lining up like an honour guard to await Panov's arrival were shuffling like a herd smelling the first smoke of the grass fire. Also, there was someone clambering up the side of the Proteus's sail, making his way back into the submarine. Ardenyev had the immediate sense that events were already minutes old, even though the white-coated group of figures seemed only now to be reacting to them. Yes. The gates were wide open, and there were two uniformed bodies lying dead on the concrete, alongside the Proteus.
He heard Dolohov say, in a strangled old voice, "No —!", and then he ushered them back through the door by which they had entered the pen, pushing them against the officers who had accompanied them, then had stood deferentially aside so that the three of them might be the first of the party to see the captured British vessel.
"Close the door — give the alarm!" he snapped, then he was pushing through the jostle of technicians towards the submarine.
The Proteus slid away from him. As he passed the huddled bodies he believed he recognised the face of the guard on Lloyd's cabin, the man who had patrolled behind the British officer when he had brought Lloyd lunch and told him about Panov.
He ran faster. The Proteus shuddered against the side of the pen, then was free. The bow was still moving away from him as he raced to overtake it. He could not believe the panic appearance of the breakout. There had to have been help, and hope. Lloyd or someone else had been given a gun. He knew "Leopard" must have been repaired. Lloyd would not have risked lives, and his submarine, without knowing he could rely on the protection of the anti-sonar equipment.