December Ultimatum

Home > Other > December Ultimatum > Page 16
December Ultimatum Page 16

by Michael Nicholson


  It was the end of a plot to aggravate, in the most outrageously sensational way, the British oil dilemma and had been masterminded by sophisticated Irishmen in New York who would only have found need to advertise themselves had their attempt succeeded. As it hadn’t they were content to sip their dry Martinis high above Manhattan, just as ready to try something else, just as sensational another time.

  That night the towns and cities of Britain experienced something they had forgotten existed. The Government not only suspended sales of fuel oil for domestic heating, but at the same time also suspended the Clean Air Acts which had banned the use of any but smokeless fuels in built-up areas. So that night people warmed themselves with coal and wood in open grates, and looked out of their windows on the first smogs for more than twenty years.

  ULLSWATER

  ‘Two horses and a saddle’

  Franklin sat in the front passenger seat of the Range Rover driven by the Chief Constable of Cumbria, the administrative county that encompasses the Lake District of northern England. They were travelling along the M6 motorway towards the Penrith turn off that would take them on to the road to Pooley Bridge and Howtown at the eastern end of Lake Ullswater, bordering King Fahd’s estate.

  For an hour he had been listening to the news bulletins over the car radio, reporting the panic that was now sweeping the United States—the same panic that now threatened Britain and Europe. The British Government had reneged on its oil contracts with its North Sea oil embargo. In response, the French President closed French airports to British airliners, the West Germans had begun recalling short-term loans off British banks, and the Belgians were stoning the British Embassy at The Hague. Even an England v. Netherlands football match in Amsterdam was cancelled.

  ‘Your President’s waving the big stick,’ said the Chief Constable. He was a burly man who had outgrown his jacket and Franklin saw that his shirt-cuffs were frayed.

  Franklin nodded back. ‘He reckons that’s just about the most threatening weapon in the Pentagon’s armoury,’ he said.

  ‘Will he invade?’

  ‘He can’t. We just don’t have the capacity. The Russians are already there, all around the Gulf. It would take America two weeks to set up a force big enough to land there and stay.’

  ‘Dangerous then, to issue such an ultimatum.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And frightening. You’re our leaders too, you know.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Franklin. ‘It’s frightening.’

  The Chief Constable looked into his driving mirror. The car in the police convoy behind him was flashing its headlamps.

  ‘They want us to speed up,’ he said.

  He leaned across to thumb down a switch and Franklin could just make out the revolving blue light reflected on the car’s bonnet. There was a quick burst of siren and cars in front of them in the fast outside lane, travelling at the regulation seventy miles an hour, quickly moved left to let them pass by.

  ‘You’ve no doubts about Schneider?’ asked the Chief Constable.

  ‘She’s here.’

  ‘The canister too? It’s fantastic.’

  ‘That’s what Howard said.’

  ‘Howard?’

  ‘Someone I met. One of your people in Dublin.’ Franklin pulled out his cigarettes and the Chief Constable pushed in the lighter button on the dash, but shook his head as Franklin opened the packet to him.

  ‘It took him a day to make someone talk before he got to know about Schneider’s arrival and the canister. I think that one day delay could cost us a lot.’

  ‘Fahd is that important?’ asked the policemen.

  ‘Without him back on his throne, we’re apparently all in trouble.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know myself. It’s an Agency operation, that’s all I know, and it’s moving on a Presidential directive which means it’s big. For whatever reason they want Fahd back we’ve gotta believe it’s a good one.’

  ‘I believe you,’ said the Chief Constable. He paused. Then he said, as if he’d suddenly lost interest. ‘D’you know, I think it’s going to snow again!’

  Franklin could see the mountains of the Lake District ahead, rolling black and white shapes, like sleeping dinosaurs. And touching them, sprawling over them, snow clouds, like dirty grey tablecloths, coming in from the north-east. He had never been this far north of this tiny island before and it struck him, watching the face of the countryside change as the sky changed above it, that there was possibly no other country he had ever visited where the weather could alter the character of the land and its people so rapidly. Britain and the British he had always been told were so constant. He found them both flimsy and volatile.

  He saw the motorway sign and the convoy of police cars turned left towards the motorway junction. An army roadblock was ahead, three Scorpion light tanks and a Scout helicopter were parked on the grass verge. Identities were exchanged.

  ‘I’ve a message for a Mr Franklin, sir.’

  ‘I’m Franklin.’

  The army captain leant forward closer to the car window. ‘It’s from one of our patrols, sir who’ve been scouting along Martindale, that’s on the south-west corner of the Lake, sir, about three miles down the valley. A farm’s been attacked . . . man and his wife shot dead.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘No, sir. We’ve had orders from headquarters to let you know of anything to do with horses.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Two seem to have been taken from the farm, sir. Two horses . . . and a saddle. Nothing else missing.’

  The Chief Constable of Cumbria, already briefed by Franklin on the preposterous possibility and the sudden extraordinary relevance of horses, accelerated away down the winding road between the high hawthorn hedges lined with oaks towards Lake Ullswater.

  She led the horses carefully through the tight gulley, wet from the small waterfall that splashed its way through the crevices and bounced off the boughs of alders, trees that had curled and spread over it forming a ceiling of leaves. The first horse tugged at its halter to drink from a small pool that had collected in the indent of a boulder and Schneider waited until it was satisfied. Then she pulled them further down into the shade and tied their halters to the root of a sapling giving them enough strap to eat.

  She had made it just in time. Snow was beginning to fall, and the clouds were heavy. Within an hour it would be inches deep and every footstep, every hoof mark and rabbit’s paw, even the pattering of woodcock and pheasant, would be seen by a trained tracker. But she had left no tracks and in an hour’s time the snow would be a help. It would muffle sound and hamper the army patrols.

  She held the map towards the late afternoon light and with her finger traced the line she had drawn on it above Martindale church through the stream and up the side of Hallin Fell following the sheep tracks, beyond Sandwick Village still climbing to the Knab. Her finger stopped with the tip of her nail touching a small black square overprinted Howtown. She planned to stand on the top of the mountain looking down to the small estate, certain to see the lights of the house a thousand feet below. And there, as the mountain sloped towards the edge of Ullswater, she would leave the horse with the lead canister strapped to it. There she would cut its hamstrings, there she would set the timing device of the detonator that would explode the soft lead and release the plutonium. And the mountain’s downdraught would take its death rapidly and inevitably to Howtown and the King.

  She had given herself only fifteen minutes to ride the second horse away from the explosion, estimating that the wind off the mountain would be constant and that the flow of radioactivity would not begin to change direction until it had reached the warmer turbulent air of the valley. Even if the lower winds did begin to take it south, she would be ahead of it and outside the contamination area before it could reach her. If she was wrong she would d
ie by her own devices. For this reason alone the small black pistol was in her breast pocket.

  She folded the map and looked up towards the mountains a mile the other side of Martindale. Through the falling snow she could see figures three thousand yards away moving along the skyline, men with back-packs and rifles. And she knew the dead farmer and his wife had been found.

  USS OKINAWA

  ‘Four miles and approaching’

  Captain Hanks stood in his favourite corner of the bridge, forward port side, looking out across the three thousand square yards of flat grey deck. His hands were behind his back, and the small black rubber squash ball turned between the fingers and thumb of his right hand.

  Below him, blue-overalled aircraft handling crews manoeuvred vertical take-off aircraft into neat lines, six of them abreast, guided by marshallers in yellow flight helmets communicating with the hangar below by two-way radios strung across their shoulders. And in the mess rooms below the flight deck, pilots sat drinking coffee and Coke and wondering why on a good-will tour they should suddenly be on standby alert.

  In the gun turrets fore and aft of the bridge, crews sat in their anti-flash masks and green steel helmets deep inside the armour-plated screens and sweated with the weight of their flak-jackets cursing the Captain on his air-conditioned bridge.

  The stub-nosed bow hardly moved. The horizon was steady and the sea, reflecting the day’s last seconds of sunlight, was like a pond, mirror-still. Only the slightest swirl of current at the stern showed that the ship was under power and, except for the movement on the flight deck, the whole vessel could have been asleep and at ease in the twilight. But every man had been at action stations for the past fifteen minutes, and Captain Hanks was not on the bridge to watch the splendour of a mid-Eastern sunset. He was searching the sea for the first sign of the Soviet Seventh Fleet, the silhouettes of the Soviet carrier Minsk and its support ship the Ivan Rogov.

  The Okinawa had not sailed down the southernmost coast of the Persian Gulf as instructed by US Naval Command in the Pentagon. Instead Captain Hanks had made his decision to take his warship at full power up to the Strait of Hormuz, the sea corridor through which all traffic entering and leaving the Gulf must pass by a deep water channel so narrow that a large ship sunk in it would delay passage and effectively block the movement of oil tankers and their vital cargo.

  It was here, now, in the Strait of Hormuz, that Captain Hanks had positioned his carrier, broadside on, to face the oncoming Soviet fleet. He had mounted his own blockade across the only access the Arabian oil states had to their world markets, the only route the tankers could take. With the West’s dependence on Arab oil, the Strait had long become the world’s most vital sea corridor. Only Captain Hanks realized its strategic importance. Or so it seemed to him.

  He had changed into a fresh uniform and stood, feet apart, his left hand holding binoculars, his right gently kneading the small black ball.

  Lieutenant Ginsberg, Gunnery Officer, stood behind him and to one side, watching the ball turn; like the rest of the crew, he knew it was the mood indicator of the man. The ball turned slowly and regularly. Captain Hanks was as still inside as the sea he was scanning.

  Lieutenant Vaduz, Communications Officer, knew it too, but he could not understand why. This was the time for Captain Hanks to be anxious. They had all listened to the President’s speech. Some had been impressed by it. Many more, who remembered similar ultimatums in similar crises, called him a maverick and his speech bullshit. Men who despite their uniforms and their employment aboard a US warship, would not willingly go to war whatever the cause or call, not for oil, not for the President, not for America right or wrong. Lieutenant Vaduz saw the President’s speech as a gambit, bluff, gusty fine platitudes in place of action because action of the kind necessary was not something American Presidents could ever indulge in again. Hadn’t they tried it in Vietnam and failed? Hadn’t they tried it in that fiasco in Cambodia when sixty-five marines died trying to rescue the merchant ship Mayaguez? Hadn’t they tried it sending commandos to rescue American PoWs in Son Tay prison, Hanoi, only to find it empty when they’d arrived? Hadn’t they lost eight Americans and American pride in the Iranian desert? Hadn’t every American foreign initiative, big and small, failed this generation? Wasn’t that why the United States had been ridiculed in Cuba and humiliated in Iran?

  And Lieutenant Vaduz knew that, even if America had lost its clout, even if it was a tottering, pitiful giant, Captain Hanks was not the man to put it right. Everyone could see the double deal. Strong words from the President out of Washington, and then a signal from the Pentagon to sail away from trouble. Captain Hanks had defied it, but how many of his men would in turn now defy him if he pressed confrontation with the Soviet fleet up front?

  Lieutenant Vaduz watched his Captain’s face in profile, watched for the jaw muscles to begin their flexing in and out, waited for the grating of his back teeth, and for the skin across his temples to tighten and glisten with sweat and the right hand to begin its violent convulsion with the ball. But there was none of it. The Captain pulled the binoculars to his eyes, using both hands, and Lieutenant Vaduz saw that he had placed the black rubber ball on the rack that held the fire extinguishers, abandoned.

  ‘Four miles. And approaching.’ The voice came up through the console speaker from Radar below.

  Lieutenant Vaduz leant forward and pressed the reply switch.

  ‘Thank you. Radar. We should have them visual any moment now.’

  ‘I already have them visual, Mr Vaduz, 045 using the centre line as zero.’ The Captain’s voice was suddenly higher pitched than normal. Vaduz and Ginsberg followed the unfamiliar coordinates, using their binoculars to trace the line across the starboard corner of the carrier’s flight deck. And then they too saw them, blurred shapes in the dusk but, to sea-eyes, unmistakable.

  ‘The Minsk is second in line, sir,’ said Lieutenant Ginsberg. ‘The Ivan Rogov seems some distance back from her. A mile, maybe less.’

  ‘Radar sir, three miles bearing 110 degrees, speed 14 knots and slowing.’

  ‘110 and 14, slowing,’ Lieutenant Vaduz repeated back. ‘Now they’ve got us too,’ said Ginsberg.

  ‘They have had us for some time, Mr Ginsberg,’ said Captain Hanks, in the same distant and high-pitched voice. ‘For as long as I have had them. Ivan Rogov has distanced herself from the Minsk. She began turning away five minutes ago and eight—possibly nine—ships have followed. They’ve split. The Minsk and her battle group sailing to us, the others are moving port. There’s some land that way, I believe?’

  ‘The Malcolm Inlet, sir,’ Lieutenant Ginsberg replied. ‘Navigational for ten miles, but too shallow for anything large. There’s nothing for them there.’

  Captain Hanks nodded his head. ‘I know their game. I know exactly their game. They’ve seen us broadside and now they want us to turn. They think I’m worried at having all my guns on one side.’

  He adjusted the left-hand sight of his binoculars.

  ‘We’ll maintain our position and our tactic. Keep moving slowly fore and aft across the deep-water channel. The bastards can’t pass us and they know it.’

  Lieutenant Ginsberg stepped forward. ‘We have to let them pass, sir. These are territorial waters shared by Iran and Oman and we’re breaking their laws. They have the right of innocent passage, sir.’

  Captain Hanks adjusted the right sight-piece of his binoculars and said nothing.

  ‘Sir,’ said Lieutenant Vaduz, ‘If we remain in this position, it can be construed as a hostile act.’

  ‘You can bet on it, boy,’ replied Captain Hanks softly. ‘You can safely bet it’ll be exactly so construed. Innocent passage my ass!’

  The door to the bridge opened and Lieutenant Commander Daniels, the Okinawa’s second-in-command, came in holding a single sheet of paper. The noise and bustle from the flight deck came in with him.
/>
  ‘Top priority—Washington—sir. From Admiral Holliwell himself.’

  ‘Read it out,’ said Captain Hanks, keeping the glasses to his eyes, as Radar interrupted:

  ‘Two miles. Sonar Detection indicating they’ve reversed engines. Main vessels still on 110 degrees, other battle group three miles west on 127.’

  ‘So,’ said the Captain, ‘they’ve stopped to ask the Kremlin what to do next.’

  ‘Admiral Holliwell, sir,’ said Commander Daniels, waving the signal at the Captain’s back. ‘He’s ordered us to turn about.’ He read from the signal. ‘You are to avoid any confrontation. Utmost care—do not escalate situation— move away from Soviet fleet. Acknowledge receipt immediately.’

  ‘Is that all?’ asked Captain Hanks.

  ‘That’s all, sir.’

  ‘What’s the security prefix?’

  ‘Beg pardon, sir?’

  ‘You say it’s from the Admiral? Pentagon? You say it’s priority. Satellite communication. And uncoded?’

  ‘Yessir.’

  ‘Then there has to be a security prefix to match ours. You know that, Mr Daniels.’

  ‘No, sir, not necessarily,’ said Daniels.

  ‘What d’you mean—not necessarily? Goddammit, is there a standard naval security procedure or isn’t there? Are we going to have a debate on the bridge with Russian warships two miles off? Let me remind you this is suddenly an operational area and I’m confronting two of the cleverest warships of any navy of any sea and you tell me that I have to obey an uncoded order of this nature that has been sent over SATCOM for anyone to pick up? You’re telling me the Admiral of the United States Navy sends such a thing with no security ident?’ He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and spat phlegm into it.

 

‹ Prev