Understrike

by John Gardner

  “And what the hell’s this got to do with Playboy? Here and now what’s it got to do with it?” Boysie cut in.

  “Ah!” Braddock-Fairchild looked happy. “Just so happens that today’s the day. Prime Minister’s flying with Lund to meet the President now. This very moment. Boeing 707 chartered from BOAC. Not direct London-New York or London-Washington either. Coming over the Pole to San Francisco. President and Minister of Defence flew down quietly last night. Big get-together. Large nuclear brain conference due in San Jose this afternoon. Point is, that the PM’s aircraft passes only 400 miles north of us. Very soon. Few minutes. Irreparable loss to the West. Great statesman and very great scientist. Priceless brace to bag in one afternoon, what?”

  A gut-somersault for Boysie. “And you’re going to…?”

  “Yes. Trepholite fitted with ICD Homer will home on the aircraft.” The Commander seemed almost complacent.

  “But how…?”

  “Have friends. Told you we have a man very close; Homer’s quite small you know. Planted nicely in the baggage before take-off. Set to number five. If you were able to come over here you’d see I’ve set our Homer to number five. Switched on preselected count-down. Nothing’ll stop it now. Prime Minister’s aeroplane’ll be in range any minute. Little red light’ll start blinking. Then whoosh! Won’t stand a chance.”

  Boysie was doing some mental overtime, urging brain and body into action. But he seemed to be helpless. The repercussions of this could be enormous. Lund’s death might well, within a month or so, drastically affect the delicate balance of power. He would certainly be a disastrous loss. Apart from that, there was the aspect of the Prime Minister’s mode of death. Flying to a secret meeting with the President of the United States and killed by a stray missile fired from an American submarine. Public feeling would run high. The whole business could cause a serious rift in the Anglo-American alliance, and a drag on the nuclear advance.

  “But what about you? How ...?”

  “Easy enough. Playboy has a scuttling mechanism. Blow the thing to tiny pieces. Call it the Omega Switch. Very fond of names like that—the Americans. Omega Switch. Had to rifle O’Hara’s body for the key, but it’s in there.” He pointed to a small drawer which had been pulled out from the under-side of the desk, between the Captain’s position and that which should have been occupied by the Ballistics Officer.

  “Time-fuse and switch in there. When Trepholite leaves us I set time-fuse to Omega minus thirty minutes. Press down on the switch. Put on my P50 mask. Into the escape tube and away.”

  “They’ll catch up with you. You can’t possibly ...”

  “Most of the contingencies’ve been taken care of. Originally had some problems because Lund and the PM weren’t going to fly until four hours later. Couldn’t afford to hang around in this state. At the mercy of the weather as well. Still. Gone very smoothly really. Not all clockwork. You for instance. Told Gorilka I didn’t like the arrangements with Solev. Khavichev’s idea, of course; felt he had to use Solev once they found you were coming down here. Idea was that Solev could take over if I got knocked out. Suppose Gorilka expected me to brief you. Khavichev’s slipping though, goes at things like a bull at a gate. That’s what they say about Khavichev—between you and me—has a tendency to waste men. Still, suppose if you were going to be in Playboy anyway, when the balloon went up, he would never have had any opportunity to use Solev. Pity Gorilka bungled that one.” He looked at his watch again. Getting nervous? Boysie wondered.

  Then, without warning, high up on the instrument panel, the little red light began to blink rapidly. The corresponding Homers had made contact. In sixty seconds or less, Trepholite would be streaking towards the Boeing 707 in which the Prime Minister of Great Britain was, at that moment, engrossed in reading a spy thriller—about an amateur secret agent: a solicitor with a passion for antique traction engines. Behind him, a small, grey-faced little man was half-way through Kierkegaard’s Enten-Eller. He seemed to be enjoying it.

  *

  Braddock-Fairchild was off guard. As the red light began to wink its warning, so his head automatically turned towards the control panel. This was Boysie’s last chance. He jerked his knees upwards, and coiled his body for the spring. A wide sheet of pain sliced into his shoulder. Then, Braddock-Fairchild was whirling round on the swivel chair, the automatic pistol, an extension of his hand, prodding forward. Confused, Boysie saw that the Commander was not turning towards him, but swinging to his right.

  There were two shots—great bursting thunderclaps echoing up the metal walls—followed by the whang of a richochet. Then another shot. On his feet now, propelled forward by the initial effort of his leap. Boysie saw Braddock-Fairchild’s eyes widen in that momentous change from life to death. The pistol slipped from him and fell with a scraping clatter, bouncing against the legs of the dead Ballistics Officer. Then, the Commander pitched forward over the tangle of bodies that lay between Boysie and the control desk.

  Boysie stumbled over the communal pile of arms and legs, still making for the desk. From behind, to his right, came a long shivering moan of pain. He reached the control desk, and glanced round. The Electronics Officer, whom Boysie had so violently slugged in the melee after O’Hara’s collapse, was propped on one arm, Boysie’s Makarov pistol—Braddock-Fairchild’s last enemy—in his free hand.

  The red light was still winking. It seemed to be going faster —as though heading for terminal action. Boysie hesitated before doing the only thing that made sense to his perplexed mind. His good arm reached out to the Homer Setting Dial. He twisted. The needle moved slowly off the number five setting. Boysie wrenched hard. The needle flicked right across the graded dial to number one. The red light went out. With any luck, Boysie thought, he had disconnected the Homer. He turned, leaning back against the desk—the pain slinking up and down his arm: heart tripping and breath wild.

  With a mighty shake, the deck below him suddenly began to move. There was a deep rumble and, for a second, Boysie thought he was dropping once more into unconsciousness. The deck tilted to a low angle and everything seemed to be juddering! The noise—coming from somewhere for’ard—was like an underground train coming full belt into Oxford Circus. The deck was dropping under his feet now. Then, just as suddenly, there was stability and silence. Through the mist of pain, Boysie’s mind closed round the facts. Disconnecting the Homer could not have arrested the firing sequence. The Trepholite had completed its blast-off.

  Boysie lurched across to the Electronics Officer. Obviously, the man had come to; heard enough of the conversation to appreciate the dangerous situation, seen the Makarov—which had landed only a foot from his hand when Braddock-Fairchild’s bullet caught Boysie’s arm—and made the splendid effort which finished the Commander. When Boysie reached him, the Electronics Officer was almost unconscious again. He had been hit in the middle of the chest, and his breathing was now lapsing into that panting rattle which is the prelude to death.

  *

  Mostyn ferociously rattled the telephone with the index finger of his right hand. They had put him in the small, soundproof booth which housed the only scrambler phone in the Control Centre. Now he waited impatiently for Birdlip to clear him with United States Security in San Francisco. The seconds clicked past, about a hundred times less than their normal speed. The possible urgency seemed to slow time to a long drag of tension.

  The phone clicked and a voice came on.

  “Hallo. Colonel Mostyn?”

  “Yes. Mostyn.”

  “Commander Birdlip’s spoken to me, sir—Duty Officer. Who was it you wanted?”

  “Anyone connected with Topmeet. Urgent!”

  “Topmeet?” The American obviously did not recognise the codeword. “One moment, Colonel.”

  The second half of the twentieth century seemed to slip by. Then:

  “Colonel Mostyn. You want either Jeffries or Ruddock. They’re both out at the airfield.”

  “Well, get one of them for me. This is prio
rity. Red emergency, for crying out loud.”

  “Yes sir; yes, Colonel.”

  The line went dead. Mostyn realised, with added alarm, that he was in desperate need of what his American colleagues artlessly called “The Little Boys’ Room.”

  *

  “Ruddock,” said the voice, staccato, on the end of the line.

  “Mostyn. British Special Security.”

  “Yea. They told me.”

  “Are you on Topmeet?”

  “Yea. We’re waitin’ for the Man now.”

  “OK. Listen. Get that aircraft turned back ... off-course ... anything ... but move it…There’s a possible attempt to…” Mostyn stopped. Outside the booth, Birdlip was waving his arms. The Control Centre seemed to have gone crazy. Birdlip wrenched the door open.

  “Colonel. They’ve fired one. They’ve launched a Trepholite.”

  “Oh my God!” Something else struck Mostyn. “Can’t they destroy from here ... Blow the thing up in the air?”

  “No. Destroy button’s in Playboy. Admiral’s got the jets after it but we don’t know what course the thing’s tracking yet.”

  Ruddock’s voice was coming, thin and plaintive, from the telephone.

  “Hallo ... Colonel Mostyn . . Hallo ... What’s going on ...?”

  Mostyn brought the instrument up to his ear. “Try and turn the PM’s aircraft off-course,” he said quietly. “But I think it’s too late.”

  Mostyn put down the telephone and followed Birdlip into the Control Centre.

  “She’s gone straight up, but doesn’t seem to have set any operational course,” said the Admiral when they reached the dais. Into his microphone, “You boys in radar got anything yet?”

  A voice over the loudspeaker, “Green Flight moving into area at 36,000 feet,”

  Then, urgently, another voice, “Admiral, she’s out of control. Winging down West and falling. Trepholite’s uncontrolled. Looks like a spiral.”

  “Mark point of impact,” said Admiral Charles Fullenhaft, cool and relieved.

  *

  The Trepholite came sizzling out of the sky to land exactly 315.8 miles south-west of San Diego in a patch of, happily, uninhabited sea.

  *

  AT 13.38 hours the Boeing 707 landed at San Francisco airport. A large closed car drove out to meet the jet as it taxied in. The Prime Minister of Great Britain, oblivious to his brush with mortality, hurried down the steps and into the car. Behind him came the little grey man—Adolph Lund.

  In San Jose, the President of the United States was informed, by telephone, that his guests had arrived safely.

  *

  The Electronics Officer died soon after Boysie reached him. Prising the Makarov out of the vice-grip of the stiffening hand, Boysie pulled himself back to the Captain’s swivel chair, where he sat surveying the grisly deckscape. He was walled up with death. In the past few days, he reflected, three others had died in his place—at least three others: Siedler, Solev, and now this young United States Navy officer who had shot Braddock-Fairchild at the crucial moment. Boysie was trembling, the pain enveloping his whole arm which hung like a spare part from his blood-soaked shoulder. Why the hell should he have been saved? Unless it was to die some more hideous death. It came to him that he was, in all truth, entombed in a watery grave. A couple of hundred feet below the surface in a metal hull stacked with corpses. He did not dare open the big bulkhead door leading to the Observation Deck—the invisible killer gas still probably lurked there. His left hand strayed to his chest. Of course! The P50 which had been slung, like a gas mask in its canvas bag, ever since they had boarded the submarine that morning. If Boysie wanted “out” he would have to play at being a human torpedo and go the way Braddock-Fairchild had intended—through the escape tube. There were plenty of small craft up there on the ceiling of the sea. He was bound to be picked up.

  Less pleasant thoughts now began streaming into Boysie’s consciousness—sharks, octopi, sting rays, mantas: the squirming fishy horrors of the deep. For a gruesomely imaginative moment, Boysie saw himself being ripped to pieces by the razor teeth of a pair of barracuda. Wholly chicken by this time. Boysie decided that it might be better to wait a while. Surely they would be starting some kind of rescue operation? Perhaps just one member of the crew had escaped the gas and decided to make the ascent. Boysie looked at his watch. It was barely one o’clock—less than an hour since Braddock-Fairchild had started the slaughter. He could afford to wait just ten, maybe twenty minutes. Half an hour even, he could wait.

  Boysie remembered the HK5. Turning the chair, he searched for the switches, found them, and disconnected the beam-bending device. His mind was made up. He would wait. But, as the minutes ticked by, the reek of death started to play tricks. Twice he could have sworn Braddock-Fairchild’s body moved. In the silence, he thought he heard breathing. Now, was the Communications Officer trying to raise his bloody head? This was Macbeth and a touch of the Capulets’ Monument rolled into one. His heart was trying to find a gap in his ribs—the timpani at the opening of the Brahms’ First. The pain was subdued again, but in its place had come a crawling under the skin: that big spider tickle up the short hairs at the nape of his neck.

  After ten minutes he could stand the charnel house no longer. Unzipping the canvas bag on his chest, Boysie took out the P50 mask, and with knees of tacky jelly, lumbered towards the escape tubes, his brain tussling through the cobweb of events, trying to call back the drill taught to him so meticulously by the submariners and the Marine sergeant only yesterday afternoon. As a lift for his depression and fear, Boysie played, ena-mena-mina-mo to choose which tube he should use. Number One was the winner.

  A light came on near his feet as he closed the tube door—turning the small wheel until the bolt clicked audibly into place. Incongruously, Boysie thought of the little man whom, some said, lived in refrigerators to operate the light when you closed the door. The walls of the tube were snug and smooth against his shoulders, and he could not help thinking of the Human Cannonball he had once seen at Lord John Sangers Circus, years ago.

  “One,” he said to himself, “Inflate life jacket.”

  He pulled on the metal ring, and with a hiss acquired an extra few inches round the back and chest. He was now wedged tightly against the walls of the tube.

  “Two. Put on P50.” The mask fitted over his mouth, nose and eyes—the eye-pieces separate so there was no misting up from breath, as with the old service gas-masks during the war. Fitting the mask took some time. Boysie found it difficult to get the thing comfortable using only one hand.

  “Three. Equalise pressure.” Which one was it for the pressure? The green lever or the red? Red. Boysie reached over with his left hand and threw the red switch. The pressure dial was fitted to the floor between his feet, like a bathroom weighing machine. The two needles, opposing one another, trembled and then crept round until they were in juxtaposition. This was it. Boysie took hold of his right wrist and tucked it into the waistband of his slacks, so that the damaged arm would be held close to his body. He took a deep breath, looked at the pressure once more, and firmly pulled down the green lever.

  Nothing happened. Then, with a surging in his ears, Boysie felt his body being crushed; high walls of water squeezing him into a tiny ball. His knees came up and his back arched forward. Now the reverse—he was jackknifed into a rigid position of attention. He seemed to be spinning ... upwards and upwards ... gulping for air ... the popping seashell roar in his ears. Through the eye-piece there was nothing but blackness ... upwards and upwards. Gulping for air ... the roar ... a heart-leap as he felt something bump his body. A shark? A dreaded baracuda? Lungs were hot ... another gulp inside the mask. Still the spiral. It seemed to be going on for ever. How long since he pulled the lever? A minute? Five? Ten? Twenty? No, Seconds. Only seconds. He was wet ... water crushing ... then light ... it was getting lighter at the end of the waterlogged elevator shaft. The singing roar began to lose volume. And with a frightening jerk, Boysie’s hea
d broke the surface and he was bobbing up and down with a warm breeze knocking gently against his cheek.

  With his free arm, Boysie tore off the P50 mask. Everything was blue and swaying—the sky and the sea rolled into one, turning in a slow circle around him. Somewhere there was the sound of a motor—a steady buzz. The water was slopping into his mouth. He was going under again. Opening his eyes Boysie saw—what seemed to be a long way off—the dot of a small boat growing larger and larger. His head fell back, and Boysie Oakes again lost consciousness, his body buoyed up by the big yellow life-jacket.

  *

  Two little yellow plastic submarines had been moved across the operations’ board and now lay in squares adjacent to the blue plastic submarine that was Playboy.

  “Scabardfish and Seacat deployed five miles from firing area, sir.”

  “OK.” The Admiral was looking at the chart. “Send Seacat in submerged. Put a diver out to examine Playboy. And tell him to keep clear of the launching tubes unless he wants to take a short course in astronomy.”

  “Aye-aye, sir.”

  The tension in the Control Centre had passed its peak. Mostyn just hoped nobody was going to loose off the other Trepholite. He kept thinking of Boysie—if it was Boysie. For all he knew, Boysie was responsible for firing the bloody thing.

  “HK5 is off, sir. We’ve got Playboy clear on the scanner. Right in position—bull’s eye for the firing area.”

  “I give up,” said the Admiral. “What the hell’s going on down there?”

  “Seacat submerged and going in, sir.”

  The Admiral nodded.

  “We’re getting some action from the PT-Boats. At the firing position, sir. PI045 reports PI486 out of station heading fast for firing area, sir.”

  “What the blazes is he doing? Get PI486. Tell him to hold station. And find out the Captain’s name.”