H.M.S. Unseen (1999)

by Patrick Robonson

  Concorde flies alone for several reasons, the first being that all populations in all countries must be protected from her big sonic double boom as she races through the sound barrier. Thus her course takes her straight down the middle of the Bristol Channel toward southern Ireland, where she begins to wind up her speed to supersonic. Then she streaks southwest, climbing to her cruising altitude of approximately 54,000 feet, more than 4 miles above the other jet aircraft, throwing her boom out behind her across the ocean.

  Out over the Atlantic she leaves the coastline of County Cork 45 miles to starboard, sticking to a course way south of the other airliners. Concorde flies over no land between Somerset in the west of England, and the immediate precincts of John F. Kennedy Airport, Long Island, east of New York City. The 3,500-mile journey will be accomplished in three hours. At supersonic cruise speed she makes 1,330 mph, covering a mile every 2.7 seconds, 22 miles every minute. She drops a little time climbing out over southern England, where her speed is strictly restricted to just less than MACH-1, but still more like a guided missile than an airliner.

  Flying her today was forty-four-year-old Brian Lambert’s second choice. His first would have been to watch his son Billy play rugby, in the front row of the scrum for his prep school first fifteen. They were up against the tigerish lineup of Elstree School in Berkshire, who traditionally won the game by about twenty points, but were perceived as vulnerable in the new season of 2006. Still, his wife Jane would be going, and Brian would be thinking of them both at 1430, when Billy would lead the team out for the first time. Concorde’s pilot would be in New York by then.

  For January, it was a good day for rugby. Cloudy, not too cold, with a softish pitch thanks to three days of almost nonstop rain. Driving from Surrey to Heathrow, on still-wet roads, Brian had already noted the westerly wind and layered banks of cloud, assembling in his mind the kind of weather he would encounter as he flew the takeoff. He wondered which particular aircraft it would be today. Not, he hoped, the one that had developed a shaky gauge in number three fuel tank last week.

  Now, with forty-five minutes still to go before the new 1045 departure time, he was familiarizing himself with his two-man crew. Henry Pryor he knew. They’d flown together in December, but Joe Brody, the first officer from West London, was a mere acquaintance. It was standard British Airways procedure to select random crews, mainly to avoid the obvious problems of overconfidence, slackness, and bad habits, which occasionally evolved among men who work together all the time.

  Thus the three men assembled, as a flight crew, for the first time a couple of hours before departure, in the operations office, where they went over the flight plan and studied the detailed weather information provided in a folder by the airport meteorological office. Every possible contingency was contained there…temperatures, pressure systems, winds, potential areas of turbulence, possible icing areas, all laid out in a coded format, incomprehensible to a layman.

  In the cockpit, preparing to leave, the planning schedules focused the minds of each of the three men. The fuel tonnage, which ensured they would have sufficient to land in the event of an engine failure, was critical. Because Concorde cannot fly at MACH-2 on only three of her Rolls Royce engines, neither can she remain at her great height. And when she slides down to a lower altitude, her fuel efficiency is cut by around 25 percent, which could force her to land in the Azores, or Gander in Newfoundland, or Halifax, Nova Scotia. Henry Pryor was watching the steady filling of those 95-ton capacity tanks with a beady eye.

  The trim of the aircraft was also a vital part of the preparation, because the center of gravity must be spot-right. With Concorde carrying a grand total of 185 tons in weight, it is more complicated than on any other aircraft, because of the constant transferring of fuel from tank to tank in flight, and the subsequent redistribution of the tonnage. Most of the passengers are sitting in front of the gravity center. Indeed the pilot works 38 feet in front of the nosewheel, and 97 feet in front of the mainwheels. The loading officers, working with the crews, often make keen judgment calls. But they miss nothing, and the 384-pound bulk of Bob Trueman had been taken into account, along with everything else.

  They called the flight shortly after 1015, and the passengers were all on board by the time the fueling was complete at 1028. The computerized loadsheet showing the final weight and balance of the aircraft was checked carefully by Brian Lambert, who signed it. The ramp coordinator reported formally to the cockpit, then left, securing Concorde’s door behind him.

  The captain and First Officer Brody then set the white markers to the takeoff speed, and pitch angles of the nose cone, for the climb-out.

  “Start clearance,” said Brian Lambert.

  And Joe Brody contacted air traffic control, requesting permission to start the engines.

  “London Ground. Speedbird Concorde 001 on stand Juliet Three for start-up.”

  “Speedbird Concorde 001, clear to start. Call on 131.2 for pushback.”

  Henry Pryor made two further entries on his checklist. Then he started Concorde’s number three engine.

  171054JAN06. 49.76N, 32.03W.

  HMS Unseen in the North Atlantic.

  Periscope Depth. Course 180. Speed 5.

  Linked to the commercial satellite international communication system, MARISAT, the ex–Royal Navy diesel-electric ran silently. The special submarine aerial had worked perfectly when they accessed, just before first light this morning. The message from Bandar Abbas Navy HQ had been succinct:

  “KING BIRDS ON BOARD SUPERSONIC FLIGHT 001, ETD LONDON HEATHROW GATE 1045 (GMT), SCHEDULED 51N, 30W APP. 1219(GMT).”

  Commander Adnam, standing in the control center with his navigator, had raised his eyebrows, and murmured, “Hmmm. An interesting first test. The highest and the fastest.”

  Now, four hours later, he checked for surface ships, found none, and ordered Unseen to periscope depth in readiness to receive his next satellite communication. He also ordered the ESM mast raised and heard the hiss of the hydraulic rams as the big radar-interceptor mast slid upward. Ben checked the immediate horizon through the search periscope.

  1042 (GMT) Heathrow.

  Flight Engineer Pryor had all four engines running. Concorde’s nose and visor were set in the 5-degree position for the taxi to the runway, during which time 30 more checks would be undertaken by the flight crew. That morning Concorde would take off from runway 27R heading 274 degrees magnetic.

  The final checks completed, Concorde taxied into her holding position, waiting her turn to leave. The cabin staff were strapped in, the flight engineer had moved his seat forward and was looking over the pilot’s shoulder, his left hand on the back of the captain’s seat. The word came over the intercom at exactly 1100.

  “Speedbird Concorde 001 cleared for take-off.”

  “Speedbird Concorde 001 rolling”.

  Brian Lambert opened the throttles. The afterburners kicked in, increasing the acceleration.

  “Airspeed building.”

  “One hundred knots.”

  “Power checked.”

  “V1, Captain.”

  This is 165 knots, the point of no return. Any faster and the aircraft could no longer stop in time to abort the takeoff. She hurtled forward, building to her ground-leaving speed of 250 knots.

  “Three, two, one, noise…cut the afterburners.”

  And Brian Lambert, husband of Jane, father of thirteen-year-old Billy, gunned Flight 001 westward, shrieking into the skies above London’s premier airport, climbing quicker and steeper than any of her bigger, heavier Boeing counterparts.

  Concorde was watched, as always, by a breath-holding crowd of onlookers in the Terminal Four departure lounges. But she was watched also by the silent Naval attaché from the Iranian Embassy, who stood behind the glass staring west, speaking crisply into his mobile phone. “Concorde takes off 1100,” he said softly.

  171104JAN06. HMS Unseen at PD. Course 028.

  Speed 5.

  Commander
Adnam held in his hand the brief printout from the satellite message, direct from the Iranian embassy link.

  FLIGHT 001 CHOCKS AWAY 1045, PROBABLE TAKEOFF 1100.

  In one hour and ten minutes, he thought, Concorde would be a couple of hundred miles out. It was not a particularly clear day, visibility was only 3 miles, but his radar would take care of that, and, so far, the sonar sweep had found no noises to suggest any ships within a 12-mile radius. The seas around the submarine were clear. There was no one around: perfect conditions in which to commit the ultimate sea-air atrocity of the twenty-first century.

  Ben Adnam’s team was highly trained. When he gave the word to the radar operator to begin the tracking, his men would slip into well-rehearsed routines, which they had practiced a thousand times. He felt relaxed and unemotional, as he always did when the pressure went on. And right now the Iraqi-born CO was in his rightful element, commanding a top-class submarine, with 2 miles of water beneath the keel, out here just west of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, watching and waiting, intending, as usual, to outwit his enemies, in the most holy name of Allah.

  1104 (GMT). West of Reading.

  Brian Lambert had Concorde almost at 400 knots, and with the nose raised, they were climbing at about 3,000 feet a minute. Joe Brody had received clearance for 28,000 feet, and the captain had turned off the seat-belt sign. The weather up ahead looked gloomy but settled. In any event, Concorde would race 4 miles above the nearest clouds as soon as she reached her cruising altitude.

  Still at MACH-.95, fractionally less than the speed of sound, the supersonic British Airways flagship thundered across western England. At 1124, high above the Bristol Channel, just before longitude 4 degrees west, her oceanic clearance came through.

  “Climb when you’re ready…cruise between 50,000 and 60,000 feet on track Sierra November.”

  Flight Engineer Pryor began the rearward transfer of the fuel, preparing for supersonic flight, and Brian Lambert pushed the throttles hard forward, on full power. The afterburners were fired up two at a time, as Concorde streaked through the sound barrier, smoothly accelerating to MACH-1.3.

  Many passengers felt the two gentle nudges as the afterburners were ignited, and still others paused from the morning papers to listen to the sounds of the big engines changing slightly in tone. Bob Trueman wondered if he might hear the sizzle of a couple of cheeseburgers deep in the galley. He regarded sudden loss of weight much more seriously than he would ever have regarded sudden loss of altitude.

  He and his team occupied a block of seven seats close to the front of the cabin—two doubles on either side of the aisle, row four; one single on the aisle, right behind in row five; another double for Bob alone, plus briefcases, on the other side, row five C and D.

  Immediately in front of them was the unmistakable figure of the 1970s British pop icon Phil Charles, who was still recording at the age of fifty-five, with a reputed net worth of $300 million. The small, balding, unshaved figure sat unobtrusively with his pony-tailed manager. Both men wore T-shirts and leather jackets. The seats to their right, row three, C and D, were occupied by two sour-looking, willowy blondes in their mid-twenties, who might have been daughters, but were probably not.

  Phil Charles’s long lifetime of philandering was a constant source of delight to London’s tabloid newspapers, mainly because he was such an unprepossessing individual with a plain and obvious vendetta against the shareholders of Gillette. He always looked dreadful to the middle-class eye.

  Steve Dimauro had recognized him immediately and nodded a greeting, which was returned with a grin. In Steve’s opinion the scruffy-looking Phil might not have cut it with the willowy ones, but for that $300 million. “Sonofabitch can still sing, though,” he muttered as he took his seat on the aisle opposite the chief.

  Way back in the aft section of the cabin was another pop singer, also British, the piano-playing rock star Shane Temple. He and Phil Charles wore nearly identical clothes, and they sang a lot of the same music. The difference was in the bank balance. Whereas Phil had never stopped being successful, deftly changing his style with the moment, but retaining his traditional sound, Shane had floundered in the eighties, and floundered more in the nineties, being reduced to working on the northern circuit of nightclubs, Skid Row to a pop icon.

  His career had been begun again with a sensational rock-opera revival in the opening months of the new millennium. But times had been hard for a long time, and Shane was still a few hundred thousand pounds light of his next castle.

  Concorde trip was a big event for him; a major recording session in New York might see him right back on top this year, and he had spent at least ten minutes cooperating with the airport press corps. Nonetheless, as they boarded the flight, his longtime manager, Ray Duffield, had groaned when he saw Phil Charles slumped in his seat reading the sports pages of the Daily Mail.

  “Son,” he growled to Shane, “I’ve got bad news. If this fucking thing crashes, you’re not gonna get the ink.”

  Concorde reached 50,000 feet at longitude 10 degrees west. This is the north–south meridian, which cuts through the westerly isles of Connaught, bisects the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry and runs to the east of Mizen Head. Brian Lambert crossed it at1136.30 flying at MACH-2 at latitude 50.49N. First Officer Brody reported their way point to Shannon, and the air traffic control center made a note to expect Concorde to come in again 450 miles later, at the 20-degree west way point. Time: 1157.

  The air routes were, as always, busy at that time of day, and to the north of Concorde’s flight path there were no fewer than six westbound air tracks in operation, with big passenger jets running through them 100 miles apart, but flying in eight layers of aircraft, “stacked” at different altitudes. Only Flight 001 made her journey in solitary splendor, moving nearly three times faster than any of the others.

  Bob’s burgers arrived at approximately the same time as First Officer Joe Brody checked in to Shannon from way point 20 West, at 1157(GMT) precisely. Out of range now on VHF, he used the High Frequency radio, confirming that the next communication would be their last before handing over to oceanic control Gander, Newfoundland, when they were 1,350 miles out from Heathrow, approaching the middle point of the oceanic crossing.

  Shannon “rogered that,” and signed off. Henry Pryor checked the fuel tanks of Speedbird Concorde 001, and the first officer confirmed the precise distance to way point 20 West…just a little more than 450 miles, since they were running slightly south, and the lines of longitude were edging fractionally farther apart.

  171210JAN06. 49N, 30W. HMS Unseen at PD.

  Speed 5.

  Commander Adnam’s radar was searching the skies to the east, the operator paying particular attention for long-range air detections. “Just keep looking,” said the CO. “Anything at over 1,000 knots, that’s the target.” The first detection found Concorde 210 miles out at 1210.33.

  “New target, sir. Moving very fast.”

  “Must be an aircraft.”

  “Fits Concorde’s route plan, sir.”

  “SURFACE. BLOW ALL MAIN BALLAST. I want a good blow…maximum buoyancy right away. Officer of the Watch, keep her headed into the swell…avoid surface rolling as much as possible.”

  The jet-black submarine came bursting out of the icy depths of the winter Atlantic, water cascading off her casing. Deep inside the hull, the Russian missile systems’ computer established the critical data for a surface-to-air missile attack.

  “Speed 1,300 knots plus, sir.”

  “Approximate course two-six-zero.”

  “Range now 188 miles.”

  “Okay team,” said Ben Adnam calmly. “Check the surface picture visual. No hurry, chaps…what do you have…? Fine. Just those three civil airliners 80 miles to the north. No problem. Let’s just relax and do it right.”

  By 1213 all the known data, the radar range and bearing, had been fed into the computer. And now they had refined the target. The CO had an accurate course, speed, and closest poin
t of approach. The range was now 153 miles. CPA: 4 miles. Every 5.2 seconds Unseen’s radar completed a sweep, and every sweep signified Flight 001 was 2 miles closer.

  “Officer of the Watch, sir. Submarine at full buoyancy now.”

  “I have an adequate firing solution within the parameters, sir.”

  “We have set the pressure height: 54,000 feet. CPA remains 4 miles.”

  “Computer estimates time of launch 1216.”

  1214: “Target holding course and speed, sir. CPA same. Predicted time to enter the missile envelope 1218.12.”

  At 1215: “Computer in final prefiring sequence, Captain! Countdown now sixty seconds.”

  Commander Adnam betrayed nothing. He stood motionless in the control center, awaiting the information that would confirm he had not crossed the Iranian border from Iraq in vain.