Hunter Killer

by Geoffrey Jenkins

  Mam'zelle Adele smiled. ' The two main exports of Limuria are coconut oil and rugged individualism.'

  Semittanté is bound for Love-Apple Crossing from New Orleans. She was just too glad to get a load to take her halfway across the world. You'll rendezvous with her there.'

  Peace prowled about uneasily. I could see that the incident of the CIA man was eating into him as the DNI elaborated' the launching programme.

  ' There is an exact firing schedule to be met,' continued the DNI. ' You don't simply point a missile at Sante Fe and blast off. Trajectories, orbits, what have ,you—Boz Blair and MKG have them all taped. As far as we are concerned, all we have to know is that Little Bear's instrumentation has been set to coincide with the optimum position of the earth relative to the space station Sante Fe. Tomorrow is February 1st.

  On February 16th Sante Fe will be at its best orbital position for Little Bear to rendezvous—space-liaise with it. The missile has a computer-compensated docking device which will guide it in to Sante Fe. Little Bear must be fired at nine o'clock on the morning of February 16th. 0900 hours on February 16th.'

  ' Local Limuria time?'

  ' Yes.'

  ' Eight o'clock is no good, nor is seven. It must be nine,'

  Peace put in. Using a radio-firing device, I shall pull the plug on MKG's behalf six hundred feet down in the sea?

  ' Pull the plug?'

  ' Fire the bloody thing!' Peace retorted. The tone of his reply betrayed his anxieties. ' The ultimate push of the button is from the surface—a small instrument tuned in to the radio antenna which Little Bear shoots to the surface when she is at the right depth. MKG does the countdown, I send the bird flying.' He suddenly swung round on me. ' 52

  all of us—have been taking one big factor for granted: are

  you in this thing with us?'

  I looked round the three faces—Peace, hard, dedicated, ruthless ; the DNI with his pedagogic whims overlying the tempered blade beneath ; Mam'zelle Adele—what did I know of her?

  Yes,' I replied. Yes, of course. All I need is a good set of navigating instruments.'

  The DNI relaxed. I felt Peace had been sure of me all along, despite his question.

  I've got the best,' he said. Nothing that gives off a single amp of power. It's all skill—John Garland's skill'

  Good. I'll want to check them over.'

  Peace went on speaking to the others, his tone warm. All

  this man needs is the traditional star to steer her by. He—'

  I cut short his eulogy. We can't launch a missile without

  radio guidance.'

  The DNI gave a short laugh. You're saying almost exactly what the early American land-based 'missileers said about the first sea-based Polaris. Admiral Red Raborn, the father of Polaris, confounded the critics. He successfully fired Polaris from a moving platform in a liquid, ever-shifting medium because he went back to that primary element at the base of all man's activity—the sea. You'll have lots of technicalities thrown at you in the next few weeks, but SINS is the heart of it all. Tell him, Geoffrey.'

  Ships Inertial Navigation System,' he explained. Raborn put his guidance package inside Polaris. It needed no help from outside—radio guidance or the rest of it. We've done the same with Little Bear, a development of the A-4 Polaris now in service with the u.s. fleet. Our Little Bear follows the same pattern. Of course, the SINS system has now become highly sophisticated in Little Bear—the guidance package is a marvel. Boz Blair will talk for days about it. But essentially it is a self-contained missile inside its own casing, a combination of mine and torpedo-tube.'

  How big is it?' I asked.

  The missile itself is forty feet long, six feet across, and weighs twenty tons,' replied Peace. The casing is another fifteen feet in length. All of it is highly streamlined. The casing is, so to speak, the gun-barrel.'

  It seems so involved, and yet so simple. Can a handful of

  men really get a thing like that to a launch-point at sea?'

  It's highly streamlined,' replied the DNI. Has to be. Goes through water, air, space . .

  53

  Ìt's a piece of cake for Bellatrix to tow it to sea,' Peace replied. You could do it with an outboard motor.'

  What about the submersion?'

  It's got ballast tanks like a sub to take it down. It is kept at a constant firing angle by two mated gyroscopes. If you want to hear all about accelerometers, earth rate and coriolis computers, automatic precision, fathometers and all the rest of it, Boz Blair will oblige with the greatest pleasure. Our job is to get Little Bear in position to fire when sequencer. starts an hour before blast-off?'

  Sequencer, what's that?'

  Countdown,' he replied. We've got to have MKG in position one hundred fathoms down before eight o'clock. I

  suggest we pull rods at dawn and have Little Bear hot to

  trot by seven-thirty.'

  I looked helplessly at Mam'zelle Adele. I'm as foxed as

  you are,' she said.

  Peace smiled. All the terms, like those of the nuclear subs are American—rightly so. After all, they pioneered the damn'

  things. Translated, we must get the SNAP nuclear reactor operating by dawn so that Little Bear is ready to be launched from seven-thirty onwards. Countdown to begin an hour

  before blast-off. You don't have to know any of this—Boz

  Blair and MKG have the most detailed schedules and technicalities written down—pages and pages of it. There's a firing checklist as long as your arm, too.'

  The DNI broke in. The Americans are great on code names. We looked for one. When the Little Bear project was

  under way originally, it went under the code name Brickbat

  Zero One—highest priority, top secret, most urgent, the lot. We've kept that—Brickbat Zero One.'

  I turned away from technicalities to something close at

  hand.

  And where does Mam'zelle Adele come into all this?' Code

  and cipher expert,' said the DNI briefly. My best girl. Break anything wide open'

  I thought she was an islander ..

  I am.' She smiled, making a gesture as if to lay her hand

  on my arm. Adele Dauguet. My father did hold a jouissance at St Brandon, and it covered Love-Apple Crossing. What'

  Sir George didn't say was that there's only one landing-place on Love-Apple Crossing and it's called Vingt-Cinq Coups—

  twenty-five lashes.'

  Something cold seemed to come into the conversation as

  she said it.

  Love-Apple Crossing was a solitary confinement cell for the Agalega plantations in the slavery days,' she explained. Vingt-Cinq Coups means exactly what it says—twenty-five lashes. You can still see the remains of the flogging grating there.'

  Peace was watching her calculatingly, as he had done at dinner. Both she and the DNI sensed his scrutiny.

  The DNI said: Adele was one of my girls in London and when this project first blew up, what more perfect cover than a girl from the islands teaching Creole to an old dodderer of a naval officer in retirement!'

  She blushed slightly. 'I don't think that's the way the locals look at it.'

  It was necessary,' retorted the DNI crisply. ' A whiff of scandal only gave credence to it.'

  So,' I said slowly to the DNI, ' you aren't even retired?'

  Officially,' he smiled. But the Prime Minister and I remain in close touch.' He turned to Peace. ' I wonder if we couldn't risk taking Maude along too?'

  Another woman!' I burst out. '

  Adele gave a low laugh. 'MAUD E—short for Morse

  Automatic Decoder!'

  Peace grinned too. ' I think Maude can stay at home—her power system might give the game away. From what you

  say, Adele's quite good enough.'

  The DNI was conspiratorial. One of my men smuggled the new u.s. Navy code-book to me. We can read anything

  the U.S. Navy sends.' Peace whistled. Offence punishable w i t h — '<
br />
  The DNI nodded. Adele's been swotting up on it. MKG also sent me—this!' He took from his pocket what looked

  like a magnetic tape casset and switched on the radiogram's tape recorder.

  I want you both to memorize this,' he said. It's from the u.s. Navy's Anti-Submarine Warfare Library.'

  He turned up the volume. The sound came through foggily—

  a jum-jum-jum noise and then a faint squeak. Then the noise blanked out, giving way to a dissipated crackling, like breaking cream crackers by the thousand; then a faint, irregular hammering. Peace's jaw was tense and his head slightly cocked. Jum-jum-jum—squeak. Crackle. Silence.

  Then a low droning hum, like a generator.

  Sound signature of a nuclear sub—deep,' said Peace with

  satisfaction. Not in these waters, though.' Jum-jum-jum—

  squeak.

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  The DNI gestured. Willowtrack's sound.'

  Peace whistled softly. This could be worth almost anything—in the wrong hands.'

  I asked, What's the rest of it besides the main noise—

  fish?'

  The DNI nodded. The crackle is shrimp. This was recorded off Greenland by—well, let us say, by an unauthorized source.'

  Jum-jum-jum—squeak.

  Peace said, Why don't they fix that circ pump? It's the

  biggest giveaway . .

  You wouldn't believe what heartache that little squeak has caused,' replied the DNI. It's a special seal where the drive-shaft enters the pump. Oddly, there's nothing wrong with it. The nearest the backroom boys have got to it is saying that it is caused by some sort of ultra-sonic vibration. Revs Tyler had this seal in Willowtrack unseal itself a thousand feet beneath the South Pole.'

  Peace said grimly, Only Revs could have made it after

  that.' He turned to me. You'll play act about my death still, but you must, of course, tell Mac. After a couple of days,

  you'll give out that you're taking Bellatrix back to South Africa for sale, in accordance with my will. You'll let it be known that you're going back via Madagascar. TrevorDavis will come aboard at night. Keep him out of sight when you leave port. Steer, a course for a couple of hundred miles as if you really were heading towards Africa. Then double back and make for St Brandon at your best speed. We'll meet you there, MKG and I'

  What about Willowtrack?' I began.

  She's due at St Brandon after thirty-six days mainly submerged from Connecticut, and if I know Revs, he'll be there to the hour,' Peace replied. He added, No radio, radar or other transmissions from Bellatrix. Better keep even the receiving radio dead until you're out of range of all the tracking equipment of the missile range.'

  You've forgotten Mam'zelle Adele,' said the DNI. ' She goes with you, John.'

  My heart lifted and she smiled back at me. Suddenly, despite the extraordinary nature of the project, life felt very good. Johannesburg, NACCAM, high-powered sales talk, all seemed a very long way away.

  It was the DNI's cold voice which brought back the dangers, the realities 'of the mission. There is a complex meshing together in Brickbat Zero One of imponderables, all sorts of factors which could ruin the project—or cost someone's life,'

  56

  he said. MKG might even find himself a victim, rather than a conqueror, of space.' The gentleness of his voice made it

  - sound more sinister. ' The missilemen always allow an extra safety margin for the imponderables ; I have tried to do the same. They also have a name for it.'

  ' They call it the Jesus factor,' Peace said.

  5 N U C L E A R H I G H W A Y

  The black whale-backed sail rose sinisterly out of the sea half a cable's length, to port. Her identification numbers had been newly painted out and above the fairwater—I still thought of it as a conning-tower--rose periscope masts, radar and radio antenna. The long shape of the nuclear sub swung and held station on Bellatrix.

  It was our second morning at sea, two days after the meeting in the DNI's cottage. I was in the wheelhouse after breakfast. It was a perfect day. Bellatrix, under my command, had cleared the Seychelles Bank and was making a breathtaking eighteen knots. I could almost hear Mac singing along with the twin Rolls-Royce diesels. Captain Trevor-Davis, the Royal Navy missile expert, was checking the fuel levels below. I had taken an immediate liking to this tall, flaxen-haired Englishman when he had come aboard Bellatrix in Port Victoria the night before we sailed. He said little, yet there was a sense of strong competence about him. I saw why the

  DNI had chosen him for the job.

  Out to starboard, a white line of foam announced La Perle

  Reef. When we had first sighted, Mam'zelle Adele and I,

  from the weather-deck dinette during breakfast, she had asked me to take her up on the coachroof to see. My heart missed

  a beat at her unusual loveliness as the north-westerly wind blew her hair into her eyes, and I slipped my arm round her shoulders. For a thousand miles to every point of the compass, Limuria stretched away. From the submerged continent under our keel life had first sprung millions of years ago and now, from its deeps again, a man would try to make

  a strange, imperishable and wonderful new journey in a

  vehicle named after the stars. I found myself sharing my

  thoughts with Adele, but when she looked gravely up into my eyes, the DNI's words hit us both—somewhere was the Jesus factor. Somehow her own presence on board threw that

  warning into sharper relief. Despite the mild morning, she

  shuddered with a sense of foreboding. Without a word,

  57

  she turned and went to her luxury cabin below-decks. I occupied Peace's own weather-deck cabin, which commanded an

  unimpaired view of the ocean.

  I switched Bellatrix's helm over to the Sperry auto and kept the telegraphs at full ahead. The sub kept pace effortlessly. Three figures appeared on the black bridge, minute by comparison with the rest of the structure. I focused my glasses on them. An officer picked up a microphone from its waterproof housing and looked across the stretch of sea between the two craft. The closeness of the metallic voice of the loud-hailer took me by surprise. It brought Adele and Trevor-Davis to the wheelhouse at a run.

  `Bellatrix! Keep course and heave to! Understood?'

  It was an English voice at least.

  I clicked on Bellatrix's own loud-hailer.

  ' Who are you?'

  The other voice came back, imperative. Do you understand?'

  Trevor-Davis said quietly. Devastation class. Look at the flared bow.

  Yes,' I replied. Understood'

  Adele stood next to me. John, this isn't part of the plan

  Trevor-Davis said reflectively, The plan's only two or

  three days old, too.'

  The metallic voice from across the water said, Bellatrix! Is that Mr. Garland?'

  Yes.'

  Captain's compliments. We are sending a boat for you

  and—' there was the slightest pause—' Mam'zelle Adele.'

  What was Peace up to, I asked myself angrily. The DNI had ordered him explicitly to take Devastation to St Brandon and here he was hundreds of miles out of his way. Had Peace, after I had sailed, prevailed on the DNI to change plans again, in the light of the CIA'S snoopings? I had kept rigid radio silence in Bellatrix, as the DNI had instructed, and had cut down the use of the electrics to the minimum.

  I used the engine-room voicepipe. Mac—there's a big sub alongside—numbers painted out. I think it must be Devasta- tion. Stop, will you?'

  There was something suspiciously like a chuckle at the other end. I would never forget the moment when I told Mac that Peace was still alive. It had been worth all the glory of Limuria. Mac's allegiance to Peace, right or wrong, had never known any bounds, and since setting out in the knowledge

  58

  that his beloved skipper was indeed still alive he had been less dour than I had ever known him.

  Commander Peace reques
ts that you and the lady bring

  some clothes. Give you ten minutes.'

  I shrugged at Adele. No point in arguing—O.K?' O.K.

  —but what about me?'

  What about you?'

  A woman aboard a nuclear submarine!'

  Trevor-Davis smiled slightly. These new subs have every

  creature comfort, Mam'zelle Adèxle: hot baths, washing machines, the lot.'

  She still seemed very uneasy. John, I thought Commander

  Peace would have stuck to orders ..

  Her tension communicated itself to me. She was putting

  into words what I had felt from the moment the long shape

  had surfaced. Mac joined us before I could reply.

  ' What the bluidy hell is the skipper playing at?' he

  grumbled good-naturedly. I thought ..

  The sub circled Bellatrix, which was now stopped.

  Bellatrix!' came the loud-hailer. Captain Trevor-Davis to assume command. MacFadden to remain. You are to steer

  a course of one-six-zero true, repeat, one-six-zero true. Bel- latrix will proceed on that course at twelve knots—repeat twelve knots—until again intercepted. Is that clear?'

  I turned questioningly to Trevor-Davis. He nodded.

  Not to worry,' I said. There's no land in any direction

  for six hundred miles. I marked our position on the chart not an hour ago.'

  No other ships,' he asked laconically.

  This is a prohibited area—missile range, don't forget'

  Adele said, I'll get my things together.'

  Slacks,' I replied. Don't try to be glamorous aboard a

  submarine. Pants are woman's best friend for the modest negotiation of ladders, hatches, and watertight bulkheads.'

  She smiled, but she was worried. Thanks.'

  Bellatrix!' called the sub. Have you briefed Captain Trevor-Davis and your engineer? Any problems?'

  Briefing complete,' I replied. What about the weather?'

  Seems good enough,' came the curt reply. Nothing exciting from Chagos.'

  In the Chagos Archipelago south of Ceylon the Limuria Squadron maintained a big weather station. Chagos is where cyclones are born. This was the cyclone season in the Sea of Limuria.