H.M.S. Unseen

by Patrick Robinson

  On board the Hedoniste were the three men who had chartered her for one week, at a cost of $20,000, off-season rates. Perfectly dressed in designer yachting kit, they had arrived in St. Malo in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes limousine, each carrying expensive leather luggage. They had brought with them, in another car, their captain, an engineer, and a chef-butler.

  The French agent took a cursory glance at their Turkish passports, and the three addresses either on, or close to, the avenue Foche, in Paris, and rapturously handed over control of the boat to Arfad Ertegan, whose current French Masters’ certificate fully entitled him to command the Hedoniste.

  “You will be very ’appy, gentlemen,” the agent had said, pocketing the banker’s check for $20,000 cash, 15 percent of which was now his. “See you in one week.”

  The six young Iranian Naval officers, posing as Turkish millionaires, and their staff, had never had such a wonderful time. This was a very beautiful boat, built in England by Camper and Nicholson. They all appreciated that. They were ready to set off on the voyage across the Gulf of St. Malo, making an overnight stop at St. Peter Port on the Channel Island of Guernsey, then pressing on to the meeting point.

  Essentially they had four days off, and the only dark cloud on their horizon was that Abdul Raviz, the “chef,” was in fact the gunnery and missile officer in Iran’s Houdong-Class fast-attack craft P307, out of Bandar Abbas. He had never actually been in a galley. Neither had any of the other five.

  Hedoniste was laden to the gunwales with the finest French cuisine, but the combined culinary talent of its guests and crew would have had serious difficulty producing a piece of buttered toast.

  They resolved to make a fast run to St. Peter Port and dine in the hotel. They carried with them a leather pouch full of French francs. The world, they knew, could be their oyster, if they could just work out how to shuck it.

  282120MAR02. 49.50N, 4.20W. Course 020. Speed 7.

  The Santa Cecilia was making a racetrack pattern on a dark cloudy night. The moon was completely hidden, and the westerly wind gusted occasionally over the short sea. Commander Adnam could see no ships anywhere along the horizon. He could hear only the hiss of the spray slashing back off the steel bow as the old freighter shouldered her way forward.

  He had been on deck for half an hour, staring out to the southeast, watching for the running lights, listening for the deep throb of the twin diesels of the French-based luxury yacht. Twice he had thought he heard something, but the sound came from too far east. He knew the bearing for her approach, and in the darkness of the English Channel he stared through binoculars, straight down bearing one-three-five. But there was nothing out there, so far. Below in the sleeping hold, his men were ready, each of them in black wet suits, each of them variously armed, the two hit men from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps rather better than the rest.

  At 2145 he picked up the running lights of the Hedoniste, her white hull visible half a mile away. She was bang on time, making good headway through the bumpy sea. Ben ordered the captain to reduce speed to two knots, and huge fenders were hung off the starboard side, as the “Turkish millionaires” maneuvered alongside.

  The sea was a thunderous nuisance, and the 80-foot yacht was rising and falling through 6 feet during the transfer. They used a climbing net and two rope ladders, but it was dangerous in the dark. Ben noticed that the two men from the IRGC waited for the right moment and jumped straight onto the Hedoniste’s foredeck. The other nineteen, including the commander, made the transfer less adventurously. Ten minutes later, Captain Ertegan revved the starboard engine and reversed away from the Panamanian freighter, which was about to head southwest.

  He set a course of zero-two-zero, and the overloaded cruising yacht swung around to the north, making her way toward the great lighthouse standing guard over the legendary sailor’s graveyard of the Eddystone Rocks, 25 miles away. At 8 knots Ben calculated the 133-foot-high, white warning beacon should be a couple of miles off their port beam by 0045. But they would see its two bright flashes, every ten seconds, long before that.

  Meanwhile, the men were making their own introductions, though most of them had been acquainted before back at Bandar Abbas. Ben Adnam went briefly through the plan with the “Turkish playboys,” and everyone could feel the atmosphere tightening as the team began to run last-minute equipment checks, paying particular attention to their breathing apparatus.

  By midnight, the Eddystone Lighthouse looked very close, off the port bow less than 3 miles away. “Hold that course zero-two-zero,” ordered Ben. “Make your speed ten, remember we’re just a luxury yacht running in late from the Channel Islands…keep the decks clear for the moment…we have plenty of water and we’re well clear of the rocks.”

  By 0100 the towering light, which has warned sailors of the dangers since 1698, was slipping behind, brightening the black water off their port-side quarter. The sharp white flashing light was certainly more efficient than the 60 great tallow candles of the eighteenth century, but Ben would have been glad of pitch-black just then, as Hedoniste drove forward toward the coastline of southwest England.

  He had chosen a craft such as this because it was unlikely to attract the attention of the notoriously vigilant English coast guard, who were always apt to stop an old foreign freighter making its way to port in the small hours of the morning. There were still around 9 miles to run, but the sea was almost deserted along the inner east-going traffic lane. The men had started to blacken their faces with a special oil, and little was said as they prepared for their mission. They had gone over the plan a thousand times. No one was in any doubt about what was expected of him.

  At 0155 Ben spotted the line of red lights on the radio masts high up on Rame Head. He estimated they were 4 miles away, right off the port bow, one of them flashing a warning to aircraft. The light on the western end of the breakwater was dead ahead.

  Ben Adnam and his navigation officer, Lt. Commander Arash Rajavi, aged thirty-one, were alone under the canopy of the exposed upper bridge while Captain Ertegan steered from the warm wheelhouse below. Both men were protected from the chill March night by their wet suits, and on their heads they wore dark balaclavas, which they would keep on under the tight-fitting black-rubber hoods they would need for the mission.

  Suddenly, in his naturally soft voice, the lieutenant commander said, “Sir, can I ask you a question?”

  “Fire away,” replied Ben.

  “How do you actually know the submarine is there?”

  “I know,” said Ben.

  “But how?”

  “Well, first, I read last August that the Brazilians were negotiating to buy one of the Royal Navy’s Upholder-Class submarines, HMS Unseen, and they hoped to take delivery in the submarine base in Rio de Janeiro around May 15. I calculated twenty-eight days at 9 knots for the 5,500-mile journey, so they probably intended to clear Plymouth Sound around April 18.

  “I knew there would be a six-week workup period for the Brazilian crew right out here in the Channel beginning around March 7. That would mean the submarine would arrive in the Devonport Navy dockyard for maintenance three weeks before that. On February 1, just before we left, I asked our agent in England to check when HMS Unseen was scheduled to leave the base at Barrow-in-Furness. That part was easy. They were having a little ceremony to say good-bye to her on February 14. So I knew everything was right on schedule. She has been sighted since then…working down here.

  “So…Arash, you will find that Unseen will be right out there where I say she’ll be. Moored on the big Admiralty buoy, 440 yards inside the breakwater. The buoy is huge…they say it could hold an aircraft carrier in a full gale. But that’s where she’ll be, three weeks into her workup, with about forty Brazilians on board. I know. I’ve moored on that buoy in a submarine while I was training here. That’s where all Royal Navy workup submarines tend to spend their weekday nights if they’re not out at sea.”

  “Sir, you are very smart man.”

  “
Still breathing,” said the commander absently.

  By 0220 the sea was calmer in the lee of the Rame Headland, and Ben ordered an increase in speed, to 12 knots. They looked like a typical big motor yacht with nothing to hide, charging in from the Channel Islands, running late, anxious to make Oliver’s Battery, the big marina, northeast of Drake’s Island, deep in Plymouth Sound. Innocence, thy name is Benjamin, and to underline it, he personally called the marina on Channel M to check their berth and give an ETA.

  The sky was brighter, the streetlights of Plymouth casting a glow in the sky to the north. Through his glasses Ben could make out the old familiar breakwater that guards the sound—right out in the middle, more than three-quarters of a mile long, a low man-made construction of concrete and rocks, with a lighthouse on either end.

  Ben could see the light flashing at the western end, and as they drew ever closer, he picked up the little intercom, and snapped, “Stand by!” No reply was needed, and now they were right opposite the light.

  “Four hundred meters,” said Ben. “Lead swimmers prepare to go…reduce speed…make it eight knots for the next half mile.”

  He lifted his night-vision binoculars and could make out the dark hulk of the submarine out on the buoy, a quarter mile off the starboard beam.

  “This is it…” he said. “Lead swimmers…GO.” And he heard a soft splash as the flippers of the first two Islamic Revolutionary Guards hit the dark waters of Plymouth Sound together.

  “Okay everyone, let’s go…Six at a time over the port side. I’ll go last…then we’ll regroup and swim in together…50 yards behind Lieutenant Commander Ali and his man. They’re well on their way now.”

  Ben pulled down his face mask, fixed his breathing gear, and dropped over the side of Hedoniste. He checked with all three group leaders that everyone was safe, then gave the order to swim forward, using flippers, just below the surface. And the nineteen-strong Iranian Naval hit squad began to kick slowly through the water toward HMS Unseen.

  Out in front, Ali Pakravan heard the motor yacht head on up the sound, lights still on full, the noise growing fainter. But he kept swimming: kicking and gliding, no splashing, no arm movement, just the legs, just as they had trained. His colleague, Seaman Kamran Azhari, swam just behind him, the rifle with the night sights clipped to his back.

  After seven minutes Ali came to the surface and tried to see the submarine. It took a few moments for him to focus; then he saw her, about 100 yards ahead. In a few more klicks he would be able to see on the fin the white marking S41, the individual identifying mark of the jet-black, 230-foot torpedo and mine-laying patrol submarine, now a part of the Brazilian Navy.

  They made their way slowly to the steep, slippery slope of the bow, hidden by its curve, and in the water they prepared the special electromagnetic clamps. Seaman Azhari placed the first two a foot out of the water, then hauled himself up and softly placed two more, three and a half feet higher up Unseen’s bow. Next he unclipped the rifle from his back, as the lieutenant commander began to work his way up beside him, moving the magnetic clamps one at a time to give himself purchase.

  It took Ali two minutes to reach a point where he could safely lie on the downward curve of the bow. High above he could see the fin, on top of which, he knew, was the night guard. According to Ben, he would just see the man’s head and shoulders above the rail of the bridge. And he would see it very clearly through the night-vision telescopic sight on the rifle.

  Ali moved one of the clamps and took up his sniper’s position on the casing. Ben was right. He could see the sentry up there, but the man was standing sideways, hunched against a light rain that was beginning to fall, and made a very difficult target. Ali, the best marksman in the Iranian Navy, was uncertain whether to wait or fire, but he decided that time was a luxury he did not have, so he lined up the crosshairs of the rifle sight with the guard’s left temple. He steadied himself, held his breath, and shot Seaman Carlos Perez dead, from a range of 110 feet. As it made its exit, the snub-nosed bullet blew away the entire right side of the Brazilian’s head. There was no sound save for the familiar soft pop made by a big rifle fitted with a silencer.

  With the night guard taken care of, the Iranian lieutenant commander stood up on the casing to signal to the rest of the swimmers it was safe to work their way around to the port side of the submarine. Handing the rifle back to Azhari, he moved along the casing and unclipped the rope ladder he had carried with him. He made it secure, then slid it silently down the hull and into the water. Almost immediately he saw the black-hooded figure of Commander Adnam coming through the water, and Ali Pakravan called out softly in the night, “Here, sir. Right here.”

  Ben came up the ladder, still using his breathing gear. Right behind him were two other submariners, both of whom had previously served in the old Iranian Kilos. They moved swiftly to the door at the base of the fin and unclipped it gently. Ben opened it and led the way inside the fin to the top of the conning tower, still undetected. He pulled from his pocket a sealed grenade, a special chlorine grenade, which he prepared and threw straight down the tower hatchway. He waited for what seemed an age after it had gone off with a soft fizzing noise. But it was only a minute, and he climbed down after it, followed by his two henchmen in the full breathing gear.

  At the bottom of the tower, in the control room they separated, one man heading forward and one aft, rolling more grenades ahead of them. Ben stayed right where he was, acting as communications number to the men above as they gathered silently on the casing, under the supervision of Lt. Commander Ali Pakravan.

  Of the thirty-eight Brazilians aboard, none survived the first two minutes. Those asleep never awoke. Those awake gasped, choked, and quickly died. The massive level of concentrated chlorine released into a confined space, was sudden, silent, and deadly. It took less than ten minutes to ensure no one remained alive.

  With the possibility of survivors eliminated, Ben himself started the engines, running them steadily, with the ventilation and battery fans working flat out to clear the hull of the poisonous gas. They tested the atmosphere constantly until almost 0400, when Commander Adnam declared the ship clean so the cold men on the casing could safely come below. There was some nervousness among the team members who did not have full breathing gear, but they all wore small chlorine-proof gas masks and went about the depressing business of dragging the bodies to the torpedo room, where they would be stored, each one zipped tight in a waterproof body bag the team had brought with them. They would be disposed of at the first fueling stop out in the cold Atlantic off Gibraltar. There was, of course, no question of dumping them out into Plymouth Sound.

  MAP

  By 0400 Commander Adnam had located the ship’s weekly Practice Program and the daily signal log. These two items had told him what to expect. Even the names of the four British training staff. The dreaded Sea Riders, he remembered, were due to come back on board at 0755 that morning. Same team all week. He noted that the Brazilians were a little behind where they should be at this stage of the proceedings. The previous day the crew had been practicing routine snorkeling drills, starting, running, and stopping the diesels while submerged.

  “Should have finished that last week,” he murmured, as he turned the pages, trying to find out what they were scheduled to do today. “Good job old MacLean’s not training them. He’d have made them walk the plank by now.”

  As he had guessed, Unseen was due to sail at 0800. This was listed alongside the Exercise Area, Stop Time, and Type of Exercise. The day’s activities were simply listed as INDEX—Independent Exercises. But there were some scribbled notes in the margins that told him they had been scheduled for emergency maneuvers: matters such as the avoidance of oncoming shipping; plane breakdowns; steering failure; failure of the systems that govern seawater, electronics, hydraulics, mechanics. Breakdown drills. Fire drills. Flooding drills…etc., etc. But there was also the most blinding bit of luck—the submarine was to stay out overnight, getting some much
-needed practice on special drills, in particular night snorkeling

  Ben read the Orders slowly and carefully, then located the previous day’s Next-of-Kin signal, the one every submarine captain sends to his shore-based headquarters immediately before departure. This details all changes to the crew list in the NOK book held ashore; the final update, ensuring accurate names and addresses of the next of kin of every man aboard, just in case the submarine should disappear.

  At 0500 he called a short briefing for his officers, while the rest of the team continued to familiarize themselves with their specialist areas of the ship. Of course, everything was more real than it had been in the Bandar Abbas model, where they had practiced so intensely for many weeks. But, with very few exceptions, every switch, valve, and keyboard was exactly where it had been in the model; the precious data from the big computer in Barrow-in-Furness had taken care of that.

  “Gentlemen,” said the commander, “I am sorry for the delay, but I have been trying to read up on procedures. Our sailing time is, as planned, 0800, three hours from now. I have the Next-of-Kin update, and the Squadron Standing Orders. At about 0755 we are expecting four Royal Navy Sea Riders to arrive from the dockyard to supervise the day’s exercises. And we will take care of them as planned. We will allow them to arrive safely and go below. Lieutenant Commander Pakravan, well-done tonight. You and Seaman Azhari did an outstanding and difficult job. I know I can leave you to silence the Sea Riders as soon as they come below.

  “The only major change to our plan is that I intend to send Unseen’s diving signal to cover today and tomorrow’s program, because she’s not due back until tomorrow evening. However, we must send in a Check Report every twelve hours because this ship is still in Safety Workup. I intend to comply with all of the external procedures when we depart, and it is vital that we make no errors. I also intend to walk out of Plymouth Sound with this ship, not run. When we leave here I do not want one shred of suspicion left behind us. That way we have many hours to get free. And once we are free, they’ll never find us.”