by Andy Lucas
Being nuclear powered, although not a ballistic submarine, HMS Superb had been stripped of her torpedoes and Tomahawk cruise missiles at the point of her decommissioning, as expected. As teary-eyed dock workers watched her towed forlornly away, under cover of darkness, from Devonport; allegedly to a secret scrapyard, they had no way of knowing that she was actually towed out barely ten miles offshore before being unhooked.
At this point, a skeleton crew of forty experienced submariners, which had been secreted in the tug's cabin, was transferred aboard. Her apparently decommissioned and removed nuclear reactor then powered the vessel under the waves and she was gone from official history forever.
Where she went, who was responsible for the refitting, or who now gave him his secret orders were never made clear to Appleby. All he knew was that the Royal Navy needed a presence anywhere in the world that would enable them to strike at an enemy whilst claiming plausible deniability. The number of boats fielded by the service was common knowledge, the world over, so if all were accounted for then Britain could never be accused of using one of her serving nuclear boats in anger, off-grid, so to speak.
With the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, resurgence in Russia and nuclear developments in North Korea, Appleby accepted that his submarine might be able to provide a valuable service to his country outside of the official chain of command. He guessed his orders came from MI6 or GCHQ but he did not really care. Service to his country had driven him all his life and a few more years, in an even more covert manner than he was used to, was fine as far as he was concerned.
His first officer was an efficient woman, in her mid thirties, by the name of Shannon Busby. With no naval experience, she had spent her youth diving on the deepest wrecks, perfecting machines that could even withstand the massive pressures found in the depths of the world's ocean trenches. Many of the new systems that controlled their reborn submarine had been designed by her, from scratch. Highly intelligent and determined, the two of them had instantly hit it off and a mutual respect already bonded them tightly after serving together for barely three months.
She sat in a large, padded armchair secured to a single, powered rail running the entire length of the port side of the bridge. Controlled with a touch pad set into the arm, it allowed her to move quickly across to any of the main displays and consoles like a horizontal stair lift. Totally engrossed in something on the screen in front of her, she sensed his approach.
'I know what you're going to say and I agree. I have no idea why we've been ordered here. Maybe it's a test of readiness, or willingness to respond quickly to orders?' she ventured hopefully. His frown was set and it did not suit him.
A handsome man, albeit now greying and running a slight paunch as he entered his fifty-sixth year, Appleby carried the extra weight well; straight-backed and upright. Blue eyes sparkled, missing nothing, and he still proudly wore his Royal Navy uniform, albeit devoid of any insignia other than his rank. His hat, as with everything else he wore, was perfectly presented and smart.
Old school, he still sported his wedding band despite all the crew being well aware of his past – it was one of the first things he'd disclosed on their first day together. Sharing the truth, building the trust, Appleby had called it at the time.
He emanated a sense of security and capability. Although she'd never really been into older men, Shannon had to admit that there was almost something of the Richard Gere about Appleby. Maybe, in the right circumstances, she might even take him to her bed one day. Hopefully not, she shook the odd thought out of her head. Workplace romances rarely succeeded, especially awkward if they did not work out when you were trapped together, for months at a time, typically hundreds of feet below the ocean's surface.
Appleby regarded her for a moment longer, drinking in her short auburn hair, pale complexion dotted with the faintest hint of freckles and full figure. Shannon did not wear a naval uniform because, technically, the submarine was under civilian control. As always, she was sporting a one-piece, rather drab set of coveralls in a depressing shade of charcoal. Zipped up at the front, she looked like a car mechanic although her outfit was pristinely clean and neatly pressed. The comfortable fit and ease of movement were the main reasons that she chose to dress like a workman. However, it also served to make her feel more part of the crew by camouflaging her gender as much as possible, especially her rather large bust which always seemed overly pronounced due to her diminutive five feet, four-inch height. Similarly, she wore no make up, perfume or jewellery.
'I've just received some more information,' he explained slowly. The bridge was laid out to be a five-station operation but the other three crewmen were down in the propulsion room, helping with some additional radiation checks on the reactor. Everyone aboard came with the very highest security clearance but Appleby was not about to share this little gem with anyone other than her.
'So you know why we're here?'
'Yes.'
Shannon waited, cocking an expectant eyebrow in his direction. 'Feel like letting me in on it?'
'This is a search and rescue mission,' he started. 'Somewhere up there,' he flicked his gaze upwards briefly, 'are two very important individuals who the British government want us to retrieve before the sea kills them.'
'They must be very important to risk exposing us to public discovery,' she said. 'Any idea who we're looking for?'
Appleby shook his head slowly. 'Only that they're men and, if we find them, we're not to ask any questions.'
'So what are we supposed to do with them if we find them?' She had run a weather check just a few minutes earlier and knew that a powerful storm was raging on the surface above them. Forty metres down, they felt no hint of its fury. 'It's blowing a real gale topside,' she added crossly. 'We can surface and take a look but the waves are going to be running at five or six metres and it's still dark. Spotting anyone in the water will be like hunting for the proverbial needle in a very large, moving haystack. At night,' she added, for final effect.
'I am well aware of the chances of success,' Appleby responded wryly. 'Orders are orders. Get the crew to their stations and make a course adjustment of five degrees south west. Bring her up to full speed and run in for approximately fifteen minutes.' He eyed his Swiss-made Doxa 750T watch, reissued from the unique original model a few years previously. Its unique orange watch face and robust durability had made it a must-have purchase for Appleby. 'That should bring us to the co-ordinates of their last known position.'
Shannon ran an immediate check of the ocean topography. 'That's far too close to shore,' she challenged. 'We will be at risk so close in, in conditions like this,' she explained further. 'Even if we only poke the top of our sail above the surface, there won't be much water under our keel.'
Appleby had already checked the electronic maps on his personal screen, in his cabin after he'd gone down to receive the coded message. He also knew that his bosses were well aware of the risk they were asking him to take with their billion-pound vessel.
'Take her in,' he ordered calmly. 'We can use the engines to pull her out into deeper water if there is any chance of us running aground. Anyway, I'm damned curious about why these men are so valuable.'
Shannon smiled wanly. 'But don't ask them, remember? You'll get into trouble.'
Appleby flashed an instant smile back. 'Nobody gets aboard my boat without first declaring their intentions, and background,' he said. 'Captain's prerogative, I'm afraid.'
'Makes sense to me,' she agreed. Turning back to her panels, her delicate fingers flew over the touchscreen as she followed Appleby's commands, instructing the computer to adjust course and speed. Instantly, a very slight tremble from the power plant indicated an increase in speed but the submarine's advanced stabilisers meant there was no other indication aboard that anything had changed. 'All done, sir.'
'Very good. I'll be down in my cabin if you need me.'
As Appleby headed down a set of steep steps at one end of the bridge, hanging on to the steel han
drails on either side, three of his crew waited patiently at the bottom until he reached them. All three threw him a curt salute which he acknowledged. No words were exchanged as the men climbed the same set of steps, to take their stations on the bridge with Shannon.
Heading down a wide passageway, brightly lit and pleasantly cooled by a continuous circulation of conditioned, purified air, he reached his cabin in a few metres. A solid door, rather than the more traditional curtain, greeted him. Secured with a high-tech lock, Appleby pressed a thumb against the reader and was rewarded by the click as the door unlocked for him. Pushing it inwards, he entered, shutting it firmly behind him.
Large but sparse, with all furniture moulded or bolted down, he settled into a chair at his desk and flicked up the screen built into its top, pulling it upright. As he did so, it sprang into brilliant life, presenting him with a gorgeous screensaver of his wife and son. It had been taken by him, on one of the very rare occasions they had managed a summer holiday together.
Taken on a beautiful beach in Crete, the faces of his past both supported and taunted him. Mixed emotions always hit whenever he looked at their image but he loved them; always would, and wanted to make sure he never forgot them.
'Love you both,' he said softly, which were the same words he always directed at the screen every time he switched it on. Hannah, slightly sunburnt and peeling on the tip of her nose, smiled back at him through gorgeous eyes that were hidden by a pair of fashionable sunglasses. Her curly blonde hair was tied up in a ponytail. In her arms sat Ben, when he was probably only five years old. Appleby's son was beaming with joy. He loved the sea and it had been a wonderful, loving holiday for them all. Having no sunglasses on, his eyes were screwed up against the glare of the Mediterranean sun. It was Appleby's favourite family photograph.
Flicking on the communication icon, their images vanished and were replaced by a string of encrypted messages, now all translated by the security software integrated into one of a dozen submarine computers. A new message had come in and he scanned the contents quickly. His heart sank a little further.
'Running aground might be the least of our worries,' he sighed to himself. 'I'd better not scratch my boat with this madness.'
Or kill us all, he finished his sentence silently to himself.
14
The flight in had been a tricky affair, with the skilled pilots being barely able to keep the Falcon jet below Uruguayan radar and set down in a deserted private airfield, fifteen miles south of the ARC facility. An old field, previously belonging to the military elite that had governed the country until democracy took hold and kicked them out, it had been mothballed more out of political correctness than operational value. Like so many airbases around the globe, the new government had simply emptied the building and locked the gate.
Thirty years on, it was only ever used by clandestine flights, as a stop over to refuel, by friendly nations. Officially, the government would deny ay knowledge, of course, but it was mainly used by the Americans who had helped a great deal with funding in those early days of democratic celebration. Even the Americans had only ever used it half a dozen times so it was no hardship to keep the tarmac strip repaired and a couple of drums of aviation fuel, with a manual pump, tucked under some old tarpaulins by one of the dilapidated hangar buildings.
The McEntire Corporation had full knowledge of all these arrangements, and airfields, that they often used for their less public operations. As a genuine, multi-billion pound international business, the McEntire Corporation had genuine reasons to send its staff all over the globe; negotiating trade deals, funding and supporting Doyle McEntire's personal interest in global conservation. In this guise, however, they tended to stick to regular airports.
Ramsay and Norton performed a flawless landing, keeping all their running lights off and setting down in total darkness, using a mixture of instrumentation and night vision helmets. The base, as they tend to be, was several miles from the nearest settlement which tended to be isolated farms at this particular location. Once down, they were confident they could remain safely hidden until dawn broke. Once they lost the cover of darkness, all four men aboard knew the plane would be forced to leave, with or without Pace and Hammond.
A short walk down a fairly steep, grass-tufted incline was all that had separated the McEntire men from the water. It had taken barely fifteen minutes to get there; Parry and Norton helping to carry the lightweight, now inflated Zodiac and its far heavier outboard motor.
It was ten o'clock at night when the men had parted company, with a promise to return by four o'clock the next morning. Long enough to find out what was going on at the ARC site and, hopefully, get a lead on where to find Josephine Roche. Pace wanted her blood for the attack on Sarah while Hammond held a grudge at the terrible indignity inflicted upon the newest member of their team; Deborah Miles.
Now though, at a little after three o'clock in the morning, with increasingly wild winds slashing all around the parked Falcon and no contact from either Pace or Hammond, Parry and Norton were beginning to fear the worst. Their duty was to Doyle McEntire, however much they both admired the courage of the others. If the deadline was reached, they would leave, without hesitation. Neither wanted that to be the outcome as they sat in the dark cockpit, scanning through the water-streaming windows with their night vision helmets. Time ticked by, with several huge gusts threatening to tip the Falcon on its wingtips until, eventually, the deadline arrived. With no sign of the men, and still no response from the encrypted satellite phones they each carried, there was no choice.
It took every year of their combined flight experience to get the jet safely into the air. Wrestling with the controls at times, making continuous adjustments to flaps and power settings, Parry took the lead and coaxed the aircraft out over the water, keeping it so low that he felt sure some of the higher waves might wash their underbelly.
Already refuelled, courtesy of the Uruguayan government drums, he managed to keep the Falcon under control until they reached a point well outside the country's territorial airspace. At this point, he gratefully powered the luxury private jet up through the storm clouds and relaxed a little when they reached a cruising height of forty thousand feet. Up there, with a new dawn tickling the horizon with pink fingertips and the clouds lying far below them like a fluffy carpet, the Falcon headed for home.
Although they had no way of knowing it at the time, their decision to leave had been the right one. There was no way Pace and Hammond would ever have got back there, even if they had all the time in the world.
After powering the Zodiac out into the teeth of the gale, Hammond had only managed to ride the first two large breakers before an unseen undercurrent had hit the Zodiac in the tail, turning her sideways on to the third wave. Before either man had even realised fully what was happening, the huge wave had hit the boat and flipped it over, dumping Pace and Hammond into the raging, icy Atlantic.
Without immersion suits, or life jackets, they both sank before scrabbling back to the boiling surface, spitting and choking out seawater. Luckily, the next wave had yet to arrive and they were able to strike out for the upturned Zodiac, reaching it just in time for them both to grab hold of one of the side handles.
Numb with cold and shock, the wave smashed down over their heads, trying to drown them quickly and forcing the entire boat under water for several feet before its buoyancy lifted it, and the men, back to the surface.
Their only hope was to get the boat turned over and facing back into the wind and they tried hard to make it happen. After perhaps the fifth attempt, their timing improved enough that they managed to work together, clinging on to the same side, and haul it over. With barely minutes of strength left in their chilled bodies, Pace clambered in, turning to help Hammond in after him.
Luck then gave them a helpful break by managing to have the bow of the Zodiac pointed towards the next wave so that it rode up and over without flipping again.
They drifted north, dragged by the
cross current, and also managed somehow to move away from the shore despite the repeated pounding from shore-bound waves. The tide, despite its fury, was behaving very strangely mainly due to a myriad of unseen seafloor features below them that created conflicting currents, undertows and occasional vortices.
It did not matter to them how they had come away from the shore, only that they had. It meant the waves, though still high and angry, now topped off at a little over three metres. If they could get the boat shipshape again, they just might be able to ride out the storm.
Their luck chose not to desert them in their hour of need.
A quick check revealed all their equipment bags were still safely stowed under the webbing around the edges, including their weapons. More importantly, the securing bolts on the outboard motor had survived the initial impact with the killer wave and the engine sat happily in its mountings at the rear. Specifically designed, by the British military, to operate after full immersion, a quick press of the starter button and it revved into glorious life.
With power, they were able to steer the boat out to sea, riding wave after wave until they were far enough from shore to risk turning slight southwards, running along the wave troughs for a few metres before presenting their noses to the wind again every time a particularly high wave approached.
Crabbing their way along the coast, shivering and deflated, the two men knew their chances of getting back to the Falcon, on time, were zero.
'What do you want to do?' Pace asked Hammond, forcing his teeth to stop chattering but having only partial success.
Hammond was only too aware of their misjudgement in not kitting up with immersion suits. Soaked to the skin, in the middle of a storm, neither of them would last much longer out on the open sea.
'We could run back into shore?' he offered. 'We're probably a mile or so up the coast from the ARC site now. With the storm covering us, we should be able to land unseen and strike inland. Maybe find some help, or at least some shelter where we can get dry and warm; start a fire maybe?'