Shadow Hunter (40 page)

‘Not out there. She was detected close to the Kol'skiy Zaliv, half an hour ago.'

The printer spewed out more paper.

‘Reconfirmed,' declared the Captain Lieutenant. ‘The IL-38 reports the contact has headed east at speed, conducting evasive manoeuvres. They've lost it now. Should they try to track it?'

‘Tell them, yes. And put out a general alert that the British submarine
Truculent
seems to be using a noise generator. She's pretending to be one of ours.'

* * *

Feliks Astashenkov heaved a sigh of relief when he checked on the chart the position of the
Truculent
that the Severomorsk headquarters had just transmitted. If she was still that far out the chances were she'd not yet laid her mines.

The thought of the undetectable threat that might be sitting on the sea-bed anywhere in their path had terrified him since leaving port. Against another submarine they could fight, but a mine gave no warning, no possibility of retaliation.

Suddenly, he was filled with hope. There was a chance, after all, that they could complete their mission, that the British boat could be destroyed inside Soviet waters and the wreckage brought up so that the Soviet people could be shown how NATO threatened the security of the State.

‘There you are, Yury. Those are the co-ordinates of the target,' he said, putting his arm round the younger man's shoulders. ‘Let's go and look for it!'

* * *

The young, white-coated doctor crashed through the swing doors with a trolley carrying a cardiac-arrest emergency kit.

Ahead of him he could see the Russian nurse holding open the door to the small, private room.

He swung the trolley inside; one of the clinic's own female nurses was pressing rhythmically on the breastbone of the old man on the bed.

They hadn't been told his name; they knew him simply as ‘the patient in room 112'. But a nurse had heard him speaking English.

‘He must be kept alive, doctor,' whispered the Soviet official who'd been guarding the room since their arrival earlier that day.

The Finnish doctor ignored the remark. Goddamned KGB! He could smell them a mile off.

He grabbed the old man's wrist. No pulse. The trace on the electrocardiograph screen was flat.

‘How long?'

‘Two, three minutes,' answered the nurse.

The doctor uncoiled cables and placed two electrodes either side of Alex Hitchens' immobile heart, removing the ones connected to the electrocardiograph.

‘Stand back,' he instructed, and pressed the switch.

Four times he repeated the process, checking after each shock for some sign that the heart had restarted. There was none.

The ECG was reconnected. The trace stayed flat.

‘He's dead,' he announced.

‘Not possible,' hissed the Russian guard. ‘He has to live!'

The doctor suppressed a desire to seize the Russian by the throat.

‘He was half-dead when he arrived here this morning. You gave us no medical records for him. But he had clear signs of heart failure. You must've known that before you brought him here. You knew the risks. He should never have been moved in his condition.'

With that he began to pack up his equipment.

The Finnish nurse looked down at the wrinkled old man, his sunken eyes hidden beneath closed lids. No name. No past. No future. It was sad that anyone should end their days in such anonymity.

Then she noticed something that gave her a certain comfort – a trace of a smile on the old man's thin lips.

* * *

Philip's mind was made up. The decision had come quite suddenly, as if placed in his brain by some outside agency.

His father was dead; he was suddenly certain of it. He'd been dead for years probably, though exactly when it had happened was irrelevant. The ‘evidence' that he was alive, which the KGB woman had produced, was fake. The whole scheme was a trick. He knew he had been stupid, but it no longer mattered.

Now the Soviets would pay the price for destroying his father, destroying his marriage and eventually destroying him too. They were going to get what was coming to them.

‘Captain, Control Room!'

‘On my way,' Philip said into the communications box.

He hurried to the control room.

‘Two submarine contacts, sir,' Pike told him. ‘Both approaching from the west, both appear to be
Victor Threes
.'

On the chart he pointed to the island of Ostrov Chernyy with the underwater spit of sand extending from its northern shore.

‘We're four miles from the island itself, two miles from the edge of the shallows. The first contact is five miles behind us on a bearing of three-one-zero. Coming straight at us. Fifteen knots. She may be tracking us, or else getting a steer from an aircraft.'

‘Our speed?'

‘Seven knots, sir.'

‘And the second contact?'

‘Less of a threat. Twelve miles distant.'

‘Right. Spriggs, over here!' Philip ordered, suddenly sounding decisive and confident. ‘We've got to be quick. They could be about to attack. Our task, gentlemen, is to lay three Moray mines close to their submarine lanes. Set the fuses for any submarine target, WEO, but with remote triggering. The mines won't be activated until later – by sonar burst. When, and who by, that'll be up to CINCFLEET. Is that clear?'

Pike hesitated. Spriggs was looking to him for a sign.

‘The orders, sir . . . , they specify geographical coordinates for the mines? You'll give us the signal you received?'

Philip ground his teeth, determined to keep his nerve.

‘The co-ordinates I was given no longer apply,' he snapped. ‘It was supposed to be right in the mouth of the Kola Inlet. We'll never get there now. The fall back plan was to place them somewhere else. That's down to me.'

He prodded the chart.

‘There. Just on the edge of the shelf, where it rises up towards Ostrov Chernyy. That's where we'll put them.'

In his mind's eye he imagined the spot; a slope of mud and fine sand, 150 metres down; protruding from it – the twisted metal of the old
T-class
boat,
HMS Tenby.
Soon, very soon, two Soviet
Victor
class submarines would be joining that pile of wreckage, if all went well.

‘Right, gentlemen. Get on with it. We only have minutes to put those mines on the bottom and get the hell out of here!'

And Philip strode off to the sound room.

‘Well?' asked Spriggs.

‘Shit! I dunno! They won't be armed when we lay them. He says it'll need further orders.'

Spriggs raised an eyebrow.

‘Look. I'm the one that'll get the chop if I'm wrong!' Pike reasoned. ‘It's not the moment, Paul. We just haven't got enough evidence for me to relieve him. You'd better get the mines ready!'

* * *

‘Target's altered course, sir,' called Lieutenant Algy Colqhoun. ‘He's heading for the shelf north of Ostrov Chernyy.'

‘Christ!' breathed Andrew. ‘The moment of truth! He's going to bloody give them the mine!'

‘I'll proceed with the firing sequence?' Biddle suggested.

‘Yes, but hold the final order,' Andrew told him.

‘Open bow caps!'
the WEO ordered the weapons compartment crew below.

Andrew looked hard at the Al plot.
Truculent
was five miles ahead. Too far for the underwater telephone.

‘That
Victor
's after us, Peter. Eight miles astern. We've not fooled her with our decoy. All we've done is given her something loud enough to track.'

‘Dump the decoy!' Biddle shouted, swinging himself into the bandstand. ‘Let it swim right here!'

He glanced rapidly at the plot.

‘Starboard ten. Steer zero-nine-zero. Standby to fire!'

They were turning away from the decoy, weaving, almost certain the Soviet boat wouldn't detect them.

So, Philip was going to do it – betray his country – hand over technology that could be ten years ahead of anything the Soviets had.

A Hammerfish torpedo would take just four minutes to reach the
Truculent.
There was a chance, just a chance he could use it to stop the mine-laying and still let the hundred men on board survive.

‘Get the bloody thing into the water!' he barked to Biddle.

The CO gave the order.

‘Fire!'

From the nose of the submarine the Hammerfish shot forward, propelled by its miniature gas turbine. Trailing behind, a thin wire linked it to the submarine.

The weapons controller had his eyes glued to his screen. The target was at the centre; a green symbol approaching it from below was the torpedo. Guidance was from the submarine's bow sonar to start with, but shortly the weapon's own sensors would begin to track the target.

Andrew hovered at his shoulder.

‘When the range is down to two-hundred metres, and the high-definition sonar goes active, we're going to have to move bloody fast,' Andrew warned. ‘If we get it wrong, all the men in that boat are dead.'

The operator swallowed hard, hand hovering over the joystick that would guide the torpedo on its last few metres of flight.

* * *

‘Torpedo! Torpedo! Torpedo! Torpedo bearing red one-five-zero! True bearing two-nine-five!'

‘Shit!' Pike hissed.

‘Starboard thirty! Steer two-nine-five! Ready the mines!' Philip bellowed.

‘Only one mine ready in the tube, sir!' Spriggs called.

The control room heeled over as the submarine turned on its tail to face the threat.

‘Fire a decoy!'

Forward of the control room a rating slipped a Bandfish decoy into a launch tube and tugged at the lever that propelled it into the sea. The cylinder of electronics hovered in the water emitting a high intensity signal to lure the torpedo.

‘Course two-nine-five, sir,' Cavendish called as the boat settled onto the new heading.

‘Are we tracking the bastard who's firing at us?'

‘Bit confused, sir. Thought it was the
Victor Three,
but the transients of the bow caps and torpedo launch came from a different bearing.'

‘Lay the mine!'

The forward weapons compartment reverberated to the thunder of compressed air, blasting the Moray mine out of the torpedo tube. It began to sink towards the sea-bed one hundred metres below.

‘
Torpedo's gone active, sir!
'

‘Give me a firing solution, sonar, for Christ's sake!' Philip screamed, clinging to the bandstand.

‘
Torpedo's sonar's classified as a fucking Hammerfish, sir!
' came a yell of astonishment from the sound room.

Philip froze.

‘Oh, my God! What have I done?'

* * *

‘Three hundred yards to the target, sir!' announced the weapons operator. ‘The passive system's swamped by decoy noise, but the active's burning through it!'

‘
Just heard the target launch something from a tube, sir!
' yelled the sound room.

‘Two hundred yards! High-definition sonar now active, sir.'

‘Make it look down! Below the bows,' Andrew hissed in the operator's ear. ‘Track what's just come from the tube!'

‘If it's a torpedo it'll be gone, sir,' the rating grumbled.

‘It's a mine! Just try and track it,' Andrew ordered.

The weapon controller dived the Hammerfish towards the sea-bed. He'd never done this before.

‘Got it, sir. Small object, dropping.'

‘Spot on! Just one? Sound room! Anything from the other tubes?'

‘Nothing detected, sir!'

‘Fifty yards, sir. Do we hit the mine?'

‘Yes. Blow the fucker to pieces!'

* * *

Inside
Truculent,
the double explosion boomed with a terrifying resonance. The blast wave lifted the bows and tossed the boat sideways.

In the control room ratings and officers crashed to the deck. Paul Spriggs gashed his forehead as he fell, blood trickling into his eye.

Tim Pike grabbed the edge of the bandstand and pulled himself to his feet.

‘Oh, God! Oh, God!'

Eyes closed, the captain was gibbering meaninglessly, his mind a tortured jumble.

The moment had come.

‘I have command!' Pike shouted. ‘Damage reports!'

Peter Claypole pressed the key on the ship control panel that linked him with the manoeuvring room, aft. He listened, then reassured the first lieutenant.

‘No problems with propulsion.'

‘Casualties in the weapons compartment!' called Spriggs, pressing a handkerchief to his forehead. ‘I'm going down there.'

‘Starboard twenty. Steer zero-one-zero! Revolutions for maximum speed,' Pike ordered. ‘Nick, give me a safe depth.'

‘Two hundred metres for five miles. Then come up to one twenty.'

‘Ten down. Keep two hundred metres. TAS, what are the contacts doing?'

‘Closing,' Cordell replied. ‘Nearest at four miles, now
classified as
Trafalgar
class. Closest
Victor
's disappeared. Guess it must've been a decoy. Lost track of the other
Victor.
We've a firing solution on the
Trafalgar.
'

‘You must be joking! What the hell was he doing firing at us, anyway? And where the fuck's the C.O.?'

The bandstand was empty. Hitchens had gone.

‘Hugo,' Pike shouted, spotting the radio officer. ‘Find the captain. He's not well. Get him back to his cabin and stay with him. Get a steward to help if you need to.'

* * *

Even four miles away the double detonation of the torpedo and the mine was heard through the hull.