Shadow Hunter (41 page)

‘Bloody well done!' Andrew clapped the weapons operator on the shoulder.

He turned to a grinning Peter Biddle.

‘Let's hope Pike's got the message by now. What's the
Truc
doing, TAS?'

‘Moving. Fast. Heading north, thirty knots.'

‘We do the same? Right?' Biddle checked.

‘Right. And keep close. When we're clear of danger I'm going to have a few words with Phil Hitchens on the underwater telephone.'

* * *

The operations room of the Soviet Northern Fleet was electrified.

The four helicopters hovering over the waters round Ostrov Chernyy reported the explosions within seconds of each other. Using passive sonar transducers, only one had been close enough to the
Truculent
to hear her bow caps open and the mine being expelled.

Admiral Belikov frowned. They didn't match. The contact discovered by the helicopter and the one the
Ladny
had been following – they were too far apart to be one and the same.

Two
foreign submarines? Had the second boat come to
try to stop Commander Hitchens betraying his country? Had the
Truculent
been sunk?

‘Tell them to go active. Search the area thoroughly. Put out a general signal to look for foreign submarines. There may be several boats, with the ability to make themselves sound like our own.'

The Captain Lieutenant hastened to relay the order. Using active sonar in the shallow water round Ostov Chernyy would not be easy; reflections from the uneven sea-bed could make the readings unintelligible.

Decoys. Of course! Belikov snapped his pudgy fingers. The explosions could be a decoy too. To make them concentrate their search round Ostrov Chernyy, while the submarines headed elsewhere! Inshore? To the mouth of the Kol'skiy Zaliv? To lay the new mines where they could do most damage, just outside the main submarine bases? It made sense.

And who would be waiting for them? Felix Astashenkov – ready to claim the military and political glory of destroying the foreign intruder.

Belikov fumed at the thought.

‘Send a coded signal to the
Ladny,
' he ordered the Captain Lieutenant. ‘Tell her to head inshore fast. I believe the British boats are making for Polyarny.'

* * *

‘The sonar computer puts the explosions at fifteen kilometres northeast of here, Comrade Vice-Admiral,' announced Captain 2nd Rank Yury Makhov.

Mines. And they'd found a target. Feliks had misjudged it. He'd thought the only place the
Truculent
would lay them would be the mouth of the Kol'skiy Zaliv. He'd been fatally wrong.

‘The sonar has no submarine contacts yet?'

‘Regrettably not, Vice-Admiral. We'll need to be close to a
Trafalgar
to hear her.'

‘Then we must close the gap, Yury. Ten minutes at maximum speed will bring us near.'

Makhov disliked driving his vessel fast in inshore
waters, making his sonar deaf. But he could see the anxiety on Astashenkov's face.

‘I share your determination. We'll have our revenge on the Englishman!'

He ordered the reactors to maximum power. Imperceptibly the 7,600 ton leviathan began to accelerate to 45 knots.

* * *

‘Ten up. Keep one-hundred-and-twenty-five metres, revolutions for fifteen knots!' Biddle directed. They were slowing down to listen, desperate to know what had happened on the
Truculent
.

‘Contact bearing zero-four-five.
Trafalgar
class, sir!' the sonar CPO announced. ‘Range . . .'

He waited the few seconds it took the computer to calculate it.

‘Two-point-seven nautical miles, sir. No other surface or sub-surface contacts registered.'

‘Right. This is it.'

Andrew lifted the handset of the underwater telephone.

‘British submarine, British submarine! This is your sister vessel speaking. I am Commander Andrew Tinker. Do you hear me, over?'

Tim Pike spun round, thunderstruck by the voice that suddenly crackled from the loudspeaker. He grabbed the handset.

‘I hear you clearly, sir. This is the first lieutenant speaking, Lieutenant Commander Pike. Over.'

There was a lapse of a few seconds before the reply reached through the water.

‘Listen carefully, Tim. Commander Hitchens is unwell. You must take command of the boat immediately. I repeat. You must assume command. That is an order from CINCFLEET. Understood? Over.'

Pike felt his shoulders sag with relief.

‘I've already taken command, sir. Repeat. I am now in command. Commander Hitchens is being attended to in his cabin. Over.'

Again, a pause for the reply.

‘Good news. Give him a message from me, will you? Tell him not to worry. His problems can be sorted out. Tell him I'll help him when we get back home. Now. Get well clear, and when it's safe call CINCFLEET. Over.'

‘We have an emergency on board, sir,' Pike continued. ‘Two men badly injured. Legs crushed by a torpedo disloged by the explosion. Over.'

‘Sorry about that. Better try to get them ashore in Norway. Tell CINCFLEET to organize it. See you in Devonport. Out.'

Tim Pike replaced the handset.

‘Clear the datum!' he called. They had to move fast. The Soviets were bound to have heard their conversation.

‘TAS. Take control. I'm going to see the captain.'

So, they'd been right about Hitchens all along. The man had thrown a loop. CINCFLEET must have known it soon after they'd left port. Had to send a bloody submarine to get the message through!

He shuddered to think what Tinker had intended when he'd launched that torpedo at them. Had he meant to hit the Moray mine, or had
Truculent
herself been the target?

In the flush of relief that they'd survived, the anger he'd suppressed for days began to boil over.

Hitchens had been happy to risk all their lives in pursuit of some crazy plan of his own. The bastard!

Sub. Lieutenant Hugo Smallbone stood at ease outside the captain's cabin.

‘He told me to get out,' Hugo whispered, tapping the tip of a finger against his temple.

Pike pushed into the cabin. The captain's face was like a cast, devoid of emotion.

‘There's a message for you, sir. From Commander Tinker.'

Suddenly Pike saw the mask crack. At the mention of the name, Philip's lips began to tremble; a tic set his eyes blinking.

‘Said you weren't to worry, sir. He'll help you sort things out when we get home.'

Philip clenched his eyelids to stop their movement. Pike's voice echoed inside his head.

Andrew? Out here?
Andrew
had come after him? The man Sara had named as the first of her string of lovers?
Andrew,
who'd betrayed nearly twenty years of friendship by seducing his wife and setting her on the path to ruin? How could this be the man they'd sent?

‘He'll help you sort things out when we get home.'
What a mockery!
God,
how patronizing!

‘Sir? Sir, are you all right?'

Pike's voice was agitated.

‘You're suffering from shock, sir. I'll get the medical assistant to give you something. Just hang on, sir.'

Alarmed at Philip's uncontrollable shaking, Pike hurried to find the steward who'd done a first-aid course. He remembered where he was; he would be attending to the two men with crushed legs in the torpedo compartment.

He clattered down the ladder to the deck below.

‘Where's the MA? Quick, get up here with your bag of goodies. Something to sedate the Captain.'

Suddenly Pike heard Hugo Smallbone bellowing for him.

‘The captain's gone! Just rushed past me. I thought he was going to the heads. . . .'

Suddenly an alarm bell sounded.

‘The forward escape hatch!' Pike yelled and hurled himself along the corridor.

In the escape chamber, the lower hatch was closed, a red light flashing to warn that the chamber was flooding.

Pike wrenched at the hatch. It crashed open, icy sea water drenching down onto the deck. Pike fought his way up through the torrent, gasping for breath. He seized Philip's legs and both men crashed down onto the deck, choking.

The medical assistant and Hugo Smallbone dragged Hitchens to one side so that Pike could get back into the tower. Water streaming past him, he reached up, and fumbled for the flood valve to shut it off.

Soaked and shivering he collapsed onto the deck, water swilling away into the drains that led to the bilges.

‘Jesus!' he panted. ‘Jesus Christ!'

* * *

Neither the
Ametyst
nor the
Ladny
was aware of the other's presence, both deafened by the speed at which they were moving. Their two captains had a single aim; to find the British submarine before it could lay more mines.

The
Ladny
had been ordered to head inshore, the
Ametyst
was bound for the open sea.

The collision came at a combined underwater speed of 72 knots.

The
Ladny
struck the
Ametyst
aft of the forward planes. The protective outer casings of the two vessels crumpled like paper, until the pressure hulls struck with a terrible wrenching of steel and an explosion of escaping air.

The forward weapon compartment of the
Ladny
telescoped, then split open like an egg dropped on concrete, spewing men and oil into the black water. The section of the
Ametyst
ahead of the fin was torn away by the impact. Exploding electrical circuitry jolted the foreshortened hull nose-up, allowing air to escape in a seething column to the surface.

Water surged down through the control and accommodation spaces, stopping only at the watertight hatches through the reactor compartment. Battered and disorientated by the violent movement, the men had no time to don escape masks. Within minutes, more than half the crew had drowned – amongst them Vice-Admiral Feliks Astashenkov.

Devoid of buoyancy, the forward section fell towards the sea-bed fifty metres below, propelled by the still-rotating screw. The aft section of her hull lifted up by the air trapped in it, the
Ametyst
began to somersault.

The safety systems in the two reactors tripped as the hull passed through the critical angle, but it was too late. The hull inverted. Steam percolated back into the reactor pressure vessel, replacing the water which moderated the nuclear reaction. Deprived of coolant, the temperature in the core began to rise. By the time the broken nose of the
hull buried itself in the mud of the sea-bed the core was melting.

On the
Ladny,
too, there were no survivors forward of the reactor section. The boat sank to the sea-bed, nose-down, but upright. The engineering crew aft succeeded in scramming the reactors; control rods dropped into the core to absorb the neutron flow and damp down the reaction. Then panic set in.

One hundred metres separated the two wrecks on the bottom. The heat in
Ametyst
's reactors climbed fast. The molten core burned through the steel of the reactor compartment, then through the hull itself. Ice-cold water surged in and exploded into steam.

The detonation of the reactor compartment released a tidal wave of energy, scattering the shreds of the
Ametyst
like sea-weed, and knocking the
Ladny
onto its side.

* * *

The sounds of the collision, the ripping of metal, and the explosions that followed were heard by the two British submarines twenty miles to the north.

Andrew took the headphones from the sonar rating in the sound room and listened to the brain-curdling racket.

‘Where's it coming from, for God's sake?' he asked, suddenly scared that Philip could have laid other mines earlier.

‘Bearing one-nine-five, sir. Range twenty miles.'

Andrew hurried to the navigation plot, and picked up the dividers. He measured the distance onto the chart.

‘Five miles north of the inlet. Not guilty.
Truculent
never got that far south.'

‘It's that
Victor III,
' announced Colqhoun. ‘She was sprinting. We tracked her all the way in. Look, it's on disc.'

‘Play it back, CPO.'

The sonar chief cued the disc and directed Andrew to the VDU. The phosphor-green wave pattern began to spread up the screen.

‘That's the
Victor III
, sir,' explained the chief, pointing
to a ridge on the waterfall pattern at the frequency generated by vibration from the Soviet submarine's pumps.

‘And what's that next to it?' Andrew asked.

‘Just an echo, sir. Shallow water.'

‘Couldn't it be another boat?' Andrew pressed.

The CPO keyed the target information into a window on the screen.

‘Same bearing, sir. Just an echo.'

‘But if there were two boats, and they collided. . . .'

‘See what you mean, sir.'

‘Spin back five minutes on the disc.'

It took a few seconds.

The chief keyed instructions for the computer to analyse the tracks.

‘You're dead right, sir. They were on different bearings.'

Andrew folded his arms. For two Soviet vessels, the submariners' nightmare had come true. A collision at speed.

Peter Biddle appeared at his shoulder.

‘We've got to get a signal off fast,' Andrew announced. ‘Before the Russians accuse
us
of sinking their boats.'

JOURNALISTS IN LONDON
and Washington were invited at short notice to special briefings at Downing Street and the White House respectively.

They were told the British and US governments had received irrefutable intelligence information that two Soviet submarines had collided accidentally earlier that day, with heavy loss of life. American spy satellites had picked up extensive radio traffic emanating from the major rescue operation the Soviet Navy was mounting.