‘And there has been nothing more from this mini-submarine?’
‘It has moved in close to
JV3.
’ Windsor glanced at a tech. The man mouthed something. ‘Fifty feet to starboard, captain.’
‘I see,’ Townscliff said. ‘Hornbee? What is your gut feeling?’
‘Not good, Prime Minister. We are in an extremely vulnerable position.’
‘Explain.’
‘The enemy has moved an asset close to the wreck and to our unarmed research vessel,
JV3.
Both the Shang submarine and the mini-sub are stealth vessels, that’s how they have
come so close without being picked up by radar or sonar. It makes me wonder what other tricks the Chinese have up their sleeves.’
‘Perhaps none, Admiral.’
‘Indeed, that is quite possible. But, the action is over two thousand feet beneath us on the floor of the North Sea. There is nothing we can do to stop the mini-sub.’
‘Do either of you have any idea what the hell the Chinese are doing?’
Derham could think of several answers, each of which would have caused trouble. He glanced at Windsor and said: ‘Thanks to the proximity of
Ark Royal
just outside Norwegian
waters, they are clearly outgunned up here. They are after the same thing as we are and they are going in hard where we can’t reach them.’
‘Admiral?’
‘I couldn’t have put it better myself.’
‘I see. So the question is: what do we do now?’
‘Would you like my candid opinion, Prime Minister?’ Hornbee asked.
‘I’m sure I won’t like it; but yes, I would.’
‘We should fire upon the Shang submarine, NATO designation Alpha564/D.’
‘But that would be construed as an act of war.’
‘Or self-defence,’ Windsor offered.
‘Would it not be considered an excessive use of force? An escalation? After all, the mini-sub only fired across the bow of a wreck.’
‘Deliberately endangering lives,’ Hornbee said.
‘We have no way of knowing the Chinese are aware how fragile the wreck is.’
Admiral Hornbee gave the prime minister a hard stare, his silence speaking volumes.
‘Admiral Hornbee,
Gladstone
, hold your positions. Do not. I repeat. Do not open fire unless either of you are fired upon.’
‘But, Prime—’
‘I will not fire the first shot,’ Townscliff snapped. ‘I will not be responsible for starting a war.’
His image disappeared from the bridge screen.
Kate heard Ester Lamb’s Mayday message, but she had no time to respond. She spun in the PAT and headed back the five yards to
Phoenix.
Lou had disappeared into
the darkness of the old sub. All Kate could see were a pair of darting light beams from Lou’s arm and helmet torches bouncing around in the chamber under the conning tower.
‘Lou?’ she called through the comms.
‘No, Kate. Go back. I got this.’
She was in the room and could see him crouching down, pulling something from the floor under an unravelled length of rope.
‘You’ve found it?’
The sub shook. Kate glanced anxiously at the opening in the hull and the PAT beyond.
Lou lifted the object. It was a small attaché case.
‘Right. Now we go!’ Kate barked. Lou could see her eyes ablaze through the suit mask as she grabbed his free arm.
The sub shuddered violently again. All around them reverberated the painful rasp of metal against rock, metal against metal.
They heard a boom from the starboard side.
Phoenix
rocked again. A support beam collapsed from the ceiling and smashed to the floor of the room inches from them. They were thrown
sideways, Kate tumbling on top of Lou as he collided with a bulkhead.
‘Jesus!’ He staggered to his feet.
Another violent jolt and they were at the opening into the PAT. Through the comms they both heard Ester Lamb. She sounded utterly desperate.
‘Mayday. Mayday. Lou? Kate? We are under attack. Repeat, under attack. GET BACK NOW!’
‘We’re in the PAT, Commander,’ Kate’s voice broke.
They crawled as fast as they could along the tunnel. It swayed and groaned under the strain.
‘Come on Lou! Faster!’ Kate screamed.
He ploughed on, propelling himself along the PAT.
A screech came from the conning tower. They dared not look back.
Kate dived into the airlock of
JV3
, spun round and reached out to help Lou. He was two yards away from her outstretched hand.
Another burst of sound from
Phoenix
and Kate saw a rip appear in the inner skin of the tunnel. It shot along the barrel of nanocarbon, spreading tendrils ten yards long.
‘Lou!’
Kate felt the tips of his gloved fingers. He half dived, half ran the final few feet and tumbled into the airlock. Kate grabbed the rim of the door and started to pull it back when the far end
of the PAT gave way.
The tunnel slipped away from the hull of
Phoenix
like a sucker detaching itself. Lou grabbed the door handle and between them they pushed the door back the last few inches. Lou pushed
down the locking lever and Kate slammed a bolt into place.
‘We’re in, Commander.’
Water slammed against the ocean side of the door as the PAT was ripped away by the swirling currents around the two submarines.
Lou and Kate were thrown backwards as
JV3
accelerated away. They clambered through the tiny connecting passage, up a ladder and scrambled into the control room, grasping at any hold
they could find as the submarine zigzagged. Pulling off their oxygen packs, they slid into the passenger seats, yanked over the safety belts and locked themselves in.
A few feet ahead, they could see Lamb. She was running her hands frenziedly over the control panel, her gaze flitting between the monitors and the array of LEDs and keypads.
And when it happened, they were all taken by surprise. In the half-light from the
JV3
’s headlamps, they saw the
Phoenix
break free from the rocky cradle it had resided in
for so many years. It rose a few yards, aft fins scraping the outcrop of stone. A few yards more and it started to crumple, dissolving like a soluble aspirin.
They saw the torpedo before they felt the shockwave. It streaked past the bow of
JV3
and exploded in a vortex of water a hundred yards to port.
The surge of water from the blast hit them.
‘Holy shit!’ Lou exclaimed as Commander Lamb swung the tiny sub hard to starboard.
For a few moments it felt as though
JV3
was completely out of control.
The engines squealed and the turbulence made the vessel shake from bow to stern. Lou and Kate could do nothing but watch Commander Lamb struggle with the controls.
‘I can’t believe this is happening,’ Kate shouted above the noise. She turned to see Lou’s face pale as death.
‘
Gladstone
, come in please,’ Lamb called into the comms. ‘Come in.’
Nothing.
A third torpedo came into view, heading straight for them.
Lamb yanked the control column hard left, then right.
JV3
jolted, the engines roaring. The torpedo slipped past, almost scraped the hull and disappeared behind them. The crunch from the
shockwave came two seconds later.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Lou exclaimed. ‘That was fucking close.’
‘Commander? Do we have a plan?’ Kate yelled over the noise.
Lamb didn’t take her eyes from the controls and monitors.
‘Nope . . . unless you have some ideas, doctor. I’m just dodging the torpedoes!’
The boom ricocheted around the control room; then came a shrill pulse like a beast vainly resisting death.
Silence.
‘The engines have died,’ Lamb said. The matter-of-factness in her voice was terrifying.
London. 9.34 a.m.
‘Prime Minister, we must attack the Chinese . . . now!’
The Right Honourable Nigel Townscliff glared back at the images on his monitor. The screen was again split into two showing the commander of
Ark Royal
and Captain Windsor on
Gladstone.
‘Must we, Admiral? There are always alternatives. Always.’
‘With respect, sir,’ Windsor interjected, ‘I think that is an exaggeration. This is a time when there are no alternatives left. Unless, of course . . .’
‘Unless what, Captain?’
‘Unless you are happy to let our three submariners die and allow the material from
Phoenix
to fall into Chinese hands.’
Townscliff said nothing, lowered his head and rubbed his temples. Those on the bridge of the aircraft carrier and the small research vessel could hear the British prime minister breathing
heavily.
‘And you are absolutely sure . . .’ Townscliff said, ‘the Chinese mini-sub has actually opened fire on our vessel down there?’
‘It has, sir. We have detected three torpedoes.
JV3
has been taking evasive action.’
‘I see.’
‘Sir?’ A tech to Windsor’s left turned, his eyes wide. ‘The heat image of
JV3
has changed.’
Captain Derham was standing on the bridge next to Windsor and turned away from the faces on the video screen. ‘What does that mean exactly, Lieutenant?’ He strode over to the tech
and stared at an infrared image of
JV3
showing the heat distribution through the vessel.
‘It means the engines are down, sir.
JV3
’s a sitting duck.’
North Sea. 9.36 a.m.
The Chinese mini-sub filled half the screen.
‘One hundred and twenty yards and closing,’ Lamb said.
Lou gripped Kate’s hand. Both of them knew that any instant their lives could end. They would barely have time to register the firing of a torpedo from the sub before
JV3
was
obliterated.
‘One hun—’
The unimaginable was happening. They could all see it on the screen over the control panel . . . the Chinese sub turning starboard, moving at high speed out of view and away from them.
For several moments, Kate, Lou and Ester Lamb stared mutely at the screen. Then Lou exhaled heavily, whooped, ‘Un-fucking-believable!’, and turned to kiss Kate on the mouth.
‘What the hell is happening?’ Kate asked Ester as she pulled away from Lou.
‘They’ve called off the attack,’ Lamb said. She was focusing on the control panel in front of her and tapping illuminated plastic tabs. ‘And if I’m not mistaken . .
.’
A loud buzz was followed immediately by a deep whirring, churning sound. ‘We have power back to the engines.’
‘How?’ Kate asked.
‘The Chinese must have used an electromagnetic pulse to knock out the power. Everything, well almost everything, is back online. We don’t have comms . . . yet.’
Lou was unbuckling.
‘What’re you doing?’ Lamb asked.
He lifted the attaché case retrieved from
Phoenix.
‘Checking this out. It was not easy to get our hands on!’
He placed it on his seat. The metal edging was heavily corroded. The lock had partially disintegrated and it took no effort to lever up the latch and open the lid.
‘Easy,’ Kate said, getting out of her seat.
From the case, Lou lifted an old tan-coloured cardboard file. With enormous care, he opened the front cover and they saw typed Russian text. He turned back the first few pages, holding them from
underneath with his spare hand so that they could see lines of mathematical formulae and Cyrillic sentences.
‘Grenyov’s work.’ Kate said taking the file and placing it on her seat.
At the bottom of the case lay a rectangular object sheathed in brown paper. Lou found a seam in the paper and prised away with expert care. Inside was a single sheet of metal foil etched with a
complex array of symbols, letters and numbers.
‘This is it,’ Lou said in hushed tones, barely able to believe what lay before them, ‘. . . the original Kessler Document.’
North Sea. 9.36 a.m.
Wing Commander Geoff Anderson, operations code name Acer 1, pulled on the pair of joysticks of his F35 fighter and the newly commissioned jet tore away at an angle of almost
ninety-five degrees, screaming skyward, accelerating to Mach 1.2 in a matter of seconds. Through his cockpit windows he could see three of his squadron, but the remaining two were just out of
sight, their signals blinking on the head-up display he wore showing a range of detailed information.
‘All systems green,
Ark Royal
,’ Anderson said into his comms.
‘Copy that, Acer 1.’
Anderson studied the complex array of information before his eyes. The HUD included altitude, attitude and speed meters, a radar sweep and a detailed set of coordinates giving the precise
position of the Chinese Shang sub in relation to his F35.
Anderson tapped at the display panel a few inches from his armrests, his other hand steady on the left joystick. The parameters in the HUD shifted accordingly. The plane banked and levelled
off.
‘Acers 2 to 6. I’ll make a solo pass before we go in. Over?’
The other five pilots acknowledged the command one by one and swept through a predetermined broad arc as Acer 1 dipped its nose and began a sharp descent.
The fog had entirely cleared, but in places the cloud line was as low as six hundred feet.
On his HUD, Anderson watched a computer representation of the enemy sub, then breaking through the cloud, he saw it for real, immobile on the surface, its nose two hundred yards from
Gladstone
’s bow.
‘Have visual of Shang,’ Anderson said. He moved the joysticks, banked to the west and streaked over the submarine ninety-six point seven feet above the conning tower.
Even through the triple-plated steel of the Chinese sub’s hull, those aboard the Shang heard the scream of the F35 as it shot overhead.
‘Status please,
Ark Royal.
’
‘Unchanged, Acer 1,’ came the reply from the bridge of the aircraft carrier. ‘No word from the Chinese. Orders from London unaltered.’
‘Copy that,
Ark Royal.
We’re going in.’
Anderson’s plane cut through the clouds and into the bright afternoon sunshine. The other five F35s slipped into view. Anderson caught up with them and they swept east, then north.