Blue Blood

by Peter Tonkin

  But then the half-deflated life raft nudged him in the back of the head and offered him a third alternative after all.

  Seven

  Driven

  Tom Hollander had met some focused and driven people since he had assumed command of Sissy. But he had never met anyone quite like Richard Mariner. ‘We follow the wave,’ grated Richard as the enormity of Robin’s disappearance began to hit them all. ‘And we go to the top of the green.’

  ‘That’s not standard “man overboard” procedure ...’ Tom was thinking in terms of Williamson turns, lifeboats out, calling for aerial support. He had already called for dry suits in case anyone had to go overboard, and there was a team on the foredeck getting the Zodiac dinghy ready for just such a jaunt.

  ‘Present heading,’ repeated Richard. ‘Full speed. And I do mean it when I say top of the green. You can get thirty knots out of Sissy before she goes into the red if you drive her hard enough. At least you can according to her paper specifications, even with a seventy-five per cent setting such as you’re running now. Go for it, man! Sparks, monitor all the emergency wavebands. Goes without saying. Keep your ears sharp. Tom, I want to show you something...’

  Tom nodded at the helmsman, shrugged at the radio operator and followed Richard out on to the bridge wing. He was wondering how his chief engineer was going to react to having his precious motors treated in this fashion - and, to be frank, whether his owner was beginning to crack under the shock of his wife’s disappearance. But no. He, was about to be educated, though he didn’t know it yet.

  Tom had always considered himself an observant and insightful man. He had a good shiphandler’s eye for detail and an intelligent person’s ability to interpret what he saw. But if he had ever considered himself a seafaring Sherlock Holmes, he discovered all to swiftly and graphically that he would be lucky to equal Dr Watson.

  ‘What do you see?’ asked Richard as they stepped out on to the blustery bridge wing.

  ‘I see what you see, Richard,’ Tom answered confidently and with calculated brutality. ‘Robin lost overboard. Now we’re wasting time. We should be performing standard search and rescue ...’

  ‘Bear with me, Tom. I’m confident that we’re heading in the right direction and coming up to our optimum speed. I think I know what happened and if I’m right, Sparks will get a distress call any moment now that will allow us to refine our heading even if we can’t triangulate. The only thing I’m not sure of is your support. I really do know what I’m doing. But if I have to prove it to you then that will be time well spent. Now, apart from Robin’s absence, what do you see?’

  Such was the intensity of Richard’s speech and manner, Tom could not resist. He looked around the bridge wing, eyes narrow and mind most vividly alive. He stood with his back to the bridge door as he did this, sending his gaze out northerly towards the Greenland horizon. So he did not see the vital clue. ‘Life raft’s gone,’ he said. ‘She’ll be lucky to have got herself aboard that if that’s what you’re thinking. But it does look as though she jumped - her lifeline is here and the harness has been released. Not broken. See? Released. You think she panicked somehow? Maybe when we were sitting right on top of the wave. Yes. That’d make sense, wouldn’t it? There was a moment there when even I thought we were going to fall back under and get swallowed right up. Yes. OK. I see that. You think she panicked, freed the life raft, hit her safety line release and jumped. But why would that have taken her forward instead of back?’

  The answer slapped him in the face as he turned to glance back along their wake towards the Denmark Strait. Then it died fitfully away to be replaced by a steadily gathering headwind that cooled the back of his neck. But he was too preoccupied to understand it all.

  ‘You’ve got it wrong, Richard,’ he concluded. ‘She’s somewhere out there in our wake, whether she’s in the raft or not.’

  ‘No,’ said Richard quietly. ‘You’ve got it wrong. Let me tell you what really happened ...’

  Five minutes later, Tom was convinced. In the interim he had received an educational master class in such matters as Robin Mariner’s unflappable, quick-thinking intrepidity. In the importance of missing axes. In the manner in which said axes had been applied to knots that were beyond the reach of a person wearing a safety line and harness. Of the reason why the shattered knot existed in the first place - and the upward force that had raised the winch end of the forward davit a good thirty centimetres higher than its after mate, in spite of the fact that it was made of sound, strong steel. And how it had been bent not just upwards - but forwards as well. How much line was still aboard from the twisted forward davit. How little from the sound, steady aft davit. How inflatable rafts inflate. The likely effect of them doing so in a gale at the top of a thirty-metre rogue wave. How this was a very logical explanation for the damage to the davit they had seen. Of the true significance of the very moment himself Tom had mentioned when the ship had suddenly seemed about to fall forward, but had settled back safely instead. Just as though an airborne drogue pulling them powerfully down the wind had been released to run free and save them.

  ‘She must have gone overboard with it,’ Tom breathed as they stepped back on to the bridge.’

  ‘She’s as quick and steady on her feet as a cat,’ said Richard. ‘She’s not likely to have slipped. And she won’t have jumped. So the long line must have taken her. The one that wasn’t tangled up and chopped free. It must have wrapped itself around her and jerked her overboard.’

  ‘I accept that...’

  ‘Then she is at the very least attached to an inflated life raft, isn’t she? With any luck at all she’ll have pulled herself aboard.’

  ‘So we just need her emergency signal and we’ve got her... ’

  Tom made it sound so easy, in the same way as Richard had made it all sound so inevitable. Neither man at this stage wanted to calculate the odds against Robin’s survival even if they were right in every detail. But even so, Tom was quick to send a man out on to each of the bridge wings with a walkie-talkie and powerful binoculars. Logic was all very well. Radar and radios were also fine in their way. But under the circumstances a couple of pairs of keen eyes would likely serve them best. No sooner had the lookouts exited than the drysuits came up from below and during the next few minutes, on top of everything else, Richard and Tom changed into them as they commanded the bridge.

  ‘We just need the signal now,’ repeated Tom when the men were gone on watch, as he stepped into the drysuit’s trouser section.

  And as he spoke, the radio screamed.

  The radio officer leaped up out of his seat, tore off his headphones and gave everyone on the bridge an advanced education in Afrikaans invective.

  ‘What was that?’ demanded Richard at once, fine-drawn, indescribably tense, hopping on one leg as he too stepped into the protective gear.

  ‘It’s a mayday,’ replied the radio officer. ‘All channels. Full power and nearby.’ He looked across at Richard as he answered. ‘Dead ahead, I’d say.’

  ‘But it’s not our life raft, is it?’ asked Tom, who was standing by the helmsman as he drove the ship as ordered with every ounce of power that was safe. Looking at the power settings and waiting for the chief to call as he pulled the unwieldy trousers up round his lean waist.

  ‘No, Captain. I don’t know precisely what it is. But no way is it our raft. Hey! Now what...’

  ‘Now what?’ Tom was becoming almost punch-drunk as one thing followed another in such disorientating series.

  ‘It’s stopped. Just like that. The full works one minute, dead air the next. Scary.’

  ‘We need to be there,’ said Richard. ‘Whatever that was, it sounds like it was big and brutal. I’d say our rogue wave just caught some poor bastard with his defences down. Wasn’t there a trawler or something showing on the radar pretty well dead ahead of us just before the rogue hit? Is that still reading there?’

  ‘Nothing reading dead ahead,’ answered the first officer from his positi
on by the radar. ‘Nothing above the water, anyway. And that’s all we could see with this.’

  ‘Still, better push in for a closer look,’ said Richard. ‘That makes sense,’ admitted Tom. ‘But whatever sent that signal it wasn’t your wife or our life raft.’

  ‘I know that. Sparks! Get those headphones on and keep searching through those emergency wavebands.’

  ‘Aye aye. But I’ll have to turn the volume up. That last lot’s sent me nearly deaf. Jesus! I haven’t heard a noise as loud as that since the Stones played Sun City!’

  As Sissy drove westward at full speed, Richard shrugged the top section of the drysuit over the breadth of his shoulders and prowled round the bridge, zipping zippers, tightening straps and going through the logic of his explanation time and again. He felt in his bones - in his water as the Irish say - that he was right and Robin was somewhere dead ahead. And yet, if he was wrong, then he was powering away from her at full speed. Putting one nautical mile between them every two minutes. And two minutes was about all she could be expected to last if she was in the freezing water anyway. Two minutes or four - maybe six at the outside - before exposure stole her away from him at last. The thought of her alone out there, of her blonde hair like a tiny beacon tossing on the lonely immensity of the ocean, was almost more than he could bear.

  Abruptly, it was more than he could bear.

  He drew breath to capitulate. To tell Tom he was free to do whatever he wanted; whatever correct procedure might dictate. At the least, following proper sea-lore would have the benefit of reducing the burden of responsibility. To have obeyed the timeless laws of the sea like countless sailors before him and then to have got it wrong was almost acceptable. A responsibility shared with sailors back before the beginnings of history whose accumulated wisdom was never quite a match for the hunger of the sea. But to have made the decision himself and alone; to have forced the ship and crew to his will, to have driven them all westwards at the top of the green, to have got it wrong and left her to die alone somewhere far in his foaming wake ...

  The thought was more than he could bear.

  ‘Tom ...’ he said. But the emotion that the uncharacteristic uncertainty had released within him made his voice turn thick and rusty. The monosyllable was lost beneath the racing of the engines, the gusting of the wind, the relentless battering of the waves that Sissy was stamping down. He cleared his throat, ready to try again.

  Eight

  Contact

  Got a contact!’ shouted Sparks as Richard called to Tom again. ‘Loud and clear and dead ahead! Two signals. Much less power than the last lot. Smaller. Maybe a lifebelt maybe a life raft. Maybe one of each.’

  ‘Let’s go and see, shall we?’ Tom flung over his shoulder at Richard, a look of simple awe on his weather-beaten face. ‘We’re all dressed up, after all. We ought to have somewhere to go...’

  ‘Hey!’ chimed in the voice of the first officer once again. ‘There’s something reading on the radar dead ahead.’

  ‘Life raft?’ demanded Tom, almost fizzing with excitement now.

  ‘Could be. It’s small enough. But it’s sending quite a signal. More like metal than rubber I’d say. But what in God’s name could something that small be doing all the way out here unless it was a life raft?’

  Then he answered his own question as the rest of Quebec heaved herself up above the ocean’s surface and into his radar range. ‘Shit! It’s a sodding submarine! A bloody great submarine just surfaced dead ahead of us.’ As if to emphasize the first officer’s words, the automatic collision alarm on the radar started to sound.

  ‘How far?’ demanded Tom and Richard both at once, for the alarm meant that the vessel was dead ahead and very close.

  ‘Five miles.’

  ‘Three minutes at this speed,’ calculated Richard, suddenly grateful for Tom’s forethought. If they were just sending down for the drysuits now they would never get over the side in time.

  ‘Why can’t we see her?’ demanded Tom. ‘Watch? What are you doing out there?’

  ‘Got her!’ called in both lookouts at once. But the man on the starboard wing continued speaking, his voice coming out of the bridge speakers even though he was close enough to have communicated with a shout. ‘There’s something wrong, though. Her outline’s not right. It’s almost like these field glasses are out of focus - but they’re not.’

  ‘Hey,’ chimed in his companion on the port wing. ‘I can see a life raft. I don’t know if it’s ours... No, it’s gone behind the sub. Wait! There’s someone in the water this side of her.’

  ‘What in God’s name is going on?’ demanded Tom of no one in particular. The succession of events was threatening to overwhelm him once again. ‘Sparks. We have eye contact with the life raft now, I guess, so we don’t need you monitoring the emergency bands any more. See if you can hail that sub and find out what on earth he’s doing, will you?’

  ‘Fall off a couple of points to port and throttle back,’ said Richard quietly to the helmsman. ‘We’ll be there in a couple of minutes and we don’t want to run them all down.’

  ‘Watch? What can you see?’ demanded Tom.

  ‘Looks like the sub’s turning to pick up the guy in the water. Yup. He’s pulling himself aboard. Right. At last. Here comes someone out of the after hatch. Wonder why it took them so long?’

  Richard, burning with frustration and uncertainty, had nothing to occupy his hands now that all the zips and straps on his drysuit were done up tight. So he pulled a pair of binoculars from their holster on the side of the captain’s chair. He slammed them to his eyes and focused them through the clearview, using the manual override to cancel the infrared beam of the automatic which would otherwise have focused them on the bridge windows immediately in front of him. Though, given that he was wearing thick gloves as part of the all-in-one drysuit, this took more than a little expertise.

  ‘Sparks. Any contact?’ asked Tom.

  ‘Nothing. If I was the sub’s captain I’d be calling home on a secure line first thing I did when I surfaced ...’

  ‘Yeah. I guess,’ agreed Tom. ‘Fall off another point to port, helm. And half power to the motors. I want to be able to stop on a penny when we get there.’

  ‘You may want to stop a little while earlier than that,’ said Richard suddenly. ‘That submarine is wrapped in fishing nets. Stem to stem and truck to keel by the look of things. I hope the captain has the wit to stop his engines before anything gets tangled in his propeller.’

  ‘First survivor down the hatch,’ called the port wing watch. ‘Starboard watch, can you see what’s happening with the life raft?’ demanded Tom.

  ‘Nothing, Captain. The sub’s in the way. And it seems to be swinging to starboard now in any case.’

  ‘How long till we get there?’ Richard asked the first officer. ‘At this speed, still five minutes.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. Sparks, can’t you raise him? I don’t think he realizes how much trouble he’s in ...’

  But the submarine remained stubbornly silent as Sissy raced towards her, the tug’s wild dash westward moderated only by the wisdom and experience of the men on the bridge who were rightly fearful of colliding with something - or someone - in the water. Three pairs of sharp eyes kept watch through three pairs of state-of-the-art binoculars, but after the tussle between the man who had pulled himself aboard and the officer on the afterdeck, their vision was obscured by the turning submarine. And, abruptly, their focus was torn away from the afterdeck and up to the top of the conning tower. From their position, the disastrous entangling of Quebec's propeller in the net’s long cables became obvious not in the sounds - which they could not hear - or in the destruction of poor Faure - which they could not see - but in the beheading of the conning tower. For, abruptly, under their stunned and disbelieving gaze, the slender uprights of the communications mast, the snorkel and the periscope all fell backwards like the tallest flowers in the field cut down by wanton fate. The whole skin of the submarine see
med to blur out of focus, then settle once again. And her forward motion faltered. Her starboard swing towards the life raft stopped. Her confident riding of the billows ceased. She slowed, steadied and settled all at once.

  And Tom, the tugboat man, spoke for them all. ‘Oh shit. She’s in trouble.’

  ‘Bad trouble,’ agreed Richard. ‘Helm, take us in as fast as you can. Tom, I think we’d better get ready to get our feet wet.’

  By the time Sissy pulled up alongside Quebec there was a team in dry suits and survival gear on the tug’s foredeck. They had prepared the ship’s twelve-man Zodiac to go over the side and were ready to go down in it. They were ready to put on diving equipment and go into the water itself, but that level of preparation would take too long, so they had drawn the line here for the time being. There was a team waiting to go out on the afterdeck and get the towing cables rigged - but they too held back for the moment while the team on the Zodiac completed the first recon.

  Richard was there as a matter of course. And so was Tom, confident that his first officer could command Sissy well enough in their absence. Both of them had waterproof walkie -talkies among the equipment at their belts. These were the only radios likely to be used in the immediate future, because the frail signals from the lifebelt and the life raft had both ceased at about the same time as the submarine’s communications mast had fallen. And that in turn had cut the sub off from the outside world - unless someone could go up and crouch in the lightly netted conning-tower cockpit and try calling out with a mobile phone.

  Though that was not as silly as it sounded, thought Richard grimly. It was exactly how the captain of the waterlogged and powerless Chicoutemi had contacted Fleet Command in Canada when a rogue wave swamped her off the Scottish coast five years and more ago. And it had worked well enough, too, until the cellphone’s battery ran out. But these thoughts were only a way of occupying his frantic mind as he searched the nearby water for some sign of Robin.