by Peter Tonkin
Mark Robertson looked across the brightness of the torch beam at the woman in the bunk lit by its backwash. The combination of sheet and shadow made every curve of her as plain as if she had been a centrefold. The ringlets of her hair gleamed like twenty-four-carat gold. But the power and command of her eyes and her tone focused him so completely that not even her body could distract. And, as obediently as any sea cadet, he told her Quebec's last known position.
‘How long have I been aboard?’
He answered that as well.
She did some sort of calculation in her head that required a fleeting frown of concentration, and a quick shake of the golden ringlets. ‘Then I think I have some good news for you, Captain. Very close astern of you, if my calculations are correct, there is an immensely powerful ocean-going tug...’
When the team brought Monks in, Mark ordered them to pass the word that everyone aboard should assemble in the mess hall, then go and find the chief. He helped Doc deal with the second body while Robin dressed. Then the three of them went down to the mess hall together. It wasn’t much of a hall, of course, but it was the largest single space aboard. Here, Mark completed a roll call that established everyone was present except for Blackfeather, Monks, Faure and Bob Hudson. That Robin Mariner was there - dressed now in overalls from the slop chest - and that the maniac with the meat cleaver was not.
Mark did not make a song and dance about it, but neither were Chief La Barbe, Lieutenant Chen and Sub-Lieutenant Gupta. With Monks’ small but very select team, they were in stores retrieving every spare flashlight and battery they could find. They had gone there via the arms locker and La Barbe at least was extremely pleased to be carrying one of the very few sidearms aboard, for his encounter with Paolo had left him very shaken indeed.
In the mess hall, the captain briefly explained the situation to the assembled crew - and how he proposed that they should deal with it. He saved the news about Sissy for last, so that he would be able to send them out into the all too dangerous darkness with the hope of a light at the end of the tunnel. But when he accepted questions in a vain attempt to lance some of the boils of worry that were festering all too obviously and widely among his crew, he found that their iron discipline was beginning to crumble. Panic, indeed, was stirring. And there were barrack-room lawyers, safely anonymous in the darkness there, who would stir it further still.
‘Why don’t we just open the hatches and cut our way out, Captain?’
‘I told you. We can’t open the hatches in the hull without power. The conning-tower hatch system is out of service for the moment - though as soon as we get to work, I’ll be sending a team up there ...’
‘But we can’t work out there in the dark with this mad guy running around. How many people has he killed already?’ ‘Each work team will have a guard to keep a look-out
‘Are these guards going to be armed?’
‘You know we keep a very limited arms store aboard. There’s nothing more dangerous than firing guns off inside a submerged vessel mostly made of steel...’
‘So who gets the guns?’
‘Some officers and some guards will be issued with firearms. I don’t want to discuss the matter further.’
‘Can we open the hatches when the power comes back? Cut the nets and get out then?’
‘That is part of the plan, of course. But only as long as Quebec is sitting high enough out of the water. We know from Chicoutimi's experience how much damage and danger can come if we let water in through a hatchway. And besides, we’re in the middle of the North Atlantic. Where would we go?’
‘On to this lady’s tugboat, for a start...’
‘If the tug Sissy makes contact, we’ll decide matters at that time.’
‘Just so long as the navy’s main priority is making sure the crew is safe rather than the vessel.’
‘Of course that will be the main…’
‘I wouldn’t be too sure. These things cost millions and millions. We come for free.’
‘I give you my word that the safety of the crew is the main concern of the officers not only of this vessel but of the command in Halifax and beyond. I think that’s enough discussion for the present. Officers, you may dismiss your men to work now, please ...’
Robin stayed with Mark when he had dismissed the crew to their various duties. It was hardly a conscious decision and she certainly had no intention of telling him his job or trying to second-guess his orders or actions. But the command positions were where she would have been on any vessel of her own and these were where she felt the most at ease. Particularly as there was obviously nothing she could do aboard that was of any use at all.
Mark at first found her a distraction. Then he dismissed her from his mind. But then, after a while, when she had dropped a comment or two into the conversations he was having with his men, he began to use her as a sounding board for some of the plans and decisions he was a little less certain about.
For her part, Robin was used to this kind of approach. It was one she often shared with Richard himself, for, decisive and commanding - and occasionally overpowering - though her husband was, he enjoyed the camaraderie that a team approach could bring. Especially when he and she were the team in question. And Mark’s priorities were simple enough. Power. Pumps. Lights. Communications. Ensure the sub was watertight and sitting at the surface. Some attempt to get men out of the vessel - but only if it was possible to get them back in again. Check the damage to the bow. Cut away the nets. Freeing the propeller would be a waste of time because they did not carry a spare shaft and this one was well beyond repair.
‘So whatever else you restore, you can’t restore propulsion.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Then as soon as you have communications you need to clear a distress call and a salvage contract with your superiors.’
Mark gave a bark of laughter at that. ‘Spoken like a woman with a tug boat close at hand!’ he said. But his laughter robbed the wry riposte of any real offence.
‘But that’s getting pretty far ahead of ourselves,’ she countered. ‘Nothing much is going to get done in the immediate future with your unwanted guest running around spooking your work teams and distracting far too much manpower from more important work.’
‘Back to the rock and the hard place ..
‘Just as you discussed with Doc,’ she agreed. ‘And I concur. You do not want to be running around in the darkness still looking for this man when Quebec hits the floor of the Atlantic.’ As if to emphasize her words, the submarine gave a sorry little heave and both sea-wise bodies felt her settle further by the head as the leak in the bows pulled her further down. Robin felt her short hairs rise and saw the frown on Mark’s face. The way the sub was pitching now had almost settled to stillness. She sat with hardly any stirring at all. That could only mean that the hull was sitting so low that the waves were washing over all but her conning tower.
They were having this conversation at the base of the conning tower in fact, while above their heads a team was exploring the possibility of getting through to the emergency hatch. If they had looked up, Mark and Robin would have seen the flashing of the torches in the gaping shadows there. First, because they were merely talking, Mark had switched off his own torch. But hardly had they finished speaking than a beam fell down on them like a spotlight. Mark looked up. ‘It’s no good, Captain,’ the leader of the team called down. ‘The whole of the inside seems to have torn loose and shifted forward. We’re not going to get up there in a hurry.’
‘Thank you, Leif,’ answered Mark formally. ‘Come down now. I have another job for you to do.’
Robin and Mark stood back as a tall young officer and three crew men climbed carefully down on to the deck. As they stepped down, so they extinguished their torches until only the young officer’s was alight. The beam of it rested on Robin suddenly, and a big square hand thrust into it, reaching out to shake hers. ‘Leif Hunter, ma’am. Lieutenant. Navigating Officer.’ In the backwash of the
light she saw that rarity among the submarine service, a man almost as tall as her Richard. Square-jawed, freckled, with a lustrous mop of auburn hair that would have graced a fashion model.
‘Robin Mariner. Captain. Thoroughly out of her depth,’ she answered and returned his firm handshake formally. The comers of his deep dark eyes crinkled appreciatively.
A few moments later, Lieutenant Hunter and his three-man team were following Mark to the arms locker. Robin went with them, paying only scant attention to the orders the captain was giving his navigating officer. She was wondering how Richard was, now that Lieutenant Hunter’s simple height had brought him back to mind. Was he worried about her? He must be! Had he worked out that she had gone over with the life raft? Yes - knowing him. Then what would he be doing about it? Searching for her, if she knew him. Searching for her unless he had been sidetracked somehow into a larger search for either of the vessels that had just collided here. And if he was, that would be all to the good as well. For it would bring Sissy here all the more quickly. And the decided downward slope of the forward sections through which they were walking towards the secure area where the arms were kept made her all too well aware of how limited time was becoming. And, indeed, the frown of concern that the slope of the deck brought to her face was compounded by the gathering silence. There were no longer any wave sounds slopping over the decks above. That meant the section they were in now must be entirely submerged.
But then, surprisingly suddenly, there came a throbbing pulsing through the stillness of the submerged hull. It was a stirring, almost thrilling sound that battered through the darkness like the thudding of life-blood in an exhausted athlete’s ears.
‘Hey,’ said a disembodied sailor’s voice, sounding not a little nervous. ‘What’s that, Lieutenant Hunter?’
They all stood listening. The throbbing thud grew louder and louder until it seemed to be stirring in the air all around them.
Then it stopped. And, in the sudden, echoing silence, Mark Robertson answered the crewman’s question. ‘Company,’ he said, almost laughing with relief. ‘We have company.’
Fourteen
Hunter-Killer
Like many another man and woman, Lieutenant Leif Hunter had allowed himself to be defined by his name. Leif learned at his mother’s knee about Leif Ericson, son of Eric the Red, who had sailed his longships round Cape Farewell from his father’s Viking settlements in Greenland and had colonized Vinland in North America several hundred years before Christopher Columbus’s birth. Leif’s name had not been chosen on a whim: his mother, a statuesque, flamehaired woman with porcelain-white skin and a vivid rash of freckles, brought him up to believe that in her veins and his flowed Viking blood. By the time he went to kindergarten he was a powerful little warrior and a berserker of dangerous potential.
And it seemed that Hunter Junior had always known about hunters and hunting. So that when his demanding ex-WWII corvette-captain grandfather and exacting weekend-huntsman senior-executive father began to take him out tracking and shooting in the forests near their home, it seemed the precocious youngster was already as wood-wise as Hiawatha and a marksman to rival Hawkeye.
From the moment Leif joined the service he had tried for Canadian Special Forces, seeking secondment to the United States Marine Corps or the British Special Boat Service. The only thing that held him back was the difficulty of honing his physical perfection in the confines of a submarine. He was still fit enough to be on the short list for inter-forces exchange, however. And his father wouldn’t have hesitated to take him out into the wilderness after grizzly or Kodiak bears - if that had been allowed. All in all, his captain could not have chosen more wisely when he decided to send out an officer and a team of men into the darkness of the corridors and work areas to seek their psychopathic stowaway.
Leif Hunter led his team of three men from the point. This was not an act of foolish bravery. It resulted simply from the fact that he was the best equipped in every possible way to lead them - in physical terms, in tactical terms and in experience. He was every bit as good a hunter as he thought he was. He was also an excellent officer, and, although his responsibilities were largely in ship-handling and command, nevertheless he had made it his job to learn every nook and cranny of the Quebec. From truck to keel, from stem to stem, from soup to nuts, as they say. Or - in this case - from cockpit to bilge, from torpedo doors to screw. He had walked these silent passageways in full light and security light and even with his eyes shut - preparing for the kinds of tests the Marines or the SBS would put him through. Which was, coincidentally, perfect preparation for this very moment.
And Leif’s captain had not sent him out unprotected or unarmed. He, like each man in his small command, wore a bulletproof vest and a toughened plastic helmet as though they were a SWAT team attending an armed siege. The men held a precious torch each but were using them sparingly. Their officer, however, held one of the vessel’s precious SIG-Sauer handguns. It was the P226 - with the longer barrel, the fifteen-round clip of 9mm bullets and the tactical light mounted in front of the trigger guard. He held it in standard firing position with the light switched on and he followed the beam as though it were a torch. The guns were standard issue and were designed exclusively for use in the unlikely event that Quebec's, officers or men should find occasion to board another vessel. But, again, like Leif and his ambitious preparation, the SIG-Sauer was perfect for the task in hand.
From the control room, Leif led his little team forward. They crossed the upper heads and showers from one bulkhead door to the next, then scanned through the weapons stowage swiftly, for the second bulkhead door into the weapons area was particularly heavy and Leif felt it unlikely that one man could have opened it alone. They pushed as far forward as they could reach as swiftly as they were able and then they turned. They could not go further forward or further down below because of the leak in the bow that had flooded the areas around them in the absence of the pumps that might have kept it under some sort of control.
Leif led them up, however, into the spaces between the three forward hatches - the torpedo embarkation hatch, the ATP hatch and the forward escape hatch. Their quarry might well have managed to get himself up here, and the four-man team proceeded with care and concentration, in spite of the increasingly intrusive sounds of footfalls and tapping on the casing immediately above their heads. If anything, the promise of contact with the outside world made them more determined to have sorted out as many problems aboard as possible. There was no contact at this level back as far as the control room, so they went down two levels and began again below weapons storage in the non-commissioned crewmen’s bunk area. Again their search was fruitless. All Leif learned - by pressing his ear to the icily sweating forward bulkhead - was that the areas from here to the bulbous bow were completely flooded now.
At this level, Leif knew, they could get a straight run down the boat, however. They worked their way back past the huge refrigerators, stocked with everything the crew might wish for in the way of ‘fresh’ food. Opposite these were the canned and dry goods storage areas - and these consumed a disproportionate amount of the hunt patrol’s time for there were all too many places that might easily conceal a man. Then, grudgingly satisfied, they worked their way back past the heads and showers to the crew’s mess, so lately the scene of the captain’s less than rousing address - then on past the galley so recently relieved of its largest, sharpest and most dangerous meat cleaver.
Aft of the galley were the weapons-control areas. Aft of these, the engineering areas that took up fully one-third of the vessel’s length from deck to keel. First came the engine room and then the motor room, each surrounded with a maze of stygian corridors full of smoke, shadows and short- tempered engineers guarded by bellicose crewmen and trigger-happy navigation officers. And aft of these, the areas of maximum physical damage where the propeller shaft had torn itself to pieces like a giant redwood caught in the heart of a twister.
Paolo was nowhere near the hu
nters. He was as unaware of them as he was of everything else - except his overwhelming need to escape. Though such was the depth of his psychosis he was not even aware of that. It dictated his actions and he obeyed it - but there was as little awareness involved as there was coherent thought. He was pressed against Quebec's titanium-steel skin between the aft escape hatch and the Dutch breech. He was pressed quite literally, from the spread of his tongue past his breast and his belly to his thighs, knees, calves and toes. In the gloom thrown by the failing battery of his torch on the walkway beside him, he was tapping on the metal with the blade of the Solingen meat cleaver. Tapping, and waiting with a concentration either super or subhuman for the tapping that would come in reply. Had he been the Paolo who would have better been associated with Ferrari than Jack the Ripper, he might have thought of sending a rudimentary message. An SOS or some such: dit dit dit, dah dah dah, dit dit dit. But he had the mentality of an animal now, and Morse code - like compassion, empathy, humanity - was far away from anything of which he was capable.
To Leif and the other hunters, the tapping on the submarine’s casing was a distraction to be ignored. To Paolo it was like a summons from a higher plane. Each tap, each squeak of boot sole on the deck outside, had something of an angel’s voice. Like Gabriel warning Lot to get himself out of Sodom. Like the Holy Spirit speaking so stirringly in Moses’ burning bush. Like God Himself talking to Noah about animals, arks and floods.
Had anyone at that stage paused to consider Paolo as anything other than a mindless psychopath, then they might have predicted more of his actions than they did. But to them he was merely a hairless, naked ape armed with a massive cleaver who had already killed two of their popular shipmates and was likely to kill the rest of then given half a chance. He was frighteningly subhuman. Who aboard was going to empathize with him?
