by Peter Tonkin
If they could even slow the inrush of the leak a little, it might give the labouring pumps a chance to disperse the weight of the water in her and raise the bows a degree or two. And who knew? Once the bows were in an upward slope, they might just pull the rest of the hull up with them. Fifty centimetres would just about do the job. Eighteen old- fashioned inches. It wasn’t a lot to ask for, was it? Give me fifty centimetres - and I’ll give back fifty lives. One centimetre for each life. That sounded like a bargain if ever there was one.
These thoughts were enough to take Richard to the square stern of the tug, and into the middle of two overlapping, almost conflicting conversations. Up until now, Tom - also heavily suited and ready to make the assessment for himself with Richard and the chief - had been alone at the centre of the tirade. When Richard arrived, the conversation became three-way as the two main protagonists continued while Tom tried to bring Richard up to date with some of their concerns.
Bob Hudson was advising caution. Could they wait, he asked, while he got back in contact with Halifax? ‘There’s a hell of a lot of classified stuff in Quebec's bow area,’ he insisted, lapsing in his concern into almost impenetrable technicalities. ‘The Type 2040 sonar is only the beginning of it. There’s the CANTASS upgrade linkage and a bunch of hardware they put in there with the under-ice special upgrade that even I don’t know about. It wasn’t all just air-independent propulsion stuff by any manner of means! And that’s just the inside. The hull is covered in more secret acoustic anti-sonar tiles than there are heat-resistant tiles on the space shuttle. Every single one of them is worth a fortune in its own right - as well as being worth God alone knows how much to Russia or whoever... Jesus. If you get a long look at the wrong stuff, or a handful of anything that secret, Admiral Pike’ll be sending the Canadian equivalent of James Bond after your asses. Licence to Kill and all!
‘I mean I shouldn’t even be telling you most of this. If anyone at MARLANT finds out I’ve even said half of this then it’ll be my career, my hide and my ass on the line as well.’
Sissy gloried in the possession of an officer called the winchmaster. The winchmaster’s name was Gustav Van Allen but everyone called him Gus. He was a weather-beaten man from Port Elizabeth who appeared to have been carved from teak, who seemed to be about as old and wise as the rest of the crew combined, and who knew his job almost as well as he knew his own mind. And he suffered neither fools, youngsters nor hesitation gladly. And he’d already had a bellyful of the young Canadian officer. ‘Look on the bright side, chum,’ he snapped. ‘Maybe it won’t be James Bond they send after your poor little lily-white ass. Maybe it’ll be Pussy Galore.’
Having dismissed his opponent for the moment, Gus swung round on Tom and included Richard in his all too evident concern. ‘Like I said before, the tow looks good enough and is apparently sitting well - though I’ve never worked with a loop-rig like this one. But I’ve had my men keep a close eye on the hawser and we’re paying out, little by little, from the big port winch here. Paying out,’ he insisted, glaring at Richard as though his frown would make everyone understand. ‘Paying out from the port without pulling in on the starboard. A foot an hour, maybe more - and it seems to be speeding up. It’s the only way we can keep Sissy's stem from settling. And you must know what that means.’
Richard could see at once that it meant that the towline was getting relentlessly longer. And that fact in turn meant Quebec was moving further and further back. But he could not at first see the relevance of Gus’s concern about the tug’s square stem settling under the strain of the tow. But then he remembered one of his unreasoning fears of the previous night. That if they weren’t careful, then the sinking Quebec might even be heavy enough to pull Sissy under. And abruptly, and with an icy shiver, he understood Gus’s worry all too well.
‘Quebec is sinking,’ he said quietly. ‘Little by little she’s going down in spite of all we’ve done so far. And because she’s already so low in the water, she’s pulling us down too - or she would be except that Gus’s men are giving her more line.’
‘More rope,’ agreed Gus grimly. ‘The better to hang herself as they say. So, sonny,’ the winchmaster swung round and confronted Bob like a drunk in a bar-room brawl, ‘unless James Bond actually has your sorry ass in the cross-hairs of his sights then you’d better forget him. And MARLANT, Halifax and Admiral Pike into the bargain. It doesn’t matter what the captain gets to see down there - whether it’s sonar or radar or Babar the bloody elephant. It doesn’t matter if it’s CANTASS or your candy ass or your admiral’s favourite piece of ass. We go down and try to plug up that collision damage in her hull, or Quebec goes down for ever - and we’ll be lucky if she doesn’t take Sissy along for the ride.’
But Bob Hudson was not some no-account boy to be dismissed by Gus Van Allen’s sarcasm. He was an officer, used to making decisions and taking control. ‘Very well,’ he temporised, forcefully if a little pompously. ‘I understand the urgency of the situation and the imminent danger of considerable loss of life. Halifax will take that into account, believe you me - these are their people! But I will need to inform MARLANT of your actions nevertheless.’
‘All right,’ said Tom equably. ‘You run on up to the radio shack while we go over the stem.’
At this point in the proceedings Chief Engineer Christian Jaeger turned up, also in his suit, in a hurry and out of patience. ‘Let’s go, Captain,’ he said shortly. ‘Time’s a-wasting and there’s a hell of a lot to do.’
Richard slipped down into the water, trying to remember that he must regulate his breathing carefully. Immediately he was clear of the little dive platform hanging off Sissy's stem, just above the restless waves, the harness he was wearing tightened and he became a miniature Quebec, as Sissy towed him across the surface of the Atlantic. Gus the winchmaster and his acolytes paid out the line that was attached to the harness, fortunately faster than thirty centimetres an hour, line that was designed to let him fall back slowly and settle deeper into the water just behind Tom and the chief. It was more than mere line, however. Richard was also dragging a fine communications cable that kept him in voice contact with Sissy - and with the other two divers falling back and down with him. At first it was quite difficult to angle his body so that he faced back towards Quebec while at the same time moving, effectively feet-first, backwards through the water. But he soon got the hang of it, helped by the fact that he wasn’t wearing flippers on his feet. Then he was able to dismiss the feeling that he was being pulled one way, while he concentrated on moving carefully in the other, controlling his movement forward with easy motions of his hands.
The concentration needed to get it right, however, took his mind away from several unpleasant things that had forced themselves upon him right at the start. The disgusting taste of the mouthpiece on his already parched tongue, for instance - and the even fouler taste of the air that pumped out of it. The realization - now that he was too deep in it to do anything but keep a lookout - that the persistent warmth of the water meant that this was still the Gulf Stream. That the Gulf Stream was home of an almost numberless range of sharks and other dangerous predators. Predators that came and went though a disturbing mistiness even more marked under the water than its cousin the wispy fog had been above. It seemed that his face-plate was turning opaque with unsettling speed. And finally, most poignantly, there was the worry that Robin might after all end up trapped on a slowly sinking coffin that he could do nothing to rescue.
The snout of the sub loomed out of the murk with shocking suddenness. And it put him in mind of his initial concerns at once. For the shape of the hull was as elegantly aqua- dynamic as the body of a shark. And it was equally packed with latent menace. The similarities did not stop there, for the damage they had come to inspect more closely was under the nose of the thing, a little way back. And it cut across the lower curve exactly like a shark’s mouth, gaping a little, viciously fanged with triangular shards of gleaming metal. Only the net and the tiles spoiled
the illusion.
The net gathered into the gape of the damaged mouth like the bridle on a horse, the relentless grey squares seemingly welded to the hull all the way up to the gleaming surface of the water above. It was caught beneath the hydroplanes - and indeed seemed to have got itself wrapped around them almost as tightly as it was wrapped around the propeller. The combination seemed to have clothed the whole bow section of the sub with a harness of net above and below, but behind the hydroplanes the belly of the sub was free of nets. The main line of tension that Richard could see stretched back from the hydroplanes like the lateral line on a shark’s body where the motion sensors and attack triggers lie. Above it, the net might as well have been an extra layer above the slate grey of the acoustic tiles. Below it, the web billowed out in ghastly skirts as though some part of the monster had been ripped asunder and left to gape and waver in the currents. Beyond the skirts of loose-flowing net, he could see nothing, but he knew well enough what the propeller must look like: he brought to mind a big ball of his mother’s grey knitting wool with a couple of knitting needles sticking at hazard out of it. For the wool read nets and lines, he thought. For the needles read propellers all askew and useless.
Tom and the chief were in place already, and they were watching him with much more attention than he was paying to them.
‘Richard?’ Tom’s voice crackled in his helmet. ‘You all right? Over.’
‘Fine, Tom. Just coming into position now. Over.’ Only now did Richard register that there had been a buzz of crackling conversation passing unheeded through his helmet all during his preoccupied swim down here. ‘In position. Over,’ he emphasized, to show that he was back fully on line and focused on the job in hand now.
‘OK, Richard. Chief, first impressions? Over.’
‘It’s worse than I had feared, Captain. There’s no way we have anything aboard big enough to block this off. Nothing that we could deploy, at any rate. It’s a miracle the internal bulkheads have held. The pressure must be immense. A miracle. And a very great credit to the men who built her.’ Tom took the chief’s awed silence to mean ‘Over’ and he added his own observation. ‘We’d better warn Captain Robertson to shore up everything that has water behind it just in case. Richard, any thoughts? Over.’
‘Are you certain there’s no way we could plug this? Even partially? Nothing we could fother in? Over.’
‘Hornblower stuff, you mean? Eighteenth-century seamanship? Get Lucky Jack Aubrey on the case?’ came the chief’s voice, scarcely more enthused than Gus Van Allen talking to Bob Hudson. ‘Like maybe we have a spare sail or something like that? Over.’
‘Not quite, Chief,’ answered Richard coolly, unused to being mocked or belittled. ‘I was thinking maybe of one of your biggest fenders, something like that. Haven’t you anything like a fender made of coir or some collision matting or…
‘It’s a surprisingly good idea,’ allowed Tom before the chief could pour more scorn. ‘But we haven’t anything that big. Not of coir fibre. Our biggest fenders - and they are pretty big too - are all air-filled. ’
‘Well,’ said Richard, ‘you certainly couldn’t put a Yokohama fender in there. They may be big and damn near indestructible, but they are basically just rubber filled with air. The points of broken metal in the damage there would rip one to pieces in a second.’
‘It’d be like something out of Jaws,' agreed the chief. ‘Only bigger.’ His tone was more placatory. Richard knew about Yokohama fenders - maybe he could pull his weight in other ways. His tone and the movements of his head also made it clear that Richard wasn’t the only one who had seen Quebec's resemblance to a shark. Like Richard, the chief was on the lookout against unexpected attacks.
‘Like Jaws but ten times bigger,’ agreed Tom nervously, unconsciously letting slip that even he was on the alert.
Gus Van Allen’s voice came on the line then. ‘That’s another foot gone, Captain. Up to two feet an hour now. What d’you reckon we should do? Over.’
‘Bridge. This is the captain. Over.’
‘Bridge here, Captain. First officer. What can I do for you? Over.’
‘Alan. You heard what Gus said? All I can think of to do is take the speed up. See if that will help matters any. Take her up another two knots. Then if nothing happens, two knots more in ten minutes’ time. Got that? Over?’
The first officer repeated the orders. And the divers had to adjust their position in the water again as the speed picked up by two knots. The three of them swam around the net- masked face of the sub, testing - as far as they could with their hands - the tension of the lines. And their sensitive, experienced hands confirmed what their eyes had told them - that from bow to hydroplane, top and bottom, from the surface - or fifty centimetres below it - down the better part of eight metres to the keel, the net was tight and absolutely solid. Even the gathers in the torn mouth section of the damage were as immovable as if they had been formed of steel and set in stone.
At last, Richard thrust his arms gingerly into the gape then followed them with head and shoulders as he tested the tension deeper inside for himself, with Gus calling ironically, ‘Keep your eyes closed in there, Richard. You don’t want to see anything too secret, man.’
The three of them laughed wryly, but Richard’s curiosity was piqued. He reached for the waterproof torch he carried at his belt and pushed himself in a little further, flashing the beam around. He was waist deep in the damaged area with only his legs sticking out when disaster struck.
Distantly, and with no sense of impending doom, Richard heard the first officer contact his captain from Sissy’s bridge. ‘That’s ten minutes at two knots higher, Captain. Go to four knots higher now? Over.’
‘Go to four knots. Over,’ said Tom unthinkingly.
Richard felt the water surge around him - but the change in pressure was slight and he didn’t even associate it with the half-heard conversation. He flashed the beam around the cavernous space behind the tightly drawn strands of netting. All he could see was an incomprehensible mess of rained equipment. As though there had been an explosion in a computer store. Nothing secret enough here to get James Bond out of bed, he thought, let alone down to Q section and out after the three of them.
On the thought, Richard drew his legs in and curled into an almost foetal position, preparing to pull himself out again. He paused for an instant, almost lying on his side, with his back pressing against the cradle of the gathered net. He switched off his torch and made sure that his line to Sissy was clear of the gaping metal fangs surrounding him.
But then, suddenly and utterly unexpectedly, the lazy stirring of the current into the gape of the damage became something else entirely. The balance of the pressure shifted drastically as, away inside the sub itself, a sorely over-tested bulkhead gave way at last. The doorway burst open releasing a flood of water into the vessel. And the weight of that water was translated immediately into pressure. And all of it came down on Richard, pressing him up against the netting in the strange gaping mouth as helplessly and immovably as the netting itself was pressed against the casing of the sub.
Nineteen
Bulkhead
With Seaman Li close behind her but her head full of Richard, Robin slopped across the weapons-storage area until she reached the bulkhead door. It was tightly closed, of course. She banged upon it and yelled, ‘All clear and secure, Lieutenant Pellier. You can let us out now.’
The door opened immediately and Robin was almost swept off her feet as she tried to step out. Pellier himself caught her arm, however, and held her gallantly erect as she staggered through, looking like some kind of pre-Raphaelite painting with the wash of foaming water breaking around her hips - or, the way Pellier and Li were looking at her, perhaps that should have been Pirelli Calendar girl. Seaman Li followed immediately behind her, but there was no hand available to steady him, so he lost his footing and was simply washed away. Robin swung her wiry strength in behind Pellier and the rest so that the door swung closed qui
ckly, but Li was still swept helplessly towards the showers.
As soon as the door was shut, Robin stepped away through the last of the dwindling flood and let Pellier and his men get on with it as she went into the heads to assure herself that Li was still all right. But as soon as she came through the doorway she knew that something was badly wrong. Li was sprawled in the final wash of water wrapped in the arms of a naked man. And the naked man looked dead to Robin. ‘Li!’ she called at once. ‘Li, are you all right?’
The seaman heaved himself sideways, disentangling himself from the flaccid arms. ‘I’m all right, Captain,’ he said. ‘But it looks like Lieutenant Gupta’s not.’
Robin crossed to her wiry companion’s side and helped him to his feet at once, then they both stood looking down. Engineering Sub-Lieutenant Gupta lay on his back and his head lay at an angle that was all too reminiscent of Annie Blackfeather’s. Robin crouched down and reached out to feel the neck for a pulse, just in case. The temperature alone assured her that this was a corpse, but her touch rolled the head a little further over so that she and Li could see the mark across the back of his neck.
‘We’d better get Doc up here,’ she said grimly. ‘Looks like he has another client.’
Lieutenant Pellier stuck his head round the door just at that moment. ‘Is that dead hand in here?’ he asked. ‘We’d better get it to the Doc.’
‘There are at least three dead hands in here,’ answered Li. ‘And we need to get them all down to the Doc.’
Pellier blenched when he saw what the seaman was talking about. ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘I’ll send for him at once. You’d better wait, here both of you.’
‘Yes,’ said Doc five minutes later. ‘This blow certainly killed him. Broke his neck as clean as a whistle. There isn’t much in the way of swelling or bruising because death was instantaneous and you need the circulatory systems working to get much in the way of swelling or discoloration as a rule.’
