Sea Leopard

by Craig Thomas

  He dimly heard the Nimrod's four Spey engines increase their power, and he felt the nose tilt upwards suddenly. He hung on to a bracket like a straphanger in a tube train, his. body wanting to lurch towards the tail of the aircraft. The MiG-23 appeared, then, whisked away from the window, like a fly that had been swatted. Even as the Nimrod climbed it began to bank to starboard, pushing Aubrey against the fuselage and his face into the double window port. He felt the glass against his cheek, and his arm aching from its hold on the bracket. The MiG was below them, the other Russian interceptor above, at a distance that implied respect or nerves. Aubrey felt himself hanging over the chasm of thirty thousand feet, imagined the rocks and the landscape below them.

  He heard Clark's voice bellow behind him, reporting a stage of his inspection. Then two hands moved his small, frail body, and he was able to let go his hold on the bracket. He looked round into the face of the young flight-lieutenant who was in charge of communications.

  "Please don't leave your seat again, Mr Aubrey."

  Aubrey shrugged his clothing to greater tidiness on his form. "I'm sorry," he said. "What did Clark want, Quin?" Aubrey sat down heavily.

  Quin shook his head. "Nothing so far," he said.

  "He is performing the check correctly?"

  "He is."

  A livid flash of lightning in the distance. The storm was behind and to the north of them now.

  "Mr Aubrey?" It was Eastoe in his headphones.

  "Yes?"

  "I'm sorry, Mr Aubrey. I'm not going to be allowed to fly the eastbound leg. They won't stand for that."

  "What can you do?" Aubrey asked in utter exasperation.

  "Fly a north-south course, over and over — if we can get away with it."

  "You're not hopeful."

  "No, I'm not. Our time here is strictly limited, I'm afraid, they're determined to get rid of us, one way or another."

  "Section completed. All readings positive," Clark's voice announced ominously from the console.

  "Damn," Aubrey whispered. "Damn."

  * * *

  They were all drunk now, yelling, bellowing, fighting drunk. Falling down and laughing drunk, too. Disrespectful, abusive, coarse, uproarious. Ardenyev enjoyed the noise, the swirl and shudder of the vodka in his veins and head, while one still sober, cold part of his awareness perceived where their laughter and taunts were leading, and anticipated with nothing more than a shudder of self-consciousness the nature of leadership and what he would now have to do to fulfil their expectations and to maintain his grip on their affection and respect.

  And also, he concluded, the drinking party had to end with buffoonery, with the game of the ego and the shallowly physical prowess they required to perform their duties. After the death of Blue Section and the others of his own team, the three survivors had been absorbed and ingested as they drank and ate into the cameraderie of the men from the rescue ship Karpaty. Balan had understood the necessity of the merger. So Balan's challenge now to him to demonstrate how he boarded the Proteus was that of a shrewd drunk. His men wanted it, a boast and valediction. He had survived, become more than ever a necessary figurehead, even to the salvage men. In the absence of an athlete, a football star, an actress, he had to submit himself to their fuddled worship, their drunken amusement.

  He was drunk, though. He knew that as soon as he stood up, and swayed as if the vodka had punched him in the temple. Teplov was watching him, he could see, as if weighing whether he should let his officer proceed. Viktor Teplov appeared sober, as ever.

  Ardenyev looked up, the two images of the wall and the ceiling of the officers" mess coming together, as if he had correctly, though slowly, adjusted a pair of binoculars. He held the new and single image with an effort of concentration. Teplov nodded at the fuzzy corner of his vision. He was prepared to extricate his officer from whatever situation he found himself in.

  "Come on, then!" Lev Balan roared, pointing up at the air-conditioning grille. "From that one, right round the room to that one!" His arm swept round the officers" mess, now deserted save for their own noisy group. The two grilles were on opposite walls. Ardenyev was being challenged to clamber and push his way through the duct until he could emerge with honour. Two of Balan's team were busy, balancing with difficulty on chairs, unscrewing the two grilles. Ardenyev looked at Balan, and then at Teplov, and Vanilov. All that remained of the Special Underwater Operations Unit. Teplov had the face of a stoical peasant in which his eyes gleamed with memory and with a strange amusement, perhaps even with approval. Vanilov looked as if he had drunk too much to forget. He wanted Ardenyev to prove something, perhaps only to be the adult coming into his child's bedroom, easing away the threatening shadows that had gathered around the cot.

  "Okay. You're on. Two hundred roubles it is."

  "One hundred —!" Balan protested.

  "Two."

  "All right, two. That means a time limit. Okay?"

  Ardenyev hesitated for a moment, then he nodded. Balan's man stepped down off his chair, the grille in his hand. Ardenyev flicked the remainder of his drink into his open mouth, feeling it burn the back of his throat, then he reached up and took hold of the rough plaster edges of the square hole where the grille had been. He felt mouse droppings under his fingers.

  "One minute," Balan called. "You" ve got one minute to get at least your head out of that other hole. Five, four, three, two, one — go!"

  The cheering was deafening. Ardenyev pushed himself up level with the hole, ducked his head into it, and then heaved himself half into the duct, which bent immediately to the left. His shoulders rubbed against the plaster, and he found he had to angle his body in order to be able to move at all. The cheering behind him was muffled by the bulk of his body and by the plaster wall and the metal. He kicked, and his legs followed him into the duct. Immediately, Balan's voice came from behind him, counting.

  "Eleven, twelve, thirteen…"

  Ardenyev shook his head to clear it. Then he began scrambling, leaning to his left, his body rubbing along the metal channel. The cheering was dim and wordless now, falling away into silence. He reached the corner of the room. The duct was a severe right-angle. He squeezed his head and shoulders around the angle, then tried to bring his thighs and knees after his upper torso. He found himself wedged immovably. He struggled as if panicking, and sweat broke out all over his body. He cursed in a yell, and then lay still. Balan's head appeared further down the duct, in a shadowy patch of light. There was a noise that no longer interested Ardenyev coming from behind him.

  "Forty-seven, forty-eight, forty-nine…"

  "Piss off!" Ardenyev yelled, not even attempting to move again. "I'm bloody stuck!"

  Balan's head disappeared with a shriek of laughter. Teplov's head appeared in its place. At the same moment, a huge cheer went up as the minute ran out. "All right, sir?"

  "Yes, thank you, Viktor."

  "Bloody silly game, sir."

  "Yes, Viktor."

  "I'll come in the other side and give you a shove, sir."

  Thank you, Viktor."

  Ardenyev smiled, then relaxed. It didn't matter. Nothing did. The air conditioning duct enclosed him more surely and tightly than the aft escape chamber of the Proteus, but there was similarity of darkness and confinement that pressed itself upon him. He allowed a congratulatory sense of memory its place in his fuddled awareness. He'd done it, he'd done it —

  No one else, he told himself. No one else could have done it. Then, more sharply, he thought, if I could, someone else could. Most of the team, the dead team —

  His thoughts had swung towards a maudlin, drunken horizon. He heard Teplov moving along the duct behind him, grunting with effort. He giggled drunkenly. Anyone could have done it, he affirmed in a mood of quick and sudden self-deprecation as he imagined those who had died. It wasn't anything. Then, through a connection of which he was not aware, he wondered: why is that Nimrod hanging around? What is it doing?

  Teplov's hand tapped his calf. He c
alled back to the michman: "What's that Nimrod doing up there, Viktor?"

  "Beg pardon, sir?"

  "That Nimrod — they were talking about it earlier."

  "Oh, that one," Teplov said indulgently. "I wouldn't know, sir."

  If I could do it, he thought, anyone could. That Nimrod —

  * * *

  He was aware of himself, stretched out on the pressure hull, held there by the mesh of nerves that covered his body. He had heard the footsteps clattering along the hull from the stern. The boots had stamped to a halt directly over the hatch through which he had entered the space between the two hulls. He had immediately switched off the lamp, as if the outer hull had been no more opaque than a curtain, and he had turned on to his back, He seemed to himself to be less vulnerable, facing the direction of the noises. Evidence, evidence? he asked himself repeatedly. Why? Why now? Noise, suspicion, evidence!

  He stared up at the outer hull as if he could really see it, almost as if he could see the armed man whose boots had clattered up on him. He listened. Tiny noises now, almost mouse-like. The irresolute shuffling of feet, the claw-like scratching of nails and metal heel-tips. The darkness pressed in, unwelcome, bringing its unexpected and disturbing claustrophobia with it. He reached up and flicked on the lamp. It shone in his eyes. He inspected his watch. Six o" clock, almost. He had been working on the back-up system for over two hours. And he had found nothing. Every circuit, every resistor, every capacitor and microprocessor and wire and pin worked—

  There was nothing wrong with it, at least not with the sixty-five per cent of the back-up system that he had checked. There was something less, or something more mysteriously, wrong with the complex lump of junk near his head than was the matter with the Nimrod. Sure, Aubrey kept reassuring him, but the communications black-outs and the poor reception and the constant re-requests and repeats of instructions told him everything.

  The boots shuffled, then moved, on the hull. They were over his face now, only a couple of feet from stamping on it.

  The Nimrod was at the fringes of, and at times beyond, the communications range. Which meant that the aircraft had company, Soviet company. MiGs were shadowing the Nimrod, maybe even playing shepherd games with her —

  As he rehearsed the conclusion once more, a chill coldness seized him. They suspected, even knew, about him. The boots on the hull, and the silence which he had noticed from the turbine room beneath him. They were listening, too. Everyone was listening for him, waiting for the mouse behind the wainscot to move again. He held his breath, one part of his mind explaining with a weary patience that he was behaving ridiculously, the remainder of his consciousness believing that the hull above him and beneath his back and head and legs was no more than a sounding-board, a corridor of whispers eager to betray his whereabouts.

  The boots moved away, forward along the hull towards the sail. Almost immediately, Lloyd was speaking in a voice muffled by the pocket of his immersion suit, through the tiny R/T Clark had left with him. Relief overcame Clark, and he felt the renewed perspiration cool almost at once on his skin, making his flesh shudder.

  He removed the R/T from his pocket and pressed it to his cheek.

  "Yes?"

  "I" ve seen Hayter and Thurston. They know what to do."

  "Good."

  "Any luck?"

  "None."

  "It's six now."

  "I know."

  "Is it still on?"

  "Eight o" clock, on the button."

  "I heard my guard and another talking. The man from Novosibirsk has arrived in Murmansk."

  "Damn. Is he on his way?"

  "I don't know."

  "Okay — I'll call you."

  Clark replaced the R/T set in his breast pocket, and zipped the pocket closed with a real and savage anger. He rolled on to his stomach, and the turtle without its shell was humped on the edge of the pool of light from the lamp, still baffling him, still apparently undamaged.

  "You heard that?" he whispered. There were noises now from the turbine room. He had imagined the silence.

  "Yes," Aubrey replied. His voice was gauzy and faint, a smear of distant sound. Flying on the limit again.

  "What trouble are you in?"

  "None."

  Tell me."

  "Four MiG-23s. They're keeping us as far away from Soviet airspace as possible —" The voice blacked out, then Clark heard an additional smear of sound some seconds later which he could not decipher. Then two more spits of sound which the cassette recorder slowed down and replayed. He could understand neither of them. The cool part of his brain suggested a storm might be adding to the difficulties, but the remainder of his awareness was raging with the same kind of helpless, impotent fury his body felt. He was shaking as he knelt in front of the "Leopard" backup system. He was in a mood to break, damage, throw. The rational part of him understood, and mocked at, the emotions he felt and his desire for their expression, and gradually he calmed himself. Then, suddenly, Aubrey was speaking again, clearly.

  "Can you hear me now?"

  "Yes."

  "Eastoe has dodged them, ducked inside," Aubrey said. Clark could even pick out the irony of the old man's tone.

  "Quin suggests it will take only hours to dismantle “Leopard”, if that is what they intend, and the same amount of time for a full analysis, with the resources they have available. Once they begin the work, they will be searching for the back-up system. You must not be where you are when that happens. “Leopard” must not be intact when this expert steps aboard. Do I make myself clear?"

  "Yes."

  "It will take an hour from Murmansk by helicopter."

  "All right, all right. I'm moving on — what next?"

  "Very well. You have both packs with you?"

  Clark looked up and into the gloom beyond the lamplight. "Yes," he replied with a sense of defeat. "Both of them."

  "Keep me informed."

  "Clark?" It was Quin's voice now, not so irritating, not so pessimistic as that of Aubrey. Quin allowed the fiction of success to be entertained. "You should move on to the spectrum analyser, noise generator and phase reverser unit."

  "Right."

  "You need the special test kit."

  "Sure." Clark unclipped it from his belt. A dial, various scales, a rotary switch, buttons, a small grille. Quin had to instruct every step of the way: every switch, every light, every reading. "All right, I'm ready." He studied the exposed maze of wiring, microprocessors and circuits in front of him. For a moment, his mind was a blank and the system before him was a puzzle to which he had no clue. Then, sighing, he shrugged off his numbing reluctance, and reached out and waited for Quin's instructions.

  It was six o-five.

  * * *

  "It's almost six, Admiral — perhaps we can now be leaving for Pechenga. Too much time has already been wasted."

  "Comrade Academician, you say it will take a matter of no more than three or four hours to complete your work on “Leopard”. What is your hurry? You waited at the airport in Novosibirsk for almost three days." Dolohov was expansive, and mocking. He was almost drunk, Panov decided, and had abandoned most of his dignity. Panov did not like the military, especially the older representatives, the officer caste. As a man who was an honoured member of another elite, one without the stain of imitating those that existed before the Revolution, Panov disliked, even loathed, the upper echelons of the military.

  Panov glanced again at his gold Swiss watch. He had purchased it in Paris, while attending a scientific congress, and that had added to its potency as a reminder of his identity. The large-faced clock on the wall behind Dolohov, which Panov would hardly have admitted to his wife's kitchen in Novosibirsk, jerked its hand past another minute. The drunken old fool remained in his chair.

  "Admiral — I must insist that we leave for Pechenga at once. My colleagues will be waiting for me. I must study their preliminary findings before I can specify what needs to be done." Panov stopped at this point, feeling the asperi
ty in his tone raising his voice beyond the point of acceptable masculinity. He despised his own too-high voice. The admiral growled and huffed like a bear.

  "I see. You insist?"

  Panov cleared his throat. "I do."

  Dolohov reached across his desk and flicked the switch of his intercom.

  "Get my car to the door at once, and warn the tower I shall want an immediate take-off." He switched off, and stood up, his arms extended in a bear-like embrace. The image made Panov suppress a shudder, and smooth dislike from his bland features. "Come, Comrade Academician Panov — your carriage awaits." Then Dolohov laughed. Panov had to endure a large hand slapping him on the shoulder, and the log-like fall of an arm across his neck, as he was ushered to the door. Dolohov's voice was like a caress when he added: "Don't you think I am anxious to see our prize, too?" Then he laughed again.

  The hand of the clock on the wall clicked again. Six o-five.

  * * *

  Clark moved the rotary switch on the test kit for the final time, the needle on the dial flickered away from zero, and he cursed as he unclipped the kit's leads from the last of the test pins on the power supply units. Each and every one of them worked, gave a positive reading, had nothing wrong with them.

  "Okay, that's it," he said, glancing at his watch. Seven o-two. Another hour had passed, and he was still at the moment before beginning. Everything he had done during the past three hours had been necessary, and pointless.

  "Very well, Clark, you'd better run a check on the power lines, from TP Seventeen, Eighteen and Twenty-Four, using the cable adaptor with the yellow sleeve, marked BFP 6016—"