Shadow Hunter

by Geoffrey Archer

Then he turned to Andrew.

  ‘Ten minutes, and we’ll stick the mast up.’

  * * *

  Varangar Fjord.

  The pilot of the Mil Mi-14 helicopter was not a happy man. He’d been scrambled, along with every other available aircraft, despite having a defective radar.

  How the hell was he supposed to look for enemy submarines when only half his equipment was working? The squadron commander had given him the Varanger Fjord to patrol, assuring him no foreign submarines would enter the bay; there was nothing there worth spying on.

  Operating from the Bolshaya Litsa naval base, the Mi-14 had an endurance of four hours; with a forty minute transit flight each way, the pilot could afford two hours on station and still have fuel in reserve for a diversion.

  They’d been on station for an hour already, criss-crossing the bay, dipping the sonar transducer as they went, and hearing nothing but seals and porpoises for their trouble.

  Soviet time was three hours ahead of GMT, so for the helicopter crew it was late morning. The michman loadmaster handed out ration packs.

  Grey and showery at first, it had become a fine morning. The sun had broken through, casting silver-gold shafts onto the sparkling water. On the horizon was silhouetted the traffic of the shipping lanes. Closer to them, there was nothing but unbroken sea.

  Suddenly the pilot did a double-take. Smack in the middle of a patch of light a thin mast protruded from the water. He nudged his navigator and pointed, flicking the intercom switch on the control stick.

  The navigator nodded excitedly and pointed to the chart to show where they were. Deep water. No rocks nearby masked with warning posts. It had to be a periscope.

  The two men in the cockpit laughed at their incredible luck. It was difficult enough to spot a periscope with radar, but with the naked eye? Astonishing!

  The pilot pulled the machine back into a hover. They were nearly a kilometre away from the target; if they got closer the submarine might see or hear them.

  The Captain Lieutenant commanding the aircraft from the sonar suite in the rear cabin called his base by radio, and was startled to find his call being routed straight to the operational control centre at Severomorsk.

  He was even more startled when, after a pause of a few minutes, his sighting report was answered by a very odd question. Did he speak English?

  He could manage a few words, he replied.

  Suddenly the pilot alerted him that the submarine had dived. The Captain Lieutenant reported the fact by radio. The orders he received a few minutes later left him stony-faced with astonishment.

  The nose of the helicopter dipped. They began to race ahead of the spot where the periscope had been seen. They flew on for a kilometre, then hovered low over the water. The winchman released the safety lock on the cable and the bulky sonar transducer dropped through the hole in the helicopter floor, entering the water with a slight splash.

  * * *

  HMS Tenby.

  The communications had worked well. The encrypted VHF call to the Nimrod revealed the plane had lost contact with the Truculent but the RAF gave them the last known position of the boat, less than fifteen minutes old.

  In a burst transmission of the SSIX satellite, they’d passed back to CINCFLEET their theory about Truculent’s destination, and picked up a string of signals stored for them.

  Andrew and Peter Biddle consulted the chart, trying to guess the direction Truculent would have taken to avoid the Nimrod.

  Ping.

  ‘Shit!’

  The sonar transmission had been so loud they’d all heard it through the casing.

  ‘Bloody hell, sound room! Where’s the contact?’ Biddle screamed.

  Ping.

  ‘Dead ahead, sir! Less than 500 yards.’

  ‘Helm hard-a-port! Ten down. Keep one hundred metres. Revolutions for maximum speed!’

  Biddle glared round at Andrew, as the submarine banked hard to the left.

  ‘Told you this would happen!’

  ‘We have no sonar contact, sir,’ yelled the CPO in the sound room. ‘Classified as active sonar from a Haze helicopter.’

  Suddenly a high-pitched whistle issued from the loud-speaker at the back of the control room.

  The underwater telephone!

  The men froze.

  The whistle stopped. A voice spoke, in a heavy Slav accent.

  At first the words were terrifyingly incomprehensible, but then became mystifyingly clear.

  ‘Helsinki is arranged. Helsinki is arranged.’

  The voice repeated the words about ten times and then ceased.

  ‘What the fuck’s going on?’ exploded Biddle.

  ‘God knows!’ Andrew answered, his mind racing.

  Biddle stood over the Action Information console like a predator, pre-occupied with getting his boat away from the Russian aircraft that had so dangerously and embarrassingly found him.

  Andrew felt himself in the way, and walked to the empty wardroom, where he slumped into an armchair.

  The message from the Soviet helicopter could not have been meant for them. The Soviets wouldn’t have known they were the Tenby. Yet it was intended for an English boat. The voice had spoken English.

  Truculent. The Russians thought they were Truculent.

  Suddenly the unbelievable possibility that Philip Hitchens had done a deal with the KGB seemed more real.

  Helsinki. Was that where Phil was to see his father again, after leaving a Moray mine at Ostrov Chernyy?

  The Russians had taken a hell of a risk with that underwater message, a risk of giving it to the wrong boat, or of arousing suspicion in the control room of HMS Truculent. Why would they do that?

  Because they were scared. It had to be that. Scared that Phil intended to renege on their deal, because of the KGB’s seduction of Sara.

  Andrew looked up from his thoughts. The communications officer walked in to the wardroom.

  ‘Signal for you, sir. Came in on SSIX. Just finished unscrambling it.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  He took the page of printout and the youth left.

  FLASH 230630Z OCT

  FROM CINCFLEET

  TO HMS TENBY

  TOP SECRET

  PERSONAL FOR CDR TINKER

  STILL CONSIDER IT MOST LIKELY CDR HITCHENS UNDER PRESSURE FROM KGB TO DELIVER NEW MINE.

  ALTERNATELY HE MAY USE MINES TO ATTACK SOVIETS. UNCLEAR. CONSIDER ALL POSSIBILITIES. CANNOT ADVISE FURTHER.

  INTERNATIONAL SITUATION VERY TENSE. ANY OFFENSIVE ACTION BY TRUCULENT WOULD BE SERIOUS THREAT TO WORLD PEACE. DOWNING STREET ORDERS YOU STOP HITCHENS. IMPOSSIBLE TO GIVE YOU OTHER SUBSURFACE ASSETS AS BACKUP.

  ALL NOW UP TO YOU. USE WHATEVER RPT. WHATEVER MEANS NECESSARY TO STOP HIS ACTIONS.

  GOOD LUCK. GODSPEED.

  FOSM.

  Andrew swallowed hard. All up to him, now, the signal said. To stop an old friend from doing something unspeakably stupid.

  ‘Phil! What have you got into?’ he moaned. ‘You crazy bastard!’

  He strode back to the control room. Peter Biddle looked puzzled.

  ‘That Haze. He’s made no effort to track us, as far as we can tell.’

  ‘Perhaps he doesn’t need to. If the Sovs think we’re the Truc, they may reckon they know where we’re going.’

  ‘Ahh. Got you.’

  Biddle took him by the elbow across to the chart table.

  ‘We’re heading for a position thirty miles northeast of Nemetskiy Point.’

  He indicated the tip of the Rybachiy Peninsula, the most northerly point on the Kola. South of them lay the densest concentration of military bases anywhere in the Soviet Union.

  Andrew shivered as a wave of fear swept through him, from seeing on the chart just how close they were to the Russian bases.

  ‘The Truc has to be west of us,’ Biddle continued. ‘She won’t be doing more than eighteen knots, and taking a line from where the Nimrod lost contact puts her somewhere here.’

  He indicated a
wide arc of sea. Without the help of aircraft, it was a hopelessly large area to search. Tenby would need to be within five miles for her sister boat to have any chance of hearing her.

  ‘We have to narrow the search area,’ Andrew decided.

  He moved his hand down the chart to the mouth of the Kola Inlet, which led to the Coastal Defence Headquarters and main submarine base at Polyarny, and the Soviet Northern Fleet HQ at Severomorsk.

  To the west of the inlet the approach was narrowed by the protruding mass of the Rybachiy Peninsula. Twenty miles east of Rybachiy, beyond the main channel into the inlet and about ten miles north of the main Kola coast lay the island of Ostrov Chernyy.

  ‘That’s where Philip’s going; into that gap. And that’s where we’ve got to be, Peter. Looking straight up the nostrils of the Russian bear!’

  Biddle chuckled, nervously.

  ‘Bit heavy on the melodrama?’

  ‘I’m not so sure. The Sovs are waiting for Philip. They don’t know whether he’s going to give them a mine, or try to sink some of their submarines. They’re going to be using every asset they’ve got to keep track of him. We’ve got to find him before they do.’

  ‘There’s plenty of cover about. The AIO plot’s filling up.’

  They crossed the control room to the Action Information display.

  ‘Talk us through it, Algy.’

  The TAS officer pointed to the symbols on the screen.

  ‘All surface contacts. We’ve lost touch with the Victor III. That’s the main shipping lane into the inlet. Most of it’s civil, freighters and fishing vessels probably going up river to Murmansk. But there’s at least one military vessel identified. A naval supply ship. She’ll be astern of us when we turn east. She’s listed in the NISUMS.’

  These were the Naval Intelligence Summaries carried on board every submarine.

  ‘She’s based at Severomorsk. Going home, I presume.’

  ‘Mmm. If I was Phil Hitchens, I think I’d have found a comfy spot somewhere underneath that one. They’d never hear him with all that racket going on.’

  Andrew agreed.

  ‘And we need to keep ahead of her?’

  Biddle nodded. When Truculent reached the target area, they had to be waiting.

  Andrew pulled Biddle to one side, out of earshot of the others.

  ‘Look, we’ve been ordered to stop him by any means possible. If we don’t get close enough in time to use the underwater telephone, or if he takes no notice, then it’ll have to be a torpedo.’

  Biddle winced.

  ‘You’ve got the new ones on board here, haven’t you? The Hammerfish?’ Andrew asked.

  ‘That’s right. We’re still doing trials. They’re supposed to be very clever, but their reliability’s not proven yet.’

  ‘Tell me what they can do.’

  Biddle led him to the firing display next to the AI consoles.

  ‘They’re like Tigerfish, in that they’re controlled from the submarine by wire. Guided either by the boat’s sonar or by the torpedo’s. But there are two big differences. First, they’re much faster. Seventy-five knots they can do! And second they have a high-frequency, high-definition sonar that turns on two-hundred metres from the target.’

  ‘What’s the point of that?’

  ‘Gives us a precise outline of the target, on this display here. It means the weapon operator has a couple of seconds to choose the precise spot where the torpedo will strike. Soviet subs are well protected, but if you can hit the right place on the hull . . .’

  ‘Clever. Very clever. And that could be just what we need. Not to ensure we destroy the Truculent, but to ensure that we don’t!’

  Andrew’s face brightened at the discovery.

  Biddle looked at him doubtfully. It was the one aspect of the torpedo’s performance they’d been unable to cover in training.

  * * *

  HMS Truculent 0900 hrs GMT.

  There was hardly room for three men in the first lieutenant’s cabin. Paul Spriggs hauled himself onto the top bunk to make room for the MEO Peter Claypole.

  All Lieutenant Commanders, they were the three most senior men on board after the captain.

  Tim Pike told them he no longer considered Commander Hitchens to be in a balanced or responsible state of mind. He listed his reasons; the secretiveness, the overreactions to crises, and the unorthodox communications orders. There were now physical signs the captain was under abnormal stress; he was taking sleeping pills and there had been evidence that morning of vomiting and bowel problems.

  ‘D’you think any of us is qualified to make a judgement? We’re engine drivers, not bloody doctors!’ Claypole growled.

  Pike was startled at encountering resistance from the engineer. After his brush with the captain the previous day, he’d expected support from him.

  ‘If we suspect the captain’s condition is a threat to safety, then we’re bloody well entitled to our opinions,’ insisted Spriggs.

  ‘Oh yes. Opinions are all right. It’s the next step that’s the problem.’

  ‘What’re you proposing, Tim?’

  Pike looked flustered as he answered.

  ‘Since we left Devonport, there isn’t a man on board who hasn’t begun to wonder if the captain’s gone off his head. You know that, Peter, as well as I do.’

  ‘Aye. Wondering’s one thing. Doing something about it’s another.’

  ‘Are you saying we should ignore these warning signs?’ Spriggs interjected, his voiced tinged with exasperation.

  ‘I’m saying we should be damned careful! There’s precious little precedent for first lieutenants relieving their captains of command. It’s not popular with the Admiralty Board. In a court-martial, even this little meeting could be seen as conspiracy to mutiny.’

  ‘It might also be seen as senior officers using their brains to avoid a disaster!’ Pike countered angrily.

  ‘What disaster?’ Claypole demanded.

  Pike looked at his cabin-mate for support.

  ‘Paul and I have been closer to it than you, Peter. You’ve only had the one row with him. For me, the friction’s been there the whole trip. You ask “what disaster?” I don’t know. Why don’t I know? Because the bugger hasn’t told me what his orders are. But . . .’

  He hesitated. Hitchens had told him not to pass on what he’d said. Pike decided he had to.

  ‘We’re going close to the Soviet submarine bases, and Hitchens is saying there may be some action. What he means, Peter, is he may take us to war!’

  Claypole scratched pensively at his bushy black beard.

  Pike went on, ‘He told me he’s already got his rules of engagement. He’s not waiting for any more orders from CINCFLEET. It’s for him to decide if we go in fighting. Now, if he orders the firing of a salvo of Harpoons, or the launch of a pair of Mk 24s, would you be happy to pull the trigger?’

  ‘Well, put like that . . . But it’s still only surmise,’ Claypole cautioned. ‘It’s not enough if you’re thinking of pushing him out of the bandstand now.’

  ‘But if he orders weapons to be readied, then you’ll back me?’

  ‘In those circs you’ve got the right to see the orders, the rules of engagement and the target listings. Yes. If he won’t show them to you, then I’m right behind you.’

  ‘And you, Paul?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I’ll be with you.’

  Pike expelled a deep sigh of relief.

  ‘Let’s hope we’re imagining all this,’ he concluded.

  The three men went their separate ways, Claypole to the propulsion section aft, Spriggs forward to check the arsenal of missiles, mines and torpedoes, and Pike to the control room, where Lieutenant Cordell met him.

  ‘We’re heading for the Kola Inlet, sir. Captain’s orders. Tucked ourselves under the Boris Bubnov, bound for Severomorsk. Plenty of broadband noise from her. Should make us invisible. I sodding well hope so.’

  Tim Pike stepped past into the control room.

  Hitchens s
tood in the bandstand; with his chiselled features and ramrod straight back, he looked like a figure from an heroic painting.

  The image made Pike shudder; a captain clinging to the bridge of his ship – as it sank beneath him.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Bolshaya Litsa, Kola Peninsula.

  1147 hrs.

  THE KAMOV KA-32 helicopter flew slowly along the line of jetties. Astashenkov, sitting beside the pilot, was struggling to differentiate one submarine from another. There were six of the broad-beamed 7000-tonners in harbour.

  Then the pilot saw the orange armbands of the ground controller, on the fourth pier along. The machine circled once, feeling for the wind direction, before setting down gently, within a few metres of the companion way from the pier to the submarine.

  The pilot saluted, and Astashenkov stepped down onto the concrete, clutching his cap to prevent it blowing away in the downdraught.

  The Captain 2nd Rank who welcomed him on board the boat was well known to the Vice-Admiral. He’d been executive officer on Astashenkov’s last command – a strategic missile submarine.

  The commander of the newly commissioned PLA saluted, then offered his hand.

  ‘You’re most welcome, Comrade Vice-Admiral,’ he shouted above the whine of the helicopter.

  Astashenkov glanced admiringly at the rounded black hull with its coating of rubber to deaden sonar reflections. The submarine had a fat pod mounted atop the rudder, containing a towed sonar array, and was the newest in what NATO knew as the Sierra class.

  ‘You’re ready to sail?’

  ‘We’ll shut the hatches as we go below.’

  Astashenkov took a last, quick look at the Bolshaya Litsa submarine base, his home port in younger days. He could be seeing it for the last time.

  The piers for the big, nuclear-powered attack submarines were on the eastern shore of the fjord. Cut into the cliffs behind the quay that linked the piers were caverns for stores, spares and weapons.

  To his right beyond the cliffs, the bleak granite rose two hundred metres in contours smoothed by the arctic ice of an earlier age.

  A cutting wind came in off the sea, and Astashenkov shivered. Time to go, before the phones started buzzing between Bolshaya Litsa and the Severomorsk headquarters.