by Alan Fenton
‘Fire at will!’ he yelled.
Before the gunners could align their sights, the whale was racing towards the gunboat again, and this time it did not stop. A violent impact on the port side sent the boat heeling over at such an acute angle that its starboard rail dipped in the sea. Three of the crew were hurled overboard, the rest clung desperately to ropes and rails, muscles straining, gaping mouths screaming in terror. As the waves washed over the deck, it seemed that the gunboat must surely capsize. Then, slowly, it righted itself. The whale was nowhere to be seen. A full minute passed, the tension on board easing as the seconds ticked away. But just when it seemed that the whale had finally lost interest, it resurfaced fifty metres away and headed at speed for the gunboat. A second massive impact on the starboard side, and the boat was holed below the waterline.
‘Abandon ship!’ shouted Kassim.
The crew hesitated, fearful of the whale, but the choice was clear; either jump in the sea and take their chances, or risk being dragged to the seabed with the doomed gunboat. In seconds, captain and crew were swimming frantically towards the helicopter gunboat now speeding in their direction. A few hundred metres away the whale resurfaced. Treading water, captain and crew watched in horror as the huge mammal streaked towards the stricken vessel ramming it amidships. In seconds the gunboat had slipped below the surface leaving only wooden spars and a few lifebelts bobbing on the surface. The whale continued to circle, moving closer and closer to the survivors floundering in the water. As they cried out in terror it dived and resurfaced more than a hundred metres away. Once, twice, a third time it spouted, slapped the water with its huge tail and disappeared.
The helicopter gunboat picked up Kassim and fourteen survivors of the twenty-five man crew and circled the area at speed, weaving from side to side to present a more elusive target for the whale.
Having observed these extraordinary events through the periscope, Mujahid was convinced that technology, not nature, was responsible for the whale. He had walked into a trap and lost one of his gunboats and a number of his men. What were his options now?
The first was to fight his way out, inflicting as much damage on the enemy as possible. Yet how did you fight someone you could neither see nor hear? And how did you deal with technology as sophisticated as Camelot’s? The second option was to get the hell out of it and live to fight another day. That had to be the option of preference; and if he were to make it back to base, there was no time to be lost. True, twelve of his men were still on the mv Camelot and sooner or later would be captured. Rescue, however, would involve considerable risk. The helicopter was too small to lift off twelve men. That meant at least two trips, and hovering over the cargo ship it would present an easy target. The only alternative would be for the gunboat to draw alongside mv Camelot, no doubt a speedier way to rescue the boarding party, but still a tempting target for the whale – or whatever else was out there.
He gave Ahmed the order: ‘Tell Mohammed to return to base immediately.’
‘What about the boarding party, sir? Shouldn’t they pick them up first?’
Mujahid avoided his first mate’s eyes. ‘Do as I say.’
Through the periscope he watched the gunboat accelerating away leaving a double wake behind it. The two missiles struck it at precisely the same moment, one on the port, one on the starboard side. Rising several feet out of the water, boat and helicopter seemed to hang suspended in the air for a split second before exploding in a fireball. The steep walls of the gunboat’s wake crumbled on the ocean, and an ominous cloud of dust and spray billowed high into the air.
Beneath the surface Mujahid’s crew felt the impact of the explosion, the sound muffled by the ocean. When he told them what had happened, their faces remained impassive. Hard to tell what they were thinking, though he guessed from the looks they exchanged that they were losing confidence in him. Too many things were going wrong. He would have to be very careful.
What to do now? It would be foolish to put the submarine in danger searching for survivors of the helicopter gunboat’s crew, or – whatever his first mate’s scruples – taking off the boarding party from the mv Camelot. The only sensible course of action was to get the hell out of it. Or was it? A disturbing thought occurred to him. If, as seemed likely, his men on the mv Camelot were taken prisoner, would they not talk to save their skins? And if they did, Arthur would learn many things, including the location of the Sea Lords’ base.
In Galaxy, at the heart of Command Control, Arthur and Agravaine pored over the big table monitor. Half a kilometre from mv Camelot, at a depth of forty-five metres, Kraken lay mantled. Ten thousand feet above, Eclipse circled, silent, invisible.
‘Mujahid’s position, Lance?’
‘Moving in north-easterly direction. Shall I track him?’
‘That’s affirmative,’ confirmed Arthur. ‘Is he heading back to base?’
‘It looks like it,’ said Arthur. ‘I’m relying on you, Lance. Watch him carefully, and keep the gravitational link open. Do you copy?’
‘I copy,’ said Lancelot.
‘You think he might double back on his tracks and try to rescue the boarding party?’ said Agravaine.
‘It’s possible,’ said Arthur. ‘Or he might feel it’s too risky. Which reminds me, how long before the rescue ship arrives?’
Gawain responded from Kraken. ‘Approximately thirty minutes sailing time from mv Camelot.’
‘I want everything cleaned up before it gets there,’ said Arthur. ‘Recall the whale, launch Sea Scuttle and pick up the Sea Lords’ boarding party. I doubt they’ll give you any trouble, Gawain, but be prepared. You copy?’
‘I copy,’ said Gawain.
Gulping black coffee and wiping his brow, Agravaine fidgeted incessantly, shifting the position of the plastic cups and tissue boxes littering the centre table in an endlessly abortive effort to align them to his satisfaction.
Arthur checked on screen data every few seconds. Something was bothering him, though exactly what, he didn’t know. ‘Lance, let’s have an update on Mujahid.’
‘Now heading north-east at a depth of thirty metres . . . changing course frequently. You think he knows we’re tracking him?’
‘I don’t see how,’ said Agravaine. ‘Evasive action is probably standard procedure.’
‘Whatever you do,’ said Arthur, ‘don’t lose him. He’s tricky.’ On the table monitor Arthur and Agravaine watched the Sea Scuttle draw alongside the cargo ship. Three actives armed with portables climbed on board and fixed a rope ladder. One waited by the gunwale, the other two advanced on the Sea Lords cowering on deck not knowing whether they were about to be taken prisoner or slaughtered. As the actives herded them to the ship’s side, down the ladder and into Sea Scuttle, Lancelot’s agitated voice broke in from Eclipse: ‘Contact lost! Mujahid loose!’
‘Recall Sea Scuttle!’ yelled Arthur.
The gravitational waves were silent . . . then a sudden shout of alarm from Gawain on Kraken. ‘Torpedoes running!’
‘Elimat! Elimat!’ cried Arthur. Too late. Even as he shouted, the first torpedo hit mv Camelot, then a second and a third, and the cargo ship and the Sea Scuttle alongside it were enveloped in a ball of fire. Moments later the scene was obscured by a dust cloud of debris that swelled to a monstrous balloon and fanned out under the low canopy of cloud. Arthur’s sombre voice raised Kraken: ‘Gawain, pick up survivors.’
‘I’m sorry, Arthur,’ said Lancelot. ‘I lost him. It’s my fault.’ ‘It’s no one’s fault,’ said Arthur. ‘This is war. Relocate
Mujahid. He’ll run for home now.’
Tears welled in Agravaine’s eyes. ‘He even killed his own men. It doesn’t make sense.’
‘I’m afraid it does,’ said Arthur. ‘If they had fallen into our hands they would have talked, and that was a risk he was not prepared to take. For him the end justifies everything, including murdering his own. I’ve been a fool. What he did was entirely predictable. I should have foreseen it.’
Agravaine laid a hand on Arthur’s arm. ‘So should I, nuncle.
And Lance shouldn’t have let Mujahid give him the slip.’
True enough, thought Arthur, but he was Camelot’s leader and that made him responsible for the deaths of all those men – his own three actives, and eleven Sea Lords. Had not Merlin taught him when he was a boy to imagine himself into the heads of birds and animals and people so that he could think like them, act like them, be them? It was a gift he had squandered. He would not do so again.
A second Sea Scuttle searched for survivors. Arthur and Agravaine waited anxiously for Gawain’s report. In a few minutes it came. ‘Eight bodies recovered – five Sea Lords, and our three actives.’
It was a bitter blow. Arthur knew the three men well, and he knew their families. No words of his could compensate them for the loss of sons and husbands.
‘No survivors?’ ‘No, sir.’
For a long time he sat with head in hands. A voice whispered in his ear – Merlin’s voice: ‘The power is yours, Arthur.’ It was what he needed to hear. There was work to be done. His doubts forgotten, he gave his orders: ‘Leave the area, Gawain. Before you do, remove all floating oil and debris. It’s essential to leave no clues. You copy?’
‘I copy, sir.’ A discreet cough. ‘And then?’
‘Join Eclipse in the hunt. Find Mujahid and bring him back.’ Gawain was happy. ‘Yes, sir!’
Several minutes passed with no further communication from Eclipse, then Lancelot’s voice was on speaker, calm but with an undercurrent of excitement. ‘Relocated Mujahid heading north-east, depth fifty metres.’
‘Keep tracking,’ said Arthur. ‘Remind you – our primary target remains the Sea Lords’ base.’
When the rescue ship arrived a few minutes later, there was no cargo ship, no engines to repair, no crew to take off. A thorough search of the area revealed no oil slicks, no floating debris, nothing. The mv Teal.com, if ever there were such a vessel, had disappeared without trace. It was thought that either there had been some as yet unexplained disaster, or the SOS call had been a foolish and irresponsible hoax.
Thirteen
The Sea Lords
As the sun set, the Sea Lords’ submarine rounded the Cape of Good Hope and headed into the Indian Ocean, all the time maintaining radio silence. On Command Control’s big table monitor a mini-image of the submarine pulsed together with a constant stream of data transmitted by Eclipse and Kraken. From time to time the sub made minor adjustments to its course, speed and depth, and based on an analysis of these adjustments by Neural Network, the forecast of the submarine’s destination was regularly updated. Though it was too early to be certain, it appeared to be on course for the east coast of Madagascar, its final destination either Pakistan, India, or the Persian Gulf, with the east coast of Africa a possibility that could not be excluded.
The sea lanes in the Indian Ocean were crowded with the usual complement of commercial shipping. There was also one passenger ship. When the sun rose the following morning, the two hundred and twenty thousand ton Crystal Splendour, largest ocean liner in the world, Chinese built, American owned, was approximately one thousand kilometres south of the Seychelles, heading south towards Capetown.
Shadowed by Kraken, Mujahid closed in. In less than an hour, submarine and liner would pass each other north of Mauritius. Would they pass without incident? Or did Mujahid have something else in mind? Kraken and Eclipse were on their highest state of alert. Tension mounted as submarine and liner moved closer, then relaxed, as the submarine, now at a depth of sixty metres, passed under the liner and continued north in the direction of the Arabian Sea.
A brief message from Gawain on speaker: ‘Well, that’s it. Either Mujahid isn’t interested, or he doesn’t know the liner is there.’
‘He knows it’s there,’ said Agravaine. ‘The sub’s passive sonar would have picked up the sound of the liner’s engines.’
‘Which means he’s anxious to return to base as soon as possible,’ said Arthur.
As if in confirmation, Gawain reported from Kraken, ‘Submarine now moving at over twenty knots.’
It was good news, though Arthur was taking no chances. ‘Kraken and Eclipse, continue tracking Mujahid and remain on red alert,’ he ordered.
Agravaine, hunched over his keyboard, was unusually quiet, and so focused, Arthur noticed, that he had left his latest cup of coffee untouched. His right leg, normally bouncing on the ball of his foot, was still. Even his pink-tinted lenses remained unwiped. Once, he spoke for several minutes to Gawain, then, briefly, to Kraken’s robot controller.
‘What are you up to?’ asked Arthur, half lost in his own thoughts.
A casual response: ‘Routine stuff.’
On edge a few minutes ago, Arthur began to relax.
It was an hour after sunrise, a clear bright morning with not a cloud in the sky. On the decks of the great liner early risers strolled or jogged or relaxed on deckchairs. A few hung over the ship’s rails to watch a shoal of silver fish trailing the ship, no doubt hoping to be fed.
In spite of all the coffee he had drunk in the last twenty-four hours, Agravaine was having difficulty keeping his eyes open. Every minute or so his chin touched his chest and he was asleep on his stool, only to wake moments later with a start.
Arthur patted his shoulder. ‘Get some rest, Agro.’ ‘I will.’ Making no move.
‘Now, Agro. You need some shut-eye. I’ll cover.’
‘OK, maybe I’ll grab forty winks.’ In seconds Agravaine was snoring loudly, flat on his back on a makeshift bunk-bed in a far corner of Galaxy. Arthur sat at the table monitor, he too struggling against sleep, eyes glazing over, head drooping. It had been a long and stressful vigil.
Galaxy’s speakers blared: Torpedoes running! Torpedoes running! Torpedoes running!
Arthur jerked wide awake, Agravaine leaped from his bunk. The table monitor and several wall screens displayed the live action that followed. Two torpedoes sped through the water towards the liner’s starboard flank. Passengers leaning over the ship’s rails were the first to see them, some too terrified to cry out, others yelling a warning, though there was nothing anyone could do. It was too late for evasive action. The missiles were now less than two hundred metres from the liner and closing fast. In seconds they would hit it amidships.
No one on the liner who saw what happened would ever completely understand it. In the ocean there was a blinding flash of sunlight on silver as a shoal of fish darted from the liner’s stern to its starboard side forming a shining shield of fish between the ship and the advancing missiles. Almost instantly, first one, then a second torpedo exploded harmlessly thirty metres from the liner. When the water subsided, the fish were nowhere to be seen.
Whatever the explanation for the extraordinary phenomenon they had just witnessed, it was clear to those who had seen it that somehow the fish had saved their lives, and in doing so had presumably lost their own. From the liner’s rails the mesmerised passengers saw four steel barrels leap from the water, hang for a split second in the air and fall back into the sea. A moment’s silence was followed in quick succession by four muffled explosions as four spouts of water erupted from the ocean and quickly subsided. Four circles of white foam spread wider and wider, merging into one big circle that slowly dispersed. ‘Stun bombs dropped,’ reported Gawain from Kraken. A few seconds later Techforce Ten reported: ‘Submarine’s engines stopped.’
‘Any communication from Mujahid?’ asked Arthur.
‘He won’t be able to communicate anything for a while, sir,’ said Gawain. ‘Nor will anyone else on board the sub. I doubt they can even move.’
Hundreds of passengers and crew rushed to the liner’s rails. For a minute or two there was nothing to be seen but a few shreds of foam swirling on the water. Then a dark sinister shape broke the surface – the prow of a submarine, followed by the conning tower and finally the stern. An ungainly looking craft appeared from nowhere fifty metres away and mano
euvred alongside the submarine. Three men in dark blue uniforms with gold insignias on their chests jumped onto the deck, forced open the conning tower and disappeared into the submarine.
The first man to appear was unshaven, barrel-chested and muscular, wearing a black T-shirt and calf-length camouflage trousers.
‘That’s got to be him,’ said Agravaine, hunched over the table screen, watching as the man was helped from the conning tower down to the listing submarine’s deck by one of the actives. ‘He’s still groggy from the stun bombs.’
One by one, the submarine’s crew, walking unsteadily, were transferred to Sea Scuttle. When the transfer was complete, Sea Scuttle moved slowly away, stopping at precisely the spot where it had first surfaced. As the water around it foamed and frothed, the craft slowly sank, until finally it disappeared.
Gawain was on screen again. ‘Scuttle back in pen. Submarine’s crew and Mujahid also on board,’ he said, sounding like a man contented with life. ‘Awaiting orders.’
Arthur beamed. ‘Outstanding job, Gawain.’
‘It wasn’t me who saved the Crystal Splendour,’ said Gawain. ‘Come now,’ said Arthur, ‘don’t be so modest.’
‘It’s a fact. The credit belongs to Agro. He told me to mobilise the silver fish as a precaution.’
Suddenly Arthur remembered. ‘You spoke to Kraken, Agro,’ he said, ‘just before you took a nap. You said it was routine stuff.’
‘So it was, nuncle,’ said Agravaine.
‘Far from it, Agro,’ said Arthur. ‘I salute you.’ ‘The man’s a hero,’ said Gawain.
Agravaine blushed crimson. Arthur had praised him. And Gawain too. And no doubt Lancelot, who always looked at him as though he were something dragged in by the cat – no doubt he too would hear about it. A wave of happiness and pride surged in his chest.
‘Excalibur charged,’ said Gawain. ‘Permission to Elimat the submarine?’
Gawain was right. The submarine had to be destroyed. The question was how. Every second of the Crystal Splendour incident would in due course be transmitted to a global audience. Yet if they used Elimat to destroy the submarine, it would simply disappear, and people might not understand what had happened to it. ‘No,’ said Arthur, not Elimat. Let’s give the world a show to remember.’
