Warning Order (A Spider Shepherd short story)

by Stephen Leather

  WARNING ORDER

  By Stephen Leather

  ***

  September 1997

  Dan “Spider” Shepherd yawned as he sprawled across a hammock in the cramped interior of a submarine’s forward torpedo bay. It was the last place he’d expected to find himself – SAS troopers jumped out of planes, abseiled down cliffs and blew their way through locked doors, they didn’t generally find themselves in sardine cans breathing recycled air. He wasn’t finding it a pleasant experience. One of the other members of his patrol, Jim ‘Jimbo’ Shortt, was lying on the deck below him in an attempt to stretch out his six foot two inch frame. They were squeezed into the cramped space between the torpedoes - the only free space available. The other two patrol members, Geordie Mitchell and Liam McKay, were sitting on the floor with their backs against a bulkhead. Subs aren’t designed to carry passengers and there were no bunks to spare – even the crew had to work a “hot bunk” system: two men sharing each bunk, one using it while his shipmate was taking his turn on watch.

  The four SAS men had been together as a patrol since they’d passed Selection and had soon settled into the relentless rhythm of the Sabre Squadrons: Operations - Rest - Retraining - Standby - Operations. Whenever they were on Standby, they were the next cab on the rank for any incident or active service mission that was not already covered by the duty Operations Squadron.

  During their army careers, they’d already trained or seen action in everything from jungle and desert to high mountains and arctic tundra, and could cope with almost anything that was thrown at them, but it was clear they were all out of their comfort zone in the claustrophobic environment of the submarine. The harsh neon lighting gave their faces a grey pallor, the hard surfaces made sounds rattle from one end of the sub to the other and the air they breathed had a metallic tang and a musty whiff of stale sweat and unwashed bodies that the recycling systems were unable to eradicate.

  There was a clunk from beneath him as Jimbo sat up and banged his head on Shepherd’s boot which was dangling over the side of the hammock. He stood up rubbing his head. ‘Why can’t they build these things for normal human beings instead of pygmies?’ he said. ‘That’s the fourth time I’ve cracked my head in this floating tomb. If I’d wanted a life on the ocean wave I’d have joined the bleeding Navy.’

  ‘At least there’s only four of us,’ said Geordie. ‘If you count the hooks for attaching hammocks, you’ll see that there could have been eighteen of us snoring and farting away in here. Just the four if us is bearable, just about.’

  ‘Your farts stink like there’s eighteen of us anyway,’ said Jimbo.

  Liam winked at Shepherd. ‘Those two bicker like an old married couple,’ he said in his Northern Irish brogue. They’d been firm friends since they’d met on the first day of Selection. Even soldiers used to excelling in their field found Selection daunting, and of the one hundred and twenty who started, just ten had passed. Liam had been one of them - the only non-airborne soldier to succeed. ‘Speaking of which,’ Liam said. ‘How’s the lovely Sue?’

  ‘As big as a house, but at least she’s stopped blaming me for the morning sickness.’

  ‘How far along is she?’ asked Jimbo.

  ‘More than seven months now,’ said Shepherd. ‘I went to see the Boss and he promised not to send me to far afield on training or ops until after the baby’s been born.’ He gestured at their surroundings. ‘I guess I should have been more specific and mentioned submarines. How deep do you think we are?’

  ‘I try not to think about it,’ said Geordie. ‘At least if you’re in a plane and something goes wrong, you’ve got the option of jumping. In a submarine…’ He shuddered at the thought of what would happen if the hull were breached.

  ‘They’re as safe as houses,’ said Jimbo.

  ‘Yeah, well they said that about the Titanic,’ said Liam. ‘And my great-grandfather helped build it but that didn’t stop it sinking.’

  ‘What about icebergs?’ asked Shepherd. ‘We’re headed to the Lofoten Islands and that’s inside the Arctic Circle.’

  ‘We’re well below any ice,’ said Jimbo. ‘And these hulls are designed to be uncrushable.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure they said that about the Titanic’s hull, too,’ said Liam.

  ‘Can we talk about something else,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Is the missus trying to talk you into becoming an officer?’ asked Jimbo. ‘Mine is. Says I should push for a commission.’ He mimicked her plaintive voice. ‘If you were an officer, you wouldn’t have to keep going to all these horrible places for weeks and months on end.’

  ‘Which is exactly why you don’t want to be an officer, right?’ said Geordie.

  ‘Right, but it doesn’t stop her trying,’ said Jimbo. ‘Her parents are well connected in the County’s hunting and shooting set and I’ve already been shanghaied into a few dinner parties.’ He gave a mock shudder at the thought. ‘She dragged me to one last week and there were a couple of retired senior officers from the Regiment there. They talked a complete load of babbling nonsense, but the other guests were so in awe of them that they hung on their every word. Total bollocks, but I didn’t say anything. But there was a certain amount of frost in the taxi going home at the end of the evening.’

  ‘Sue’s not like that,’ said Shepherd. ‘And her parents know the score. Her dad’s a bank manager and my mother-in-law’s a sweetie. They’re both Hereford born and bred so they know how important the Regiment is. They know I’ve never wanted to be an officer. I didn’t join the SAS to shuffle paper and send other people out to do my fighting for me. But there’s no doubt she’d be happier if I was doing something else.’

  ‘Like what?’ asked Liam. ‘You love it, you know you do.’

  ‘My missus reckons I’m more married to the squadron than I am to her,’ Jimbo said. ‘I told her: “You’re right and you know what? The sex is better too”.’

  Geordie laughed. ‘You’re so naive, couldn’t you tell I was faking it?’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Liam said in mock disgust. ‘The SAS camping it up. Is nothing bloody sacred any more?’

  ‘Clearly not,’ laughed Shepherd.

  ‘But seriously, what does she want you to do instead?’ asked Liam. ‘Find a desk job?’

  ‘She suggested the police,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘What, have you walking the streets in a pointy hat?’ laughed Geordie. ‘Has she seen Hereford town centre on a Saturday night? You’d be safer with the Regiment in Belfast. At least we’ve got guns. What do cops have? A stick and a whistle.’

  Shepherd smiled. ‘I pretty much said that to her. I guess the way she looks at it, if I was a cop at least I’d be home every night.’ The hull creaked and he grimaced. ‘She’s got a point.’

  ‘I don’t know why anyone would want to be a cop,’ said Geordie. ‘They have to work with one hand tied behind their backs most of the time. The villains have more rights than the victims.’

  ‘They should let the Regiment loose on the bad guys,’ said Jimbo. ‘We’d cut re-offending rates at a stroke. So what did you say to her?’

  ‘Said I’d think about it. But I can’t see I’d ever leave the Regiment. Kid or no kid.’

  ‘That’s the spirit.’

  ‘But I do understand how she feels. I mean, she’s pregnant and I’m stuck in a sardine can in icy water. She’s having to do the doctor’s appointments on her own and I can’t guarantee that I’ll be there when it’s born.’

  ‘It?’ said Liam. ‘You don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl?’

  ‘The doctor said she was seventy-five per cent sure it was a boy after the last scan but she cou
ldn’t say for sure. Sue’s got a scan coming up and I wanted to be there for that but the way this is panning out…’ He shrugged.

  ‘It’s going to be worse when the kid arrives, of course,’ said Jimbo. ‘Then she’ll say you’re using operations to get out of nappy-changing.’ He grinned. ‘And she’ll probably be right, too.’

  Shepherd grinned. ‘Nappies are one thing I’m not looking forward to,’ he admitted. ‘Anyway, I hate to spoil the party but this is supposed to be squadron training, so how about we focus on the task for a few minutes?’ He unrolled a map and spread it out over the floor. ‘We’ve come on this little pleasure cruise to test-launch a self-inflating reconnaissance boat. There’s a question mark over it because in previous tests it has not always inflated correctly. Assuming it does this time, we’ll be using it to make a covert landing on the Lofoten Islands - here.’ He tapped the map. ‘And if you want to keep an eye on the movements of the Russian Northern Fleet, the Lofotens are as good a place as any, because it’s based just around the corner in Murmansk.’ He paused. ‘Oh, and we’d better hope the outboard works too, because the Lofotens are also home to the Moskstraumen - it means maelstrom in Norwegian apparently - a whirlpool powerful enough to drag in a much bigger boat than ours.’

  ‘You’re all good news today, aren’t you?’ Liam said. ‘So where is this inflatable wonder boat?’

  ‘Already loaded in one of the torpedo tubes.’

  Liam did a double-take. ‘You’re shitting me, right? We’re going to trust our lives to a rubber boat that’s been fired out of a torpedo tube? What if it gets shredded?’

  ‘It won’t, but if it doesn’t inflate correctly or it sinks, we’ll be swimming to the coast because once we’ve exited the sub, the crew have no means of knowing if we’re fine or fucked and won’t even be able to see us, let alone pick us up again. They stay submerged and access comms by trailing a tiny aerial on a wire several miles long, timing the deployment precisely to coincide with the transit of a military comms satellite overhead. That allows the sub to remain undetected by enemy forces, but unfortunately, for operational and practical reasons, it also means that it cannot surface to rescue us if we get into difficulties as there’s no way of getting the boat or us back on board.’ He paused again to let that sink in.

  ‘Remind me again why the SBS boys aren’t doing this?’ asked Jimbo.

  ‘Because the Special Boat Service are experts at ducking out of dangerous jobs,’ said Liam. ‘Their motto is “By Strength And Guile” and they’re always heavy on the guile.’

  ‘It’s our mission and we’re stuck with it,’ said Shepherd. ‘OK, Survival brief: Geordie?’

  Geordie, the patrol medic, cleared his throat. ‘We’re well inside the Arctic Circle, so even wearing dry suits, if we’re in the water, our survival time is going to be limited. For an unprotected body, at a water temperature close to freezing point, exhaustion and unconsciousness will set in within fifteen minutes and death will follow within forty-five minutes. Our dry suits will prolong that survival time by up to another couple of hours, but no more than that. Should the boat capsize, we’re better adopting a defensive posture in the water to conserve heat than trying to swim or even tread water, both of which can cut survival time by as much as fifty per cent. At the risk of getting my boyfriend over-excited again-’ He gave Jimbo a sideways look, ‘-huddling together in the water will also decrease heat loss significantly. However, the good news is that we have the Norwegian coastguard chopper on standby, so there should be no problems.’

  Shepherd took up the briefing again. ‘Okay, as I said, the recce boat is deployed by being fired through the submarine’s torpedo tubes. The patrol will follow through the lock-out system in the sub’s conning tower and swim to the boat. The only other issue may be the weather, which is looking dubious.’ He paused at the sound of approaching footsteps on the steel floor. ‘This might be the update on that.’

  A lieutenant, wearing the dolphin badge of an experienced submariner, stepped through the hatch. He was in his early thirties, pale skimmed with a rash of brown freckles across his nose and cheeks. ‘Not good news, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Pressure’s falling, visibility is poor and the wind’s backing northerly and strengthening, so we look to be in for a bit of a blow. The commander’s recommendation is that the exercise should be postponed until the weather improves.

  Shepherd glanced at the others. ‘What do you reckon?’

  Liam shrugged. ‘It’s the navy’s environment, not ours. If they don’t think it’s fit, we’d be mugs to overrule them.’

  There was a murmur of agreement from the others.

  ‘Fair enough then,’ Shepherd said. ‘I’ll tell the Head Shed, assuming we have comms at the moment? Though you know what the Boss is like, so don’t stand down just yet.’

  Shepherd went to the comms area and outlined the weather problems and the sub commander’s opinion, to the Squadron OC, Michael de Vale, who was supervising the operation. There was a pause on the radio while he digested the news. ‘Nonsense,’ he said eventually, his accent pure cut glass. ‘Who Dares Wins, remember? We don’t suspend operations because there’s a bit of wind and rain. Get on with it, Shepherd. That’s an order.’

  ‘Yes sir,’ Shepherd said, masking his irritation. De Vale came from a family with a strong military background and a lineage stretching back to the Norman Conquest and he was renowned in the Regiment for losing no opportunity to blow his own trumpet and for volunteering his men for any operation, no matter how reckless or ill-conceived.

  Shepherd reported back to the others. ‘No surprises there,’ Geordie said. ‘OK, let’s get to it.’

  Despite their reservations, there was no grumbling or hesitation from anyone. The decision was made and, whatever their private thoughts, they had received a direct order and would carry out the task without further pause. They began to dress themselves in their dry-suits, a difficult enough task in ample space on dry land, never mind in the cramped confines of a submarine torpedo bay. Shepherd was sweating profusely by the time he’d struggled into the suit, with its gaskets clamping tight around his wrists, neck and ankles.

  When all four men were fully suited, they shuffled along to the lock-out chamber and, with the help of two of the sub crew, clambered through the circular hatch into the chamber. They synchronised watches with the lieutenant. ‘We’ll launch the raft at 0950 hours,’ he said. ‘Good luck.’

  Shepherd nodded, then the sub crew closed the hatch and he span the circular wheel to lock it shut. ‘Alone at last,’ he said to the others. No one laughed. They were all in operations mode, all too well aware that any mistake could be fatal.

  They took it in turns to put on their fins and their modified submarine escape hoods, designed to allow them to exhale during the short ascent to the surface. It was essential that they did so; if they held their breath, the air in their lungs would expand as they rose from the depths, causing internal damage to their organs.

  They waited as the time ticked down, every sound echoing from the steel walls of the tiny chamber. ‘Now!’ Shepherd said at last. He spun the wheel to free the hatch above their heads. There was a blast of gas, the hatch swung open and a torrent of seawater cascaded into the chamber. He stifled a gasp at the icy shock of the water, and had to fight to control the involuntary, hyperventilating response to sudden, extreme cold. The airlock filled rapidly and he was swept upwards. He cleared the hatch and exhaling as he went, finned rapidly upwards.

  He broke surface and looked around. A heavy swell was running, the wind whipping drifts of spray from the crests. As he was lifted by the swell, he caught a brief glimpse of three other heads bobbing above the surface near him. About a hundred yards away he could see the glistening outline of the black rubber raft uncurling as it began to inflate. He slipped down into the trough before the next wave and he lost sight of his colleagues. He began finning towards the raft, pausing a couple of times to check his direction, as the stiff, gusting wind and the po
werful current of the ebb tide combined to hamper him. Even in the short time in the water, he could feel the effects of the cold, which seemed to double the effort needed to swim to the boat.

  In the far distance, to the east, he could see the outlines of the peaks of the Lofoten Islands, as sharp and jagged as shark’s teeth against the lowering grey clouds. He reached the raft just ahead of the others and clung to the side of it for a moment as the waves pummeled him. He could hear the hiss of gas from the boat’s cylinders as they continued their slow inflation of the raft. One by one they pulled themselves out of the frigid water and swung into the raft. Even the freezing wind felt better than the numbing cold of the ocean.

  His relief proved short-lived because the hissing sound from the cylinders faltered and stopped. He looked at the others and saw his concern mirrored on their faces. The boat was not even half-inflated. Burdened by their weight, it was filling with water. As the others scrambled for anything they could use to bale out the seawater as the boat bucked and rocked in the swell, Shepherd grabbed the mini-flares from the boat and jammed them into his belt, then began trying to restart the cylinders. As he looked up, he froze, seeing a monster wave rising above them. His shouted warning was snatched away by the wind, and the wave smashed down with crushing force, capsizing the boat and hurling them all back into the ocean.

  As Shepherd broke surface, he saw the raft had turned turtle and was now upside down. He swam back to it and hung on to the slippery hull as the others joined him, battling to maintain their grip as each wave threatened to tear them loose. They had only the most minimal kit on them. Everything else - comms, weapons, rations, survival gear, rations - had been in the boat and was now on its way to the bottom of the ocean.

  Shepherd was all too well aware of the seriousness of their situation. Even wearing dry suits to combat the extreme cold of the Arctic water, they would not be able to survive for long before hypothermia began to kick in. He pulled the metal firing tube from the flare pack. His frozen fingers fumbled with the trigger for a moment, then it fired and the mini-flare arced up high above them and burst into vivid red star.