One minute to go. Sixty excruciating seconds, each a lifetime long. It didn’t help knowing that the hard cases he was wedged between were also plagued by fear. No matter how many times you did this, the risks were the same. Their lives would be hanging by threads.
Red on.
They stood again, hands grasping the man in front. Sam’s heart hammered. Beyond was a big square void.
Green on.
‘Go!’ A yell split his ears, whether from behind or from his own throat he didn’t know. The pallets rolled and were gone. Then one man, two, three. A jab in his back and the slipstream hit him. Cold air that took his breath away. Then the bang of the harness opening. He hung from his straps. The reserve chute clung to his stomach like a fat blister. His lifesaver if anything went wrong, but it had to go now the main canopy was open. He pulled the release and felt it fall away.
The night was as black as death. Not a speck of light. He’d forgotten to count. Phipps had said ten. Sam shone the torch down, searching for a reflection off the waves.
Six, seven, eight . . . Breath held, hand on harness release. The water hit as soon as he saw it. He yanked at the D-ring and felt the harness let go of his crutch. Then he went down beneath the water. It felt like for ever. At last, with a hiss, the lifejacket cuddled his neck.
Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen . . . An eternity of gurgling ears, then air suddenly. He could breathe again, but not see. He flinched, anticipating a wave pounding down.
A light came on. Beside his head. The lamp on the lifejacket, reliable as paint drying. Enough light to show a gentle swell. Waves of no consequence. He turned his head. Wherever he looked, more lights twinkling. Like fairy dust. A couple of the men had cracked the cyalume tubes too.
‘Sam?’ A shout off to his left where several lights were grouping together.
‘Here!’
‘Okay?’
‘Yep.’
He checked he was free of the canopy lines, then swam towards the voices. They were further off than he’d thought and progress with the lifejacket was slow. After a few minutes, a pencil of light reached out from the darkness, sweeping across them, pausing when it picked out a figure in the water. HMS Truculent had surfaced close by. Sam looked away to preserve his night vision and kept swimming.
As he neared the cluster of bodies, he saw that something was wrong. Five of them together, a daisy chain round one man at the centre who wasn’t moving.
Lieutenant Willie Phipps held up a waterproof radio, telling the submarine of their casualty.
‘Hit by something . . . Unconscious . . .’ The lap of the water broke into his flow of words. He acknowledged Sam with a nod.
‘Stick close. The submarine’s coming over. Don’t get anywhere near the stern. Those propulsors can chop up torpedoes.’
The submarine doused its spotlight. Sam looked towards the vessel and saw the flicker of torchlight on the casing.
‘They don’t have a Gemini out, but there’ll be a diver to help you,’ Phipps told him. ‘There’ll be a scrambling net to get onto the casing. Look after yourself, okay? I’m busy.’
‘No problem.’
The submarine switched on a deck light so they could see it more easily. It had stopped some fifty metres away. Sam struck out. He saw water splash as a diver from the boat jumped in to help.
The man waved an arm. ‘Over here!’
Sam reached him.
‘You the civvy?’
‘Does it show?’
‘Not what I meant. You’re on your own, that’s all. Follow me to the casing. Feel for the net with your hand.’
‘Thanks.’ Sam banged against the hull, scrabbling along its smooth surface until he touched the thick rope of the net. He jammed his toes in and struggled to raise himself from the water. His limbs were like lead. Hands reached down and pulled him up onto the casing.
‘Welcome on board, sir. Name, please?’ asked a brisk, efficient sailor in white rollneck, clutching a clipboard.
Sam gave it.
‘Straight down below please, sir.’
A hand took his elbow and guided him firmly to an open hatch. He felt an updraught of warm air, the stale warship smell that he’d once known so well. A CPO met him at the bottom and helped him remove his dry suit.
‘Any injuries or immediate needs?’
‘Yes to the second. A stiff drink.’
The chief smiled. ‘There’s hot tea in the senior rates’ mess. The lad here’ll show you down below. The bomb shop’s been cleared for you.’
Sam nodded at a young sailor with spots on his chin and a label on his chest that said Griffiths.
‘We’re hot bunking to make room for you lot,’ the youth complained as he led Sam down the companionway. ‘We had a full complement already.’
‘Sorry to inconvenience you,’ Sam muttered.
In the chiefs’ mess a mug was pressed into his hands and he gulped the tea gratefully while the rating waited outside for him to finish. When Sam rejoined him in the passageway leading forward, he seemed eager to make it clear that he hadn’t been complaining.
‘I didn’t mean it were an inconvenience having you on board,’ Griffiths explained awkwardly as they reached the ladder down to the weapons storage compartment. ‘Most interesting thing that’s happened all trip. You okay now, sir? Got to go for the others.’
‘Fine. Thanks.’
Sam looked round at the packed stowage area. In his years in the Navy he’d never served in a submarine. He noted the bunk pallets fixed onto empty torpedo racks, but knew there’d be no time for sleeping.
Over the next fifteen minutes the rest of the landing party gathered. There was little chat amongst the marines, just the clipped grunts of men used to working closely together.
Last down was Lieutenant Willie Phipps, stepping off the bottom rung as the pipe announced they were diving again.
‘That’s a bugger,’ he murmured. ‘Macko was our linguist. Fluent Russian and Serbo-whatsit.’
‘How is he?’ Sam asked.
‘Severe concussion, by the look of it. The MO’s got him in the sick bay. How’s your Russian?’
‘Not good enough.’
‘Then I’d better ask if there’s anyone on board who can come ashore with us.’
‘When do we go?’
‘In about two hours.’
They heard footsteps on the ladder and turned to see a lieutenant commander’s epaulettes emerge below the hatch.
‘Everybody comfy?’ the First Lieutenant asked as he reached the bottom. He had a folder clutched under his arm.
‘Like pigs in shit,’ growled a voice from the back.
Hayes grinned. ‘Okay. Happy for me to brief you now?’
‘Sooner the better,’ Phipps told him.
‘Fine.’ Hayes set his folder down on one of the boxes where the GCHQ team stored their tapes. ‘We’re currently about thirty miles west of Palagra,’ he explained, opening a chart of the Lastovski Channel. ‘We’ll be in position to surface again in about ninety minutes.’ He pointed to a circle on the chart. ‘There’s only one easy way onto the island as far as we can see.’ He spread out a small-scale plan that had been faxed from London. ‘A natural inlet at the eastern end, sheltered from the northwesterlies. The rest of the coastline is rocks and cliffs about ten metres high with thick scrub on top.’
‘When we left Lyneham, the intelligence picture was like a fog in the Channel,’ Willie Phipps interjected. ‘All they said was the island’s supposed to be uninhabited. Nothing about what’s on it.’
‘We can do better than that now. The place used to be lived on by monks, until Tito’s communists turfed them out so the big man could use their monastery as a guest house for his cronies. When Yugoslavia broke up, the place was reclaimed by the Church, but, strangely enough, they couldn’t find any young men wanting to shut themselves away there. So they leased the building to an Austrian religious foundation as a retreat.’
‘Austrian foundation,’ Sam repea
ted, his interest sharpening. ‘D’you have a name for it?’
‘Sorry. Nothing more than that.’
‘The monastery’s the only building on the island?’ Phipps asked.
‘There’s one other house, occupied by a Croatian family. They run goats and chickens and have a few patches of maize, peaches and vegetables. Used to supply food to Tito’s guests when they were in residence, and when they weren’t, they’d look after the place for him.’
‘How many bods on the farm?’
‘Don’t know. A “family” is all it says on the signal.’
‘Okay. So tell us about the Russians?’
‘The CTs picked up four different voices. There may be more. Our assumption is they’ve been occupying the monastery. And not for a prayer meeting. The last transmission monitored suggested panic. Something had gone badly wrong and a manhunt was under way on the island.’
‘But they may have all left,’ Phipps prompted. ‘A boat was seen leaving?’
‘That’s right. A cluster of people on board. Hard to tell numbers. At least four, maximum six. We’ll show you the video.’ He pointed beyond the line of gleaming torpedo tube hatches where a small monitor and video player had been set up.
‘No police or Croatian armed forces on the island?’ Phipps queried.
‘We don’t think so. There’s no reason for them to be there.’
‘And what’s the met picture?’
‘Cloud cover may break up after midnight Zulu – London time. If it does there’s a moon.’
‘A new moon, thankfully,’ Phipps told him. ‘Not so bad.’ Total darkness suited them best because their night vision gear was brilliant. ‘One thing . . . That casualty of ours – Macko – he was our linguist. We’d like a Russian and Serb/Croat speaker with us if possible. Anybody on board who could fill in?’
‘Will he have to swim?’
‘No. We’ll carry him on our backs if he can tell us what we’re listening to.’
Hayes scratched his chin. ‘I could try the CT who identified the voice of Igor Chursin. He’d be ideal if I can persuade him.’
‘Good.’
‘He’s racked at the moment, but coming on watch in an hour or so. I’ll give him a shake when we’ve finished our briefing.’
‘Fine. Let’s have a look at your pictures.’
Martin Hayes crouched in front of the recorder as the SBS team bunched closer to the screen.
‘Okay. These first shots are of the boat seen leaving the island.’
Sam peered over the heads of the marines. A modern glass-fibre utility boat, with a forward wheelhouse and cabin and a long open stern section for passengers or goods. Ideal as a work boat for someone running a covert laboratory. Two figures visible behind the wheelhouse windows, with more on the open deck.
‘As you can see, an accurate head count is hard.’ There was a grunt of affirmation from Phipps. ‘The next bit of tape is our circumnavigation of the island. I’ll speed through. You’ll soon get the message. Pretty unapproachable because of the cliffs and dense woodland. You could get ashore that way, but it’d take an age.’
The marines’ eyes drilled the screen. ‘Can you see any of the buildings from the sea?’ one of them asked.
‘Nope. The trees are too tall.’ The First Lieutenant cleared his throat. ‘And now we’re back at the inlet.’ He slowed the tape to normal speed. ‘I’ve done some hard-copy printouts which you can study at your leisure. As you can see, there’s what looks like a quay there. Perhaps “quay” is too generous. It’s rocks cemented together.’
‘Freeze it, could you?’ Phipps spread his fingers and thumb and measured the image on the screen. He estimated fifteen or twenty metres of landing space. ‘When was this taken?’
‘Twenty-four hours ago.’
‘There’s a family living at the farm, you said?’
‘Yes, but I’ve no idea how current or sound that piece of intelligence is,’ Hayes cautioned.
‘If they’re still there, they’re bound to have a boat too, that’s all,’ Phipps added ruminatively.
‘Out fishing?’ Hayes suggested. ‘Or gone across to Lastovo for supplies. Probably find it back there when we arrive.’
‘How close can you take us?’
‘Half a mile at a pinch.’
Sam looked at his watch. A quarter to eleven Zulu. Nearly one in the morning local. Ninety minutes until they neared the island. Fifteen minutes to get the boats loaded and off the casing once they’d surfaced. Two hours ashore at the most before the approach of daylight forced them to withdraw.
‘It’s essential the submarine stays undetected,’ Hayes told them, ‘and that you do too. NATO does not want to find itself at war because of this operation. Weapons for self-defence only. Absolute last resort. If we have to leave you ashore overnight to prevent detection of the submarine, then so be it. We’ll collect you the following night. Or else you could become tourists and make your own way back.’
The thought of being stranded in the Adriatic horrified Sam. His instinct was to be back in Vienna as soon as he could, snapping at the heels of Max Schenk. As the briefing continued he detached his mind from it. Phipps and the First Lieutenant were on to technicalities – communications frequencies and procedures for every balls-up imaginable.
Sam perched on the edge of a bunk pallet watching the faces of the marines, his unease growing. They were a tight-knit group of men, all under thirty. Single-minded and with a clear agenda, but one that was different from his own. Their mission was to look for signs of biological weapons being prepared for use against NATO troops, but their priority was to remain unseen. They’d keep their distance. Observe from afar, as they were trained to do. His need was to gather the sort of hard evidence that might only be found by taking the place apart. He wanted tangible proof that this rock was where Harry Jackman’s shipment had ended up. And confirmation that what had been produced here was now being used by European racists. To get it could well mean becoming very visible indeed. It might even come down to sticking guns in the Russians’ mouths to encourage them to talk.
And unless he could persuade them otherwise, the men he was travelling with would do all in their power to stop him.
Stockholm
After midnight
Twelve hundred miles to the north of where HMS Truculent was making her preparations, a Saab 900 drove through a western suburb of Stockholm. The vehicle was stolen and so were its plates.
Although the centre of the Swedish capital stayed abuzz until late on a Friday night, out here, where many immigrant families had settled close to one another for support, the streets were empty after midnight and the apartment windows for the most part dark.
The history-loving schoolteacher behind the wheel wore a long, brown wig over his straight, fair hair, and heavy-framed spectacles without any lenses in them. It was a cold, wet night in eastern Sweden, justifying the parka he’d put on. He drove slowly through a bleak, run-down commercial centre, scanning shopfronts. Buildings of three floors – business premises at street level, with apartments above.
It didn’t take him long to spot the doner kebab house on the opposite side of the road that he’d checked out a couple of days before. He slowed the car and glanced up at the apartments. To his relief, the windows were in darkness or curtained. No one to see him. He stopped a little way down the road.
He’d thought about this moment for days, doubting he would dare go through with it. I wait to know that you are not a coward. The words of the e-mail had lingered in his mind like a stain. He wasn’t brave by nature. But on this issue he was determined. Determined that something had to be done to stop the contamination of Europe by the dispossessed from other lands.
He swung the car in a U-turn and drove slowly back to the takeaway, stopping outside. He pulled the parka’s hood over his head, then got out. From the boot he removed a sledgehammer, a Molotov cocktail and a can of petrol, hurrying them over to the shop before he could change his mind.
Foot hard down on the accelerator, he put some streets between himself and the scene of his crime. Then, fearing a heart attack if he didn’t calm down, the schoolteacher slowed the car. Concentrating, he drove carefully so as not to draw attention to himself, his mind reliving every moment of what he’d just done.
Eventually he spoke. Not to himself, although anyone watching would have thought so, but to the man who called himself Simon, a man whose face he’d never seen.
‘You see, comrade? I did it. I am not a coward. And I am with you.’
20
HMS Truculent
Saturday, 01.40 hrs Zulu
COMMANDER ANTHONY TALBOT sat glued to the attack periscope monitor as the marines made their preparations on the casing aft of the fin. He had a deepening sense of dread about the mission.
The monochrome thermal images were crisp and clear, the men’s warm faces and hands showing up white. Bulky in their kit, the ten marines were grouped round the Geminis, inflating them with compressed air from bottles and attaching the silenced outboards to the transoms. Beyond them, where the casing slipped into the sea, the submarine’s rudder swung slowly from one side to the other like the tail of a basking whale. Standing a little apart from the SBS men, looking ill at ease, were the two ‘passengers’ on the mission, Sam Packer and Arthur Harris. It hadn’t taken much to persuade the CT to step in as translator, but Talbot knew he’d be more scared now than at any time in his life.
His misgivings concerned the other man, however. Harris was military and would obey the lieutenant’s orders, but Packer was a civilian, and a shady character judging by the press summary that had been included in the last broadcast from Northwood. It wasn’t at all clear why the man had been sent. No explanation from London except ‘security reasons’. But whatever they were, the man had his own agenda, which meant the mission had split aims, something naval commanders were trained to avoid.
The Lucifer Network Page 34
