“Where do we start, Commander?” my petty officer asked.
I looked around at the awful desolation. “Split into two sections,” I said. “You take one section right, I’ll take the other left. We walk right around the shore, which shouldn’t take too long by the look of it, and meet half way. All eyes watchful, and guns ready. Investigate anything, and I mean anything, that strikes you as needing it. When we meet up again, we’ll quarter the island right across. Okay?”
“Okay, Commander. Come on, you guys.” The petty officer stabbed a finger. “You and you and you.”
*
It was, in fact, a hell of a trudge. Kakai was bigger than it had looked at first sight and there were several inlets that had to be conscientiously walked. It was a little over an hour before the two parties met again roughly opposite where we’d landed. By that time the heat had grown vicious and steam was rising from Kakai, a highly curious and ominous sight. I’ve seen tropical regions steam before, but never like this: it was almost a fog on the old scale of the London pea-soupers, though lighter in content naturally. We all complained of a nasty skin tingle and it was clear the seamen all wished to get back aboard as soon as possible.
I said, “It’s due to pass soon, going on what’s been happening to date, so don’t worry too much. In the meantime, we quarter the island inch by inch.”
“The whole island, Commander?”
“Right,” I said, “the whole goddam island! It’ll take more time than I thought, so we won’t linger, and we’ll split into two’s to make it quicker.”
We started off, spreading wide along a broad front before we moved inland to cross Kakai to its other side. Almost dead centre there was a curiously raised piece of ground, treeless and bare, with what looked like rock sides. It lay slap across my own particular line of advance, as it happened, and when I neared it, it rose not quite sheer so that it was just possible to climb it, which I did. Somehow it had the feel of an altar — it was that kind of shape — and that was where I found Miss Mandrake, staked out with ropes and heavily-driven steel pegs, spreadeagled beneath what in better weather would have been direct sunlight, stark naked and looking as dead as a doornail. Men’s reactions are funny: even before I felt for signs of life to reassure myself, I had torn off my shirt and flung it over her as my search mates pounded up behind.
*
She was alive, just. Sheer exposure had very nearly done her in. I brought from my hip pocket what I always carry: my flask of whisky. It did her some good and she began to come round, enough to open her eyes, blink, and register. She gave me a weak smile of something like gratitude. When we had freed her arms and legs we lifted her gently and, assisted now by the whole landing party, carried her back to where the rubber dinghy waited. The petty officer and I nursed her across to the ship and she was lifted aboard and taken to the sick bay, where a hospital corpsman attended her. Colour was coming back into her face and her pulse was stronger; and there were questions I had to ask, so I asked them. She was a tough girl and she answered like the professional she was. The story was much what I’d figured out for myself: whilst obeying orders in regard to Nick Early, she and he had been attacked and she had been hijacked. The hijackers had worn masks and had not spoken throughout, but she was pretty certain they were Orientals. She had been gagged, a knife had been held against her body, and she had been taken across the lagoon in a rubber dinghy, across the coral by the heavily booted hijackers, into another dinghy which had taken her to a submarine that had made for deep water and submerged as soon as she was aboard. Destination, of course, Kakai; and on Kakai the staking out for the kill only it hadn’t happened.
I caught Beery’s eye and said, “Thank God for Hysterectomy.”
“What’s that?” Felicity asked.
“Never mind for now,” I said. “What about the thugs? Where do we find them?”
She didn’t know, but suggested the unknown submarine. I tended to agree: they certainly wouldn’t have lingered, whoever they were. It seemed to me that we had just one thing to do: head back at speed for Diego Garcia. I asked, “Did they mention the Gulf of Tongking by any chance?”
“I told you, they didn’t utter.”
“Check,” I said. “Sorry. It must have been a dull party.”
“It was,” she agreed, then seemed to drift off into sleep, her eyes closing on a faint sigh. The sleep would be the best thing for her. I bent and kissed her gently on one cheek and persuaded myself that she smiled. I left her then to the hospital corpsman and with Beery I went to the navigating bridge. Anchor was weighed and we said goodbye to Kakai and the Candars, though not before we had sailed right around the whole little archipelago and subjected each tiny islet, and Kakai apart that was all they were, to close scrutiny through binoculars. There was nothing there, no base, no radio station — it would probably have been a mobile one anyway and dismantled when finished with no super scientific set-up to project streams of jet-propelled aerosol gas or whatever into the heavens.
“There wouldn’t be, would there?” Beery said. “It would be liable to be spotted. It’s just the test area, period.”
I agreed: there was almost nothing to be seen but what there was had been burned. More remnants of palm trees, blackened stumps. Scorched earth … a foretaste of what could be about to hit civilisation when Nodd was ready to go. Our circling manoeuvre completed, we steadied on course for Diego Garcia and Beery brought his engines up to full. The seas were restless yet, greyly heaving, but the hurricane was well past the area now. We got back to the atoll base a damn sight quicker than we’d made Kakai, and as we came into the lagoon in the early hours of next morning to go alongside the logistics pier a signal went by light ahead of our arrival, reporting on Miss Mandrake and asking for the Rear-Admiral to make himself available immediately and to implement earlier requests pronto. When we berthed a navy ambulance was waiting and Beery and I went in it with Miss Mandrake to the base hospital, the siren screaming out and lights flashing. As the medics took the girl over I was driven in an open vehicle to the Rear-Admiral’s block, with Beery. They didn’t in fact admit Beery to the presence, but I was hustled up right away and found Warfield with Rackstall. I gave a concise report, which I was aware was taped, and expressed my view that it was a case of next stop the Gulf of Tongking. To my surprise, Rackstall was dubious.
“It’s a long shot,” he said. “There’s no evidence to support what Ellum told you, Commander.”
“Except that it fits, ties in, is all of a piece. WUSWIPP’s no stranger to China, sir, and the Chinese have ambitious —”
“Not currently against the West, Commander. They’re kind of friendly. There’s been a hell of a lot of co-operation the last few years, right?”
“Right,” I said, “but it may not be intended to last and it may be a cover. China’s always meant to be top dog one day. Over us, and over Russia too.”
“Could be a waste of time.”
I said, “Yes, could be, but I don’t think it’ll prove so. And it’s the only lead we have.”
“No help from Miss Mandrake, you said. That’s odd — surely they’d have dropped a clue somewhere?” Rackstall scratched his chin. “Why did they do that to her anyway? Where’s the point?”
I shrugged. “The point is, they were making a point — if you follow me. A demonstration, if you like. If it hadn’t been for the hurricane — or if I hadn’t got there in time once the hurricane had passed through — it would have been a pretty horrible find. Just bones and burned chunks of flesh.”
“But why warn us, for God’s sake?”
Again I shrugged. “Perhaps this isn’t to be an all-out operation. Yet, that is. They demonstrate their power, then they come across with what they want for not using it. How’s that, sir?”
“Far fetched,” Rackstall said irritably, looking at Warfield for support. Warfield nodded. I began to get hot under the collar and saw the moment fast approaching when, in obedience to Max’s order, I would need to tell
Rear-Admiral Rackstall to get stuffed. It would be difficult, to say the least, to give that message to the one man who could provide me with transport to the Gulf of Tongking, but it would have to be faced. In the event, my path was eased for me and one way and another it couldn’t have been better timed — couldn’t possibly, in view of what I’d just been saying. A communications officer knocked and was admitted and handed a message to Rackstall. It was another broken-down cypher from the Pentagon and it made Rackstall gasp. Wordlessly, he handed it to Warfield, who also gasped. Then they both stared at me.
I asked, “May I know?”
“Guess you’d better,” Rackstall said. His grating voice was grimly worried, but there was a hint of climb-down in it. He waved the message form at me. “Washington reports a phone call tapped into the White House line, personal to the President from WUSWIPP … demanding demilitarisation of all United States overseas bases, dismantling to start within fourteen days as of last midnight.” Rackstall’s voice shook a little — with fury, I think, rather than apprehension. He was not an apprehensive man. “Or else. Else being unspecified, but I guess we know.”
“I guess we do, sir,” I said, and paused pregnantly. “Do I take it this phone call has official backing from any country in particular?”
Rackstall said heavily, “It’s maybe backed by China. The call is believed to have originated in Peking.”
“Do I get my submarine?” I asked.
8
Of course I got my submarine: Rackstall couldn’t wait to get it for me. He still didn’t have one handy in Diego Garcia at that moment, but he lost no time in drafting a signal to Washington and they lost no time in making their reply: the USS Hampton Roads, a nuclear-powered submarine then on submerged patrol in the Arabian Sea, was ordered to surface and proceed at top speed for Diego Garcia to come under Rackstall’s orders for a special assignment. Only then did Rackstall ask precisely what I proposed to do with the submarine.
“Head for the Gulf of Tongking,” I told him, “and get myself put ashore. With Miss Mandrake and Ellum.”
“Just the three of you, Commander?”
“Right.”
“That’s crazy,” he said.
I agreed that it sounded crazy but that was the way we worked. Even if Washington would agree to an involvement of its navy personnel ashore on the mainland of China, which for a certainty they would not, a posse of armed US sailors tramping towards the Yamchow-Shangsze area would be liable to attract rather a lot of attention, and wouldn’t be much use, probably, when they got there. Diplomatically, you can’t go around shooting things up in uniform and if you aren’t in uniform then you’re a spy like me and liable when caught to a show trial Chinese propaganda style followed by execution — literally. The official United States, I pointed out, couldn’t risk that happening to navy men.
“And you?”
I grinned, though I didn’t feel at all funny. “I’m 6D2, sir. Not official. Private and expendable. Miss Mandrake and I know we can be, and would be, disowned.”
He gave me a hard look. “Some guts,” he said. “But goddam stupid. What can you achieve on your own?”
I said, “Reconnaissance, firstly.”
“Then you report?”
I nodded. Rackstall asked, then what? He provided his own answer, scathingly: “It’ll be brought before the United Nations, who’ll sit on their goddam fannies and debate it. Peking will issue a flat denial of any involvement and will get full support from the Third World. The West’ll be accused of every trick in the goddam book, and this Nodd’ll go on producing. Jesus!”
I murmured, “There may be other ways … but what would you do, sir?”
“Me?” Rackstall got to his feet and went across to a wide window where he stood staring down at the Stars and Stripes floating, or rather drooping limply since the wind had gone now, from the flagpole in its brilliant patch of carefully tended US grass. Hands clasped behind his back, he swelled out his chest and thrust out his jaw. “I come from the old navy, Commander, the one that fought the war and Korea you know what I mean. In my early days I was a battleship man when I wasn’t in heavy cruisers. Great ships, great guns. Sure, we have more fire power now, but the splendour’s gone … what I’m saying is, if it were my decision. I’d take a goddam fleet into this Gulf of Tongking and blast hell out of goddam China!” He turned from the window after a while looking deflated. “Well, I know I can’t do that and I know it wouldn’t solve anything. I don’t know if you understand, though.”
I said I understood very well indeed: we in Britain faced even more impotence in the modern world and had learned to live with it. To bring Rackstall back to the present I coughed discreetly and said the thing to do, in my view, was dead simple: get Nodd. Cut Nodd and his superbrain out from China and the scheme would stand fair for general collapse. Rackstall took the point but still looked dubious. He was in an uneasy mood; he didn’t like being a landbound admiral at all and there was something else: he was facing the end of his career. Diego Garcia was his last job before they threw him on the beach with an inadequate pension and he was hoping to go out with flying colours rather than on a botch-up. I hadn’t seen much of Rear-Admiral Rackstall but I liked him a lot and hoped I wouldn’t be letting him down.
*
The USS Hampton Roads had been operating well south in the Arabian Sea and in fact had been not far off the Maldives when her diversionary orders had reached her from the Pentagon; even so it was late the following day before her signal lamp requested permission to enter the deep channel between the coral and come alongside the logistics pier. By this time sundry things had happened. Felicity Mandrake was fighting fit again and ready to go, and a message in departmental cypher had come in for me from 6D2 HQ Britain, in other words Max. The Prime Minister was worried and the Cabinet had been in almost continuous session, conferring frequently with the Chiefs of Staff at the Defence Ministry and calling in all the top men in meteorology and even astronomy — astrology too for all I knew, plus witches and soothsayers and readers of palms-chemists, physicists and what-have-you from the learned institutions, you name them, they’d been consulted. Yorkshire had cooled down and cars sped in safety once again from Ripon to Leyburn and so far there had been no more heat attacks in Britain or in the US but the threat from WUSWIPP had the brass badly rattled. Britain herself was not (so far) directly under threat, it was true, and in any case she had no overseas bases left other than Gibraltar largely demilitarised anyway on the grounds of cost — and, of course, Hong Kong, to which one might have expected the Chinese to object if they were backing WUSWIPP. Objections to the British presence had not in fact come. But everyone was only too well aware that Britain’s security depended squarely upon America in the last resort and never mind the little charade of NATO. There had been, so far, a deafening silence from Russia, which was curious. Also curious, Max thought and so did I, was the fact that the Peking influence had not prevailed upon WUSWIPP to demand a Russian withdrawal from the places of world power. Russia, after all, was the main threat to China, not Britain and America. Two communist doves could not possibly exist in the same dovecot, we all knew that. I talked it over with Miss Mandrake and we came to no conclusions. All that stared me in the face were the operational orders from Max, a repeat of before: get Nodd.
Almost before the Hampton Roads had secured at the pier, Miss Mandrake and I, with Ellum ex cooler and looking pale, were ready and waiting, having been trucked out soon after the arrival signal had been received. I had contacted the Admiral’s staff before leaving my quarters, just to take my adieu politely, but had been told he was down at the pier. He was — with bag and hammock, in the old RN phrase. He was coming with us, he said, and had turned over the base to his Exec. The Pentagon wouldn’t like it, but balls to the Pentagon … Rackstall gave a dry chuckle. “You had that guy Nelson,” he said.
“Blind eye, sir?” I asked.
“Sure, though these days there’s so much goddam bumph and radio traffic
you need an anaesthetic more than just a blind eye.” He added as he set foot on the brow to embark aboard the nuclear submarine, “I hope I’ll not be a nuisance, Commander.”
So did I. The brass can foul things up, however noble their intentions, but I reckoned he would be more of a worry to the sub’s Commanding Officer than to me, since I intended to be firm that the show was mine after arrival off the China coast and the Yanks were just the bus crew. Anyway, we settled in and proceeded out to sea with no time lost and once we were clear the CO, a commander named Darrell, took us down to periscope depth. The voyage would be slower but secrecy was all and there could be spotting aircraft on patrol. Darrell reckoned to make the head of the Gulf of Tongking in ten days, which I had already worked out for myself along with Rackstall’s staff and, since it was a damn sight too long and would bring us right up against the Peking deadline, I had sent sundry requests by cypher to Max. He had, somehow or other, to get the US Government to stall for all it was worth. I knew there was no way I could reach the Gulf of Tongking faster, that an air approach was right out if we wanted any secrecy at all, so that was that. A good deal of prayer would be necessary and some of it might well go faster through Nodd’s hole in the ozone layer, I said to Miss Mandrake. She told me not to be facetious.
I said, “It takes one’s mind off things.”
“What things?” she asked, giving a kind of giggle.
“Yes,” I said, “that, too. A sub’s a sub, not much room.” This was only too true: the Hampton Roads was big but didn’t boast many actual self-contained single cabins, and what there were were occupied by Darrell, Rackstall and Miss Mandrake herself, the latter with sentry, the Americans being virtuous people with respect for single women’s reputations afloat as well as ashore, it seemed.
Sunstrike_The next gripping Commander Shaw thriller Page 9
