“Range three thousand metres,” York estimated. “Reduce your speed to one quarter and bring us round to bearing seven-five degrees.”
The crewman checked the laser distance-finder while York confirmed the GPS fix and leaned over the Admiralty Chart beside the compass binnacle. A few moments later the island came dramatically into view, its glistening surface rising to a near perfect cone.
“My God!” the crewman exclaimed. “It’s erupting!”
York replaced his dividers and snatched up a pair of binoculars. The umbrella shrouding the island was not just sea mist but a plume discharging from the volcano itself. As the cloud base rose, the plume stretched skywards like a ribbon, its upper reaches wavering to and fro before streaming south with the wind. In the middle was a truncated rainbow, a vivid streak of colour that flickered luminously as the sun broke through.
York kept his glasses trained on the spectacle for a full minute.
“I don’t think so,” he replied. “There’s no particulate matter. I’ve seen this before, in the Vanuatu Islands in the South Pacific. Rainwater saturates the porous upper layers of ash and vaporizes when it comes into contact with magma, causing a plume that rises for hours after the clouds have cleared. But I’ve never seen one quite like this. The vapour appears to have been channelled into a single chimney, producing a column that looks no more than twenty metres wide.”
“If this happened in ancient times it must have seemed awesome, a supernatural event,” the crewman ventured.
“I wish Jack could see this.” York looked pensively at the waves. “It lends credence to his theory that the mountain was sacred, a place of worship like those Minoan peak sanctuaries. It would have seemed the very home of the gods.”
York raised his binoculars again to scan the volcano where it sloped down in front of them. The surface appeared desolate and lifeless, the scorched ash of the cone giving way to a barren tumult of basalt below. About halfway down he saw a line of dark patches above rectilinear features that looked like platforms or balconies. He closed his eyes briefly against the sunlight, looked again, then grunted. He put the binoculars down and walked over to the high-resolution telescope beside the binnacle, only to be interrupted by a voice at the door.
“That’s quite a sight. I assume it’s water vapour.” Peter Howe stepped onto the bridge. He was wearing green rubber boots, brown corduroys and a white roll-neck sweater, and was carrying two steaming mugs.
“You look like something out of the Battle of the Atlantic,” York said.
“Battle of the Black Sea, more like. That was a hell of a night.” Howe passed over a mug and slumped on the helmsman’s seat. His face was unshaven and lined with fatigue, the tiredness accentuating his New Zealand drawl. “I know you kept us out of the eye of the storm but we still had our work cut out stopping the gear from rolling. We nearly lost the escape sub.”
They had retrieved the submersible soon after despatching the DSRV, its passengers safely delivered to Sea Venture some thirty nautical miles west. Even though they had secured the craft inside the internal bay it had bounced off its pivots during the night, nearly causing a massive weight displacement that would have been fatal for the ship and crew. If the efforts of Howe and his team had failed, they would have had no recourse but to ditch the sub, a move that might have saved Seaquest but would have cut off their only emergency escape route.
“We’re only a skeleton crew of twelve,” Howe continued. “My people have been working flat out through the night. What’s our status?”
York looked at the SATNAV monitor and watched their co-ordinates converge with the GPS fix where they had launched the DSRV the day before. The storm had almost abated, the sea had reduced to a moderate swell and the morning sunlight shimmered off the glassy surface of the island. It was going to be a perfect summer’s day.
“If we still haven’t heard from Jack in six hours’ time I’m sending in the divers. Meanwhile, you can stand down the crew for the next watch so they can have a well-earned rest. I’ll call reveille at twelve hundred hours.”
“And our guardian angels?”
“Same time frame. If there’s no contact we’ll transmit emergency status notification at twelve hundred hours.”
Their guardian angels were the naval task force, which was their ultimate back-up. Already a Turkish frigate and FAC flotilla had passed through the Bosporus and was steaming full speed in their direction, and in Trabzon a flight of Seahawk helicopters with elements of the Turkish Special Forces Amphibious Marine Brigade was in advanced readiness. Mustafa Alközen and a team of high-ranking Turkish diplomats had flown to the Georgian capital Tbilisi to ensure that any intervention was a fully collaborative effort between the two nations.
“Right.” Howe spoke with obvious relief. “I’m going to check the forward gun turret and then catch some shut-eye myself. See you at noon.”
York nodded and moved to the binnacle. Twenty minutes ago the helmsman had reported a huge cleft in the seabed, a previously uncharted tectonic fault ten kilometres long and over five hundred metres deep. He had watched as the depth-finder charted their progress from the canyon up to the line of the ancient shoreline 150 metres deep. They had now reached their rendezvous position and were hove to one and a half nautical miles north-north-west of the island, almost exactly the spot where Jack and Costas had first seen the ancient city from the Aquapods the day before.
York looked towards the island, the twin peaks and saddle now clearly visible where the caldera had collapsed eons ago. He stood still, in awe at what might lie below. It was almost beyond belief that the waters in front of him concealed the greatest wonder of the ancient world, a city that pre-dated all others by thousands of years and contained towering pyramids, colossal statues and multi-storeyed tenements, a community more advanced than any other in prehistory. And to cap it all somewhere below lay the sinister form of a Soviet nuclear submarine, something he had spent half a lifetime training to destroy.
A voice crackled over the radio. “Seaquest, this is Sea Venture. Do you read me? Over.”
York grabbed the mike and spoke excitedly. “Macleod, this is Seaquest. Relay your co-ordinates. Over.”
“We’re still trapped in Trabzon by the storm.” The voice was wavering and distorted, the effect of 100 miles of electrical mayhem. “But Mustafa’s managed to tap into a satellite. It’s hot-wired for heat imagery. It should be streaming in now.”
York swivelled to get a closer look at the screen on the navigation console, moving alongside the crewman who had the helm. A flickering sheen of colour resolved itself into a rocky landscape and then fragmented into a mosaic of pixels.
“You’re looking at the central part of the island.” Macleod’s voice was barely audible. “The eastern shore is at the top. We’ve only got a few moments before we lose the satellite.”
The upper half of the screen remained obscure but another sweep of the scanner revealed a vivid image at the centre. Beside the jagged contusions of lava lay the edge of a wide platform, a radius of evenly spaced stones just visible to the left. To the right was the unmistakable outline of a rock-cut stairway.
“Yes!” The crewman punched the air. “They made it!”
York eagerly followed his gaze. Two red blotches detached from the stairway and were clearly moving. A third appeared from the haze of pixels at the top of the screen.
“Strange.” York was uneasy. “They’re moving up from the direction of the shoreline, yet Jack was convinced the underground passage would land them near the top of the volcano. And they should have made radio contact as soon as they reached the surface.”
As if on cue his worst suspicions were confirmed. A fourth and then a fifth figure emerged into view, fanned out on either side of the stairway.
“Christ,” the crewman exclaimed. “Not ours.”
The image disintegrated and the crackle of the radio became continuous. The crewman’s head jerked towards a warning light on the adjacent screen.
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“Sir, you should see this.”
The monitor displayed the circular sweep of a military-specification Racal Decca TM1226 surface-search and navigation radar.
“There’s a contact detaching itself from the east side of the island. I can’t be sure until the image clarifies, but I’d say we’re looking at a warship the size of a frigate, maybe a large FAC.”
Just then there was a terrific shriek overhead and the two men were thrown violently back. York picked himself up and ran to the starboard wing just in time to see a plume of spray erupt five hundred metres off the bow. At the same moment they heard a distant crack of gunfire, the sound reverberating off the island and rolling towards them in the clear morning air.
“All systems down, I repeat, all systems down,” the crewman shouted. “Radar, radio, computers. Everything’s dead.”
York lurched back into the deckhouse and quickly looked around. Through the door to the navigation room he could see his monitor was blank. The lighting and VHF radio in the bridge were out, along with the GPS receiver and all other LCD displays. He immediately pulled down the handle on the clockwork klaxon and flipped open the lid on the voice tube that led to all quarters of the ship.
“Now hear this,” he bellowed above the alarm. “Red alert. Red alert. We are under attack. All electronics are down. I repeat, all electronics are down. Major Howe, report to the bridge at once. All other crew assemble in the internal bay and prepare to deploy the escape sub Neptune II.” He snapped the lid shut and looked across at the helmsman, his face grim and drawn. “An E-bomb.”
The other man nodded knowingly. The gravest addition in recent years to the terrorist arsenal had been electromagnetic bombs, magnetically charged shells that emitted a multimillion watt microwave pulse when they exploded. The most powerful made a lightning bolt seem like a lightbulb, and could disable all electric power, computers and telecommunications within their radius.
“Time for you to join the others, Mike,” York ordered the helmsman. “The reserve battery packs in the sub and the command module are protected from electromagnetic interference so should still be operable. Peter and I will stay as long as possible and depart in the module if necessary. It’s imperative that you reach Turkish territorial waters before transmitting your position. The call code is ‘Ariadne needs Guardian Angel’ on the secure IMU channel. As senior crewman you have my authority.”
“Aye, sir. And good luck, Captain.”
“And to you too.”
As the crewman clattered hurriedly down the ladder, York focused his binoculars on the eastern extremity of the island. Seconds later a low form slipped out from behind the rocks, its raking prow as menacing as a shark’s snout. In the pellucid morning light every feature seemed accentuated, from the gun turret in front of the sleek superstructure to the fanjet nacelles on the stern.
He knew it could only be Vultura. Apart from the US and Britain, only the Russians had developed electromagnetic pulse artillery shells. During the most recent Gulf conflict Russia’s studied neutrality had led a number of diehard cold warriors to suggest she had secretly supplied the insurgents with weapons. Now York had confirmation of what many had suspected, that the shells were part of an illegal traffic from the old Soviet arsenals that reached terrorists by way of the criminal underworld. Aslan was probably not the only warlord to retain some of the prized hardware for his personal use.
As York zipped up his survival suit, Howe came bounding up the ladder. He was already half into a white flash-resistant overall and passed another to York. The two men quickly kitted up and each took a helmet from a bin under the console, the Kevlar domes incorporating bulbous ear-protectors and shatterproof retractable visors.
“This is it, then,” Howe said.
“God be with us.”
The two men slid down the ladder to the deck. Behind the superstructure the helipad lay empty, the Lynx having flown off to Trabzon as soon as the storm brewed up.
“The automated firing system will be useless without electronics,” Howe said. “But I put the pod on manual when I last checked it so we should be able to crank it up by hand.”
Their only hope was surprise. Vultura would not know they carried fixed armament; the weapons pod was retracted during Seaquest’s normal operations. Aslan’s intent was undoubtedly to board and plunder and then dispose of the ship at his leisure. They had little power to affect the fate of Seaquest but they might exact a small price in return. With Vultura’s gun trained on them, they knew their first shot would unleash hell, a furious onslaught the vessel was not built to withstand.
Together the two men crouched in the middle of the foredeck and heaved up a circular hatch. Below them lay the dull grey of the turret armour, the Breda twin 40 millimetre barrels elevated from the compact mounting in the centre.
Howe dropped down to the gunner’s platform behind the breech mechanism and looked up at York. “We need to be ready to fire as soon as we raise the turret and acquire the target. We’re going to have to do this the old-fashioned way. I’m gun layer and you’re forward observer.”
The weapon would normally have been operational from Seaquest’s bridge, the range-finding provided by a Bofors 9LV 200 Mark 2 tracking radar and 9LV 228 fire-control system. As it was, York did not even have use of the hand-held laser rangefinder and had to rely entirely on his navigational skills. Fortunately he remembered the distance from the rendezvous co-ordinates to the eastern tip of the island, where Vultura was now exposed broadside on.
“Range three thousand three hundred metres.” York raised his arms as a crude sighting aid, his right arm held out at forty-five degrees from Seaquest’s bow and his left arm at Vultura’s stern. “Azimuth two hundred and forty degrees on our axis.”
Howe repeated the instructions and spun the wheel beside the gunner’s seat until the barrels were aligned on Vultura. He swiftly calculated the angle of elevation, moving a ratchet on the semicircular metal compass so the barrels would fall on the trajectory as they raised the turret.
“Barometric pressure and humidity normal, wind speed negligible. No need for compensation at this range.”
York lowered himself to the floor beside Howe to help with the ammunition. The belt feeds from the hold magazine were empty since the ship had not been prepared for battle before the attack, and in any case did not operate without electronics. Instead they began extracting shells from reserve lockers on either side of the turret interior.
“We’ll have to use the manual feed,” Howe said. “High explosive for the left barrel, armour-piercing for the right, five rounds each. I doubt whether we’ll have the opportunity for more. We’ll use the HE for rangefinding because the impact is more visible and then switch to solid shot.”
York began stacking the five-kilo shells in the racks above the receivers, red-tipped to the left and blue-tipped to the right. When he had finished, Howe sat in the gunner’s seat and pulled back the bolt on each barrel to chamber a round.
“Bloody frustrating having only ten shells for a gun that fires four hundred and fifty rounds per minute,” Howe observed nonchalantly. “Maybe the gods of Atlantis will smile on us.”
The two men pulled down their safety visors. York eased his body into the narrow space in front of the wheel controlling barrel elevation while Howe grasped the manual override that raised and lowered the turret. After giving the wheel an experimental turn he looked at York.
“Ready to elevate?”
York gave a thumbs-up.
“Now!”
As the turret rose and the barrels depressed, York felt a surge of adrenaline course through him. He had faced hostile action many times, but always from the detached position of a bridge or control room. Now he was about to engage an enemy in mortal combat behind the cold metal of a gun. For the first time he knew what it felt like for the men crouched behind the cannons of Nelson’s Victory or inside the mighty turrets of dreadnoughts at Jutland or the North Cape. Their survival was in the balance, th
e odds stacked heavily against them faced with Vultura’s 130 millimetre gun with its state-of-the-art GPS-linked ranging system.
The pod rose above the deck and the silhouette of Vultura came into view. As York watched the barrels drop to the pre-set mark and lock into place, he slammed shut the handle on the elevation wheel and raised his right arm.
“On my mark!”
Howe flipped up the safety and curled his finger round the trigger.
“Fire!”
There was an ear-splitting crack and the left-hand barrel recoiled violently on its springs. York snatched up his binoculars and followed the trajectory of the shell as it screamed through the air. A few moments later a fountain of spray erupted just to the right of Vultura.
“Twenty degrees left,” York yelled.
Howe spun the azimuth wheel and locked the carriage in place.
“Fire!”
There was another jarring report and jet of flame from the left-hand barrel. The gas blowback instantaneously ejected the spent casing and chambered a new round.
“Hit!” York shouted. “Armour-piercing, five rounds rapid!”
He had seen the red flash where the explosive had detonated against metal and sent a spray of splinters over Vultura’s stern. Their hope now was that solid shot would disable the ship’s propulsion system, wreaking damage on the turbofan boosters that gave Vultura more speed than almost any other surface vessel.
“Fire!”
Howe pulled the right-hand trigger and held it down. With a noise like a giant jackhammer the gun blasted off the five-round burst at full cyclic rate, the magazine emptying in under a second and the spent cases flying from the breech with each recoil.
Even before the reverberation had ceased there was a sickening crash towards the stern of Seaquest and a massive vibration through the deck. The two men watched in horror as the ship took half a dozen direct hits just above the waterline. At this range the powerful Nitrex propellant meant Vultura could fire at a virtually level trajectory, the depleted uranium AP rounds raking Seaquest from stern to midships. It was as if she had been skewered by a giant pitchfork, each shell punching effortlessly through the bulkheads and emerging from the other side in a jet of fire and debris.
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