by Andy Lucas
The thought of a warm fire was tempting to Pace but landing back in Uruguay, having already alerted the local military to their intrusion, was asking for trouble.
'They might think we're dead, that's true,' he conceded. A sharp pain was jabbing behind his eyes now as exhaustion and dehydration began to bite. 'You talked to those soldiers. I only sapped them and laid them out against the rock face,' he added. 'Do you think they'll try looking for us when the weather improves?'
'Definitely,' Hammond stated emphatically. 'Their leader seemed a decent bloke and the men clearly trusted him. He won't want to let us escape if he can help it.'
'Thought as much. If we go back, we're probably going to end up caught. Maybe not tonight, or even tomorrow, but in the next few days. We'd end up having to fight it out.'
'That might be better than the alternative.' Another wave chose that moment to crash over them with unexpected violence, drenching them once more with a frozen hand that drew the very breath from their aching bones.
Choking up a lungful of water, gagging for a moment, Hammond wheezed in a deep breath before continuing. 'We don't have a choice. If we stay out here, we're going to die.'
Pace nodded imperceptibly. 'We can't stay here, you're right. Maybe it's time to call for help? Did our phones survive the dunking?'
Hammond reached under the single, bench seat and flipped open a small cupboard. Reaching in with clumsy, numb fingers, he pulled out a clear plastic bag. Inside, two satellite phones were visible, even in the darkness.
The storm chose that moment to intensify again, this time by adding brilliant forks of lightning and thunderous, tumultuous crashes to its natural symphony. The waves, fortunately appeared unaffected. They continued to roll and smash, crest and swamp the little Zodiac as it valiantly fought its way southwards.
Hammond dug out Pace's phone and handed it to him. Waterproof and shock-resistant, these marvels of encrypted technology would fare much better than the human occupants against the weather. Holding it to his ear, hitting a secure number with surprising dexterity, seeing as how he could not feel his fingertips any more, the call connected quickly.
The signal, bounced across three, low-orbiting satellites and was diffused by a further half dozen deceptor relays to prevent any risk of triangulation, connecting within five seconds whereupon a familiar voice responded at the other end.
Baker was relieved to hear Pace's voice. He had been well aware of their trip and had hoped sending them to a site, which he already knew had been deserted for over a month, would keep them busy for a few days while he tried to get a handle on what was going on within the McEntire Corporation. Ramsay and Norton had yet to check in and he had wrongly assumed they were all flying back to London together.
As Baker listened, and his mood darkened, he quickly realised his plan to let them head off on a surveillance job somewhere fairly safe had completely backfired.
'Can you help us?' Pace spoke loudly into the handset and crushed it to his chilled ear to try and hear as clearly as possible. 'We won't make it back to the Falcon. You need to tell Ramsay and Norton to get the hell out of here.'
'They will leave of their own accord,' replied Baker solemnly. 'As for helping you, I already have a fix on your position. We don't have any assets in the area and calling for help from the Uruguayan Coast Guard needs to be a last resort.'
'What do you suggest? We can make it to shore, I think, but we run the risk of having to shoot it out with local garrison.'
Baker frowned and then a weak cough behind him had caught his attention. Turning around, he eyed the prone figure of Doyle McEntire laid out in fresh linen and noted the man's eyes were open. Miraculously, both he and Sarah had survived their individual ordeals. Sarah remained in quarantine but was improving each day.
McEntire had been moved out to his own room, still in the medical facility, after life-saving heart surgery had brought him back from the brink of death. A quadruple by-pass had done the trick but recovery would take many months. Having been fully briefed by the surgeon, Baker knew McEntire would struggle with the wound on his chest and the many on his legs, where veins had been stripped out so they could be grafted to his heart.
Given the all clear from the pathogen, deliberately blown into his daughter's face, McEntire had been awake several times since his surgery. Heavily dosed up with pain medication and precautionary antibiotics; plumbed into several different drips dispensing saline and anti-clotting medication too, his sheer bloody-mindedness shone through.
'I will ring you back in a few minutes, with a plan. Stand by.' Disconnecting the call, Baker moved across to the bed and settled himself down into a chair at the side. His eyes met McEntire in a frank stare. His boss's own eyes were blood-shot and watery but the old fire was evident to behold. When McEntire spoke, his voice was thin but firm.
'They're both alive?' Baker nodded. 'Good. We need to pick them up fast, before dawn.'
'Daylight is only an hour or so away, where they are,' explained Baker calmly. 'We can't get to them that fast. Even an aerial pick-up, using a cable and harness, would take a few hours to set up and a few more to get down to them.
'We have many friends in Brazil now,' McEntire reminded him, forcing a vague smile. 'We do have an asset in the vicinity, do not worry. I have sorted it.'
Baker shook his head. 'Sorry, Doyle. We don't. I have been running the show while you have been incapacitated. I am fully briefed on all our covert operations and asset deployment, including our contacts in the British military. There is nothing close enough to reach them before the local authorities pick them up.'
''You may have done a stand-up job while I've been flat on my back but you are not me, nor do you have all the information about everything we do, or are currently involved with. I'm sorry, but there have to be some secrets, even from you.'
Baker was taken aback. 'You know a way of getting them out? Something I don't?'
McEntire nodded. 'It is already in motion.' Then, quickly, he explained himself to Baker.
Back out at sea, with the storm showing no signs of abating, the return call was welcome. The news was even better. Hanging up, Pace found himself grinning stupidly although his frozen cheeks struggled to move.
'Well, what's the score?' asked Hammond. He was sitting, hunched over by the outboard, in charge of steering and propulsion while Pace handled communications. 'Do they have a rescue plan?'
'We are going to be the honoured guests of one of Her Majesty's nuclear submarines, which just so happens to be on manoeuvres nearby. They have already been sent orders to pick us up.'
Hammond's heart leaped inside his chest as he allowed himself to feel a little hope for the first time in hours. The darkness was beginning to lighten on the rolling horizon. Wiping the driving rain from his eyes, he squinted at it hard. Daylight was only an hour away, perhaps less. 'Thank God for the Royal Navy.'
'No, thank Doyle McEntire…and Sarah.' Hammond caught his gaze and saw the look of relief threatening to reduce his friend to tears. 'They both made it,' he added. 'Sarah is doing well but remains sedated while the team purge her system of the pathogen. The old man has come though his heart surgery with no complications and is already awake and back in charge.'
'Good men die hard,' Hammond decided.
Pace eyed the same piece of horizon that Hammond had just done and came to a similar conclusion. 'The submarine can only come in a certain distance. The water is too shallow here so we need to stop heading south and run as fast as we can east, directly out to sea. If we don't hit ay snags, and the outboard gives every revolution it can, we should rendezvous with the submarine in a couple of hours.'
'It'll be broad daylight by then,' noted Hammond. 'I don't think the Royal Navy will be too keen to surface and openly take aboard wanted men, do you? Not so close to the shore.'
'Of course not. Being that close means they would be violating Uruguayan territorial waters, which would be a breach of international law. They won't be able to surfac
e.'
Hammond sighed. 'Thought it sounded a bit too good to be true. So, we're going swimming again?'
Pace laughed, despite their predicament. 'Seems that way. Unless the submarine's commander has a trick up his sleeve that I don't know about.'
'Or some kind of invisibility ray,' barked Hammond gruffly.
'We'll find out soon enough, said Pace. 'Let's head out to sea and please try and keep that little engine going for the next couple of hours. If it dies on us, the whole deal is off and our next meeting will either be with the Uruguayan Navy or Davey Jones.'
'Have a little faith,' Hammond exclaimed, feigning hurt feelings. Despite being chilled to the bone and beginning to feel the same headache as Pace, a sense of purpose flamed within him; a survival instinct that had yet to fail him. 'I will get us to the rendezvous point if I have to get out and push.'
'Let's hope that isn't necessary,' agreed Pace. 'Let's see if this is another race we can win by the skin of our teeth.'
15
The submarine closed in on the coast, silently slicing through the dark water, her sophisticated technological upgrades reducing the risk of her being discovered to virtually nil.
Codenamed Vixen, the boat had no official service name nor had it been commissioned back into the Royal Navy. Brought back from the brink of death to serve the nation once more, this time her commander was free from the constraints of the Rules of Engagement, or perhaps even the Geneva Convention, if events required it.
Back on the bridge, with all systems functioning perfectly, just as they had done over the past three months of intense, covert sea trials, Appleby glanced at his watch again. He loved the look of the orange face, as immortalised in the fictional writings of Clive Cussler, and his famous hero; Dirk Pitt. The watch told him they must nearly be there. He could, of course, just check the main display panels but he preferred the watch.
'Ten minutes and we'll be in the zone,' called the helmsman; Peter Tong. Solid, two-hundred and fifty pounds of reliable, experienced submariner, Tong also had the dubious honour of being a dangerous bare-knuckle fighter in any spare time he was given. 'Shall I ease back on the engines, sir? The bottom is coming up pretty fast.'
'Come back to half ahead, steady as she goes, Mr Tong. Thank you.'
'The weather up there is still messing with our sensors,' interjected Shannon quickly. 'If they are in a small boat, as we believe, there won't be much of a chance of picking them up on our screens. A visual search would stand a better chance.'
'In these conditions, we wouldn't see them, even if I was prepared to surface, which I can't do. Their only hope would be to pop off a flare and guide us in.'
'Excuse me, sir.' This time it was his weapon's officer; Neil Williams, who spoke. Seated in his chair, eyes glued to his own screen, he could call upon numerous deadly weapon systems at the touch of a finger. For now, he was focused on helping Shannon scan the sonar, radar and satellite imagery, played in real time, across their screens. The satellite images were now clear and crisp, with the sun having risen an hour earlier. They showed an untidy ocean, piling wave upon wave against each other, in stark contrast to the curved rigidity of the coastline.
'Yes, Mr Williams?' Appleby liked all his crew but he had a soft spot for Williams. The only member of his family ever to enter the service, having gown up on a tough council estate in Birmingham and being regularly targeted with racial abuse because of his Jamaican heritage, he had earned his way in the submarine service through hard work and dedication to his adopted country, serving on no fewer than four different boats, including two ballistic missile vessels, before taking early retirement the previous year.
In his late fifties, short, tightly curling hair flecked with white, he had been headhunted away from his plan to open his own Jamaican restaurant in Plymouth to serve aboard the Vixen. He saw the posting as merely a delay in his plans and one that offered him the chance of a large payday to top up his pension.
'How are you planning to get these men aboard, if we are able to find them?' His voice was deep and resonant, filled with a rich sense of kindness yet purposeful and focused at the same time. 'We don't have the mini-sub aboard yet.' Williams knew that one was awaiting their arrival back at their secret, Brazilian home base but that would not help them with their current situation.
Vixen would never come anywhere near British waters and McEntire; the source of its funding and control, had managed to pull enough strings to secure a permanent lease on an old submarine pen just south of Porto Alegre, on the Brazilian Atlantic coast. Barely a few hundred miles from Uruguay's border, it could not have worked out better.
'They will have to come to us,' Appleby stated. 'A couple of you will need to suit up and bring them down from the surface and back in through the airlock. You can take a couple of spare air tanks and masks with you. We will stay down at least twenty metres so the sail doesn't become exposed. Volunteers?'
'Not me, sir. Thanks, all the same,' said Williams immediately. He hated open water despite being a competent swimmer, mainly due to a crippling fear of running into one of the ocean's predators. Raised on the Jaws movie franchise, he had never been able to shake off his irrational fear. He was always glad that the submarine's massive bulk sat between him and the ocean's natural inhabitants.
Of course, he would go if ordered but that wasn't necessary.
'I'd love the chance to get out of here for a few minutes and have a swim,' said Shannon. 'Are you up for it, Peter?'
Tong nodded, smiling. An avid scuba diver in his younger years, he still liked to keep his hand in.
'That's settled then. Both of you go and suit up. Wait by the forward airlock until I give you the go ahead. Swim up, grab them, bring them back fast. Understood?' They both nodded, disappearing down the steps with Shannon practically skipping at the thought of heading out into the ocean.
With no further updates from Baker, Hammond continued to nurse every ounce of speed from the outboard that he could while Pace sat up at the bow, scanning the open sea for any sign of life. He knew he was not going to see the welcome sight of a submarine conning tower, or sail as they were more commonly referred to, but that wasn't why he was using his binoculars to scour a violently shifting horizon. The rain had eased down to a fine drizzle and the clouds were starting to lift; thinning by the minute. The sea, as though unwilling to improve its temper too soon, remained rough and dangerous.
'Any sign of visitors?'
'Not yet, Max, no.'
'What's the plan if the local boys decide to come out of port and take a look at us? Over the side and hope there's a friendly sub somewhere underneath us?'
'It may come to that,' agreed Pace, sweeping the binoculars around again. Seeing nothing but empty ocean, he swivelled around in his seat and aimed the glasses back towards the dark smudge of the coastline behind them. Again, thankfully, there was nothing on the water to indicate pursuit.
'I have been thinking about our little predicament,' began Hammond, so cold now that his speech was almost slurring. 'We are really exposed on the surface. It only takes a helicopter or spotter plane to get the all clear for flight, what with the weather clearing, and they could be overhead in minutes. A quick radio call to a gun boat and that's us.'
'If you're suggesting taking an early bath,' countered Pace; his headache now splitting and pounding in his ears, 'I'm not keen. Being captured doesn't fill me with joy either.'
Both men had taken a few minutes to drink a litre of water each, from sealed containers secreted in the boat's internal webbing, which made them feel a little better. The chocolate bar they'd each also bolted down had made a bigger impression on their morale than their energy levels. With a cold swim ahead of them, already weakened and dangerously close to being hypothermic, eating too much would have been counterproductive. The fact that both Pace and Hammond had both stopped shivering was a very dangerous sign but with no dry clothing aboard, no towels or shelter, there was little choice but to remain in their wet clothing.
'The Zodiac can be deflated,' continued Hammond. 'It has gas release valves in the bladders.'
'I know,' agreed Pace. 'What are you getting at?'
'Hear me out.' The serious edge to his voice made Pace stop scanning the water and pay closer attention. Max clearly had something he wanted to get off his chest. 'This motor is not just waterproof.'
'Okay?'
'No, it's a fairly new design, built for the SBS to help them with water-based insertions, typically from submarines. I think I'm right in saying there is small battery pack inside, sealed up tightly. When switched over, it can run the propeller for about fifteen minutes, completely submerged.'
The penny dropped and Pace knew exactly why Hammond was pushing the matter.
'Right,' said Pace carefully. 'We deflate the bladders just enough to submerge the Zodiac say down to…five feet below the surface?' Hammond nodded as enthusiastically as his aching neck and stiff shoulders would allow. 'We flip the engine onto its battery pack and run underwater until the submarine finds us?'
'Almost. My idea is that we actually take the thing down deeper and look around for it. But only if we get visitors that we need to avoid, of course,' he added quickly. 'I'm in no mood for a cold swim any earlier than necessary either. I'm not crazy.'
The Uruguayan Coast Guard intervened at that exact moment, with a glint of something shiny catching Pace's eye just over Hammond's shoulder, back towards the coast.
Pushing away a feeling of dread that immediately gripped his insides, he brought the binoculars up smartly to his eyes again and zeroed in on the point. A tiny dot on the water was definitely visible; one that had not been there a few moments before. Although it was still too far away to make out any details, it was clearly a vessel and it was heading their way at some speed.
