by Stephen Makk
Lieutenant Tom Hilton did the most wonderful and stupid thing he could ever do with his life. At the height of the Cold War, he fell for the enemy: Irina, a Soviet naval officer. The streets of Moscow are a world of subterfuge, but they must keep their secret from the KGB.
When war erupts in the South Atlantic, Tom is forced to abandon Irina. With the Soviets on his tail, he leads his dive team into the most dangerous place on Earth: a shipwreck with live nuclear weapons. The task is illegal and deniable, but failure is not an option; millions of lives are at stake.
With the British submarine HMS Sultan and the Soviet submarine Arkhangelsk facing each other down like gunfighters, Tom’s confronted with a harsh realisation: Irina’s on the other side, playing for the opposition. How can he choose? Will saving Irina lead to the failure of his mission? Can he lead his team to success against the odds?
If you like the sound of ‘Jason Bourne meets The Hunt for Red October’, join Tom now in the most dangerous place on Earth.
Prologue
On that day, it would be pass or fail. It was a big day for me. I didn’t know it was the beginning of the most wonderful and the most stupid thing I would ever do with my life. My name is Tom Hilton, Lieutenant Tom Hilton, Royal Marines. That day, I could finally qualify as a Marine diver for submarine diving operations. Sometimes, I wish that was all that mistress fate had in store for me. But then again, only sometimes.
“Lt Hilton, just go out there and remove the limpet mine from the hull.”
He knew the skipper had a reputation as a hard charger, but 120 metres deep? Five minutes to swim out into the blackness, find and remove the mine.
Tom had donned his dry suit and rebreather, a device that recirculates your expired air in a closed circuit. The expired air is then passed back inside and the CO2 scrubbed out with a chemical. O2 is added as necessary by an electronic monitoring processor.
Tom climbed into the submarine’s conning tower, more properly known as a sail. The hatch below swung shut and the cold seawater gushed in and started to fill the chamber. Tom was alone now in the flooding cylinder. Soon, the water covered his head and all he could hear was the hiss and click sound of his breathing and the valves of the rebreather opening.
By the red light illuminating the inside of the water-filled sail, he watched the instrument on his wrist. One hundred and fifteen meters deep. That’s it then, here we are.
Tom reached up and turned the wheel; the hatch swung upwards and beyond was the inky black North Sea. He switched on his helmet lights and swam out into the black maw.
He left the lip of the bridge. HMS Conqueror was a nuke, and her hull had more surface area than a blue whale. He’d start by heading down towards the propeller. His breathing hissed and sighed, the only sound in these depths. Where would it be? Where was the last place he’d look?
He stopped; it had to be. He turned back, ascended the sail and dropped into the bridge; there was the open hatch. Tom lifted it and there was the mine. They’d attached it to the outside of the hatch, the sneaky bastards.
He pulled the dog to unfasten it and descended into the sail, pulling the hatch closed behind him. He spun the wheel shut and gave three sharp knocks, a five-second pause, and three sharp knocks.
Air started to rush into the cylindrical compartment, the water level dropped and soon his weight returned. All he had to do was wait as they slowly decompressed the chamber.
Long minutes later, the lower hatch opened. A naval rating helped him down. He took his helmet, mask and rebreather off, then walked forward into the control room.
Men sat around staring at screens, and the skipper sat in his comfy chair grinning. His instructor examiner, Lt Commander Pine, stood facing him with a smirk.
“Here’s your limpet mine, sir.” Tom handed the mine over.
“Well done, Hilton. You’ve passed your submarine operations ticket; report to Dirty and he’ll assign you a posting tomorrow. I thought you’d go charging off around the hull like a silly bugger.”
“I knew you’d put it where I’d least expect it, sir. But I’d have done otherwise to you.”
“Oh, and what would that be?”
“I wouldn’t have put one on at all, sir. That’d fuck with your mind.”
1
Northern England. 1979.
I placed my book on the table in front of my seat. Looking out of the window at the world, I waited and passed my time as best as I could. The platform clock read 12.07.
Preston station: I'd passed through here many times in the last few years. Mothers and children, teenagers with Walkman’s tisk-tisking in their ears, bored men.
One man had clearly had an argument with his wife or girlfriend; her sulk could have sunk an oil tanker. He glanced at her quickly and shook his head. I smiled. The poor bugger.
Two girls took the two seats opposite me. Both were pretty, brown-haired, a bit too much makeup.
“Hi,” one said.
“Hi.”
They stuffed their coats into a seatback store over their cases. The engine roared and the train pulled away with a vibrating rumble.
We passed over a river, its dark swirling waters flowed on into the Irish Sea. Fields slipped by. The bare trees were not yet leafed out, their branches dark against the green wetness, hedgerows, power pylons.
I sneaked a look at the two girls across the table, one looked up from her copy of Cosmopolitan and smiled at me.
“Did you get on at Preston too?” She spoke in a soft but heavily accented Scottish lilt.
“No, I've travelled up from Devon. I stayed overnight with one of my oppos in Wolverhampton.”
“One of your oppos? Is that a girlfriend then?”
“No, he's a mate.” She brightened, I think. “I'm off up your neck of the woods. Scotland, I'm going to be living there.”
“Really? Where?”
“I don't know yet.”
She raised her eyebrows. “You’re going to be living there but you don't know where yet?” Her green eyes playfully gave me the once over.
“I'm in the Navy,” it was a half truth. “I'm going to Faslane.”
“Will you get into Glasgow then? We're from Cambuslang. I'm Annie.”
“Tom.” I shook her hand; she seemed surprised.
“I suppose I will. It's not far from Faslane, is it?”
We chatted for long spells; it helped the journey to go by.
“I'm from just over there,” I pointed. “Kendal. I was going to call in, but no time really.”
We pulled into Glasgow Central. There was a bustling chaos on the train as we all gathered our bags. I slotted the paper slip she'd given me into my book.
“Don't forget, give me a call if you're coming into town. I'll show you around, take you for a night out. You'll enjoy it, Tom. Trust me.” She gave me a flirty smile.
“I will. I promise.”
They merged in with the crowd. I made my way out for my connection to Helensburgh and RN Faslane.
A tall double walled wire fence surrounded Faslane, and the top was secured with razor wire. I reached the gate and the guard looked at my pass and order papers.
“Very good, sir. Down the road, first left; the admin block is the second building on the right.”
I walked in via a large wooden door. A female Petty Officer sat at the desk; I showed her my pass.
“I'm here to report to Captain Gooch.”
“Ok, sir.” She picked up the phone. “Sir, Lieutenant Tomas Hilton, Royal Marines, is in reception. Ok, sir, I'll send him up.”
His office was small but tidy. He pointed at the chair. “Welcome to Faslane, Lieutenant. With us for 18 months, I see. You drew the short straw then?”
“Not really, sir. I volunteered.”
He looked at me with a raised left eyebrow. “Not many like submarines. Too claustrophobic for them.”
“I'm a diver, sir. I like claustrophobic.”
“You'll get that here. Otter’s out on patrol tomorrow. No
thing like being thrown in at the deep end, so to speak. Report to CPO Mally at zero seven hundred tomorrow; the boat’s in berth two.”
I'd volunteered for 18 months of diving from various submarines, often leaving and returning underwater via an airlock. I'd be carrying out surveillance on enemy facilities and ships. It promised to be cold, dangerous, lonely and downright bloody marvellous.
The following morning I was down at the berth early. It was damp and cold.
There she was, black and low in the water, the bulbous sonar cover standing over her bow. Her tall, curved, dark sail towered above her deck. I used to call this the conning tower but submariners call it the sail. It stood several metres proud of the long body of the boat, and no periscopes or snorkels were visible above the sail. But I knew they’d be there.
HMS Otter looked menacing, even at the quayside. She'd be my home for the next three weeks. I could make out a sailor busying himself with something atop the sail.
“CPO Mally?” I shouted to him.
He looked down. “Lieutenant Hilton?”
I nodded.
“Yes, sir. Come aboard; climb the sail.”
I spent the next few months entering the world of the submariner: a small close-knit community, different from the surface Navy I was familiar with. A submarine is not a ship, it's a boat, crewed by men who harbor some disdain for the more formal rules and regulations normal in the mainstream Navy. They refer to them disparagingly as skimmers or targets. A phrase I heard was, there are two types of Navy: submarines and targets.
Uniforms are optional on patrol, and jeans, tee-shirts and training shoes are common. Amongst the surface Navy, submariners are known as pirates.
A new submariner works towards becoming worthy of being awarded his dolphins; it indicates the two dolphins on the submarine service badge. This is awarded after carrying out one or more patrols at sea; it requires an intimate knowledge of the boat's systems and workings. In an emergency at sea, all hands get involved and it requires some skills in a field that isn't your speciality. I couldn't be awarded my dolphins as I wasn't a submariner, but I did try as hard as the next man to learn the boat's systems. Submariners do receive extra pay compared to the skimmers, but none are there for the money.
Hot bunking is normal. You sleep in your bunk and, when it's your turn to stand your watch, someone else climbs into your bunk until you return. It's normal not to wash, as water is limited. On returning from a patrol after four or six weeks without any of the crew having had a wash, brushing teeth or a shave, the stink is appalling. Or so they say; the boat's crew have got accustomed to it.
On a rare run ashore, the rest of the Navy shuns the pirates as a scruffy, stinking bunch. The submariner wouldn't have it any other way; they see themselves as an elite. If a sailor carries himself with a scruffy, arrogant swagger, he's a pirate, and damn proud of it.
After five months, I was assigned to a SSN, a nuclear hunter-killer submarine: HMS Sultan. A SSN's main job is to do what the name says it does: hunt down and kill ships and other submarines. Essentially, the same job as HMS Otter did, but out to sea at greater distances. With much longer endurance, it would take the fight right to the enemy, just where he doesn't want it: his home waters.
We were submerged under the Clyde approaches and heading back to Faslane, and another patrol was coming to a successful ending. We'd been out on a NATO exercise in the North Sea and the Norwegian Sea.
There were eight of us tucking into breakfast in the mess. We wolfed down ham, eggs and sausage; the cook always did us proud. We marked the days by the food. Wednesday was pizza night, Thursday was steak night, Friday was fish night, Saturday was curry night and Sunday it was a Chinese.
I'd been out on three patrols in the nuclear boat. There was more room than aboard Otter, and I’d learned something about the differences. I tried hard to get a feel for her. CPO McGill told me I was well on my way towards qualifying for my dolphins. I couldn't get them, of course, but I was pleased he'd bothered to tell me. It would be the middle of September now, up top. I sipped my pot of tea.
“What will you do, sir, when we come alongside?” asked PO Simpson.
“I might call a friend I have in Glasgow. Spend some time there.”
“What's her name, sir?”
I looked at him. “How do you know it's a she?”
“Got a nose for these things, sir.”
I smiled. “Her name’s Annie.”
“I'm on the train back to Stoke, sir. Out with some mates tonight; down a few pints. It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it.”
We pulled alongside, and as I walked down onto the quayside, a rating approached me and saluted.
“Lieutenant Hilton, please report to Captain Gooch, sir.”
I got myself cleaned up in the shower block. We weren't allowed back into the real world until we cleaned up, and rightly so. I changed into uniform and made my way to his office in the admin block. I knocked.
“Come in… Hello, Hilton. Good patrol?”
“Yes, sir. I did a couple of covert dives into a Norwegian naval base. Took some pictures.”
“Did the Noggies catch you?”
“No, sir. I was inside for four hours and I under-hulled every ship in there. We had to share the pictures with them, of course, after end ex.”
“Yes, of course. What did they think?”
“Mortified is the word, sir; mortified. Especially the one I took in broad daylight of a rating pissing over the side of the submarine Stadt.”
The Captain laughed. “I got this letter from the MoD a few days ago. Looks as though you'll be leaving us sooner than we thought.”
“I can't say I'm happy at that, sir.”
“No. Neither are we, but Her Majesty's posting system works in mysterious ways. They want to see you at the MoD as soon as they can, so I'd get down there by train in the morning.”
That was another night out with Annie scuppered.
The train arrived in London early afternoon and I made my way to the MoD building. The security staff checked my papers and consulted their printed list.
“The lift's over there, sir. Third floor.”
I'd never been in there before. It was a mix of uniformed officers and civilian staff. I noticed salutes weren't used. You'd be at it all day with all that scrambled egg on the peaked caps.
I took the lift and found the room. Walking in, I crossed over to a civilian receptionist with glasses and a stern expression. She looked up from the typewriter.
“Hello, I'm here to see Commander Rossall.”
She checked my papers and smiled; wonders never cease. “Come on, sir, in here.”
Commander Rossall sat behind a large dark wood desk, and an imposing replica of Turner’s painting ‘The Fighting Temeraire’ adorned the wall. A short man in a civilian suit sat on a spare chair.
“Lieutenant Hilton, sit please.” He indicated a vacant chair, then nodded to the other man. “This is Mr Weller.”
We shook hands. I felt his searching but blank stare, and his vague smile, but I knew he watched me keenly, searchingly.
“Hilton, of course you'll be wondering what this is all about,” said Commander Rossall. “We have you lined up for a new posting. As it's a little unusual, we thought we'd like to see you first.”
“I've only done nine months attached to the submarine service, sir.”
“Yes, I know. How is life with the pirates?”
“Very good, sir. They're a fine bunch.”
He gave me a look. “Well, this posting is very different. Your file shows that you studied Russian and History at Bristol. And you've taken courses in Russian during your time with the Marines.”
“Yes, sir, I didn't want it to get too rusty.”
What was going on here? I felt as though I was being examined and more than a little, let’s say, set-up.
“How good is your Russian?”
“I couldn't pass as Russian, sir, but it's not bad.”
“Y
our scores and tutor reports tell me that you're a little better than ‘not bad’.” He looked at me with a knowing stare. “I'm going to ask Mr Weller to carry on now. He's a Russian speaker from… well, let’s just say he’s from nearby.”
“Spasibo Commander.” Mr Weller turned to face me. He continued in Russian. “Lieutenant, could you tell me about your career in the Royal Marines so far?”
I knew he already knew whatever he needed to know. This was to test my language skills and to get to know me better.
I outlined my duties and postings so far. We chatted on for 15 minutes about a range of subjects; his Russian was good, very good.
“Lieutenant, can you tell me anything about where I've spent time over there?”
“Your accent tells me Leningrad or surrounding areas.”
He smiled and looked impressed. “Very good, you're correct. Now let’s talk about this appointment. It's at our Embassy in Moscow; the posting will be acting as Assistant Military Attaché. What's your first impression?”
This was a surprise, and I tried my best to hide it. It would be a good career move, but not one I’d expected. Assistant Military Attaché… that was a new one.
“It sounds an interesting post. Not one I’d expected, I’ll admit. But I’m no diplomat.”
“That’s not important. Would you accept it?”
I knew it was in for a penny, in for a pound. “Yes, sir, I would.”
He switched back to English. “Commander Rossall, Lieutenant Hilton’s Russian is very good. I told him about the posting and he’s accepted.”
“Good show, Hilton,” said the Commander.
“When do I start, sir?”
They looked at me with bewildered stares.
Mr Weller spoke first. “Lieutenant, we’re not just playing at it. Report to my office at the following address tomorrow morning, nine thirty.” He passed me a card. “You’ve been seconded to the SIS.” He grinned. “You’re with MI6 now. I’ll issue your licence to kill tomorrow.” His laugh told me that was untrue.
