Submarine

'Right, sir.' And as Woolf-Gault slid the curtain across, he heard Farge murmuring: 'We must be clear of the minefields then, if there's a ship tooling about ahead of us.'

Woolf-Gault's long watch crept to its close. At 0217 he noted from the navigator's notebook that the sun up top was setting. The hour and three-quarters of dreary twilight would be casting its weird, red-tinged gloom upon the surface, 630 feet above the submarine. At 0255 Woolf-Gault shook the first lieutenant. Prout, bleary-eyed, took over the watch; Woolf-Gault left the control-room to crawl into his bunk where merciful sleep eased his misery.

'Captain in the control-room!'

Farge shoved back his chair and left his officers at the wardroom table, finishing their cold lunch. The officer of the afternoon watch, Sims, was standing at the entrance to the sound-room.

'I wasn't sure,' Farge said, 'but I thought I heard it on the hull… active pinging?'

'Affirmative, sir. 290°. They're hunting off Set' Navolok.'

'The same choppers?' 'Same frequencies, sir. Getting closer.'

Farge paced his control-room: it was 1324, the day already half-spent. He crossed to the chart table to think things out.

He had suspected for some time that the enemy's ASW forces were on to Orcus' penetration. Loops off Set' Navolok? Hydrophones on the shallow spur at the eastern end of the Rybachiy peninsular, when Orcus entered beneath the tanker? Towed Surface Arrays? Or sheer bad luck from routine ASW helicopter sweeps? At least the second chopper group was to the north-eastward, and moving northward up the eastern shipping channel away from Orcus. He pricked off the distance to the declared danger area to the north — if he continued on a course of 038°, the southern limit of what must presumably be a moored minefield (the soundings were over two hundred metres) was 10.2 miles off. Though he had succeeded in insinuating Orcus as far as this, he still needed luck: the state report was taking an eternity to build up, and Orcus could not wait here for ever.

The constant irritant in any conventional GO'S mind was his remaining battery power. The boat had been dived for forty-one hours since her last charge off Vardo: the air was tolerable, but the life support system and lighting were using up the amps. As David Powys had reported quietly in the captain's cabin, thirty-six per cent had already been expended.

The forenoon's sonar classifications confirmed the suspicion which first entered Farge's mind while Orcus was lying in Lodeynaya Bay. The Northern Fleet's outward submarines and heavier units seemed to be routed to the eastern shipping lane, which was three miles wide. The outward traffic must be using the starboard side of this swept channel and the submarine targets for which he was searching should be in that farther lane. Opening his dividers, he pricked off the distance: four miles. He'd take Orcus further north to a position, 2–6 miles south of the declared minefield and within three miles of the western edge of the inward shipping lane; she'd be ideally placed — and clear of those chivvying choppers off Set' Navolok. Though the 187 sonar had classified a Delta II and a Yankee outward at dawn this morning, it had pin-pointed only one other, an Oscar at 1151. There was such activity that even Joker Paine, the sonar chief, had had difficulty in sorting out the grain from the chaff. Farge decided to move immediately to this third waiting position, WP3.

Making use of the tidal stream which started setting easterly at 1642, Farge went to full action stations at 1600: twelve minutes earlier, the sound-room reported active pinging approaching on a steady bearing from the west-north-west.

Unsticking herself without trouble from the mud, Orcus rose silently to four hundred feet, Foggon and the cox'n having her under firm control this time. With infrequent kicks ahead on slow one for his northing, Farge virtually drifted on the easterly set for his easting to WP3. Averaging four knots and with minimal active use of his mine detecting sonar, at 1810 he put her down again in 650 feet on to mud, sand and shingle.

He relaxed action stations to a modified attack team as the long vigil began again. The sonar department were bearing up, but the strain was beginning to show; and at this discharge rate, it was not difficult to calculate when the battery would become dangerously low. If something didn't turn up soon, Farge would have to make for the deep field in order to charge.

'Have you got the watch, Number One?' Farge asked.

'Yes, sir, until 2000.'

'I'd like to go through the boat with the cox'n,' Farge said. 'It's time I saw for myself how everyone is.'

'I'll send for him, sir.'

Farge shook his head. 'I'll pick him up on my way for'd. Shout for me on the broadcast if you need me.'

Chapter 17

HM Submarine Orcus, 16 May.