Submarine

The short silence was broken by the admiral's terse, clipped sentences 'We've been picking 'em off like a turkey shoot,' he said. 'When, for Pete's sake, is Nato going to deliver, eh?' His chin stuck out aggressively, as he stared at Trevellion. 'The President's impatient. He wants to know when the British are going to carry out their side of the bargain. He's using the hot line and, as he told the Secretary of Defense, he can't mollify the Kremlin much longer. We've told 'em we'll also take out their Typhoons and Alfas — why, for God's sake, are you Limeys being so goddam long about it?'

'Intelligence gives their first Typhoon's earliest sailing date ' as midnight tonight, sir.'

Admiral Floyd shook his head irritably. 'Put yourself in the President's place, captain. His argument collapses if we fail now. Fourteen SSBNS without a Typhoon just ain't good enough, gentlemen. The Soviet hawks are itching to pitch in, as soon as they can prove we've been bluffing. "We told you," they'll say. "Our Typhoons are inviolate, you haven't been able to sink 'em." Unless you can kill a Typhoon quickly, Captain, the Kremlin will know it can get away with it.'

'A bit more time, sir.'

'How long? The President's got to know.'

'It'll be all over by the twentieth or twenty-first, sir. One way or the other.'

'Seventy-two hours?'

'Yes, sir. The second Typhoon is expected for the twentieth. I The President must wait, sir — in case we miss our first chance.'

The admiral smacked the back of his fist into the palm of his other hand. 'Okay,' he rapped. 'I'll tell the Secretary.' He rounded on Trevellion once more. 'If you Brits can't come up with the ante,' he snapped, 'you'd better let us in on the act.'

'I can only pass on your comments to the First Sea Lord, sir.'

'Do that, captain.' The admiral strode from the room.

Outside, in the sweltering, humid afternoon, Butch Hart laid his arm across Trevellion's shoulders:

'A Bourbon'll do us both good,' he said.

They walked together towards the senior officers' car park, each with his own thoughts. For the first time in his career, Trevellion felt unsure of the Service in which he served. He had never before had to apologize for the Royal Navy: he found the exercise acutely distasteful.

Chapter 21

HM Submarine Orcus, 16 May.

Although WP4 was only eight miles east of her mining emergency, by the time Farge had taken Orcus south to avoid the minefield danger, she did not bottom on the easterly edge of the outward channel until early afternoon. Farge was not the only man to breathe a sigh of relief when she settled again on the two-hundred-metre line. He felt satisfied too, because every outward bound enemy submarine, it seemed, must pass close to him. From midnight onwards, he could expect the Typhoon.

The enemy's surface activity continued to be intense but Farge was feeling a reaction to the strain of the last twelve hours. Leaving Prout in charge in the control-room with a reduced attack team closed up. he retired to his cabin and climbed on to his bunk.

The doctor had decided that he could not leave Hicks in the after ends much longer: in another two hours they would have to decompress him. Only then could Tomkins make a provisional diagnosis, but he would not rule out that Hicks might have suffered the bends.

Farge had been touched by the troops' reaction to Woolf-Gault's death. After the midday snack the cox'n had told him of how they felt. Woolf-Gault's act of gallantry had, in some curious way, bound the company more closely together. Many individuals felt twinges of shame and remorse at the way they had treated the poor guy — Farge included. The doctor and Bill Bowles must be the only men who could probably claim a clear conscience. Orcus had been lucky, but the might-have-beens were causing Farge moments of bitter self-reproach. He was dropping into a half-sleep when Sims tapped on his doorway.

'Contact, sir: a Victor II, bearing 250°, range eight thousand yards. She's diving.'

'Sure?'

'Confirmed, sir. Three shafts.'

'Same position, on the two-hundred-metre line?'

'Identical, sir. We'll get her course and speed when she passes abeam: refining is difficult with all this activity in the lanes.'

Sims was back — again fifteen minutes later. An Alfa was diving in the same position. She seemed to be following the Victor II, now dived and steaming at twenty-five knots on a course of 050° up the same swept channel.

Farge's tired brain hardly registered the reports: the Victor ii, a torpedo-firing fleet submarine, was the fastest nuke in the world after the Alfa who, with her forty-two knots, could outpace anything Nato could put to sea. They were probably northward-bound to do battle with those Nato boats deployed across the gaps.