Submarine

'I don't want to raise your hopes. Vardo, Norway's main port up here, is our nearest point of land, but the Russians are in control of the coastline, as you all know. Pockets of the Royal Marines are still resisting in the mountains; remnants of 45 Commando are, I know, organizing resistance groups among the Norwegians.' He cleared his throat. 'Safari should have received our enemy report on the Typhoon, so we've done what's expected of us. I don't know what's waiting for us up top, but so far we've been lucky. Of one thing you can be sure: I shan't sacrifice the boat needlessly. If I'm forced to, I'll surface to give us a chance to bale out. Be ready for anything. Obey your officers; keep your heads; and don't hang about, because I'll be scuttling the boat if it comes to it. With God's help, we'll get out of this.' He turned to Bill Bowles. 'And thanks, cox'n, and all of you,' he ended quietly. 'No captain's ever been served by better men.'

He replaced the mike and turned to Prout:

'I'll come straight up,' he said briskly. 'Sixty feet.'

Bowles drew the column towards him. The bubble slid forward. The terse commands of the trimming officer and the distant whine of the motor were all that could be heard in the control-room.

'Stand by to snort, generating both sides,' Farge ordered. He had to hold her at a hundred feet for the completion of the snort drill, an opportunity to catch a trim which Eddie Foggon did not miss: Orcus was light and when the trimming officer had flooded Ds, the engine-room came through on the intercom:

'Ready to snort, generating both sides.'

'Periscope depth,' Farge ordered briskly. 'I shan't raise the snort mast until I've had a look.' He moved backwards from the gauges and took up his position between the periscopes. Still nothing from sonar.

'Eighty feet, seventy-five.'

'Up attack.'

The friendly hiss of the steel tube, sliding upwards again from its well… he opened the handles as the eyepieces came level.

'Sixty-two feet…'

He pushed his face into the eyepieces, heard behind him the MEO restraining the cox'n and his bubble.

'Sixty feet. Breaking!' The darkness merged swiftly with the grey underneath of the surface-daylight-and, as the smeared lens cleared, he saw the yellow-green tinge of the mud-stained sea, its creamy wave-crests curling towards him. He swung on his heel, taking in the horizon line of the southern sector- he could see no land to the eastward — then round to the north, to the north-west and 'Bloody hell!' he shouted. 'Down periscope! Stop snorting. Flood Q. Three hundred feet. Don't speed up, for God's sake.'

As he stood back from the periscope, the image of three, clumsy-looking Hormone helicopters etched indelibly in his mind, the control-room exploded into action. At sixty-five feet the first active pinging from the ASW helicopters blasted against the hull. At eighty feet, Orcus, still at slow one, but three and a half tons heavy with Q flooded, was sinking like lead.

'Shut off for counter-attack,' Farge shouted above the controlled chaos. 'Blow Q.'

The engine-room was coming through:

'Induction hull valve and emergency hull valve shut.'

Foggon was tapping Bowies' shoulder and pointing at the bow-down bubble.

'Can I speed up, sir?' The MEO'S mouth was a hole in his pale face: he had over-flooded Ds on the way up.

'Yes,' Farge snapped. 'To hell with the amps.'

'Group up, half ahead together,' Foggon ordered. Then, as the cox'n gained control again, the bubble slipping for'd, the boat began to porpoise.

'Two hundred feet.'

'Hard-a-dive on the fore-planes,' Foggon was shouting above the din.

Farge watched Bowles forcing for'd on his column, calm determination on his face as the boat began swooping down again. Then, seconds after another active ping from the attacking helicopters, a shattering explosion rocked the submarine. Farge glimpsed the curved frames springing toward him, felt the pressure on his lungs. Glass tinkled around him from the broken gauges, men slithered to the deck, hurled from their seats. A nuclear depth-bomb, not too distant…?

'Fore-planes jammed hard-a-dive,' the cox'n called out.

'Hydraulic pressure gone,' the wrecker shouted. 'Switching to secondary.'

'Fore-planes in hand,' Farge snapped. But with the broadcast system off the board and the bulkhead doors shut down for counter-attack, his orders could not be repeated by voice. 'Open bulkhead doors,' he shouted.

'340 feet — 380.' The bubble was against the stops.

'Blow one, two, three main ballast.'

As he held on to the pipes above his head, his feet slipping from beneath him, he heard the high pressure air screaming along the line to the ballast tanks for'd.

'410 feet- 420.'

In seconds Orcus would be smashing herself into the bottom. Holding his breath, Farge watched the depth-gauge pointer racing round the dial.

'Bubble's coming off, sir,' Bowles called out as the air emptied from the for'd main ballast tank to bring up her bows.

'430 — 425–420. Bubble's moving for'd.'