BLOOD GURKHA: Prophesy (James Pace novels Book 5) (12 page)

'That rock face is pretty sheer,' responded Pace thoughtfully. 'I don't know that you'd have made it.'

'Me neither,' agreed Hammond. 'So you can see why I was so damned pleased to see you.'

'Likewise, Max,' replied Pace, feeling a lump starting to form in the back of his throat at the mental image of Hammond throwing himself off a high cliff. If Pace had been just a few moments later, it was highly likely that Hammond would now be lying dead at the base of the cliff. Swallowing it back, both men left the remainder of their thoughts unsaid; they were a close team who trusted each other with their lives. Today was just another example of that trust, they knew.

They hurried back to where they had left the Zodiac, still faithfully awaiting their return, dragged it down to the water and kicked over the outboard motor. Gunning it for all she was worth, they powered the little inflatable craft beyond the protection of the impregnable harbour wall, out into the teeth of the storm.

Greeted by an enormous wall of water, racing towards them, tipped with white and boiling with rage, the storm must have been a Force Eight by then.

'Did we bring life jackets?' shouted Hammond, struggling to be heard above the shrieking wind. His grin filled Pace with determination and renewed his intent to survive.

'Sorry, no!' he shouted back. 'Afraid we'll have to swim for it if the boat goes over.'

The first wave crashed into them, bodily lifting the Zodiac high, as Hammond throttled the engine for every horsepower, driving up over the crest and down the other side. Wave after wave was rolling in towards them, cresting at eight metres as they were drawn into the shallows. This was going to be one devil of a roller coaster ride, they both knew.

'Is it too late to turn back and ask our friends for a cup of coffee?' wondered Hammond.

'Probably.'

'Damn it. Okay,' Hammond conceded, 'I guess we'd better not hash this up then.'

The next wave hit them like an articulated truck breaking the speed limit and the Zodiac flipped over.

13

Commander Appleby was not pleased at his latest orders, especially when all the recent sea trials had been completed and the crew should have been hightailing it back to port. Instead, a priority order had come down the wire, ordering him to proceed 'with all haste' to an empty patch of ocean thirty miles off of the coast of Uruguay. 

As a lifelong submariner, Appleby never failed to follow orders. He knew they were given for a reason; his liking them or not was irrelevant.  When her keel was laid down, over forty years earlier, she had represented cutting edge technology and was the pride of the Royal Navy. A fast, lethal, nuclear-powered attack submarine, of the
Swiftsure
class, the boat had been named
HMS Superb
and served with distinction, and not a few mishaps, until being decommissioned in 2008, a little earlier than planned after a dry dock accident.

According to official records, her nuclear reactor had been cleanly decommissioned and the submarine had eventually been cut up for scrap, after all other traces of her technology had been removed or destroyed. Superseded by the bigger, faster
Trafalgar
class attack boats,
HMS Superb
had been consigned to the naval history books and a few lines in a Google search.

At the time of her commissioning, more than four years after her construction had begun, the boat officially needed a crew of one hundred and sixteen, although the vessel often ran slightly below this number whilst still performing admirably.

Commander Appleby had cut his teeth on the
Swiftsure
class, although he had never managed to serve aboard
HMS Superb.
As he approached retirement age, rather than leave the ocean and finish tied to some desk at the Admiralty, an offer too good to refuse had come his way. On the day he was piped off his
Astute
class nuclear submarine for the final time, handing over command to his fresh-faced, female successor, Appleby was by no means saying goodbye to the silent service.

On one of his final shore leaves, he had been summoned to a private meeting by Admiral Prowse; a long-time friend and confident. They had met at a small London pub, with no fanfare or more notably, any written record. The contact had been made on the secure satellite phone that all nuclear submarine commanders were now entrusted with by the Royal Navy. As the request to meet came from Prowse, he'd not questioned it and dutifully turned up at a rather dowdy establishment called the
Pig and Crust,
tucked down a side street near Bow.

Upon arrival, he spotted Prowse immediately, seated in a small alcove whose red velvet bench seat and wooden table had seen far better days. The Admiral was dressed in jeans and a thick woollen sweater to ward of the biting autumnal chill of an English October. He, himself, wore a long, dark blue duffel coat that completely concealed his uniform beneath.

The meeting had been brief and bizarre. The Royal Navy had sold one of its
Swiftsure
class boats to the security services. It had been deemed a project of national security and was, therefore, top secret. When questioned as to why the Royal Navy needed another security arm fielding a nuclear boat, Prowse had simply refused to be drawn. All he had said was that they were looking for an experienced submarine commander to run the boat now that an extensive refit had been completed. Would he be interested?

Admiral Prowse had chosen his man well. Not only had they known each other for over thirty years, but Prowse was also privy to the terrible motoring tragedy that had cost Appleby his entire family one wet Sunday afternoon a few years earlier. A drunk driver; only sixteen at the time, had lost control of a stolen vehicle at a town centre intersection whilst trying to evade a police car. Careening up onto the pavement, he had mown down eight innocent pedestrians.

Three of them were the most important people in the world to Appleby; his wife, sister and his twelve year old son. Appleby had been at sea at the time, out of contact due to being on a classified escort job for one of the Navy's ballistic missile submarines. By the time he got the message, two weeks had passed, which was probably a blessing.

British justice being what it often is, in cases like this, it gave the offender a paltry five year jail term but he was out on an electronic tag after serving barely two. Appleby, for his part, had a life sentence ahead of him.

So he'd taken the job and it was helping him cope with his loss. There was no reason to stay at home, rattling around in an empty detached house in Chipping Ongar. He rented it out, using an agent so he did not have to worry about anything. There was no mortgage to pay and the rental money was accruing in his bank account, topping up a healthy sum that he and his wife; a GP, had been squirreling away towards their planned retirement in Spain.

If any of the submarine's previous crew members, and there would have been thousands over the thirty years she saw service, had seen the submarine after her refit, none would have recognised the interior. They would, of course, have instantly recognised her from the outside. The hulking, sleek dark form that stretched eighty metres in length and nearly ten metres across, standing over three story's tall when she was in dry dock; another two if you included her impressive sail.

The insides had been gutted. The previous layout had been removed and replaced with two simple decks, each much taller and more spacious than the previous configuration. The walls in the control room sported large, moulded screens and all the consoles were touch-operated. The set up resembled a starship rather than a submarine, gleaming with polished plastic, aluminium and twinkling with a million lights across twenty-five screens, displaying sonar, radar, satellite tracking systems, weaponry and the operational status of its many stealth systems; all  highly experimental.

The propulsions systems had always been reliable, as had the reactor. Upgraded a little, and with the propulsion system further shielded to bring her up to the standards of the most modern nuclear attack boats, the refit had been minimal in that area.

Accommodation would have been considered as luxurious for any serving submariner, even on an
Astute
or
Trafalgar
class submarine. No bunks and no shared hot-bunking either. The entire centre of the lower deck had been kitted out with separate cabins for officers and two large, airy dormitories for the crew. It had been an easy thing to do, seeing as how the reconfigured vessel operated with a crew of only fifteen sailors, trimming her previous compliment by over one hundred.

Her sea trials had gone better than anyone had expected. Additional strengthening of her pressure hull had increased her maximum diving depth and her performance, above and below the water, far outstripped the official specifications for the class. Appleby knew that the statistics the Royal Navy put out about the performance of their fighting vessels was always deliberately misleading, for the benefit of their enemies.

Being nuclear powered, although not a ballistic submarine,
HMS
Superb
had been stripped of her torpedoes and Tomahawk cruise missiles at the point of her decommissioning, as expected. As teary-eyed dock workers watched her towed forlornly away, under cover of darkness, from Devonport; allegedly to a secret scrapyard, they had no way of knowing that she was actually towed out barely ten miles offshore before being unhooked.

At this point, a skeleton crew of forty experienced submariners, which had been secreted in the tug's cabin, was transferred aboard. Her apparently decommissioned and removed nuclear reactor then powered the vessel under the waves and she was gone from official history forever.

Where she went, who was responsible for the refitting, or who now gave him his secret orders were never made clear to Appleby. All he knew was that the Royal Navy needed a presence anywhere in the world that would enable them to strike at an enemy whilst claiming plausible deniability. The number of boats fielded by the service was common knowledge, the world over, so if all were accounted for then Britain could never be accused of using one of her serving nuclear boats in anger, off-grid, so to speak.

With the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, resurgence in Russia and nuclear developments in North Korea, Appleby accepted that his submarine might be able to provide a valuable service to his country outside of the official chain of command. He guessed his orders came from MI6 or GCHQ but he did not really care. Service to his country had driven him all his life and a few more years, in an even more covert manner than he was used to, was fine as far as he was concerned.

His first officer was an efficient woman, in her mid thirties, by the name of Shannon Busby. With no naval experience, she had spent her youth diving on the deepest wrecks, perfecting machines that could even withstand the massive pressures found in the depths of the world's ocean trenches. Many of the new systems that controlled their reborn submarine had been designed by her, from scratch. Highly intelligent and determined, the two of them had instantly hit it off and a mutual respect already bonded them tightly after serving together for barely three  months.

She sat in a large, padded armchair secured to a single, powered rail running the entire length of the port side of the bridge. Controlled with a touch pad set into the arm, it allowed her to move quickly across to any of the main displays and consoles like a horizontal stair lift. Totally engrossed in something on the screen in front of her, she sensed his approach.

'I know what you're going to say and I agree. I have no idea why we've been ordered here. Maybe it's a test of readiness, or willingness to respond quickly to orders?' she ventured hopefully. His frown was set and it did not suit him.

A handsome man, albeit now greying and running a slight paunch as he entered his fifty-sixth year, Appleby carried the extra weight well; straight-backed and upright. Blue eyes sparkled, missing nothing, and he still proudly wore his Royal Navy uniform, albeit devoid of any insignia other than his rank. His hat, as with everything else he wore, was perfectly presented and smart.

Old school, he still sported his wedding band despite all the crew being well aware of his past – it was one of the first things he'd disclosed on their first day together. Sharing the truth, building the trust, Appleby had called it at the time.

He emanated a sense of security and capability. Although she'd never really been into older men, Shannon had to admit that there was almost something of the Richard Gere about Appleby. Maybe, in the right circumstances, she might even take him to her bed one day. Hopefully not, she shook the odd thought out of her head. Workplace romances rarely succeeded, especially awkward if they did not work out when you were trapped together, for months at a time, typically hundreds of feet below the ocean's surface.

Appleby regarded her for a moment longer, drinking in her short auburn hair, pale complexion dotted with the faintest hint of freckles and full figure. Shannon did not wear a naval uniform because, technically, the submarine was under civilian control. As always, she was sporting a one-piece, rather drab set of coveralls in a depressing shade of charcoal. Zipped up at the front, she looked like a car mechanic although her outfit was pristinely clean and neatly pressed. The comfortable fit and ease of movement were the main reasons that she chose to dress like a workman. However, it also served to make her feel more part of the crew by camouflaging her gender as much as possible, especially her rather large bust which always seemed overly pronounced due to her diminutive five feet, four-inch height. Similarly, she wore no make up, perfume or jewellery.

'I've just received some more information,' he explained slowly. The bridge was laid out to be a five-station operation but the other three crewmen were down in the propulsion room, helping with some additional radiation checks on the reactor. Everyone aboard came with the very highest security clearance but Appleby was not about to share this little gem with anyone other than her.

'So you know why we're here?'

'Yes.'

Shannon waited, cocking an expectant eyebrow in his direction. 'Feel like letting me in on it?'

'This is a search and rescue mission,' he started. 'Somewhere up there,' he flicked his gaze upwards briefly, 'are two very important individuals who the British government want us to retrieve before the sea kills them.'

'They must be very important to risk exposing us to public discovery,' she said. 'Any idea who we're looking for?'

Appleby shook his head slowly. 'Only that they're men and, if we find them, we're not to ask any questions.'

'So what are we supposed to do with them if we find them?' She had run a weather check just a few minutes earlier and knew that a powerful storm was raging on the surface above them. Forty metres down, they felt no hint of its fury. 'It's blowing a real gale topside,' she added crossly. 'We can surface and take a look but the waves are going to be running at five or six metres and it's still dark. Spotting anyone in the water will be like hunting for the proverbial needle in a very large, moving haystack. At night,' she added, for final effect.

'I am well aware of the chances of success,' Appleby responded wryly. 'Orders are orders. Get the crew to their stations and make a course adjustment of five degrees south west. Bring her up to full speed and run in for approximately fifteen minutes.' He eyed his Swiss-made Doxa 750T watch, reissued from the unique original model a few years previously. Its unique orange watch face and robust durability had made it a must-have purchase for Appleby. 'That should bring us to the co-ordinates of their last known position.'