Darke Mission (23 page)

Commodore Park was also looking a bit queasy, crawling on his hands and knees among the furniture rubble that used to be his dining room. He had, fortunately, escaped both the tea fountain and the table's corners, but his premises were a mess and sloping at a 30 degree angle. Once his senses had returned, though, he'd probably feel a lot less fortunate.

Lieutenant Commander Gok Han-Jik was physically unscathed after the explosion but his mind was both scathed and numb. From the dining room's half collapsed window frame that only a few minutes earlier had had a window in it, he looked out at the dockside. Beyond the chaotic and random running of many KPN submariners, he could just make out the pattern of distinctive ripples in the water that revealed that a vessel had just left. Not any old vessel, he realised, but a Borei class Russian nuclear submarine, armed with ten Bulava missiles. His mind raced through all the expected questions following such an event. Who did it? Why did they do it? Why wasn't the submarine guarded better? The question that made his brain ache with the most excruciating pain ever was how will he tell his cousin, North Korea's supreme leader Kim Jong-un?

* * *

JJ and Cyrus were cosying up on their expansive dark blue leather sofa. JJ was trying to sketch something but in truth he did not even have the skill to draw stick men well. Cyrus had his feet up, legs outstretched on the sofa, taking up all the space apart from the small section that he allowed his dad, mainly so that JJ could act as the boy's headrest. Cyrus had downloaded some classic tunes and was listening through large, white, round headphones as he read the last few pages of
The Hunger Games
. Classic for Cyrus meant the Kinks, the Beatles, T-Rex, Human League or Heaven 17.

JJ was getting a bit frustrated with his lack of artistic ability, so he gave Cyrus a gentle dunt to get his attention. Cyrus removed his headphones. “Are you concentrating, Cyrus, or can I get your help on something?” asked JJ remembering that not only had Cyrus won a school Design and Technology bursary in his day, he had also had a painting of his exhibited at The Royal College of Art when he was six. Admittedly, it was abstract but it must have taken some ability to have been selected from the hundreds and hundreds of school kid hopefuls. JJ never forgot the day that he and Eloise went along to see their son's painting, proud parents given that neither had any artistic acumen. In advance, they had asked Cyrus what he had painted so that they could find it among the various categories on the RCA's display walls. The boy had said he'd done a
Power Rangers Ninja Storm
morpher. JJ had to sit through enough episodes of
Power Rangers
on TV to know that there was more than one type of morpher, depending on which incarnation of
Power Rangers
was on. At the end of the day, though, the morphers were similar, they kind of all did the same thing, you flipped them open, hit a few buttons, they beeped and, hey presto, either you suited up into Rangers, other Rangers came to your aid or they ordered the formation of huge and powerful zords. JJ and Eloise knew what they were looking for. After about twenty minutes scanning walls with paintings on display they could not see anything that looked like a morpher. Cyrus was with them, so JJ asked him if he could spot his own painting. A minute or two later, he bounced up with pleasure and said, “Here it is!” pointing at a multi coloured painting. JJ and Eloise looked at it closely, but to them it seemed more like a house than a morpher. It was definitely striking and it was definitely well done, but it so wasn't a
Power Rangers
morpher.

“Cyrus, this is brilliant, but it doesn't look like a morpher,” said JJ.

“I did the morpher last year, Dad, this is our house and garden, can't you tell?” replied the six year old. JJ noted his son's skill for disinformation, it could come in useful one day he laughed to himself.

“I'm not concentrating, Dad, just chillin' to ‘Waterloo Sunset' and worrying about the fate of Katniss Everdeen,” replied Cyrus. He knew his dad was well acquainted with both so he didn't need to elaborate much. JJ preferred the Kinks to either the Beatles or the Rolling Stones and it was he who first introduced Cyrus to
The Hunger Games
.

“Great. Thanks Cyrus, so here's the scoop. In the course of business, MAM has acquired quite a chunk of physical gold. It's in the form of bullion bars, each weighs about 12.5kg, so they're a bit heavier than the weights Gil has been torturing you with. We need to find an efficient way of loading these bars from vaults, which may be under street level, and onto secure trucks. I'm trying to devise some kind of treadmill or travelator machine to do this but I can't sketch a stick man, as you know.”

Cyrus knew his dad was rubbish at drawing. He also knew that his dad didn't often ask for his help in relation to his work, so this was quite cool, the teenager thought. “I get it, Dad, you need a conveyor belt system to transport the gold and it needs to be capable of going uphill with quite a heavy load on it.”

Smart boy
, thought JJ,
he was on it straight away
. “Yes, that's it, Cy. You don't need to worry about weight or dimensions etc. I have a manufacturer in mind, but a decent sketch or drawing of what it might look like would be handy.”

“When do you need it, Dad, and do I get a financial incentive for my work?” asked Cyrus, cheekily and with a broad capitalist smile.

“Tonight would be good, young man, and yes you can have a decent bonus if it's up to scratch,” replied JJ, ruffling Cyrus's curly locks and giving him a wee hug.

Cyrus worked on his sketches for a few hours. They were good and clear. He even included a collapsible version where the conveyor belt could be made smaller and then extended when necessary. This was likely to be a very useful variant.

Overnight JJ worked on the loads that the conveyor belt would need to carry and support. The next morning he contacted Harold McFarlane at McLaren to find out whether they had anything comparable in stock, surely McLaren would need such a gizmo at some point, or at least know of one. Harold said that they did not. However, a while back, he recalled Ron Dennis had asked him something similar regarding baggage handling for his private jet. Harold had gone to Herbert Systems in Cambridgeshire, and they constructed a small mobile conveyor system for them. Harold suggested that JJ scan the diagrams he had and email them to him, sharpish. He'd get on the phone to Herbert's and see if they could do a rush job. JJ thanked Harold, scanned and e-delivered the diagrams and hoped for the best.

The timeline and deadlines for this mission were seriously constraining. So far, luck had been on his side, meeting Vincent Barakat, his old pal Harold, the availability and skillset of Ginger, his US buddy Jim Bradbury being in Seoul and his offer of two helpful Koreans. Ginger had earmarked a safe cracker, whom he was going to meet later today, his son could draw and Toby was doing a good alcohol-free job of covering for JJ at work. The non-existent law of averages suggested that this could not last, but, hey, let's ride that lucky train for as long as it's chugging along.

JJ still had not solved the thorny issue of the HGV drivers. Sure it was easy enough to get such drivers with the requisite skills and licence but the vast majority of these would be legitimate, no knowledge of the criminal world or the security services, and no desire to get involved in a life-threatening heist. If Ginger's safe cracker was up to scratch then JJ would turn his mind to finding the final piece of the pre-match jigsaw. Maybe Harold could help. He must know a gazillion HGV drivers, but it was how to approach it. In any event, they all needed to be on a flight to Seoul in three days' time, no matter what.

* * *

“I think my fucking leg's broken,” wailed Joe Franks as he peeled Billy Smith off the top of him. The two of them plus Mark O'Neill and Yang Dingbang had literally dived into the sub through the surface hatch. There was no time for climbing down the integral ladder or following protocol. They were under fire and down they went like apples from a barrel. Joe Franks drew the short straw and both Ding and Billy landed on him as they hit the sub's unwieldy floor.

As Joe Franks stayed down, clutching his right leg, O'Neill was up and shouting, “Medic!” The approved medic on this operation was Garrison Whitton, one of Evan Harris's team. He had been a SEAL for only two years, hailed from Washington State, but was widely regarded as one of the best patch up guys in the Navy. So far, he had had little to do on this mission and while he would have preferred that Franks didn't have a broken leg, at least he didn't feel like a spare part anymore. Whitton headed straight for Joe Franks with his medical bag. The rest of the team could not afford to hang about however much they cared for their buddy. There was an enemy nuclear sub to drive to safety and there were only an effective eight of them to do it.

“How are we doing, Tommy?” Commander O'Neill asked of Tommy Fairclough, the main driver, backed up by David McCoy.

“Fine, Sir,” he replied. “We're under way and we'll soon be underwater. Those NGA girls did a good job with the crib sheets they sent through. The main instructions for this sub and all the labelling on the instruments are in Russian. I think there's a Korean translation in this drawer, but I've not had time to look at it. Not that it would do any good. If we get stuck on translation can we contact them?”

“Not yet. We need to be sure we're undetectable first. You're right about the NGA girls. Not only have they sent us a workable translation of the key operating instructions they let us know that the submarine was supposed to be all stealthed up. We'll find out soon enough if that's accurate,” said O'Neill, clapping Fairclough on the back and then checking the status of the rest of the men.

Evan Harris joined O'Neill on the conn. While all aboard were Navy SEALs they could afford to dispense with much of the usual submarine specific language. There was no need for a Chief of Boat (COB) as the discipline and good order of the crew would not be an issue. O'Neill was the Commanding Officer (CO) and Harris the Executive Officer (XO). It needed both Fairclough and McCoy to drive the sub efficiently, one to control the tail action and one the sail. Normally, there would be another submariner behind them issuing instructions but this skeleton crew did not have that luxury. Barry Minchkin was the Chief Engineer, essentially the only engineer. He was critical to the supervision of the nuclear reactor on board, and any tweaking that was necessary to keep it operating safely. Barry was also doubling up as the Communications Officer. Ding had been put in charge of weapons, not that they were likely to use them but they needed checking anyway. It would have been Joe Franks' job but his injury prevented him from moving around efficiently to inspect the various weapons positions. There was no Supply Officer, indeed there seemed to be no sign of supplies on board at all. O'Neill hoped that would not become an issue later on.

“Preparing to dive, Sir,” announced Tommy Fairclough.

McCoy repeated the announcement though he didn't really need to as O'Neill and Harris were both well within earshot. McCoy opened the valves at the top of the ballast tanks and as the air escaped and seawater came in, they headed lower.

This Borei could submerge lower than 1,000 feet but Tommy Fairclough had set the stable depth to be 400 feet. He was taking no chances with either the sea bed or his crib sheet instructions. Evan Harris had undertaken emergency specialist sonar training when he knew about Operation Philidor Defence. On this operation he would only be deploying passive sonar to detect where other subs or ships were without revealing the Borei's location. So far, so good, there was nothing within detection distance, and that detection distance was more than 1,000 nautical miles. The Borei class subs had a sonar processing power of around 2,000 laptop computers.

The KPN were not giving chase. As the submarine settled at a depth of 400ft, Commander O'Neill relaxed a little. They'd acquired their target, only one non-life threatening injury to the team, and now they were deep underwater and very difficult if not impossible to detect. The submarine was moving along at close to 25 knots or just under 30mph, and could go a little faster if necessary. As O'Neill was contemplating the next phase, Garrison Whitton came into the room. Whitton was in his mid-twenties, slight of build, dark brown straight hair, not cut short enough in O'Neill's view, with blue eyes and an upright posture.

“Sir,” he said, attracting O'Neill's attention. Normally, he would have addressed his usual team leader, Evan Harris, first but he was embroiled in sonar work and Whitton judged it best to leave him alone.

“Yes, Gary, what is it?” asked O'Neill.

Whitton was pleased that the mission's team leader knew who he was and that he felt comfortable enough to address him by his shortened first name.

“Two things, Commander,” began Whitton. “Joe Franks has two fractures of his right leg, the major one is a clean break of the tibia and I think at least three of his proximal long bones in his foot are also broken. I've put a makeshift splint on his leg and wrapped his right foot as best I can. He's effectively immobile just now but may be able to hobble about in a day or so. I'll have a ferret around the ship to see if I can make a temporary set of crutches.”

Mark O'Neill did not think that Whitton's report was the end of the world. He'd kind of assumed that Joe would be out of action given the wailing noise he'd made when hitting the deck. “And the second thing?” asked the Commander.

“Once I'd patched Joe up, Sir, I thought I'd have a look for food stores. I know we don't have a Supply Officer so I thought I'd double up. I can cook a bit, but there's nothing to cook. In fact, there's nothing to eat at all. They had not provisioned the sub, Sir, as of tonight.”

“Is there anything to drink?” responded the Commander.