Land of Fire (16 page)

"Argentine naval rescue craft," the skipper explained for our benefit. "Built by our own Vosper-Thorneycroft for the Dutch navy and sold by them to Argentina. Dual-use capability that's to say, sonar-equipped for inshore ASW. We've tracked her before. Probably out after a fishing boat in trouble. Let's hope she wraps it up smartly."

An air-sea rescue boat could be a threat to us if it came close enough, though, and this one was fitted out for anti-submarine warfare. And if there was a rescue launch out, there was a possibility that it was backed up by a helicopter overhead. Even if that weren't the case, it would be a simple matter for her to fix us with her sonar while radioing Rio Grande for aircraft with depth charges and torpedoes.

And then abruptly, without warning, somewhere in the boat an alarm pealed.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The noise was so loud we almost leapt out of our skins. It seemed incredible that it would not be audible out on the patrol boat.

"Bridge," the captain snapped into a microphone. "What's the problem?"

"Forward turbine room reports smoke, sir. Lots of it."

"Shut watertight doors. Fire party close up."

"Aye, aye, sir. Shutting all watertight doors and hatches. Fire party close up," the officer of the watch repeated.

All of us on the team had been through this drill before in the course of exercises. Fire is a constant and deadly hazard underwater. Modern subs are stuffed full of electric cabling and plastic insulation that if heated can generate deadly toxic fumes.

Heavy steel hatches slammed shut, clunking home like safe doors, isolating the upper deck from the bridge area. A seaman appeared in the door and tossed smoke masks into our laps and told us to be ready to put them on if ordered.

We were trapped in a narrow undersea canyon in shallow water on a hostile coast with a patrol vessel bearing down on us, and now the boat was on fire. In short, the situation was fucked up. I was willing to bet, though, that the captain would be as calm and collected as if he were tied to a pier at Devonport dock. He couldn't fight the fire personally; other people would do that. They were well trained and could be relied upon to do their job in a speedy and efficient manner.

In the event of a fire, then the water- and smoke tight doors would confine it to a single compartment on the lower deck. Water sprays would dowse the flames, while a fire party equipped with breathing equipment and extinguishers tackled the source of the blaze. If necessary, and should the flames prove too fierce, then the captain would give the order "Execute CO2 drench' to flood the compartment with carbon dioxide gas, stifling the oxygen from the fire. It would be bad news for anyone in the compartment without breathing equipment, but that was why he was commanding a nuclear submarine and why the men trusted him because he had the guts to do it.

The alarm was still shrilling. Why didn't someone switch the bastard thing off? There was a pounding on the locked hatch in the passage; a brief exchange over the intercom and the hatch was opened to allow a party of seamen through with tools and extinguishers. They went aft through the bridge area and clattered down the ladder to help fight the flames on the lower deck. Briefly through the open hatch I saw the operations centre functioning as before. The sonar operators' attention would still be fixed on their job of tracking the patrol vessel.

Josh glanced at me, a bit pale. If there's one thing we hate in the SAS it's having to sit on our hands in a crisis. "What d'you reckon?" he said. "An overheated bearing?"

"More likely an electrical fault," Jock told him casually. "A bundle of wires heat up, reach flashpoint and bing! Smoke alarm."

"Yeah, that's what I figured," said Josh.

I smiled inwardly. He reminded me of myself at his age fresh-faced, eager, but a bit apprehensive. This was his first time on a real combat mission. Now things were starting to go wrong he was trying to keep the nervousness out of his voice. I wanted to reassure him, then I remembered how angry it used to make me when Andy tried to do the same to me all those years ago. I was beginning to understand what it meant to feel like an older brother.

The alarm bell cut out suddenly. Over the intercom we could hear the operators calling down the range to the patrol boat. The distance was opening up again as the boat turned. Had it overrun the mouth of the canyon and put its helm over to circle round and pick up the scent again? I tried to picture where the forward turbine room was in relation to the reactor. I've never trusted that radioactive stuff. They had given us little radiation badges to wear, but all they did was measure the size of the dose that killed you. Interesting to the scientists, but not a fuck of a lot of help otherwise.

"If that fire spreads to the reactor room then we're in mega-trouble," Nobby observed, as if reading my thoughts.

"Us and all this end of South America," said Doug.

Surely someone would be able to shut down the reactor before we all blew up or melted or whatever it was a runaway nuclear reactor did. But if we did manage a controlled shutdown, that would still leave us lying on the bottom of the canyon without power. At a rough estimate we currently had just under 200 feet of water over our heads.

Departing a submarine via the escape hatch is something I have had to do as part of my SAS training. It is not a method recommended for the claustrophobic. There are two escape hatches, one either end of the boat. In our case we would have to use the forward hatch located in the torpedo storage area. It consists of a steel tube just wide enough for one man to crawl up into, with a watertight hatch at each end. You open the bottom hatch and climb in with an emergency air breathing set. The lower hatch is then closed and the tube flooded. It's pitch black inside, and the experience is like being buried alive and drowned simultaneously. If all goes well the pressure within the tube equals the water pressure outside and the top hatch can be opened. You climb out, pull the inflation cord on your life jacket and swim up to the surface.

That's the theory. There are a number of things that can fuck up, most of which involve getting stuck in the tube and running out of air. The procedure is so dangerous even submariners rarely practise it. It's better than drowning or suffocating in a disabled submarine but not much.

Even if we made it to the surface, it wasn't as though our troubles would be over. We were still ten miles out from the shore at night in near-polar waters, without boats in a force-seven gale. Our survival suits would give us only limited warmth. I envisaged the winds blowing our bodies ashore after we had died of hypothermia.

I was wondering if the fire was accidental. If the salmonella outbreak at Stanley could be part of a biological attack, then it would certainly be one hell of a coincidence for the one submarine present at the time to catch fire. On the other hand, why plant an incendiary when a high explosive would do the job better? None of it made sense.

We went back to our cabin. There was nothing we could do to help and we'd only get in the way. Nobby Clark cracked a joke about being roasted or boiled. Jock grinned at him and went on studying his map. Kiwi was reading a paperback; he seemed completely unconcerned. The rest of us lay on our bunks or fiddled with our equipment.

There was the ominous thud of a small explosion from somewhere down below.

"Air bottle going up," said Doug.

"Steam pipe fracture more like," said someone else.

The alarm bell resumed and was joined by another with an alternating note. The Argies would have to be deaf not to hear the racket. Jock yawned with elaborate unconcern and looked at his watch. "Seven o'clock. Another two hours to go. Well, I hope the Navy get things under control in time for us to go ashore on schedule."

The hatch outside was unlatched again and more people could be heard coming through. A waft of smoke reached us. Doug said that this showed they had the fire under control and were reopening the hatches. "Or else," Nobby suggested brightly, 'the back end of the boat is burning and the mate lots are jumping ship."

The bells and sirens continued to sound intermittently. We could hear equipment being dragged about and sailors shouting to one another. There was no sign of panic that I could make out. Kiwi laid down his book and glanced across at Jock, one eyebrow raised. I saw Jock shake his head slightly. All we could do was wait.

The door to the passage opened and a young officer stuck his head in. "Don't want to cause alarm, but the captain just wanted to check that you chaps are all familiar with our escape drill."

"You mean underwater escape? "Jock said. "Everyone here has done the course. Some of us," he nodded in the direction of Doug and myself, 'have more experience than others."

"Excellent. If it does become necessary, your departure station will be in the torpedo room forward. Just a precaution, you understand, so you know where to go if you have to." He cast an eye at our berg ens "I should try to take as little as possible if I were you."

I told myself that this was just procedure. If the situation got that bad we would still have residual power left in the stand-by batteries sufficient to blow the tanks and bring us to the surface. But that would effectively mean surrendering the ship to the Argentines. The captain would rather die.

It was getting hotter in the cabin and the air quality was noticeably deteriorating. The captain must have switched off the air conditioners to prevent smoke from circulating through the rest of the boat. On a submarine fumes can kill quickly. Battery compartments and electrical wiring release toxic vapours when they burn and portable oxygen sets provide only a few minutes' breathable air.

Nobby cracked open the door to our cabin. "What's happening, mate?" he called cheerily to a seaman. "Are we sunk yet?"

"Nah," came the reply. "Just the fucking engineers set their grots alight." The fire, the mate lot told us, had begun in a storeroom on the engine deck, next to the turbines. Lagging on a lubricant feed pipe had suddenly caught ablaze. No one knew how it happened. There was no flame source nearby. Equally inexplicably the sprinklers in the compartment failed to function. Flames spread through air vents into the turbine room. Huge volumes of smoke made it difficult to isolate the source of the blaze. At one point the heat was so intense it had cracked a steam pipe. Fortunately a courageous rating turned off the valve before major damage was done. At one point it had looked as if the blaze might go critical. Luckily the rear bulkheads held and sprinklers in neighbouring compartments kept the heat down and prevented a flashover.

The lights went out, leaving only an orange emergency bulb in the ceiling. From time to time the hatch nearby would clang open, letting in fresh draughts of smoke. We could hear more feet on the ladders, calls over the intercom for a medical team, and the sounds of an injured man being removed to the sick bay.

Meanwhile we still had the patrol vessel to worry about. We had heard over the intercom that the sonar trace was continuing on the same heading. The range was now down to 8000 yards, four nautical miles but after an anxious few minutes it started to open up again. Evidently while the soot-blackened fire parties fought to bring the blaze under control, the sonar operators had continued calmly at their posts, listening to the engine sounds and computing the track.

If the patrol boat was conducting her own sonar search, she must have picked us up by now. We were making enough noise to be heard at twice the range. Maybe the walls of the canyon were confusing the return signal. Or maybe she was hanging back, waiting for an armed helicopter to join the hunt. If we came to periscope depth and stuck up an air mast for ventilation they would spot it on radar.

I was sweating in my survival suit but couldn't take it off. I might need it in a hurry. The lights came back on, which cheered us, but although someone had restored the circuits the ventilation stayed shut down. After a while the air quality became even worse as the hatches below were opened up again. But it was a sign the flames must be finally out. A nauseating cocktail of fumes eddied through the boat until the captain at last gave the order for the air conditioning to be switched on to scrub the atmosphere.

Nobby went out to see what was happening. The submarine was in a filthy state. The lower deck was running with water and foam and powder residue. There were ash and smoke stains on bulkheads and overhead panels. Half a dozen men had been injured, two with serious burns. We had full power available on the turbines again so if necessary we could come up to periscope depth, find room to turn around and make a run for the open sea. At least we weren't going to be frazzled by radiation or poisoned by smoke or drowned!

The launch didn't come any nearer, though. A few minutes later sonar announced that she had broken off the search and was heading away south along the shore in the direction of Rio Grande. Either she had found what she was looking for or else had given up.

Even so the skipper didn't move. For the next two hours we stayed just where we were. His patience was immense. He set his men to work cleaning up the ship, and while they did he waited. For us it was intensely frustrating. All we could do was wait, with nothing to do but speculate over whether the mission was blown. Doug, of course, took out his boredom on the rest of us. Even Kiwi got scratchy, telling him to button his mouth before he got it shut for him permanently.

At nine-thirty half an hour after our planned drop-off time with no sound detected by the sonar, the skipper ordered the tanks blown gently to bring us up to periscope depth. Briefly we stuck an ESM aerial up to check for radar emissions. If there was a helicopter up there still searching we wanted to know about it.

A few minutes later a message came down for Jock saying he was wanted in the operations centre. He was gone some minutes. When he returned he was grim. He shut the door of the cabin.

"This is the position," he said. "The patrol boat has gone. The fire is out. The skipper says his people can't be certain but it looks very like sabotage. An incendiary device inserted behind the lagging of a pipe in the machinery area. Nothing else could explain a fire of such intensity at that location." Every inch of the sub was being searched now for further firebombs, he added.