Shadow Hunter (23 page)

Two years later he'd been told to join
HMS Truculent;
he'd thought of asking for a different appointment, but without a good reason, a man would damage his career that way. Anyway, TAS Officer was exactly the job he'd wanted.

When he'd first joined the boat, Hitchens had shown no sign of suspicion. Sebastian had relaxed, believing his secret was safe. Until the start of this patrol. On his return from shore leave this time, Commander Hitchens' attitude to him had changed radically.

Now the whole boat was in turmoil. Because of him, so he believed. Sebastian pressed his fists against the deck-head. The steel seemed to crush downwards.

How much had Sara told him? Everything they'd done that night?

He'd never seen her again – hadn't dared to. For months she'd haunted his thoughts. He'd never been so in love before.

He almost wished Hitchens would come out with it. Tell him what he thought of him and have done with it. But it was as if Hitchens had decided Cordell had ceased to exist. That look in his eye was of a man betrayed by his closest friends. A man whose mind had been turned by it.

He ought to warn them; tell them what he knew. But what if he were imagining it? Supposing there really were secret orders? He'd have made a fool of himself. It'd go on his file.

Best to hold his tongue for the time being. Just one more day. See what developed. But should he wait, when the whole ship's company might be heading for appalling danger?

He banged his fists against his head. He had to tell someone. He'd talk to Pike. That's what a first lieutenant was for.

Philip Hitchens checked in the small mirror that his hair was groomed. Doubt plagued him; he panicked even, at the thought of what he'd taken on.

The day ahead would be critical. No more wavering. He had to weigh his options – decide what to do.

He looked long and hard at his reflection. The strain was less noticeable now. Two nights of deep, drug-induced sleep had worked their beneficial effect.

He'd apologized to Pike for not telling him about the tablets. But he hadn't realized they'd put him so far under. He'd imagined he'd still be rouseable in an emergency.

His crew had done well handling that
Victor,
though he'd torn a strip off them for not waking him at the time. That was when Pike had rounded on him in the control room.

He'd realized then how close he was to wrecking everything. He'd taken stock rapidly, wrenching his emotions back under control. Now, after a second night of deep sleep, he felt ready.

Calm and consistent; that's how he must appear to his men if they weren't to doubt his authority. Whatever the outcome of his mission, he needed them to obey his orders without question.

Taking a deep breath to steady himself, he left his cabin and stepped into the wardroom for breakfast. Seated at the near end of the table was a short, stocky figure, shovelling bacon, egg and sausages through a small gap in his bushy black beard.

‘Stoking up, Peter?'

‘It's all fuel, sir,' answered the marine engineer officer, Lieutenant Commander Peter Claypole. ‘Body's just like a machine.'

‘Standard, sir?' asked the steward.

‘Yes, please,' answered Philip. ‘I can just about manage it this morning.'

‘Standard' was egg, bacon, sausage, tomato and fried bread.

Further down the table sat Sub-Lieutenant Smallbone, the radio officer, and Lieutenant Cordell.

‘Are you going on or just off watch, Sebastian?' Philip asked, pouring himself a cup of tea.

‘Off – I mean, just going on, sir,' Cordell stammered.

There's something wrong with Cordell, Philip thought. The boy blushed whenever he spoke to him. He hoped he wasn't gay.

‘This morning – and this affects both of you lads – we need a SSIXS. Scheduled at 1130, isn't it, Hugo?'

‘That's right, sir.'

SSIXS stood for Ship to Shore Information Exchange Satellite.

‘We'll need to take extra care this far north, Sebastian. The Russians are everywhere.'

‘Yes, sir. I know that.'

The steward placed the greasy breakfast on the table. What would Sara say about all that cholesterol?

For a split second nothing happened.

Sara. Oh, Jesus!

The hurt hit him like a gloved fist. Eyes closed against the pain, he swayed and gripped the table.

‘Everythin' okay, sir?'

The steward's voice sounded distant, as if deep in a tunnel.

From the far end of the table Sebastian and Hugo stared at Hitchens open-mouthed.

‘Back to the stoke-hole,' muttered the marine engineer, noticing nothing and heading for the door.

‘Yes . . . fine,' Philip managed to reply.

He forced down a sip of tea, and felt better for it.

He gripped the knife and fork and began to eat, forcing the food down. He mustn't give way like that again.

‘If you'll excuse us, sir . . .'

Cordell and Smallbone were heading for the door.

‘Of course.'

Lieutenant Commander Peter Claypole was brushing his teeth in his cabin, when the phone call came from the chief of the watch, aft. Trouble with a pump in the reactor's secondary cooling system.

Claypole looked like the popular idea of a submariner, stocky and bearded. He was a man of routine; three meals a day, regular as clockwork and never a problem with his health. Bodies were like machines; keep them fuelled and maintained and everything should run smoothly. He thought of submarines in much the same way.

But now a pump was playing up.

Passing through the control room, he glanced at the dials on the power panel. They were doing thirty-one knots.

‘I may have to slow you down, Tim,' he warned.

Pike had been in command most of the night, and looked weary.

‘Trouble?'

‘Maybe.'

‘Serious?'

‘Let you know.'

With that he was on his way. Claypole never used two words where one would do.

He reached the tunnel over the reactor and pulled the lever on the airlock door. Before entering, he checked his radiation monitor card was clipped to his belt.

He hurried down the tunnel that led aft. Beneath his feet was the reactor compartment with its primary cooling circuits and steam generators.

Through the second door, and he was into the machine-spaces. He entered the manoeuvring room, the reactor control centre, where every aspect of the power plant and propulsion system was monitored. His eye went straight to the gauges showing the temperature in the pumps. The needle was high for pump three in the number two steam loop.

‘Where's the chief of the watch?' Claypole asked.

‘Three deck, sir.'

Logical. That's where the secondary circuit pumps were. He gripped the rails of the ladder and slid below.

The secondary circuit carried superheated steam from the reactor compartment through the turbines that drove the propulsor and the electrical generator. After the steam had released its energy it passed through a sea-water condenser; then, as water, was pumped back into the reactor heat-exchanger to start the process all over again.

Two deck. One more ladder, and he'd be there.

CPO Gostyn was crouched beside the silver-grey pump. He wore headphones connected to sensors built into the pump casing, listening to confirm his suspicion that the grinding noise from inside was getting steadily worse.

They were two of a kind, Claypole and Gostyn, yet separated by rank and status. Both men lived for their machines, knew the workings of them intimately. But Claypole, with his engineering degree ranked as an officer; Gostyn with his ‘O' levels and an engineering diploma would probably never rise above warrant officer.

Gostyn removed his headphones and passed them across. ‘Bearing, sir. Almost certain.' In a war, machine noise could be the death of them all. The smallest extra vibration or rumble could transmit itself to the water outside and pinpoint their position for an enemy.

Claypole pressed the phones to his ears.

‘Not much doubt. Bloody dockyard was supposed to have checked that last time we were in!'

They both knew the fault probably lay with a microscopic flaw in the steel used in the bearing, but it helped to have someone to blame.

‘We'll have to shut it down,' Claypole decided. ‘If we leave it running, it'll seize. Captain'll go bananas.'

‘Can't be helped, can it, sir? Not our fault.'

There were four pumps in each coolant loop, mounted on rubber rafts to absorb noise. Shutting down one pump meant the loss of about five knots.

‘He's not going to like it. Wherever it is we're going, he's in one hell of a hurry to get there. What d'you think? If he won't play ball, how long can we keep it running before it seizes?'

Gostyn shrugged.

‘Fuck knows! If the fucking bearing breaks up, he'll fucking
'ave
to slow down!'

Claypole smiled. He couldn't have put it better himself.

‘Right. Wish me luck.'

In the control room Tim Pike was desperate to get his head down, but had hung on to hear what the marine engineer had to say.

‘Don't baffle me with jargon, Peter,' he began. ‘Words of one syllable please. Two at the most.'

‘Got a duff bearing in a pump. Simple enough for you?'

‘And you're proposing. . . .?'

‘Shut it down. Means you'll lose a few knots.'

‘That'll knock us back on our schedule. Captain won't like it. Do you have to?'

‘The bearing could go at any time. If it does you'll be down to twenty-five knots anyway. Shut it down now and you'll still have it in reserve – turn it on again if you really need it.'

‘Sod it! We'll need to talk to the captain. This is his mission we're on. Only he knows our deadline. You'd better come with me.'

At that moment Philip entered the control room.

‘Problem, Tim?'

‘Trouble with a pump, sir. MEO wants to shut it down. We'd lose five knots.'

‘We can't do that! We need the speed! And
why
is there trouble with a pump?' His voice began to rise. ‘They're not supposed to need attention from one refit to the next. If one of your men's fouled it up, Mr Claypole, I'll have him on a charge!'

Philip's eyes blazed.

‘Nobody's fouled anything up, sir,' Claypole bristled. ‘Leastways, not any of
my
men. There's a bearing that's noisy and overheating. Ship's engineers don't have access to them. Dockyard job. But it must be shut down.'

‘Don't tell me what
must
be done! You're being too bloody cautious, MEO. If we were at war you wouldn't be talking about stopping a pump.'

‘I bloody would, sir!' Claypole growled.

Hitchens flinched. He could smell mutiny.

The men were staring. He suddenly realized he'd been shouting. Careful! He swallowed hard.

‘All right, Peter. What's the percentage chance of that pump failing?'

‘Oh, it'll fail. Hundred per cent. The only question is when. The bearing's got a rumble. Low-frequency. Probably not bad enough yet to be heard outside the hull. But it'll get worse. Could go very quick. If the bearing breaks up and bits of metal get into the lubricating system, then we could write the whole pump off.'

‘What's the chance of failure in the next forty-eight hours?' Hitchens pressed.

‘God knows!'

‘Give me your considered judgement. You're an engineer, aren't you?'

Claypole frowned, as if deep in thought. Sod the bloody CO! Why couldn't he just accept that something was wrong and let them put it right? He tried to remember a previous incident that would give him a clue. He'd never heard of a bearing actually disintegrating on one of these pumps. Still, there was always a first time.

‘Outright failure? I suppose the chance of that is low,' the MEO conceded. ‘But deterioration, with the pump overheating and the noise level becoming detectable outside? The chance is higher. Much higher.'

‘In forty-eight hours?'

‘Can't guarantee anything, sir,' Claypole concluded sullenly.

‘We'll risk it. We have to,' the commander decided. ‘You can have a couple of knots if it'll help.'

‘Every little bit . . .'

‘Twenty-eight knots then, Tim.'

‘Aye, aye, sir,' Pike acknowledged as Hitchens turned to the chart table.

‘And I want reports every hour, MEO.'

Lieutenant Sebastian Cordell had just taken over the watch from Nick Cavendish, and was leaning over the chart. He eased to one side as Hitchens appeared next to him. Their course had brought them closer to the Norwegian coast, but they were still one hundred and fifty miles west of the nearest land. The Lofoten Islands were well to the south. Beneath them the ocean plunged two-thousand-five-hundred metres to total darkness, and a sea-bed of ooze and rock.

‘ETA abeam North Cape?' Hitchens asked. ‘At twenty-eight knots?'

Cordell picked up his brass-handled dividers, set them against the latitude scale and measured out the distance.

‘About three-hundred-and-thirty miles to run . . .'

He pulled the calculator towards him and punched at the keys.

‘2200 tonight, sir. And that allows for some slow running for comms.'

‘Mmmm.' Hitchens looked reassured. He picked up the dividers and measured the distance for himself.

‘We'll be crossing the edge of the continental shelf in about four hours. You'd better start plotting sea-bed soundings. When we get round the Cape there'll be Sovs everywhere. Won't be able to poke a mast up to get a satellite fix.'

‘Yes, sir.'

Navigating by reading the topography of the ocean floor was a difficult art dependant on finding large features, like underwater mountains. There weren't too many of those in the shallow waters of the Barents Sea.

Hitchens pulled out the chart showing the northern tip of Norway and the western half of the Soviet Kola peninsula.