Shadow Hunter (9 page)

The commander grabbed the journalist's arm.

‘Okay. You got your shot,' he shouted hoarsely into his ear.

The correspondent clamped the headset back on and clipped the microphone pads to his larynx.

‘So, we're okay with that now, yeah?' he asked cautiously.

‘I got new orders. It's his arse gets kicked now, not mine. But I still can't fly over that goddam Russian. But see here! I'm just gonna move up ahead and practise a hover. Now if that ship decides to steam right underneath my hover – that's his problem!'

‘That's real neat!'

The helicopter banked to the left and the nose dipped to accelerate. Five hundred yards ahead the pilot pulled it sharply up into a hover, one hundred feet above the waves. He swung the nose round so that the side door looked directly back at the Soviet ship bearing down on them. The cameraman switched on and adjusted his focus.

The second SH-3 with the stills photographers on board flew parallel to the ship, but turned sharply away when it saw the first machine hovering in its path.

As the ship passed beneath them the correspondent's excitement mounted. The cocooned deck cargo revealed itself indisputably to be what the pilot had said; the wings of jet fighters. As the ship's bridge passed below, dark uniformed figures could be seen waving and gesticulating furiously.

Ten minutes later they landed back on the deck of the
Eisenhower.
The TV crew hurried below to prepare their tapes for transmission to New York by satellite. With help from aircraft recognition manuals provided by the PIO, they concluded the wings were for MiG-29 fighters, aircraft considerably superior to anything the Cubans had at present. They counted twelve individual wings; that meant six fighters.

Admiral Vernon Kritz appeared reluctant to jeopardize the secrecy of his ship's location by allowing the TV and newspaper men to transmit their reports, transmissions which could be detected by Russian satellites and spy planes. But eventually he allowed himself to be persuaded, and the media men set up a small gyro-stabilized satellite dish on the flight deck, in good time for the material to
be turned round for the morning news programmes back home.

* * *

Andrew Tinker caught the early flight to London. Patsy had grudgingly driven him to Plymouth airport after an early breakfast.

She'd scowled for most of the previous evening, after he told her he'd been ordered to take command of
HMS Truculent
so that Philip could be brought home.

‘It's not bloody fair!' she'd railed. ‘Home for three days, and now you're off on patrol again! You'll be gone for weeks!'

She could well be right. He hadn't told her the real reason Philip was being brought back, simply that the Navy took domestic upsets pretty seriously.

‘And so they should,' she'd answered. ‘Damn Sara! If she couldn't have her affairs discreetly, she should've taken up pottery instead!'

At Heathrow, Andrew was met by the driver to Flag Officer Submarines. The black Granada slipped easily through the light Sunday morning traffic to Northwood. Forty-five minutes after touching down, he presented his identity card in the guardroom of the combined NATO and Royal Naval headquarters.

He was directed straight to ‘the hole', the deep underground bunker that houses the operational command. Further identity checks, then he was through the heavy double doors, and down the steps to the Submarine Ops Room.

Flag Officer Submarines was Rear-Admiral Anthony Bourlet, a short, peppery man who had overall command of the Royal Navy's thirty nuclear and diesel-powered attack submarines.

‘Very grateful to you for coming, Andrew,' he welcomed, grabbing him by the arm and leading him into his own small office next to the ops room. ‘Alarming business, this.'

‘We'll probably find when we get him back that it was all in Sara's imagination,' Andrew replied. ‘I can't really believe Phil would do anything daft.'

‘You're an old friend, aren't you?'

‘Since Dartmouth.'

‘Mmmm. Now look. This is what we've arranged. We've signalled Hitchens that he's to rendezvous with a helicopter off the Western Isles at 1600, and that he's to be replaced on board. He's acknowledged the signal, so with a bit of luck the scare'll be over by this evening.

‘You'll leave Northolt in a 125 at 1300 hours for Stornoway. That's where you'll pick up the helicopter. The 125 will wait and bring Hitchens back here. When he's safely in our hands, we'll get the security boys in and find out what's at the bottom of all this. All right so far?'

Andrew looked at his watch. It gave him barely two hours to get briefed on
Truculent
's mission.

‘Fine, sir.'

‘Now . . .'

Bourlet's voice sank lower.

‘What you don't know is that Hitchens was given a special briefing before he left. A secret task for the exercise which is terrifyingly sensitive. The C-in-C shat himself when I told him the Russians had been sniffing round Philip.'

Andrew's eyebrows shot up. Craig had told him of a special mission, but not what it was.

‘You'll know about the new “Moray” mines . . .'

‘Of course. Remotely programmable microprocessors, incredibly clever target selectivity – laid in deep water they launch an underwater guided-missile that can penetrate even the heaviest Soviet double-hull.'

‘Precisely. And at the first threat of war with Russia, and politicians willing, you lot would be told to lay them outside all the main Kola submarine bases.'

Andrew's jaw dropped.

‘And that's Phil's mission?' he asked, stunned.

‘To try it out. To try slipping through their ASW screen, get right up to the Kola Inlet and fire water-shots to simulate laying the mines.'

‘Wheew!'

‘Not the sort of job to give a man who's facing a personal crisis.'

‘You can say that again! A hairy enough job for anybody!'

‘The Yanks are in on it, too. They've tasked one of their
Los Angeles
boats to do the same thing further east, at Gremikha. As I'm sure you realize, the point of doing this in the middle of a big exercise is that the Russians'll probably be running a big ASW screen in the Barents. They'll be looking hard for our boats, and we need to know how good they'd be at finding us if we had to do it for real.'

Andrew nodded. It was almost routine for Allied submarines to probe Soviet waters on intelligence-gathering missions, but such operations were invariably conducted when the Soviets were known to be at a low state of alert. Going in when the Northern Fleet was mounting a fullscale anti-submarine sweep would be another matter.

‘What's the time scale on all this, sir?'

‘Well, there's a cover plan, obviously. He's scheduled to play “blue” in the exercise until Wednesday, and then switch sides. He then has five days supposedly acting on his own, playing “orange”; in reality he has that amount of time to get in to Polyarny and out again. I keep saying “he”, but of course it's “you” now. Think you can do it?'

‘I'll have a bloody good try, sir,' Andrew replied, trying to look more confident than he felt.

‘The key thing is to be damned careful not to get caught. The last thing we want is an international incident with one of our SSNs trapped in a Russian fjord. At the first sign of your being detected – withdraw. Get well away from their territorial waters.'

‘There's one problem, sir. I know about the Moray mines, but I don't know anything about the tactics for them.'

‘No problem.
Truculent
's the trials boat for the weapon system. Paul Spriggs is the WEO on board. Knows the mines inside out. And Tim Pike's the first lieutenant, so you couldn't ask for a better team.'

‘And they know all about the mission?'

‘Umm, well, probably not. Hitchens was alone at the
special session here, and he was told not to brief his crew until the last possible moment. “Need to know”, and all that. There's still a good chance of CINCLANT getting cold feet and calling off the whole caboodle. And of course it's political, this one, too. Number Ten and the White House had to give the okay, in the same way they would in a real “time of tension”. With President McGuire still feeling his way in foreign affairs, he might well pull out.'

Andrew looked at his watch again and gulped. In just a few hours he was due to take command of a boat full of strangers and head north for one of the trickiest patrols of his career. He felt desperately ill-prepared.

‘I'd better look at some charts, and see what you've got in mind, sir.'

‘You certainly had. Come along.'

Admiral Bourlet led Andrew along the subterranean corridor, their rubber-soled shoes squeaking on the polished floor, to the SSO room – Submarine Special Operations.

This was the most secret room at the Northwood headquarters. Only a handful of men and women ever entered it – even its very existence was known to only a handful more.

* * *

Shortly after 10.00am in Washington, the Soviet Ambassador's car drew up outside the State Department at Foggy Bottom, escorted by police outriders, sirens wailing. All morning the television news programmes had been running and re-running the pictures of the Soviet freighter, the close-up shots of the fighter wings carefully cross-edited with file footage of MiG-29 aircraft in action.

The Ambassador was received by the Deputy-Secretary for US-Soviet Relations, the most senior official available at short notice on a Sunday, and ushered to a reception room on the sixth floor.

‘My government has instructed me to protest in the strongest terms,' he began with grim solemnity. ‘The incident in the North Atlantic this morning was outrageous.
A Soviet freighter called
Rostov
, on innocent passage on the high seas, was harassed without provocation by two helicopters from the American nuclear carrier
Dwight D. Eisenhower
. One helicopter passed directly over the ship at mast-top level. It was only by means of a sudden change of course that the captain of the cargo ship was able to avoid a collision. Look. Here, I shall show you . . .'

From his briefcase he pulled out two 10 x 8 black and white prints and placed them on the table. The photographs had been well taken; they showed the deck-der-ricks of the ship with the US Navy helicopter almost touching them and, in the foreground, crewmen on the bridge with arms above their heads as if protecting themselves from an expected collision.

‘My government finds such aggressive behaviour by the United States Navy to be quite incompatible with the more relaxed relationship that has existed between Moscow and Washington in recent years, particularly since it has occurred at the start of Exercise Ocean Guardian, in which your warships will rehearse provocative NATO war plans almost within sight of the Soviet homeland. I am instructed to inform you that General Secretary Savkin is deeply disturbed by this event, and will not let the matter rest.'

The Deputy-Secretary feigned polite indifference to cover his embarrassment at being unbriefed on the affair.

‘Thank you for your visit, Mr Ambassador. We shall look into this, and will give our answer to the matters raised in due course. May I express the hope that this incident doesn't prevent you enjoying the rest of this sunny Sunday, sir?'

He stood up and extended his hand. The Ambassador took it without a word, then gathered up his briefcase and turned for the door.

‘Have a nice day, sir,' the Deputy-Secretary breathed to the Ambassador's back as he left the building.

Outside on the pavement, a handful of newsmen had gathered, including two TV crews. The Ambassador's press spokesman moved amongst them, handing out copies of the official protest and the photographs.

The Deputy-Secretary chewed at a thumb-nail. It was a set-up, he was sure of it. He'd watched the morning newscasts; the networks had done well to get their video on the air so fast. But the Soviets had matched that speed with their stills. To do that, the Russian ship must have been supplied with a professional photographer, a darkroom, a facsimile machine and a satellite terminal. Not the normal equipment of a Soviet merchantman, surely?

The Navy had walked into something. Goddam military and their club feet! And the Defence Intelligence Agency still hadn't answered the request for information that he'd lobbed in as soon as he saw the pictures. He had some 'phoning to do.

* * *

Dr Tatiana Gareyeva's apartment, in one of Moscow's anonymous residential areas, had a sad air about it and smelled stale. Ornaments on the shelves and tables had been collected over the years for sentimental reasons rather than for their intrinsic attractiveness. The furniture looked cheap; it had outlived its initial purpose to be used as a stop-gap until she could create a new home – with a husband.

Tatiana was over forty now, and time was running out. Standing by the window looking out on the bleak concrete landscape where thousands lived in similarly cramped homes, she turned to look at Vice-Admiral Feliks Astashenkov, slumped in an armchair watching television.

He was no use to her any more. Any dream she may have had of making their relationship permanent had long since evaporated. He was a hindrance to her now; his sudden surprise visits a few times a year would be an embarrassment one day if she ever met a real suitor.

She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror on the wall opposite. Her hair was flecked with grey; her eyes which once had sparkled blue now looked grey as well. Her face, once pretty, had filled to a dull squareness; her body was thickening towards an eventual shapelessness.

And Feliks? Age had not improved him either; he was
developing the heavy jowls and flabby waistline that came from the excess of good living since his promotion to Vice-Admiral.

When they'd first met, they'd loved each other with a passion. She'd almost convinced him to leave his iceberg of a wife and marry her instead. But the whiff of promotion had come his way – and his wife's brother was on the General Staff. . . .