“Right,” Costas said. “Time to saddle up. You guys deserve some R & R.”
While he and the two crewmen went aft to disengage the DSRV, Jack went over the next stage in his plan, the final act that would extinguish Aslan’s evil empire once and for all.
When Costas returned from the escape trunk, Jack was seated behind the weapons panel in the fire control alley. It was one of the few areas to have escaped damage.
“What are you doing?” Costas enquired.
“I have a score to settle.” Jack glanced at him with cold eyes. “Call it loss adjustment.”
Costas looked intrigued if a little dumbfounded. “You’re the boss.”
“Leaving Aslan’s headquarters intact is asking for trouble. There’ll be plenty of good intentions but neither the Georgians nor the Turks will touch it for fear of escalating the civil war and provoking the Russians. And we’re not talking about just another warlord. The place is a tailor-made terrorist centre, a dream for the al Qaeda operatives who must already have had Aslan’s number and been waiting for just this kind of opportunity.” Jack paused, thinking of Peter Howe. “And this is personal. I owe it to an old friend.”
Jack activated the two LCD screens in front of him and ran a series of operational checks.
“Katya gave me a briefing before we left. Apparently even junior intelligence officers of her grade were trained to shoot these weapons. In a nuclear holocaust they might be the last survivor in a submarine or bunker. All systems were self-contained and designed to be operable in extreme conditions. Katya reckoned the back-up computer would still be functional even after all this time.”
“You’re not going to fire a cruise missile,” Costas breathed.
“Damn right I am.”
“What about the works of art?”
“Mostly in the domestic complex. It’s a risk I have to take.” Jack quickly surveyed the monitors. “I checked after we defused those warheads. Number four tube is occupied by a complete all-up Kh-55 Granat ready to fire. The canister is still sealed by the membrane pressure cap. Eight metres long, three thousand kilometre range, mach point seven zero cruising speed, one thousand kilogramme direct-impact fused HE charge. Basically a Soviet version of the Tomahawk land-attack missile.”
“Guidance system?”
“Similar terrain-contour-matching software and GPS to the Tomahawk. Fortunately the course is a direct over-sea route so no need to program in evasive tactics. I have the exact target co-ordinates so we won’t need the seeker head and search pattern system. I’ll be able to bypass most of the complex programming procedures.”
“But we’re too deep for a launch,” Costas protested.
“That’s where you come in. I want you to operate the emergency blow valves. As soon as we reach twenty metres you give the order to fire.”
Costas slowly shook his head, a crooked smile creasing his ravaged features. Without a word he took up position in front of the ballast control panel. Jack remained hunched over the console for a few moments and then looked up with grim determination.
“Developing fire-control solution now.”
Their movements gave no hint of the momentous force they were about to unleash. Jack was fully focused on the monitor in front of him, his fingers tapping a sequence of commands with brief pauses while he awaited each response. After inputting the necessary presets, a pattern of lines and dots appeared on the screen. In a typical operational scenario the solution would represent a best-fit search area, but with the destination coordinates known, the screen simply showed a linear projection of range and course with the target pinpointed.
“I’ve loaded a mission profile into the TERCOM computer and am warming up the missile,” Jack announced. “Initiating firing sequence now.”
He swivelled his chair to the fire control console, sweeping the crust of precipitate from the launch control panel to reveal the red firing button. He checked that the electronics were active and looked across at Costas behind the buoyancy control station. Jack needed no affirmation that he was doing the right thing, but the sight of his friend’s bludgeoned face hardened his resolve even further. The two men nodded silently at each other before Jack turned back towards the screen.
“Engage!”
Costas reached up and pulled the two levers down with a resounding clank. At first nothing happened, but then a deafening hiss of high-pressure gas seemed to fill every pipe above them. Moments later it was joined by a rumbling like far-off thunder as the rush of compressed air purged the ballast tanks between the two layers of hull casing.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, there was movement, a creaking and groaning that rose in a shrieking crescendo and seemed to whip from one end of the boat to the other. It was as if some long-dormant creature were stirring awake, a sleeping giant grudgingly roused after an eternity of undisturbed slumber.
Suddenly the bow tilted upwards at an alarming angle, throwing the two men sideways. There was an ear-splitting wrenching sound as the remains of the propeller and rudder assembly sheared away.
“Hold on!” Costas shouted. “She’s about to go!”
With a final screech the stem lurched upwards and nine thousand tons of submarine were free. The depth gauge in front of Costas began to cycle through with alarming rapidity.
“On my mark!” he yelled. “Eighty metres…sixty metres…forty…thirty…shoot!”
Jack punched the red button and there was a sound like a vacuum extractor from the front of the submarine. The launch system automatically opened the hydraulic door of the tube and set off an explosive charge that blew the missile into the water. Just metres in front of the hull the booster rocket thrust the missile with colossal force towards the surface, its course now set for a deadly rendezvous away to the north-east.
On the bridge of Sea Venture Tom York stood on crutches beside the captain and the helmsman. They had been watching the last of the Seahawks as they lifted off from the island on their way to a maximum security compound for terrorist prisoners in Georgia. Now their attention was focused on Vultura, its hull low in the water where Jack’s explosive had mangled the stern. They had just despatched three Zodiacs with twin 90 hp outboards to tow the hulk further offshore above the deep-sea canyon.
As York glanced back at the island, his eye was suddenly caught by a disturbance on the sea about a kilometre away. For a moment it looked like the shock waves from an underwater explosion. Before he had time to alert the others a spear of steel burst through the waves, its exhaust kicking up a vast orb of spray like the plume from a rocket launch. Thirty metres up it tilted lazily and hung motionless for a second while the burnt-out booster ejected and the wings folded out. Then the turbofan ignited with a thunderous roar and the missile streaked off on a level trajectory towards the east, soon reaching high subsonic as it skimmed the waves like a fast-receding fireball.
Seconds later a vast eruption turned all eyes on Sea Venture back to the sea. Kazbek broke surface like a mighty whale, its bow rising clean out of the water and then flopping down with an immense crash. As the huge black shape settled into the waves, the only evidence of its prolonged immersion was a faint yellowing on some parts of the casing and the damage to the stern quarter. For a brief moment until it settled underwater they had seen the circular hole where the EH-4 membrane had ripped off, the torpedo room now flooded but sealed off behind a bulkhead by Costas. The sheer size of the submarine was overwhelming, an awesome image of one of the most lethal war machines ever devised.