Mike brought the plane to a halt, went through the power-down procedure and opened the door.
Meena remained sitting in the seat, her eyes fixed on the pictures on her camera.
‘What’s up? Did you leave the lens cap on?’
‘I’ll be OK in a minute.’
For the first time Meena began to realize what she had just seen. London was wrecked. She’d grown up there, built a career there. She didn’t live there now, but so many people she knew did. Many of her favourite places were there: shops, theatres, cafés, restaurants, museums. The landmarks of London were the landmarks of her life. With a heavy heart she climbed down from the plane.
‘Miss?’
A man in army fatigues was walking out of the hangar. He had a green helmet under his arm with the name DOREK handpainted on it in white letters, and seemed to be looking straight at her.
‘Yes?’
‘Are those pictures of the disaster area?’ His accent was Polish.
‘Yes, they are.’
‘The emergency services would be very interested in them. We need to make a map of the disaster area and any information at all is being considered of value at present.’
She sighed and held her camera up. ‘You’re welcome to them, if you can find a printer.’
There was not a helicopter in sight at the Royal Naval Air Station at Yeovilton. The rain fell on a mass of empty tarmac. Junior communications officer Lieutenant William Beaumont had never seen it empty like that. Every single heli was out on a mission. And that meant the communications room was stretched to the limit.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Beaumont to his captain, ‘we don’t have enough bandwidth to send that message at present.’
The captain needed to get his message to General Chambers in Hendon. ‘Just find a way to send it, Lieutenant, it’s top priority.’
‘With respect, sir,’ said Beaumont, ‘all the satellites are fully in use.’ He indicated his workstation, where he was tracking all the helicopters that had been dispatched to deal with the emergency.
The captain clearly didn’t believe him. He sighed, then bent down and hit a couple of keys on Beaumont’s workstation. The display changed. The lieutenant was annoyed but there was nothing he could do about it: the captain was his superior.
The captain’s finger stabbed the screen. ‘There. That channel’s free. Send it on that.’
‘You can’t use that channel, sir,’ said Beaumont. ‘It has to be kept clear for vital defence communications.’
‘This is a vital communication, Lieutenant. Now just send it. That’s an order.’
In the cold rolling waters of the Atlantic Ocean, a black shape emerged. It looked like a shark’s fin, but much bigger. A radio antenna rose slowly out of the top, in a tube camouflaged with white and black so that it blended into the sea and sky around it.
The object was speeding through the water, the waves closing over it as it went. When the waves rolled away, a little more became visible — the top of something much bigger, long and dark: a hundred and fifty metres long — longer than a football pitch. It was HMS Vanquish, a Vanguard-class nuclear submarine.
The captain stood on the bridge, or conn, hands on hips, bathed in red light. It was dark and cramped there and it smelled of oil and sweat. The walls of instruments twinkled with coloured lights and glowing screens. It was also noisy with radio static, the steady bleep of the sonar and the thrum of the propeller that drove the craft through the water.
The helmsman was watching a readout of the sub’s depth. ‘We’re on the surface now, sir.’
‘Antenna is deployed and active,’ said the communications officer.
The submarine had several systems of communication. There was the VLF antenna by the conning tower. VLF stood for Very Low Frequency, the only type of radio signals that could penetrate water. This was how the sub kept in contact with its commanders in the UK. Because the frequency was so low, it could not carry audio signals like voices, so most orders and routine transmissions from the UK were sent as encrypted text. Then there was a buoyant wire antenna — an aerial several hundred metres long that floated up on a cable like a tail and allowed the sub to pick up transmissions without surfacing. And, for use in special circumstances, there was an erectable mast in the top fin. To use this mast, the sub had to be able to surface.
At the moment the Vanquish was testing all three systems. Every four hours it received a standard message from its commanders in the Admiralty; an all-clear to let them know that all was well in the UK. The transmission was top priority and was never missed.
But the last one had failed to come through.
‘Commence testing,’ said the captain.
‘Testing now, sir.’
The communications officer sent a test signal and monitored the three receivers for the results. They were all fine. He turned round. ‘Sir, all communications equipment is fully operational. There is no reason why we should have missed the transmission.’
‘Thank you, Officer.’ The captain unhooked a microphone attached to his command post by a curly cable and spoke into it. ‘Computer room, this is the captain. Are there any malfunctions on the communications equipment?’
‘No malfunctions, sir. All systems are working correctly.’
The captain slipped the microphone back to his command station. He was aware that the eyes of all the crew members were on him.
‘Communications Officer, is there anything else we can do to re-establish communication?’
‘No, sir. But sir — I’m picking up radio broadcasts saying London is submerged. There may have been some kind of natural disaster there.’
The captain thought. ‘Gentlemen, we have our protocols and we must follow them. We have strict instructions on what to do if our all-clear transmission is missed. That is so that if there is an emergency, High Command know exactly what we will do. We will have to risk exposing our position by sending a signal to High Command. Communications Officer, send the emergency message.’
The communications officer was ready. He rapidly typed the message into his keyboard and watched the thermometer bar on the screen as it was fired off into the ether. ‘Message successfully sent, sir.’
The message sent, they could submerge once more. ‘Dive to three hundred metres. Full speed ahead.’
‘Aye-aye, Captain.’
They all felt the pressure in their ears as the ship began to submerge. There was another feeling too: a deep shudder as the propeller bit into the sea. With a Chinagraph pencil the navigator made notes about their course on a Perspex map.
The captain unhooked the intercom again and spoke to the ship. ‘This is the captain. Our routine all-clear transmission from High Command has been missed and we have had to break cover by contacting them. This has exposed our presence in these waters. We are now in a vulnerable position as we could be targeted by enemy action. We do not know the reason why High Command has missed the routine all-clear transmission. Until we contact them, this boat is in a state of emergency. Everyone will work double shifts and all privileges are cancelled.’
Lieutenant Roberts was coming off duty in the computer room and intending to grab a bite to eat in the mess. Now he hurried down faster than usual. Privileges cancelled meant no watching movies or time off. What on earth was going on?
The cramped mess was crowded when he got there. Midshipmen, oilers and officers were all trying to grab a quick bite before going straight back on duty.
Roberts grabbed some rather grey-looking stew and a couple of rolls and sat down opposite Andrews, a missiles engineer, who was trying to shovel soup and a sandwich into his mouth as fast as humanly possible. They were also discussing the captain’s announcement.