Having been instructed to each plug in a set of headphones, they pulled them to their ears to hear the sound of radio chatter. Hornsby continued. ‘What you’re hearing is communications from the navy task force, out in the Med, off Pathos. For the past few weeks they have been involved in the evacuation of British citizens. We’ve been having some fun with them. Our Lightnings have been testing their defence radars.’
They sat in the chairs, listening to the broadcasts. These were mostly concerning the communication between the Wessex helicopters taking refugees to and from the SBAs, but the matter that had alerted John Hornsby could now easily be heard. One of the ships was attempting to hail an unidentified submarine, which had suddenly appeared on their scopes.
Rowse was then distracted by a movement coming from outside the plane.
‘Excuse me gentlemen, but I think we have some company.’
Chapter 29
Swan looked out of the window to see a jeep, flying a UN pennant, slowly moving towards them from the terminal building. There were three occupants. Swan wondered who they could be.
As the vehicle got nearer, Swan could now clearly make out the dark skin of the passenger in the front seat. Hornsby climbed out of his seat, walked towards the exit and threw open the door. He saw a big uniformed officer opening the passenger door of the vehicle and locked eyes with him.
‘Squadron Leader Hornsby?’ The man saluted on the positive nod Hornsby gave him. ‘My name is Major Ramesh Singh. I am the base commander of the United Nations forces in Cyprus.’
The Punjabi officer paused to survey the big aircraft in front of him. He smiled appreciatively. ‘This is a fine aircraft. I spent many days in my youth watching your Lancaster bombers fly from an airfield near my home in Rawalpindi.’
Hornsby reminded him the Shackleton was a direct descendant of the famous World War 2 bomber. ‘What can I do for you, Major?’
The major suddenly took on a more formal tone. ‘I have understanding you are planning to fly it back to Akrotiri, this morning.’
Hornsby nodded. ‘That is correct, Major,’ he lied.
The major shrugged. ‘In that case, I came to warn you Turkish forces are positioned just beyond the perimeter to the north, and Greek forces are on the south side.’
Hornsby informed him of the checkpoints they had to go through to get here and how they had managed to get through them. The major laughed briefly, before returning to his serious tone. ‘We have had a number of mortar attacks over the last few days. Both forces want this airfield and if the ceasefire breaks, all hell could unleash here. I am also fearing that should you attempt to fly out, you could be fired upon. Our reconnaissance has detected these forces have anti-aircraft guns, probably radar-controlled. They could use them against your plane.’
Hornsby had suddenly been presented with an excuse not to fly that plane. ‘In that case major, I’ll talk with my crew and make a decision whether to fly or not.’
He offered the officer a tour of the old plane.
‘I’m afraid on this occasion, I have to decline. I am late for an important meeting in Nicosia with the Turkish and Greek commanders. Some other time, perhaps?’ The major saluted and climbed back into the jeep. Hornsby watched as it headed back to towards the terminal, then he re-entered the aircraft.
He explained to the others the nature of the conversation and, more importantly, their lucky break in coming up with an excuse not to have to fly. Swan then held out the headphones for him. While the pilot was outside, he had continued to monitor the transmissions.
‘You’d better listen to this, John. Things are not sounding good with this submarine.’
Hornsby took the headphones. Placing them on his head, he listened carefully to the communication.
‘This doesn’t sound good.’
Handing them back, Hornsby climbed back into the pilot’s seat to fiddle with some dials for the old radio. Suddenly, he started reminiscing about the days when he used to listen to the messages coming through about Soviet submarines, picked up on the radar of patrol ships in the Atlantic or off the Cornish coast.
Assuming the navy boys were still having trouble hailing this submerged submarine, his suspicions were raised as he recalled his experiences back in those days. What could this mean? Could it be Russian, sent to monitor the task force? Perhaps it had miscalculated its position, and was now trying to evade the ships above for calmer waters.
Hornsby tuned the frequency for a better reception. But again, there was no word from this mysterious vessel.
Seeing how concerned the RAF pilot was looking, Swan broke the uneasy silence. ‘What is it, John?’
Hornsby snapped out of his deep concentration on the signal to acknowledge him. ‘What? Oh, I’m not sure, Alex. There seems to be a problem with this sub. It’s not responding to the navy radio operator. Plug in the set on the plotting desk and have a listen.’
Swan took the headphones and held one to his ear, listening carefully to a voice inside them. ‘Unidentified submarine, this is Her Majesty’s Royal Navy ship, HMS Amersham, please respond. You are showing on our scopes being north west of our location, steering a head on course for our flagship. Please identify yourselves — over.’
Swan listened to the static response, then heard the radio operator repeat his message.
‘Sounds like the navy boys have got themselves a problem.’
They were joined by Rowse and Reynolds, who had finished their brief tour of the rear cabin. ‘What’s happening, gents?’ Rowse enquired.
Swan turned to him. ‘It seems there is a submarine shadowing our task force. The navy have been trying to make contact, but it’s not answering.’
The four men listened, as the action played out in their headsets. The message from the frigate, came through again. Swan drew a possible conclusion. ‘Is it a Greek boat, I wonder?’
‘Or even a Turk sub?’ added Reynolds.
‘Maybe it has a fault of some kind with its radio?’ Rowse suggested.
Hornsby shook his head. ‘No idea, chaps. Whatever it is, the navy won’t be tolerating the no response from it much longer and will threaten action.’
They listened some more, all mesmerised by what was unfolding out at sea. Rowse suddenly had an idea. ‘I take it there’s a Nimrod at Akrotiri?’
Hornsby explained the Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft, the submarine-hunter that had succeeded the aircraft they were now sitting in, was currently in for the scheduled overhaul of its four Rolls Royce Spey turbofan engines, so was presently out of action.
‘The nearest replacement is back in Gibraltar, and would take almost three hours to get here.’
Rowse leant forward. ‘So, you’re saying there’s no sub-hunter in Cyprus right now?’
Hornsby paused. ‘Actually Jack, there is. There’s us!’
‘But we haven’t got any weapons,’ observed Rowse.’
As Hornsby listened some more to the broadcast, he glanced around the consoles. Suddenly, he remembered something important about this particular Shackleton. Just above the throttles was a raised panel with three evenly-spaced switches and above them, in white printed letters on black tape, were the initials ALISS.
He let out a cry. ‘Of course!’
The other three men looked at him, wondering why he had suddenly become excited.
‘This kite is fitted with the experimental ALISS package,’ he announced.
Swan was puzzled. ‘And what’s ALISS?’
Hornsby then explained. ‘ALISS stands for acoustic library identification of submarine signatures. It was tested on a few Shacks during the early sixties. It enables the sonar to track and identify, then log the unique sound of every sub and, if a new one is discovered, it is identified, then added to the library.’