In the Ops Room the Air Chief Marshal spoke to the command centre. ‘We have to keep the two Moroccan fighters interested in Golden Sundancer and looking in the wrong place for about twenty minutes. Get the Harrier pilot to engage the two fighters in conversation and to tell them that there are British nationals amongst the hostages on board – and that they should shadow the motor vessel. I repeat, we’ve got to keep them looking in the wrong place! The dinghy and life rafts won’t show up on their radar, so they will be safe until the rain clears and the planes fly directly overhead.’
The seconds passed by. The Moroccan pilot would by now have Golden Sundancer on visual. What would he do? He had been warned that there were hostages on board. At 48-50 knots she could outrun anything that the Moroccan Navy possessed. A further command was heard.
‘Stop or I will open fire!’
‘Northrop Tiger, come in Northrop Tiger,’ said the Harrier pilot. ‘Be advised that there are British Nationals on board… Do not engaged !’
In the rainswept dinghy, the commander leant across to Jim. ‘If you hear any cannon fire, please push your little red button. The pilot will think it’s all his doing.’
There was silence and then a further command to ‘Heave to’ was heard. Golden Sundancer carried on regardless. In the distance there was the distinctive sound of a short burst of gunfire. No doubt the fighter pilot had aimed across the bow.
Jim pressed the little red button. Seconds later the deep boom and shockwave of the explosion reached the dinghy. He squinted through the rain, but could see nothing.
The radio fell silent.
Back at the command centre there had been initial consternation when the pilot had opened fire and seconds later Golden Sundancer had literally disappeared from the Nimrod’s screens.
‘Oh my God!’ the intelligence officer standing beside the team leader was heard to say. He’d just arrived back on duty and had missed out on the recent shenanigans.
Over the speaker came the voice of the Northrop Tiger’s pilot. He was calling up helicopter support.
The stern voice of the Harrier pilot meanwhile was demanding to know what the hell the Northrop Tiger pilot thought he was up to.
Meanwhile the Eurocopter on board the frigate Mohammed V had taken off to investigate. The sky was going to get busy and the nuclear submarine still had to make its pickup.
‘Right,’ said the chief in the command centre to the Nimrod, ‘Where exactly is our Harrier relative to the helicopter?’
‘She’ll be there in fifteen minutes and the Eurocopter will be there two minutes later.’
‘Excellent.’
Meanwhile the Harrier’s pilot was demanding that the two Moroccan fighters keep looking for survivors until the helicopter arrived.
In the rainswept dinghy, the commander was still dazed. The swell that had hardly inconvenienced Golden Sundancer was making life uncomfortable for those in the little open-topped inflatable, which was barely making four knots. Slowly, the commander calculated that they would get back to the life rafts in twelve minutes and the submarine would surface just minutes later.
The Nimrod continued to pick up the radio traffic between the Moroccan fighter pilots and their control centre. There was consternation. The Northrop Tiger pilot was describing the size of the explosion.
Jim had placed his explosive charges next to the cool box, which housed the four thermobaric Kornet missiles, which in turn weren’t far from the main fuel tanks full of diesel vapour. The overall effect was impressive. One moment Golden Sundancer had been there, the next she’d literally disintegrated into a fireball. Her debris had vaporised. When the flames and smoke cleared there was no sign of her.
A minute later the second Moroccan jet fighter arrived to find nothing but clear ocean. The presence of the RAF Harrier fighter thirteen minutes away, bearing down on their two planes, was causing concern at the Moroccan control centre.
Rafi listened to the colonel who was talking to the RAF command centre. ‘We have the makings of a major diplomatic incident if they piece together what’s really going on under their noses. Tell the Harrier to keep talking and to get them to stay where they are…’
The contents of the Chancellor’s third coloured folder grabbed Rafi’s attention. It was as though he’d been through the Treasury’s ‘good ideas box’ and was bringing them out, one at a time.
The Chancellor started to outline a new corporate structure. ‘The not-for-profit corporation will primarily be used for public sector bodies.’ His voice was clear and authoritative.
‘The structure of a not-for-profit corporation will be similar to that of a public limited company,’ he added in a businesslike manner. ‘Just like a PLC, it will have a Memorandum and Articles of Association. The difference will be that this corporation will have custodianholders instead of shareholders. The custodianholders will have limited liability, as is the case in companies limited by guarantee. The custodianholders will have the same role as shareholders, in that they will be responsible for holding the management to account. Custodianholders will be drawn from the managers of the business, its employees, its funders, local organisations, locally elected politicians and those who receive the services. The last group, the service users, will have the largest number of votes, but no group will have a clear voting majority.’
The Chancellor seemed to be enjoying himself…
Rafi’s attention was pulled back to the action going on off the Moroccan coast. The distant Nimrod reconnaissance plane reported that the dinghy had rejoined the two life rafts. All three specks on the rain swept ocean were ready, waiting for their rendezvous. The squall was clearing and they would soon be clearly visible to a plane flying overhead. Eight miles away the radio traffic between the Harrier and the two Moroccan jet fighters had been concluded. The Moroccan pilots viewed it as job done and had turned back to their bases minutes before the Harrier arrived.
The seconds ticked by.
The Harrier arrived, over the spot where Golden Sundancer had exploded, and waited for the Moroccan helicopter to get there so that a final search could be carried out.
The helicopter, in theory, posed a grave threat to the submarine, but with the Harrier in position that threat could be neutralised.
The command centre spoke to the special service personnel on board the life rafts. ‘Activate the homing device. You have less than seven minutes to get on board the submarine.’
Jim felt under his shirt and switched on his personal homing device for ten seconds – not 200 metres away, the submarine picked up the signal.
The order went out: ‘Make surface and prepare to take on board visitors.’
The sight of the Vanguard class submarine breaking surface at speed surprised those in the dinghy. They knew she was big, but relative to the life rafts she was huge!
‘The helicopter has you on its radar and has changed course to investigate – the Harrier is shadowing,’ came the message from the Nimrod. ‘Captain, you have less than six minutes before the helicopter has you on visual.’
Rafi sensed the tension in the room. It was going to be a close-run thing.
In a flurry of activity, a squad of naval ratings descended on the two life rafts and the dinghy. The ratings and three of the special service men hauled the eight uncooperative captives out of the life rafts and manhandled them across the deck to the door at the bottom of the conning tower. They were followed by those from the inflatable dinghy. Meanwhile, Jim had slashed the buoyancy tanks of the dinghy and the life rafts and lashed them together, so that they would sink under the weight of the outboard engine.
The Nimrod was tracking the hostile helicopter and speaking to the submarine’s commanding officer. ‘You have ninety seconds before you’re in firing range. The Harrier has taken up a position above and behind the helicopter and continues to shadow her.’