To Simon Collingwood’s astonishment the little incident had miraculously detached the black dog mood from his back. He’d been livid, disappointed, felt betrayed when he had received Admiral Christopher’s orders. Suddenly, those orders didn’t seem to defeatist or so ‘stupid’ as he had initially determined. In fact, they seemed entirely rational in the circumstances both of the war in the Eastern Mediterranean, the evolving tactical situation elsewhere and the particular conditions now prevailing in his command.
“No damage done, Miss Hayek,” he assured the young woman in what he hoped was his most emolliently paternal tone.
The woman lowered her eyes and fled with the two infants.
The commander of the Royal Navy’s only — and increasingly tired and battered — nuclear-powered submarine tried to remember what he had been about to say.
Oh yes…
“We have been ordered to return to Malta at our best speed,” he declared. “Dreadnought is to avoid renewing contact with the enemy. Several US Navy SSNs are expected to begin operating in the Ionian and Libyan Seas sometime with the next five days and the C-in-C doesn’t want to risk us tangling with each other until such time as robust standard operating procedures have been established and tested in exercises simulating actual war conditions. The C-in-C is also cognisant of the fact that the boat is badly in need of dockyard time. These considerations allied to aerial reconnaissance indicating that the enemy has no major surface units deployed south of the line Crete-Cyprus provides an opportunity for Dreadnought to dock at Malta and make good defects. The C-in-C ends his message,” he took a breath, “please extend my personal thanks and congratulations to every member of your excellent crew for the exceptional service you have rendered Queen and country in recent days.”
Simon Collingwood looked up.
“The C-in-C also looks forward to meeting with and shaking the hand of all on board when we get to Malta.”
There were smirks and guffaws around the table.
“I suppose we ought to break out a Jolly Roger for our entrance into the Grand Harbour, sir?” One wag proposed.
“The Executive Officer already has that well in hand!” Simon Collingwood allowed the levity to circulate the cramped compartment for a few seconds. “Right. We’re still a long way from base and the nearest friendly ship is in Alexandria right now. Everybody needs to be on their toes the next few days. There are people out there who would dearly like to do us harm. Keep your wits about you, gentlemen. That will be all.”
The commanding officer of HMS Dreadnought had never cared for overlong, discursive briefings, conferences, meetings of any kind. People confused the word ‘meeting’ with ‘party’ far too often in his book. The one was business, the other pleasure. The two did not mix, especially on a devilishly complicated and vulnerable thing like a nuclear submarine operating in a war zone. Moreover, while off the boat he might consider Max Forton a friend, he was no other man’s friend on his boat. He was the captain, end of story. At any moment he might have to order any or all of the men in the Wardroom to their death. He did not have the luxury of friendship onboard his command and he despised any captain who did not understand this basic tenet of command.
Simon Collingwood remained in the Wardroom as most of the others departed. Two men attempted to doze in one corner, and another swung himself into the hammock slung between two improvised hooks at the aft end of the compartment. Refugees were accommodated in the cabins of his officers, his people made the best of things. It was amazing how quickly men adjusted to new realities.
He began to work through a sheaf of defects lists, supply requisitions, status reports and personnel files. There were readiness updates, training recommendations, evaluations, medical summaries of the health and remedial treatments administered to the twenty-two refugees. He soon became absorbed in his work, so absorbed that he was unaware of the pair of wide dark eyes staring at him from an inch or so above the edge of the Wardroom table.
He blinked at the child.
“Sorry, sir,” blurted a steward, “I didn’t see the little beggar come in.”
“Leave her be, Adams,” Simon Collingwood half-smiled. Once upon a time he’d thought knowing, and remembering, the names of every man aboard would be virtually impossible. Not counting the unwilling civilian dockyard workers who had been compelled to come along for the cruise, Dreadnought’s complement was one hundred and thirteen officers and men, several of whom had joined the boat at Gibraltar. “I very much doubt that she is a Red Dawn assassin.”
“No, sir,” the other man agreed with alacrity.
The girl’s name was Yelda, which Maya had explained meant ‘summer rose’ in her native tongue. The child had inquisitive, tawny eyes and a mop of black, tousled hair.
Simon Collingwood sighed.
There was something badly wrong with a World in which Yelda could find herself orphaned, homeless and a passenger on a nuclear hunter-killer submarine in the middle of a war.
Chapter 56
General Curtis LeMay was fit to burst a blood vessel. Well, several actually. All the communications equipment on the Presidential VC-137 — a specially adapted and modified long-range Boeing 707 — was supposed to be ‘hardened’ to survive close proximity to the EMP, the electro-magnetic pulse, emitted by a large nuclear explosion. Like so much of the hugely expensive garbage supplied to the United States Armed Forces to appease and grease the palms of grasping defence contractors and their gutless clients in the House of Representatives, it transpired that seventy-five percent of SAM 26000’s communications suite was junk. Although the aircraft had been thirty miles away from the first airburst, at least fifty from the second; practically the only systems that had survived were the short-range air-to-air intercom, and the air control circuit to the Egyptian civil and military command centres. He stomped back down the jetliner, his brows knitted and his expression black as night.
“Our best guess is that the first ICBM was meant for Cairo, Mister President,” he growled like a bear with both feet snared in the jaws of the same trap. “It went off several miles approximately south west of the southernmost pyramid,” whose name he’d forgotten in the walk back from the cockpit.
“The Pyramid of Menkaure,” an aide murmured helpfully.
“The other strike was in the Ismailia area. The wind is from the west so the fallout from the Cairo strike is going to be a problem. Ismailia?” The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff shrugged. “There’s just desert east of Ismailia.”
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the thirty-fifth President of the United States of America was the calmest man in the cabin.
“Bill Fulbright ought to be in Israel by now?” He asked rhetorically.
“His flight was scheduled to touch down in Tel Aviv about the time of the second strike, sir,” Curtis LeMay confirmed.
“Who can we talk to at the moment, General?”
“The Egyptians,” the big man grunted unhappily.
“Where the nearest phone?” Jack Kennedy asked, a sardonic half-smile playing on his lips. “I need to call home before this gets out of hand. And I need to do it soon.”
“We need to get out of the combat zone, Mr President,” an aide blurted.
Jack Kennedy and his senior military commander weren’t listening to anybody else in the compartment.
“Alexandria, Mr President. The Brits set up an emergency communications relay station as soon as Nasser opened the port to them.”
“That’s where we go then.”