‘This is Algy Colqhoun. A very enthusiastic TAS. Says this new gear’s so sensitive it can pick up the moaning ghosts from World War Two shipwrecks! Now then, TAS; what’re you up to!’
The tactics and sonar officer pointed to the VDU at his shoulder. Vertical bands of green shading moved slowly up the screen. He pointed to a very narrow line running up the screen between two broader bands, and spun the screen cursor onto it, using the roller-ball control on the console.
‘We’ve got a line at 370 Hz., sir,’ he explained, grinning. ‘Can’t hear it on headphones, but it’s definitely not part of the natural background.’
‘Okay, so what is it?’
The TAS officer punched a few keys and displayed the frequency of the noise in a window at the right of the screen. Then the picture changed to a table of data, on the left a list of known sounds in that same frequency range. He pointed to a paragraph on the right.
‘Closest thing in the classification guide is the main coolant pump in one of these.’
‘A Trafalgar?’
‘We don’t often make that sort of racket, thank God, but if we had undetected pump trouble it’d be somewhere in that range. Must be going fast not to hear it on his own sonar.’
‘Where do you think it is?’ Andrew interjected.
‘It’s very faint, sir. Right on the edge of the capabilities of even this equipment.’ He patted the console. ‘We’ve got an ambiguous bearing of eighty degrees relative to the array. My guess is it’s on our port bow, but I’d like to alter course twenty degrees to starboard to eliminate the ambiguity.’
The initial bearing from the towed array was always ambiguous; the hydrophones couldn’t tell which side the sound was coming from. By altering course and taking new relative bearings, one fix would remain constant, the other would diverge further, clearing up the ambiguity.
‘Well, hang on to it. It’s all we’ve got,’ Biddle ordered.
Andrew hurried to the chart table.
‘There’s nothing on the intelligence plot about any of our subs being in this area, so it could well be our man.’
‘Starboard ten. Steer zero-two-five,’ ordered Lieutenant Colqhoun. The blue-shirted rating switched off the autopilot and turned the steering column, glad of something to do.
It would be several minutes before the array steadied again behind them, after which they could get their new bearing.
‘Exactly right,’ Andrew breathed, laying the protractor on the chart. ‘If it’s confirmed as a portside contact, it puts him precisely where the Nimrod’s searching! We may just have struck lucky!’
He took up the dividers and measured the distance between their present position and the track he imagined the Truculent was following.
‘About three hours! That’s all it would take!’ he remarked.
Lieutenant Colqhoun called across from the Action Information Display.
‘Got a confirmed bearing, sir. Two-eight-six degrees. Range — probably between fifty and a hundred miles.’
‘Thanks.’
Biddle settled himself at the chart table. He would calculate an intercept course to close the range. They’d have to guess the speed of the target. Thirty knots probably, making that much noise.
He pulled the keypad of a small computer across the table and tapped in the figures. A split second later its narrow liquid-crystal screen displayed the course to follow.
‘Steer three-five-six. Keep seventy metres, revolutions for fifteen knots!’
Andrew scribbled down his radio signal to FOSM. It was in two parts. The first gave their own position and the bearing and possible range of the suspected target, to be relayed to the Nimrod overhead; the second was to ask for a search of Philip’s file for clues.
‘We’ll come to periscope depth for the transmission in ten minutes,’ Biddle told him.
Then the commander leaned an elbow on the chart table. He didn’t want the navigation rating to hear what he said next.
‘If this is the right contact, Andrew…’
He didn’t need to complete the sentence. Andrew beckoned and led the way out of the control room.
‘Can we talk in your cabin?’
‘Of course.’
Biddle pushed open the door for him. Andrew sat on the narrow bunk.
‘My orders are to stop him,’ he declared simply.
Carefully, he watched Biddle’s face for his reaction.
‘How we do that, I don’t know yet. I hope to God it’s easy and a few words on the underwater telephone will be enough to let Pike take over.’
‘And if not?’
‘Then I’ll need fresh orders. But in the last resort — we’re supposed to hit him. That’s what they told me.’
He expelled a long breath.
‘You can’t do that!’ Biddle almost shouted. ‘There’s a hundred guys in there, Andrew. I know most of them. You couldn’t pull the plug on them.’
‘Depends on the alternative, doesn’t it,’ Andrew countered sharply. ‘If he’s about to do something that’ll make the Russians turn my children into nuclear cinders, then a hundred lives is a small price to pay. We let over twice that many die in the Falklands, for Christ’s sake!’
‘But how will you know what he’s going to do?’ Biddle persisted. ‘Who’s to be the judge of what effect his action’ll have? We can’t know down here, that’s for sure. Will CINCFLEET decide? Or Downing Street?’
‘You have a point… We’re going to want to be in contact with base when the moment comes. But if we keep bobbing up to the surface to transmit, we’ll risk losing him.’
‘So in the end it may be down to you…’
Andrew’s eye was drawn to the photograph on Biddle’s desk. Two little girls aged about three. Twins, probably.
‘I just hope to God it doesn’t come to that.’
Chief Petty Officer Gostyn was not a happy man. Not only did he have a defective pump in the number two steam system of HMS Truculent, and an unsympathetic Commanding Officer, he also had a bad apple among his mechanics.
He knew who it was. But could he prove it? Could he hell!
It was bloody Percy Harwood again, had to be. None of the other five sods whose job it was to check and maintain the steam system would have been so flaming stupid as to drop an eighteen-inch wrench down behind the defective pump and then pretend it hadn’t happened.
Anybody else, any other bugger on the entire submarine, would have known what a disaster it was to do something like that and not report it.
Millions of pounds had been spent on inventing ways to make all this machinery silent. Mounting individual pumps and piping on rubber, developing low-speed bearings, all of it to reduce the noise detectable outside the hull to a bare minimum. And all it took was Percy bloody Harwood to leave his spanner resting one end against the pump, the other on the deck, thus building a bridge across the sound insulation so that the rumble coming from the defective bearing could be transmitted straight out into the deep sound channel of the North Atlantic.
Gostyn had spotted it himself, while making his hourly rounds. Harwood had denied it was him, of course, but it couldn’t have been anyone else. It was he who’d drawn the wrench from stores.
The question now was, should he report it? He was the chief down here; it might reflect on him. Lieutenant Commander Claypole might be sympathetic, but with this dodgy mission they were on, he’d probably report it to the captain. And Commander Hitchens could be bloody vindictive.
Something wrong with their captain, this patrol. The whole boat was talking about it. Some of the CPOs had even heard a rumour the other officers were plotting to relieve him of his command. Bloody riot that would cause, when they got back to Devonport. It’d never happen of course. They hadn’t got the guts.