‘Course zero-four-five. Reducing to three knots. Returning to periscope depth!’
The zig-zag they’d been following should have confused any trackers, in the unlikely event there were any. Their sensors had detected none. But you couldn’t be too careful in these northerly waters; the Bears were everywhere.
‘Periscope depth, sir!’
‘Up ESM!’
The Electronic Support Measures mast, covered with radar detectors, slid upwards, its dome just breaking the surface. Shaped to reflect radar beams no more strongly than a wave-crest, it scanned the electromagnetic spectrum for emitters.
Cordell leaned over the shoulder of the CPO at the Action Information console.
Printed on the amber VDU screen was the data processed by the ESM computer.
‘Four radars detected, but none of them a threat, sir.’
Cordell ran his eye down the list. The first trace was from the Soviet RORSAT ocean surveillance satellite, passing 180 kilometres above their heads. Truculent’s periscope wouldn’t be large enough to register. Two other traces were the navigation radars of passing freighters, the fourth from a Soviet TU-95 Bear-F reconnaisance plane, too far away to matter.
‘Raise the search periscope! Standby, wireless room!’
The search periscope came hissing up from the control room deck. Mounted atop its optical system was a conical satellite antenna.
Cordell pressed his face to the eyepiece and swung the viewfinder through 360 degrees.
‘Nothing in sight!’
He looked away to the control room clock. It was time.
In the wireless room, Hitchens hovered behind the signaller, waiting for the burst of satellite data to be received and stored in the communications computer. At that point he would expel the others from the room, so that he could print out the signals unobserved.
The digital clock completed the hour. On the dot, a red l.e.d. on the satcom panel began to flicker. The signals were being sucked in. Within fifteen seconds the transmission would be over.
‘Aircraft overhead!’ bawled the Action Information rating.
‘Searchwater, sir!’
‘Bearing?’
‘One-nine-two, sir.’
‘One of ours. Thank God for that! What’s he doing this far north?’
‘What’s happened?’ Hitchens had heard the shout and came running from the wireless room.
‘Nimrod, sir. South of us. Detected its radar.’
‘What?’ Hitchens screamed. ‘Get the masts down, you stupid sod! Go deep! Go deep! Get this bloody boat out of the way!’
‘But the aircraft’s friendly, sir,’ Cordell gaped.
Hitchens’ eyes almost burst from their sockets. He looked ready to kill. Fists clenched, he advanced on Cordell.
Then he checked himself, Cordell’s face, open-mouthed, inches from his own. All around him he sensed a stillness, the men watchful.
Unnoticed, Tim Pike had entered the control room. He saw the expression change on his captain’s face. Rage became fear, then bewilderment; then the mask was back in place.
‘Depth under the keel?’ Hitchens demanded, breaking the silence.
‘Two-sixty metres, sir!’ called the navigator.
‘Keep two hundred metres, come left, steer three-two-zero.’
Still struggling to control emotions which seemed not to belong to him, Hitchens took Cordell by the arm to one side of the control room. The boat heeled to port as the planesman responded to the orders.
‘That aircraft. It’s on the exercise. But we’re not any more, see?’
Cordell didn’t see, but nodded as if he did.
‘Now, get us away from the datum. Evasion tactics. Lose the bloody Nimrod!’
Philip pushed past Lieutenant Smallbone and Radio Operator Bennett and closed the door firmly behind him.
Tim Pike caught the eye of the weapon engineer, Paul Spriggs. This was one more incident to add to the list.
Cordell took a grip on himself.
‘Sound room! Call the best evasion depth when we reach it!’ he barked into the intercom. ‘Planesman! Call out the depth every thirty metres!’
‘Sixty metres, sir!’
Built into the outer hull, a water sampler constantly measured the temperature and salinity of the sea, feeding a computer in the sound room which calculated the best conditions in which to hide and distort their underwater sounds.
‘Ninety metres, sir!’
Pike joined Cordell at the chart table.
‘The bastard was gonna hit me! Did you see?’
‘Forget it. Sort yourself out. Concentrate on evading.’
‘I’m not going to bloody forget it! There’s more to this than you know about, sir.’
‘One-hundred-twenty metres, sir!’ the planesman yelled.
‘What d’you mean?’ asked Pike.
‘The reason he’s so bloody bolshie, sir. I know what’s behind it.’
The two men leaned over the chart, so as not to be heard.
‘What?’
‘Well, it’s er…, look it’s dead personal, sir. Can we…?’
‘Okay. Tell me later. Now, let’s think what the bloody “crabs” are going to do.’
‘Riser, bearing zero-one-two!’
‘Got it!’
The tactical navigator tapped the key which brought the radar data onto his display.
‘Turned half a circle from his last position. No wonder we lost him.’
The flight navigator gave the new course to the pilot, and the plane banked sharply. They’d be overhead the submarine in two minutes.
‘Prepare Barra 9 and Difar 20.’
In the rear of the aircraft the air electronics operator selected the directional buoys, set them and loaded them into the ejection tubes.
‘Radar’s cold! He’s gone deep again!’
‘Here we go,’ Mackintosh groaned.
‘I need a bathy-buoy, fast.’
‘Bathy 34 ready in the multilauncher,’ crackled the voice from the rear of the plane.
‘Bathy away.’
‘Barra 9 away.’
They’d just flown over the last known position of the submarine. The tacnav put one buoy to the west and south, told the pilot to turn hard right, and launched the other buoy to the north and east. It would take about a minute for the buoys to start transmitting their information.
‘Difar 20 away.’
‘Can’t we go active?’ the tacnav asked Mackintosh. ‘Best chance of finding him.’
‘Need clearance from Northwood for that, and there’s no time. Just have to keep our fingers crossed.’
One of the processor operators called, ‘Best evasion depth one-hundred-and-fifty metres, the bathy says.’
The bathythermographic buoy had measured the temperature and salinity of the water down to the sea bed. Up here the North Cape Current could produce sudden changes in water conditions that could affect drastically the passage of sound through the water.
‘Touched bottom at three-hundred-and-fifty metres.’
‘Thanks. Anything on the Barra yet?’
‘Nope. Barra and Difar both cold.’
‘Sod him! We’ll have to put a circle round the area. Ten mile radius. And we’ll be out of Lofars by the time we’ve finished.’
‘Time to signal Northwood again,’ Mackintosh sighed. None of this was making his hangover feel any better.
Rear-Admiral Bourlet cursed himself for having been so stupidly optimistic. When the earlier signals had come in saying Truculent had been detected, he’d called the Commander-in-Chief to tell him. Admiral Waverley said he’d ring Downing Street immediately with the good news.
Arse-licker! If it weren’t for Waverley’s bum-crawling he wouldn’t now be facing the humiliation of having to tell the PM they’d lost the boat again.
There’d been no further signals from Tenby, but she was still over fifty miles from the search area, and if the Nimrod had lost track of Truculent while sitting almost on top of her, Tenby wouldn’t stand a chance of hearing her at that range.