Andrew bit his tongue. He was in command of their overall mission, but Biddle was driving the boat.
‘Revolutions for twenty-five knots!’
Biddle looked at the clock. He’d take no chances; just two minutes on this course and speed, before weaving east again.
Andrew stepped into the sound room to talk to the TAS, Algy Colqhoun.
‘What’s the maximum range of the underwater telephone here, d’you reckon?’
The lieutenant checked the Sound Path Predictor computer, linked to probes on the hull that analysed water samples.
‘About three to four miles, sir. And at a guess, at least a dozen Soviet sonobuoys would hear it too, and get a nice fix on us!’
Andrew didn’t need reminding. He went back to the control room.
‘Revolutions for fifteen knots! Starboard twenty. Steer one-three-five!’
The deck lurched sideways with the violence of the new manoeuvre.
‘Where’s the range on the bloody target, TAS?’ Biddle growled, knowing Colqhoun would be working on it without his telling him.
‘New contact, sir!’ the sound room announced. ‘Astern. Submarine contact on the towed array.’
‘Classification?’
‘Working on it, sir. Looks like a Victor.’
On the Action Information screen, contour lines marked the edges of the deep-water channel. Ahead of the symbol for their own boat, a small square representing Truculent changed to a diamond, signifying its range was now known.
The operator hit a key to open a window with the target data on the right of the screen.
‘Range eight miles, heading one-four-zero, speed eight knots,’ Andrew read. ‘Eight miles? Are we sure? That’s beyond the normal detection range for a Trafalgar.’
‘Told you the sonar fit on here’s bloody brilliant,’ Biddle answered. ‘The Truc’s got the older set. Phil won’t know we’re here yet.’
‘Eight more miles, and he’ll be at Ostrov Chernyy,’ Andrew grimaced. ‘If he maintains that speed, he’ll be there in an hour.’
‘Target’s changed course, sir,’ the AIO rating called across.
‘Dodging planes, like us, I guess,’ Andrew commented.
‘Steer one-eight-zero!’ Biddle ordered, changing course again so the towed array could compute a bearing on the second contact, behind them.
‘We’ve got to catch up with him, Peter,’ Andrew insisted, ‘before he gets there and lays a Moray mine on the shelf, like a bloody Easter Egg. Ten minutes at thirty knots might put us close enough to talk to him.’
‘But we’d be deaf for those ten minutes. We’re surrounded by Russians. And they’ve got sea-bed arrays somewhere around here. The noise we’d make could give them a firing solution.’
‘Tow a decoy. Make them think we’re, one of their own.’
Biddle hesitated. The decoy would make even more noise — make them easier to track. Would it fool the Soviets if they tuned it to sound like a Victor III?
‘Second contact confirmed, sir!’ came the voice from the sound room box. ‘Victor three astern. Heading one-two-seven degrees. Range ten miles, range decreasing. Estimated speed twenty knots!’
‘Okay, Andrew, you’ve got it,’ Biddle decided. ‘Time’s running out. But hang on tight. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.’
Philip Hitchens gripped the padded rail of the bandstand, picking at its blue imitation leather cover with his fingernails.
‘Steer zero-six-zero. Ten down. Keep two hundred and twenty metres,’ he snapped.
The sound room kept reporting aircraft noise. The sky must be full of planes. What the hell were the Russians up to? If they wanted the damned mine, they’d do better to leave him in peace.
Had they decided he’d renege on the deal? Perhaps they were right. Doubt still paralysed him. He was acting on instinct now. Survival — that was all. Had to get away from those planes.
‘Charted depth two-hundred-and-fifty metres, sir,’ cautioned Lieutenant Nick Cavendish.
The chart was all they had to go on. They dared not use their echo-sounder, for fear it would be detected and give away their position.
Faces in the control room were tense and sombre. The day before, they’d found it hard to accept the Captain’s warnings that the world above them was close to war. But today they were beginning to believe him.
A few hours earlier, Sebastian Cordell had summoned Tim Pike to the sound room, and clamped headphones on his ears so he could hear the sudden silence. The sonar had been tracking over fifteen surface contacts, from tankers to trawlers, but one by one they’d disappeared.
It was eerie. All around them, ships had cut their engines; propellers hung idle.
There was only one explanation; the Russians knew they were there. They’d ordered silence, to make it easier to find them.
Deprived of the Boris Bubnov as a noise shadow, they were now on their own in hostile waters, lacking the most important weapon a submarine can have — surprise.
The Action Information display was uncomfortably empty of contacts. Tim Pike felt like a goldfish in a bowl, surrounded by hungry Soviet cats.
Every post on the submarine was closed-up now, ready for action. Pike’s task was to follow his captain’s every move, ready to take over if ordered — or if he felt the time had come.
‘It’s almost as if they were expecting us, sir,’ Pike murmured to the captain. ‘They’ll have sonobuoys everywhere.’
‘Yes.’
‘What’re we going to do, sir?’
‘Complete our mission,’ Philip said icily, yet feeling as if someone else had spoken. He swung round to address Paul Spriggs.
‘WEO. Bring all tubes to the action state. Load two tubes with Mark 24 torpedoes. Make ready three Moray mines.’
Spriggs shot a glance at Pike for support.
‘What exactly are our orders for the mines, sir?’
There was a moment’s silence, but Hitchens was ready for them.
‘Very shortly, Paul, I shall be in a position to tell you. Tim? Take over. I shall be in my cabin.’
Admiral Andrei Belikov snapped his fingers for some more tea. He’d sat in the operations room in the underground bunker since the moment he’d learned of Astashenkov’s ‘freelance’ mission on board the Ametyst, and his eyes were feeling gritty and tired.
Reports from the IL-38s had produced nothing but confusion; suspected contacts had been ‘detected’ in six different areas. Most of them were caused by malfunction in the equipment or by excessive optimism on the part of the crew, Belikov believed.
But there had been persistent traces of a submarine, northwest of Ostrov Chernyy. It was in the right place and on the right heading if Commander Philip Hitchens was intending to carry out his contract with the KGB. The trouble was that there had also been strong reports of another contact twelve kilometres further west.
The Captain Lieutenant seated in front of him turned from his communications panel.
‘A request from one of the maritime aircraft, Comrade Admiral. The intermittent contact it was tracking now sounds to him like one of our own PLAs. He’s asked if we can confirm it’s the Ladny.’
‘Which track is that?’
‘Number four.’
The Captain Lieutenant shone his light pen at the more westerly of the two strongest contacts.
‘Send Ladny a signal. Tell her to report her position.’