H.M.S. Unseen

into day. Two seconds later the thunder of the blast split the night air as the Flower of Scotland and her three-man crew were blown to pieces by a bomb that detonated right behind her engine.

Ben Adnam watched the burning wreckage scatter downward onto the water. Then he shook his head, shrugged, and kept heading east.

He knew it was a bomb. A torpedo from Unseen would have caused quite another kind of explosion, more muffled, less spectacular. And yet he was curious. Because he saw in his mind the tense, worried look there had been on the face of Lieutenant Commander Alaam. He remembered the way there had been no time for even the warm exchange of greetings so prevalent in the Muslim world. No time to discuss anything, not even to deliver the congratulations of their masters. Not a word about the success of the operation. Not even civility. Not even approval, far less warmth.

The Iranian, in Ben’s view, had been a man on the edge of his nerves, taut, dry-mouthed, and desperate to get away. He had been too overwrought even to offer a reasoned explanation for the change of plan. In Commander Adnam’s view, he might as well have carried a placard with him which stated he had just booby-trapped the Flower of Scotland in order to kill their redundant employee, who knew too much.

But Ben Adnam was still curious. “I wonder why,” he asked the empty ocean. “After all that I have done, some people still assume that I may be a fool?”

So many lessons, for so many people. “Especially Captain Mackay,” he mused. “That was a hard way to learn there’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

His own situation was, however, only marginally better than that of the late master of the Flower of Scotland. Betrayed first by Iraq, and now by Iran, he felt the horizons closing in. He understood the reasoning of the Ayatollahs — that he, Benjamin, was just too much of a liability. If they offered him shelter and perhaps more work in Iran, it would be a only matter of time before someone put together the pieces that made up his murderous six-week reign of terror in the North Atlantic.

The Americans were plainly not going to sit still and forget about the acts of mass destruction he had perpetrated. There would be men in the Pentagon and the CIA, perhaps even the White House, who would never rest until he was caught. He knew, too, the icy cunning of the British military, who would eventually learn of his whereabouts and come after him.

The Ayatollahs would be crazy to harbor him; he had always known that. It was nonetheless an emotional, if not intellectual, shock, that they had attempted to execute him quite so summarily, within a couple of hours of his leaving the superb submarine he had acquired for them. On reflection, he thought, I’m glad I played it safe. I just hope my crew is as lucky.

He had experienced the feeling of desolation when he had walked from Baghdad almost two years previously. But that night it was a hundred times worse. Because he could not go back to the Middle East, where he was wanted as no Arab had ever been wanted. Three powerful governments, Israel, Iraq, and Iran, had all made determined attempts to assassinate him. He had to face it. There was nowhere for him to go. He was, as usual, on his own.

For the moment, he must concentrate on survival in the short run. He could feel the chill of the night upon his face as the Zodiac ran on toward the island. He pulled out his chart, and he checked the GPS and the compass. He held the little boat steady on course zero-nine-zero and, facing the east, prayed silently to his God to forgive him.

The trouble was, he needed to get into his bag for the flashlight, and he needed time to look at his chart, just to check. Rather than attempt to hold his course during those routine navigational procedures, he switched off the motor and stopped. And there, solitary in the gusting chill of the Atlantic, Ben Adnam once more studied his bearings. He had already programmed in the way points, and after two minutes of checking, he kicked over the engine and headed east again, course, zero-nine-zero.

As expected, the GPS told him he was about 15 miles west of the four lonely, uninhabited islands of St. Kilda, which sit in gale-swept isolation, at the mercy of the open Atlantic, 50 miles west of the rest of the Hebridean Islands, and 110 miles from the Scottish mainland. They are the most westerly point of the British Isles, save for the great granite slab of Rockall, which lies another 180 miles closer to North America.

Commander Adnam was headed for the largest of the St. Kilda group, named Hirta, which is these days referred to simply as St. Kilda, separate from the trio of tiny neighboring islands of Soay, Boreray, and Rona. The combined population of the four is easy to calculate. Zero.

Before the 1800s the only way out to St. Kilda from the Scottish mainland was in a rowboat pulled by the men of the Isle of Skye. It took several days, and nights, and even today it can be impossible to make a landing in the massive seas that have battered the islands since the dawn of time.

Ben knew the problems, and he knew how swiftly the weather could change out there. He could feel the wind freshening a little from the southwest, and he thanked his God it was not from the southeast, because a gale from there renders the only landing place on the entire island, Village Bay, unapproachable. He had been to St. Kilda once before, during his submarine training with the Royal Navy, but they had not landed, and, so far as he knew, no British Navy warship had ever put into Village Bay. Not even in the deep water on the outer edges.

He just had to pray the weather held and that he could get into shelter unobserved. Instinct was telling him to open the throttle fully and go for it. But that would use too much gas. And, besides, much more important in his mind, it would betray panic, a lack of professionalism. Ben Adnam despised amateurs.

He shined the flashlight on the chart again, noted the depth of the water, and the precise position of his way points along the route to the beach. He noted once more that the southeastern tip of St. Kilda was separately named Dun, a high, jagged promontory, three-quarters of a mile long. The chart showed that there was a channel between Dun and the main part of the island. But it was very narrow, and shallow at low water, strewn with rocks. At one point the chart was showing zero depth at low tide, and the former commander of HMS Unseen had long assumed he would go right around the long headland of Dun, despite the extra twenty minutes running time that would add to his journey into Village Bay. If he revved the propeller on the rocky floor of the Dun channel, he knew he would be finished.

With the slight rise of the wind, the night grew a little darker, as lower clouds drifted northeastward out of the Atlantic, a high thin layer of cirrus, covering the moon. But none of it worried Ben. He knew everything he would see in the dim, diffused light. And he recognized the cloud for what it was, the precursor of an Atlantic low, bringing rain on a southwest wind, with reasonably warm temperatures.

Commander Adnam was satisfied he had his mission under tight control, including the weather, his precise course and position. Not for him the nagging dread of less experienced helmsman at the dead of night with no radar, that of being swept against the cliffs or the rocks, in a following sea, which he had.

He stayed deliberately on the southerly edge of a planned track that would take him within a mile of the terrible black cliffs of St. Kilda. But he would see them in the dim light, even if the GPS failed.

The Zodiac went on for another fifty minutes, 12.5 miles, planing comfortably at just below 15 knots. Then he cut back the engine and chugged forward quietly, just at idling speed. Suddenly, he could see the shape of the island — bang in front, a monstrous cliff, topped by a massive 1,000-foot mountain peak, glowering out over a shallow bay. He could also see yet another peak, even higher, way back beyond the first one. He shined the light on his chart. “That’s it,” he murmured. “I’m looking at the twin peaks of Mullach Mor and Mullach Bi.” He checked the compass and saw that the GPS had not let him down.

He stopped the engine and poured half the contents of his spare gas can into the fuel tank before setting off again at 5 knots. After ten minutes, he slowed right down, and turned inshore, and there, about 100 yards off his port bow, he could see the great rock stack of Hamalan, close to the tip of the Dun headland. He ran on for another 200 yards, then turned northeast in the dark, then right around into Village Bay, setting a course of three-four-two on his handheld compass.

The Bay itself measured a mile across from Dun to its northern point. But the British had built a military base along that northern shoreline, and used it periodically as a missile-tracking station for the rocket range at Benbecula on the main Hebrides Islands. According to Ben Adnam’s guidebook, the British Army made a foray to their base every two weeks, when a couple of soldiers would land and stay for two days, checking the island over, particularly their electronic equipment.

Commander Adnam thus headed quietly into the western edge of the bay, where the chart told him he could land and secure his boat behind a rocky outcrop and out of sight of the north shore. He would then proceed on foot