Sea Leopard

Grey, white numerals, then the blackness of the sea behind. Ardenyev, feeling Teplov's tap on his shoulder in response to what they both had seen, turned the sled slowly in a sweeping curve. He circled slightly above the British submarine like a gull in the wind, and watched as the headlights of Shadrin's sled slipped like a caress across the midships section of the submarine, then up and around her sail.

They'd found her. He looked at his watch. Seven minutes remaining. He pushed the nose of the sled down towards the Proteus.

* * *

'There she is skipper!'

'Infra-red cameras?'

'Cameras running, skipper.'

'Can you see them, Terry?'

'No — wait — there!'

'What the hell is that?'

'Looks like a sled. It's going, going over the side. They'll get caught by the wave, no, one of them has — he's going over!'

'All fall down. Can we communicate with MoD yet?'

'No, skipper.'

'Then you'd better send the pictures over the wire straight away. Even Aubrey ought to be able to work this one out!'

* * *

'I'm sorry, Mr Aubrey, it could take hours to analyse these pictures.' Clark was holding irritation in check, his apology an exercise in calming his breathing and no more.

'There's no way we can communicate with the Nimrod?'

'I'm sorry, sir,' Copeland replied lugubriously, shaking his head, folding down his lower lip to complete the mask of apology. 'The jamming makes that impossible. Eastoe must have sent these by way of a substitute — and without sub-titles.'

'I am in no mood for cheap remarks, young man!' Aubrey snapped wearily.

'Sorry, sir.'

Aubrey turned back to Clark. 'How many men, would you say?'

They were still clustered round the wireprint machine, and the grainy reproductions of the infra-red photographs that the Nimrod had transmitted, torn off the machine as each frame appeared, were in every hand, or lay scattered on the bench near the machine. The whole room seemed crowded, like boys urging on two unwilling combatants, around Aubrey and Clark.

'This sled?'

'What do you mean this sled?' Aubrey wanted, demanded information, answers to his question upon which he could base a decision. The desire to make a decision, to act, pressed upon him like a manhole-cover which would mask a trap. Failure, complete and abject and humiliating, stared up at him like a nightmare into which he was falling.

'I mean there may be more than one sled. It looks like two, it's a two-man sled all right. Could be three —?' Clark was examining the photograph with a magnifying-glass. It seemed old-fashioned, inappropriate to the advanced technology that was their pressing concern. 'Leopard' lying like junk on the floor of the Barents Sea.

'That equipment, then?' Aubrey asked snappily, using his own magnifying-glass, making nothing of the shapes and bulky outlines of the underwater equipment that was strapped and secured on the back of the sled. Yes, he could see it was a two-man sled, there were two men, perhaps one of the grainy dots was another head bobbing in the water —? 'You say this man Ardenyev would be in command here?'

'That equipment — welding or cutting gear, oxygen, who knows? And yes, I guess it would be Valery Ardenyev.'

Clark was grinning.

'You' ve met him, then.'

'We' ve been — observers, at the same oceanographic conferences, sure.'

'What is his field of expertise?*

'Red Banner Special Operations — rescue, salvage, demolition, offence, defence, — you name it, they can do it.'

'The launch, Ethan — how many of these sleds could it hold?'

'No more than two, three — why?'

The numbers involved, my dear fellow.' Aubrey was expansive again, confident. Clark was amazed at the brittle, transitory nature of the old man's emotions, whether optimistic or pessimistic. When he encountered the next obstacle, he would fall back into a trough of doubt and anxiety. 'Can I assume that they would not attempt salvage — or anything more intrusive — with so few people?“

'You might do. Inspection? Maybe.'

'Come, Ethan. Give me a best guess. Is this likely to be an inspection?'

'They'll have little time down there, at that depth. Just enough time, maybe.'

'Then we have some little time available ourselves?'

'To do what?' Clark turned on Aubrey angrily as it seemed self-satisfaction was the object, the sole purpose, of his questions. Feel good, put your mind to rest — and then you don't need to do any more. He almost voiced his thought.

'I don't know. We are prevented from making any moves other than diplomatic and political, until tomorrow or the following day. Have we that much time?'

'I don't know. Let's hope Eastoe goes down for another set of pictures when these divers return to the surface. Then we'll know it was only an inspection.'

Aubrey's face darkened. He wondered what madcap idea had sprung into Clark's mind, and whether, because he was younger and of the same experience and background, he might not have perceived something of what was in the man Ardenyev's mind. He did not, however, ask Clark his meaning.

'Norway must make another protest about this incursion into her territorial waters,' he said, and even to himself it sounded both too little and too late. He avoided looking at Clark as he pushed his way out of the circle of people around them, towards the telephones.

* * *

The Proteus's stern lay bathed in the headlights of the two sleds, parked side by side on the ledge. The silt which they and the submarine had disturbed had settled. There was a wide ugly furrow the Proteus had gouged before she finally stopped. Beyond it, the damaged stern was grey, twisted, scorched metal, flayed by the coils of steel the MIRV torpedo had released. Ardenyev saw, as he picked his way fly-like in the illumination of the lights, that the fifteen-blade propeller had been thrown out of alignment, or dragged so it became embroiled with the whipping tendrils of steel cable, and that three of the phosphor-bronze, boot-shaped blades had been sheared off. One or two of the others were distorted, but intact. Without the MIRV torpedo, the damage wreaked by the low-warhead hit would not have been sufficient to stop the submarine.

Teplov's shoulder nudged against his as they clung to the port aft hydroplane. A steel cable twisted away from them like a great grey snake slithering towards the silt beneath the submarine. The hydroplane was buckled and torn beneath their hands and flippers, and its skin of metal had begun to unpeel like layers of an onion, having been damaged and then subjected to the pressure of the water before the Proteus slowed and halted. In front of them, the bulk of the submarine retreated into the darkness. Buckled plates, damaged ballast tanks, but there was no evidence that the pressure hull had been ruptured.

'They made a bloody good job of it,' Teplov's voice croaked in his earpiece. Ardenyev nodded.

The rudders were misaligned, too, but not badly.

'We can patch it — she'll have to be towed. We don't have time to repair the prop.'

It was Teplov's turn to nod. His eyes seemed to be grinning behind his facemask.

'What next?'

'Let's move amidships. Signal the others to start making a din in —' He looked at his watch, 'one minute.' Ardenyev pushed away from the damaged hydroplane. His watch informed him that four minutes had already