Sea Leopard

out of sight behind the swelling midships section of the submarine, then clambered back up the line to the top of the hull. One.

He saw the starboard guard little more than half-way up the pen, his feet jigging unconsciously to the noise coming from the tiny radio. He swung down on the starboard side until he was level with the tear-drop dome. It was loose, and he cursed silently. He pulled a screwdriver from his kit, and prised at the thin titanium. Beneath it, the sensor appeared undamaged. He juggled his lamp in his hand, and switched it on. He checked, feeling the arm that gripped the line begin to quiver with nerves — guards nearly at the end of the pen, moving into the shadows beyond the hard lights — and his body heating with the tension. Undamaged — yes, undamaged. He loosened his grip on the lamp, and it dangled from his wrist again on its thick strap. He made to replace the screwdriver in his belt, and it slipped from his fingers — the guard was out of sight behind the swell of the midships, and in the shadow — and slid down the hull with a rattling noise that sounded deafening in the intense silence. It plopped like a large fish into the water. They must have heard it. He clambered, feet slipping, then able to grip, body hunched, almost jerking upwards on the line as if he were a fish and was hooked, waiting for the challenge, the shout of recognition at any moment.

He flattened himself on the hull, bunching the nylon line beneath his body, feeling his whole frame quivering. Another malarial attack. He could not stop himself shaking.

'Progress report,' he heard in his earpiece. The port guard was in sight again, meandering down the pen towards him. Then the starboard guard came into sight, chewing and cocking his head into the tinny noises of the transistor radio at his ear. 'Progress report', Aubrey requested again in his ear, this time with more asperity. Clark wanted to howl into his throat mike for the crazy old man to shut up.

The guard passed beneath him on the port side, then the starboard guard was level with him again. The radio made tinny, scratchy noises. A Western pop station, beamed in from Norway or Sweden.

'Lend us your fucking radio,' the port guard called across to his companion in a not unamiable manner. 'Bored stiff.'

'I'm not,' his companion replied, facing him. 'You bloody Ukrainians are all the same — scroungers.'

'Clark — progress report.' Shut up, shut up —

'Fuck off.' Clark craned his neck. The port guard, the taller of the two with the cropped haircut and the stooping shoulders, had unslung his rifle, and was pointing it at the man on the starboard side. 'Hand over your radio, or I'll fire,' he demanded.

The man on the starboard side laughed. He wore spectacles and a thin, weak moustache and looked no more than fifteen. He, too, unslung his rifle, and pointed it across the water with one hand, the other still pressing the radio to his ear. 'Bang, bang,' he said, hooting with laughter when he had done so.

'Piss off.'

'Progress report, Clark. Clark?' Shut up, shut up —

Clark knew what would happen next, and knew it would be audible. Sharp, painful bleeps of sound, like morse dashes, to attract his attention, then a continuous tone like that of a telephone that has been disconnected because the subscriber has moved. Both guards looked up. Clark squeezed himself flatter against the top of the hull, praying for the curvature to be sufficient, to hide him like high ground or a horizon.

'What's that?'

'Dunno. Fucking radio. Our lot trying to jam it.' The starboard guard laughed again, a thin high cackle as if his voice had not yet broken.

'Race you to the other end, you skinny, underfed Ukrainian!'

'What about—?'

'Ready, set — go!'

The noise of their boots echoed off the concrete walls and roof of the pep. The tone stopped, and then began again in his head. Clark whispered intently into his throat-mike.

'For Chrissake, get off my back, Aubrey!' He went on quivering, his body seeming to jump with the detonations of their footsteps bouncing off the roof, until Aubrey replied.

'Clark — what is wrong?'

'I'm lying on the fucking hull, man, with two goons training for the Olympics right below me. I can't talk to you!'

A few seconds later — he could hear a thin, breathless cheer from the far end of the pen as the taller guard won the race — Aubrey replied stiffly and formally, 'Very well. Report as soon as you can.'

'Okay, okay.'

'And again?' the shorter guard called angrily.

'You're on. Ten roubles on this one?'

Twenty, you Ukrainian bullshitter!'

'Ready, set — go! Hey, you jumped the gun, you cheating sod!'

Then the bootsteps rained down from the roof again as they charged towards the seaward end of the pen. Clark lay icily still now, his tension expended with his anger, his sense of time oblivious to anything but the slow passage of seconds on the watch-face he held in front of his eyes.

The starboard guard won, by virtue of a flying start, and crowed and pranced. His companion, now his deadly rival, challenged him to a return. They regained their breath, watched each other like combatants for a fortune in prize money, crouched into sprinting starts, and then began running on the call of the taller man. Clark got to his knees. Their row would bring someone, soon. He scuttled along the hull, careless of the noise he made, fixed the pad, and lowered himself feverishly down the nylon rope, checked the undamaged sensor, climbed the rope again, imagined the ragged breathing of the two runners, waited until he could hear them arguing with out-of-breath shouts, and swung down the port side of the hull. He was elated by the clownish behaviour and the stupidity of the two young guards; almost reckless with confidence. Undamaged. He climbed the line again.

They were still arguing, their voices coming from the far end of the pen. He could dimly discern them, shadows in shadow. He moved back along the hull, lowered himself on the port side again — the two men had moved slightly to starboard of the bow of the submarine — and checked another sensor. The titanium blister was dented, but undisturbed. Then the starboard side, his luck beginning to extend beyond the point at which it was simply acceptable and becoming instead a source of anxiety, where he checked two more sensors. He was almost level with rudder fin again, almost finished —

Another voice, a snarling petty-officer voice, and silence from the two guards. Berating, angry, loud. Their parentage was stripped from them, then their maturity, then their manhood. Layers of the onion, until they would be left with nothing but total humiliation and punishment duties. They would be replaced, the new guards would be fearfully alert, punctilious in their patrols. The crushing reprimand went on and on.

Clark lowered himself down the port side of the hull again. The plates were scarred, as if the metal had been lashed with a giant whip. He knew what he would find. A weal like a furrow lay along one hull plate, and whatever had caused it had crushed the wafer-thin titanium in upon the sensor beneath it. He reached into his belt, moving with feverish haste now as the michman's voice rose again, perhaps towards a peroration. He drew a smaller, stubbier screwdriver and jabbed it into the slot on the locking ring and heaved. It moved, and then turned. He lifted it clear and snapped it into a hook on his belt. As he prised out the transducer he could see the damage clearly. Shattered fragments fell from the transducer and rattled and slid down the hull to the water.

Bare wires. The sheathing was cut through, and half the wiring was severed. Dangling from the end was an ABS multipin plug. Half of it. Half a smashed multi-pin plug. He registered it with helpless fury. Silence. The michman had finished. Christ—

A door slammed, and then there was silence again, a heavy, ringing silence. He was alone in the pen for perhaps a few minutes at most. Perspiration drenched him. He wiped the back of one hand over his face.

'I got problems,' he announced. 'Stern sensor fourteen— one of the sonar signal nullifiers. The wiring behind the transducer's a hell of a mess.'

He continued to lever at the wiring with the screwdriver while he waited for Quin to reply.

'What extent is the damage?'

The rest of the transducer slid away with a noise like the claws of a crab on metal. Then it plopped into the water. Clark hefted his lamp and shone it into the hole.

'Bad. Most of the wiring has been sheared; but there's worse. The connector's smashed.'