Sea Leopard

Lloyd hesitated for a moment, on the threshold of the bathroom, straddling the body of the guard who had only had time to half-turn before the small Astra, pressed against his side, had exploded twice. Lloyd had had to take him into an embrace, feel the man's final shudder against him, and lower him to the deck. One guard only in the corridor. Lloyd had been surprised at the small, muffled sound the gun had made when pressed into the spare flesh the man was carrying. It was as if the pistol had been fitted with a silencer.

He saw the guard outside the wardroom door at the end of the corridor, and hoped, as he studied the man's movements and saw the Kalashnikov turn in the guard's hands and draw a bead on himself, that Thurston would not blunder into the line of fire out of the cabin next door to his own. Then he prayed his hands would move more swiftly to bring the small pistol up to the level of the guard's trunk.

He could not believe that he would move more quickly than the trained marine, but some realisation that the clock was ticking away precious seconds only for him, came to him as he fired. He had moved inches faster, reaction had been milliseconds quicker, because he had an imperative the Russian did not share. The guard thudded back against the wardroom door, and slid down, feet out, to a sitting position with his head lolling. The pistol now made much more noise, and would have attracted attention.

'Come on, come on!' he yelled, banging on Thurston's door as he passed it. Then he was stooping to retrieve the Kalashnikov, which felt immediately bulky and menacing in his grip. He flung open the wardroom door. Surprised faces, half a dozen of them, mostly unshaven, were grouped around the table above mugs of steaming coffee. Thurston was behind him now. He passed the Astra back to his first-lieutenant. 'Get the others out — now!' he snapped, feeling the dangerous, elating adrenalin running wildly through his body.

* * *

Seven twenty-one. Clark had recognised, almost subliminally, the two shots, then the third after a slight delay. He imagined that the same small Astra pistol had made all three reports, but he could not quite believe it, until Lloyd's voice could be heard plainly, coming from the R/T which was clipped to the breast of his immersion suit, ordering his officers to remain in the wardroom until the control room had been recaptured. Then there was the awful, cloth-ripping stutter of the Kalashnikov on automatic — Clark presumed feverishly that it was the one Lloyd had taken from the wardroom guard. It was. Lloyd yelled at Hayter to recover the gun of the man he had just killed. Clark nodded to himself. Lloyd would go on now until he became exhausted or until someone shot him. He was high on escape, even on death.

Clark lifted the lid of the power supply box, as Quin had instructed him. LIFT HERE ONLY. He had undamped the lid, and obeyed its command, stencilled in yellow.

'Clark?'

'Yes. The box is open,' he told Quin. Communications were already weakening as the Nimrod moved towards the fringes of reception. Aubrey had told him what was happening, then patched in Eastoe. The pilot did not enjoy admitting his weariness, his loss of nerve, his failure, but he had done so. The Nimrod was shot, finished. It was on its way home. Eastoe had dropped the airspeed as much as he could, but they were gradually moving out of range, taking Quin with his manual, his diagrams and his knowledge with them. He had, at the Nimrod's present speed, no more then five minutes. Seven twenty-two.

'Switch SW-Eight-R should be off.' Clark followed Quin's instruction. Lloyd's breathing was audible to him in the confined, lamplit darkness from the R/T against the submarine captain's chest. Running —? Cries, yells —? Come on, Quin —

'Okay.'

'Press the yellow button marked PRESS TO TEST. Have you got that?' A faint, weak voice, like a man dying in the next room.

'Okay?'

Firing.

'Lloyd, what's happening?' He knew he should not have called, that it might be fatal to distract Lloyd now. Yet the sounds tormented him, made his body writhe with an uncontrollable tension and anxiety.

Firing.

Quin said something he did not catch. He prayed it was only his inattention.'… through top… cover?'

'Repeat, please,' he requested loudly, holding his breath. Lloyd's breathing roared on his chest like an illness he had contracted.

'… contacts move… clear top…?'

'Repeat, repeat!' Clark shouted, almost as a relief for the hours of whispering and silence he had endured and partly because he was panicking. The irreversible had begun. Lloyd had killed, the officers were armed with two Russian Kalashnikovs and were in the control room of the Proteus. He had begun it — he had. 'Repeat. I say again, repeat your message.' The words were formal, the voice running out of control.

'Right. Hold them over there — no, get them off my ship, now!' Lloyd's elation, his success, drummed in the cramped space between the two hulls. 'Clark?'

'Yes?'

'What's wrong?' Even in his excitement, Lloyd was responsive to tone, to nuance.

'Nothing.'

'We have the control room in our hands again.'

'Good —' Clark paused. There was a spit of sound, but when the tape had been slowed, there was only the ether, mocking him. A gauzy, sad, distant voice mumbled behind it. Christ, what have I done? 'Outside?'

'Thurston's taking a look. I' ve despatched three men, two of them armed, to the control booth for the gates. A couple of minutes now —?' the statement ended as a question. Another spit of sound, Clark's heart pounding as he waited for it to replay more slowly in his earpiece, Quin's voice broken and racked by the interference.

'Can you see… through top… moving?'

Contacts, contacts, he recalled. Can you see the contacts moving through the clear top of the cover?

'Got you!' Then, immediately, he cried, 'They're not moving!'

'Clark, what the devil's wrong?'

'I can't —!' Clark cried despairingly. 'I don't know what's wrong!'

'For God's sake… ' Lloyd breathed. 'Oh my God!' Clark stared desperately at the contacts, which remained unmoving. Then he jabbed his finger on the test button again and again.

Spit of sound in his ear. What is wrong? What is the matter?

'Examine the relays,' he heard Quin say quite clearly in a calm, detached voice. Then the interference rushed in to fill the small silence after he had spoken.

Relays, relays —

'What do I do?' Lloyd asked peremptorily, a sense of betrayal in his voice.

'Open the fucking gates!' Clark snarled. 'You got nowhere else to go!' Relays, relays —

One of them is undamped, one of them is undamped.

'Chief — get the men to their stations, immediately. Engine room?'

'Sir, we're clear down here. '

'Run up electric power. Well done, Chief!'

'Thank you sir.'

'Sandy, clear the ship of all Soviet personnel — all of them, mind you.'

'One of them is unclamped!' Clark yelled into his throat-mike, as if he expected Quin to be able to hear him in an identical freak reception spot.

'What?' Lloyd asked.

'You do your thing, Lloyd — let me do mine!'

'Is it go?'

'It was go a long time past! Let's get out of here!'

'What about “Leopard”?'

'I'll give you “Leopard”, dammit!'

'What about you? You can't be outside the pressure hull when we dive.'