Sea Leopard

'You worry about your business, I'll worry about mine.'

'Very well. Thurston's opening the gates now.'

'Get with it.'

Faulty fitting, he told himself. The relay, one single fucking relay, lying there on the base of the case. His fingers trembled as he reached down to it, touched it almost reverently, fearfully. His fingers stroked, embraced, lifted it. The vibration caused by the torpedo damage had shaken it out of place, disabling the back-up system, preventing the automatic change-over from working.

There was another spit of sound in his ear, but he ignored the slowed-down, true-speed voice of the storm and the air. Quin was invisible, inaudible somewhere behind it, but he no longer mattered.

Clark pressed home the detached relay, flipped over the retaining clamp, then removed his fingers from it. They came away clammily. The electric motors of the Proteus thrummed through the pressure hull.

His back ached. He groaned with the sudden awareness of it and of his cramped and twisted body and the rivulets of perspiration running down his sides and back.

Lloyd's stream of orders continued, murmuring on his chest like the steady ticking of his heart, slower and calmer and younger then his heart felt.

'Slow astern.'

'Slow astern, sir.' Thurston's voice was distant, but Clark could still hear it repeating the captain's instructions. They'd got the gates to the pen open, they'd cast off their moorings at bow and stern. How many men had they lost, just doing that?

'Clark?'

'Yes.'

'Have you finished?'

'Yes. I hope to God, yes.'

'Get back in here — now.'

'Aye, aye, sir.'

Clark turned, still on his knees. He could hear a siren through the outer hull of the Proteus. 'Leopard' had to work —

He turned to look at the back-up system — the grey carapace lay behind it. He tore at the wiring and at the wads of explosive, huddling them into his chest then thrusting them back into the pack in pure elation. Then he lifted the grey metal casing, fitted it, fidgeted in his pocket for the screws, fixed them one at a time, feeling the submarine moving slowly backwards on her batteries, out of the pen. Yes, yes.

Pack, pack — left hand bad. The other could stay. Whatever happened, he would not be coming back. He took hold of the pack, and turned once more to make his way back to the hatch following the wire of his aerial. He shunted the pack and his lamp in front of him, hurrying now, winding through the tree-like stanchions like an obstacle course.

The Proteus lurched forward, as if freed from some constraint.

Clark slipped, and began to slide into the abyss, into the dark. His lamp slid away, wobbling its light back at him for a moment before leaving him in entire darkness, his body weighted by the pack in his right hand — left hand bad — beginning to pursue the fallen lamp. He crooked an arm round one of the stanchion trees, heaving his body into stillness, into a quiver that was devoid of downward movement. He felt sick. He felt exhausted.

'Clark — Clark, where are you, man?'

Clark groaned. He swung the pack until it rested on the level top of the pressure hull, then grabbed the stanchion with his right hand, changing the agonising hold of his crooked arm for a two-handed grip. He heaved at his leaden body, feeling the revolutions of the motors rise in speed. Proteus must be almost out of the pen.

He pulled himself up, aided by scrabbling feet and knees, and lumbered along the top of the pressure hull, reached the hatch and thrust it open. He hefted the explosives through, and let them roll away down the outer hull. Then he clambered after them, closing the hatch and locking it behind him.

The stern of the submarine had already passed into the concrete tunnel leading to the harbour. On her docking prop, Proteus was sliding through the tunnel, out to sea.

He watched as the sail of the submarine slid into the shadow of the tunnel. Above the bellow of the siren, he could hear shooting in the distance, like the pinging of flies against a windscreen. Then he ran crouching along the hull, almost slipping twice, until he reached the aft escape hatch, lifted it, stepped on to the ladder inside the chamber, closed the hatch and locked it. Then he felt his legs go watery and he stumbled to the bottom of the escape chamber, bent double with effort and relief.

'Prepare to dive,' he heard Lloyd saying, then: 'Clark? Clark, where are you?'

'Inside.'

Thank God. Well, does it work?'

'Switch on, and pray.'

'You don't sound too hopeful —'

'Switch the damn thing on!' Clark bellowed with rage and relief and tiredness.

* * *

Valery Ardenyev instinctively placed himself in front of Dolohov and Panov. The scene in the pen had no precise focus, nor did it possess a great deal of movement — certainly not sufficient to suggest panic — yet Ardenyev knew what was happening. One guard was firing, the technicians who must have been lining up like an honour guard to await Panov's arrival were shuffling like a herd smelling the first smoke of the grass fire. Also, there was someone clambering up the side of the Proteus's sail, making his way back into the submarine. Ardenyev had the immediate sense that events were already minutes old, even though the white-coated group of figures seemed only now to be reacting to them. Yes. The gates were wide open, and there were two uniformed bodies lying dead on the concrete, alongside the Proteus.

He heard Dolohov say, in a strangled old voice, 'No —!', and then he ushered them back through the door by which they had entered the pen, pushing them against the officers who had accompanied them, then had stood deferentially aside so that the three of them might be the first of the party to see the captured British vessel.

'Close the door — give the alarm!' he snapped, then he was pushing through the jostle of technicians towards the submarine.

The Proteus slid away from him. As he passed the huddled bodies he believed he recognised the face of the guard on Lloyd's cabin, the man who had patrolled behind the British officer when he had brought Lloyd lunch and told him about Panov.

He ran faster. The Proteus shuddered against the side of the pen, then was free. The bow was still moving away from him as he raced to overtake it. He could not believe the panic appearance of the breakout. There had to have been help, and hope. Lloyd or someone else had been given a gun. He knew 'Leopard' must have been repaired. Lloyd would not have risked lives, and his submarine, without knowing he could rely on the protection of the anti-sonar equipment.

The bow was behind him now. He ran closer to the hull. It rose smoothly above him. He was half-way down the pen, the only moving figure. There was rifle fire behind him, pointless but noisy. The pitons of a ladder climbed away from him. He reached for the lowest one, felt his feet lifted and dragged, his stride extending to great lunar bounds as his arms protested. Then he was pressing himself against the side of the submarine, watching the concrete wall of the tunnel approaching. He might have been half- jammed into the door of a metro train, watching the end of the platform racing at him.

He clambered up the hull, feet slipping, hands sweaty, on to its upper section. He climbed the last few pitons and stood on top of the hull as it slid into the tunnel. He ran to the forward escape hatch, unlocked it, lifted it, and clambered down into the chamber, closing the hatch behind him.

* * *

'Did he hear you, man? Did he?'

Quin shook his head. 'I don't know,' he admitted. 'I really don't know.'

Aubrey looked at his watch. Seven twenty-seven. They were out of range. The link between Clark and the Nimrod had been broken as certainly as if Pasvik had been shot, and his dish aerials smashed. There was nothing more to be done. As if he saw clearly into Aubrey's mind, Eastoe's voice sounded in the headset.