'She's showing up like a house, even with her night deck-lighting.'
He put down Perdix's nose and let her drop from the sky. He'd show these Sea King boys a thing or two — half their pilots were only recently ' front line', and had been in the navy only two and a half years. He knew that they'd be on the quarterdeck, or in Flyco, the flight commander's bridge which protruded above the flight deck, on the port side of the island. They would be watching the approach of this Mark VII, the new Lynx, a machine they ached to fly. At a hundred feet, he pulled her out and lined up on the centre line.
'They've got a reception committee,' Rollo said. ' Both sides.'
'Not for us.' Hob was concentrating now, watching the eerie violet lights sliding up to meet him. There was the batsman, his luminous truncheons flickering weirdly. Perdix was over the round-down and Hob felt the draught snatch at her, as he went into the hover… gently does it… there… smack on spot seven.
He listened to the deck procedures from Flyco, saw the handlers dodging beneath the cab, received the okay to run down. He cut the engines and, as always thankful to be down, he waited for the rotor to lose momentum….
'Okay, Rollo.'
'I'll open the door.'
Hob could see through his window the motionless silhouettes of the guard. At least twenty-four file, the officer of the guard out in front, the commander, the carrier's executive officer, to one side. Even after sunset they were paying Fane their respect.
If there had been no exercise ' Clear Lane'; and if the Lynx's visit to the carrier had not been such a solemn occasion, Hob and Rollo would have been dined that night by the squadron. But the refuelling of Perdix gave them a chance to meet their Culdrose cronies — it did everyone good to swap experiences during these NATO exercises. As soon as Perdix had landed, Glorious increased to maximum cruising speed to close the Azores. MoD had signalled that, at the request of the next of kin, Fane's body was to be flown home. The navy's welfare organization, Hob acknowledged, was first rate. A carrier was being diverted at speed for some four hundred miles.
'Beer, Hob?'
'Squash, please…'
They were sitting in the aircrew mess. It was good relaxing here in their flying gear, yarning of Culdrose and catching up with latest gossip. Before coming out to Glorious, one of the pilots had bumped into Allie Hob's wife.
'She's not missing you, Hob.' The man was grinning.
'Sure…?'
'She's okay.'
Hob wasn't listening, as he stared at the garish prints of Scotland stuck on the bulkhead. He could see her, his Allie, tall and slender, with the laughter in those restless, dark eyes. She was on night duty during the heavy flying spell.
'… and I took her out to dinner.' The pilot was glancing from the corner of his eyes at Hob.
They laughed: a ' front line' pilot's girl was sacrosanct.
'And how d'you like your Mark VII Lynx?' someone asked. ' Scruffy little thing.'
Inevitably they talked shop: if you spent your working life in the air, the stress produced a remarkable interest in the machine you were flying. Hob knew every nut and bolt, every peculiarity that was Perdix. ' They've given her enough power this time, which was what we all worried about,' Hob said.
And then they talked of the Mark VII's role, the new generation of Lynx which frigates now carried. This helicopter was part of the ship's weapons system, but the Lynx's prime roles were to detect and attack submarines at long ranges — before the Russian nuclear boat could launch her attack on the parent frigate, and to destroy with its four Sea Skua missiles enemy surface ships at ranges below the horizon.
And so they went on… the Mark VII Lynx, having been dispatched to destroy the enemy submarine whose approximate position had already been relayed from the RAF''S LRMP (Long Range Maritime Patrol), would first localize the contact. An automatic system was provided for accurately pin-pointing the target's and the helicopter's positions relative to the frigate.
The Mark VII Lynx was fitted with the latest ASW weapon to be produced by the boffins: the 196 ' Active' Short-Range Sonar Buoy ASRB. Dropped in the vicinity of the suspected contact, the buoy automatically ' pinged', transmitting its readings back to the mini-computer for analysis in the Lynx. Tied to the sonar plot, the active short-range sonobuoy was greatly enhancing the Lynx's role in hunting and attacking submarines. Although still fitted with MAD (Magnetic Anomaly Detector) the Active short-range sonobuoy was vastly increasing range detection and thereby providing real killer capability to the Mark VII. Data-linked to the ship, which could be forty miles away below the horizon, the ship-borne Lynx-helicopter system was carrying ASW warfare deep into the.enemy's backyard.
'What fish are you using now?' someone asked.
'The Mark 46. Bloody good Yank torpedo,' Hob said.
'And if you've a surface target?'
Hob explained that the Mark VII was fitted with Sea Skuas, a surface-skimmer missile integrated with the Lynx's electronic support measures and Sea Spray radar. The system was an automatic air-to-surface weapon which needed no aimer — and was difficult for the enemy to counter.
'She's a good bit of kit, without doubt,' said one of the pilots. 'Coffee, Rollo… Hob?'
They were due to take off at 2130, the briefing being in half an hour's time. The coffee did its stuff; Hob relaxed and was enjoying being again with the squadron.
'Your Lynx will never replace a Sea King, though,' commen ted an older pilot, ' however versatile this new Mark VII may be.'
'Okay, okay,' Hob said, grinning. ' It's all right for you and your lumbering mastodons. At worst, you work in pairs, seldom alone, out ahead. We're on our tod, bloody miles out. If I have an enemy nuke under me, even if I'm on MAD, I'm never absolutely certain that he doesn't know I'm there.'
'He'll never know if you're passive. You'd get him on Sea Spray if he used his stick,' the tall pilot said.
'That's what we all say,' Hob replied. ' My point is, that we assume they play to our rules. I bet they don't.'
'Our submariners don't feel happy when there's a chopper around. And I don't suppose the Russians do. They'd knock us out of the sky if they could.'
'It's unlikely they've got anything,' Hob said. ' We gave up SLAM, remember? The converted army "Blowpipe" weapon; it had six missiles grouped circularly on one of the submarine's masts, a TV camera on the other.'
'She disclosed her presence the moment she fired. That was the official pronouncement for abandoning the project. But, of course, the real reason was money.'
'The Russians haven't got it,' Rollo added. 'That's what we were told.'
'My point,' Hob said, ' is that when a new weapon shows up, the Russians immediately counter it.' He downed his coffee: ' Come on. Let's go.'
Hob and Rollo collected their bone domes and made their way out of the aircrew mess. ' Thanks, you guys,' said Hob, and added, 'things are hotting up, if what they tell us is the truth.'
8
Corporal Roderick Burns, Royal Marines, wished now that he had told Mick Foulgis to get stuffed. Foulgis, though a highly competent aircraft handler, was a disrated Leading Airman (for what reason, Burns had never been able to discover); he was also a persistent scrounger. He had invited himself into the Royals' mess for this Friday night — and then arranged for his cronies to come. The mess was crammed, but the watchkeepers were not yet ready to turn in: most were enjoying their pre-supper can. Foulgis had turned up with a load of cans probably scrounged off the newly-joined innocents.