‘X-ray One, loud and clear. Running in on one-one-two. Estimate nine minutes to DZ overhead.’
‘Roger. We’ll give you a white light buoy on our starboard side, your port.’
‘X-ray One. Thanks.’
‘Alpha Two. Happy landings, and please not to drop your goddamn boats on top of us.’
Merv knew that to have comms with the aircraft, the sub must have her periscope above the surface. By the time they reached her, she would have surfaced.
‘Four minutes to DZ overhead,’ the pilot called. ‘Stand by.’
The head-loadie held up four fingers. The Herc had levelled off and was flying steadily at 1200 feet. All round the hold guys were adjusting and checking their harnesses. The rest of the hold crew were snapping off the fastenings and removing the nets that had held the boats down. At D minus two the head-loadie hit the button to lower the tailgate ramp. Warm, fresh air rushed in as the broad platform descended and the back of the plane yawned open to reveal black water glittering below.
The head-loadie held up one finger. Merv counted down the sixty seconds to himself. Then they were into the familiar sequence: ‘Red on. Green on. GO!’
First out were the boats. One big shove, and their platforms slid quickly backwards over the steel rollers in the deck until they toppled clear. The team immediately followed, in two sticks of five.
As his chute snapped out, Merv saw the brilliant light shining up out of the sea, and beyond it he made out the long, dark shape of the sub’s upper hull. Then he steered for the boats, which were hitting the water with a big double splash three hundred yards away to the east.
Ten minutes later each team was clustered round its boat, still trussed on the platform. Cutting the tie-cords was a dicey business, because if anyone got entangled he could easily go down deep six when the platform fell away. With most of the cords severed, all but two men backed off, and they severed the final bonds in unison.
With both Geminis fully operational, they motored gently towards the long, low hulk of the sub. The crew had already opened up the main hatch above the forward torpedo room — a huge, empty space on the front of the ship — and all the gear went into that; the boats were deflated, rolled up and packed into valises, the engines sealed inside waterproof bags. The guys changed into dry gear and went down into the heart of the ship. The hatches were sealed, buzzers sounded and the crew prepared to dive.
Merv introduced himself as the commander, and met the officer of the watch. He’d been in submarines before, but they had all been small and cramped. This one was mega, with four decks, passages running for a hundred feet or more, and a luxurious amount of space. The whole ship was very quiet, and only the faintest hum of air-conditioning was detectable. It was also spotlessly clean, with fresh pastel colours on the bulkheads. The temperature was a comfortable 68 degrees, the air fresh, and the crew were in shirt-sleeves. The facilities in the enlisted men’s mess included a TV screen, a whole library of videos, and a bar at which the visitors were encouraged to make themselves tea and coffee. Their American hosts must have been curious about their mission, but they showed professional restraint. Apart from a few cracks such as, ‘What’s it like out there?’ they asked no questions.
In any case, the visitors were going to be on board for no more than a couple of hours. While the rest of the team relaxed, Merv went along to the CIC, or Combat Information Center, beneath the conning tower, to check details of their approach to Desierto. The island was only thirty miles off, and the sub was closing on it at twelve knots.
For a layman, the CIC was an eerie sight: a circular room, almost dark, full of men monitoring low-lit dials with dark-red figures flickering on them. Since the whole principle of a submarine is that it does not advertise its presence, the Endeavor was operating on passive sonar only, sending out no emissions that other vessels could detect. At a bank of complex arrays five men were listening for transmissions at different ranges — distant, medium and close.
‘Don’t think me a prick,’ said Merv to the cheerful first duty officer, ‘but if you don’t use radar, how do you know where you are?’
‘We have very precise inertial navigation systems,’ was the answer. ‘Gyroscopes — yes? Right now, I can tell you where we are to within a few feet. If we have to, we can put up an aerial now and then to get a fix off a satellite, but most times we’re happy to stay down. We can hear a lot, too. Listen in.’
The officer handed Merv a pair of headphones, and he found they were full of mysterious swishing, booming noises.
‘Hear that?’ said his companion. ‘That’s a shoal of barracuda giving us the time of day. When we close on this island of yours, we’re gonna be hearing the surf on the shore from about four miles out. Now, you call the shots. Just say where you want to go, and we’ll squirt you out.’
‘Can you give us a sub-surface release?’
‘Sure can. In fact, that’s all the better for us. If we don’t break the surface, we don’t break international law. Until we break the surface, we don’t become a ship.’
By 0345 they could hear the surf ahead of them. The sub came up to periscope depth and sat there, moving gently forward, five ks off the coast. In the cavernous forward torpedo room the team pulled on their full diving kit and checked each other methodically, then went two at a time into the escape hatch. Merv always found that an unnerving moment: once you’re sealed in the hatch in total blackness and the chamber is filling with water, there’s no turning back. If anything goes wrong then, you could be written off.
Having released a float with a steel hawser attached, the first pair swam up the cable, popped the air-bottle to inflate the No. 1 boat, and scrambled aboard. Humping the 175-lb engine out of the water and on to the back of the boat was no picnic, but they managed it, and moved away from the buoy. Up came the second team and the second boat. Last to the surface were their bergens full of kit, their weapons and explosives, all done up in Ellison bags. With everyone and everything on board, Merv counted heads, made the total ten, and with a torch flashed a clearing signal to the officer observing them through the periscope.
The time was 0405. The moon had set, leaving the night very dark, and only a gentle wind was blowing from the west, so the sea was calm. The sub had put the boats out west of their target, and they set off on a course of ninety degrees, due eastwards, cruising easily downwind at eight knots.
Soon the coast of the island was showing as a dark line on the horizon ahead. The coxswains reduced speed and continued until, one kilometre out, Merv signalled a halt. With the boats hove to, he and another swimmer slipped over the side and went in alone for a beach reconnaissance. Thirty minutes later they were bobbing in the swell and touching bottom, a few yards offshore, only to find that their navigation had been almost too precise. No more than 300 metres in front of them, a big cargo vessel was moored alongside a jetty, her upperworks showing white in the starlight.
‘Too fucking close,’ said Merv. ‘Let’s get round the corner.’
The Int guys at Hereford had faxed him a map of the island. It was only a photocopy, but it gave a reasonable idea of the layout round the port, and Merv had memorized the details. He remembered that the jetty lay along the inner edge of a small bay, and that the bay was sheltered by a hook of headland. He also remembered that the airstrip was inland to the south — about one k away to their right as they faced in from the sea.