“There, sir.” Shaw put his finger on the spot. “Just clear of the channel.”
“Hm… soundings look all right, plenty of water there. It starts to shoal only farther in. Yes, yes… the approach to the tower is certainly clear enough. It could be done, certainly it could, from a purely seamanship point of view. It would be the end of the Cochrane, of course, and there would be casualties…”
“I think we’ll have to accept that, sir, when you think of what’s in the balance now. They needn’t be very heavy, since the ship’s company will have been warned and they can mostly be on the upper deck as she runs in.”
“Yes, yes…” Carleton pulled at his lower lip. “What about retaliation? It’s defended, presumably?”
“Only by guards with automatic weapons, sir, just to control the civilian labour. They’ve got Kalashnikov submachine-guns with an effective range of about four hundred yards. Also there’s some rocket-batteries on the coast, but I don’t believe they’d tick over in time.” Shaw kept his consuming impatience out of his voice with an effort. He wanted nothing so much as to take Careful Carleton by the scruff of the neck and shake him into action, into an awareness of urgency. “As for the boom, the Cochrane would go through that like paper. And here’s the nice bit, sir. We could work it so it looked just like a genuine accident, something going wrong at the last minute. Caught with our pants down. Then they can’t use it as an excuse, can’t say we struck the first blow — all that sort of thing. It’s tit for tat, sir!”
“Ah-ha.” Carleton looked at him intently, his heavy face folded into deep lines. “How would you go about that, Shaw?”
Shaw was trembling now, striving to keep his feelings out of his face, but he thought: Oh, dear God! He clenched his fists, said, “Steering can jam at awkward moments, sir, as you know. No reason why the Cochrane's helm shouldn’t jam once she’s headed a little off the channel, and something go wrong in the engine-room too. An old ship…”
“Yes, I follow.” Carleton tapped the chart with his pencil, gnawing at his bottom lip, tall and gloomy, concentrating hard.
“Well, sir?”
Carleton said, “It’s a plan, certainly. Yes. Well worth thinking about. But a very big decision to have to make, Shaw.”
“Yes, sir.”
Suddenly Carleton swung round. He said energetically, “I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll put it to the Admiralty with my recommendation that it be adopted. Does that satisfy you?”
Shaw let out a long breath and said, “Thank you, sir. But may I suggest you lose no time now? So far the home authorities don’t even know exactly what’s going to happen in that fissure — and I really would like to get the Vulcans called off.”
Shaw knew it was going to work. Assuming that the timings were right, he couldn’t see anything to stop it. After they’d hit there would be nothing the Russians could do about it, even if they did smell a rat and disbelieve that explanation of an unavoidable accident, as in fact they most likely would. There would be far too much dirty washing around if they made trouble; they couldn’t possibly use a jammed helm and a fault in the engine-room as an excuse for going to war, however phoney they might believe it to be, for to do so would be to admit to the world what the tower was there for.
Within the hour the answer was flashed through from the Admiralty and Shaw read the cypher as soon as it was broken down. It read: Plan approved. Vulcans cancelled but will be held at instant readiness pending success or otherwise of ramming. They will be airborne at your E.T.A. Moltsk and can have Skybolt missiles on target within five minutes of any signal from you reporting plan impracticable in conditions as you find them. It is however urgently hoped at highest level that Vulcans will not repeat not be required.
Once that signal had come and he had definite orders, Carleton was a changed man. He acted quickly. There were urgent consultations between ships and Carleton went into the plan very thoroughly with his navigator and the Flag Captain and with the captain and navigator of the Lord Cochrane. The right moment for the ramming turn was plotted as closely as possible. In the meantime Carleton had given orders for a helicopter lift of all excess personnel from the cruiser so as to minimize casualties; and both his helicopter squadrons were engaged on this, dropping aft over the carrier’s round-down to hover above the cruiser, which had now closed the carrier to a cable’s-length astern; keeping as low as possible so that the radar tracking-stations ashore, which would be following the fleet all the way in, would not be able to pick up any aerial activity. Orders were passed to ensure so far as humanly possible the safety of all hands remaining aboard the cruiser, which the Admiral expected would have her fo’c’sle ripped right back to the bridge under the tremendous impact. Aboard the cruiser mechanics and engineer officers were working flat out and would go on doing so throughout the night and the next forenoon, bringing life to the two silent engine-rooms which had not been needed in the old vessel’s role of training-ship, bringing them to life so that her four shafts could, that afternoon to come, send her flinging arrow-like, thundering through the water with a foaming bow-wave and tumbling wake to demolish the tower and all its works.
Ashore the radar tracking-stations kept their unremitting vigil on the British ships, handing them on from one to another along the coast, making reports by landline to grim-faced men in Moscow, the men behind the threat, the men whose very lives now hung upon complete success. These men were edgy, in a nail-biting mood as the hours ticked slowly past. No chances were being taken now; a big reception — though now, unfortunately, without Comrade Doctor Carew — had been prepared for the British Admiral in a spirit of complete friendliness, a friendliness that would effectively mask the iron fist to be revealed when it was too late — only after the fissure had been fired into the heart of England.
In the meantime certain further precautions were being taken — just to be on the safe side. The British Admiral’s signal about Carew had appeared to be perfectly genuine; it fitted with such facts as were known — with the two disasters on the road north from Emets. One of the motorcyclists had been found alive and he had reported filling the escaping car with bullets, one of which could easily have hit Carew. The man Alison might also have been wounded and then, succumbing to the weather, have been washed out of the boat…
Yes, it fitted; but the British, of course, were never entirely to be believed.
Twenty-four
And now there was not long to go.
The dawn was cold and grey and the sun was a dull and ominous red blob on the eastern horizon. The fingers of the look-outs, the men who were the eyes of the fleet and who were now alert for any hostile signs in the air and along the Russian coast, were stiff with cold although the morning watchmen had not long since relieved the decks. Away to starboard those men could begin to see that barren coastline, the dreary tundra stretching away, characterless and open in the clefts between the high rock walls. Some men, those who had served during the war, knew this run — as far as Murmansk anyhow; and they cursed it still. It had never brought anything but grimness and death. The Murmansk run, the last run of all for so many ships, so many men, so many cargoes. A cruel place in which to be attacked, to be cast adrift in a hopeless sea, a cold sea whose icy fingers dug into men’s entrails and stopped their breath; a sea in which in those days there had been no rescue, for the escorts could not stop to pick up survivors under threat of the German bombs and the shells; and there had been no helicopters handy. This run brought its memories of the long, weaving gun-barrels of the German heavy cruisers and the pocket-battleships, of the black crosses on the wings of the dive-bombers aiming sudden death at sailors who had struggled round the dehumanizing North Cape to bring the means of war to the Russian armies.