Simon Collingwood had been thinking about that for several hours.
He didn’t like any of the conclusions he’d reached.
The USS Scorpion had actually stopped ‘charging’ the moment Dreadnought’s wheel had gone over. The American boat was coasting to a halt about a mile away, more or less bow to bow with her British quarry.
Bandit One, the Scorpion’s sister had headed away at high speed, discounting any fanciful idea that she’d suffered some kind of mechanical problem and been forced to abandon the chase. Ever since then the Scorpion had easily kept pace with Dreadnought, never falling more than three miles astern, which told Collingwood that both the US Navy subs had a speed advantage over his boat with its older hull form. Although the Skipjack boats might not have the teardrop hulls he’d heard mooted for the subsequent class of US nuclear attack boats — the Thresher class — they shared the same power plants and propulsion machinery, and they were clearly more slippery through the water than Dreadnought. To have maintained contact so easily their speed advantage had to be at least two or three, perhaps as many as five knots. If that wasn’t bad enough, and it wasn’t in any way good; he was beginning to suspect that the Americans probably had superior passive sonar equipment. This and the knowledge that his every move was almost certainly now being tracked by air-dropped sonar buoys, somewhat limited his options.
Simon Collingwood wasn’t entirely disheartened; he’d drawn the two Skipjack class boats away from the Hermes Battle Group and, if and when the acoustic and sonar records of the last forty-eight hours were properly analysed, a huge amount of operational and tactical information about the relative performance of the Dreadnought and her American cousins would be gleaned for future reference. Moreover, this had been achieved without anybody actually getting killed, which was always good news.
It went without saying that the game had been fun.
“Right full rudder!” He called, coming to a decision. “Make five-zero revs! Make our course one-eight-zero degrees. Make our depth one-zero-zero feet if you please!”
Dreadnought’s Executive Officer raised an eyebrow.
“We’re not getting away from that chap,” he grimaced, jabbing a finger at the USS Scorpion’s symbol on the tactical plot. “And I don’t think he’s going to let us get anywhere near the Enterprise Battle Group. We’ll cut out losses and report in to Fleet HQ. I should imagine we’ll be redeployed south to cover the Hermes’s northern screen.”
The USS Scorpion held her course until she was directly astern of the Dreadnought and then formatted on her, heading south.
“Persistent bugger, isn’t he?” Max Forton complained.
His Captain frowned.
He’d anticipated his US Navy counterpart would have understood that the game was over, let the range open and commenced patrolling just to make sure Dreadnought didn’t put about and attempt to creep around her to the north. Carrying on the chase wasn’t playing the game; nor was it wise.
“What does he think is going to happen next?” Max Forton asked rhetorically. “Sooner or later we’re going to fall in with Hermes’s anti-submarine screen. After what those fellows have been through the last week they’re going to be a tad trigger happy, methinks!”
“Active sonar on standby please!” Simon Collingwood demanded. This thing needed to be stopped before it got even more dangerous. “Prepare to send by Morse code in the open.”
He didn’t quite know why but he was getting a very bad feeling about the situation. He wasn’t quite sensing an icy hand clutching at his vitals; but the hairs at the nape of his neck were beginning to stand on end.
“S ONE-ZERO-ONE TO SSN FIVE-EIGHT-NINE STOP WELL PLAYED STOP GAME OVER STOP RESPECTFULLY SUGGEST YOU BREAK CONTACT AT THIS TIME STOP ADVISE AGAINST CONTACT WITH ROYAL NAVY SURFACE UNITS PATROLLING SOUTH OF THIS POSITION STOP PLEASE ACKNOWLEDGE MESSAGE ENDS”
Nothing happened.
“Scorpion is holding at two miles, sir.”
Collingwood and his Executive Officer looked thoughtfully at each other.
“Send,” the Dreadnought’s commanding officer ordered, “S ONE-ZERO-ONE TO SSN FIVE-EIGHT-NINE STOP PLEASE ACKNOWLEDGE MY PREVIOUS TRANSMISSION MESSAGE ENDS”
HMS Dreadnought was closed up at action stations but some hours ago all internal hatches had been dogged open.
“Quietly if you please, Number One,” Simon Collingwood murmured, “let’s close up the boat and warn the torpedo room to be ready to flood down the tubes again.”
The word was passed through the ship in hoarse whispers.
“Yeoman, prepare the following signal for broadcast in the clear to Fleet HQ: DREADNOUGHT TO C–IN-C FLEET STOP COPY C–IN-C FIRST SUBMARINE SQUADRON STOP HAVE ATTEMPTED TO BREAK CONTACT WITH USS SCORPION AND COMMUNICATED MY INTENTION TO THAT VESSEL STOP I ANTICIPATE POSSIBLE HOSTILE ACTION MAY BE IMMINENT STOP I HAVE DETERMINED NOT TO FIRE THE FIRST SHOT STOP.” Suddenly, he could have cut the atmosphere in the control room with a knife. “Append our current position, course, speed and depth to that report at time of dispatch please.”
“Scorpion is flooding her tubes!”
Simon Collingwood held up a hand before Max Forton could order Dreadnought to respond. Scorpion had the prime tactical position.
“Sir?” The other man asked.
Collingwood began to game the options: Scorpion could have fired on Dreadnought at any time in the last few hours; the best time would have been when her prey gave in to the inevitable and abandoned its flight a few minutes ago.
“Revolutions for twelve knots please!”
“Scorpion is conforming to our course and speed!” Then: “Belay that! Scorpion is coming right and increasing revs… Altering right to pass along our starboard side, sir!”
“Maintain current course and speed!” Simon Collingwood directed as he tried to unravel what was going through the mind of his counterpart in the Skipjack class submarine’s control room.
“SPLASH ONE!” Yelled a gruff voice from the sound room. “Bearing green-two zero! FAST PROPELLORS! Three thousand yards! TORPEDO IN THE WATER!”
The Captain of the Royal Navy’s first and only nuclear attack submarine understood everything in a fraction of a second with a perfect clarity; a perfect clarity that made absolutely no difference to the fact that within minutes he and all his men would be dead.
“SPLASH TWO!”
Commander Simon Collingwood would have panicked if he’d thought it would have done any good. He was astonished at how calm his voice sounded when he started giving orders.
“Ten degrees right rudder!”
“Make maximum emergency revolutions! Over-ride ALL safeties!”
“Down bubble!”
“Make our depth three zero-zero-feet!”
“Flood all torpedo tubes!”
Chapter 33
The Vice-President of the United States of America, Lyndon Baines Johnson stepped forward in the steady rain that had begun to fall twenty minutes before the Boeing 707 in the dark blue and white livery of the British Overseas Airways Corporation landed. The easterly wind which had blown wintery rain across Virginia and Maryland had carried away the pall of smoke that had hung across Andrews Field like a dirty fog, when dawn had finally broken after the most terrible night any of those in the reception committee could ever recollect.
Edward Heath, hatless in a nondescript gabardine raincoat had paused in the doorway. The low clouds and the rain obscured the agony of the city to the north-west and he was a little relieved. In the Second World War he’d been an artillery man; fought all the way from Normandy to the Rhine and beyond, witnessing in detail the pitilessness of war. He collected his wits and walked carefully down the steps to the tarmac followed by his Foreign Secretary, Tom Harding-Grayson and Iain Macleod, his Minister of Information. While the VIPs disgorged from the front of the airliner Sterling submachine gun-armed Royal Marines and less military-looking dark-suited Special Branch bodyguards decamped hurriedly from the rear door.