More unintelligible words, static. Then a loud hum and the line died.
‘Shit!’ Derham exclaimed. ‘They must’ve cut comms in the control room.’ He was about to try to reroute the system when he heard voices from the corridor. He dived behind the console.
The door eased open. Through a tiny slit in the corner of the console, he could see two men in black fatigues, faces in shadow, weapons ready. They slipped into the room.
Derham jumped up, unleashed a spray of bullets and ducked back down. Leaning forward, he peered through a crack.
‘Drop the gun.’
The voice came from behind him.
Derham let the weapon fall to the floor.
‘Get up.’
Derham rose to his feet, felt the man’s rifle against the nape of his neck and knew he was a dead man.
‘Sergei. Stop. I want him alive for a while longer.’ The voice came from the doorway.
A man with steely blue eyes crossed the room, his rifle lowered at his side. The man with the G3 at his neck hissed and Derham felt the barrel pull away from his skin.
‘Who are you?’ Derham snapped.
He ignored the question and stopped a few feet away from the console. ‘You are Captain Jerry Derham. I’ve read a lot about you.’
‘Why are you here? What do you want?’
‘Well, captain. You are here to retrieve an artefact from the wreck of the Titanic, while our job is to stop you. My employers would rather whatever it is you are looking for stayed put.’
Van Lee stepped forward and removed Derham’s pistol and knife. Then he spun him to face Sergei, pulled some twine from a pouch in his combat trousers and bound the captain’s hands behind his back.
Van Lee led the way out into the corridor. They took a right and followed a straight narrow corridor to the steps up to the control room.
Derham surveyed the carnage and forced himself to say nothing, to remain icily calm.
Two of the mercenaries were still at the console. ‘Steve, Al,’ Van Lee snapped. ‘You traced the sub’s crew?’
‘Nothing yet,’ Al replied without looking up.
Van Lee swung round to Derham. ‘Excuse the mess.’ Then he kicked one of the corpses close to the control panel where Chris Tomkin stood. He pointed to the monitor. ‘I thought you’d like to see this,’ he added. ‘The wreckage of your clever submarine.’
Derham blanched.
‘The crew are out on the ocean floor, but they won’t last long, of course.’
Derham held Van Lee’s stare. Without warning, he spun round, raised his leg and landed his boot square in the throat of the man called Sergei standing a few feet behind him. They all heard his windpipe snap. He dropped his gun and brought his hands to his neck, gasping for air.
As Derham whirled back round Van Lee took a step back and slammed his fist hard into the captain’s face, knocking him backwards into the injured gunman. The two men fell to the floor in a tangle of limbs.
Van Lee forced Derham up and onto his knees, totally ignoring his colleague writhing in his death throes. He landed a kick to the captain’s chest, causing him to double up in agony. A second kick to the jaw sent Derham sprawling back across the cold metal floor. Van Lee stepped forward; Chris Tomkin came round behind Derham.
‘Get up, you fuck!’ Van Lee screamed.
Derham slowly struggled back to his knees, his hands still tied behind him. He was reeling in pain and blinded by blood running into his eyes. Tomkin grabbed his hair and yanked his head back. He pulled an Ek Commando knife from his belt and brought the blade round to Derham’s throat. Glancing up, Tomkin held Van Lee’s eyes, waiting for the order.
‘Lower your weapons.’ The shout came from the door into the control room. Four men charged into the room, HKMP5 sub-machine guns at their hips. Two more came in a second wave and charged across the room, sidestepping the corpses and taking up position close to the control panels. The men were dressed in assault armour, helmets and goggles, with badges bearing the impression of a winged dagger and the words ‘Who Dares Wins’ on each sleeve.
The four mercenaries froze. The SAS leader took two paces over to where Derham knelt, Tomkin’s knife still at his throat. He stood behind the mercenary, bringing the barrel of his weapon to the back of his head. ‘Drop the knife and back away,’ he said calmly.
Tomkin barely moved a muscle, but the soldier sensed instantly what he was about to do. With stunning speed the SAS officer grabbed Tomkin’s knife hand and pulled the trigger of his HKMP5.
A soldier helped Derham to his feet, and the SAS commander whirled on Van Lee and the other two. ‘Drop your weapons, or you can follow your friend.’ He flicked his assault weapon towards Tomkin’s headless corpse.
45
‘I’m OK,’ Derham snapped as one of the SAS men helped him to his feet. Three of the British soldiers had stripped Van Lee and the two other mercenaries of their weapons, bound their hands and had started to escort them out.
Derham dashed over to the control panel and stabbed at the keypad. ‘Commander Milford… do you copy?’
Nothing but an electronic hiss.
‘Milford, come in.’
Derham turned a dial and the speaker emitted a high-pitched whine.
‘The bastards have cut the comm link,’ Derham spat and slammed a palm down onto the control panel.
‘Captain?’ The leader of the SAS team was standing beside him.
Jerry turned and saluted. ‘Captain Derham.’
‘Major Graham Davenport. We were shadowing you… received your Mayday.’
Derham exhaled. ‘I’m extremely grateful, sir,’ he said. ‘But three of my people are down there on the ocean floor.’
The major looked at the screen. ‘The sub has gone.’
‘Yes, but they were already some way from it… I hope.’
‘How is that possible?’
Derham glanced at a clock above the control panel. ‘I can’t explain. We have a second sub. I have to get down there.’ He spun round.‘I would like you to assume command of the ship. I hope some of my men have survived.’
‘We’ll begin a search,’ Davenport said and watched Derham race to the door.
There was no time to run through the routine checks, but JV1 and JV2 were kept on standby 24/7. Derham had no comms between JV2 and Armstrong, so he would be riding solo the whole way with no navigational aid from the surface.
As the sub shot away from beneath the ship, Derham let it accelerate to maximum speed. He glanced at the depth gauge, watching the digits change rapidly as on the screens the light began to fade.
The monitors displayed an image of the area around where JV1 had stood. JV2 was still too far away to make out anything other than blurred clumps of dark and light marking out the cargo hold and other large pieces of the Titanic.
Derham was working robotically. He could not contemplate the thoughts trying to seep into his consciousness. He could not accept that Jane Milford, Kate and Lou were dead. But at the same time he was processing the situation logically. The only way the three of them could still be alive is if they had made it to the cargo hold and got inside before their suits gave out. He had to hang on to that hope.
He adjusted course with short bursts of the engines. The on-board computer was guiding the ship automatically but he was able to override manually to compensate for random fluctuations in the currents. He glanced at the image on the control panel monitor and noticed it had cleared. Now he could just make out individual features and spotted the wreckage of JV1 strewn across the ocean floor.