Hawke slammed the hatch door and fired Ryan into the sea. It wasn’t as risky as it sounded — he’d left submarines that way many times before. It was a standard manoeuvre for naval Special Forces all over the world.
With the men working hard to force open the internal hatch, and the sub still diving, Hawke spun open the hatch door and stood well back as the pressure differential forced the seawater through the tube and into the torpedo room. It quickly flooded into the small space.
The flow velocity of the water was tremendous, so he didn’t have to wait long until the water was level with the top of the torpedo tube. Then he pulled himself inside and took the deepest of breaths as he went. Hauling himself through the torpedo tube took all of his strength but then he was clear and swimming to the surface.
When he left the sub they were at twenty-five meters which was nowhere near his deepest freedive without breathing apparatus. His record was eighty meters below sea level, which he’d done off the coast of Bermuda many years ago. Now recognized as a serious sport, freediving had a lengthy pedigree stretching back to ancient cultures when they used the skill to gather pearls or sponges.
For a trained Special Forces frogman like Hawke, leaving a sub at twenty-five meters and swimming to the surface was meat and potatoes, but the feigned casual manner back in the torpedo room with Ryan was to conceal his concerns about the young man’s safety. This would be very deep for Ryan, plus it was freezing, dark water, he had no light and a wounded arm.
Freediving was fun, but not without its risks. At serious depths the body could suffer from a variety of problems ranging from hyperventilation to shallow-water blackout which struck without any warning signs.
There was a lot to consider, including the salinity levels of the water you were diving in. Freshwater and saltwater freediving had their own challenges. Most divers had two forces to consider — upward and downward. A diver’s buoyancy was determined by the saline levels of the water, which meant that the less salt the easier it was dive, because bodies floated more easily in saltwater.
But less upward force caused by the lack of salt meant more downward force when the diver was trying to reach the surface again. In a saltwater environment it was easier for the diver to float back up, but much harder in freshwater.
Hawke knew that the Barents Sea had three distinct water masses, each with their own salinity levels. The warmer water from the Atlantic was higher, as was the colder water coming down from the Arctic, but along the coast the saline levels were lower. This made it easier to dive but harder to reach the surface, and as he and Ryan were on a strictly one-way trip from the sub to the surface this was to their disadvantage.
Now, Hawke swam to the surface, straining his eyes through the gloom to find Ryan, but all he saw was a wild, heaving ocean looming above him like a snarling beast into whose jaws he would soon be swimming.
Lea clung to chopper’s portside skid for her life as Trond turned sharply in the air to give Scarlet another opportunity to hit the Puma with the M2. The skid was wet and slippery in the freezing Arctic rain but her cries for help went unheard. Trond was in the cockpit struggling to evade the enemy’s bullets while Scarlet was occupied behind the noisy machine gun. Victoria’s ears were covered by a chunky pair of defenders and her eyes were clamped shut in terror. If she fell now, no one would notice for a very long time.
She made the cardinal error of looking down and saw only her Heckler & Koch MP7 as it spun down into the raging black sea hundreds of feet below her. She was dimly aware of the pale glow of the Rán’s conning tower lights as it slowly sank beneath the waves and she prayed Hawke had gotten safely aboard.
She made another attempt to pull herself back inside but Trond was climbing hard into the sky and she slipped back over the skid, now hanging on at arms’ length as the helicopter was shrouded in the low storm clouds. The smell of the chopper’s exhaust fumes wafted over her and a wave of nausea almost made her throw up, but she focussed and kept her head together.
With the fumes past now, she blinked to get the drizzly water out of her eyes and took a deep breath. Her fingers, wrapped tightly around the icy metal skid, were tired and wanted to let go but she knew that meant falling to her death. She thought of her father. He had fallen to his death too. The only difference was someone had pushed him over those cliffs and she knew she couldn’t die until she had found out who and why.
She was dragged back to life by the sound of the M2 going nuts on the far side of the helicopter and then she heard Scarlet’s voice screaming with joy. Trond pulled level and then began to descend, allowing Lea to take advantage and use gravity to climb up over the skid and clamber back inside the helicopter.
Looking through Scarlet’s door on the other side of the chopper she saw the Puma spinning around uncontrollably. Flames and smoke poured from its rear rotor as the pilot struggled to keep it in the air.
“You’re going down like a fucking sycamore seed, baby!” Scarlet shouted, and celebrated her shot with a solid-gold air-punch.
Lea moved over to her and watched as the Puma spun closer to the ground. “Nice shooting.”
“Where were you? You missed all the fun.”
Lea took a deep breath and tried to slow her pounding heart rate. “Just hanging out on my own for a second.”
Victoria opened her eyes and looked at them both. “Did I miss anything?”
When Hawke reached the surface a cold rush of air hit him in the face followed by a blast of sea spray. He was in a deep trough now, surrounded on all sides by towering walls of gray ocean. High above, he saw a crest of rising water which folded over and crashed down on top of him.
Seconds later he was atop an enormous crest of seawater, struggling with all his strength to maintain some kind of even buoyancy in the raging swell. To his left, he saw a massive, smoking fireball burning on the rear rotor of a chopper and for a heart-stopping moment he thought it was the AW101 about to crash into the sea with Lea and his friends on board.
Then he realized it was the Puma, and that Scarlet must have taken it out with the M2. He watched it drop into the ocean a few hundred yards away where it landed with a low crashing sound. A sombre column of smoke rose from the water but was quickly dissipated by the wind.
Fighting the power of the sea, he gasped another deep breath as he scanned the water for any sign of Ryan, but saw only the AW101 as Trond spun it around over the cliffs and headed back in the direction of the burning Puma wreckage. They were obviously making a fly-by to ensure it was dead.
Then Hawke saw Ryan, rising on a crest slightly further out to sea than he was — he looked disoriented and scared. The SBS man estimated the wave length at about thirty meters, so he got swimming as fast as he could. He headed down the slope of the water into the trough and then powered himself up the other side until he was on the same crest as Ryan, but when he got there his friend was unconscious and bobbing helplessly up and down in the freezing water. The only reason he was still on the surface was the lifejacket Hawke had given to him as he climbed into the torpedo tube.
Hawke swam behind Ryan and hooked his arm around his chest before beginning the arduous swim back to shore. A nice little rip current had started to develop and no matter how hard the Englishman fought to reach the safety of the shore, they were pushed further out into the freezing ocean.
Hawke’s mind raced with options, but then the best of all presented itself to him when the AW101 turned from the sinking Puma and flew in their direction.
“Stay with us, mate!” Hawke shouted as a line was winched down from the side of the helicopter. Still clinging to Ryan, he grabbed hold of the line and fixed himself into the harness. Moments later they were ascending toward the chopper.