Power Play (9 page)

With the outrage simmering among the naval agencies involved, the Royal Marines came clattering out of the skies in their enormous Chinook Mark 3. Angus Moncrief had commandeered the local football field about 250 yards north of the harbor for the landing. He instructed the bells of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland to ring out across the town to reassure local people, who may have wondered whose side the marines were on.

They split into two fighting forces, the first jogging down to the harbor in readiness to embark a couple of tugs and escort the harbormaster out to the submarine, the second to march to the shore road and secure the area, ensuring people kept well clear of the
Gepard
, and if necessary to close the left-hand lane across the island bridge.

A detachment of a dozen troops was detailed to each of the tugs, one of which, owned by the Royal Navy, was commanded by Major Ronnie Hughes. Angus Moncrief was in the resident Lochalsh vessel, and they cleared the jetty at 0800.

With the great span of the bridge high above them, they swept out of the loch and drove out into the waters of the inner sound and were now within a few hundred yards of the Russian boat. Through his glasses, Angus could see the name
Gepard
on the front of the sail. He could also see its masts—periscope, radar antenna, radio and satellite comms—and there were now two Russian officers on the bridge. The pressure hull itself was also much more visible, since the water had subsided another couple of feet.

It was difficult for either tug to come alongside, given that neither helmsman wished to find himself stuck fast on the same sandbank as the submarine. And so they both stood off, while Angus Moncrief shouted through his bullhorn, requesting anyone who could speak English to open communications.

The Russian captain, distinctive with the thick gold-braid single stripe beneath one star on his sleeve, signaled by waving his arms that no one on board was able to converse with the British military, and he made significant gestures suggesting all he wanted was a good, solid tow off into deeper water. They’d be just fine under their own power.

The marines, however, had thought to bring along a young lieutenant who spoke some Russian, and after a short consultation with his commanding officer he called out that the
Gepard
was regarded as an instrument of war, that it contained very powerful weapons, and that the captain and the rest of the ship’s command should regard themselves as under arrest for trespassing in British waters.

Further, they would not be permitted to leave British territorial waters until it was established beyond doubt they had not been spying or making electronic interceptions during the course of their illegal voyage into forbidden areas.

The submarine would be towed off at high tide, but boarding nets would be required for the marines to secure the ship and take over its command. If the captain did not acquiesce, the
Gepard
would be disabled by means of bombs under her propeller and become the property of Her Britannic Majesty’s Government. The crew would then be ordered to scram the nuclear reactor and would be escorted out at gunpoint to face trial for spying and espionage.

The marine lieutenant added that it would be simpler for all concerned for the crew to surrender forthwith until the Royal Navy arrived in force to clean up the operation and remove the
Gepard
undamaged to a safe haven, where formal inspections would be carried out.

Major Ronnie Hughes had not the slightest compunction about treating the captain so harshly. If the situation had been reversed, the Russian Navy would have used every trick in the book to humiliate either the British or the Americans and would most certainly have commandeered any nuclear boat that had strayed into their waters.

They would also have given deep consideration into the possibility of
never giving it back, and, would, without question, have dismantled it down to the last rivet to discover its secrets. The major was on the line to Admiral Ryan at Faslane, and they were already into damage limitation.

“Ronnie,” said the admiral, “the Royal Navy is going to get the blame for this. The politicians will deny that their defense review had anything to do with it, and they’ll say the navy was just too slack. I’ve spoken to Mark Rowan, and we agree the navy’s best bet is to be very harsh with the Russians and to get hold of their submarine and gut the bloody thing for information. That means we have to board the ship and place it under formal military arrest.”

“Okay, sir. But what about towing it in? Will we have to bring her down to Faslane?”

“That’s possible but not definite, because it really would be a huge pain in the ass to tow her all that way—maybe four hundred miles by sea. And it would be pointless to let her make the journey under her own steam—she’d just dive and charge off home five hundred feet below the surface.

“We’re not admitting it, but there’s probably nothing wrong with her. I’m flying in a dozen senior submarine engineers and sonar technicians. That way we can take a long look at her weapons, confiscate her electronic surveillance records, and dismantle her towed array controls. We’ll also get a grip on her acoustic cladding and see if there’s anything to learn. Right after that we’ll tell her to bugger off.”

Major Hughes laughed at the crisp thought processes. “Right-ho, sir,” he replied. “And how about hauling her off?”

“That’s under control. The
Sutherland
is in the area, on her way north. She’ll be with you in around four hours. You get the captain to surrender his ship. If you have to, threaten to blow the propeller off.”

“I’ve done that, sir.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing, sir. But he went a bit pale.”

“Well done, Ronnie. Get in control, ASAP.”

The incoming
Sutherland,
a four-thousand-ton Duke Class Type-23 guided-missile frigate, had already cleared the great southern peninsula of the Isle of Skye, past the flashing light on the Point of Sleat, off which the ship had made a U-turn.

The frigate had been en route to the northern Hebrides when the signal had come in to make all speed to Lochalsh. Rather than tackle the
150-mile voyage around the huge island, Captain Allan McKeown elected to swerve hard to starboard and steam straight up the sound into what looked like a dead end.

Every Royal Navy captain knew the shortcut through the narrow waters of Kyle Rhea, with its deep channel sloping up to a minimum depth of around 40 feet as it swirls on a strong tidal pull into the Alsh Loch itself, saving more than 120 miles of the journey to the Skye Bridge.

None of the known Royal Naval routes is marked on any chart, and no Dark Blue personnel ever admits they took this surreptitious cut through the mountains to Angus Moncrief’s harbor. The conservationists do not like it, inflamed by the possible dangers to otters and other wildlife. But there was a mischievous turn of mind to Captain McKeown, and he swiftly accepted his new orders:
Make all speed to Skye Bridge, Lochalsh . . . Prepare to tow off Russian submarine “Gepard” Akula, ten thousand tons, and hard aground—then get her to Faslane. RN Submarine Command.

He gunned the big frigate up toward the tight waters of Kyle Rhea, prepared to scatter the otters and possibly break the Scottish all-comers record for the journey.

As Captain McKeown was charging up toward the mountains, the Royal Marine Fleet Protection Group was issuing final orders to the Russian captain. Boarding nets were to be dropped down the hull for a twenty-four-strong party of heavily armed Royal Marines to climb and enter the ship. All Russian small arms were to be surrendered.

At this point the ship’s executive officer and first mate were to leave the
Gepard
and climb aboard the Royal Navy berthing tug
Impulse,
normally based on the Clyde but on standby in Kyle Lochalsh for forthcoming submarine training exercises being conducted throughout these Scottish waters.

Angus Moncrief elected to remain on patrol just off the sandbank until slack water at the lowest point of the tide, at around 1100 hours. His local captain would hold the second tug in readiness in case the marines elected to disembark.

At only 0930, there was a clear Mexican standoff. The Russian captain claimed he was awaiting instructions from his naval attaché in the London embassy and from Northern Fleet Headquarters. Major Hughes instructed his lieutenant to inform the captain he was in no position to
accept instructions from anyone except the Royal Navy since the
Gepard
had been confiscated and was going precisely nowhere until he gave the order.

And, should that be unclear, he was ordering the fixing of two “sticky” bombs, one on the shaft and one on the propeller joint. This, he said, would most certainly blast the
Gepard
’s only method of propulsion asunder and probably blow all seven of her propeller blades into the middle of the inner sound.

Meanwhile, the marines would happily wait it out, and when the submarine’s food ran out, the crew could send up a flare to avoid starvation and submit to captivity. Better yet, said the major, they could surrender forthwith and begin the formal process of getting home to Mother Russia.

Within fifteen minutes the captain saw the sense in this and signaled that boarding nets would now be placed on the hull. His two officers would submit to British military custody, and the Royal Marines were welcome to come aboard and take charge of the ship.

Would the major, however, refrain from fixing limpet mines to the propeller shaft? He plainly had decided that Mother Russia would be quite sufficiently vexed without that particular expense, and there was no sense in making a diabolical situation into a disaster.

Major Hughes, a thirty-eight-year-old native of South Wales, thus ordered into action the first boarding party of his career to mount a guard on the foredeck while small arms were surrendered and then take over the
Gepard
, waiting for the tide and the arrival by helicopter of Admiral David Ryan’s submariners. The Royal Navy would then assume command for the journey to Faslane, in cooperation with the Russian captain, whose name it transpired was Konstantin Tatarinov, originally from the Republic of Karelia.

No one broached the subject of how the
Gepard
came to be resting on the starboard-side sandbank in clear sight of the channel markers, green buoys on her port side and red to starboard. From her grotesque position, slewed onto the seabed, she looked as if someone had just left the helm and allowed the submarine to wallow right, at a slow speed, until she lurched into the shallows and grounded out.

“I have nae idea how anyone in the whole worrrld could have managed that,” grunted Angus Moncrief in his rich Argyll brogue. “They must have handed over the helm to the ship’s cat.”

But while everyone in the Skye Bridge area slipped into calm and cooperative mode, there was absolute hell to pay in London and anywhere else where highly placed naval commanders were involved.

The Royal Navy’s first sea lord knew he would bear the brunt of the humiliation from on-the-make politicians and faux-indignant newspaper editors. But, being several times more clever than all of them, he had a plan to defuse the heart of the problem.

Laymen could not possibly understand the complexity of running a submarine protection system around a rugged, rough coastline like that of Great Britain. And they certainly could never understand the system of decoys practiced so assiduously by Russians, Americans, and the home team.

In the broadest terms, a submarine nation trying to spy would likely send in a couple of boats to draw off the defenses, while their main vessel slipped away into forbidden waters. The first sea lord proposed to confirm that a Royal Navy submarine had been tracking at least one Russian in the open Atlantic north of the Hebrides.

And the reason no one had locked on the
Gepard
? The Royal Navy did not have another submarine in the area. The Royal Navy did not have a submarine within four hundred miles. The Royal Navy was desperately short of submarines. And there had been holdup after holdup in the new Astute program.

“We do not have the weapons to carry out these elaborate defensive strategies.” That would be the drift of the sea lord’s reasoning. And that, of course, was a political problem, not naval. Not naval at all. There seemed no reason for the admiral to go public with those opinions. At least not yet.

However, at eleven o’clock on that Monday morning, he spoke to the prime minister along those lines, reminding him that the Americans were only too well aware of Great Britain’s naval weaknesses, and so were the Russians. Otherwise, their bloody nuclear submarine would not be sitting on the beach in Scotland.

The prime minister, who had been perfectly cheerful about his ministers saving money and wielding the ax all over the naval budget, was a great deal more concerned about being remembered as the PM who destroyed the Royal Navy. Looming before him was the possible loss of Great Britain’s status as one of the permanent members of the United
Nations Security Council. That type of thing can happen when a former great military nation loses its teeth.

Worse yet, there was the onrushing problem of the press release being prepared by the public affairs department at the Ministry of Defense. Frankly, the prime minister did not care one way or another what it said, as long as it did not reflect badly on him, personally. He wanted no mention of navy budgets, which had been slashed by
his
government: nothing like that.

“Prime Minister,” the first sea lord had said, rather succinctly, “you can’t defend our hundreds of miles of coastal waters if you don’t have enough bloody ships. What can I tell you? Your political defense review is nothing of the sort. It’s just a way of taking Great Britain’s national defense money and spending it on social benefits for bloody foreigners.”

The prime minister’s blood ran cold. This idiot could bring down the government. “Well, yes, I understand the navy’s point of view. Of course I do,” he said.