Masters of War (17 page)

Danny looked around. They were in a room with a painted steel floor, about eight metres square. The walls were covered with pipes and hydraulics. The sub yawed, but only barely. Buckingham looked unsteady on his feet. The four guys who had ushered them off the deck were there, as well as one other. He wore a greying beard, had very piercing blue eyes and looked about forty years of age.

‘Welcome aboard HMS
Vanguard
,’ he said. ‘I’m Commander Flemming.’

Danny had full-on respect for members of the Silent Service, and particularly for anyone who had passed the rigorous Submarine Command Course. Its failure rate was almost as high as that of SAS selection, hence its nickname ‘the Perisher’. He shook Commander Flemming’s hand. ‘Change here, if you will,’ Flemming said. ‘I’ve asked my men to deal with your equipment and I’ve had rooms set aside for you – unless you’d care to join me on the bridge?’

Danny glanced at Buckingham, who was miserably trying to peel off his neoprene suit. ‘No, we’ll go to our rooms,’ he said.

‘Of course,’ the captain said. ‘Is there anything we can do for you? Something to eat?’

‘Hot food would be good,’ Danny said. With another sidelong glance at Buckingham, he added, ‘And tea. Sweet.’

Flemming nodded at one of the waiting seamen. ‘Aye-aye, captain,’ the man replied, then headed down a metal staircase.

‘Follow me, fellas,’ a second of the submariners said. He led them down below. Danny could sense the vessel submerging again as they left the staircase and passed along a series of narrow corridors.

‘I don’t much like enclosed spaces, old sport,’ Buckingham whispered.

‘Then you’re in the wrong place, pal,’ Danny said. ‘They have to fit a couple of hundred guys on one of these things. Doesn’t leave much space.’

‘No chicks either,’ Spud said. He looked over at the MI6 man. ‘So if you were thinking of joining the mile-low club . . .’ he grinned, ‘you won’t be fuckin’ ’em, Buckingham!’

To his credit, Buckingham smiled.

The quarters to which the submariner led them comprised a single room, seven metres by four – though Danny realised this was spacious compared to the tiny berths that the
Vanguard
’s crew had to put up with. The guys stripped out of their drysuits and changed into the all-in-one blue overalls that were waiting for them. Ten minutes later food arrived. Subs such as this were designed to be constantly at sea. It required no refuelling on account of its nuclear reactor, and it could be at sea for long stretches without being restocked. Fresh food was rare, but the cooks had a reputation for conjuring decent meals from the dried and tinned supplies at their disposal. The unit tucked into bowls of welcome, warming stew and drank mugs of hot tea in silence. When they’d finished, Danny turned to Buckingham.

‘Strip off,’ he told him.

Buckingham had another go at peeling off the neoprene while Danny opened one of the waterproof bags and removed a set of clothes. They were deliberately nondescript – a pair of jeans and a coarse shirt. You could wear this outfit almost anywhere, from Damascus to Dorking, without anybody batting an eyelid. The clothes smelled unpleasantly musty, and Danny was briefly reminded of his brother’s B&B room. ‘Put these on,’ he told Buckingham once he had stripped down to his boxer shorts, ‘then put the drysuit on again over them.’

The Regiment guys were stripping down too, but their preparations were a bit more exotic. The clothes they wore were similar to Buckingham’s, but under his shirt each man strapped a shoulder holster and a Sig 9mm. Buckingham’s eyes were wide as he watched them check over their weapons. The room filled with the dull clunk of magazines being inserted, safety switches enabled. Danny noticed how he looked rather apprehensively into the waterproof bag that contained their M4s. He zipped it shut. No point shitting the guy up more than necessary.

Once they’d put their civvies on, they pulled on the drysuits once more.

‘How far down are we?’ Buckingham asked.

Danny shrugged. ‘Five hundred metres,’ he said. ‘A bit more.’

‘Bloody hell. And how long until . . .’

Danny sensed that Buckingham was talking out of nervousness, and maybe the best thing was to
keep
him talking. ‘A couple of hours,’ he said. ‘When they drop us off, we’ll have to tab about a kilometre inland. There’s a T-junction leading to the main highway. That’s where we’ll meet our fixer and pick up the cars.’

Buckingham looked confused. ‘Wouldn’t it be better for him to meet us with the cars as soon as we land? I mean, we’d rather be in vehicles than on foot, wouldn’t we?’

Danny shook his head. ‘We don’t know this fixer from Adam. If we meet him at the T-junction, he’ll assume we’re approaching by road, not by sea. We can check him out before we make contact. Let’s not get compromised before we’ve even begun.’

‘Compromised? He’s an MI6 agent. Surely we can trust him?’

The rest of the guys laughed.

‘What?’ Buckingham demanded. ‘
What?
’

‘He’s a fixer, mate,’ Spud explained. ‘They’re the same the world over. Sneaky. Out for what they can get. He’s helping us because the Firm are paying him, but he’ll betray us just as quickly if someone comes along with a better offer.’

Buckingham looked a bit sick.

‘Don’t worry, pal,’ Greg told him. ‘Any problems, we’ll sacrifice Spud, not you. Right, Spud?’

Spud looked down at the bulge in his chest where the dry suit was covering his handgun. Then he looked back at Buckingham. ‘Yeah, right,’ he said.

23.30 hrs, Eastern European Time
.

A sharp rap on the door of their quarters. A bearded submariner appeared. ‘Breaking the surface in ten minutes, guys. Wait here till we give you the word.’ In his arms he had a pile of inflatable vests. He handed them round to Buckingham and the unit, who slipped them over their heads. Then they waited.

Danny felt the sub roll a few degrees as it broke the surface. Buckingham flinched – he’d barely spoken a word since they’d been submerged. The guys grabbed the waterproof bags. Two minutes later the door opened again. The bearded submariner nodded at them. Silently, they filed out into the narrow corridor and followed the guy back in the general direction of the conning tower. They didn’t take the spiral staircase up into the tower, however, but carried on ten metres past it to a ladder that led up to an overhead hatch. Commander Flemming was waiting for them here.

‘We’ve had a communication from Hereford HQ,’ he said. ‘There’s been a night of heavy fighting in Homs. Two Médecins Sans Frontières doctors went missing. Reports are coming in that one of them’s been found dead.’ He gave Danny a piercing look. ‘Watch how you go, lads. Looks like they’re killing foreigners in the streets.’ He glanced at Buckingham and his face was filled with distrust. Whether Buckingham noticed it or not, Danny couldn’t tell. The captain pulled a red lever on the corridor wall. A hiss, and the hatch in the ceiling slid open.

A sudden rush of noise as sea air blasted down the hatch. A face appeared up above. ‘Send your gear up!’ it shouted. The guys passed their waterproof bags up through the hatch, then Greg, Jack and Spud climbed the ladder, leaving Danny alone with Buckingham and the captain.

‘Ready?’ Danny asked.

Buckingham took a deep breath. ‘As I’ll ever be,’ he said.

‘You go first. I’ll be right behind. Go carefully on deck. It’s not a good night for swimming.’

Buckingham nodded, then carefully climbed the ladder.

‘Good luck with that one,’ Flemming said quietly. Danny felt his brow furrowing as he nodded in farewell and followed the MI6 man.

On deck there was a stiff breeze. Here, two miles from the Syrian coast, the weather conditions were different to those they’d left behind in Cyprus. The moon was still bright – bright enough for the conning tower to cast a sinister shadow over the vessel – but the sea, ten metres below the deck, was rougher. The foam where the swell hit the sub was almost phosphorescent, and the spray made the deck treacherous. After the relative quiet inside HMS
Vanguard
, the steady throb of the sub’s engines seemed ominously loud. But that was OK: they were two miles out to sea. Cloaked in its dull metallic black paint,
Vanguard
was out of sight and out of earshot. A black RIB was waiting for them, along with two Marines in neoprene suits and with MP5s slung around their necks. As the hatch hissed closed, Danny saw that the guys had already loaded up the RIB and were climbing in.

‘Get in!’ he shouted at Buckingham, before walking him five slippery metres across the deck to the stern of the RIB. With a nod at the Marines he helped Buckingham into the vessel, then climbed in too. He gave the Marine at the outboard a thumbs up. The Marine flicked the pressel of his radio twice.

‘Hold on!’ he shouted.

At first it seemed that nothing was happening. But then, after about twenty seconds, the massive sub juddered slightly. Slowly, it started to sink.

Five metres to sea level.

Three metres.

One.

The sea suddenly closed in over the deck. They were still in the shadow of the receding conning tower, but they were afloat. The RIB rocked precariously, caught precisely in the crash of the sea rushing in from either side. Salt water splashed over them. The coxswain waited ten seconds for the deck to submerge another few metres before swinging the hinged outboard down into the water and starting it up. As water continued to slosh over the RIB, the Marine increased its speed, heading ten metres towards the submerged aft of the
Vanguard
before turning in a wide semicircle and making directly for the shore.

Half blinded by the spray, Danny peered into the night, towards the Syrian coastline. There were lights to his ten o’clock, but in the darkness he couldn’t tell how far away they were. Overhead, a commercial flight was travelling in a southerly direction. Danny wondered how many aircraft there were up there that he
couldn’t
see. He remembered catching the glint of a drone when he was lying beside Boydie in the OP in Syria. Those drones were like guardian angels. You never knew if they were really there, or even if they’d help you out when you needed it most. Straight ahead, there was nothing. The deserted stretch of beach to which they were heading was five klicks from any known human habitation in any direction. He wouldn’t have expected to see any lights, but that didn’t mean their insertion point was safe. Far from it. If
he’d
been on the shore looking out, nobody would have seen him either.

Time check: 00.15 hrs. Forty-five minutes till RV. They were cutting this fine. If the fixer didn’t hang around with their vehicles, they were screwed.

The RIB’s outboard slowed down, becoming quieter: a sure sign that they were approaching land. ‘Two hundred metres,’ the coxswain announced. Greg and Jack, sitting on either side of the boat, raised their weapons, scanning the coast through the lenses of their IR sights. Ten seconds later they slowed again. The motor was very quiet now, barely audible above the sound of waves crashing on the beach. There, about fifty metres distant, Danny could see the humped outline of a sand dune. A sudden surge as the RIB caught a breaking wave. They glided into shallow water, where the second Marine jumped from the boat. The sea was knee-high. The coxswain killed the outboard as his colleague dragged them towards the beach.

Five metres from dry land. The unit moved quickly. This was a moment of vulnerability – anyone could be waiting for them, unfriendly eyes searching – and so they needed to be especially watchful. And fast. And quiet. Greg and Jack splashed into the shallow water and ran to shore. Ten metres up the shingle beach, they threw themselves on their bellies in the firing position, carefully scanning the area, on high alert for any sign of a threat.

‘Get out,’ Danny told Buckingham, who nodded and eased himself carefully into the water while Danny and Spud grabbed the waterproof bags and joined him. While the Marines grounded the RIB, Danny, Spud and Buckingham ran on to the beach. ‘Get out of your drysuit,’ Danny told Buckingham. The three men tore off their inflatable jackets and peeled away the dripping suits to reveal their civvies underneath. Danny stuffed the wet clothes back into the waterproof bag and picked up his weapon. He grabbed Buckingham’s shirt, dragged him over to where Greg and Jack were lying and pushed him to the ground. ‘Don’t move,’ he hissed. As he and Spud adopted the firing position, Greg and Jack returned to the Marines to hand over their wet gear.

Danny scanned the surrounding area, ignoring a sharp stone digging into his elbow. The beach was about thirty metres deep. The sand dune that backed on to it was about fifteen metres high and had an incline of roughly forty degrees. It was high summer. Expected rainfall in western Syria was close to zero, although the winter and spring rains meant this part of the country was fertile and scrappy plants sprouted from the surface of the dune. There was no movement that he could make out. No sign that anyone had witnessed them land. No government troops. No locals.

At least, not that Danny could see.

Two minutes passed. Behind him, Danny heard the cough of the RIB’s outboard. He didn’t look back – he knew that Greg and Jack would by now have stuffed their wet gear into the waterproof bags and given these to the Marines, who would be on their way back to HMS
Vanguard
.
There was a light crunch of footsteps as his two unit colleagues stepped past the three men on the ground and headed stealthily towards the rim of the dune.