Countdown to Doomsday Read online

  COUNTDOWN

  TO DOOMSDAY

  Brandon Rolfe

  Copyright © Brandon Rolfe 2011

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the copyright owner. Nor can it be circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition including this condition being imposed on a subsequent purchaser.

  PRINT ISBN 978 1 84963 005 4

  www.dolmanscott.com

  eBook conversion by M-Y Books

  Dedication

  For

  Annita Crestina and Enrico

  About the Author

  Brandon Rolfe studied optometry at university in Glasgow, before working in hospitals and medical centres in Coventry and London. Initially he practised as locum, around the Greater London Area, before becoming clinical director in the city’s south eastern sector. Between professional duties, he created and marketed his own patented product. (patents USA, UK, S/Africa). Qualified also in engineering and psychoanalysis, he later opened a private psychotherapy clinic. As a further diversion from work, he ran a confidential intelligence service. Having completed a second novel, The Analyst, he is currently working on a third novel.

  02.40hrs, 23rd June, North Sea.

  1

  02.40hrs, 23rd June, North Sea. The Royal Navy Harrier Mk3 thundered onwards at 600 m.p.h., into the crimson dawn, anxious to reach its mission- point in the bosom of the rising sun. Like a great seabird, its ‘plumage’ bristling with 25-mm GU-12 cannon and AGM-65E Maverick missiles, the plane tore on through the sky, its Rolls Royce Pegasus turbofan engine screaming out its fiery fury with 21,500lb thrust, to ripple the cold air with its 0.7 Mach anger. Sunbeams pounded the great bird’s beak and tickled its belly, while others exploded into diamonds of coloured light on the glass-fibre wing tips and around the Perspex canopy, where a helmet bobbed and turned. The pilot’s helmet bore a black arrow and he aimed it 90 degrees to starboard to look out. Trained eyes darted about behind the rubber mask in an overall check along the wing; from the glistening rods to the hooded mouth of the engine nacelle, where the sun lingered, but dared not enter, to be churned by the roaring turbine blades. The head turned to port, swinging the convoluted oxygen tube like a wrinkled proboscis.

  The same expert eyes judged the velocity below with their own up here, at 300ft above sea level, and returned to the front with a bob of the head. Land and sea rushed past, where minutes before, HMS Dover’s dull grey deck had been. At 02.31hrs precisely, the signal had come in from the Nimrod on RAF Coastal Command Reconnaissance, Flight 301, reporting the sighting. Flight 301 had reported the plane going down south of the Muckle Flugga rocks, just off the northern headland of Unst. Within two minutes of receiving the coded signal, HMS Dover had jettisoned the Harrier, codename PETREL, from its deck and had it racing north on Blue Alert urgency.

  HMS Dover was part of Naval Strike Force Command and as such, was part of Britain’s contribution to Nato’s Greenland/Baltic maritime air-arm. On constant patrol in these waters, the 20,000 tons Dover was equipped with conventional and nuclear missiles and four Sea King helicopters and three Harriers, to investigate, intercept and ‘nullify’ if necessary, any incidences of ‘hostile influence’ --- what had been the former Soviet Bloc’s Baltic fleet --- and could well be again, the way things were cooling into another Cold War between East and West. The pilot consulted the time: 02.42 hrs. He would soon reach the target.

  Zetland’s southern tip slid rapidly over the gilded silken sea below, nearer and nearer. The pilot’s head bent over the Ferranti Blue Fox radar display screen to check the electronic land map. He spoke into his rubber mask.

  ‘Zetland, CONTROL. About another seven minutes and we’ll be bang on target. Changing twenty one degrees west.’

  The pilot tipped the ailerons with the Boulton Paul actuators, to swing the plane round smoothly and follow the spinal line of the islands. These scattered out ahead, beyond the 60th parallel and Greenland’s toe, in a sprinkling of emerald gems encrusted with golden sun and the rust of Pre- Cambrian cliffs. They were the uppermost jewels in the crown of Her Majesty’s British Dominions and all under the protection of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy. Hundreds of birds flew out in squawking flecks from the furrowed brows of the cliffs, to watch the great royal bird zoom over.

  The radio began to crackle with static, just as the mainland began to splinter up into bronzed fragments: ‘CONTROL calling PETREL. Do you read me, PETREL? Do you read me?’

  ‘Loud and clear, CONTROL.’

  ‘What is your position, PETREL?’

  The pilot looked down at the sea, sparkling gleefully while it rent the land asunder. ‘Just leaving the mainland now. Flying over the Yell Sound. Should be there pretty soon.’

  ‘Can you see anything yet, PETREL?’

  ‘Not yet, CONTROL. It’s too early and the angle’s too wide at this height. Don’t want to fly any higher and spot somebody’s radar.’

  ‘Very well, PETREL. Report as soon as RED WHALE is sighted. Back-up on the way.’

  ‘Okay, CONTROL. Will do.’

  As the islands flitted past beneath them, the pilot watched their ghostly flight on the radar screen, checking them aloud to himself: ‘Yell -- Fetlar -- Uyea -- Unst. Nearly there now.’

  02.49hrs. Sure enough, as CONTROL had promised, support appeared as two dots in the sky far behind the Harrier. They were growing larger by the second. Eurofighter Tornadoes, sent up from RAF Leeming, Yorks, they were catching up fast. Closing in, they flanked the naval plane, right and left. The Harrier pilot held up a thumb to the other pilots.

  On the last island now, the great ‘seabird’ dived down for a scavenger’s look at 100ft. The two Tornadoes climbed up steeply into the sky, to bank over and circle down and round while the other plane went below. Straight ahead, the island began to split on cue into the four-mile-long Burra Firth fjord. The Harrier swooped down the glacial valley with a thunderous scream and there it was, in front.

  The gigantic US Rockwell B-1B Lancer strategic bomber, bereft of its right wing, lay up on the right bank of the loch, like a monster ray fish. Entrails trailed out from the fuselage tail-cone to the GQ ribbon-type parachute brake that floated at the water’s edge. Twisted wing pieces, gleaming and smooth, fitted the scene like discarded claws. The dark General Electric turbofan engine poked out from the belly, like fish roe, dangerously close to the bomb itself. The B83 thermonuclear stand-off bomb lay dislodged to one side of the belly, with the island’s annihilation nestling in its unexploded mercy.

  With the bomb safe for the moment beneath them, their mission was to fend off RED WHALE. Off-shore, the massive 8000 ton ‘whale’, black not red, basked in the sun with sinister glinting silence, while watching its ‘spawn’ scramble from the dinghies and scurry among the wreckage. The Harrier banked up steeply into the sky, blocking out the Russian sailors for a second, as it went into a tight turn. The whole North Sea spun round slowly, driven by the giant 426ft submarine in its ‘screw slot’, the binoculars winking on the 47ft long ‘sail’ of a conning tower.

  ‘PETREL calling CONTROL. Do you read me, CONTROL’

  ‘CONTROL receiving you. Go ahead, PETREL’

  ‘Circling RED WHALE now. Delta class, by the look of her. She’s quite a giant. Easily four hundred feet.’

  ‘She is Delta class. Left Gdynia in Poland six days ago. Last seen patrolling the Icelandic waters until she was reported ‘shadowing’ the plane when it came down.’

  ‘They’ve landed a party on shore. About twenty, I’d say.’

  The radio pipped patiently during CONTROL’s hesitant silence before coming alive again: ‘The bomb must not fall into their hands. Repeat. The bomb must not fall into their hands. You have full permission to intercept, PETREL.’

  ‘Understood, CONTROL. Going in now.’

  ‘Good luck, PETREL.’

  ‘Tally-ho, CONTROL.’

  The jet fighter screamed down in a warning swoop, leaving only sixty feet clearance for the sailors to duck their heads in reflexive fear. Everyone cringed down for a second and then straightened up to watch the great fire- bird climbing high into the sky. The officer snapped them out of their trance, waving his arm and barking them back to work with a voice as broad as the wooden Mauser holster that dangled beside the transmitter slung over his shoulder.

  ‘Spishitye! Mi spishim!’ (Hurry up! We have no time to lose!)

  The guttural Slavic gabblings recommenced and they clambered over the plane. From high above in the sky they looked hardly more serious than romping children on a picnic treasure hunt. But they didn’t carry wooden pirate swords. Instead, they attacked the bomber with oxy-acetylene torches and heavy duty cutters, while those with the cameras climbed into the cockpit. Like Lilliputians, they worked frantically on their great ‘Gulliver’, more afraid of their commander than the Harrier, as it shattered their eardrums with another 600m.p.h screech.

  Ignoring the Harrier, the men worked on feverishly, their tensions hidden inside. The great bomb was beginning to move as the two men in goggles cut away at the fuselage fastenings, behind a deluge of sparks. It looked a frightful load to move, being ominously long and fat with devilishly pointed tail fins.

  That was why the other team was assembling the eight-wheeled hydraulic bogie, attaching buoyancy tanks to its sides and fina
lly a tackle to its end and that to the cable that ran down the beach, into the water and out to the submarine.

  Swooping round for another dive, the Harrier pilot prepared to fire the air-to-ground missile. He judged with lightning speed. Distance was too short for visual guidance by the missile’s aft end flares. He operated the Ferranti Airpass-11 computerised radio command-link lock-on, watching the display screen and fired. The missile rocketed away from the wing with fire-ball fury, to home in on its target, while the plane curved away. The 300lb warhead exploded in the rock-face 100 yards from the men, showering the place with rocks.

  Everyone stopped work and looked around for orders. The officer had none to give, and looked round at the submarine, waiting for his transmitter to speak. No-one went back to work and anxiety mounted as the plane came in again. Everyone dived for cover just before the second warning missile was let loose. The Maverick screamed over their heads and exploded 50yds away, spewing up a shower of rocks that narrowly missed most of them.

  The veteran seaman with the cutter’s goggles looked up at the bomb’s suspension and shook his head pessimistically. It was touch and go whether they could cut it free in the little time that they had. He didn’t think that they could manage it and looked round at the officer and then at the plane circling in the sky. The officer took the message, but didn’t flinch. He kept his stalwart stance, surveying his men in their predicament. He was a seasoned officer. Although too young for the Second Imperialist War in ‘39, or to have looked nuclear war in the eye, when America had later blockaded Russia’s aid to Cuba, he had first seen military service, mostly through binoculars, as a junior ‘naval advisor’ offshore from Cambodia, in the Mekon delta, in the Vietnam conflict. Like any good officer, he was not afraid. But he did respect the safety of his men.

  A startling cry from one of the men, above the Harrier’s roar, solved the problem.

  ‘Smatritye! Smatritye!’ (Look! Look!)

  Shading his eyes from the sun, the officer followed the arm pointing down the valley. After a second’s focusing, the two optical smudges became real solid objects. Popping up and down like wind-hopping dragonflies and coming on at them at 130m.p.h. Sure enough, they were the two Westland Lynx helicopters promised by CONTROL, and sent out from RNAS Unst. Both were armed with machine-guns, torpedoes, and Nord SB3.11 air-to- surface missiles. They each also carried twelve marines.

  That was it. The officer swung his arm and ordered immediate withdrawal from the beach. Grabbing their tools, the men crawled out of the bomber like maggots from a sore host. The artificer with the camera carried a leather shoulder satchel hurriedly stuffed with top secret flight command codes confiscated from the Lancer’s cockpit.

  Somehow sensing the general rush to escape, the massive bomb shuddered and suddenly broke free under its own weight and slithered down the slope, knocking the bogie aside. The old sailor’s eyes widened in alarm at the danger and he yelled to his mate. ‘Vnimaniye!’ (Look out!) But it was too late. Like a killer shark, the huge finned bomb pinned its victim down by the hips, squeezing out his agonised scream. Those that heard, stopped to look. The officer turned round, at the same time stopping two of his retreating men.

  Everyone rushed in to help the injured comrade, but found that they could do nothing. The ground was too steep and the bomb’s angle was wrong for wedging the bogie’s hydraulic jack. The old man knelt over the younger one --- a mere lad. ‘Ni bispakoityes, ni bispakoityes.’ (Don’t worry, don’t worry.) Perhaps it was a stupid thing to say, the old man thought, but he didn’t know what else to say in the circumstances. He gave the lad a fist to grip and rambled on with coarse jokes to distract him from the pain.

  Squirming with excruciating pain, the young sailor gasped out his words slowly: ‘U minya galava kruzhitsa.’ (I feel dizzy.) Speech was difficult, not just because of the pain, but because his native tongue was Arabic. Pressure became too great and his head slumped down into the soft sand.

  ‘On upal vobmarak,’ said the old man to nobody in particular. (He’s fainted.) The officer stood up and looked around for the jet fighter. It was circling around waiting to see if the retreat would recommence. He then looked round at the helicopters. He guessed that they would most likely have winches on board that were capable of shifting the bomb. That was his decision, then. His injured party would have to be left behind, to be tended by the British. Their doctors couldn’t be any worse than those ‘butchers’ in Yerevan, back in Armenia, he reasoned bitterly.

  The radio transmitter crackled out the mounting urgency and so he signalled his men to move out again. All but the old man obeyed. He stayed put, by his ‘apprentice’. The officer saluted with understanding in his dark Armenian eyes. ‘Da novi fstryechi,’ (Till we meet again,) he said, and then was gone, running down the beach to join his men in the dinghies. The cable, disconnected from the bogie, snaked down after them, and disappeared into the water.

  The Royal Navy helicopters landed with a whirlwind commotion, spilling out their twenty four marines onto the red garnet sand. M16 assault rifles, with M203 grenade launchers attached, swung about in all directions. The Russians were well out in the water by this time and so the men stood and watched them bobbing up and down in their dinghies. When they turned and went among the wreckage, they were surprised to find an old sailor in a black sweater and Yalta on his cap, standing in their midst. Only an odd rifle pointed at him, as he spoke in a heavy Uzbeck accent. ‘Prashu vas pamoch mnye? Praizashol nishchasni sluchi. On siryozna ranyen.’ (Will you help me? There has been an accident. He is badly hurt.)

  Nobody understood. They simply stared on tensely as he babbled and gestured in his strange ways. The chisel-faced Welsh sergeant pushed his way through to the front. ‘What’s goin’ on, then? Who the hell are you, then? He understood as soon as the Russian pointed to the black ‘thing’ trapped beneath the bomb. They both knelt down quickly beside the still body.

  ‘On patiryal saznaniye,’ said the Russian. (He’s lost consciousness.)

  ‘He’s lost consciousness,’ said the Welshman.

  The sergeant stood up and bellowed out to the helicopter. Its winch paid out the cable and they fastened it, with nerve tingling care, around the bomb, behind the anterior fins. ‘What yer bleedin’ all peein’ for, then?’ shouted the Welshman in jest. ‘ ‘Fraid of meetin’ the angels, are we? An’ all of us all regular little choir boys, too.’ The Wessex lifted into the air, straining on the cable, until the bomb rose up at its front. Gingerly aware of the nuclear menace hovering beside them, they put the stretcher down beside the sailor and placed him carefully onto it. Some would have said none too carefully, but everyone was in a hurry, with ‘something else’ on their minds. ‘Watch it, now. We don’t want to break any ruddy bones, now, do we?’ chided the sergeant, monitoring every single move.

  The Russian felt relieved, as he watched his young charge being stowed in the helicopter’s stretcher bay. The sergeant touched the Russian’s arm lightly, and with a hard smile ordered him with a nod onto the aircraft. Appreciating the casual discipline, the Russian adjusted his cap into a more formal position, with Yalta facing defiantly to the front. He climbed on board beside his mate. The helicopter cluttered away into the sky with its urgent load, leaving the others to guard the Lancer and its nuclear charge.

  03.10hrs. Her Britannic Majesty’s Forces were once more the sole occupants of Her northern-most shore. Off-shore, the great Russian ‘whale’ blared its warning horn and dived, disappearing in a mighty swelling of waves and foam.

  05.01hrs, 23rd June, UNST.

  2

  05.01hrs, 23rd June, Unst. The knife and fork clinked and grated, cutting the small room’s silence, as well as the two golden kippers on the chipped NAAFI plate. Grilled with a generous knob of butter, the fish looked delicious, infusing the blade and prongs with hungry gusto, to thrust and parry, flashing their scars like proud sabres. Now and then the fork stabbed at the plate of steaming mussels garnished with chopped onions and white prawn sauce. John Sherman watched all this this from his chair by the window, when he wasn’t looking out at the transport plane being serviced by the RAF ground- staff maintenance crew. The eyes looked on, while the mind worked elsewhere, running the facts over and over again through its treadmill. Not fully satisfied that there was nothing to worry about, he tried to ignore the burning unease in his mind, relaxing until his grey concentration began to drain away. He began to take more note of the other man’s ‘involvement’ at the table.