Hunter Killer - Alex King Series 12 (2021), A BATEMAN [urban books to read TXT] 📗

“And they’ll know that,” said King. “But they need to escape, and they need to use the Northern Sea Route. They won’t risk deviating. Once they hit the channel they’ll go deep. But they will stay on course.” He paused. “So, we do it again, with everything we’ve got!”

“But if we miss…” Rashid started.

“Then we bloody well miss!” King snapped. “We need to stop that sub, and we can only do it if we unload on them.” He paused, glancing at Madeleine. “What’s the beacon telling us?”

“They’re on the same course, speed is increasing to twenty-five knots,” Madeleine replied.

“Grainger, get to thirty-five knots, continue on the same heading. Rashid launch a buoy and you’d better pray you’ve got your eye in…” King readied the other charges. He still had the one set for thirty-seven seconds, and he shrugged as he set the next two for the same time and the other three for thirty-five, thirty and twenty-six seconds, respectively. Like spreading bets on a roulette table. The science of blind luck. “Madeleine, how’s the course?”

“The same.”

“The channel is fast approaching…” Grainger informed them.

“I reckon we’re four hundred metres from the buoy.” Rashid paused. “Four-twenty…”

“Course?” King asked.

“Steady,” replied Madeleine.

“Four-forty…”

“Let’s give them five-fifty to account for their increase in speed,” King looked at Rashid and shrugged. “It’s worth a shot.”

“Approaching five hundred…” Rashid said, squinting at the buoy. He raised his hand. “Five-fifty!” He dropped his hand as if launching two drag racers off the line, then threw himself across the boat to help lift the charges for King.

King armed the first charge and tossed it over the side. He took the rest of the charges from Rashid, repeated the process three more times then stood up, breathless from the cold, the exertion and adrenalin. “Slow down to ten knots and keep the course steady…” he said to Grainger.

“We need to,” Grainger replied. “We’ve barely got enough fuel to get back to the rigs…”

Grainger was cut off by the first explosion, which was quickly followed by the second. Plumes of water spewed into the air like geysers. But the third charge sounded hollow and rumbled, the surface bubbling rather than sending up a plume of spray. The fourth charge exploded, again sounding hollow and was followed by a muffled ‘thud’, which reverberated through them and strangely, without rocking the boat.

King said, “Kill the revs…” He paused. “Explosions take the path of least resistance, no plumes would indicate two direct hits…” He  stared at the ocean’s surface, where large pockets of air bubbled up and popped on the surface, each one the size of a beachball. He turned his eyes to Madeleine’s laptop, but there was no ‘blip’ displaying the submarine. Which could merely have meant the tracker had been destroyed. He looked at the GPS and made a note of the coordinates. When he looked back at the surface there were a few lifejackets floating, empty plastic bottles and strangely, a metal teapot with its lid still fastened in place.

“We got it!” Madeleine exclaimed. “I can’t believe we got it!”

“So, it would seem,” Grainger said somewhat subduedly.

“Forgive me if I don’t cheer,” Rashid commented, his voice seeming to echo in the stillness.

King watched the jetsam rolling in the gentle swell. The lifejackets afloat, while their loose straps drifted lazily beneath the surface like the tendrils of a shoal of yellow jellyfish. Calming and serene. “Hollowest victory I’ve ever had…” he said quietly.

Chapter Forty-Nine

London

Whether it was because he had experienced such a brutally cold climate, or whether it was because spring had finally sprung in London, he did not know. But it was evident that the sun was bright and hot on his face and the breeze blowing up the Thames was warm and smelled of the distant estuary and sea. The azure sky had given the river a mirror-like sheen and the buildings on the South Bank reflected clearly on the river’s surface. The people of London were not generally known to be a friendly bunch, but today, as joggers, dogwalkers, and mothers pushing prams met head-on with commuters jostling their way to work at the tail end of the rush hour, there seemed a little more tolerance in the air than perhaps there would have been if the wind had blown cold and the clear sky above had scudded with dark rainclouds and the Thames had flowed brown and choppy and slick.

King knew that events were not going to run smoothly. Simon Mereweather had declined an office meeting. From his experience, a ‘meeting without coffee’ was one thing, but to be denied access to the entire building was quite another. The survival instinct in King had kicked in and he had procured a small automatic with a suppressor from his usual contact. He’d wanted a quick service and had received it. A text and a reply, a dead drop for the cash and another dead drop for the package to be retrieved. As usual, the weapon was clean – meaning no crimes had been committed with it – and King would have no doubts about its reliability.

The time and place had been arranged, but King had arrived an hour and a half early and before the rush hour had begun. He had used the time and the cover of people and traffic to survey the area. He hadn’t spotted anybody, but that wasn’t to mean he was in the clear. As he had recently started to do, he checked regularly for common drones – simple toy and craft shop models could now perform surveillance beyond MI5’s wildest dreams ten years ago. Capable of hovering perfectly and film from a great distance in full HD, they were difficult to spot and practically impossible to destroy.

King had watched Simon Mereweather take a seat on a park bench opposite a statue of a