They continued their descent until their feet touched the top of the fuselage, half-walked, half-swam until they reached the front of the plane, switched on their flash-lights and looked through the completely shattered windows of the cockpit. The pilot and the co-pilot were still trapped in their seats. They were no longer men, just the vestigial remains of what had once been human beings. Death must have been instantaneous. Carrington looked at Talbot and shook his head, then dropped down to the sea-bed in front of the nose cone.
The hole that had been blasted there was roughly circular with buckled and jagged edges projecting outwards, conclusive proof that the blast had been internal: the diameter of the whole was approximately five feet. Moving slowly and cautiously so as not to rip any of the rubber components of their diving suits, they passed in file into a compartment not more than four feet in height but almost twenty feet in length, extending from the nose cone, under the flight deck and then several feet beyond. Both sides of the compartment were lined with machinery and metal boxes so crushed and mangled that their original function was incomprehensible.
Two-thirds of the way along the compartment a hatch had been blasted upwards. The opening led to a space directly behind the seats of the two pilots. Aft of this was what was left of a small radio-room with a man who appeared to be peacefully sleeping leaning forward on folded arms, the fingers of one hand still on a transmitting key. Beyond this, four short steps led down to an oval door let into a solid steel bulkhead. The door was secured by eight clamps, some of which had been jammed into position by the impact of the blast. A hammer carried by Carrington in his canvas bag of tools soon tapped them into a loosened position.
Beyond the door lay the cargo compartment, bare, bleak, functional and obviously designed for one purpose only, the transport of missiles. These were secured by heavy steel clamps which were in turn bolted to longitudinal reinforced steel beams let into the floor and sides of the fuselage. There was oil mixed with the water in the compartment but even in the weird, swirling, yellowish light they looked neither particularly menacing nor sinister. Slender, graceful, with either end encased in a rectangular metal box they looked perfectly innocuous. Each contained fifteen megatons of high explosive.
There were six of those in the first section of the compartment. As a formality, and not because of any expectations, Talbot and Carrington applied their stethoscopes to each cylinder in turn. The results were negative as they had known they would be: Dr Wickram had been positive that they contained no timing devices.
There were also six missiles in the central compartment. Three of these were of the same size as those in the front compartment: the other three were no more than five feet in length. Those had to be the atom bombs. It was when he was testing the third of those with his stethoscope that Carrington beckoned to Talbot, who came and listened in turn. He didn’t have to listen long. The two and a half second ticking sequence sounded exactly as it had done in the sonar room.
In the aft compartment they went through the routine exercise of listening to the remaining six missiles and found what they had expected, nothing. Carrington put his visor close to Talbot’s.
‘Enough?’
‘Enough.’
‘That didn’t take you long,’ Hawkins said.
‘Long enough to find out what we needed. Missiles are there, all present and correct as listed by the Pentagon. Only one bomb has been activated. Three dead men. That’s all, except for the most important fact of all. The bomber crashed because of an internal explosion. Some kindly soul had concealed a bomb under the flight deck. The Pentagon must be glad that .they added the faint possibility that there was one chance in ten thousand that security might be breached. The faint possibility came true. Raises some fascinating questions, doesn’t it, sir? Who? What? Why? When? We don’t have to ask “where” because we already know that.’
‘I don’t want to sound grim or vindictive,’ Hawkins said, ‘because I’m not. Well, maybe a little. Should cut the gentlemen on Foggy Bottom, or wherever, down to size and make them a mite more civil and co-operative in future. Not only is it an American plane that is responsible for the dreadful situation in which we find ourselves, but it was someone in America who was ultimately responsible. If they ever do discover who was responsible, and it’s not without the bounds of possibility, it’s going to cause an awful lot of red faces and I’m not just referring to the villain himself. I’d lay odds that the person responsible is an insider, a pretty high-up insider with free access to secret information, such as closely guarded secrets as to the composition of the cargo, the destination and the time of take-off and arrival. Wouldn’t you agree, Commander?’
‘I don’t see how it can be otherwise. Not a problem I’d care to have on my hands. However, that’s their problem. We have an even bigger problem on our hands.’
‘True, true.’ Hawkins sighed. ‘What’s the next step, then? In recovering this damn bomb, I mean?’
‘I think you should ask Chief Petty Officer Carrington, sir, not me. He and Petty Officer Grant are the experts.’
‘It’s a tricky one, sir,’ Carrington said. ‘Cutting away a fuselage section large enough to lift the bomb through is straight forward enough. But before we could lift the bomb out we would have to free it from its clamps and this is where the great difficulty lies. Those clamps are made of high-tensile steel fitted with a locking device. For that we need a key and we don’t know where the key is.’
‘It could be,’ Hawkins said, ‘that the key is held at the missile base where the bombs were due to be delivered.’
‘With respect, sir, I think that unlikely. Those clamps had to be locked at the Air Force base where they were loaded. So they would have to have a key there. I think it would be much easier and more logical if they just took the key with them. Trouble is, a key is a very small thing and that’s a very big bomber indeed.
‘If there’s no key there are two ways we can remove that clamp. One is chemical, using either a metal softener or corrosive. The metal softener is used by stage magicians who go in for spoon-bending and such-like.’
‘Magicians?’ Hawkins said. ‘Charlatans, you mean.’
‘Whatever. The principle is the same. They use a colourless paste which has no effect on the skin but has the peculiar property of altering the molecular structure of a metal and making it malleable. A corrosive is simply a powerful acid that eats through steel. Lots of them on the market. But in this case, both softeners and corrosives have one impossible drawback: you can’t use them underwater.’
Hawkins said: ‘You mentioned two ways of removing the clamp. What’s the other?’
‘Oxyacetylene torch, sir. Make short work of any clamp. It would also, I imagine, make even shorter work of the operator. Those torches generate tremendous heat and I should also imagine that anyone who even contemplates using an oxyacetylene torch on an atom bomb is an obvious candidate for the loony-bin.’
Hawkins looked at Wickram. ‘Comment?’
‘No comment. Not on the unthinkable.’
‘I speak in no spirit of complaint, Carrington,’ Hawkins said, ‘but you’re not very encouraging. What you are about to suggest, of course, is that we wait for the Kilcharran to come along and hoist the damn thing to the surface.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Carrington hesitated. ‘But there’s a snag even to that.’
‘A snag?’ Talbot said. ‘You are referring, of course, to the distinct and unpleasant possibility that the ticking might stop while the Kilcharran’s winch engine is working overtime at hauling the bomber to the surface?’
‘I mean just that, sir.’
‘A trifle. There are no trifles that the combined brain-power aboard the Ariadne can’t solve.’ He turned to Denholm. ‘You can fix that, Lieutenant?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘How, sir?’ There was a pardonable note of doubt if not outright disbelief in Carrington’s voice: Lieutenant Denholm didn’t look like the type of person who could fix anything.
Talbot smiled. ‘If I may say this gently, Chief, one does not question Lieutenant Denholm on those matters. He knows more about electric’s and electronics than any man in the Mediterranean.’
‘It’s quite simple, Chief,’ Denholm said. ‘We just couple up the combined battery powers of the Ariadne and the Kilcharran. The Kilcharran’s winches are probably diesel-powered. We may or may not be able to convert them to electrical use. If we can’t, it doesn’t matter. We have excellent electric anchor windlasses on the Ariadne.’
‘Yes, but — well, with one of your two anchors out of commission you’d start drifting, wouldn’t you?’