Covered by comforters, Bass and Gant were sleeping on mattresses atop blankets spread over the floor. Wearing a parka, Jake sprawled out in the commanding officer’s fold-out wall rack.
“What’s up?” Jake asked.
“This ship’s an iceberg,” Renard said.
“Battery’s still okay?”
“It’s only lost three volts over two days.”
“We can do this for a few more days, then.”
“The other half of our crew is growing impatient.”
“They haven’t complained.”
“You’ve only talked to Mister Lion. The younger ones do not share his patience. It might be wise to consider the reactor start-up now.”
“That’s too risky, and you know it,” Jake said.
Bass and Gant stirred, and Jake lowered his voice.
“The Miami shot at us and missed,” Jake said, “and Brody didn’t hear us evade. There’s a good chance he’s still out there.”
“You’re right, of course,” Renard said.
“Then what’s the problem?”
“The Taiwanese do not understand why we wait now and why we were moving so slowly under the ice. They think that a steel ship would just bounce off ice ridges unscathed.”
“Then they’re idiots.”
“They do not understand the dangers of this world that you and I take for granted.”
“So what should I do?”
“You have a battery at ninety-two percent charge. That’s more than adequate for a reactor start-up, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s risk starting a motor generator and bringing up the sonar room. If we hear nothing, then we start the reactor. If we hear something, then the Taiwanese will have to accept more freezing days. And sadly, so will I.”
Lieutenant Commander Lin wiped gravy from his lips and looked up at the Tai Chiang’s wardroom seats. Three men surrounding him ate in silence.
“Pass the salt,” he said.
Lieutenant Yang Kai-huang, his executive officer, plopped the shaker by Lin’s hand. Yang’s face remained glacial. Lin’s past attempts at conversation about financial markets had stymied the machinist’s son, and lighthearted chat in the wardroom had tapered to nothing.
I dine with the son of a commoner, Lin thought. How can a man raised in simplicity master the complex art of war? He should be tilling the land.
A phone chimed by Lin’s side. He reached to the wall and lifted the receiver to his ear. He heard news that excited him and pushed the receiver into its cradle.
He stood.
“Come, Yang,” he said. “If you pay keen attention, you may learn something.”
Lin climbed a ladder and slid his soft stomach over one of the many spare barrels of jet fuel he had picked up in a southern Japanese port. Entering the bridge, he studied a young bridge officer.
“Report, Ensign,” he said.
“Sir, undersea laser detection bearing three-zero-five. Range four miles. Depth one hundred feet.”
“Warm up torpedoes,” Lin said.
“Sir, I’ve turned away from the contact to open distance,” the ensign said.
“That is a mistake,” Lin said. “The contact is close enough to detect us. We must assume counter-detection and prosecute.”
The ensign lowered his gaze.
“Sir, the submarine shows no evidence that it sees or hears us,” Yang said. “Our orders are to remain undetected.”
“You will report to the auxiliary bridge for battle stations, Mister Yang.”
“Sir, our orders state that we are to avoid all encounters unless we have clear evidence that we’ve been counter-detected.”
“I have interpreted that a submerged contact at short range is a threat to our stealth. You will be relieved of your duties and restricted to your quarters for insubordination if you do not follow my orders.”
Yang retraced his steps down the stairs. Lin sat at his battle control station.
“This is the captain,” he said. “The submerged contact is emanating the frequencies of a Romeo class diesel submarine. The ship is Chinese and is a threat.”
Through his earpiece, he heard Yang protest.
“The ship shows no indication that it has detected us. We should evade or we risk revealing our position, and that is against our orders,” Yang said.
“You are relieved,” Lin said. “Lieutenant Second Class Ye, lay below and relieve Lieutenant Yang of auxiliary bridge command.”
Over the circuit, Lin heard Yang’s headphones slam against his battle control station keyboard.
“Extending torpedo batteries… solution set… firing tube one!” Lin said. “Firing tube two! Weapons away. Coming to course zero-three-five to evade.”
Lin listened to his weapons converging on the diesel submarine. He savored the sound of the rupturing hull and turned the Tai Chiang northward.
Standing in the Colorado’s sonar room, Renard slapped his gloves together. Jake’s teeth chattered by his ear.
“Shit, Pierre. I’ve never been this cold,” Jake said.
“Be thankful we have space heaters. Otherwise, we would have already frozen to death.”
Renard watched Jake flip switches. Machines whirred to life and green displays energized.
“So far, Jake, I see nothing. This is good.”
“Give the integrators time to process. Plus our towed array sonar is dangling below us. I don’t know how bad that screws up the bearings.”
“We’re not worried about bearings. Either the arrays hear something or they do not. I pray for the latter case.”
After half an hour of space heater operation, Renard still saw his breath but could feel his extremities.
“I think we’re alone, Jake. Whoever shot at us may have left.”
“I agree. Let’s start up this pig and get moving.”
During the days guiding the Miami by the pole toward the Bering Strait, Brody tried seven times to break through the ice but failed. On his eighth try, he watched the depth gauge stall at seventy-five feet.
“Our under-ice sonar predicted that this was the thinnest ice we’ve seen, right, executive officer?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. Must be a slow thaw.”
“We’re south of the Alaskan Pipeline, and we still can’t get through. I think it’s time to just clear the ice altogether.”
CHAPTER 27
His triceps muscles bulging through parka sleeves, Tiger finished his hundredth push-up on the stateroom’s blanketed floor. His breath formed mist as he spoke in Mandarin to Jaguar in the rack above.
“You wait until I’m done,” Tiger said. “Then you can have the floor for your exercises. Or you can go to the engine room. The heaters are on there.”
“I will wait,” Jaguar said. “I do not want to freeze to death walking back there. I wish we were off of this submarine. The stupid American naval officer has added days to this mission for nothing.”
The room’s third commando, the wiry Cheetah, responded from the highest rack.
“Slate is starting the reactor now,” Cheetah said. “Why are you complaining? He has kept you alive, has he not?”
Tiger felt like slapping Cheetah for being complacent, but he let the two above him argue while he pumped out push-ups.
“He performed so well that we were hunted under the ice,” Jaguar said.
“He avoided the torpedo,” Cheetah said.
“The Frenchman saved us. Not the American,” Jaguar said.
“Slate shut us down to fool the torpedo.”
“All he did was shut off the heat so that we had to spend two days in this small room. Then when he listened on sonar, there was no one near us. We wasted two days freezing.”