“You had better be fine,” Renard said. “I need my executive officer at peak performance.”
Two hours later, a second shipyard expert joined Henri by the ship’s control station, and a veteran sailor, new to Renard’s team after leaving the French Navy, sat with Remy and the first shipyard expert in front of the Subtics monitors.
Jake hovered over the group as an extra set of hands and as its human data aggregator. A sound-powered headset covered his ears, keeping him in communication with LaFontaine in the propulsion spaces.
Renard stuck his eyes to the periscope optics but pulled back and glanced at a monitor showing the outside world. He swiveled the periscope controls and panned the view in the monitor down to a tugboat escorting their submarine through the short egress channel. Taking a ship to sea quickened his pulse.
“Ha! How do you feel now, Jake?” he asked. “Once again, we are leading a ship to sea.”
“Yeah,” Jake said. “It’s not so bad.”
The tug had departed, and swells rocked the ship.
“Are we at the dive point yet?” Renard asked.
“Two minutes if you want to be perfect,” Jake said. “We can submerge anytime you want though.”
“Perhaps we should name our vessel prior to its first dive.”
“I thought we agreed to call it the Mercer, at least for this one mission,” Jake said. “Grant’s paying for it.”
“And so it shall be,” Renard said. “Henri, submerge the Mercer. Make your depth thirty meters.”
Renard watched turquoise envelope his optics and yellow rays dance in the subsurface waves. The Mercer slid below the swells as he lowered the periscope.
“We’re steady at thirty meters,” Henri said. “Speed five knots. So far, this ship behaves like a dream.”
CHAPTER 11
Brad Flint watched Alex Baines flip a microphone toward his mouth.
“What’s that? Okay, got it,” he said.
“What’s that you got, XO?” Flint asked.
“Possible target zig, INS Leviathan.”
Sound frequency data shifted on across a monitor.
“You see it?” Flint asked.
“Yes, sir. Down-Doppler on their reduction gear frequencies and an increase in blade rate. It’s too early for wave front data to give us information on their new range, but I’m sure they’re accelerating.”
“We’ll let them open distance a thousand yards before reacting.”
“Yes, sir.”
“In the meantime, give me an update on merchants,”
Baines toggled a button, flipping through monitor views. He pointed at fuzzy traces.
“We’ve lost contact with three merchants in the last half hour and picked up only one. We’re still close enough to a shipping lane to be concerned.”
“This whole sea is a shipping lane, except where the trawlers are tossing nets over the side just to complicate our lives. Keep an eye out.”
“I will sir,” Baines said. “Sonar has a new speed for the Leviathan of eight knots, based on blade rate.”
“After cutting holes in the ocean on their tip toes, they now all of a sudden need to get somewhere.”
“Looks like it, sir.”
“They might be in cruise missile launch range of coastal Egypt, right?”
“Depends on who you believe on the range of a Popeye missile,” Baines said. “We might have just validated that it’s in line with the longer range estimates, assuming they just simulated a launch.”
“We didn’t hear them opening outer doors, but they already proved they can simulate a launch sequence near Syria. They might just be making sure they can hang out and await launch orders without being caught.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay, match their course and speed.”
While Baines had the crew accelerate the Annapolis, Flint scratched his chin and stood. His disheveled hair brushed piping, and he curved his lanky frame forward. He gestured to Baines who slid his headset to a seat and met him at the polished railing of the conning platform.
“I’m going back and forth in my head, XO.”
“You mean — are we trailing a ballsy and clumsy commanding officer or are we witnessing something else?”
“Bingo. And not an iota of insight on this from back home. You’d think someone would’ve lit a fire under the Israeli ambassador’s ass for some answers.”
“We have to let the bigwigs play the diplomacy game.”
“Shit. If that’s our only hope, we’re in trouble.”
Salem scowled.
“They’re taking forever to slow,” he said.
“As expected,” Asad said. “A ship of that size is difficult to stop. Coasting to a standstill takes time.”
“It’s useless now to argue, but tell me why they aren’t ordering their engines in reverse.”
“Suspicion. A commercial tanker would never do so unless trying to avoid a collision, and any sonar system within a hundred kilometers would take notice.”
“How soon until nightfall?”
“Two hours.”
“This is trying my patience,” Salem said.
“I sense the unrest among the men, too,” Asad said. “The Russians warned us of psychological stress on a submarine, as did Bazzi. He remembers the old days.”
“I’m starting to feel it myself. I pray that the Zafar will reinvigorate us.”
“Me, too, Hana. And some of us will at least get fresh air tonight.”
“We’ll all get fresh air. If the Zafar’s captain has a shred of decency, he’ll send stores along with the tow lines. We’ll use everyone to carry food down the hatch.”
Ali Yousif twisted his rotund mass atop a seat before a stacked monitor.
“The Zafar is three miles away,” he said, “and still probably moving. If we assume a three-mile stopping distance, they have another two to drift.”
“It could be as long as five miles,” Asad said. “This isn’t a parameter commonly tested on tankers. Braking distance, yes, but drifting to a stop is less known.”
“But we need to know it now,” Salem said. “Ali, what can you do for us in getting us near the Zafar?”
“Well, I believe I’ve figured out how this system works when we hear a ship. Our hull sonar picks it up and displays it here.”
He pointed to a fuzzy green line running up the monitor. Salem moved behind his shoulder.
“Yes, I know,” he said. “But are you making sense of it? Data we can apply?”
“Well, yes and no. I mean not really me. It seems automatic. If this line is the Zafar, it passed very close to us, as it should have. The direction to it changed rapidly as it passed, and this system volunteered parameters describing its motion and location in relation to ourselves.”
“And?”
“And I was able to adjust a variable, an assumption on the Zafar’s speed. Since we know it to be ten knots, I was able to insert that value into the system, and it accepted it. That’s how I know where they were.”
“Were?”
“Yes. You see, our sonar system seems to no longer hear the sound source I was monitoring.”
“Which confirms that they secured their propellers,” Asad said. “This is good news. Latakia thought he had heard them on the sonar system, but was unsure. This helps confirm that he heard and then stopped hearing their blades, meaning they are now drifting.”
“So the system can tell us where they are and when they will finish their drift to a stop?” Salem asked. “I intend to take position behind them without keeping our periscope continuously exposed, but I would hate to drive into them.”