Flint felt his heart pumping.
“Yes, that’s what I mean,” he said.
“There’s a lot of conjecture between losing the first and regaining the second to make this work.”
“The ship drifts to a stop, launches a craft with high-speed screws, monkeys with the Leviathan, and then gets out of Dodge at a cruising speed of fourteen knots.”
“Plausible, sir.”
“The fourteen knots was based on blade rate, right?”
“Most likely, sir. The bearing was constant because it had its stern to us driving away.”
“We’re trained to assume that blade rate correlates to a speed because merchants aren’t stopping and starting in the open ocean. What if the blade rate meant that the screws were turning at the engine speed equivalent of fourteen knots but that the ship was instead accelerating from a drift or dead stop?”
“I see, sir. This is stuff I’d normally throw away as speculation, but with the Leviathan, we’ve seen that anything is possible.”
“XO,” he said. “Go back and have the sonar team assess these two merchants to see how likely they’re the same ship.”
Flint stood straight and watched Baines walk away. Minutes later, Baines returned from the sonar team’s room and joined him by the plot.
“Can’t prove anything either way, sir.”
“I thought not. What’s your gut tell you?”
“That we share what we know with squadron, and see what they can add to the picture.”
“The picture, XO,” Flint said, “is exactly what I’ll ask them to add.”
“Satellite support”
“Yup. To figure out if our two ships were one, who they are, where they’re going, and, if I understand the capabilities of modern technology, what the skipper’s eating for breakfast tomorrow. If something interesting comes of this, then I’ll know we did our jobs right.”
CHAPTER 14
Jake finished leading the Mercer back and forth along a submerged imaginary line one hundred miles from France’s southern shore. The American assets searching for the rogue submarine had found nothing, and he began to wonder if a chapter in his life he considered closed began to creak open.
Renard greeted him and asked about the Mercer’s status. Jake willed himself to utter data about systems in various states of advanced testing. Although Jake wanted to return to his apartment in Avignon and figure out how to begin the free decades of his life, Renard’s face revealed that his immediate future would unfold on the Mercer.
“Each day the Americans fail to find the Leviathan,” Renard said, “is an added day of hope that they will need us before this is done.”
Jake nodded, swallowed, and walked away.
His stomach full of baked ham and green beans, Jake asked his lunch mates if they wanted desert. Henri Lanier and Claude LaFontaine nodded. They appeared weary but patient in their following of Renard.
“I’ll get some ice cream,” Jake said.
He entered the pantry and saw a tub of melting ice cream remaining from the watch section that had just eaten. As Jake reached into a cupboard for bowls, he heard a commotion. He peered into the wardroom and saw Antoine Remy’s toad-like face jutting in from the passageway.
“Renard just received a message from Director Rickets,” he said. “He’s decrypting it now.”
Henri snapped a comment to Jake about running the ship from the operations room in Renard’s stead and shuffled away with LaFontaine on his heels. Expecting to hear of the Leviathan’s demise, Jake scooped himself a celebratory bowl of ice cream and sat to enjoy it.
As he looked around the wardroom, he noted the barren walls. No leader and no country had yet claimed the ship, and nobody had imbued its officers’ dining area with a personality. The entire ship had a skeletal persona and lacked an identity. It reminded him of himself.
Perhaps, he wondered, this is what his brother Nick meant by death and danger. He was on a dead ship that had yet to be born. He comforted himself with this thought as he awaited the desired news from Rickets about the Leviathan having been found and neutralized.
His ice cream half eaten, Jake sensed an energy throughout the ship that made him nervous. Renard burst through the door.
“My friend,” he said, “I have news that will excite you to no end!”
“What?”
“The Leviathan is suspected to be towed by an Iranian tanker, a mere three days away from us.”
“That’s… how?”
“Likely an orchestrated hijacking.”
Jake’s heart skipped a beat.
“What’s this mean for us?”
“We verify it.”
“Verify what?”
Renard cracked an eager smile.
“Director Rickets has admitted that no American submarine is close enough to verify the presence of the Leviathan behind the tanker sooner than we can. He needs us to handle this delicate task. I intend to run it by you for your insight, of course, but I already have a plan in mind to achieve this.”
“Oh really?” Jake asked. “Where are NATO’s submarines?”
“I don’t care,” Renard said. “Have you considered that we are on a state of the art vessel and that most submarines within arm’s reach are not? Have you considered that Director Rickets is confining the information about a rogue Israeli submarine to as few people as possible? Dear God, this is the opportunity I had hoped for, and—”
“And damn it, Pierre, I don’t give a shit.”
Jake felt blood coursing through the veins of his neck during awkward moments of silence. He watched Renard reach into his breast pocket for a pack of Marlboros.
“I thought you quit smoking,” Jake said.
Renard withdrew a gold-plated Zippo lighter and sparked flint into flame below the cigarette in his mouth.
“I must have started again.”
“When?”
“Just now.”
“Because of me?”
“No. I’ve been cheating. I may continue, especially if you no longer care about our fates being intertwined.”
Jake glanced at the half eaten bowl of ice cream.
“That’s part of the problem. I’m sick of being dependent upon other people for every step I take. The Navy made me a submarine officer, you made me a traitor, and then you and Rickets made me a mercenary. I’m thirty years old now. When the hell do I get to say what I do and when?”
“A noble question, my friend, but this is hardly the time. You’ll have plenty of time to ascertain your identity once this is behind us.”
Jake looked away from Renard, and his finger began tapping the tabletop aside the bowl. Thoughts raced through his mind too fast to grasp. When his awareness returned to the room, Renard was seated in the captain’s chair beside him.
“Jake?”
“What?”
“Stop!”
Renard cupped his hand over the resonating finger. Jake ran his free hand through his hair and sat straight.
“I sense something in you I had seen before only in glimpses and snapshots, but now I see it as a constant, and it concerns me.”
“Yeah?”
“Fear.”
Jake shrugged. Renard reached for an ash tray and propped his cigarette on it. He looked at the lighting above, focusing his thoughts and words.
“It makes sense,” Renard said. “I should have seen this. You’ve faced ungodly amounts of stress unwaveringly, but underneath your strength you are lost. Perhaps it was the omen from your brother or perhaps the fallout with Olivia, but something pushed you over this edge that I failed to see you approaching.”