“Part of your obligation during our discussions, Officer McDonald, is to demonstrate something vital to me. Since I see nothing standing between myself and the presidency, I would like you to prove to me that I need you.”
CHAPTER 18
Jake leaned forward in his foldout captain’s chair and rubbed his eyes. When he lowered his hands and blinked, he noticed that Henri’s tennis shoes looked free of grime, as if the will of their wearer made them as impeccable in appearance as himself.
“This is going to take forever,” he said.
“Patience,” Henri said. “The crew is looking to you for it. You’re old enough now to understand the value of the virtue.”
Jake leaned back and looked up to Henri, who appeared crooked with his hip planted against the railing that encircled the conning platform.
“We cut holes in the water with our hull all night, and not a peep from the San Juan.”
“You said it yourself. That old ship is loud when it moves, but it’s as silent as a ghost when it crawls. You can only keep searching for it and wait for it to make noise. No submarine can remain silent forever.”
Jake glanced beyond Henri and saw Remy curled toward his sonar station. But instead of looking ready to spring with the discovery of an adversarial target, the Frenchmen buckled under pending sleep’s weight.
“Remy’s not going to pull off a miracle today,” Jake said. “I think you’re right, Henri. We’re not going to find the San Juan until it makes a move loud enough to be found. It’s going to require a slow and steady search.”
Henri twisted his torso toward his countryman, and his gaze seemed to animate Remy, who stiffened.
“I have something at a high bearing rate,” Remy said.
Brushing by Henri, Jake covered the distance to the sonar expert in seconds. High bearing rate meant something was moving fast, was nearby, or both. He looked over Remy’s shoulder at a monitor that showed a line of broadband noise, comprised of multiple high frequencies.
“What sort of noise?” he asked.
“Flow noise,” Remy said.
“What sensors do you hear it on?”
“Towed array and flank array.”
“How fast?” he asked.
“Three degrees per minute, to the left.”
“Assume a range of eight miles and calculate speed.”
“Twelve knots.”
“Let’s test it. You got enough data on this geometry?”
“Yes, Jake. You can turn.”
From the corner of his eye, Jake saw Henri retake his seat at the ship’s control station.
“Left ten-degrees rudder,” Jake said. “Steady course three-four-zero.”
Henri acknowledged the order, and the deck tilted with the Specter’s turn. Jake kept his eye on Remy’s monitor, but he knew that the wealth of knowledge defining the new target’s identity and comprehending its behavior lived in the Frenchman’s ear.
Seated at the monitor beside Remy, Kang listened to the ocean as the Frenchman’s apprentice.
“I hear cavitation,” he said.
Remy’s toad-head turned in lethargic disbelief. He slid one of his earpieces to his neck.
“You hear cavitation?” he asked. “And I don’t?”
“Yeah. It’s on the correct bearing.”
Remy craned his neck upward and shrugged.
“Young ears,” he said.
“Don’t forget his great teacher, my friend,” Jake said.
He felt the deck level under his feet.
“Steady on course three-four-zero,” Henri said.
“Very well, Henri,” Jake said. “Remy, you’ve got ninety seconds to give me your best solution.”
Remy slipped his headset back over his ear.
“Signal strength is dropping,” he said.
“Whatever we hear, it’s driving away from us now,” Jake said. “The bearing rate is less than I had expected in this geometry. Our target is still moving to the west, but our own motion is hardly contributing to the bearing between us.”
“It’s far away, Jake.”
“How far?”
“I’d say more than twenty miles.”
“Enter twenty-three miles into the system and let’s see how it tracks. What speed does that correlate to?”
“Thirty-four and a half knots.”
“Well, shit,” Jake said. “If this solution tracks, we know we’ve found something fast enough to be worth finding.”
Remy tapped his screen, and a cross section of the ocean appeared showing lines curving over distance and depth based upon the speed of sound across varied temperature, pressure, and salinity. He pointed at lines curving through the Specter’s present depth of one hundred meters.
“For all sound frequencies, this could be reaching us from a surface vessel or from a submerged vessel. The sound isn’t bouncing off the ocean bottom to reach us at this distance. It’s coming to us via direct path propagation.”
“So it could be a surface warship or a submarine. It’s sure not the San Juan, though. Not at that speed.”
“I’ve got blade rate,” Remy said.
“What speed does it correlate to if that’s the Ambush?”
“You think it’s the Ambush?”
“What else could it be?” Jake asked. “There’s nothing else out here that moves that fast.”
“Blade rate correlates to thirty-three and a half knots if this is the Ambush,” Remy said.
“Pull the range in to twenty-two miles.”
“The solution looks good,” Remy said. “You’re right, Jake. This is the Ambush, sprinting to the west as fast as it can.”
Jake felt like taking a risk.
“Energize our active bow sonar,” he said. “I want to target the Ambush with as much power as we can transmit, in the tightest acoustic beam we can form.”
“Seriously?” Remy asked.
“Trust me.”
“What frequency?”
“The lowest we have. I want to make sure it reaches them.”
Remy tapped his screen.
“Sonar is ready to transmit active.”
“Transmit,” Jake said.
The entire ocean seemed to vibrate around Jake as acoustic energy shot forth from the Specter’s bow-mounted hydrophones, oscillated throughout the submarine’s hull, and raced at fifteen hundred meters per second toward the Ambush.
“If they didn’t hear that,” Jake said, “their sonar system is broken.”
“What are you trying to accomplish?” Henri asked.
“Communication,” Jake said. “Beyond that, I’m not sure.”
“I’ve lost blade rate,” Remy said. “No more cavitation.”
“It’s moved out of our hearing range, or it stopped moving?”
“Give me a moment,” Remy said. “Okay, flow noise is decreasing. I believe they’ve stopped their screw.”
“Prepare another active sonar ping,” Jake said. “Same settings as the last one.”
“Ready, Jake.”
“Transmit.”
The ocean shook again.
“Have you considered that you may be inviting a hostile torpedo?” Henri asked.
Jake twisted at his waist to look at Henri.
“The thought crossed my mind,” he said. “But I’m going to trust that a British submarine commander has more class than that.”
“Hull popping,” Remy announced.
Jake recognized the announcement as the expansion of the Ambush’s hull under lowering pressure as it rose in depth. He turned back to his sonar expert.
“They’re going shallow?” he asked.
“Yes,” Remy said. “But all I can hear is the hull popping. The flow noise and blade-related noises are gone. I had their reactor coolant pumps, but I can’t hear it now.”