“Look, mate,” the Australian said, “I don’t mean to be paranoid, but I’d like to take a look inside those limpets I loaded, just to convince meself there’s no explosives inside them. I didn’t want to open them up without one of your guys watching.”
“That’s not paranoid,” Jake said. “I imagine I’d do the same thing. Let’s go.”
“Don’t you need to bring one of your technicians?”
“No,” Jake said. “I helped design them. If you let me borrow your power tools, I’ll have you inside them in twenty minutes.”
On the pier, Cahill pulled a Rankin officer’s ball cap out of his pocket and extended it.
“A gift.”
“Thanks,” Jake said.
The sensation of a ship’s ball cap felt alien after not having donned one since wearing an American naval officer’s uniform.
Following the Australian over the Rankin’s brow, he heard a sentry announce over the vessel’s public address system Cahill’s return. The tradition addressed him by the name of the ship he commanded.
“Rankin, arriving.”
Jake wondered if the sentry would salute him and stopped breathing as the young sailor announced his arrival.
“Wraith, arriving.”
Instinctively, he returned the salute that accompanied the announcement. In that moment, he sensed his twelve-year sentence of shame dissolve. He no longer commanded a mercenary ship, but he was a legitimate submarine commander.
His treason with the United States Navy prevented his homeland from acknowledging this, and the clandestine acts he had committed during a decade of redemption pushed him outside the bounds of any national navy’s public recognition. But here, by a concealed wharf and united by shared secrecy, an Australian vessel recognized him for the first, and probably last, time.
He knew that Cahill had arranged the gesture, having spoon-fed him the ball cap to allow him to return the salute.
“Thanks for that,” Jake said.
“What? Announcing your arrival? It was nothing, mate.”
“You do remember that I stole that thing, right? You just had one of Her Majesty’s Australian Ships approve that theft.”
“And I can’t confirm nor deny that I helped you steal it, right? Let’s just say that I give you more credit for what you’ve done with that submarine alone, never mind what you’ve done with your other submarines, than I give meself and all me colleagues back home. While we’ve been busy training, you’ve been busy doing.”
“Thanks. I don’t know what else to say.”
“Buy me a beer when we’re done with this and celebrating the oil flow into the Philippines.”
Jake hardly remembered navigating the Rankin’s corridors to its torpedo room, opening up the limpets, and waving a flashlight over the harmless noisemakers.
He bid a satisfied Cahill farewell and floated across the brow, anger and anxiety leaving his body as the Rankin’s sentry saluted and proclaimed his authenticity again with a final salutation.
“Wraith, departing.”
Three hours later, he finished a stir-fry dinner loaded with the fresh vegetables he would miss at sea, and then he walked to the torpedo room with Henri. He remained silent, already knowing that his ace French mechanic had loaded the new weapons per his orders.
To the untrained eye, the compartment appeared unchanged since the Wraith had slid under the wharf’s covering canopy. But Jake noticed the subtleties.
A clear white ring encircling the torpedo’s circumference atop its warhead section identified it as a limpet. Beside it, he recognized a slow-kill weapon’s telltale gray ring. Then behind the two custom torpedoes lay their twins.
On the other side of the room, four more custom weapons rested in their racks, ready for the automated hydraulic system to reload them into tubes. Behind the custom armaments, a yellow ring identified a drone of the type that DCNS, the European naval construction company that had launched Renard’s private career, had been producing for Jake’s use for a decade.
“No need to show me what’s in the tubes,” Jake said. “After eight years, I’m willing to trust you.”
“Thank you,” Henri said.
“The crew is all aboard?”
“I need to take a final muster, but all hands were aboard prior to the evening meal.”
“We cast off in two hours. Take muster and remind everyone to be ready.”
In his stateroom, he read a book on his computer to distract himself while awaiting his wife’s call. A future earth had polluted itself to the verge of extinction, and cartels of the wealthy elite battled the government’s military for control of humanity’s new future on a terraformed Mars.
A popup window showed his wife’s attempt to contact him. He accepted the call and typed his passcode to connect with her, but a man’s gentle and wise face appeared. Jake recognized the man seated in front of his refrigerator.
“I didn’t know that bishops did house calls.”
“Whenever needed, brother,” Bishop Francis Kalabat said.
Linda slid her face in front of the camera, smiling as if Kalabat’s presence assured her husband’s safety.
“Hi, honey!” she said. “Look who’s here. He came right over when I called him this morning.”
“Thank you, Bishop Francis,” Jake said.
“My pleasure. Linda says you need a blessing before you head off on another endeavor.”
“That is indeed what she says, and I’m not about to argue.”
“Well said. Shall we?”
“Sure,” Jake said.
He bowed his head out of respect to the bishop and his wife’s beliefs.
“Dear God, I ask you to guide Jake with wisdom, compassion, and decisiveness and to bless him on his upcoming endeavor. Amen.”
“That’s it?” Jake asked.
“Do you want more? You’re normally looking for the tersest answers I can give. I figured you’d be happy if I kept it short and sweet. God knows what I’m wishing for you in my heart.”
Jake had seen the bishop render passionate homilies and knew he could speak as long as needed to inspire anyone who listened. He considered him the ordained Energizer Bunny with eyeglasses, a gray beard, and a miter.
“No,” he said. “That was perfect. Thank you, father. I mean bishop. I mean… Your Excellency?”
“All of it works for me. I answer to a lot of things. How are your studies going?”
“I got sidetracked by work, so to speak. But it’s starting to sink in, the evidence for a god, I mean.”
“Great!”
“Doesn’t mean I’m picking a side of the argument. Just digesting the facts.”
“Fair enough. Do you have anyone to talk to on your crew?”
As best he could tell, his main French accomplices were Christians. Antoine Remy had revealed his belief, but Jake also suspected Henri Lanier and Claude LaFontaine.
“Yeah. There are a few guys. I might have some down time with them to chat. Thanks for the idea, actually.”
“My pleasure.”
Jake glanced at the clock on his wall and let thoughts of his mission creep into his head.
“You look like you need to leave us, Jake,” Kalabat said.
“I’m afraid so. I need to say good bye. Will you assure Linda that everything will be okay?”
She shifted the camera to her face and tried to hold on to the moment. The vision pained him, but the bishop mitigated the suffering.
“I will help her find the strength and courage to trust in the outcome,” Kalabat said, “so that you can go and do God’s work.”
Four hours later, Jake slid the Wraith under the waves, thirty minutes ahead of the Rankin. He then drove his submarine at an economic speed of six knots towards the Second Thomas Shoal in preparation for another showdown with the Chinese Navy.