“Thanks. I’ll keep mine stowed until I detach from you.”
“Anything else?”
“No. Just keep your sonar team attentive.”
He tapped the screen, and blackness replaced Cahill’s face.
“Antoine?”
As the toad-like head eased sideways, Jake realized that his sonar expert was engrossed in listening to the seas through the Specter’s bow and hull arrays. Remy pulled down an earpiece to hear him.
“Yes, Jake?”
“Did you get that? We’ll be using the Goliath’s towed array.”
Remy nodded and turned his head back to his visual display, seeking waterborne acoustic clues for adversarial assets.
Jake tapped his screen to call up a nautical chart. Stale data showed the movement of the swarm of North Korean ships where they had been ten minutes ago. The Goliath’s railgun attack had created the desired effect of drawing surface combatants and aircraft towards the Gwansun and away from the Kim.
But isolated from radar input, the data decayed into shadows of guesses. With the Goliath-Specter tandem submerged, the open water held unwanted surprises.
“I’m getting data from the Goliath’s towed array now.”
“Thanks, Antoine. Do you see anything new?”
Jake expected the long line of hydrophones, receptive to lower frequencies and free of its host ship’s noise, to hear sounds that hull-based sensors missed.
“Yes, as you might have guessed, I hear a lot of new sounds. I hear a shrimp bed, I hear whale calls, and I hear loud merchant ships in the transit lanes to the east.”
“Right. Sorry. Finish your analysis and let me know if there’s something that doesn’t correlate to a known target.”
“I will be surprised if there’s something new out there.”
“We’ll all be. Try not to surprise me.”
Remy’s analysis had found nothing of interest, and Jake’s anger of having been missile bait had receded during a quiet hour of transit.
“We’re at the detachment point,” Henri said.
Jake noticed the decreasing speed of the Goliath-Specter tandem as he invoked Cahill’s image.
“Are you slowing us to detach me?” he asked.
“Right, mate. We can do this at speed, but I prefer to do it while we’re at a crawl. It’s safer.”
“Sure.”
He watched the speed meter glide to under a knot.
“Let’s do it, Jake. Do you remember the procedure?”
“I do. You release the hydraulic presses and then I make the Specter light enough to drift up and away.”
“That’s right. You ready?”
“Yes. Commence detachment.”
“Commencing detachment,” Cahill said. “Releasing hydraulic presses.”
The first step in the procedure was silent.
“I don’t notice anything. How’s it going?”
“Something’s wrong,” Cahill said.
The Australian’s face disappeared, leaving Jake a view of the Goliath’s control room. Cahill’s voice and that of his executive officer emanated from the Specter’s speakers.
“What’s wrong with that press?” Cahill asked.
“I’m not getting positive indication of its position,” Walker said. “I can’t tell if it’s pressing down on the Specter, locked in the open position, or somewhere in between.”
“Can we get a visual with the rover?”
“Wait, you guys have a rover?” Jake asked.
Cahill’s face returned.
“Well yeah, mate. We need to be able to inspect our cargoes from time to time. You know, in case something like this happens.”
“What do you hope to find?”
“If the press is engaged or not.”
“If it is?”
“Then you could rip it off its joint when you rise.”
“What can you do to prevent that?”
“Since it’s a starboard side press, I’d bring me starboard hull down a bit to place a tilt on you. That way, you’d slide up and to the left. That would reduce the stress on the press in question.”
Jake visualized the maneuver.
“But it might make me bump into your port side presses.”
“Not if you’re light. You’d lift off while I tilt. But you’re right, it’s tricky timing.”
“I’d rather not risk it if I don’t have to. How long to get your rover out there?”
“It’s fast and quiet. Just a few minutes. I need to know the state of the press anyway so that I know what I’m dealing with when engaging the Kim.”
“Go ahead.”
Cahill looked away and nodded towards Walker.
“Liam’s on it,” he said. “I’ll patch the video through to you.”
Moments later, Jake watched dual conical light beams illuminating the Specter’s bow. The sight of his own ship gave him an eerie feeling, like he was spying on himself.
The first starboard press came into view aft of the torpedo tubes. A number appeared on the hydraulic arm as it extended above its pivoting joint.
“Number one,” he said. “Simplified for identification. Nice.”
“Right,” Cahill said. “Odds on the starboard side, evens on the left, as it should be.”
“Which press is the one in question?”
“Eleven.”
Twenty feet later, the rover’s camera reached press three. Then it continued, passing between presses five, seven, and nine and the Specter. When it reached the next hydraulic appendage, the sight relieved Jake. The arm with the number eleven on it angled backward towards the Goliath like its siblings.
“That’s good, right?” he asked.
“Right, mate. Let’s make sure.”
With respectable subtlety, the rover twisted and danced around the arm, giving visual evidence that it had withdrawn to its opened, latched position.
“It’s latched,” Cahill said. “It’s just a problem with the indication. Probably an electrical short.”
“So I’m free to go?”
“Yes. In fact, you should detach immediately. Liam is good at driving the rover, but you’ll simplify his backtracking trip if you’re out of his way.”
“Ready to withdraw the communication link?”
Jake knew that a final, smaller press held electromagnetic transducers against his hull. Mounted opposite them, transducers within his control room exchanged magnetic oscillations, encoded with the audio and visual data that connected the transport ship and its cargo. He glanced at the temporary box of communications transducers bolted outboard his captain’s chair and prepared for isolation from the outside world.
“Ready,” Cahill said. “Good luck, Jake.”
“Good luck to you, Terry. Withdraw communications.”
The screen went black.
Alone, as a submarine commander prefers, Jake ordered the Specter lifted from its perch and driven forward to hunt those who stood between him and the Kim.
CHAPTER 14
Lieutenant Yoon leaned into his crutches and tolerated the throbbing in his belly. Below him, Senior Chief Nang tapped keys and entered data into the Kim’s tactical system.
“How slow can you make them run?” Yoon asked.
“Twenty-five knots by design. I’m not sure how to set it through the system, though. This isn’t my normal job, sir.”
“I know. Press the settings icon. That’s right. Now the transit speed. Set it to minimum.”
“Done, sir.”
“How far does that extend the range?”