“Do you believe that they’d be so naïve?”
Jake sighed and slouched.
“No. And that’s what’s bothering me. I thought this was going to be an easy ambush on just the Crocodile, but now I’ve got a creepy feeling about it being too easy.”
“But what to do about it? You can’t just retreat.”
“No, I can’t. We’ll stick to the plan of taking out the Crocodile. The submarine remains the meat of our attack. All the surface ships are just gravy.”
As Jake feared he might overanalyze the scenario, the Frenchman compelled him deeper into the matter.
“What do you make of the old Sa’ar 4 missile boats?”
“Relics with only one purpose,” Jake said. “To shoot Harpoons at the Goliath. They’ll probably be mothballed by the end of the week.”
“I thought they were already mothballed. I hardly remember them from our reviews of the Israeli fleet.”
“I’m honestly impressed that they’re at sea making more than thirty knots. I guess the Israelis thought it was worth putting Harpoons on them and getting them within strike range of the Goliath. They’ll be loud, but remember that they’re just distractions. We’re taking out the submarine.”
Appearing content with Jake’s position, the Frenchman switched to English.
“Shall I have the tactical A-team stationed in three hours, to include a team briefing of your intent with the task force?”
“Make it three and a half,” Jake said. “Let’s give our aces a final chance for some food and rest before battle.”
To clear his mind, Jake went to his stateroom and reclined in his rack. After a minute of racing thoughts tormenting him about possible outcomes of the pending battle, he found the solitude unsettling. As he sought companionship, a quick walk brought him to the entryway of the crew’s mess.
He pushed his head into the space and saw his French veterans huddled around a dining table.
“You guys plotting a mutiny?” he asked.
His top mechanic lifted his white-haired head.
“I’ve been working on that for years,” Henri said. “So far, progress has been slow.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Jake said.
“I guess it is,” Henri said. “Claude has been my biggest supporter, but even he seems safely back in Antoine’s camp of remaining loyal to you.”
The wiry frame of his engineering officer, Claude LaFontaine, twisted and exposed a cigarette hanging from the corner of a curled mouth. Jake also noticed a book in the man’s hands.
“Henri exaggerates,” LaFontaine said. “I haven’t even thought about mutinying against you since our latest campaign in Taiwan. We’re all with you, and we know we’ll succeed in the next battle.”
“I appreciate it. What are you guys doing?”
“Bible study,” Henri said. “Would you care to join us?”
“It depends what you’re studying. If you’re studying some sort of glorious historic battle, I’m not interested.”
“Not at all. We’re in First Corinthians.”
Jake had read every canonical book, and though he’d internalized a fraction of the contents, he considered the repetitive guidance of the Pauline epistles hard to digest.
“I don’t think I want to read about a bunch of do-gooders before I take a bunch of cheap shots at Israeli sailors.”
The Frenchmen chuckled in unison.
“Corinth was a mess,” Henri said. “It was a harbor town with pagans, Jews, and the worst sort of scum — sailors. They were horrible sinners and struggled to figure out how to adopt their new beliefs. Since Paul said there was hope for them, there’s hope for everyone.”
“That’s good to know,” Jake said. “But I’ll pass. I need to think through some more possible scenarios against the Israelis.”
He wandered farther aft and entered the MESMA plant and heard hissing steam. The compartment’s billowing heat warmed him, and he sat at a workbench to gather himself.
A passing technician garnered Jake’s nod and then departed down a ladder to the room’s lower section, leaving the Specter’s commander alone with his thoughts.
Though the words he shared with his crew preached a focus on the Crocodile, the urge to succeed drove Jake to strike the entire task force. With one smart salvo of his torpedoes, including the reloads he expected he’d have the time to employ, he could cripple the remainder of the Israeli fleet.
Then the humanitarian support of the blockade run would be a foregone conclusion, and the ensuing political embarrassment would force the militant prime minister to reshape his strategy of expansion — or have it reshaped by his emergency successor.
A fledgling Christian, Jake sought divine guidance.
“I need your help, God,” he said. “Please let me know what to do. I’m trying hard not to pretend I’m you anymore. So help me figure out if I’m supposed to hit the Crocodile and run or take down the entire task force.”
He glanced around the room and saw temperature sensors on steam piping but no divine signs.
“I guess you’ll guide me when you need to.”
He returned to his stateroom where he took a quick shower and put on fresh clothes. After a few minutes of relaxing, he headed to the control room and found his A-team.
Beside his mechanic, he stood at the central charting table.
“Would you like to deploy the drones?” Henri asked.
“Soon,” Jake said. “Where are my drone operators?”
Seated at adjacent Subtics systems consoles, two young Frenchmen turned and raised their hands. Though untested in combat, they’d undergone training with Remy.
“You guys ready?” Jake asked.
Two confident faces affirmed their eagerness.
“Okay, then,” he said. “Let’s deploy them at the same time to make all our noise at once. And let’s do it now before we’re close enough to the Crocodile to be heard.”
“Tubes five and six are ready with drones,” Henri said.
“Simultaneously launch drone one from tube five and drone two from tube six.”
After hearing confirmation of the launch relayed from the torpedo room, Jake watched his sonar guru gather input from his protégés.
“Drones one and two are deployed and clear of our hull,” Remy said. “We have wire connectivity and confirmation of propulsion on both drones.”
“Set the speed for both drones to ten knots,” Jake said. “Fan them out forty-five degrees off our track for five miles. After five miles, turn them parallel to our track.”
To give his sonar arrays workable listening geometries, he accelerated the Specter to six knots and began zigzag legs across the path leading to his prey. Then, for thirty minutes, he took periodic views of the tactical chart as the crosshair of his submarine slipped behind the icons of his twin drones.
The triad of the submarine and its extended listening machines appeared on an imaginary line Jake drew connecting the distant Goliath to the approaching Israeli task force. He considered his lurking Specter ready to swallow the hidden but predictable Crocodile and its surface escorts.
“Too easy,” he said.
Exercising the patience submarine commanders valued, Jake retreated to his foldout chair on the conning platform, slouched in it, and let his crew search for its victim.
After two hours, the familiar curl in his sonar ace’s upper torso caused Jake to sit straight. Remy pressed his muffs against his ears as he discerned phantom sounds from reality.
“Fifty-hertz electric plant,” Remy said. “I have it on the towed array, bearing zero-eight-three. Sending to the system.”