“Excellent. Executive officer, lower the periscope. Now we can submerge again.”
As the portly officer obeyed, Levy commanded his mechanical veteran at the ship’s control panel.
“Make your depth thirty meters, slowly.”
The deck assumed a gentle angle, and the rocking receded.
“I request a change in course to drive some geometry on the hostile torpedo, sir,” the supervisor said.
Levy turned his head.
“Why?”
“There’s a good minute or two before it detonates. I’d like to track it to be sure.”
The Crocodile’s commander agreed with the tactic but rejected the recommendation as a show of strength.
“The hostile torpedo’s fate is now a foregone conclusion. The missile boats have served their purpose. My hunt begins now.”
He turned back to his mechanical veteran.
“Make eight knots, and steer course two-six-one. Take me right back down the bearing of that damned torpedo. The sonar team will continue its search for a Scorpène-class submarine, and I will rid these waters of this accursed menace.”
As the supervisor announced the success of the first phase of the counterstrike — the sacrifice, Levy’s confidence rose.
“The hostile weapon has detonated,” the supervisor said. “I have just enough bearing separation to place it under the Arrow. It’s not a heavyweight. Limpets are attaching to the Arrow. And now, the limpets are detonating.”
“Belay your reports on the Arrow,” Levy said. “That ship’s now finding the best retirement it could hope for with a burial at sea.”
“It’s crew, sir—”
“Is of no concern to us. Shame on them if they can’t find their way to life boats. Now that the Lance is the surviving missile boat destined to an ignoble retirement, it will pick up the Arrow’s crew. Focus on finding the Specter.”
“Why do you think it’s the Specter and not the Wraith, sir?”
Levy had received intelligence that the Wraith had transited the Suez Canal, making it the likely aggressor against the idiots who’d let it cripple their two submarines north of Port Said, Egypt. That left the Specter as the culprit that had defied his blockade, and the geometry of undersea, undetected transit favored his target being the Specter.
“That’s a commanding officer’s privileged information,” he said. “I am hunting the Specter.”
“Okay, sir. Let’s assume the mercenary submarine is the Specter since—”
“It is the Specter. There is no assumption.”
After a brief silence, the sonar supervisor continued.
“Yes, sir. I would bet the Specter’s commanding officer is smart enough to have repositioned himself so that he’s no longer on a bearing of two-six-one. I’m sure he kept moving along the line of sight after he shot at us. So he’s gone far to the left or to the right.”
“Of course, he has,” Levy said. “But that will only matter in resolving ambiguity if I pick him up on the towed array, and if I pick him up before someone else in the task force does.”
The long line of hydrophones he towed behind the Crocodile sensed low-frequency sounds and distant noises, providing him his first warning of danger. But exposed to the water without any mechanical backstop, his towed array was helpless to tell its left from its right.
“Given our limits in maneuvering, we could save some time in resolving ambiguity if we knew what side it’s on now.”
“There’s no rationale beyond a coin toss for that.”
“Maybe not, sir, but let’s take a guess. I think the Specter’s heading south to go help the Goliath.”
Levy saw a flaw and attacked.
“I’m sure that’s what they want us to think, these mercenaries. But we know the Goliath’s primary purpose is to serve as bait, which, of course, backfired through my insights when I outsmarted them with my counterstrike plan. For all we know their entire fleet could be heading to Cyprus to escort a blockade run or even be withdrawing.”
“I just wanted to get ahead of the Specter, sir.”
“That’s my job, and I will make no assumption about its behavior beyond what the data tells me.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, what does the data tell me?”
“Acoustically, nothing yet,” the supervisor said. “I see that we’re getting useful low-bandwidth updates from the task force’s tactical data feed though.”
Levy lowered his gaze to the central table.
Icons representing helicopters that had taken off from the four largest ships stopped and hovered twenty miles from the torpedo-detection point. He expected their dipping sonar systems to shriek their dangerous frequencies and drive the Specter back into the pursuing task force.
The corvettes marched forward at half speed, closing the formation’s jaws while blaring their sonar systems and listening for a return, and the Seagulls patrolled the outer edges of the formation.
With a mistrust of the robots, Levy hoped a manned asset would find and prosecute the Specter. Though he personally wanted to find the mercenary submarine, he conceded that he needed a large net to capture it.
Though suffering from misplaced loyalties, the Specter’s commander had talent. He could mount an escape in any direction, and Levy wanted him to double back into a submarine-versus-submarine encounter.
But a kill of the Specter would be his victory, and he would claim credit regardless who pulled the trigger.
“Where’s my torpedo?” he asked.
“Fifteen miles out with eight percent fuel remaining,” the supervisor said. “Do you want a steer?”
“No. There’s nowhere smart I could steer it. Cut the wire and reload the tube.”
Ten minutes passed, and as doubt threatened him, Levy leaned over the chart to assure himself his trap would succeed.
The counterstrike was brilliant, he convinced himself. Flawless. The net was wide and tight, and fate lacked the cruelty to allow the Specter to escape. He commanded his patience to endure, and he waited.
Two minutes later, his adrenaline spiked as he reaped the rewards of his genius.
A new icon appeared on the display, two miles from the southern pair of Seagulls.
He smirked.
“After all this elaborate planning and putting the best ships of the surface fleet forward, a damned robot finds the Specter.”
He waited for an update to the mercenary submarine as the Seagulls tracked its course and speed.
“Good,” he said. “Only twelve miles away. I will chase it. Assign tube two to the Specter.”
The executive officer voiced his weak protest.
“Sir, it’s my duty to inform you that leaving our exclusion zone is a danger to our ship.”
“Noted. Annotate your protest in the deck log again to protect your career. I don’t care. I know where our ships are, and I know how to avoid them.”
“But why seek the Specter when the Seagulls will prosecute it? You’re incurring risk for no reward.”
“Don’t be a fool, you buffoon,” Levy said. “A Seagull has never been tested against a commander as skilled as that of the Specter, and I’m making a calculated assessment that my intervention as an insurance policy is necessary.”