“May I at least inform the task force with a communications buoy, sir? For our safety.”
Levy flipped his wrist backwards.
“Bah. Very well. Prepare a buoy and launch it when you’re ready. But hurry so we’re not close enough to the Specter that it can hear the launch.”
He looked to his chart to check his target’s tracking, and then he dragged a stylus over the display to confirm his intent before calling out to his veteran.
“Increase speed to eighteen knots, come left to course two-one-five.”
“We’re at eighteen knots, sir,” the supervisor said. “Coming to course two-one-five. We’re incurring a heavy load on the battery at this speed. Remaining time on the battery is seventy-eight minutes.”
As the deck rolled through the turn, the supervisor requested his commander’s attention. Sensing the man might utter words best kept private, Levy walked to his side and crouched.
“I couldn’t help but notice the Specter’s heading towards the south, sir. It looks like it was heading that way to help the Goliath after all.”
“How dare you gloat,” Levy said.
“That’s not what I’m doing, sir. I mean we need to consider the Goliath. It’s still out there, and we haven’t seen any sign of it since we launched our counterstrike at the Specter.”
Digesting the insight, Levy stood, walked to his executive officer, and whispered.
“Before you send the communications buoy, place an order to the task force to request constant air observations over the Goliath and constant updates back to us. If that ship so much as snorkels, I need to know where it is and what it’s doing.”
“But the Goliath shouldn’t be a factor, sir. Not given the distance where it was last found.”
“It’s almost laughable how you try to defy me to protect your career, but in this case, I actually agree with you. No, the Goliath shouldn’t be a factor. But given the history and luck of these mercenaries, I refuse to leave that accursed ship’s undetected intervention to chance.”
CHAPTER 9
Jake considered surfacing and surrendering.
“What the hell’s going on, Antoine?”
“You said it,” Remy said. “Hell is going on.”
Leaning over the tactical chart, Jake stared at interlacing lines of sounds to hostile ships, aircraft, and robots. The noise cast an inescapable net with webbing attached to Israeli assets his sonar guru struggled to locate. It felt like a locust swarm.
“Get me a solution to the closest threat.”
“The raw bearings are on the chart,” Remy said. “You can draw a solution as well as I could estimate one.”
“Damn it. At least tell me which threat is the closest based upon sound power levels.”
The guru offered Jake his facial profile while yelling over his shoulder. He appeared flustered for the first time Jake could recall.
“At what power level is each sonar transmitting? At which depths are the dipping sonars? How fast is water moving over the surface ships’ sonars? Answer these questions, and I’ll tell you which is closest.”
“Shit. Can you tell me which ones are the greatest threats of detecting us?”
“I can give you power levels hitting our hull, but I can’t tell you about the return paths or sensitivity of every hostile hydrophone. If you want my guess, a good half of them have more than a fifty percent chance of detecting us.”
Jake sensed fear in the control room but lacked the confidence to override it. Feeling vulnerable, he wished for divine intervention.
Then help came from above.
Hostile icons jumped on his screen as Renard’s data feed tightened to the threatening war machines while the merchant shipping went dark. With the constrained focus on the assets that could kill him, the updates arrived faster.
“Thank you, Pierre,” Jake said. “Antoine, Pierre’s giving us updates every thirty seconds. Get your team to correlate what you’re hearing to his feed.”
One by one, the haphazard lines of sound from the crosshair of the Specter disappeared as the sonar ace’s technicians matched them to a truth Jake assumed Renard garnered from an American satellite or a NATO aircraft.
“Henri, cut the wires to tubes five and six. Reload both tubes with Sidewinders.”
As the Frenchman relayed the orders to the torpedo room, Jake reflected upon his loaded weapons. Having never used the encapsulated anti-air Sidewinder missiles, he doubted their efficacy. But Volkov’s success three months earlier against multiple helicopters offered Jake hope in their design.
A simple casing held one anti-air missile in its torpedo tube and protected it against moisture after launch. Once at the water’s surface, the canister would open and aim the missile’s heat seeker to the sky. Bladders under the tail would inflate to tilt the weapon in a crude preset direction. But with a two-thirds chance of hitting its target, the missiles left Jake with a need for insurance.
“Get a Stinger missile team up here, too.”
The French mechanic looked at him with raised eyebrows.
“You expect that we may surface?”
“I don’t know what to expect. Just get them up here.”
As Henri obeyed, Jake walked around the table to gain his sonar guru’s attention.
“Assign tubes one through four to the four closest contacts, based upon Pierre’s feed.”
“Tubes one through four to the four closest contacts,” Remy said. “We’ll take care of it.”
Jake stepped back to the plotting table and enjoyed a moment of comforting insight into the machines maneuvering above him. But his moment evaporated when he realized a pair of Seagull hunters had turned towards him.
He looked across the table at the Aman officer.
“The Seagulls are a risk at three miles, right?”
“Yes,” the officer said. “But it varies with many factors. Two to six miles, depending—”
“Then the pair to the south is a threat already.”
The officer nodded.
“Tell me everything you know about them,” Jake said. “Speed, hunting tactics, launch parameters.”
“Maximum speed is thirty-four knots. They usually hunt in pairs where the ships take turns slowing for short periods to listen while the other is transmitting. This gives them an average speed over ground of twenty-five to twenty-eight knots.”
“What else? Would their behavior change if they detect us?”
“I expect the same sort of aggressive behavior you’d see from a surface combatant that lacks a helicopter and must fight with its organic torpedoes, except there’s no human element of fear of your counterstrike.”
While weighing his escape options, Jake wanted to avoid the unafraid robots, but they represented one of several evils. He could risk running under a helicopter, he could turn back towards the task force that included an alerted submarine or he could try to slip under the southern pairs of Seagulls.
Each option stank of death.
Hoping for a clue of discernment, Jake welcomed the French mechanic’s presence by his side.
“Pierre just sent a text note in his data feed,” Henri said. “He’s commanded Terry to come shallow and render assistance.”'
“I’m glad I didn’t have to ask,” Jake said. “I would’ve felt like a coward asking Terry to expose himself.”
“If the roles were reversed, I’m sure you’d help him.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Okay. This tells me which way to run. We’re heading south to make it easier for Terry to help us.”
“That’s logical. But it means we need to pass near the southern group of Seagulls. Maybe right under them, depending how they maneuver. They’re fast.”