“Everything hunting us is fast.”
“Then I leave it to your skills.”
For lack of a rational basis to hope for his survival, Jake trusted his instincts.
“Henri, come left to course one-five-zero. Increase speed to fifteen knots, slowly.”
The mechanic acknowledged and walked to his station to administer the order.
As the deck rolled through the turn, Jake pressed his palms into the table for balance. He looked down at the icons that shifted about the display at the fastest speed Renard could provide him information through the submerged antenna trailing the Specter.
An update to the Seagulls kicked his adrenal glands into overdrive.
“The Seagulls just turned towards us.”
“I don’t hear them,” Remy said. “If they turned towards us, that puts their bow nulls facing us. That’s their quietest aspect.”
“I know that. Shit. That’s enough. Do you have weapons ready against them yet?”
“Yes, tubes one and two.”
“Very well,” Jake said. “Shoot tubes one and two.”
The impulsion system beyond sight popped Jake’s ears.
“Tube one indicates normal launch,” Remy said. “I have wire control. I hear its propeller. Now I hear tube two and have wire control.”
“Hand off weapons control. I want you to focus on listening.”
The guru tapped keys and uttered quick keywords to his team. As he settled back in his seat, his torso became taut and began to curl forward.
While Jake waited for him to sort seaborne sounds from auditory hallucinations, he turned his head to the ship’s control station.
“Henri, reload tube one with a Sidewinder, tube two with a slow-kill weapon. Make noise and get it done fast. Get two teams down there if they’re not already.”
“I already have two teams in the torpedo room,” Henri said. “I’ll have them load tube one with a Sidewinder, tube two with a slow-kill weapon.”
From the corner of his eye, Jake saw his sonar ace stir.
“Torpedo in the water,” Remy said. “From a Seagull, bearing two-zero-four. The seeker is active.”
“Bearing rate?”
“I don’t have one yet.”
“Bearing drift?”
“Drifting to the right. On the left, drawing right. It looks like a good intercept shot.”
Icons on the chart shifted to show the robotic hunters three miles away. Realizing the impossibility of outrunning weapons launched in a nearby damning geometry, Jake shifted his thoughts into the third dimension.
“Henri, all ahead flank, and make your depth three hundred and fifty meters, smartly. Get us down fast!”
Grabbing a handle on the charting table for stability, Jake braced himself against the thirty-degree descent. He twisted his sneakers on the diving deck to face the stern and give his toes a chance to bend in his favor.
“Prepare to launch one pair of gaseous countermeasures on my mark.”
“I’m ready,” Henri said.
Watching the depth gauge pass through two hundred meters, Jake gave his order.
“Launch countermeasures.”
“Countermeasures are launched,” Henri said.
“Prepare to launch a second pair on my mark.”
At two hundred and fifty meters, Jake ordered the second pair of bubble-makers into the water, and then the deck’s tilt receded with the Specter’s steadying at its deepest depth.
“I’ve lost the torpedo to our countermeasures,” Remy said.
“Then it’s lost us, too,” Jake said. “Henri, prepare to launch a noise-making countermeasure.”
“One moment… it’s ready.”
“Launch the countermeasure.”
“I hear our noise maker,” Remy said. “It’s transmitting our recorded frequencies.”
“That may not fool the torpedo,” the Aman officer said. “I can only speculate that its seeker would use passive listening to regain us after our gaseous countermeasures blinded its active seeker. I can give you no guarantee.”
“The only guarantee is that we need to fool it or we’re dead,” Jake said. “Henri, left full rudder, steady on course zero-six-zero. Make your depth fifty meters smartly. Get us up fast.”
Jake twisted his feet and braced his arm against a seat as the Specter tried to toss him towards a corner.
“What are you doing, driving down and up like this?” the Aman officer asked. “How can this work? How can you save us?”
The Israeli’s distress revealed he’d reached the extent of his undersea warfare knowledge. Jake had little patience for his ignorance, but he needed to quell the fear.
“The torpedo was too close to outrun. So I blinded it and dived below its seeker’s acquisition cone. Now that it’s diving blindly, the first thing it should hear on the other side of our gaseous countermeasures is our noise maker. That should keep it aiming downward while we rise above its seeker’s acquisition cone and slip away.”
“Can it work?”
“We’ll know soon enough.”
“We lost the wires to our weapons during our erratic maneuvers,” Remy said. “But they looked like good shots at the Seagulls. We’ll track them acoustically.”
“Very well,” Jake said. “Let me know when the hostile torpedo pushes through our gaseous fields.”
“That’s in twenty-five seconds, best estimate.”
Time working in his favor, Jake waited half a minute.
“I hear the hostile torpedo’s seeker,” Remy said. “It passed through our second gaseous countermeasures. Bearing two-one-zero.”
“Bearing drift?”
“One moment,” Remy said. “Slight right. Yes. On the right drawing right.”
“We’re clear,” Jake said. “Henri, slow to eight knots.”
The hull’s trembling ebbed, and the deck leveled. Across the table, the Israeli Aman officer’s shoulders slumped.
“That really worked?”
“The torpedo’s moving away from us, isn’t it?” Jake asked.
“If you say so. That was… amazing.”
“We’re hardly free yet. Those Seagulls have three torpedoes left and are still chasing us. Antoine, how long until our weapons hit?”
“Less than two minutes,” Remy said. “The Seagulls are driving right into them, making no effort to evade.”
“The manufacturer claims that the Seagulls can evade torpedoes,” the Aman officer said. “But I don’t see how someone could write software elegant enough to do what you just did.”
Though running with severed wires, the Specter’s torpedoes appeared on the display thanks to the sonar team tracking their propellers and seekers. Matching them to Renard’s updates on the Seagulls, Jake expected his weapons to reach their targets.
“Our weapons will detonate under the Seagulls,” he said. “My concern is what happens if both weapons hit the same Seagull. Or what happens when limpet bombs designed to spread across multiple compartments of a frigate try to land on a tiny robot. Most of them will miss.”
“How many need to hit to stop them?” the officer asked.
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
“I could only speculate.”
“Then I can only speculate on the number of warheads needed to cripple them, and I hope to find out. But you asked a good question. Antoine, reassign tube three to the closest Seagull, tube four to the farthest Seagull.”
“That’s really one target in our system, given how close together they are,” Remy said.
“Fine. Just reassign the weapons.”
“Done. Tubes three and four are assigned to the Seagulls. Do you want me to shoot?”
“Hold your fire. Let’s see what our deployed weapons do.”
“Thirty seconds to impact of our first weapon — roughly — I can’t tell exactly without the wire,” Remy said. “Both weapons are pinging for terminal homing.”