“I just heard the Goliath’s trim pump. It cycled on and off. It’s getting close.”
“Very well,” Jake said. “Now you can signal the Goliath. Highest frequency, ten percent power, twenty-degree beam.”
The French technician tapped keys, and the submarine’s sonar system whispered at the Goliath.
“I sent the signal.”
The Goliath’s lack of a bow-mounted array precluded its mimicked response. Jake instead expected to detect Cahill when he aimed his ship towards him and created an upward Doppler shift in the scanning sonar.
“Any Doppler shift yet?” he asked.
“Nothing,” the technician said. “I lost it.”
“Probably just bow nulls, assuming he turned towards us.”
“I think so. We’ll hear him as he gets closer.”
“Signal him again, to be sure.”
The technician obeyed, and two minutes later, he stirred.
“I have the Goliath’s scanning sonar again on the towed array. Doppler shift above base frequency correlates to three knots.”
“That’s perfect. He’s coming for us.”
“I’ve got him on the bow array now.”
“Good. Can you see a depression angle?”
“Minus twenty degrees. It’ll get steeper as he drives in.”
Jake expected the Goliath to be fifty meters below him, and the direction to its sounds needed to travel downward over time to comply with his expectation.
“Terry knows that we don’t have steerageway, doesn’t he?” Henri said. “We’re drifting with the current and slipping southward of our eastward heading.”
“Terry will adjust,” Jake said.
As the Goliath’s scanning sonar grew louder and walked under the Specter, Remy appeared in the control room and took over the listening duties.
“I don’t suppose you’d hear it ahead of time if Terry’s going to make a mistake?” Jake asked.
“I’m good, but nobody’s that good,” Remy said.
Jake accepted the guru’s answer and waited. After several minutes of uneventful listening to the whir of cooling fans behind the Subtics tactical system consoles, he saw Henri look to him.
“Shall I energize the laser communication system?”
“Go ahead.”
“The laser communication system is energized,” Henri said. “No laser lock yet.”
“Give it time. Terry must be delicate.”
Thirty minutes later, Jake was reading a book on his phone while leaning his jaw against his palm. Doubts crept up his spine faster than the Goliath crept underneath him.
“I’m getting something,” Henri said.
“Laser lock?”
“No. It’s from Pierre’s low-bandwidth feed. He’s calling our attention to Israeli warships deploying from their ports.”
“No kidding?”
Jake stood, stretched, and walked to the center charting table to see the overhead scene. Icons dotted the Israeli coast.
“Do you think we should abort our loading procedure?” Henri asked. “The last thing we need is all three ships tied together if the Israelis are seeking blood.”
“No,” Jake said. “Let’s continue pulling all three teams together. Our plans should still be to head to the beach. Just because the Israelis are deploying doesn’t necessarily mean anything for us.”
Henri looked down to his console.
“There it is,” he said. “Laser lock.”
With the network of blue-green transceivers mounted over his submarine giving him secure communications with the Goliath, Jake returned to his seat and called the new feed to his screen. Cahill’s face appeared.
“You found me,” Jake said.
“I found you a long time ago,” Cahill said. “I’ve been nudging meself into position under you for over an hour. Have a look. I’m sending you interesting camera angles.”
Jake set the screens by his chair to receive the feeds from the Goliath’s selected external cameras. One showed the tapering stern of his ship extending over the forward end of the cargo bed that spanned the centerline between the transport vessel’s twin hulls.
“Why do I have to ride backwards?” he asked.
“Because Dmitry got here first. Those are the rules.”
“Whose rules?”
“Mine.”
“Bite me.”
Cahill smiled but withheld further comment, and Jake looked to another screen.
The second view came from above and behind the Specter’s conning tower and looked down upon the submarine. In the dim artificial lighting, Jake saw several hydraulic presses rotated to their middle positions between retracted and jammed against his hull.
“That view is coming from your rover?” he asked.
“Yeah, mate. Quite a helpful view it gives, letting us see things from above.”
“Got it,” Jake said. “But why do you have the presses partially deployed?”
“To nudge you back in case you drift side to side.”
“Do I need to worry?”
“Not at all. It’s just a precaution. I’ve got control over that with the outboard motors, and I’ve got range finders all along me hulls that measure how far away you are.”
“Great. How long until you’re carrying me?”
“About ten seconds ago. You’re officially touching me cargo bed, and I’ve taken about two hundred tons of your weight.”
“I didn’t’ feel anything.”
“And now I’m closing the presses against your hull.”
Jake watched the rams clamp downward with slow and powerful grace. When he realized he’d become a passenger, he sat back in his chair and took a cursory look at the final camera angle.
His bow faced its twin with a sliver of water between them.
“Holy cow,” he said. “How close am I to Dmitry?”
“About half a meter.”
“That’s insane.”
“That’s how it has to work for you both to fit. And to keep it working, you need to pump water forward so that you don’t flip backwards off me when we surface.”
“Did Dmitry say anything when you loaded me?”
“He’s been quiet. Want to talk to him?”
“Sure. Let’s compare notes.”
An image of the Wraith’s control room wiped away an external camera view, and Volkov appeared with his English translator standing beside him. Jake thought the beard made his Russian colleague look distinguished.
“I guess I’m in charge until we’re back in full communication with Pierre,” Jake said.
The Russian and Australian conceded.
“Any opinions on the Israeli deployments?” Jake asked.
His two colleagues agreed the movements were innocuous until proven otherwise, and Renard’s data lacked evidence of venomous intent.
“Then let’s share tactical data recordings of all our encounters, study it, and compare notes in say, an hour?”
“Yes, I want the data,” Volkov said.
“Did you just say that in English?” Jake asked.
“Yes. I practice,” he said.
“Good job. Since Terry has the biggest computer, he’ll download from both of us and then we’ll download each other’s data from him.”
“Right, mate,” Cahill said. “But we may want to let the Aman team have a chat before we clog up the bandwidth.”
Jake picked up a headset, slid it over his ear, and lowered his voice.
“Should we give them privacy? I mean, without our Hebrew translators eavesdropping?”
A beautiful woman with athletic lines, fierce eyes, and an olive complexion stepped beside Cahill.
“I’m Major Ariella Dahan,” she said. “I request privacy in talking to my team on the Wraith and the Specter. I haven’t had secure communications with them since deploying with your fleet.”