“No, Dmitry. There’s a second Israeli submarine nearby.”
In tense silence, Volkov watched the lines of bearing to the hostile torpedo drift behind him. But he needed them to drift faster.
“Increase speed to sixteen knots.”
The deck shuddered with speed.
“We’re at sixteen knots,” the gray beard said. “Time on the battery at this speed is fifty-one minutes.”
“What do you hear, Anatoly?”
“We need to maintain this speed, but we’ll evade.”
Volkov exhaled and shifted his mind to evaluation mode. He wanted to understand how he’d been ambushed.
“I never launched a torpedo,” he said. “There’s no way we could have been heard by any submarine, unless… damn.”
“Dmitry?” Anatoly asked.
“The Israelis have studied current events, and I fear they’ve had access to privileged information. They know that we mimic biologic sounds to communicate with dolphins.”
“How can you be sure?”
“You’ll have to verify this by listening to our self-recordings of our generated sounds, but I’m sure you’ll conclude that the only targeting data we gave the shooter was our dolphin and shrimp signals.”
“That would ruin our greatest advantage,” Anatoly said.
“I’m afraid that advantage is already at risk. In fact, let’s be sure that cool bastard of a commander doesn’t dare believe that he can repair two small holes at sea. Prepare the weapon in tube one for a one-third deployment of bomblets and aim it at the surfaced submarine.”
“One third?” Anatoly asked.
“Yes. I don’t want to sink the ship — just make sure our adversary returns to port and stays there for a long time.”
The sonar guru interacted with the technician beside him, who tapped the icons to prepare the weapon.
“This will all but end our charade as an Egyptian vessel when we reveal our slow-kill weapon,” Anatoly said.
“I suspect that ruse ended when Andrei and Mikhail announced their presence, and we’ve added circumstantial evidence if you count our synthetic biological transmissions. The Israelis have figured out who we are, or they will have done so by the end of the day.”
“I understand, Dmitry. Tube one is ready.”
“Very well,” Volkov said. “Shoot tube one.”
CHAPTER 2
Terrance Cahill strolled along the causeway above the dry dock and stopped at the railing overlooking his submersible combat-transport ship, Goliath. The catamaran’s nearest hull appeared familiar, but farther away, overhead lights illuminated the alien-looking left half of his ship.
Questions rattled his mind faster than he could sort them, but he focused on the one that irked his sense of symmetry. The Goliath appeared stunted in its port, forward section.
“Tell me again why you’ve attached a stubby corvette-sized bow to the front of me port hull,” he said.
The man beside him withdrew a Marlboro from his mouth and blew smoke.
“Because a stubby corvette-sized bow section was all I could acquire on short notice. You left the proper frigate-shaped bow section on the bottom of the Aegean Sea three months ago, if I remember correctly.”
“Better the bow section than the entire ship,” Cahill said.
“If you’d stop running my property into hostile weapons, we wouldn’t have to worry about replacement parts. I believe that’s twice now you’ve had relations with torpedoes that forced me to dip into my capital asset account.”
“With all due respect, Mister Renard, you can press your dry old French lips hard against me bare hairy Australian arse.”
His companion aimed eyes of steel blue at him and broke out in a smile.
“No need for vulgarity. I was merely jesting. I assumed you’d know that, but perhaps I hit a nerve?”
“Don’t worry about it, mate.”
Cahill felt a discomforting silence until his boss broke it.
“Unfortunately, your reaction is giving me cause for worry,” Renard said. “You meant your comment about me kissing your buttocks as a joke, but I noted a hint of frustration.”
Cahill shut his eyes as a waking recurrence of his repeated nightmares played in his head. A torpedo erupted, a wall of infinite water pounded him, and he drowned.
His awareness returned to Renard.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“In time, you must.”
He grunted, left the Frenchman’s comment unanswered, and posed one of his own.
“Ugly as it is, what do the simulations say about me new bow section?”
“Of course, with less mass, you’ll have less buoyancy when submerged. You’ll have to compensate symmetrically by holding more water in your forward starboard trim tanks.”
“Right, mate. But what about top speeds surfaced and submerged? What about the risks of oscillations with the new hydrodynamics?”
“I admit the Taiwanese were unable, or unwilling rather, to commit to a simulation of hydrodynamic performance.”
Cahill glanced around the covered wharf. The shipyard workers seemed lithe and short for Southern France, reminding him that Renard’s primary workforce consisted of Taiwanese personnel, regardless of his location. The more he learned about his French boss, the more he understood how the secrets he shared with the renegade Chinese province guaranteed ongoing mutual trust.
“That’s a pity,” Cahill said. “The Taiwanese have been providing solid engineering to your fleet for years. I assume that if they can’t run a simulation, then a simulation can’t be run.”
“Indeed,” Renard said. “Rather, it could be run, but it’s not worth the time and effort.”
Cahill gave the Frenchman a sideways glance.
“You mean it’s not worth your money.”
“Admittedly, no.”
“It’s unlike you to leave your investments to chance.”
“I wouldn’t trust the simulations until they were proven against reality for such a strange thing as an undersized bow section. So I decided not to bother. Also, you already proved you can manage the Goliath without a bow section at all. Your maneuvering of the ship in the Aegean after losing your port bow was commendable.”
A fresh snapshot of the recurring nightmare flashed across Cahill’s mental view, and then reality returned.
“A feat I hope to never repeat.”
A phone chimed in the Frenchman’s pocket, and he reached into his blazer to lift the cellular device to his cheek.
“This is Pierre. No, I’ve not met them in person. You can match their faces to their photographs as well as I. Good. Give them badges and let them into the dry dock area. I’ll meet them at the north entrance.”
“Me Israeli Mossad guests?” Cahill asked.
“Not Mossad. That’s for external affairs, and their problem — our opportunity — is due to an internal disagreement within the Israeli machine. Your riders are Aman, military intelligence.”
“With all the mistrust and problems around Israel, you can’t blame me for getting it confused.”
“Confused indeed,” Renard said. “And in the event that your Aman riders get confused about their priorities underway, you have the four Legionnaires I rented to protect you.”
Cahill appreciated the security force and recalled that the four men who’d joined his crew a month earlier were respectable students in learning their jobs tending to the propulsion equipment. They would monitor gauges and clean machines underway to blend in and earn their keep.
“And you trust them, these Legionnaires?” he asked.
“Indeed. Their battalion officer is the son of a very close friend I’ve known since my years at l’Ecole Navale.”
“Right, then let’s meet our Aman riders.”
“Agreed,” Renard said. “Let’s not keep them waiting. They’ll be our allies only as long as it suits them. Best to begin this short relationship on a positive note.”