“Jake reminds you that we’re deep and dead in the water, in the optimum position to attempt this.”
“Did he use the word ‘attempt’?”
“No, I filtered his words based upon my own doubts.”
Volkov shook his head.
“I really need to learn English.”
“French would useful as well since Jake’s entire crew is already fluent and it’s Pierre’s native language. I have some skill in the language, but English is best since Terry’s shown no interest in learning French.”
“I hate French,” Volkov said. “It sounds so pretentious. I’ll learn English. I swear to you I will.”
“You’re doing fine. You already have a three-hundred-word vocabulary, I’d guess. That’s impressive for the time you’ve invested. You’ll pick it up quickly.”
“Perhaps some members of the crew should learn with me. We’ll make it a team exercise, with friendly competition.”
“Some of them are already trying. I could teach you all.”
Jake’s voice shot from the microphone. Volkov intuited the message and responded in English
“Yes, sorry,” he said. “I start now.”
As he glanced at a screen that showed the bulbous bow of his boat from the Goliath’s rover, he switched to Russian and raised his voice to his sonar expert.
“Is drone one ready?”
“The drone is ready,” Anatoly said. “Initial ordered speed will be one knot.”
“Is our young drone driver ready?”
“He is. He says he’ll make it look easy.”
“I’ll buy him a bottle of expensive vodka in our next port if he doesn’t damage the drone or scrape any of the three ships.”
Volkov heard whispering.
“What’s the problem?” he asked.
“He says he doesn’t like vodka.”
“Then I’ll buy him whatever he wants of equivalent value. And then I’ll take him to a bar and teach him to drink vodka like a man, whether he likes it or not.”
“Thank you, Dmitry. I agree,” the young technician said.
“Open the outer door to tube three,” Volkov said.
With a rare opportunity to view his ship from the rover, he watched the faired door slide sideways and reveal the torpedo tube’s watertight muzzle door.
“The outer door is open to tube three,” Anatoly said.
“Yes, I see — literally. I just watched it happen,” Volkov said. “Launch drone one from tube three.”
“Drone one is swimming out of tube three,” Anatoly said.
“I don’t see anything.”
“One knot is very slow, Dmitry.”
“This is testing my patience.”
His anxiety growing, Volkov waited for his drone to emerge. Like a coy rigid eel, the plastic cylinder jutted its nose through the submarine’s rounded bow.
“There it is,” he said.
As he spoke, he glued his gaze to the screen showing the view from the camera. The angle became lower as the rover swam closer to the exchange, and Volkov saw his drone sliding towards the open outer door of the Specter’s waiting tube.
“Drone one is clear of our hull, I mean just free of our muzzle door, rather,” Anatoly said. “At this speed, I need to be specific. I know you can see it, but we have electrically confirmed wire connectivity and propulsion control.”
“Yes, of course,” Volkov said. “Just be careful.”
“He’s not doing anything, Dmitry. It’s one knot, no steering. There’s no room to steer.”
“No, I suppose not.”
The drone bumped against the lip of the receiving tube’s outer door but bounded inside the tubular conduit towards the muzzle door. The rover slid behind the moving cylinder’s propeller and cast light into the tight space.
“Can he see anything?” Volkov asked.
“Yes,” Anatoly said. “He’s watching the same video you are, but with younger and better eyes. We should be done soon.”
The propeller angled aside and ceased forward motion.
“What’s going on?” Volkov asked.
“I think I’m stuck against the door lip,” the young technician said. “Or maybe against the muzzle door.”
“You don’t sound distressed about it,” Volkov said.
“Because I’m steering through it.”
The drone’s stern planes and rudder shifted through their extremes, but the vessel stayed stuck.
“Damn it,” Volkov said. “Increase the drone’s speed to two and a half knots.”
The propeller twirled faster, and the drone jumped forward.
“Reverse!” Volkov said.
“I’m reversing!”
The translator called out for Volkov’s attention and told him Jake’s team heard the vessel bump against the breech door. The American then ordered the guidance wire severed.
“Cut the wire to drone one,” Volkov said.
The cylinder became a dumb tool resting in a useless tube, and its guidance wire kept a muzzle door open on each ship. As Volkov turned to the screen, waiting for his teammates to act, he noticed the rover’s camera pointing to the open hatches of its nest as it returned to the top of the Goliath.
The conversation in English was quick, and his depth gauge showed an upward crawl before his translator relayed the obvious.
“Jake ordered Terry to surface us. Jake’s team will work on the drone while Terry carries us to the drop point.”
“The speed will be nice,” Volkov said. “But I don’t like the exposure.”
The Wraith’s deck rocked as his gauge showed shallower depths. It then bobbed and rolled as the numbers reached zero. In the background behind Cahill’s face he saw dawn’s indigo piercing the distant horizon’s blackness.
“Now we’re at altitude,” he said.
“Jake’s team has pulled the drone and all the remaining wire into his torpedo room,” the translator said. “He recommends shutting our muzzle door.”
Volkov gave the order to his team to close the door, drain the tube, and reload it. When he turned his attention back to the screens by his chair, his employer’s face appeared.
As the translator relayed the message, Volkov watched a circle of uncertainty rise from the Haifa coast on a display.
“Pierre says the Crocodile and Leviathan have deployed. Based upon their submerged speed limits and the time of their departures, the circle is the farthest extent of their location.”
Finding the account self-explanatory, Volkov nodded. He filtered the translator’s ongoing narrative of Renard’s data feed as it showed the drop off point being ten miles from the future extreme reach of the Israeli submarines.
The velocity vector predicted the Goliath moving at twenty-nine knots, slower than its unencumbered maximum. Curious, Volkov toggled through screen views until he found a vantage from a camera atop the port weapons bay. Sea spray tickled the Wraith’s dangling rudder as the laden transport ship held its cargo low in the water.
After seeing the extent of the added flow friction, he understood his team’s speed limits. But the Goliath, serving its original function of a submarine transport vessel, was taking the Wraith faster into the combat theater than Volkov could take his submarine under its own power.
Moving two submarines with such speed despite the transport ship’s stubby port bow impressed him with his fleet’s abilities. Knowing the proper bow section would allow at least two more knots, he felt more empowered working for Renard than he had for the Russian Navy, and he appreciated his hand-picked key team members from his homeland — human and other.
But as the trainer entered the control room, the lithe man’s demeanor concerned him, and the artificial light made the new arrival seem pale. With a lull in a conversation between the fleet’s commanders, Volkov stepped away and met the dolphins’ master beside a corner console.