As the optics underwent their circular sweep, the toad-head whipped around, and Remy pointed towards the air.
“Missile!”
Jake cringed on his way to the deck and slapped his hands against the tiles. Expecting to see water inundating his ripped-open metallic coffin, he verified his safety with an upward glance. The Specter’s hull had held.
Deafened, he recovered to a knee and made eye contact with the first person he saw. His buttocks balanced on his seat, Henri cramped his canted torso across the adjacent console.
“Henri.”
The words were muffled murmurs in Jake’s mind, and the mechanic mimicked a motionless mime.
“Henri!”
Nothing. Jake staggered to the Frenchman’s station and reached for controls. He tapped the icon that signaled the engine room to accelerate to full speed, and then he tapped another image to rotate the stern planes to a full dive.
As the deck nosed downward, the mechanic straightened his back, studied his panel and looked to Jake.
“Emergency Deep!” Jake said.
Reading his lips, the Frenchman nodded and then reached to drive down the fairwater planes with one hand while flooding water into centerline trim tanks with the other.
Climbing against the Specter’s descent, Jake walked sternward. His hearing began to return as he heard cooling fans and low-frequency electronic hums.
Sailors groped and gazed for awareness around him as he stepped to the conning platform and stood tall to give his crew an image of strength. He yawned to pop his ears, but sounds remained garbled.
The chaos of a missile attacking him receded as he counted the meters into the concealing depths. He assessed his status.
A small airborne warhead had wrecked his periscope, and his rudder, stabilizers, and the top of his propeller were offering his assailant his final vulnerable targets before he escaped below the waves.
He drew in a breath, counting the seconds until the water would swallow his ship into its safe confines.
When the second explosion rumbled in the distant rear of the submarine, Jake recognized the gravity, lowered his head, and sighed through his nostrils.
Another missile had struck, but this time, his enemy had hit something important.
CHAPTER 19
Jake lifted a sound-powered phone to his face and heard his engineer’s harried voice.
“I shut down propulsion,” LaFontaine said.
“What’s going on back there?” Jake asked.
“The shaft started spinning erratically. I had to stop it.”
“Understood. We took a hit in our screw, didn’t we?”
“I’m afraid so. We probably lost a couple blades.”
“But you could give me slow propulsion if I need it?”
During the silence, Jake thought he could hear LaFontaine’s heart sinking.
“We’d be abnormally loud with whatever damage we’ve taken, and I wouldn’t know your speed limit until I monitor the shaft under load. The uneven weight distribution and water resistance on the screw will create rapid and periodic shocks in shaft torque, radially and laterally. It’s bad.”
“I got it,” Jake said. “Keep the shaft secured for now, but deploy the outboard motor. I have other business to deal with at the moment, but I’ll be back there soon.”
He jammed the receiver back into its cradle.
“Antoine, find me whoever shot us.”
“I’ve narrowed it down to about ten degrees of bearing from the sounds of the incoming missiles,” Remy said. “You could help me by giving me a limit of the range.”
“Use three miles,” Jake said. “Shoulder-launched missiles don’t go very far.”
“That narrows it down to two ships I’m tracking.”
With tubes three and four dedicated to drones, Jake recalled having reloaded tubes five and six with torpedoes during his ride into battle aboard the Goliath.
“No time for guessing games,” he said. “I’m taking out both contacts. Assign a slow-kill to each one, tubes five and six.”
“I’ve assigned tube five and six to the potential vessels who shot us,” Remy said.
“Shoot tube five.”
Jake felt the pressure change.
“Tube five indicates normal launch,” Remy said. “I have wire control. I hear its propeller.”
“Shoot tube six.”
“Tube six indicates normal launch. I have wire control, and I hear its propeller.”
“Give me an update to all deployed assets.”
“Weapon one is two minutes from the Seagulls with its active seeker on and should acquire its target any second,” Remy said. “Weapon two is fifty seconds behind weapon one. Weapon five and six will go active in ninety seconds. Tubes three and four are guiding drones one and two.”
Given his torpedoes’ proximity to their targets, Jake relinquished his privilege of guiding his weapons.
“Henri, cut the wires to tubes one, two, five, and six,” he said. “Reload tubes one, two, five, and six with slow-kills, and have them do it fast. Make all the noise that’s needed.”
“You’re giving up your guidance wires?”
“Yes,” Jake said. “Remember what you said about finesse?”
“Of course.”
“Forget it. I need to be ready to start throwing punches in multiple directions.”
The Frenchman relayed the order to the torpedo room.
“Get a hold of your relief and head back to the engine room,” Jake said. “I’m sure Claude could use your help.”
As the mechanic departed, Jake looked to the data feed trickling in from Renard over the low-frequency antenna his submarine trailed behind its stabilizer. He was relieved to see the communications connection had survived the blast.
The update identified the missile’s shooter as a fishing trawler he correlated to the target of weapon six. With a silent and insincere apology to the target of weapon five, he continued reading his employer’s feed.
As he expected, he found a recommendation to slip away unnoticed from the location of the attack and a request to send Renard his status.
“My status,” he said. “My status is damned.”
As Henri’s understudy reached the control panel, Jake considered his options to communicate with Renard. Exposing his radio mast would offer his assailant another target, and he opted for patience.
“Weapon one has acquired a Seagull,” Remy said.
“Still damned,” Jake said. “But that should remove one major problem.”
Renard’s continuing feed showed the distant Seagull pairs turning towards Jake. With Volkov’s Wraith to the south, the Israeli’s focused their complete visible undersea hunt on the known location of the Specter.
“Weapon one has detonated under a Seagull,” Remy said. “Limpets are attaching — enough to sink it. Weapon two has acquired the sinking Seagull’s partner.”
“That’s somewhat encouraging. Any sign of the Crocodile?”
“No. But weapons five and six have acquired the fishing ships.”
“Let your young apprentices manage those weapons while you dedicate yourself to a search for the Crocodile.”
“Of course,” Remy said. “Do you have a preference for how I use the drones?”
“I deployed the drones to go hunting, but now we’re the hunted, and I doubt we can move without being louder than a chainsaw. So we’re in pure defensive mode now. Bring them back towards us and tighten your search radius to ten miles.”
The technicians beside Remy stirred and murmured reports to their guru.
“Weapon six has deployed its limpets with most of them attaching,” Remy said. “We’re counting detonations.