Jake interrupted the Frenchmen. “And as my unofficial therapist, you should know the value of expressing yourself. Let it out.”
Henri’s features softened as he pleaded. “For God’s sake, man, if you’re not going to shoot this ship, tell us what you intend to do instead. And if you’re going to shoot it, would you please do so before you end up ramming it?”
“Oh, I’m going to shoot it, alright. Just not quite yet. And I’m not going to ram it, but don’t put good ideas into my head like that.”
“I fear for your state of mind.”
Jake flicked his fingers and looked away. “You always worry about that.”
“Yes. Yes, I do.”
“Well, here’s the plan.” The Specter’s commander stepped to the central plotting table and waited. “Are you going to join me or not?”
Henri sighed as he strode across the deck to accompany his commanding officer.
Jake aimed a stylus at an icon. “From Pierre’s feed, we know this is the mothership. From Antoine’s superhuman ears, we’re locked in on it with sonar. It’s a loud ship, and I’d bet my life that nobody onboard thinks we know of its existence, much less know its role in this conflict.”
“From the sounds of it, you’re betting everyone’s lives on it.”
Ignoring the jab, Jake moved the stylus. “Dmitry’s here, ten miles away, trying to break this suspected underwater Iranian Maginot Line. The California’s using its speed to go the long way around the barrier.” He brushed his fingers toward the American submarine’s icon, which had begun its transit northward towards its wounded sister ship after the Goliath’s failure to load it.
Evidenced in his tone, Henri’s frustration remained. “I understand all of this. You’re still supposed to take out the mothership to disrupt the use of their dolphins. I don’t see how anything you’re pointing to in the geometry changes that.”
“I’ll sink it long before it can catch the Indiana. But I’m going to do more than that.”
“Do tell.”
“Based upon the time the Predator drone saw them deployed, I think the dolphins are south of the Iranian barrier now, looking for a target. I also think I can predict the timing of their return to the mothership, within a couple hours, based upon what the Americans have observed in their movements and from what we know about Mikhail and Andrei’s cycles.”
“So?”
Jake knew he was twisting his latest orders liberally, and he hoped his clever ploy would bear fruit to avoid embarrassment or worse. But he needed to work towards something besides another deadly weapons exchange. “I’m going to break their dolphin code.”
“I don’t like the sound of this.”
“Your job will be holding speed, course, and depth right underneath the mothership. Antoine’s job will be listening for dolphin calls. My guess is that if we’re underneath that ship, we’ll intercept some sort of communications between the dolphins and whoever’s giving them commands.”
Returning to his control station, Henri groaned. “I like the idea of ramming it better.”
An hour later, Jake navigated the Specter underneath the dolphins’ mothership. Creeping below the vessel at four knots, he allowed himself an upward view through his periscope. With the sun backlighting the keel, he saw protrusions he suspected housed hydrophones for undersea communications.
A swell swept the submarine upward, and Jake lowered the optics. “Careful, Henri.”
“Sorry! That wave surprised me. They can’t all be predicted, you know.”
“I know. Do your best.”
“This is exhausting. Do we have to be exactly underneath it?”
Jake canted his head and considered how the Specter’s accidental noises, if created and overheard, would be mistaken as coming from the mothership. “I guess not. Thirty yards off the beam is okay.” He had the French mechanic adjust the submarine’s course and then waited for time and biological sounds to prove his theory of Persian cetacean communications.
Henri’s impatience was obvious. “Are you sure you’ve calculated the dolphins’ feeding and resting cycle correctly?”
Jake shrugged. “As correctly as possible. You know there’s a lot of wiggle room in it.”
“There’s a lot more wiggle room in it than I interpreted in the orders from Pierre.”
The Frenchman’s verbal gamesmanship began to weary Jake. “Like you said, I’m in command. I’ve interpreted my orders.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to chance a discussion with Pierre for clarification?”
Jake recalled the consensus explaining the Iranian heavyweight torpedo that had required an American robot’s sacrifice to protect him. “They’re hiding electronic support measures suites on their merchant ships. That’s how they found us and got off a good shot. I’m not giving them another free target by begging Pierre for permission to do what I’m already doing.”
“They’ll think it’s coming from the mothership.”
“Not if the mothership’s the one catching us with the ESM.”
Henri grunted and faced his panel. “Fair point.”
“If Pierre really hated this delay in sinking the mothership, he’d question it, but he’s just sending us tactical data on the low-baud feed as normal.”
“Perhaps a communications buoy then, as a courtesy.”
Jake inhaled through his nostrils and sighed. “I can live with that. Tell him we’ve taken station under the mothership to intercept and record dolphin transmissions. We’ll sink the ship with at least two slow-kill weapons on our way out. Set a one-hour delay on the buoy and launch it when ready. I’ll slow us for a few minutes so that we drift into the mothership’s wake before the buoy surfaces. No need to let an attentive crewman on the bridge see it.”
“Thank you, Jake.”
The Specter’s commander slowed his ship, drifted behind the targeted vessel, and allowed Henri to send the communications buoy. He then moved his submarine back into position next to the mothership and grew impatient. “Anything yet, Antoine?”
The toad-head turned. “I hear a lot of biological sounds. If you mean from the mothership specifically, nothing yet.”
“How about chirps, whistles, or complaints from tired and hungry dolphins, possibly with a Persian accent?”
“Nothing yet.”
“Damn. We’ll keep waiting.”
Apparently aware of his commanding officer’s waning tolerance for open debate, Henri waited for a quiet moment to skulk to his side and lower his voice. “May we talk at my panel?”
Realizing the Frenchman’s need to keep his eyes on his instruments to maintain depth in the shallow water, Jake followed Henri to control station. The status of trim and drain tanks spanning the Specter ran across a placard with lights and gauges showing their filled percentages, the status of their pumps, and the positions of the valves between them. “What’s on your mind?”
Henri tapped an icon, opening a valve, flooding a central tank, and weighing the submarine deeper under the waves. “You need to decide now how long you’re willing to wait. We may be temporarily safe hidden in plain sight under this mothership, but there are too many submarines, divers, and dare I say, dolphins that can detect us. These waters are dangerous.”
Jake swallowed. “You’re right. Forty-five more minutes.”
“So that we can escape before our communications buoy sends its broadcast?”
“Yeah. Exactly.”
“I’ll set a timer to remind us.”
Jake returned to his console and sat, but nervousness compelled him to his feet ten minutes later. He walked to the seated trio of sonar technicians and paced behind them.