Ul Haq's eyes flashed dark with anger. "You will not speak of the scriptures in that way. I will not be lectured on the tenets of the Quran by an infidel…."
"Why not? Do you believe what it says about the treatment of your fellow man—or woman?" DuPont was skating on very thin ice now. He'd never read the Quran himself — there'd never been a reason to — but he'd discussed it with an Islamic roommate in college, once, and he'd had a class in comparative religion that same semester. He remembered arguing that Islam encouraged the mistreatment of women. Ali, his roommate, had insisted that the Prophet had been a radical and compassionate reformer where the rights of women were concerned. He desperately hoped the Quran backed that bit of information dredged from a late-night college bull session thirty years ago because, right now, he was shooting from the hip. "I mean no disrespect, sir," he continued. "I simply ask… do you live by the Quran? Or is the Quran just… words?"
"I am a servant of Allah," ul Haq began.
"Then you know what your own religion says about hospitality to strangers. And protecting women. And… isn't there something in your religion about Christians and Jews both being 'People of the Book?' We are not 'infidels,' as you put it. In Allah's name, I'm asking you, I'm begging you for help! We are being treated like animals, and if this goes on we will die! And then you will not have hostages for ransom or whatever else you want out of us!"
He stopped for breath. Ul Haq sat behind his narrow desk, regarding him in silence for a long and aching minute. DuPont forced himself to remain still, and outwardly calm. Had he pushed too hard, said too much?
"Do you believe in God?" ul Haq said at last. "Are you Christian?"
"Yes, I am." Well, technically. He'd not been to church since he was a kid, and the Sunday school lessons had never taken, as he liked to say. He wondered if he needed a quick brush-up lesson from Schiffer. "And those with you?"
"They're Christian, yes." He hoped none of the papers and passports these pirates had grabbed listed anyone's religion as Jewish. He didn't even know if any of them were Jews, but somehow he doubted that this Muslim's tolerance for other faiths extended to them.
Ul Haq nodded. "You are correct, Mr. DuPont. We do recognize the People of the Book, not as followers of Islam, but as… fellow travelers. However, there is very little I can do about the conditions you find yourself in. This is a submarine, a steel tube seventy-three meters long and less than seven meters high, with sixty men on board crowded into a space that would be cramped for half that many. We do not have private lavatory facilities for women—"
"Well, maybe you should have thought about that before you brought us all on board!"
"Would you prefer that I had left the women behind with the two Vietnamese we found on your boat?"
DuPont felt a cold chill on his spine at that. It was the first time anyone had hinted at the fate of Phuong and Nguyen. "No…"
"They would be dead now if we had done so. Mr. DuPont, I do regret your discomfort, but there is very little I can do. However, since you did ask in Allah's name, I will do what I can. I promise this, by Allah who is all-merciful. Is that sufficient answer to your… conditions?"
"I guess it will have to do."
"Very well. Good day, Mr. DuPont." Ul Haq nodded to the guard who'd been standing just outside the open door for the entire interview, and DuPont was led back to the room to rejoin the other captives. He knew something had just changed, that ul Haq had made some sort of key decision about the nine of them, but he wasn't certain what.
He hoped he hadn't just convinced the submarine's captain that his prisoners were more trouble than they were worth.
13
"Think they're here yet?" Jorgensen asked.
"They're SEALs," Garrett replied. "They're here. The problem is finding them in an invisible needle in a very large haystack."
Virginia had made good time coming south from her too-brief stopover in Japan. After taking on board additional supplies — including fresh fruit and vegetables for the galley and more frozen food to replace that lost when the freezer had gone tits-up — they'd continued south, rounding the southern tip of Taiwan to reach the spot specified in their orders. They were cruising slowly now at one hundred feet, waiting to make contact with the SEAL element designated Trident.
"So… what do we do? Hang out a 'welcome' sign?"
"Much as I hate to say it, we wait another minute… and then we go active."
Jorgensen made a face, and Garrett could sympathize. Submariners employed two distinct forms of sonar, their principal means of sensing what was in the ocean around them. Passive sonar was the act of listening. Most things moving around in the ocean were noisy, to one degree or another, and Virginia's sensitive electronic ears could pick up a tremendous amount of information just by paying attention.
Active sonar meant sending out a loud, sonic chirp— the sound equivalent of radar — and collecting the reflected sound waves when they bounced back from a target. Active sonar was far more informative than passive — especially when your target was another submarine designed to be as stealthily quiet as possible.
But going active also meant broadcasting your existence and your exact position to every passive listener in the area, and that was something that submariners tended to regard as a decidedly unnatural act — kind of like a burglar shouting "Anybody home?" as he crawled in through the window.
Garrett was all too aware that this region south of Taiwan had recently been a combat zone. Three years ago, he'd brought the Seawolf into these waters, and taken on a small fleet of hostile attack subs, courtesy of the People's Republic of China. The PRC's new and growing fleet of attack submarines had been crippled in that exchange, but there was every reason to believe they were in the process of making a comeback.
Might there be PLAN boats lurking out there, listening for an American sub to go active? It was a distinct and uncomfortable possibility.
"Sonar, Conn."
"Go ahead, Conn. Sonar."
"Heads up back there, and ears on. We're going to go active in a second, and I want to know if you get so much as a twitching octopus as a response."
"Aye aye, sir!"
He checked the control room clock, which was still set to local time. Oh-nine hundred hours….
"Sonar, Conn. Give me a ping. We're looking for an ASDS in this immediate vicinity."
"Conn, Sonar. One ping, aye…."
The sonar pulse struck the ASDS hull like a hammer blow, loud enough to leave ears ringing. Lieutenant Mark Halstead looked up and said quietly, "Right. They've got us."
"And close, too," TM1 Diller added. "That's good. I want out of this freaking sardine can."
EM1 Arthur Nemecek chuckled. "Yeah, but we'll be trading one sardine can for another. Let's just hope we get to stretch our legs a bit during the crossover!"
"Shit, Nemmie," Halstead said. "At least we're riding in style! It could be a lot worse."
"Roger that," Chief DiMercurio said, laughing. "You ever ride in a Mark VII?"