“Periscope.”
If the destroyer attacked, they would lose their easy shot, and perhaps not get another one.
If a better target was nearby, though, he would not forgive himself.
Greed?
“Active sonar,” decided Balin. “Prepare torpedoes to fire.”
Twenty seconds alter, the sonar room reported a large contact two miles beyond the destroyer.
“What is it?” asked Captain Varja.
“Unknown,” was the answer. “Large, very large.”
“Direct our course for it,” Balin told Varja.
“The destroyer is changing course. They’re heading for us.”
“Target the largest contact,” said Balin.
“It is a good day,” said Varja.
“Yes,” said Balin.
“We have a destroyer bearing down on the marker,” Iowa copilot told Danny over the Dreamland circuit.
“Yeah, we got him on long-distance radar,” Danny replied. “We’re still a good five minutes away.”
“I have the raft,” said Zen. “Somebody’s in it. One person.”
“Understood,” replied Danny. “How close is the destroyer?”
“Two hundred yards. Shit,” yelled Zen. “They’re firing at them!”
The first depth charge exploded well off the port side. The second and third were even farther. As the sub shook ever so slightly form the fourth, the sonar room reported the large contact was slowing, probably to turn. It was now less than two and a half miles away.
“Is it the carrier,” answered Varja.
“Prepare to fire.”
The submarine rocked with a fresh explosion. The lights blinked off; it took a second for the systems and the crew to recover.
“We have severe damage — we’ve lost control of the diving planes,” said Varja as the reports came in. “Ballast tanks blown — we’re surfacing.”
“Keep us down.”
“We’re trying, Admiral.”
Varja said nothing else, but it was obvious what he meant to tell the admiral — they were no longer in position to fire. The ASW weapons had jammed the hydroplanes upward and mangled the controls on the ballast tanks, robbing them of their ability to maneuver below the water. “Surface,” said Balin, accepting the inevitable. “Then we will fire.”
“Hey, Captain! Navy’s found something south of us,” reported the Osprey crew chief as Danny and Bison hunkered by the door. “The helo that was coming north for this raft, backing us up — they just spotted some wreckage. They think they may have a body.”
“A body or a person?” asked Danny.
“They said body, sir. They’re checking it out. They want to know if we need them, or if they can concentrate on that.”
“Yeah, release ’em,” shouted Danny. “What about the Hornets?”
“Inbound.”
“Chinese answer the hails?”
“No, don’t worry. The F/A-18’s’ll nail the bastards.”
Danny didn’t answer. They were still a good two minutes off; he couldn’t see the Chinese ships from where he was standing.
Bastards — he’d strangle each one of them personally.
Bison looked at him across the doorway. If the Chinese were shooting at unarmed men in a raft, they’d sure as hell fire at the Osprey. But there was no way he was stopping now.
Bastards!
If the Hornets didn’t take out the destroyers, Zen decided, he’d crash the stinking UMB into it. Let them court-martial him — shit, he’d willingly spend the rest of his life in Leavenworth or wherever the hell they sent him.
Might just as well now. Breanna didn’t love him.
God, Bree.
Picture, new picture.
The gun on the side of the destroyer fired again. As it did, the sea exploded beyond it.
Bastards couldn’t hit the side of a barn, thank God.
The fact that they were terrible shots wasn’t going to get them off. Bastards. What the hell kind of people were they?
Picture, new picture.
A ridge erupted in the sea at the far end of his screen, behind the destroyer.
Picture, new picture.
Zen hit the resolution, backing off for a wider shot. There was another ship, a cruiser beyond the destroyer.
Picture, new picture.
It took the computer three more shots to get the focus right. By then, the ridge that had appeared was on the surface of the water.
A submarine.
The Chinese weren’t attacking the raft at all — they were going after a sub.
As he reached the bridge, Admiral Balin saw his crew had been mistaken — the large contact was a cruiser, not the carrier.
It mattered little. The submarine sat cockeyed in the water, heeling over to the left. They were an easy target.
A shell splashed into the water a hundred yards away.
“They destroyer will hit us eventually,” said Varja behind him.
Balin gripped the small rail before him and took a long deep breath. The sun shone down strong upon him, the sea barely swelled, the air had a fine salty mist.
Would he remember this in his next life?
The cruiser was at 3,300 meters — not optimum, but acceptable, given the circumstances. His shot was dead-on.
“Fire torpedoes,” he said, as the next shell from the destroyer’s deck gun landed twenty yards away.
It took perhaps five seconds for the order to be carried out. In those seconds Balin felt every failure and mistake of his life rise in his chest, pounding like a thousand iron fists on his frail frame. But as the first torpedo left the boat, the regrets dissolved. He took a deep breath, felt the sea in his lungs. It was as sweet and heavy as the first breath he’d ever taken at sea. He turned his head upward, and in the last half-second of his life saw the approaching shell descending toward his vessel’s hull.
They didn’t have time to finesse this approach. The Osprey banked low and slow. Danny jumped, so anxious he didn’t tuck his legs right before hitting the water. He shook off the shock and, without bothering to check for Bison, began stroking toward the raft, which bobbed about thirty yards away.
There were explosions nearby. The Chinese were firing, but not in his direction. They weren’t interested in the raft, or the Osprey.
When he was five yards from the raft, it ducked downward as if pulled toward the depths. Danny took a breath and prepared to dive after it, then saw it bob back up with Bison at its side. With one hard overhand stroke he reached it, grabbing the side with both hand and pulling his body over it.
“Dead,” Bison told him.
“Shit,” said Danny.
“Dolk,” added Bison, turning the prostrate body over. “I don’t see any wounds. Might’ve been internal injuries. Hey—” A plastic container slipped to the bottom of the raft; it was attached via a chain to Torbin’s wrist.
“Those are discs from the mission,” said Danny. “Security protocol is to take ’em out if you go. He did his job to the end.”
He saw Dolk’s radio near the dead man’s foot.
The Osprey was approaching, its hoist line draping into the water.
“Sucks,” said Bison, fitting a life preserver around the dead man’s torso.
“Yeah,” said Danny. “Big-time.”
Zen listened to the Osprey pilot calling off the Hornets, telling them the Chinese were not going after their people. Anger seized him, surging over his shoulders like a physical thing, a bear gripping its thick paws into his flesh and howling in his ear. The Chinese hadn’t just shot down Breanna; they had made her unfaithful.