Kao’s face remained stone.
“Is this acceptable?” Jake asked.
“Ten knots is acceptable,” Kao said.
Jake pushed back his chair and walked out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
As he squatted in his shower stall, Jake let hot water pour over his back. He lowered his head into his hands. The heat melted the arctic chill from his bones, but the chill in his soul remained ice.
The Frenchman had been right weeks ago when they had intercepted the Custom Venture. His few friends were gone, or at best distant. He was empty and alone — living for survival itself.
He wanted to trust Renard. The Frenchman had proven himself a worthy ally thus far, but everything he had done for Jake was self-serving. He wondered if Renard would jab a knife in his back when their agendas crossed.
Jake accepted that he might never be able to trust anyone. He curled into a ball and let the water burn away at an icy core that wouldn’t seem to melt.
Renard dreamt…
He sat on a slab of granite atop Mont Saint Victoire. Storm clouds swallowed the mountain. As freezing rain pelted his face, he saw a dark figure pierce the swirling blackness and disappear.
He assumed it a dragon or some other nightmarish beast, but he heard jet engines whine between cracks of lightning.
Stinking of blood and gunpowder, a pistol appeared in his hands. He tightened his grip and rose to his feet.
A puddle of mud chilled his first barefooted step. He froze. A black serpent slithered over his foot and vanished into bushes behind a boulder. Renard followed it around a corner, and two men locked in combat came into view.
Jake wore a charred cotton jump suit and bounced on his feet. Facing him, a middle-aged Taiwanese commando in a black wetsuit approached, his legs spread wide and his rigid hand forward.
Lightning flashed, and Jake unleashed a flurry of kicks. He connected with Kao’s ear, and the commando staggered. Lightning cracked again, and Kao buried his heel into Jake’s gut.
Mud splashed on Renard’s feet as Jake landed before him. The tugging at his pants reminded him of a widow he had long ago created. He wondered if he was ruining another life as Jake clawed at his rain-drenched cotton dress shirt.
“Help me!” Jake said.
“What should I do?” Renard asked.
“You got me into this, you bastard. Get me out!”
Lightning crashed. Renard awoke.
Renard showered away cold sweat. He pulled his shirt over his shoulder and studied his reflection.
His eyes looked dull, and his skin sagged.
His knees cracked as he climbed the stairs to the control room where he joined Jake by the navigation chart and studied the coordinates that placed the Colorado one hundred miles north of Alaska.
“Shit, Pierre,” Jake said. “You look as tired as I feel.”
Renard lit a Marlboro.
“You handled the confrontation well yesterday.”
“Are we in this too deep?” Jake asked.
“The dangers within the ship now equal those outside.”
“Yeah, even though my friend on the Miami is the one who tried to kill us.”
“You verified the acoustic evidence from the torpedo exchange?” Renard asked.
“I ran the tape,” Jake said.
“Then it is as we feared. The best submarine commander in the world, present company excluded, is on our tail.”
Renard inhaled. The sweetness of nicotine filled his lungs and he blew smoke away from Jake.
“And I’ve got a revolt brewing within the ship,” Jake said, “and there’s a chance that this submarine might become an ‘us versus them’ world. Six frogmen against four sailors is normally no match, but remember, this is my ship.”
“Stop reminding me.”
“Well, it is, and I keep a few tricks up my sleeve. I don’t know who the hell you became after commanding the Amethyst, and I don’t know how deep you’re in with the Taiwanese. But if it comes down to it, you’ll need to choose a side.”
Sadly, he’s correct, Renard thought. The situation on this ship is more volatile than he knows.
Brody ran his finger over a penciled trace of the Miami’s voyage. From the plot’s overhead perspective, he reviewed a path once sealed by ice, a turn to the east, and then a southerly trek under an ice roof that ascended into the Arctic Ocean’s southern body of water, the Chukchi Sea.
He walked to the periscope and stuck his eye to the optics as the Miami ascended. Daylight broke through the Arctic Ocean and painted shallow water turquoise. Brody swiveled the scope. A wall of white ice rose behind him and an iceberg touched the horizon.
“No close contacts,” he said. “Chief of the Watch, raise the radio mast. Radio room, transmit one outgoing message. Let the world know that we found the Colorado.”
In Nome, Alaska, Grant Mercer cast a line off a forty-eight-foot trawler.
As he tiptoed his way along the deck with the agility learned while operating his father’s sailboat on Lake Michigan, he felt the idling three hundred horsepower diesels rumbling below.
Under the canopy of the powerboat’s pilothouse, he nudged an aircraft-type throttle. Mercer watched the bow push aside chunks of ice as he entered the darkness of the Snake River en route to the Chukchi Sea.
CHAPTER 28
Four days had passed since Brody had led the Miami from the icecap. After communicating with higher authorities, he had two P-3 Orion crews from Whidbey Island, Washington, in a dedicated full alert status to back him up. Two submarines from Hawaii, still a day’s transit away, were en route to the Bering Strait to assist.
Brody steered the Miami back and forth along the ten-mile wide underwater opening that he believed offered the Colorado its only passage from under the ice.
His latest orders matched his instincts — destroy Jake Slate and the Colorado.
As the ice-roof clamped down upon the submarine, the under-ice sonar system blared. Jake reached for a microphone to order Bass to slow the ship, but the deck fell.
He grabbed for a handrail and regained his balance, but his legs hit his chest as the Colorado scraped the ocean floor. He felt the ship rebound and graze the overhead ice again.
Silence. Jake hoped the collision was over.
It wasn’t.
A handrail knocked the air out of his lungs. He winced as crumpling metal creaked. Splintering ice snapped. The shattering fiberglass bow crackled.
Expecting a wall of water to crash in, Jake held his breath. Chunks of ice banged the Colorado. A circular rib in a ballast tank groaned and buckled.
Jake stood and stumbled across the slanted deck.
At the helm, the wiry Cheetah lay limp over the rudder control yoke.
“You okay?” Jake asked.
Cheetah nodded, palpated his stomach, and winced.
Broken ribs, Jake thought.
Jake moved to Kao, who was hunched over the ship’s control panel. Blood covered his forehead. Jake cradled Kao and set him on the deck.
Cheetah, bent to his side, limped toward Jake.
“Take care of him,” Jake said.
Standing, Jake grabbed a phone and called the engine room. After learning that Mike Gant had escaped harm but that Leopard had broken his arm, he saw Renard appear atop the staircase.