“Or you could let nature take its course,” Renard said.
“I don’t want any loose ends,” Jake said.
Stirring, Kao whispered two words. “Leave me.”
“What?” Jake asked.
“Leave me with the weapon and one bullet.”
Jake looked at Renard who nodded. He left the pistol on the table and followed Renard out the door.
His heart skipped a beat as a shot rang.
Thirty miles from Russian waters, Grant Mercer read a Stephen King novel under a kerosene lamp. Black tape over the trawler’s windows trapped light. A kerosene space heater protected him from the freezing cold. He lay the book down, checked the GPS, and deduced that he had drifted ten miles since his last reading.
He braved the cold of the pilot house and depressed a button. Twin diesel engines belched and groaned. Mercer drove the ship ten miles west to the coordinates where Jake had told him to wait. He cut the engines, returned to the cabin, and picked up his novel.
The Tai Chiang floated near an iceberg and used its short-range blue-green undersea laser system to search for the Colorado. The laser detected nothing. Neither did the infrared sweeps. But the ship’s sonar system did.
Wearing a thick navy blue sweater, a Taiwanese ensign tapped at his battle control station and reviewed the frequency data from Mercer’s diesel engine, but Lin had made it clear that the Tai Chiang would not waste precious fuel investigating fishing vessels.
Jake watched the ship’s control panel. Perceptible only on the control panel’s gauges, the Trident ascended. Smashed ballast tanks moaned as the ship settled five feet above the bottom.
Jake spoke via the circuit to McKenzie in the engine room.
“Scott, give the throttles a quarter twist counterclockwise.”
The Colorado crawled through the hole it had punched in the ice, but Jake heard the ship grind to a stop.
“I think we’re riding over our damaged bow,” Renard said.
“Agreed. What if we just blow to the surface?”
“The entire hemisphere will know we’re here,” Renard said.
“May as well send invitations to the party.”
Jake pushed handles upward. Air hissed from high-pressure canisters into the ballast tanks on either end of the ship. Jake felt his stomach drop through his knees as the Colorado ascended.
He raised a periscope and examined dark water and the crisp white ice behind him. Violent spray shot upward where the forward-most ballast tanks had been smashed and ripped open.
“We’re alone, Pierre. How fast are we going?”
“Six knots,” Renard said. “I recommend we speed up to reach our rendezvous with the Tai Chiang.”
“How far are we from the rendezvous point?”
“The gyroscopic navigators are off after the collision, but their last charted fix places us eight miles west and thirty miles north. I will get a GPS fix to verify.”
Jake joined Renard by the navigation chart. He pointed to a circle with an ‘X’ at its center.
“The Tai Chiang is scheduled to meet us there,” Jake said, “but it could be anywhere within ten miles of that point. Hell, as fast as that thing moves, it could be anywhere it wants.”
Jake opened navigation dividers and measured miles along the length of the chart’s side. He drew a ten-mile radius around new coordinates.
“My friend is waiting for us there. He’ll come when I call him.”
“So call him, then,” Renard said. “Now would be a good time”
Jake walked to the radio room and lined up the high frequency voice transceiver. Returning to the ship’s control panel, he bumped a switch that raised the radio antenna high above the Colorado’s sail.
He stepped between the periscopes, twisted dials on the bride-to-bridge radio, and lifted a microphone to his lips.
“Zeus, this is Poseidon, over.”
“A bit arrogant,” Renard said.
“Shut up!” Jake said and clicked the microphone again. “Zeus, this is Poseidon, over.”
Jake stared through the periscope to distract himself from the radio silence that made him uneasy.
In the hazy summer evening sunlight, he saw smoke rise from the engine room and missile compartment hatches that McKenzie had opened. The back of the Trident looked like a pair of smokestacks.
A crackling voice carried excitement.
“Poseidon, this is Zeus, over,” Mercer said.
“You’re there!” Jake said. “You’re a man-god. I’d love to swap stories but we need to be quick. You’ve got a boat, right?”
“It’s a nice rig. I made sixteen knots on the way out here. I have supplies and fuel for at least another week and a half. Over.”
“Write this down. I’m thirty-one miles from your rendezvous coordinates, bearing three-two-nine…”
Jake watched Renard, the new GPS fix apparently in his head, trot to the navigation plot and nod affirmation of the coordinates. Jake repeated himself.
“…thirty-one miles, bearing three-two-nine. Did you get that? Over.”
“Yeah. Thirty-one miles. Bearing three-two-nine. Over.”
“I need you to sprint to me. Max speed. I’ll need a ride off this pig soon. Over.”
“Consider it done. Zeus, out.”
Lin watched fog patches roll over the Tai Chiang’s bow at fifty-one knots. White clouds danced across the bridge windows and yielded only flickering views of blue water.
Kao should have signaled me by now, he thought.
Through breaking mist, his battle control station displayed a passive infrared sweep. A heat plume billowed over the horizon.
“Heat signature of smoke from the direction of the Colorado,” he said.
Voices over a loudspeaker caught his attention. It was over a bridge-to-bridge radio frequency, and it was in English between men named Zeus and Poseidon.
You fool, Kao, he thought. You have been outsmarted by the Americans.
“The Americans are planning a second rendezvous,” he said. “There is damage to the Colorado and they have blown to the surface.”
“Our stealth is compromised,” Yang, the executive officer said.
“A brilliant analysis, you halfwit. Regardless, we still have hours before even an air asset would find us,” Lin said. “We will continue and make haste.”
Lin tapped keys on his battle control station that warmed up his ship’s remaining four torpedoes and readied its three-inch main gun.
“Man battle stations,” he said.
“Where’s the Colorado, sonar room?” Brody asked.
“On the other side of the ice, sir,” Schmidt said. “The sound is coming through the hole it made. It blew to the surface and is dead in the water. We just heard its shaft stop.”
“How hard will it be for your men to help us fit through the hole the Colorado made?” Brody asked.
“It’s tight, sir, but we have a lot of noise from the Colorado to guide us.”
“Tell your guys we’re going through.
“Alright, everyone,” Brody said. “Listen up. All ahead one-third, make turns for five knots. And let’s get our ‘A’ team up here for depth control. This is going to be tight.”
Numbers on digital meters trickled downward as the Miami slowed and the ice-roof descended upon it.
“Tripwire,” Schmidt said. “Ten feet of ice above the sail.”