Renard aimed the microphone at the farthest Subtics monitor and then raised it to his lips.
“Does five degrees left rudder look good from up there?” Renard asked.
Commander Ye’s voice crackled from a speaker.
“Yes,” Ye said. “Helm, left five-degrees rudder, steady course zero-four-nine.”
Aside the ship’s control station, Jake saw sunlight peeking through an open hatch. He walked to it and glanced up at Ye’s shoes twenty feet above in the bridge.
“I thought you were in command?” Jake asked.
Renard kept his face to the optics.
“Consider Commander Ye a pilot for now,” Renard said. “Don’t worry, this ship is ours to fight.”
Jake sat at the forward-most Subtics dual-stacked monitor and console station. Two seats away, a sailor turned to him and frowned.
“Hello,” Jake said.
“Don’t waste your time,” the middle Taiwanese sailor said. “Petty Officer Zhu’s English is the worst on ship. Maybe the worst on the island. But he’s very good with the fire control system.”
“Thanks,” Jake said.
Jake had studied the Subtics system during his flights but needed to familiarize himself with it. Exploring, he tapped buttons.
Images and icons flew by his screen, and the system reminded him of the early stand-alone submarine tactical systems the United States Navy had introduced in the early nineties. The difference, he had read, was that Subtics was generations ahead in automation and integration.
The system allowed operators to read and operate all of the Hai Lang’s sensors and resources for detection, tactical data processing, navigation, external communications and weapon launching.
Where sailors of Jake’s past had to use manual intervention between each step, Subtics integrated the work. Aboard the Hai Lang, he expected less fumbling with placards, less fiddling with plastic trigonometric wheels, and less artistic work in the penciling of curvilinear sound propagation lines. As he scrolled through screens, Jake felt at one with the system.
He wondered if the Chinese sailors aboard the new Kilo class submarines had equivalent data processing, and he wondered which ship held the acoustic advantage. Data processing was irrelevant if there was nothing to process.
In submarine warfare, that meant sound and the acoustic advantage — who would hear whom first.
Jake found a screen that showed the decibel level of sounds emanated from the Hai Lang over all directions and multiple frequencies. He memorized which combinations of machinery operation created the least noise.
No reactor plant, he thought. Just run at a snail’s pace on the cruising motors, and we’re a silent ghost.
Next, he flipped to the best estimate of the sound profile of Chinese Kilo class submarines.
And we’re going to battle against ghosts, he thought.
Tapping the keyboard at his console, Jake called up a new view. A blue inverted triangle represented the Hai Lang. It overlay dozens of smaller blue inverted triangles. Jake threw his voice over his shoulder.
“What are the little blue triangles?” he asked.
The English-speaking Taiwanese sailor seated at the monitors leaned back and glanced at Jake’s screen.
“Mines,” he said.
“Mines?”
“Anti-submarine mines. They only attack targets below fifteen meters. That’s why we transit on the surface.”
“We have air superiority to the twelve-mile international water boundary,” Renard said. “We are at risk on the surface beyond that distance. We’ll dive eight miles from shore and slip into international waters.”
Tapping again, Jake called up a two-dimensional overhead view of a planned battle scene. He advanced it over time and watched Renard’s intentions unfold.
“Shit, Pierre,” he said. “I can’t tell if this is the most brilliant or most stupid battle plan I’ve seen.”
Renard’s voice echoed off the periscope.
“I’ve made a few assumptions about the Chinese doctrine of submerged battle and have placed some faith in Taiwanese technology, but it’s a sound plan.”
“What if it isn’t?”
“That’s the chance we take,” Renard said. “And after two days of arguing with a room full of Admirals to make them buy into it, I’d rather face the Chinese than try to have it changed. But if you see a flaw—”
“No,” Jake said. “No flaws. I just hope this little submarine can do everything it was built for.”
CHAPTER 22
Hayat gulped bismuth fluid to ease his queasiness, and the increased codeine dosage kept his pain in check. As his body crumbled under the scourge of cancer, he understood that medication alone would fail to ease his passing. He drew strength from daily prayer.
The mind, body, and spirit are one, he thought. How smart I thought I was. I shunned Him, and I will pay with my life. But He lets me draw strength from His love, and I will rejoice with Him in the afterlife.
“Captain?” the middle-aged corpsman said.
Hayat returned the bismuth bottle to a tray.
“Yes?”
“The men suspect that you are ill, sir.”
“Of course they do,” Hayat said. “They are observant, and there are clues we cannot avoid. You are here, a man with far more medical training than a common corpsman.”
“I was assigned to this patrol because of its duration. Men may need treatment that a less experienced corpsman cannot give, and we are far from home. I’m more concerned that they have taken glances in my medical locker. They see the stores of bismuth fluid and codeine.”
“Then let them speculate,” Hayat said. “It is better than admitting that their captain is dying.”
The corpsman extended a bottle of codeine and tipped two pills into Hayat’s hand.
“I must also be direct about the crew’s doubts concerning Lieutenant Commander Raja,” the corpsman said. “The junior officers and the senior enlisted see that Raja’s experience is less than the average executive officer.”
Hayat dumped the pills into his mouth and washed it down with bitter tea.
“Indeed he is junior,” he said. “He has little more experience than Lieutenant Walid. But certain ranking officers recommended him, and I saw potential. I am pleased with his progress and confident he could lead this ship. You have ways to relay my confidence in him to the crew, do you not?”
“Yes, sir,” the corpsman said. “They know that I have privileged information about you. I will make it known that your confidence in Raja is not feigned.”
“Very well. You are dismissed.”
The corpsman shut the door behind him, and Hayat reached for a rolled carpet. Before unfurling it onto the deck, he noted the Hamza’s course on a digital repeater and calculated the bearing towards Mecca.
As he knelt to affirm his faith and draw strength, his phone jingled.
“Captain,” he said.
“Raja, sir. We’ve detected a possible submarine.”
Hayat returned the phone to its cradle, and a sting coursed the length of his spine as he stood. Bracing himself against his doorframe, he waited for the pain to subside and his head to clear.
He left his stateroom and followed the passageway into the operations center. Raja leaned over the nearest Subtics monitor.
“Transients,” Raja said. “Flowing water followed by multiple valve operation. Bearing two-seven-five.”
“That’s almost directly behind us.”
“Yes, sir,” Raja said. “We heard it on the after section of the towed array sonar.”