“One more time,” he said. “Torpedo evasion!”
Jake glanced at the Frenchman at his control panel to the right of the central charting table.
“I ring up a head flank with cavitation to the engine room,” Henri said.
Jake angled his nose to the other side of the room.
“I warm up countermeasures to be launched on your mark,” Lin said
“I prepare a torpedo for a reactive launch, search depth equal to our own depth, range three thousand nautical yards,” a Taiwanese sailor seated beside Jin said.
“And I report the bearing to the incoming torpedo every fifteen seconds, whether you hear me or not,” Remy said from his sonar station.
The voices sounded tired and the faces looked worn, but Jake judged the team as ready as an ad hoc crew could be.
“Very well,” he said. “Everyone get some sleep. We’re getting underway in seven hours.”
Jake awoke with a coppery taste. The commanding officer’s wardroom felt confining as he crept to a steel basin to brush his teeth. He stripped and slipped into a shower, spurting water over himself. As the droplets landed against entombing metal, he felt trapped in an alien world he had forgotten.
After drying himself and donning loose-fitting slacks and a cotton dress shirt, he ducked through the watertight door to the control room. He heard Henri’s soles slapping ladder rungs and saw the Frenchman stoop through a door.
“Topside is rigged for submerging,” Henri said. “The gangway is on the pier, and four lines remain to be cast off to get underway. Each line is mated to a capstan.”
“What’s next?”
“Divers swim to the capstans on the far wall,” Henri said. “There will also be line handling crews at the pier capstans. The line handling crews will pull us from the pier and orient us in the center of the basin.”
“Then how do we get rid of the lines?”
“Divers mount us to cast off the lines, and then they swim for the pier. We’ll receive word when they are clear so we may submerge. They await your command.”
Jake nodded and reached for a microphone above.
“Prepare to get underway,” he said. “Man the egress piloting team.”
Sailors filled the tiny room, and Henri moved beside Jake, who handed him a radio handset.
“Tell them to center us in the basin.”
Henri exchanged words with the command station.
“Line crews are maneuvering us,” Henri said. “It will take a good ten minutes to steady us.”
“How’s our trim going to be?”
“Very light,” Henri said. “We will submerge slowly, and there will be a slight down angle.”
“How many times have you done this before?”
“Me? Twice. Jin has been through it three times. It will be tight by design, but it will go smoothly.”
Jake stepped forward and placed his eye on the periscope optics. Under florescent illumination, a man in a wetsuit whipped a hand crank and coiled nylon rope around a capstan. He stopped and dropped his head below his shoulders, Jake assumed, as the submarine slid toward him.
The man looked up in response to a distant cue and recommenced his laboring with the crank. He released the handle, stood, and shook his arms.
“We are centered,” Henri said.
“Lowering the periscope,” Jake said.
He twisted a ring concentric to a glistening shaft and watched the periscope glide into the well at his feet.
“Lines are off,” Henri said. “We are underway and ready to conduct the egress.”
“Attention in the control room,” Jake said. “Henri has the conn. I have the deck.”
Taiwanese faces looked at him and frowned.
“That means Henri is driving but still taking orders from me,” Jake said.
Heads nodded.
“Submerge the ship and pilot us to open water.”
“Submerge the ship and pilot us, aye,” Henri said. “Open main ballast tank vents.”
Jin flipped switches, and Jake felt nothing while the creeping numbers of a depth gauge hinted at motion.
“Subtle,” he said.
“Indeed,” Henri said. “Each tank level and storage weight is known, be it fuel, sanitary matter, lubrication oil, food stores, or weapons. Even each person on board is accounted for in the neutral buoyancy equation.”
Jake waited and eyed Henri.
“We’ve steadied,” he said. “Looks to me like we’ve hit the bottom of the basin, huh?”
Henri glanced at the depth gauge and blushed.
“The basin floor is covered with a meter of silt in the event that the buoyancy calculation is… just slightly off,” Henri said. “I will get us off the bottom.”
Henri slid over the shoulders of a seated sailor and stood behind Jin. He pointed and orchestrated the movement of water through tanks, spurring a trim pump to life that caressed Jake’s ear with a distant whir. The ship tilted forward, rolling Jake to the balls of his feet.
Henri returned to his side and shrugged.
“I apologize.”
“No need,” Jake said. “I once drilled a Trident into the bottom of the Atlantic.”
“Nevertheless,” Henri said. “I will be more careful.”
“Take her to sea,” Jake said.
“Make turns for two knots,” Henri said.
Jake watched a speed gauge crawl through one knot. Henri returned to Jin’s shoulder and helped the Taiwanese officer caress the submarine down an underwater ramp. The speed readout indicated two knots.
“Leveling out,” Henri said.
Jake rebalanced his weight between his heels and toes.
“We are passing through the basin door,” Henri said. “The egress will be complete momentarily.”
Henri turned, hovered over the nautical chart, and lifted his head from between his shoulder blades.
“We are clear, Jake.”
“I have the deck and the conn,” Jake said. “Make turns for four knots. Maintain course.”
He stepped to the chart and stood opposite Henri.
“Expand the scale,” he said.
Henri lowered his arm and depressed a button. The islet became smaller, the world expanded, and the fathom curves tightened. The islet’s defensive sonar array wiggled into the field of view followed by the dark blue hue of deeper water.
“Give me a deduced reckoning,” Jake said.
Henri nodded and slid his finger to a second control. Timestamps glowed on hashes crossing the Hai Ming’s projected course.
“We can go deeper in twenty minutes at this pace,” Henri said. “Do you wish to accelerate?”
Jake shook his head, surprising himself with patience.
“Secure the piloting team and set underway watch team number one. Take over the control station from Jin.”
Jake stepped back to the elevated conning platform and sat on a foldout seat as bodies snake-danced before him. Ten minutes elapsed, and a new team settled in the room.
He dismissed Henri to explore the submarine for signs that a valve might have been left open, a duct misdirected, or a spoon misplaced. He trusted the veteran’s instincts to assure the ship’s readiness.
In a moment of quiet, he let himself think about returning home, another game-changing deed accomplished with inner peace as his reward.
“Jake!”
The interruption was a hoarse whisper. Antoine Remy, his eyes huge between the muffs of his sonar headset, had become a petrified toad.
“Antoine?” he asked.
“I think I heard launch transients.”
“You think?”
“I wasn’t listening for them. There’s something out there, bearing one-six-two.”
Jake flew to Remy’s shoulder and studied his screen. A discernible blip of noise rolled down the Subtics monitor.
“There,” Remy said.
Jake nudged the Taiwanese sailor beside Remy.