“Henri?”
No response.
“Henri?”
The Frenchman turned his head and said nothing.
“How long does the hydrazine last?” Jake asked.
“As long as we need,” Henri said.
He started to taper off. Jake engaged his companion’s mind to keep it responsive.
“How long is that, Henri? Using the pumping system you designed, how long does the system work?”
“Only a subset of valves open near the location where we crossed. It optimizes the gaseous distribution that way. We have at least three minutes.”
“What happens to the torpedo?”
“It accelerates to penetrate through the noise, descends violently in the bubble curtain, and hopefully sustains damage to its sensors and guidance electronics as it hits the wall of water on the far end.”
“Hopefully?”
“Probably. If not, the torpedo may be set wildly off course. In these shallow waters, it may also take on such a steep angle as to collide with the sea bottom.”
Jake grunted.
“Remy, anything?”
“No, Jake. Just hissing.”
“Would you hear an active seeker?”
“Yes, I think so. There’s nothing.”
Jake returned his attention to Henri.
“Can you turn the line off?” he asked.
“Five active pings in rapid succession will tell the operators in the pen to secure the pumps,” Henri said. “They will hear it on the sonar arrays and recognize our sonar system.”
Jake walked to the abandoned station beside Remy, tapped keys, and ordered the ship to render the sonar pings. As he returned to the chart, the crackling stopped, and he held his breath.
A phantom hiss toyed with his ears, and he knew that Remy strained through a similar auditory hallucination to discern the sea’s true noises.
“Anything now?”
“Yes, Jake!” Remy said. “High-speed screws!”
“Damn it! Bearing rate?”
“Not changing.”
Jake’s heart sank, and he wondered if he could get off the Hai Ming in time.
“Wait, Jake. I hear Doppler shifting on the blades.”
“It’s turning?”
“Yes! In a tight circle.”
Jake held his breath and waited for Remy to ratify his hopes. The Frenchman obliged with a howl.
“Incoming torpedo has shut down!”
“Keep listening for other weapons,” Jake said.
“All I hear is ours, Jake,” Remy said. “And it’s about to impact!”
The control room boomed. Startled, Jake steadied himself with white knuckles on a polished rail. Sonic static sizzled, echoed, and tapered to silence.
“We just killed whoever shot at us,” Remy said.
“I figured,” Jake said. “What about incoming weapons?”
Remy pressed his muffs into his head.
“There’s nothing Jake. We made it.”
Jake clasped both hands on a polished rail, exhaled, and sagged his head between his shoulders. He felt Henri’s hand pat his back. He straightened and grabbed the beaming Frenchman’s shoulders.
“Holy shit, Henri. You did it!”
“The hydrazine line must have damaged the incoming torpedo and made it circle until it shut itself down on anti-circular run protection.”
“Amazing, mon ami,” Jake said.
“The crew?” Henri asked.
“Crap,” Jake said. “I suppose it’s too late to tell them not to jump.”
“Indeed. We need to pick them up with haste.”
A voice crackled from a loudspeaker.
“I will slow the ship.”
Jake reached for a microphone and responded.
“Claude? I ordered you to abandon ship.”
“I know,” LaFontaine said. “But I assumed you needed control of your propulsion plant.”
“You’re a fool,” Jake said.
“I was listening. I was ready to jump if you did.”
“Give me a backing bell,” Jake said. “We need to get the crew back on board and get the hell out of here.”
CHAPTER 10
Translucent tracing paper crinkled as Lieutenant Commander Chan yawned and pressed his forearms on a table.
“How long has it been?” he asked.
The younger man with a rugged jaw turned his sharp nose towards a digital clock.
“Twenty minutes, sir,” Lieutenant Huang Gao said.
Chan’s eyes compared the penciled path his stolen submarine had taken against that of the South Korean destroyer that had followed him to the Chinese coast.
“They’re still out there.”
“Carbon dioxide is high,” Gao said. “The soda lime beds can’t clear it fast enough. We must snorkel.”
“No,” Chan said. “I suspect the diesel engines on this accursed submarine are too loud. We must be patient.”
“The stench of the bodies. It’s becoming unbearable.”
Chan glanced to the deck at corpses stacked between electronic cabinets. He acknowledged the rising odor of rotting meat.
“We are near the kelp bed if we must hide,” he said.
“You mean to snorkel, then, sir?”
“No. The risk is too great. We will instead run fans. Prepare to ventilate.”
As Gao turned to execute the order, Chan stopped him.
“One more thing,” he said. “Get a weapon ready with the tightest search parameters you can set. If I fire, I don’t want to hit a friendly vessel.”
Chan stepped back to the periscope well and flung a hydraulic control ring. A valve clanked, and a silvery cylinder rose. He unfolded two handles, pressed his orbital socket to the optics, and saw watery darkness.
“The ship is lined up to ventilate, sir,” Gao said.
“Ascend to snorkel depth,” Chan said.
The world remained dark as he walked the periscope in a circle. As his eyes adjusted, stars twinkled.
“Raytheon long-range radar, sir,” Gao said. “Intermittent, low signal strength.”
“I knew they were still out there,” Chan said. “But they are fortunately distant. Raise the induction mast.”
Hydraulic servo valves clunked while porting fluid to an actuator. As his vision steadied, Chan spied the green running light of a freighter steaming behind him.
“Induction mast is raised,” Gao said.
“Ventilate,” Chan said.
A fan whirred and breathed clean air into the hijacked North Korean vessel. Chan smelled the sea as he correlated two more ships in the transit lane against memorized bearings to sounds heard by the submarine’s old but functional sonar system.
“Consider snorkeling now, sir?”
“No, Gao.”
“Battery is at thirty percent,” Gao said. “Ventilating with the fan is slow. Using the diesels would quicken our air purification.”
“They’ve proven they can hear us,” Chan said. “We would already be rid of that destroyer if this submarine weren’t so damned loud.”
“They may have been tracking us with active sonar.”
Knowing the South Korean destroyer would be running dark without navigational lights, Chan twisted the periscope handle to allow high-power optics and identify a silhouette on the horizon. His eye followed the edge of a tanker’s fantail and saw its white aft running light that had masqueraded as a star in low magnification.
“No, Gao,” he said. “If they had achieved active return, they would have already prosecuted us. They have had only bearings to our noise, which is frustratingly high when making any speed on this worn down machine. They hear us intermittently, which is why they’ve been able to follow us loosely but not engage us with weaponry.”
“Thales targeting radar!” Gao said. “High signal strength!”