“Very well, then. It’s unworthy of alarm, but a tactical advantage in knowing of the enemy’s presence. Keep listening for other submarines. I hardly expect this fellow to be alone.”
“I will, Pierre. I must also add that Antoine detected a hull popping transient from the hostile vessel about two hours ago, but it wasn’t while the drone heard it.”
“Hull popping? You’re shallow?”
“Yes. Why?”
A technician, his face red with sleep, arrived at the console and gestured at the blank upper screen. Renard stood and stepped aside, his wired headset tethering him in orbit around the console.
“He went to snorkel depth, and his hull expanded with the lessening of sea pressure,” he said. “The sound traveled in a duct of water near the surface. That’s why you heard it on a ship’s sonar and not the deeper drone.”
“Pierre? Did I err?”
Frustrated, Renard imagined the outcome if Jake Slate had been in charge. Jake would have concluded that the drone and the hull popping were damning clues about the Song-class submarine.
His protégé would have connected the line between the drone and the Song with the one drawn from the Hai Ming to its target with a third line representing four knots of speed, a reasonable estimate for the hostile Song.
Though the solutions connecting these lines contained infinite iterations spanning fractional degrees, Jake would have boxed in their extremes, and he would have deduced that he had a high probability of destroying the Song with a torpedo targeted at the center of these bounds.
Jake would have considered the risks, calculated the gains, and fired a torpedo. That torpedo would have snuck up on the unsuspecting Song and destroyed it. Jake would have revealed the existence of the Hai Ming to the Chinese, but Renard would have preferred this over letting the capable Song remain in the upcoming engagement.
The sting of the leadership gap Jake’s departure had opened hurt, but Renard rationalized that Henri had maintained the element of surprise by being too ignorant of his advantage to exploit it.
“No my friend,” he said. “You did precisely as I had hoped you would.”
The console’s upper screen came to life with a sonar display from the Hai Ming’s Subtics system.
“Ah,” Renard said, “I see your sonar screen.”
“Excellent,” Henri said.
Renard looked to the translator.
“Ask the technician if I can control the screens.”
Renard watched the translator inform the technician of his request. The technician toggled through screens, demonstrating that Renard could see each one from the Hai Ming. However, the technician made no attempt to control them. The scaling, the frequencies to observe, which torpedo’s parameters to monitor… all of it out of reach, Renard concluded.
“Thank you, that’s enough,” he said. “You may dismiss the technician.”
He sat and looked to the Hai Ming’s control room.
“Henri,” he said, “have a man at my disposal tomorrow who can serve as my hands on your consoles. I don’t want it to be you because you will be busy relaying my orders.”
“Of course, Pierre. It will be tight up here with the extra body, but we’ve been through worse.”
Renard’s adrenaline diminished, yielding to the swelling fatigue. He recognized that he had accomplished all he could for the night and had shaken out the kinks in the vital link to the Hai Ming.
He wished Henri a peaceful night, shutdown his console, and skulked to his quarters.
CHAPTER 16
Pierre Renard rolled from his bunk and pressed his feet against rough carpet. He bounded forward, a long nap and anticipation energizing him.
In his tiny quarters, he crept to the washbasin, met his gaze’s reflection with eyes of blue steel, and examined himself. The mirror showed sharp features that, despite lines cutting into his face, retained a classic handsomeness under silver hair.
He brushed his teeth, spat, and rinsed his mouth. Glaring at day-old stubble, he decided that the patrol ship egress operation deserved a fresh shave. A razor buzzed as it grazed his chin. Slapping Versace aftershave against his jaw, he judged his image deserving of the man who would drive the day’s victory.
He reached into the stall, rotated dials, and awaited the rise of steam. Registering hot water with his palm, he slid into the shower and rubbed a loofa over his lean physique. He shut off the flow, pranced to the towel rack, and rubbed fabric over cooling droplets.
Clothed in his trademark Chinos and white dress shirt under a gray blazer, he shut his chamber door and crept down a passageway. Oil-based brush strokes of Taiwan’s seaborne military lineage sailed by, summoning his admiration from cherry wood frames. Empty wallpaper at the end of his pictorial time warp harkened future heroes, and Renard envisioned the Hai Ming and a stealth patrol craft challenging each other from opposing walls.
Reaching the cafeteria, he surprised the serving crew setting up the guest breakfast buffet. Aware that the only other guests at the command center were military journalists with no preparation required to chronicle the day from the control center’s upper deck observatory, he expected to arrive first and eat alone. He gathered his breakfast, sat, and ate while cycling through his mental checklist of the egress mission’s details.
He wiped his mouth and dropped his cloth napkin to the table. Coffee, oatmeal, and melon within him, he walked to an access point. He nodded to a uniformed guard, showed the badge dangling around his neck, and punched a key code into cipher lock. The door to the inner nerve of Taiwan’s naval and air defense, staffed by its skeletal midnight crew, slid open. He slid through the doorframe and found his way to the central navigation chart.
Taiwanese defenses agreed with his expectations. Two blue triangles representing F-16 Fighting Falcon combat patrols flew in a northerly track on the island’s contested western edge, defining a fuzzy battle boundary at the Straits of Taiwan. The other four covered the northeast and southeast edges of the island, defying Chinese surface and air assets to maneuver east into the Philippine Sea.
Renard considered the air patrols thin, but he respected the Taiwanese gambit to preserve fuel in favor of keeping a full scale vigil. The defenses had to both hold and endure.
He noted Suao Harbor, where eighteen interlaced blue semicircles represented the patrol vessels.
The flag watch officer, a man taller and more senior than the evening shift officer, slid beside him and spoke in respectable English.
“I will be off duty when you lead this operation, Mister Renard,” he said. “But I will watch from the observatory. It will be a great achievement to reestablish undersea control of the Philippine Sea.”
“This is but one step of many leading to the lasting independence for your countrymen.”
The admiral’s face darkened as he pressed his wireless earpiece against his cheek. He spoke with hoarse gravity, and moments later a soft siren whined, and pulsating red strobes bathed the control room.
“What is it?” Renard asked.
“Air attack,” the admiral said.
“Where?”
“Southern quadrant. Please, give us room.”
The Frenchman circled the navigation chart to its far side and allowed officers to converge upon the admiral. The first to arrive wore a captain’s uniform with glinting wings over his breast pocket that revealed him as the senior aviation expert on watch.
The meaningless Mandarin exchanges muted in his mind, Renard watched an unwelcome fire of six red triangles rise in the South China Sea. Long red lines foretold the future of the assailing jets, and he pursed his lips while contemplating their destination. A fuel depot seemed possible, but surface-to-air missile batteries rendered it impregnable.