Alarms ringing in his head in the control room, he watched the inverted red triangles of his comrades’ torpedoes converge on him. A lucid slip across dimensions showed hurricane forces whipping salt spray and the sea into the dragon’s mouth, and he watched his submarine’s puny hull slip towards a devouring demon-leviathan orifice.
Alarms-orifice. Alarms-orifice. Alarms-orifice.
Alarm. Alarm. Alarm.
His eyes popped open, and the Romeo’s general alarm snapped his awareness to waking reality.
He rolled to his feet, pulled his jumpsuit from a hook on his stateroom door, and zipped his uniform. Jamming his thumb behind his heel as he crouched into his sneakers, he twisted into the tight hallway.
As the alarm subsided, he darted to the control room and into Gao’s concerned face.
“Active sonar, bearing zero-five-one,” Gao said.
Chan slid to a nearby sailor’s monitor and verified the data over a sonar operator’s shoulder. The frequency appeared familiar, matching his studies of the Reagan strike force’s escort vessels.
“Adjusting for Doppler,” he said, “I expect it’s a Burke-class destroyer.”
Sailors who huddled over a codex manual exchanged banter and nodded agreement.
“We can’t estimate the target’s speed,” Gao said. “They can adjust their system’s frequency to mask the Doppler effect. But it correlates with a Burke. Probably an escort for the Reagan.”
“Agreed,” Chan said. “Warm up a weapon.”
“Our orders are to avoid the escorts, sir. This mission is exclusively about the carrier.”
“I have no intention of shooting,” Chan said. “But only a fool would be unready to do so. Warm it up.”
“Yes, sir. Should I also slow and rig the ship for ultra-quiet running?”
Chan realized he had already answered the question subconsciously by letting it slip from his mind.
“No, Gao. We need speed to verify that the Burke is indeed, as I hope, moving faster than thirty knots and doing so from far away. If we retain eight knots of speed and the bearing remains the same, we can be confident it is distant.”
“They may hear us, sir.”
“If they are distant and moving fast, they will not.”
“And if they are close?”
“Then they will discover us regardless of our speed.”
As his submarine drove geometry relative to the enemy sonar, Chan watched the bearing to the Burke’s periodic active pulses stay constant. Five minutes flew by, and he exhaled.
“No change in bearing,” he said. “They must be far.”
“That may explain why we don’t hear their ship’s noise,” Gao said.
“I hope so,” Chan said. “Power down the weapon.”
“Done, sir.”
“Slow to four knots,” Chan said. “And rig us for ultra-quiet running. Now that we know the Burke is distant, I am concerned about its helicopters.”
Ten minutes passed, and the bearings to the Burke walked westerly.
“That’s normal,” Chan said. “Even at distances of tens of miles, our ship’s motion and theirs will change the bearings over time. What’s your solution, Gao?”
Gao stood from his crouch beside a seated sailor.
“We’ve got a good estimate, sir. Eighteen miles away, speed thirty-two knots. Course one-nine-five.”
Chan heard a sailor announce a course change for the Burke. Gao leaned forward to analyze it.
“Take two full minutes, Gao,” he said. “At this distance, there’s time to get it right. Remember that destroyers stay alive by changing direction frequently.”
He let Gao assess the Burke’s new course.
“Same speed,” Gao said. “New course is due west.”
“Logical,” Chan said. “The average course between their prior leg and this one aims them between Kikaijima Island and Kita-Daito Island. This is the expected path the Reagan strike force will take towards Taiwan, and the Burke’s passage signals that our trap’s victim will arrive soon.”
CHAPTER 29
While the Hai Ming sought the Romeo, Jake locked himself in his stateroom to strangle his rising rage.
Bitterness of his victimization when he was a naval officer had simmered for years, even after lashing out by stealing a Trident missile submarine. Opportunities to seek redemption, build wealth, and create a private life had held the anger in check. But it lingered, like a fault line, awaiting a stressor to unleash its destruction.
He needed privacy to vent it, but solitude let it oscillate unchecked, driving his hardened innards to fracture. It rose, and he bent over, trying to dissipate it in his flexed muscles.
Internal conflict fueled it. To feel complete, he wanted to be home with his wife. But without his submarine comrades, guilt and avoidance of danger’s thrill hobbled him. Forcing himself back into the submarine brought him unexpected resistance as reward for separating himself from his wife and risking his life for someone else’s cause.
Fate damned him if he sought a private life. It damned him if he imperiled himself for others.
An incarcerated terrorist had preached selflessness, and it stuck. But as Jake tried to apply the lesson, it backfired. He couldn’t swallow the role of sacrificing himself, and his perspective failed. He had nothing, saw no hope for a future, and felt nothing but anger.
Redness framed his blurred vision, and his ears shut out sounds. His chest tightened and burned. A right cross to a cabinet door avulsed his knuckles, and he heard his echoing scream.
Blood pounding through his neck, he sat, sucked the blood from his torn skin, and swallowed. He sensed the submarine rocking at snorkel depth and realized the motion had thrown off his punch.
“You stupid shit,” he said.
He remembered angrier times when his rage would surge for hours. Once confident that he had matured to overcome his anger, he now questioned if it only flared less frequently because it had exhausted his life’s energy. He wondered if age wore him down.
“Living for others,” he said. “Bullshit. Ayn Rand was right. Selfish. Do shit for me. Screw everyone else.”
Then he thought of his wife. Something angelic about her penetrated his psychological fog, and she reminded him of Christianity’s virtues.
“Charity,” he said. “Giving of myself to a community.”
The rage redoubled and lifted him to his feet. Another venting punch against the cabinet swelled in his gut. He hissed through his teeth to calm himself.
“How the fuck can I give to people who reject me, to help people who don’t appreciate me, to pay a debt I don’t owe?”
Conscious of the avulsion risk as his vision tunneled again, he sent his palm into the cabinet. The door thumped open, and Jake sank back into the chair, cradling a sprained wrist.
“Just give me a sign, for fuck sake!”
He heard a knock on his door.
“Come in!”
Henri’s white hair appeared, followed by a face filled with wonder.
“What’s wrong?” Jake asked.
“Orders from China’s East Sea Fleet,” Henri said. “You won’t believe it.”
“Go on.”
“After the assault against the Reagan is complete, we are to sink the Romeo.”
“No shit?” Jake asked.
“No shit, as you say.”
Jake questioned if a supernatural force had brought the news but pushed the speculation from his thoughts to clear his mind.
“Technically,” he said, “that doesn’t change anything. It’s just a set of orders from a different master to complete our mission.”
“But odd that they’d kill their own crew.”
“Maybe not,” Jake said. “Sounds like they convinced a crew to hijack the North Korean submarine just to set them up for a secret kill. Some guy in Beijing is going to carry that guilt to the grave, but it still might be a sound strategic move, depending on your assumptions.”
“Shall I call the officers together? To discuss those assumptions, perhaps?”
“No, not yet. Let me brood over this. Since nothing has changed in our mission, let’s let this sink in. We’ve got time to digest this, and I plan to use it.”