“Too much backpressure on the hatch,” Chan said. “Too much sophisticated knowledge of the interlocks required to open the breach and muzzle doors simultaneously on the after torpedo tubes. No, Gao, this is someone doing their best to kill us with the drain valves at their disposal. Their methods are slow but proving effective and a challenge for us to counter.”
“This is madness, sir,” Gao said. “After all we’ve encountered, now we face a saboteur.”
Chan reviewed the ship’s control panel.
“Our after trim tanks are almost dry,” he said. “We will soon have nothing left to counter the water ingress.”
“Then we’ll have to blow the after ballast tanks.”
“That brings its own risks,” Chan said. “It could pin us to the surface where we would be exposed.”
“I agree, sir, but we’re running out of time and choices,” Gao said.
“Can we drill through the viewing lens of the watertight door?” Chan asked. “To equalize pressure, gain access, and retake the engineering spaces.”
“It’s possible, sir, but it might be just as fast to cut through the steel of the door itself.”
“Assemble a team with drilling and cutting equipment to puncture through that door any way possible — attack glass and steel. Also, send men to the ventilation line isolation valves to attempt cutting through them, or perhaps unseat them. All we need is a pinhole leak to balance the air pressure. Also, send a team with small arms to storm the engineering spaces once you break through the door.”
“I will, sir.”
Gao departed to loosen the saboteur’s grip on the submarine, and Chan watched the slow battle of water management unfold on a panel. Vertical bars rose and fell as the ship’s trim pump funneled water from the empty rear trim tanks to those near the ship’s bow.
Minutes ticked away as Chan teased his brain for new ideas to break through the engineering door. Nothing.
Expecting a sailor beside his executive officer to be listening, he lifted a sound-powered phone from its cradle.
“This is Chan,” he said. “Give me Gao.”
Chan heard the high-speed whine of a drill in the background as he waited.
“This is Gao, sir.”
“Any progress?”
“Progress, yes. Drilling through the glass appears the fastest option, but this is going to take at least thirty minutes — probably more. And that’s just to create a small hole. It may take another thirty minutes of pressure equalization before we can open the door.”
“Have we thought of everything?” Chan asked.
“There are no more vulnerable ways into the engineering spaces than the door and the ventilation lines,” Gao said. “The electrical and piping lines are as resilient as the ventilation lines and harder to access with cutting equipment.”
“That’s it, then,” Chan said. “Continue your efforts to retake the engineering spaces, Gao. We may yet have use for this complete submarine. But now it’s time to surface and seek a vessel of opportunity to deliver us from this steel sarcophagus.”
In the reddish lighting of the control room, Jake watched Remy spring half way out of his chair.
“What’s going on, Antoine?”
“They’re blowing to the surface!”
“You heard their high-pressure air compressor running, you heard their trim pump practically spinning off its bearings moving water around their boat, and after all those boring tasks they’re all of a sudden hitting an emergency blow?”
“Yes!”
“No warning. No flooding. No explosions. Nothing banging. No ship-wide alarm klaxons blaring. Just business as usual and then blow for their lives.”
Remy squinted and cocked his head.
“Well, I heard some maintenance sounds, like welding or cutting, but I thought nothing of it.”
“Fair enough,” Jake said. “We don’t know why they’re surfacing, but they needed to get there in a hurry, and they’ll probably be there for a while.”
“We should probably have a look,” Remy said.
“Darn right,” Jake said. “Henri, get us to periscope depth fast. Feel free to broach if you need. I never thought I’d say this, but in this case, speed is more important than stealth. I need to see what they’re doing.”
“I shall see to it,” Henri said.
“Also, raise our radio mast,” Jake said. “I want to listen, too.”
As the Hai Ming angled upward, Jake raised the periscope, stuck his eyes to the optics, and saw darkness in the sea’s shallow layers.
“We’re at periscope depth,” Henri said.
Jake digested the Frenchman’s report and realized his lens had broached, and he stared at a starless horizon. He swiveled the optics upward, let his eyes adjust, and proved to himself that the outside world existed by blinking until his brain registered the appearance of constellations.
He walked the periscope counterclockwise.
“Henri,” he said. “Let me know when I’m on the bearing to the Romeo.”
“Five more degrees,” Henri said. “There!”
“Nothing,” Jake said. “They’re too small, even this close. I can’t see a thing.”
Jake pulled his face back from the optics.
“Jin,” he said, “capture an automated three-hundred and sixty-degree sweep from the periscope, and then lower it. There’s no reason to keep looking at nothing.”
Expecting Jin’s habitual professional compliance, Jake felt a strange arousal when the Taiwanese officer hushed him with a stern finger. Jake watched with fascination.
Jin pulled back one of the muffs from his ear and flipped a switch at his console. A voice, deepened with its higher frequencies clipped by radio transmission, filled the control room. Jake recognized the inflections and rhythm as Mandarin, but the foreign meaning eluded him.
However, his intuition grasped the emotions in the man behind the words. He sensed fear and, to lesser extents, hope and relief.
Jake looked to Henri.
“Make sure we’re recording this. Also, get some Taiwanese guys up here who aren’t manning stations so that they can listen and take notes.”
“Immediately,” Henri said.
Then Jake heard a second voice. It also spoke Mandarin, but it carried more excitement and enthusiasm than the first. He turned to Jin.
“Who is it?” he asked. “What are they saying?”
Jin twisted in his seat.
“I believe the captain of the Romeo has had good fortune,” Jin said. “He’s seeking a vessel to rescue his crew from his submarine, and he’s found a mainland fishing vessel that is happy to assist.”
Jake recalled that Chinese merchant and fishing vessels maintained free reign within international waters despite the boundaries their navies had set between themselves.
“Sounds like the Romeo’s captain is a lucky man,” Jake said. “So is his crew.”
“They’re going to abandon the submarine and seek transfer via life rafts to the fishing vessel,” Jin said. “They need only wait two hours for the fishing vessel to arrive at its best speed.”
Jake glanced at the chart and sought the nearest friendly combatant. A stealth patrol craft one hundred miles away caught his attention.
“If you can convince the captain of this stealth craft to leave the hydrophone line partially unattended for the night, he could be here in less than three hours to offer the Romeo’s captain a second option.”
“The option to escort the fishing vessel and the submarine crew to Suao?” Jin asked.
“To escort them wherever the heck the admirals in Keelung want to accept their new, special guests,” Jake said. “This scenario is why the mainland wanted them dead. This is why I let them live.”