He stood on the elevated conning platform and looked down upon his underlings. Under reddish nighttime lighting, they moved in a choreographed saga of rehearsed actions, each bending to his will to manage and filter data into the ship’s tactical system.
His monochrome cathode ray tube monitor showed an overhead view of symbols representing the San Juan and freighters transiting through a nearby shipping lane. The arrangement displeased him, and he yelled to his executive officer.
“Lieutenant Commander Fernandez,” he said.
“Sir!”
“Come!”
Fernandez emerged from a pack of sailors. His soft features appeared downcast, the way Gutierrez preferred it. Obedience by fear instilled his brand of discipline.
“Yes sir.”
“Why don’t you have a course and speed set for target number six?”
“It’s bearing is constant, and its signal strength is weak. It’s far enough away to be ignored while we focus on the closer vessels. I have firing solutions on the other five, one solution each entered into five of our torpedoes.”
He recognized that Fernandez’s argument carried merits, but he refused to hear them. Thwarting a mindset of counterarguments — veiled excuses — would preserve order.
“We have a sixth torpedo tube, do we not?”
“Yes, sir.”
“If we are fortunate enough to engage a British task force, their ships will emit one-tenth the noise and move twice as fast. I want an accursed solution for every ship out there.”
Two minutes later, the course and speed to the sixth merchant ship transiting by the San Juan appeared on Gutierrez’s screen. He let ten more minutes elapse to verify that the solutions to each vessel correlated to the updates from the sonar systems.
“Stop!”
The din in his submarine’s control room ebbed.
“I said stop!”
Silence.
“You’ve all barely managed to track half a dozen merchants. They move in straight lines and at slow speed. They are noisy. You got lucky that these ships are moving at predictable and constant speeds and directions in the shipping lanes. What will you do when faced with destroyers and frigates? They move swiftly. They are quiet. They turn at random intervals to throw off our tracking solutions and our torpedoes.”
Silence ensued, and Gutierrez continued.
“I will tell you what you will do. You will wish that you can use a periscope for targeting. But you cannot. British detection systems can see our periscope. I will not risk it. Learn to track vessels with sonar alone. Maybe, if you get lucky, you’ll be able to track a submarine.”
He stepped to the periscope.
“Diving officer, make your depth forty meters.”
His diving officer acknowledged, and the deck tipped upward as the submarine ascended. He twisted a ring that ported hydraulic fluid underneath the huge cylinder of metal, lifting it. With his eye to the optics, he snapped open and torqued two handles to swivel the periscope clockwise.
Keeping his face pressed against rubber, he barked his next order.
“Diving officer, make your depth thirteen meters.”
The deck tilted as a surface swell extended its reach to the submarine. As the periscope broached, stars backlit darkness. Settling his field of view in the direction of the closest freighter, he saw a green running light.
“Raise the radio mast and get me a communications download.”
A crewman acknowledged his order, and he heard the clunk of a hydraulic gate valve above him. The crewman announced that the radio mast had reached the surface and had linked with shore-based communications.
“Line up to snorkel,” he said.
He knew that the ventilation system had been lined up to run the diesel engines, but he wanted his staff’s formal verification. A minute later, the snorkel mast joined the periscope and radio mast above the water’s surface.
“Cycle the head valve,” he said.
The diesel air intake’s covering clanked open and shut, sending echoes into the San Juan’s steel frame. Assured that he could close the huge intake hole leading into his vessel if the submarine lost depth, Gutierrez was ready to charge his battery.
“Commence snorkeling,” he said.
The quad diesels rumbled to life with baritone tones vibrating throughout the cylindrical hull. Cool, moist air filled the compartment, refurbishing the atmosphere as it fed the engines.
“The radio download is complete, sir,” Fernandez said.
“Very well,” Gutierrez said. “Lower the radio mast. I will stay shallow to continue snorkeling.”
He grew weary watching shipping traffic, but he refused to trust anyone else. A single missed sighting could allow a catastrophic collision. He remained diligent.
“The battery is fully charged,” Fernandez said.
“Very well,” Gutierrez said. “Secure snorkeling.”
The rumbling subsided, and he lowered the periscope. As his eye adjusted to the red light, his executive officer handed him a clipboard with a printout of the radio traffic download.
An intelligence update on the activity of the Ambush excited him. According to several sources, the British submarine was transiting in his direction.
“They’re taking the bait,” he said. “They are coming. Less than a day away.”
“This is excellent,” Fernandez said. “We must make noise so we are heard. I will have the crew begin the maintenance and repair exercises we have scheduled.”
“No,” Gutierrez said.
“I don’t understand. These are our orders.”
“Let Commander Martinez and the Santa Cruz make noise. Let him be the bait. Why waste my skills when I’m superior to that halfwit in every respect?”
“Do you mean to disobey orders, sir?”
“A mere slight deviation. The orders were written redundantly. There’s no need for both submarines to call attention to themselves. The Santa Cruz will provide sufficient bait.”
“I suppose you’re right, sir.”
“I am. We will remain silent and remain vigilant in doing so. In fact, I intend to reach the delousing with the Specter with the Ambush having no idea where we are.”
“You intend then to not reveal our position to the Ambush at all, despite orders to the contrary, sir?”
Gutierrez turned his back and stepped toward the exit. At the door, he stopped and turned back to Fernandez.
“Join me in my stateroom,” he said. “It’s time for me to share special details of our orders that you have yet to hear.”
CHAPTER 7
Commander Nigel Gray awoke from a restful sleep. Unlike most people preparing for mutiny, murder, and treason, he accepted turning his back on everything he’d known as a logical continuation to his tragic life.
His first waking thought drifted to a three-month old memory when he had been seducing barflies in a Portsmouth pub. Instead of finding a woman to help him forget his loneliness, he had found a new foreign friend. A Frenchman had approached him and offered his services in retaliating against a system that had failed him.
The Frenchman had paid significant sums of money to hold subsequent private meetings where Gray had to do nothing but listen. On their third meeting, Gray surprised his companion by asking him to cease his incremental commitment recruiting techniques.
He remembered his words.
“You need me to commit an act of treason. You have no need to justify it or make it seem something that it is not. I am ready to do my part for my own reasons, and I will trust you to offer me fair compensation. I assume that you have a pricing model for such activities, based upon weapons given to your disposal, adversarial assets neutralized, strategic impact, and the like.”