“Can I help you, sir? Would you like a status report?”
“No. I’m merely observing. As you were.”
He moved behind a man seated at a digital control panel and looked over his shoulder through the window. The silhouette of the forward gun became distinct in front of the bow, and a ray of moonlight shimmered over wave tops.
He looked at the seated sailor’s panel and focused on a temperature gauge that indicated ambient temperature. He then lifted his phone close to his nose and tapped a command giving him an option to select a number. He picked the number seventy-nine, entered it, and held his breath.
Below him, the temperature gauge rose to seventy-nine degrees, and he tapped a command on his phone returning the value to its true reading. As the values on the sailor’s panel returned to normal, he excused himself from the bridge and returned to the electronics cabinet.
“I have the schematics, sir,” Smythe said.
Gray grabbed them and knelt to the panel. He verified that Smythe had shut off the correct feeds, stood, and gave back the paper.
“Very well,” he said. “Proceed with your maintenance.”
Gray watched Smythe probe circuit modules with a battery-powered signal generator and oscilloscope. He knew that Smythe’s scheduled maintenance excluded reviewing his sabotaged module, but he monitored the work in case the petty officer stumbled upon it.
Twenty minutes later, Smythe finished without incident or discovery, and Gray walked away.
He returned to his stateroom and changed into exercise gear. Into his gym bag he lowered a contraption, built by Renard’s Taiwanese army of engineers, that resembled a car battery with yards of exposed cable. Stuffing towels around and under the equipment helped to hide the sharp corners outlined on his bag, but as he strained to hoist it to his shoulder, he hoped that no witnesses would notice its abnormal sag.
Since he knew the depopulated path to follow, he faced the solitary threat of a random wanderer as he descended into the ship several decks, crept quickly, and cast frequent glances in all directions. He worked toward the ship’s bow and angled around a corner. Stopping at a locked door, he reached into his bag for a key, slid it into the keyhole, and twisted his wrist.
He popped open the lock, lifted its freed arm from its hole, and let it dangle from its chain. Gray rotated the circular ring that withdrew the metallic tentacles from recesses in the bulkhead, and then he pushed open the door.
A forest of metal launch tubes sprawled across the compartment, gauges and access panels on each offering the only clue that they held Aster surface-to-air missiles.
The sterile scent of cleaning agents, steel, and dried paint reminded Gray of the room’s infrequent human occupancy. One sailor per day entered the area and walked its length and width seeking temperature, humidity, pressure, and explosive gas gauges that deviated from their norms. He knew that he could hide his sabotaging equipment in plain sight.
After latching the door behind him, he lowered the bag to the deck. He withdrew one white towel, wrapped the bag within it, and nestled it in a recess against the bulkhead. He then opened the door, latched it in place, and satisfied himself that the latched ovular shape of metal hid the towel-covered bag.
Perfect, he thought.
He then marched aft, climbed a ladder and turned. He unlatched a door and stepped into the blue dimness of the combat operations room. The eerie indigo-hued form of the officer seated at the center chair stirred.
“Good evening, executive officer,” he said.
“Good evening. Give me the latest data feeds,” Gray said.
The officer reached over the chair’s arm for an electronic tablet and extended it to Gray, who grabbed it and sat in an empty seat in front of a console.
The news told him that Argentine military activity had increased. Twenty A-4 Skyhawk attack aircraft exercised maneuvers, launched missiles, and dropped bombs over an inland weapons range.
Three of the nation’s four aged so-called destroyers, which in Gray’s perspective were instead small, multi-purpose frigates, each shot an Exocet anti-ship missile into a barge off the coast of Puerto Belgrano before closing in and finishing their target with naval gunfire.
The British Empire took note of the resurgence in Argentine activity, but when one of the destroyers had to be towed back to port for apparent engine trouble, the empire judged the threat worth monitoring but minimal.
Argentine submarine activity had provided the greatest interest when both Type Seventeen Hundred vessels left port on the same day. The nuclear-powered Astute-class submarine, the Ambush, trailed the Argentine submarines San Juan and Santa Cruz as they practiced attacks on merchant vessels in shipping lanes.
Gray read that the empire’s intelligence teams considered the activity to be a flurry relative to the Argentine military’s normal tempo but that it remained a blip against the British regional defenses. He agreed, deducing that if every active Argentine war machine made the long journey to the Falkland Islands with its weapons intended for hostilities, the outcome remained obvious — the British defenses were overpowering.
He considered that if the Argentines challenged the existing British defenses, the Ambush would sink the submarines, the Dragon, the four Typhoon fighter aircraft on the islands, and the numerous surface-based Rapier anti-air batteries would turn back the entire aged A-4 Skyhawk fleet, and the geriatric Argentine surface combatants would falter against anything they faced.
Gray returned the tablet to the watch officer.
“I almost feel bad for the Dauntless. Don’t you, sir?”
“Why?” Gray asked.
“In five days, we’ll be patrolling the Falkland Islands, and they’ll be on their way home.”
“Yes, we are en route to relieve them of duty per the normal operations plan. Why would you pity them?”
“If these Argentines actually think they can stir the hornet’s nest in the Falklands, we’re the lucky ones who will have the privilege of reminding them of the Royal Navy’s abilities.”
Gray nodded and left the operations room.
As he climbed stairs toward his stateroom, he redid the math in his head for an Argentine attack. He adjusted the numbers for his secret knowledge.
He removed the Ambush from the equation, and then he removed the Dragon. By reducing the British arsenal by those two vessels, he gave Argentina fifty percent odds of succeeding in an attack on the Falkland Islands. Then he shifted the Dragon to the Argentine side of the equation, just for a single day, and he calculated the odds as favoring the South Americans.
He decided that under Renard’s plan, the Argentines would take the islands.
What happened after that meant nothing to him. Renard had promised him a safe exit from the fray, but he found himself uncaring about the Frenchman’s promises.
No matter who supported him, betrayed him, or punched him in the stomach as the bell rang, he would act upon plans of his own. He would dig the ditch, plant the spikes, and find a way to overcome adversity.
Accepting danger, Gray knew he would survive.
CHAPTER 8
Jake rose from his foldout chair and placed his hands on the metal railing encircling the Specter’s elevated conning area. After a week and a half at sea, he felt the edginess of cramped confines, and his unkempt beard itched.
“How’s our trim, Henri?”
“Neutral, Jake. Within a ton, I believe. But I am tempted to pump a thousand pounds of seawater overboard from the aft trim tank to balance us out better. I’ll know more when we come to a complete stop.”