“I’m still analyzing the most dangerous torpedoes.”
“Very well. Keep analyzing. I’ll make my own assumptions.”
He walked dividers again, muttering conservative suppositions to himself.
“Bump torpedo speed up to sixty-five knots. Assume they were shot from eight miles away. Assume that I’m not opening any appreciable distance while evading.”
“How long do we have?” Henri asked.
“Seven minutes and twenty seconds. We need to either buy ourselves a minute, or we need to hope that I’m being a minute too conservative.”
“Will countermeasures help?”
“At the right time, they might, but not yet,” Jake said. “Not until we verify that at least one of these torpedoes has an intercept course for us. Let’s keep running and reassess.”
He reached for a sound-powered phone, twisted its dial to the engine room, and whipped the ringer handle. He lifted the phone to his cheek.
“Engineering,” LaFontaine said.
“Claude, what’s holding us back? Can you squeeze anything else out of our propulsion plant?”
“I don’t know this ship as well as the Specter. I wouldn’t dare push its limits beyond design.”
“I know that! Tell me what you see holding us back. Battery cell temperature, shaft torque, lube oil temperature. What limit are you up against? Even a quarter knot could make a difference!”
“Shaft torque. It’s twisted one and a quarter turns from the reduction gear to the stern bearing. That’s the design limit, and if I push it harder, our shaft could snap.”
“Shit. That’s a real limit.”
“I promise you, I understand the urgency. If there were another quarter knot to spare without risk of complete propulsion collapse, I would give it to you.”
“I know, but I had to ask. What about our battery? Is it going to hold?”
“Yes, you have twenty-two minutes until cell inversion.”
“Very well. Just keep it running back there.”
As he stowed the phone in its cradle, Henri stopped beside him and whispered.
“Should we prepare to abandon ship?”
Given his history, Jake had forced his staff to rehearse the procedure for driving to the surface and escaping out the hatches with lifeboats and small arms. He knew they could find their way off the Wraith within ninety seconds of giving the order.
“Wait,” he said. “Call me crazy, but I’ve actually got a feeling that we’ll be driving the Wraith home.”
CHAPTER 20
Three minutes into his evasion from the torpedo swarm, Jake recalculated geometries for the fifth time. Five phantoms and thirty-two inaccurate torpedoes had slipped into his recent nightmares, but four high-speed hunters appeared to have caught the Wraith’s scent.
Relieved, he realized that Otto fuel-powered propellers thrust the incoming agents of death towards him at fifty-eight knots. Given the extra breathing room versus his original assumption of sixty-five knots, he planned to reach the shoal’s southern tip seconds before all of the weapons.
Except one. Maybe.
“How does it look?” Henri asked.
“Come look,” Jake said.
“I grayed out this huge grouping on the right since they’re drawing behind us. Same for this smaller group on the left that’s drawing far enough ahead of us. Remy removed the false torpedoes.”
“I see two on intercept courses.”
“Correct. Those two are on intercept courses, and this one might pick us up when its seeker goes active. In fact, it might already hear us passively. But it’s less of a concern than those two.”
“And this one — ahead of us to the south?”
Jake looked at Henri.
“That one scares me the most. Its seeker’s going to go active in front of us. If it looks back over its shoulder far enough, it’s going to turn ninety degrees and come punch us in the face.”
“Sprinting into a torpedo is quite the opposite of prudent behavior, Jake.”
“You’d rather turn back into the other three?”
“Of course not. We’re damned either way. So what will you do if the lead weapon acquires us and turns?”
“Right now, I just hope that it doesn’t. Because if it does, it’s up to countermeasures, luck, and prayer.”
“You would consider prayer?”
“It’s a figure of speech.”
“Not really.”
“I meant whatever it takes.”
“That’s not how prayer works.”
“I don’t need a philosophy lesson now.”
Jake heard Remy stirring behind him.
“Active seekers! The torpedo seekers are starting to awake!”
“Very well, Antoine. What about the primary four?”
“Not yet. Soon. Yes! The first is active. Now the next.”
“Tell me if any of the four change course after they go active, especially the one in front.”
Tapping the map, Jake zoomed in on the shoals’ southern tip.
“Shall I prepare to abandon ship?” Henri asked.
“No. We’re half a mile from the turn. We can make it.”
“You mean, if the lead weapon doesn’t see us.”
“We’re on a good aspect. We’re almost bow on. It will minimize our sonar cross section.”
“Does that really matter?”
“A little. I’m trying to wish ourselves small.”
Jake turned and leaned over Remy’s shoulder.
“What’s going on with that lead weapon?”
“I think it’s active.”
“You don’t know? That’s good. That means its active seeker transmission isn’t reaching us.”
“Right. Count your blessings. We’re also positioning ourselves behind it. I think we’re okay.”
“Good. That leaves only the three in a tail chase.”
“You need to turn soon,” Remy said.
Jake turned and stooped over the chart as Henri returned to his control panel. The Wraith’s inertial navigation system placed the submarine a stone’s throw from the shoal. Allowing for the vessel’s advance and transfer, the display showed the tactical system’s calculated recommendation of the turn’s timing.
“Left full rudder!” Jake said. “Steer course zero-one-zero.”
As the Wraith rolled through the extreme about-face, he held the navigation table and monitored his position through the turn. The ship hugged the shallow rock.
“Get ready for gaseous countermeasures,” he said.
Keeping one hand on the rudder’s joystick, Henri stood and reached for a button.
“Ready.”
When the crosshair rounded the shoal, Jake recognized his opportunity to leave a blinding wall of bubbles behind him.
“Deploy gaseous countermeasures!”
Explosive gas hammered the hull as launchers spat compressed gas canisters into the sea. Jake tapped the display to mark the location for reference.
For a moment of ignorant bliss, effervescent water separated the Wraith from torpedo seekers.
“Do you hear anything?” Jake asked.
“Just our countermeasures and a lot of our own flow noise,” Remy said. “A full-speed turn with full rudder makes hearing anything almost impossible.”
“Keep listening.”
Henri released the joystick to set the rudder amidships.
“Steady on course zero-one-zero,” he said.
“Very well.”
“That’s it, then,” Henri said. “If we’ve left the torpedoes on the other side of the countermeasures and shoals, we survive. If a weapon passes through, however…”
Nobody cared to finish his sentence.
Time slipped forward in tortured agony as Jake caught himself seeking a conversation with a dubious deity about his survival. He made note that, if he survived, he would engage Henri in the philosophical discussion he had cut short moments earlier.