Glaring at Remy as he curled and then stiffened, his heart sank. In that moment, he understood the adage about there being no atheists in foxholes.
His face ashen, Remy was a talking corpse.
“Active torpedo seeker, bearing one-nine-zero.”
Jake swore under his breath.
“Fuck.”
“What do we do?” Henri asked.
Jake dropped his head between his shoulder blades and stared at the floor while announcing his defeat.
“Prepare to abandon ship.”
Sixty seconds later, the control room had emptied of all but four men. Jake stood at the charting table beside Henri and Lieutenant Santos while Remy stayed at his sonar console.
“I suppose Claude stuck around the engine room.”
The response came from a loudspeaker.
“Of course,” LaFontaine said. “I will see to it that this engine room continues running as long as you are aboard.”
“What about you, Lieutenant Santos? You could join the men by the exits.”
The young officer looked at Jake with defiance.
“No, I can’t. Whatever fate you’re facing, I’m facing it with you.”
“So be it,” Jake said. “Antoine, do you have an updated solution to that torpedo?”
“The countermeasures bought us thirty seconds. It’s going to reach us in two minutes.”
“Santos,” Jake said. “Where can we cross the shoals into the lagoon? The Sierra Madre did it seventeen years ago. We can do it, too.”
“It was farther north,” Santos said.
“Antoine,” Jake said, “if I deploy countermeasures, I can buy fifteen to thirty seconds per batch.”
“That’s only going to delay the inevitable, Jake. It’s over.”
“I agree,” Santos said. “The Sierra Madre’s crossover point was too far away.”
“Damn. I was afraid of that. Can we cross anywhere else? Keep in mind that our draft is twenty feet when surfaced.”
“There’s nothing deep enough, at least nothing we can reach in time.”
In desperation, Jake scanned the chart for inspiration. Nothing came to mind other than abandoning the ship he had stolen. Surfacing the Wraith would make him a target for Chinese guns and missiles, but he preferred facing those speculative dangers over a torpedo rupturing his hull.
“Henri,” he said. “We need to surface.”
“Are you sure?”
“It’s time. And since we’re shallow, drive us up and use our high-pressure air banks to blow our ballast tanks dry.”
“I shall see to it.”
As the deck angled upward, Jake walked to the conning platform and raised the periscope.
“Raise the radio mast, Henri.”
Seconds later, the tactical scene merged data from the Philippine control center with that of the Wraith’s organic Subtics system.
Grayed out, the surviving frigate and corvettes appeared as lifeless icons, special notes beside them proclaiming that each ship had fallen dead in the water and had surrendered. Jake deduced that the railgun had inflicted the requisite damage on their engines.
Had his mortal terror allowed it, he would have felt a vengeful pleasure in seeing the gray icon of the destroyer. The note beside it indicated that a torpedo from the Wraith had snapped its keel. However, it had met its demise within cannon range of the railgun module, and he worried about his mission and the stronghold’s survival.
A familiar voice on a loudspeaker offered him insight.
“Jake! Jake!” Renard said.
“I’m here, Pierre. Getting ready to abandon ship. I’ve got about ninety seconds. Did I at least protect the module?
“Yes. Mostly. The destroyer landed a dozen shells before your torpedo hit. The armor on the southeast corner collapsed, but you spared the expensive inner equipment.”
“Well, that’s good to hear. Sorry I couldn’t spare your submarine, though. I’m about to give it back to the ocean.”
“I see your predicament on the tactical feed,” Renard said. “Your escape plan was brilliant, evading thirty-five of thirty-six torpedoes.”
“Let’s finish this talk later. I need to go swimming.”
“Before you do that, try extending your run a bit with more countermeasures.”
“Sure. Why not? It can’t hurt. Henri, go ahead and launch another pair of compressed gas countermeasures.”
As the popping thuds echoed through the Wraith’s ribs, Jake called out to Pierre.
“I really need to go now,” he said.
“Do you? Look again. Do you see the Alcatraz?”
He had ignored the gray icon of the burning hulk, which had moved within three miles of his submarine.
“What are you doing?” Jake asked.
“The Alcatraz is a lost cause, but it still has propulsion. When I saw the task force shoot its torpedo arsenal at you, I figured you might need the help.”
“Help? Explain.”
“Consider it a gift for a tactic that we’ve used before.”
Jake scanned his memory banks for abnormal tactics he’d used over ten years of extreme submarining.
“You want me to do what we did with the Bainbridge?”
“Yes, but the inverse. Sacrifice the surface ship. Save yourself — and my investment.”
“Are there still people aboard the Alcatraz?”
“The throttles are pinned open, and the captain is the last man aboard piloting the ship. A helicopter is hovering above the bridge with a hoist for him.”
“When will he jump?”
“Right after his bow passes yours.”
“Then I don’t need to do anything but launch another set of countermeasures, head topside, and wait, do I?”
“For your safety and that of the crew, I recommend that you send everyone overboard. Helicopters and gunboats will retrieve you.”
“The torpedo has circled back and has passed through our countermeasures,” Remy said. “I estimate sixty seconds until impact.”
“Henri, deploy another pair of gaseous countermeasures.”
The hull thudded with the deployment.
“Now launch our noisemaker countermeasure from the three-inch launcher.”
Henri pressed a button.
“The noisemaker is launched.”
“The torpedo has ignored the gaseous countermeasures,” Remy said. “It doesn’t appear to acknowledge our noisemaker either. No change to torpedo behavior.”
“It’s over guys! Claude, do you hear me?”
“Yes, Jake,” LaFontaine said.
“Get off this ship! Everyone goes overboard! Now!”
Sultry air became a moist artificial wind across Jake’s cheeks as he stood on the Wraith’s bow. Fires dotted the night, orienting him in the moonlit darkness.
Residual oil from the burning landing craft Sierra Madre cast dim light on the railgun module, but distance prevented him from seeing the damage with his naked eyes.
To the north, the Gregorio del Pilar appeared as two fires under a canopy of black clouds that blocked starlight. Further west, three clusters of small fires, barely visible on the horizon, showed the resting place of the three surrendered Chinese ships.
A mile away, the green running light of a gunboat offered his crew refuge from the sea through which they swam, and elevated white lights undulating with rotating rhythm pinpointed a waiting helicopter.
Dead ahead, blazing so brightly that its fires reflected off the submarine’s bow wake, the sprinting Alcatraz offered its dying mass as a sacrifice to the Wraith.