“And it proves that their anti-submarine tactics work.”
“Agreed. Do not take them lightly.”
“I won’t,” Jake said.
He reflected upon his mentor’s comment about arrogance. The manifestations of a divine god in all the religions he studied abhorred hubris, and he considered it human nature to find arrogance repulsive. But he recognized that any successful submarine commander needed to ooze confidence.
Sensing his mind slipping into the abyss of a looping argument between the humility of human limits and a commander’s need for perfection, he fidgeted. Then, clenching his teeth, he dissipated his frustration into his jaw muscles as he felt the aircraft stop and hover.
“You’re first,” Renard said.
Jake looked up and saw a crewman holding a harness and gesturing with his free glove for him to stand. He obeyed, and after a minute of contortions, he stared through the faceplate of a helmet at the bulge in his crotch. He yanked his groin straps and fumbled with his genitals until convinced of their safety.
The crewman reached, and the door crashed open, revealing darkness. Jake eased to the lip of the exit and slid his feet backward out of the helicopter until he felt the cable bear his weight. Releasing himself, he waved goodbye to Renard and slipped below the aircraft.
As he started twirling, he focused on the spinning black form of the Specter below. Happy he had kept an empty stomach, he tightened his abdomen on the way down.
When his vision paralleled the tanker’s deck, he felt a hook latching onto his backside, and the spinning stopped. Moments later, he pressed his tennis shoes against steel and recognized the face of Claude LaFontaine, his longtime friend and the Specter’s engineer. He kissed the air beside his cheeks and screamed over the rotor wash.
“Good to see you, Claude!”
“And you, Jake. Take off your harness and helmet and head below. You’ll recognize much of the crew that’s already aboard.”
Beside LaFontaine stood a pair of Korean rescue swimmers. Trusting that his engineer and the hook-wielding helpers would get his newest crewmen to the submarine, he started towards the hatch.
But the view slowed him, and he stopped to take it in.
An enormous catamaran, the Goliath and its rakish bows extended into the night. Illuminated by internal lighting, the domed bridge sent checkered radiance into the sky. The forward sections appeared capable of slicing waves.
The sterns of both hulls also tapered upwards towards fantails to allow for surface-combat weaponry. He recognized the railguns and the radar system.
Submerged cylinders of equal girth to the Specter connected the customized bows and sterns of each hull. Fuel lines reached from the tanker to the Goliath’s black arcs jutting above the dark waves. Taking in a final impression of the majestic transport ship, Jake scurried into his submarine.
Familiarity.
The ship he had commanded in protecting Taiwan and then the Falkland Islands felt safe and comforting, like a womb. Memory guided his walk to the control room.
He passed through a doorway and positioned himself behind the shiny railing of the elevated conning platform.
The metal casing that housed the consoles and monitors of the Subtics tactical system seemed shiny, and he realized that Renard had paid the Taiwanese maintenance crew to polish the interior.
Key familiar faces greeted him. To his left, before one of six dual-stacked Subtics panels, sat his sonar systems expert, Antoine Remy. Like all his aces, Remy had honed his skills in the French Navy prior to recruitment to Pierre Renard’s mercenary fleet.
To his right, seated in front of panels and gauges that controlled the ship’s skeletal and cardiovascular systems, the white-haired, sharp-featured Henri Lanier epitomized dignity in stature, appearance, and knowledge of any moving part of a submarine.
A few younger French-trained mercenaries, familiar from past missions spanning from the recapture of an Israeli submarine in the Atlantic Ocean to the defense of Philippine land in the Spratly Islands, sat in front of consoles.
“Did you miss us?” Henri asked.
Before Jake could answer, the smiling Frenchman crossed the deck plates, grabbed his shoulders, and kissed the air beside his jaw. Then Remy, his toad-like head appearing oversized for his body, joined Henri.
“It is good to see you, Jake,” Remy said.
The younger sailors then greeted their commander.
“It’s great to see you guys,” Jake said. “I never thought we’d reunite for a mission on top of an armed, high-speed dry dock.”
“It’s so much more than that,” Henri said. “At first, I argued with Pierre that it would be wiser to purchase a third submarine. But then he explained the Goliath’s design. It has tactical merit far beyond that of a transport vessel.”
“It’s too loud and deaf for combat against submarines. I hope Terry recognizes this and keeps it out of my way.”
Jake recalled having expressed prior concerns about his Australian colleague’s abilities and having eaten his words.
“Terry has already proven himself,” Henri said.
“I know,” Jake said. “Any lesser of a commander, and I wouldn’t be here. This rescue is going to tricky enough, even with the best people working it.”
CHAPTER 10
Jake hid in the captain’s stateroom, separating himself from fellow humans to face his parasitic demons.
The strange absence of pre-combat jitters created a void and let an unsettling sensation cloud his mind. He sought to frame the feeling but failed, leaning back in his chair like a zombie.
A broken home had skewed his childhood worldview. A malicious exchange of HIV-positive blood and subsequent wrongful expulsion from naval submarine duty had made him vengeful. He knew that people considered him an angry person, but something seemed different this time.
He felt angrier than normal, and this mission felt incomplete.
“What’s wrong with me?”
From nowhere, the answer struck him — the lost anticipation of alcohol.
With the pill-driven death of his drinking desire, he lacked the expectancy of drowning himself in his usual post-mission hazy euphoria. Renard’s intervention had broken his cycle of tasting fear, riding adrenaline through battle, and then returning home to douse his emotions.
He realized that if he survived rescuing the Kim, he would face the post-traumatic turmoil without his comforting chemical crutch. The demons of fear and anger dwelling inside him would rise unchecked, and the prospect of weathering such a storm scared him.
He rolled the chair forward, folded his elbows to his knees, and lowered his head to his hands.
“Shit,” he said.
Philosophical sentiments rolled through his mind as he groped for solace. Randomly, the concept of Zen landed first in his thoughts.
Years of Buddhist studies had frustrated him, highlighting the strength of his demons and the weakness of his efforts to control them. Endless sitting meditations, readings, and discussions about denying desires to escape suffering had exhausted him, and he had abandoned the practice.
Buddhism would not fill the alcohol gap.
Taoism had crept into his awareness through his martial arts training, but after studying it, he considered it a temporary optimizing of harmony with nature’s forces. But it failed to resolve any deep problems, such as keeping its practitioners from reaching their graves. He instead had tried going the other way of indulgence.
With his enormous net worth, he had explored materialism as his mechanism to decompress. Five-star dinners, luxury hotel rooms, and travel to exotic destinations on a whim had garnered his attention for the early years of his wealth, but every effort to pamper himself had left him empty, questioning his purpose.