He couldn’t buy a substitute for his escape into alcohol.
Violence — dominating others with his will — had held appeal in his past. Revenge had driven him to steal his Trident missile submarine, killing dozens in the flight. His post-treason life had then centered around lethal submarine missions, and he had lost count of the hundreds of men he had doomed to watery graves. Anger had even compelled him to beat a man to death with his bare hands.
The result — guilt and emptiness.
Violence offered no sanctuary from the cauldron of his emotions, leaving him no shelter except alcohol.
He had considered other activities and ingestion addictions, but the logical endpoint for each was a circling back to its starting point. Excessive exercise, adrenaline sports, and martial arts provided temporary distractions, but they changed nothing about his philosophy. And new chemical indulgences seemed fruitless with their destructive effects and limited highs beyond that of alcohol.
Though temporary, cyclical, and damaging, alcohol had been his only reliable escape. But with the pills having removed his craving, he now faced the frightening void.
Knowing that nature abhors a vacuum, he predicted that anger, and the other dark emotions it masked, would consume the space that alcohol had relinquished.
He had forgotten a time when anger seemed distant. It lurked below the foreground, waiting to explode when his efforts to restrain it failed. Without the safe harbor of inebriation, he knew he would struggle harder to contain the rage.
But he found it odd that people considered him angry. The feeling seemed the normal, base human state. He wondered how anyone could examine the human condition and conclude anything beyond hopeless misery. Anyone who’s paying attention to mankind’s lot should be infuriated.
Why didn’t this truth aggravate everyone? Did people ignore it? Were others angry but better at controlling it? Did they see a way around the impasse to which he was blind?
Seeking answers led him into a logical corner. Sampling and then rejecting the worldly philosophies and distractions had forced him to investigate the evidence underlying organized religions.
The endless controversy about the existence of an omniscient god suggested a need for the universe’s uncreated creator that varied in essence from a random force to the personalized gods of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Regardless of the essence, every logical path he followed to understand a creator required a leap of faith beyond the known and knowable laws of nature.
That meant a need to account for the supernatural.
During his reflections, the possibility of the supernatural had cracked his defensive shell and had taken root in his mind. The seed planted, all spiritual doors swung open, and he doubted he could draw a conclusion if given a lifetime to examine the mountains of evidence behind the monotheistic beliefs, their countless offshoots, Hinduism, or any other school of religion.
The daunting task of exploring faith-based existences while racing the ticking clock of his life exacerbated his frustration. But at least, he realized as the Specter’s deck rolled, it could fill a void.
“Interesting,” he said.
He straightened his back as he acknowledged that he could divert his frustrations into research. Perhaps he could feed his mind the essential knowledge behind mankind’s purpose to fill the void of alcohol and diffuse his anger. The thought offered him a chance at sanity after the mission.
It was the best he could fathom, and it kept his demons in check. But first, he had to survive rescuing the Kim.
The Specter heaved and redirected his thoughts to the pending dangers he faced off the North Korean coast. He stood, left his stateroom, and closed the door. After a quick walk to the control room, he grabbed the polished rail that encircled the raised conning platform.
The deck dipped and rebounded, knocking him off balance. He swore as he caught himself with the rail.
“God damn it!”
Henri gave him an inquisitive stare.
“Sorry,” Jake said. “I’m a bit torqued, that’s all.”
“Indeed,” Henri said. “You’re not one to let the anticipation of combat consume you, but you’ve seemed on edge lately.”
Jake appreciated the candor of his French accomplice. He counted on Henri to state his mind, and his directness had saved their lives in the past.
“Just not used to being rattled in this cage,” he said. “Can it get any worse?”
“Sometimes,” Henri said. “Such is life as the cargo of the Goliath.”
“At least guys on the Goliath can take breaks and look out the window. This isn’t right for guys stuck inside steel.”
“I’m sure it’s this bad on frigates,” Henri said. “And imagine how it is on even smaller ships.”
“No thanks. I did my first summer cruise at the academy on a cruiser. That was bad enough in the Atlantic. Then they made me ride a shitty little yard patrol craft for three days the following year. It was a puke fest. After that, I wised up, and it’s been submarines ever since. Until now, sort of.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it, Jake. We’re close to the drop off point.”
Jake glanced at a navigational display showing fifteen minutes before he would detach from the transport ship.
“Where were you?” Henri asked. “You’re not one to remain behind a locked door for long.”
The question caught him off guard. He lied.
“I was just pondering some of the mission essentials. Trying to think if we forgot to analyze anything.”
“Did you come up with anything?”
The Frenchman having called his bluff, Jake prepared to brush off the question with a negative response. But a random flash of inspiration shot through his mind.
“Yeah,” he said. “I actually had an interesting idea. You can listen in while I run it by Terry.”
He tapped a screen and waited for Cahill’s voice to render over the loudspeaker.
“How are you, mate?”
“Good, Terry.”
“What’s on your mind?”
“I thought maybe you could create a diversion to get us in closer to the Kim and also cripple a few North Korean ships while you’re at it.”
“I’m listening. Go on.”
“You have five hundred total rounds in your railgun magazines, right?”
“Right. Two-fifty per hull.”
“What say you put two rounds into each engine room of the closest hundred ships to the Gwansun?”
The silent pause left Jake wondering if he had asked a stupid question.
“Brilliant!” Cahill said.
“I was afraid you’d call me an imbecile.”
“I’m ashamed I didn’t think of it meself. There’s no way we’re going to run out of ammo on this mission. I may as well make the area around the Gwansun appear like our destination by raining down hell there.”
“Glad you like the idea.”
“Like it? I love it. It’ll take some heat off the Gwansun, focus the North Koreans’ attention in that area, and give us more breathing room to maneuver in closer to the Kim before submerging. Who knows, I might even disable a few ships, like you said.”
“You’ll need to attack the ships while they’re broadside to you, right? It’s the only way you can get a clean shot at their engine rooms, despite the fact that a bow or stern shot rakes the ship and does more total damage. These railgun rounds just keep going through metal, like cannon shot through the old wooden ships.”