“Understand. Go shallow. Prepare to surface and sprint. Over.”
“Roger, going shallow. Preparing to surface and sprint. Over.”
“Very well. Out.”
Jake looked to Henri and saw the disapproving expression that dug a pit in his stomach. He wondered if he had just erred and doomed his team with his aggressiveness.
Demons inside him clawed at his mind, craving the self-destruction of second guessing. But he had stared them down before and survived.
“Nothing yet, Antoine?” he asked. “No counter-fire?”
“No, nothing yet. But be patient. Master Four is close and will launch soon. It’s a Yono class submarine.”
“How can you tell?”
“I can practically hear the crew breathing. You need to take this torpedo evasion as seriously as any one you’ve ever undertaken.”
“I am. What about Master Three?”
“We’re opening range. Every second it doesn’t shoot is a second in our favor that we may get lucky and escape it unheard.”
“But Master Four?”
“Torpedo in the water! Master Four just shot!”
“Be calm,” Jake said. “We knew this was coming. We’re already on the proper evasion course.”
“Another torpedo from the Yono!”
“That’s all it has. It only has two tubes. Stay calm. Antoine, track them. Noah, take control of weapon one. Julien, take control of weapon two.”
“My wire broke,” Julien said. “I have no control over weapon one.”
“That’s fine,” Jake said. “Master Four is a sitting duck at this range anyway.”
“I have solutions to the incoming torpedoes,” Remy said.
Jake looked over his sonar expert’s shoulder. The first weapon vectored ahead of him while the second boxed him in from behind.
“Shit.”
“I’m estimating an optimum evasion course,” Remy said. “I don’t like what I see.”
“Just recommend it.”
“We need to stay where we are on course two-eight-one. It keeps us away from the incoming weapon to the north, and it puts us thirty degrees off a tail chase from the weapon to the south.”
“Perfect. Thirty degrees opens range while sliding us out of the weapon’s seeker cone. We’ll stay on this course.”
“The incoming weapon is a Russian Type 53K. I can tell by its blades and its seeker, which just went active. I estimate that it’s four miles behind us, or, rather behind the Goliath. It’s a coin toss which one of us the weapon will acquire.”
“Weapon speed?”
“Forty-five knots.”
“That’s twenty-five knots of net closure to cover four miles,” Jake said. “More than seven minutes before it would catch us. That’s enough time to take action.”
“But not enough time to exhaust the weapon’s fuel,” Remy said. “The weapon has an expected range of ten and a half miles. The Subtics system says that the weapon will have more than three miles of range remaining when it reaches us.”
“We’re not optimized in this evasion. We can do better. We can make more speed, as can the Goliath. What’s our system say for our optimum evasion speed?”
“Exactly all out,” Remy said. “Twenty-five knots. If our MESMA system stays up and running, we can get twelve minutes of sprinting out of the battery. And twelve minutes is when the torpedo would catch us. Accelerating to twenty-five knots would also reduce the torpedo’s margin to a mile and a half, but it would still reach us.”
“What if Terry goes to twenty-five knots?”
Remy tapped buttons to pull up the Goliath’s technical data.
“His batteries are much smaller, and his ship is much larger. So even with his extra MESMA systems, he’s at a disadvantage. His batteries will die in ten minutes.”
“That’s fine.”
“You would sacrifice him?” Henri asked.
Jake had a desperate plan, but he realized that all his plans appeared desperate until they worked. He kept his deepest thoughts to himself while orchestrating the two-ship evasion. He faced his French mechanic.
“Just trust me. I’ve got a plan. Make sure I’m lined up at full power to talk to Terry.”
“You have full power.”
Jake trotted to the conning platform and grabbed the microphone.
“Make turns for twenty-five knots. That’s two-fiver knots. Over.”
“Making turns for twenty-five knots. Time on the battery is ten minutes. Over.”
“Understand ten minutes. Out.”
Jake slammed the handset back into its cradle.
“Henri, make turns for twenty-five knots.”
“Making turns for twenty-five knots. Get ready for Claude to complain.”
“Talk to him. If the limit on our speed is shaft torque, that’s fine. If he complains about anything else, I want to know.”
Jake moved to the navigation plot to give himself a larger field of view of the scenario.
“You were right,” Henri said. “Claude says the shaft torque is at its maximum design limit. You can’t go any faster without risking it cracking.”
“We’re going fast enough,” Jake said. “I trust the system’s recommendation. It makes sense. Now the trick is to outsmart this old weapon. It can be fooled. Get gaseous countermeasures ready.”
“Gaseous countermeasures are now armed and ready for deployment,” Henri said.
“Deploy gaseous countermeasures!”
Explosive gas hammered the hull as launchers spat canisters into the sea. Pressing his palm into the navigation chart, Jake tapped the display to mark the location for reference.
For a moment of ignorant bliss, effervescent water masked the Specter from the torpedo.
“How’s the Goliath doing?” Jake asked.
“I track it at twenty-five knots, right behind and above us,” Remy said.
“Above. He’s shallow. Any hull popping?”
“I might have heard some, but it’s not what I’m paying attention to, to be honest.”
“I’ll assume Terry’s shallow. So was the submarine that shot at us. I’m assuming the weapon is shallow, too.”
“All reasonable assumptions,” Remy said. “Where are you going with this?”
“Deep,” Jake said. “Deep enough to escape the incoming torpedo seeker’s acquisition cone vertically. Normally, I’d expect the weapon to follow us, but in this case, I think it’ll stay on Terry. And when I tell him, Terry will hit the surface, turn on his gas turbines, and leave the weapon in his dust.”
“Perhaps,” Henri said.
Jake cringed at the Frenchman’s stern paternal tone.
“But you might be sending him to the wolves,” Henri said. “You don’t know what’s on the surface out there. You don’t know how many more submarines may be around him.”
“The Goliath is built to fight, and Terry knows how. Let’s just get away from this torpedo first and debate Terry’s surface tactics next. Antoine, how long until the torpedo reaches our countermeasures?”
“Two minutes and ten seconds.”
“Now’s the time to dive, while it’s blinded to us.”
“Agreed,” Remy said.
“Henri, announce to the crew to brace for a steep angle. Then make your depth three hundred meters, smartly.”
As the deck dipped twenty-five degrees downward, Jake hiked up to the conning platform, stuck his tennis shoe onto the railing for balance, and grabbed the microphone.
“Comms check. Over.”
“Comms check, satisfactory. Over,” Cahill said.
“Perform comms check with me every thirty seconds. Over.”
“Roger, comms check with you every thirty seconds. Over.”
“If comms check fails, surface and sprint to twelve miles separation from shooting submarine. Over.”