“Still, I sent down Sangos with crews of fifteen and a Romeo with fifty. And the crew of that Sango that refused to surface — they got to listen to their submarine creak and groan all the way to the bottom. Do you know how horrific that is? Can you think of a worse way to die?”
“Crucifixion, perhaps?”
“Oh for God’s sake, don’t throw Jesus at me now.”
“I won’t. But in fairness it was a defensible answer to your question. The ancient Romans perfected the arts of torture and death, and crucifixion was considered the epitome of agony. It was so bad that they wrote laws preventing its use on Roman citizens.”
“So Jesus suffered. I get it. But I’m suffering now, and I don’t see anyone helping me.”
“I’m helping you.”
“Really? How?”
Jake jammed the remnants of his lunch into his mouth. Henri took advantage of the break to eat a bite.
“Talk therapy,” Henri said. “And you don’t have to pay me.”
“My net worth is stupid big. The money isn’t a concern.”
“But I am making progress with you.”
“Really? Do tell.”
“Your stress isn’t just from killing. It’s from the decisions of killing and sparing. People who kill experience the stress. People who save lives do as well. That’s obvious. What’s worse is the decision. Nobody should have to make life and death decisions for other people, but you’re subject to it constantly.”
“Okay. So it sucks. That’s my life. You’re not exactly cheering me up.”
“But at least you know a problem you need to address.”
Jake gulped his juice.
“You mean that humans aren’t made for this.”
“Precisely. But it’s a reality, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. Your point?”
“It’s a reality which humans must face but which no human can be equipped for.”
“You mean I’m playing God. I get that. I’ve always gotten that. I don’t like it, and pointing it out without a solution doesn’t help anything.”
“There is only one logical conclusion. There’s a need for a god, and such a deity must exist. And it’s not you. When you realize that and follow the logic through to its conclusion, you’ll note a change in your demeanor.”
Jake pondered Henri’s words as he reclined into his rack. He planned a short nap, hoping to finish one rapid-eye-movement sleep cycle. When his alarm went off two hours later, sleep’s sneaky claws fought his effort to roll from his rack.
But he found his way to his personal plumbing. Avoiding the risk of shower noises, he ran baby wipes over his naked body and donned clean clothes. Though feeling his fatigue, he knew that the rest had benefited him.
He reached the elevated conning platform, and a glance at his display showed him seven miles behind the Kim, searching in a clockwise spiral. Deduced reckoning of the Goliath’s position showed the transport ship thirty minutes from its destination.
Wanting to believe that Cahill would make the rescue and egress look easy, he accepted that his vigilant search for hostile company played a vital role in preserving their victory.
He walked to the navigation chart, more to stimulate blood flow than to improve his tactical view. Bending, he allowed his head to drop and his fingers to reach the dusty deck plates. The stretch brought him back to reality in time for Julien’s report.
“Active return from drone two.”
The surprise elevated Jake’s awareness.
“Secure all active transmissions,” he said. “All stop. Bring the drones to all stop. Designate drone two’s new contact as Master Six. Get Master Six on the chart.”
The icon appeared on his display twelve miles from his ship. The triangle between the Specter, the Kim, and Master Six placed seventeen miles between the new threat and Cahill’s future work site.
“Shit,” Jake said. “I’ve got a decision to make.”
Henri’s understudy looked at him from the ship’s control station and shrugged.
“I need to decide whether to sink Master Six and risk that the noise attracts unwanted attention, stay here and police Master Six to make sure it doesn’t hear Terry when he’s working, or trust that Master Six won’t hear Terry and keep looking for other bad guys.”
“I don’t envy your captain’s job. Should I get Henri?”
“Yeah, get him,” Jake said. “This is one of those moments where I appreciate the old codger’s advice.”
CHAPTER 21
Cahill glared at the Goliath’s short-range, side-scan sonar. His eyes burned, and he looked away and blinked.
“Still nothing,” Walker said.
“Submarine warfare requires patience,” Cahill said. “Apparently so does submarine rescue.”
“We could turn the power up on our scanning sonar.”
“Not when we’re trying to maintain our stealth.”
“Right,” Walker said. “I get it. I don’t like it, but I get it. At least in surface warfare, it’s definitive.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean when you light up your radar, you expect to get a return from your target, but you also expect that you’re announcing your presence to the enemy. Down here, it’s a coin toss. We use our active sonar, and we may get the return we want, and we don’t know if our enemy hears us searching, even with this short-range high-precision scanning sonar. It just adds to the willies of the blindness.”
Cahill looked out the window at the pitch blackness and then shifted his eyes back to the sonar display.
“You get used to it.”
“I may never,” Walker said. “Jake placed us within a mile of it, but it’s still as invisible as if it didn’t exist.”
“We’ll find it. This search pattern will reveal it. We just need to be diligent.”
“Maybe not,” Walker said. “We may have just found what we’re looking for. Could that be it?”
An oblong shape took form on the display.
“We’ll know soon. Give it a moment.”
The significance of the image’s outline became undeniable.
“Securing the scanning sonar,” Cahill said. “We’ve got it. Let the crew know where it is and have them prepare for loading operations.”
“I’ll let the crew know,” Walker said. “It’s supposed to be waiting for us at fifty meters of depth. It looks more like sixty, but I won’t complain. We can handle that no problem.”
“Its crew probably had trouble getting it to a neutral trim. It’s a challenge to give a submarine an exact equal weight to the water around it so that you’re not sinking or rising with a level deck. I’ll give them a silver medal for getting it done within ten meters of the depth Pierre requested.”
“But it’s easy for us on the Goliath.”
“Yeah, because we’re built for it,” Cahill said. “You’re spoiled and you don’t know it. We have huge automated trim and drain pumps that are made to push high volumes of water for tight depth control when shallow. But true submarines are usually moving and can use their planes and ship’s angle to compensate for minor imperfections in their trim. And they need to go deeper than our pumps work. So no need and no use for the oversized, high-volume pumps.”
“But the Kim is getting no value from its planes or ship’s angle because it’s stranded.”
“Right.”
“Its heading appears to be about one-one-zero, based upon its hull length and trigonometry.”
“That’s a good estimate. I’ll position us behind it on that heading and drive us under it. Stand by for some more patient ship handling. This will be delicate.”