“There’s a ton of shipping out there,” he said. “We’ll blend in just fine.”
“Hide in plain sight, right?”
“Right. Don’t you have a ship of your own to command?”
“Liam’s got it. I just wanted to see you in person before things get too intense.”
“I appreciate it. But it’s going to stay boring long before it gets intense. We’ve got a lot of time for social calls.”
“Four days to the Strait of Malacca, assuming we can sustain this speed and don’t have to submerge.”
“How fast is our top speed with this exoskeleton?”
“I took it to twenty knots with the engines at eighty percent. Pierre didn’t want me to push it further for fear of ripping off our camouflage, but I think we could get twenty-two, maybe twenty-three knots if needed.”
“Shit, that’s slow.”
“For the Goliath, yes. For the freighter we’re supposed to be, it’s admirable. Anyway, we can make about only nine knots submerged while this fake ship is covering us”
“Sounds like we can average our charted speed of seventeen knots. That’s four days to Singapore, then twelve days to the Suez. You’ll have plenty of time to visit me.”
“Are you trying to get rid of me?”
“I’d feel better knowing the Goliath is in your hands.”
“Well, let me finish updating you, and then I’ll leave. We can blow the exoskeleton off at any time, but we’ll have shards of scaffolding attached until we can unscrew them all.”
“How many to unscrew?”
“Nearly three hundred.”
“So, we’ll look like a pin cushion for a while if it comes down to it. What else?”
“I can fire all me externally mounted weapons with the exoskeleton still in place. Pierre assures me they’ll hit the water and dive below the bulkheads. But if we need any of me other torpedoes, I need to blow the scaffolding.”
Jake envisioned an exception.
“What about your railguns?” he asked.
“I can shoot them through the bulkheads without blowing the scaffolding, but it would be messy.”
“What about sonar?”
“Just need to consider that the hull-mounted systems are a bit degraded by the exoskeleton being in the way and by its flow noise.”
“Our improved communications?”
“The laser system will shift frequency within the blue-green spectrum if the signal fades, to try to penetrate whatever color of water we’re dealing with. It’s got great bandwidth and is undetectable, but we need to be within fifty meters of each other for it to work. Otherwise, we’re stuck with the acoustic phone like the old days.”
“The laser communications work when we’re surfaced, too, right?”
“Of course. We’re as good as being on the same ship as far as sharing data goes.”
One of Jake’s displays showed the innards of the Goliath’s bridge. Walker stood at its far end.
“Can you hear me, Liam?” he asked.
The former Australian frigate officer raised his thumb, and Jake looked back to Cahill.
“What languages do you have covered with translators?”
“I’ve got two translators covering Korean, Chinese, English, Russian, and Arabic.”
“Why Korean?”
“By accident. Dr. Tan speaks it, but he’s our Chinese translator, and he also speaks pretty good Russian. I wanted him because he handled the pressure well in Korea.”
“You have a super-fluent Russian translator, I hope.”
“That’s the other academic type. He also speaks the right dialect of Arabic to cover us around the Saudi Peninsula.”
“That’s all I can think to ask,” Jake said.
“I won’t be far if you think of something else. I’ll get back to me own ship now.”
Cahill turned his head to the display as he stood. The icon marking the Goliath-Specter tandem crossed the hydrophone array and entered the South China Sea.
“We’re outside of Taiwan’s protective naval reach now,” he said. “The Goliath needs its leader.”
CHAPTER 7
The announcement sent a spike of adrenaline up Jake’s spine.
“Chinese warship approaching,” Cahill said.
With the Akula having returned to the Russian Far East for lack of a mercenary submerged target, Jake calculated that his freedom from a foreign threat had lasted less than two days. But he registered the tension level in the Australian’s voice as below an immediate crisis. He tapped an icon and shifted his screen from raw sonar data to an overhead view of shipping.
A red icon of a surface combatant appeared outside the fifty-mile ring surrounding the Goliath-Specter tandem.
Nothing seemed suspicious until he tapped another icon to add speed leaders to his picture. The warship barreled towards him at twenty-seven knots.
“I see it. Is this information coming from the Hawkeye?”
“That’s right,” Cahill said. “From our eye in the sky.”
Jake reflected that Taiwanese E-2 Hawkeye patrols were offering him coverage to the Straits of Malacca, after which he expected support from other nations friendly to Renard.
Knowing that the exoskeleton covered the Goliath’s masts, he looked to the Specter’s sensors. Since he wanted to avoid drawing attention, he kept the submarine in listening mode with darkened radar, but his electronic support measures suite sniffed a Chinese long-range Type-517 detection system.
“It could be any sort of Chinese warship,” he said.
“Wait,” Cahill said. “There’s separation on radar. Make it two Chinese warships.”
“Their course and speed don’t mean they have any interest in us. They could just be heading to a patrol area in the Paracels or the Spratlys.”
“Right, mate. What should we do, if anything?”
Jake glared at his screen.
“First, stay calm,” he said. “We’ve got so many options with this camouflage that it’s mind-boggling. We may be able to mind our own business and avoid them, but get your translator to the bridge just in case.”
“He’s on his way.”
Jake brooded in silence as minutes ticked away, and the Chinese combatants continued on an intercept course.
“Terry?” he asked.
“Still here.”
“Am I being paranoid if I think that this intercept geometry is no accident?”
“No idea, mate. But here’s the rub. Our radar is dark. So as far as they’re concerned, we have no way of knowing where they are. If we react to them by changing course or speed, they’ll know we’re getting radar information from somewhere else.”
“We could submerge and just confuse them.”
“You know better than that.”
“I do. It would draw attention and probably turn us into easy prey for a helicopter or two. I’m just thinking out loud.”
When the dubious threat reached thirty miles away, Jake heard an authoritative voice in Mandarin over his loud speaker.
“Shit,” he said. “Is that them? Can your translator tell?”
His display showed a short man with thick glasses on the Goliath’s bridge.
“We are being hailed,” Doctor Tan said. “At least I believe it’s us. He’s giving coordinates to identify who he’s talking to.”
“Write them down,” Jake said. “Let’s be sure it’s us.”
“I didn’t hear them all.”
“I’ll replay it for you.”
Jake looked to Henri, who nodded and tapped a screen to replay the message. Murmurs from the Goliath revealed that Tan and Cahill translated the coordinates.
“It’s us, Jake,” Cahill said.
Angrier, the same Chinese spokesman hailed again.