“But the dolphins are still pinging on us?”
“Yes, the dolphins know where we are, but I imagine that they can’t tell the Kilo with enough accuracy to shoot us. Look at the data Pierre sent about using dolphins in undersea tactics.”
“Sorry, Antoine, I’ve been busy. I’ll trust you for now.”
“Yes, trust me. It’s good to be far from the dolphins.”
“Let’s keep it that way.”
“I think they’ll follow the Goliath because of its speed and noise. It’s a far more interesting target.”
“Has Terry shot yet?”
“Yes. He’s porpoising. He’s shot his cannon three times.”
“Any sign yet of a hit?”
“I can’t tell if they damage a helicopter unless they splash it.”
“But the Goliath hasn’t been hit?”
Jake avoided appending the word ‘yet’ to his question, refusing to utter the negative thought.
“No, absolutely not. That I would hear.”
“No need to listen,” Jake said. “Let Julien listen to the Goliath’s battle. I want you to track the incoming torpedo.”
As Jake looked to his display and saw the Kilo’s weapon approaching his port flank, an alarm whined.
“Silence that.”
“Active torpedo seeker alarm,” Remy said. “The Kilo’s weapon just went active.”
“Are we in its acquisition cone?”
“Marginal. It’s hard to tell. We’ll know in about fifteen seconds as it hopefully crosses our stern.”
“Brace for impact,” Henri said. “Bottoming the ship.”
“Perfect timing,” Jake said.
With the torpedo having energized its active acoustic seeker, he decided that minimizing the Specter’s reflective surfaces offered his best hope of survival. He eliminated his ship’s entire bottom as a liability.
He held the railing as his knees buckled and the hull scraped the sediments.
“We’re still moving at quarter of a knot,” Henri said. “But we’re slowing.”
“Let friction stop us.”
“The torpedo has passed through our baffles,” Remy said. “It’s following the Goliath.”
Julien, a young sailor who had earned Jake’s respect during the rescue of a South Korean submarine, turned his head and pulled back an ear piece.
“Something just splashed into the water, bearing two-six-eight. I think it’s a helicopter.”
“It could be any of the vampires running out of fuel,” Jake said. “Make sure you got it right.”
“He’s got it right,” Remy said. “I heard it, too. And I hear the first vampires splashing as they run out of fuel.”
“I thought I told you to listen for the torpedo.”
“You did, but you didn’t say I couldn’t listen for anything else. You know me. I like to listen, and I’m surprised I don’t hear Terry pumping his fists in the air for shooting down his targets.”
“How could you possibly hear that?”
“I can’t. But what I can hear is that he’s either out of range of my hearing, or he’s stopped shooting.”
“Nothing’s out of range of your hearing.”
“That’s why I know he’s done shooting. I think he shot down all the helicopters.”
CHAPTER 11
Volkov released the railing, looked down, and watched the color return to his knuckles.
“We’ve escaped the second torpedo,” the sonar operator said. “There are no remaining threats to our ship.”
“Are the weapons a threat to any friendly assets?”
“No, sir. They’ll run out of fuel before reaching the coast.”
He studied the display by his side and eyeballed the worst-case scenario. The luckiest steering command to the closest torpedo would exhaust its fuel before acquiring the Krasnodar, provided he continued southwest — the direction of his adversary’s escape.
Glancing at the latest data update, he digested his fleet’s status. The stranded and impotent Muromets fought fires and flooding, three anti-submarine helicopters were downed, and the salvo of anti-ship missiles had splashed.
His new enemy, which the fleet had identified as the mercenary transport vessel, Goliath, working in tandem with its Scorpène-class submarine, Specter, had broken the bridge and pipeline under his guard. Redemption meant revenge, and revenge meant redemption. For his sanity and self-respect, he had to bring the assailants to justice.
And he would have help. The sizeable surface fleet sprang to action, the huge Slava cruiser leading the high-speed chase. The Goliath may have surprised and overpowered a Grisha corvette, but against the rest of the Black Sea Fleet, it and the Specter would succumb.
Long-range, long-endurance, anti-submarine aircraft zipped ahead of the enemy with the intent of dropping hardware to block the exit through the Bosporus. His sister Kilo-class submarines lagged behind him — one trapped in the Sea of Azov behind the bridge’s cleanup effort, the rest getting underway from Novorossiysk. That suited him. If the Goliath-Specter tandem dared to remain submerged, the battle was his.
The Black Sea provided the bulwarks that penned in his prey, and he would track them down. But the sick suspicion that an adversary smart enough to launch a sneak attack of guarded assets was also smart enough to escape from the Black Sea worried him.
“I’ve received the new submerged threat signal, again,” the trainer said. “This battle is confusing them.”
“Just ignore it. Keep them chasing the Goliath-Specter.”
Volkov found the dolphins’ repeated reports of submerged contacts annoying as downed helicopters and splashing missiles had taxed their ability to report data.
“I’ll do my best. They lost a lot of ground when the Goliath-Specter surfaced. I don’t know if they’re catching up or falling behind now with the Goliath-Specter submerged.”
Volkov’s request to fleet headquarters for damage reports of the Goliath revealed that the transport ship’s port cannon had failed. The helicopter crews had been obsessed with survival at the expense of gathering additional useful data, and without evidence to the contrary, he estimated that the dolphins had planted their explosives over a free-flooding tank or other area of minimal impact.
“All ahead standard,” he said. “Make turns for fifteen knots.”
The gray-bearded veteran seated at the ship’s control panel acknowledged the order.
“Time on the battery is three hours at that speed, while the fuel-cell system remains online,” the veteran said. “It’s one hour, twenty minutes without the fuel-cell system.”
“Very well. Chart me a course to the Bosporus, minimum transit time, assuming the fuel-cell system stays online, and assuming maximum speed when snorkeling.”
After the veteran acknowledged and turned to begin his calculation, Volkov realized that his opponent needed to follow a random zigzagging course to reach the Bosporus. Otherwise, a direct course would simplify the search for the new wave of helicopters that would seek the Goliath-Specter tandem.
“I estimate that we’ll get there three to five hours before the Goliath-Specter,” the veteran said. “It depends on the assumptions of the course it takes, but I’ve modeled them in the system for you.”
Volkov reviewed and approved the assumptions.
He then noticed a new rhythm in an incoming mammalian signal.