A few steps deeper into the compartment placed him at the propulsion control panel. The last man he expected to see stood in a small crowd of men with damp jumpsuits.
“Captain,” the trainer said.
“I’m impressed,” Volkov said. “It appears that you’ve been supporting the damage control teams.”
“Indeed he has, sir,” the engineer said.
Volkov turned to see a short man looking back at him through thick glasses. The engineer had opened the sleeves of his jumpsuit and had tied them around his rotund belly. Seawater had darkened his clothes and had set white saltwater stains into them.
“He was one of the first to show up in auxiliary machinery, ready for action. I agree, sir. I, too, was impressed.”
“If all dolphin trainers were to show such zeal, I assure you that the program would begin to flourish. You’ve more than carried your own weight. I commend you.”
“Thank you, sir. Just one thing, though.”
“Yes. What is it?”
“The dolphins will be awake in two hours. I’d like you to keep them within communications range, if you can. I know you may have orders that say otherwise, but I’m asking you to see what you can do to keep them with us. Otherwise, they’ll wake up and head for home, and I’d rather use them, sir.”
Volkov squinted and heightened his alertness to the trainer’s demeanor. He sensed that the engineering staff around him shared his newfound respect for the man and his mammals.
“Use them for what?”
“I assume we have more hunting to do. Aren’t the ships that attacked us still out there and waiting for us to deliver justice?”
“They may be,” Volkov said. “If the fleet doesn’t take care of them before we can, we may still have the opportunity open to us.”
“How fast can we move, sir?”
“You mean, how fast can I verify our orders?”
“No, I mean the ship, sir.”
“Four knots submerged on the fuel cell. Twelve knots at snorkel depth with the diesels and full cell combined.”
The trainer’s brow furrowed.
“They’ll need time to get ahead of us.”
“It’s possible. Time is on our side, now that the Bosporus is mined. I consider your dolphins a valued asset, and I will plan our tactics accordingly. Let them finish resting and then have them swim ahead while I let my crew rest. We’ll then seek justice as a team.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Volkov accompanied the engineer on a tour of the engineering spaces, verifying that the inner hull remained intact and that the equipment remained operational. However, he ignored the engineer’s routine reports and played with a thought that teased him.
His crew had made it clear that they were ready to fight. Dismissing the engineer, he grabbed a sound-powered phone, whipped it, and awaited his veteran’s voice.
“Control room.”
“This is the captain.”
“What can I do for you, sir?”
“I have an update for the message in the radio queue. Tell fleet headquarters that we’re in a complete battle-readiness condition except for our speed and depth limitations.”
“I will, sir. Anything else?”
“Yes,” Volkov said. “Instead of asking the fleet for orders, tell them that I want twenty-four hours to handle this myself.”
“Would you like to tell them our future positioning?”
“Yes. Tell the fleet that I’m thoroughly impressed with the abilities of the dolphins, and that I’m going wait eight hours right here to let them move ahead while I rest my crew. Then I’m going after my target during the following sixteen hours.”
“Of course, sir, but which target?”
Volkov wavered inwardly about the answer. The first ship had attacked the assets he defended, but the other had attacked him, cracking his self-worth harder than the first.
“Tell them,” he said, “that I’m going to sink the Specter.”
CHAPTER 15
Cahill watched another round splinter and pelt the propulsion train of a Grisha-class corvette.
“That’s it for that Grisha,” he said.
“That’s our last easy target,” Walker said.
Cahill looked at the display that showed the positions of his stranded victims. He had crippled a Kashin-class destroyer and two Grisha-class corvettes, but he knew that every remaining ship within his range possessed a close-in weapon system.
“Let’s test a Vympel system. Target the Nanuchka missile boat with twenty splintering rounds from the starboard cannon.”
“The Nanuchka is targeted with twenty splintering rounds from the starboard cannon.”
“Get a message out to Pierre that we’re targeting the Nanuchka, just in case he can hear us.”
As the radio operator seated next to Walker nodded his understanding, Cahill viewed his targets’ positions. They appeared to be converging upon each other, optimizing their defense.
“Hold your fire,” he said. “Check out the update on their positions. We missed it while we were attacking that Grisha.”
“They’re forming a tight formation,” Walker said. “They can’t be fifty meters from each other. They’re converging around that huge Slava and its six Vympels. The Buyan missile boats are also moving to intersect our incoming rounds with two Vympels each.”
“The Nanuchka is still out of reach of the pack. It went too far ahead of the rest and now has to scramble back, but it’s not going to make it. Are you ready to fire?”
“Yes. The starboard cannon is ready.”
“Did you send the message to Pierre?”
“Yes.”
“Fire twenty splintering rounds.”
The railgun announced its first shot. As the noise repeated every five seconds, Cahill watched the icons of his rounds streak towards the Nanuchka.
“Thirty-three knots,” he said. “Running for all it’s worth, but I’m going to make its speed fall to zero.”
“The first round is arriving,” Walker said.
Bright blue bulleted streaks raced from the Nanuchka, and the trace of the incoming railgun round broke into misty pieces on the infrared imagery.
“Damn,” Cahill said. “Count one for the Vympel.”
“There’s your first documented test of a close-in weapon system against our railgun.”
Blue streaks revealed that the missile boat defended itself against the next round.
“And that Nanuchka has no jamming protection since it’s so far from the pack,” Cahill said. “That says a lot about the Vympel.”
“At least now we’re learning about their defenses.”
“This is being recorded, right?”
“Sure. Why?”
The Vympel took down the third round.
“Simple math. We know how many rounds we have left for our railguns, and we know how many rounds the Russian Vympel systems hold. The first one to run out of bullets loses.”
As the Nanuchka’s automated point-defense system destroyed the railgun’s fourth incoming round, he had one of his sailors review the ongoing attack in slow motion to count the defensive rounds.
As the minute-long, twenty-projectile attack ended, Cahill saw the defiant, unscathed missile boat continue to flee.
“It’s still making thirty-three knots,” he said.
A sailor handed him a sheet with a scribbled tally of the Vympel’s efficacy.
“I’ve got the analysis. It uses forty rounds per defensive shot. With two thousand rounds of storage per Vympel, that means we can bleed it dry with fifty total cannon rounds.”