“No, I do not.”
“Then the time for talking is over.”
“Wait!” Jake said.
“What’s wrong?” Cahill asked.
“Dolphins.”
Cahill felt a dark pang of anxiety at the mention of his aquatic nemeses.
“Are you sure it’s them?”
“Antoine has been studying their communications pattern,” Jake said. “It’s distinct and repetitive. It’s them.”
“Do you know what they’re saying?”
“Antoine’s good but not that good.”
Cahill heard the Specter’s sonar guru speaking in the background. Jake excused himself for a quick chat and returned.
“Correction,” Jake said. “Antoine thinks that dolphin noises sent in isolation concern information about their location and that exchanges with the Kilo are queries and responses about the behavior of a target the dolphins are tracking.”
“Which type is he hearing now?”
“It’s impossible to tell. The Kilo’s still too far away to hear if it’s responded back to them.”
“I hear the dolphins now, too,” the sonar operator said. “They just sent out a noise.”
“We hear the dolphins on the Goliath now, too,” Cahill said. “I think that indicates that the Kilo has a pretty good chance of knowing where you are. That’s what we want.”
“But it also means the dolphins are probably coming for me, which means they’ll be between you and the Kilo. If they tell the Kilo about you, you’re screwed.”
“That’s a problem.”
“The dolphins will see you,” Jake said. “There’s no way around that. Nature has made them too good to fool.”
“You’re right, mate. You need to kill them.”
The silence told Cahill he had challenged his colleagues’ morality. He realized that nobody, including himself, had considered the dolphins an enemy worthy of destroying until now.
“Let me confer with Antoine,” Jake said.
“A disheartening request,” Renard said. “But appropriate.”
“I know. I felt like a mongrel for saying it.”
“You had no choice.”
Jake reappeared.
“Antoine needs help solving the range.”
“You’re stuck where you are,” Cahill said. “Let me drive out a few miles and see if we can triangulate the range.”
“You won’t have time to come back here and tell me what you found.”
“Right. Listen for me on the radio for a short-range voice transmission. I’ll send you a message when I’ve got them.”
“And send it again as you hear my torpedo getting close to them. I’ll need to detonate it by wire. So any real-time data you can give me will be useful.”
“You should send two torpedoes — one long and one short, just to be sure.”
“Roger that,” Jake said. “With what we know now about the dolphins, I see no need to fake my flooding casualty.”
“Agreed. Cancel it,” Renard said.
“I need to get moving,” Cahill said.
“Indeed you do, my friend,” Renard said “Remember not to engage the Kilo beyond five hundred yards. If you do, you’ll be at risk of a torpedo. Within five hundred yards, you’ll be protected by the same safeguards that prevent the Kilo from shooting itself.”
“Don’t worry, mate. I’m not getting anyone killed — except those bloody dolphins.”
CHAPTER 20
Volkov checked his chart.
The dolphins had located the Specter, but so had the fleet. Though he remained below periscope depth, he received the coordinates of his enemy over the low-frequency bandwidth signals that tickled the antenna he floated near the surface.
As his executive officer typed in the fleet’s data on the Specter, he watched the oval of uncertainty shrink to a singularity.
“The dolphins were accurate,” Volkov said. “The limit is our ability to understand them. If you could teach them to communicate with more precision, I could use them to shoot weapons to the limit of my torpedoes.”
“That would take months,” the trainer said. “Maybe years.”
“It’s a moot point today,” Volkov said. “The Specter is out of torpedo range. Eighteen miles.
“That’s two hours of driving to reach nominal launch range,” the executive officer said. “Alternatively, you could snorkel to achieve greater speed and get there in forty minutes.”
“That would give away our position.”
“I imagine that the commander of the Specter can estimate our exact position already, sir. If he’s conservative, he’s assumed that we’re heading straight for him after shooting at his decoy.”
Volkov glared at his chart, trying to surmise the tactics of the Specter’s commanding officer. The permutations of his enemy’s possible intent seemed tortuous.
“I don’t want to spend undue time at snorkel depth,” he said. “I’ll make one rapid trip shallow to grab the updated tactical feed, and then I’ll end this. Prepare tube six for the Specter.”
“Torpedo in the water!” the sonar operator said.
“What bearing?”
“It’s from the Specter. Zero bearing rate.”
“Shooting at us? From that distance? He must be mad, even if he has the vaguest notion of where we are.”
“He may have heard a transient noise from us and took a poor guess at our range,” the sonar operator said.
“Did you hear any transients from our ship?” Volkov asked.
“No, sir.”
“Regardless. I’ll turn to verify that the torpedo is far away. Come left, steady course one-two-zero.”
“There’s a second torpedo, sir! It’s from the same bearing.”
“How loud?”
“Very faint. I suspect they’re both far away, both launched from the Specter.”
“Time will tell as I drive this new course.”
“I could use more speed to drive the bearing and to be sure of the distance, sir.”
“Very well. So be it.”
He looked to his gray-bearded veteran.
“Bring us to snorkel depth and prepare to snorkel.”
The room tilted upward, and the Krasnodar rocked. After the veteran raised the snorkel mast, he heard the gentle vibrations of his hungry diesels.
“Make turns for twelve knots,” he said.
At his best speed, he watched the lines to the torpedoes fan out and pinpoint the incoming weapons.
“They’re far away,” he said. “They’re from the Specter.”
The explosion rumbled through his hull, tickling his naked ear. The next boom of thunder followed seconds later.
“This makes no sense,” he said.
“I’m confirming,” the sonar operator said. “I no longer hear the Specter’s torpedoes. The detonations were from both its torpedoes. I hear no more torpedoes in the water.”
“Mark the location of the detonations on the chart.”
The intent and outcome of his adversary crystalized in his mind as red icons marking the exploded warheads appeared.
Glancing up from his console with sullen eyes, the trainer reaffirmed his suspicions.
“Andrei? Mikhail?”
“I am sorry,” Volkov said. “The second weapon appears well-placed.”
“My babies?”
“Try to hail them.”
The trainer tapped his keys, and the Krasnodar’s pre-recorded dolphin sounds filled the room. During the sad moments of silence, Volkov looked to his display where the fleet’s input to his tactical data feed adjusted the Specter’s position.