“And I’m breaking the feeding tube.”
“Indeed. Crimea will begin a slow death, and the Russian president will face the harsh decision of either launching a costly crisis response campaign or the embarrassing walk to a negotiations table.”
“I see why you’re talking about new upgrades. I can’t see me railguns taking down a bridge, at least not efficiently. Maybe if I pounded it with half me arsenal.”
“Quite unnecessary. I’ve equipped you with externally-mounted tubes that have the coordinates of a main caisson programmed into them.”
“You sure that’s going to work? I can’t see a torpedo taking down a concrete structure of any appreciable size.”
Renard tapped a screen to invoke a map, and then he pointed at the bridge.
“The weapons will target the middle section to the west of the Tuzla Spit where the bridge reaches its highest point. I’m assured that the detonations will at least crack the concrete and make the caisson unusable, if not crumble a section of the bridge altogether.”
“Detonations? Plural?”
The Frenchman furrowed his brow and appeared to calculate his response while lighting a Marlboro.
“You’ll need to detonate a warhead on either side of the caisson simultaneously. The weapons will be staggered in location in order to apply a torqueing tensile stress and create a brittle fracture of the concrete. The explosions will be shallow to minimize backpressure from the water.”
“Sounds optimistic.”
“No need to take my word for it. See the video. A team of Taiwanese engineers ran a test and recorded the results on underwater cameras.”
He crouched while Renard tapped icons on a screen and nothing happened. The Frenchman stood and spoke Mandarin, and a watchman hurried to his side. After a curt conversation, gestures, and assistance navigating the screens, his French boss invoked a video as the Taiwanese sailor returned to his post.
Progressing in slow motion, four frames moved forward with a different camera’s view in each quadrant of the display. Two overhead vantages and two nose-on shots showed a pair of torpedoes moving through shallow, clear water.
The first weapon detonated, and the second followed it within ten milliseconds.
“Separated by ten meters laterally,” Renard said. “Separated by seven meters axially. The locations and timings were well within specification. This is the only test I had run with actual warheads, but there were twenty non-explosive runs that showed comparable positions and timing.”
“How’s that possible?”
“The seekers. Since the coordinates of the detonations are already known, there’s no need to use them to chase moving targets. So they’ve been modified to allow the weapons to track each other and to hold a prescribed relative geometry.”
“Still, you can’t reach good terminal accuracy with just inertial gyros. You’ll be off by meters, which could mean the difference between success and failure.”
The Frenchman exhaled smoke, making Cahill appreciate the control room’s ventilation system. He glanced at the two Taiwanese sailors who sat behind monitoring panels and reminded him of chain-smoking chimneys.
“Not to worry,” Renard said. “The seekers will still be used for terminal targeting to assure a proper distance from the caisson. In fact, the flatness of the concrete makes for an excellent acoustic return and precise locating.”
“So if I get close enough to launch a pair of weapons, I’ll cripple the bridge. Period.”
“Indeed. The construction of the bridge is well-understood, given its public visibility. This allowed accurate modeling of the simulation. The weapons will succeed. I even gifted you the ability to launch from outside the strait. You can remain in the Black Sea while shooting.”
“Really? How?”
“The weapons have a pre-programmed waypoint algorithm, mapped to the turns of the strait. Fortunately, there are only two turns, but mapped they are. I don’t want you getting trapped in the strait.”
“Nice. How many chances do I get?”
Renard stared at him and raised an eyebrow.
“Do you mean how many pairs of anti-bridge weapons are in your arsenal?”
“Yes.”
“An excellent question. Four pairs, in addition to two weapons dedicated to the pipeline, which is a much simpler target to cripple. That’s ten total weapons, five per side, mounted on your hull.”
“Four pairs for the bridge. That’s overkill for weapons you just told me are guaranteed to work. It suggests risks I don’t yet see.”
“Perceptive. We’re undertaking this mission after a failed attempt by the Ukrainians. I’ll share the details during the mission brief, but beware that the Russians are watching and defending the bridge. You may need more than one shot to hit the target.”
“That leaves only six weapons in me internal tubes for other purposes like self-defense.”
“Jake will be handling that for you with the Specter.”
Cahill envisioned the world map in his head and added up a challenging distance.
“Provided we can get there. There’s a lot of ocean between here and the Black Sea.”
“That’s a good opportunity for me to show you the liberties I’ve taken with the Goliath for your mission.”
“I can’t wait.”
He followed Renard down a staircase to the chiseled ledge of rock serving as a wharf and marveled at the brutal elegance of the waterfront.
The Taiwanese had packed spare weapons, fuel tanks, and electronic cables into carved recesses. Fed by fuel and lubricant lines, a diesel generator whirred with air ducts running into the rock ceiling.
“How’d they get all this down here?”
“The cutting took two years,” Renard said. “Once the rocks were carved, the concrete, wood, and machinery arrived aboard submarines. It was a high-priority exercise when the Taiwanese were responding to the invasion by China. I’ve kept the place running as the new home port of the Goliath and Specter.”
Cahill’s boots tapped concrete as he trailed Renard onto the dock. A huge pile of a disassembled ship’s hull sections caught his attention.
“What ship was that?” he asked. “And why’s it down here?”
“That’s your camouflage.”
“Say again?”
“Camouflage. I’m not sending you over thousands of miles without camouflage, especially since you need to traverse no less than five intensely watched chokepoints.”
Unsure how his boss planned to make his ship and its elevated cargo submarine invisible with black hull sections, he glanced at the Goliath. Beyond the hull-mounted torpedo tubes, he saw the stanchions and rigging that Taiwanese sailors were attaching to his deck.
“You mean for me to appear like what? A tanker?”
“A freighter. A freighter allows for piling empty shipping containers into a shaped fit over the Specter, and it creates a multi-colored illusion to onlookers.”
“You expect me to operate at top speed surfaced and submerged with whatever coverage scheme you’re concocting?”
“Quite near top speeds, minus the extra weight and drag. You’ll obviously be more hindered underwater. But note that the material is light — fiberglass-reinforced plastic, and the drag is minimized by having the bulkheads extend only two meters below your waterline.”
“What about me weapons? Radar? Sonar? The laser communications? What the bloody hell, Pierre?”
“All usable. Trust me. I’ve thought this through.”
“How’d you get all this custom stuff down here?”
“I had an underwater barge built. Picture a barge with ballast tanks, pulled by a semi-retired Taiwanese submarine. It’s rather simple and cheap in the grand scheme.”