“Then we’re sitting tight on shooting a weapon at target eleven for another forty-one minutes. But I need to get the longer shots launched at targets ten and twelve before that.”
He drew two more lines.
“Fifteen minutes and seventeen minutes of torpedo runs.”
“If you believe the ranges,” Henri said.
“They’re just guesses at this point, but the torpedoes will handle what we need them to handle.”
The Frenchman stiffened.
“Only if you use active seekers, and only if the targets are true submarines and not drones. You’ll be giving away your element of surprise.”
“You have a better idea? We’re the aggressors working against time. There’s no time to be delicate.”
“Sadly, I do not. I just dislike giving up our advantage.”
“You have to give up the element of surprise at some point to benefit from it,” Jake said. “But maybe the dolphins can give us updates before we shoot.”
He returned to his seat and oversaw his crew while the dolphin-submarine tandem icon inched toward an unidentified submerged contact, target eleven.
The toad-head stirred again.
“The dolphins just announced another range shift,” Remy said. “A target has moved from far range to in between.”
Jake glanced at his display and assumed one of two submerged targets could be within ten miles of the mammals.
“Any guess as to which one?” he asked.
“I’ll guess it’s the one to their immediate left. It feels closer than the one on the right.”
“You can’t hear it, can you?”
“No,” Remy said. “I can’t hear anything because all the Greek submarines and drones are drifting silently with the current. They’ve created an impenetrable wall except for the help from the dolphins allowing us to see them.”
“Then why do you think it’s the one on the left?”
“Because you’re going to force me to guess. So I guessed.”
“So be it,” Jake said. “Give target ten a range of ten miles from the dolphins and get a range check on them again.”
The loudspeaker played aquatic sounds in rapid succession.
“What was all that?” Jake asked.
“Range checks and another range shift report,” Remy said. “They just passed from far range to in between on another contact, and I’ll guess it’s target twelve. The geometry now precludes targets nine and lower from being ten miles from them.”
“Good,” Jake said. “Set the range to target twelve at ten miles from the dolphins. Even if we got targets ten, eleven, and twelve screwed up, we’re wrong by no more than three miles on any one of them.”
“Three miles is enough to throw off a surgical torpedo shot.”
“I’m not going surgical,” Jake said. “I’ll turn on the seekers with plenty of advanced time to absorb the slop.”
“The submarines will hear the weapons through the drones.”
“True, but then what? If I heard a torpedo coming for one of my drones, I’d sit tight and wait while I generated a solution on that torpedo backwards like a tracer bullet going the wrong way. If these guys are smart, they won’t give up their ambush positions just because they hear a torpedo attacking a drone.”
“Thank God you’re in charge,” Remy said. “I hate these sort of decisions.”
“I’ve made my decision. Assign tubes one through three to targets ten through twelve respectively. Have the seekers wake up nine miles away from us.”
The sonar expert turned his head to the technician beside him and talked him through the presets for each weapon.
“Tubes one through three, all slow-kill weapons, are assigned to targets ten through twelve respectively,” Remy said.
Chirps and whistles arrived every ten minutes as the dolphins offered their unsolicited range checks. After thirty minutes of low-intensity analysis, Jake stood and reached for the overhead piping to flush fatigue from his flesh.
“It’s time,” he said.
“To launch weapons?” Henri asked.
“Tubes three, one, and then two, in that order, two minutes apart, starting with tube three.”
The French mechanic repeated the sequence and walked about the room to verify the preparations. When ready, he looked to Jake.
“Antoine is ready for your orders.”
“Tube three is ready,” Remy said.
“Presets?”
“Medium-speed run. Anti-submarine mode. The active seeker will turn on after nine miles of running.”
“Very well. Shoot tube three.”
The soft whine and pressure change hit Jake’s ears.
“Tube three indicates normal launch,” Remy said. “I have wire control. I hear its propeller.”
Six minutes passed as Jake launched two more weapons from the Specter’s tubes.
“And now, ten minutes of patient waiting, hoping nobody heard any of that launching noise,” Jake said.
“Nobody heard,” Henri said. “They’re all to the north, waiting for you sprint by. They have no idea we’ve used nature’s sonar experts against them.”
As the minutes ticked away, Jake was restless in his chair until Remy brought his focus to his next move.
“The dolphins announced a range shift,” Remy said. “A target has just moved from in between to near range.”
A glance at his display encouraged Jake as the Russian animals demonstrated their merit.
“That’s a mile sooner than expected,” he said. “But I’ll take it. Set the range to target eleven at one mile from the dolphins, and get a range check from them.”
Remy announced a slight update to the cetaceans’ position.
“They’re five minutes from camera range,” Henri said.
Jake expected cameras atop their body harnesses to capture images of target eleven to confirm its identity. Five minutes later, he ordered the image.
The Specter’s recorded chirp told Andrei to point his nose at the contact for three seconds while the apparatus atop his head snapped a picture of the dark depths.
Jake recognized the new incoming sound of crackling shrimp, the camera’s signal that simulated the sea’s biological noises, pulsing through the loudspeakers. Given the low baud rate, he expected five minutes to form the full image, but less than two minutes to discern a tiny drone from a Type-209 submarine.
“Order the dolphins to hold their position,” he said.
Remy complied.
As the synthetic shrimp symphony sounded, a grainy picture took form on Jake’s display. He noticed Henri glaring at the same image evolving at his control station.
The synthetic shrimp crackles continued building the resolution, and the subject’s form had become discernable.
“That’s no drone,” he said. “That’s a submarine.”
“Agreed,” Henri said. “A little common sense guessing and a little luck led us to the right assumptions.”
“Keep weapon two on track,” Jake said. “Weapon two is properly seeking a submarine.”
“Where to send the dolphins next?” Henri asked.
“Target nine,” Jake said. “We’ve got torpedoes investigating targets ten and twelve.”
“If ten and twelve are indeed drones, you’ll be unable to verify it. A lack of return from a torpedo seeker fails to prove the existence of a drone. It only verifies that a submarine doesn’t exist where you thought.”
“I’ll take my chances on the implied logic,” Jake said. “Antoine, can you send the dolphins to check out target nine, if you query them on all contacts and send them to number nine right after they report on it?”
“Yes, Jake. I’m proud of you for actually reading their operating manual and understanding my convoluted path to give that order to them.”