“How much longer until I can secure snorkeling?”
“Another twenty minutes,” Henri said. “Then you’ll have enough battery energy to maintain eight knots until we’re safely out of Greek waters.”
“How long until I can wake Andrei and Mikhail?”
“You’re using their first names now?”
“They’re hard not to like. How long until nap time is over?”
“Another hour and twenty minutes recommended. But you can roust them whenever you want. The manual says their trainer has made them flexible in this area, and they supposedly slept and ate a meal during their flight out here. So I expect that they’re refreshed enough and fed.”
“As long as we’re in the surface channel, we’ll wake them before we come down from snorkeling.”
He turned to the navigation table and verified the dolphins’ positions two miles behind him and two miles ahead of the Hydra-Goliath tandem. Realizing they’d drift behind the Greek ship if he waited to wake them, he changed his mind.
“On second thought, I think I’ll wake them now. I want to keep them ahead of Terry.”
“Good idea,” Henri said.
“Antoine, send the wakeup message.”
Chirps and whistles played over the loudspeaker, but the cetaceans remained silent.
“Try again,” Jake said.
“Maybe they’re groggy from too short a nap,” Remy said. “Here goes another try.”
This time, the dolphins responded with a wakeup acknowledgement and more.
“That seemed long for a wakeup message,” Jake said. “And some of that sounded familiar, like we’ve heard it before.”
“The second half of it was familiar,” Remy said. “It was the new submerged contact message.”
“Do they normally do that when they wake up?”
“That answer’s not in the manual,” Henri said.
Jake offered a quizzical look to his mechanic.
“You really memorized that thing?”
“I did. My assumption for the lack of such clarity is that you can’t predict which contacts are old or new when you can’t predict what changes around the dolphins while they sleep.”
“But they can tell one submarine from another, can’t they?”
“It depends. They can only tell the difference if there’s a distinguishing feature between them. But if the submarines are outwardly equivalent, they can’t tell. For example, they’d be challenged to distinguish the Specter from the Wraith.”
Jake intensified his inquisitive stare, and the Frenchman reached for the printed manual on his console.
“It’s all in the appendices,” Henri said.
“I just thought that was meaningless theory behind the commands, but you’re proving me wrong.”
“You’re quite welcome.”
“Anyway, then we have no choice but to walk them through a complete report of submerged contacts.”
“Agreed,” Henri said. “We may as well verify that their worldview corresponds with ours.”
“Antoine, order a range check and then query Andrei and Mikhail on all contacts.”
The recorded orders played over the loudspeakers, and the mammals responded as commanded. Jake knew he offered the Greek submarines an idea of his location by issuing the orders, but during a ceasefire he accepted the risk in exchange for information.
He also expected that his secret role in escorting the Goliath to safety was a needless insurance policy. Renard had done what the Frenchman excelled at, and the negotiations were complete. With the threat of annihilation of the task force, the puppet prime minister had the leverage he needed to order the naval forces to honor the truce.
As part of creating the leverage, Jake had reloaded four of his tubes with heavyweight torpedoes, and each one targeted a different ship than Cahill’s three weapons. Though not guaranteed to hit all seven ships, the combined threat of torpedoes from the Specter and the Goliath provided enough fear to motivate peace.
Despite his outward mannerisms and his attempts at inward assurance, Jake wondered why he felt like something was about to break.
He counted the submerged contacts as the dolphins reported. The sloppiness of the range information bothered him, and he made a mental note to ask the trainer to improve that feature. But the summation of data aligned with possible locations where his historic data suggested submarines and their drones would be.
Then came the new submarine, the one from the west that had fired at the Goliath and had escaped the dolphins’ detection — until now. Jake heard the mammals report the first drone from that vessel but thought he missed something when the chirps and whistles stopped short of calling out a second drone.
“Every submerged submarine still has its drones out,” he said. “These guys aren’t making any pretense about lowering their guard.”
“True,” Henri said. “Nor should they. Pierre couldn’t push for any special behavior of the submarines. It was too much to ask of the Greeks. How would you feel if he forced you to surface in the face of an adversary?”
“Like shit. Like a failed submariner. But that’s not what’s bothering me. What’s bothering me is why this new submarine to the west has only one drone.”
“Because it’s a torpedo,” Remy said. “Torpedo in the water, bearing three-three-one.”
Jake’s adrenaline spiked.
“Can you hear its seeker?” he asked.
“No, just its high-speed screws, and barely. I would have needed another minute or two to hear it if not for the dolphins.”
“Can you estimate the speed based upon blade rate?”
“Forty-five knots.”
Jake watched lines of bearing fan out on his display.
“It’s on our right drawing right. No concern to us, but track it against its bearing rate. Let’s see if these Greeks have done what I hope they haven’t.”
“Shot at Terry?” Henri asked.
“Yeah,” Jake said. “And it’s time to let Pierre know. Secure snorkeling and raise the radio mast.”
As Jake stepped to his chair, the ship stopped rumbling, and he saw Renard’s face on his display.
“What’s wrong, Jake?”
“Hold on, Pierre. Antoine, assign tube six to the new submarine.”
“That’s a heavyweight, Jake,” Remy said.
“I know. Assign tube two as well. I’m planning to shoot a slow-kill and a heavyweight and shut one or both off depending how these bastards react.”
“Tubes two and six are assigned to the new submarine, designated as target thirteen.”
“Jake, what’s going on?” Renard asked.
“I just picked up a new submarine to the northwest, and it shot a torpedo towards Terry.”
“Mother of God,” Renard said. “I was clear in my negotiations and resolute in my threats. Now this is escalating into another Black Sea crisis.”
“May I shoot?”
“Absolutely not. The last thing we need is you letting anger get the better of you.”
“I’m not angry,” Jake said. “Well, okay, I am, but this is warranted anger.”
“You’re preparing to kill men for carrying out orders,” Renard said. “I’m sure the fault lies with some inane mid-level admiral. Let me use diplomacy to rid us of this stupidity.”
“Antoine,” Jake said, “assign tube six back to the surface ship it was aimed at. Keep tube two assigned to target thirteen.”
“Good move,” Renard said. “Give me time to warn Terry and contact my diplomatic channels. I recommend you lower your radio mast to avoid detection. I’ll hail you on the low-frequency feed if I need you.”
“Thanks, Pierre. Henri, lower the radio mast. Take us to thirty meters.”
The deck dipped and then leveled.