“Go ahead, sergeant. What’s your status?”
“Gunfire broke through the hull in the engine room, and water started gushing in before we could react. So we ran forward. There’s five of us here, counting the two guys who were in MESMA plant five.”
“Injuries?”
“None. Just shaken up.”
“Can you get back into MESMA plant five?”
“Yes. The hole was smaller. Not as many bullets. You want damage control there?”
A display showing pumps keeping pace with the water level in the air-independent propulsion space’s bilge encouraged the colonel. “Not now. Get everyone into MESMA plant five and use the tunnel to get to the port side. We’ll bring ourselves back to life using the port propeller and the port MESMA plants.”
“We’re on it, sir.”
As the colonel sensed himself having survived the worst of the attack, the sonar expert announced news. “Both torpedoes have shut down, the Wraith’s and the Specter’s.”
His face ashen like decaying death, the commander appeared as shaken as the colonel felt. “They had wire control and issued shutdown commands.”
“Why?”
“Because I was right. They were going to damage us with bomblets. But after the helicopter attack, there’s no need. We’re compromised and slowed, and they know it.”
“Then they didn’t mean to sink us.”
“No. They could have done so a dozen times already, but here we are.”
“They may be counting on capitalizing on our mistakes, such as forgetting that a transport helicopter can carry machine guns and move with enough speed to surprise us.”
“Capitalizing on our mistakes could sink us. There’s only so much damage to us they can risk.”
The colonel scoffed. “Not in Pierre Renard’s mind. He believes he can recapture his ship, and as long as he thinks so, we hold the advantage.”
CHAPTER 6
Terrance Cahill stood behind the Specter’s commanding officer, wanting to replace him as the video feed’s conversation put the Goliath in jeopardy.
Thankful for the linguistic gesture of inclusion, Cahill participated in the meeting of the commanders over the data link in English. He thought Volkov’s translator spoke French, but he preferred to leave that theory untested.
Cahill cringed hearing his colleague’s warmongering tone.
Jake sounded irate. “Okay, Pierre. I shut down my slow-kill weapon, and so has Dmitry. But I did it under protest, and I don’t like it.”
In contrast to the American, Cahill’s French boss appeared calm. “What’s not to like? You and Dmitry have tagged the Goliath with enough limpets to track it across the globe, and the helicopter flooded its starboard engine room.”
“But those thieves still have an operational ship. They’ll have the port side up before we know it, and God knows what’s next on their agenda.”
“You’d risk sinking our flagship?”
“No. If they’re smart enough to steal the Goliath, they’re smart enough to surface it if I put a few small holes in it. Let me cripple it.”
The comment irritated the Australian commander, and he interrupted the Franco-American conversation. “It doesn’t have the reserve buoyancy of a standard submarine. Have you ever heard me brag about the size of its main ballast tanks?”
Jake’s ire rose higher. “No. What’s your point?”
“It doesn’t have any main ballast tanks! How do you expect it to get to the surface if you riddle it with holes?”
The American shot an annoyed glance over his shoulder. “Your trim and drain pumps are enough to turn that thing into a cork.”
“Me pumps — their pumps—‘that thing’s’ pumps… are running on an undersized battery system. They’ll die out with the MESMA systems down.”
“But they can blow the drain tanks with high-pressure air.”
“If they know how. And the ship’s only designed for a hundred meters. There’s not nearly as much stored high-pressure air in the air banks as you’re used to.”
“You’re downplaying its abilities.”
Unable to restrain himself, Cahill raised his voice. “The hell I am! Get it through your bloody head that it needs its power plants to survive. Flooding multiple compartments would sink it with a band of clueless frogmen mongrels tripping over themselves trying to do damage control.”
The Frenchman’s assurance lowered Cahill’s blood pressure. “Gentlemen, please calm yourselves. I’ve already resolved this debate by ordering our weapons tight. We’ll think through possibilities together as opposed to rushing through reactions. We can afford this luxury since we’ve turned time to our advantage.”
Jake remained hostile. “How? Last I checked, Dmitry and I can sustain twelve knots best transit speeds, and the Goliath can hold twenty-four with a gas turbine and one propeller.”
“I’ve negotiated air coverage. With our security system lockouts, the Goliath presents no threat to aircraft and will be forced under.”
“Who are you negotiating with? You don’t even know where it’s going.”
The Frenchman became snappish, signaling an informational boundary. “I can get air coverage as needed. Let’s leave it at that.”
The American dragged a stylus across an electronic chart of the Gulf of Oman. “We’re two hundred miles from the Strait of Hormuz. Even if you can keep the hijackers submerged, that’s roughly twenty hours until the Fifth Fleet is bound to hear them.”
“We don’t know if they’re going that way.”
“They’re heading that way now, and they won’t turn unless it’s west to shoot over land and hit Dubai. Maybe they want to hit the Burj Khalifa. They’ll be in range in less than ten hours.”
“I’m working a plan that will preclude this.”
Again, Cahill interrupted the Franco-American exchange and then felt like an idiot guilty of wishful thinking as his words circled through his head. “And they’d need weeks with supercomputers to break through the weapons’ safeguards.”
After a slight hesitation to process Cahill’s oversimplification, the Frenchman clarified. “For automated firing, I agree. But manual firing of the cannons and setting of the rounds’ coordinates can be achieved easily enough.”
“Yes, that was stupid of me. At least I think we just concluded that the railguns are the reason they stole me ship.”
“Indeed. And they’ll be going after stationary objects since they have no way to guide the rounds into moving targets.”
The American remained agitated. “No way that we know of. Who’s to say they haven’t figured out how to program their own guidance information into the rounds? They could be ripping into spare rounds now and reverse engineering the guidance encryption.”
“Possibly. But it’s all speculation. I urge you all to stay calm.”
Cahill shared a thought his team had left unspoken. “We need to know who did this.”
The comment backfired with the American. “No, we don’t. We need to hit them with little bomblets from the weapon I designed for this, make the little bomblets go boom, and force them to surface. Then let a helicopter put an end to this so we can go finish desert.”
Cahill stepped back to distance himself from Jake. The rift forming between himself and the American concerned him. “You designed the slow-kill weapon to let crews abandon sinking submarines, not to spare me ship.”
“But I can dial down the weapon to a one-third the yield. What the hell, Terry? You know this. Why are we even arguing?”
“Even if they could manage the damage control, what if they scuttle the ship in your happy scenario, genius?”