“I’m sure you feel victimized.”
“But I’m the only one who’s showing it. Jake should feel victimized, but he’s just pissed off. You should feel victimized, but you’ve found your damage control groove without a hitch. Dmitry’s blocked out everything and enjoying this like just another normal mission. Why am I taking it so hard?”
“I own it, but for all intents and purposes, it’s your ship. That’s why it’s hitting you the hardest.”
“It can’t be that simple, can it?”
His hotel room’s lights casting shadows over his face, the Frenchman fell silent to focus his thoughts. Cahill allowed the delay in hopes of enlightenment, and then Renard sounded pensive. “I believe you’ve revealed something important.”
“Go on, mate.”
“Each of you — Jake, Dmitry, and you — all came to me after losing commands. Jake was younger and had never been an official commanding officer, but his career had been taken from him, and he commanded the submarine he stole for me. So the loss of a submarine’s a commonality you all share.”
“I know that. We’ve joked about it before.”
“But it’s no laughing matter. For all of you, the ships you command represent redemption.”
The words lifted to the surface a realization that had been lurking within Cahill’s subconscious mind. “Yeah, you have a point.”
“You were relieved of your prior command, though wrongly per my estimation, leaving you broken at the time.”
“Every man who’s relieved of command is broken. It was a brutal feeling I’d like to forget.”
“The Goliath was your solace, and its loss is a redoubling of your pain. What Jake and Dmitry don’t yet feel is that its loss will destroy this fleet and take their ships of redemption away from them, too. You, however, are feeling the loss in real time.”
During an uncomfortable lull in the conversation, Cahill let the realization settle.
He welcomed Remy’s interruption. “Water hammer, MESMA plant four. They’re bringing it back online.”
“Water hammer? Is that what you call it when steam tosses condensed water droplets against the piping?”
“Yes.”
“How can you hear that on the Goliath? That steam system is encapsulated behind… I mean it’s sound-mounted within…”
The toad-head turned, looked at Cahill, and offered a knowing grin.
Henri shook his head. “Don’t argue, Terry. Jake’s tried to call his bluff many times, to his shame.”
“I’m sure, mate.”
“Now I hear steam ring.”
“I won’t argue. I believe you, Antoine. That will take the Goliath back to five MESMA plants online.”
The silver-haired mechanic lifted a makeshift placard covered with grease pencil markings and read its notes. “With the single screw and drag friction of the nets, that correlates to eight point two knots.”
“Understood, mate. Eight point two knots.”
The Frenchman lowered his placard and ran his finger over a faceplate mounted at his station. “If we increase speed to eight point two knots to keep pace, our new time to snorkel to avoid going below thirty percent battery is now forty-one minutes away.”
“Very well. We’re now forty-one minutes away from snorkeling.”
Expecting a slight change to the transport ship’s speed, he looked to a tactical display and noticed lines of acoustic direction from the shrieking limpets sliding off track. Before he could voice his observation, the toad-head turned. “And now, the Goliath is accelerating.”
“Got it. The Goliath is accelerating. Let’s keep pace. Henri, have the engine room make turns for eight point two knots.”
As the mechanic acknowledged, two men scurried through the room’s front door. “What’s up, mate?”
Jake seemed giddy. “We figured it out. Well, Claude did, mostly, but we got it.”
“You mean you figured out how to reduce the slow-kill’s yield?”
“Damn straight.”
LaFontaine’s wiry frame appeared too thin to support his weight. “It will take time to implement, but we’ve removed one bomblet from the detonation sequence.”
“How much time will the whole thing take?”
LaFontaine looked to the American. “Well, it took us almost, what… two hours for the first bomblet?”
Jake tilted his head and shrugged. “Yeah, but most of that time was figuring it out. If I had to guess, the actual time to make a bomblet inert is only about fifteen to twenty minutes.”
“The Subtics system allows you to make two thirds of the bomblets inert automatically before launch, right?”
Jake spoke with a pride of ownership in his design. “Yeah, sure. They come in three rings of eight bomblets each. We’ve got a routine in Subtics that lets us turn off one or two of the rings as we like.”
“So to reduce the yield to just one, you need to manually detach seven on the same ring. That leaves six, which is conservatively an hour and a half of work.”
The wiry engineer stepped forward. “Not exactly. I can get two teams working on different bomblets at the same time. They can reach without interfering with each other. But they’ll need to stop halfway through their work and have our torpedo technicians lift and roll the weapon. The bottom three bomblets are inaccessible as the torpedo is resting.”
Cahill had lost track of the math. “So, what’s it all add up to?”
The engineer crossed his arms, looked upward, and calculated. “You were right, after all. It’s an hour and a half of work.”
Before Cahill could voice his newfound enthusiasm, he heard footsteps passing through the room’s aft door.
The elder legionnaire stopped below him next to the elevated conning platform and posed a question in French.
Jake corrected him. “In English. If you need to say some of it in French, we’ll translate it.”
“I have a plan. My team can plant explosives on the Goliath and force it to stop.”
Redemption. Hope. Possibilities. Cahill sensed the claws of depression receding. He also saw a break in the dark clouds covering Jake, and he dared to trust in the return of his teammate. “Well then. We have ourselves some progress. Let’s get started on the warhead modifications and review our new opportunities.”
CHAPTER 11
The colonel stood under the domed bridge, doubting his bulldog. “Is the team preparing to mutiny?”
“That’s not what I said, sir. I said they’re disgruntled.”
As the bulldog offered an unreadable grin, the wailing limpets grated the colonel’s nerves. He blocked out their incessant whining and commanded himself calm. “I heard you, but a disgruntled crew doesn’t concern me. What are you getting at? Are they afraid?”
“You can’t blame the geeks for being afraid. They’re not used to the stresses of combat.”
Realizing his fervor for revenge had blinded him, the colonel accepted a problem.
He’d expected frayed nerves from his technicians, but he’d banked upon the resolve of his steeled commandos to generate steadfastness. But by turning them into deckhands on a crippled submarine, he’d sapped their control of their fates. Men accustomed to driving their destinies were helpless passengers.
He’d marginalized their courage.
The only opportunity for his commandos to fight back had left his best Stinger missile man clinging to life.
But he needed his warriors to remain warriors. “I understand the technicians aren’t accustomed to the stresses of combat. I don’t care about that. What I care about is you keeping our men in line and them keeping the technicians in line.”