“That’s step three on my list. Let me hit the second Ghadir first before I worry about that. Then let me snorkel and charge my batteries.”
Anatoly called out. “Our weapon has acquired the second Ghadir and is accelerating. The Ghadir doesn’t have the evasion speed. It should happen soon.”
Volkov waited.
“Detonation… bomblets are attaching. And… explosions. Three of them. The Ghadir’s surfacing.”
The American rider was bold. “Let me send another buoy about finishing that Ghadir.”
“As you wish commander. Again, it’s on your conscience.”
“A fifteen-minute delay again?”
“Yes.” Volkov had an idea, which became an order to his gray-bearded veteran. “Reload tubes one and three with limpet weapons.”
“Limpets, sir?”
“I’ll tag those two Ghadir’s with sonic limpets so that I always know where they are, no matter what the Americans decide about their fates.”
“Don’t you think they’ll be sunk soon?”
“If that happens, I won’t shoot the limpets. Load the tubes like I said.”
The translator stood and marched to his commanding officer with scribbled notes. “You’ll want to read this.”
“What’s it say?”
“It’s from the fifth fleet. They’ve received Commander Hatcher’s recommendation of finishing off the first Ghadir. They’re going in the other diplomatic direction and offering assistance to the crew. The Americans have two riverine command boats which are the closest vessels that could help.”
Volkov scoffed. “I can’t wait to see Commander Hatcher’s response to that. In fact, I can’t wait to see the Iranian response. This conflict’s getting more bizarre by the hour.”
“I suppose you now have a decision about shooting limpets.”
“That’s easy. I’ll shoot them when they’re ready. Pierre won’t mind the expense, and there’s little tactical risk.”
“You’d shoot even if the Iranians accept the American offer?”
“Don’t try to make political sense out of this, or you’ll go crazy. The limpets don’t make much of a difference, other than letting me know from far away if a wounded Ghadir’s trying to move.”
The translator shrugged. “I can’t argue that.”
“There are plenty of hard decisions ahead without having to stress over this one. I just wish that Terry could load the Indiana and get the hell out of here before someone makes the wrong decision and starts a fire that nobody can put out.”
CHAPTER 16
With a black marker, Causey wrote the brainstorming session’s latest contribution on a whiteboard. He hated the idea. Blow the forward ballast tanks, use the improved leverage to rotate backwards into the Goliath’s cargo bed, and then evade. “Well, it’s an idea, and it would work, but we’d announce ourselves to the entire world. It’s a good idea to remember if we’re in a pinch, though.”
A brash junior petty officer called out. “You mean a worse pinch than we’re in now, captain?”
Nervous laughter rose from the crew.
“Yes, I mean a worse pinch than we’re in now. I can’t say that I’ve seen worse, but I can imagine it. Keep the ideas coming.”
Mustered around him, covering the widest opening in the engine room’s middle level and arranged in varied postures, dozens of sailors faced him in silence.
The Indiana’s commander cast his voice into a forest of pipes and machines that included a freshwater evaporator and high-pressure air compressors. “Come on. Anyone else? Don’t be shy.”
Heads shook.
Causey eyed his senior enlisted leaders one-by-one. “Division chiefs, anything to add from your breakout meetings?”
Again, heads shook.
The Indiana’s commander faced his second-in-command. “XO, do I have all the ideas from the fleet on the board?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then that’s it. Twenty-six ideas.” Causey added a silent qualifier — most fruits of the extensive brainstorming sessions were rotten. Few caught his attention as better possible options than continuing east for six days to Pakistani waters.
A phone-talker wearing a headset challenged his hopes of staying the course. “Sir, Lieutenant Hansen says the Goliath urgently recommends coming to all stop.”
Causey stepped to a handset, yanked it from a cradle, and lifted it to his cheek. “This is the captain.”
The diver sounded urgent. “Sir, the Goliath’s found something in the seafloor they don’t like. A fissure, Mister Cahill called it, though I doubt it’s an accurate description. I’d call it an underwater ravine.”
“Like a valley?”
“Not that deep, but deep enough to matter.”
“Big enough to make us stop?”
“That’s correct, sir.”
“I’ll be right there.” The Indiana’s commander flipped the circuit to the engine room’s command center. “Maneuvering, this is the captain. Come to all stop.”
The reply came from the engineer. “Coming to all stop, sir.”
“XO, pick the top ten of these ideas and take notes about their pros and cons. We’ll review them when I get back.” The deck’s gentle rumble waned under Causey’s sneakers as he marched toward the engine room’s watertight door.
At the jury-rigged laptops, the dive team’s officer pointed at the rightmost screen. “Check this out, sir.”
Causey examined the underwater gully beneath the Goliath’s floodlights. “Shit.”
“I’m sending my guys to check it out, but I agree it sucks. It’s deep enough to screw us. If we fall into it, we’re not getting out.”
“Lucky the Goliath’s scouting ahead of us. God help us if we’d fallen…” Causey rubbed his tired eyes. “Never mind. We didn’t fall into it. We just need to avoid it.”
“No shit, sir. We either go around it in the shallow direction, go around it in the deep direction, or try one of our desperate ideas to avoid it altogether. But I don’t see how we could cross it.”
Cahill’s Australian accent issued from the central laptop. “It looks like it goes on forever in either direction. If you go shallow, you’ll expose your rudder. If you go deep, you’ll tumble down the steep decline into the Gulf of Oman.”
Causey revealed his concerns. “I was thinking about going deeper, even if it means going deeper than you can follow. The problem is, you’re probably right about us rolling before making our way across.”
On the laptop’s screen, the Goliath’s commander shrugged. “It only looks to be about three meters or so deep. You could try to power down one side and back up the other.”
“The thought had crossed my mind.” Causey met the burly diver’s stare. “But I’ve heard dissenting views already about the chances of that working. Lieutenant Hansen and I were just convincing ourselves it was impossible.”
“If you gunned it, you might reach ten knots before you hit the other side. It’d be an interesting outcome.”
Causey disagreed. “It could get interesting with a big celebration on the other side, or it could get interesting with screams of terror if we roll. But you forgot to mention the possible outcome of us getting stuck in the rut. That’s almost as bad as tumbling into the deep. Maybe worse.”