Jake watched three men gyrating about each other, struggling for equilibrium. With waves rolling under their raft, they rested the wobbling launcher over a hunched man’s back, but the weapon slid off its human mount as a trough took the survival craft. “Shit.”
“It gets worse.” LaFontaine swung his launcher towards the other horizon. “That Sea Cobra’s coming for us.”
Jake had missed the helicopter upon his arrival topside. “Damn it. Give me that.” He stepped forward and yanked the Stinger off his engineer’s shoulders before the lanky man could protest. His strong arms bore the weight through a lifejacket’s clumsy bulk as he swiveled the weapon next to his ear and shouted. “All of you. Go!”
Henri protested. “I’m masquerading as the captain. I should be the last man off. I’ll take the launcher.”
“I’m still in charge, and I’m ordering you off my submarine.”
The Frenchman’s eyes softened. “Jake. You can’t.”
Unwilling to yield the gunship uncontested access to his sailors, Jake stifled his racing thoughts and the unidentified emotions colliding within him. “I can, and I will. Do you want to argue, or do you want to swim away from the big torpedo?”
Heeding the advice, the silver-haired mechanic slapped his commanding officer’s back. “Luckily I learned how to swim. I agree with Pierre and somehow believe you’re still charmed. See you later, my friend.” Henri sprinted three steps and leapt into the water.
Remy tapped the back of Jake’s arm. “Don’t test your luck. I would be saddened if you mistime this.” The toad-head lowered as the sonar ace sprinted and jumped.
The lanky engineer raised his voice. “I have no idea what’s running through your mind. God willing, I’ll see you in a life raft soon.” LaFontaine cast himself overboard.
Standing alone, Jake faced the incoming Sea Cobra. Thankful someone else had turned on the Stinger launcher, he checked the status in its optics. His eyes focused on phrases in plain English stating the missile was armed with its heat seeker ready to track a target. He knew he could point at the helicopter and fire, but he forgot how to enable the laser guidance for overcoming the countermeasure of flares.
“Jake?”
“Not now, Pierre.” Jake needed to think. He aimed the Stinger at the helicopter in hopes of tapping his memory of the weapon’s function. But his mind went blank. “How the heck…” Caressing the handle, he worked his fingers around a guard and the trigger. The touch invoked his muscle memory, and he remembered how to use the laser guidance.
The voice in his ear nagged him. “Are you listening, Jake?”
“Not really.”
“Get off my submarine.”
“How long now?”
“Forty seconds. I told you to get off my submarine.”
“Not yet.”
“You’re about to commit suicide. I won’t allow it.”
Jake wanted to be scared, but a swirling mix of emotions made him numb. He wondered if he’d become arrogant by expecting to survive every mortal danger or if he’d flirted with death so often that he’d grown receptive to its promise of peace and beyond. “The pilot needs to see my resolve.”
“Damn it, man. He’s going to see your shattered carcass if you wait any longer.”
For fleeting moments, Jake considered death a viable option. The fury still simmering deep within him would disappear. The futility he felt during boring times aboard the Specter between terrifying battles would evaporate. The fear of a meaningless life beyond the mercenary fleet would end. The fatigue of constant brushes with death would become permanent rest. “I can’t—”
Renard raised his voice. “You can’t survive if you’re blown up! Get off my submarine and figure out how to fire the Stinger while treading water if you must. I’m not losing you!”
The Specter’s commander scoffed. “Well, shit, Pierre. After all these years, you really do care.”
“Yes, damn it! What must I say to get you off that ship? Do I need to say ‘I consider you my son’ or ‘I love you’?”
The comment reminded Jake that he believed in something more than himself, the Specter, and Renard’s Mercenary Fleet. His boss did love him, and he wasn’t the only one. “Nah. I already know all that.” He hurled the launcher into the waves, leapt overboard, and swam for his life.
CHAPTER 21
A hive of conflicting thoughts buzzed in Jazani’s head as he toggled his gaze between two screens. The lower display streamed video from a drone overflying the mercenary submarine while the lower showed the telemetry data and control icons of his torpedo. With fifteen seconds to impact, he emitted a thoughtful groan.
With a morbid silence over the room, his second-in-command glanced at him but then lowered his gaze.
Despite the three men accompanying him in the Ghadir’s control room and the background voices in his earpiece, Jazani was alone.
His task force commander withheld clarification of how to proceed with his life’s critical next quarter of a minute. Therefore, his orders stood.
And they were ambiguous. Freedom to engage a mercenary vessel, but no obligation to do so. Restrictions on endangering an American vessel, but no definition of endangerment.
The burden of the command decision was his. The glory of getting it right or the shame of getting it wrong would carry his career to lofty heights or haunt him forever, and he had no idea who would serve as his judge and jury — other than his own conscience.
During an instant, a replay of recent events flashed in his mind.
Helicopters had kept the Goliath submerged, but the cargo ship had attained a faster speed than his intelligence reports predicted possible. The mercenary catamaran breaking twenty knots without exposing its air intakes was unexpected — unfeasible, but it had happened.
He’d speculated how. Had the ship found a way to store high-pressure air for running its gas turbines in bursts? If so, why didn’t he hear jets wailing underwater? Was something else accelerating his targeted vessel?
A clue had arrived when his sonar team had heard a straining Virginia-class power plant on the same bearing.
But two minutes ago, he’d stopped caring.
He’d discarded the riddle when a Scorpène-class vessel had offered itself. Shocking Jazani, the mercenary submarine had sprinted onto the torpedo’s track in an obvious act of sacrifice. The brazenness suggested a suicidal adversary or one who’d developed comfort toying with death.
The drone’s video had proven the latter.
With urgent efficiency, the ship had surfaced, the aft hatch had flipped back, and a tall, lanky man had bounded onto the deck. By the time the drone’s camera had been aimed at the Scorpène, a Stinger missile had appeared, wrapped in lifejackets, and had steadied on the first sailor’s shoulder. Before the Persian fleet’s air assets could respond, their prey had grown teeth. Life rafts had also appeared, landing in the water with sailors who inflated them into escape pods.
Tactical data showed the United States abstaining from influencing the mercenary’s fate. The American fleet behaved as it should, honoring the international twelve-mile boundary, but a destroyer, its escorts, and several fixed and rotary winged aircraft stood by to overwhelm Jazani and his comrades if ordered.
Afraid of the unseen American submarine he suspected lurked nearby, he let fear bring his thoughts back to his present concerns aboard his Ghadir-class vessel.
He took a final view of his targeted crew’s evacuation and realized they’d escaped mortal danger — except for the lone cowboy who’d considered himself unbreakable against a heavyweight torpedo. Unable to escape the pending shockwave, the man who’d just followed his Stinger missile into the water had delayed his evacuation to the brink of insanity.