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“I highly advise against us entering that fjord. We don’t want to get stuck in there.”
“I’m not going to pass it and risk missing the Oregon because we lost our courage.”
“It’s not courage, sir. It’s just that—”
Yu put up a hand to interrupt him. “Your objection is noted. Is there anything else?”
The XO backed down and shook his head.
“How long until we reach that offshoot?” Admiral Yu asked.
“Thirty minutes.”
>
“Fine. When we reach that point, I will guide us in personally.”
“Should I raise the antenna and inform the Portland of our status?”
Yu bored through his executive officer with an icy glare. “We will contact Zachariah Tate when we have something to report.”
“Understood, Admiral.”
The XO didn’t say another word, and Yu leaned down to continue poring over other potential hiding places for the Oregon.
60
Thank you for the heads-up, Captain Jefferson,” Juan said after hearing the audio clip that the NUMA commander had played for them over the encrypted radio channel. Everyone in the op center had gone quiet to listen to the underwater propeller.
“What do you make of it?” Jefferson asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“Is it the Portland?”
“No, I can say for sure that it isn’t.” The jets of water produced by the magnetohydrodynamic engines would never be mistaken for a ship’s propeller. “Can you play it again?”
After several repetitions, Linda Ross, whose hearing was still diminished but now functional again thanks to two weeks of recovery time, said, “Chairman, I ran the sound of the screw through our military database. The sound fidelity isn’t very good through the radio connection, but the computer says it most closely matches the audio profile of the screw on a Type 039A Chinese diesel-electric submarine.”
A murmur went through the op center. Juan certainly hadn’t expected that result.
“Although I never considered the possibility it was Chinese, I thought it might be a sub,” Jefferson said. “My chief scientist, Mary Harper, thought the screw was too far below the surface to be a ship.”
“And you said it’s heading toward us?” Juan asked Jefferson.
“Yes. Dr. Harper estimates that at the rate it is traveling, the sub will be able to see you in less than thirty minutes. That is, if her captain is crazy enough to enter the channel where you’re anchored.”
The Oregon had taken refuge in a long fjord that was the shape of a U-bend pipe used in plumbing. The Deepwater had come this way two days ago because one of the biggest penguin rookeries they were studying was located on one of the fjord’s pebble beaches. Jefferson said she briefly saw the Oregon on the operational webcam before the ship went out of frame.
On the map, it seemed that the fjord had only one way in or out. However, what used to be a peninsula that separated the two long arms of the fjord was now an island. Until recently, a glacier flowed down to the sea near the entrance to the fjord, but the ice had melted after the latest maps had been created just a few years before.
That left a gap barely wider than the Oregon. Only the most desperate circumstances would spur an effort to squeeze through it. One wrong move or rogue current and the jagged rocks would rip a mortal gash in the hull. While the sub would never come through the cut through the peninsula, it might attempt going down the length of the fjord.
“I wouldn’t discount anything at this point,” Juan said, “including Tate attacking your ship.”
“But we went through a channel that even I was reluctant to enter. There’s no way the Portland could get to us in here.”
Juan looked at the map. The Deepwater was ten miles to the south in a broad cove surrounded by mountains. Jefferson was right that the Portland couldn’t get in there, but that wouldn’t stop Tate.
