Chapter Twenty
From the bridge, Renard watched the skiff roll in the light seas as it dragged a meandering nylon line toward the Custom Venture. Jake startled him by speaking through a mouthpiece to Kao below.
“Mister Lion, right five degrees rudder,” Jake said.
“Coming to starboard may be too shallow,” Renard said. “If you overshoot the Custom Venture, it will take half an hour to circle back.”
“I won’t miss.”
“I suppose you have it all figured out.”
“Something wrong?” Jake asked.
As Renard grabbed his Marlboro, a crisp breeze blew amber cinders onto his olive parka.
“I’ve bitten my tongue more than once on this mission.”
“Just stick to my plan,” Jake said.
“Your plan failed to account for the Miami.”
Jake grunted.
“I do not mean to criticize,” Renard said. “I’m simply trying to begin a dialogue. What must a man do to earn your confidence?”
“You want to know?” Jake asked.
Renard felt Jake’s finger poke his sternum.
“In high school, Grant Mercer hardly left my side for three months after my mother died so that I wouldn’t kill myself. Riley Demorse and I traded duty responsibilities whenever one of us was too exhausted to stand watch. John Brody gave me a family. What the hell have you done?”
“I offered you liberation,” Renard said.
“You’re only doing it because I’m giving you a Trident full of warheads. These guys, they...”
“Yes? These guys?” Renard asked.
“They were real friends.”
“Ah, yet you may never see your real friends again.”
“So what’s your point?”
Renard tossed his Marlboro over the side and raised a fresh one to his lips.
“Men like you - like us - desire control. That’s why you’ve trusted so few men in your life, and then only in situations of dire need. But when you lose those friends, you feel a gap that’s not so easily filled. Loneliness, I believe it is called.”
“I still have Grant.”
“Do you? Are you sure he will be there to pluck you from the sea on the other side of the world?”
“I have the guys on this ship.”
“Do you consider them friends? I doubt it. I may now be your only true friend,” Renard said. “At some time during this journey, you will need to decide that I’ve earned your trust.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then I pray that fate has no intention of placing more strafing aircraft or Miami’s in our path. Tell me, this accident you suffered where you suspected foul play and mentioned a sort of impotence. You’ve hinted that your captain was at fault, and your angst was obvious, but we’ve never discussed the details.”
“Why should I?”
“It could be therapeutic.”
“I’m not impotent.”
“I never thought so, because you seemed far more enraged than depressed,” Renard said. “Yet you refused an attractive woman’s advances and mentioned that you were sexually incapable. I’ve tried to remain reserved about it but must inquire.”
Jake lifted a mouthpiece to his lips.
“Rudder amidships,” he said.
The Colorado veered toward the Custom Venture’s starboard quarter.
“Much better,” Renard said. “I now see your angle.”
“I have HIV,” Jake said, “because that fucker Thomas Henry gave it to me.”
“Mon Dieu! How?”
“I’m one of four guys on the crew who had AB positive blood. The other three donated a pint each, but Henry made damn sure his got in me first.”
For the first time, Renard empathized with his recruit’s rage.
“Why?”
“To protect his own ass,” Jake said. “After my accident was reported in the Kings Bay base paper, praising everyone who helped save my life, a few gay sailors – still in the closet, of course, because the Navy makes them hide behind the ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ policy – figured out that I had Henry’s blood in me. One of them warned me. Wrote me a nice long anonymous letter explaining everything.”
“Henry was gay?” Renard asked.
“Married but bi-sexual and part of a sex ring that disbanded when a few of them discovered they were HIV-positive. Henry was due to have his HIV discovered at the next blood screening.”
Renard sucked his Marlboro to the butt and sought its replacement.
“And it would have ended his career?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Jake said. “HIV-positive sailors can’t deploy on combatant vessels.”
“And so neither could you, after he infected you.”
“Right.”
“But he did not do this out of pure malice?”
“No,” Jake said. “He cut one of his fingers in some sort of bullshit accident I’m sure he faked while running down the passageway to be by my side. Then he just laid his hand on me. Supposedly, he was trying to demonstrate concern for my well-being while I lay there bleeding, but he made damned sure there were witnesses.”
Renard realized the extent of the evil.
“And blood flowed both ways,” he said, “casting doubt on who infected whom?”
“You got it,” Jake said.
“Did you not bring this to your chain of command?”
“No, Pierre, those assholes brought it to me. Commander Henry has already been selected for promotion to captain, and he’s been deep-selected to replace the submarine community’s only black admiral. John Brody deserves it, but they selected Henry because he played politics and the race card better, I guess.”
“Deplorable,” Renard said, “yet I see how men who place politics above valor may have rallied to protect the man.”
“The Commodore and base admiral told me to keep it quiet until Henry commanded his last patrol. Then he would have been done with sea duty before the next periodic blood draw, and he would waltz through shore commands on his way to admiral, HIV or not.”
“And you?”
“I was supposed to transfer to the Trident Training Facility for instructor duty the morning the Colorado left for patrol. No one onboard knew about it but me, Henry, and our yeoman. Then from there, I was supposed to fester while my dream of commanding a submarine died.”
Renard chuckled. Jake narrowed his eyes and stared.
“No,” Renard said. “I’m not laughing at you. Do you not see, mon ami? This horrific, callous event strikes you, and you lament your lost dream of commanding a submarine. Yet here you are, with my help, of course, and the Colorado is yours.”
Renard thought he noticed Jake holding back a smile.
“Just worry about your own problems,” Jake said.
“What do you mean?”
“I heard you talking on the wireless.”
“You understood?”
“Caught a few choice words.”
“Such as?”
“Such as ‘je t’aime’. Even a first year French student recognizes that as ‘I love you’. I had no idea you had emotional baggage.”
“Until recently,” Renard said, “neither did I.”
*
As parallel steel arms lifted the skiff to the Custom Venture’s deck, Jake ordered the Colorado to all stop, then watched the cargo vessel’s forward capstan winch pull the nose of the Colorado alongside.
His gaze fell to the back of the Trident where McKenzie and commandos climbed topside through the missile compartment hatch. They carried wrench sets, crowbars, and coils of nylon line.
Jake looked through the Custom Venture’s open cargo bay door. A group of longshoremen, a mix of Latinos and Europeans, stood in artificial light in front of a background of towering steel crates.
“How should I address our man on the bridge?” he asked while fingering the controls to a bridge-to-bridge radio.
“Call him ‘Captain’,” Renard said.
“Captain, do you copy?” Jake asked.
“Yes, sir,” a man with a Mandarin accent said.
“Do you have communications with the cargo bay?” Jake asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Stand by to receive our second mooring line.”
“Mister Panther,” Jake said into his sound-powered phone, “have Scott cast over the line.”
From the Colorado’s deck, Scott McKenzie tossed a rubber ball up to the Custom Venture’s bay. The ball carried a string behind it, which in turn held the end of a nylon mooring line.
A Custom Venture worker fielded the ball and dragged at the string and rope until he held enough mooring line to wrap around a second capstan within the cargo ship.
The capstan wound the rope and pulled the Colorado flush against the Custom Venture. Men lowered rubber come-alongs to the water line to buffer the bumping ships.
McKenzie supervised commandos in removing buoy hatch covers. Two cranes from the cargo ship swung overhead. After the commandos snapped the steel hooks to the exposed buoys, McKenzie signaled Jake with a thumbs-up.
“Release the buoys,” Jake said.
A thump reverberated throughout the Colorado as a blast of compressed gas severed the links holding each buoy to its nest. Gas venting around them, the buoys jumped and were caught by the Custom Venture’s cranes.
McKenzie inspected the nests to verify that the hoisting paths were clear. He motioned with a counter-clockwise waving of his arm.
“Lift the buoys,” Jake said.
Cranes hoisted buoys that resembled plastic orange garbage cans up the side of the Custom Venture.
“Buoys away. The rest is ready?” Jake asked.
“Yes, sir,” Captain Chu said. “Chains have been connected between the three steel crates. I verified the detonator. My partner will set it.”
“Very well. I have one order of business left. Send two inflatable life rafts down to my deck. After that’s done, tell the ship’s crew to slack the mooring lines so I can cast off. I’ve been surfaced too long already.”
Over the Colorado, a bright yellow barrel - a pneumatically inflatable raft - dangled in a webbed cargo net. As the raft touched down, Jake watched McKenzie help two commandos hold it steady. The crane released the webbing and rose to retrieve another raft.
McKenzie and the commandos rolled the rafts into the vacant buoy holes, bolted the buoy hatches over them, and prepared the Colorado’s topside to submerge again.
“Captain, make sure you follow my plan,” Jake said as he watched McKenzie shut the hatch and seal the Colorado.
“Detonation will occur twelve hours from now,” Chu said. “I will see to it.”
“I hope so. If not, you might want to stay on the higher decks. Because if I don’t hear crates hitting the water within the hour, I will be pumping this ship full of torpedoes. Now get this ship out of my way, and make sure its rudder is over hard right so you don’t scrape my hull.”
Jake led Renard down through the sail as the Custom Venture slipped away from the Colorado. He stared at the ship’s control panel and McKenzie’s grime-covered face. Cheetah and Tiger were seated at the control yokes, and the rest of the commandos had assembled to observe.
“The bridge is sealed, Scott. Fill all tanks.”
Two hours after surfacing, the Trident slipped beneath the water.
*
Illuminated by floodlights, a crane swung a three-crate network containing the Colorado’s identification buoys across the Custom Venture’s deck. The crane lowered the network into the ocean, releasing it to Jake’s calculations and the laws of physics.
Captain Chu watched the first crate, filled with sand, slide under the ocean surface. Dragged by the first, the empty second crate followed. The final crate, empty sans the Colorado’s buoys and a depth charge strapped to its wall, kept the network afloat.
“The depth charge is pressure activated, sir,” Chu said. “It will not detonate on the surface.”
“You leave me no choice but to share your optimism,” Captain Martino said.
“Our work here is complete,” Chu said. “You may now continue your voyage to Marseille. My partner and I will be your personal escorts for the remainder of the voyage.”