The Steel Shark

Chapter 24

Laila looked around her once-Spartan bedroom. Aunt Bibi had given them small carpets to hang on the walls or tack to the floors, a tea service for the mess hall with ornate metal cups that wouldn’t break if they were knocked off in a strong sea, packets of fine tea, expensive chocolate, sheer scarves, pots of paint and brushes, and so much more. The women had set about brightening up their austere living quarters. If the Chinese builders could see the ship now, they would shudder.

But the Siren looked wonderful and homey. They would hate to leave her after they took care of Prince Timgad. Maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe they would sail the seas forever, resupplying at Aunt Bibi’s, living on fine tea and fresh fish. They didn’t have to abandon their vessel when she’d completed her task.

Aunt Bibi had included backgammon and chess and other travel-sized board games. Most pieces had magnetic bottoms, and she remembered playing with similar versions as a child. Aunt Bibi had also burned DVDs full of music and movies and television shows. The television in the mess hall was scheduled for many shifts to come.

They had one more training exercise, and then they had only to wait for their target to come to them, and hope they didn’t miss. If they hit their target, a thousand lives would be lost. If they missed, it would be a hundred times that, and Nahal would never let her forget it. They had to practice.

She took a sip of black tea sweetened with so much sugar it made her teeth hurt and ate the last fresh fig. She wondered if the new indulgences were weakening the crew’s resolve.

Today would show otherwise.

She walked leisurely to the bridge. Someone had painted the once-gray floor a bright orange with paisley patterns. It brightened the corridor and gave the crew something to do, but she missed the simple gray. It had been restful.

She entered the bridge. No one had changed anything in here, per her orders. This place permitted no distractions. The women sat tense at their posts.

“Captain on the bridge,” said Ambra, again with the emphasis on captain. “Coming up on the Narwhal.”

The Narwhal was an oil tanker that had visited New York a few days before to deliver her oil. She was returning to her home base in the country of Laila’s birth. A banged-up old tub, she’d been in service for a long time and didn’t have the latest in electronics and sonar. She thought she was alone in the middle of the Atlantic.

But she wasn’t.

Ambra used her yellow pencil to trace their course relative to the Narwhal’s on the paper maps. Laila was thinking about the men aboard the Narwhal. She must encourage the crew to think of those men as collateral damage, not as men with wives and children and mothers. Men who would be mourned. Men whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Although, not all the men were innocent. One had beaten Rasha so hard she’d lost her child. And it was a small crew, just over twenty men. They had to practice.

Laila and the crew had discussed this for hours. Some had suggested shooting at ghost ships, others at empty oil rigs. In the end, they had agreed that targeting a moving boat in the middle of the ocean was the only real test they had time for. They had to intercept the Roc in six days, so their options were limited.

They had chosen a civilian boat that seemed unlikely to be monitored by sonar. Rasha’s husband’s presence was merely a bonus. The time for the test had come.

Ambra ran a polished red nail across their course, stopping at the point of intercept. “Right there. They might as well be on Ceti Alpha V.”

“Where’s that?”

“It’s the planet where Captain Kirk marooned Khan in the Space Seed episode,” Ambra said.

“You know the episode name?”

“You wanted a mathematician. We know this stuff.”

“The episode name?” Laila asked.

“They also made two movies about Khan. As a film major, you ought to have seen them.”

“I bet they were classics.”

Ambra smiled. “In the genre, yes.”

“Is Ceti Alpha V a good place to intercept?”

“So long as we don’t beam down to the planet’s surface.”

“Duly noted. Proceed to Ceti Alpha V.”

“Aye aye, Captain.” Ambra marched back to her duty station.

It seemed like a movie, or a game, but it wasn’t. The lives they would end were real.

“Close to firing distance,” said Ambra without even turning to look. “No other vessels in range. No other vessels for miles.”

So, no one would see their attack, or come in time to rescue the survivors. The ship was helpless. Rasha would get revenge, and they would be able to practice for their more important mission. An ideal scenario, but Laila knew they all felt conflicted about it.

“How long until we’re in torpedo range?” Laila asked.

“A little over a minute,” Ambra said. “Sixty-seven seconds.”

“Load torpedoes.”

Ambra relayed the order to the torpedo room.

“Breech door open,” said Rasha’s curiously deep voice through the intercom. “Loading torpedo.”

They waited. She imagined the scene in the torpedo room — they’d opened the inner door, also called the breech door, to the torpedo tube. Right now, they were watching the giant explosive device slide into the firing tube.

“Torpedo loaded. Breech door closed,” said Rasha. She sounded uncertain. Laila had thought it would be best to have her man the torpedoes, but maybe she should have used someone else, someone who didn’t know one of the men to be killed.

“Roger that,” said Laila. “Stand by.”

They continued on their course through the deep blue. If she didn’t do anything to stop it, twenty-five men would die.

“In range, Captain.” Ambra’s voice trembled.

This was the first time they would take innocent lives, but Laila had practiced. She’d killed her brother and the prince’s bodyguard. “Flood the tube.”

“Flooding,” crackled from the intercom.

It would take a few seconds to fill the torpedo tube with water. The pressure within the tube had to equal the water pressure outside before they could move to the next step. She’d lain in the escape trunk long enough to know the process took time.

Sooner than she’d expected, the torpedo room spoke. “Ready to open the muzzle door.”

The muzzle door was on the outside hull. The torpedo would fire through that opening. Ambra’s teeth worried her lower lip.

“Open muzzle door,” Laila said.

“Open,” the torpedo room confirmed.

“We’re in range,” Ambra said.

“The torpedo is aimed and ready to fire,” announced Rasha.

Laila took a deep breath. She pictured the blood of the innocent crew splashing into the sea, and she looked over at Ambra.

“Ready,” Ambra said.

The die was cast. “Fire torpedo.”

The submarine rocked slightly, but that was the only indication the torpedo had left the ship. Another rock might have meant the torpedo had hit its mark and exploded.

“Surface to periscope height.” She had to make sure.

The periscope was eighteen meters long, so they didn’t have to come too close to the surface to use it. If anyone on the Narwhal was looking, the Siren wouldn’t be spotted, even if the torpedo had missed the ship entirely.

“Periscope height,” said Ambra.

Laila pulled down the handles and looked through the eyepieces. The Narwhal looked unharmed. She moved forward as before.

“We missed,” she said. “Acquire the target and try again.”

She returned to the periscope and watched the hapless Narwhal. It sailed along, completely unaware. That was how she would want to die — happy, unaware, and then gone. “We have to learn before it’s important.”

“Second torpedo in place,” said Rasha. “Target is acquired.”

“Fire second torpedo,” Laila said.

The Siren dipped, and she looked through the periscope. A tremendous explosion of white water blossomed into the air, and the submarine rocked. The outline of Narwhal was barely visible through the white screen.

The water settled back to the sea.

“Target is hit,” she called.

Ragged cheering broke out on the bridge and sounded over the intercom from the torpedo room.

She watched their unfortunate target. Tall flames licked up from the sea. Black smoke billowed into the sky like a cloud from hell. The water roiled white around the ship. The torpedo had struck the Narwhal amidships, and she rode low in the water.

“Nothing on the radio,” Ambra said. “They haven’t sent out a Mayday yet.”

Those left behind might not ever know where their loved ones had died, might wait weeks for the overdue ship, as their mothers and family had waited for news of the women who now crewed the Siren.

The Narwhal’s deck listed, and figures small as ants spilled off the side.

A hand touched her shoulder.

“You don’t have to watch it,” Meri said.

“You should be at your battle station,” Laila said. “In the medical bay.”

Meri squeezed her shoulder and let go.

The tanker burned in earnest now. Flames engulfed the deck. To minimize environmental damage, Laila had waited until the ship had off-loaded the oil, even though she would have liked to have forced her country to take that financial loss. Was the tanker burning up because she carried extra oil, or was this normal? She had no idea, because she’d never seen a ship take a torpedo strike before, not even in the movies.

She swept the periscope back and forth, looking for survivors. Tiny black heads bobbed among pieces of wreckage.

“Mayday message sent out,” Ambra said. “They reported an explosion and are requesting help.”

No one was close enough to help them.

“Admirable performance,” Laila said.

“Thank you, ma’am,” said Rasha on the intercom from the torpedo room. She sounded ready to cry.

“We must discover why the first one missed,” Laila said. “But not today.”

Ambra looked at the periscope, and Laila stepped back to let her use it. Maybe she would be able to see Rasha’s brutal husband die. Laila understood the need for that kind of closure.

During the next new moon, they would rendezvous with Aunt Bibi. She would have new oxygen generators. They would be able to dive and maneuver and fire like a true combat submarine, instead of limping along near the surface. The target would have no chance.

Unless they shot back.