Arabian Storm (The Hunter Killer Series Book 5)

by George Wallace

  “Can you tell how close?”

  “With this strength, it has to be very, very close.”

  “Pirates?”

  “Never known them to have anything this powerful or broad-banded. They’re covering from VLF to SHF.”

  Without hesitation, Monagnad reached over and grabbed the alarm switch. The klaxon blared as he grabbed the microphone and hollered, “Repel boarders! All hands take stations to repel boarders.”

  Flashing on the massive topside lights, he illuminated the ocean out to a thousand yards, just in time to see four dark-gray high-speed gunboats racing toward them. Each sported a very nasty-looking machine cannon on the bow, pointed directly at the ship.

  Monagnad recognized the boats. They were the new stealth gunboats that the Iranians had been bragging so much about lately, in propaganda, to news media, to anyone who would listen. That explained how they got so close without the radar alarming. But it did not explain how they got way out here, over a thousand miles from the nearest Iranian naval base, or how they knew to come to this remote spot.

  Then, quick flashes from the cannon on one of the craft. Monagnad dove to the deck just as a spray of deadly fire crashed through the broad windshield and demolished the wheelhouse. Glass shards and metal fragments flew in all directions as if slapped by some giant hand.

  The radio operator was an instant too slow in ducking. He fell in a bloody heap of shattered flesh.

  “On the ship!” It was a loud hailer from the lead gunboat. “On the ship! Stand by to receive boarders! Do not attempt to resist.”

  Monagnad painfully crawled through the broken glass over to the bloody mass that had just seconds before been his radioman. There was nothing he could do for the man. Flying shrapnel had cut through his throat, almost decapitating him.

  The captain continued crawling, heading toward the bridge wing away from the gunboats, putting as much ship as possible between himself and the attackers’ guns. In the darkness, he bumped into Chas ben-Wabi, who lay on the deck in a fetal position, whimpering. He was incoherent with fear, unable to respond to Monagnad’s questions about any possible wounds. He couldn’t see any blood or obvious trauma. The captain crawled on. He had more important things to worry about. His ship was under attack, and whoever it was meant business and had the weapons to do whatever they wanted.

  Monagnad risked raising his head just enough to see down to the main deck. Gunboats had sidled up midships on either side while the other two took station a couple of hundred meters off, the maws of their ugly guns trained on the Ocean Mystery. Most of the crew were standing now, their hands raised.

  He caught a glimpse of Clyde McClellan dropping out of sight into the control box. Almost immediately, Fish Number Four, hidden from view between the hulls, fell from its sling into the water and slid unseen into the depths. Monagnad knew it would soon join Five and Six far out in the Indian Ocean. At least those three would not be captured. And if McClellan was half the engineer that Monagnad thought he was, Fishes One, Two, and Three were very, very dumb by now.

  Activity over on the port rail. Armed men clambered over the side and took up firing positions on the main deck, some with guns aimed at the deck crew and more with their weapons pointed up at the wheelhouse.

  Monagnad raised his hands over his head and slowly stood. He yelled down to the deck, “We surrender! We are not armed!”

  The team leader, a tall, dark man dressed in combat fatigues and armed with a wicked-looking machine pistol, called back, “You are the prisoners of ‘ustul allah, Allah’s Navy. Do not attempt to resist or you will be executed.”

  “We are an unarmed research ship conducting peaceful operations for the United Nations,” Monagnad countered. “Take whatever you want but do not harm us.”

  The leader sprayed automatic fire just above the captain’s head.

  “Silence, infidel! We have far to go before the sun rises. Pray to Allah that you are alive to see it rise one more time.”

  Ψ

  Captain Yon Hun Glo stretched mightily, hoping to relieve his tired, cramped muscles. For the past week, the Chinese submarine captain had remained almost continuously in the control room of his boat, the Wushiwu, leaving only for meals and head calls. He had watched as his quarry, the unsuspecting Indian SSBN, slowly but inexorably steamed to the north and west, toward its certain destruction.

  Yon glanced at his watch. Should be time now.

  “Captain, contact zig,” the on-watch sonarman called out. “Contact is slowing and turning right.”

  Yon nodded and smiled. Four hours, almost to the minute. Sure enough, the Indian captain had continued his very methodical and predictable pattern. He would slowly turn to the right and then come up to periscope depth. Then, after fifteen minutes shallow and copying his broadcast, the SSBN would sink back to fifty meters depth and continue to the north and west. Always at a very sedate and predictable seven kilometers per hour.

  Stepping over to the electronic navigation table, Yon stared down at the traces that electronically detailed the two warships’ tracks. Touching a few keys projected the Indian’s course that would carry him across the bright red line drawn across twenty degrees north latitude. The submarine would pass the line of death only a few minutes after completing its excursion to periscope depth. Yon had a fleeting image of the Indian making a final good-bye to his family.

  It was time to go into action. Yon, in rapid succession, ordered, “Bring the ship to battle stations. Make the torpedoes in tubes one and two fully ready. Open the outer doors on tubes one and two.”

  The captain could just hear the muted shuffle of running feet as the crew scurried to their action stations and rushed to make the Wushiwu ready for battle. The sonar system fed its stream of course, speed, and range information into the fire control computers that calculated the intercept information the YU-9 torpedoes needed to be able to hunt out their prey. The torpedo tube outer doors swung inward, exposing the torpedoes to the sea. Now, Yon only needed to order their launch, the instant the Indian crossed the invisible line in the ocean.

  “Captain, the Indian has steadied on a new course. Transients. I think he is coming deep.”

  Something did not sound quite right in the sonarman’s tone. Yon glanced across the control room to where the man sat at his console, body rigid, and held his earphones clamped tightly to his ears.

  “Zero bearing rate!” the sonarman suddenly screamed. “He is coming right at us!”

  Wide-eyed, Yon leapt into action.

  “Right full rudder, full dive on all planes, ahead flank!” he commanded as he dashed to get his own view of the sonar screen. Sure enough, the trace was printing out an arrow-like path aimed directly at the Chinese submarine.

  What was going on? Was there time and room to get out of the big Indian sub’s way?

  Wushiwu’s deck angled downward as both the depth gauge and compass rapidly unwound.

  “Steady course zero-nine-zero. Make your depth two hundred meters.” Yon consciously worked to keep the panic from his voice. Just maybe they could get far enough off track or deep enough to keep from getting struck. But Yon was well aware that an underwater collision with a boat over four times the size of the Wushiwu would be devastating.

  “Captain, contact is still closing,” the sonarman called out, his voice now little more than a panicked squeak. Now Yon and his crew could hear the Indian sub through the hull. The reverberating drumming from the big sub’s screw drowned out everything else. Then, like a locomotive screaming past a railroad station, the Indian sub roared by overhead, the noise gradually diminishing to the southeast.

  Yon’s hand was shaking as he tried to wipe the sweat away from his brow. Only then did he realize he had been holding his breath for at least the past two minutes.

  Ψ

  Captain Ashwinder Vikat had been sitting on the conn of the INS Argihat SSBN 86, calmly reading the message traffic that his radiomen had just downloaded. The message in his hand had not been ent
irely unexpected, but it was very welcome. They were being ordered home, finally. But their home base at INS Varsha was over two thousand miles away, way over on the Bay of Bengal. They would have to hurry to get there by their assigned time.

  “Diving Officer, make your depth one hundred meters, come to course one-six-zero, all ahead full. It’s time to go home.”

  Several crewmembers had cheered enthusiastically.

  The big submarine quickly dropped down from periscope depth and picked up speed as it swung around to its new southerly course.

  As Vikat stepped out of the control room, he glanced at the sonar display. There was the briefest flash of noise energy, but it had disappeared just as quickly as it popped up.

  Biologics, the submarine captain thought. Probably nothing but some biologics. Nothing to be concerned about, though.

  After all, they were now headed home. And after an uneventful, typically boring voyage.

  6

  Admiral Tom Donnegan had been the US Navy’s top spook since most of his superiors were still in high school. Now, finally approaching retirement age, he often wondered what it would soon be like, not having the fate of the planet on his shoulders 24/7. Merely thinking of such a boring existence made him depressed.

  “I’d prefer keeling over face-first into this mug of coffee on my last day on the payroll,” he had told the few others he considered close friends. “Then play taps and roll me off into a ditch somewhere.”

  But there were times—like that very moment—when he felt he could do just fine without the aggravation. Donnegan removed his reading glasses and idly cleaned them with a used paper napkin left over from the usual greasy, high-fat breakfast he consumed at his desk. He was doing no good with the specs, though. Lost in thought, he was simply smearing around a bit of butter on the lenses. He never noticed.

  At the top of the pile on his overflowing desk was a report that was especially interesting. And distressing. It was the thorough work of young Jim Ward, the SEAL lieutenant and son of Donnegan’s godson, Jon Ward. Donnegan snorted. Did that make Jim his god-grandson? Might as well be. The admiral had been in the hospital, fifty feet from the delivery room, when Jim was born. Taught him to ride a bicycle without training wheels while his dad was deployed as a submarine skipper. Watched in person as he graduated from middle school, high school, and first in his class at the US Naval Academy.

  Donnegan allowed himself a long sigh, sipped cold coffee, and failed to notice it as he picked up the relatively thin sheaf of papers. Ward’s report on the Sudan mission was interesting. And not in a good way.

  He skimmed the report for the third time, but he already knew exactly what it contained. He had read it in full the moment it hit the desk.

  Donnegan shook his head, stood up, and stretched his cramped muscles. His back was really starting to bother him lately. Way too many hours hunched over that old desk, reading complicated reports from the far side of the world, most of them written more for advancement in rank or potential commendation instead of telling the head spook what he needed to know. The data he required to draw conclusions and then move men and machines around on the planet to gather more data. Or to put a stop—often a violent one—to whatever was afoot.

  Yet again, Tom Donnegan promised himself that he would get out and exercise more. Maybe an hour a day down at the Pentagon Athletic Center. Maybe peddle a stationary bike while he ruminated over the knotty problems that found their way to his desk in search of solutions and decisions. But he knew himself well enough to be assured such a lifestyle change would never happen.

  Too much shit going on. Too many bad guys to keep track of. Copious troubles constantly in the offing, many of which could change the face of the planet if allowed to fester and metastasize.

  He stepped over to the window of his E-Ring office and stared out at the Potomac River and the Washington Monument beyond, just now catching the early morning sunshine. The view always reminded him why he was here, doing this thankless job, anonymously protecting his country the best way he knew how.

  The moments at the window helped his disposition if not his back muscles. After a few seconds, he turned and sat back down at his desk. Nothing in the pile had moved. It all still needed to be read, digested, and acted upon. Quickly, decisively, and correctly.

  Jim Ward’s report had Donnegan stymied. Why was the top dog in Somalia taking a late-night meeting with the top dog in Yemen in a very secluded corner of the Sudanese desert? Two men who openly and viciously hated each other? And who was this guy in the business suit who appeared to have called the conclave in the first place?

  Donegan riffled through the report again, as if he would find the answers to his questions somehow hidden there. The photographs of Sheik al-Wasragi were very clear. The murderous Wahabi terrorist ruled the lawless regions of Somalia with an iron fist, making use of the chaos and unbelievable human suffering for his own nefarious purposes. There were reliable reports that he sometimes worked with the Egyptian Sunni terrorist group Al-Jama’a al-Islamiyya, Boko Haram in Nigeria, as well as several other Sunni terrorist organizations in Africa, possibly with plans to unite them into one mighty dangerous entity. But so far, most of his efforts had been spent ruthlessly squashing the many small groups of bandits and terrorists that claimed bits and pieces of Somalia.

  And then there was General Babak. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard general, the behind-the-curtain leader of the Houthi rebels in Yemen, the monster directly and proudly responsible for massacres that slaughtered entire loyalist villages. The sadistic revolutionary terrorist had made a career out of killing Sunni Muslims wherever he might encounter them. Often by his own hand if no lackey was nearby to do the deed.

  How could these two brutes possibly be in the same place at the same time without war breaking out? But the pictures did not lie.

  Then the real puzzle: who was the little man in the rumpled business suit, the one obviously in total control of the desert rendezvous? The one who produced and turned over a stunning amount of gold? And what could all that gold possibly be purchasing?

  The Prophet? Who was this man who could demand such respect—even fear—from such brutal, egomaniacal, and hardened terrorists?

  For years now Donnegan had seen hints and mentions of such a super-terrorist, a man that even the worst of the lot bowed to. But the admiral considered it mere legend. In this day and age, such a self-styled, latter-day Prophet—a direct descendant of Muhammad returned to reunite the faithful in a final jihad against the infidels of the world according to the wilder speculation—could never exist.

  Donnegan had seen other reports that the Prophet claimed to have descended from the high mountains in the East to lead jaysh allah—Allah’s Army—to personally oversee the “final campaign.” Most in the world’s intelligence community had shoved such reports aside, regarding them as little more than Yeti sightings or UFO rumors. Or, at the most, simple wishful thinking by the most radical Islamic terrorists. Fairy tales to be discounted and ignored. There were far more legitimate concerns that required attention.

  But now, a hint, maybe more of a hunch, told Tom Donnegan that there might actually be something there. A man or men who had convinced such jaded radicals to peacefully come to the same place at the same time and breathe the same air, then haul away a fortune in gold into the desert night.

  Was this proof that years of mythical mumblings might actually have substance? Did this Prophet really exist? And if so, if he had such power, not to mention so much gold, how had he managed to avoid showing up on the world’s radar screen when so many were constantly looking for the next dire threat?

  Donnegan rubbed his temples. Too damn many questions. Each one only made the throbbing at the base of his skull more intense. But the admiral knew it was up to him to get answers. The right answers. Only then could this threat be evaluated, and appropriate action taken.

  The old admiral could see that he could do two things right away to stir the pot some and see what bo
iled to the surface. First, he dashed off a quick message with orders for Jim Ward and his team. A little mission that might sow some confusion. Then he grabbed a phone and dialed a well-remembered number. After a series of clicks, beeps, and long pauses for the security system to catch up, the call finally rang through.

  “Peace and Plenty Grill.” The familiar voice was skewed by a forced island lilt. “Let the umbrella drinks and warm sand wash away your troubles in our little island paradise.”

  Donnegan laughed.

  “Drop the marketing! This ain’t no customer. I need to speak with a broken-down old SEAL, reportedly well pickled in cheap rum and cheaper suntan oil.”

  Bill Beaman chuckled. “Ain’t nothing cheap about my rum, Boss. And I prefer ‘preserved’ to ‘pickled.’ How can I help you, Admiral?”

  “We won’t quibble semantics when it comes to your questionable sobriety, Sailor!”

  “Agreed, then. Something tells me you aren’t calling to book a quick weekend on the beach.”

  After years putting out conflagrations around the globe and a few too many broken bones and gunshot wounds, Bill Beaman had retired as a SEAL. He promptly bought a bar and motel in a quiet corner of the Bahamas, a place where one of his last adventures had occurred. But he, too, had trouble stepping away from a violent and intense lifestyle. He continued to consult when called upon. There had been no lack of business so far.

  “Not this time, Bill,” Donnegan confirmed. “Maybe when things slow down a bit Louise and I can get down there and hold down a deck chair next to a pool for a while and gauge the quality of that rum for ourselves.” The shift in gears in Donnegan’s voice was obvious, at least to Beaman. “Right now, though, I need to hire you on for a little bit of side work.”

  “Let me guess. Something so deep down and obscure, your cohorts and not even your bosses know about it. And won’t, unless we fail.”