Arabian Storm (The Hunter Killer Series Book 5)

by George Wallace

  Even as the ground shook beneath him from the plane’s impact, a thought flashed through Jim Ward’s mind. In the space of two minutes they had gone from having strong advantage, following a good plan, on the attack with overwhelming firepower, to being in a very bad and risky position. Even with one truck destroyed and still burning, al-Wasragi’s fighters outnumbered and out-gunned Ward’s SEAL team. And now it was clear they were on alert and ready for just about anything.

  There was no time to call in any more airstrikes. Nor was it an option to slip away to regroup to fight another day. By the time they could get another air or missile strike in action, the terrorists and their gold would be gone.

  There was no other real choice. Ward and his team would have to stay and fight their way out of this mess.

  They had one ace in the hole—the single Javelin missile that one of the squad members, Tony Martinelli, had lugged into the fight. Other than that, they had to fight heavy machine guns with only their HK417 battle rifles and M320 grenade launchers. With only seven shooters, these were not the odds Ward wanted.

  Martinelli went to work. With a brief streak of light, the FGM-148F Javelin initiated the next phase of the fight. The deadly missile flashed across the valley, and its multi-purpose fragmentation warhead detonated as the missile slammed into the last pickup in line. Even with only eight kilograms of high explosives, the combination of blast and fragmentation sliced the truck, the fighters manning its gun, and its driver to shreds.

  Both the terrorists’ remaining heavy machine guns opened up on the rocky outcropping that Martinelli had used for concealment when he launched the Javelin. The bullets raised a dust storm, but the SEAL was no longer there. He had already scooted downslope and settled into a new firing position.

  Two other members of the SEAL team, Doug Broughton and Skip Cantrell, lobbed 40mm grenades into the fight with their launchers while Ward and Jason Hall used their 7.62mm sniper rifles to keep the bad guys pinned down. AK-47 fire and 23mm machine cannon rounds answered. The Somali fighters appeared to be moving their small arms positions away from the machine guns. They were probably trying to work their way around behind where the SEALs lay hidden. Plus, as far as they knew, more Javelins were about to be sent screaming in the direction of the trucks.

  Either way, Jim Ward had his suspicions confirmed. These guys were as well trained as they were armed.

  Ward caught occasional quick glimpses of al-Wasragi as he directed his men, but he never had a clear shot. The man seemed to magically move from one position to the other between wisps of dust and smoke. The white-robed terrorist was a ghost-like wraith moving around the battlefield in the yellow light of dawn.

  Ward had another realization. The firefight had become a standoff. The young SEAL lieutenant knew that his team could never win a standoff. This was al-Wasragi’s home turf. He almost certainly had help on the way already.

  There was only one thing to do.

  “Guys, hit the trucks,” he yelled into his boom mike. “And then let’s beat feet.”

  The SEALs shifted their fire to concentrate on the Toyotas, hitting them both with 40mm grenades. Neither of the vehicles was going anywhere soon. Even so, their machine guns continued to blast away.

  “Okay, let’s make ourselves scarce,” Ward called out. “Let’s muster at the crash site.”

  The black-smoking wreck of the Warthog was the only easily distinguishable feature anywhere nearby. Rocks offered some semblance of cover, too.

  “Skipper, I need some help.” Master Chief Johnston’s voice boomed through Ward’s earbuds. “I got the pilot. He’s busted up. We gotta get him out of here pretty quick.”

  “Roger, Master Chief. Heading your way.”

  The sun decided then to take a peek at the patch of violence there in its desert domain. The SEALs did not look back. They slipped down off the backside of their hill while they had the chance.

  They had a long and risky trudge to try to escape the scene of their ambush gone dramatically sideways. Someday, if they lived, they would try to figure out what all had gone wrong with an otherwise good plan and what they could do to avoid a repeat.

  But now, they had to get away from some angry fanatics while carrying a wounded man, and make it to some place where they could be extracted from this hellhole.

  But the one thing Jim Ward dreaded most was explaining to Admiral Tom Donnegan just how their mission had gone so big-time tits-up.

  10

  The news story on the Al Jazeera Network went viral almost immediately. Ben Tahib had not become the news service’s top correspondent only because he was well-connected or knew where certain skeletons were buried, though he certainly qualified on both counts. The reporter had an uncanny nose for a story and a naturally mesmerizing way of spinning it. Plus, he was well aware of how much the world loved an enigmatic tragedy.

  The big chopper on which Tahib had been riding out to visit Ocean Mystery had barely landed before the newsman jumped out and raced toward the nearest Wi-Fi connection. Even an airport as remote as Oman’s Salalah International had the wide band connectivity to get his blog file, tweets, and YouTube video distributed to his millions of followers. By the time he got his executive editor on the phone, the story was already trending worldwide. The idea that an ultra-modern oceanographic research ship had simply vanished in the Arabian Sea’s ancient—though pirate-infested—waters promised intrigue and high adventure. That the Ocean Mystery was conducting vital global-warming research, trying to save mankind from themselves, all under the auspices of the United Nations, took the story to an even more majestic level. And for an added fillip, two very interesting people, one a top scientist and the other a major UN functionary, had gone missing with the vessel.

  In New York, the United Nations General Assembly promptly scheduled an emergency meeting for the next day. Fiery speeches were being cranked out. The Security Council did not even wait. It was already in session, gathering consensus from the major powers on who was to blame for this tragedy. And, of course, to determine who could bring what resources into play in what would be an unprecedented search-and-rescue effort. Omani and Saudi search planes were already clawing their way into the sky to scour a very large chunk of the Arabian Sea. A pair of American P-8 Poseidons departed Sigonella Air Station in Sicily to stage out of Djibouti. The Indians were offering to send a couple of their P-8s to help, while the Pakistanis, not to be upstaged, volunteered a pair of their somewhat obsolete P-3 Orions. The skies in the region would soon be crowded as nations jockeyed to be the first to find the missing vessel and solve the puzzle. Meanwhile, ships got underway from naval bases within a couple of thousand miles of the missing vessel’s last known position. Soon the sea would be every bit as crowded as the skies.

  Talking heads at news organizations and propagandists from myriad countries around the world were already spinning the story. It was a Zionist plot to blame Palestinians or the Iranians. No, capitalist lackeys had done the dirty work to deflect attention from their raping of the planet. It was a Russian plot to crash the world economy. A dozen terrorist organizations hurried to claim credit for capturing, sinking, or otherwise making the ship disappear. One individual in Waddingham, England, purported to be in contact with extraterrestrials who shared with him details on how they had transported the Ocean Mystery to another dimension in the space-time continuum. But, he reported, they promised to send it back when they were finished examining it.

  This was all great fun for Ben Tahib. He had received the help of three assistants at the network to coordinate his appearances on news media around the globe. But he was realistic enough to know this might not lead to the Pulitzer Prize. Or a best-selling book or high-dollar movie. There was every chance that Ocean Mystery would show up with a story of a communications glitch or faulty navigation system and that would be the end of it. Tahib was well aware having a ship disappear with no trace, even if it had sunk, was highly unlikely.

  But as hours turned to days and
then a week passed with no sighting of ship or survivors or even any debris, the story only grew as the mystery intensified and the world media played it to the hilt.

  Ψ

  The massive, darkened ship steamed ponderously through the nighttime sea. From horizon to horizon, no other vessel cluttered up the radar screen. On the AIS screen, the nearest ship transponder was almost a hundred miles away. The huge vessel’s own AIS transponder had been turned off for days. Lloyd’s of London would not be tracking this particular asset for a while longer.

  The Persian Star barely slowed as it passed a rock of an island near a desolate shoreline, little more than an outcrop jutting out of the pitch-black sea. Then, in this isolated bit of sea, something odd occurred. The Ocean Mystery separated from the mammoth oil tanker. So did the four small vessels that had originally surrounded the research ship.

  Next, they headed arrow-straight for the uninhabited bit of rock. Unseen from their direction of origin was a small anchorage, barely large enough for the research vessel to slip in and snug right up next to the tall outcropping. Careful observation would have confirmed that this docking slip had only recently been blasted out of solid stone. Even in the pre-dawn semi-light, the raw, ugly scars showed brightly against dark, weathered rock.

  By the time the sun edged above the eastern horizon, the Persian Star had moved on, now only a tiny silhouette in the distance. Ocean Mystery and her playmates had already disappeared again, this time beneath huge camouflage curtains draped down from the top of the rock ledge. Anyone steaming through the area would have to risk colliding with the cliffs before they could have seen the curtains or the vessels they so effectively hid. Eyes overhead—aircraft or satellite—would almost certainly never see them.

  Meanwhile, half a mile offshore and a hundred feet under the surface, three vessels knew precisely where Ocean Mystery now floated. The persistent unmanned underwater vehicles had continued making a slow, wide circle. Without a specific mission assignment, their electronic brains would not allow them to go into water any shallower. Until told to do otherwise, they would faithfully circle out here, within range of Ocean Mystery’s acoustic signal, until either she called them in or came out to rendezvous. Or until they ran out of fuel.

  Of course, running out of fuel was now becoming a very real possibility. Their supplies had been marginal when they arrived for the original meeting. Now, after transiting across the Arabian Sea, keeping within the prescribed distance from their mothership, they would soon be critically low.

  Soon, commands or not, they would run dry and sink to the bottom, their service to their master no longer available.

  Ψ

  Bill Beaman’s muscles ached as he clung to the truck seat, trying to keep from being bounced all over the vehicle. How much higher could they possibly climb into these remote mountains before they would have to start dodging satellites and asteroids? Islamabad and any signs of civilization had long since been left behind them.

  Abdul Yusufzai had promised a short ride in the country. That had been many dusty hours of bad road ago and plenty of painful bouncing about. Beaman was becoming more and more aware that he was no longer as young as he once had been, and despite a rigorous workout routine, he was no longer in SEAL shape either.

  Rounding a curve in the road, Yusufzai suddenly jumped on the brake and skewed to a stop. A military checkpoint blocked their way. A squad of uniformed men guarded this unlikely outpost way up here in the middle of nowhere. Clearly, the soldiers were as surprised at being disturbed at their lunchtime activities as Beaman and Abdul were at running upon the checkpoint.

  They all looked at each other for a moment, then the soldiers slowly rose from where they sat around a small campfire. A pair of them, hands resting on the grips of their sidearms, sauntered over to where Abdul had stopped the truck. The rest watched with interest but made no move to where their rifles were stacked neatly against a nearby boulder.

  Beaman tensed and leaned forward, coiled, ready to defend himself.

  “Just stay calm and quiet,” Abdul hissed. “These are Guardia. They are more interested in screwing goats than bothering us.”

  Beaman nodded and leaned back. But his hand casually dropped to where his Sig pistol rested under his jacket on the seat next to him. Abdul cranked down the window, allowing in a blast of cold, dry air.

  “Papers,” the ostensible leader growled in Punjabi as he stepped up to the driver’s side.

  Abdul nodded then riffled through a wad of documents that he pulled from above the truck’s sun visor. He handed a couple to the guard.

  After only a cursory glance, the guard handed them back and impatiently waved the truck on through. As they disappeared around the next turn, Beaman could see the squad hunker down around the campfire once more, likely grousing about the interruption. He saw no radios, no move to alert anyone up ahead that strangers were approaching.

  Another hour and even higher up in the mountains, the old road opened out to an overlook, offering a sweeping view of a broad valley far below. With no explanation, Abdul pulled the truck over to the side of the road and climbed out. He reached behind the seat and retrieved a large, powerful spotting scope. Only then did he look to Beaman.

  “Come. There is something I want you to see.”

  Setting the scope across the truck hood, Abdul aimed it across the valley as he peered through the device. Then he motioned for Beaman to have a look.

  “See that village over there, back up against the rock?” the Pakistani agent asked. Beaman looked, nodded. “I do. What about it?”

  “It was not there last fall. It appeared up here sometime during the winter. We have received intel that the Pakistani ISI, the Inter-Services Intelligence, is using it to train anti-terrorists. Or to train terrorists.”

  Beaman looked at Abdul quizzically. A brutally chill wind blew up from the valley. The big SEAL shivered.

  “So, which is it?” he asked.

  “We cannot be certain,” the agent said, in an almost mournful tone. “That, Captain, is our quandary. The Pakistanis, they have been our best allies. But, at times, our worst enemies.”

  Beaman scratched the day’s growth of beard on his jaw.

  “Trouble with war these days, you can’t tell your friends from your foes.” He bent over and looked again at the village. It looked like any other remote cluster, a few rough huts that had been there for millennia. “What do we do?”

  Abdul Yusufzai ignored Beaman’s question. He leaned against the truck and took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, then removed one, placed it in his lips, and lit it. He offered Beaman the pack. The SEAL shook his head.

  “Too many things out there could kill me. I don’t need another one.”

  The brisk wind swept away the cigarette smoke.

  “We are concerned by what we have seen down there,” Abdul said. “First, someone went to much trouble to make the village suddenly appear yet look as if it had long been there. And then, we have observed much unexplained activity.” Abdul took a drag on his cigarette and exhaled a cloud of smoke. “Not the usual, where they merely teach men—practically children, actually—how to point a gun and pull a trigger or how to approach a targeted group of people without arousing suspicion and detonate themselves. We have reason to believe it is much more sophisticated and lethal than that.”

  The agent’s tone got Beaman’s attention.

  “So, what do we do?” he again asked.

  Abdul tossed the cigarette into the dust at his feet and crushed it with his boot heel.

  “Our mutual friend believes it all might be tied to someone named Nabiin.”

  “Nabiin?”

  “But to some, he is known as the Prophet. If we are able to confirm that one fact…” The agent’s voice trailed off as he stared down into the deep, darkening valley.

  “If we confirm it, what?” Beaman finally asked.

  “Then it may already be too late.”

  Even as Abdul spoke, the two men h
eard the unmistakable roar of jet aircraft approaching rapidly. There were four of them, a flight of Russian-built SU-30s. But each plane carried the unmistakable orange, white, and green Indian Air Force roundels.

  The jets flashed by so low and close they were actually below where Abdul and Beaman stood, watching, mouths open. Beaman was certain that he could read the pilots’ instruments.

  Then the noise of the engines was drowned out by the staccato roar from each plane’s 30mm auto-cannon. Next came the flash and thunder as the fighter jets unloaded their ordnance on the training village. The four planes went supersonic as they climbed and then disappeared over the high ridge, heading east toward home.

  A second wave of four SU-30s swooped in and dumped their loads of cluster bombs. But they fell on nothing more than a burning hole in the ground.

  The little village that had popped up so suddenly had just disappeared from the face of the earth far more quickly and violently.

  Ψ

  Nabiin gazed through the lenses of his fashionable spectacles at the cramped little room in which the other men waited quietly but patiently. He studied the faces of the small gathered group seated comfortably on cushions scattered about the cave floor. The only adornments were colorful and intricate Persian and Afghan rugs that lay on the floor or hung from pitons in the rock wall.

  This would be one of the very few—and likely the very last—times that the Prophet would gather his most powerful lieutenants here in this particular location. Nabiin sensed that it had become incredibly dangerous by now, that the likelihood had become high that the American devils and their many spies would stumble upon some hint of the grand plan now underway. However slight such a thing might be.