Arabian Storm (The Hunter Killer Series Book 5)

by George Wallace

  By then, too, other ships in the battlegroup were coming alert. Weapons were slewing toward the incoming radar blips, just in case they were determined to be a threat. Then, suddenly, the first of the Type 730 Close-In Weapons System spurted out a stream of thirty-millimeter slugs. Almost immediately, more guns came alive. HHQ-10 short range anti-air missiles burned across the sky. Tracers, missiles, and explosions lit up the darkness. That clearly revealed a gargantuan swarm consisting of small, propeller-driven aircraft slowly but inexorably moving toward the battlegroup. With a wingspan of barely four meters, the tiny, unmanned drones were difficult targets to hit. In the face of the withering fire from the Chinese naval vessels, hundreds were being punched out of the sky, even if it was mostly by accident, not aim.

  Then the guns fell silent, out of ammunition. And no more missiles, either. The launchers were empty. But more than six hundred diminutive aircraft were still coming their way, and they were only three kilometers out. Crews rushed out on deck, lugging HHQ-10 missiles to reload the launchers while others rolled out drums of thirty-millimeter ammunition for the guns.

  That was when the first wave of unmanned craft reached the Nantong. Carrying less than ten kilograms of explosives each, an individual strike did not cause much damage. But when more than two hundred aircraft smashed into the frigate, like so many bugs on a car’s windshield, the effect was crippling. They first struck the bridge and radar masts, rendering the ship blind and headless. Fires and secondary explosions rippled across the deck, up and down the length of the vessel.

  The Hohhot and the Sin Tzu were next. On the destroyer, the story was very similar to what occurred on the unfortunate frigate. The warship was left burning, sightless, and, for all practical purposes, defenseless, even as the crew valiantly tried to save their ship.

  The helicopter carrier had a much worse fate. The tiny aircraft slammed into the Shenyang fighters that were aligned along the flight deck, fully fueled, armed, and ready to support the operation that brought them to this spot in the sea. But they were not ready for the sudden onslaught now upon them. Each fighter became an exploding, flaming pyre. The secondary explosions from the fighters’ ordnance ripped mammoth holes in the deck and poured burning fuel from the aircraft down hatches and ladders, lighting more fires deep into the heart of the ship.

  The Sin Tzu had been prepared for attack and re-attack. The ammunition and bombs had been staged on the hangar deck, ready to rapidly re-arm returning fighters. The fires raced down the hangar deck and reached the ordnance, creating more secondary explosions, adding to the dying ship’s agony.

  More tiny planes slammed into the Renhai. The night sky was brilliantly lit by the flaming pyres that only minutes before had been indomitable fighting ships. But the ships on the starboard side of the formation, the Zaozhuang and the Chagan Lake, were untouched.

  Now in survival mode, no one on any of the ships saw a second wave of drones, every bit as large and deadly as the first, flying in from the north.

  The Zaozhuang was hit first and then the Chagan Lake. The entire attack was over in less than half an hour. The once proud battle group was little more than a cluster of burning hulks, even as the surviving crews battled just to keep them afloat.

  Soon, the rising sun would reveal the scene, including the pillars of black, billowing smoke climbing into the clear, red-tinged sky.

  Ψ

  Nabiin the Prophet sat in the communications center on the Ocean Mystery, just a few kilometers over the horizon from all the mayhem. Even in the moonless night, he could see the building fires glowing on the horizon, as if the sun had decided to rise in the west this particular morning. The barest hint of a smile flitted across his craggy features as he glanced down at the satellite images on the console display below him.

  Once again, his strategy was playing out perfectly. The unsuspecting Chinese had fallen into the carefully planned and baited trap, just as he knew they would. They had become victims of their own hubris, their cocksure belief that they had become a major naval power.

  Where was that bold self-assurance now?

  It would be only a short wait before the next step played out. And the fallout from that would reverberate around the globe.

  Yawm al-Qiyamah—the End Times—had been unleashed. There was no longer anything the world’s infidels could do to stop it.

  Ψ

  Admiral Tom Donnegan sat at the head of the oak conference table, sipping cold, mucky coffee without tasting it. Jon Ward, his brand-new deputy, sat at his left hand, staring at reports, a puzzled frown on his face. The window behind Ward perfectly framed the last of the orange, gold, and red sunset lighting the sky over Arlington National Cemetery.

  “You awake, Jon?” Donnegan suddenly asked.

  “Brain-numb, maybe, but yeah. I’m awake. Travel makes me tired anymore. And besides, none of this makes sense, you know.”

  Donnegan snorted. “Welcome to my world. Like one of the wife’s landscape jigsaw puzzles. With half the pieces missing. You seen these yet?”

  Donnegan tossed a sheaf of photos across the table to Ward. He glanced at them.

  “No, sir. But I read the brief.” Ward riffled through the photos of burning ships taken from a low-earth orbit satellite. They were sharp enough to make out men in the water, bodies lying on decks, flames and smoke erupting from below. “Looks like our good friends, the Chinese, ran into a buzz saw. I’ll be real surprised if they keep the Sin Tzu afloat much longer. Not if they don’t get a handle on that fire.”

  Donnegan nodded slowly, considering the carnage depicted in the images. Even considering all the bad things he had seen in his long career, the admiral still felt bad about needless loss of life. And especially among men and women who had chosen to defend their country. Regardless of the country.

  “Yep. You probably saw we offered to help. But, as usual, they turned us down flat. They denied they even had assets in the area, let alone that they were mostly a bonfire at the moment. Bastards finally told the CNO that if they had ships in the area and if they were in any distress, it was their problem and they would fix it. They even had the gall to tell us to stay well clear.”

  Ward shook his head. “Can’t say that I’m sorry to hear this. I wouldn’t want to be going into that area right about now. Not in a gray hull anyway. There’s no telling what that crazy Nabiin has up his sleeve next.”

  “I suspect provocation and response is a big part of his plan.”

  “I suspect you know what you’re talking about, boss.”

  “Speaking of our good buddy Nabiin, you getting any word a’tall on where he might be squattin' down to take a shit on all that’s decent and right?” Donnegan queried.

  Ward pursed his lips and shook his head. “Nothing since the one report that he was spotted in Al Ghaydah, Yemen. And we haven’t been able to verify that. I pinged Talbot since he has suddenly become so very helpful, but Mossad doesn’t have anything more. TJ Dillon checked in this morning. That guy is reliable as they come and rarely wrong, but he didn’t have anything new either. Not even our best sources in the field. That means nada all around. But Talbot did have something else that confirms what we suspected. He sent some journalist type named Tahib down to Chabahar to nose around. We now know that the Iranian SSB did get underway and she does have nukes onboard.”

  “Glad we got backup confirmation. Everybody in the loop that needs to be?”

  “Fifth Fleet has been notified. George Mason has been authorized weapons release if the Iranian sub shows even a hint of hostile intent.”

  “I’m assuming that you made sure that ‘hostile intent’ means missile tube hatches swinging open.” Donnegan made quote signs with his fingers. “We sure as hell don’t want those crazy sons of bitches to light up the Mid-east with a mushroom cloud. But politically...”

  The old admiral leaned back and swiped his forearm across his brow. “Besides, something tells me this is all part of the damn Prophet’s master plan. Everybody blaming and
shooting at everybody else until the planet melts down. Maniac! Problem is, with today’s technology and firepower, it only takes one lunatic with enough charisma to attract a bunch of downtrodden followers and enough resources to cause a shit-load of destruction.” Donnegan took a deep breath. “Look, let’s keep digging. Information is what we need to stay ahead of this guy. And on that note, we need to figure out what the Chinese are going to do next. They’re acting like a caged tiger. About like we would, too, if somebody set one of our battlegroups afire. They want to hit back hard, but we all know they don’t have anything to hit. And not many choices of what to use to hit with, either. All we know is it looks like the attack was staged out of Socotra Island and Alhami on the Yemen coast. Nothing for the Chinese to hit at either place except sand and rocks. Even if they had ships left. They have a real problem with reach now. With that battle group gone, I don’t see them sending the PLAN that way anytime soon. And they damn sure ain’t asking us for help.”

  Ward shook his head. “This is going to get very interesting. Not exactly in the wheelhouse of a couple of old submarine skippers, right?”

  “Who you calling ‘old?”

  Jon Ward cocked his head sideways and looked at his long-time friend.

  “Okay, I admit I have a hard time trying to guess what a crazy son of a bitch hellbent on causing a global conflagration might do next, Tom.”

  Donnegan took another sip of the cold coffee. The frown on his face, though, was not from the vile, bitter liquid.

  “As I said, my boy, welcome to my world.”

  28

  Arman Dirbaz had been carefully watching the data on the fuel cells for several days. The corkscrew expression on his unshaven face confirmed that he was beginning to seriously worry about what he was seeing in the columns of numbers. The Russian-designed fuel cell technology on his brand-new Iranian submarine was, for certain, unproven. It had not yet been adequately tested on an operating submarine. The Boz-Manand was very much a guinea pig for doing this in real time, even as the new sub was being employed for propaganda purposes. The bluster could be accomplished just as easily within a few hours of home port, and issues with the ship’s systems could be addressed promptly and efficiently. But not while plowing through open seas far from home, and to who knew where, to do who knew what.

  The engineer rubbed his forehead and popped four more ibuprofens in a vain attempt to ease his nagging headache. Must be the tension from worrying about the fuel cells, lack of sleep, staring at gauges and printouts and monitor displays for hours on end. What had started as a dull throb in his temples a couple of days before was now an excruciating vise, tightening across his forehead. He suspected the double dose of pills would not even take the edge off it. Only a solution for his technical issues and having to listen to less ranting from his new Guard commander would do that.

  It appeared that Vassily Godonov, his old Russian friend, had been right about the cell temperature problem all along. They had discussed it at length and had plans to investigate and solve the issue as they prepared the ship for actual duty. During trials, they found that so long as they kept the output at less than eighty percent of design, the operating temperature, though elevated, remained within a safe margin. As soon as they tried to edge the output up, however, the temperature rapidly rose and was very quickly in the danger band.

  But that was not the only problem that had Dirbaz’s skull pounding. Something else was happening here that he did not at all understand. Something that may or may not have anything to do with the temperature issue.

  He squinted, hoping the pills would go to work soon. He once more checked the readings. Then he performed the calculations yet again, this time even more carefully than the previous half-dozen runs. But the results were the same. Maddeningly the same. They were absolutely using the hydrogen fuel at a much higher rate than they should be. He read through Vassily’s notes and the electronic technical manuals one more time, but they told him the same absolute truth.

  The proton-exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell was standard technology. A proven design properly installed and tested. Dirbaz was convinced that the problem could not lie there. He scanned further down in the manual until he found the section on the organic hydrogen storage system. He was no organic chemist and the formulas for the long-chain hydro-polymers read like so much Greek to him. But it looked so simple. You put the right organic liquid in contact with the right catalyst at high pressure and it sucked up hydrogen. Then, to release the hydrogen for fuel, you simply heated the liquid with a different catalyst and out came pure hydrogen. All very neat and efficient. But something was very wrong with the system within his submarine.

  Dirbaz had just read down to the section that discussed the effects of possible impurities in the organic liquid when a loud, angry buzzer nearby kicked his headache into high gear.

  The atmosphere analyzer. He frowned as he put his laptop down and stepped over to the analyzer’s control panel. He reset the alarm and flipped through a couple of displays before he found the problem. A high carbon monoxide level in the diesel room. Like everything else on this voyage to hell, this alarm did not make one bit of sense. Even when the buzzer once again sounded, right in his face. While submerged, they would not be doing anything in the diesel room—the next compartment aft from where he now stood—that would produce any CO.

  His first thought was a bad sensor or a glitch in the computer code. Still, best to be safe. A bad guess could be fatal. Dirbaz re-set the alarm and then grabbed an emergency airbreathing mask and slipped it over his face. The air fed into the mask smelled dusty and stale but it would provide safe breathing air until they could check into and resolve this latest problem.

  He grabbed a phone and called the submarine’s control room. They would be seeing the same alarm.

  “This is Mohandes Doktor Dirbaz. Be advised we have a high carbon monoxide level alarm in the diesel room. The entire crew should don emergency air breathing masks immediately and we must ventilate the ship.”

  The echo of his voice on the announcing system had barely fallen silent before Colonel Sayyed Abdul-Qadir Gilani stormed into the fuel cell room, eyes wide and face livid.

  “Dirbaz, what is the meaning of this?” the Guard colonel ranted. “First you come crying to me about your poor, precious fuel cells overheating and beg me to slow down our sacred trek. And now, without even bothering to inform me, you announce to the entire ship that the air is not fit to breathe and demand we come to the surface to ventilate. I swear by Allah, I think you are attempting to sabotage our mission!”

  The engineer stared through his mask at the colonel for a long moment. Then he pointed to the analyzer panel and spoke loudly to be heard through his protective equipment. His tone, though, was as if he were lecturing a child.

  “Colonel, the carbon monoxide level in the diesel room is dangerously high. It already reads at fifteen hundred parts per million and is climbing. I presume you know this particular gas is deadly. The reading is already at an unsafe level. We must vent it immediately and bring in clean air. And everyone must wear a protective breathing...”

  “Nonsense! The air is fine.” He pulled in a deep breath, held it, then exhaled and glared at Dirbaz. “See? I am still alive. And even if there is a little carbon monoxide—maybe from the slop they prepare in the galley—the CO burner will take care of it in short order.” He turned to the shorter engineer and thumped him on the chest with an extended index finger. “You will not further hinder our mission. If you are convinced that you must wear that silly mask, go ahead and do so. There is plenty of air in the banks for you. But you will not become a distraction. The crew will remain at their watch stations and we will continue our voyage submerged as commanded by the Prophet. Our mission will be completed in a day or so and then it will not matter anymore. We will be heroes of the jihad and, in sha Allah, holy martyrs as well.”

  After another painful poke in Dirbaz’s chest, Gilani turned and stormed forward, bumping his he
ad on the hatch combing and lurching off in the direction of his stateroom. But as the colonel departed, Dirbaz pondered a question that the irate officer had triggered in his mind. Why had the CO burner not cleared the carbon monoxide from the air? That was why the equipment was there, after all.

  At least his headache was easing somewhat. Maybe the pills were working. Or possibly, having a problem he might actually be able to solve had caused the engineer to forget about something as inconsequential as pain.

  Ψ

  Captain Yon Hun Glo read the urgent message from PLAN Submarine Command Headquarters again, this time even more carefully. He could only shake his head in amazement. What could those brass hats sitting in a cave on Hainan Island possibly be thinking? The reported destruction of the Chinese battle group had come as a total shock to the submarine skipper. Had he not seen the summary report for himself, he would never have believed such a thing. How was it possible that a tribe of Arab nomads and camel jockeys could attack and destroy the finest and most powerful naval warfare technology in the world? Inconceivable! But Hainan would not lie to him. The proof was right there in his hand.

  Even more incredible, the brass hats had ordered him to make maximum speed to race down to the Gulf of Aden and then to rain down destruction on those goatherds. Did not his masters understand that the only destruction he could “rain down” was the four YJ-18 Eagle Strike cruise missiles resting in Wushiwu’s torpedo room? A three-hundred-kilo warhead would make a satisfying boom for certain. But blowing up some stray Houthi tent hardly constituted revenge for the destruction of a fleet of warships.