Piranha

by Dale Brown

  “Good idea, Colonel,” said Delaford. “We’ll keep the probe its present course.”

  “Keep an eye on our F-8’s,” Dog told Rosen as he nudged the stick to get closer to the ship.

  “They’re turning it up a notch—on an intercept now at forty miles.”

  “Surface ship is tracking us for them?”

  “No indication of that,” said Rosen.

  By the time the ship appeared in the distance, the F-8’s were roughly ten miles out. The two planes had cut their afterburners and were now descending in an arc that would take them about a half mile off Iowa’s nose. If everyone stayed on their present course. The fact they were heading in that direction, rather than trying to take a position on Iowa’s rear, seemed a significant tactical shift to Dog. Maybe shooting down the cruise missiles yesterday had won some friends.

  Not that they necessarily wanted them.

  The ship in the distance looked like an old trawler. Ensign English, working off the video feed piped down by the copilot, identified it as a Republic of China or Taiwan ship, one of a class of spy vessels the Taiwanese used to keep tabs on their mainland brothers.

  “He may be looking for subs,” said Delaford. “He’s got active sonar.”

  “Can they find us?” asked Dog.

  “I don’t believe so.

  “F-8 pilots are challenging us,” said Rosen. “In pretty good English too.”

  Dog tuned his attention to the Chinese fighters, giving them the standard line about being in international airspace and having no “hostile intent.”

  The Chinese replied that the Yankees were overrated and would have no chance in the World Series this year.

  “Couple of comedians,” said Rosen.

  In the exchange that followed, Rosen proved to be a ridiculously committed LA Dodger fan, predicting the Dodgers would “whup” whomever the American league managed to put up. The Chinese pilot—he was apparently the wingman in the two-plane flight—knew more than enough baseball to scoff at Rosen’s predictions. The man inexplicably favored the Cleveland Indians, and in fact, seemed to know the entire lineup.

  As the two pilots traded sports barbs, the F-8’s took a pass and then came back to work themselves roughly parallel to the Megafortress’s cockpit. This was undoubtedly their first look at an EB-52, and the pilot complimented Rosen on his “choice of conveyance.”

  “Quite a vocabulary,” said Dog.

  “Claims he went to Stanford.”

  After the tension of the past few days, the encounter seemed almost refreshing.

  Excitedly, Delaford brought the laughs to an end.

  “We have a contact. Definite contact,” he said. “Shit, yeah!”

  The GPS readings showed the submarine exactly thirteen miles to the south by southeast.

  “They’ve made good time submerged,” Delaford answered. “These are them—Trafalgar signature. Wow! Colonel, this is pay dirt. Pay dirt. These submarines don’t exist—this is a serious coup.”

  “Relax, Commander. There’ll be plenty of time to pick up the Navy Cross at the end of the mission,” said Dog. Not that he didn’t share at least some of Delaford’s excitement—especially since it meant his decision to launch without a sighting from the Orions had been vindicated. One less thing for Allen to look down his nose about. “Make sure we’re recording.”

  “Oh, yeah. Big time.”

  “Thirty-five knots, submerged,” said Ensign English.

  “Is that fast?” asked Dog.

  “It’s good. It’s very good,” said Delaford. “And they may not even by trying. We’re twenty miles behind, at forty-two knots, our max. I’m going to settle in at sixteen miles behind them. If they’re like our guys, they’ll accelerate a bit, then stop. Jesus, I wonder if they consider slow.”

  “F-8’s holding their position,” said Rosen.

  “I’d like to shoot south and drop a buoy ahead of the subs,” Delaford added.

  “We’ll wait until the F-8s go home,” Dog told him. “They ought to be leaving pretty soon; their fuel should be just about out.”

  “Copy that,” said Delarod. “This is great, Colonel. This is really great.”

  Aboard Shiva in the South China Sea

  1530

  The distance from their target, their need to avoid the escort ships, and the storm all greatly complicated matters. When they were finally able to analyze all of the data, Admiral Balin was faced with the inescapable, if unpalatable, conclusion that their vaunted weapons had somehow missed. To add further insult to this grave disgrace, one of the Chinese escort ships somehow managed to get close enough to him as he doubled back to reconnoiter; two of its Russian-made ASW rockets had exploded close enough to do some damage to Shiva. One, but apparently only one, ballast tank vent was stuck in a closed position, a circulating pump in the environmental system had broken, and it seemed likely there had been damage to the radar mast. The ELF gear was apparently no longer functioning, as they had missed a scheduled transmission. Casualties were negligible; one man had suffered a broken arm.

  Any competent Navy would have sunk them.

  He was now out of Kali missiles, but had six torpedoes, one for each forward tube. In the chaos and the storm, he had lost contact with the Chinese fleet, but would find it again soon enough.

  The torpedoes on board were primitive Russian twenty-one-inch unguided fish, which required him to get considerably closer than the Kalis. To guarantee a strike, he intended to close to within three thousand yards, if not closer.

  Getting that close to a warship involved many dangers, but these were not to be thought of now. Soon, if not already, his own fleet would be pressing home the attack; no matter the odds, Balin owed it to them to press home his mission.

  To be truthful, part of him was glad. From the moment he had launched the last missile, an inexplicable sadness had come over him. He had fulfilled his greatest ambitions; there was nothing else left to achieve. Even if he had been given a hero’s welcome, or promoted to command the entire Navy, he would, in effect, be retired. He had fought all these years to remain at sea—to remain alive. Retiring, even as a hero, seemed something akin to a slow and meek death.

  Retirement was no longer a possibility. That notion somehow felt supremely comforting as he plotted a course to intercept the enemy.

  Airborne, northwest of the Philippines

  1623

  They rigged the MV-22 with buddy tanks on the lower fuselage, allowing the Osprey to refuel the Quick Birds en route to the atoll. It was a great plan in theory, one that worked perfectly in any number of computer simulations. In the real world, however, it was trickier than hell.

  The small helos struggled to stay connected to the drogues fluttering behind the Osprey. The gyrating wash of the massive propellers tossed the small bodies up, down, and sideways. The pilots compared the energy needed just to work the stick to a ten-mile kayak race; their arms were burning even before the fuel started to flow. watching the sweat pour off his pilot, Danny wondered what he’d do if the man collapsed in midair. When the Quick Bird was finally topped off, it lurched so violently to the right, Danny thought they’d been clipped by something.

  “We’re five minutes out,” said the pilot, no sign of stress in his voice.

  “All right, listen up,” Danny said over the Dreamland frequency. “Flighthawks give us real time ninety seconds ahead of the assault, so we see what’s there when we go in. Boom-boom-boom, just like we drew it up.”

  He’d drawn it up simple: one helicopter from the south, one from the east. The one from the south overflew the small dock and landed on the beach area. The other went directly to the building seventy yards from the water. The helos would suppress and defenses—the Flighthawk snaps Zen had taken showed there were no gun emplacements or heavy weapons, so resistance should amount to no more than hand-carried light machine guns. With the defenses neutralized, the two teams would rapid-rappel to the ground.

  Stoner had concluded there should
be no more than six people on the islands, given the small size of the building and the lack of cover elsewhere. Danny concurred. The takedown should go quickly.

  In case it didn’t, the Osprey would circle in from the north, prepared to use the chain-gun in its chin if things got tough. Fentress and the Flighthawk, with their 20mm weapons loaded for bear, would be available for fire support as well.

  The island was shaped like an upside-down L, with the observation post near the tip of the leg. The head of the letter had a rocky beach that could serve as a set-down point for the helos and Osprey once the atoll was secure.

  “Hawk Leader to Whiplash One,” said Fentress over the common frequency. “Captain Freah, I’m ready when you are.”

  “Roger that,” said Danny. He glanced at his watch, then back at the sitrep map in his smart helmet, which showed they were about twelve miles from the atoll. Fentress would start his pass when they hit five miles. “We’re just over three minutes from Alpha. We’ll keep you posted.”

  “Hawk Leader.”

  Fentress wasn’t Jeff Stockard and would never be, but he was definitely capable; Danny had no doubt he’d do this job well.

  So if Danny left, would somebody else walk right in and pick up the slack?

  Yeah.

  “Team Two checking in,” said Powder, in charge of the second squad. “Hey, Cap, can we go for a swim when this is over?”

  “Only if there’s a school of sharks nearby,” said Liu.

  “That’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout,” said Powder.

  “Hey, Cap, you ever have grilled shark?” asked Bison. “Serious food. You get a little lemon, maybe some herbs. Very nice.”

  “I thought you only ate burgers and pizza,” said Danny.

  “Burgers, pizza, and shark.”

  They were eight miles from the atoll.

  “All right. Sixty seconds, Hawk Leader,” said Danny.

  “Copy that.”

  Danny turned to look at his pilot, an Army officer who’d come over to Dreamland specifically for the Quick Bird program. Before that he’d flown with the special operations aviation group that worked with Special Forces, 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR). The captains gave each other a thumbs-up; Danny sat back, clicked his viewer into the Flighthawk feed, and curled his thumbs around his restraints.

  “Alpha,” he told Fentress.

  “Alpha acknowledged,” said Flighhawk pilot. And the show began. “Welcome, my friends, to the show that never ends… .”

  All Danny saw at first was a blur of blue and white whipping across the screen. The blur settled into a hatched pattern of waves as the Flighthawk leveled off, then slowed. A brown bar appeared in the distance, growing into a cat stretched across a purple rug, morphing into the side of a mountain at the top of a black-blue desert. Light glinted like crystal arrows from the blue background. Then, the image seemed to snap, and now everything was in perfect focus. A small dock sat before him, a rubber speedboat tethered to one end; above it sat a green-yellow cottage, a shack really, made of palms—no panels designed to look like palms in the distance. Fishing poles, oddly oversized, sat in the water near the dock. There was a rock at the water’s edge.

  No, not a rock. A housing for a radar.

  “Infrared feed,” Danny told Fentress. The pilot must have anticipated him, for as the words left his mouth, the image flashed into a gray greenness, murky monotone as if the robot aircraft feeding if had dipped into the bottom of an algae-choked pond. It took nearly three seconds for the computer to artificially adjust its sensitivity, forming the blurs into an image. If froze frame, backed out twice—all obviously at Fentress’s command—then analyzed the picture, supplying white triangles that showed a total of five people on the islands: two near the docks, one in the hut, and two about twenty yards further north, possibly observing the water.

  “We’re dancing,” said Danny. He fed the analyzed picture to the rest of his team, briefly summarizing the situation. The Osprey was tasked with neutralizing any resistance from the two men on the northern side of the atoll.

  “Everyone hold your fire unless we’re fired on,” he reminded them. “You know the drill. Two—if they move toward the boat, sink it.”

  “Aw, Cap,” said Powder. “Can’t we take it out for a spin first?”

  “Hawk Leader to Whiplash One. You need another run?”

  “Negative, Hawk Leader. Hold your orbit as planned. We’re going in.”

  “Godspeed.”

  The Quick Bird pilot threw everything he had into the helo’s turbine engines, flooing the gates with the remains of a thousand long-gone dinosaurs. The tail whipped around and the helicopter tilted hard, pulling two or three Gs as it swooped into an arc. Once pointed at his target, the pilot began to back off the throttle, and somehow managed to come at the island like a ballerina sliding across the stage.

  The effect on his passengers, however, was more like what might be felt in the cab of a locomotive throwing on the brakes and reversing steam at a hundred miles an hour. Danny felt his boron vest pushing hard against his collarbone as the restraints took hold.

  If felt damn good.

  “We’re hot!” said the pilots as something red erupted on the left side of the island.

  “Missiles in the air!” said Danny. He could see small pops of red near the dock. “Guns—fuckers! Let ’em have it!”

  The mini-gun at the side of the Quick Birds’s cabin spit bullets toward the cottage. A burst from the ground, and the helo pirouetted to the side, flares popping as it whipped into a quick series of zigs and zags to avoid a shoulder-launched SAM. The missile sniffed one of the flares and shot through it, igniting above and behind the helicopter. The small scout shot downward in a rush; Danny threw his arm out in front of him as they hurtled toward the cottage area. The pilot slid the aircraft twenty feet from the ground, hurtling almost sideways over the rooftops. As they passed the cottages, Bison, sitting behind Danny, pointed his MP-5 out the open doorway and burned a magazine at one of the men on the ground. Flames burst from the cottage. Danny caught a glimpse of the man dropping his rifle and falling backward as the chopper spun away.

  “Let’s go, let’s go,” screamed Danny, undoing his restraint to go down the rope.

  Stoner grabbed the rope after Sergeant Liu disappeared. Even though he wore thick gloves, the friction burned his hands. He had taken the team’s smart helmet and carbon-boron best, but because the Whiplash issue seemed a bit bulky, had opted to use his own gloves. Obviously, a mistake, but it was too late to bitch about it now. He felt the dock under his boots and let go, collapsing into a well-balanced crouch.

  Ten times hotter than he imagined, everything was exploding. In the back of his mind, he heard his boss’s boss, the Director of Operations himself, bawling him out for going ahead with only six guys in broad daylight.

  Yet the atoll’s defenders throwing up all this lead and blowing up so much equipment—for surely that was what they were doing—argued that hitting them as soon as they could had been the right thing to do.

  Should have hit it last night then.

  Liu was at the head of the dock, onshore already. The boat was on Stoner’s right. He pulled his knife and went to it, slashed the two lines, then kicked it away. Something pushed him down onto the bobbing boards—it was the helicopter rocking back after firing a salvo of rockets. Thick cordite and smoke, and something like diesel fuel, choked his nose. A fireball erupted; the water churned with a stream of steady explosions. Now all he smelled was burning metal.

  These bastards had SAMs and all sorts of weapons.

  “Hey, forward, damn it!” yelled someone.

  It was Powder, waving through the smoke on the beach. Stoner pushed himself to his knees, stumbling toward the land.

  By the time Danny made it to the ground, the gunfire had already stopped. The defenders’ stores of ammunition and weapons continued to explode, and the cottage burned bright orange, flames towering well overhead.

>   They’d rigged it. Bird One tried smothering the fire by flying over it, but this only made the flames shoot out the side and was dangerous as hell. Finally, Danny told them to back off. The inferno continued, doubling its height in triumph and sending a burst of flames exploding above.

  “Team One, move back,” he told Bison and Pretty Boy. “Get back to that fence of vegetation. Powder, what’s your situation?”

  “Two dead gomers. Can’t see what else is going on with all this smoke. We’re on the beach near the dock.”

  “You got a way out of there?”

  “Same way we came.”

  “How’s Stoner?”

  “Got a smile on his face,” said Powder. “I think we oughta draft him, Captain.”

  Danny doubted the CIA officer was doing anything but frowning. The truth was, the operation was a fiasco. The only saving grace was that none of theirs were injured—a minor miracle, given all the lead and explosives in the air.

  What listening post was worth this?

  “We’ll wait for the fire to go down; then we’ll inspect the building,” Danny said. “Everybody just relax. Powder, those bodies near you got Ids?”

  “Negative. Look Chinese, but no dog tags or anything. No names.

  There was one more burst of fire from the walls of the hut, followed by an explosion that seemed to shake the island up and down an inch. Danny half-expected a volcano to open up in front of him.

  Then everything was quiet. In less than two minutes, the flames had consumed themselves. Danny pushed the visor back on his helmet, and unbuttoned two buttons on his vest. He walked toward the ruins of the cottage, now a thick line of black and gray soot in the sand. The air was still hot, as if he was walking into a sauna.

  “Looks like they had an underwater long-wave-communication system,” said Stoner from down the beach. “Most of it’s in pieces, but if that’s what it is, they’re very sophisticated.”

  “You figure that’s what they were protecting?” Danny asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Stoner. “Sure blew everything up in a hurry.”

  “They must have realized we were coming when the Flighhawks came in,” said Danny. “Or they picked up the helos with their radars.”