by Dale Brown
If the aircraft they'd seen earlier had deposited saboteurs — not a proven fact, but a very good guess — it was likely that the planes would be returning to pick up the men. The Abner Read had activated its radar to look for them.
Starship's job was twofold. First, scout the water and see if he could find any trace of the saboteurs. Second, check the nearby shore, which was the second most likely escape route. And he'd have to do all that in about ten minutes, or he'd risk running out of fuel before getting back to the ship.
He saw the Indian corvette to his right as he approached the outer edge of the smoke. The ship looked like an up-sized cabin cruiser, with a globelike radar dome at the top. Designed for a Russian Bandstand surface targeting radar, the large dome held a less potent Indian design. But it was the small dish radar behind the dome that got Starship's attention — the Korund antiaircraft unit extended its sticky fingers toward the Werewolf, marking a big red X on it for the ship's SS-4 antiaircraft missiles.
"Werewolf One being targeted by Indian vessel," Starship reported to Tac. He hit the fuzz buster and tucked the little helicopter toward the waves, weaving quickly to shake the radar's grip. "Hey, tell these guys I'm on their side."
"We're working on it, Werewolf One. They're having a little trouble identifying targets."
"Duh. Tell them I'm not a target."
"We're working it out. Stay out of their range."
"It's ten kilometers," protested Starship.
"Head toward the shore and look for the raiding party. We'll let the Indians look at the water."
"Yeah, roger that," he said, jamming his throttle to max power.
Off the coast of Somalia
0028
The light looked like the barest pinprick in a black curtain, yet everyone aboard the raft saw it instantly.
"There!" said the coxswain. He lifted a small signal light and began signaling.
"Go," said Sattari, pushing his oar. "Stroke!"
The little raft heaved itself forward as the men pushed at the oar. Sattari felt the commando he had rescued stirring next to him.
"Rest," he told the man. "We're almost there."
"Ship!" said the coxswain.
Sattari swept his head back, though he continued to row. The low silhouette of the Indian patrol boat had appeared to the northeast; it was perhaps three kilometers away.
"Stroke," insisted Sattari. The pinprick had grown to the size of a mayfly.
Sattari had personally told the commander of each of the four midget submarines to leave if threatened — even if that meant stranding the team he was assigned to retrieve. He did not regret the order, nor did he curse the Indian ship as it continued to move in the direction of the light. He only urged his men to row harder.
His own arms felt as if they were going to fall off. His head seemed to have tripled in weight, and his eyes ached.
"Two hundred meters!" called the coxswain.
A searchlight on the Indian ship, barely a kilometer away, swept the ocean.
"Stroke!" yelled Sattari. "Stroke!"
And then they were there, clambering over the rail at the stern. The sleek conning toward the bow looked like the swept cabin of a speedboat, and the entire craft was not much longer than a runabout.
"Get aboard, get aboard," said Sattari.
He pulled the raft close to him, then plunged his knife into its side. As it began to deflate, he saw the Indian patrol boat bearing down on them, its lights reaching out in the darkness.
One of the other commandos took the raft and began to pull it down into the hatch.
"No. Let it go. It will give them something to look at," said Sattari. He tossed it off the side, then pulled himself down the hatchway. The submarine's crewman came down right behind him, securing the hatch.
"Commander, we are aboard. Dive," Sattari said loudly, though the command was clearly unnecessary; he could feel the small vessel gliding forward, already sinking beneath the waves.
Aboard the Abner Read,
off the coast of Somalia
0032
"The Indians have spotted a commando boat about five kilometers from Port Somalia," Eyes told Storm. "Empty." "Submarine?"
"Unsure. They don't carry sonar. That's a Russian Project 1234 boat. I'm surprised it made it across the Arabian Sea. I don't envy their sailors."
Storm studied the hologram. The Abner Read had a world-class passive sonar — the Littoral Towed Array System, or LITAS — which was carried on a submerged raft behind the ship. Built around a series of hydrophones, the system picked up and interpreted different sounds in the water. In theory, LITAS could hear anything within a twelve-mile radius of the ship, even in shallow waters where sounds were plentiful and easily altered by the sea floor. Very loud vessels — such as the Indian ship, which the system identified even though it was thirty-five miles off— could be heard much farther away.
The Abner Read also carried an active sonar developed by DARPA as part of a project known as Distant Thunder. The sonar was designed to find very quiet electric submarines in what the engineers called "acoustically challenging" waters. The Abner Read had used it with great success to find a submarine operating on battery power in the canyonlike Somalian waters to the west. Like all active sonar, however, the device not only alerted the prey that it was being hunted, but told it where the hunter was, an important concession against a wily captain. Storm preferred to hold it in reserve if at all possible.
The northwestern tip of Somalia loomed about fifteen miles ahead. By altering course slightly, Storm could cut off the most likely escape route north and still be in a good position to chase a submarine if it headed west.
What to do when he caught it was a separate problem. Admiral Johnson had not answered his message, and Storm needed his permission before engaging.
Given that Port Somalia was an Indian installation, the submarine might be Pakistani. They had exactly six subs— four French Daphne-class boats well past their prime, and two Augustas, modern boats that could sprint to about 20.5 knots while submerged, and could be extremely hard to find in coastal waters — worthy adversaries for the Abner Read.
Of course, if was a Pakistani boat, he wouldn't be allowed to attack at all; the Paks were in theory allies.
The Iranians had Kilos, even more potent submarines, though they hadn't moved from their ports in months.
"We'll move closer to shore, close down the distance with the submarine, if there is one," Storm told Eyes. He glanced at the hologram to see where the Werewolf was.
"Have Airforce check the area where the raft was spotted, look for others."
"He's low on fuel."
"Well, tell him to get moving."
* * *
Starship slid over the village five miles inland from Port Somalia, following the road as it wound back toward the coastline. Six small buildings stood next to each other, shouldering together between the road and a nearby cliff. Nothing.
Nothing on the road either.
The computer gave him a warning tone. He was at "bingo," his fuel tanks just full enough to get him back to the Abner Read.
"Werewolf to Tac — I'm bingo, heading homeward."
"Negative. We need you to scan the area near the Indian warship."
Naturally.
"I can give you five minutes," he told Eyes, planning to cut into his reserves. "Am I looking for something specific?"
"They found a raft. See if you can spot anything similar. We believe there may be a submarine in the area, but we haven't heard it yet."
Ah, an admission of mortality from the all-powerful Navy, thought Starship as he whipped the Werewolf toward the Indian patrol boat. The ship's radar remained in scan mode; they saw him but were no longer targeting him.
"Couldn't the patrol boat pick him up on sonar?" Star-ship asked.
"A boat that class isn't always equipped with sonar. And this one is not."
Starship took the Werewolf a mile and a half north, then turned to the w
est, sweeping along roughly parallel to the shore for nearly three miles before sweeping back. The flight control computer gave him another beep — he'd used half of his ten minute reserve.
"Not seeing anything, Tac."
"How are you on fuel?"
"One more pass and then I absolutely have to come home," said Starship. "Acknowledged."
* * *
Storm stared through the binoculars, watching the Werewolf as it came toward the ship. The helicopter had turned on its landing lights, and it looked like a sea anemone trailing its tentacles through the ocean.
It was a good little machine. It would be even better if it were equipped with a sonar system like the AQS-22—a suggestion Storm had sent up the chain of command weeks ago. The idea had yet to be acknowledged as received, let alone considered.
What he needed were a few short circuits up the chain of command, just like the Dreamland people had.
"We think we have something, Storm," said Eyes. "Very light contact, has to be a battery-powered propeller, six kilometers west of Port Somalia. At this range, with the Indian patrol boat so loud, it's hard to tell."
"Let's head down there. I'll put in another call to Admiral Johnson. Maybe he'll answer me sometime this century."
Off the coast of Somalia
0108
The helmsman controlled the midget submarine from a seat at the nose of the craft, working at a board that reminded Captain Sattari of the flight simulator for American F-4 Phantom jets he'd practiced on years before. The craft was steered with a large pistol-grip joystick; once submerged, it relied on an internal navigational system. The vessel was run by two men; the vessel's captain sat next to the helm, acting as navigator and watching the limited set of sensors.
The four submarines in Sattari's fleet had been designed by a European company as civilian vessels, intended for use in the shallow Caribbean and Pacific coastal waters. Converting them to military use had taken several months, but was not particularly difficult; the work primarily included measures to make the craft quieter. The acrylic bulbous nose and viewing portals had been replaced and the deck area topside stripped bare, but at heart the little boats were still the same submarines that appeared in the manufacturer's pricey four-color catalog. They could dive to three hundred meters and sail underwater for roughly twenty-eight hours. In an emergency, the subs could remain submerged for ninety-six hours. A small diesel engine propelled the boats on the surface, where the top speed was roughly ten knots, slower if the batteries were being charged. The midgets were strictly transport vessels, and it would be laughable to compare them to frontline submarines used by the American or Russian navies. But they were perfect as far as Sattari was concerned.
He called them Parvanehs: Butterflies.
The captain glanced back at the rest of the team, strapped into the boats. Among the interior items that had been retained as delivered were the deep-cushioned seats, which helped absorb and dampen interior sounds. Three of the men were making good use of them now, sleeping after their mission.
Sattari turned to the submarine commander.
"Another hour, Captain Sattari," the man said without prompting. "You can rest if you wish. I'll wake you when we're close."
"Thank you. But I don't believe I could sleep. Are you sure we're not being followed?"
"We would hear the propellers of a nearby ship with the hydrophone. As I said, the Indian ship has very limited capabilities. We are in the clear."
Sattari sat back against his seat. His father the general would be proud. More important, his men would respect him.
"Not bad for a broken-down fighter pilot, blacklisted and passed up for promotion," he whispered to himself. "Not bad, Captain Sattari. Thirty-nine is not old at all."
Aboard the Abner Read,
off the coast of Somalia
0128
"What kind of submarine? A Pakistani submarine?"
"I'm not close enough to tell yet, Admiral," Storm told Johnson over the secure video-communications network. "We're still at least twenty miles north of it. There are two surface ships between us and the submarine, and another oil tanker beyond it. They may be masking the boat's sound somewhat. I'll know more about it in an hour."
"You have evidence that it picked up the saboteurs?"
"No, I don't," admitted Storm.
Johnson's face puckered. "Pakistan, at least in theory, is our ally. India is not." Storm didn't answer.
"And there are no known submarines in this area?" said Johnson.
"We've checked with fleet twice," said Storm, referring to the command charged with keeping track of submarine movements through the oceans.
"I find it hard to believe that a submarine could have slipped by them," said Johnson.
"Which is why I found this submarine so interesting," said Storm. While it was a rare boat that slipped by the forces — and sensors — assigned to watch them, it was not impossible. And Storm's intel officer had a candidate — a Pak sub reported about seven hundred miles due east in the Indian Ocean twenty-eight hours ago. It was an Augusta-class boat.
"All right, Storm. You have a point. See what you can determine. Do not — repeat, do not—fire on him."
"Unless he fires on me." "See that he doesn't."
Off the coast of Somalia
0158
Sattari leaned over and took the headset from the submarine captain, cupping his hands over his ears as he pushed them over his head. He heard a loud rushing sound, more like the steady static of a mistuned radio than the noise he would associate with a ship. "This is the Mitra?" he asked.
"Yes, Captain. We're right on course, within two kilometers. You'll be able to see the lights at the bottom of the tanker in a few minutes. I believe we're the first in line."
Sattari handed the headphones back, shifting to look over the helmsman's shoulder. A small video camera in the nose of the midget submarine showed the murky ocean ahead.
From the waterline up, the Mitra appeared to be a standard oil tanker. Old, slow, but freshly painted and with a willing crew, she was one of the vast army of blue-collar tankers the world relied on for its energy needs. Registered to a company based in Morocco, she regularly sailed these waters, delivering oil from Iranian wells to a number of African customers.
Or so her logbook declared.
Below the waterline, she was anything but standard. A large section of the hull almost exactly midship had been taken out and replaced with an underwater docking area for the four midget submarines. The vessels would sail under the tanker, then slowly rise, in effect driving into a garage. The submarines measured 8.4 meters, and the opening in the hull was just over twenty, leaving a decent amount of space for maneuvering.
The murky image on the forward-view screen suddenly glowed yellow. The camera aperture adjusted, sharpening the image. A set of large spotlights were arranged at the bottom of the hull; as the Parvaneh came closer, another group of colored lights would help guide the sub into the hold.
"Is the tanker moving?" Sattari asked.
"Three knots."
The submarines could dock whether the mother ship was moving or not, and as long as it wasn't going more than four knots, most of the helmsmen felt it was easier to get aboard when the ship was under way. But in this case, the fact that the tanker was moving was a signal that there were other ships in the area. Sattari sat back in his seat, aware that not only was his mission not yet complete, but the success or failure of this final stage was out of his hands.
Aboard the Abner Read,
off the coast of Somalia
0208
"Tac, I'm clear of that freighter," said Starship, flying the Werewolf south. "Tanker is two miles off my nose, dead on. I'll be over it in heartbeat." "Roger that."
Starship whipped the little aircraft to the right of the poky tanker. He could see two silhouettes at the side of the superstructure near the bridge — crewmen looking at him.
His throat tightened a notch, and he waited for t
he launch warning — he had a premonition that one of the people aboard the ship was going to try shoving an SA-7 or even a Stinger up his backside. But his premonition was wrong; he cleared in front of the tanker and circled back, ramping down his speed to get a good look at the deck.
"Take another run," said Tac as he passed the back end.
"Roger that. Ship's name is the Mitra" added Starship. The name was written at the stern. "Keep feeding us images."
* * *
Storm had handpicked the crew for the ship, and the men who manned the sonar department were, if not the very best experts in the surface fleet, certainly among the top ten. So the fact that they now had four unknown underwater contacts eight miles away perplexed him considerably. As did their utter failure to match the sound profiles they had picked up with the extensive library in the ship's computer.
And now they seemed to be losing contact.
"Has to be some sort of bizarre glitch in the computer because of the shallow depth and the geometry of the sea bottom nearby," insisted Eyes. "Maybe it's an echo."
"That's impossible," said Storm.
"I know."
Eyes recognized the tone. It meant — not everything works in the real world the way it's drawn up on the engineering charts, Captain.
Still, he was convinced his people were right.
So what did that mean?
That either he was looking at four submarines — four very quiet submarines — that no one else in the world had heard before, or that he was being suckered by some sort of camouflaging device.
Like an underwater robot trailing behind the submarine, throwing up a smoke screen.
The problem with that was that decoys normally made a lot more noise. These contacts were almost silent.
"We have mechanical noises in the water," said Eyes. "We're having some trouble picking up the sounds, though, because of that tanker."
"Explosion?"
"Negative."
"Torpedoes?"
"Negative. He may have some sort of problem. He may be using the tanker to turn around and check behind him, just as we theorized, Storm. He's done everything we thought he would, just slower."
