End Game d-8

by Dale Brown

  "We're at the way point," said his copilot.

  "Yes," said Sattari, and he moved his aircraft to the new course. Oman loomed fifteen miles ahead.

  If I can make it to the twelve-mile limit, he told himself, then I will be OK. In the worst case, if the Americans pressured the emir, they could blend in with the civilian government and escape.

  Sattari scolded himself for thinking like a defeatist, like a refugee. He tightened his grip on the plane's wheel, flying. The surveillance plane must be far away, or surely it would have tried to contact him by now.

  Unless it was vectoring fighters to intercept him. Or planning to alert the authorities on shore.

  Oman was not as friendly toward the Americans as it once had been, and was unlikely to cooperate. Still…

  "Two minutes to the landing, Captain," said his copilot finally.

  The radar warning receiver switched off. They were no longer being watched — or was it a trick to make him think that?

  Even when he saw that the landing area was empty, Sat-tari was not convinced he wasn't being followed. He taxied to the dock, then turned the plane around to make it easier for his copilot to get out and handle the refueling.

  "Hurry," he told the copilot as he feathered his propellers. "I wish to take off as soon as possible."

  "Is that wise? Shouldn't we wait a day or two?"

  "No. If we are no longer being followed, it is best to leave right away. And if we are being followed, there is no sense delaying the inevitable."

  Aboard the Abner Read,

  off the coast of Somalia

  9 January 1998

  0111

  Storm studied the Indian destroyer with his night glasses, examining the damaged ship from about a quarter of a mile away. The Calcutta listed six degrees to starboard — a serious lean, as Airforce put it when he described the situation earlier. But the damage had been contained. The Indian ship no longer appeared in danger of going to the bottom. More than twenty of her men had been killed or were still missing, another thirty or so injured.

  With a crew of forty officers and 320 enlisted, the Calcutta displaced 5,400 tons, a good 1,200 less than a member of the U.S. Navy's Arleigh Burke Block I class, a rough contemporary. The Indian ship was a member of the Delhi class, a guided missile destroyer that used both Russian and western components and weapons system. A 100-millimeter gun sat on her forward deck just about where the torpedo had exploded. The antisubmarine torpedo battery aft of the gun had caught fire immediately after the strike and now sat charred and mangled at the side, a cat's claw of burnt metal. Storm guessed that the Indians' own weapons had caused many of the causalities.

  "Corpsmen are ready to disembark," said the crewman in the Abner Read's fantail "garage."

  "Proceed," said Storm.

  A panel in the well of the ship's forked tail opened and a rigid-hulled inflatable boat sailed out and sped toward the stricken destroyer, carrying medicine and two corpsmen to help the Indians. Once the men were safely aboard, the Ab-ner Read would head eastward after the Pakistani oil tanker, which was now about fifty miles away.

  Unless he could spot the submarine first.

  "Eyes, what's the status of our treasure hunt?"

  "Nothing, Storm. Submarine is nowhere to be found."

  "What about Piranha?"

  "It's been in the water two hours now without a contact."

  Impossible, thought Storm. Impossible!

  He thought of punching the bulkhead in frustration. Then, realizing he was only thinking about it, he smiled at himself. He had changed in the past few months.

  "Keep on with the search," he told Eyes. "Tell the Dreamland aircraft controlling Piranha that we'll be heading for that oil tanker within a few minutes."

  Las Vegas University of Medicine,

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  1530

  Zen rolled himself off the elevator into the lobby and saw his taxi waiting outside. He was glad: Despite the fact that he'd spent the day doing almost absolutely nothing, he felt exhausted.

  The needles were already routine, as were the monitors, scans, and tepid herbal tea offered up by Dr. Vasin's interns in place of their overheated coffee. The light exercises they gave him to do with dumbbells were a bare shadow of his normal daily routine. So why was he so tired?

  Partly because he wasn't sleeping. He missed Breanna, and found it difficult to sleep without her.

  And he continued to have the dream. It distracted and annoyed him, kept him guessing what it was really about. Better that, though, than worrying about whether the experiments were actually going to do anything. So far, he felt exactly the same.

  "I'll get the door for you, sir," said a young man, trotting ahead as he came down the hall.

  Zen stopped. The kid was just being polite, but his goofy smile irked him. Zen forced a gruff "Thank you" as he rolled past.

  Aboard the Islam Oil Princess,

  in the Arabian Sea

  0350

  A light spray of seawater wet Storm's face as the rigid-hulled inflatable drew close to the Pakistani oil tanker. The first boat had already deposited most of the shipboard integrated tactical team, and the SITT members were fanning out above.

  The tanker's crew and its captain were cooperating, but

  Storm wasn't taking any chances. The Werewolf, with Star-ship at the controls, hovered overhead. The aircraft's floodlights made it look like one of the riders of the Apocalypse, the gun at its nose a black sword as it circled menacingly around the forecastle.

  Storm had decided he would go aboard personally, partly as a gesture of respect to the other captain, and partly to show him how seriously they were taking the matter.

  "Secure, sir," said the ensign in charge of the landing team, speaking over their short-range communications system.

  "Very good," said Storm. He'd exchanged his shipboard headset for a tactical unit, which had an earset and a mike clipped to his collar. He didn't bother with the helmet most of the boarding party wore, though he did have a flak vest on. "I'll be aboard shortly."

  Storm checked back with Eyes as he waited for the boat to draw alongside the tanker.

  "No sign of the submarine at all," Eyes said. "Piranha has gone to silent mode, just waiting. If it's nearby, she'll hear it when it moves out."

  "Keep me informed. Storm out."

  The petty officer who headed the boarding team in Storm's boat leapt at the chain ladder on the side of the tanker as they drew near. He pulled himself up two rungs at a time, leading his team to the deck.

  This is the way my crew operates, Storm thought, following. A seaman from the Abner Read met him at the rail and helped him over, then led him up to the tanker's captain, waiting with Storm's ensign on the bridge.

  At nearly seven feet tall, the captain towered over Storm. A rail of a man, he gripped Storm's hand firmly when they were introduced.

  "You were near the Indian destroyer when it was struck by a torpedo," said Storm, dispensing with the preliminaries. "Why didn't you stop?"

  "They did not ask for our assistance." The Pakistani's English was good, his accent thin and readily understandable.

  "You saw the submarine?" asked Storm.

  "No. We did not understand what happened. It was only your man here who told me that the ship had been fired on. From our viewpoint, we thought they were simply testing their weapons. The explosion was in the water."

  "Perhaps we could speak in private, Captain," suggested Storm.

  "As you wish."

  The tanker captain led him off the bridge, down a short flight of stairs to a small cabin nearby. A desk sat opposite a bunk at least a foot too short for its owner; the space in between was barely enough for two chairs.

  "Drink?" asked the Pakistani. He produced a bottle of scotch from the drawer of the desk

  "No, thank you," said Storm.

  "Then I won't either," said the other captain. He smiled and put the bottle back.

  "The Indian destroyer was
hit by a torpedo. I'm sure it made quite an explosion."

  "We were a few miles away." The captain spoke softly, and it was not possible to tell if he was lying or not. It seemed unlikely to Storm that he didn't realize what had happened, though if he had no experience with warfare, he might have been confused at first. "The Indians do not generally regard ships flying the Pakistani flag as friends," added the man. "They did not ask us for assistance."

  "Would you have stopped if they did?"

  "Absolutely." The captain leaned back in his chair. "Who fired the torpedo?"

  "Possibly a submarine. Though it would have been possible for you to fire it as well."

  The captain jerked upright. "Impossible."

  "Not necessarily."

  "Search my ship."

  "I intend to."

  The Pakistani captain frowned. "The Indians no doubt accused us. Probably they invented the submarine, and the torpedo. A hoax to cover their own incompetence. I would not be surprised if they blew up themselves by accident."

  "There was an aircraft in the area," said Storm. "It was spotted after the attack. Did you see it?"

  "I don't recall."

  "What was he smuggling?"

  "I don't know what you mean."

  "Come on, Captain. Don't make me order my men to tear your ship apart piece by piece. Was the airplane picking up medicine? Or was it delivering something?"

  The Pakistani wore a pained expression.

  "I know that many ship captains are poorly paid," said Storm. "In this region, one earns what one can."

  "I am not a smuggler, Captain."

  "Fine. We will search your ship."

  "You have the guns. Do as you will."

  Storm, frustrated but determined, got up. He paused at the doorway. "Information about the submarine would be very helpful."

  "If I had any to give, I would."

  "Search the ship," Storm told his ensign on the bridge.

  "We've already gone over the deck, Captain. We haven't found any sign that they fired a torpedo, no launch tube, no sign of bolts or anything where it could have been mounted."

  "All right. Keep looking. Find out what they smuggle. They must do more than run oil over to Pakistan. I want a full inventory, down to the last toothpick."

  Aboard the Wisconsin,

  over the Gulf of Aden

  0445

  Dog undid his restraints and squeezed out from behind the stick of the Megafortress, taking a moment to stretch his legs before they began the trek back to their base. It had been a frustrating sortie. Not only had they failed to locate the submarine, but Major Smith proved himself an extremely annoying Flighthawk pilot, refusing to let the computer handle the robot during refuelings. The procedure was notoriously difficult; the Megafortress's large and irregular shape left a great deal of turbulence immediately behind and below it, and even Zen occasionally had trouble making the connection. For that reason, the routine had been hard-wired into both the Megafortress's flight control computer and C3, which directed the U/MFs. But Mack insisted on trying it himself — even though it took no less than five approaches for him to get in. Dog found himself becoming so short-tempered that he nearly let Jazz take the stick.

  Mack and Storm. Between them, he was going to end up in an insane asylum.

  Dog walked to the end of the flight deck, where a small galley complete with a refrigerator and a microwave had been installed. He ducked down to the fridge and found a small milk container, then reached into a nearby cabinet for a pack of oatmeal cookies. The techies complained about the crumbs, but there was something comforting about the old-fashioned snack, especially when you were having it aboard one of the most advanced warplanes in the world.

  "Captain Gale for you, Colonel," said Jazz.

  Dog sighed and flipped on the communications unit at the auxiliary station next to one of the radars where Dish was working.

  "Bastian here."

  "You have anything new?"

  "Negative, Storm. I'd surely have told you if I did."

  "We just finished turning that tanker inside out. Nothing." Storm squinted toward the camera. "I think it has to be some sort of Chinese sub."

  "Why Chinese?"

  "They hate the Indians. I'm going to return to the Indian destroyer. They have the damage under control. They're heading back east at sunrise. There's an Indian task group supposedly setting sail. I assume they'll meet up."

  "All right."

  "Tell your people — this task force is headed by a small battle carrier. It's a combination aircraft carrier and missile ship. It used to belong to the Russians. The Indians have fixed it up considerably. We'll have a full briefing for you. They have an air arm aboard — a dozen Su-33 Sukhois."

  "We can handle them."

  "Don't shoot them down," said Storm quickly. "I know you people are light on the trigger." "Anything else?"

  "That's it."

  "We're going off station in a few minutes. Levitow will continue controlling Piranha."

  "Good," said Storm, his sharp tone suggesting the opposite as the communication screen blanked.

  Dog straightened. He glanced over Dish's shoulder. The sergeant was busy fine-tuning the large screen in front of him, which showed that there were two ships, a cargo container carrier and a garbage scow, sailing twenty miles to their south.

  On the other side of the aisle, T-Bone was tracking a pair of civilian airliners heading toward India, and a cargo craft flying south along the African coast. Except for their Flighthawks and the Levitow, the sky in their immediate vicinity was clear.

  "Say, T-Bone, can you give me more information about that civilian plane we tracked?" Dog asked. "The one that was near the oil tanker."

  "Don't have that much to give you, Colonel." T-Bone reached to a set of switches at the right of his console, fingers tapping quickly over the elongated keyboard. A radar plot appeared on the auxiliary screen to the right of T-Bone's station.

  "This is the first solid long-distance contact we had."

  T-Bone's fingers danced again. A new image appeared, showing Dog an enhanced radar view. T-Bone did a double tap on the lower keyboard at his right. A window opened on the screen.

  "This is the spec screen where the computer — and me— tried to figure out what the hell it was," explained the sergeant. The computer used the radar return to analyze the aircraft's structure, identifying its type and capabilities. Depending on the range, it could also identify weapons the plane carried, which could also be done by analyzing the radars emanating from the plane. Knowing an enemy plane's type and capabilities before engaging it was an enormous advantage, and much of the work that went into perfecting the Dreamland radar system had been aimed at doing that. The onboard computer library had data on nearly everything that had ever flown, right back to the Army's Wright Model A.

  "No hit in the library, see?" said T-Bone, pointing to the screen. "Light aircraft, civilian type, two engines far back on the fuselage. Looks like a small seaplane, with the engines up there to stay out of the spray. Hull is boat-shaped."

  "Definitely makes sense," said Dog. "Why wouldn't we have seen him earlier?"

  "Two possibilities. One, he was outside our range, flying in from the east. Two, he was on the surface of the water, probably at that oil tanker. If he's a smuggler—"

  "Far south for that."

  "Maybe they're changing tactics because the Abner Read has done such a good job farther north." "Maybe."

  It wasn't that he didn't think Storm was doing a good job; clearly they were missing something.

  "Get Dreamland Control. Send this information back. I want Dr. Rubeo to get some of his people on this. I want to know what type of aircraft this is, what's it's capable of.

  Dish… "

  "Yes, sir," said the sergeant, turning around.

  "Get as much data as you can on the torpedo that damaged the Indian ship. Size, that sort of thing. Give that to Dreamland Command as well. I think this little aircraft is m
ore of a problem than we know."

  III

  Be Boarded, or Be Sunk

  Aboard the Shiva,

  in the Indian Ocean

  10 January 1998

  0800

  Anil Memon zipped his windbreaker as he stepped out onto the observation deck of the Shiva. India's deputy defense minister immediately grabbed for the railing, thrown off balance not by the rolling of the ship but the roar of one of her Su-33s charging off the ramped runway below. The warplane lurched into the sky, her left wing bucking down for a brief moment before the thrust from her two massive engines muscled her upward.

  "An impressive site, Mr. Memon, is it not?" said the commander of the Shiva, Admiral Kala. A short, slight man, he did not weigh much more than 120 pounds, but he was one of the most respected commanders in the navy. "When we have five more ships like this, no one will challenge India's greatness, not even the Americans."

  Memon smiled. To get five more ships such as the Shiva would not be easy.

  He turned his attention back to the sea, scanning the surface for the wounded destroyer Calcutta. One of the lookouts had said it was just visible on the horizon, but even with his powerful binoculars he couldn't see it.

  "It's to port, ten degrees," said the admiral, guessing what he was looking for.

  Memon adjusted his view and saw the mast.

  "I was aboard the Calcutta last year," Memon said. "I can't imagine she was struck by a torpedo from a submarine. She would have heard the vessel before the attack." "We will know the answer soon."

  A sailor appeared behind them, his uniform so crisp that a scent of starch filled the air.

  "Admiral Kala, communication with the American ship has been established."

  "Very good. Deputy Minister Memon, will you join me?"

  Memon followed the admiral back into the superstructure of the ship. Allowing for the metal walls and the pipes, the interior of the Shiva seemed more like the inside of a large office complex than that of a ship. The halls still smelled of fresh paint, and even the decking had a glow to it.