by Dale Brown
"Good."
Martindale folded his arms and surveyed the rest of the room. Jed had seen the President in many tense situations; always, he was calm and almost detached. But clearly he recognized the tension in the room.
"The technology down here is great," said Martindale. He winked at Jed. "But what we really need is a good coffee machine."
Aboard the Fisher,
near Dwarka Early Warning Platform
0543
Danny clicked the control for his smart helmet'svi-sor, selecting the image from the low-light camera in the Fishefs nose. The wrecked platform was dead ahead.
Tommy Chu's voice boomed in his ear. "We're sixty seconds from drop," said the Fisher's pilot. "The Sharkboat is eight miles to the west. The targets are diving. I'm going to drop you approximately five hundred yards ahead of their route calculated by the computer."
"What happened to Piranha?" Danny asked.
"We haven't reconnected yet," said Chu. "Ensign English is working on it. Things are pretty hot down there, Danny. Are you sure you want to go ahead?"
"No doubt in my mind."
"All right. One of our Flighthawks will orbit to assist if you need it. Thirty seconds."
"Boston, you ready?" Danny asked his sergeant on the other wing.
"Born ready, Cap. Can't wait to get in the water. Goin' stir crazy here. And freezin' my nuts off."
Danny switched the screen view to the manpod's rear camera, figuring that would be the one he'd want to use after the drop. Then he took a long breath, gripped the rails near his head, and closed his eyes.
Aboard the Levitow,
over northwestern India
0545
Flying the Megafortress at high speed and low altitude was the ultimate thrill ride, the sort of attraction roller coaster designers could only dream about. The scenery north of India's largest city added to the sensation; exotic rooftops flew by the windscreens, giving way to yellowish fields, then more houses and factory buildings.
Breanna wasn't interested in the scenery, except as a reference point to make sure she was flying as low as possible. The thrills she could take or leave, though at the moment she couldn't live without them.
She hurled the Megafortress forward at 500 knots, counting on her reflexes to keep her out of trouble. They were less than fifty feet above ground level, so close to some of the buildings that if she extended her landing gear she could have scraped off shingles.
"Terrain rising!" warned Stewart.
"Thanks," said Breanna, even though she was already pulling back. "Levitow to Hawk leader — we're approaching Omega point."
"Roger that, Levitow. We're getting ready to say goodbye right now."
* * *
Unlike their mother ship, the Flighthawks were not shielded against the EEMWB's electromagnetic waves. To avoid the effects of the blast, Hawk Four would be sent to a rendezvous point south, piloted completely by the onboard component of its C3 flight-control computer. The Mega-fortress would pick it up on the way back. If for some reason they were unable to return within an hour, C3 would fly the plane westward and ditch in the ocean.
The other aircraft, Hawk Three, would stay with the Levi-tow until the EEMWBs went off. That would leave the Megafortress temporarily without an escort, but in theory anything nearby would have been zapped out of order anyway.
"Thirty seconds to disconnect," Dork told Zen. "Hard to let go, huh?" Zen asked the other pilot. "You got that, Major."
Zen kept Hawk Three five miles ahead of the Megafortress, flying at thirty feet. He was so low not simply to avoid detection — the Flighthawk's radar profile was con siderably stealthier than the Megafortress's — but as a kind of terrain bird dog to alert Breanna to anything unexpected.
"Hawk Four is no longer under my control," said Dork, sounding a little sad.
Zen leaned forward in his seat, eyes scanning the screen as the ground whipped by.
He'd made the right decision. This was exactly where he needed to be.
Northern Arabian Sea
0548
The concussion threw the midget submarine sideways. Sattari lurched against his seat belt, then fell back, suddenly weightless in the small craft.
He waited for a second blast, sure that the aircraft they had seen above would finish them off. He felt his heart pounding at the top of his chest, near his collarbone.
A minute passed, then another. There were no more explosions. Sattari bent his head and uttered a prayer of thanksgiving.
"Captain, we are losing power," said the submarine's commander. "We're losing speed."
The soft light from the instrument panel turned the man's face a brownish red; he looked like a demon.
"We will wait, then."
"If the Parvaneh has been seriously damaged, we may not be able to stay under very long."
"Let us examine the damage and discover what else we can do. Trust yourself, and Allah."
"Yes, Captain."
* * *
The manpod hit the water with a teeth-rattling smack and shudder. The nose — where Danny's feet were — shot downward, then flipped abruptly toward the surface. Danny hung onto the handles near his head, expecting the pod to spin or, worse, flip over. But it did neither. A buzzer sounded in the cabin as the pod's automated raft system prepared to inflate. He didn't override, and three seconds later a shrill hiss told him compressed air had filled the bladders at the sides, stabilizing the craft.
The feed from the rear cam showed nothing nearby. Danny reached to the back of his helmet and cued in the front view. Water lapped the top two-thirds of the screen; he couldn't see anything else.
Balling his hands into fists, he reached down and pounded the recessed handles above his stomach, blowing the top half of the pod off. He pulled himself upright, punching his visor into its low-light mode.
There was nothing nearby — including the other manpod.
"Boston?"
No answer.
"Boston?"
He was just about to switch back into the Dreamland circuit and make sure that Chu had dropped his sergeant when something broke the water a few yards away.
"Boston?" he yelled.
The figure waved. It had to be Boston, he decided, and reached down to his pants leg to take out the flashlight. He gave a quick flick of light to help the man find his way over, then pulled off his helmet.
"Boston?"
"Yo, Cap," said the sergeant, grabbing onto the side of the pod. "Had a little trouble. The stabilizer raft didn't inflate right, and I guess I blew the lid too soon."
"Where's your helmet?"
"Bottom of the sea. Lost the laughing gas too. Got my dive gear and weapons, though." Boston hauled the waterproof sacks up to Danny.
"All right. Let me see where our submarine is," Danny said, pulling his helmet back on.
Aboard the Abner Read,
in the northern Arabian Sea
0555
Starship stayed in an orbit between the Sharkboat and his last sighting of the submarines.
"Werewolf, the Dreamland team is in the water," said Eyes. "Approach the area and give them cover."
"Copy that. I see them. Do you have a location on the submarine?"
"Dreamland Fisher is still working on that."
Starship sped forward. He saw a dark smudge in the water at about a mile. Thinking it was the Dreamland Whiplash team, he started to slow down, then realized it was one of the commandos' empty rafts. Tracking north, he found a small missilelike raft nose down in the water — one of the manpods.
"Werewolf has Whiplash manpod in sight," he told Eyes.
"I'm switching you over to the commander of Sharkboat One. You have a direct line on your channel two."
Starship gave the commander the GPS coordinates for the manpod. One man clung to the side and the other was in the tiny vessel.
"Stand by for the location of the submarines, via Dreamland Fisher commander," said Eyes, breaking in.
Northern
Arabian Sea
0558
The global positioning cue in the smart helmet indicated that the submarine was four hundred yards almost directly south. It appeared to have stopped moving, drifting less than twelve feet below the surface.
"Quarter mile," Danny told Boston. "Just below the surface. Probably trying to lay low until things quiet down. Let's paddle as close we can. We'll skip the laughing gas, do everything else like we drew it up."
Boston moved to the back of the raft and began kicking. Danny picked up a paddle. The wind was gentle, but it was in his face, and it took quite an effort to reach the spot where the submarine was. Finally, Danny grabbed the waterproof packs from the inside of the manpod and gave one to Boston. He traded the smart helmet for a dive mask with a light and breather, and pulled on flippers.
"Ready?"
"If you say so," replied Boston.
Danny took out his survival radio and held it to his face. "Whiplash to Werewolf and Sharkboat. We're ready to go below."
"Sharkboat is fifteen minutes away," replied the boat's captain.
"Great. We'll meet you on the surface."
"Whiplash, you got a fighter coming at you out of the north. He's at low altitude and slow."
"Roger that. We're in the water," said Danny, tossing the radio behind him and slipping over the side.
The water was much darker than he had imagined it could be. Even with the light, he couldn't see more than a few feet away.
Just when he thought he'd swum right by the sub, he spotted a black shadow looming a few yards to his right. A strong kick took him to the side of the vessel. He looked back and saw Boston's light approaching.
Fearing that any noise outside the submarine might alert the people inside, he stayed off the hull, swimming above the deck to locate the emergency blow device. The sub expert had warned that the device might have been removed, but the door covering it was exactly where he'd seen it on the diagram. He reached gingerly to the panel, running his fingers around it. There were two latches. He slipped them to the sides and pried the panel upward. The large red lever sat inside, exactly as in the brochure advertising the civilian version of the submarine's safety features.
Not ready to activate the system, Danny turned and worked his way to the rear of the vessel, looking for the stern planes. Resembling a pair of airplane wings, the planes helped hold the vessel at the proper angle in the water; blowing them would make the submarine bob forward, further disorienting the passengers and making it harder for them to get away if something went wrong. He placed the small packs of explosive, then waited for Boston to put his on the propeller shaft. They pressed the timer buttons almost simultaneously. Then Danny swam back to the rescue device while Boston went to see if there were forward fins.
* * *
Captain Sattari listened as the creaks and tremors of the great ocean rippled through the submarine, the sounds magnified by fear as much as acoustics.
If Allah permitted, they would stay here all day until the sun set. Then they could surface and repair whatever had caused the engine to fail. If unsuccessful, they would board the raft and head to shore.
It was possible. It would be done.
Sattari heard a loud clunk above him, so close it sounded as if someone had kicked the submarine.
"There may be patrol vessels searching for us," said the Parvaneh's commander. "We should be prepared to scuttle."
Even as Sattari nodded, he found himself hoping it wouldn't come to that. He wanted to stand before his father and tell him of his great victory.
* * *
The handle refused to budge. Danny put his feet as gingerly as he could on the deck of the submarine and pushed, but still couldn't get it to turn.
Boston swam up next to him and pointed at his watch. The charges were set to go off in another sixty seconds.
Danny motioned to him to get near the hatchway, located inside the low-slung conning tower, so he would be ready to throw the grenades inside when the sub surfaced. Glancing at the timer on his watch — forty-eight seconds — he balled his hand into a fist, measuring his aim. As he did, he saw a long plastic knob next to the handle. It looked like a screwdriver, but turned out to be a release for the handle.
Before he could try the handle again, the charges exploded. Small as they were, they rocked the submarine upward. Danny jammed his hand against the lever as the top of the sub smacked him into his face mask. He felt himself propelled upward, as if he were sitting on an underwater volcano. He lost his grip on the handle but grabbed the device door, holding on as the submarine surfaced with a roar.
Aboard the Wisconsin,
over India
0610
There were times when flying the EB-52 was like being the engineer on a high-speed train riding on a dedicated rail, with relatively few decisions to make and a predictable program ahead of you.
This wasn't one of those times.
Dog was being tracked by no less than six different missile batteries. He tried to zigzag between them and still stay on course.
"SA-12s to the right, SA-10s to the left," said Jazz. "Pick your poison."
"Tens," said Dog.
"Flap Lid radar," said the copilot, telling Dog that the SA-10's engagement radar had locked onto them. "Breaking. I'm using every ECM we've got, Colonel."
They were roughly seventy miles from the missile site, just outside its maximum reach. But their course was going to take them down to thirty miles from the battery.
"SA-12s are launching!" shouted Jazz. "I don't think they have a lock."
Dog immediately changed his course, dodging back to the north, closer to the SA-12 battery — if they were going to fire at him anyway, there was no sense getting too close to the SA-10s.
The Russian SA-12—known to its makers as the S-300V — was a versatile missile that came in two different versions, depending on its primary use. The SA-12A — code-named Gladiator by NATO — was a low-to-high altitude missile that could reach targets up to fifteen and a half miles in the sky, with a range of just over forty-five miles. The B version was optimized as an antiballistic missile missile, with a higher altitude and longer range. Both missiles were incredibly fast, in the league of the American Patriot, which could hit Mach 5.
"He's coming for us, Colonel. Forty miles."
They had less than a minute to dodge the missile. Dog shoved the Megafortress hard to his left, trying to beam the Grill Pan missile radar.
"Still coming."
"ECMs," Dog told Jazz.
"I'm playing every song I know."
"Chaff. Hang on, tight." Dog veered down, trying to stay at a right angle to the radar and get the missile to bite on the tinsel.
"We're clear! We're clear!" said Jazz.
The missile's warhead exploded a few thousand feet above them, two miles away. Dog kept the Megafortress level as he tried to sort out where he was relative to his original course. He'd strayed farther south than he wanted; as soon as he corrected, Jazz called out a fresh warning.
"We're spiked! More SA-12s. The whole battery, looks like. This time they have a lock."
Northern Arabian Sea
0612
The Parvaneh submarine shook with the sharp thud of multiple explosions. Captain Sattari ripped the seat belt from around his waist and grabbed his AK-47 from the floor. He started to run toward the ladder to the deck above — the charges for the explosives that were sealed in the vessel's hull were set off from the panel there.
After his third step he heard a loud roar, the sound of an old-fashioned locomotive letting off steam. Then he flew forward, knocked off his feet by the submarine's sudden and unexpected rise toward the surface.
* * *
Danny was thrown off the side as the submarine popped up. His foot grabbed in the side rail and he slammed against the hull, caught on the deck. He pushed himself back toward the conning tower, half swimming, half stumbling, in the direction of Boston, who was already at the hatch. The submarine twist
ed, whirling as the waves frothed and steamed. Danny lurched to his knees and slid into Boston's back just as the sergeant dropped his tear gas canisters down into the vessel. Catching his balance, Danny gripped the edge of the conning tower. He tossed off his knapsack and unzipped the outer and then the inner skins, exposing the CQWS shotgun.
The close-quarters weapon — developed by Dreamland's weapons lab, the letters stood for Close Quarters Whiplash Shotgun — looked like a Pancor jackhammer shotgun that had been sawed off just fore of the trigger. It held twelve rounds of plastic pellet-filled shells, designed to incapacitate but not kill a person. The shells were expelled with enough force to knock down a 250-pound man.
Danny grabbed the gun and leapt down into the submarine. He saw only smoke in front of him, but immediately fired two rounds. Something fell at his feet — a man. Danny sidestepped him, then raised his gun as something moved a few feet away. He fired point-blank and it went down.
Boston was right behind him. Danny pushed through the thick haze, still using his dive pack to breathe. The submarine had an aisle down the middle, with a seat to each side. He saw a station with a wheel at the front, a shadow moving next to it. He put two shells into the shadow.
Someone grabbed at his side. A sharp elbow got rid of his assailant, but as he brought his gun up, a bullet ricocheted nearby. Before Danny could react, he felt a burning sensation in his calf. He fired toward the front of the submarine, heard another bullet, and found himself falling.
Aboard the Wisconsin,
over India
0613
Dog veered to the south as soon as Jazz gave him the warning about the SA-12s. The Megafortress groaned with the strain, pulling nearly eight g's. Engines at max power, he pushed his nose down, increasing his speed.
"Colonel — you're heading straight for the SA-10 site."
"Turn off the ECMs."
"Colonel?"
"Jazz."
"ECMs off. Clam Shell acquisition ra— They have us! They have us! They're launching — two, four missiles."
