Dreamland: Piranha

by Dale Brown

  “Go,” said Dog.

  The lieutenant’s fingers pounded on his keyboard. Jed Barclay’s pimple-strewn face flashed onto the screen. He had deep black bags under both eyes; back East it was around three in the morning.

  “Colonel, uh, Jed Barclay here.”

  “Go ahead, Jed.”

  “Pacific Fleet’s making some noise. The boss man wanted me to give you a heads-up. USCINCPACCOM’s throwing a territory fit.”

  “Acknowledged,” said Dog, who actually would have preferred to say something else.

  “Whiplash order is being reviewed. They’re going to look for an opinion from you,” added Jed.

  “Opinion on what?”

  “Whether the Megafortresses can stop ships from being sunk.”

  “Okay, we’ll start working on it.” Colonel Bastian wasn’t sure they could; they had no ASW weapons on the Megafortresses. Besides, protecting shipping was a Navy task, and if that became the primary mission, the Pacific Fleet would surely get the job. Their most likely role would be working with PACCOM as they had with CENTCOM in the Middle East, thought the personalities here were considerably more prickly.

  “I think the Navy may suggest escorts, flagships, like they did in 1987 with tankers in the Persian Gulf, the oil crisis,” added Jed. “But most of the fleet is still up near Taiwan and Japan, uh, due to the situation on the mainland. The other major assets are near India and the Gulf—I guess you know that. So, uh, they’re scrambling to figure out where to allocate what. I don’t know how long it will be before there’s a decision. Might be days or weeks.”

  “Okay,” said Dog.

  Barclay blinked.

  “Maybe you ought to catch some Zs, Jed,” said Dog. “Have you slept since you got back?”

  “Thanks, Colonel.” Barclay managed a weak smile. “You look a little tired yourself.”

  “A little.”

  “You have any more information about the Chinese plane?” asked Jed.

  “NO. I imagine the pilot make it,” said Dog. “Zen had a Flighthawk nearby and we don’t have any video showing an ejection, let alone a chute.”

  “Yeah. Tough luck for him.”

  Dog nodded, thought he felt more sympathetic. While the Chinese pilot wasn’t exactly an ally, it seemed a waste that he had died. Dog hated the idea of any pilot dying in accident, even if he’d caused it himself.

  “Um, State may contact you,” added Jed. “They’re a little behind the curve on this, so they may need a full, uh, briefing. Director says do it, but you have to watch their clearance.”

  “What exactly does that mean?”

  “Nothing on Kali,” said Jed.

  “Then what’s the sense of briefing them?

  “Yeah. Not my call,” said Jed, which Dog had learned was Jed’s standard response when he agreed something didn’t make sense, but his boss hadn’t listened to the reasons. “I guess you have to do what you can do.”

  “All right, Jed. We should have the cargo planes on the Philippines tonight,” added Dog.

  “I’ll keep you updated,” said Jed.

  “Thanks.” Dog killed the connection himself with his remote control, then clicked onto the Quicksilver circuit to update them.

  Aboard Quicksilver, over the South China Sea

  August 23, 1997, 1430 local (August 22, 1997, 2330 Dreamland)

  Cargo stretched across the water like so many icebergs. The fantail of the ship jutted upward from the water, its large screw looking like a bizarre metal daisy waiting to be plucked. Zen brought the Flighthawk down for a pass at two thousand feet, his airspeed bleeding back under two hundred knots. He could see bodies in the water; two or three appeared to be clinging to something, and there was a man on one of the floating cargo containers.

  “I think we have survivors,” he told Breanna. “I’m going to take another pass and try to get better video. You might want to radio any ships that are coming.”

  “We’re in the process of making contact now,” she told him. “We’re going to pipe your feed up here.”

  “Hawk Leader,” acknowledged Zen.

  He checked Hawk Two, still in trail above and behind Quicksilver, then turned Hawk One around for another run. The feed off the robot plane was being pumped back to Dreamland, were it could be analyzed for potential survivors, as well as any hazardous cargo or weapons.

  The merchant ship that had been sailing ahead of the container vessel when it was struck had made a large, cautious turn in the water and was approaching the debris field slowly. It hadn’t yet lowered boats into the water. In answer to the SOS, another vessel, a tanker, was about ten miles away, coming north at fifteen knots. Several miles beyond the tanker, but making better time, was a cruise ship. Collins had ID’s the tanker and cruise ship already—the Exxon Global and the Royal Scotsman—and now Ferris clicked in to say they had acknowledged his message that there survivors in the water. The closer merchant ship, meanwhile, did not answer on any of the frequencies the copilot tried, even as it continued at a snail’s pace toward the bobbing containers.

  “Hawk Leader—we’re getting something twenty miles west of than tanker—odd reading on the water,” said Ferris. “Could be our sub getting ready to surface. We want to change course to check it out.”

  “Yeah, go for it,” said Zen, immediately turning toward the coordinates.

  Hawk One cruised in range just in time to see a submarine rise gently above the waves, the black, elongated oval of its conning tower pushing aside the water. Zen slid around the sub at just over three thousand feet; Collins ID’s it as a Russian Kilo, a diesel-powered boat that according to his brief usually didn’t operate this far south.

  “This bastard that sank the container ship?” questioned Zen.

  “Not sure who it is,” said Collins. “We don’t have any transmissions. I’m piping your feed to Dreamland, but they can’t ID it either. Probably Chinese, not Indian.”

  “You think the Chinese sank the ship?”

  “Stand by, Hawk Leader,” said Collins, undoubtedly so he could talk to Dreamland people uninterrupted.

  Zen took two passes low and slow, but failed to pick up and identifying marks. Like nearly all modern designs, the sub had no bow gun or surface weapons, beside its torpedoes and mines, and seemed to be taking no hostile action. It didn’t use its radio either; the only emissions coming from it were from a relatively short-range surface search radar, which Torbin announced was a “Snoop Tray.”

  “Checking on his handiwork?” Zen asked.

  “Can’t tell for sure what he’s doing,” answered Torbin. “But I don’t think these guys carry cruise missiles. Assuming he’s Chinese.”

  “Thinking is, definitely Chinese,” said Collins, coming back into the discussion. “Container ship almost certainly got nailed by a cruise missile, so odds are this guy’s clean. Container ship was supposedly going to Pakistan, so the implication is that might have been a motive; that, or target practice.”

  Zen had dealt with the Chinese and their proxies before; he didn’t trust them not to have sunk the ship.

  “Ship captains are requesting instructions,” said Ferris. “One of them got the sub on his radar; now they’re all chattering about it.”

  “Tell them to proceed with the rescue,” snapped Breanna. “Collins, if you can figure out what the hell radio frequency they’re using, advise the submarine to help out or get lost!”

  “We don’t have a precoded message for that,” said Collins. “Not in Chinese.”

  “Do it in English. Use every frequency you can think of—Russian and Indian as well as Chinese. Hell, try Dutch and French too.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Collins.

  “Sub’s moving southward, changing course,” said Zen. He brought Hawk One down to five hundred feet and rode the sub bow to stern. There were three or four men in the tower; no weapons visible. Hawk One was moving too fast to get a good look at uniforms, let alone faces, and the freeze-frame didn’t make it any clearer
. “Looks like they’re headed toward the damaged ship. If they try to interfere with the rescue, I’m going to perforate their hull.”

  “It may come to that,” said Bree. “Lets drop down a bit and make sure they know we’re here.”

  “They’d be awful blind not to,” said Zen. He did a quick check on Hawk Two; its systems were all in the green and the computer had it in Trail Two, one of the preset flight patterns programmed into the Flighthawk’s onboard systems. To save communications bandwidth, a number of routine flight operations and patterns were carried aboard the robot, allowing it to perform basic functions without being told precisely what to do. In Trail Two, it homed in on the mother ship, staying precisely three miles off the V-shaped tail, varying its altitude and position as it flew, pretty much the way a “real” pilot would.

  “Uh-oh. Got another sub surfacing,” said Chris as the Megafortress spiraled down toward the ocean. “Five miles beyond the cruise ship.”

  “On it,” said Zen, jumping into Hawk Two as the Megafortress changed course to get a look.

  In the few minutes it took to get in range, the submarine was already fully surfaced. Its conning tower was longer than the first sub’s, shaped like a rounded dagger with the knifepoint facing backward. Otherwise, the sub itself seemed to be roughly the same shape and size as the Kilo.

  “Not in our library,” said Chris. “We’ll want to route video on this to Dreamland.”

  Zen had the Flighthawk down to two thousand feet. Tipping the wing gently, he cruised around the submarine, trying to go as slow and steady as possible. There were no markings on it, let along a flag, but he felt sure this was what they’d been sent to find—the Indian hunter-killer that was blowing Chinese ships.

  “Zen, they think it’s a modified Kilo,” said Chris Ferris. “But the conning tower looks like an Akula, which is a nuke boat. They’re real interested in this; it’s off their maps.”

  Zen nudged lower for another pass. They’d just scored a major intelligence coup, but Zen wasn’t particularly impressed.

  “What’s the Kilo doing?” Zen asked.

  “Moving toward the wreckage,” answered Ferris. “Still on the surface. Think they’ll spit at each other?”

  “I wouldn’t mind that,” said Zen. “As long as they don’t interfere with the rescue.”

  “Collins, see if you can hail them.”

  “Trying to communicate with them now,” said Collins. “Nobody’s acknowledging. Wait, here we go.”

  Collins switched off for a few moments, then came back on the interphone to explain he had spoken to the captain of the cruise ship, who said he would do nothing to endanger his passengers or crew. He’d asked if the Americans would guarantee their safety.

  “Tell the captain we’ll do what we can,” Bree said.

  “He doesn’t seem to think that’s good enough,” he reported back. “He’s holding off. I gotta think the others are going to do the same, Captain.”

  The sitrep showed Collins was correct: the surface vessels were no longer moving toward the debris field.

  “We have a pair of Sukhois inbound,” warned Chris. “Coming at us at zero-ten, one hundred miles away, about five hundred knots.”

  “Air-to-surface radars active,” said Torbin. “Two more planes behind them.”

  “I confirm,” said Chris.

  “I can jam,” said Torbin.

  “Hold on till they’re in firing range,” said Breanna. “I’ll make the call then. In the meantime, let’s see what Dreamland thinks.”

  “Gotcha, Cap.”

  Zen turned Hawk One back toward the floating debris field. As the sun slipped steadily downward, a storm front approached, and while this was a warm part of the ocean (near the surface, the water temperature was roughly thirty degrees Celsius or eighty-six degree Fahrenheit), it would feel cold if you stayed in it long enough. No way the people clinging to the tops of the container ships and the debris in the water were going to make it through the night. They had to be rescued now.

  “Orders remain to take no hostile action,” Breanna reported.

  “Okay, but how do we get these guys to close in and pick up the survivors?” said Zen.

  “Working on it, Jeff,” she told him.

  “If we can get the subs to take their dispute outside, we can probably reassure the civilians,” said Chris. “Maybe get them to move this catfight to the south.”

  “You want to try suggesting that to them?”

  “I can give it a whack,” said the copilot. About a minute later, he came back over the interphone to announce no one had answered his broadcasts.

  “Well, let’s show these jokers we’re serious,” said Bree. “Zen, I’m going to take it down low and buzz both of them, all right?”

  “Hawk Leader.”

  “Chris, keep track of the Sukhois. Open bay doors.”

  “Open bay doors?”

  “I want them to think we’re prepared to fire. We’re going to two thousand feet—no, one thousand. I want them to count the rivets.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  It was a serious calculated risk—at one thousand feet the Megafortress would be easy picking for a shoulder-launched SAM. On the other hand, the move was sure to get their attention. Collins began broadcasting an all-channels message, telling the submarines to stand off while the surface ships made the rescue.

  “How are those Sukhois?” asked Bree as she dipped her wings toward the waves.

  “Five minutes to firing range,” said Chris.

  “Keep an eye on them,” said Bree. “Hang with me, Flighthawks.”

  Zen rolled Hawk One just ahead of the big Megafortress as she pulled level. He tightened Hawk Two on Quicksilver’s tail; if one of the subs did fire a heat-seeker, he hoped to be close enough to help suck it off.

  The video on Hawk Two caught one of the crewmen aboard the first Kilo covering his head as Breanna came over. The others had thrown themselves to the deck. The second submarine had started to change course south when they reached it.

  “Maybe they got the message,” said Collins.

  “They’re broadcasting?” Bree asked.

  “Negative,” said Collins.

  “We have communication from a Navy plane,” said Chris. “They’re en route; about two hundred and twenty nautical miles to our south-southwest. Call name is Pegasus 202.”

  “Tell them to stand of until we what the Sukhois are doing,” said Bree.

  As Zen edged back toward the debris field, he saw one of the freighters was once again moving toward the survivors. A small boat was being lowered from its side.

  “Okay, this is shaping up,” he told the others, passing along what he was seeing. Breanna began a wide, banking track to take the Megafortress back up to a more comfortable altitude.

  “Hold on. Somebody’s broadcasting to the civilian ships, in English,” said Collins. “Telling them to stand off. They want them to move out of the area. It’s the sub, that Kilo—definitely Chinese.”

  “Pipe it in,” said Bree.

  The accent made the words difficult to decipher quickly, but it was clear the speaker did not want the civilians nearby. Breanna clicked her transmit button when he paused, identifying her plane, then asking the speaker to do the same. There was no answer at first, then the speaker repeated, more or less, what he had said before, adding that the Chinese Navy had the situation under control.

  “Other sub is diving,” said Chris.

  “Those suckers are going to start shooing at each other,” Torbin warned. “Sukhois are tracking.”

  “Collins, tell the civilian ships to move back,” said Bree. “Torbin, see if you can jam those radars so they can’t lock—”

  “Missiles in the air! Sukhois are firing—AGMs—ship missiles, I mean. Shit!”

  Dreamland Command

  August 22, 1997, 2358 local (August 23, 1997, 1458 Philippines)

  “PACCOM wants to talk, sir,” said the lieutenant just as Dog was going to take a qui
ck break. “Admiral Allen.”

  “Don’t they sleep out there?” asked the colonel, returning to his console.

  “It’s only about nine in Pearl.”

  “Rhetorical question,” said Dog. “Let ’er rip.”

  The screen at the front of the room blinked white, then transformed into a high-resolution video feed showing a small office area filled with a half-dozen frowning Navy commanders. The script at the bottom of the screen identified the source as CinCPacSIT, a top-level secure facility for Pacific Command. Admiral Allen, with his sleeves rolled up, stood in front of a large map table, his face as red as the flag used to provoke the proverbial bull.