Satan's Tail d-7

by Dale Brown

  "If you made it all that way with only thirty-eight men, you will be able to do the same here. Besides, there is no time to train them. By this time tomorrow you will be under way. The cruise will not require a relief crew, I assure you."

  "We would value action," said the captain finally.

  "You will have plenty. An aircraft carrier is making its way down from the Suez Canal. It will be in the Gulf of Aden at dawn the day after tomorrow."

  They moved to the chart table, where the Libyan captain brought out a chart of the gulf area. The maps were not very good — surely another sign that Allah had guided the man here.

  "I will get you another set before we sail," Ali assured him. "But for now, these will do — we will sail to the eastern end of the gulf as swiftly as possible. It is several hundred miles." He pointed to 'Abd al Kuri, a small island roughly seventy miles east of the tip of Somalia. Allah had given him a plan overnight — in compensation for the dreams, perhaps. They would strike where the carrier least expected it: at the end of the passage through the gulf. The other ships would lure the carrier to an attack, allowing the submarine to close in with its torpedoes. Sharia would launch its missiles at the same time — the Ark Royal would be overwhelmed.

  "I have spies all along both coasts, and among the traffic in the gulf," Ali told the submarine captain. "They will give us his location without trouble. We will then make an attack."

  He described the three-tiered attack he had mapped out in general terms, giving the submarine commander enough information so he would know his duty, but not enough to scuttle the missions of the other ships if he was captured. The Sharia, fueled and disguised as a benign pile of junk ready for the salvagers' blowtorches, would put out to sea at dusk on its slow trek eastward. The rest of the fleet would slip out a few hours afterward. The entire flotilla would be gone within thirty-six hours.

  "It is mostly a matter of timing," added Ali. "Once things begin, it follows the clock. There will be no need for communications. And no possibility of it. But we will succeed."

  "God willing," said the captain.

  "I have no doubt that he is willing."

  "Nor do I." The captain looked at the chart. "We will be sailing more than five hundred miles."

  "It will be somewhat more," said Ali.

  "We will have to go on the surface during the night to accomplish this. It is a risk we must take now," said the captain.

  Ali folded his arms, studying the captain's face. His assessments were correct, and he seemed aggressive. His passage here, however, had demonstrated caution in the extreme.

  Which was the true man?

  The answer could be seen in the gaze at a chart or the knitting of a brow. Ali would have to trust that the man who spoke of God's will was the truer — or that God would take a hand when necessary.

  "There is an American force in the waters. They are a serious concern, far more than the British," said Ali. He showed the submarine captain where Satan's Tail normally patrolled. "He cannot go into the coastal waters," said Ali. "As long as you stay close to the coast, he cannot attack you. He may follow, though. We will use that to our advantage if it happens."

  Ali outlined his plan. Tomorrow afternoon a pair of patrol boats would head a few miles to the west and then cut directly north across the gulf toward Yemen. The submarine would sail at dusk, followed by two other patrol boats that would shadow him. A few hours later a second group of patrol boats would go across the gulf, with the Sharia following roughly the same route the submarine did. Ali would follow in the large amphibian ship's path.

  Most likely the Americans would attack the first group of patrol boats as they headed toward Yemen or soon afterward. If this happened, the submarine would have clear sailing. The next possibility was that those boats and the submarine would be missed; the second wave of patrol craft would draw the Americans' attention. The third possibility was that the Americans would detect the submarine and follow it.

  "Their sensors are not very good in the shallow water," boasted the submarine captain. "I have sailed right past American ships in the Mediterranean many times."

  "This is not the Mediterranean, and you have not dealt with this ship and its commander before," said Ali. "Do not be overconfident. Satan's Tail is a ship like no other you have ever seen. The other day one of my vessels fired eight Exocet missiles at it, and it survived."

  "We will do better if we come up against it."

  "No. You must stay near the coast. Keep in the shadow of the Karkaar Mountains. Do not give them a reason to come for you."

  "If they attack me?"

  "If they attack you and you have no other choice, then you may engage. But your first mission is to get away." Ali looked down at the chart. "I will get them if they interfere. I will find a way."

  "Let me show you the rest of the boat," said the Libyan.

  They went through the forward spaces. Some of the equipment had been updated; even the older gear was clean and freshly painted, a sign of discipline that pleased Ali, for to him it meant not simply that the captain paid attention to details, but that the crew paid attention to the captain. This was another of the lessons he saw from the Italians, in going from ship to ship in their fleet — one could measure the crew by the captain, and vice versa.

  The tour continued to the forward torpedo room, where the large tube openings protruded from the wall like the stubby teats of a goat. There were six firing tubes, three to a side.

  "Only six torpedoes?" asked Ali. "I was told you would supply more," said the captain. "I do not have Russian torpedoes. Nor anything large enough for these tubes."

  The submarine used a standard Russian design, twenty one inches, or 533mm, in diameter. The torpedoes that Ali had were Italian A244s — a very versatile weapon, as its adaptation to his boats and tactics had shown, but at 12.75 inches, a much smaller and lighter torpedo.

  "Perhaps we can modify the tubes," suggested the captain. "The Russians have done so."

  He is optimistic by nature, thought Ali. That would be useful in battle.

  "There isn't time for that," said Ali. "Six will have to suffice."

  Alexandria,

  near Washington, D.C.

  1500

  Jed took the Metro from the airport and walked the five blocks from the Metro, stopping first to grab the Washington Post—no picture on the front or inside the newspaper, where the story played at the top of the international section.

  Standing at the register waiting to pay, he glanced sideways toward the coolers at the six-packs of beer.

  "Maybe later," he said out loud. He wasn't much of a drinker.

  "Later?" asked the clerk.

  "Just the paper," said Jed. He took his change and walked the five blocks home. His mood swung from anger at himself to depressed disbelief.

  How could he have been so stupid?

  Why the hell had he made the picture in the first place? He was an assistant to the National Security Advisor of the United States, not a member of the Harvard Lampoon.

  Damn, I'm a jerk, he told himself. I deserve to get booted across the Potomac.

  And I will be. Probably by the President himself.

  The answering machine was blinking at him when he got in: twelve calls.

  That wasn't a record, but it was close for a Sunday. He hadn't turned on his phones since he'd left the UN; he did now, and saw that each had nearly as many calls.

  Jed put them down on his bed and stood over them.

  I'm either going to deal with this, he thought, or I'm not.

  I am going to deal with this.

  His house phone rang and he jumped, but made no effort to get it.

  Man, what are my parents going to say? And Colonel Bastian? And Zen? What is my cousin Zen going to say?

  He's going to say I'm a jackass.

  Whoever called hung up without leaving a message.

  Zen would sit there in his wheelchair, shake his head. Then he'd mutter something like, "Little Jed, Li
ttle Jed, Little Jed."

  Then he took me out to shoot some hoops…

  It really had happened that way, when Jed got in trouble as a senior in high school, caught smoking a marijuana cigarette in the school bathroom — only his second time ever smoking dope, and of course he got caught. He'd thought that was the end of the world.

  It was, then. Zen's appearance in his uniform, fresh from the Gulf War — God, he was a sight, standing in the door. Standing…

  What would Zen say now?

  He'd say get off your ass and deal with it. If I can deal with being in the f-in' wheelchair, you can deal with this, asshole.

  Jed picked up the sat phone and started checking his messages.

  Aboard the Wisconsin,

  Gulf of Aden

  2400

  "There's a mooring area for abandoned ships at the western end of the little inlet there," said Dog, talking to the crew of Megafortress Delta One as he prepared to hand off the patrol to the other crew. "The submarine is across the arm of the bay, in this area here. It looks like a manmade cave, with just enough clearance for a small vessel to get in. According to what we've been able to dig up at Dreamland, the Italians found it in 1940 or 1941 and began modifying it for use as a submarine pen. Eventually it was abandoned. The submarine is there along with two patrol boats. Piranha is right here, about a hundred feet from the mouth of the cave. At least one patrol boat is sitting with these civilian boats in this area, and one of the moored ships isn't a wreck. We'll have fresh satellite intelligence in a few hours, but from old snaps, we think the headquarters area is over here, below the cliffs."

  Dog added that there was a legitimate port nearer to Karin, a few miles away; at least one patrol craft was hiding there as well.

  "More than likely there are ships and patrol craft hidden in different spots all along the coast," he added. "But I don't want to send a Flighthawk over, on the chance it'll tip them off. We'll wait until we're ready to deal with whatever is going on. Your job tonight is to stay far enough away that they can't see you, but close enough so you can react if something happens. No overflights, no combat if at all possible."

  Dog continued, passing along the frequencies that were being used by the Abner Read and the other ships, emergency landing fields, and the other necessary minutiae of a successful mission.

  * * *

  Zen swept the Flighthawk toward the coast as Dog finished up his brief with the crew of the Delta One. The Flighthawk pilot aboard Delta One, Captain Eric "Guitar-man" Mulvus, had seen action as an Army helicopter pilot in Panama and the Gulf War, left the regular Army, somehow managed to get into the Air Force Reserve, hopscotched into an ROTC program, and emerged as an F-16 pilot. Clearly a finagler, Guitarman's real claim to fame was lead guitarist in a pickup band known as the Dream Makers. He was a decent Flighthawk pilot, though this was his first mission in a combat zone.

  Zen slid down to fifteen hundred feet, gliding along the coastline. While they were giving the submarine base a wide swath and avoiding any chance of tipping the pirates off, Dog had decided there was nothing wrong with surveying the coastline well to the east as they went off duty. Starting about fifty miles from the cave where the sub was hidden, the Flighthawk would survey the coastline to the Indian Ocean with its infrared video camera. Even if they didn't spot anything, the survey would form a baseline for future operations; the computer would review the recorded images and flag what had changed.

  Zen settled onto a path about a quarter of a mile north of the coast. During the sixteenth century, Somalia was a flashpoint for Christian and Islamic cultures. Islam dominated the cities and areas on the coast where Zen flew, and Christians dominated the interior. The severe terrain kept relations between the two religions manageable, isolating the communities and weakening the appetite for conquest. Still, there had been many fights over the centuries; domination by one group or the other had not halted the flow of blood, nor, to be fair, did the sharing of a common religion prevent murder or depredation.

  Somalia had been divided in two during the nineteenth century, with the British dominating the northern coast and Italy the eastern, including the tip of the Horn of Africa. In the early days of World War II, Italy had seized British Somaliland; in 1941 the British took it and the rest back. The country's history after the war was partly cruel and partly confused, with the UN Security Council placing Italy in charge of the southern portion and Britain retaining the north, against the wishes of both the people and the UN. Unification, revolution, alliance with the Russian communists, chaos, hunger, and disaster had been the lot of the people ever since. The UN's effort to fight starvation in the early 1990s had ended in disaster for the U.S. when an Army unit tried to arrest followers of a warlord; the bungled politics surrounding the affair was one of many issues that had helped President Martindale win election. But the incident also convinced the UN to pull out, making ordinary Somalians victims once more.

  That's always the way it is, thought Zen. The little guy takes it in the ear.

  His father used to say that all the time. That's why you don't want to be a little guy.

  Zen hoped that wasn't the real lesson to be drawn, though sometimes it was hard to argue against.

  The Flighthawk chugged along, not caring a whit for history or injustice. A large vessel sat in the water off the left wing. The infrared image seemed a little off as Zen passed. It took him a moment to realize that the ship's image had been fairly uniform; there were no hot spots, which you'd expect if the engines were running.

  "Wisconsin, this is Flighthawk leader," said Zen. "Looks like I found that converted oiler we saw the other night. It's dead in the water. I'm going to take a close-up look at it."

  "Roger that, Flighthawk leader. Something up?"

  "Not sure."

  The ship seemed dead cold, the only heat the lingering warmth of the sun. And it was high in the water.

  "Maybe we didn't save it after all," said Zen after a second pass. "Maybe they had already taken it, got the fuel off, then brought it here. I think we ought to have somebody check it out."

  "Agreed," said Dog. "I'll dial it into Storm. Stand by."

  Aboard the Abner Read

  2400

  Danny stared at the hologram, which showed the likely location of the pirate camp near a village on the coast and just below a sharp cliff. A sequence of satellite photos had been used to form the basic layout, focusing on three old buildings across from a mooring where there had been occasional activity over the past several weeks. The old ships in the harbor gave the pirates good hiding places and made it difficult to flush them out if they managed to take positions there. While none were visible from the photos, the Abner Read would begin the engagement by pummeling the old hulks and neutralizing the possibility. The ship would wait for the submarine to come out of the cave; the shallow water as well as a breakwater and two old wrecks near the entrance prevented an easy torpedo shot.

  The ground team would prevent escape by land and secure whatever the pirates had onshore. The old village had been largely abandoned and could be isolated by capturing a small bridge at the southern end accessible from the water; with that out of the way, the main force could concentrate on the buildings directly across from the mooring. The Marines and Danny Freah's Whiplash team would land at the top of the cliff and rappel down from two different points to press home the attack. The troops could be deposited as the Werewolves blazed in from the oceanside. Between the high-pitched whine of the robot helos' rotors and the Abner Read's exploding shells, the Osprey's approach would be difficult to hear.

  "They most likely have at least a token watch in this area up here," said Danny, pointing to a ridge just behind the point of the cliff. "We have to find out before we attack. We can send a Flighthawk over shortly before the attack and look at the infrared camera. That'll show us where everything is. We can have it orbit during the operation, showing us what's going on."

  "We need at least a token force to come in off t
he shore to the west," said Dancer. "Otherwise they can just filter down here and get away. And just for good measure, we should put people on this side of the village to the east as well. We're looking at three heavily armed teams, lots of firepower, support from those robot helos. If there are two hundred pirates in there—"

  "I doubt there are two hundred," said Danny. "Not even a hundred."

  "We still need more people," said the Marine lieutenant. Danny found himself admiring her professional skepticism. Too often junior officers simply parroted what their superiors drew up.

  And she was good-looking when she was skeptical.

  "We can always use more people," said Danny. "But the technology will let us leverage what we have."

  "I'll take two boots on the ground over a silicon chip any day," said Dancer.

  "We can use the SITT teams onshore," said Storm. "In a pinch we can make a shore party from some of the people on Shark Boat One. They should be able to handle the western escape route. The Shark Boat can be operated with a minimal crew and still provide fire support."

  They worked the changes into the computer driving the holographic display. The elements snapped in: a dozen men down each side of the cliff, with a team at the top of the cliff to keep them secure; two fire teams on the shore below, a Flighthawk for reconnaissance, the Werewolves for pinpoint fire support, the Shark Boat to provide support and cut off any retreat, the Abner Read to methodically wipe out the wrecks and any other defenses that turned up.

  It looked like it would work. But it was a complicated plan, and Danny would have much preferred to rehearse it a few dozen times before the main event, especially given the fact that his men and the Marines had never worked together before.

  "What are you thinking, Captain?" asked Dancer.

  "I'm thinking I'd like a chance to work with you guys before we do this, just to make sure we're all on the same page," he said.

  "I wouldn't mind that," answered Dancer. "But I don't think we can tell the pirates to hold in place for six months."