Satan's Tail

by Dale Brown

  “On my way, Colonel.”

  “Piranha control, we are in range for the handoff. Baker-Baker is standing by,” added Dog over the interphone.

  “Piranha control is ready,” said Delaford, who was sitting next to Starship on the Flighthawk deck. “Initiating transfer procedure.”

  WITH THE FLIGHTHAWK LAUNCHED AND THE PROBE NOW under Delaford’s control, Dog had a few moments to relax before lining up for a buoy drop about thirty miles to the east.

  He checked back in with Danny at Khamis Mushait via the Dreamland Command frequency.

  “Peaceful at the moment,” said Danny. His voice came over the circuit a half second before his image appeared on the screen on the left-hand side of Dog’s control panel.

  “Base commander was over a little while ago, full of apologies and trying to be reassuring. He says this is being stirred up by bad elements.”

  “That’s nice,” said Dog sarcastically. “Did they beef up security?”

  “Claims it’s at the max now. Has Washington gotten back to you, Colonel?”

  “Negative. But I can’t imagine that they’re going to tell us to stay around,” added Dog.

  “We can bug out as soon you give the order,” said Danny.

  “And as soon as we know where we’re going.”

  “Probably Diego Garcia,” said Dog. “Unless somebody comes up with an alternative. Did you get the blimp up?”

  “Half hour ago. We’re going to run a drill with the Werewolves around 2400, just to make sure the systems are all working together.”

  “All right. But get some sleep at some point.”

  “I will.”

  “All right, Danny, I have to get into position to drop a buoy. Let me know if anything comes up.”

  STARSHIP PUSHED THE FLIGHTHAWK OVER THE STERN OF THE merchant ship, riding slow and low across its topside. The low-light video image appeared gray on his main screen.

  Though slightly blurry, it was clear enough that there were no weapons aboard the ship.

  “He’s probably a smuggler,” said Commander Delaford.

  Starship was providing a video feed to one of the commander’s auxiliary screens so the Navy expert could offer his opinions. The Piranha’s onboard controls were more than adequate to take it to its new location on their own, and would alert Delaford automatically if it encountered anything suspicious or ran into a problem. The commander could easily divide his time between the probe and helping Starship.

  “Why do you think he’s a smuggler?”

  “According to the database of area shipping we’ve compiled, he’s headed for South Africa,” Delaford explained.

  “But he’s on a beeline for coastal waters, well out of the normal traffic area. If we follow him, my bet is we’ll see him rendezvous with some smaller boats just inside territorial waters where he knows he can’t be touched if Xray Pop comes calling.”

  “Doesn’t the Navy force know what’s going on?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “So how can these guys get away with it?”

  “Well, for one thing, you can’t just stop any ship on the high seas. International law permits inspections only in certain circumstances. So even if the ship were carrying weapons, you’d have to prove that some law was being broken.”

  “Like smuggling guns?”

  “Unfortunately, you can’t just stop and search a ship because you think it has guns,” said Delaford. “There are countries that we have treaties with, where the terms of the treaty might allow a search. But even there, you would need at the very least probable cause and some sort of OK or at least notification. The administration has tried negotiating that, mostly to stop smuggling of weapons-grade plutonium or ballistic missiles. But what we’re talking about here, pretty much the whole nature of the thing, we simply don’t have the authority to stop the ship and search it against its captain’s will. The UN and other international organizations are working on protocols to prevent certain types of smuggling and make it possible to take action, but they’ve been working on them for years. Most arrests are made in territorial waters where the local government is going to enforce its laws. At the moment, if you don’t catch them in the act, or you don’t find some very obvious problem with the ship manifest or something else, in the end you’re going to have to give the weapons back. In theory,” added Delaford. “Besides, Xray Pop can’t be everywhere at once. Stopping and searching a ship can take considerable time if you do it right.

  The Navy has specially trained teams to handle it, and let me tell you, it’s a dangerous job in a place like this. Thoroughly searching a vessel that size could take six, eight hours, even more.”

  “What about the pirates?” said Starship. “Why aren’t we just blasting them? We know what they’re up to. They’re just terrorists.”

  The same people who killed Kick, he thought, though he didn’t say it.

  “The thing that sets us apart from pirates is that we follow the law,” said Delaford. “You have to remember that, Starship.”

  “How does the law stop us? It shouldn’t.”

  “It doesn’t, specifically. But what we can do depends on where they are,” said Delaford. “If they’re in international waters, we can defend anyone that they’re attacking—or to put it in your terms, blast them. But outside of international waters, an attack on another ship isn’t actually piracy. So an attack in coastal waters is subject to the laws of the country where it occurs.”

  “Unless it’s Somalia, where there is no law.”

  “There are laws. Whether they are enforced or not is another question.”

  “But these guys attack in international waters. How come they’re free?”

  “Again, because they’re in the territory of another country. They can also claim that they’re under the jurisdiction of Somalia or Yemen or wherever, and are entitled to the protection of their laws.”

  “Sounds like bullshit to me.”

  “Well, think of it this way. One of the things the War of 1812 was about was America’s rights to its territorial waters and the rights of its seamen. Britain was stopping American ships and impressing seamen. America said it had no right to do that.”

  “That doesn’t sound like the same thing,” said Starship.

  “It has to do with the law of the sea, and one country putting itself ahead of the law because it has the power to do so.”

  “I don’t think we’re above the law,” said Starship. “But I don’t think these crazies should be shooting at us either.”

  “Agreed. The fanatics don’t care how many people die,” added Delaford. “They know they’re not going to win in the short term. This isn’t about a single battle for them, or even a short war. They see this as a hundred year struggle. They want us to invade Somalia—they want us to invade all of Africa, all of the Middle East. They think if that happens, Islam will rise up and there will be a new golden age. Those people back in Saudi Arabia who were protesting outside the gates, the people who threw stones at you because you were curious about a mosque—what do you think their reaction would be to an invasion?”

  “But we’re not here to invade. We’re just trying to protect shipping in the Gulf of Aden.”

  “Absolutely,” said Delaford. “That’s what we have to remember. That and the fact that no one’s going to thank us for it.”

  Starship turned his full attention back to the Flighthawk, circling eastward to visually check the area where the control buoy would be dropped.

  Whatever the law said, and whatever the geopolitical and religious implications were, Kick had been killed by fanatics.

  They didn’t hate Kick specifically; they hated all westerners.

  And Starship hated them.

  STORM’S VOICE EXPLODED IN DOG’S EAR AS SOON AS HE opened the circuit to the Abner Read. “You went over my head!”

  “I didn’t go over your head, Captain. I informed the White House that we had a serious diplomatic situation. I need to relocate my people bef
ore things get uglier.”

  “You went over my head! You instigated an incident—”

  “Look, Storm, I don’t particularly like you, and it’s clear you don’t like me. But neither I nor my people instigated anything in Saudi Arabia. There was clearly a well-thought-out plot to provoke a riot at the entrance to the base. I reported the incident to Washington as commander of Dreamland— not as part of the Whiplash team working under your command.”

  “Stop the legal bullshit, Bastian. The fact is, you talked to the White House without talking to me.”

  “Actually, Storm, I did try to talk to you. You wouldn’t pick up the phone. Check with your communications officer.”

  “I’m warning you, Bastian. Play by my rules.” Dog checked his course on the navigation screen. They had to drop below three thousand feet to drop the buoy as configured, and they were still above the cloud cover at 25,000 feet.

  “Are you there, Bastian?”

  “I am here, Captain. As a matter of fact, I’m just double-checking where here is.”

  “Is that supposed to be a joke?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Colonel, we have a surface contact coming out of the coast near Karin, about fifty miles due south of us,” said Dish, who was operating the surface radar aboard the Wisconsin. “Thing is, I don’t have that marked as a major port, and this is a pretty big ship. Nothing in the database about a tanker or anything either.”

  “Run that by Commander Delaford and see what he thinks about it,” said Dog. “Ask him if it’s worth jogging down in that direction for a look-see.”

  “Bastian?”

  Dog clicked his talk button. “Yes?”

  “You’re to move your operation to Diego Garcia as soon as possible. Note I said possible, not convenient.” Gee thanks, thought Dog.

  “We’ll be there in twenty-four hours, if not sooner,” said Dog.

  “When are you rendezvousing with my ship?”

  “It’ll take us a few hours to get the probe close enough to get overhead.”

  “Make it here as quickly as you can.”

  “Aye aye, Captain.”

  Khamis Mushait Air Base

  2130

  WITH THINGS OUTSIDE THE GATE QUIET FOR THE MOMENT, Danny Freah decided to do two things he’d been putting off since arriving in Saudi Arabia: call his wife, and take a shower.

  He did the latter first, scalding the desert sand out of his pores. By the time he got out he felt like a lobster—but a relaxed one. He got dressed and returned to the Dreamland Command trailer. After checking to make sure that nothing had changed outside—it hadn’t—he put through the call, trying her university office first.

  “Dr. Freah.”

  “Hi, Doc. I was wondering if you could cure my sore throat,” said Danny. It was an old joke between them—her Ph.D. was in black studies.

  “Well, hello, stranger. Where have you been?”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  “No, I wouldn’t. Have you talked to Rosenstein?”

  “I’m fine, how are you?”

  “Don’t duck the question.”

  “I haven’t had a chance,” said Danny.

  “There’s a party at the Guggenheim Museum two weeks from today that would be fantastic for you to attend,” said Jemma Freah. “All the important people are going to be there. It’s a cocktail party, mixing art with politics. A lot of bucks. Definitely a good place to press the flesh.” Politics was the last thing Danny wanted to talk about. He leaned back in the chair, stretching his legs under the console carefully to avoid the stack of black boxes controlling the communications functions.

  “How are you, Jem?”

  “Fine, but I have a class in two minutes. Can you make that party?”

  Danny had no way of knowing how long the present deployment was going to last. It was conceivable that, if the Dreamland team moved to Diego Garcia, he’d be able to go home for a few days, maybe even an entire week, around Thanksgiving—Diego Garcia not only had its own security, it was at least arguably more secure than any base in the Continental United States because of its location. But about the last place in the world he wanted to even think about being was a political cocktail party.

  Would he ever feel differently?

  If not, then why run for office?

  “I don’t know what I’ll be doing then,” said Danny.

  “Why not?”

  “You know I can’t go into details, Jem.”

  “Yeah, well, look, I have to go to class. Send me an e-mail.”

  “Good idea,” he said, though he really didn’t have anything to say. In fact, he wondered why he’d bothered to call at all.

  Aboard the Wisconsin,

  over the Gulf of Aden

  2135

  STARSHIP BROUGHT THE FLIGHTHAWK SOUTH, DROPPING through two thousand feet as he approached the lumbering ship. There were two much smaller vessels moving in its wake, twenty-foot open boats. The infrared camera in the nose of the Flighthawk painted the ship a ghostly green in the display; the angle seemed odd—the bow looked as if it poked up out of the ocean. Starship thought there was something wrong with the camera or viewer, and hit the diagnostic section for a self-test.

  The test showed no problem. The ship looked to Starship like an old oil tanker; it carried crates or something lashed to the deck.

  “What do you have there?” asked Delaford.

  “I don’t know. I’m getting some distortion from my infrared viewer. Bow’s kind of out of whack. I’m switching to the low light. Pretty dark, though.”

  “Looks like an old amphibious vessel,” said Delaford.

  “See how the bow sweeps up?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s not in our database,” said Delaford. “Can you get closer?”

  “I can just about land on his deck if you want.” Starship tucked the Flighthawk into a roll, knifing down through one thousand feet. He continued to accelerate as he dropped toward the water. As the altimeter ladder ramped down through five hundred, he started to level off, getting a high g warning as he pushed the robot plane into an extremely sharp turn to take it over the ship. He leaned forward against his restraints, pushing the robot toward her limits.

  For the first time on the deployment, and for one of the first times since he had started flying the U/MFs, he felt as if he were on board the tiny aircraft. He sensed the rush of gravity as he bent the wings to complete his turn. The aircraft took over 9 g’s; he could feel his body reacting, tensing and leaning against the forces the Flighthawk was encountering.

  This is what Zen means, he thought to himself. This is what it’s supposed to feel like.

  “There used to be some sort of gun at the rear deck—at the forward area too,” said Delaford, somewhere far behind him.

  Starship poured on the dinosaurs, accelerating back toward the Megafortress. He was still low, barely a hundred feet over the waves. He began another turn, banking much more gently, lining up for a run over the bow area for another angle.

  Delaford was talking over the interphone, telling him about the ship: “The Somalians had a large Russian vessel that was designed as an amphibious ship. It was supposed to be used to transport tanks and equipment. Hasn’t been used in at least five years. This is probably it, patched up to be used as a freighter, or more likely being taken to a salvage operation. Stolen, maybe.”

  This is how it’s supposed to feel, Starship thought again. The ship grew in his screen, its upturned bow on the right side. He realized he should slow down for a more detailed view, but by now it was too late; he was already beyond it.

  “One more pass, low and slow,” he said aloud. He nudged his throttle back and took a breath, reminding himself to stay in control. He could feel his pulse thumping in his throat.

  Get too excited and you lose it.

  That was Kick’s saying, wasn’t it?

  You with me, Kick?

  Get too excited and you lose it.

  Yea
h.

  Starship exhaled very slowly as he took the Flighthawk into a turn, trying to stay calm. But just as he reached the far point of the turn, the computer warned that he was at the far end of his control range.

  “Three seconds to disconnect,” it said in his ear.

  “Colonel, I need you to come east.”

  “It’s unnecessary, Lieutenant. Get back to the Wisconsin.”

  “I just need one more pass.”

  “Back to the Wisconsin,” said Dog.

  Starship opened his mouth to argue, then realized it was a moot point—the computer was counting down to disconnect on his screen. Reluctantly, he pulled it back toward its mothership.

  “My bet would be it’s on its way to the scrap heap,” said Delaford, examining the video scans of the ship again. “A lot of metal.”

  “What about the crates on deck?”

  “Possibly more junk inside them,” said Delaford. “Or else like I said, someone’s trying to use it to bring cargo back and forth. I kind of doubt that but you never know out here. People can be very resourceful.”

  “Maybe they’re going to invade someplace.”

  “These warlords have enough trouble keeping control of their little spits of land,” said Delaford.

  Starship reached for the steel coffee mug, draining the last bit of coffee. Flying circles around the sky for hours on end was bad enough, but doing it on such little sleep was sheer torture. He had some caffeine pills he could take—as well as stronger medicine if absolutely necessary—but he preferred to hold them in reserve.

  “Hawk One, we have two ships approaching from the north,” said Dog. He gave him a heading and a GPS location about sixty-five miles ahead of the Megafortress.

  “On my way, Colonel,” replied Starship. He nudged the Flighthawk’s control stick forward, descending gradually toward the two ships.

  “Big one in front looks like an oiler,” said Delaford as he got close, “the sort of ship that carries diesel fuel for others.”

  “Like a tanker?”

  “More like a floating gas station. There are a few of these ships that were used by navies in the past, mostly the Russians, and then were sold off and used with very little conversion as transports. Database is working on it.” The computer needed twenty points of reference to identify a ship and compare it to the database for identification.