Satan's Tail

by Dale Brown

  “Maybe I can fly them,” said Mack. “They don’t look that hard to learn.”

  Dog reached back to stop Jennifer, who’d continued her massage as they were talking. “This isn’t a great time, Mack.

  I’m kind of tired. You must be too.”

  “Nope. Want to hear some of my ideas?”

  “Tomorrow’s much better. How are your legs?”

  “Getting there. I’ll be walking any day.”

  “Great. See you tomorrow.”

  “One thing we ought to do is come up with real names for the aircraft, the Megafortresses especially,” said Mack.

  “Tell you what—why don’t you handle that?”

  “Fine. I’ll get right on it.”

  “In the morning, Mack. People are tired.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Dog watched him wheel out.

  “I’ll fly the Werewolves until the replacement pilot arrives,” said Jennifer. “I have to be on the ship anyway. And I’d be testing the system.”

  “You’ll be too busy.”

  “They’re not likely to use them in the next twenty-four hours, are they?”

  Dog shrugged. It was the obvious solution, yet still he resisted it. Not because she was a civilian, he thought, and still less because she was a woman.

  Then why?

  Because he didn’t want her to get hurt.

  “All right, if you can stand Storm, you can handle the Werewolves until Rosenzwieg gets here,” he told her.

  “Knowing Storm, he’ll probably insist that you show him how to fly them so he can do it himself. Any chance of taking Mack with you?”

  Jennifer rolled her eyes.

  Dog took out the sheet he had used to write his air tasking order, which laid out the upcoming missions. Their four Megafortresses would be used on a straight rotation, one after the other, with only one over Xray Pop at a time.

  Because of the distances involved, each flight would spend roughly six hours going out to the gulf, six hours on patrol, and six hours returning. The arrangement called for three aircraft to be in the air at any given moment—one on patrol, one coming home, and one going to relieve the other. That gave the maintainers twelve hours to turn each one around; it sounded like a decent interval, but in practice it could end up very tight. Fortunately, they had more leeway with the Flighthawks, since they had six and were only planning on flying one per mission. But there were only four Flighthawk pilots, and only two—Zen and Starship—had combat experience. Dog had tried to arrange the missions so Zen and Starship would be flying on the night patrols, which was when the pirates were most active. Complicating this immensely was the fact that there were only three Piranha operators, counting Delaford and English. If anyone got hurt or sick, they were in trouble. Zen and Starship were the only backups at the moment.

  He needed more planes, more crews, more support, but he’d settle for a closer base of operations. Northern or central Africa would be perfect; northern India would do in a pinch.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” said Jennifer.

  “They’re worth a quarter at least,” said Dog. “But they’re not about you.”

  “They ought to be.”

  “What time is it in New York?” Dog asked, looking at his watch, which was still set to gulf time: 2216.

  “About two-fifteen in the afternoon,” said Jennifer.

  “Let me see if I can get a hold of Jed. Have you had a chance to look at those Navy systems?” Jennifer leaned toward him and frowned. “Didn’t you just tell Mack it was getting late?”

  “That was to get rid of Mack,” Dog said. “I have a lot of work to do.”

  Jennifer started to pout. Dog leaned up and gave her a kiss. “I do have to work.”

  “I know.”

  “I love you.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hey.” He pressed her arm gently. “I do.”

  “I know.” She smiled. “Don’t stay up all night.”

  UN Building,

  New York City

  7 November 1997

  1430

  JED STARED AT THE PICTURE OF THE OMAN MISSILE BOAT, replaying the conversation he’d had with Ford and the Secretary of State.

  Tell a good story.

  Put together a strong set of images.

  Was he being told to lie? Or just do a good job?

  He didn’t have any pictures of people dying, as Ford had suggested. He did have a picture of the ship as it fired the missile—that looked pretty graphic. But beyond that?

  A picture of the nearby oiler or tanker blowing up would be something.

  Except that it hadn’t blown up.

  Jed brought up one of the photo editing programs on the computer and merged the shot with a blowup of the missile launch. At first it didn’t look like much, but as he cropped it and played with the settings in the photo manipulation program, he got it to look pretty gruesome. He dappled and faded, played around some more—the ship appeared to be on fire in a shadowy image.

  Was that what Ford wanted?

  You couldn’t fault the ambassador for wanting to make a strong message, thought Jed, and here it was, all in an easily disseminated jpg file: We have to stop these pirates. They’re blowing up the world’s oil supply.

  And they were too. The message wasn’t a lie. They were blowing up whatever they could, killing as many people as they could in the process.

  Unfortunately, Jed Barclay didn’t happen to have a picture of it.

  Except for a phony one. Kind of artistic, though. And definitely dramatic.

  His sat phone began to ring. He picked it up and turned it on.

  “Mr. Barclay, stand by for Colonel Bastian.” Before he could say anything, Colonel Bastian’s voice boomed onto the line.

  “Thanks for helping us out on that situation today. What are the odds on us using that facility again?”

  “Yeah, OK,” said Jed. “The Navy, um, mentioned that you’re supposed to work through them.”

  “Did I get you in trouble?”

  “Not yet.”

  “We could use a base a lot closer to the gulf. Somewhere in Africa.”

  “I’ve tried, Colonel. No go.”

  “What about India?”

  “Boss is opposed to that for a bunch of reasons,” Jed told Dog.

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Your lunch is here, sir,” said a voice in the hall.

  “OK, cool,” said Jed. “Just leave it. Uh, Colonel, I gotta run.”

  “All right. If you can arrange for us to use that base again as a backup, though, I’d appreciate it.”

  “I’ll work on it.”

  He ended the call, then pulled over the laptop. He slid his finger on the touchpad and moved the pointer to the X at the top of the corner of the program window.

  DO YOU WANT TO SAVE? asked the computer.

  He hesitated, then pressed YES.

  Diego Garcia

  0400

  MACK WAS TOO KEYED-UP AND TOO TIME-LAGGED TO SLEEP. He read some of the CD-ROM manuals on the Piranha and basic naval warfare tactics. By four a.m. he’d read his fill and was still restless. He pulled on a sweater and roamed out of the building. His wheels splashed through a deep puddle near the road.

  “Hold on there,” said an authoritative voice behind him.

  Mack turned around and recognized Boston, one of the Whiplash team members.

  “Sergeant Rockland. Good morning.”

  “Morning, Major. Out for a stroll?”

  “A roll more like it.”

  “Yeah.” Ben Rockland—Boston to those who knew him—pulled a cigarette out of his jacket pocket. He had an M4 rifle with him, a shortened version of the M16 preferred by airborne and some special operations troops. “Want a butt?”

  “No. I didn’t know you smoked.”

  “Out in the wilderness, there’s nothing else to do.” Boston lit up and took a drag. “How you doing with that thing?”

  “Chair? Pain in the ass. Liter
ally.”

  “Yeah.” Boston took a pensive smoke. “My brother is a paraplegic.”

  “No shit. Sorry.”

  “Yeah. Sucks big-time.”

  “It does.”

  “You’re gonna be OK, though, right?” He was. That’s what everybody said. But he sure as hell didn’t feel like he was going to be OK.

  “Bet your ass,” said Mack. That was what people wanted to hear.

  “Good.” Boston took a long puff on his cigarette. “Well, don’t get run over by a bike. That’s the main means of travel around here.”

  “I don’t think there are too many people going to knock me over at this hour.”

  “Probably not.”

  “What happened to him?” asked Mack.

  “My brother? Car accident.”

  “No hope?”

  “Nah. People, you know, they tell him to cheer up and shit, but, I mean some days he gives it a good show. He really does. But he ain’t the same person. He played basketball in high school. Not like he was a star or nothing, but I mean, to go from that to this. Sucks.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re going to get better, though.”

  Am I, thought Mack. When?

  “Hey, you need like a ride somewhere? We have two vehicles. We brought in a pair of gators, you know, the little ATV things.”

  “I don’t really know where I’d go this time of night.”

  “Gym’s open. Fitness center. It’s over by the billeting office. Open 24/7. Come on. I’ll just tell Nurse I’m taking you over.”

  “Thanks, Sergeant. I appreciate that.”

  “You can call me Boston. Everybody does.”

  “Thanks, Boston.”

  UN Building,

  New York City

  7 November 1997

  1830

  THE CORRIDOR SEEMED TO CLOSE IN AROUND JED AS HE walked with the Secretary of State and the rest of the American entourage toward the chamber where the Security Council meeting was to be held. They were running late; the meeting should have started a half hour ago. But the delay was well worth it. The Secretary had spent the time convincing Russia to vote in favor of the proposal. Britain was strongly in favor. China had already agreed to abstain. That left only France among the permanent members that could veto the measure. The French had been presented a draft of the proposal, but the Secretary had not been able to schedule a meeting with them. According to Ford, that wasn’t a bad sign. He predicted that Egypt, one of the rotating Security Council members and a key regional ally, would agree because of pressure from Oman as well as the U.S.

  They reached the doorway. There were people ahead, murmuring. The Secretary paused, then swept right. Jed followed, and was suddenly inside the National Security Council hall. Along with the ambassador and Secretary of State, he moved to the U.S. spot at the table. Jed sat in one of the modernistic blue seats directly behind Ambassador Ford.

  He’d seen the room on a tour as a kid and vaguely remembered it now—more for Rosie Crowe’s hair than the awe he should have felt. He hadn’t felt any awe at all then.

  Now he did.

  Security Council President Fernando Berrocal Soto of Costa Rica gaveled the session to order. The murmurs crescendoed and then there was silence.

  Secretary of State Hartman leaned forward and began his speech.

  “The international community cannot withstand the continued depredations of lawlessness in the Gulf of Aden, which escalate every day,” he read. The words had looked good on paper—they had sounded great when the Secretary tried them out on Jed and some of the staff—but they came off flat here, a little off-key and hurried.

  Jed thought of what a nightmare it would be if he had to speak—how terrible his stutter would be.

  The ambassador cited some statistics and then spoke of the “horrible outrage” involved in the stealing of the Oman missile ship.

  Jed saw the Kenyan representative frowning.

  How could he frown? It was an outrage.

  “Would someone dim the lights?” said the Secretary of State, moving to the final stage of the presentation, showing the evidence Jed had compiled.

  There was a scramble at the side of the room as the lights were dimmed. They had given a CD-ROM with the presentation to one of the aides, who’d set up a projector and a screen. As the slide show began, Jed heard the ambassador reading the script he’d written, and cringed. He should have done a much better job, he thought, been more eloquent.

  He glanced around and saw more frowns; mostly frowns.

  Ford was right: He should have gotten more narrative in. He should have used that slide of the ship exploding. No one would have frowned at that.

  The lights came back on. The floor moved to the representative from Oman, who deplored the “action of brazen, misguided thieves and radicals.” He called on the international community for action. Ford turned around and gave Jed a thumbs-up.

  Then one by one the other permanent and rotating members of the Security Council took the floor. The Kenyan representative charged that the Americans had “wantonly attacked a peaceful air patrol from the law-abiding country of Ethiopia” and “murdered countless airmen aboard the planes.”

  Secretary of State Hartman quickly countered that the aircraft had failed to answer hails and acted in support of the pirates. Even the Ethiopian government had denounced their interference with an American flight, he pointed out, claiming that the unit involved had mutinied.

  Of course, Jed and the Secretary of State knew that the Ethiopian government actually authorized the mission, but the U.S. had indicated through back channels that it would go along with the lie, so long as no more Ethiopian forces materialized in the area.

  Hartman made some points, but Jed saw that Ford had been far too optimistic. Kenya and France were clearly opposed to the measure. Egypt was on the fence. The objec-tions being raised seemed ludicrous to Jed; the rule of law had to be preserved, international sovereignty had to be preserved, America was injecting itself where it didn’t belong.

  How about the fact that a hundred people had died since the attacks began? And a few hundred thousand dollars extorted? Money that was being used to kill innocent people, not only in Africa, but in faraway places like Brunei.

  Do nothing? And let the attacks continue? Let more innocent people die?

  Peace was attractive—but it wasn’t the alternative here.

  When the French ambassador said he had questions about the attack on the American ship, Ambassador Ford raised his hand and then whispered something to the Secretary of State.

  “We can answer those questions,” said Ford when the president of the Security Council acknowledged him. “We invite an open and frank discussion, Mr. President. We will answer any questions about that incident.”

  “Where was this attack exactly?” said the French ambassador.

  The Secretary of State turned to Jed.

  “Like, uh, about twenty miles west of Laasgoray and just outside territorial waters,” whispered Jed.

  “Tell them.”

  “Me?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Jed’s throat constricted and he felt his fingers turn ice cold. He leaned forward to the microphone; Ford moved aside.

  “The attack took place at approximately forty-seven degrees longitude and just short of thirteen miles from the coast in the Gulf of Aden. I have the GPS point.”

  “Very smooth,” replied the Frenchman, smirking. He asked another question, this one about the U.S. forces, which Secretary Hartman took himself.

  Ford tugged on Jed’s sleeve and Jed moved back.

  “Douceur,” the Frenchman had said. The translator had rendered it as “smooth,” but Jed, who’d taken four years of French in high school and another two in college, realized that wasn’t a precise translation.

  Douceur. What did that mean? Sweetness.

  A sweet-tongued lie, seemed to be the sense of the remark.

  He listened as the session continued. T
he Russian representative took the floor and began peppering the Secretary of State with questions about pirate attacks that had been made over the previous months.

  This is all BS, thought Jed. The Russian knows the answers to those questions because the Secretary of State gave him a background paper with all the information when they met.

  The Secretary did not seem to mind, answering the questions patiently. The tone changed with the next speaker, the representative from the United Kingdom, who gave an impromptu speech on international law on piracy and the precedents for following the pirates into territorial waters when sovereignty was being abused by non-nationals.

  As the tone of the remarks from the other countries gradually became more diplomatic—and harder to decipher—Jed’s attention wandered. He saw Ford get up and go over to the French delegate; he came back smiling.

  A few minutes later a motion was made for a brief recess for dinner.

  “Good work, Jed,” said Ford. “Come on now, we’re on to part two.”

  “Part two?” Jed turned to the Secretary of State.

  “Press conference,” said the Secretary. “Replay for the Sunday papers and talk shows. Important part of the campaign.”

  “Oh,” he mumbled.

  “We’ll get you some dinner when we’re done. Don’t worry,” said Ford.

  Reporters had packed into the auditorium; TV lights were popping in the back as correspondents did brief pieces that could be used to introduce the small snippet or two they would take from the session. A large desklike wooden table sat on the stage at the front. Jed hung back, but Ford prodded him to come sit at the table, where three chairs were set up.

  “Time to face the music,” the ambassador joked in a stage whisper.

  Jed forced a smile. His fingers were freezing again.

  The Secretary repeated the highlights of his speech—much more forcefully this time, Jed thought—then opened the floor to questions. The reporters were more skeptical than the French ambassador had been, one or two even suggesting that the pirates were “liberators” rather than thieves.

  Maniacs maybe, thought Jed.

  “Jed, maybe you can talk about that Oman ship,” said the Secretary when the reporters pressed for details.

  “Uh, sure. It was basically a patrol boat that was being refitted; you know, like updated. That included putting in missiles. That’s where the Exocets came in. They’re ship-to-ship missiles. These were early model missiles, which limited their effectiveness and—”