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  "Tac to bridge — Storm, Dreamland Levitow needs to talk to you right away. Piranha's picked up another submarine contact."

  Storm hit the switch on his belt and opened the com channel. "Talk to me, Dreamland."

  "The Piranha operator has an unknown contact near Karachi," said Breanna Stockard. "I'm going to let her fill you in."

  "Do it."

  Another voice came on the line — Ensign Gloria English, who'd been assigned to wipe the Dreamland team's noses.

  "Captain Gale, we have an unknown contact near the Karachi port, two miles south of the oil terminal. It appears to be headed toward shore. I can't follow it and the Chinese submarine at the same time."

  "It's going toward shore?"

  "Affirmative. I'm going to punch in the coordinates through the shared-information system. They should be there — now."

  Storm looked at the holographic table. A small yellow dot appeared near the coast, roughly twenty miles from the Chinese submarine. Given the direction it was heading, he knew it might be a Pakistani vessel.

  Or an Indian boat preparing an attack?

  It seemed too far for that.

  "Ensign English — what sort of submarine is it?" asked Storm.

  "Sir, I can only tell you what it isn't. It's not a Kilo boat, it's not anything the Pakistanis have, at least that we know of. Same with the Indians."

  "You're sure it's not Indian?"

  "I tried matching against German Type 209s, Kilos, and Foxtrots," she said, naming the three types of submarines in the Indian fleet. "No match. I even tried comparing the profile to the Italian CE-f/X1000s. Nada."

  "Help me out here, Ensign. What are those Italian boats?"

  "Two-man special forces craft, submersibles. They only have a range of twenty-five miles, but I thought I better be sure. I checked comparable Russian craft as well."

  Was this the boat that had launched the torpedo at the Indian destroyer and taken the special forces teams in and out of Port Somalia?

  If so, it was a Pakistani vessel, returning to port.

  Not port, exactly. Storm looked at the hologram. There was no submarine docking area anywhere near Karachi.

  That he knew about. Which made the sub worth following.

  But if Piranha turned off, he'd lose track of the Chinese submarine. That might put his own ship in danger; it was out of range of his sonar array.

  It had to be a Pakistani sub. In the end, English would be wasting her time following it — he couldn't do anything about the Paks.

  "Stay with the Chinese Kilo. That has to be your priority," Storm told her. "Get as much data on this as you can. We'll want to look into it."

  "Aye aye, sir."

  Storm hit the switch on his com unit, tapping the small buttons to contact Colonel Bastian.

  "Bastian, this is Storm," he said when the colonel's face appeared on the bridge communications screen. "Piranha has an unidentified contact near Karachi. It can't stay with it. But I'd like to figure out just what the hell it is."

  "What'd you have in mind?"

  "Since your Megafortress can't be in two places at the same time, I want you to get another one out there. The sub will have to surface soon, and you can catch it on your radar."

  "Can't do that, Storm. We're on a very tight rotation as it is. If you want coverage—"

  "Damn it, Bastian. Find a way to make it happen." He killed the connection with an angry slap at the control unit.

  Karachi oil terminal

  0305

  Captain Sattari looped the wire from the explosive pack around the terminals, then strung it across the metal girder to the base of the stanchion below the massive tank. The explosives were rigged to ignite the collector unit at the Karachi oil terminal complex. Designed to capture fumes from the storage tanks and prevent them from leaking into the environment, the system was the terminal's weak link— blow it up, and the resulting backforce would rip through the pipes and cause fires and explosions in the storage tanks themselves.

  Or at least the engineer who had analyzed the terminal believed that to be the case.

  Sattari climbed over the long concrete barrier, letting the wire roll out of its spool as he went. He could feel the sweat pouring down his back and the sides of his body. He welcomed it — the poison was running from his body, the poison of fear.

  The terminal consisted of several different tank farms, connected by a vast network of piping. Three different docks were used by ships loading and unloading. The gas collection system was at the extreme eastern end, located on a man-made pennisula with a rock jetty that extended to the sea.

  The team's demolition expert waited near the rocks. Sattari was glad to find he was not the last man to bring back the wire; two more men had yet to report back. He held up the wire for the man's cutters.

  "Thank you, Captain," said the man, quickly stripping the strands and attaching them to his unit.

  There were backup timers on each of the explosives, all set for the same time, but to do maximum damage to the tanks the explosives all had to go off at once, and the best way to guarantee that was by igniting them together. The signal would be received here by short-range radio, then instantly transmitted to the units.

  Sergeant Ibn climbed up over the nearby rocks. "The next to last boat is leaving," he told the captain. "You should go."

  "No," said Sattari. "Two more men."

  "Captain." The rocks were covered in shadow, but even in the dim light Sattari knew that his captain was looking at him reproachfully. "You should be back aboard the submarine, sir. I will wait for them."

  "Thank you, but I will not leave my men," said Sattari. "We will come when we have ignited the tanks."

  "Very good, Captain. Very good."

  Ibn put his hand to his head and snapped off a salute. How much had changed in just a few short days; the aches and bruises, the sweat, even the fear, they were all worth it.

  Sattari returned the salute, then turned back to look for the others.

  Aboard the Shiva,

  northern Arabian Sea

  0310

  Memon felt his chest catch as he read the message:

  WITHDRAW TO 24°00′00″. DO NOT PROVOKE THE CHINESE.

  — ADM. SKANDAR

  He handed the message to Captain Adri, who smirked but said nothing before giving the paper back to Admiral Kala.

  "We will recover the aircraft," the admiral said in a tone that suggested he was talking to himself rather than giving orders. "Then we will sail south, and farther out to sea."

  "We've been cheated," said Memon as the others went silently to their tasks.

  Drigh Road

  0312

  "Hey, Colonel, what can we do for you?" said Danny Freah, rubbing his eyes as he sat down in front of the communications console in the Dreamland Command trailer. Sergeant Rockland, known as Boston, was on duty as the communications specialist. He walked to the other end of the trailer and began making some fresh coffee.

  "Sorry to wake you up, Danny," said Dog, talking from the Wisconsin. "But Piranha has an odd submarine contact near the Karachi port. Storm thinks it may be his mysterious submarine and he wants to see where it surfaces. If it surfaces."

  "You want me to take Whiplash Osprey up and reconnoiter?"

  "That's exactly what I want you to do."

  "Question — do I tell the Pakistanis what I'm up to?"

  "No. He thinks this is their submarine, the same one that attacked the Calcutta. Run it as a training mission."

  "Will do." Danny got up from the console. "Yo, Boston — go wake up Pretty Boy."

  "Action, Cap?"

  "Not really. Just a midnight joy ride. But it'll have to do for now. Roust the Osprey crew on your way."

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later, Danny, Boston, and Sergeant Jack "Pretty Boy" Floyd peered from the side windows of Dreamland's MV-22 Osprey, using their Mk1 eyeballs to augment the craft's search and air rescue radar and infrared sensors. They were less t
han fifty feet above the churning gray waves, heading south toward the spot where the Piranha had lost contact with the vessel.

  "Gotta be an underwater cave, Cap," said Boston. "I say we dive in and find the sucker."

  "Go for it," said Pretty Boy. "That water's a stinking sewer."

  "You comin' with me, dude," joshed Boston. "You my swimmin' buddy."

  Danny peered out the window, using the night-vision gear embedded in his smart helmet to look at the shoreline. There was a small marina just ahead; pleasure boats bobbed at their moorings. Beyond them a channel led to a set of docks used by container ships. A little farther south sat a large oil terminal, where tankers unloaded their cargo.

  It seemed to him this would be a particularly bad place to hide a submarine base. While an enemy might not look for it here, there were so many small boats and commercial vessels that someone was bound to stumble across you sooner or later.

  "Whiplash leader to Levitow. Bree, can you spare me some attention?"

  "What do you need?"

  "Punch me through to Ensign English, would you? I want to pick her brain for a second." "Stand by."

  "English here."

  "Ensign, this is Danny Freah. Help me out here — why do we think this submarine is Pakistani?"

  "We're not really sure. The only thing we know is that it's not similar to known submarines operating in any fleet nearby, nor a Russian or American, for that matter. It could be anyone's."

  "How about a special operations craft?"

  "Possible, Captain. I wouldn't rule anything out. It may even be a noisemaker."

  Before Danny could thank her, the aircraft was buffeted by a shock wave.

  "Holy shit!" yelled Boston. "Something just blew up half of Karachi!"

  V

  Fires of Hell

  Northern Arabian Sea,

  offshore of the Karachi oil terminal

  13 January 1998

  0312

  The explosion was so immense that it blew one of the men into Captain Sattari, and they tumbled backward into the water. Sattari found himself on his back under the waves, surrounded by darkness. He tried to push himself upright but was paralyzed. I'm going to die, he thought.

  Rather than panic, the idea filled him with a kind of peace. He felt his arms and legs relax; he thought of his triumph now, another mission executed with complete precision.

  Then he felt himself being pulled upward. One of his men had grabbed him and was hauling him out of the water.

  The man who had fallen on top of him struggled to his knees as Sattari coughed the water from his lungs.

  "The boat, Captain," said his man. "Into the boat."

  Sattari pushed himself in the direction of the raft. He found one of the gunwales with his hand and flopped forward, landing in the bottom like a seal flipping itself out of the water. He got upright as the others entered the craft. In a moment they were heading out to sea.

  A mountain of fire had erupted from the collection system, setting off a tank of light fuel about fifty yards away. The heat was so warm he could feel it here, more than a quarter mile away. There were rumbles, more explosions— the entire terminal would burn, and burn for hours.

  The Pakistanis would have no choice now but to attack. The Indians would retaliate. The Chinese would come to Pakistan's aid. The Indians would be destroyed, and with luck, the Chinese would be severely bloodied as well. Iran would be free of her two rivals — and the price of oil would soar.

  Sattari picked up his oar and began helping the others, each stroke pushing them farther out to sea.

  There was an aircraft nearby; he heard the loud drone, something like a helicopter, or two perhaps, very close.

  "The sub is there, she's there," said one of the men, spotting a blinking light in the distance.

  "Strong strokes!" said Sattari. "We are almost home, men."

  It was a wildly optimistic lie — they had another thirty-six hours of submerged sailing to do before reaching their next rendezvous — but the men responded with a flurry of strokes.

  Aboard the Shiva,

  northern Arabian Sea

  0314

  "A huge fireball — I can see it from here. Someone must have set the entire oil terminal on fire."

  Memon watched the admiral as the pilot's report continued over the loudspeaker.

  "The Pakistanis have set their oil tanks on fire as an excuse to attack us," Memon told the admiral when the report ended. "We should strike before the Chinese can."

  "Our orders say to do nothing to provoke the Chinese," said Captain Bhaskar. "Admiral Skandar himself directed us to withdraw."

  "The hell with Skandar — he's not here."

  "You're supposed to be representing him, aren't you?" said Adri.

  Memon pressed his lips together. Captain Adri was nothing but a coward. "The circumstances have changed. If Ad miral Skandar were here, he would order the attack himself."

  "Aircraft from the Deng Xiaoping have changed course and are heading in our direction," reported the radar officer.

  "Will we wait until their missiles hit us to fire back?" Memon asked.

  "Prepare for missile launch," said the admiral. "Air commander — shoot those fighters down."

  Aboard Whiplash Osprey,

  near the Karachi oil terminal

  0315

  Danny grabbed hold of one of the restraining straps at the side of the Osprey as the aircraft wheeled around to head toward the terminal. The pilots had flipped on the Os-prey's searchlights, but the towering flames from the explosion were more than enough to illuminate the facility and surrounding water. The force of the explosion probably meant that at least one of the two liquefied natural gas tanks at the terminal had been detonated. Geysers of flame shot up, as if competing with each other for brilliance.

  Danny reached to the back of his smart helmet and hit the circuit to tie into the Dreamland Command channel.

  "Danny Freah for Colonel Bastian. Colonel?"

  The software smart agent that controlled the communications channels buzzed the colonel, whose voice soon boomed in Danny's ear.

  "What's going on?"

  "An attack on the Karachi port oil terminal. Big attack— has to be sabotage. My bet is that submarine we were looking for wasn't Pakistani at all."

  "Stand by, Danny."

  The Osprey drew parallel to the conflagration, then veered away, the fire and secondary explosions so intense that the pilot feared for his aircraft.

  "Danny, we're going to swing Levitow over that way to use its radar to search for periscopes," said Dog. "In the meantime, search the immediate area for small boats, anything that might be used by a spec-op team to get away. You know the drill. And if you see any survivors who need help—"

  "Yeah, we're on that, Colonel," Danny told him, moving forward to confer with the pilots.

  Aboard the Levitow,

  over the northern Arabian Sea

  0317

  "Coming to new course," Breanna told Stewart. "We should be within visual range of the terminal in less than five minutes."

  "Roger that," said Stewart.

  Breanna heard a tremble in her copilot's voice. There wasn't much she could do about it now, so she ignored it, quickly checking the panels on the configurable "dashboard" in front of her.

  "Piranha to Levitow" said Ensign English over the interphone. "Captain, I've put the Piranha into a circle pattern around our last buoy. The Chinese submarine is twenty miles from the buoy. At most, we have an hour before we'll lose contact."

  "Roger that, Piranha. Thanks, Gloria. That vessel did not launch or have any contact with the one we've been trailing?"

  "Affirmative. We would have heard it. These are two unrelated boats."

  The radar warning receiver began buzzing. Without waiting for her copilot, Breanna hit a preset to display the threat panel at her station. One of the Chinese escort vessels had activated the targeting radar for its antiaircraft batteries.

  They were out
side its effective range, though of course that might not keep them from firing.

  "Jan — ECMS," said Breanna, deciding not to take any chances.

  "ECMS, yes. Communication on the guard frequency," added the copilot. "All aircraft are being warned to stay away from the Chinese fleet or be shot down."

  "How far away?"

  "Not specific. Pakistanis are declaring an emergency— they're saying the same thing." "To us?"

  "Um, not specifically."

  "J-13s heading our way," broke in the airborne radar operator.

  "All right, everyone, let's take this step by step," Breanna told her crew. "We're proceeding on course to look for a possible submarine. Be prepared for evasive maneuvers. We will defend ourselves if necessary."

  "Indian aircraft are approaching Chinese task force at a high rate of speed!" said the radar operator, shouting now. "Two J-13s going to meet them. They're gunning for each other, Bree."

  The radar warning receiver lit up with a new threat — a Pakistani antiaircraft battery northeast of Karachi was trying to get a fix on them. The missiles associated with the radar were American Hawks, early generation antiaircraft weapons still potent against low and medium altitude aircraft out to about twenty-five miles. The weapons' aim could be disrupted with a specific ECM program stored in the Megafortress's computer; they represented a low threat. Even so, the sky was starting to get a bit crowded.

  "Jan, see if you can get word to the PAF that we're a friendly. Broadcast an alert — see if you can make contact with one of their patrols."

  "F-16s scrambling in our direction," answered Stewart.

  Crowded indeed. "Surface radar — Smitty, you have any periscopes yet?" "Looking, Captain."

  "J-13s are goosing their jets," said Stewart. "They'll be within range to fire their missiles in zero-one minutes."

  Aboard the Wisconsin,

  over the western Arabian Sea

  0317

  "Indian and Chinese planes are mixing it up, Colonel," said T-Bone. "This is going to get ugly fast."