Satan's Tail d-7 Read online

  Breanna put her hands on Zen's shoulders as he came out of the bathroom, kneading his muscles.

  "Keep going," he urged when she stopped. "My neck is all whacked out. I had to stoop over the display."

  "Hop into bed and I'll give you a full body massage."

  It was more a dive than a hop. Zen pulled himself over the mattress, sinking in. His wife's hands felt fantastic.

  "Admiral Storm still a jerk?" asked Breanna.

  "Captain Storm. No worse than your dad."

  "My father isn't a jerk."

  "Demanding."

  "Oh, he is not. He has standards." "He can be a prick." Breanna smacked him, semiplayfully. "I meant that in a good way," said Zen. "It's OK to be tough."

  "I doubt that Storm is anything like my father." "Probably not," said Zen.

  Breanna went back to giving him a massage. "Maybe I should take this bathrobe off and you could give me a massage," she suggested.

  "Good idea," said Zen. He felt his eyes closing.

  "Jeff?"

  "Good idea," he mumbled, sliding into a dream.

  Aboard the Wisconsin

  0250

  Starship looked at the main screen as the computer replayed his flyover of the Oman missile boat, watching it as if it were a training video, not his own engagement. He saw someone standing on the upper deck of the missile boat, aiming at the ship with a gun. The gun sparkled as the Flighthawk passed.

  He hit pause and backed up to the beginning of the run, going through it in slow motion this time as he tried to gauge the impact of his 20mm cannon shells. The bullets were relatively small, designed primarily for use against other aircraft; in retrospect, he thought he should have been more selective in targeting the ship, looking for a vulnerable spot. He slowed the action down, watching the line of slugs slanting into the hull as the attack continued. The holes were nothing more than specks on the screen.

  The man stood there again. What he'd thought was a gun turned out just to be a shadow.

  Starship saw the flash again, and this time realized that the man on the deck hadn't been firing at him at all; he'd simply been running. The flash came from one of the Flighthawk's bullets as it struck the rail or perhaps the bulkhead behind him.

  The man lay on the deck in the next pass. If his Flighthawk had done any other damage, it wasn't visible.

  So I killed him, thought Starship. He leaned back in the seat.

  Good. Revenge for Kick.

  He leaned forward, hit the button to play the rest of the encounter. Midway through he backed up and again ran through the attack where he had shot the man.

  "Good," he whispered, but he didn't feel good at all.

  Dog let McNamara handle the buoy launch, double-checking the plotted course and feeding him vital signs, but otherwise staying in the background as the copilot flew the plane. They slapped out the buoy and buttoned up, continuing their patrol. The Tac officer on the Abner Read gave them an update a short while later. A fleet ocean tug— basically an oceangoing tugboat large enough to pull an aircraft carrier by herself — had been dispatched from Bahrain to take the damaged Shark Boat under tow. The Navy was still undecided about where the Shark Boat would be taken for repairs.

  "I'd like to have a word with Captain Gale," said Dog when the update was done.

  "All right," said the Tac officer, with a tone that implied he was asking for trouble.

  "What is it, Bastian?"

  "We should rendezvous to discuss the situation tomorrow," suggested Dog. "Rendezvous?"

  "I think we can do things better."

  "You'll have to come to me. I have no way of getting to you," said Storm.

  "Not a problem," said Dog. "I should be able to get there late in the afternoon, depending on what's going on in Saudi Arabia."

  "Good."

  "Good," said Dog. He clicked off the circuit. Clearly the best time to talk to Storm was when he was too tired to argue.

  On the other hand, the same was probably true of himself. He glanced at his watch. They had more than six hours scheduled on patrol. And by the time he got to the Abner Read, he'd be even more exhausted.

  "Colonel," said Delaford. "I have contact with the Piranha. It's about a hundred miles south of us, just passing out of range of the buoy we dropped. It's headed west."

  "West? Didn't you point it east?"

  "I put it in autonomous mode, which means it can change its mind if something comes up," said Delaford. "Looks like it found the sub."

  VI

  Paradise

  Gulf of Aden

  8 November 1997

  0301

  Two of the patrol boats were damaged beyond repair. Ali took a last look around their decks, making sure his men had salvaged everything possible. He hated to lose the heavy guns, but they didn't have the wrenches needed to take the bolts from the decks. One of the men had tried to cut away the deck with a chain saw — a creative idea, thought Ali, until the chain snapped and the man got a slashing wound on his arm for it. They settled for the ammunition.

  Ten men had died, and some of their blood stained Ali's hand and shirt. He saw it when he waded back to his own craft, noticing the stain on his hand.

  He wished it were his enemy's blood.

  He had lost the Oman ship, and with her, his cousin Mabrukah and several other men he knew very well. Satan's Tail had escaped. Ali knew because his spies had heard its radio transmissions, or at least some. One of the boats that accompanied it had been damaged, apparently by one of the missiles. A fisherman and his brother were making their way toward the area now in a small boat; he would know by morning how much damage they had done.

  It wouldn't be enough. Nothing would be enough until he sank the large ship.

  To do that, he had to return west. The Sharia and the others would have to be rallied. He would regroup, attack again.

  The wind howled around his ears. It sounded like Abu Qaed's voice, calling him. "Quickly now," he told his crew. "Signal the others. We have a great distance to go."

  Aboard the Abner Read

  0310

  Following directions from the Dreamland technical team, Storm's communications specialists had managed to plug the portable communications system into the Abner Read's own system, even allowing visuals. So when Colonel Bastian signaled that he had to speak to the captain immediately, the specialists called up to the bridge and told Storm he could see the man who'd become such a thorn in his side.

  Storm told them to make the connection and stepped to the video screen.

  An image snapped in. He saw the side of a helmet, and waited as the head turned toward the camera. The visor was up and the oxygen mask hung down, revealing a face softer than Storm had expected. The eyes were pensive, searching, and expressive.

  The voice was as belligerent as ever.

  "We found the submarine," Bastian told Storm.

  "What?"

  "The Libyan submarine. About forty miles southwest of your present location, just barely in Somalian territorial waters. It's going west. Commander Delaford is on the circuit with the technical details. Tommy?"

  "Hi, Storm. The submarine is definitely a Foxtrot, Project 641, Russian sub. May have been upgraded — the engines are quieter than the specs say they should be. It's definitely not a Kilo."

  "How do you know?" said Storm.

  "Because we worked with a Kilo to develop Piranha," snapped Bastian. "And we sank one in the South China Sea."

  "Two," said Delaford. "This is the first time we've come across a Foxtrot. He's snorkeling right now, making about eight knots, a little slower. That's close to his best speed using the snorkel. He can go twice that fast on the surface, though he wouldn't be able to sustain it very long. If he goes deeper and just runs on his battery, he's not going to go much over two knots unless he really has to. If his batteries were in good shape he could probably do fifteen knots on them, but that would run them down pretty quickly."

  "Can you sink him?"

  "We'
re not authorized to," said Bastian. The eyes flashed. Then he added, "I have one Harpoon left aboard. I can sink him on the surface, and maybe when he's snorkeling. As long as I have authorization."

  "I'll get permission," said Storm. He'd been ready to bury the hatchet with the Air Force lieutenant colonel — after all, his men had performed well — but the tone in his voice stoked Storm's resentment all over again.

  "Permission or not, I think rather than sinking him, we should follow him, at least for a while," said Dog. "My guess is that he's going toward an important pirate base. If we follow him, he'll lead us right there."

  Storm realized that made sense, especially since the only weapon Bastian had was designed to strike a surface ship, not a submerged submarine.

  On the other hand, the way Bastian suggested it — with a sneer in his voice for anyone who wasn't thinking as quickly as he was — nearly forced him to dismiss the idea out of hand.

  Bastian is a real jerk, Storm thought, but not a stupid jerk. He happens to be right. "Captain?" said Bastian. A real jerk, though.

  "All right, that's not a bad idea. Hold on."

  He went over to the holographic display. The damaged Shark Boat could not make it to the rendezvous without the Abner Read; the ship would be lost.

  Which would have a greater impact on his career? Sinking the Libyan ship? Or losing a damaged ship to do so?

  Probably the latter. In an ideal world — in an ideal navy— the objective would be the most important. But even the U.S. Navy was far from ideal.

  At present. It would be better in the future.

  "Storm?"

  "Unlike you, Bastian, I try not to shoot from the hip. If we could slow him down, it would be an easier decision."

  "I have a way we might do that," said Delaford. "There's a patrol boat near him, a few miles away. It's possible he's trailing him, communicating somehow. If the Megafortress buzzed the surface boat, they might warn the submarine. If the sub dove deeper, he'd have to slow down, or least run on batteries for a while."

  "I think it's worth a try," said Bastian.

  "Yes. It is a good idea," said Storm, glad that it had come from a Navy officer and not the insufferable flyboy.

  Storm could order a Shark Boat to help trail the submarine at a distance; if it made an attack, the boat would be in a position to combat it. By the afternoon, the Abner Read and Boat One would meet the tug. He could have Boat Two escort the tug and head back.

  A haul — he had three hundred miles to the tug rendezvous, another four hundred back, at least, even if they slowed it down. More than twelve hours, getting back and forth. But the Shark Boat could stay nearby, ready to strike if it looked like the sub was going to get away. It had lightweight torpedoes designed for undersea warfare. They'd be much more effective than lobbing a Harpoon and praying that the sub stayed near the surface.

  "All right, Bastian, let's do it your way this time. I'll send a Shark Boat to shadow them, and have them stay just over the horizon."

  "I'm going to bring another Megafortress in to relieve me in a few hours. Not only do we have only one Harpoon aboard, we have no Flighthawks." A criticism of his ship?

  Even Storm had to admit it would have been justified. "Do it. Keep me posted," said Storm. "I'll expect a full report when you come to the ship tomorrow."

  "Out."

  The screen went dead.

  Aboard the Wisconsin

  0312

  "Well, he was almost human that time," Dog told Delaford.

  "I think you're just being too hard on him, Colonel. He's lost a bunch of men, and one of his ships is pretty battered."

  "We'll see. I'll run ahead and make a buoy drop, then come back and harass the gunboat."

  "Ready whenever you are."

  The control setup for the Piranha allowed Starship to see the synthesized sensor view on his number two auxiliary screen. The submarine appeared as a reddish flicker at about nine o'clock on the rectangular screen; a row of yellow, orange, and blue flames made waves behind it, descending toward the bottom of the screen. Piranha swam about three hundred yards behind the Libyan submarine, a little less than a quarter mile. The sub didn't know it was there.

  "We're going to say hello to the surface craft," said Dog. "We don't think the patrol boat has any antiair missiles, but there's only one way to find out. Hang on."

  Starship slapped against his seat restraints as the EB-52 powered toward the waves. The aircraft tilted left, then right, taking a wide turn before climbing back out.

  "Didn't shoot at us," reported Dog.

  "Sub is still moving forward," said Delaford.

  "Patrol craft has stopped," said Dish, watching on the radar above. "Maybe that's the signal."

  The submarine continued toward the patrol boat for another half mile or so, then began to submerge.

  "We got their attention," Delaford told Dog. "He's going down."

  "How did he know?" asked Starship.

  "Either they were listening as the engines cut out or they're using a light or something to communicate. At snorkel depth the submarine can use its periscope to watch the surface."

  "Are they blind when they go down?"

  "No. They can use either passive or even active sonar to follow the patrol boat. He's probably going to dive for a bit, hang out there. When nothing happens, he'll come back up and proceed again. My guess is, the submarine captain is pretty cautious."

  "Why?"

  "He could have made better time on the surface earlier. Rather than using his snorkel, he could have surfaced. It was night, and more than likely he wouldn't have been seen."

  "We would have seen him on radar."

  "True enough."

  "You try and psych him out so you know how he'll be when you fight him," said Starship.

  "You don't do that with the Flighthawks in air combat?"

  "The situations are usually so fluid, you don't have time. It sounds good, but in real life it's just bang-bang-bang. For me, anyway."

  "Zen says he does it."

  "Zen's different. That's why he's Zen."

  Delaford laughed. Starship shrugged. It was true; Zen wasn't like most other pilots — he was Zen.

  "He's stopped," said Delaford, looking back at his screen. "Hundred and fifty-five feet. I give him only a few minutes."

  Sure enough, the submarine began moving again ten minutes later, gliding upward. Within a half hour it had begun snorkeling again. They let it proceed for twenty minutes, then Dog brought the Megafortress in for another run — this one at five hundred feet and directly over the submarine's wake. The patrol boat veered hard toward the coastline.

  "He's going down. Fast," said Delaford. "He's nervous."

  "Good for him," said Dog.

  "Fifty feet…seventy-five," said Delaford. Excitement snuck into his voice. "He's got his nose down. Angle is fifteen degrees. He's moving — he's in trouble here. Twenty degrees. Still growing. He may hit the bottom!"

  The water the submarine was moving through was about 1,200 feet deep. But once the submarine built up downward momentum, it could be hard to stop. The pitch was important as well as its speed: The boat was designed to descend horizontally; if the nose of the sub pitched greater than thirty degrees, the vessel became virtually uncontrollable.

  Starship watched the screen, which had become a frenzied mass of purple and red funneling lines — the computer's representation of the sound the submarine was making. The lines fluttered, breaking in the middle.

  "Four hundred feet…four fifty," said Delaford.

  Starship watched the colors dancing on the screen. Was it this easy to kill your enemy? There were about seventy-five men aboard the average sub of this class — could you kill them by scaring them to death? Was war really that easy?

  "Four seventy-five. He's slowing. Angle is less than fifteen. He's under control." Delaford sounded disappointed. "I may have misinterpreted his movement a bit."

  Starship wasn't entirely sure why, but he felt reli
eved.

  White House 7 November

  1910

  "This is beyond piracy," the President told the others gathered in his study next to the Oval Office. "What does Oman say?"

  "They claim the ship was stolen," said Secretary of State Jeffrey Hartman.

  "They're probably telling the truth," said Robert Plank, the CIA director.

  Jed's boss, Philip Freeman, looked at Jed, who nodded.

  "I agree," said Freeman. "It may have been attempting to hijack a civilian ship, an old tanker type, when we came across it."

  "You're sure it's been sunk?" the President said, directing the question to Jed, who'd gotten data on the battle from Dreamland and supplied it to the others.

  "Yes, sir. Another ship picked up some of its crew. They're holding them for Oman. They, uh, had to be subdued. So I think the story the Oman government is telling is probably true."

  "What happened to the tanker?"

  "The owners haven't reported any trouble but we're still trying to get a definitive word."

  The President turned to Admiral Balboa. "What was the latest on the submarine?"

  Balboa looked at Jed. "Mr. Barclay seems to have the best information here."

  Jed felt his face flush. It was hard to tell whether Balboa was trying to put him on the spot or actually trying to be nice.

  "Just that it's still under surveillance," Jed said. "It's definitely the Libyan boat. Some improvements. Last time I checked, just before coming here, it had moved closer to the coast, but was within a few miles of where it was originally spotted. It can't go very fast on battery power, and the thinking was that it might wait a few hours and then try to move again."

  "Xray Pop can sink it within an hour of getting the order," said Balboa. "Let's go in there and sink the submarine before this gets worse."

  "Wait until we get the vote in the UN," said Secretary Hartman. "We'll have it easily now. The session is Tuesday. It's only a few days."

  "What if they vote it down?" asked Chastain.

  "They won't."

  "I think this new attack, with the Oman ship and the submarine, will cinch things," said Freeman.