End Game (5 page)

It was a good little machine. It would be even better if it were equipped with a sonar system like the AQS-22—a suggestion Storm had sent up the chain of command weeks ago. The idea had yet to be acknowledged as received, let alone considered.

What he needed were a few short circuits up the chain of command, just like the Dreamland people had.

“We think we have something, Storm,” said Eyes. “Very light contact, has to be a battery-powered propeller, six kilometers west of Port Somalia. At this range, with the Indian patrol boat so loud, it's hard to tell.”

“Let's head down there. I'll put in another call to Admiral Johnson. Maybe he'll answer me sometime this century.”

Off the coast of Somalia
0108

T
HE HELMSMAN CONTROLLED THE MIDGET SUBMARINE FROM
a seat at the nose of the craft, working at a board that reminded Captain Sattari of the flight simulator for American F-4 Phantom jets he'd practiced on years before. The craft was steered with a large pistol-grip joystick; once submerged, it relied on an internal navigational system. The vessel was run by two men; the vessel's captain sat next to the helm, acting as navigator and watching the limited set of sensors.

The four submarines in Sattari's fleet had been designed
by a European company as civilian vessels, intended for use in the shallow Caribbean and Pacific coastal waters. Converting them to military use had taken several months, but was not particularly difficult; the work primarily included measures to make the craft quieter. The acrylic bulbous nose and viewing portals had been replaced and the deck area topside stripped bare, but at heart the little boats were still the same submarines that appeared in the manufacturer's pricey four-color catalog. They could dive to three hundred meters and sail underwater for roughly twenty-eight hours. In an emergency, the subs could remain submerged for ninety-six hours. A small diesel engine propelled the boats on the surface, where the top speed was roughly ten knots, slower if the batteries were being charged. The midgets were strictly transport vessels, and it would be laughable to compare them to frontline submarines used by the American or Russian navies. But they were perfect as far as Sattari was concerned.

He called them Parvanehs: Butterflies.

The captain glanced back at the rest of the team, strapped into the boats. Among the interior items that had been retained as delivered were the deep-cushioned seats, which helped absorb and dampen interior sounds. Three of the men were making good use of them now, sleeping after their mission.

Sattari turned to the submarine commander.

“Another hour, Captain Sattari,” the man said without prompting. “You can rest if you wish. I'll wake you when we're close.”

“Thank you. But I don't believe I could sleep. Are you sure we're not being followed?”

“We would hear the propellers of a nearby ship with the hydrophone. As I said, the Indian ship has very limited capabilities. We are in the clear.”

Sattari sat back against his seat. His father the general would be proud. More important, his men would respect him.

“Not bad for a broken-down fighter pilot, blacklisted and
passed up for promotion,” he whispered to himself. “Not bad, Captain Sattari. Thirty-nine is not old at all.”

Aboard the
Abner Read
,
off the coast of Somalia
0128

“W
HAT KIND OF SUBMARINE
? A P
AKISTANI SUBMARINE
?”

“I'm not close enough to tell yet, Admiral,” Storm told Johnson over the secure video-communications network. “We're still at least twenty miles north of it. There are two surface ships between us and the submarine, and another oil tanker beyond it. They may be masking the boat's sound somewhat. I'll know more about it in an hour.”

“You have evidence that it picked up the saboteurs?”

“No, I don't,” admitted Storm.

Johnson's face puckered. “Pakistan, at least in theory, is our ally. India is not.”

Storm didn't answer.

“And there are no known submarines in this area?” said Johnson.

“We've checked with fleet twice,” said Storm, referring to the command charged with keeping track of submarine movements through the oceans.

“I find it hard to believe that a submarine could have slipped by them,” said Johnson.

“Which is why I found this submarine so interesting,” said Storm. While it was a rare boat that slipped by the forces—and sensors—assigned to watch them, it was not impossible. And Storm's intel officer had a candidate—a Pak sub reported about seven hundred miles due east in the Indian Ocean twenty-eight hours ago. It was an Augusta-class boat.

“All right, Storm. You have a point. See what you can determine. Do not—repeat,
do not
—fire on him.”

“Unless he fires on me.”

“See that he doesn't.”

Off the coast of Somalia
0158

S
ATTARI LEANED OVER AND TOOK THE HEADSET FROM THE
submarine captain, cupping his hands over his ears as he pushed them over his head. He heard a loud rushing sound, more like the steady static of a mistuned radio than the noise he would associate with a ship.

“This is the
Mitra
?” he asked.

“Yes, Captain. We're right on course, within two kilometers. You'll be able to see the lights at the bottom of the tanker in a few minutes. I believe we're the first in line.”

Sattari handed the headphones back, shifting to look over the helmsman's shoulder. A small video camera in the nose of the midget submarine showed the murky ocean ahead.

From the waterline up, the
Mitra
appeared to be a standard oil tanker. Old, slow, but freshly painted and with a willing crew, she was one of the vast army of blue-collar tankers the world relied on for its energy needs. Registered to a company based in Morocco, she regularly sailed these waters, delivering oil from Iranian wells to a number of African customers.

Or so her logbook declared.

Below the waterline, she was anything but standard. A large section of the hull almost exactly midship had been taken out and replaced with an underwater docking area for the four midget submarines. The vessels would sail under the tanker, then slowly rise, in effect driving into a garage. The submarines measured 8.4 meters, and the opening in the hull was just over twenty, leaving a decent amount of space for maneuvering.

The murky image on the forward-view screen suddenly glowed yellow. The camera aperture adjusted, sharpening the image. A set of large spotlights were arranged at the bottom of the hull; as the Parvaneh came closer, another group of colored lights would help guide the sub into the hold.

“Is the tanker moving?” Sattari asked.

“Three knots.”

The submarines could dock whether the mother ship was moving or not, and as long as it wasn't going more than four knots, most of the helmsmen felt it was easier to get aboard when the ship was under way. But in this case, the fact that the tanker was moving was a signal that there were other ships in the area. Sattari sat back in his seat, aware that not only was his mission not yet complete, but the success or failure of this final stage was out of his hands.

Aboard the
Abner Read
,
off the coast of Somalia
0208

“T
AC
, I'
M CLEAR OF THAT FREIGHTER
,”
SAID
S
TARSHIP
,
FLYING
the Werewolf south. “Tanker is two miles off my nose, dead on. I'll be over it in heartbeat.”

“Roger that.”

Starship whipped the little aircraft to the right of the poky tanker. He could see two silhouettes at the side of the superstructure near the bridge—crewmen looking at him.

His throat tightened a notch, and he waited for the launch warning—he had a premonition that one of the people aboard the ship was going to try shoving an SA-7 or even a Stinger up his backside. But his premonition was wrong; he cleared in front of the tanker and circled back, ramping down his speed to get a good look at the deck.

“Take another run,” said Tac as he passed the back end.

“Roger that. Ship's name is the
Mitra
,” added Starship. The name was written at the stern.

“Keep feeding us images.”

 

S
TORM HAD HANDPICKED THE CREW FOR THE SHIP
,
AND THE
men who manned the sonar department were, if not
the
very best experts in the surface fleet, certainly among the top ten. So the fact that they now had
four
unknown underwater contacts eight miles away perplexed him considerably. As did their utter failure to match the sound profiles they had picked up with the extensive library in the ship's computer.

And now they seemed to be losing contact.

“Has to be some sort of bizarre glitch in the computer because of the shallow depth and the geometry of the sea bottom nearby,” insisted Eyes. “Maybe it's an echo.”

“That's impossible,” said Storm.

“I know.”

Eyes recognized the tone. It meant—not everything works in the real world the way it's drawn up on the engineering charts, Captain.

Still, he was
convinced
his people were right.

So what did that mean?

That either he was looking at four submarines—four very quiet submarines—that no one else in the world had heard before, or that he was being suckered by some sort of camouflaging device.

Like an underwater robot trailing behind the submarine, throwing up a smoke screen.

The problem with that was that decoys normally made a lot more noise. These contacts were almost silent.

“We have mechanical noises in the water,” said Eyes. “We're having some trouble picking up the sounds, though, because of that tanker.”

“Explosion?”

“Negative.”

“Torpedoes?”

“Negative. He may have some sort of problem. He may be using the tanker to turn around and check behind him, just as we theorized, Storm. He's done everything we thought he would, just slower.”

“We didn't think he'd split himself into four equal parts.”

“You
really
think we're chasing four submarines?”

Storm folded his arms in front of his chest. The truth was, they'd had all sorts of glitches with their equipment from the moment they'd left port. It was to be expected—the gear was brand new and the bugs had to be worked out.

“Airforce find anything on that tanker?” asked Storm.

“Negative. Tanker checks out. They do a run down to South Africa from Iran. Goes back and forth every couple of weeks.”

“Let's give the submariner a few more minutes to make a mistake,” said Storm. “Then we'll turn on the active sonar. At least we'll find out how many of him we're chasing.”

“Aye aye, Captain.”

Off the coast of Somalia
0208

C
APTAIN
S
ATTARI WAS THE NEXT TO LAST MAN OUT OF THE
small submarine. The small interior smelled so horribly he nearly retched as he grabbed hold of the rope guideline and jumped onto the narrow metal gangway at the side of the hull.

“Captain Sattari! Ship's commander needs to see you right away,” said the sailor leaning toward him at the end of the decking. “He's on the bridge, sir. He asks you to hurry.”

Sattari glanced back as he entered the doorway at the side. Two other submarines had arrived; one was starting to unload and the other was just being secured.

The sailor ran ahead. Sattari did his best to keep up. Not familiar with the ship, he knocked his shin as he went
through one of the compartments to the ladder that led to the bridge.

“We have an American warship behind us,” said the ship's captain when he reached the deck. “He's sent a helicopter to circle us. He may be tracking the submarines with passive sonar.”

“Do we have all the subs?”

“The fourth still has not come inside. I believe he is within a half kilometer at this point, or perhaps closer. I thought it best not to use the sonar.”

“You're sure these are Americans?”

“Quite sure. The ship identified itself as the
Abner Read
. Devil's Tail.”

The American littoral destroyer had made quite a name for itself in the Gulf of Aden in the few months it had been there. But it rarely ventured to the eastern end of the gulf, and Sattari had not seen it during his earlier scouting missions.

Beside the point now. It was here.

Discovery by the Americans would be catastrophic. Even if the Americans left them alone for the moment—and really, why would they help the Indians?—they would be on the lookout for his midget submarines in the future. It was one thing to evade the Indians and even the Chinese; quite another to have to deal with an American dragnet.

Not that he did not relish the day he would face them in combat. He welcomed the chance to avenge the defeat they had dealt his father.

“Can you launch the decoy once
Boat Four
is aboard?” Sattari asked.

“With them this close, I would think it highly likely they would realize where it came from.”

“Turn on the sonar as the submarine comes into the ship,” said Sattari.

“The sonar?”

“For a brief moment. Then drop the decoy. Continue on as if nothing has happened.”

“As you wish, Captain.”

Aboard the
Abner Read
,
off the coast of Somalia
0215

“S
HARK
G
ILL SONAR
! D
EAD AHEAD
—
HE MUST BE RIGHT UNDER
that oil tanker!” Eyes's voice was so loud Storm thought he would've heard him without the com set.

“Excellent,” said Storm, though in truth he felt disappointed. Shark Gill was the NATO code word for the sonar used in Russian Kilo-class submarines. Most likely he had been trailing a Russian boat that had managed to evade the fleet—
not
the commandos, since Russia and India were allies.