End Game (4 page)

A man emerged from the cabin. A second later the Werewolf's flight control computer sounded a tone in his ear—the smuggler had fired a rocket-launched grenade at the small aircraft.

Starship jammed his throttle, ducking the grenade. Then he reached to the weapons panel, dialing up the Hellfire missiles.

“I have hostile fire,” he told Tac. “Permission to launch Hellfires?”

“Negative, negative,” said Eyes. “Don't sink him.”

“I'm under fire,” Starship repeated. The men at the rear had gone back to the large crates.

“Do not sink that boat. We want the cargo intact.”

Stifling a curse, Starship keyed back to the light machine gun. As he nudged his stick forward, the man near the cabin picked up an automatic rifle and began firing. The tracers gave Starship something to zero in on as he pressed his own trigger. With the second burst, the man crumpled to the deck of the boat, sliding toward the low rail as it rocked in the water.

Starship returned his attention to the rear deck, where the two crewmen had succeeded in pulling one of the crates from its tie-downs and were shoving it over the side. As it went over, the entire boat began to tip as if it were going to
capsize. Starship continued northward and banked back around, dropping the small helicopter to ten feet over the waves. The men continued working on the crate. If he wanted the cargo, he would have to shoot them; warning shots would no longer do.

He got close enough to see the worried scowl on one of the men's faces before he fired; the man fell limp on the deck as he passed over. Still, the other crewman refused to give up. He struggled with the chain that held the crate down as Starship zeroed in, finger dancing against the trigger. When the bullets caught him, they spun him in a macabre death dance, a large part of his skull flying off as if it had been a hat. The man danced off the side of the boat and disappeared.

“Defenses have been neutralized,” Starship said, taking the Werewolf back over the boat slowly. “I think the crew's all dead. They got one of the crates over the side but I saved the other.”

“SITT is en route,” said Eyes.

 

A
SPRAY OF WATER HIT
S
TORM AS HE STEPPED OUT ONTO THE
flying bridge. The smuggler's boat was two hundred yards away, off his starboard side; the SITT crew was aboard inspecting her. Storm's communications gear could connect him instantly with the team as well as everyone on his own ship, and he had the crew's frequency tuned in; he listened to the boarding party as it went about its work. The Werewolf hovered just over the bow of the little boat, its nose slowly moving back and forth as its pilot trained its weapons on the vessel.

“Captain Gale to SITT—Terry, you there?”

“Here, Captain.”

“What do you have?”

“RPGs. Crate's filled with grenades and launchers. Have some heavy machine guns in the hold.”

“Get it all on video. Make sure we have a good record. Then get back here and we'll sink it.”

“Aye aye, Captain.”

Storm went back inside. He was just about to see if he could hunt down a cup of coffee when Eyes's excited voice erupted in his ear.

“Port Somalia has just been attacked!” shouted Eyes. “There's a fire on the artificial island, and the sonar array picked up the sound of a large explosion.”

Storm's mind jumped from shock to reaction mode, sorting the information, formulating a response. The airplanes they'd seen before—they had to have been involved.

What would Admiral Johnson say now?

“Get Airforce down there right away,” said Storm. “Bring the SITT crew back, then sink the smuggler's vessel, cargo and all. Prepare a course for Port Somalia,” he added, speaking to the navigational officer. “I'll be in my quarters, updating Admiral Johnson.”

Off the coast of Somalia
6 January 1998
0023

T
HE COMMANDO
S
ATTARI RESCUED HAD BROKEN HIS LEG
falling from the decking to the rocks, but had not been shot. He slumped against the captain as the men paddled against the current. They attacked the waves like madmen, pushing against the spray, which seemed to increase with every stroke.

Sattari could hear the explosions behind them and saw the yellow shadows cast by a fire, but dared not take the time or strength to look back.

“Another kilometer,” yelled the coxswain. He was referring not to the rendezvous point but to the GPS position where the boat would turn to the north; the pickup would be roughly four kilometers beyond that.

Still, Sattari repeated the words aloud as a mantra as he
worked his paddle: “Another kilometer to go. One more kilometer to success.”

Aboard the
Abner Read
,
off the coast of Somalia
0023

T
HE SMOKE FROM
P
ORT
S
OMALIA ROSE LIKE AN OVERGROWN
cauliflower from the ocean, furling upward and outward. It was so thick Starship couldn't see Port Somalia itself.

If the aircraft they'd seen earlier had deposited saboteurs—not a proven fact, but a very good guess—it was likely that the planes would be returning to pick up the men. The
Abner Read
had activated its radar to look for them.

Starship's job was twofold. First, scout the water and see if he could find any trace of the saboteurs. Second, check the nearby shore, which was the second most likely escape route. And he'd have to do all that in about ten minutes, or he'd risk running out of fuel before getting back to the ship.

He saw the Indian corvette to his right as he approached the outer edge of the smoke. The ship looked like an upsized cabin cruiser, with a globelike radar dome at the top. Designed for a Russian Bandstand surface targeting radar, the large dome held a less potent Indian design. But it was the small dish radar behind the dome that got Starship's attention—the Korund antiaircraft unit extended its sticky fingers toward the Werewolf, marking a big red X on it for the ship's SS-4 antiaircraft missiles.

“
Werewolf One
being targeted by Indian vessel,” Starship reported to Tac. He hit the fuzz buster and tucked the little helicopter toward the waves, weaving quickly to shake the radar's grip. “Hey, tell these guys I'm on their side.”

“We're working on it,
Werewolf One
. They're having a little trouble identifying targets.”

“Duh. Tell them I'm not a target.”

“We're working it out. Stay out of their range.”

“It's ten kilometers,” protested Starship.

“Head toward the shore and look for the raiding party. We'll let the Indians look at the water.”

“Yeah, roger that,” he said, jamming his throttle to max power.

Off the coast of Somalia
0028

T
HE LIGHT LOOKED LIKE THE BAREST PINPRICK IN A BLACK
curtain, yet everyone aboard the raft saw it instantly.

“There!” said the coxswain. He lifted a small signal light and began signaling.

“Go,” said Sattari, pushing his oar. “Stroke!”

The little raft heaved itself forward as the men pushed at the oar. Sattari felt the commando he had rescued stirring next to him.

“Rest,” he told the man. “We're almost there.”

“Ship!” said the coxswain.

Sattari swept his head back, though he continued to row. The low silhouette of the Indian patrol boat had appeared to the northeast; it was perhaps three kilometers away.

“Stroke,” insisted Sattari. The pinprick had grown to the size of a mayfly.

Sattari had personally told the commander of each of the four midget submarines to leave if threatened—even if that meant stranding the team he was assigned to retrieve. He did not regret the order, nor did he curse the Indian ship as it continued to move in the direction of the light. He only urged his men to row harder.

His own arms felt as if they were going to fall off. His head seemed to have tripled in weight, and his eyes ached.

“Two hundred meters!” called the coxswain.

A searchlight on the Indian ship, barely a kilometer away, swept the ocean.

“Stroke!” yelled Sattari. “Stroke!”

And then they were there, clambering over the rail at the stern. The sleek conning toward the bow looked like the swept cabin of a speedboat, and the entire craft was not much longer than a runabout.

“Get aboard, get aboard,” said Sattari.

He pulled the raft close to him, then plunged his knife into its side. As it began to deflate, he saw the Indian patrol boat bearing down on them, its lights reaching out in the darkness.

One of the other commandos took the raft and began to pull it down into the hatch.

“No. Let it go. It will give them something to look at,” said Sattari. He tossed it off the side, then pulled himself down the hatchway. The submarine's crewman came down right behind him, securing the hatch.

“Commander, we are aboard. Dive,” Sattari said loudly, though the command was clearly unnecessary; he could feel the small vessel gliding forward, already sinking beneath the waves.

Aboard the
Abner Read
,
off the coast of Somalia
0032

“T
HE
I
NDIANS HAVE SPOTTED A COMMANDO BOAT ABOUT FIVE
kilometers from Port Somalia,” Eyes told Storm. “Empty.”

“Submarine?”

“Unsure. They don't carry sonar. That's a Russian Project 1234 boat. I'm surprised it made it across the Arabian Sea. I don't envy their sailors.”

Storm studied the hologram. The
Abner Read
had a world-class passive sonar—the Littoral Towed Array System, or LITAS—which was carried on a submerged raft behind the ship. Built around a series of hydrophones, the system picked up and interpreted different sounds in the
water. In theory, LITAS could hear anything within a twelve-mile radius of the ship, even in shallow waters where sounds were plentiful and easily altered by the sea floor. Very loud vessels—such as the Indian ship, which the system identified even though it was thirty-five miles off—could be heard much farther away.

The
Abner Read
also carried an active sonar developed by DARPA as part of a project known as Distant Thunder. The sonar was designed to find very quiet electric submarines in what the engineers called “acoustically challenging” waters. The
Abner Read
had used it with great success to find a submarine operating on battery power in the canyonlike Somalian waters to the west. Like all active sonar, however, the device not only alerted the prey that it was being hunted, but told it where the hunter was, an important concession against a wily captain. Storm preferred to hold it in reserve if at all possible.

The northwestern tip of Somalia loomed about fifteen miles ahead. By altering course slightly, Storm could cut off the most likely escape route north and still be in a good position to chase a submarine if it headed west.

What to do when he caught it was a separate problem. Admiral Johnson had not answered his message, and Storm needed his permission before engaging.

Given that Port Somalia was an Indian installation, the submarine might be Pakistani. They had exactly six subs—four French Daphne-class boats well past their prime, and two Augustas, modern boats that could sprint to about 20.5 knots while submerged, and could be extremely hard to find in coastal waters—worthy adversaries for the
Abner Read
.

Of course, if was a Pakistani boat, he wouldn't be allowed to attack at all; the Paks were in theory allies.

The Iranians had Kilos, even more potent submarines, though they hadn't moved from their ports in months.

“We'll move closer to shore, close down the distance with the submarine, if there is one,” Storm told Eyes. He glanced at the hologram to see where the Werewolf was.
“Have Airforce check the area where the raft was spotted, look for others.”

“He's low on fuel.”

“Well, tell him to get moving.”

 

S
TARSHIP SLID OVER THE VILLAGE FIVE MILES INLAND FROM
Port Somalia, following the road as it wound back toward the coastline. Six small buildings stood next to each other, shouldering together between the road and a nearby cliff.

Nothing.

Nothing on the road either.

The computer gave him a warning tone. He was at “bingo,” his fuel tanks just full enough to get him back to the
Abner Read
.

“Werewolf to Tac—I'm bingo, heading homeward.”

“Negative. We need you to scan the area near the Indian warship.”

Naturally.

“I can give you five minutes,” he told Eyes, planning to cut into his reserves. “Am I looking for something specific?”

“They found a raft. See if you can spot anything similar. We believe there may be a submarine in the area, but we haven't heard it yet.”

Ah, an admission of mortality from the all-powerful Navy, thought Starship as he whipped the Werewolf toward the Indian patrol boat. The ship's radar remained in scan mode; they saw him but were no longer targeting him.

“Couldn't the patrol boat pick him up on sonar?” Starship asked.

“A boat that class isn't always equipped with sonar. And this one is not.”

Starship took the Werewolf a mile and a half north, then turned to the west, sweeping along roughly parallel to the shore for nearly three miles before sweeping back. The flight control computer gave him another beep—he'd used half of his ten minute reserve.

“Not seeing anything, Tac.”

“How are you on fuel?”

“One more pass and then I absolutely have to come home,” said Starship.

“Acknowledged.”

 

S
TORM STARED THROUGH THE BINOCULARS
,
WATCHING THE
Werewolf as it came toward the ship. The helicopter had turned on its landing lights, and it looked like a sea anemone trailing its tentacles through the ocean.