End Game

Aboard the Abner Read, off the coast of Somalia 0208

‘Tac, I’m clear of that freighter,’ said Starship, flying the Werewolf south. ‘Tanker is two miles off my nose, dead on. I’ll be over it in a 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.’

Storm 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

Captain Sattari 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

‘Shark Gill sonar! Dead 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.

‘See if the captain of the tanker would honor a request to move off to the west,’ said Storm. ‘Tell him that our helicopter has been tracking some mines in the area – get him scared and get him out of there.’

‘The sub may follow.’

‘I doubt he’ll make it that easy for us, now that he knows we’re here,’ said Storm. ‘Turn on our active sonar as well – let’s make sure he knows precisely how close to him we are.’

Off the coast of Somalia 0216

Sergeant Ibn came up to the bridge to report to Sattari while the tanker captain was talking to the Americans.

‘All our men are back. No losses. Mission accomplished,’ said the sergeant, his face as grim as ever.

‘The success of the mission is entirely yours,’ Sattari told him. ‘You trained everyone superbly – I for one benefited greatly from your drills.’

The sergeant turned beet red, then bent his head.

Had Sattari mistaken shyness for skepticism? No, he thought; Ibn – and most likely the others – were wary of an unproven commander whose experience was entirely in the cockpit. They must have felt, and with some justification, that he had only gotten his position because of his father, who still had some influence with the government. Or else they thought the entire scheme of equipping a special operations group with gear and machines any civilian – any rich civilian – could buy was preposterous.

They would not think so now.

Ibn remained at attention.

‘Relax, Sergeant,’ Sattari told him. ‘See to the men.’

‘Thank you, Captain.’

Was there more respect in his voice? Less doubt?

Perhaps. But more important, Sattari felt sure of himself. He had done it; he had succeeded. Tonight was only the start.

‘The Americans want us to go west,’ the tanker captain told him. ‘They say they have spotted some mines.’

Had he not been so tired, Sattari would have burst out laughing.

‘Comply. Make as much noise as you can.’

‘The decoy will begin chattering any moment now.’

‘That’s fine,’ said Sattari. ‘They will think the submarine launched it. Combined with the sonar they heard – they won’t be able to piece the different parts together.’

The ship’s commander was a short, sinewy man who had somehow managed to keep his face clear of wrinkles despite having spent his life at sea. He looked at Sattari as if he didn’t understand, and the commando leader felt compelled to explain further.

‘You see,’ Sattari said, ‘these Americans are clever people. They love puzzles, and they love to piece them together. In this case, the fact that the pieces don’t fit will confuse them. Their instincts will be to press ahead and attack. They will realize it’s a decoy soon enough, then they will look for the submarine in earnest.’

‘You speak of the Americans as if you know them very well,’ said the ship’s captain.

‘I speak from unfortunate experience.’

Aboard the Abner Read, off the coast of Somalia 0218

‘Ship is turning to port. I wouldn’t say they’re burning up the ocean,’ reported Starship.

‘Take a run over them. Make sure they see you.’

‘Have to be blind not to,’ said Starship. But he did as he was told, moving the Werewolf down toward the tanker. Again he passed so close that he could see a man on the ladder of the superstructure. Again he felt a chill and a moment of premonition, sure he was going to be shot down.

I’m not even on the stinkin’ helicopter, he reminded himself as he circled away, unfired on. Relax.

‘We have a decoy in the water,’ Eyes told Storm. ‘Loud. Imposter.’

Imposter was a nickname for a Russian MG-74 decoy, a versatile torpedo-tube-launched noisemaker that could employ a variety of techniques to confuse a tracking ship, including jamming sonar and simulating the sound of a large submarine.

‘You have a contact with the sub that launched it?’

‘Negative. We didn’t hear the tube flood or launch, either. Tubes could have been open for a while. Not adding up, Captain. Now we don’t have any contacts at all.’

‘Nothing!’

‘I know, I know,’ said Eyes quickly. ‘We’re looking, Storm. I don’t know why we can’t find it.’

This was the point in the chase where a hunter had to be patient; sooner or later the prey would make a mistake and give himself away. No matter how clever – and the captain of the submarine had proven himself quite clever – he would eventually slip.

The problem was, Storm was not a patient man. He stared at the holographic display, trying to puzzle out where his adversary had gone.

‘You’re sure he’s not trailing that tanker?’

‘Negative.’

Oh my God, thought Storm, what if he managed to get underneath us?

Impossible.

But a logical explanation.

‘Change course – hard to starboard,’ he shouted to the helmsman behind him on the bridge. ‘Eyes – make sure the SOB isn’t hiding right beneath us or in our wake somehow.’

Starship skipped over the waves, staring at the infrared feed and trying not to let it burn through his eyes. There was nothing on the surface of the water – no periscope, no radio mast, no nothing.

Navy guys stared at the sea all the time, and claimed to love it. How sick was that?

The submarine wasn’t under them. But neither was it anywhere in the five-mile grid they marked out in the ocean as its most likely location, nor in the wider circle that Storm had the ship patrol after the grid proved empty.

They’d been beaten. And the worst thing was, Storm didn’t even know who had done it.

A hard-ass Russian submarine captain in a Kilo, who’d wandered close to Port Somalia by accident and then thought it best to get away before he got blamed?

Or the captain of a submarine who had in fact picked up the saboteurs and scooted clean away?

‘All right,’ he growled into his microphone. ‘Eyes – we’re going to have to call off the search. We can’t stay here forever.’

‘Aye aye, Captain.’

Storm’s anger flashed as the command was passed and the crew began to move, tacitly accepting defeat. His right hand formed into a fist but he restrained himself from pounding the bulkhead.

He thought of that later, in his cabin, when he stared at the ceiling instead of sleeping. It was a measure of how much he had changed in the months since the fight with the Somalian pirates.

Whether it was a change for the better, he couldn’t tell.

Las Vegas University of Medicine, Las Vegas, Nevada 5 January 1998 1723

The day’s worth of tests were mostly variations on ones Zen had already gone through before Christmas. He was injected with a series of dyes and then X-rayed and scanned, prodded and listened to. The technical staff took a stack of X-rays, MRIs, and ultrasounds. Then they hooked him up to a machine that measured nerve impulses. This involved inserting needles into various parts of his body. The doctors had done this several days before. Now they inserted more, and left them in for nearly two hours.

He didn’t feel the ones in his legs, but he did get a prickly sensation in his neck when they were inserted along his upper back. It didn’t hurt, exactly, but lying there was more difficult than he had imagined.

‘Done,’ said Dr Vasin finally. Two aides came over and helped Zen sit up.

‘So I can walk now?’

‘Jeff.’

‘Hey, Doc, loosen up. Just a joke.’ Zen pushed his arms back. His muscles had stiffened. ‘Tomorrow I go under the knife, right?’

‘Laser, and then the injections. Bright and early, but listen –’

‘I know. No guarantees.’

‘This is a really long process, Jeff. And I have to be honest, brutally honest –’

‘Ten percent chance. I know.’

‘Ten percent is very optimistic,’ said Vasin.

‘It’s OK. I understand.’

‘Operation one is tomorrow. The procedure itself is relatively simple, but of course it is a procedure. No food after seven P.M., just in case we have to put you out.’

‘Beer’s not food, right?’

‘Not after seven. And for the duration of the test period, alcohol and coffee are forbidden.’

‘Well, there goes the bender I was planning. Don’t worry, Doc,’ added Zen, ‘I’m just joking.’

Needles and sensors removed, Zen got dressed and wheeled himself out into the hallway. He headed toward the lounge area, where he could call for a taxi before taking the elevator down. He was surprised to see Breanna waiting for him.

‘Bree?’

‘You called for a taxi?’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Like I said – need a taxi?’

‘I thought you were snowed in.’

‘I shoveled the runway myself.’

She leaned over and kissed him. Zen grabbed her around the neck and hugged her, surprising himself at how much he missed her.

‘Everything all right?’

‘I feel like a pincushion. Other than that, I’m fine.’ He thought of telling her about the dream but decided not to. It would fade, eventually.

‘Operation still on for tomorrow?’

‘Not much of an operation,’ he told her. ‘They just inject me with crap. Don’t even knock me out.’

‘Crap,’ she said sarcastically.

‘Let’s go grab something to eat, OK? I’m fasting from seven P.M. After that, no food until tomorrow night. I want to have a beer. I can’t have any during the two weeks of injections. No coffee, either.’

‘No beer or coffee? You sure this is worth it?’ Breanna laughed.

‘Hope so.’