Dale Brown - End Game

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.

‘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.’

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.’

‘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.