Dale Brown - End Game

Starship 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.’

Storm 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.

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 to 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.’

The 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.’

‘What kind of submarine? A Pakistani 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.’

Sattari 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.