Arabian Storm (The Hunter Killer Series Book 5)

by George Wallace

  The big submerged boat had barely begun its turn when Joe Drussel announced, “Array is unstable.”

  As the boat turned, and for several minutes afterward, the towed array acted much like a “crack the whip” behind the sub. Bearing information was meaningless because the array formed a changing arc as they came to the new course and steadied up.

  Meanwhile, Joe Glass looked at his watch.

  “It’ll be fifteen minutes before the array is stable again. Much as I love you boys, I’m going down to the wardroom and see if I can get myself some breakfast. Call me if anything changes but for sure when the array is stable.”

  He disappeared out the forward control room door, ducking into his stateroom to retrieve his coffee cup. Then he headed forward and down toward the wardroom at a fast clip.

  Joe Glass was convinced that breakfast was the most important meal of the day.

  Ψ

  Twenty minutes later, Glass was just tucking into a huge cheese omelet with bits of bacon when his JA phone buzzed. Reaching under the table, he grabbed the headset and growled, “Captain.”

  “Captain, Officer of the Deck.” It was Pat Durand from the control room. “Steady on course two-four-zero. The array is stable.”

  Durand paused.

  “And?” Glass asked. The omelet smelled wonderful.

  “Captain, we did not regain either Sierra Two-Seven or Two-Eight. Currently hold no towed array contacts.”

  Glass shook his head. Such was submarine warfare. It was not unusual to lose contact as the result of a maneuver. Frustrating as hell, and especially when trying to draw a bead on an especially interesting contact. But not unusual.

  “Very well. Stay on this course for an hour and conduct a careful sonar search. If we haven’t regained contact by then, come back to the northwest and resume the navigator’s track.”

  Glass had lost his appetite. He picked at the eggs and bacon as he considered the situation.

  Ψ

  Arman Dirbaz stared hard at the barnacle-encrusted device lying on the Naranjee Sayyad’s after deck. It looked like a miniature submarine—a plaything—maybe two meters long and twenty-five centimeters in diameter. At the after end was a small plastic screw that propelled it. A very evil-looking gun barrel-like device, maybe five centimeters in diameter, protruded from the bow.

  “So, this is what the divers found?” the Iranian engineer asked.

  “Yes, Mohandes Doktor,” a sailor answered. “It was lying on the bottom in the mud at thirty meters depth.”

  Dirbaz squatted down to get a better look while Vassily Godonov slowly circled the device. Finally, he squatted next to his friend and touched it.

  “I have heard rumors that such a thing was possible,” Godonov finally said. Dirbaz glanced over at him as he went on. “It’s really not much more than a small cannon that fires a super-cavitating very-high-speed bullet. The super-cavitation makes certain that the projectile is always traveling in a cloud of steam. That means the water does not slow it down. And that it ultimately hits its target with tremendous velocity.”

  Dirbaz nodded. “That explains the round holes blown through Boz-Manand’s hull.” The engineer tapped the nameplate with the American flag and the words "Property of the US Navy” engraved on it. “And there is no doubt where this technology came from and who used it on us. We must inform Navy Command at Bandar Abbas. I am sure our government will want to bring this to the attention of the entire world. And to respond immediately and powerfully. We, of course, will get this up to the shop to disassemble. We will learn much.”

  Godonov stood, scratching his head, a telling frown on his face.

  “There are still two things that trouble me, Arman.” He pointed to the front of the UUV. “This is a single-shot weapon. Boz-Manand was hit twice. This means there is at least one more mine out there and probably more.”

  Dirbaz gazed out across the water, toward the mouth of the harbor and the sea beyond. He shivered just a bit.

  “You said there were two things that trouble you, my friend.”

  “The Americans would have known there was a possibility one of their devices might be recovered.” The Russian leaned in again to touch the bold symbols attached to the weapon’s skin. “Yes, they are arrogant. Yes, they are haughty and typically proud of their aggression. But why would they intentionally alert the world to this attack so clearly inside your territorial waters? What would be their purpose in so blatantly advertising their participation in this ambush with this obvious evidence yet not holding press conferences to brag about what they have done, as usual?”

  The engineer once again contemplated the gathering gloom of night out toward the open waters. He had no answer to the Russian’s questions.

  Ψ

  It took the police an hour to break through the security system in Ben Tahib’s apartment. Both the reporter and his wife were passed out, she slumped across their bed and he lying on the thick Persian carpet.

  The police were mystified. There was no sign of forced entry. Nothing seemed out of place. Despite Tahib’s mumbling of gas, there was no trace of any.

  Just as a precaution, and because Ben Tahib was a Very Important Person, the police rushed the pair off to the hospital under heavy and close protective guard. Guards in their rooms, in the hallway outside, even an armored car at the hospital entrance.

  The medical examinations revealed nothing for either, other than Tahib was twenty pounds overweight and had elevated cholesterol. And Shelia was six weeks pregnant.

  It was just after evening prayers when the in-room guard mumbled something about the bathroom and stepped out of Tahib’s room.

  The door had just swung shut when the phone jangled. The deep, growling voice was the same as before. “Heed your warning. The next time you won’t wake up. You want to see your new son grow up. Forget you ever heard of a ship called Ocean Mystery. Forget about Mr. Talbot and Nabiin, the Prophet. Forget these things and you may live to enjoy your grandchildren.”

  Ben Tahib was still staring at the phone when the guard returned with a cup of coffee.

  16

  Captain Yves Monagnad came up slowly from the depths of unconscious sleep. The groggy, half-awake, uncomprehending state left him confused, disoriented. Where was he? Was it day or night? What day was it? It took a moment before he realized that he was still alone, that he remained in a locked storeroom, deep in the bowels of his ship, the research vessel RV Ocean Mystery. Held hostage by some mysterious, ill-tempered, and very violent Arabs. A group of pirates who had attacked his ship and overpowered his crew and now treated him and his men as prisoners of war. Prisoners from a conflict of which they were completely unaware and certainly not combatants.

  He shook his head, tried to see his hands in the darkness and clear the fog in his brain. But he still had no idea what day or time it was. As far as he knew, he could have been locked here for a couple of days or a couple of weeks. With no point of reference, there simply was no way to know.

  What could these brutal men want? What was their game?

  In the beginning of their capture, there had been interrogations followed by the inevitable torture if he did not answer their questions. Questions that made no sense and gave no clue about their mission. It had been tough to endure but his military training had prepared him well. As he had been instructed, Monagnad appeared to break under the torment and slowly, begrudgingly revealed a few believable facts. Then he followed with some rather far-fetched cover stories as the interrogations progressed. Stories he carefully crafted to convince even as they effectively misled.

  His crew, though, did not have the benefit of such preparation. The worst part for the research ship captain had been listening to his men’s screams as they suffered similar treatment from the terrorists.

  Then, abruptly, the interrogations ceased. Even the screams finally stopped. Had one of his crew revealed more than he should have? Or had the lies Monagnad fed them finally satisfied them? Or, more likely, were
their captors about to move to the next step in whatever nefarious plan they were carrying out?

  Regardless, the end to the interrogations put Monagnad into this netherworld, more painful and unendurable than the rather primitive torture had been for him. And he had been alone in this darkened space for an eternity, hidden from sun and moon, salt air and sea breeze. The only sensual stimulation he experienced came when the terrorists intermittently brought what passed for food. Or opened the door just long enough to empty the bucket that passed for a toilet in this place.

  Monagnad was left with plenty of time to ponder what their end game might be. If they were kidnapped for ransom, as was typical of piracy in this part of the world, the scenario should have played out by now. He and his crew would have been either free or dead depending on whether or not the funds had landed in the correct bank account. If the terrorists merely wanted Ocean Mystery for transportation to carry out some reprehensible purpose, the captain and his men would have long since been fed to the sharks.

  In Monagnad’s mind, that only left one possibility. Their captors—he had long since decided they were terrorists of some stripe or another—had a need for him and his crew. That likely meant they intended to take Ocean Mystery somewhere for some purpose that required some more complicated maneuvering. Thus, they needed someone to operate the vessel. But what could that voyage and mission possibly be? Ocean Mystery was a ship of peace and on a mission of learning and furthering science. She carried no weapons. If, of course, one did not consider the underwater unmanned vehicles. But these terrorists could never have known of their true purpose or capabilities. The world only knew that they did deep-water climate research.

  Yes, his ship actually was on a surveillance and intelligence gathering mission, but the UUVs would have been of no use to these twenty-first-century brigands. As far as they knew, Ocean Mystery was only a research vessel, not a warship.

  One thing was clear, though. The only way to end this travesty and somehow escape their captors was for someone—anyone—to come to their rescue. And that would only happen if he could figure out a way to tell the world the missing vessel still floated and where it could be found.

  Monagnad had been down this line of reasoning a thousand times already. And, once again, he drew a blank. There simply was no way to send a signal to the outside world from where he was locked up deep inside his ship. Not even a bottle with a note to get tossed out with his excrement, though he had even tried to think of a way to accomplish that. Nor did he have any idea of where they were floating on a very large planet.

  Then, footsteps. It was not yet time for food. Monagnad’s pulse quickened. Pirates though they were, these men had been following a tight schedule. Food. Toilet emptying. Torture. All highly predictable.

  The lock clicked. The door was yanked open. Monagnad was blinded by a sudden flare of brilliant sunlight. Daytime. Without a word, one of the terrorists grabbed him and shoved him out onto the passageway. He kicked the captain in the general direction of a ladder that led up to the next deck. Then he motioned Monagnad to start climbing and kicked him again, hard, to emphasize the urgency.

  The captain more stumbled and fell up the ladder than climbed it. Up to the next deck. Then upward farther until he finally collapsed onto the deck on the bridge of the very ship he had recently commanded. But it seemed an impossibly long time ago that he had confidently trod these decks, overseeing the crew of this famous and highly touted vessel. Now he groveled pitifully, sprawled out on the polished terrazzo, mostly blind, hot, and sweating in what appeared to be a noontime sun.

  General Farad Babak, the Iranian terrorist leader, grabbed him by the shoulder and lifted him to his feet.

  “Come, Captain, we cannot allow you to lie there like that. Not aboard your own ship. Disgraceful.” Monagnad accepted the offered help then shielded his eyes from the sun and looked into the smiling face of the short, stout Arab. Disfiguring burn scars, clearly visible through the man’s scraggly gray beard, made the smirk almost ghoulish. “I am General Farad Babak of Yemen. You have, by now, met most of my men. The time has come, Captain, for you to earn your life and the lives of your loyal crew.”

  Monagnad dared a quick look out the broad windows that arced across the front of the bridge. He did not recognize the ship that stretched out in front of him. The Ocean Mystery was no longer his beautiful, gleaming-white research ship, but rather a drab, gray vessel of some nondescript configuration. A ship even its captain would not have recognized.

  New structures—clearly little more than sheets of cheap plywood crudely painted a dull cement color—covered what had once been the wide main deck. Some monstrosity had been built to hide the catamaran’s distinct dual bows. Someone had transformed his ship and made it unrecognizable.

  But, of course, that had been the aim.

  “I see that you find our enhancements to the Ocean Mystery interesting,” Babak commented. “I trust you approve. I doubt even you would now recognize your little yacht from a few hundred meters away. But do not feel bad. When we are finished with her, no one else will recognize it either. At least not until it is too late to matter.”

  The Houthi terrorist leader’s dry, harsh snicker sent a shiver down Monagnad’s spine.

  The research ship’s captain furtively glanced around his bridge, looking for any other changes. This was his chance. Likely his only chance. There had to be a way to signal to the world some word of their situation and where they were being held by these madmen.

  But nothing seemed obvious.

  “Now, Captain, as I say, it is time you earned your keep,” General Babak continued. “We have kept you and your crew alive for a purpose. It is time for you to show Allah your appreciation for the mercy.”

  Monagnad stared blankly at the diminutive terrorist leader, only half-listening as he continued trying to solve the problem of how to signal their plight.

  Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw it. It instantly made sense.

  The UUVs. They were the answer. The only answer. Provided, of course, that they were still out there, circling, waiting for a command from the mother ship. And that they had any power left. But they were the only hope for him and his crew.

  “Are you listening, Captain Monagnad? It is important that you understand what we are telling you to do,” Babak continued, no longer smiling. “You will order your crew to operate this scow under our orders. They will do what we tell them, or they will feed the sharks. You will watch each of them die until none remain and then it will be your turn. It is time for you to choose between death or doing the will of Allah.”

  Babak stepped closer.

  “Captain, I sense you are not fully comprehending what I am telling you!”

  He suddenly shoved Monagnad backward, hard. The captain staggered, allowing his momentum to carry him into the after bulkhead, slamming brutally into a control panel. The control panel for the UUVs. He reached back, ostensibly to steady himself, to regain his balance.

  But the captain’s hand fell on one particular switch on the console.

  The UUV emergency shutdown control.

  Ψ

  Three miles out, the only UUV with enough charge left in its fuel cells to continue to circle just below the surface received the signal from the Ocean Mystery. As it happened, the little submersible was in the process of making one final, feeble loop before it joined its fellows at the bottom of the Arabian Sea, there to sleep forever. But with the last voltage it had left, the emergency shutdown signal was received and interpreted. Just as it was programmed to do, that triggered a number of automatic sequential actions, the most important of which was the deployment of an emergency response buoy. The buoy, once on the surface, immediately began to ping a communications satellite that waited in a geosynchronous orbit twenty-three thousand miles overhead. That signal told anyone in the world who might be listening that a very valuable UUV had been sunk at this very specific location.

  As it happened, someone was listen
ing.

  Ψ

  Samuel Talbot was initially mystified by the report. Why would he suddenly receive an emergency shutdown message from one of Ocean Mystery’s UUVs? He had assumed that all the unmanned submersibles had been lost when his ship disappeared somewhere in the Arabian Sea. Weeks spent searching the vast ocean area had come up empty. Not even a bit of flotsam.

  But now? This strange message? Like a voice from the crypt? What could it mean? Could his ship actually still be out there somewhere, still afloat?

  The mission control center, buried deep under Mossad headquarters, was manned by only a few technicians. With Ocean Mystery and her UUVs assumed gone, there was really no reason for much effort in the facility. The sensor and mission packages were all controlled and monitored elsewhere. Talbot frankly expected to find the control center lights were out when he was called down there.

  One of the technicians waved the gray-haired spy master-cum-billionaire over to a large-screen display that revealed a detailed chart of the western Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Aden. The technician pointed to a tiny dot and said, “This is the location for the emergency pinger. It was a really weak signal that only lasted for a few cycles before it died completely. We are most fortunate that the satellite even managed to detect it.”

  Talbot stared at the chart and rubbed his chin. “Are we very sure that this is one of our UUVs?”

  “Yes. It is definitely UUV Number Six,” the technician answered. “They each have a specific code ID so we can tell them apart. Zero chance it is anything else.”

  More to himself than to the technician, Talbot mumbled, “That is over a thousand miles from Ocean Mystery’s last known position. How did it get here? Have we been looking in the wrong place all this time?”