Arabian Storm (The Hunter Killer Series Book 5)

by George Wallace

  The AC-130J methodically worked down the cliffside, sequentially knocking out the well-advertised gun emplacements. When the Ghostrider reached the far side of its orbit, the Warthogs flew in to slam the caves, now well marked by blazes and smoke, with even more firepower.

  By the time Ward’s team reached the foot of the cliffs, the night had grown eerily silent, save the distant whine and roar of the circling aircraft.

  Then rappelling ropes from the second team began landing around them as Ward crashed into the first cave, stepping carefully around the rubble and pieces of human remains. He suddenly found himself in a large, brightly lit room stacked high with equipment. He seemed to be all alone until he heard shouts coming from the far side of the large, open space. Still looking all about for stragglers with guns, he hurried through the smoke and dust to reach a heavy steel door set into the solid rock. It was locked.

  The shouting and calls for help were coming from behind it. They had found the prisoners. Now, how to get them out?

  Ward could see the other SEALs through the smoke, searching every nook and cranny of the big cavern for any other fighters.

  “Martinelli, get over here with that det cord,” he yelled.

  Martinelli taped the thin, flexible plastic tubing across the heavy steel door and attached the nonel shock tube detonator.

  As he worked, Ward called out, “Anybody speak English?”

  “Yes! Yes! Are we safe? Who are you?”

  “Never mind that. Right now, I need everyone in there to get as far away from the door as you can. Okay?”

  “Yes. Yes, we are against the back wall. All of us.”

  Martinelli detonated the primer cap. A half-second later, the steel door split into two sections, both crashing to the ground. The cell was open.

  The members of the second SEAL team arrived just as Ward and Martinelli were escorting the prisoners out into the open room. They quickly herded the group—fifteen people—out of the cave mouth and up the cliff face to one of the waiting Ospreys atop the rock.

  As the rescue continued, Ward and Martinelli strung charges around the room before they followed. No sense in leaving this base for terrorists to once again use. Better to turn it into a fine nesting place for seabirds.

  But as the two SEALs emerged from the still-smoking cave, they saw one of the hostages had remained behind, not joining the others, and appeared to be waiting for Ward and Martinelli. They quickly aimed their rifles at him, just in case.

  “No, no. I am Yves Monagnad, Ocean Mystery’s captain,” he explained. “I fear that the one man you most want is still not accounted for. We saw him just before...”

  Just then, a speedboat roared from behind an outcropping just beyond where the pier had once stood. It had only one person aboard and was zooming at remarkable speed out into open water, quickly beyond the range of the SEALs’ weapons.

  “That’s what I didn’t understand!” Monagnad shouted. “Where had Babak gotten to? Why was he not with his followers?” He frantically pointed at the boat, now growing dimmer and dimmer in the darkness. “That’s him! That’s the bastard! Do not let him get away.”

  Ward started to send the word to one of the planes, but almost as if the pilot had heard Monagnad’s plea, one of the A-10s swooped down from the night sky like some giant bird of prey and unleashed a rain of hellfire. The chainsaw sound of the GAU-8A ripped the night apart.

  Out in the water, the fleeing speedboat disappeared in a roaring explosion.

  Monagnad watched, expressionless. Then he suddenly crumpled, sitting down hard, face in his hands, sobbing, his ordeal now over.

  31

  Tom Donnegan and Jon Ward had enthusiastically attacked the stack of after-action reports. This time the outcome was positive. Sometimes it was decidedly not. Thank goodness it had been successful with only one man slightly wounded. And all accomplished by two SEAL teams and a few very effective aircraft.

  For his part, Ward was having a hard time believing much of the terse prose had been written by his own son, calmly describing the treacherously dangerous operation that he had just led. The prose was almost like dinner-table talk only a few years before when young Jim would describe the results of some first-person-shooter video game he had just conquered. Or recounted over breakfast the gist of the previous night’s high school basketball victory. The story was very different.

  Donnegan looked up at Ward and sat back in his big chair, all the while idly rubbing a spot on his chest just above his diaphragm.

  “This Monagnad guy, he’s a gold mine of intel. But dammit! Looks like we missed Nabiin by just a few hours. Could’a nailed the big fish and put this all to rest, if only…”

  Jon Ward held up a hand.

  “Tom, I remember a gruff old salt once telling me ‘should’a,’ ‘could’a,’ and ‘would’a’ were the sorriest-ass excuses ever invented by a sailor. Wonder who that old salt was?”

  “Damn, you were listening after all,” Donnegan said with a snort. “Could’a fooled me at the time.” The old admiral suddenly winced and caught his breath.

  “Tom, you okay?”

  “Aw, I’m fine. Chili night at the flag mess. You look like you spotted something there.”

  Ward re-read a paragraph in the report and stopped.

  “Tom, you see this bit where Monagnad is talking about the stuff they loaded on the Ocean Mystery? Here, where he says they loaded a bunch of UUVs that look like torpedoes? What the hell is Nabiin going to do with a bunch of UUVs?”

  The old intel master shook his head. “Don’t have the slightest idea. But you can bet it ain’t to study global warming or look for sea bass. Well, at least this Monagnad character gave us enough of a description of the Ocean Mystery’s new look so we can start a search for the thing.”

  "Yeah, I already sent it out. At least we know what we’re looking for now and that certainly makes the job a tad easier. NRO tasked the satellites and CENTCOM is tasking the BAMS units, too. If that rust bucket is out there, we’ll find her.”

  Donnegan nodded, still studying the fine details of the interview with the research vessel’s captain. Still idly rubbing his breastbone.

  Ψ

  The MQ-4C Triton unmanned aircraft conducted its broad area search from sixty thousand feet above the Gulf of Aden. Meanwhile, the big bird’s “pilot” sat in her air-conditioned and climate-controlled bunker in Bahrain, sipping Diet Mountain Dew and maneuvering the craft in an expanding circle, spiraling from the island outward. Since there was nothing to be gained from searching the Yemeni desert, the course quickly became a narrow ellipse. The pilot flipped the lid of her soda bottle like a coin and it told her to head back east first. Hundreds of ships and boats were there, but so far none met the description that had been programmed into the aircraft’s brain.

  It took the Triton two hours to cover all the water up to the Gulf of Oman. Nothing. Then the unmanned bird swung around and flew back. By the time the craft made it to the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the sun had long since set in the west. Not that it mattered much to the UAV’s advanced sensors. They were all-seeing, day or night.

  Next the pilot glanced at the fuel gauge readout in the tool bar window on her display. Still in good shape but something to keep an eye on. She swung the bird around and headed it down the centerline of the Red Sea. That long, narrow body of water was just a bit over one hundred and fifty miles across at its widest point. From the drone’s very high perch, it was easy to see all she needed to in one pass.

  The Triton was flying past Farasan Island, a little more than three hundred miles down the fourteen-hundred-mile flight to Suez, when the alarms sounded, and an icon blinked boldly on the pilot’s display. She set down her soda bottle, renewed her grip on the joystick, and swung the Triton around in a long, swooping circle. Simultaneously, she employed the aircraft’s high-resolution, synthetic-aperture radar and its sensitive multi-spectral sensors to image the target.

  Even as the Triton was swinging back to base course
to see what else she could find, analysts in Chantilly, Virginia, were already calling Admiral Tom Donnegan with the good news.

  Ψ

  Nabiin, the Prophet, calmly watched as the crew launched the UUVs from the after deck. The bright-yellow, torpedo-shaped devices were each lifted from their cradle and lowered over the side of the vessel with care. Methodically, one after another, the mechanical fish dropped deeper into the water. They each remained on the surface for a few seconds, almost as if they were orienting themselves in the warm sea surface before diving into the colder deep and disappearing, headed northward up the Red Sea to do their programmers’ bidding.

  Nabiin smiled. The choreography was almost hypnotic. A miraculous tool provided to the Prophet and his followers by Allah—and unsuspecting investors and speculators all over the world—to do his holy bidding.

  “Alzaeim Almuqadas, please excuse my intrusion into your meditation,” Farian Gurmani, one of his faithful lieutenants, interrupted. “But I must report that we have received a most disturbing message from our faithful at Al Mukalla.”

  Nabiin barely took his gaze away from the UUVs. Nor did the smile leave his lips. He was obviously enjoying this aspect of his operation being set into motion.

  “So, what is this disturbing news, Farian?”

  “The Americans launched an attack on our island. I am afraid they sent in hundreds of troops and a squadron of aircraft. They overwhelmed and killed all our brave followers there. No survivors. And they freed all the prisoners.”

  Nabiin nodded. The unmanned underwater vessels unleashed so far were no longer visible, but the Prophet kept his gaze on the dark waters into which they had disappeared.

  “None of this is of any concern. The ayatollahs will make great propaganda use of this intrusion in our region by the American infidels. Our fighters? They are now enjoying the fruits of paradise, a blessing in which we will soon join them.”

  Gurmani continued his report. “I must also inform you that General Babak has not yet arrived at Al Mukalla. We fear that the attack occurred before he could leave the island. We are certain that he is now among the other martyrs.”

  The smile suddenly left Nabiin’s face. He abruptly jumped up, looking quickly at his watch, the mental wheels spinning at lightning speed.

  “Farian, this development does require that we slightly modify our plans. Order the men on deck to complete the launches as quickly as possible. Then have the Darih al Mahit al Muqadas ready to go at the very instant they are finished. We will barely have time to reach Al Mukalla in time.”

  “What about Mecca and the helicopter?” Gurmani protested. “The plan was to have you there by Friday Maghrib, sunset prayers. That this would fulfill prophecy.”

  “Allah will direct us in the ways of prophecy,” Nabiin replied, speaking as though to a questioning child. “His ways are not always clear to us. But we must be in Al Mukalla in order to bring about the end times. General Babak had the launch instructions to bring down the holy cleansing fire on Jerusalem. Now it is I who must get to Al Mukalla so that I can issue the orders. The Boz-Manand must be instructed how to fulfill their final jihad.”

  Ψ

  The evening’s rush hour was at its peak. The red taillights of the cars of bureaucrats and office workers appeared to be a solid trail up Boundary Channel Drive out of the Pentagon. The view from Admiral Donnegan’s E-ring office was most often totally lost on both him and Rear Admiral (Lower Half) Ward. Their attention was most typically on bright computer monitors and skyscrapers of bound and printed reports.

  Jon Ward had been down the hall, collecting even more paperwork, when he heard the news. He rushed into Donnegan’s office and dropped the sheaf of pictures on the conference table. He ignored most of them as they slid onto the cluttered floor beneath the table but grabbed a few before they fell.

  “Tom, they found the Ocean Mystery. One of the Triton flights located it heaved to off Farasan Island.”

  Donnegan looked at him questioningly over the top of his reading glasses.

  “All right, for the geographically challenged, just where the hell is this island of which you speak?”

  Just the barest smile flitted across Ward’s face. “Why it’s about three hundred miles up the Red Sea from Bab al-Mandab, of course.” Ward tossed the images onto the big oak table in front of his boss. “But for the life of me, I can’t figure out what they’re doing. It appears to me and the analysts that they might be launching the UUVs that Monagnad was talking about. But to do what?”

  Donnegan shook his head.

  “Beats the hell out of me, but we’ve got to find out. What do we have in the area that can get there quick?”

  It was Ward’s turn to shake his head.

  “Not a thing. Closest Navy asset is the Ford Strike Group. It’s just arriving in Port Said and is supposed to transit the canal tomorrow.”

  “Damn!” Donnegan growled. “That son of a bitch is going to slip through our fingers again. He’s going to be the death of me yet!”

  Ψ

  The school of UUVs swam north in perfect formation at a depth of thirty feet. There they were invisible from the air or the surface of the relatively calm sea.

  Without hesitation, they continued on, straight up the center of the Red Sea, precisely as ordered, intent on performing the mission for which they had been programmed.

  Ψ

  The USS Gerald R. Ford, CVN-78, had barely dropped its hook in the anchorage off Port Said when the canal pilot boat pulled alongside the massive aircraft carrier. The canal pilot grunted and cursed under his breath as he climbed the long rope ladder, making his way up to the hangar deck elevator that towered above the little motor launch. Once safely on the hangar deck, the pilot was next escorted up a series of ladders—he twice had to ask that they pause for a moment while he caught his breath—until they finally arrived on the mammoth ship’s bridge. For years the carrier had been the largest warship ever constructed. The winded pilot had no reason to doubt it.

  Once on the bridge, he informed the captain that the carrier along with the rest of the strike group would be part of the morning’s southbound convoy. In all, there were fourteen merchant ships, a motley group of steamers, tankers, and container ships, and they would all be steaming along ahead of the strike group. They expected three more merchant ships to arrive in time to follow the group down the narrow channel. The Ford should weigh anchor and be ready to get underway by 0300. The entire mishmash of vessels would enter the canal precisely at 0330 local time.

  At 0330 on the dot, the convoy proceeded down the canal. Barring any unexpected events, the hundred-mile transit south would take a little more than twelve hours. At eight knots, the long line of ships was making what appeared to be a leisurely cruise down the waterway. They were abreast the sand-buffeted canal town of Ismailia when a northbound convoy passed them going the other way in the northbound channel.

  By noon, the Ford and other ships were entering the Great Bitter Lake. That meant more than half of the transit was behind them. They were making reasonably good time.

  But then, one of the merchant tankers ahead of them lost power. During the two-hour delay, the convoy sat motionless while the Canal Authority tugs maneuvered the stricken vessel out of the channel to an anchorage.

  By the time the convoy reached Port Tawfiq at the canal’s southern entrance, the sun had long since dropped below the western horizon. The strike group commander decided that, after the long and exhausting canal transit, it would be prudent for his ships to swing at anchor overnight while the crews rested. Then they would be fresh to enter the unfamiliar waters of the Gulf of Suez and, ultimately, the Red Sea beyond.

  Ψ

  The UUVs turned into the Gulf of Suez and continued their swim north. By midnight, the first of them was abreast Adabiya, Egypt. There the Gulf was only six miles wide and a little over a hundred feet deep. The lead UUV sank down and settled into the sand below. There it rested, waiting.

  Soon the
rest of its brethren had joined it in a rough line that stretched all the way across the bottom of the narrow channel. They, too, sat there, patiently waiting, as if contemplating an ambush.

  32

  The sun was just clearing the eastern horizon, out over the Sinai Desert, when the USS Sam Nunn, DDG 133, raised its anchor and got underway. The USS Carl Levin, DDG 120, followed a few hundred yards astern. The two new Arleigh Burke-class destroyers headed down channel out of their Port Tawfiq anchorage as the first ready element to go find the elusive Nabiin and his pirated ship.

  As soon as they were clear of the crowded harbor, the Nunn and the Levin both spun up to a flank bell. The gray ships’ sterns squatted in response to the twin five-bladed controllable-pitch screws biting into the clear blue waters. A churning white rooster tail erupted astern as the massive ships shot forward.

  The two destroyers were making better than thirty knots as they hurried past Ra’s al Adabiya, a sandy headland jutting far out into the deep water at the head of the Gulf of Suez.

  The Sam Nunn passed almost directly over where one of Nabiin’s UUVs rested on the sea bottom. The device’s delicate sensors registered the magnetic anomaly from a nearby large steel body, sensed the pressure wave from a ship racing overhead, and heard the churning of its screws. That was adequate data to satisfy its logic circuits.

  It released a warhead that floated up and promptly attached itself to the American warship. The warhead’s own logic circuits had directed it toward the vessel’s keel where the two-hundred-kilogram charge dutifully detonated seconds after attachment.