Piranha

by Dale Brown

  IR view picked up the embers of a fire beyond them. a cooking fire, probably; the vegetation was too thick to see clearly.

  A whistle broke the silence. Danny looked toward the water as a duck darted downward, grabbed something from just the surface, and then flapped its wings in an arc away, the prize in its beak.

  The person he’d been following was crouched at the edge of the water, thirty-five yards away.

  Watching him? Or the whistling duck?

  Danny thought of standing and waving. Before he could decide, the figure turned and moved away, walking slowly, without alarm, past the sheets. There looked like there might be a hut there, but Danny couldn’t get an angle to see.

  He’d have to find out more about the camp. Maybe go in there, find out who these people were. At the moment, though, there were more important things to do—he could hear the distant thump of helicopters bringing in supplies.

  Couple of people in the jungle weren’t much of a threat, especially if they stayed were they were. He’d set up a sensor picket, keep tabs on the ridge and the valley until he decided what to do, or got some advice from the colonel. They might have to move these folks out.

  They could use that stream for a sensor line. Put some video cams on the swamp and pond. There looked like only one way across the water and deep muck, off on the right, not counting the sharply rising slope to the left.

  Danny began moving back up the hill, pausing every so often to make sure he wasn’t being followed. It was presumptuous to think of moving the people who lived here. How the hell would he feel if someone snuck into his neighborhood, spoke a few words in halting English, claimed to be long-lost friends, then said, sorry, you gotta go? We have a top-secret? We have a top-secret airfield in your backyard and we cant; have you stripping over it.

  But that was the way it went sometimes.

  Dreamland Command Center

  August 22, 1997, 2321 local (August 23, 1997, 1421 Philippines)

  As Colonel Bastian took a fresh gulp of coffee, he told himself the scratch in his eyes was due to the ventilation system’s lack of humidity. Under other circumstances, he’d been snoring in bed. He’d put in a long day, and unlike the crews that had flown out to the Philippines, didn’t have an opportunity to take a nap; he always felt he ought to be the one in the Command Center when the shit hit the fan—as it was now. He rubbed his eyes, then began pacing near the large screen at the front of the room.

  The Chinese aircraft had gone down on its own, obviously because the idiot pilot decided to play cowboy with the Megafortress. The Chinese were out-of-their-minds furious about it; they’d already filed a protest note in Washington claiming it had been shot down. While the politicians postured, Dog considered the more important development: the sinking of the container ship. The attack seemed to have been the work of the weapon they were supposed to be gathering data on, the Kali missiles, apparently launched at long range by a diesel-powered snorkler—seemed and apparently being the operative words, since Quicksilver had been too far away to gather meaningful data on the weapon or launch platform.

  Had Breanna simply ignored the Chinese aircraft and continued on her patrol, that wouldn’t have been the case.

  Not that she necessarily should have. Still …

  According to the analysts who had examined the data, the radar indications and probable warhead size showed interesting parallels to the Russian SS-N-12, a very large antiship missile known as “Sandbox.” But the SS-N-12 was far too big to fit into a submarine or be launched from beneath the water.

  Presumably anyway.

  “Sir, stand by for communication from the White House Situation Room,” said the lieutenant at the com console. “Mr. Barclay.”

  “Go,” said Dog.

  The lieutenant’s fingers pounded on his keyboard. Jed Barclay’s pimple-strewn face flashed onto the screen. He had deep black bags under both eyes; back East it was around three in the morning.

  “Colonel, uh, Jed Barclay here.”

  “Go ahead, Jed.”

  “Pacific Fleet’s making some noise. The boss man wanted me to give you a heads-up. USCINCPACCOM’s throwing a territory fit.”

  “Acknowledged,” said Dog, who actually would have preferred to say something else.

  “Whiplash order is being reviewed. They’re going to look for an opinion from you,” added Jed.

  “Opinion on what?”

  “Whether the Megafortresses can stop ships from being sunk.”

  “Okay, we’ll start working on it.” Colonel Bastian wasn’t sure they could; they had no ASW weapons on the Megafortresses. Besides, protecting shipping was a Navy task, and if that became the primary mission, the Pacific Fleet would surely get the job. Their most likely role would be working with PACCOM as they had with CENTCOM in the Middle East, thought the personalities here were considerably more prickly.

  “I think the Navy may suggest escorts, flagships, like they did in 1987 with tankers in the Persian Gulf, the oil crisis,” added Jed. “But most of the fleet is still up near Taiwan and Japan, uh, due to the situation on the mainland. The other major assets are near India and the Gulf—I guess you know that. So, uh, they’re scrambling to figure out where to allocate what. I don’t know how long it will be before there’s a decision. Might be days or weeks.”

  “Okay,” said Dog.

  Barclay blinked.

  “Maybe you ought to catch some Zs, Jed,” said Dog. “Have you slept since you got back?”

  “Thanks, Colonel.” Barclay managed a weak smile. “You look a little tired yourself.”

  “A little.”

  “You have any more information about the Chinese plane?” asked Jed.

  “NO. I imagine the pilot make it,” said Dog. “Zen had a Flighthawk nearby and we don’t have any video showing an ejection, let alone a chute.”

  “Yeah. Tough luck for him.”

  Dog nodded, thought he felt more sympathetic. While the Chinese pilot wasn’t exactly an ally, it seemed a waste that he had died. Dog hated the idea of any pilot dying in accident, even if he’d caused it himself.

  “Um, State may contact you,” added Jed. “They’re a little behind the curve on this, so they may need a full, uh, briefing. Director says do it, but you have to watch their clearance.”

  “What exactly does that mean?”

  “Nothing on Kali,” said Jed.

  “Then what’s the sense of briefing them?

  “Yeah. Not my call,” said Jed, which Dog had learned was Jed’s standard response when he agreed something didn’t make sense, but his boss hadn’t listened to the reasons. “I guess you have to do what you can do.”

  “All right, Jed. We should have the cargo planes on the Philippines tonight,” added Dog.

  “I’ll keep you updated,” said Jed.

  “Thanks.” Dog killed the connection himself with his remote control, then clicked onto the Quicksilver circuit to update them.

  Aboard Quicksilver, over the South China Sea

  August 23, 1997, 1430 local (August 22, 1997, 2330 Dreamland)

  Cargo stretched across the water like so many icebergs. The fantail of the ship jutted upward from the water, its large screw looking like a bizarre metal daisy waiting to be plucked. Zen brought the Flighthawk down for a pass at two thousand feet, his airspeed bleeding back under two hundred knots. He could see bodies in the water; two or three appeared to be clinging to something, and there was a man on one of the floating cargo containers.

  “I think we have survivors,” he told Breanna. “I’m going to take another pass and try to get better video. You might want to radio any ships that are coming.”

  “We’re in the process of making contact now,” she told him. “We’re going to pipe your feed up here.”

  “Hawk Leader,” acknowledged Zen.

  He checked Hawk Two, still in trail above and behind Quicksilver, then turned Hawk One around for another run. The feed off the robot plane was being pumped back to Dreamland, w
ere it could be analyzed for potential survivors, as well as any hazardous cargo or weapons.

  The merchant ship that had been sailing ahead of the container vessel when it was struck had made a large, cautious turn in the water and was approaching the debris field slowly. It hadn’t yet lowered boats into the water. In answer to the SOS, another vessel, a tanker, was about ten miles away, coming north at fifteen knots. Several miles beyond the tanker, but making better time, was a cruise ship. Collins had ID’s the tanker and cruise ship already—the Exxon Global and the Royal Scotsman—and now Ferris clicked in to say they had acknowledged his message that there survivors in the water. The closer merchant ship, meanwhile, did not answer on any of the frequencies the copilot tried, even as it continued at a snail’s pace toward the bobbing containers.

  “Hawk Leader—we’re getting something twenty miles west of than tanker—odd reading on the water,” said Ferris. “Could be our sub getting ready to surface. We want to change course to check it out.”

  “Yeah, go for it,” said Zen, immediately turning toward the coordinates.

  Hawk One cruised in range just in time to see a submarine rise gently above the waves, the black, elongated oval of its conning tower pushing aside the water. Zen slid around the sub at just over three thousand feet; Collins ID’s it as a Russian Kilo, a diesel-powered boat that according to his brief usually didn’t operate this far south.

  “This bastard that sank the container ship?” questioned Zen.

  “Not sure who it is,” said Collins. “We don’t have any transmissions. I’m piping your feed to Dreamland, but they can’t ID it either. Probably Chinese, not Indian.”

  “You think the Chinese sank the ship?”

  “Stand by, Hawk Leader,” said Collins, undoubtedly so he could talk to Dreamland people uninterrupted.

  Zen took two passes low and slow, but failed to pick up and identifying marks. Like nearly all modern designs, the sub had no bow gun or surface weapons, beside its torpedoes and mines, and seemed to be taking no hostile action. It didn’t use its radio either; the only emissions coming from it were from a relatively short-range surface search radar, which Torbin announced was a “Snoop Tray.”

  “Checking on his handiwork?” Zen asked.

  “Can’t tell for sure what he’s doing,” answered Torbin. “But I don’t think these guys carry cruise missiles. Assuming he’s Chinese.”

  “Thinking is, definitely Chinese,” said Collins, coming back into the discussion. “Container ship almost certainly got nailed by a cruise missile, so odds are this guy’s clean. Container ship was supposedly going to Pakistan, so the implication is that might have been a motive; that, or target practice.”

  Zen had dealt with the Chinese and their proxies before; he didn’t trust them not to have sunk the ship.

  “Ship captains are requesting instructions,” said Ferris. “One of them got the sub on his radar; now they’re all chattering about it.”

  “Tell them to proceed with the rescue,” snapped Breanna. “Collins, if you can figure out what the hell radio frequency they’re using, advise the submarine to help out or get lost!”

  “We don’t have a precoded message for that,” said Collins. “Not in Chinese.”

  “Do it in English. Use every frequency you can think of—Russian and Indian as well as Chinese. Hell, try Dutch and French too.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Collins.

  “Sub’s moving southward, changing course,” said Zen. He brought Hawk One down to five hundred feet and rode the sub bow to stern. There were three or four men in the tower; no weapons visible. Hawk One was moving too fast to get a good look at uniforms, let alone faces, and the freeze-frame didn’t make it any clearer. “Looks like they’re headed toward the damaged ship. If they try to interfere with the rescue, I’m going to perforate their hull.”

  “It may come to that,” said Bree. “Lets drop down a bit and make sure they know we’re here.”

  “They’d be awful blind not to,” said Zen. He did a quick check on Hawk Two; its systems were all in the green and the computer had it in Trail Two, one of the preset flight patterns programmed into the Flighthawk’s onboard systems. To save communications bandwidth, a number of routine flight operations and patterns were carried aboard the robot, allowing it to perform basic functions without being told precisely what to do. In Trail Two, it homed in on the mother ship, staying precisely three miles off the V-shaped tail, varying its altitude and position as it flew, pretty much the way a “real” pilot would.

  “Uh-oh. Got another sub surfacing,” said Chris as the Megafortress spiraled down toward the ocean. “Five miles beyond the cruise ship.”

  “On it,” said Zen, jumping into Hawk Two as the Megafortress changed course to get a look.

  In the few minutes it took to get in range, the submarine was already fully surfaced. Its conning tower was longer than the first sub’s, shaped like a rounded dagger with the knifepoint facing backward. Otherwise, the sub itself seemed to be roughly the same shape and size as the Kilo.

  “Not in our library,” said Chris. “We’ll want to route video on this to Dreamland.”

  Zen had the Flighthawk down to two thousand feet. Tipping the wing gently, he cruised around the submarine, trying to go as slow and steady as possible. There were no markings on it, let along a flag, but he felt sure this was what they’d been sent to find—the Indian hunter-killer that was blowing Chinese ships.

  “Zen, they think it’s a modified Kilo,” said Chris Ferris. “But the conning tower looks like an Akula, which is a nuke boat. They’re real interested in this; it’s off their maps.”

  Zen nudged lower for another pass. They’d just scored a major intelligence coup, but Zen wasn’t particularly impressed.

  “What’s the Kilo doing?” Zen asked.

  “Moving toward the wreckage,” answered Ferris. “Still on the surface. Think they’ll spit at each other?”

  “I wouldn’t mind that,” said Zen. “As long as they don’t interfere with the rescue.”

  “Collins, see if you can hail them.”

  “Trying to communicate with them now,” said Collins. “Nobody’s acknowledging. Wait, here we go.”

  Collins switched off for a few moments, then came back on the interphone to explain he had spoken to the captain of the cruise ship, who said he would do nothing to endanger his passengers or crew. He’d asked if the Americans would guarantee their safety.

  “Tell the captain we’ll do what we can,” Bree said.

  “He doesn’t seem to think that’s good enough,” he reported back. “He’s holding off. I gotta think the others are going to do the same, Captain.”

  The sitrep showed Collins was correct: the surface vessels were no longer moving toward the debris field.

  “We have a pair of Sukhois inbound,” warned Chris. “Coming at us at zero-ten, one hundred miles away, about five hundred knots.”

  “Air-to-surface radars active,” said Torbin. “Two more planes behind them.”

  “I confirm,” said Chris.

  “I can jam,” said Torbin.

  “Hold on till they’re in firing range,” said Breanna. “I’ll make the call then. In the meantime, let’s see what Dreamland thinks.”

  “Gotcha, Cap.”

  Zen turned Hawk One back toward the floating debris field. As the sun slipped steadily downward, a storm front approached, and while this was a warm part of the ocean (near the surface, the water temperature was roughly thirty degrees Celsius or eighty-six degree Fahrenheit), it would feel cold if you stayed in it long enough. No way the people clinging to the tops of the container ships and the debris in the water were going to make it through the night. They had to be rescued now.

  “Orders remain to take no hostile action,” Breanna reported.

  “Okay, but how do we get these guys to close in and pick up the survivors?” said Zen.

  “Working on it, Jeff,” she told him.

  “If we can get the
subs to take their dispute outside, we can probably reassure the civilians,” said Chris. “Maybe get them to move this catfight to the south.”

  “You want to try suggesting that to them?”

  “I can give it a whack,” said the copilot. About a minute later, he came back over the interphone to announce no one had answered his broadcasts.

  “Well, let’s show these jokers we’re serious,” said Bree. “Zen, I’m going to take it down low and buzz both of them, all right?”

  “Hawk Leader.”

  “Chris, keep track of the Sukhois. Open bay doors.”

  “Open bay doors?”

  “I want them to think we’re prepared to fire. We’re going to two thousand feet—no, one thousand. I want them to count the rivets.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  It was a serious calculated risk—at one thousand feet the Megafortress would be easy picking for a shoulder-launched SAM. On the other hand, the move was sure to get their attention. Collins began broadcasting an all-channels message, telling the submarines to stand off while the surface ships made the rescue.

  “How are those Sukhois?” asked Bree as she dipped her wings toward the waves.

  “Five minutes to firing range,” said Chris.

  “Keep an eye on them,” said Bree. “Hang with me, Flighthawks.”

  Zen rolled Hawk One just ahead of the big Megafortress as she pulled level. He tightened Hawk Two on Quicksilver’s tail; if one of the subs did fire a heat-seeker, he hoped to be close enough to help suck it off.

  The video on Hawk Two caught one of the crewmen aboard the first Kilo covering his head as Breanna came over. The others had thrown themselves to the deck. The second submarine had started to change course south when they reached it.

  “Maybe they got the message,” said Collins.

  “They’re broadcasting?” Bree asked.