Dreamland: Piranha

by Dale Brown

  “Need you to cut, uh, need you at two-seventy,” said Rosen, giving Dog the turn they needed to launch their missiles. “Tracking One. Tracking Two. Okay, okay. No locks. Come on, baby.”

  Dog pushed his stick to the left, riding the big plane hard. He nosed the plane down at the same time his hand reached for the throttle bar, picking up speed for the launch. The AMRAAM-pluses sat in their launchers near the wingtips, their brains seething for the targeting data.

  “Okay—locked on Two!” said Rosen.

  “Fire.”

  “Launching. Launching. Two missiles away. Good read. Still looking for One. Still looking—can you cut twenty north—north, I need you north.”

  Dog pushed the jet hard, following his copilot’s directions. Rosen gave another correction—they were almost out of time, the missile hunkering low against the waves, accelerating. Dog slid the stick back, his body practically jumping in the ejection seat to slap the Megafortress onto the proper bearing.

  “Locked on One! Locked!”

  “Fire,” said Dog softly.

  The first Scorpion came off the wing with a thud so loud, Dog first thought there had been a malfunction, but it burst ahead a second later when the main rocket ignited, its nose rising briefly before settling down.

  The Sukhois had rolled downward and were now five miles behind the Megafortress, closing fast.

  The RWR blared.

  “Flares,” Dog told Rosen calmly. “Hang on everyone.”

  He threw the big plane onto its wing as the Chinese interceptors launched a volley of missiles. After seeing the Megafortress launch, they had incorrectly concluded it had fired on their ship.

  “Two more Sukhois,” said Rosen as Dog whipped them into a seven-G turn. “Bearrrrrrrrring—”

  Gravity slurred Rosen’s words as Dog whipped the plane back and then pushed the wing down, not merely changing direction, but dropping altitude dramatically. The Megafortress temporarily became more brick than aircraft, whipping toward the waves just barely under control. The two Russian-made heat-seekers sailed well over them; by the time they realized they’d missed their target and lit their proximity fuses, Dog had already wrestled Iowa level in the opposite direction. He was nose-on to one of the Sukhois and had he harbored any hostile intent—or a cannon in his nose—he could have waxed the Chinese pilot in a heartbeat. Instead, he merely pushed the throttle glide for more giddyyap. The Sukhoi shot below as Dog upward toward a stray bank of clouds, looking for temporary respite.

  He hadn’t quite reached cover when the RWR announced there were radar missiles in the air. Rosen cranked the ECMs. They fired off chaff, and once more began jucking and jiving in the sky. The easily confused radar missiles sailed away harmlessly.

  “Two is cooked! Splash cruise missile two,” said Rosen, somehow managed to keep track of his missile shots despite working the countermeasures.

  “Where are the Sukhois?” asked Dog.

  “Two are heading back to the carrier. Ditto the one that just launched the homers,” said Rosen, meaning the radar missiles. “Tomcats are sixty seconds away.”

  Dog hit the radio. “Dreamland Iowa to Tomcat Top Flight—do not take hostile action. Stand off.”

  “Missile three is terminal—missed, shit.” said Rosen.

  Dog ran out of clouds and tucked toward the ocean, his altitude dropping through five thousand feet. A geyser shot up in the distance.

  “Four is-is,” stuttered Rosen, eyes fixed on his targeting radar screen. “Four—yes! Grand slam! Grand slam! Got both those suckers!”

  “Relax, Captain.” Dog swung his eyes around his instruments, getting his bearings quickly. The sitrep map showed the Tomcats are within twenty-five miles. There were two Sukhois directly over the Chinese carrier Shang-Ti. A flight of four, undoubtedly from the T’ien to the north, was coming down with afterburners lit.

  “They’re looking for us,” said Rosen.

  “ECMs.”

  “I’m singing every tune I can think of,” said Rosen. The computer was jamming the Sukhois’ “Slotback” Phazotron N001 Zhuck radars, making it impossible for them to lock on the Megafortress, or anything else nearby, including the much more obvious Orion to the south.

  As Dog banked, he turned his head toward the side windscreen, looking at the sea where the missiles had originated. “Tell our Chinese friend we just saved their butts.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Delaford, you have a line on the Indian submarine?”

  “Not a specific location, but they’re definitely in range for Piranha. We’ll have tons of data on Kali now,” he added. “Very interesting.”

  “No response from the Chinese,” said Rosen. “Helos launching—looks like one of the destroyers changing course.”

  “I don’t see much sense launching Piranha now,” Dog told Delaford. “The Chinese will be throwing depth chares left and right.”

  “By the time they get near the sub, it’ll be long gone,” said Delaford. “But I concur, Colonel. At this point I’d suggest we stand off and watch.”

  Dog gave the lead Tomcat pilot a quick brief after being asked for a rundown.

  “I’d prefer we didn’t have to shoot them down,” he added.

  The Navy pilots didn’t respond.

  “You got that, commander?” Dog added.

  “Lightning Flight acknowledges transmission,” said the pilot. “With due respect, Colonel, it’s my call.”

  “Listen, Captain, at this point, we do not need to escalate. Hold your fire unless the Chinese get aggressive.”

  “Just because you have a fancy ol’ plane, doesn’t mean you’re king of the hill,” said the Tomcat jock.

  “Set the ECMs to break their missiles if they fire,” Dog told Rosen over the interphone.

  “The Chinese?”

  “The Tomcats.”

  “Yes, sir. Four helos now, coming out from the task force. Hold on here. Got some transmission.” Rosen listened a moment more, then laughed. “The Chinese are demanding we tell them were the Indian sub is.”

  “Tell ’em damned if we know. Just like that.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Verbatim.” Dog switched his radio to the shared frequency again. This time talking to the Orion pilot. They decided to hold off dropping more buoys—no sense helping the Chinese any more than they already had.

  In the background, Dog heard a transmission from one of the Tomcats pilots to another group of Navy fighters coming from the south: “Watch out for the cranky AF transport driver.”

  Dog didn’t mind being called cranky. The slur on the Megafortress was hard to take, though.

  “They’re damned lucky we’re out of Scorpions,” said Rosen, who’d flipped into the circuit just in time to hear the crack. “Show ’em cranky.”

  Dog looked to the west at the slowly approaching storm. All things considered, it was probably better they hadn’t launched Piranha; tracking it through the storm would have been difficult.

  “Can you get me a weather update?” he asked the copilot.

  “Worse and worser,” replied Rosen before proceeding to retrieve the more official version—which used a few more words to say the same thing.

  “Plot a course back for the Philippines,” Dog told him. “We’ll let the Navy guys take if from here.”

  “Sure you don’t want to shoot down one of the Tomcats before we go?” joked Rosen.

  “Very tempting, Captain,” said Dog, starting to track south.

  Aboard the trawler Gui in the South China Sea

  1715

  It happened Chen Lo Fann was staring at a map showing the respective positions of the Chinese and Indian fleets when the message came that Americans had shot down the Indian missiles before they could strike the carrier. He read the note calmly, then nodded to dismiss the messenger. He resisted the impulse to go to the radio; there would be no further details, or at least none of any import. Instead, he locked the door to his cabin, then sat cross-legged on the de
ck in front of the large map.

  It was undoubtedly the first time he had sat on the floor of a cabin since he was young man, and probably the first time he had done so when not playing dice. He could feel the ship here, and through it, the sea, the endless energy of the complicated sea.

  Perhaps the information was incorrect or incomplete. He needed more. The Dragon ship was still too far off; he had to rely on his network.

  He stared at his map, eyes blurring. The coldness of the ocean seemed to come up through the deck, though he was a good distance from the water.

  While his men gathered their information, he could only wait.

  Chapter 5

  Death in the family

  Philippines

  August 26, 1997, 0718 local

  When Jennifer Gleason finally managed to unfold herself from the jump seat on the C-17’s flight deck, her legs felt if they had been stapled together. Her stomach and throat had changed places; and even her eyes were giving her trouble. Jennifer was a veteran flier, had been in the Megafortress during combat, and survived a disabling laser hit, but this was by far the worse flight she had ever endured.

  It wasn’t just uncomfortable fold-down seat or the turbulent air. She’d spent the entire flight worried about Colonel Bastian; a vague uneasiness, indefinable. It was new to her; she’d never really had anyone to worry about before, not like this. None of her other boyfriends—the term seemed ridiculous applied to Tecumseh, who was anything but a boy—had aroused such emotions. Until Tecumseh—she hated calling him Dog—Jennifer had been organized and specific about her thoughts and emotions. Now her head fluttered back and forth, and her body hurt like hell.

  Outside, the rain had stopped; the wet leaves glistened in the morning light. The base had been taken over by the Navy—there were several large patrol aircraft parked in front of two Megafortresses, along with a pair of F/A-18’s and a blue Navy helicopter. Three or four bulldozers were revving nearby, assisting a construction crew to erect a hangar area.

  Colonel Bastian was waiting for Jennifer at the Whiplash command post. So was most of the Dreamland contingent, and a few Navy officers besides, so she had to confine her greeting to a very proper “Sir.”

  “Jennifer, we’ve been waiting for you,” said the colonel. “Or rather, your equipment.”

  She snickered at the unintended double entendre, but it went right by Dog and the others. He introduced two Navy officers as liaisons with the fleet, informing Jennifer they had clearance for Piranha.

  “If you can give us a quick timetable,” he added in his deep voice. She had trouble turning her mind back to the project, and the reason she’d come.

  “It’s straightforward. First up, we get the control gear into the planes. By tomorrow night we should have two new probes. Beyond that, there are some tests and fixes I’d like to try. Oh, and I have a fix, no, not a fix, just a tweak, on the wake detectors—I’ll put that in first. Shouldn’t take too long; it’s a software thing.”

  “So how sensitive is the passive sonar?” asked one of the Navy people.

  “Good enough to follow submarines of the Trafalgar type at twenty miles. I have the diffusion rates, all the technical data here.”

  The officer had obviously asked the question to see how much she knew, and Jennifer, not so subtly, called his bluff, reaching into her knapsack for her laptop.

  “We’ve had a few problems with the amplitude when the temperatures shifts quickly, such as when you go into a different thermal layer. We think it’s hardware, though I’ve tried two different versions of the chip circuitry and had the same results, so I’m not sure. Here—maybe you have some ideas. Look at the sines, that’s where it’s obvious.”

  She started to unfold the laptop. The intel officer had turned purple. Delaford rescued him.

  “I think for now we better just stay focused on equipping the other planes,” he said.

  Jennifer gave the other man an overly fake smile and packed the laptop away.

  “How long to install?” Zen asked.

  “Three hours per plane,” she told him. She took a long strand of hair and began twisting it, thinking. “We’re going to route the com units through the Flighthawk backup gear and use the panels for the display. We didn’t have time to actually test it, but I think it’ll work.”

  Dog wanted to grab her, just jump her right there—it was as blatant as that, raw, an overwhelming animal urge. His eyes bored into the side of her head; she hadn’t looked at him after coming in, probably because she felt the same way.

  “All right. We need a fresh weather report. Storm should almost be out of the tracking area, which will make our job easier, at least until the next one comes through. They were talking about a twenty-four-to-forty-eight-hour window, which means one full rotation. Then, the probe goes home.” Dog resisted the urge to pace—there simply wasn’t room in the small trailer. “Our Navy friends have worked on some idea about where some of targets may be located. We’re going to work with a group of P-3’s flying at a very long range on the west side of the Chinese battle group, from here over to the Vietnamese coast.”

  Dog’s hand slid across a massive area of ocean as dismissively as if it were a small parking lot.

  “If we find something or get a good hint, we launch. Quicksilver is up next. They replace us on station in six hours. Raven comes on six hours later. If there’s no launch, Quicksilver still helps the Navy with patrols, but we’ll take the next shift. Bu sometime tomorrow, or maybe the next day, Kitty Hawk should be in the patrol area and that will change things. I’m not sure exactly what the admiral had in mind at that point.”

  Dog’s lineup would mean at least twelve-hour shifts for the crews, with three or four hours prep, six hours on patrol, two or three hours to get back and debrief. No one complained—which didn’t surprise Dog in the least.

  He glanced over at Jennifer. She was looking at him, squinting ever so slightly.

  Of course she was looking at him. Everyone was.

  Dog forced himself to nod, shifted his gaze to Fentress, and nodded again. When he turned toward Breanna, he saw she was frowning.

  “Captain?” he asked her in surprise.

  “Nothing.”

  “Captail Williams will give us the latest on the Chinese and Indian forces,” Dog said, turning to the Navy officer. Williams had come from the G-2 section of Admiral Allen’s staff to facilitate intelligence sharing.

  “The storm slowed down the progress of the task forces.” He pulled out a small manila folder and handed some papers around. Dog glanced down at his and saw it was actually a cartoon rendering of the situation—on one side of the South China Sea was Donald Duck, on the other Mickey Mouse, both posturing on top of the aircraft carriers.

  “You draw this yourself?” said Zen, an obvious snicker in his voice.

  “Just keeping things in perspective,” said Williams. He dished out another version—this one a detailed sketch based on the latest reports. “Probable area of the Indian submarine is that crosshatch just to the east-southeast of the lead Chinese carrier, which is where they launched from. They haven’t found it yet, at least as far as we know. Good submarine captain—and I think we have to assume this fellow’s at the top of the heap—would use this storm to skitter around, get a new location. The Chinese don’t have an all-weather ASW capability, not from the surface anyway, their submarines may be different story, but as you can see from the diagram, they’re still at best a day away from joining the aircraft carriers. Even then, frankly, their probability of intercepting the Indian boat is not going to break double digits.”

  The Indian aircraft carrier had managed to link up with the cruisers and destroyers. If everyone steamed toward each other at flank speed, they could be firing at each other within twenty-four hours.

  “More likely, they’ll just shadowbox,” said Williams. “Plenty of opportunity for you to get information about the submarines. Yesterday’s show of force by Iowa seems to have dampened some of the
war fever; the diplomacy’s at high pitch.” Hoping to fire a diplomatic flare of his own toward the Dreamland contingent, Captain Williams added, “By the way, that’s a good name for a Megafortress. Her Navy namesake would be proud.”

  The sailor handing the chow line in the mess tent saw Danny Freah approach. “More eggs, Captain? Be your third helping.”

  “Problem with that?” said Danny lightly.

  “No, sir,” said the Navy seaman, lifting the metal cover on the serving tray. “No, sir. Good to seem someone with a healthy appetite.”

  “It’s good cooking, sailor,” said Danny, though truth was the eggs were rubbery at best. Most likely they were powdered or flash-frozen or whatever the hell they did to eggs these days. Still, he took another full helping, then went back to his table.