Dreamland: Piranha

by Dale Brown

  Aboard Iowa, over the South China Sea

  1800

  Once the Chinese planes turned back, Dog pushed the Megafortress south, tracking ahead of the submarines to a point about seventy-five miles away from the carrier’s air screen. Dog began running a figure-eight at two thousand feet, then ducked lower to drop the transponder buoy. It settled under the waves and began transmitting perfectly from its wire net. Delaford made sure he had the probe on the new channel, then sank the first buoy.

  We’re looking good,” said Delaford as Iowa climbed back up through five thousand feet. “Buoy is gone. We have our two contacts now at fifteen miles, still moving at thirty-one knots now. Interestingly, the two subs are sticking pretty close together,” he added.

  “Why is that interesting?” said Rosen, listening in. Delaford gave a short lecture in submarine tactics. It began fairly basically—splitting up made it more difficult for the two submarines to be followed—and progressed into a discussion of the wolf packs used by the Germans during World War II. Delaford had a theory the two subs might be talking to each other somehow, though there was no indication of that from Piranha. He had interesting ideas on short-range acoustical and light-wave systems that sounded more like science fiction than doable technology, even to Dog. His chatter, though, helped relieve some of the boredom of the routine; Dog’s job now consisted primarily of lying the same figure-eight pattern again, and again, and again, holding a steady course while Piranha did its thing.

  Meanwhile, the submarines continued on a beeline for the position of the Chinese carriers. The Iowa began plotting the next buoy drop, deciding how close they would get to the Chinese task force.

  As Dog found the coordinates for the next launch, a communication came in from PacCom, restricted for Dog.

  “What the hell is going on up there?” said Admiral Woods, flashing onto the small video screen in front of the pilot’s console. The computer automatically restricted the communication to his headset.

  “We’re deployed Piranha and are tracking two Chinese submarines. I’m told they’re making good time—thirty-two knots.”

  “The MiGs.”

  “The F-8’s? They played cowboy and Indian for a while, then went home. We reported that.”

  “Your orders were to steer clear of all Chinese aircraft.”

  “Admiral, I think you’re being a little picky,” said Dog. “The fighters came out and met us. We took no action against them. What would you have me do?”

  “I would have you follow orders.”

  “With all due respect, sir,” said Dog, who felt anything but respect was due, “I think you’re just looking for things to criticize. I can’t seem to tie my shoes without you objecting.”

  “My people don’t talk that way to me, Colonel.”

  “Maybe they should.”

  “You want to go toe-to-toe with me, fine.”

  “Admiral, really. What’s the problem here?”

  “You’re used to running the show, Tecumseh. I understand, but you’re under my command now.”

  Dog stared at the screen. Woods stared back.

  “Well?” said the admiral finally.

  “I was following my orders as best as I knew how. That’s all I can say.”

  “I’m sending a patrol plane to help track those submarines,” answered Woods.

  “I don’t see that as necessary, Admiral. We’re tracking sufficiently.”

  The line snapped clear before Dog could finish.

  An atoll in the South China Sea

  1800

  Danny’s brain split in half, one playing an endless track of sorrow, the other stepping back calmly, decisively, peering at the scene from above. The second half realized—belatedly—the area near the cottage had been thickly laid with mines and booby traps.

  “Stay where you are. Everybody!” the calm half yelled. “Stay!” He pointed at Stoner, who’d impulsively taken a step toward Powder. Liu, who’d been about ten or twelve feet away when Powder got hit, lay slumped over on the ground, moaning.

  Get Liu out, then decide what to do.

  Danny flipped the shield on his helmet back down. Any metal in the area ought to be a little warmer than the rest of ground, and metal might translate into mines or trip wires—he pushed the IR sensor, went to maximum sensitivity, and began scanning slowly.

  Nothing.

  God damn, screamed the other half of his brain. God, God damn.

  Try again, said the other half. He readjusted the setting, took a long breath, then moved his helmet slowly.

  He could see rocks, or something like rocks. Flipping back and forth from IR to optical, he realized there were some rocks that had a triangular shape at the bottom. These were mines, or attached to mines.

  Liu, twenty yards away, curled between two of them. Danny continued to scan. There were two other mines behind where Powder had been blown up.

  There were more mines over to his left. And a row of mines directly in front of him; another step and he would have blown himself up.

  Powder had saved him.

  He had a pretty straight path to Liu on his right, assuming he wasn’t missing any of the mines.

  Danny lowered himself to his knees, the pulled his knife out of its scabbard. He began crawl-walking slowly, examining the area in front of him as carefully as he could. It couldn’t have taken him more than two minutes to reach the sergeant, but they stretched out forever. Liu turned toward him as he came forward.

  “Don’t move,” Danny told him. He pointed near Liu’s head. “There’s a mine right there.”

  “Helicopter,” said Liu, suggesting he be pulled out from above.

  “Yeah, but I’m afraid of the rotor wash and we don’t know if there are any timers,” Danny explained. “We can do this. Just relax.”

  “I got nicked in the arm and in the leg,” said Liu. “I think I’m okay.”

  “Just hang there a minute,” Danny said. he bent over the first mine, sliding around it. Until he started to move sideways, his balance had been perfect, but now he started to lose it; he tottered forward toward the trigger of the explosives. With a quick jerk, he changed his momentum. His leg slipped and he fell backward.

  He’d missed the mine by a good measure, but still he expected an explosion. When it didn’t come, he started to laugh uncontrollably. The spasms shook his body, emptying it not only of tension but of doubt. Sure of himself now, Danny got back up and made his way to Liu, scooping him into his arms.

  “Powder?” asked the sergeant.

  “No,” said Danny. He’d left a good trail and it was easy to take Liu back. He paused and got his bearings before moving, made sure the area to the south was clear. Once he started, he moved quickly.

  “You okay, Captain?” said Bison when he reached him. The trooper had inflated a stretcher.

  “Get him out,” Danny said. “Get the mine detector on the Osprey down here too.”

  “Inbound,” said Bison. The MV-22 was just approaching the dogleg part of the atoll.

  “All right. Get him back ASAP. Just go,” Danny said.

  “I’m okay,” Liu protested.

  “Go.” Danny returned to the spot where he’d retrieved Liu, then began moving down toward Stoner.

  “You got a mine detector in that helmet?” Stoner asked.

  “I got infrared.”

  “That works?”

  “Seems to,” said Danny.

  “This ain’t worth getting blown up.”

  “Now you fuckin’ tell me that,” said Danny. “There’s a wire over there. I can’t tell what it’s attached to.”

  “You see it?”

  “Not well,” Danny admitted. “Temperature in metal’s a little different than the sand. I got it on maximum. Problem is, there’s rocks on top of some of those mines, or they’re set up in the same. Pretty clever. I’m doing okay so far.”

  “Yeah,” said Stoner.

  “Yeah.” Danny was now ten yards from the CIA officer. Part of Powd
er’s leg lay directly to his right. “How the hell did they work around these mines?”

  “Maybe they weren’t armed. Get attacked, they hit the radio and turn it on,” suggested Stoner.

  “Yeah,” said Danny, working closer. Eve though the way looked clear, his paranoia felt overwhelming.

  “Protecting something.”

  “I think that was a long-wave-communication device out by the shore they blew up,” said Stoner. “Looked like big fishing poles? Use it to communicate with submarines.”

  “So this was an Indian post?”

  “Guys looked Chinese to me.”

  The Osprey, already loaded with Liu, buzzed low over the water and headed out, its large rotors whipping it toward its top speed of 425 knots, twice as fast as any helicopter in the world.

  “He gonna be okay?” Stoner asked.

  “He said he would. He’s just about a doctor, so he’s probably right,” said Danny as he reached Stoner. “Now we go back the way we came,” he told him. “Easy.”

  “Yeah.”

  “My footsteps.”

  “I’m right behind you.”

  Bison had started toward them with his gear, moving very slowly and marking the mines with reed-thin flags. It was as if he were laying out an odd golf course.

  “They must’ve had some pretty high-tech stuff here,” said Stoner as they walked. “They sure as shit fought to protect it.”

  “Yeah, they did.”

  “That hump down by the water didn’t blow completely. Was probably a radar.”

  “Yeah,” said Danny.

  “Look at it once the mines are clear.”

  “After we secure my sergeant’s body, yes.”

  Aboard Quicksilver, over the South China Sea

  2002

  “We’re ready,” said Jennifer. “We should have it.”

  Zen stared at the screen. “Nothing. Didn’t work, Jen.”

  “All right, hold on.”

  Zen pushed back in the seat. The sim program included a short-handoff module, but it wasn’t much of a workout—on the program, the screen appeared and you went.

  No screen, no go.

  “All right, let’s try again,” said Jennifer.

  Zen’s main screen turned green. White axis lines dissected it into four quadrants. Two white blobs sat in the upper quarter, percolating like tiny Alka-Selzer tablets.

  “Hey, got radar feed,” said Zen.

  “Sonar!” corrected Jennifer.

  “Yeah, sorry. Got it. Okay, this is the synthetic thermal feed?”

  “Right.”

  “Looks like I’m flying in soup. Except for the grid, there’s no reference.”

  “You’re swimming, not flying.”

  “Whatever. Running diagnostic set. You out there, Delaford?”

  “I’m watching everything you do,” said the Navy commander from Iowa, which was orbiting the ocean a short distance away.

  Zen’s Flighthawk controls had been replaced by two oversized keyboards and a control stick large, but considerably less flexible, than the Flighthawks’. While Piranha’s full range of commands could be entered through the keyboards, Zen’s interest—and training—was confined to a very small subset, which could be handled by preset buttons carefully marked with tape. He could flip between a view synthesized from either passive sonar or temperature-deviant sensors. The computer automatically processed the contact data, displaying a small amount of its information in captions beneath each of the white synthesized images on his main screen; more information on each could be called up on the auxiliary screen. His speed controls were also worked by dedicated keys on the left board.

  “How are you looking over there, Quicksilver?” asked Delaford.

  “Uh, well, the sea is kind of a brownish green,” said Zen.

  Delaford laughed. “I can tell you how to change the colors if you want.”

  “I’m just fine,” Zen told him.

  “All right. Those two white blobs are our submarines. We’re twelve miles behind the closest one. This is as close as we want to get. They’re oblivious to us. All their attention is ahead. Pretty soon they’ll be turning around,” added Delaford. “They’ll pull a quick spin in the water to make sure there’s no one behind them.”

  “What do I do then?”

  “Just stop. Their active sonar can’t see us beyond roughly five miles, if that. Truth is, we could probably get right on their hulls and they’d never know we were there.”

  “Okay.”

  “Temperature sensors are not nearly as sensitive. Here, look at the screen.”

  Delarod fed in the display. It took Zen a second to realize the orange funnels in the milky greenish-brown field were the target subs.

  “Very obvious what sensor you’re looking at,” noted Delaford.

  “Clever.”

  Delaford ran through some of the routine, then repeated things Zen had already heard from one of the Navy briefers as well as Jennifer. Zen felt a little like a high school backup quarterback being crammed with information on the sideline after the star went down. Best things to do, he thought, was just get into the game and work it out on his own.

  “Okay, so eventually these guys split up. It’s not going to matter who you go with, but once you do, you have to stay with him. Just make sure the other sub doesn’t come back around and try and sniff you out,” said Delaford.

  “I thought they couldn’t see me.”

  “Hear you. Probably, they won’t.”

  “Probably?”

  “If we could sneak past an American destroyer, I wouldn’t worry about a Chinese sub,” said Delaford. “On the other hand, that’s kind of why we’re here, to figure out what they can do.”

  “All right, I’m ready.”

  “I would go with the sub that heads west,” said Delaford. “That’s the one that will be likely to be closest to the Indian ships, so if they’re going to do anything fancy, that’s the one that’ll do it. We want to see if they lay mines, fire torpedoes, that sort of thing. Be an intelligence bonanza, as long as you don’t get in the way.”

  “Okay, I’m ready.”

  “When they surface, just hang back. They come up every so often to use their radio. You know the auto-destruct sequence, right?”

  “Yes, we do,” shot in Jennifer.

  “Our preference is to pick up the probe when we’re done. You can hit the home sequence. You remember?”

  “Yeah,” said Zen. “You know, I’m really ready to go. Let’s do it.”

  “All right, do a ten-degree dive for a hundred meters, then return to three hundred meters depth,” said Delaford.

  Zen pushed the joystick forward, remembering he needed to move very slowly. A bright red number appeared on the grid line as soon as he pushed on the stick to its right, what looked like a compass with an artificial horizon appeared, showing the attitude of Piranha’s nose. The depth climber—or rather, dropped—through 310 quickly, but the attitude of the probe barely budged. It was like flying in thick honey. Or swimming in thick honey—Zen had trouble conceptualizing what he was doing.

  “Good enough,” said Delaford as he hit the mark, then brought the probe back. “Every movement is very gentle. Very Zen-like, Zen.”

  “Ha-ha,” said Zen.

  “So when do I get to fly the Flighthawks?”

  They ran through a few more maneuvers and the detection modes. Delaford then transferred complete control and watched over Zen’s shoulder for a while.

  “We’ve got great data so far,” the Navy commander told them. “What we get from here out is just icing on the cake. Anything you find out—how deep they go, weapons—it’s all icing on the cake.”

  “Chocolate or vanilla?” asked Jennifer.

  Delaford laughed, then signed off.

  Dog’s brief to Breanna was simple and quick, filling her in on the position of the Chinese, where they’d dropped Piranha’s com buoys, and their encounter with the fighters. There were some civilian commercia
l vessels at the far eastern end of the patrol sector, heading south but obviously trying to avoid the Chinese fleet. They also counted three Taiwanese spy ships in the search range. Breanna already had the tanker tracks and contact info, and there wasn’t much to say about the weather forecast, which was still predicting clear skies for thirty-six hours or so.