Dobrynyn nodded to Aziz then said quietly to Ullanov. "He's too stubborn to ask. He needs at least one starboard engine on the line, Josef."
Ullanov grunted. He was tired, his head throbbed. He didn't look forward to climbing down into the Waheed's sweltering engine room and fighting with that imbecile chief engineer again. Besides, the place reeked of vomit. The engineering gang was always seasick. Conscripted men of the desert didn't seem to adapt well to the sea, even these waters close to the Libyan coast.
Ullanov's ears still rang. Tonight had been difficult, a night exercise with live limpet mines. The dive on the wrecked freighter had gone as planned until O'Toole, that damned IRA fire-eater, had set his limpet for ten instead of thirty minutes. The thing went off, predetonating seven other mines in ripple fire. An erupting Mediterranean heaved Dobrynyn, Ullanov, and their entire eight man team off the rubber boat. Water and shrapnel rained among them. The only casualty was the dark, silent one. Rameriez, a Honduran, had an ugly red gash across his forehead. Still, he helped right the boat, scrambled in, and wordlessly tied a splotchy wet rag over the wound.
And now Ullanov had to undo a simple wingnut under the fuel filter and run his finger around a perforated basket. Both engines. Damnit! Would those idiots down there never learn such a basic job? Why did they use such cheap fuel to begin with? And what if it wasn't fuel filters? What if it were something more serious, like clogged injectors? Then they'd be in the middle of the minefield without the damned starboard engines and all their skins would be on the line.
Ullanov asked, "How about the tug?"
"Can't raise them. Radio's acting up. Static everywhere. We're on our own."
Ullanov watched the Waheed's bow wave gurgle down the port side.
"I'd go myself Josef. But Vladimir's flat on his back again and there's no one else to watch Aziz. Somebody has to do it. Go down there, show them how to clean strainers once more, and you'll be a hero before the colonel's eyes. He'll pin a medal on you just after Captain Aziz docks the Waheed without ripping out half the wharf."
Ullanov spat over the side. "OK." His voice dropped a notch. "What's with Zuleyev."
Dobrynyn dipped his head in the gloom. He didn't know how well the rest of the bridge crew understood Russian. "I don't know where he finds the stuff. He got completely plastered while we were out setting limpets. And right under the noses of these people, too. Lucky his breath doesn't smell too much. I found him while you were pulling the boat out of the water. I stuck him in Aziz's bunk and posted O'Toole outside."
"Must be some way to dry him out."
"I don't know. He just doesn't seem to care any more. He would have been a captain first rank by now. Submarines were his whole life. This shit detail is, was, his last chance. But it's probably too late. I think they'll kick him out, soon."
"It's probably our last detail, too. I wouldn't be surprised if they throw us out with him." Ullanov shook his head. "That filthy zamp deserved it. If you hadn't decked the sonofabitch, I would--"
"As I said, too late to worry about it now."
Ullanov paused. "OK. Let's take Zuleyev back to Tripoli tomorrow and lock him up."
"Where? Got any ideas?"
"How about the Uaddan Hotel? One of us can take a couple of days off. Tie him to a bed and let him sweat it out."
"Two hundred rubles a night, Josef."
Ullanov grunted. "That's true. A month's pay. Too rich for my blood, Major. You should be able to handle that."
Dobrynyn grinned. "Me?" He pointed to a ring that had materialized on Ullanov's finger three days ago. A gold filigreed "U" was set over a large black onyx. "Tanya. Right?"
Ullanov smirked. He had been dating a nineteen year old communications rating aboard the Kotel'nikov.
"How much did your weekend at the Uaddan cost, Sergeant? Did she--"
A shout reached them. Voices babbled. Aziz called over in stilted Russian, "Major Dobrynyn. The radar is off. We can't get a picture on any of our repeaters."
"What?" Dobrynyn stepped over and looked at the radar console. The PPI wasn't blank, as Aziz implied. The cursor swept around a snowy, pale green scope. No blips, no land, no targets. Nothing.
Of course! The radios were out, too! Static! Why hadn't he thought about that?
He looked up. "Captain. Is the ECM gear on?"
Aziz's darting eyes betrayed him. No, the ECM gear wasn't energized as required. He flipped switches on the bridge intercom and fired rapid Arabic interrogatives to his operations officer below. He digested the response, then said, "All radars are still off, Major. And the ECM operator reports jamming on a northerly bearing." Aziz paused, his eyes found the deck. "I would feel more comfortable if Captain Zuleyev were here."
"All right. I'll get him in a minute. He's not feeling well." Hell, yes. This is Vladimir's territory, not mine. I'm just a glorified frogman and that clown Zuleyev is dead drunk in your cabin.
Dobrynyn turned. "Sergeant!"
"Sir!"
"Clean those fuel strainers, now. And tell the team to assemble their gear and prepare to debark, fast. I think Captain Aziz will want to get back to sea as quickly as possible."
"Sir!" Ullanov ran for the ladder.
"Americans." Aziz spat. His eyes narrowed. The memory was fresh. He had lost a cousin when the U.S. Navy sank three Libyan patrol boats last month; one was a La Combattante-II class sister ship. A coastal radar site near Sidra had also been bombed out.
Dobrynyn said, "I suggest you sound action stations and douse your navigation lights, Captain."
Aziz fumbled at the button. He finally found it and pushed. A klaxon wailed, feet shuffled, dark shapes materialized around Dobrynyn and donned helmets. The forward mount unlimbered with a whine, trained back and forth and elevated her cannon.
Aziz ordered half speed. The Waheed's helmsman cursed as the boat, with more power on the port side, crabbed against the rudder.
They had just entered the minefield when the throttleman nodded at his headphones. Aziz sighed as the outboard starboard engine roared into life. The throttleman worked his lever. The engine bellowed while the helmsman coaxed the Waheed to a more precise course.
The blaring diesel masked the first explosion. Their heads snapped to the left. A brilliant flash illuminated the horizon toward Tripoli. Then another and another.
A loud "crumff" enveloped them. They felt it in their ears. Another explosion followed, much louder this time, the pressure wave was thicker.
Dobrynyn looked east toward the promontory. "Forty-four-hundred-kilo bomb. The first ones must have been eleven hundred."
The Waheed cleared the minefield, slowed and approached the wharf. More "crumffs" mixed with the sound of screaming jet engines. Bright flashes, on the horizon, surface-to-air missiles, leaped from launchers and disappeared in the haze.
Aziz ordered `all stop' and let his boat drift. His concentration on the pier broke as his eyes darted toward the east where more bombs flashed and thudded.
Dobrynyn followed his gaze. The flashes came from the direction of Colonel Qaddafi's bunker complex. "Looks like they're hitting the Azziziyah Barracks."
"No!" Aziz shouted. "They--"
"I hope they've turned off their street lights." He looked toward the wharf, fifty meters ahead. Men stood in scattered groups, their mouths agape, watching the bombing.
He said to Aziz, "Can we get word to somebody over there?" They should douse the pier lights."
"They wouldn't dare to--"
A string of bombs, five or six, Dobrynyn couldn't tell, salvoed forty meters aft, walked right abeam of them and across the pier in two seconds. The night was filled with an impossible brilliance, thunder, his lungs felt as if they had caved in. Shrieking metal, cordite, human screams. The Waheed reeled like a wounded bull to her beam ends. Aft, men wailed incredulously as they pitched into the water. Shrapnel, indescribable hot chunks, pieces of the corrugated Marine Guards building rained over the boat as she righted herself.
Dobrynyn picked himself up. He'd been thrown against the port bulwark. Shouting men were jammed against him. The decks were wet. Some was plain Mediterranean seawater. But a thick fluid oozed around a prostrate sailor.
Aziz knelt next to him, shouting in his ear.
Dobrynyn shook his head. "What?"
The man's lips moved, flames leaped above the pier and reflected off Aziz's teeth. Dobrynyn blinked, roaring still echoed in his head.
"Where is Zuleyev?" he heard.
Dobrynyn rose as another bomb string charged up the beach and fell in the motor pool. The fuel dump erupted and flung him to the deck again. Flaming tires spun high overhead. A T-54 tank turret, its one-hundred-millimeter gun obscenely bent, arced lazily skyward as the blast carried over them, bounced among hills, and washed over them again.
He lay on the deck, on his back. Coughing. His ribs. Pain, his shoulder. It grated. His lungs were filled with noxious smoke. He gasped and tried again. No oxygen.
Aziz crawled next to him again.
Dobrynyn tried to sit as a string of secondary explosions from the fuel dump enveloped them. "Let's get out of here," he shouted.
Aziz reached for Dobrynyn's collar. "Incompetent, this is--"
"What the hell are you talking about? We have to move. Do you want to get blown up too?"
The hand clawed at his shirt. Dobrynyn slid back, seeing blood running from the captain's mouth, ears, and nose.
"--all your fault. You let this happen," Aziz's voice rasped. You're afraid of the Americans."
"What the hell do you mean?" He crawled next to the captain. Aziz's hand fell. Dancing flames from the fuel dump glowed on their faces as Dobrynyn grabbed Aziz's shoulders and screamed, "We're in this as much as you are! Why do you think I..."
Aziz's eyes rolled into his head, he fell unconscious and slumped into Dobrynyn.
More fuel exploded. No! It was the ammo dump. Hot, projectilelike shrapnel surged skyward as he lowered Aziz to the deck.
"Uhhh!" He wobbled to his knees, then rose. "Josef!"
Dobrynyn stumbled aft toward the gangway. His lungs screamed for air as explosions reverberated around him. Shock waves slammed him against the pilothouse bulkhead. He pitched toward the ladder, his hands in space.
The next thing he knew, he was sprawled on the main deck amidships among a tangle of writhing, screaming men. Their eyes were wide, imploring, they looked to the skies. Dobrynyn leaned up, then pulled his legs underneath. The engine room hatch gaped seven meters aft.
Dobrynyn cast aside arms, wiggling legs. A voice roared a strange language --Farsi?-- in his ear.
The hatch.
He pressed a hand on his knee, struggled to his feet and lurched aft.
The hatch.
Even as he wobbled toward it, a pair of hands, then a shrieking head rose through the hatch. Half of the face was blown away, the man's gelatinous jaw was dislocated to one side. He screamed again and again as his hands spasmed for a grip on deck.
Dobrynyn reached for the creature. He heard a whoosh and looked up. A bomb salvo sprinted directly toward him. An incredible flash, spinning, screaming. End over end. He couldn't breathe.
Dobrynyn sweltered under an open tent. He leaned against an oil drum and looked at his watch: twelve-thirty. Dark smoke roiled above him. The news wasn't good from Tripoli either, as smoke rose from that direction, too. The sun occasionally winked through and added more heat to the still blazing fuel dump. His ribs hurt and his left arm was stiff. In order to look around the Sidi Bilal compound, he had to swivel his body.
Thirty or so corpses lay under a common tarp for later identification. The mixed nationalities had been quickly arranged side by side: North Korean, North Yemeni, South Yemeni, Pakistani, Indian, Filipino, Japanese, Italian, Guatemalan, Cuban, Irish, West and East German, Honduran, Panamanian, Iraqi, PLO, even an American.
And Russian. Captain Second Rank Vladimir Zuleyev's body had bobbed its way to the beach during the flat, calm morning. He was one of five known Soviet advisors killed in the raid. Two others were missing. The Soviets lay under the tarp, too.
And Libyan. Captain Gholam Aziz, whose ship, Waheed lay fully capsized in ten meters of water, was stretched out with twenty-one countrymen beneath a separate tarp.
Charred wreckage was cast about as if thrown by an enormous, cosmic hand: burned out trucks, two wrecked helicopters, twisted light attack vehicles, parts of metal buildings, concrete chunks, and paper. Hundreds of sheets of scattered paper.
Where the hell did all the paper come from? Dobrynyn wondered. If wars were organized with paper, this one was over, he thought dully. He prodded a sheet with his boot: It was stamped "TOP SECRET." The bold title suggested a tome on neutralizing radars at civilian airports.
He sipped a can of fruit punch, the first nutrition he'd taken since yesterday evening except for hurried gulps of water. He couldn't shake the exhaustion, and yet he knew he had to consolidate the base command and above all, make sure the perimeter was secure against another attack. His pauchy eyes swept the hills again, checking his distribution of the mobile radar units and the remaining ZSU-23-4 self-propelled air defense guns. Four of the tracked vehicles, with quad twenty-three-millimeter radar-guided cannons, had miraculously survived. Five other demolished heaps were still neatly parked side by side in a gully.
His eye caught one ZSU as it trailed dust atop a low ridge line, then slowed in a palm grove. It was quieter now, the whine and snorting of the ZSU's engine reaching him faintly as it jerked among trees. It stopped, exactly where Dobrynyn had ordered, and swung its turret out to sea. The driver switched off the engine.
Silence reigned for a moment, a gull squawked. Then an auxiliary generator coughed into life. Dust stirred once more as trucks rumbled in from Tripoli with food and medical supplies.
Finally, reluctantly, he rotated his body toward the bay. The water was incredibly flat. A smooth, viscus surface, nothing moved except for light ripples around the gunboat. Ullanov's tomb: steel, air-conditioned, modern, it used to travel at thirty-nine knots. Very different from Bilal's timeless brick and mortar tomb perched on the ridge.
The Waheed's stern protruded a meter or so above the surface. Her propellers and rudders clawed at the sky and diesel oil glistened around the hulk. An assortment of cans, life jackets, Styrofoam cups, strips of wood, a whole tree, a blackened car seat stretched over the minefield. Rainbow crystals danced off the oilslick and pierced his eyes.
Dobrynyn squinted. Still no horizon and Fata Morgana had given them two silhouettes so far. The first looked like an American frigate and all guns blazed for sixty seconds at the mirage. Dobrynyn let them shoot, it helped relieve their frustration as their rounds fell uselessly into the Mediterranean. The second time, he called a cease-fire at once.
He looked again knowing the hulk would be gone soon. Their command ship Kotel'nikov had warned the Marrobbio was on its way. It was an unexplained surge in the coastal water level near Tripoli, and would cover the Waheed for a few hours, maybe until tomorrow. Just as well, he wouldn't have a chance to pull Ullanov's body out until things quieted down in another two or three days.
Ullanov. Damnit! He'd sent Ullanov down there with all those seasick engine mechanics. They hadn't a chance. They--
Ripples.
He stood up and peered at the Waheed. Ripples, tiny ones expanded from the hulk in concentric rings. Some bounced through occasional air bubbles.
Damn! Ripples!
He yelled, grabbed two nearby men, one a naval infantry private, the other a Spetsnaz corporal, and ran for the demolished pier. They commandeered a rubber boat, jumped aboard, and paddled furiously.
It took five minutes to gain the hulk. They slipped and slid up the Waheed's crusted bottom and tied the painter to an outboard propeller shaft.
The other two knelt with Dobrynyn as he put an ear to the hull and said, "Quiet."
Something metallic thumped inside. Yes a rhythmic clangi
ng! "Someone's alive," Dobrynyn shouted. He pressed his ear to the slimy hull again and listened.
A strange, weak rhythm. A tattoo. Somewhere, he thought he recognized a cadence. He listened again. It sounded like a hammer, possibly a heavy sledge.
"Clang-clang", then, "CLANG."
The letter "U"! "Yes!"
Dobrynyn stood and thumped a "D" several times with his boot. Then he knelt again and listened. Silence. Good. Save your air, Josef.
Other boats bumped against the hulk. Men scrambled up the flat bottom and joined them. Soon, fifteen were packed around the Waheed's propellers. Most were Soviet naval infantry, but a few Libyans thumped, slipped, and cursed among them as they grabbed propeller shafts and rudders to keep their balance.
And the Marrobbio inched its way over the hulk. The group became more tightly packed as the Mediterranean made its temporary demand. Their feet sloshed as they argued over how to extract survivors trapped inside the Waheed's engineering spaces.
Dobrynyn, still on his knees, looked about frantically. All their diving gear was on the bottom with the Waheed. What else?
Yes!
He grabbed a naval lieutenant's sleeve. The man had a portable radio. The message was sent.
An excruciating twenty minutes passed before the torch arrived. The acetylene and oxygen bottles bobbed in the boat. Hoses snaked under slipping feet to the cutter's torch. The yellow-toothed demolition expert sparked the flame and knelt to the plates. His hood was up as he asked Dobrynyn, "Where?"
Double bottoms? Engine mounts? Ammo stowage? Pyrotechnic lockers? Fuel tanks? Dobrynyn had no idea what was beneath, what they would burn into. Something could explode. But their choices were limited. Only half a meter of the Waheed's transom protruded above sea level now.
He checked an area between the port propellers. A deep alley should run longitudinally between the shafts. With the heel of his boot, Dobrynyn drew an outline perhaps half a meter square. He would have liked to have a larger opening but the water was close. It lapped within a meter of the welder's Reeboks.
THE BRUTUS LIE Page 20