by Dale Brown
"But we're not here to invade. We're just trying to protect shipping in the Gulf of Aden."
"Absolutely," said Delaford. "That's what we have to remember. That and the fact that no one's going to thank us for it."
Starship turned his full attention back to the Flighthawk, circling eastward to visually check the area where the control buoy would be dropped.
Whatever the law said, and whatever the geopolitical and religious implications were, Kick had been killed by fanatics. They didn't hate Kick specifically; they hated all westerners.
And Starship hated them.
* * *
Storm's voice exploded in Dog's ear as soon as he opened the circuit to the Abner Read. "You went over my head!"
"I didn't go over your head, Captain. I informed the White House that we had a serious diplomatic situation. I need to relocate my people before things get uglier."
"You went over my head! You instigated an incident—" "Look, Storm, I don't particularly like you, and it's clear you don't like me. But neither I nor my people instigated anything in Saudi Arabia. There was clearly a well-thought-out plot to provoke a riot at the entrance to the base. I reported the incident to Washington as commander of Dreamland—not as part of the Whiplash team working under your command."
"Stop the legal bullshit, Bastian. The fact is, you talked to the White House without talking to me."
"Actually, Storm, I did try to talk to you. You wouldn't pick up the phone. Check with your communications officer."
"I'm warning you, Bastian. Play by my rules."
Dog checked his course on the navigation screen. They had to drop below three thousand feet to drop the buoy as configured, and they were still above the cloud cover at 25,000 feet.
"Are you there, Bastian?"
"I am here, Captain. As a matter of fact, I'm just double-checking where here is."
"Is that supposed to be a joke?" "Not that I know of."
"Colonel, we have a surface contact coming out of the coast near Karin, about fifty miles due south of us," said Dish, who was operating the surface radar aboard the Wisconsin. "Thing is, I don't have that marked as a major port, and this is a pretty big ship. Nothing in the database about a tanker or anything either."
"Run that by Commander Delaford and see what he thinks about it," said Dog. "Ask him if it's worth jogging down in that direction for a look-see."
"Bastian?"
Dog clicked his talk button. "Yes?" "You're to move your operation to Diego Garcia as soon as possible. Note I said possible, not convenient." Gee thanks, thought Dog.
"We'll be there in twenty-four hours, if not sooner," said
Dog.
"When are you rendezvousing with my ship?" "It'll take us a few hours to get the probe close enough to get overhead."
"Make it here as quickly as you can." "Aye aye, Captain."
Khamis Mushait Air Base
2130
With things outside the gate quiet for the moment, Danny Freah decided to do two things he'd been putting off since arriving in Saudi Arabia: call his wife, and take a shower.
He did the latter first, scalding the desert sand out of his pores. By the time he got out he felt like a lobster — but a relaxed one. He got dressed and returned to the Dreamland Command trailer. After checking to make sure that nothing had changed outside — it hadn't — he put through the call, trying her university office first.
"Dr. Freah."
"Hi, Doc. I was wondering if you could cure my sore throat," said Danny. It was an old joke between them — her Ph.D. was in black studies.
"Well, hello, stranger. Where have you been?"
"You'd be surprised."
"No, I wouldn't. Have you talked to Rosenstein?"
"I'm fine, how are you?"
"Don't duck the question."
"I haven't had a chance," said Danny.
"There's a party at the Guggenheim Museum two weeks from today that would be fantastic for you to attend," said Jemma Freah. "All the important people are going to be there. It's a cocktail party, mixing art with politics. A lot of bucks. Definitely a good place to press the flesh."
Politics was the last thing Danny wanted to talk about. He leaned back in the chair, stretching his legs under the console carefully to avoid the stack of black boxes controlling the communications functions.
"How are you, Jem?"
"Fine, but I have a class in two minutes. Can you make that party?"
Danny had no way of knowing how long the present deployment was going to last. It was conceivable that, if the Dreamland team moved to Diego Garcia, he'd be able to go home for a few days, maybe even an entire week, around Thanksgiving — Diego Garcia not only had its own security, it was at least arguably more secure than any base in the Continental United States because of its location. But about the last place in the world he wanted to even think about being was a political cocktail party.
Would he ever feel differently?
If not, then why run for office?
"I don't know what I'll be doing then," said Danny.
"Why not?"
"You know I can't go into details, Jem." "Yeah, well, look, I have to go to class. Send me an e-mail."
"Good idea," he said, though he really didn't have anything to say. In fact, he wondered why he'd bothered to call
at all.
Aboard the Wisconsin,
over the Gulf of Aden
2135
Starship brought the Flighthawk south, dropping through two thousand feet as he approached the lumbering ship. There were two much smaller vessels moving in its wake, twenty-foot open boats. The infrared camera in the nose of the Flighthawk painted the ship a ghostly green in the display; the angle seemed odd — the bow looked as if it poked up out of the ocean. Starship thought there was something wrong with the camera or viewer, and hit the diagnostic section for a self-test.
The test showed no problem. The ship looked to Starship like an old oil tanker; it carried crates or something lashed to the deck.
"What do you have there?" asked Delaford.
"I don't know. I'm getting some distortion from my infrared viewer. Bow's kind of out of whack. I'm switching to the low light. Pretty dark, though."
"Looks like an old amphibious vessel," said Delaford. "See how the bow sweeps up?"
"Yeah."
"It's not in our database," said Delaford. "Can you get closer?"
"I can just about land on his deck if you want."
Starship tucked the Flighthawk into a roll, knifing down through one thousand feet. He continued to accelerate as he dropped toward the water. As the altimeter ladder ramped down through five hundred, he started to level off, getting a high g warning as he pushed the robot plane into an extremely sharp turn to take it over the ship. He leaned forward against his restraints, pushing the robot toward her limits. For the first time on the deployment, and for one of the first times since he had started flying the U/MFs, he felt as if he were on board the tiny aircraft. He sensed the rush of gravity as he bent the wings to complete his turn. The aircraft took over 9 g's; he could feel his body reacting, tensing and leaning against the forces the Flighthawk was encountering.
This is what Zen means, he thought to himself. This is what it's supposed to feel like.
"There used to be some sort of gun at the rear deck — at the forward area too," said Delaford, somewhere far behind him.
Starship poured on the dinosaurs, accelerating back toward the Megafortress. He was still low, barely a hundred feet over the waves. He began another turn, banking much more gently, lining up for a run over the bow area for another angle.
Delaford was talking over the interphone, telling him about the ship: "The Somalians had a large Russian vessel that was designed as an amphibious ship. It was supposed to be used to transport tanks and equipment. Hasn't been used in at least five years. This is probably it, patched up to be used as a freighter, or more likely being taken to a salvage operation. Stolen, maybe."
"One more pass, low and slow," he said aloud. He nudged his throttle back and took a breath, reminding himself to stay in control. He could feel his pulse thumping in his throat.
Get too excited and you lose it. That was Kick's saying, wasn't it? You with me, Kick? Get too excited and you lose it.
Yeah.
Starship exhaled very slowly as he took the Flighthawk into a turn, trying to stay calm. But just as he reached the far point of the turn, the computer warned that he was at the far end of his control range.
"Three seconds to disconnect," it said in his ear.
"Colonel, I need you to come east."
"It's unnecessary, Lieutenant. Get back to the Wisconsin'"
"I just need one more pass."
"Back to the Wisconsin'" said Dog.
Starship opened his mouth to argue, then realized it was a moot point — the computer was counting down to disconnect on his screen. Reluctantly, he pulled it back toward its mothership.
"My bet would be it's on its way to the scrap heap," said Delaford, examining the video scans of the ship again. "A lot of metal."
"What about the crates on deck?"
"Possibly more junk inside them," said Delaford. "Or else like I said, someone's trying to use it to bring cargo back and forth. I kind of doubt that but you never know out here. People can be very resourceful."
"Maybe they're going to invade someplace."
"These warlords have enough trouble keeping control of their little spits of land," said Delaford.
Starship reached for the steel coffee mug, draining the last bit of coffee. Flying circles around the sky for hours on end was bad enough, but doing it on such little sleep was sheer torture. He had some caffeine pills he could take — as well as stronger medicine if absolutely necessary — but he preferred to hold them in reserve.
"Hawk One, we have two ships approaching from the north," said Dog. He gave him a heading and a GPS location about sixty-five miles ahead of the Megafortress.
"On my way, Colonel," replied Starship. He nudged the Flighthawk's control stick forward, descending gradually toward the two ships.
"Big one in front looks like an oiler," said Delaford as he got close, "the sort of ship that carries diesel fuel for others."
"Like a tanker?"
"More like a floating gas station. There are a few of these ships that were used by navies in the past, mostly the Russians, and then were sold off and used with very little conversion as transports. Database is working on it."
The computer needed twenty points of reference to identify a ship and compare it to the database for identification. The points could range from size measurements to mast and stack configurations.
An ID flashed on the screen as Starship's Flighthawk closed to within two miles:
Dubna class, oil
"Database is comparing it to a Finnish-built ship used by the Russians," explained Delaford. "Carries a couple thousand tons of bunker oil and about the same of light diesel,
some other supplies. I have it in the registry — it's a Turkish ship, looks like it was bought from Ukraine two years ago."
"What's the other one?" asked Starship.
Before Delaford could answer, the computer gave its opinion:
Bushra class patrol boat Oman Nav
"That's incredibly far from home. Couple of hundred miles," said Delaford.
"Maybe they're protecting them from the pirates." "Maybe."
* * *
Dog looked at the low-light video as it played in the panel on the Megafortress's "dashboard."
"The Oman ship doesn't look particularly hostile," he told Delaford.
"Granted," said the lieutenant commander. "But there are a couple of things out of place. There's an Exocet missile launcher on the deck behind the smokestack. You can see it in the view of the starboard side. That's not standard equipment on those boats. Oman does have Exocets, but they're usually on their Dhofar missile boats, which are a little newer. There's also an antiair battery, a missile system on the forward deck."
"Doesn't add up to pirates," said Dog. "So they've updated the ship, so what? It might be protecting the other ship."
"Very possibly. Or perhaps pirates have taken over the Oman ship and have used it to capture the oiler. It's filled with fuel. It can fuel other ships at sea, or at least bring fuel supplies to ports."
"But most of the patrol boats don't use the heavy fuel it has."
"Good point," said Delaford. "I'm not saying I know what's going on. Quite the opposite."
"All right. Let's try hailing them and find out what they're up to," said Dog. He turned to his copilot. "McNamara, ID us as a Navy flight on a routine patrol. See if you can hail the Oman ship."
"On it, Colonel."
"How's your fuel, Starship?"
"Going to need to tank in about twenty minutes," said Starship.
"Get some close-ups of both of those ships," said Dog. "Then we'll set up for a refuel." "Roger that."
"Not acknowledging us," said McNamara. "Try the oiler." "Yes, sir."
"Delaford, the Oman ship isn't talking to us," said Dog. "Anything except the obvious occur to you?"
"No."
"Radar," said McNamara. The copilot was warning Dog that the Oman ship had just turned on an antiaircraft radar. "Shouldn't be able to see us at this range. Not sure about the Flighthawk as it goes over, but they don't have a lock at the moment."
* * *
Starship pushed the UM/F toward the Oman vessel, accelerating for a quick fly-by.
"People moving on the deck of the second boat," he told Dog. "Up near the, uh, front, the bow, near the gun."
If they were fanatics, killers, he could erase them with a squeeze of his trigger. They deserved it — murderers. They'd
killed Kick.
Would that bring him back? Of course not. Would it feel good?
Not really. Not in the way he wanted it to. "What should I do, Colonel?"
"Just stand by," said Dog. "Let me talk to my friend, Captain Gale."
Aboard the Abner Read,
Gulf of Aden
2150
Storm pressed the button on the communication control, connecting through the satellite phone.
"What is it, Bastian?"
"Hold on, sir," said a voice he didn't recognize. Bastian came on a second later.
"We have something that you may be interested in, Storm," he said. "Some sort of tanker being trailed by a gunboat that's supposed to belong to Oman. We're not sure if it's an escort or if it's joined the pirates."
"Hail them."
"We've tried that. No answer from either ship. I'm going to patch you over to Commander Delaford," said Dog. "He can fill you in on what the ships look like and what he thinks they may be up to. I'll stand by. Using the satellite phone to connect isn't working very well, Storm. Your voice blanks in and out."
"And what do you propose instead?"
"As I tried to tell you earlier, we have mobile communications units that will let you tie into the Dreamland network. If you work with me instead of against me, we might actually get something done."
"I'm getting plenty done, Bastian. Put Delaford on."
The line descended into static for so long that Storm was about to call in his communications expert to get the Dreamland people back when Delaford came on.
"Storm, we have a gunboat out of Oman trailing what looks to be an old oiler converted for use as a civilian tanker," Delaford explained. "It's an Al Bushra, a large patrol boat originally built by France. They've mounted Exocets on it."
"Exocets?"
"Absolutely. I can't tell whether they've taken them off one of their missile boats or what, but they're definitely there."
"He's pretty far from where he b
elongs," said Storm. He hadn't encountered any Oman ships during their patrol; they usually stayed close to port, where the government could keep a close watch on them.
"He's escorting an oiler that's been converted to civilian use as a tanker," said Delaford. "We have the oiler in the database registered to a Cameroon company. It took on fuel in Turkey and does a regular route, mostly bunker oil, over to the East African coast, sometimes to Asia. Never to Oman."
"And they're not answering radio calls?"
"No. They're headed in the direction of Somalia, though they're in international waters. It looks weird, but there's no proof of anything."
"You sure Bastian's not making this up?"
There was a pause. "I'm sorry, Captain, we have a bum connection I think. I'm not sure what you said."
"You're sure this is for real?" said Storm.
"It's real. I'm looking at a video of it now."
"All right. It's definitely worth checking into."
Storm looked at the holographic display. The two ships were over two hundred nautical miles to the southwest. It would take six hours, at least, to get there. But the addition of an Oman ship to the pirate fleet would be a major development.
Eyes looked at him expectantly. Storm put up his forefinger, signaling that he would explain in a moment.
"It'll take us several hours to get out there," Storm told Delaford. "Do you think the Dreamland people can track him until then?"
"With their eyes closed."
"Give me Bastian."
"I'm here," said Bastian.
Just like him to eavesdrop, thought Storm. "Trail the ship. See where it goes. We're going to come east and board them."
"I can do that, but I may have to put the Piranha into sleep mode," said the Air Force flier.
"What does that mean?"
"I'm uncomfortable discussing it in detail," said Dog. "The satellite line is encrypted."
"I'm still uncomfortable talking about details of the system. You're going to have to take my word for it."