End Game

by Dale Brown

  The figure waved. It had to be Boston, he decided, and reached down to his pants leg to take out the flashlight. He gave a quick flick of light to help the man find his way over, then pulled off his helmet.

  “Boston?”

  “Yo, Cap,” said the sergeant, grabbing onto the side of the pod. “Had a little trouble. The stabilizer raft didn’t inflate right, and I guess I blew the lid too soon.”

  “Where’s your helmet?”

  “Bottom of the sea. Lost the laughing gas too. Got my dive gear and weapons, though.” Boston hauled the waterproof sacks up to Danny.

  “All right. Let me see where our submarine is,” Danny said, pulling his helmet back on.

  Aboard the Abner Read,

  in the northern Arabian Sea

  0555

  STARSHIP STAYED IN AN ORBIT BETWEEN THE SHARKBOAT AND his last sighting of the submarines.

  “Werewolf, the Dreamland team is in the water,” said Eyes. “Approach the area and give them cover.”

  “Copy that. I see them. Do you have a location on the submarine?”

  “Dreamland Fisher is still working on that.”

  Starship sped forward. He saw a dark smudge in the water at about a mile. Thinking it was the Dreamland Whiplash team, he started to slow down, then realized it was one of the commandos’ empty rafts. Tracking north, he found a small missilelike raft nose down in the water—one of the manpods.

  “Werewolf has Whiplash manpod in sight,” he told Eyes.

  “I’m switching you over to the commander of Sharkboat One. You have a direct line on your channel two.”

  Starship gave the commander the GPS coordinates for the manpod. One man clung to the side and the other was in the tiny vessel.

  “Stand by for the location of the submarines, via Dreamland Fisher commander,” said Eyes, breaking in.

  Northern Arabian Sea

  0558

  THE GLOBAL POSITIONING CUE IN THE SMART HELMET INDICATED that the submarine was four hundred yards almost directly south. It appeared to have stopped moving, drifting less than twelve feet below the surface.

  “Quarter mile,” Danny told Boston. “Just below the surface. Probably trying to lay low until things quiet down. Let’s paddle as close we can. We’ll skip the laughing gas, do everything else like we drew it up.”

  Boston moved to the back of the raft and began kicking. Danny picked up a paddle. The wind was gentle, but it was in his face, and it took quite an effort to reach the spot where the submarine was. Finally, Danny grabbed the waterproof packs from the inside of the manpod and gave one to Boston. He traded the smart helmet for a dive mask with a light and breather, and pulled on flippers.

  “Ready?”

  “If you say so,” replied Boston.

  Danny took out his survival radio and held it to his face. “Whiplash to Werewolf and Sharkboat. We’re ready to go below.”

  “Sharkboat is fifteen minutes away,” replied the boat’s captain.

  “Great. We’ll meet you on the surface.”

  “Whiplash, you got a fighter coming at you out of the north. He’s at low altitude and slow.”

  “Roger that. We’re in the water,” said Danny, tossing the radio behind him and slipping over the side.

  The water was much darker than he had imagined it could be. Even with the light, he couldn’t see more than a few feet away.

  Just when he thought he’d swum right by the sub, he spotted a black shadow looming a few yards to his right. A strong kick took him to the side of the vessel. He looked back and saw Boston’s light approaching.

  Fearing that any noise outside the submarine might alert the people inside, he stayed off the hull, swimming above the deck to locate the emergency blow device. The sub expert had warned that the device might have been removed, but the door covering it was exactly where he’d seen it on the diagram. He reached gingerly to the panel, running his fingers around it. There were two latches. He slipped them to the sides and pried the panel upward. The large red lever sat inside, exactly as in the brochure advertising the civilian version of the submarine’s safety features.

  Not ready to activate the system, Danny turned and worked his way to the rear of the vessel, looking for the stern planes. Resembling a pair of airplane wings, the planes helped hold the vessel at the proper angle in the water; blowing them would make the submarine bob forward, further disorienting the passengers and making it harder for them to get away if something went wrong. He placed the small packs of explosive, then waited for Boston to put his on the propeller shaft. They pressed the timer buttons almost simultaneously. Then Danny swam back to the rescue device while Boston went to see if there were forward fins.

  CAPTAIN SATTARI LISTENED AS THE CREAKS AND TREMORS OF the great ocean rippled through the submarine, the sounds magnified by fear as much as acoustics.

  If Allah permitted, they would stay here all day until the sun set. Then they could surface and repair whatever had caused the engine to fail. If unsuccessful, they would board the raft and head to shore.

  It was possible. It would be done.

  Sattari heard a loud clunk above him, so close it sounded as if someone had kicked the submarine.

  “There may be patrol vessels searching for us,” said the Parvaneh’s commander. “We should be prepared to scuttle.”

  Even as Sattari nodded, he found himself hoping it wouldn’t come to that. He wanted to stand before his father and tell him of his great victory.

  THE HANDLE REFUSED TO BUDGE. DANNY PUT HIS FEET AS gingerly as he could on the deck of the submarine and pushed, but still couldn’t get it to turn.

  Boston swam up next to him and pointed at his watch. The charges were set to go off in another sixty seconds.

  Danny motioned to him to get near the hatchway, located inside the low-slung conning tower, so he would be ready to throw the grenades inside when the sub surfaced. Glancing at the timer on his watch—forty-eight seconds—he balled his hand into a fist, measuring his aim. As he did, he saw a long plastic knob next to the handle. It looked like a screwdriver, but turned out to be a release for the handle.

  Before he could try the handle again, the charges exploded. Small as they were, they rocked the submarine upward. Danny jammed his hand against the lever as the top of the sub smacked him into his face mask. He felt himself propelled upward, as if he were sitting on an underwater volcano. He lost his grip on the handle but grabbed the device door, holding on as the submarine surfaced with a roar.

  Aboard the Wisconsin,

  over India

  0610

  THERE WERE TIMES WHEN FLYING THE EB-52 WAS LIKE BEING the engineer on a high-speed train riding on a dedicated rail, with relatively few decisions to make and a predictable program ahead of you.

  This wasn’t one of those times.

  Dog was being tracked by no less than six different missile batteries. He tried to zigzag between them and still stay on course.

  “SA-12s to the right, SA-10s to the left,” said Jazz. “Pick your poison.”

  “Tens,” said Dog.

  “Flap Lid radar,” said the copilot, telling Dog that the SA-10’s engagement radar had locked onto them. “Breaking. I’m using every ECM we’ve got, Colonel.”

  They were roughly seventy miles from the missile site, just outside its maximum reach. But their course was going to take them down to thirty miles from the battery.

  “SA-12s are launching!” shouted Jazz. “I don’t think they have a lock.”

  Dog immediately changed his course, dodging back to the north, closer to the SA-12 battery—if they were going to fire at him anyway, there was no sense getting too close to the SA-10s.

  The Russian SA-12—known to its makers as the S-300V—was a versatile missile that came in two different versions, depending on its primary use. The SA-12A—code-named Gladiator by NATO—was a low-to-high altitude missile that could reach targets up to fifteen and a half miles in the sky, with a range of just over forty-five miles. The B vers
ion was optimized as an antiballistic missile missile, with a higher altitude and longer range. Both missiles were incredibly fast, in the league of the American Patriot, which could hit Mach 5.

  “He’s coming for us, Colonel. Forty miles.”

  They had less than a minute to dodge the missile. Dog shoved the Megafortress hard to his left, trying to beam the Grill Pan missile radar.

  “Still coming.”

  “ECMs,” Dog told Jazz.

  “I’m playing every song I know.”

  “Chaff. Hang on, tight.” Dog veered down, trying to stay at a right angle to the radar and get the missile to bite on the tinsel.

  “We’re clear! We’re clear!” said Jazz.

  The missile’s warhead exploded a few thousand feet above them, two miles away. Dog kept the Megafortress level as he tried to sort out where he was relative to his original course. He’d strayed farther south than he wanted; as soon as he corrected, Jazz called out a fresh warning.

  “We’re spiked! More SA-12s. The whole battery, looks like. This time they have a lock.”

  Northern Arabian Sea

  0612

  THE PARVANEH SUBMARINE SHOOK WITH THE SHARP THUD OF multiple explosions. Captain Sattari ripped the seat belt from around his waist and grabbed his AK-47 from the floor. He started to run toward the ladder to the deck above—the charges for the explosives that were sealed in the vessel’s hull were set off from the panel there.

  After his third step he heard a loud roar, the sound of an old-fashioned locomotive letting off steam. Then he flew forward, knocked off his feet by the submarine’s sudden and unexpected rise toward the surface.

  DANNY WAS THROWN OFF THE SIDE AS THE SUBMARINE POPPED up. His foot grabbed in the side rail and he slammed against the hull, caught on the deck. He pushed himself back toward the conning tower, half swimming, half stumbling, in the direction of Boston, who was already at the hatch. The submarine twisted, whirling as the waves frothed and steamed. Danny lurched to his knees and slid into Boston’s back just as the sergeant dropped his tear gas canisters down into the vessel. Catching his balance, Danny gripped the edge of the conning tower. He tossed off his knapsack and unzipped the outer and then the inner skins, exposing the CQWS shotgun.

  The close-quarters weapon—developed by Dreamland’s weapons lab, the letters stood for Close Quarters Whiplash Shotgun—looked like a Pancor jackhammer shotgun that had been sawed off just fore of the trigger. It held twelve rounds of plastic pellet-filled shells, designed to incapacitate but not kill a person. The shells were expelled with enough force to knock down a 250-pound man.

  Danny grabbed the gun and leapt down into the submarine. He saw only smoke in front of him, but immediately fired two rounds. Something fell at his feet—a man. Danny sidestepped him, then raised his gun as something moved a few feet away. He fired point-blank and it went down.

  Boston was right behind him. Danny pushed through the thick haze, still using his dive pack to breathe. The submarine had an aisle down the middle, with a seat to each side. He saw a station with a wheel at the front, a shadow moving next to it. He put two shells into the shadow.

  Someone grabbed at his side. A sharp elbow got rid of his assailant, but as he brought his gun up, a bullet ricocheted nearby. Before Danny could react, he felt a burning sensation in his calf. He fired toward the front of the submarine, heard another bullet, and found himself falling.

  Aboard the Wisconsin,

  over India

  0613

  DOG VEERED TO THE SOUTH AS SOON AS JAZZ GAVE HIM THE warning about the SA-12s. The Megafortress groaned with the strain, pulling nearly eight g’s. Engines at max power, he pushed his nose down, increasing his speed.

  “Colonel—you’re heading straight for the SA-10 site.”

  “Turn off the ECMs.”

  “Colonel?”

  “Jazz.”

  “ECMs off. Clam Shell acquisition ra—They have us! They have us! They’re launching—two, four missiles.”

  Three behind them, four in their face. Dog continued on a beeline for the Indian site that had launched the SA-10s for another twenty seconds.

  “Give it everything you got, Jazz,” he said. “Chaff, ECMs, the kitchen sink. Crew—stand by, this one’s going to be close.”

  THOUGH THE FLIGHTHAWK WAS SEVERAL TIMES MORE MANEUVERABLE than the EB-52, Mack had trouble keeping Hawk One close to the Wisconsin as she jinked and jived toward the ground, rolling on her wing and then heading almost straight down. It wouldn’t have been half bad if he hadn’t actually been in the plane—the hard maneuvers while he was flying in a different direction threatened to tear his head from his body. His stomach felt like it was where his legs should be, and the g forces tried to jerk his arms out of their sockets.

  One of the Indian missiles was beelining for the Flighthawk. That wasn’t a bad idea, he thought—intercept the missile before it hit the Megafortress. But the telephone-pole-sized weapon flew by him at the last second.

  DOG POWERED THE MEGAFORTRESS INTO A DIVE. HE GLANCED at the sitrep, then back at the windscreen.

  “SA-12s are following—no, he’s off—he’s going for the SA-10,” shouted Jazz.

  “Hang with me, son.”

  Confused by the jamming gear and the apparent disappearance of their target, the two sets of missiles quickly found alternatives—each other. None managed to complete an exact interception, but when the first missile detonated, the others quickly followed suit.

  The plane shuddered, and the computer warned that it was “exceeding normal flying parameters”—a polite way of asking if the pilot had lost his mind. Dog struggled through an uncontrolled invert; with the computer’s help he leveled off at fifteen thousand feet.

  They were beyond the missile batteries.

  “You did it, Colonel. They cooked each other. We’re past them.”

  “We got a ways to go yet, Jazz,” said Dog, hunting for the heading to the launch area.

  Northern Arabian Sea

  0614

  DANNY LANDED ON A BODY AS BULLETS FLEW BY. HE SAW someone rising behind him. Thinking it was Boston, he hesitated for a moment, then saw the silhouette of a pistol in the man’s hand. He fired two rounds from his shotgun point-blank at the shadow’s head.

  Someone grabbed him by the throat. Choking, he pointed the shotgun backward and fired once, twice, three times before the hand finally let go. He jumped up, firing two more times at the prone body.

  Boston loomed behind him, waving his hand. They’d subdued everyone aboard the submarine.

  Breathing heavily, they began trussing the men with plastic handcuffs and grabbing any guns they could find. Danny’s leg screamed with pain. He stumbled over the bodies in the aisle, then found his way to the ladder, clambering topside. He crawled out onto the deck of the submarine and pulled down his mask and breathing gear, hyperventilating in the fresh air.

  “Sharkboat dead ahead!” said Boston, coming up behind him.

  The low-slung patrol craft was less than fifty yards away. Danny dug in his equipment belt for the flare they were supposed to use to tell them the submarine’s crew had been subdued; by the time he found it, three sailors were already aboard.

  “Hey, Captain Whiplash!” yelled one of the Navy men, who’d worked with Danny before.

  “About time you got here,” said Boston. “Put your damn gas masks on—place is a mess down there.”

  SATTARI FELT HIMSELF BEING LIFTED AND CARRIED UPWARD. He was going to Paradise, his battle done.

  He sailed through a narrow tunnel, flooded with light.

  Was his wife waiting for him?

  His head slapped hard against the ground. Water splashed over him—he was wet—he was alive.

  The submarine had been attacked. There had been gas and explosions, men…

  Someone shouted nearby. The words were foreign—English.

  Americans!

  When he tried to move his hands, he found they were bound in front of him.

  They
would not take him alive. Sattari pushed over the side, diving into the water.

  “HEY, ONE’S JUMPING IN THE WATER!”

  Danny turned in time to see a pair of legs crashing through the waves. Without thinking, he dove forward off the submarine, stroking for the man. His leg throbbed as he tried to kick; it went limp on him, stunned, as if anesthetized—except it still hurt like hell. He saw the man surfacing a few feet away and lunged for him. He grabbed the man’s back, pulling him to the left; the man jerked away and fell back under the waves.

  SATTARI’S LUNGS SCREAMED FOR AIR BUT HE IGNORED them, pushing himself downward. He would cheat his enemies of this.

  The man who’d followed him grabbed him by the left arm. Sattari shoved him aside. He opened his mouth, trying to swallow the sea.

  He saw the man’s eyes in front of his face, wide and white. Sattari threw his hands forward and found the man’s neck.

  “You’re coming with me,” Sattari told him.

  BEFORE DANNY COULD REACT, THE HANDS TIGHTENED AROUND his neck. Dragged down, he tried to kick but couldn’t. He began punching the other man, but the man didn’t let go. Both of them continued to sink.

  I’m going to die here, he thought.

  Danny flailed desperately, poking and punching and kicking, forcing his injured leg to move, using every ounce of energy in his body to push off his attacker. His lungs were bursting, his nose and mouth starting to suck seawater.

  Suddenly, the hands slipped away. Danny threw himself up toward the surface. He burst above the waves, gulped a breath, half air, half water. Coughing violently, he slipped back down, fought his way back to the air, tried to float. He gasped and coughed at the same time.

  “Here, here!” someone shouted nearby.

  Danny turned over to paddle but his arms were too tired now. His body sagged and exhaustion felt very near. He pushed once, then slipped down below the waves, happy to rest finally.

  Then he felt himself moving upward. He took a breath and coughed. He coughed until the world around him was red. When he stopped, he found himself in a small rigid-hulled craft from the Sharkboat.