Dangerous Grounds

by Don Keith

  The relentless trail headed up, ever up. Kincaid and Luna ran on, their breathing like two charging bulls, not even trying to be quiet. The druggies almost certainly knew they were being followed. Kincaid and his crew only needed to be aware of any possible ambush.

  Kincaid finally stopped and knelt beside the trail. He felt the tracks and smelled the broken brush.

  “Not more than an hour,” he said. “We’ll catch them before dawn if they don’t stop and try to fight in the meantime.”

  In a single smooth motion he rose and ran on. Luna shook his head.

  One thing was for certain. Before dawn, someone was going to die.

  Roger Sindhlan was barely coherent, his body wracked by fear and complete exhaustion. Racing through the high mountains, the hostage of a bunch of fanatical mercenaries wasn’t something typically on the agenda of a botanist. And this was hardly comparable to his daily jog at the faculty club back home.

  “Ellen, you okay?” he whispered. “I have a real bad feeling about all this.”

  “What?” Ellen Ward asked. “You said if we went along with these people, we’d be alright. That they were only using us to shield them until they got out.”

  Sindhlan reached out and grasped her hand.

  “I know what I said. And I thought I was right. I’m not so sure now.”

  Something screeched in the night, farther down the mountain. It sounded like a cry of unbelievable pain. That or an alarmed animal. Ellen Ward started. Sindhlan put his arm around her protectively, pulling her close.

  “The Montengards are very nervous,” he whispered. “Someone is following us and closing in. They will force the hand of these people and I’m afraid they see us as baggage by now. We are of little use to them. We have to make our move.”

  Ellen Ward shivered. This was something her husband would do. Not her. She was a botany professor. A mother. The chairperson of the submarine officers’ wives Christmas toy drive. Not some Navy SEAL charging through the jungle, going hand-to-hand with a bunch of very vicious people who held little regard for human life.

  And besides, there was a bunch of tired, frightened students for which needed a mother hen.

  “Okay. What do you want me to do?” she said, unsure and suddenly more frightened than she had ever been in her life. She tried to imagine what Jon would want her to do, what he would expect of her.

  “I’ll create a diversion,” Sindhlan said firmly. “You take the kids and run back the way we came. Don’t stop for anything. I don’t care what you hear back this way, you keep running until you get to whoever is following us. They are after these guys so they have to be better friends to us than these bastards are. You understand what I’m saying, Ellen? Keep running, no matter what.”

  Ellen Ward nodded and slowly rose. It was only a few steps back down the steep trail to where the students sat, slumped together in an exhausted, shivering bunch. It only took a few seconds to rouse them and explain to them what was about to happen. Mercifully, the guards paid the motley group of worn out, passive prisoners little heed. They seemed more worried about the bunch that was coming after them, about the inevitable fight.

  Roger Sindhlan moved with uncharacteristic speed. He stood quickly, dived at the nearest guard and snatched his AK-47. Before the man knew what was happening, the botanist pointed the weapon at him, pulled the trigger and knocked the warrior down with a burst of fire.

  “Now!” he screamed, and sprayed machine gun fire all around the small area before the other men could pick up their weapons and shoot back.

  Ellen Ward pushed her brood down the path, sending them running as if their lives hung in the balance. In seconds she was beyond the ring of surprised Montengards and charging headlong down the almost invisible mountain pathway they had just climbed.

  The firing above them continued in short, vicious bursts, but she forced herself not to look back. Or to think about what might be happening up there.

  She and her students ran, slipping, sliding, grabbing at limbs to keep from falling head first down the mountainside.

  Still, somehow, in the midst of her wild flight, Ellen Ward managed to whisper a very sincere prayer.

  Roger Sindhlan fought with a strength he never suspected he possessed. His first burst cut down the guard from whom he had grabbed the weapon. The next took out two more of his cohorts.

  Instinctively, he dove behind the biggest tree he could see and fired off another burst in the general direction of where the other men had been gathered. Another guard fell, screaming, clutching his belly.

  Dawn was a glimmer on the horizon, bathing the area in a peaceful, golden glow. It lent just enough light so Sindhlan could see if any of the remaining Montengards broke the cover to which they had scurried.

  But it also gave enough light for Sun Rey to view the sudden, unexpected problem. He slipped off the trail and made his way down and around the rocky ridge until he was ten meters behind where Sindhlan crouched behind the tree. From there, Sun Rey took careful aim and squeezed off a three-shot burst. He watched as the slugs stitched a bloody pattern across the botanist’s sweat-stained back.

  Incredibly, the man rose, turned, and sent a long torrent of fire toward where Sun Rey stood, half-hidden by the foliage. A second full auto-burst from Sun Rey’s AK-47 sent Sindhlan stumbling backward hard against the tree, then to his knees.

  The botanist finally dropped his rifle, and slumped forward.

  “ Run Ellen!” he cried. “Run, my love, run.”

  39

  President Adolphus Brown slammed the phone down so hard it almost jumped off the big mahogany desk.

  “Damn Arabs,” he muttered. “The Crown Prince had the effrontery to hang up on me. His advisors have convinced him the bomb was Israeli.”

  He walked around the conference table and sat down heavily. Deep lines furrowed his brow. Heavy, dark bags under his eyes told of forty-eight straight hours spent trying to stop a full-scale war from erupting in the Mid East.

  “Dr. Kinnowitz, what’s the latest intel?” the President demanded, his voice cracking with exhaustion as he fished for something positive. “And please bring us some good news for a change.”

  The National Security Advisor looked up from the laptop computer where he was typing away. He shook his head ever so slightly.

  Kinnowitz pushed a couple of keys so that his laptop was projected on the situation room’s flat panel screen. The Mid East map was covered with broad arrows, color-coded for different armies on the move. The attack on Mecca had brought old enemies together, centuries of hatred forgotten in the common cause. The Egyptian army, combined with Libya, Tunisia, and the rest of North Africa, stood poised with almost a million men and five thousand front line tanks in the Sinai. Iran was airlifting units into Jordan and Syria. Even Turkey had units on the move.

  “I’m afraid everyone is arming. The only Arab nation that has stopped mobilizing is Dubai, and they don’t have an army. Of course, they may well raise one by dark, if this thing goes on.” He deliberately moved the pointer down to the Negev Desert. “Satellite imagery shows that the Israelis have put their nuclear forces on war alert. We’re at the edge, looking down into the abyss, Mr. President.”

  President Brown shook his head.

  “I guess you can’t blame them. Everyone has to worry about national survival. But it’s like 1914 all over again. We’re on a runaway train and it looks for all the world like it can’t be stopped.”

  “At least no one has launched a pre-emptive strike,” Kinnowitz noted. “There might still be hope.” He swung the pointer over to the Indian-Pakistani border. “India has mobilized her armed forces. Most of her navy has sortied or will in the next forty-eight hours. And combat air forces are forward deployed to their wartime fields. Pakistan has reciprocated, but neither side has moved any major forces toward the border yet.”

  “Thank God for small favors,” the president snorted while his security advisor took a deep breath and flashed a data slide up on the
screen.

  “Isotopic analysis is back from the Mecca bomb. It positively correlates to a Soviet type warhead, an old one. Identical to the type that Bill Beaman found on that freighter. The Indians have a team of physicists going over that one now. Maybe that corroboration will help our cause.”

  Brown looked over at the Secretary of State.

  “Set up a deal so that Pakistan gets some of their best people in on this, too. I don’t care whose arm you have to twist, or really what you have to promise, but make that happen. Maybe having a Moslem physicist verifying the source of the bomb might help convince the Arabs.” The president stroked his chin for a moment. “Oh, and go ahead and leak the intel from our source in North Korea.”

  Dr Kinnowitz stared hard over the tops of his reading glasses as he vigorously objected.

  “But Mr. President, there isn’t any way we can do that without revealing the source. We’ll lose a very valuable asset, and the DPRK won’t play nice with him when they catch him.”

  Brown shook his head slowly. His voice was heavy as he spoke.

  “I’m afraid there isn’t any other way. We’re trading one spy to stop a major war. A sacrifice has to be made. Kim Jae-uk’s security forces will have him in custody within hours of the information hitting the streets. We know that the Arabs have very good sources within the DPRK. They’ll have positive verification of the plot shortly after our man gets picked up.”

  The president didn’t have to say that the “positive verification” would come from the DPRK’s brutal torture methods. The spy would die after a very great deal of pain. Everyone in the room knew it.

  President Brown leaned back in his big chair.

  “Now, for the other problem. Would somebody tell me where the hell our submarine is?”

  Corpus Christi moved silently to the north. Even with all the technology and capability the U.S. Seventh Fleet had brought to bear to hunt her down, the nuclear submarine moved like a black wraith through the depths, undetected by any of that fancy, expensive gear. No one had managed to find any hint of her in over three days. The expanding search circle was now mammoth, with a radius of over two thousand nautical miles.

  Jim Ward had spent the last two days in a near catatonic stupor. He had gone into shock after witnessing the awful execution of Neil Campbell. Now he sat silently at a table on the mess decks, staring at the after bulkhead, not speaking to any of his shipmates. He couldn’t eat. He had not slept. All he could manage was to sit there and relive the terrible event in his mind.

  Master Chief DiAnaggio walked into the mess decks and eased down beside young Ward.

  “Son, you need to get hold of yourself,” the Master Chief growled, his Baltimore Italian accent even thicker than usual. “Ain’t no use in you feeling sorry for yourself. You ain’t the one that died.”

  Ward responded with only the slightest of shrugs.

  “Look, they’s people here dependin’ on you,” DiAnaggio continued, his tone gradually getting more accusatory. “How do you expect to lead sailors if you sit here and pout the first time something bad happens? You think these young kids are going to look up to a crybaby?”

  Jim Ward’s face glowed red. He suddenly pounded his fist onto the table.

  “You heartless son of a bitch!” he screamed. “Those bastards murdered him. They just cut him down like he was a steer at slaughter or something. And you’re telling me to forget him!”

  Quick as lightening, Ward swung around and went for DiAnaggio’s throat. As quick as Jim Ward was, DiAnaggio was faster, a veteran of more than his share of bar fights. He caught the each of the young midshipman’s clawing hands in his own massive paws and held him powerless.

  The terrorist guard jumped up from his seat across the mess decks, drawing his pistol as he rushed across the tiny space to see what was going on.

  Suddenly, Ward collapsed in tears. DiAnaggio hugged the young man to his chest and let him cry out his anguish. The guard only stood there with a cruel smile on his face, watching the odd scene play out.

  Slowly, Jim Ward calmed down. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and mumbled something that sounded like, “Thanks.”

  DiAnaggio’s face broke into what might be considered a wry smile.

  “You just needed someone to kick your ass a little.” The guard lost interest and went back to his food. The Master Chief’s voice dropped to a whisper. “We got to do something so Mister Campbell and the rest of our shipmates didn’t die for nothin’.”

  Ward quickly glanced at DiAnaggio then looked away. The guard was well out of hearing range, totally engrossed in another bowl of ice cream. The terrorists had never enjoyed such a delicacy before.

  “What you have in mind, Chief?” Ward whispered, still wiping away the tears. “We don’t stand a chance if we try to rush them or something. They’ll just mow us down.”

  “Naw, we just got to make sure somebody on the surface knows where the hell we are. Chief Suarez sound-shorted number four feed pump to the hull. You remember; that’s the one with the noisy lower radial bearing. Lieutenant Winslow is making sure that’s the pump we always have running. We need you up in control to make certain none of these terrorist bastards find out.”

  Ward nodded. “I doubt they’ll do a self-noise survey. Don’t figure any of them have the smarts.”

  “Yeah, that’s for sure,” DiAnaggio replied. “But we don’t want sonar reportin’ no new noise sources either. And when one of our boats finally picks it up, be a real good idea to turn so good old number-four pump stays turned toward them. We don’t want them guys up there to lose track of us before they can…uh…put a stop to this little sea cruise.”

  Jim Ward tried not to think about the inevitable. He winked at DiAnaggio.

  “We’ll get it done, Master Chief.”

  “Conn, Sonar.”

  The 21MC in Topeka’s control room blared, causing Lieutenant Commander Sam Witte to start. Topeka’s XO and CO were standing port and starboard Command Duty Officer watches, or “providing adult supervision,” as Sam Witte preferred to call it. He drew the 2000 to 0800 watch, the night watch. The boat’s captain, Don Chapman, who stood watch from 0800 to 2000, was tucked away in his bunk sleeping. Rank does have its privileges.

  Witte grabbed the 21MC mike and answered “Conn aye.”

  “We’re just starting to pick up a one-six-zero hertz line, real weak, minus sixteen dB. On the TB-23. Best bearing two-one-two or three-two-eight. Best classification, submerged submarine. Designate contact at two-one-two sierra eight-three; contact at three-two-eight sierra eight four.”

  The TB-23 thin line towed array could not tell which side of the array the contact was on. It dealt with symmetric beam pairs. There was no way to tell which beam of the pair really held the contact without maneuvering the submarine.

  Witte punched up the passive narrow band display on the control room repeater. Sure enough, there was the little blip, barely discernable in the background noise, really down in the grass. There wasn’t enough there to call it a sub contact yet. But it was certainly worth looking at.

  “Sonar, we’ll stay on this leg until we have a curve.” Witte turned to the Chief of the Watch and ordered, “Man battle stations silently.”

  Witte then stepped forward, out of the control room a couple of steps, and knocked once on the skipper’s door. Without waiting for acknowledgement, he stuck his head into the darkened room.

  Don Chapman was already sitting on his bunk, pulling on his poopie suit.

  “Skipper, we got a contact. Might be Corpus. We don’t know yet. Signal is real weak. Probably pretty distant. Range of the day is in excess of fifty thousand yards. I’m stationing Battle Stations.”

  Chapman stood and slipped on his shoes.

  “Thanks, XO. I heard most of it on the 21MC. One-sixty hertz line equates to a Los Angeles class. Far as I know, there are only two of us on this side of the Pacific. Let’s get a handle on where he is and then report in to SUBGROUP Seven. We can�
�t afford to lose him while we’re at periscope depth chatting, though.”

  The two men stepped back into the control room, threading their way through a dozen or so crewmembers rushing to their battle stations. By the time Chapman stepped up onto the periscope stand, the boat’s best operators manned every console in the control room.

  The first team was ready to go work. And every one of them knew what that work might inevitably involve.

  40

  Jim Ward carefully stole a quick glance at the navigation plot. If Manju Shehab even suspected what he had in mind, young Ward would be sharing a body bag in the freeze box with his fellow midshipman, Neil Campbell. Ward fought back the latest wave of nausea as his mind flashed back to the brutal murder he had witnessed.

  Five hundred miles south-southwest of Tokyo Wan. They were almost there. Surely someone had detected the noisy feed pump. Surely the Topeka or a bunch of Seventh Fleet’s Arleigh Burke-class destroyers would be moving into position to stop them.

  Everyone up there must know by now that something was horribly wrong with Corpus Christi. They would know by this time that she had not gone down. That she was under power, running directly toward Japan, not acknowledging any messages and not following routine check-in procedures. They would be smart enough to guess that the boat was under control of someone with evil intent.

  And they would know what had to be done to stop her.

  Ward shivered slightly as he quickly shifted the CCS Mk2 fire control multi-function display from the navigation display so he could look at the sonar picture before any of the terrorists saw him. Not a single contact disturbed the perfectly blank screen. If someone was out there looking for Corpus, they were certainly being damn quiet about it.

  Ward risked a glance around the control room. The place was eerily quiet. There wasn’t the least hint of the hustle and bustle normally associated with a submarine nerve center.