Dale Brown - Dale Brown's Dreamland 04 - Piranha(and Jim DeFelice)(2003) (18 page)

 
          
“Not
sure who it is,” said Collins. “We don’t have any transmissions. I’m piping
your feed to Dreamland, but they can’t ID it either. Probably Chinese, not
Indian.”

 
          
“You
think the Chinese sank the ship?”

 
          
“Stand
by, Hawk Leader,” said Collins, undoubtedly so he could talk to Dreamland
people uninterrupted.

 
          
Zen
took two passes low and slow, but failed to pick up and identifying marks. Like
nearly all modern designs, the sub had no bow gun or surface weapons, beside
its torpedoes and mines, and seemed to be taking no hostile action. It didn’t
use its radio either; the only emissions coming from it were from a relatively
short-range surface search radar, which Torbin announced was a “Snoop Tray.”

 
          
“Checking
on his handiwork?” Zen asked.

 
          
“Can’t
tell for sure what he’s doing,” answered Torbin. “But I don’t think these guys
carry cruise missiles. Assuming he’s Chinese.”

 
          
“Thinking
is, definitely Chinese,” said Collins, coming back into the discussion.
“Container ship almost certainly got nailed by a cruise missile, so odds are this
guy’s clean. Container ship was supposedly going to Pakistan, so the
implication is that might have been a motive; that, or target practice.”

 
          
Zen
had dealt with the Chinese and their proxies before; he didn’t trust them not
to have sunk the ship.

 
          
“Ship
captains are requesting instructions,” said Ferris. “One of them got the sub on
his radar; now they’re all chattering about it.”

 
          
“Tell
them to proceed with the rescue,” snapped Breanna. “Collins, if you can figure
out what the hell radio frequency they’re using, advise the submarine to help
out or get lost!”

 
          
“We
don’t have a
precoded
message for that,” said
Collins. “Not in Chinese.”

 
          
“Do
it in English. Use every frequency you can think of—Russian and Indian as well
as Chinese. Hell, try Dutch and French too.”

 
          
“Yes,
ma’am,” said Collins.

 
          
“Sub’s
moving southward, changing course,” said Zen. He brought Hawk One down to five
hundred feet and rode the sub bow to stern. There were three or four men in the
tower; no weapons visible. Hawk One was moving too fast to get a good look at
uniforms, let alone faces, and the freeze-frame didn’t make it any clearer.
“Looks like they’re headed toward the damaged ship. If they try to interfere
with the rescue, I’m going to perforate their hull.”

 
          
“It
may come to that,” said Bree. “Let’s drop down a bit and make sure they know
we’re here.”

 
          
“They’d
be awful blind not to,” said Zen. He did a quick check on Hawk Two; its systems
were all in the green and the computer had it in Trail Two, one of the preset
flight patterns programmed into the Flighthawk’s onboard systems. To save
communications bandwidth, a number of routine flight operations and patterns
were carried aboard the robot, allowing it to perform basic functions without
being told precisely what to do. In Trail Two, it homed in on the mother ship,
staying precisely three miles off the V-shaped tail, varying its altitude and
position as it flew, pretty much the way a “real” pilot would.

 
          
“Uh-oh.
Got another sub surfacing,” said Chris as the Megafortress spiraled down toward
the ocean. “Five miles beyond the cruise ship.”

 
          
“On
it,” said Zen, jumping into Hawk Two as the Megafortress changed course to get
a look.

 
          
In
the few minutes it took to get in range, the submarine was already fully
surfaced. Its conning tower was longer than the first sub’s, shaped like a
rounded dagger with the knifepoint facing backward. Otherwise, the sub itself
seemed to be roughly the same shape and size as the Kilo.

 
          
“Not
in our library,” said Chris. “We’ll want to route video on this to Dreamland.”

 
          
Zen
had the Flighthawk down to two thousand feet. Tipping the wing gently, he
cruised around the submarine, trying to go as slow and steady as possible.
There were no markings on it, let
along
a flag, but
he felt sure this was what they’d been sent to find—the Indian hunter-killer
that was blowing Chinese ships.

 
          
“Zen,
they think it’s a modified Kilo,” said Chris Ferris. “But the conning tower
looks like an
Akula
, which is a nuke boat. They’re
real interested in this; it’s off their maps.”

 
          
Zen
nudged lower for another pass. They’d just scored a major intelligence coup,
but Zen wasn’t particularly impressed.

 
          
“What’s
the Kilo doing?” Zen asked.

 
          
“Moving
toward the wreckage,” answered Ferris. “Still on the surface. Think they’ll spit
at each other?”

 
          
“I
wouldn’t mind that,” said Zen. “As long as they don’t interfere with the
rescue.”

 
          
“Collins,
see if you can hail them.”

 
          
“Trying
to communicate with them now,” said Collins. “Nobody’s acknowledging. Wait,
here we go.”

 
          
Collins
switched off for a few moments, then came back on the interphone to explain he
had spoken to the captain of the cruise ship, who said he would do nothing to
endanger his passengers or crew. He’d asked if the Americans would guarantee
their safety.

 
          
“Tell
the captain we’ll do what we can,” Bree said.

 
          
“He
doesn’t seem to think that’s good enough,” he reported back. “He’s holding off.
I
gotta
think the others are going to do the same,
Captain.”

 
          
The
sitrep showed Collins was correct: the surface vessels were no longer moving
toward the debris field.

 
          
“We
have a pair of Sukhois inbound,” warned Chris. “Coming at us at zero-ten, one
hundred miles away, about five hundred knots.”

 
          
“Air-to-surface
radars active,” said Torbin. “Two more planes behind them.”

 
          
“I
confirm,” said Chris.

 
          
“I
can jam,” said Torbin.

 
          
“Hold
on till they’re in firing range,” said Breanna. “I’ll make the call then. In
the meantime, let’s see what Dreamland thinks.”

 
          
“Gotcha,
Cap.”

 
          
Zen
turned Hawk One back toward the floating debris field. As the sun slipped
steadily downward, a storm front approached, and while this was a warm part of
the ocean (near the surface, the water temperature was roughly thirty degrees
Celsius or eighty-six degree Fahrenheit), it would feel cold if you stayed in
it long enough. No way the people clinging to the tops of the container ships
and the debris in the water were going to make it through the night. They had
to be rescued now.

 
          
“Orders
remain to take no hostile action,” Breanna reported.

 
          
“Okay,
but how do we get these guys to close in and pick up the survivors?” said Zen.

 
          
“Working
on it, Jeff,” she told him.

 
          
“If
we can get the subs to take their dispute outside, we can probably reassure the
civilians,” said Chris. “Maybe get them to move this catfight to the south.”

 
          
“You
want to try suggesting that to them?”

 
          
“I
can give it a whack,” said the copilot. About a minute later, he came back over
the interphone to announce no one had answered his broadcasts.

 
          
“Well,
let’s show these jokers we’re serious,” said Bree. “Zen, I’m going to take it
down low and buzz both of them, all right?”

 
          
“Hawk
Leader.”

 
          
“Chris,
keep track of the Sukhois. Open bay doors.”

 
          
“Open
bay doors?”

 
          
“I
want them to think we’re prepared to fire. We’re going to two thousand feet—no,
one thousand. I want them to count the rivets.”

 
          
“Yes,
ma’am.”

 
          
It
was a serious calculated risk—at one thousand feet the Megafortress would be
easy picking for a shoulder-launched SAM. On the other hand, the move was sure
to get their attention. Collins began broadcasting an all-channels message,
telling the submarines to stand off while the surface ships made the rescue.

 
          
“How
are those Sukhois?” asked Bree as she dipped her wings toward the waves.

 
          
“Five
minutes to firing range,” said Chris.

 
          
“Keep
an eye on them,” said Bree. “Hang with me, Flighthawks.”

 
          
Zen
rolled Hawk One just ahead of the big Megafortress as she pulled level. He
tightened Hawk Two on Quicksilver’s tail; if one of the subs did fire a
heat-seeker, he hoped to be close enough to help suck it off.

 
          
The
video on Hawk Two caught one of the crewmen aboard the first Kilo covering his
head as Breanna came over. The others had thrown themselves to the deck. The
second submarine had started to change course south when they reached it.

 
          
“Maybe
they got the message,” said Collins.

 
          
“They’re
broadcasting?” Bree asked.

 
          
“Negative,”
said Collins.

 
          
“We
have communication from a Navy plane,” said Chris. “They’re en route; about two
hundred and twenty nautical miles to our south-southwest. Call name is Pegasus
202.”

 
          
“Tell
them to stand off until we know what the Sukhois are doing,” said Bree.

 
          
As
Zen edged back toward the debris field, he saw one of the freighters was once
again moving toward the survivors. A small boat was being lowered from its
side.

 
          
“Okay,
this is shaping up,” he told the others, passing along what he was seeing.
Breanna began a wide, banking track to take the Megafortress back up to a more
comfortable altitude.

 
          
“Hold
on. Somebody’s broadcasting to the civilian ships, in English,” said Collins.
“Telling them to stand off. They want them to move out of the area. It’s the
sub, that Kilo—definitely Chinese.”

 
          
“Pipe
it in,” said Bree.

 
          
The
accent made the words difficult to decipher quickly, but it was clear the speaker
did not want the civilians nearby. Breanna clicked her transmit button when he
paused, identifying her plane, then asking the speaker to do the same. There
was no answer at first, then the speaker repeated, more or less, what he had
said before, adding that the Chinese Navy had the situation under control.

 
          
“Other
sub is diving,” said Chris.

 
          
“Those
suckers are going to start shooting at each other,” Torbin warned. “Sukhois are
tracking.”

 
          
“Collins,
tell the civilian ships to move back,” said Bree. “Torbin, see if you can jam
those radars so they can’t lock—”