Acts of Vengeance

CHAPTER EIGHT PURSUIT

“Depth?” Manilov demanded.

“Ninety meters, Captain,” said the technician, his eyes riveted to the Fathometer. “Shallowing. Eighty-eight meters. Eighty-six now.”

“Slow to two knots.”

“Aye, sir.”

They were inshore, gliding over the seabed of the shallow Yemeni coastline. Manilov wanted to stay close to the bottom, hiding beneath the thermal layer that lay like a shield between the submarine and the surface above. To scrape the bottom here could damage the Mourmetz’s hull, but the greater danger was the acoustic hell it would raise on the enemy’s sonars. They would awake to the fact that a Kilo-class sub was lurking in their presence.

“One knot.”

“Aye.”

It was barely enough forward speed to keep the planes working. The Mourmetz was almost motionless and, thus, undetectable. At least that was what Manilov had to believe. He had no choice except to place his faith in the submarine’s ability to operate in nearly total silence. He knew that they still presented the tiniest of magnetic anomaly signatures, but unless the American sub hunters knew precisely where to search, there was only the remotest likelihood of being detected.

Last night had been their last opportunity to snorkel — to refresh the batteries and air. Now they would remain submerged until the conclusion of the operation. They could go for a week without snorkeling, and even longer if they went to extreme-conservation mode with the carbon dioxide scrubbers and the oxygen/hydrogen generator plant.

Such measures would be unnecessary, Manilov concluded. However the action ended, the last voyage of the Mourmetz would be over soon.

Perhaps this evening.

Darkness was coming, and with it his best opportunity to attack. Not until then would Manilov risk ascending to periscope depth. A quick look, then a decision. If he did not have a clear shot, he would drop the scope and immediately descend back below the thermal layer. If all parameters were correct, he would fire a salvo and then run.

What were their chances of escape?

He put the question out of his mind. The overwhelming magnitude of the enemy’s antisubmarine warfare capability was enough to intimidate any boat captain. What counted to Manilov was getting off the first shot. Kill the enemy. Every minute they lived after that was an unexpected blessing.

Manilov waited, checking every two minutes with the sonar passive operator. “Bearing and range, primary target?”

“Zero-four-zero, seven thousand meters, moving northeast at fifteen knots.”

Finally, sunset. Not completely dark, but it would do. Manilov didn’t want to wait any longer. Nineteen years was enough.

“Ascend to periscope depth.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Ready tubes one, two, three.”

“Tubes one, two, three loaded, ready to fire.”

The Mourmetz was carrying a load of ten elderly SET 16 torpedoes. It was all Manilov could requisition for the ferry trip to Iran. He would have been more comfortable going into battle with the normal complement of eighteen torpedoes as well as a battery of antiship missiles. The deal with the Iranian Navy included only enough armament for the Mourmetz to defend itself on the trip to Bandar Abbas.

It wouldn’t matter. Ten torpedoes were more than enough. Long before he could expend all his weapons, this battle would be over.

As the Mourmetz slowly rose toward the darkened surface, Manilov gazed around the control room. He could sense the tension hanging like electricity in the stale air. Lieutenant Commander Ilychin, the executive officer, looked like he’d stepped from a shower. Perspiration streamed over the officer’s face, dripping onto his console. Borodin, the young sonar operator, was moving his lips in some sort of prayer.

“Up scope,” Manilov ordered.

“Up scope.”

“Level… now.” The Mourmetz’s periscope was protruding a few inches above the surface. The sea was almost calm. As he expected this close inshore, ripples still washed over the glass. Because they were motionless — zero forward speed — the planes were useless and the scope was not as steady as he would like it.

He first did a complete sweep with the attack scope, taking a 360-degree look at his surroundings. Whenever a wave splashed over the glass he made himself pause and wait until it cleared again. Don’t rush, he commanded himself. The worst mistake you could make was to rush. Fear, adrenaline, the terrifying nearness of the enemy — all conspired to make you rush your shot and miss. Be calm; be deliberate.

He saw two ships, destroyers, both headed northeast away from them. Carefully working the scope he picked up what appeared to be an amphibious dock ship. Still rotating the periscope, he scanned eastward. Then to the south —

There it was! Manilov felt like shouting. Sliding into view was a silhouette, massive and foreboding. My God! He had never observed a vessel of such immensity through a periscope. Even in the gathering darkness he could make out the high, flat deck, the towering superstructure.

USS Reagan.

A wave splashed over the glass of the periscope, blurring his view. Manilov made himself wait while the image cleared. “Firing solution!”

At the MVU-110 combat information computer, the operator yelled out the data. “Primary target bears 155, range 8,640 meters, tracking 070, speed sixteen.”

“Stand by tubes one and two.”

“One and two standing by.”

After all this waiting, Yevgeny Manilov’s life had shrunk to this tiny speck in time. No past, no future. Just this moment.

He saw something. What was that? Another object, smaller, faster, directly aft of the carrier.

A destroyer?

Yes, damn it to everlasting hell, another destroyer! Pulling ahead, inserting itself between the Mourmetz and the Reagan.

Turning toward them.

He flipped the scope to aerial view and swept the sky over the ships. More trouble. A helicopter lifting from the fantail of the carrier. Swinging leftward, dipping its nose.

Coming toward them.

“Radar targeting,” called out the electronic warfare specialist. “Upper-spectrum fire control radar, same bearing and range as the primary target.”

“Down scope!”

He could still fire but it would be suicide. Even if they were lucky enough to score a hit, they would never live to see the Reagan sink.

“Descend to eighty meters, medium rate.”

“Aye, sir,” answered the engineer, his voice quavering.

“Ahead three knots.”

Not too fast. Slow and easy. Just enough to give the planes effectiveness. At less than five knots, running on the electric motors, the Kilo class was virtually noiseless. He wanted nothing more than a silent descent back to the relative safety beneath the thermal layer.

As the Mourmetz’s bow tilted down, Manilov’s mind raced through the possibilities. What had they detected? Just the tip of the periscope. A few sweeps of the radar, an imperceptible trace, then nothing. They would investigate, but if Manilov was quick and careful, they would detect nothing more.

He ordered the planesman to level the sub. The Ilia Mourmetz was running for its life.

Hurry, darkness.

B.J. ran, her heart pounding not so much from the exertion as from pure terror. Keep running, she commanded herself. Keep them behind you.

The sun was below the high ridgeline. In the dwindling light she was having trouble on the rough terrain. Twice she stumbled, once over a rock and then a low shrub, tumbling end over end. Her hands were bleeding. Her elbow ached, and her torn flight suit was flapping loose at the sleeve.

Keep running. Run out the daylight. The black of night was her only hope.

She could hear them crashing through the brush behind her. She heard them stop, bark at each other in Arabic, then come after her again. Overhead the helicopter was crisscrossing her path, losing her, picking up the trail again.

She zigzagged, taking abrupt turns, keeping to the darkened side of the hill. The light was fading, making it more difficult to keep her feet beneath her. She felt the terrain steepening. To her right, the hill dropped down into a murky gloom.

Her breath came in sharp gasps. She felt her heart pounding like a jackhammer. Her pursuers had to be locals. Mountain people. These guys spent their lives breathing thin air, navigating these rocky goat paths.

What would they do when they caught her?

You know.

The image of the F-14 crew flashed through her mind. She felt a new impetus. Run!

The chopper was above and to her left, the pilot apparently unwilling to descend into the darkness below the ridgeline. But the noises behind her seemed nearer. She could hear labored breathing, the steady clump of boots on rock, the metallic clink of weapons.

Thirty yards, she guessed. Maybe closer.

She wondered how they were catching her. Damn it, she was a marathoner, a fitness freak. She was losing the race to these goons in ratty fatigues.

It came to her. With every sharp turn she took, they were cutting across the angle, closing more distance on her. They didn’t have to see her. They could follow the sound of her clunking boots.

She picked up the pace. More than ever she wished that she had her running shoes instead of these goddamn Clydesdale hooves. Her lungs ached. Her legs felt like rubber.

She fought back the panic rising in her. Being hunted by terrorists wasn’t mentioned when she had signed up to be a naval aviator. Why had she thought being a fighter pilot was a great adventure? She would gladly change roles with any briefcase-toting woman professional in America. Let someone else run from these assholes.

Too late, girl. She reached down with her right hand and checked the Beretta. Still there.

Soon, within minutes, she would have to confront them. She could surrender, hope they let her live.

Or shoot it out. Try to kill them, all three —

She tripped.

Something — she never saw it, a stone or a branch — caught her toe, sending her headlong down the slope. She felt herself hurtling through space.

Whump. She hit on her side, rolling with the fall, airborne again.

She landed on her shoulder, ricocheting off the steeply sloping terrain.

End over end, glancing off the earth. Into space again. Tumbling, hitting something hard and gritty, hurting like hell, falling.

Then nothing. No pain, no falling, no awareness. Just the blackness.

In the flag plot compartment aboard the Reagan, one of the admiral’s four phones jangled — the direct line from the duty officer in CIC.

“Fletcher.”

“Admiral, the SPY-one radar operator on the Arkansas just reported a disappearing contact bearing 340 degrees, five miles. That puts it only two or three miles offshore.”

“Disappearing? What kind of contact?”

“Two sweeps, he said, and it was gone. Their computer gave it a thirty percent probability of being a sub.”

“What kind? Whose?”

“It would have to be a diesel/electric, either a Kilo or a Lada boat. In these waters it could be Iranian, maybe Libyan. Might even be Russian, but we don’t show them having any operational Kilos deployed here. We’ve got a request in to SUBLANT for a status update on all Indian Ocean and Gulf fleets.”

Fletcher considered for a moment. What would a Russian-built sub be doing in the Gulf of Aden? Nothing, probably, except being curious. “Thirty percent? What’s the other seventy?”

“The usual stuff, sir. That close inshore they get a lot of those contacts. They give every one a track number and plot it whether it’s real or not.”

Fletcher had once commanded an Aegis cruiser, and he knew about such contacts. At least one of the array of SPY-1s was tweaked to pick out the return of a barely raised periscope. The trouble was, such a vague target could be mimicked by hundreds of natural and manmade objects — small boats, divers, all kinds of flotsam. Sub hunters spent their lives chasing phantoms.

“Okay, maintain a normal screen and have the Arkansas link all their contact plots over to us.”

“Yes, sir, I’ve done that.”

Fletcher went back to his plotting chart. Third-world submarine fleets were more of a nuisance than a threat. Backward countries like Libya and Iran and Iraq bought these obsolete Russian boats; then they went looking for games to play with them. Someday, Fletcher thought, one of those ragleg sub jockeys was going to push his luck and get blown out of the water.

A dull ache. That was all, just a remote pain, like the twinge of a forgotten injury. It wasn’t even her pain, but somehow separate and detached from her body. She was someplace else, a space traveler in a dimensionless void. No gravity, no up, no down. Just this dreamy sensation, afloat in the universe.

Except there were no stars.

She thought for a moment that her eyes were still closed. No, that wasn’t it. Had she lost her sight? She didn’t think so. It was dark, dark as a thousand bungholes.

Then she tried to move. She nearly screamed as the pain seared through her legs, up through her torso, all to her arms. Everything hurt.

She wasn’t a space traveler anymore. What the hell happened?

The details came back to her in fragments, like pieces of a dark mosaic. Running from the terrorists. The helicopter. They caught her — or did they?

She fell. That was the part that didn’t come into focus. She went down the mountainside — and the rest became a blur. Was she hurt? Was she captured? Where was she?

Her legs and torso felt as though they were bound, immobile. Wherever she was, it was cold as hell.

She tried moving her right hand. It was okay. Fingers, wrist, elbow, all intact and functional. The other hand was okay too. She wiggled her toes. They all worked.

The problem was her legs. Her damned legs wouldn’t move. Why?

Like a blind person feeling in the darkness, she explored her surroundings. On either side rose a rough, gritty surface, like a rock wall. Her hips and legs seemed to be wedged between the two vertical surfaces.

In short and painful movements she managed to sit up. After an agonizing effort, she managed to draw her knees toward her. She seemed to be at the base of some sort of crevice. In the darkness she couldn’t determine how far up the walls of the crevice extended. Nor could she see in front or behind. For all she knew, she was perched at the lip of an abyss.

She was alone. That much she was sure of, and the thought made her rejoice. In the black stillness, she could hear nothing but the sound of her own breathing. When she tumbled down the mountainside, she must have dropped into this ravine. They lost her in the darkness.

They would wait until daylight, she guessed; then they would resume the search.

B.J. took an inventory. Bruises, abrasions, sprains, but nothing seemed to be broken. When she touched her head her fingers came away with a wet stickiness, which she traced to a nasty cut above her temple. Probably the blow that knocked her unconscious.

Her eyes were adapting to the darkness. She pulled out the water canteen. Still intact, thank God. Wetting her bandanna with water from the canteen, she dabbed at the wound on her head. The damp cloth on the open cut made her wince.

The signal mirror was in pieces, smashed during her tumble down the slope. Likewise the handheld GPS. When she flicked the power button, the little LCD screen remained lifeless. One of the pencil flares was broken in half.

Then she noticed the PRC-112 mobile radio. The most valuable escape-and-evasion item — and it had failed her. Why had she bothered to keep the useless device? It was deadweight. Now the radio’s hard case was cracked open. The thing must have taken a hit during her plunge down the mountain.

Okay, no GPS, no radio. So much for the high-tech magic the Navy gave pilots who were shot down. She was down to old-fashioned compass and map. Kit Carson in Indian country.

Before throwing away the useless radio, just for the hell of it, she decided to try the power button one more time.

When she poked the button, she heard something. A hissing sound.

The tiny power light on the radio was glowing red. It was working.

“This is Runner Four-one on Magic channel. Anybody home?”

Leroi Jones listened for half a minute. It was his second attempt on the SAR frequency. He had tried calling the Tomcat crew and gotten nothing. Same thing with B. J. Johnson. Nobody home. No one down there was monitoring the frequency with their PRC-112 radio.

One more time. “Tomcat Five-one,” he said, using the call sign of the F-14 crew. “Runner Four-one calling. Do you guys read me?”

Another half minute. Still nothing.

What the hell, thought Jones as he switched his primary UHF radio back to the AWACS frequency. It was worth a try.

He stifled a yawn as he squinted into the eastern sky. Even the hundred-percent oxygen flowing through his mask didn’t make up for the lack of sleep. The emerging sun was just touching the horizon, framing the rim of the Gulf of Aden.

It had been a short night. At zero-three-hundred they’d been alerted for the mission. Blackness still covered the sea when he and his wingman, Flash Gordon, catapulted from the deck of the Reagan. Twenty minutes later they were established on the CAP station, twenty thousand feet over Yemen.

Jones could hear the other flights checking in with the AWACS.

“Rover Four-one, on station.”

“Roger, Rover,” came the voice of the controller in the AWACS. “Stand by for an update.”

“Bluetail Five-one, confirm the picture for us again.”

“Picture clear, Bluetail.”

“Tomcat Four-oh is ready,” reported the F-14 with the TARP package.

“You’re cleared to enter the AOR, Tomcat. We show zero threats. You’re good to go.” AOR was for “area of responsibility,” the target area of the previous day. The Tomcat would make a high-speed photo pass, hoping to pick up traces of the missing pilots.

Jones wondered why they were bothering. A thin morning fog veiled the valleys and plateaus. Peaks and ridges were protruding through the fog blanket, giving the landscape the appearance of a Jovian moon.

Not a sign of human existence.

Jones couldn’t help thinking about B. J. Johnson. He liked her for the way she handled herself during the bad times when she was the only woman in the squadron and no one was giving her a break. Himself included, he recalled. He wished he had been a friend to her. Like the others, he had kept his distance from the alien.

Of all people, he should have known what it was like to be an alien. He was the only African-American pilot in the squadron, one of four in the entire air wing. Not a big deal in the Navy these days, but not so long ago it had been a very big deal. He knew what it was like to always have to prove yourself. To prove that you weren’t there because you were getting special treatment.

You should have been her friend.

It was too late. If B.J. was still alive, she was either hiding or captured. Jones knew in his heart there was no way that she had survived. Someone would have seen the chute. She would have made contact with the emergency UHF radio. B.J. was scattered in the earth with the debris from her Hornet.

The Tomcat crew was another matter. Both chutes had been spotted, and after the shoot-down they had made a brief transmission on the SAR frequency. Then nothing, which was a solid clue that they had been captured by the gomers. Short of an all-out invasion, there was nothing that could be done to get them back. It was in the hands of negotiators.

Yeah, B.J. was dead. But what the hell, one more shot. Just in case.

“Runner Five-two, stay with Sea Witch,” he said to Gordon, a mile abeam in combat spread. “I’m gonna try the SAR channel one more time.”

“Copy, Leroi. I’ve got Sea Witch covered.”

He keyed the mike and used B. J. Johnson’s call sign. “Yankee Two, this is Runner Four-one. Are you up?”

Silence. It filled his earphones like a stillness from the grave.

“B.J., damn it, this is Leroi. If you’re alive, answer up!”

Seconds passed. Nothing.

It was a waste of time. Useless.

He was reaching for the channel selector to return to the tactical frequency when a voice came to him, distant and weak. “I hear you, Leroi. Please don’t go away. I’m alive.”