End Game

I Test Run

The darkness had erased the line between heaven and earth, and even with his infrared glasses Captain Val Muhammad Ben Sattari had trouble finding the quartet of small aircraft as they approached the oil tanker. Built as civilian pleasure craft by a Russian company, the two-engined Sparrows were relatively quiet, their twin piston engines producing a soft hum rather than the loud drone generally associated with military aircraft. By the time the Iranian captain finally found them, the lead airplane was less than three hundred meters away, its hull planing through the water. The other three amphibious aircraft were in line behind it, ugly ducklings heading toward their rendezvous.

Four or five years ago Sattari might have looked on the tiny airplanes with amusement or even disdain. He was a fighter pilot by training and inclination, one of Iran's best— when it still had an air force, before the black robes had run it into the ground. But with his new perspective and responsibilities, he saw the value of small, simple aircraft.

Sattari tucked the glasses into their waterproof pouch inside his tac vest and pulled the brim of his campaign cap down. Much depended on the night's mission. It would test all of the components of the force he had built, putting them all in action to test their strengths, but also their weaknesses. For among the many hard lessons Captain Sattari had learned was that there were always weaknesses. Success required finding them before the enemy could.

Success also required the respect and unquestioning trust of the men who followed him. Both of which he would earn tonight.

Or die trying.

"We're ready to go, Captain," said Sergeant Ahmed Ibn, holding the captain's AK-47 out to him. The ranking noncommissioned officer of the commando unit, Ibn's skeptical sneer was as obvious and comfortable as his wet suit; with every glance he implied that at thirty-nine, the ex-fighter pilot was both too old and too soft to lead a team of young commandos.

Sattari checked the gun and slung it over his shoulder. "Let's go then."

Lieutenant Kirk "Starship" Andrews stared at the green-hued shadow near the lip of the Gulf of Aden. The shadow belonged to a boat seven miles away. It measured no more than thirty feet, with a low cabin toward the bow and a flat, probably open stern. Under other circumstances Starship might have thought it was a small fishing vessel or a pleasure boat. But no one sailed the Gulf of Aden for pleasure these days, and it was a rare fisherman who went out this late at night, let alone plied these waters near the tanker routes from the Persian Gulf.

Which meant the shadow was either a smuggler or a pirate.

Starship thought the former much more likely. He knew from experience that pirates tended to move in packs, with at least three and often as many as a dozen small boats.

"Werewolf One to Tac Command, I have the subject in sight."

"Tac. Clear to proceed." "Roger that."

Starship leaned toward the screen as he pushed his hand against the Werewolf's throttle bar. The procedure for checking out suspicious ships was straightforward: a highspeed run at low altitude, stem to stern (or vice versa), allowing the sensors aboard the Werewolf to get a good look at the target. After the first flyover the images were analyzed by specialists in Tac — officially, the Tactical Warfare Center, the nerve center of the Abner Read—who passed the information on to the tactical commander and the ship's captain, who would then tell Starship what to do next. The Abner Read was about twenty-five miles to the southeast. Depending on what Starship saw, the ship's captain would decide whether it was worth bothering to pursue.

The Werewolf was a UAV, or unmanned aerial vehicle, which Starship flew from a station in a corner of the Tac Center. Combining the agility and vertical maneuvering capability of a helicopter with some of the speed of a conventional plane, it looked something like a downsized Kamov Ka-50. It had diminutive wing-mounted jet engines and a tail to go with the two counterrotating rotors at the top. Its top speed, which Starship himself had never reached, was around 400 knots, more than a hundred knots faster than most helicopters.

The Werewolf was not a Navy aircraft, nor was Starship a sailor. Both the robot and Starship had been shanghaied from Dreamland two months before, following attacks by pirates in the Gulf of Aden. Easy to fly and versatile, the Werewolf had been pressed into service as a replacement for a Navy UAV that was at least a year behind schedule. The Dreamland craft had done such a good job that everyone from the ship's captain to the Navy secretary sang its praises.

The same could not be said for Starship. He'd gotten this gig by being the right man in the wrong place. Already an accomplished Flighthawk pilot, he had made the mistake of cross-training in the Werewolf program so he could help out as a relief pilot during the testing program, which used mostly civilian jocks. When the Werewolves were rushed into duty with Xray Pop, Starship suddenly found himself the only military officer both qualified to teach others how to fly the craft and available for temporary duty aboard the Abner Read. Originally scheduled to last two weeks, the assignment was nearly six weeks old and showed no sign of ending soon. The Navy people rode him unmercifully, then turned around and claimed he was indispensable.

As the only Air Force officer aboard the Abner Read, he would have felt out of place in any event. But he particularly disliked the ship's captain, whom in his more charitable moments he thought of as a blowhard. The tactical commander and ship's executive officer, Lt. Commander Jack "Eyes" Eisenberg, was nearly as bad.

The Abner Read was a cutting edge ship, a next-generation "littoral combat vessel," officially called a DD(L) for littoral destroyer. About the size of a corvette, it had the firepower of a destroyer but only a third of the complement. Supposedly, the officers and crew had been chosen as the most forward-thinking people in the service. Having come from Dreamland, Starship had a different perspective. And used to the much more easygoing and fluid procedures of Dreamland, he chafed at the "fussy" discipline and stringent shipboard rules.

Starship had trained two sailors to fly the robot helicopter, but the ship's captain insisted that he be at the stick during "prime time" — the hours between dusk and dawn when the pirates were most likely to strike. That meant duty from 1600 to 0700—or whatever stinking bells the Navy used to confuse landlubbers like himself. That might not have been so bad if he didn't have to oversee the maintenance and ordnance people assigned to the aircraft during the day. It wasn't their fault that they were unfamiliar with the systems — but it wasn't his fault, either, though the captain seemed to think it was.

The image in the main screen in front of Starship sharpened. There were two large crates toward the stern; this was almost certainly a smuggler, bringing anything from canned goods to weapons into the northern coast of Somalia, despite UN strictures.

"Coming up on him," Starship said. "Two crates. Uh, got, um, maybe a deckhand, only one person I see — smile for the camera, scuzzball."

"We can do without the color commentary," snapped Eyes.

Man, I am working with a bunch of old farts, Starship thought.

The Werewolf's flight station, adapted from a control unit designed to be used by soldiers near the battlefield, had one large display screen and two smaller ones, all touchscreen panels. While they could be configured in a number of ways, Starship typically left the large screen as his main view screen, displaying either infrared or daylight video from the Werewolf's nose. He usually put the system's engineering panel in the top left-hand screen, toggling it with the weapons screen when appropriate. Below that he always put a God's-eye-view map, generally referred to as a "sitrep," or situation report, map showing where he was and what was around him. The area the Werewolf flew over was rendered as a wire model, with green and red lines delineating the topography. The Werewolf was a stubby yellow double cross that, if you squinted just right, looked a little like the aircraft itself.

"Tac, we have a tanker out here," said Starship, spotting a much larger vessel ten miles beyond the suspected smuggler. "Want me to check it out?"

"Negative, Werewolf. We have him on the sonar array. One problem at a time."

Starship reached for his cup of the crankcase oil the sailors claimed was coffee. As he did, the Werewolf's flight control computer buzzed with a warning — the radar had caught sight of an aircraft approaching from the north. Before the pilot could react, the screen flashed a proximity warning — the airplane was heading at a high rate of speed on a direct vector toward him; he had thirty seconds to evade.

Starship pushed the Werewolf stick to the left, starting an easy circle away from the airplane's flight path. The computer had been programmed to be overanxious so that the Navy newbies he was training didn't fly into anything; he wasn't really in any danger of a collision. But it was curious that the other plane was flying so low. As he banked parallel to its flight path, the radar caught sight of three other airplanes, all at very low altitude and obviously following the leader.

"Tac, I have something unusual here. Four aircraft very low to the water, no running lights, no radar — can I follow them and find out what's going on?"

"Hold tight, Werewolf."

Old farts.

Captain Harold "Storm" Gale stared at the holographic display on the bridge of the Abner Read. The three-dimensional projection rose from a table behind the helmsman's station and could be used for a variety of purposes. In this case, it was taking various sensor data to render a map of the area they were patrolling. The Abner Read, in green, sat at the right-hand corner. The smuggler the Werewolf had spotted — yellow — was toward the center, with the tanker another yellow block beyond it. There were no aircraft.

"I don't see any airplanes," Storm told Eyes. "You're sure Airforce got it right?"

"He has them on his radar," said Eyes.

Storm reached to the communication control on his belt, flipping into the Werewolf circuit. The wireless communications system allowed him to talk to all of the ship's departments directly.

"Airforce, what are we looking at here?"

"Four unidentified aircraft, flying low and fast."

"What types are they?"

"Not sure. I haven't seen—" "Get closer." "Tac just told me—" "Get closer!"

Storm flipped back to Eyes. "Have Airforce find out what the aircraft are."

"What about the boat, Captain?"

"A single smuggler, no weapons visible?"

"Affirmative, Captain. He's twenty minutes away, at our present course and speed."

"Threat to the oil tanker?"

"Doesn't appear so."

"Have the Werewolf pursue the airplanes. We'll set a course for the smuggler in the meantime." "Aye aye, Captain."

The computer estimated the aircraft were moving at 280 knots. The computer calculated the lead aircraft's likely course based on the past observations — a straight line toward the eastern tip of Somalia.

"Werewolf, please close on the bandits and identify," said Eyes.

Gee, no kidding, thought Starship.

"Tac, be advised these aircraft are now out of my sensor range. It'd be helpful if you turned on your radar and gave me a hand."

"Negative. We're staying dark."

"Do we have an Orion above?" asked Starship. As the words came out of his mouth, he realized the answer was going to be negative — the radar planes had been pulled off the gulf duty two days before, sent to Europe to help in the Kosovo mess.

"We're on our own."

"Yeah, roger that. OK, I'm maneuvering to follow." Starship arced behind the planes and revved his engines to max power.

More smugglers, probably, though the fact that there were four of them was curious. He could guess that they weren't combatants; the planes were too small and slow.

Five minutes later, with the aircraft still out of sight, Star-ship asked the computer to recompute his targets' course and probable location. The computer declared that they should be five miles dead ahead. They weren't, and when five more minutes passed and he didn't fly through them, Starship told Tac the obvious.

"Looks like we lost them. They probably put the pedal to the metal as soon as they picked me up on radar."

"Repeat?"

"I believe they accelerated away. My screen is clear." "You're sure they're gone?" "Either that or I just flew through them." "Stand by, Werewolf," said Eyes, his voice dripping with venom.

"It wasn't my fault I lost them, Commander. They had a head start. If you'd allowed me to chase them when I wanted to—"

"Stand by," snapped the other man.

Starship continued southward; he was about sixty miles from Tohen, a tiny village on the northeastern tip of Somalia. Port Somalia — an oil terminal port built by the Indians and not yet fully operational — was another ten miles to the southeast.

"Airforce — what's your story?" barked Storm, coming onto the communications line. "Lost them, Captain." "Where are you?"

The captain knew precisely where he was. It wasn't a question but an accusation: Why didn't you do what I wanted you to do? Starship read off the GPS coordinates, then translated them into a rough position off Somalia.

"According to the computer, the aircraft are about a half hour from Somalia. Among the possible targets—"

"Somalia's not my problem," answered Storm. "Go back north and find that smuggler."

"Your call." "Excuse me?"

"Aye aye, Captain. Werewolf turning north."

"You're early!"

Zen shrugged as he wheeled his way across the thick rug of Dr. Michael Vasin's office. "Yeah, figured I'd get it over with."

"Tea?"

"Coffee if you have it, sure."

Vasin picked up the phone on his desk and asked his assistant to bring them some. Then he got up and walked to the nearby couch, shifting around as Zen maneuvered his wheelchair catty-corner to him. Indian by birth, the doctor spoke with a pronounced accent, even though he had been in America since college.

"And everything square with work?"

"Squared away," Zen told him. The doctor did not know the specifics of what Zen did, officially anyway. But he was friends with one of Dreamland's most important scientific researchers, Dr. Martha Geraldo, who had referred Zen to him for the experimental program. So he probably knew a little, though neither man tested the specifics of that knowledge.

Vasin's assistant came in with a tray of herbal tea, coffee, and two small cups. She was a petite, older woman, efficient at handling minutiae and thoughtful enough to ask after Zen's wife, whom she had never met. When she left, Zen found Vasin staring out the large windows behind his desk. The Vegas Strip lay in the distance.

"The desert is not a good place for gamblers," said the doctor absently.

Unsure how to respond, Zen said nothing.

"Jeff, I want you to understand, there are no guarantees with this. It may have absolutely no effect on you. Absolutely no effect. Even if regenerating nerve cells in the spine is possible, it might not work in your case for a million different reasons."

"I understand."

Vasin had already told him this many times.

"And, as we've discussed, there is always the possibility there will be side effects that we don't know about," continued the doctor.

"I read everything you gave me."

"I'm repeating myself." Vasin turned around, smiling self-deprecatingly. "I want you to understand it emotionally. There's always a possibility — unforeseen — that things could be worse."

Zen had already sat through two long lectures from Vasin and another by one of the researchers on his team outlining the potential pitfalls and dangers of the technique. He had also signed a stack of release forms.

"I'm about as aware of the dangers as I can be."

"Yes." Vasin rose. "Ready to get the ball rolling?"

"I thought you'd never ask."

Lieutenant Colonel Tecumseh "Dog" Bastian checked his altitude and location, then radioed to the event controller, who was sitting inside a highly modified Boeing RC-135, circling above at forty thousand feet.

"Dreamland Raptor to Event Command — Jerry, are we firing this missile today?"

"Event Command to Dreamland Raptor, we're still hanging on Dreamland Levitow," answered the controller, referring to the EB-52 that was to fire the target missile. "Colonel, you sound like you're anxious to get back to your paperwork."

Not at all, thought Dog, who greatly preferred his present office — the cockpit of Dreamland's experimental long-range attack version of the F-22 Raptor — to the one with his cherrywood desk twenty thousand feet below. Flying cutting-edge aircraft was undoubtedly the best part of Dreamland.

The F-22 bore only a passing resemblance to the "stock" model. Its wings had been made into long deltas; in the place of a tailfin it had a faceted quadrangle of triangles over the elongated tailpipe. The plane was twenty feet longer than the original, allowing it to accommodate an internal bomb bay that could be filled with a variety of weapons, including the one Dog was waiting to launch. The length also allowed the plane to carry considerably more fuel than a regular F-22.

"All right, Dreamland Raptor, we're proceeding," said the event controller. "Dreamland Levitow is on course. They are firing test missile one….Test missile has been launched. We are proceeding with our event."

Test missile one was an AGM-86C whose explosive warhead had been replaced with a set of instruments and a broadcasting device. Also known as an Air Launched Cruise Missile, or ALCM, the AGM-86C was the conventional version of the frontline nuclear-tipped cruise missile developed during the 1980s and placed into storage with the reorganization of the nuclear force in the early 1990s. In this case, the missile was playing the role of a nuclear weapon.

The missile in Dog's bomb bay was designed to render such weapons obsolete. The EEMWB — the letters stood for Enhanced ElectroMagnetic Warfare Bomb, but were generally pronounced together as "em-web" — created an electronic pulse that disrupted electric devices within a wide radius. Unlike the devices that had been used against power grids in Iraq during the 1992 Gulf War, the EEMWB used terahertz radiation — known as T-Rays or T Waves — to do its damage. Conventional electronic shielding did not protect against them, since until now there had been no need to. Occupying the bandwidth between infrared and microwave radiation, T-Rays were potentially devastating, yet extremely difficult to control and direct. While their potential had long been recognized, their use remained only the wishful daydream of weapons scientists and armchair generals.

Until now. The Dreamland weapons people had found a way to use carefully fabricated metal shards as antennas as the pulse was generated. Computer simulations showed they could design weapons that would fry circuitry at five hundred miles.

There were two likely applications. One was as a weapon to paralyze an enemy's electronics, a kind of super E bomb that would affect everything from power grids to wrist-watches. The other was a defense against nuclear weapons such as the one the AGM-86C simulated. The EEMWB's pulse went through the shielding in conventional nuclear weapons that protected them from "conventional" electromagnetic shocks. By wiping out the nanoswitches and all other control gear in the weapons, the EEMWB prevented the weapon from going off.

It was possible to shield devices against the T-Rays— both Dreamland Raptor and Dreamland Levitow were proof. But the process was painstaking, especially for anything in the air.

Dog's EEMWB had a fifty-mile radius. If successful, tests would begin in the South Pacific two weeks from now on the larger, five-hundred-mile-radius designs.

"Dreamland Raptor, prepare to fire EEMWB," said the event controller.

"Dreamland Raptor acknowledges." The EEMWB's propulsion and guidance units came from AGM-86Cs, and it was fired more like a bomb than an antiair weapon, with the extra step of designating an altitude for an explosion.

"Launch at will," said the event coordinator. "Launching."

Jan Stewart glanced at the screen at the left side of the control panel on her EB-52, checking the sitrep screen for her position and the location of the Dreamland landing area, now about fifteen miles away and due south. If the shielding failed when the EEMWB exploded, she would have to fly Dreamland Levitow back to base by dead reckoning on manual control — not a prospect she relished.

Actually, Captain Stewart didn't relish flying the Levi-tow, or any Megafortress, much at all. She'd been a B-1 jock and had come to Dreamland to work in a project designed to test the B-1 for conversion similar to the EB-52 Megafortress. A week after she arrived, the project's funding was cut and she was pressed into the Megafortress program as a copilot. She outranked a lot of the other copilots and even pilots in the program, but because she was a low-timer in the aircraft, she'd been relegated to second seat by the program's temporary head, Captain Breanna Stockard. Worse, Breanna had made Stewart her copilot.

Bad enough to fly what was still essentially a B-52 after the hotter-than-fire B-1B. Worse — much, much worse — to be second officer after running the show.

Today, though, Stewart was boss. Her nemesis had been scrubbed at the last minute due to a snowstorm in Chicago.

"EEMWB detonation in twenty seconds," said Lieutenant Sergio "Jazz" Jackson, who was serving as her copilot.

"Yup."

A tone sounded in her headphones, indicating that the weapon had detonated. Stewart hot-keyed her communications unit to tell the event commander, but got no response.

She pulled back on the stick slightly, but the airplane failed to move.

Had the shielding failed?

Only partially — her configurable control panel was still lit. She'd go to manual control right away.

Interphone working?

"Prepare for manual control," she said.

"Manual?" said Jazz.

Immediately, Stewart realized what had happened— she'd turned the aircraft over to the flight control computer for the missile launch as part of the test protocol, and neglected to take it back.

It was a boneheaded mistake that would cost her at least two rounds of beers. Thank God the Iron Bitch hadn't been here to see it.

"I mean, taking over control from the computer," Stewart told Jazz lamely.

"That's what I thought," said the copilot.

"Dreamland Levitow," said the event controller. "Please repeat your transmission. I'm sorry — we were caught up in something here."

I'll bet, thought Stewart, not entirely convinced that Bre-anna hadn't somehow conspired with them to make her look bad.

Dr. Ray Rubeo, Dreamland's head scientist, was waiting for Colonel Bastian as he unfolded himself from the Raptor's cockpit.

"So how'd we do, Doc?" Dog asked, coming down the ladder. Techies were already swarming over the Raptor, preparing it for a complete overhaul. Besides thoroughly analyzing the shielding and systems for signs of damage from the T-Rays, the engineering team was planning a number of improvements to the plane, including a new wing structure that would lower its unfueled weight by five percent.

"It's premature to speculate," said Rubeo. "Do it anyway."

Rubeo frowned. "I'm sure that when the results are analyzed, the models predicting the impact of the weapon will be shown to be quite correct. All of the test instruments reported full hits. And," he paused dramatically, "one of the ground technicians forgot to remove his watch, and now finds that it no longer functions."

Dog laughed. The scientist touched his earring — a habit, the colonel knew, that meant he was planning to say something he considered unpleasant. Dog decided to head him off at the pass.

"Ray, if the full-sized weapons won't be ready for testing—"

"Bah. They're sitting in the bunker, all eight of them. Though the tests are unnecessary."

Then obviously I'm about to get harangued for more money, thought Dog, starting toward the Jimmy SUV waiting to take him over to the hangar area where he could change. Sure enough, Rubeo fell in alongside him and made the pitch.

"If you are going to proceed with the project, Colonel, I need several more technicians to assist while the team is away."

"Can't do it, Ray. You've seen the budget."

"Colonel, we are past squeezing water from a stone. We need more people."

Dog stopped to watch Dreamland Levitow practicing touch and goes on the nearby runway. As part of a new policy at Dreamland, the EB-52 Megafortress had been named for Sergeant John L. Levitow, an Air Force Medal of Honor winner. A crewman in an AC-47 gunship during the Vietnam War, Sergeant Levitow had thrown himself on a live flare inside the hold of his damaged aircraft following a mortar hit. Despite numerous wounds, he managed to toss the flare outside of the aircraft before it ignited, saving the entire plane.

Rubeo renewed his pitch as the plane passed overhead. "Colonel — we need more people."

"If the EEMWB project gets funding, we'll have more slots."

"Only if it's approved as part of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Program, which it shouldn't be."

Rubeo had made this point before: The EEMWB was not a good ABM weapon, since the lead in technology would last, by his estimate, no longer than five years. And it was not selective — everything in the area was disabled, not just the target. Dog didn't disagree, but he didn't see that as an argument against proceeding with the weapon, which would provide a decent solution until other technologies matured. And he especially thought this was a good idea since it would help him get the people Rubeo needed.

"We have to be practical," said Dog.

"Colonel, I'm the most practical scientist I know."

"That isn't saying much, Ray," Dog told him, climbing into the truck.

Captain Sattari felt the slight burn at the top of his shoulders as he paddled in unison with the others, propelling the small boat toward their target. The wind came at them from the west, trying to push them off course. They compensated for it as they stroked, but the boat still drew a jagged line forward.

Sattari allowed himself a glance to the other three craft, gauging his performance; it seemed to him that their boat was doing better than two of the others, and not much worse than Sergeant Ibn's, which was in the lead.

The raft lurched with a sudden swell. Sattari gripped his oar firmly and dug at the water, stroking hard and smooth. His instructor had claimed propelling a boat was a matter of finesse, not strength, but the man had rowed every day of his life for years, and surely took strength for granted. Sat-tari's chest rose and fell with the roll of his shoulders, as if he were part of a large machine. He heard the hard, short breaths of the men around him, and tried to match them.

A light blinked ahead. Ibn's boat had stopped a few meters away. They changed their paddling and surged next to the other raft with a well-practiced flare. First test passed, thought Sattari. He reached for his night glasses and scanned around them as the other boats drew up.

Sergeant Ibn moved in the other raft until he was alongside his commander.

"No sign of the Indian warship," said Ibn.

"No. Nor the helicopter."

A helicopter had nearly run into one of the airplanes roughly seventy miles from shore. Captain Sattari was not sure where it had come from. It seemed too far from Port Somali to belong to the small Indian force there, nor had the spies reported one. The Somalian air force had no aircraft this far north, and it seemed unlikely that it had come from Yemen.

"The helicopter most likely belonged to a smuggler," said Ibn.

"Perhaps," said Captain Sattari. "In any event, let us proceed."

"God is great."

Sattari put his glasses back in their pouch and began helping the four men on his boat who would descend to the pipes below them to plant their explosive charges. The charges they carried were slightly bigger than a large suitcase, and each team had to place two on the thick pipes below.

Sattari positioned his knee against the side of the raft, but cautioned himself against hoping it would brace him; he'd already seen in their drills that the raft would easily capsize. The trick was to use only one hand to help the others balance their loads; this was a heavy strain, but the team he was assisting managed to slip into the water without a splash or upsetting the raft.

The men on the raft on the other side of him did not. The little boat capsized.

Sattari picked up his paddle, as did the other man on his raft. They turned forty-five degrees, positioning themselves to help if necessary. But the two men on the other boat recovered quickly; within seconds they had their vessel righted and were back aboard. "Good work," Sattari told them.

He turned back toward Ibn's raft. The sergeant had gone below with the others, but one of the two men still aboard had a radio scanner, which he was using to monitor local broadcasts. As Sattari picked up his oar to get closer, the coxswain did the same. They pushed over silently.

"Anything, Corporal?" Sattari asked the radioman.

"All quiet, Captain."

"There was nothing from the Indian warship?" "No, sir. Not a peep."

Sattari scanned the artificial island, roughly two miles away. Aside from a few dim warning lights on the seaward side, it was completely in shadow. It slumbered, unsuspecting.

"We will proceed," Sattari said. "God is great."

Storm took Admiral Johnson's communication in his cabin. The admiral's blotchy face was rendered even redder by the LCD screen. Johnson was aboard his flagship, the Nimitz, sailing in the waters north of Taiwan.

"What's going on out there, Storm?"

"Good evening, Admiral. I'm about to send a boarding party over to a boat I suspect is a smuggler."

"That's what you called me about?"

"No," said Storm. "About an hour ago we spotted four aircraft flying very low and fast toward northeastern Somalia. We were not able to identify the aircraft. Given the size of the force, they may have been terrorists going ashore to a camp we don't know about. Since they were flying in the direction of Port Somalia, I tried to contact the Indian force there, but could not. I wanted to send—"

"Port Somalia? The Indian tanker station? What is your exact location?"

"We're about eighty nautical miles—"

"Exact location."

Storm looked over to the small computer screen near the video display, then read off the GPS coordinates.

"What are you doing so close to that end of the gulf?" said Johnson. "You're supposed to be chasing pirates."

"With all due respect, Admiral, that's what I'm doing. I have a smuggler in sight, and we're preparing to board her. I called to alert you to these aircraft, so a message could be sent through the normal channels. I don't know whether their radio—"

"You know as well as I do that you're a good deal east of the area we discussed two days ago. A good deal east."

"I'm within the parameters of my patrol area. I'm not in coastal waters."

When Johnson was displeased — as he was just about every time Storm talked to him — his cheeks puffed slightly and his eyes narrowed at the corners, so that he looked like the mask of an Asian sea devil. When he became really angry — which happened often — his forehead grew red and he had difficulty speaking. Storm saw the space above his eyebrows tint, and decided it was time to return the conversation to its point.

"Should I attempt to contact the Pentagon to alert the Indians at Port Somalia?" he asked.

"No, you should not." Johnson scowled. "We'll handle that here."

The screen blanked before Storm could respond.

Captain Sattari felt his gloved hand slipping from the rope. Swinging his left arm forward, he managed to grab hold of the cross-hatched metal fencing at the side of the support pillar. For a moment he hung in midair five meters over the water and rocks, his fate suspended.

If I slip, he thought, the man behind me will fall as well. He will be killed, and even if I survive, I will never be able to draw a breath as a man again.

He'd practiced this climb for months. He could do it. He had to do it.

With a ferocious heave, Sattari pulled himself to the pillar. Hanging by three fingers, he hunted for a better handhold. His left arm seemed to pull out of its socket before his right hand found a grip.

Up, he told himself, forcing open the fingers on his left hand. Sattari jerked his arm upward, throwing it against the fencing. His right arm had always been stronger than his left; he found a good hold and rested for a moment, then attacked the fence again, trying but failing to get a toehold so he could climb rather than pull. Again and again he forced his fingers to unclench; again and again he felt his shoulders wrenching. Even his right began to give way before he reached the top.

The first man up stood by the rail, waiting. Sattari took the rope he had carried up, tied it to the rail, then tossed it down. The captain helped the man who had started up behind over the rail, then went ahead.

Their target was a pipe assembly and tank housing fuel for the boats that docked here. Besides the large tanks containing ship fuel, there were two tanks that held the lighter — and more flammable — marine fuel used by small vessels. The tanks and some of the associated machinery sat behind a Cyclone fence topped with barbed wire. The point man began cutting a hole through the fence with a set of large wire cutters; Sattari went around the decking to the corner to act as a lookout while the others prepared to set explosives on the tanks.

A pair of metal staircases led down to the lower docking area just beyond the turn where he took his position. A small boat was tied to the fiberglass planks, and he could hear it slapping against the side with the current.

Sattari could also hear his heart, pounding in his chest. Never had he been this nervous, not even on his first solo flight.

The Indians had roughly two dozen men permanently on the island; another three or four dozen workers came out during the day when ships were docked or to finish up the many small items that still had to be perfected before the official opening in a few weeks. At night, a force of no more than eight men were on duty, manning lookouts on the northern and eastern sides of the large complex.

A local spy had reported that the watchmen varied their patrols admirably, making it impossible to time their rounds. However, this area was consistently neglected; like many security forces, the guards concentrated their efforts on what they thought the biggest prize was.

Sattari heard a noise behind him. He turned; the man who had cut the hole in the fence raised his hand in the air. The charges had been set.

They retreated to the ropes. Remembering the trouble he'd had climbing with the gloves, Sattari pulled them off. Better to burn his hands, he thought, than to lose his grip. He slung his gun over his shoulder and took hold of the rope, waiting for the point man before starting.

Sattari was about a third of the way down when his companion said something. The words were garbled in the wind; as Sattari glanced toward him to ask what he'd said, a gun barked from above.

Without consciously thinking about what he was doing, Sattari hooked his foot taut against the rope and swung up his gun. A muzzle flashed above him; he pushed the AK-47 toward the burst of light and fired. His bullets rattled sharply against the steel superstructure. Thrown off-kilter by the kick of the gun, the captain swung to his right and bounced against the fence. Before he could grab on and stabilize himself, he saw two shadows moving above and fired again. This time one went down, though whether because he was ducking or had been hit was impossible to say. The other shadow returned fire. Sattari squeezed the trigger of the AK-47 once, twice, several times, until its magazine was empty.

He let the rifle drop against its strap and skidded down the rope. The captain hit the water and bounced backward, rolling against a rock, half in, half out of the sea. Pushing forward, he willed himself in the direction of a boat floating nearby. Gunfire erupted from above. As he was about to dive into the water, he saw a shadow behind him on the rocks; it had to be one of his men. He twisted back, half hopping, half crawling, aiming to grab the man and drag him into the sea and safety. Bullets danced around him, but Sattari focused only on the black shadow that lay in front of him. He grabbed the man and pulled, growling as he did, a threatened bear cornered in an ambush. Pulling the soldier over his shoulder, he went back to the water, growling the whole time.

The steamy hiss of a rocket-launched grenade creased the air; a long, deep rattle followed. The water surged around him, pushing him down, but Sattari kept moving until hands reached out and grabbed him. The commando was lifted from his back, and Sattari was pulled into the raft. He pushed himself upright, looking around. They were the last boat to get away.

"Detonate the charges," he told the coxswain when he saw his face.

"Now, Captain?"

"Now."

Starship steadied the Werewolf a mile in front of the small boat's bow. The Abner Read was now less than two miles away, but the warship sat so low in the water that even if the smugglers had infrared glasses they probably didn't know it was there.

"Werewolf, we're about to radio them to stop," said Eyes. "Go ahead and turn on the searchlight."

"Roger that," said Starship.

The halogen beam under the Werewolf's nose caught the bow of the little boat dead on. Starship looked at the image from the Werewolf's video feed; he saw shadows in the cabin but couldn't make out much else.

A warning was broadcast in English, Arabic, and French on all of the maritime radio channels. Starship came over the craft and fired a "log" — an LUU-2 illumination flare— which lit up the boat and the sea around it. At the same time, a boarding party pushed off the Abner Read in a rigid-hulled inflatable boat.

Called a SITT, or shipboard integrated tactical team, the specially trained team of sailors was heavily armed and well-versed in dealing with smugglers. Starship's job was to get a good look at the boat so the boarding party would know what to expect. He would train his weapons on the smuggler's craft. The boat was so small it was likely the Hellfire missiles or even his 30mm cannon could sink it within seconds if he fired.

So could the Abner Read—its forward deck gun was already zeroed in.

"I have nobody on the forward deck," Starship reported. "Uh-oh, here we go — two guys coming out to the stern. Going to the boxes."

"Are those weapons?"

"Negative — looks like they're trying to cut the crates loose. Want me to strafe them?"

"Unidentified ship has failed to acknowledge," said Eyes, whose remarks were being recorded as evidence of the encounter. "Abner Read SITT team is en route. Werewolf, see if you can stop the smugglers from throwing the contraband overboard."

"Roger that," said Starship. He selected the aircraft's 7.62 machine gun and sent a string of bullets into the rail of the small boat. He saw the people on the boat ducking as he flew past; wheeling the helicopter around, he steadied the nose to spray the stern again, using his weapon to keep them away from the back of the vessel.

A man emerged from the cabin. A second later the Werewolf's flight control computer sounded a tone in his ear— the smuggler had fired a rocket-launched grenade at the small aircraft.

Starship jammed his throttle, ducking the grenade. Then he reached to the weapons panel, dialing up the Hellfire missiles.

"I have hostile fire," he told Tac. "Permission to launch Hellfires?"

"Negative, negative," said Eyes. "Don't sink him."

"I'm under fire," Starship repeated. The men at the rear had gone back to the large crates.

"Do not sink that boat. We want the cargo intact."

Stifling a curse, Starship keyed back to the light machine gun. As he nudged his stick forward, the man near the cabin picked up an automatic rifle and began firing. The tracers gave Starship something to zero in on as he pressed his own trigger. With the second burst, the man crumpled to the deck of the boat, sliding toward the low rail as it rocked in the water.

Starship returned his attention to the rear deck, where the two crewmen had succeeded in pulling one of the crates from its tie-downs and were shoving it over the side. As it went over, the entire boat began to tip as if it were going to capsize. Starship continued northward and banked back around, dropping the small helicopter to ten feet over the waves. The men continued working on the crate. If he wanted the cargo, he would have to shoot them; warning shots would no longer do.

He got close enough to see the worried scowl on one of the men's faces before he fired; the man fell limp on the deck as he passed over. Still, the other crewman refused to give up. He struggled with the chain that held the crate down as Starship zeroed in, finger dancing against the trigger. When the bullets caught him, they spun him in a macabre death dance, a large part of his skull flying off as if it had been a hat. The man danced off the side of the boat and disappeared.

"Defenses have been neutralized," Starship said, taking the Werewolf back over the boat slowly. "I think the crew's all dead. They got one of the crates over the side but I saved the other."

"SITT is en route," said Eyes.

A spray of water hit Storm as he stepped out onto the flying bridge. The smuggler's boat was two hundred yards away, off his starboard side; the SITT crew was aboard inspecting her. Storm's communications gear could connect him instantly with the team as well as everyone on his own ship, and he had the crew's frequency tuned in; he listened to the boarding party as it went about its work. The Werewolf hovered just over the bow of the little boat, its nose slowly moving back and forth as its pilot trained its weapons on the vessel.

"Captain Gale to SITT — Terry, you there?" "Here, Captain." "What do you have?"

"RPGs. Crate's filled with grenades and launchers. Have some heavy machine guns in the hold."

"Get it all on video. Make sure we have a good record. Then get back here and we'll sink it."

"Aye aye, Captain."

Storm went back inside. He was just about to see if he could hunt down a cup of coffee when Eyes's excited voice erupted in his ear.

"Port Somalia has just been attacked!" shouted Eyes. "There's a fire on the artificial island, and the sonar array picked up the sound of a large explosion."

Storm's mind jumped from shock to reaction mode, sorting the information, formulating a response. The airplanes they'd seen before — they had to have been involved.

What would Admiral Johnson say now?

"Get Airforce down there right away," said Storm. "Bring the SITT crew back, then sink the smuggler's vessel, cargo and all. Prepare a course for Port Somalia," he added, speaking to the navigational officer. "I'll be in my quarters, updating Admiral Johnson."

The commando Sattari rescued had broken his leg falling from the decking to the rocks, but had not been shot. He slumped against the captain as the men paddled against the current. They attacked the waves like madmen, pushing against the spray, which seemed to increase with every stroke.

Sattari could hear the explosions behind them and saw the yellow shadows cast by a fire, but dared not take the time or strength to look back.

"Another kilometer," yelled the coxswain. He was referring not to the rendezvous point but to the GPS position where the boat would turn to the north; the pickup would be roughly four kilometers beyond that.

Still, Sattari repeated the words aloud as a mantra as he worked his paddle: "Another kilometer to go. One more kilometer to success."

The smoke from Port Somalia rose like an overgrown cauliflower from the ocean, furling upward and outward. It was so thick Starship couldn't see Port Somalia itself.

If the aircraft they'd seen earlier had deposited saboteurs — not a proven fact, but a very good guess — it was likely that the planes would be returning to pick up the men. The Abner Read had activated its radar to look for them.

Starship's job was twofold. First, scout the water and see if he could find any trace of the saboteurs. Second, check the nearby shore, which was the second most likely escape route. And he'd have to do all that in about ten minutes, or he'd risk running out of fuel before getting back to the ship.

He saw the Indian corvette to his right as he approached the outer edge of the smoke. The ship looked like an up-sized cabin cruiser, with a globelike radar dome at the top. Designed for a Russian Bandstand surface targeting radar, the large dome held a less potent Indian design. But it was the small dish radar behind the dome that got Starship's attention — the Korund antiaircraft unit extended its sticky fingers toward the Werewolf, marking a big red X on it for the ship's SS-4 antiaircraft missiles.

"Werewolf One being targeted by Indian vessel," Starship reported to Tac. He hit the fuzz buster and tucked the little helicopter toward the waves, weaving quickly to shake the radar's grip. "Hey, tell these guys I'm on their side."

"We're working on it, Werewolf One. They're having a little trouble identifying targets."

"Duh. Tell them I'm not a target."

"We're working it out. Stay out of their range."

"It's ten kilometers," protested Starship.

"Head toward the shore and look for the raiding party. We'll let the Indians look at the water."

"Yeah, roger that," he said, jamming his throttle to max power.

The light looked like the barest pinprick in a black curtain, yet everyone aboard the raft saw it instantly.

"There!" said the coxswain. He lifted a small signal light and began signaling.

"Go," said Sattari, pushing his oar. "Stroke!"

The little raft heaved itself forward as the men pushed at the oar. Sattari felt the commando he had rescued stirring next to him.

"Rest," he told the man. "We're almost there."

"Ship!" said the coxswain.

Sattari swept his head back, though he continued to row. The low silhouette of the Indian patrol boat had appeared to the northeast; it was perhaps three kilometers away.

"Stroke," insisted Sattari. The pinprick had grown to the size of a mayfly.

Sattari had personally told the commander of each of the four midget submarines to leave if threatened — even if that meant stranding the team he was assigned to retrieve. He did not regret the order, nor did he curse the Indian ship as it continued to move in the direction of the light. He only urged his men to row harder.

His own arms felt as if they were going to fall off. His head seemed to have tripled in weight, and his eyes ached.

"Two hundred meters!" called the coxswain.

A searchlight on the Indian ship, barely a kilometer away, swept the ocean.

"Stroke!" yelled Sattari. "Stroke!"

And then they were there, clambering over the rail at the stern. The sleek conning toward the bow looked like the swept cabin of a speedboat, and the entire craft was not much longer than a runabout.

"Get aboard, get aboard," said Sattari.

He pulled the raft close to him, then plunged his knife into its side. As it began to deflate, he saw the Indian patrol boat bearing down on them, its lights reaching out in the darkness.

One of the other commandos took the raft and began to pull it down into the hatch.

"No. Let it go. It will give them something to look at," said Sattari. He tossed it off the side, then pulled himself down the hatchway. The submarine's crewman came down right behind him, securing the hatch.

"Commander, we are aboard. Dive," Sattari said loudly, though the command was clearly unnecessary; he could feel the small vessel gliding forward, already sinking beneath the waves.

"The Indians have spotted a commando boat about five kilometers from Port Somalia," Eyes told Storm. "Empty." "Submarine?"

"Unsure. They don't carry sonar. That's a Russian Project 1234 boat. I'm surprised it made it across the Arabian Sea. I don't envy their sailors."

Storm studied the hologram. The Abner Read had a world-class passive sonar — the Littoral Towed Array System, or LITAS — which was carried on a submerged raft behind the ship. Built around a series of hydrophones, the system picked up and interpreted different sounds in the water. In theory, LITAS could hear anything within a twelve-mile radius of the ship, even in shallow waters where sounds were plentiful and easily altered by the sea floor. Very loud vessels — such as the Indian ship, which the system identified even though it was thirty-five miles off— could be heard much farther away.

The Abner Read also carried an active sonar developed by DARPA as part of a project known as Distant Thunder. The sonar was designed to find very quiet electric submarines in what the engineers called "acoustically challenging" waters. The Abner Read had used it with great success to find a submarine operating on battery power in the canyonlike Somalian waters to the west. Like all active sonar, however, the device not only alerted the prey that it was being hunted, but told it where the hunter was, an important concession against a wily captain. Storm preferred to hold it in reserve if at all possible.

The northwestern tip of Somalia loomed about fifteen miles ahead. By altering course slightly, Storm could cut off the most likely escape route north and still be in a good position to chase a submarine if it headed west.

What to do when he caught it was a separate problem. Admiral Johnson had not answered his message, and Storm needed his permission before engaging.

Given that Port Somalia was an Indian installation, the submarine might be Pakistani. They had exactly six subs— four French Daphne-class boats well past their prime, and two Augustas, modern boats that could sprint to about 20.5 knots while submerged, and could be extremely hard to find in coastal waters — worthy adversaries for the Abner Read.

Of course, if was a Pakistani boat, he wouldn't be allowed to attack at all; the Paks were in theory allies.

The Iranians had Kilos, even more potent submarines, though they hadn't moved from their ports in months.

"We'll move closer to shore, close down the distance with the submarine, if there is one," Storm told Eyes. He glanced at the hologram to see where the Werewolf was.

"Have Airforce check the area where the raft was spotted, look for others."

"He's low on fuel."

"Well, tell him to get moving."

Starship slid over the village five miles inland from Port Somalia, following the road as it wound back toward the coastline. Six small buildings stood next to each other, shouldering together between the road and a nearby cliff. Nothing.

Nothing on the road either.

The computer gave him a warning tone. He was at "bingo," his fuel tanks just full enough to get him back to the Abner Read.

"Werewolf to Tac — I'm bingo, heading homeward."

"Negative. We need you to scan the area near the Indian warship."

Naturally.

"I can give you five minutes," he told Eyes, planning to cut into his reserves. "Am I looking for something specific?"

"They found a raft. See if you can spot anything similar. We believe there may be a submarine in the area, but we haven't heard it yet."

Ah, an admission of mortality from the all-powerful Navy, thought Starship as he whipped the Werewolf toward the Indian patrol boat. The ship's radar remained in scan mode; they saw him but were no longer targeting him.

"Couldn't the patrol boat pick him up on sonar?" Star-ship asked.

"A boat that class isn't always equipped with sonar. And this one is not."

Starship took the Werewolf a mile and a half north, then turned to the west, sweeping along roughly parallel to the shore for nearly three miles before sweeping back. The flight control computer gave him another beep — he'd used half of his ten minute reserve.

"Not seeing anything, Tac."

"How are you on fuel?"

"One more pass and then I absolutely have to come home," said Starship. "Acknowledged."

Storm stared through the binoculars, watching the Werewolf as it came toward the ship. The helicopter had turned on its landing lights, and it looked like a sea anemone trailing its tentacles through the ocean.

It was a good little machine. It would be even better if it were equipped with a sonar system like the AQS-22—a suggestion Storm had sent up the chain of command weeks ago. The idea had yet to be acknowledged as received, let alone considered.

What he needed were a few short circuits up the chain of command, just like the Dreamland people had.

"We think we have something, Storm," said Eyes. "Very light contact, has to be a battery-powered propeller, six kilometers west of Port Somalia. At this range, with the Indian patrol boat so loud, it's hard to tell."

"Let's head down there. I'll put in another call to Admiral Johnson. Maybe he'll answer me sometime this century."

The helmsman controlled the midget submarine from a seat at the nose of the craft, working at a board that reminded Captain Sattari of the flight simulator for American F-4 Phantom jets he'd practiced on years before. The craft was steered with a large pistol-grip joystick; once submerged, it relied on an internal navigational system. The vessel was run by two men; the vessel's captain sat next to the helm, acting as navigator and watching the limited set of sensors.

The four submarines in Sattari's fleet had been designed by a European company as civilian vessels, intended for use in the shallow Caribbean and Pacific coastal waters. Converting them to military use had taken several months, but was not particularly difficult; the work primarily included measures to make the craft quieter. The acrylic bulbous nose and viewing portals had been replaced and the deck area topside stripped bare, but at heart the little boats were still the same submarines that appeared in the manufacturer's pricey four-color catalog. They could dive to three hundred meters and sail underwater for roughly twenty-eight hours. In an emergency, the subs could remain submerged for ninety-six hours. A small diesel engine propelled the boats on the surface, where the top speed was roughly ten knots, slower if the batteries were being charged. The midgets were strictly transport vessels, and it would be laughable to compare them to frontline submarines used by the American or Russian navies. But they were perfect as far as Sattari was concerned.

He called them Parvanehs: Butterflies.

The captain glanced back at the rest of the team, strapped into the boats. Among the interior items that had been retained as delivered were the deep-cushioned seats, which helped absorb and dampen interior sounds. Three of the men were making good use of them now, sleeping after their mission.

Sattari turned to the submarine commander.

"Another hour, Captain Sattari," the man said without prompting. "You can rest if you wish. I'll wake you when we're close."

"Thank you. But I don't believe I could sleep. Are you sure we're not being followed?"

"We would hear the propellers of a nearby ship with the hydrophone. As I said, the Indian ship has very limited capabilities. We are in the clear."

Sattari sat back against his seat. His father the general would be proud. More important, his men would respect him.

"Not bad for a broken-down fighter pilot, blacklisted and passed up for promotion," he whispered to himself. "Not bad, Captain Sattari. Thirty-nine is not old at all."

"What kind of submarine? A Pakistani submarine?"

"I'm not close enough to tell yet, Admiral," Storm told Johnson over the secure video-communications network. "We're still at least twenty miles north of it. There are two surface ships between us and the submarine, and another oil tanker beyond it. They may be masking the boat's sound somewhat. I'll know more about it in an hour."

"You have evidence that it picked up the saboteurs?"

"No, I don't," admitted Storm.

Johnson's face puckered. "Pakistan, at least in theory, is our ally. India is not." Storm didn't answer.

"And there are no known submarines in this area?" said Johnson.

"We've checked with fleet twice," said Storm, referring to the command charged with keeping track of submarine movements through the oceans.

"I find it hard to believe that a submarine could have slipped by them," said Johnson.

"Which is why I found this submarine so interesting," said Storm. While it was a rare boat that slipped by the forces — and sensors — assigned to watch them, it was not impossible. And Storm's intel officer had a candidate — a Pak sub reported about seven hundred miles due east in the Indian Ocean twenty-eight hours ago. It was an Augusta-class boat.

"All right, Storm. You have a point. See what you can determine. Do not — repeat, do not—fire on him."

"Unless he fires on me." "See that he doesn't."

Sattari leaned over and took the headset from the submarine captain, cupping his hands over his ears as he pushed them over his head. He heard a loud rushing sound, more like the steady static of a mistuned radio than the noise he would associate with a ship. "This is the Mitra?" he asked.

"Yes, Captain. We're right on course, within two kilometers. You'll be able to see the lights at the bottom of the tanker in a few minutes. I believe we're the first in line."

Sattari handed the headphones back, shifting to look over the helmsman's shoulder. A small video camera in the nose of the midget submarine showed the murky ocean ahead.

From the waterline up, the Mitra appeared to be a standard oil tanker. Old, slow, but freshly painted and with a willing crew, she was one of the vast army of blue-collar tankers the world relied on for its energy needs. Registered to a company based in Morocco, she regularly sailed these waters, delivering oil from Iranian wells to a number of African customers.

Or so her logbook declared.

Below the waterline, she was anything but standard. A large section of the hull almost exactly midship had been taken out and replaced with an underwater docking area for the four midget submarines. The vessels would sail under the tanker, then slowly rise, in effect driving into a garage. The submarines measured 8.4 meters, and the opening in the hull was just over twenty, leaving a decent amount of space for maneuvering.

The murky image on the forward-view screen suddenly glowed yellow. The camera aperture adjusted, sharpening the image. A set of large spotlights were arranged at the bottom of the hull; as the Parvaneh came closer, another group of colored lights would help guide the sub into the hold.

"Is the tanker moving?" Sattari asked.

"Three knots."

The submarines could dock whether the mother ship was moving or not, and as long as it wasn't going more than four knots, most of the helmsmen felt it was easier to get aboard when the ship was under way. But in this case, the fact that the tanker was moving was a signal that there were other ships in the area. Sattari sat back in his seat, aware that not only was his mission not yet complete, but the success or failure of this final stage was out of his hands.

"Tac, I'm clear of that freighter," said Starship, flying the Werewolf south. "Tanker is two miles off my nose, dead on. I'll be over it in heartbeat." "Roger that."

Starship whipped the little aircraft to the right of the poky tanker. He could see two silhouettes at the side of the superstructure near the bridge — crewmen looking at him.

His throat tightened a notch, and he waited for the launch warning — he had a premonition that one of the people aboard the ship was going to try shoving an SA-7 or even a Stinger up his backside. But his premonition was wrong; he cleared in front of the tanker and circled back, ramping down his speed to get a good look at the deck.

"Take another run," said Tac as he passed the back end.

"Roger that. Ship's name is the Mitra" added Starship. The name was written at the stern. "Keep feeding us images."

Storm had handpicked the crew for the ship, and the men who manned the sonar department were, if not the very best experts in the surface fleet, certainly among the top ten. So the fact that they now had four unknown underwater contacts eight miles away perplexed him considerably. As did their utter failure to match the sound profiles they had picked up with the extensive library in the ship's computer.

And now they seemed to be losing contact.

"Has to be some sort of bizarre glitch in the computer because of the shallow depth and the geometry of the sea bottom nearby," insisted Eyes. "Maybe it's an echo."

"That's impossible," said Storm.

"I know."

Eyes recognized the tone. It meant — not everything works in the real world the way it's drawn up on the engineering charts, Captain.

Still, he was convinced his people were right.

So what did that mean?

That either he was looking at four submarines — four very quiet submarines — that no one else in the world had heard before, or that he was being suckered by some sort of camouflaging device.

Like an underwater robot trailing behind the submarine, throwing up a smoke screen.

The problem with that was that decoys normally made a lot more noise. These contacts were almost silent.

"We have mechanical noises in the water," said Eyes. "We're having some trouble picking up the sounds, though, because of that tanker."

"Explosion?"

"Negative."

"Torpedoes?"

"Negative. He may have some sort of problem. He may be using the tanker to turn around and check behind him, just as we theorized, Storm. He's done everything we thought he would, just slower."

"We didn't think he'd split himself into four equal parts."

"You really think we're chasing four submarines?"

Storm folded his arms in front of his chest. The truth was, they'd had all sorts of glitches with their equipment from the moment they'd left port. It was to be expected — the gear was brand new and the bugs had to be worked out.

"Airforce find anything on that tanker?" asked Storm.

"Negative. Tanker checks out. They do a run down to South Africa from Iran. Goes back and forth every couple of weeks."

"Let's give the submariner a few more minutes to make a mistake," said Storm. "Then we'll turn on the active sonar. At least we'll find out how many of him we're chasing."

"Aye aye, Captain."

Captain Sattari was the next to last man out of the small submarine. The small interior smelled so horribly he nearly retched as he grabbed hold of the rope guideline and jumped onto the narrow metal gangway at the side of the hull.

"Captain Sattari! Ship's commander needs to see you right away," said the sailor leaning toward him at the end of the decking. "He's on the bridge, sir. He asks you to hurry."

Sattari glanced back as he entered the doorway at the side. Two other submarines had arrived; one was starting to unload and the other was just being secured.

The sailor ran ahead. Sattari did his best to keep up. Not familiar with the ship, he knocked his shin as he went through one of the compartments to the ladder that led to the bridge.

"We have an American warship behind us," said the ship's captain when he reached the deck. "He's sent a helicopter to circle us. He may be tracking the submarines with passive sonar."

"Do we have all the subs?"

"The fourth still has not come inside. I believe he is within a half kilometer at this point, or perhaps closer. I thought it best not to use the sonar."

"You're sure these are Americans?"

"Quite sure. The ship identified itself as the Abner Read. Devil's Tail."

The American littoral destroyer had made quite a name for itself in the Gulf of Aden in the few months it had been there. But it rarely ventured to the eastern end of the gulf, and Sat-tari had not seen it during his earlier scouting missions.

Beside the point now. It was here.

Discovery by the Americans would be catastrophic. Even if the Americans left them alone for the moment — and really, why would they help the Indians? — they would be on the lookout for his midget submarines in the future. It was one thing to evade the Indians and even the Chinese; quite another to have to deal with an American dragnet.

Not that he did not relish the day he would face them in combat. He welcomed the chance to avenge the defeat they had dealt his father.

"Can you launch the decoy once Boat Four is aboard?" Sattari asked.

"With them this close, I would think it highly likely they would realize where it came from."

"Turn on the sonar as the submarine comes into the ship," said Sattari.

"The sonar?"

"For a brief moment. Then drop the decoy. Continue on as if nothing has happened." "As you wish, Captain."

"Shark Gill sonar! Dead ahead — he must be right under that oil tanker!" Eyes's voice was so loud Storm thought he would've heard him without the com set.

"Excellent," said Storm, though in truth he felt disappointed. Shark Gill was the NATO code word for the sonar used in Russian Kilo-class submarines. Most likely he had been trailing a Russian boat that had managed to evade the fleet—not the commandos, since Russia and India were allies.

"See if the captain of the tanker would honor a request to move off to the west," said Storm. "Tell him that our helicopter has been tracking some mines in the area — get him scared and get him out of there."

"The sub may follow."

"I doubt he'll make it that easy for us, now that he knows we're here," said Storm. "Turn on our active sonar as well — let's make sure he knows precisely how close to him we are."

Sergeant Ibn came up to the bridge to report to Sat-tari while the tanker captain was talking to the Americans.

"All our men are back. No losses. Mission accomplished," said the sergeant, his face as grim as ever.

"The success of the mission is entirely yours," Sattari told him. "You trained everyone superbly — I for one benefited greatly from your drills."

The sergeant turned beet red, then bent his head.

Had Sattari mistaken shyness for skepticism? No, he thought; Ibn — and most likely the others — were wary of an unproven commander whose experience was entirely in the cockpit. They must have felt, and with some justification, that he had only gotten his position because of his father, who still had some influence with the government. Or else they thought the entire scheme of equipping a special operations group with gear and machines any civilian — any rich civilian — could buy was preposterous.

They would not think so now.

Ibn remained at attention.

"Relax, Sergeant," Sattari told him. "See to the men." "Thank you, Captain."

Was there more respect in his voice? Less doubt?

Perhaps. But more important, Sattari felt sure of himself. He had done it; he had succeeded. Tonight was only the start.

"The Americans want us to go west," the tanker captain told him. "They say they have spotted some mines."

Had he not been so tired, Sattari would have burst out laughing.

"Comply. Make as much noise as you can."

"The decoy will begin chattering any moment now."

"That's fine," said Sattari. "They will think the submarine launched it. Combined with the sonar they heard — they won't be able to piece the different parts together."

The ship's commander was a short, sinewy man who had somehow managed to keep his face clear of wrinkles despite having spent his life at sea. He looked at Sattari as if he didn't understand, and the commando leader felt compelled to explain further.

"You see," Sattari said, "these Americans are clever people. They love puzzles, and they love to piece them together. In this case, the fact that the pieces don't fit will confuse them. Their instincts will be to press ahead and attack. They will realize it's a decoy soon enough, then they will look for the submarine in earnest."

"You speak of the Americans as if you know them very well," said the ship's captain.

"I speak from unfortunate experience."

"Ship is turning to port. I wouldn't say they're burning up the ocean," reported Starship.

"Take a run over them. Make sure they see you."

"Have to be blind not to," said Starship. But he did as he was told, moving the Werewolf down toward the tanker. Again he passed so close that he could see a man on the ladder of the superstructure. Again he felt a chill and a moment of premonition, sure he was going to be shot down.

I'm not even on the stinkin' helicopter, he reminded himself as he circled away, unfired on. Relax.

"We have a decoy in the water," Eyes told Storm. "Loud. Imposter."

Imposter was a nickname for a Russian MG-74 decoy, a versatile torpedo-tube-launched noisemaker that could employ a variety of techniques to confuse a tracking ship, including jamming sonar and simulating the sound of a large submarine.

"You have a contact with the sub that launched it?"

"Negative. We didn't hear the tube flood or launch, either. Tubes could have been open for a while. Not adding up, Captain. Now we don't have any contacts at all."

"Nothing!"

"I know, I know," said Eyes quickly. "We're looking, Storm. I don't know why we can't find it."

This was the point in the chase where a hunter had to be patient; sooner or later the prey would make a mistake and give himself away. No matter how clever — and the captain of the submarine had proven himself quite clever — he would eventually slip.

The problem was, Storm was not a patient man. He stared at the holographic display, trying to puzzle out where his adversary had gone.

"You're sure he's not trailing that tanker?"

"Negative."

Oh my God, thought Storm, what if he managed to get underneath us?

Impossible.

But a logical explanation.

"Change course — hard to starboard," he shouted to the helmsman behind him on the bridge. "Eyes — make sure the SOB isn't hiding right beneath us or in our wake somehow."

Starship skipped over the waves, staring at the infrared feed and trying not to let it burn through his eyes. There was nothing on the surface of the water — no periscope, no radio mast, no nothing.

Navy guys stared at the sea all the time, and claimed to love it. How sick was that?

The submarine wasn't under them. But neither was it anywhere in the five mile grid they marked out in the ocean as its most likely location, nor in the wider circle that Storm had the ship patrol after the grid proved empty.

They'd been beaten. And the worst thing was, Storm didn't even know who had done it.

A hard-ass Russian submarine captain in a Kilo, who'd wandered close to Port Somalia by accident and then thought it best to get away before he got blamed?

Or the captain of a submarine who had in fact picked up the saboteurs and scooted clean away?

"All right," he growled into his microphone. "Eyes— we're going to have to call off the search. We can't stay here forever."

"Aye aye, Captain."

Storm's anger flashed as the command was passed and the crew began to move, tacitly accepting defeat. His right hand formed into a fist but he restrained himself from pounding the bulkhead.

He thought of that later, in his cabin, when he stared at the ceiling instead of sleeping. It was a measure of how much he had changed in the months since the fight with the Somalian pirates.

Whether it was a change for the better, he couldn't tell.

The day's worth of tests were mostly variations on ones Zen had already gone through before Christmas. He was injected with a series of dyes and then X-rayed and scanned, prodded and listened to. The technical staff took a stack of X-rays, MRIs, and ultrasounds. Then they hooked him up to a machine that measured nerve impulses. This involved inserting needles into various parts of his body. The doctors had done this several days before. Now they inserted more, and left them in for nearly two hours.

He didn't feel the ones in his legs, but he did get a prickly sensation in his neck when they were inserted along his upper back. It didn't hurt, exactly, but lying there was more difficult than he had imagined.

"Done," said Dr. Vasin finally. Two aides came over and helped Zen sit up.

"So I can walk now?"

"Jeff."

"Hey, Doc, loosen up. Just a joke." Zen pushed his arms back. His muscles had stiffened. "Tomorrow I go under the knife, right?"

"Laser, and then the injections. Bright and early, but listen—"

"I know. No guarantees."

"This is a really long process, Jeff. And I have to be honest, brutally honest—"

"Ten percent chance. I know."

"Ten percent is very optimistic," said Vasin.

"It's OK. I understand."

"Operation one is tomorrow. The procedure itself is relatively simple, but of course it is a procedure. No food after seven P.M., just in case we have to put you out."

"Beer's not food, right?"

"Not after seven. And for the duration of the test period, alcohol and coffee are forbidden."

"Well, there goes the bender I was planning. Don't worry, Doc," added Zen, "I'm just joking."

Needles and sensors removed, Zen got dressed and wheeled himself out into the hallway. He headed toward the lounge area, where he could call for a taxi before taking the elevator down. He was surprised to see Breanna waiting for him.

"Bree?"

"You called for a taxi?" "What are you doing here?" "Like I said — need a taxi?" "I thought you were snowed in." "I shoveled the runway myself."

She leaned over and kissed him. Zen grabbed her around the neck and hugged her, surprising himself at how much he missed her.

"Everything all right?"

"I feel like a pincushion. Other than that, I'm fine." He thought of telling her about the dream but decided not to. It would fade, eventually.

"Operation still on for tomorrow?"

"Not much of an operation," he told her. "They just inject me with crap. Don't even knock me out."

"Crap," she said sarcastically.

"Let's go grab something to eat, OK? I'm fasting from seven P.M. After that, no food until tomorrow night. I want to have a beer. I can't have any during the two weeks of injections. No coffee, either."

"No beer or coffee? You sure this is worth it?" Breanna laughed.

"Hope so."