Satan's Tail

II Xray Pop

Storm sipped the cold coffee, its acid bitterness biting his lips. Admiral Johnson had been called away from the camera in the secure communications center aboard the Vinson. The pause gave Storm a chance to regroup and reconsider his approach. By the time Johnson's face flashed back on the screen, Storm was more deferential.

"As you were saying, Captain?" said Johnson.

"We have reviewed the data, and the weapons were definitely aimed at us," said Storm.

"You still disobeyed your orders of engagement. You were not within visual range and therefore could not positively identify the craft."

"Admiral, I believe that United States warships are permitted — excuse me, directed—to take any and all prudent actions to protect themselves."

"You were not supposed to pursue any warships into territorial waters," said Johnson, who wasn't about to let go of this. He continued over the same territory he had covered earlier, speaking of the delicacy of diplomatic negotiations and the political situation in the Middle East.

Storm took another sip of his coffee. No other commander would get this lecture; on the contrary, they would be commended for forceful and prudent action and the sinking of two pirate vessels, wherever their rusty tubs had gone down. Storm was only getting blasted because Tex Johnson hated his guts.

"Talk to the intelligence people. I have other things to do," said the admiral finally.

Storm leaned back in his seat, waiting for Commander Megan Gunther and her assistants to come on line. But instead the screen flashed with the chief of staff, Captain Patrick "Red" McGowan.

"You son of a bitch you — congratulations on sinking those bastards!" said Red.

"Thank you, Captain."

"Don't give me that Captain bullshit, you dog. Tell me— did those idiots you were chasing blow themselves up or what?"

"Just about," said Storm.

"So you sunk them with the gun, huh?"

"Didn't seem worth a missile," said Storm. "Of course, a tactical decision like that would be made by the ship's captain."

"Bullshit. I'm surprised you didn't go down and load the damn gun yourself."

"Computer does all the hard work." Storm smiled. He might be a micromanager and a pain in the butt and all that — but he also knew that he took care of his people when the shit hit the fan. And they knew it too.

"They're mighty pleased back at the Pentagon. Everybody's lining up to buy you some champagne."

"Everybody except your boss."

"Ah, don't worry about Tex. He's just pissed that you're getting most of the credit. He'll come around. By tomorrow he'll be reminding people Xray Pop was his idea."

Red meant that as a joke — Tex had opposed the idea as premature, and Storm had only prevailed by calling in favors owed to him at the Pentagon. It didn't hurt that he'd had several assignments under the present Chief of Staff, Admiral Balboa, when Balboa headed CentCom. Balboa was a bit too pansy-assed for Storm, but connections were connections.

"I'm telling you, Tex is warming up to you," added Red. "He has the commendation all written out."

"The only reason that might be true is if you wrote it."

Red smiled. "So how many of the little suckers are left?"

"No idea," said Storm. "There were at least three other boats last night, all of them patrol-boat-sized. And we've seen others. It's a motley assortment."

"One of your little Shark Boats couldn't take care of them?"

"I have to tell you, Red, not having over-the-horizon systems is hurting us quite a bit. If we had those Orions we'd be doing much better. Listen — give me the Belleau Wood and I guarantee we'll wipe these guys off the face of the earth."

Red laughed, but Storm wasn't joking. The Belleau Wood—LHA-3—was an assault ship capable of carrying Harriers and AH-1W SuperCobras as well as nearly two thousand Marines. The ship looked like a down-sized aircraft carrier, which she essentially was. When Storm had originally drawn up the proposal for Xray Pop and the mission here, he had wanted Belleau Wood or one of her sister ships involved, intending to use the airpower to provide reconnaissance and air cover. He also would have used the Marines to strike the pirate bases.

"What happened to your Sea Sprite helicopters?" asked Red when he noticed Storm wasn't laughing.

"Still back at Pearl. It's a sore subject, Red. Those helos weren't designed to operate from the Abner Read, let alone the Shark Boats. I need the UAVs."

"Not going to happen." Red shrugged; weapons development wasn't his area. "Any other news? You find that lost Libyan submarine?"

"Give me a break, huh? The Libyans can't even get out of port, for cryin' out loud. They're not going to sail around Africa."

"National Security Council thinks it's real. Rumor has it Phil Freeman is sending a detachment out of Dreamland to look for it."

"Dreamland? Out here?"

"Strictly to find the submarine."

"As long as they stay out of my way," said Storm. He'd heard of Lieutenant Colonel Tecumseh "Dog" Bastian: He'd gotten his nickname because it was "God" spelled backward. Bastian was so full of himself he could have been in the Army, Storm thought. "That Yemen missile boat we sunk — does that mean we can go into Yemen waters now?"

"You heard that the Yemen government claims it was stolen, I assume."

Storm snorted in derision. "Sounds like the story we told the night we stole the Army's mule for the game."

Red smiled. As students at Annapolis, Red, Storm, and four other midshipmen had conducted an elaborate operation to procure the Army mascot prior to the Army-Navy game. The operation had involved considerable daring, skulduggery, and not a little deceit — but its success had guaranteed that the six would live forever in Academy lore. It also hadn't hurt their careers.

"Untie my hands, Red. Let me go after these bastards where they live. They don't respect the law. Why should we? Let my ships go into territorial waters."

"Talk to the politicians," said Red. "Even Tex'll back you on that."

"Untie my hands. That's all I ask."

"That and an assault ship and half of the Navy's Marines."

"I'll take two platoons of Marines. With or without the ship."

"Where will you put them?"

"Marines? I'll give 'em a rubber raft and tell them that's all they get until they take over one of the patrol boats. I'll have the whole damn pirate fleet by nightfall."

Fatigue stung Ali's eyes as he walked up the gangplank to the large ship. He had not slept since the battle. It was not simply a matter of restlessness, or even the demands of his position. He feared that he would dream of his son the same way he had dreamed of his wife after her death. The dreams had been vivid and heart-wrenching; he could not face such an ordeal now.

The ship was nearly twice as long as his boats. Once part of the Russian navy, it had fallen into great disrepair after being delivered to Somalia as part of a deal the communists used to sway the corrupt government years before. The ship had fallen under the control of a warlord in Mogadishu, who had agreed to donate it to the Islamic cause in exchange for weapons and cash.

Rust stained the hull and the odor of rot hung heavy over the ship. Netting and fake spars had been strategically placed ahead of the forecastle to make the vessel look more like a merchant trawler from the air. Ali had no illusion that this would fool a discerning eye intent on discovering the ship; he merely wanted to make it easier to overlook.

"Admiral Ali," said the ship's captain, greeting him as he came aboard. "It is a pleasure, sir."

"I am not an admiral," Ali told him.

"Yes, sir," said the captain. He led the way around the deck of the ship, showing Ali to the bridge.

"I wish to see the engines," said Ali.

"The engine room," said the captain doubtfully. When Ali did not respond, the captain dutifully led him to a ladder and they descended into the bowels of the ship. The stench of rot increased as they went down; the way was dark and the passages narrow. Ali noticed several sets of pipes and wires that were broken, and there were bits of the decking that seemed as if a shark had bitten through.

In truth, the engine room was not as bad as he expected when he saw the captain's frown. Water slopped along the floor, but it was less than an inch. The massive 40 DM diesels seemed clean enough, and while the space smelled of diesel oil, Ali had been on several ships in the Egyptian navy that were much worse. There were two men on duty, one of whom did not speak Arabic — a Polish engineer familiar with the engines whom the captain had somehow found and managed to hire.

"He is, unfortunately, a drinker," said the captain as they went back topside. "But he knows the engines."

"You have done very well getting the ship here," said Ali. "But you have much more work to do."

"I understand, Captain."

"We will obtain the missiles in a few days. How long will it take you to install them?"

Ali listened as the ship's commander told him that he had two men trained by the Russians to work with the systems, and several others willing to work with them. This neither answered the question nor impressed Ali.

"Two brothers from Egypt will join you tomorrow and help with the work," Ali told the captain. "They will help you determine how much additional laborers are needed. One of my men will install a radio system with an encryption system."

"Thank you, Captain."

Ali nodded. "We need a name." The vessel looked the opposite of a warship, and giving it a warlike name would be an affront, he thought. It needed something nobler. "Sharia."

The word meant "Islamic law" in Arabic. It was the only true law, the law that would be restored when the jihad was won.

"It is a good name. Fitting."

"Make sure your crew does not embarrass it," said Ali, turning to go back to the dock.

Breanna put the aircraft into a wide turn over the desert to the east of Khamis Mushait, waiting for the ground controllers to decide that she was cleared to land. The other Megafortress, Wisconsin, had landed ten minutes ago. It wasn't clear what the hang-up was, since there were no other aircraft visible on the ramps or anywhere near the runway.

The city looked like a clump of dirty sugar cubes and miniature plastic trees stuck in a child's sandbox. Yellowish brown sand stretched toward the horizon, as if the desert were marching toward the city and not the other way around. This was actually a relatively populous area of the country, with highways that had existed for centuries as trade routes and cities that had been shady oases before the Pharaohs built the pyramids. But from the air the land looked sparse and even imaginary.

"What do we do if we don't get cleared in?" asked Lieutenant Mark "Spiderman" Hennemann, her copilot.

"Then we launch our Flighthawk, have Zen take out the tower, and settle down right behind him," she said.

The copilot didn't laugh. "Bree?"

"I'm kidding," she told him. "If you're going to fly with me, Spiderman, you better get a sense of humor."

"I'm working on it," he said, as serious as if she had told him to review a flight plan or procedure.

Breanna began to laugh.

"Did I miss another joke?" asked Spiderman.

"Never mind. See if you can get a hold of Colonel Bastian on the ground and find out what i hasn't been dotted."

"Will do." Spiderman punched the flat-panel touchscreen at the right side of his dashboard. "We have about fifteen minutes of fuel left."

"Looks like that's how long they have to decide whether we're allowed to land or not."

The Saudis took nearly all of them before not one but two officers came on offering their "most sincere and humble apologies" and directing the Megafortress to land. Breanna brought the plane in quickly, setting the big jet down on the ample runway. She found a powder-blue Saudi Royal Air Force car waiting as she approached the far end of the runway; the car led them past a group of Saudi F-15s to the far end of the base. Well-armed Saudi soldiers were clustered around a pair of trucks parked at the side of the ramp. An Air Force advance security team had been sent down from Europe and was waiting near the revetment where they were

led.

"Ah, home sweet home," said Breanna as she and her copilot began shutting down the aircraft after parking.

Dog took another slug from the bottle of mineral water. He felt as dry as the desert outside, even though he'd already finished two liter bottles since landing. Commander Delaford, meanwhile, poked at the large map they had mounted on the wall of the command center the Saudis had loaned them. The facilities — built less than a year before and never used — combined living and work quarters and could have fit at least two squadrons if not more. And they weren't little rooms either — this one was about three times the size of Dog's entire office suite. His small team was clustered around a table that could have accommodated the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff and their assistants.

"The problem is," continued Delaford, "the best place to launch the Piranha probe to guarantee that it won't be spotted going in is in this area here, well off the Somalian coast and a good distance from the shipping lanes. But that puts it six hundred miles from the most likely places for the submarine to be. At forty knots, that's fifteen hours of swim time before the probe starts doing anything worthwhile."

"Let's just deploy the probe at the same place where we put the sentinel buoy," suggested Zen. "If we have to be close to land and the water anyway, let's take the risk at one place and at one time."

"You'd have to go a little farther south, but not that much," said Delaford.

"If Baker-Baker takes both drops, it can't carry a Flighthawk," said Breanna. "But I think limiting ourselves to one aircraft in the target area makes it less risky that we'll be seen visually. The moon will be nearly full."

They discussed the trade-offs. The Somalian, Sudanese, and Ethiopian air forces were all equipped with modernized versions of the MiG-21, relatively short-ranged but potent fighters. The radar in the Megafortress would make the large plane "visible" to them from no less than one hundred miles, possibly as many 150 or 200, depending on the equipment they carried and the training the pilots received. On the other hand, the ground intercept radars that were used in the countries were limited, and it would be difficult for them to vector the airplanes close enough to the area.

"Don't kid yourself," said Dog. "This is probably like Bosnia — there'll be spies all over the place. They'll know when we take off."

"It'll still be hard to track us," said Breanna.

"Why don't we fly Wisconsin with a Flighthawk over the area first, doing reconnaissance," said Zen. "Then head south over the general area where Piranha will head. We come back and hand off the Flighthawk to Baker-Baker, land, replenish, and take off for another mission in the morning."

"Stretching the crew," said Dog.

"Just me. Ensign English can drive the Piranha on the second shift, and you can have the backup flight crew take the aircraft. "We can get back to twelve hours on, twelve hours off. One Flighthawk per mission."

"I think it'll work," said Breanna.

"Still, the turnaround on the mission times will be ridiculously tight," said Spiderman, who was acting as maintenance officer as well as copilot of Baker-Baker Two. "We're really stretched out here. We have the backup crews, but we're pushing the aircraft and systems. We need more main-tainers and technical people, Colonel."

"Our MC-17 should be here with the full load in two hours," said Dog. "We'll bring more people and equipment in as needed."

As usual, the most difficult part of the mission wasn't actually the objective itself, but getting the people and material into position to do the job in the first place. The so-called "little people" — the guys and gals who fueled the aircraft, humped the supplies, tightened the screws — were in many ways the ones the mission actually hinged on. And Dog knew that the hardest part of his job wasn't dodging bullets or Pentagon bullshit — it was finding a way to get his support people to the places they were needed the most.

"All right, let's all take a break and get a feel for our quarters," said Dog as the outlines of their tasks were finally settled. He glanced at his watch. "I'll brief the Wisconsin flight and mission in an hour. Breanna, you and Baker-Baker should be ready to launch two hours after we do."

"When are we going to come up with a better name for the plane?" Breanna asked. "It has to have a real name."

"Let's deal with that later," said Dog.

"Yeah," said Zen. "We're going to need an hour just to find our rooms in this place. The building's bigger than half the cities in Saudi Arabia."

"One other thing," said Dog. "The Saudis have opened their cafeteria on the other side of the base; Danny's making the arrangements. Listen, I know I don't have to remind any of you that we're in a Muslim country, and a very sensitive one at that. Please, pass the word — best behavior. We're ambassadors of goodwill here. Frankly, the lower the profile we have the better."

"We're going to be too busy to have much of a profile," said Delaford.

"Hopefully," said Dog.

Ali steadied himself on the open bridge of the patrol boat as it cut across the shadows below the Somalian coast. Their target sat about a mile away, still steaming lazily for Boosaaso, a port on the Somalian coast. The ship was a freighter carrying crates of packaged food from the Mediterranean. Once the vessel was secured, they would offload as much of the supplies as they could. Ali's men would also scour the ship for anything useful; he was especially interested in batteries and items such as electrical wires that could be used in the repair of the Sharia, the Somalian amphibious ship that they were working on. Finally, several hundred pounds of explosive would be packed into the hull, a timer set, and the ship directed toward the open channel: payback to the Greeks who owned her for trying to renege on an earlier arrangement.

"Boarding party is ready, Captain," said Bari, the dark first mate.

"Signal the other vessels," said Ali.

"Yes, Captain."

The merchant ship, the Adak, lumbered along at eight knots. It was likely her small crew hadn't even spotted the three fast patrol boats and four smaller runabouts charging toward her stern.

Ali's crew moved to the 40mm gun on the forward deck. He picked up the microphone as they drew alongside the ship.

"Brothers, I speak to you today as a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council," Ali declared, his voice booming over the loudspeaker. "Your cargo is required in the struggle against the great enemy. Surrender without resistance and you will be accorded safe passage home. Any who wish to join our cause will be welcomed with eager arms."

A figure appeared at the rail. Ali repeated his message.

"They're sending an SOS!" said the radioman from below. "Fire!" Ali told his crew over the loudspeaker. "Boarding parties, attack."

Storm had just stepped into the head when Commander Marcum beeped him on the communicator system. Grumbling, he secured his pants and hit the switch at his belt. "What is it?"

"Storm, we have an SOS from a merchant ship about ten miles from Boosaaso on the Somalian coast," said the ship's captain. "They said they were under attack. The radio seems to have gone dead. Seaman who monitored the call couldn't tell if it was real or not. I suspect a trap. Eyes isn't sure. He's working on it."

"What's the ship?"

"The Adak. It's out of Greece. This wouldn't fit with the normal pattern of attacks. It's back to the south a bit quicker than they normally move."

Which, to Storm's way of thinking, made it all the more likely to be exactly that: an attack.

Boosaaso was a tiny port at the north of Somalia; there was a small airport near the city. They were a good two hours away from the area.

"I'll be in the Tactical Center in a minute," Storm said. "Have Eyes rally one of the Shark Boats; keep the others in reserve in case it's a decoy. If the Adak sends another SOS, don't radio back. I don't want to tip off anyone who's listening that we're on our way."

"Aye aye, Cap."

The mortar at the rear of the boat made a thick thump as it fired the projectile toward the superstructure of the merchant vessel. The rope whistled behind it as two of Ali's sailors waited for the device it had fired to land. The mortar's payload looked like a folded grappling hook, designed to open as it landed. As soon as the ropes stopped flying through the air, the men grabbed and pulled them taut, securing a connection with the ship. In a matter of seconds they had thrown themselves into the air, swinging across the space and climbing up the side of the vessel. This was the most dangerous moment for Ali's teams as they boarded. Anyone on the other ship with a hatchet and an ounce of courage could sever the line, sending the heavily armed men into the water. To help lessen the chance of this, two of Ali's team peppered the top rail with their machine guns. Ali himself had unfolded the metal stock of his AK-47, though he did not believe in wasting bullets without a target.

Smoke curled from the superstructure of the merchant ship. The fools! They'd gained nothing by calling for help.

Ali saw the first member of his team clamber over the deck, then the second and third. The other boats drew close; more men followed. There were shouts, gunfire. A swell pitched his small craft toward the merchant vessel. At the last second God intervened, pushing the boats apart.

A ladder, two ladders, were dropped off the side. His men were now firmly in control of the deck.

"We monitored a message from some of our brothers in Yemen, Captain," said Bari, coming up from the radio area. "I thought it best to bring it to your attention."

"What?"

"Two large American aircraft landed in southern Saudi Arabia this afternoon," said the mate, his black face blending into the growing darkness of the evening. "Perhaps they were the Orions you spoke of. The alert is being spread through Yemen and across the gulf to our other friends."

A green flare shot from the deck of the merchant ship. His men had taken it over.

"Thank you, Bari," he told his mate. "Keep me informed. In the meantime, take command here while I go aboard our new vessel."

"As you wish, Captain."

Mack slid into the water and began paddling slowly.A lifeguard watched from the other end, but otherwise he was alone, and would be for the rest of the session. The rehab specialists were off-duty today, and more important, Zen was halfway across the world and couldn't barge in to harass him.

He knew that should have made him relax, but Mack felt even more stressed and tired as he pushed toward the other side. How the hell did Stockard do this every day, anyway? The guy had been in decent shape before his accident, but he was no athlete, not by a mile.

Mack, on the other hand, had gotten letters in high school football and baseball. He had worked out semiregularly, not so much in the past few months maybe, but still, he could be considered in at least reasonably good shape. Yet here he was, struggling to reach the far side of the pool.

He tried pushing his legs — this was supposed to be about his legs, not his arms. But they wouldn't respond. They were never going to respond, he thought, despite what the doctors said.

He'd known that the moment he opened his eyes in the hotel in Brunei. Breanna was there, looking over him. He'd seen that look in her face, and he knew. If anyone was an expert on whether people would walk or not, it was Breanna.

He had to give Zen one thing — he'd sure as hell picked the right wife.

Mack had met a pretty decent woman in Brunei, as a matter of fact: Cat McKenna, a contract pilot who was now the de facto head of the air force there.

McKenna was more than decent, actually — she was probably the most competent woman pilot and officer he'd ever met. She was also, without doubt, one of the ugliest-looking women he'd ever met. Reasonable enough body, but her nose alone would have stopped a truck. And her chin…

But he missed her.

God, thought Mack as he finally reached the edge of the pool, the stinking paralysis is affecting my brain.

Zen took over from the computer as the Flighthawk U/MF-3 dropped off the aircraft's wing, ramping up the engine and banking toward the waves below. The aircraft's vital signs flashed in the lower left-hand quadrant of his screen: airspeed pushing through four hundred knots, altitude going down through twenty thousand feet. He had a full tank of gas and all systems were in the green.

"Successful launch, Wisconsin,' he told Dog, who was piloting the Flighthawk's mother plane.

"Roger that, Flighthawk leader. We're proceeding on course as planned. The only thing we have on the water in the immediate vicinity is that barge we told you about earlier."

"Copy. Should have a visual in thirty seconds."

Zen checked his position on the sitrep screen. This was essentially a God's eye view of the world, with the Flight-hawk marked out as a green arrow at the center of the screen. Using data from the Wisconsin's powerful radar, the computer could detect ships as well as aircraft. The barge that Dog had mentioned appeared as a black rectangle marked SV1—surface vessel contact 1—in the right-hand corner of the screen. Zen could get information about it by asking the computer. If SV1 were a warship, the computer would have checked it against an identification library and provided details on its armament. An operator on the flightdeck — one handled surface contacts, one air contacts — had a database of commercial shipping in the area that identified most, though not all, of the major traffic through the Gulf of Aden.

"Full visual on the barge," said Zen. The computer focused the camera in the Flighthawk's nose on the craft. "You getting that, Dish?" Zen added, speaking to the operator handling the surface radar.

"Roger that, Flighthawk leader," Sergeant Peter "Dish" Mallack replied. "We copy. Looks like an oil equipment barge. Definitely benign."

Zen started a turn, taking the Flighthawk around the rear of the craft. The computer kept the camera trained on it, providing a detailed view to the crewman upstairs. Dish used a "de-dappler" program to analyze the image, stripping away and manipulating possible camouflage to make educated guesses about what was aboard the craft. It wasn't foolproof, and relied on close-up video to work well, but it beat staring at shadows with a magnifying glass for hours.

"Confirmed. That is definitely an equipment barge," said Dish. "Can we get an infrared image? I'll just double-check the number of people."

"On this run," said Zen. He brought the Flighthawk down below three thousand feet and eased off on the slider at the back of his joystick controller. The slider was actually the throttle; the Flighthawk controls had been designed to allow the aircraft to be flown with only one hand. The idea had been that the pilot would control a second Flighthawk with his other hand. In real life, however, switching hands had proven cumbersome and confusing in combat. Typically, the pilot would control one Flighthawk at a time, while letting the computer take the other. Zen routinely flew two but had handled four in exercises.

"Five people aboard," said Dish as Zen climbed away from the barge. "Looking good, Major."

"Let's see how we do a little closer to shore," he said, continuing on their survey.

The cannon had destroyed a good portion of the bridge, but the ship itself was in decent shape. Ali had no trouble from the surviving crew; they were all good Muslims, willing to follow his commands — at least while his men were aboard.

Ali's men quickly fell into their routine, bringing over the material for the bombs while removing everything they could find that would be of use.

The captain had had the good sense to die when the first shells raked the superstructure of his ship. This made it unnecessary for Ali to execute him. But as it was necessary to demonstrate that his orders were to be followed without question, when the ship had been secured and most of what they wanted moved off it, Ali had the merchant vessel's crew brought before him on the deck. He asked for the radioman, who after some hesitation stepped forward.

"Why did you make the distress call?" Ali asked.

"My captain directed me to."

"Do you believe in God?" "I believe in God, yes." "Make your peace with him."

The man flinched, but bowed his head and began to pray. Ali, who was not without compassion, waited until he finished before executing him, firing a single bullet into the center of his skull.

He had just signaled to his men to throw the man overboard when one of the lookouts ran to him.

"A ship in the distance," said the man, out of breath. "It may be Satan's Tail."

"Ten seconds to target point," said Spiderman. "Roger that," said Breanna. "Bay."

"Bay," said the copilot. The large doors at the rear of the fuselage swung open. A green light flashed in the heads-up display in front of Breanna; the sentinel buoy was ready to go.

She leaned on her stick, nudging the big aircraft onto her mark. Breanna had the option of letting the computer fly the Megafortress to the release point, but what was the point of that?

"Deploy," she told the copilot as they hit their mark.

"Sentinel buoy is away," said Spiderman as the bomb bay dispenser ejected the large cylinder.

Breanna snapped the Wisconsin upward and began a hard bank to the southeast, getting into position to launch Phoenix.

"You're up, Commander," she told Delaford. "Piranha team is ready," he said over the interphone. "Thirty seconds to Piranha release point," said Spiderman. "Radar contact!" said Jackson Christian, who was operating Baker-Baker's AWACS-style radar, monitoring other aircraft. "Bogie at 322, one hundred miles. Identified now as a Chendu F-7M Fishbed, export Chinese fighter aircraft. Might be Sudanese."

"Pretty far from home if it is," said Breanna.

"Can't match it up otherwise," said the sergeant. "Radar is definitely that type, which rules out one of the Ethiopian

MiGs."

"If it is from Sudan, he's at the edge of his combat radius, if not beyond it," said Breanna. "Keep tabs on him. Alert Colonel Bastian. Tell him we're proceeding with launch. Commander Delaford?"

"Ready."

"Spiderman?"

"Counting down. We are at eleven seconds, ten… "

The Megafortress hit a turbulent layer of air as it came down closer to the water. The big aircraft shuddered, then responded sluggishly to the control inputs, her right wing fighting against Breanna's stick. She leaned in the seat, as if her body might somehow transfer a bit of spin to the controls and the probe as they ejected it. This may actually have worked, for despite the buffeting, the computer recorded a bull's-eye as Piranha hit the water. The probe shot beneath the waves, preprogrammed to dive to fifty feet. Breanna leveled off and Spiderman initiated their third countdown — the launch of a guidance buoy to control the Piranha.

Downstairs on the Flighthawk control deck, Starship watched Commander Delaford completing the diagnostic series on the sentry buoy. The first buoy they had dropped was basically an automated listening post, transmitting the same data sets as the Piranha probe. It sank itself twelve feet below the surface, using a thin filament antenna to send its data. Shaped more like a tangled ball of yarn, the antenna sent its signals through the Dreamland dedicated satellite system at regular intervals; it could also be tapped directly by the Megafortresses. The signal could be detected, which was one of its few disadvantages, but none of the countries in the region were believed to have equipment sophisticated enough to do so.

"We're two miles south of Barim Island," said Delaford. "Looking good."

"Guidance buoy is in the water," reported Spiderman over the Megafortress's interphone, or intercom system. The buoy was used to control Piranha from the Megafortress; it had to be roughly fifty miles from the probe and no more than fifty from the aircraft.

"Roger that, thank you," said Delaford.

Starship shifted around in his seat, trying to get comfortable. For the time being, his job was to back Delaford up, continuing to learn how to operate Piranha. They'd run the simulations on the flight over, and except for the fact that the Megafortress was moving, he couldn't have told the difference.

"Initiating equipment calibration," said Delaford. "Bree, we're going to need you to stay close to the buoy until we're ready."

"Roger that," said the Megafortress pilot. "Be advised we now have two aircraft ID'd as Sudanese F-7Ms that are on an intercept. They'll be in our face in about two minutes."

"I need five," said Delaford.

"Acknowledged," said Breanna. "You'll have them."

"Looks dead in the water, Cap," said Commander Mar-cum, handing back the starlight binoculars. "No sign of the pirates around anywhere."

Storm took the glasses but didn't answer. The Abner Read had a pair of small decks that could be folded out of the superstructure on either side of the bridge — almost literally flying bridges, which were generally kept inside to prevent disturbing the radar profile. They were small and narrow, and weren't high enough to afford much of a view — one of the drawbacks of the ship's stealthy design.

"There's only one way to find out what's going on over there. We have to board her," said Marcum.

Storm scanned the vessel one more time from bow to stern. The ship had clearly been fired on; there were cannon holes in the superstructure and the bridge appeared to have been gutted.

"I volunteer to lead the boarding party," said Marcum. "Only way we're going to find out, Storm. The only way."

"There's no question we have to board the ship. But you can't go."

"I'd like to. You would if you were me." "No I wouldn't," said Storm. He shrugged, because it was an obvious lie. "Send Gordie to lead the team." "Yeah, I know," said Marcum.

"Sudanese F-7Ms on a direct intercept, at our altitude," said Spiderman. "Twenty miles and closing. What do you think, Captain?"

"I think they're going to run out of fuel halfway home," said Bree. "Obviously someone told them we were here. The other Megafortress is well south."

The EB-52 design was not as stealthy as the F-117 or B-2, but it nonetheless presented a small radar profile to conventional radars such as those used by the F-7M. Opening the bomb bay doors increased it exponentially, but still, the F-7Ms had help from somewhere.

"About sixty seconds to intercept," Spiderman said.

"Should I hail them?"

"No. They want to play chicken. Be ready with the ECMs and Stinger just in case."

She altered her course slightly and rearranged her orbit so the Megafortress's tail was in their face as they approached. This wasn't meant just as an insult: She wanted the Stinger defensive weapon ready in case the other pilots did something stupid.

"Going over our wings," said Spiderman. His voice had gone up two octaves. "Ten seconds."

"Boys will be boys," said Breanna. She flicked on the interphone, talking to the rest of the crew. "Preparing evasive maneuvers. Check your restraints, and please keep your hands in the car at all times."

"Twenty feet over us, both of them."

"Assholes," said Bree, pushing her stick to increase the separation.

"We're over you, Baker-Baker," said Dog. "Hawk One has the MiGs in sight. No weapons radar at this point."

"Affirmative. I think they just want to play tag."

"Any hostile acts?" he asked.

"Negative, unless you want to call aggressive stupidity hostile."

"Depends on the circumstances," said Dog.

"Question in my mind is who told them we're out here," said Breanna. "They had to be vectored toward us from a good distance away. They're breaking off."

They were — and headed toward the Wisconsin.

"I'm on them, Colonel," said Zen, flying the Flighthawk. "Looks like they want to check us out. No missiles."

The Sudanese aircraft were roughly ten miles away from the Wisconsin, which was now a few miles north of Baker-Baker. Zen flew the Flighthawk between a mile and two miles behind them; it was probable that they couldn't even see him.

"Coming at you," said Zen.

"Let them come," said Dog. "Just keep an eye on them."

The air surveillance radar on Dog's plane showed the Sudanese aircraft nearly merging as they approached. Close encounters at high speed were always reckless, but in this case the Sudanese pilots were being particularly foolish. Not only was it dark, but they had no way of knowing what the Megafortress was or would do. It was a large aircraft, one they'd surely never encountered before. That demanded caution, not hotdogging — and these bozos looked like they were going to knock each other out of the sky the way they were

going.

He spun the Megafortress through its orbit as the planes passed. They rounded south and headed back toward land.

"All right, looks like they're heading home," said Bre-anna. "I have a mind to go and spank them."

"Are you sure they're from Sudan?" asked Dog.

"We'll keep tabs on them and see. As I was saying, I still wonder who told them we were out here. I wonder if somebody at Khamis Mushait tipped them off."

"Very possibly." Dog checked his position. "Baker-Baker, I'd like to resume our patrol south closer to Somalia, get some idea of the area."

"Go for it. We can take it from here."

"Roger that."

He tacked south and then eastward, riding over the gulf toward the coast. When they were about thirty miles from land, he banked gently and began running parallel to Soma lia, gradually fine-tuning his position until he was about fifteen miles from the craggy shore. The African continent lay roughly thirty thousand feet below, part of the dull blackness out the copilot's side window. Zen's Flighthawk slipped along below them at 2,500 feet, providing a close-up view of the shoreline and nearby ship traffic. The night seemed quiet, with a few empty tankers heading toward the Persian Gulf and a cluster of fishing boats tied up near a settlement on the shore.

Within an hour they were coming up toward Laasgoray, a tiny hamlet on the coast.

"Colonel, we have a couple of surface contacts moving at pretty high speed here," said Dish Mallack from his radar station upstairs. "Uh, two, hold — three patrol boats. They're being ID'd by the computer as members of the Super Dvora Mk II class. That's an Israeli ship, patrol boat, so the computer is just making a match to the closest type."

"Flighthawk leader, see if you can get a close-up view," said Dog. He checked the sitrep map. The Abner Read—just barely visible on the radar — was about fifty miles farther east and just to the north, next to a much larger ship. Here was his chance to say hello to the task group's commander, and maybe give him an assist at the same time.

"I think these may be the pirates Xray Pop has been hunting," Dog told Zen. "Track them while we make contact."

"I'm on it," said Zen.

Ali strained in the direction the helmsman was pointing, but he saw nothing in the sky.

"It came from that direction," insisted the man. "It flew toward us, then banked in the gulf."

A figment of the man's imagination? Or an aircraft hunting for them?

"Stop the boats. Lie dead in the water," said Ali. He took the signal lamp and flashed the message to the other boats personally as their speed slackened and the boat's prow lowered into the water. "Man the forward gun and the SA-7," he told the crew.

Two of the crewmen went to the stern and opened a waterproof locker where the antiaircraft missile was kept. The SA-7 was an old weapon dating to the Cold War, but properly handled, it could be effective against low flying aircraft, helicopters especially.

"Any word on the Adak?" he asked Bari, inquiring about the merchant ship they had left behind when Satan's Tail approached.

"No sir. The timer has another five minutes to run."

"There!" shouted one of the men at the bow. They swung the cannon in the direction of a shadow looming out of the dusky coast to their south.

"Hold your fire!" ordered Ali. "No one is to fire until I give the order. Bari, signal the others."

Ali watched as the black triangle approached. It was low, no higher than fifteen hundred feet above. At first it seemed to be a great distance away; then Ali realized it was close but smaller than he had thought. For a moment he feared it was a missile, homing in on them. Despair fluttered in his stomach — he thought of the moment he realized his son was gone — then he realized that the craft was passing overhead.

"A radar is tracking us, Captain," said Bari. "It may be an aircraft. It seems to be at long range, but it may be the way the signal is sent, a mechanism designed to be difficult to detect."

"The docks at Laasgoray, quickly!" said Ali, spinning around and taking the wheel of the boat himself.

"We've found three bodies so far," said Gordie, who was heading the boarding team. "The bridge is a mess. Auxiliary controls look OK, though. We probably could get her into port with a skeleton crew. We'll know better in the morning."

"Storm, we have a report coming in from an Air Force unit," said Eyes, who was standing next to him in the Tactical Center. "I assume it's the Dreamland group you mentioned, though they won't specifically identify themselves. They have a location on three fast patrol boats about fifty miles from here. They're on Com Line External Two."

"Hold on, Gordie. Let me deal with this." Storm went to his station in the Tactical Center. He punched the communications panel at the left. "Is this Colonel Bastian?"

"This is Technical Sergeant Mallack," said the man on the other line.

"This is Captain Gale. Give me your boss."

"Uh—"

"Now, mister."

There was a slight pause, but no click or discernible static on the line.

"This is Colonel Bastian."

"Colonel, you have surface contacts?"

"We have three fast patrol boats that are similar to Israeli Dvora II class. My radar operator has the specific locations. They're about fifty miles from your location, about seventeen miles offshore but heading toward coastal waters. I haven't had a chance—"

"Sink the bastards."

"Excuse me?"

"You're ordered to sink them."

There was a pause. "You're giving me an order?"

"Colonel, I'm sitting in the water next to a merchant whose crew they slaughtered. Sink them." "You know these are the ships?"

"What do you want? Pictures? If I'd been close enough to see them, I would have sunk them."

"Sorry, Captain, but my orders don't allow me to sink unidentified boats, or any boat for that matter," said Dog. "I can track them for you; that's the best I can offer."

"That's not good enough," said Storm. "They'll be in forbidden territory in a second. Sink them."

"Thanks for the advice." The line snapped dead.

Dog shook his head, wondering why every Navy officer he ever dealt with had an ego larger than an aircraft carrier.

"Patrol craft are starting to move again," said Sergeant Mallack. He'd gotten his nickname, "Dish," not because he worked a radar, but because he always went back for seconds, and sometimes thirds and fourths, in the mess hall.

"Any hostile action?" Dog asked Zen.

"Negative. They manned their guns and got a missile ready, but didn't attack."

"Follow them at a distance."

"Flighthawk leader."

"So what do you figure the Sudanese F-7Ms were up to?" asked Spiderman as they got ready to drop their second control buoy.

"Just a macho thing to show us that they're here," replied Breanna. "And to see what we were."

"They didn't go slow enough to see anything."

"Maybe they were too scared to slow down," said Bre-anna. "Piranha, how are we doing?"

"Probe's just humming along," said Commander Del-aford. "We have control from the second buoy. Proceeding on course as planned."

"All right. We're going to swing south and drop our next control buoy, then climb and take a look around."

"Roger that," acknowledged Delaford.

"You sleeping yet?" Breanna asked Starship.

"No ma'am," said the lieutenant. "Just wishing I'd had a Flighthawk to kick those two ragheads in the rear."

"All right, let's all just relax," said Breanna. "We're going to be out here for quite a while tonight. No sense using up all our adrenaline in one shot."

"Contacts, hot, Fishbeds!" said the radar operator. "From the southwest — Ethiopians. Just crossing Somalian territory."

Storm pounded the ledge at the base of the control console twice before he was able to corral his anger.

"Captain?"

Storm looked up at Eyes.

"Flyboys have found our bad guys. But they don't want to get their hands dirty." He went over to the display, dialing the range out so he could see the area where Bastian had located the pirates.

"We can get a Shark Boat over in a little more than an hour," said Eyes.

"They'll be gone," Storm said. He contemplated going into Somalian territory after them but knew he couldn't— Johnson would jump on it as an excuse to block his career forever.

He could, however, wait for them offshore. Spread a net and catch them when they tried to run.

"Maybe we can have Boat Three pick up the boarding party while we go up there," said Storm. "Have the two other Shark Boats come as well."

"Marcum's not going to like that," said Eyes.

"I wouldn't either. But I think it's our best bet here."

"Boat One is closest."

Storm reached to his belt and hit the preset, connecting him with the commander of Shark Boat. "Boat One, this is Captain Gale. I have a target for you. We'll get the position but you're to stay in international waters and wait until he gets there."

"Shit."

Storm punched the button to connect with the boarding party. "Still there, Gordie?" "Aye, Cap. What's going on?"

"Looks like the flyboys have found our bad guys. We may arrange for you to have another taxi pick you up. Can you handle that?"

"I can handle anything."

"Stand by. Commander Marcum will contact you directly." "Aye."

Storm took another look at the hologram, then decided to tell the ship's captain personally what he had in mind. He found Marcum out on the folding bridge, looking at the tanker alongside.

"Killed them all?" asked the ship's commander. The other ship was less than twenty feet away, a brooding hulk on the water.

"Looks like it," said Storm. "We have a possible location on our pirates. Very close to Laasgoray. They have a fifty-mile head start. I have Boat One heading there. I want Abner Read to help."

"What about the boarding party?"

"I'd prefer to have Boat Three stand by and pick them up if they need assistance. This way we can leave right away."

Storm could tell from the look in Marcum's eye that he didn't want to leave his men behind. It was a natural objection, and even though Xray Pop had been configured for exactly that sort of flexibility, Storm couldn't blame him.

"All right," said Marcum. "Tell me one thing, though."

"Yeah."

"Can we get these bastards?" "I want to. But not if they're close to shore." "Which they will be by the time we get there." "Very likely."

Marcum frowned. Storm turned to go back inside the ship. As he did, the world lit with a red glow and Storm felt himself flying through the air, propelled by a massive explosion.