Satan's Tail Read online

  “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.”

  Near Karin, Somalia,

  on the Gulf of Aden

  4 November 1997

  1731

  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.

  Approaching Khamis Mushait Air Base,

  southwestern Saudi Arabia

  6 November 1997

  1331

  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 sincer
e 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 Eu-rope 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, re-plenish, 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 maintainers 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.

  Near Boosaaso, Somalia,

  on the Gulf of Aden

  6 November 1997

  1731

  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.”

  Aboard the Abner Read,

  Gulf of Aden

  6 November 1997

  1734

  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.”

  Near Boosaaso, Somalia,

  on the Gulf of Aden

  6 November 1997

  1738

  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.