“We’ve been cheated,” said Memon as the others went silently to their tasks.
Drigh Road
0312
“HEY, COLONEL, WHAT CAN WE DO FOR YOU?” SAID DANNY
Freah, rubbing his eyes as he sat down in front of the communications console in the Dreamland Command trailer.
Sergeant Rockland, known as Boston, was on duty as the communications specialist. He walked to the other end of the trailer and began making some fresh coffee.
“Sorry to wake you up, Danny,” said Dog, talking from the Wisconsin. “But Piranha has an odd submarine contact near the Karachi port. Storm thinks it may be his mysterious submarine and he wants to see where it surfaces. If it surfaces.”
“You want me to take Whiplash Osprey up and reconnoi-ter?”
“That’s exactly what I want you to do.”
“Question—do I tell the Pakistanis what I’m up to?”
“No. He thinks this is their submarine, the same one that 180
DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
attacked the Calcutta. Run it as a training mission.”
“Will do.” Danny got up from the console. “Yo, Boston—go wake up Pretty Boy.”
“Action, Cap?”
“Not really. Just a midnight joy ride. But it’ll have to do for now. Roust the Osprey crew on your way.”
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, DANNY, BOSTON, AND SERGEANT
Jack “Pretty Boy” Floyd peered from the side windows of Dreamland’s MV-22 Osprey, using their Mk1 eyeballs to augment the craft’s search and air rescue radar and infrared sensors. They were less than fifty feet above the churning gray waves, heading south toward the spot where the Piranha had lost contact with the vessel.
“Gotta be an underwater cave, Cap,” said Boston. “I say we dive in and find the sucker.”
“Go for it,” said Pretty Boy. “That water’s a stinking sewer.”
“You comin’ with me, dude,” joshed Boston. “You my swimmin’ buddy.”
Danny peered out the window, using the night-vision gear embedded in his smart helmet to look at the shoreline.
There was a small marina just ahead; pleasure boats bobbed at their moorings. Beyond them a channel led to a set of docks used by container ships. A little farther south sat a large oil terminal, where tankers unloaded their cargo.
It seemed to him this would be a particularly bad place to hide a submarine base. While an enemy might not look for it here, there were so many small boats and commercial vessels that someone was bound to stumble across you sooner or later.
“Whiplash leader to Levitow. Bree, can you spare me some attention?”
“What do you need?”
“Punch me through to Ensign English, would you? I want to pick her brain for a second.”
“Stand by.”
END GAME
181
“English here.”
“Ensign, this is Danny Freah. Help me out here—why do we think this submarine is Pakistani?”
“We’re not really sure. The only thing we know is that it’s not similar to known submarines operating in any fleet nearby, nor a Russian or American, for that matter. It could be anyone’s.”
“How about a special operations craft?”
“Possible, Captain. I wouldn’t rule anything out. It may even be a noisemaker.”
Before Danny could thank her, the aircraft was buffeted by a shock wave.
“Holy shit!” yelled Boston. “Something just blew up half of Karachi!”
V
Fires of Hell
Northern Arabian Sea,
offshore of the Karachi oil terminal 13 January 1998
0312
THE EXPLOSION WAS SO IMMENSE THAT IT BLEW ONE OF THE
men into Captain Sattari, and they tumbled backward into the water. Sattari found himself on his back under the waves, surrounded by darkness. He tried to push himself upright but was paralyzed.
I’m going to die, he thought.
Rather than panic, the idea filled him with a kind of peace.
He felt his arms and legs relax; he thought of his triumph now, another mission executed with complete precision.
Then he felt himself being pulled upward. One of his men had grabbed him and was hauling him out of the water.
The man who had fallen on top of him struggled to his knees as Sattari coughed the water from his lungs.
“The boat, Captain,” said his man. “Into the boat.”
Sattari pushed himself in the direction of the raft. He found one of the gunwales with his hand and flopped forward, landing in the bottom like a seal flipping itself out of the water. He got upright as the others entered the craft. In a moment they were heading out to sea.
A mountain of fire had erupted from the collection system, setting off a tank of light fuel about fifty yards away.
The heat was so warm he could feel it here, more than a quarter mile away. There were rumbles, more explosions—the entire terminal would burn, and burn for hours.
186
DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
The Pakistanis would have no choice now but to attack.
The Indians would retaliate. The Chinese would come to Pakistan’s aid. The Indians would be destroyed, and with luck, the Chinese would be severely bloodied as well. Iran would be free of her two rivals—and the price of oil would soar.
Sattari picked up his oar and began helping the others, each stroke pushing them farther out to sea.
There was an aircraft nearby; he heard the loud drone, something like a helicopter, or two perhaps, very close.
“The sub is there, she’s there,” said one of the men, spotting a blinking light in the distance.
“Strong strokes!” said Sattari. “We are almost home, men.”
It was a wildly optimistic lie—they had another thirty-six hours of submerged sailing to do before reaching their next rendezvous—but the men responded with a flurry of strokes.
Aboard the Shiva ,
northern Arabian Sea
0314
“A HUGE FIREBALL—I CAN SEE IT FROM HERE. SOMEONE
must have set the entire oil terminal on fire.”
Memon watched the admiral as the pilot’s report continued over the loudspeaker.
“The Pakistanis have set their oil tanks on fire as an excuse to attack us,” Memon told the admiral when the report ended. “We should strike before the Chinese can.”
“Our orders say to do nothing to provoke the Chinese,”
said Captain Bhaskar. “Admiral Skandar himself directed us to withdraw.”
“The hell with Skandar—he’s not here.”
“You’re supposed to be representing him, aren’t you?”
said Adri.
Memon pressed his lips together. Captain Adri was nothing but a coward. “The circumstances have changed. If Ad-
END GAME
187
miral Skandar were here, he would order the attack himself.”
“Aircraft from the Deng Xiaoping have changed course and are heading in our direction,” reported the radar officer.
“Will we wait until their missiles hit us to fire back?”
Memon asked.
“Prepare for missile launch,” said the admiral. “Air commander—shoot those fighters down.”
Aboard Whiplash Osprey,
near the Karachi oil terminal
0315
DANNY GRABBED HOLD OF ONE OF THE RESTRAINING STRAPS
at the side of the Osprey as the aircraft wheeled around to head toward the terminal. The pilots had flipped on the Osprey’s searchlights, but the towering flames from the explosion were more than enough to illuminate the facility and surrounding water. The force of the explosion probably meant that at least one of the two liquefied natural gas tanks at the terminal had been detonated. Geysers of flame shot up, as if competing with each other for brilliance.
Danny reached to the back of his smart helmet and hit the circuit to tie into the Dreamland Command channel.
“Danny Freah for Colonel Bastian. Colonel?”
The software smart agent that controlled the communications channels buzzed the colonel, whose voice soon boomed in Danny’s ear.