Captain Sattari pulled up his night glasses to scan the ocean around them. Between the darkness and the fog, he could see only a short distance; the shoreline, barely four miles to the north, was invisible, as were the towering mountains beyond.

The Parvaneh had sailed roughly 140 miles, but they were still in Pakistani waters; Iran lay another 150 miles to the west, and their home port was three hundred miles beyond that. The Parvanehs carried enough fuel to reach Iran-

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ian territory, but only if they traveled mostly on the surface, where they would be easy to detect. Rather than taking that risk, Sattari had arranged a rendezvous with the Mitra, the tanker that had been altered to take them into its womb. It was to meet them twenty miles southwest of here in exactly three hours; they had barely enough time to put a small charge back in the batteries before setting out again.

Sattari continued to hunt for Boat Two and Three. They had started before his; surely they must be lurking nearby.

And yet, neither had been found twenty minutes later. A light rain started to fall, making Sattari’s infrared glasses nearly useless. He paced along the narrow deck, weaving around his men. To make their rendezvous with the oil tanker, they would have to leave within a half hour.

Ten more minutes passed. Sattari spent them thinking of the soldiers in the midget submarines. He saw each of their faces; remembered what they had done by his side.

The submarine commander came up from below.

“Twenty minutes more, Captain. Then we must leave.”

“Have you heard anything on the radio?”

The commander shook his head. They were far from the world here.

Five minutes passed, then ten.

“Signal Boat Two to start,” Sattari told one of his men.

“We will follow shortly.”

The signal given, Sattari scanned the waters once again.

He saw nothing.

“Sound the horn,” he told one of his men.

“A risk.”

“It is.” The captain folded his arms in front of his chest, listening as the handheld horn bellowed.

A light flickered to the west. One of his soldiers spotted it and shouted, “There!”

The mate signaled frantically with his light. The light in the distance blinked back and began to grow. It was BoatFour. Signals were passed; the submarine turned and began to descend, heading toward the rendezvous.

242

DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

Three was still missing; Sergeant Ibn’s boat.

Sattari ordered the horn sounded again. Two more times they tried, without response.

“Time to go below,” the captain told his men. They got up reluctantly, walking unsteadily to the mock wheelhouse that held the hatchway and airlock. The last man began folding the wire rail downward. Sattari helped him.

“The horn once more.”

A forlorn ba-hrnnn broke the stillness. Sattari listened until he heard only the rhythmic lapping of water against the Parvaneh’s hull.

“With God’s help, they will meet us at the Mitra, ” he told the submarine captain below. “But we can wait no longer.”

Aboard the Wisconsin , over the northern Arabian Sea

2222

“STILL NO SIGN OF THE PIRANHA, COLONEL,” CANTOR TOLD

Dog as they reached the end of the first search grid. “Sorry.”

“Not your fault, son. All right, crew; get ready to drop the second buoy. Mack, stay with me this time.”

“I was with you the whole way, Colonel.”

Cantor’s attempt to stifle a laugh was unsuccessful.

“Concentrate on your tinfish, kid,” snapped Mack.

“Trying.”

Cantor had been pressed into service as an operator for the robot undersea probe so the Megafortresses could extend their patrol times. Gloria English and Levitow were en route to Crete to pick up EEMWBs before starting their patrol. The Wisconsin would go to Crete at the end of this patrol as well so that it, too, could pick up the weapons.

Cantor didn’t mind “driving” the Piranha, though until now he had done so only in simulations. The hardest part of controlling the robot probe was reminding yourself not to END GAME

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expect too much. It moved very slowly compared to the Flighthawk; top speed was just under forty knots.

The question was whether they would find it. The probe hadn’t been heard from since English put it into autonomous mode. The last patrol had taken advantage of a lull in the fighting between the Indians and Chinese to drop buoys south of Karachi, without any luck. The Wisconsin had flown back through that area, up the Indian and then Pakistani coasts and around to the west before dropping its own buoys. Batteries aboard the buoys allowed them to be used for twenty-four hours; after that they were programmed to sink themselves into the ocean. Their limited contact range with the Piranha was their one drawback, a by-product of the almost undetectable underwater communications system the devices used to communicate.

Gravity gave Cantor a tug as the Megafortress began an abrupt climb after dropping the fresh buoy.

“See, I’m just about right on top of him,” said Mack.

“Sure,” mumbled Cantor.

“I know what you were trying to tell me the other day,”

Mack added. “And you know what—I appreciate it.”

Cantor was so taken by surprise by Mack’s comment that he thought he was being set up for some sort of joke.

“I was thinking about these suckers all wrong. I have the hang of it now,” said Mack. “I’m on top of the game.”

“Good,” said Cantor, not sure what to say.

“You were right. I was wrong.”

An apology? From Major Mack “the Knife” Smith? Cantor wondered if he should record the date for posterity.

“If we have to tango and you’re watching Piranha, don’t sweat it,” added Mack. “I can take two.”

Flighthawk Two was on Wisconsin’s wing, ready to be launched in an emergency.

“It’s a lot easier one at a time,” said Cantor.

“Ah, I can handle it. Piece of cake,” said Mack.

Before Cantor could consider what, if anything, to say, he 244

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got an alert from his console. He turned his head back to the screen and saw a message: PIRANHA CONNECTION ESTABLISHED.

“I’ve got Piranha!” he shouted. He flipped from the master control screen to the sensor view, which synthesized the sensor data and presented it to the screen as an image, much the way the sensors on the Flighthawk were used to give the pilot an image. The Piranha carried two different sensors in its nose. One was an extremely sensi-tive passive sonar; the other made use of temperature differences to paint a picture of what was around it. An operator could choose one or the other; passive was generally easier to steer by, and that was where Cantor started, flipping the switch at the side of the console. A sharp black object appeared dead ahead, marked on the range scale at five hundred yards.

“Piranha has got a target, dead in the water. I’m transferring the coordinates to you now.”

DOG DOUBLE-CHECKED HIS POSITION, THEN HAILED THE AB-ner Read on the Dreamland Command circuit. Storm came on the line almost immediately.

“We’ve reestablished a connection with Piranha,” Dog told him. “We think we found that special operations submarine. It’s fifteen miles off the Pakistani coast, about a hundred miles from Karachi. It’s about eighty miles north of you.”

“Excellent. I’ll send the Sharkboat to trail it.”

“How long will that take?”

“About three hours.”

“Good. Listen, Storm, about your position—”

“I’ve spoken to Admiral Balboa. He agrees that there’s no reason for me to move that far west. In fact, he wants me to keep the carrier within range of my Harpoon missiles, just in case it becomes necessary for us to sink it. Backing you up,” added Storm.