Dale Brown - Dale Brown's Dreamland 04 - Piranha(and Jim DeFelice)(2003) (31 page)

 
          
“Powder,”
said Danny. “This isn’t a deli.”

 
          
“Hey,
Cap, you never know. I could go for a good hit of
joe
right now.”

 
          
“We
just want to look around,” Danny told the girl. “Okay?”

 
          
She
stared at him, and then nodded, or seemed to nod.

 
          
“You
stay with her. Powder, while I check out the stairs.”

 
          
“You
sure, Cap?”

 
          
“I’m
sure.”

 
          
The
urge to take out his gun was overwhelming, but Danny managed to resist,
determined to show the young woman he meant no harm. He walked toward an open staircase
at the side of the room. A candle and matches were on a small ledge at the base
of the steps; he lit them, then, calling ahead, went upstairs. In the glow of
the candle, Danny saw the floor of a large room was covered with bird shit; he
looked up and saw little remained of the roof. Still, he walked far enough
inside to make sure no one was hiding in the shadows, then returned to where
Powder was monitoring the young woman.

 
          
“Basement
next, Powder.”

 
          
“Yes,
Cap.”

 
          
In
the basement, Danny found a mattress and some bedclothes about four feet from
the bottom step. There was nothing else; no furnace, no washing machine, not
even a store of food—just the stone and dirt walls of the foundation.

 
          
Danny
relaxed a bit as he walked back up the stairs. Idiot policemen were probably
just anxious to go home—or more likely, complete whatever black-market
transaction was waiting for them near the checkpoint. Smuggling was a common
sideline for the authorities here.

 
          
Once
back on the main floor, Danny started toward the door, then remembered he
hadn’t looked beyond the torn curtain the girl had emerged from.

 
          
As
he turned and took a few steps toward the concealed area, Powder said
something, then shouted. Totally by instinct, Danny ducked as the woman charged
past his sergeant. He reached out and grabbed her leg, sending her tumbling
against the shelves. A small revolver fell from her hand.

 
          
“Shit,”
said Powder.

 
          
Now
standing, Danny clamped his foot on the woman’s arm. The two Yugoslavian
policemen charged inside, raking the ceiling with submachine guns. After shouts
from the Americans finally managed to calm them, one of the policemen grabbed
the woman and hauled her out. Danny—pistol now out—pulled back the curtain.

 
          
A
boy, three of four years old, sat on the floor in the middle of a small,
squalid kitchen, his thumb in his mouth.

 
          
By
the time Danny got outside, the young woman was gone, and several policemen had
poured out of the station next door. As Danny tried to sort out the situation,
one of the policemen had said the woman was a known Muslim. Danny tried to find
out what would happen to her, but was ignored. Finally, he and his men had no
option but to leave. The meeting between the UN and government officials was
never held.

 
          
Powder
had grabbed the pistol and found three bullets loaded, but the firing pug was
broken and it probably couldn’t have fired.

 
          
Months
later, Danny saw a Reuters news story about bodies being unearthed in a field
near the same village. There was murky photo of a recently opened ditch. In the
corner of the photo were the bodies of a young woman and a small boy, both
nude.

 
          
Was
it the woman and her son? The photo was too poor for him to tell. They could
have been anyone in that war, any of a thousand victims, mother and child, sister
and brother, innocents slain because of religion, or revenge, or just for the
hell of it. It was the reason the U.S. got involved in the first place; to stop
shit like that from happening, but reasons, and intentions, and the future
didn’t make much difference to the people in that ditch.

 
          
Aboard Iowa, over the South China Sea

 
          
As
she poked into a solid wall of rain just over the ocean, Dog slid Iowa back
down through the clouds, holding her steady through a series of buffeting
winds. Piranha was ready to dance, but they couldn’t find her a partner; the
Navy ASW planes with their sonar buoys had been delayed. Delaford said the
Indian sub captain might try to take advantage of the weather to snorkel and
recharge batteries. So, with nothing else to, they were trying to find him on
the surface. The laborious process of running tracks over the empty water
hadn’t yielded any results, however, and Colonel Bastian was starting to feel
tired.

 
          
“I
felt that yawn over here, Colonel,” said the copilot. “I thought we were
heading into a hurricane.”

 
          
“Very
funny, Rosen. Just keep tabs on those Sukhois.”

 
          
“Aye,
aye,
Cap’n
.”

 
          
“We’re
not in the Navy yet,” Dog told him.

 
          
“No,
but we’re low enough to be a ship,” said the copilot. It was only a slight
exaggeration—they were at a thousand feet, using every sensor they had,
including their eyes.

 
          
“Shark
Ears,” the Navy Orion with the sonar buoys, checked in. They were still a good
forty minutes away.

 
          
“Maybe
we should set up a refuel,” suggested Rosen. “Extend our patrol and come back
and work with them for a while, assuming they don’t totally scrub because of
the weather. It’s pretty rough down there, and it’s going to get worse.”

 
          
“Good
idea,” said Dog.

 
          
The
tanker was flying a track well to the north east. With the help of Iowa’s
sophisticated flight computer system, Rosen quickly plotted a course to
rendezvous about thirty minutes away. Eager to get away from the water and the
severe weather below, Dog leaned back on the stick and the airplane bolted
upright. The air was fairly clear away from the leading edge of the storm,
their view unimpeded.

 
          
“We
may have a contact on the surface,” said Rosen. “Ten miles, two degrees east of
our nose, just about in our face.”

 
          
Dog
immediately began to level off and nudge toward the contact. Delaford,
monitoring the feeds on his equipment downstairs, couldn’t find anything. Dog
swung Iowa around, holding the Megafortress on her wing, and cruised over the
coordinates at about a thousand feet.

 
          
“If
there was something there, it’s gone now,” said Delaford finally. “I don’t
think we should launch Piranha until we have something more definite.”

 
          
“I
concur,” said Rosen.

 
          
“All
right. Let’s give Shark Ears this point as a reference,” said Dog. “In the
meantime, let’s go tank.”

 
          
As
they started to climb once again, the two Chinese fighters flying over the
nearest aircraft carriers changed their course.

 
          
“Looks
like we’ve finally aroused some curiosity,” said Rosen. “Their new course will
put them in visual range in eight minutes.”

 
          
There
was no pressing need to refuel, so Dog decided not to lead the fighters out to
the tanker. He told Rosen to cancel the rendezvous for now, and resumed what
was essentially a holding pattern just over the worst of the storm. Big fists
of gray clouds ran north west by south east for as long as the eye could see; a
light haze sat to the northeast of the front, a dark blanket to the southwest
where the storm was coming from.

 
          
The
Chinese planes weren’t moving particularly fast, an indication they weren’t
intending hostile action, though there were no guarantees. Rosen tried hailing
them at twenty miles, but to no one’s surprise, the Chinese pilots did not
respond. A second two-ship of Sukhois was also heading out, a few minutes
behind the first. Their carriers were just a little ahead of the storm, and it
occurred to Dog the Sukhois wouldn’t be able to spend all that much time with
them if they didn’t want to land in the teeth of the heavy weather.

 
          
The
enhanced optical feed from the Megafortress’s chin camera caught the lead
Sukhoi
at ten miles. The computer
ID’d
the missiles under its wings as R-73s, known to NATO as Archers. They were
heat-seekers with excellent off-
boresight
capability,
at least, in theory, better than all but the latest-model Sidewinders at
sniffing out heat sources. They could be launched from any angle, including
head-on.

 
          
Which
was pretty much where they were now.

 
          
“Six
miles and closing,” said Rosen. “Man, it pees me off they won’t answer our
hails. I’ve been practicing my Chinese and everything.”

 
          
“Just
keep tracking,” Dog told him.

 
          
The
two lead Chinese fighters broke to Iowa’s right about a mile ahead of them,
turning in a wide circle. Not coincidentally, the move put them in an excellent
position to close and then fire their heat-seekers, though they made no obvious
move to do so.

 
          
“Computer
thinks the second group of Sukhois is packing
Exocets
,”
said Rosen, referring to the second flight of Sukhois. “Optical IDs are not
perfect.”

 
          
“Could
be they’re hoping we have a line on the Indian sub,” said Dog. He kept Iowa
steady as the second group of planes abruptly tipped their wings and shot
downward toward the water. The nearest civilian ship was about two miles behind
them; the Chinese fighters showed no interest in the tanker.

 
          
“What
do we do if they sink him?” Rosen asked.

 
          
“I
guess we take notes,” said Dog. “Delaford, how good are
Exocets
against submarines?”

 
          
“I’d
say next to useless, unless something keeps the sub on the surface for an
extended period. You saw what happened the other day,” said the Navy commander.
“The helicopters are what they’d really want out here, but we’re too far from
the carrier group for them to operate comfortably. It’s just not in their
normal doctrine.”

 
          
“Then
why did they blow it the other day?” Dog asked.

 
          
“Well,
they probably had the planes in the air, just like now, and decided to take
their best shot. My guess now is they were planning to land soon anyway, they
saw us dip down like we found something, so they decided to come out and see
what’s up. We’re close to a hundred miles from the carrier, which is beyond the
range of conventional submarine torpedoes. So, this far from the carrier, a
submarine ordinarily wouldn’t be a threat, unless it was one of ours or maybe a
Russian. See, that’s why Kali is so significant; it changes the equation for
them.”

 
          
“Hey,
I have a question,” said Rosen. “Why didn’t the Chinese submarine take out the
Indian sub the other day?”

 
          
“Assuming
it didn’t,” said Delaford, “since we don’t really know what happened under the
water, my bet is that it was returning from the Indian Ocean and had fired all
of its torpedoes earlier. Three ships sank out there last week.”

 
          
“So
why didn’t the Indian sub fire at the Chinese?” asked Dog.

 
          
“Again,
we’re assuming they didn’t,” said Delaford. “We don’t know what happened under
the water later. But given that, my guess is the sub wasn’t a big enough
target. They’d want the carrier. Or their orders didn’t call for firing on a
combat vessel unless they were specifically attacked. They hadn’t fired on
one.”