Dale Brown - Dale Brown's Dreamland 04 - Piranha(and Jim DeFelice)(2003) (33 page)

 
          
“Yes,
sir. Four helos now, coming out from the task force. Hold on here. Got some
transmission.” Rosen listened a moment more, then laughed. “The Chinese are
demanding we tell them were the Indian sub is.”

 
          
“Tell
’
em
damned if we know. Just like that.”

 
          
“Just
like that?”

 
          
“Verbatim.”
Dog switched his radio to the shared frequency again. This time talking to the
Orion pilot. They decided to hold off dropping more buoys—no sense helping the
Chinese any more than they already had.

 
          
In
the background, Dog heard a transmission from one of the Tomcats pilots to
another group of Navy fighters coming from the south: “Watch out for the cranky
AF transport driver.”

 
          
Dog
didn’t mind being called cranky. The slur on the Megafortress was hard to take,
though.

 
          
“They’re
damned lucky we’re out of Scorpions,” said Rosen, who’d flipped into the circuit
just in time to hear the crack. “Show ’
em
cranky.”

 
          
Dog
looked to the west at the slowly approaching storm. All things considered, it
was probably better they hadn’t launched Piranha; tracking it through the storm
would have been difficult.

 
          
“Can
you get me a weather update?” he asked the copilot.

 
          
“Worse
and
worser
,” replied Rosen before proceeding to
retrieve the more official version—which used a few more words to say the same
thing.

 
          
“Plot
a course back for the Philippines,” Dog told him. “We’ll let the Navy guys take
if from here.”

 
          
“Sure
you don’t want to shoot down one of the Tomcats before we go?” joked Rosen.

 
          
“Very
tempting, Captain,” said Dog, starting to track south.

 
          
Aboard the trawler
Gui
in the South China Sea

 
          
It
happened Chen Lo
Fann
was staring at a map showing
the respective positions of the Chinese and Indian fleets when the message came
that Americans had shot down the Indian missiles before they could strike the
carrier. He read the note calmly, then nodded to dismiss the messenger. He
resisted the impulse to go to the radio; there would be no further details, or
at least none of any import. Instead, he locked the door to his cabin, then sat
cross-legged on the deck in front of the large map.

 
          
It
was undoubtedly the first time he had sat on the floor of a cabin since he was
young man, and probably the first time he had done so when not playing dice. He
could feel the ship here, and through it, the sea, the endless energy of the
complicated sea.

 
          
Perhaps
the information was incorrect or incomplete. He needed more. The Dragon ship
was still too far off; he had to rely on his network.

 
          
He
stared at his map, eyes blurring. The coldness of the ocean seemed to come up
through the deck, though he was a good distance from the water.

 
          
While
his men gathered their information, he could only wait.

 
          
Philippines

 
          
August
26, 1997, 0718 local

 
          
When
Jennifer Gleason finally managed to unfold herself from the jump seat on the
C-17’s flight deck, her legs felt if they had been stapled together. Her
stomach and throat had changed places; and even her eyes were giving her
trouble. Jennifer was a veteran flier, had been in the Megafortress during
combat, and survived a disabling laser hit, but this was by far the worse
flight she had ever endured.

 
          
It
wasn’t just uncomfortable fold-down seat or the turbulent air. She’d spent the
entire flight worried about Colonel Bastian; a vague uneasiness, indefinable.
It was new to her; she’d never really had anyone to worry about before, not
like this. None of her other boyfriends—the term seemed ridiculous applied to
Tecumseh, who was anything but a boy—had aroused such emotions. Until
Tecumseh—she hated calling him Dog—Jennifer had been organized and specific about
her thoughts and emotions. Now her head fluttered back and forth, and her body
hurt like hell.

 
          
Outside,
the rain had stopped; the wet leaves glistened in the morning light. The base
had been taken over by the Navy—there were several large patrol aircraft parked
in front of two Megafortresses, along with a pair of F/A-18’s and a blue Navy
helicopter. Three or four bulldozers were revving nearby, assisting a
construction crew to erect a hangar area.

 
          
Colonel
Bastian was waiting for Jennifer at the Whiplash command post. So was most of
the Dreamland contingent, and a few Navy officers besides, so she had to
confine her greeting to a very proper “Sir.”

 
          
“Jennifer,
we’ve been waiting for you,” said the colonel. “Or rather, your equipment.”

 
          
She
snickered at the unintended double entendre, but it went right by Dog and the
others. He introduced two Navy officers as liaisons with the fleet, informing
Jennifer they had clearance for Piranha.

 
          
“If
you can give us a quick timetable,” he added in his deep voice. She had trouble
turning her mind back to the project, and the reason she’d come.

 
          
“It’s
straightforward. First up, we get the control gear into the planes. By tomorrow
night we should have two new probes. Beyond that, there are some tests and
fixes I’d like to try. Oh, and I have a fix, no, not a fix, just a tweak, on
the wake detectors—I’ll put that in first. Shouldn’t take too long; it’s a
software thing.”

 
          
“So
how sensitive is the passive sonar?” asked one of the Navy people.

 
          
“Good
enough to follow submarines of the Trafalgar type at twenty miles. I have the
diffusion rates, all the technical data here.”

 
          
The
officer had obviously asked the question to see how much she knew, and
Jennifer, not so subtly, called his bluff, reaching into her knapsack for her
laptop.

 
          
“We’ve
had a few problems with the amplitude when the temperatures shifts quickly,
such as when you go into a different thermal layer. We think it’s hardware,
though I’ve tried two different versions of the chip circuitry and had the same
results, so I’m not sure. Here—maybe you have some ideas. Look at the
sines
, that’s where it’s obvious.”

 
          
She
started to unfold the laptop. The
intel
officer had
turned purple. Delaford rescued him.

 
          
“I
think for now we better just stay focused on equipping the other planes,” he
said.

 
          
Jennifer
gave the other man an overly fake smile and packed the laptop away.

 
          
“How
long to install?” Zen asked.

 
          
“Three
hours per plane,” she told him. She took a long strand of hair and began
twisting it, thinking. “We’re going to route the com units through the
Flighthawk backup gear and use the panels for the display. We didn’t have time
to actually test it, but I think it’ll work.”

 
          
Dog
wanted to grab her, just jump her right there—it was as blatant as that, raw,
an overwhelming animal urge. His eyes bored into the side of her head; she
hadn’t looked at him after coming in, probably because she felt the same way.

 
          
“All
right. We need a fresh weather report. Storm should almost be out of the
tracking area, which will make our job easier, at least until the next one
comes through. They were talking about a twenty-four-to-forty-eight-hour
window, which means one full rotation. Then, the probe goes home.” Dog resisted
the urge to pace—there simply wasn’t room in the small trailer. “Our Navy
friends have worked on some idea about where some of targets may be located.
We’re going to work with a group of P-3’s flying at a very long range on the
west side of the Chinese battle group, from here over to the Vietnamese coast.”

 
          
Dog’s
hand slid across a massive area of ocean as dismissively as if it were a small
parking lot.

 
          
“If
we find something or get a good hint, we launch. Quicksilver is up next. They
replace us on station in six hours. Raven comes on six hours later. If there’s
no launch, Quicksilver still helps the Navy with patrols, but we’ll take the
next shift. Bu sometime tomorrow, or maybe the next day, Kitty Hawk should be
in the patrol area and that will change things. I’m not sure exactly what the
admiral had in mind at that point.”

 
          
Dog’s
lineup would mean at least twelve-hour shifts for the crews, with three or four
hours prep, six hours on patrol, two or three hours to get back and debrief. No
one complained—which didn’t surprise Dog in the least.

 
          
He
glanced over at Jennifer. She was looking at him, squinting ever so slightly.

 
          
Of
course she was looking at him. Everyone was.

 
          
Dog
forced himself to nod, shifted his gaze to Fentress, and nodded again. When he
turned toward Breanna, he saw she was frowning.

 
          
“Captain?”
he asked her in surprise.

 
          
“Nothing.”

 
          
“Captain
Williams will give us the latest on the Chinese and Indian forces,” Dog said,
turning to the Navy officer. Williams had come from the G-2 section of Admiral
Allen’s staff to facilitate intelligence sharing.

 
          
“The
storm slowed down the progress of the task forces.” He pulled out a small
manila folder and handed some papers around. Dog glanced down at his and saw it
was actually a cartoon rendering of the situation—on one side of the South
China Sea was Donald Duck, on the other Mickey Mouse, both posturing on top of
the aircraft carriers.

 
          
“You
draw this yourself?” said Zen, an obvious snicker in his voice.

 
          
“Just
keeping things in perspective,” said Williams. He dished out another
version—this one a detailed sketch based on the latest reports. “Probable area
of the Indian submarine is that crosshatch just to the east-southeast of the
lead Chinese carrier, which is where they launched from. They haven’t found it
yet, at least as far as we know. Good submarine captain—and I think we have to
assume this fellow’s at the top of the heap—would use this storm to skitter
around, get a new location. The Chinese don’t have an all-weather ASW
capability, not from the surface anyway, their submarines may be different
story, but as you can see from the diagram, they’re still at best a day away
from joining the aircraft carriers. Even then, frankly, their probability of
intercepting the Indian boat is not going to break double digits.”

 
          
The
Indian aircraft carrier had managed to link up with the cruisers and
destroyers. If everyone steamed toward each other at flank speed, they could be
firing at each other within twenty-four hours.

 
          
“More
likely, they’ll just shadowbox,” said Williams. “Plenty of opportunity for you
to get information about the submarines. Yesterday’s show of force by Iowa
seems to have dampened some of the war fever; the diplomacy’s at high pitch.”
Hoping to fire a diplomatic flare of his own toward the Dreamland contingent,
Captain Williams added, “By the way, that’s a good name for a Megafortress. Her
Navy namesake would be proud.”