Dale Brown - Dale Brown's Dreamland 04 - Piranha(and Jim DeFelice)(2003) (37 page)

 
          
“The
only problem is what we do if, after we launch, the
Orions
find the Chinese subs and they’re really far away.”

 
          
“How
far?” asked Dog.

 
          
“Well,
anything over fifty miles and not heading in our direction is going to be
problematic,” said Delaford.

 
          
“But
we’ll know where they’re headed.”

 
          
“Only
if our guess that they’re after the Indian sub is right.”

 
          
“I
say we go for it,” said Dog.

 
          
“I
agree.”

 
          
Woods
and Allen might not, but Dog couldn’t see the use of flying around all day and
not launching. They had to take a shot sooner or later.

 
          
“Give
us that launch point again,” Colonel Bastian told Delaford.

 
          
Twenty
minutes later, Dog and his copilot took Iowa down to five hundred feet,
surveying the ocean and preparing to launch a buoy and the device. After a last
check with the
Orions
to make sure they hadn’t found
anything, Dog dipped the plane’s nose. Piranha splashed into the water like an
anxious dolphin, freed from her pen.

 
          
“Contact
with Piranha,” said Delaford, reporting a link with the robot. “We’re running
diagnostics now. Looking good, Colonel.”

 
          
They
ran the Megafortress in a slow, steady oval at approximately five thousand feet
above the waves. As they completed their second pass, Rosen got contacts on the
radar—a pair of Shenyang F-8’s were heading south from China.

 
          
“I
have them at one hundred twenty-five miles,’ said Rosen. “They’re between
eighteen and twenty angels, descending.”

 
          
“They
see us?” said Dog.

 
          
“Not
clear at this time,” said Rosen.

 
          
“Check
and record our position,” said Dog, who wanted the record clear in case of
attack. They were, irrefutably, in international air space.

 
          
“
Absolutemento
.”

 
          
“Which
means?”

 
          
“You
got it, Colonel.”

 
          
“Still
bored? I thought the launch would perk you up.”

 
          
“Just
call me Mr. Perky, sir.” Rosen worked in silence for a few minutes, still
tracking the pair of interceptors as they headed south, not quite on an
intercept vector. It was possible a land-based radar had picked them up as they
opened their bay to complete the Piranha launch. On the other hand, it was also
possible the planes were merely on a routine mission. The F-8IIMs looked like
supersized MiG-21’s. though their mission was considerably different. Intended
as high-altitude, high-speed interceptors, they were not quite as competent as
the more maneuverable Sukhois that had recently tangled with Iowa. Nonetheless,
they were capable aircraft, and their Russian
Phazotron
Zhuk-8 multimode radars would be painting the Megafortress relatively soon.

 
          
“We
have a surface ship, thirty miles west, thirteen degrees from our present
heading,” said Rosen, “Unidentified type—trawler-size.”

 
          
“Yes,
we have it on the passive sonar,” said Delaford. “We’re looking at our library
now. Probably a spy ship.”

 
          
“Not
in the library,” said Ensign English after comparing the acoustical signal
picked up by Piranha with a library of known warships.

 
          
“We
can swing over and take a look,” said Dog.

 
          
“Good
idea, Colonel,” said Delaford. “We’ll keep the probe its present course.”

 
          
“Keep
an eye on our F-8’s,” Dog told Rosen as he nudged the stick to get closer to
the ship.

 
          
“They’re
turning it up a notch—on an intercept now at forty miles.”

 
          
“Surface
ship is tracking us for them?”

 
          
“No
indication of that,” said Rosen.

 
          
By
the time the ship appeared in the distance, the F-8’s were roughly ten miles
out. The two planes had cut their afterburners and were now descending in an
arc that would take them about a half mile off Iowa’s nose. If everyone stayed
on their present course. The fact they were heading in that direction, rather
than trying to take a position on Iowa’s rear, seemed a significant tactical
shift to Dog. Maybe shooting down the cruise missiles yesterday had won some
friends.

 
          
Not
that they necessarily wanted them.

 
          
The
ship in the distance looked like an old trawler. Ensign English, working off
the video feed piped down by the copilot, identified it as a Republic of China
or Taiwan ship, one of a class of spy vessels the Taiwanese used to keep tabs
on their mainland brothers.

 
          
“He
may be looking for subs,” said Delaford. “He’s got active sonar.”

 
          
“Can
they find us?” asked Dog.

 
          
“I
don’t believe so.

 
          
“F-8
pilots are challenging us,” said Rosen. “In pretty good English too.”

 
          
Dog
turned his attention to the Chinese fighters, giving them the standard line
about being in international airspace and having no “hostile intent.”

 
          
The
Chinese replied that the Yankees were overrated and would have no chance in the
World Series this year.

 
          
“Couple
of comedians,” said Rosen.

 
          
In
the exchange that followed, Rosen proved to be a ridiculously committed LA
Dodger fan, predicting the Dodgers would “
whup
”
whomever the American league managed to put up. The Chinese pilot—he was
apparently the wingman in the two-plane flight—knew more than enough baseball
to scoff at Rosen’s predictions. The man inexplicably favored the Cleveland
Indians, and in fact, seemed to know the entire lineup.

 
          
As
the two pilots traded sports barbs, the F-8’s took a pass and then came back to
work themselves roughly parallel to the Megafortress’s cockpit. This was
undoubtedly their first look at an EB-52, and the pilot complimented Rosen on
his “choice of conveyance.”

 
          
“Quite
a vocabulary,” said Dog.

 
          
“Claims
he went to Stanford.”

 
          
After
the tension of the past few days, the encounter seemed almost refreshing.

 
          
Excitedly,
Delaford brought the laughs to an end.

 
          
“We
have a contact. Definite contact,” he said. “Shit, yeah!”

 
          
The
GPS readings showed the submarine exactly thirteen miles to the south by
southeast.

 
          
“They’ve
made good time submerged,” Delaford answered. “These are them—Trafalgar
signature. Wow! Colonel, this is pay dirt. Pay dirt. These submarines don’t
exist—this is a serious coup.”

 
          
“Relax,
Commander. There’ll be plenty of time to pick up the Navy Cross at the end of
the mission,” said Dog. Not that he didn’t share at least some of
Delaford’s
excitement—especially since it meant his
decision to launch without a sighting from the
Orions
had been vindicated. One less thing for Allen to look down his nose about.
“Make sure we’re recording.”

 
          
“Oh,
yeah. Big time.”

 
          
“Thirty-five
knots, submerged,” said Ensign English.

 
          
“Is
that fast?” asked Dog.

 
          
“It’s
good. It’s very good,” said Delaford. “And they may not even by trying. We’re
twenty miles behind, at forty-two knots, our max. I’m going to settle in at
sixteen miles behind them. If they’re like our guys, they’ll accelerate a bit,
then stop. Jesus, I wonder if they consider slow.”

 
          
“F-8’s
holding their position,” said Rosen.

 
          
“I’d
like to shoot south and drop a buoy ahead of the subs,” Delaford added.

 
          
“We’ll
wait until the F-8s go home,” Dog told him. “They ought to be leaving pretty
soon; their fuel should be just about out.”

 
          
“Copy
that,” said
Delarod
. “This is great, Colonel. This is
really great.”

 
          
Aboard Shiva in the South China Sea

 
          
The
distance from their target, their need to avoid the escort ships, and the storm
all greatly complicated matters. When they were finally able to analyze all of
the data, Admiral
Balin
was faced with the
inescapable, if unpalatable, conclusion that their vaunted weapons had somehow
missed. To add further insult to this grave disgrace, one of the Chinese escort
ships somehow managed to get close enough to him as he doubled back to
reconnoiter; two of its Russian-made ASW rockets had exploded close enough to
do some damage to Shiva. One, but apparently only one, ballast tank vent was
stuck in a closed position, a circulating pump in the environmental system had
broken, and it seemed likely there had been damage to the radar mast. The ELF
gear was apparently no longer functioning, as they had missed a scheduled
transmission. Casualties were negligible; one man had suffered a broken arm.

 
          
Any
competent Navy would have sunk them.

 
          
He
was now out of Kali missiles, but had six torpedoes, one for each forward tube.
In the chaos and the storm, he had lost contact with the Chinese fleet, but
would find it again soon enough.

 
          
The
torpedoes on board were primitive Russian twenty-one-inch unguided fish, which
required him to get considerably closer than the
Kalis
.
To guarantee a strike, he intended to close to within three thousand yards, if
not closer.

 
          
Getting
that close to a warship involved many dangers, but these were not to be thought
of now. Soon, if not already, his own fleet would be pressing home the attack;
no matter the odds,
Balin
owed it to them to press
home his mission.

 
          
To
be truthful, part of him was glad. From the moment he had launched the last
missile, an inexplicable sadness had come over him. He had fulfilled his
greatest ambitions; there was nothing else left to achieve. Even if he had been
given a hero’s welcome, or promoted to command the entire Navy, he would, in
effect, be retired. He had fought all these years to remain at sea—to remain
alive. Retiring, even as a hero, seemed something akin to a slow and meek
death.

 
          
Retirement
was no longer a possibility. That notion somehow felt supremely comforting as
he plotted a course to intercept the enemy.

 
          
Airborne, northwest of the Philippines

 
          
They
rigged the MV-22 with buddy tanks on the lower fuselage, allowing the Osprey to
refuel the Quick Birds en route to the atoll. It was a great plan in theory,
one that worked perfectly in any number of computer simulations. In the real
world, however, it was trickier than hell.