Dale Brown - Dale Brown's Dreamland 04 - Piranha(and Jim DeFelice)(2003) (48 page)

 
          
“I
probably wouldn’t want to say that,” said Chris contritely.

 
          
If
the trawler hit the buoy, they would most likely lose their connection—and
Piranha. It occurred to Breanna the ocean was awful big and the buoy awfully
small—and yet the ship was uncannily on course for the device.

 
          
“Could
they track the transmission, you think?”

 
          
“Well,
the Navy couldn’t,” said Chris. “But in theory, it’s possible. That ship had
been around—they might have seen the buoy launched.”

 
          
“
Fentress’s
—how’s your connection with Piranha?” Bree asked.

 
          
“As
far as I can tell, Captain, they’re not interfering.”

 
          
“Going
through two thousand feet to nineteen hundred, eighteen hundred,” said the
copilot, belatedly calling out their altitude. “We’re getting low.”

 
          
“Is
there enough time to auto-sink this buoy and launch another?” Bree asked Chris
and Fentress as she leveled off.

 
          
“Sinking
procedure takes a hundred and eighty seconds,” said Fentress. “I have the
screen up.”

 
          
“We
have to get the new one in the water first,” said Chris.

 
          
“Pick
a spot about five miles away. Make it ten.”

 
          
“Hang
on.” He worked on his screens, plotting a course. “Five minutes total. If
they’re watching and they’re interested, there’s no guarantee they won’t see
us, Bree. They’ll know what we’re doing and get at least a rough idea of where
we launch. The Chinese may too.”

 
          
“I
don’t know that we have any other choice. Give me the course. Kevin, be ready
with the self-destruct.”

 
          
“I
can’t get that panel once we’re trying to reconnect,” he told her. “What I mean
is, it’ll take a few more seconds.”

 
          
“They’re
just about alongside,” said Chris.

 
          
If
Zen were here, she’d have him send the Flighthawks to buzz the spy ship.

 
          
So
where the hell was he when she needed him?

 
          
“Think
they’ll back off if we buzz them?” she asked Chris.

 
          
“Don’t
know,” said the copilot. “Sure get them talking about us, though.”

 
          
Breanna
slid the Megafortress onto her left wing, pirouetting back toward the trawler
and kicking up her speed. ‘They may be armed,” said Stoner over the interphone.

 
          
“Don’t
be so optimistic,” said Breanna. She pushed the EB-52 to just three hundred
feet over the white-capped waves, the plane a black finger wagging at the
trawler not to be naughty. They could see the people on the deck duck as they
roared over.

 
          
“One
more time,” she said, picking up the plane’s nose and then pedaling into a
tight bank. “And this time, we’re going to one hundred feet.”

 
          
“We
can snap their aerial if you want,” offered Chris.

 
          
“Don’t
tempt me.”

 
          
“Two
hundred fifty feet,” said the copilot. As he continued to read the descending
numbers, a bit of a tremble entered his voice. They cleared the upper mast by
maybe ten feet.

 
          
“They
stop?” Breanna asked.

 
          
“Not
sure. They’re on the deck.”

 
          
“One
more pass. Prepare to deploy buoy,” said Breanna.

 
          
This
time they cleared the mast by inches rather than feet, but the trawler had
continued moving and was no practically alongside the buoy. Two or three crew
members were leaning over the rail there.

 
          
“Getting
static here,” said Fentress as they cleared the shop.

 
          
“Activate
the targeting radar for the air mines,” said Breanna.

 
          
“Captain?”
said Ferris.

 
          
“We’ll
get their attention, launch another probe while we’re firing, sink the first,
launch a third further away, then sink the second,” said Breanna. “Calculate it
so we come close, but don’t hit them with the shrapnel.”

 
          
“I’m
not sure I can do that. I don’t even know if I can get the gun on them.”

 
          
“You
can do anything, Chris.” She swung the Megafortress through another turn so she
could get her tail aimed at the spy ship.

 
          
“All
right. We cross over the trawler, bank, take our shot, then launch.”

 
          
“You
disappoint me,” she told him, hitting the throttle for more speed.

 
          
“How’s
that?”

 
          
“All
that potential and no sexual innuendo?”

 
          
“Yeah,
well, you should hear what I’m thinking.”

 
          
Aboard Shiva in the South China Sea

 
          
IT
wasn’t until he was four miles from the aircraft carrier that the Chinese
destroyer picked up
Balin’s
submarine. Even then, the
destroyer wasn’t quite sure what if had found, or where its quarry was—the ship
began tracking north, probably after one of the other subs
Balin’s
men had detected in the vicinity. And so he managed to get nearly two miles
closer before Captain
Varja
passed the word that the
enemy escort was now bearing down on them.

 
          
“Prepare
torpedoes,” said
Balin
calmly.

 
          
“Torpedoes
ready,” said
Varja
.

 
          
“Range
to target?”

 
          
“Three
thousand, five hundred meters,” reported the captain.

 
          
The
others in the control room were trying to strangle their excitement; the few
words they exchanged as they prepared to fire were high-pitched and anxious.
Varja
, though, was calm.
Balin
appreciated that; he felt he had taught the young man something worthwhile.

 
          
“We
will fire at three thousand meters,”
Balin
said.

 
          
A
moment later, a depth charge exploded somewhere behind them. The boat shook off
the
shrudder
and the helmsman managed to stay on
course, but
Balin
realized this had only been the
opening blow.

 
          
“Launch
torpedoes,” said the admiral. “Sink them.”

 
          
Aboard Quicksilver

 
          
In
order to get the air mines where Chris wanted them, Breanna had to practically
stand the Megafortress on its tail, fighting all of Newton’s laws—not to
mention those of common sense. Breanna barely managed to control the big plane,
sliding sideways across the waves at a mere thousand feet. She finally had to
let her left wing sail downward; the front windscreen filled with blue before
she could recover.

 
          
“Got
a couple of shots on their bow,” said Chris. His helmet was touching the
display where the Stinger target box was displayed. “I don’t think we hurt
anybody. They all ran aft. Ship’s dead in the water, eight, ten feet from the
buoy.”

 
          
“Get
ready to launch,” said Bree calmly.

 
          
“Okay,
right.”

 
          
“Fentress?”
she asked.

 
          
“Not
as much static. Geez, those bullets make a hell of a racket hitting the water.
You should see them on the display screen—look like volcanoes erupting on top
of you, then there’s this wild crisscross pattern in different shades of red
and blue. Very 1960s. I had to hit the manual filter and—”

 
          
Fentress
stopped abruptly.

 
          
“We’re
at launch point,” said Chris.

 
          
“Wait,”
she told him. “Fentress? Kevin? You okay down there?”

 
          
“Torpedoes
in the water.”

 
          
“What?”

 
          
“Back
by the carrier,” said Fentress. “Have two, three warning blocks.”

 
          
“Launch
the buoy,” she told Chris. “Kevin. We’re launching. You sure about the torpedoes?”

 
          
“Yes
ma’am. Have another sub.”

 
          
“Give
the coordinates to Chris as soon as you can. Buoys first.”

 
          
Aboard the Dragon ship in the South China
Sea

 
          
Realizing
his presence made the men nervous, Chen Lo
Fann
had
refrained from coming into the operator’s suite until the robot planes were
approaching the fleet. Now, his place was in this room.

 
          
They
rose as one as he entered, bowing stiffly. After he returned their salute, they
went back to what they were doing.

 
          
The
long LCD screen at the center of the room was gray. He started at it, wondering
why he had not been told of the malfunction, before realizing he was seeing
clouds.

 
          
“We
will descend from the clouds in thirty seconds,” said Professor Ai. Overcoming
the mishap with the crane seemed somehow to have calmed him, or at least
drained some of his energy. He spoke slowly now, more himself. “The carriers
will be in the far corner to your left. There is one
Sukhoi
approaching, but its radar has not detected us.”

 
          
“At
what point will it do so?” asked Chen.

 
          
“We
are not sure. We will be ready in any event.”

 
          
“Yes,”
said Chen.

 
          
One
of the radio operators at the far corner of the room held up his hand. “There
is a report the Megafortress is firing on our ship near its probe,” said the
man.

 
          
Chen
considered this. “Have them back away. Tell them to leave the area.”

 
          
The
robot supplying the video feed finally broke through the cloud bank. The
operator adjusted the picture, compensating for the fading light. The Chinese
aircraft carrier sat like a large, gray cow at the top of the screen.

 
          
His
robot was equipped with two small missiles, adapted from antitank weapons. They
would do almost no damage on a target so vast. The thought occurred to him that
he could crash his plane into the carrier, it would not sink, but the fire
would kill many men.

 
          
Relatives
of his perhaps; much of his family had not escaped the Communists, and he knew
that a few were now in their Navy. Fortune’s irony.