said Breanna. “They had to be vectored toward us from a good distance away. They’re breaking off.”
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They were—and headed toward the Wisconsin.
“I’m on them, Colonel,” said Zen, flying the Flighthawk.
“Looks like they want to check us out. No missiles.”
The Sudanese aircraft were roughly ten miles away from the Wisconsin, which was now a few miles north of Baker-Baker. Zen flew the Flighthawk between a mile and two miles behind them; it was probable that they couldn’t even see him.
“Coming at you,” said Zen.
“Let them come,” said Dog. “Just keep an eye on them.”
The air surveillance radar on Dog’s plane showed the Sudanese aircraft nearly merging as they approached. Close encounters at high speed were always reckless, but in this case the Sudanese pilots were being particularly foolish. Not only was it dark, but they had no way of knowing what the Megafortress was or would do. It was a large aircraft, one they’d surely never encountered before. That demanded caution, not hotdogging—and these bozos looked like they were going to knock each other out of the sky the way they were going.
He spun the Megafortress through its orbit as the planes passed. They rounded south and headed back toward land.
“All right, looks like they’re heading home,” said Breanna. “I have a mind to go and spank them.”
“Are you sure they’re from Sudan?” asked Dog.
“We’ll keep tabs on them and see. As I was saying, I still wonder who told them we were out here. I wonder if somebody at Khamis Mushait tipped them off.”
“Very possibly.” Dog checked his position. “Baker-Baker, I’d like to resume our patrol south closer to Somalia, get some idea of the area.”
“Go for it. We can take it from here.”
“Roger that.”
He tacked south and then eastward, riding over the gulf toward the coast. When they were about thirty miles from land, he banked gently and began running parallel to Soma-
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lia, gradually fine-tuning his position until he was about fifteen miles from the craggy shore. The African continent lay roughly thirty thousand feet below, part of the dull blackness out the copilot’s side window. Zen’s Flighthawk slipped along below them at 2,500 feet, providing a close-up view of the shoreline and nearby ship traffic. The night seemed quiet, with a few empty tankers heading toward the Persian Gulf and a cluster of fishing boats tied up near a settlement on the shore.
Within an hour they were coming up toward Laasgoray, a tiny hamlet on the coast.
“Colonel, we have a couple of surface contacts moving at pretty high speed here,” said Dish Mallack from his radar station upstairs. “Uh, two, hold—three patrol boats. They’re being ID’d by the computer as members of the Super Dvora Mk II class. That’s an Israeli ship, patrol boat, so the computer is just making a match to the closest type.”
“Flighthawk leader, see if you can get a close-up view,”
said Dog. He checked the sitrep map. The Abner Read—just barely visible on the radar—was about fifty miles farther east and just to the north, next to a much larger ship. Here was his chance to say hello to the task group’s commander, and maybe give him an assist at the same time.
“I think these may be the pirates Xray Pop has been hunting,” Dog told Zen. “Track them while we make contact.”
“I’m on it,” said Zen.
Near Laasgoray, Somalia,
on the Gulf of Aden
6 November 1997
2220
ALI STRAINED IN THE DIRECTION THE HELMSMAN WAS POINTing, but he saw nothing in the sky.
“It came from that direction,” insisted the man. “It flew toward us, then banked in the gulf.”
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A figment of the man’s imagination? Or an aircraft hunting for them?
“Stop the boats. Lie dead in the water,” said Ali. He took the signal lamp and flashed the message to the other boats personally as their speed slackened and the boat’s prow lowered into the water. “Man the forward gun and the SA-7,” he told the crew.
Two of the crewmen went to the stern and opened a water-proof locker where the antiaircraft missile was kept. The SA-7 was an old weapon dating to the Cold War, but properly handled, it could be effective against low flying aircraft, helicopters especially.
“Any word on the Adak?” he asked Bari, inquiring about the merchant ship they had left behind when Satan’s Tail approached.
“No sir. The timer has another five minutes to run.”
“There!” shouted one of the men at the bow. They swung the cannon in the direction of a shadow looming out of the dusky coast to their south.
“Hold your fire!” ordered Ali. “No one is to fire until I give the order. Bari, signal the others.”
Ali watched as the black triangle approached. It was low, no higher than fifteen hundred feet above. At first it seemed to be a great distance away; then Ali realized it was close but smaller than he had thought. For a moment he feared it was a missile, homing in on them. Despair fluttered in his stomach—he thought of the moment he realized his son was gone—then he realized that the craft was passing overhead.
“A radar is tracking us, Captain,” said Bari. “It may be an aircraft. It seems to be at long range, but it may be the way the signal is sent, a mechanism designed to be difficult to detect.”
“The docks at Laasgoray, quickly!” said Ali, spinning around and taking the wheel of the boat himself.
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Aboard the Abner Read , Gulf of Aden
6 November 1997
2223
“WE’VE FOUND THREE BODIES SO FAR,” SAID GORDIE, WHO WAS
heading the boarding team. “The bridge is a mess. Auxiliary controls look OK, though. We probably could get her into port with a skeleton crew. We’ll know better in the morning.”
“Storm, we have a report coming in from an Air Force unit,” said Eyes, who was standing next to him in the Tactical Center. “I assume it’s the Dreamland group you mentioned, though they won’t specifically identify themselves.
They have a location on three fast patrol boats about fifty miles from here. They’re on Com Line External Two.”
“Hold on, Gordie. Let me deal with this.” Storm went to his station in the Tactical Center. He punched the communications panel at the left. “Is this Colonel Bastian?”
“This is Technical Sergeant Mallack,” said the man on the other line.
“This is Captain Gale. Give me your boss.”
“Uh—”
“Now, mister.”
There was a slight pause, but no click or discernible static on the line.
“This is Colonel Bastian.”
“Colonel, you have surface contacts?”
“We have three fast patrol boats that are similar to Israeli Dvora II class. My radar operator has the specific locations.
They’re about fifty miles from your location, about seven-teen miles offshore but heading toward coastal waters. I haven’t had a chance—”
“Sink the bastards.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re ordered to sink them.”
There was a pause. “You’re giving me an order?”
“Colonel, I’m sitting in the water next to a mer-
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chant whose crew they slaughtered. Sink them.”
“You know these are the ships?”
“What do you want? Pictures? If I’d been close enough to see them, I would have sunk them.”
“Sorry, Captain, but my orders don’t allow me to sink unidentified boats, or any boat for that matter,” said Dog. “I can track them for you; that’s the best I can offer.”
“That’s not good enough,” said Storm. “They’ll be in for-bidden territory in a second. Sink them.”
“Thanks for the advice.” The line snapped dead.