Satan’s Tail
The air force in his native land was staffed entirely by cowards who would never act, but Ali told the Saudi he would do so before his first meal.
‘Other ships will join you within a few days. Large, powerful ships that you can use. A vessel from Oman,’ added the Saudi.
‘Oman? From the corrupted government?’
‘Brothers there are active. Details will be provided in the usual way.’
‘A missile boat would be very useful.’ Ali ran his hand over his chin. He needed fuel, food – those were the problems of a commander, more difficult to solve than the tactics of warfare.
‘If you had everything you wished for,’ said the Saudi, ‘what would you do?’
‘I would sink the enemy’s ships.’
‘The one that killed your son?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is that the limit of your ambition?’
‘I would sink every ship that I could find,’ said Ali. ‘I would continue to obtain the tribute that is God’s so we could fight the only war. I would show the West that they are not the rulers of the world.’
The Saudi stared at him. His eyes were the eyes of a viper, black diamonds that missed nothing.
‘What would you do with a submarine?’ said Osama.
‘A submarine?’ Had anyone else made this suggestion, Ali would have thought it a joke – but the Saudi did not joke. ‘A submarine would be very useful.’
‘Friends in Libya who agree with our aim have volunteered to join you. The vessel has been sailing for many days. It had to go around Africa. We have been trying to get word to you in a way that the Americans and Jews could not intercept. Finally, I decided I must come myself.’
The Saudi told Ali that the submarine would arrive at a point ten miles due north of Boosaaso and surface at ten minutes past midnight on the morning of November 8. If no contact was made, he would surface the next night, and the next.
‘They will surface every night to look for you. They will do so until they run out of fuel and food. If you do not come, they will destroy the first American warship they see. And then the next, and so on, until they have no more weapons to fire. Then they will crash their ship into the enemy, and commit their souls to Allah.’
‘We will meet him,’ said Ali. He was somewhat skeptical at the mention of Libya. The Libyan Navy had several submarines, all Russian vessels that the Italian navy had tracked when they came out of port. These were Project 641 and 641B ships, members of the Foxtrot and Tango class, large, oceangoing submarines. Not quite as quiet as the Kilo class of diesel-powered export submarines, they were still potent ships – but only if properly maintained and manned. In his experience, the Libyan vessels were neither.
‘There is one other matter of interest,’ said the Saudi.
Ali understood that this was meant to be the condition for the largesse Osama had brought. He listened without emotion as the Saudi told him that God’s plans were immense, and the war against Satan immeasurable from a human perspective. Personal feelings could have no place in it. Only after this lengthy preface did he get to the heart of the matter:
‘Friends of ours have learned that a British aircraft carrier named the Ark Royal is due to sail through the Suez Canal at the beginning of next week. Have you heard of it?’
‘Of course. It’s the pride of their fleet.’
‘If the ship were to be sunk, it would be a major blow to the West. The British could not afford to replace her. Others would see what happens to those who work closely with the devil. The blow would be much mightier than any attack on a smaller ship, however great the lesser strike would be.’
‘There will be many protections in place,’ said Ali. It was clear that the Saudi knew nothing about sea matters; suggesting an attack on an aircraft carrier was foolhardy, even by a submarine. ‘Aircraft carriers sail with several other vessels and are watched constantly.’
‘According to our Egyptian friends, the carrier is on a journey to India. Perhaps they will not be on their guard the entire distance.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Ali.
‘The Egyptians will make much information available. Some I do not entirely understand, I confess. They speak of three escorts, and an air arm at half strength.’
Three escorts would be standard – two optimized for air defense, one for submarine warfare. They were good ships, though certainly not unbeatable. The air arm probably referred to the carrier’s complement of Harrier jump jets; half strength might mean as few as four planes were aboard the carrier. Ali would have to find out; such a low number would limit patrols severely. The ship would also have helicopters for radar and antisubmarine work – potentially more of a problem than the Harriers.
Was he thinking of attacking? Against such strong odds?
It would be suicidal.
He did not care for his own life now. Death would be welcome. And wouldn’t God see to it that he succeeded?
The answer was obvious. This was an order from God; the Saudi was only a messenger.
During his time with the Italian destroyer Audace, one of their regular exercises had called for an attack on the flagship of the Italian fleet, the Giuseppe Garibaldi. The Garibaldi was somewhat smaller than the Ark Royal, displacing only about half the tonnage. In some ways it was much more capable, however – unlike the Ark Royal, it carried potent surface-to-surface missiles and torpedo launchers; even during the exercises when it was stripped of its escorts it held off Ali’s ship. In fact, it usually did better without escorts: There were never enough to properly screen against a surface attack if it was launched properly, but the carrier crews saw the other ships and believed they were well-protected. They were less than vigilant.
The attack would have to be orchestrated very carefully.
The surprising thing he had seen during the exercises was the ineptness of the flight crews when locating attacking ships. They trained almost exclusively to bombard land targets or combat submarines. The captain of Ali’s ship had dodged one patrol merely by identifying the ship as one of the carrier’s screening vessels. The vessel had been permitted to get close enough to launch its surface-to-surface missiles unscathed.
The commander had been reprimanded for his trickery; Ali thought he should have been commended. It was the pilot’s fault, after all; truly he should have been able to tell the difference.
If he could sink it – if he did sink it – wouldn’t that send a message that anyone who was friends with the Americans could be targeted? Wouldn’t the nations of the Middle East – the small ones especially, like Djibouti and Bahrain, but also the bigger ones, Egypt, Saudi Arabia – realize they weren’t safe?
Ali looked over at his visitor and found him smiling.
‘You understand how truly majestic it would be,’ said Osama. ‘I can see it in your face.’
‘Yes, I do understand,’ said Ali. ‘But – it would not be an easy task. I would need much information – considerable information.’
‘You will have it.’
‘The Iranians?’
‘The Iranians will not be cooperative. We will work to get you other resources,’ said the Saudi. ‘And God will be with you. Come. It is almost dawn. Let us prepare to pray. It will be a glorious day.’
II
Xray Pop
Aboard the Abner Read 4 November 1997 0800
Storm sipped the cold coffee, its acid bitterness biting his lips. Admiral Johnson had been called away from the camera in the secure communications center aboard the Vinson. The pause gave Storm a chance to regroup and reconsider his approach. By the time Johnson’s face flashed back on the screen, Storm was more deferential.
‘As you were saying, Captain?’ said Johnson.
‘We have reviewed the data, and the weapons were definitely aimed at us,’ said Storm.
‘You still disobeyed your orders of engagement. You were not within visual range and therefore could not positively identify the craft.’
‘Admiral, I believe that United States warships are permitted – excuse me, directed – to take any and all prudent actions to protect themselves.’
‘You were not supposed to pursue any warships into territorial waters,’ said Johnson, who wasn’t about to let go of this. He continued over the same territory he had covered earlier, speaking of the delicacy of diplomatic negotiations and the political situation in the Middle East.
Storm took another sip of his coffee. No other commander would get this lecture; on the contrary, they would be commended for forceful and prudent action and the sinking of two pirate vessels, wherever their rusty tubs had gone down. Storm was only getting blasted because Tex Johnson hated his guts.
‘Talk to the intelligence people. I have other things to do,’ said the admiral finally.
Storm leaned back in his seat, waiting for Commander Megan Gunther and her assistants to come on line. But instead the screen flashed with the chief of staff, Captain Patrick ‘Red’ McGowan.
‘You son of a bitch you – congratulations on sinking those bastards!’ said Red.
‘Thank you, Captain.’
‘Don’t give me that Captain bullshit, you dog. Tell me – did those idiots you were chasing blow themselves up or what?’
‘Just about,’ said Storm.
‘So you sunk them with the gun, huh?’
‘Didn’t seem worth a missile,’ said Storm. ‘Of course, a tactical decision like that would be made by the ship’s captain.’
‘Bullshit. I’m surprised you didn’t go down and load the damn gun yourself.’
‘Computer does all the hard work.’ Storm smiled. He might be a micromanager and a pain in the butt and all that – but he also knew that he took care of his people when the shit hit the fan. And they knew it too.
‘They’re mighty pleased back at the Pentagon. Everybody’s lining up to buy you some champagne.’
‘Everybody except your boss.’
‘Ah, don’t worry about Tex. He’s just pissed that you’re getting most of the credit. He’ll come around. By tomorrow he’ll be reminding people Xray Pop was his idea.’
Red meant that as a joke – Tex had opposed the idea as premature, and Storm had only prevailed by calling in favors owed to him at the Pentagon. It didn’t hurt that he’d had several assignments under the present Chief of Staff, Admiral Balboa, when Balboa headed CentCom. Balboa was a bit too pansy-assed for Storm, but connections were connections.
‘I’m telling you, Tex is warming up to you,’ added Red. ‘He has the commendation all written out.’
‘The only reason that might be true is if you wrote it.’
Red smiled. ‘So how many of the little suckers are left?’
‘No idea,’ said Storm. ‘There were at least three other boats last night, all of them patrol-boat-sized. And we’ve seen others. It’s a motley assortment.’
‘One of your little Shark Boats couldn’t take care of them?’
‘I have to tell you, Red, not having over-the-horizon systems is hurting us quite a bit. If we had those Orions we’d be doing much better. Listen – give me the Belleau Wood and I guarantee we’ll wipe these guys off the face of the earth.’
Red laughed, but Storm wasn’t joking. The Belleau Wood – LHA-3 – was an assault ship capable of carrying Harriers and AH-1W SuperCobras as well as nearly two thousand Marines. The ship looked like a downsized aircraft carrier, which she essentially was. When Storm had originally drawn up the proposal for Xray Pop and the mission here, he had wanted Belleau Wood or one of her sister ships involved, intending to use the airpower to provide reconnaissance and air cover. He also would have used the Marines to strike the pirate bases.
‘What happened to your Sea Sprite helicopters?’ asked Red when he noticed Storm wasn’t laughing.
‘Still back at Pearl. It’s a sore subject, Red. Those helos weren’t designed to operate from the Abner Read, let alone the Shark Boats. I need the UAVs.’
‘Not going to happen.’ Red shrugged; weapons development wasn’t his area. ‘Any other news? You find that lost Libyan submarine?’
‘Give me a break, huh? The Libyans can’t even get out of port, for cryin’ out loud. They’re not going to sail around Africa.’
‘National Security Council thinks it’s real. Rumor has it Phil Freeman is sending a detachment out of Dreamland to look for it.’
‘Dreamland? Out here?’
‘Strictly to find the submarine.’
‘As long as they stay out of my way,’ said Storm. He’d heard of Lieutenant Colonel Tecumseh ‘Dog’ Bastian: He’d gotten his nickname because it was ‘God’ spelled backward. Bastian was so full of himself he could have been in the Army, Storm thought. ‘That Yemen missile boat we sunk – does that mean we can go into Yemen waters now?’
‘You heard that the Yemen government claims it was stolen, I assume.’
Storm snorted in derision. ‘Sounds like the story we told the night we stole the Army’s mule for the game.’
Red smiled. As students at Annapolis, Red, Storm, and four other midshipmen had conducted an elaborate operation to procure the Army mascot prior to the Army-Navy game. The operation had involved considerable daring, skulduggery, and not a little deceit – but its success had guaranteed that the six would live forever in Academy lore. It also hadn’t hurt their careers.
‘Untie my hands, Red. Let me go after these bastards where they live. They don’t respect the law. Why should we? Let my ships go into territorial waters.’
‘Talk to the politicians,’ said Red. ‘Even Tex’ll back you on that.’
‘Untie my hands. That’s all I ask.’
‘That and an assault ship and half of the Navy’s Marines.’
‘I’ll take two platoons of Marines. With or without the ship.’
‘Where will you put them?’
‘Marines? I’ll give ’em a rubber raft and tell them that’s all they get until they take over one of the patrol boats. I’ll have the whole damn pirate fleet by nightfall.’
Near Karin, Somalia, on the Gulf of Aden 4 November 1997 1731
Fatigue stung Ali’s eyes as he walked up the gangplank to the large ship. He had not slept since the battle. It was not simply a matter of restlessness, or even the demands of his position. He feared that he would dream of his son the same way he had dreamed of his wife after her death. The dreams had been vivid and heart-wrenching; he could not face such an ordeal now.
The ship was nearly twice as long as his boats. Once part of the Russian navy, it had fallen into great disrepair after being delivered to Somalia as part of a deal the communists used to sway the corrupt government years before. The ship had fallen under the control of a warlord in Mogadishu, who had agreed to donate it to the Islamic cause in exchange for weapons and cash.
Rust stained the hull and the odor of rot hung heavy over the ship. Netting and fake spars had been strategically placed ahead of the forecastle to make the vessel look more like a merchant trawler from the air. Ali had no illusion that this would fool a discerning eye intent on discovering the ship; he merely wanted to make it easier to overlook.
‘Admiral Ali,’ said the ship’s captain, greeting him as he came aboard. ‘It is a pleasure, sir.’
‘I am not an admiral,’ Ali told him.
‘Yes, sir,’ said the captain. He led the way around the deck of the ship, showing Ali to the bridge.
‘I wish to see the engines,’ said Ali.
‘The engine room,’ said the captain doubtfully. When Ali did not respond, the captain dutifully led him to a ladder and they descended into the bowels of the ship. The stench of rot increased as they went down; the way was dark and the passages narrow. Ali noticed several sets of pipes and wires that were broken, and there were bits of the decking that seemed as if a shark had bitten through.
In truth, the engine room was not as bad as he expected when he saw the captain’s frown. Water slopped along the floor, but it was less than an inch. The massive 40 DM diesels seemed clean enough, and while the space smelled of diesel oil, Ali had been on several ships in the Egyptian navy that were much worse. There were two men on duty, one of whom did not speak Arabic – a Polish engineer familiar with the engines whom the captain had somehow found and managed to hire.
‘He is, unfortunately, a drinker,’ said the captain as they went back topside. ‘But he knows the engines.’
‘You have done very well getting the ship here,’ said Ali. ‘But you have much more work to do.’
‘I understand, Captain.’
‘We will obtain the missiles in a few days. How long will it take you to install them?’
Ali listened as the ship’s commander told him that he had two men trained by the Russians to work with the systems, and several others willing to work with them. This neither answered the question nor impressed Ali.
‘Two brothers from Egypt will join you tomorrow and help with the work,’ Ali told the captain. ‘They will help you determine how much additional laborers are needed. One of my men will install a radio system with an encryption system.’
‘Thank you, Captain.’
Ali nodded. ‘We need a name.’ The vessel looked the opposite of a warship, and giving it a warlike name would be an affront, he thought. It needed something nobler. ‘Sharia.’
The word meant ‘Islamic law’ in Arabic. It was the only true law, the law that would be restored when the jihad was won.
‘It is a good name. Fitting.’
‘Make sure your crew does not embarrass it,’ said Ali, turning to go back to the dock.
Approaching Khamis Mushait Air Base, southwestern Saudi Arabia 6 November 1997 1331
Breanna put the aircraft into a wide turn over the desert to the east of Khamis Mushait, waiting for the ground controllers to decide that she was cleared to land. The other Megafortress, Wisconsin, had landed ten minutes ago. It wasn’t clear what the hang-up was, since there were no other aircraft visible on the ramps or anywhere near the runway.
The city looked like a clump of dirty sugar cubes and miniature plastic trees stuck in a child’s sandbox. Yellowish brown sand stretched toward the horizon, as if the desert were marching toward the city and not the other way around. This was actually a relatively populous area of the country, with highways that had existed for centuries as trade routes and cities that had been shady oases before the Pharaohs built the pyramids. But from the air the land looked sparse and even imaginary.
‘What do we do if we don’t get cleared in?’ asked Lieutenant Mark ‘Spiderman’ Hennemann, her copilot.
‘Then we launch our Flighthawk, have Zen take out the tower, and settle down right behind him,’ she said.
The copilot didn’t laugh. ‘Bree?’
‘I’m kidding,’ she told him. ‘If you’re going to fly with me, Spiderman, you better get a sense of humor.’
‘I’m working on it,’ he said, as serious as if she had told him to review a flight plan or procedure.
Breanna began to laugh.
‘Did I miss another joke?’ asked Spiderman.
‘Never mind. See if you can get a hold of Colonel Bastian on the ground and find out what i hasn’t been dotted.’
‘Will do.’ Spiderman punched the flat-panel touch-screen at the right side of his dashboard. ‘We have about fifteen minutes of fuel left.’
‘Looks like that’s how long they have to decide whether we’re allowed to land or not.’
The Saudis took nearly all of them before not one but two officers came on offering their ‘most sincere and humble apologies’ and directing the Megafortress to land. Breanna brought the plane in quickly, setting the big jet down on the ample runway. She found a powder-blue Saudi Royal Air Force car waiting as she approached the far end of the runway; the car led them past a group of Saudi F-15s to the far end of the base. Well-armed Saudi soldiers were clustered around a pair of trucks parked at the side of the ramp. An Air Force advance security team had been sent down from Europe and was waiting near the revetment where they were led.
‘Ah, home sweet home,’ said Breanna as she and her copilot began shutting down the aircraft after parking.
Dog took another slug from the bottle of mineral water. He felt as dry as the desert outside, even though he’d already finished two liter bottles since landing. Commander Delaford, meanwhile, poked at the large map they had mounted on the wall of the command center the Saudis had loaned them. The facilities – built less than a year before and never used – combined living and work quarters and could have fit at least two squadrons if not more. And they weren’t little rooms either – this one was about three times the size of Dog’s entire office suite. His small team was clustered around a table that could have accommodated the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff and their assistants.
‘The problem is,’ continued Delaford, ‘the best place to launch the Piranha probe to guarantee that it won’t be spotted going in is in this area here, well off the Somalian coast and a good distance from the shipping lanes. But that puts it six hundred miles from the most likely places for the submarine to be. At forty knots, that’s fifteen hours of swim time before the probe starts doing anything worthwhile.’
‘Let’s just deploy the probe at the same place where we put the sentinel buoy,’ suggested Zen. ‘If we have to be close to land and the water anyway, let’s take the risk at one place and at one time.’
‘You’d have to go a little farther south, but not that much,’ said Delaford.
‘If Baker-Baker takes both drops, it can’t carry a Flighthawk,’ said Breanna. ‘But I think limiting ourselves to one aircraft in the target area makes it less risky that we’ll be seen visually. The moon will be nearly full.’
They discussed the trade-offs. The Somalian, Sudanese, and Ethiopian air forces were all equipped with modernized versions of the MiG-21, relatively short-ranged but potent fighters. The radar in the Megafortress would make the large plane ‘visible’ to them from no less than one hundred miles, possibly as many as 150 or 200, depending on the equipment they carried and the training the pilots received. On the other hand, the ground intercept radars that were used in the countries were limited, and it would be difficult for them to vector the airplanes close enough to the area.
‘Don’t kid yourself,’ said Dog. ‘This is probably like Bosnia – there’ll be spies all over the place. They’ll know when we take off.’
‘It’ll still be hard to track us,’ said Breanna.
‘Why don’t we fly Wisconsin with a Flighthawk over the area first, doing reconnaissance,’ said Zen. ‘Then head south over the general area where Piranha will head. We come back and hand off the Flighthawk to Baker-Baker, land, replenish, and take off for another mission in the morning.’
‘Stretching the crew,’ said Dog.
‘Just me. Ensign English can drive the Piranha on the second shift, and you can have the backup flight crew take the aircraft. ‘We can get back to twelve hours on, twelve hours off. One Flighthawk per mission.’
‘I think it’ll work,’ said Breanna.
‘Still, the turnaround on the mission times will be ridiculously tight,’ said Spiderman, who was acting as maintenance officer as well as copilot of Baker-Baker Two. ‘We’re really stretched out here. We have the backup crews, but we’re pushing the aircraft and systems. We need more maintainers and technical people, Colonel.’