Arabian Storm (The Hunter Killer Series Book 5) by George Wallace (different ereaders .txt) 📕

easily distinguishable feature anywhere nearby. Rocks offered some semblance of cover, too.

“Skipper, I need some help.” Master Chief Johnston’s voice boomed through Ward’s earbuds. “I got the pilot. He’s busted up. We gotta get him out of here pretty quick.”

“Roger, Master Chief. Heading your way.”

The sun decided then to take a peek at the patch of violence there in its desert domain. The SEALs did not look back. They slipped down off the backside of their hill while they had the chance.

They had a long and risky trudge to try to escape the scene of their ambush gone dramatically sideways. Someday, if they lived, they would try to figure out what all had gone wrong with an otherwise good plan and what they could do to avoid a repeat.

But now, they had to get away from some angry fanatics while carrying a wounded man, and make it to some place where they could be extracted from this hellhole.

But the one thing Jim Ward dreaded most was explaining to Admiral Tom Donnegan just how their mission had gone so big-time tits-up.

10

The news story on the Al Jazeera Network went viral almost immediately. Ben Tahib had not become the news service’s top correspondent only because he was well-connected or knew where certain skeletons were buried, though he certainly qualified on both counts. The reporter had an uncanny nose for a story and a naturally mesmerizing way of spinning it. Plus, he was well aware of how much the world loved an enigmatic tragedy.

The big chopper on which Tahib had been riding out to visit Ocean Mystery had barely landed before the newsman jumped out and raced toward the nearest Wi-Fi connection. Even an airport as remote as Oman’s Salalah International had the wide band connectivity to get his blog file, tweets, and YouTube video distributed to his millions of followers. By the time he got his executive editor on the phone, the story was already trending worldwide. The idea that an ultra-modern oceanographic research ship had simply vanished in the Arabian Sea’s ancient—though pirate-infested—waters promised intrigue and high adventure. That the Ocean Mystery was conducting vital global-warming research, trying to save mankind from themselves, all under the auspices of the United Nations, took the story to an even more majestic level. And for an added fillip, two very interesting people, one a top scientist and the other a major UN functionary, had gone missing with the vessel.

In New York, the United Nations General Assembly promptly scheduled an emergency meeting for the next day. Fiery speeches were being cranked out. The Security Council did not even wait. It was already in session, gathering consensus from the major powers on who was to blame for this tragedy. And, of course, to determine who could bring what resources into play in what would be an unprecedented search-and-rescue effort. Omani and Saudi search planes were already clawing their way into the sky to scour a very large chunk of the Arabian Sea. A pair of American P-8 Poseidons departed Sigonella Air Station in Sicily to stage out of Djibouti. The Indians were offering to send a couple of their P-8s to help, while the Pakistanis, not to be upstaged, volunteered a pair of their somewhat obsolete P-3 Orions. The skies in the region would soon be crowded as nations jockeyed to be the first to find the missing vessel and solve the puzzle. Meanwhile, ships got underway from naval bases within a couple of thousand miles of the missing vessel’s last known position. Soon the sea would be every bit as crowded as the skies.

Talking heads at news organizations and propagandists from myriad countries around the world were already spinning the story. It was a Zionist plot to blame Palestinians or the Iranians. No, capitalist lackeys had done the dirty work to deflect attention from their raping of the planet. It was a Russian plot to crash the world economy. A dozen terrorist organizations hurried to claim credit for capturing, sinking, or otherwise making the ship disappear. One individual in Waddingham, England, purported to be in contact with extraterrestrials who shared with him details on how they had transported the Ocean Mystery to another dimension in the space-time continuum. But, he reported, they promised to send it back when they were finished examining it.

This was all great fun for Ben Tahib. He had received the help of three assistants at the network to coordinate his appearances on news media around the globe. But he was realistic enough to know this might not lead to the Pulitzer Prize. Or a best-selling book or high-dollar movie. There was every chance that Ocean Mystery would show up with a story of a communications glitch or faulty navigation system and that would be the end of it. Tahib was well aware having a ship disappear with no trace, even if it had sunk, was highly unlikely.

But as hours turned to days and then a week passed with no sighting of ship or survivors or even any debris, the story only grew as the mystery intensified and the world media played it to the hilt.

Ψ

The massive, darkened ship steamed ponderously through the nighttime sea. From horizon to horizon, no other vessel cluttered up the radar screen. On the AIS screen, the nearest ship transponder was almost a hundred miles away. The huge vessel’s own AIS transponder had been turned off for days. Lloyd’s of London would not be tracking this particular asset for a while longer.

The Persian Star barely slowed as it passed a rock of an island near a desolate shoreline, little more than an outcrop jutting out of the pitch-black sea. Then, in this isolated bit of sea, something odd occurred. The Ocean Mystery separated from the mammoth oil tanker. So did the four small vessels that had originally surrounded the research ship.

Next, they headed arrow-straight for the uninhabited bit of rock. Unseen from their direction of origin was a small anchorage, barely