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

keep it lined up with the drydock centerline. The nearly flooded submarine, extra heavy from all that seawater, passed over the drydock sill with only inches to spare. As she was drawn forward, lines were passed from the port and starboard wing walls to waiting workers on the boat’s deck, a couple still dripping from their unexpected dunk in the sea. They were then alternately pulled and slacked to jockey the boat directly over keel blocks that had been set up on the drydock floor.

Finally, when all was lined up, giant pumps deep in the floating drydock’s bowels began pumping massive amounts of water out of huge flood tanks. The entire structure then rose out of the water, bringing Boz-Manand higher and higher until finally the drydock floor was above the water and the submarine rested safely on the keel blocks.

Arman Dirbaz nervously observed this entire complicated dance from the wing wall as the Boz-Manand was docked. Vassily Godonov stood by his side, smoking one cigarette after another. The Iranian engineer stared intently and with great interest at his prize toy as she gradually rose out of the water. Very little on the outside indicated the damage inside the boat. Water still poured from the hoses draped down over the side as pumps continued to remove the dirty brown floodwater.

A drydock crane had set down a metal brow connecting the wingwall to the submarine’s rounded deck.

“Mohandes Doktor,” one of the workers shouted at Dirbaz above the industrial din. “You may now come aboard.”

The engineer frowned, looking angry, and turned to the Russian.

“Come, Vassily. Now we can see just what those damned Americans have done to our beautiful ship.”

Arman Dirbaz charged across the brow and then dropped down the wounded submarine’s hatch. The more elderly and far more portly Russian struggled to keep up.

As Dirbaz assessed the damage, his anger only intensified. The destruction below decks was appalling. Soot, water, and streaks of blood were everywhere. The control room and all the vital and very expensive electronics were almost certainly a total loss.

The two men climbed down the forward ladder, deeper into the ship, to the second deck and into the crew’s mess, their eyes just now adjusting to the semi-darkness. They could then make out medical personnel, dressed in white Tyvek suits, rubber gloves, and face masks, removing the last of the human remains. Dirbaz promptly gagged and struggled to keep his lunch down as a worker nearby dropped a severed human hand into a bucket. Vassily Godonov’s constitution was not so sound. He just managed to stick his head into a handy nearby pail.

Dirbaz leaned against something solid to regain his composure. Then he noticed light streaming through a hole in the thick steel of the outboard bulkhead. Then another. Two small holes, each maybe twenty millimeters in diameter.

“Here! Here is where the cowardly Americans’ weapon struck,” he growled as he stepped over to examine the penetration more closely.

Godonov, pale-faced and wiping his chin with his sleeve, moved over to examine the small wounds in the submarine’s skin.

“Wait a minute,” he quietly muttered as he fingered the metal splinters left by the projectile. “Something is strange here, Arman.”

The engineer leaned in to see what the Russian was talking about.

“The only strange thing is that the Americans were bold enough to attack a vessel in territorial waters on sea trials,” Dirbaz sneered. “Cowards!”

But Godonov peered even more intently at one of the new sub’s entry wounds, feeling the bits of metal that had been brutally shoved out of the way by some very powerful force.

“No. Look closely at this damage. See how the pressure hull steel is actually melted through. No explosives. Only something small moving incredibly fast.” The Russian eased back, leaning heavily on something solid nearby. He closed his eyes, wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket. He looked again at the hole in the submarine’s hull as if observing an evil specter. “No weapon I know—American or otherwise—made this hole through three centimeters of solid steel.”

“But the Ayatollah has told us it is the Americans and the Israelis who…”

Godonov held up his hand.

“For once, my friend, we must not consider the opinions of the state or guidance from the afterlife. We must objectively determine whose weapon it was that attempted to sink this vessel and murder its crew.” Godonov suddenly slid down and sat on the deck as if his legs could no longer support him. He put his head in his hands, beads of sweat prominent on his bald spot. “Until we do, none of our ships or crews, your Iranian ones or our Russian ones, will ever be safe.”

14

The USS George Mason moved silently through the night. The photonics mast’s electronic eyeball slowly rotated, revealing the starlit night seascape on a large-screen command display in the submarine’s control room. Advanced algorithms ignored the impressive astral show as they automatically detected, identified, highlighted, and tracked every contact within the visual horizon.

Brian Edwards, the submarine’s skipper, watched the screen for a few minutes. He felt a fleeting bit of nostalgia for the old days, for the old boats, where it would be he alone, staring through the periscope at the ship lights, trying to mentally calculate all the information that the algorithm so easily displayed. On a more visceral level, he missed the tantalizing excitement of a pitch-black control room and peering out at the real beauty of the night sky. Instead he was standing in his boat’s control room staring at the pixelated representation on the big screen, all covered with numbers, tracks, and assorted data, as if he were playing some advanced video game.

At one hundred nautical miles off the Iranian coast, the submarine was well out in international waters, but her sensors reached out far into the night, ignoring political boundaries. Her super-sensitive BQQ-10 sonar systems detected, classified, and tracked every sound source within twenty miles, while her BLQ-10 electronic warfare system swept the skies to gobble up every