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

In the beginning of their capture, there had been interrogations followed by the inevitable torture if he did not answer their questions. Questions that made no sense and gave no clue about their mission. It had been tough to endure but his military training had prepared him well. As he had been instructed, Monagnad appeared to break under the torment and slowly, begrudgingly revealed a few believable facts. Then he followed with some rather far-fetched cover stories as the interrogations progressed. Stories he carefully crafted to convince even as they effectively misled.

His crew, though, did not have the benefit of such preparation. The worst part for the research ship captain had been listening to his men’s screams as they suffered similar treatment from the terrorists.

Then, abruptly, the interrogations ceased. Even the screams finally stopped. Had one of his crew revealed more than he should have? Or had the lies Monagnad fed them finally satisfied them? Or, more likely, were their captors about to move to the next step in whatever nefarious plan they were carrying out?

Regardless, the end to the interrogations put Monagnad into this netherworld, more painful and unendurable than the rather primitive torture had been for him. And he had been alone in this darkened space for an eternity, hidden from sun and moon, salt air and sea breeze. The only sensual stimulation he experienced came when the terrorists intermittently brought what passed for food. Or opened the door just long enough to empty the bucket that passed for a toilet in this place.

Monagnad was left with plenty of time to ponder what their end game might be. If they were kidnapped for ransom, as was typical of piracy in this part of the world, the scenario should have played out by now. He and his crew would have been either free or dead depending on whether or not the funds had landed in the correct bank account. If the terrorists merely wanted Ocean Mystery for transportation to carry out some reprehensible purpose, the captain and his men would have long since been fed to the sharks.

In Monagnad’s mind, that only left one possibility. Their captors—he had long since decided they were terrorists of some stripe or another—had a need for him and his crew. That likely meant they intended to take Ocean Mystery somewhere for some purpose that required some more complicated maneuvering. Thus, they needed someone to operate the vessel. But what could that voyage and mission possibly be? Ocean Mystery was a ship of peace and on a mission of learning and furthering science. She carried no weapons. If, of course, one did not consider the underwater unmanned vehicles. But these terrorists could never have known of their true purpose or capabilities. The world only knew that they did deep-water climate research.

Yes, his ship actually was on a surveillance and intelligence gathering mission, but the UUVs would have been of no use to these twenty-first-century brigands. As far as they knew, Ocean Mystery was only a research vessel, not a warship.

One thing was clear, though. The only way to end this travesty and somehow escape their captors was for someone—anyone—to come to their rescue. And that would only happen if he could figure out a way to tell the world the missing vessel still floated and where it could be found.

Monagnad had been down this line of reasoning a thousand times already. And, once again, he drew a blank. There simply was no way to send a signal to the outside world from where he was locked up deep inside his ship. Not even a bottle with a note to get tossed out with his excrement, though he had even tried to think of a way to accomplish that. Nor did he have any idea of where they were floating on a very large planet.

Then, footsteps. It was not yet time for food. Monagnad’s pulse quickened. Pirates though they were, these men had been following a tight schedule. Food. Toilet emptying. Torture. All highly predictable.

The lock clicked. The door was yanked open. Monagnad was blinded by a sudden flare of brilliant sunlight. Daytime. Without a word, one of the terrorists grabbed him and shoved him out onto the passageway. He kicked the captain in the general direction of a ladder that led up to the next deck. Then he motioned Monagnad to start climbing and kicked him again, hard, to emphasize the urgency.

The captain more stumbled and fell up the ladder than climbed it. Up to the next deck. Then upward farther until he finally collapsed onto the deck on the bridge of the very ship he had recently commanded. But it seemed an impossibly long time ago that he had confidently trod these decks, overseeing the crew of this famous and highly touted vessel. Now he groveled pitifully, sprawled out on the polished terrazzo, mostly blind, hot, and sweating in what appeared to be a noontime sun.

General Farad Babak, the Iranian terrorist leader, grabbed him by the shoulder and lifted him to his feet.

“Come, Captain, we cannot allow you to lie there like that. Not aboard your own ship. Disgraceful.” Monagnad accepted the offered help then shielded his eyes from the sun and looked into the smiling face of the short, stout Arab. Disfiguring burn scars, clearly visible through the man’s scraggly gray beard, made the smirk almost ghoulish. “I am General Farad Babak of Yemen. You have, by now, met most of my men. The time has come, Captain, for you to earn your life and the lives of your loyal crew.”

Monagnad dared a quick look out the broad windows that arced across the front of the bridge. He did not recognize the ship that stretched out in front of him. The Ocean Mystery was no longer his beautiful, gleaming-white research ship, but rather a drab, gray vessel of some nondescript configuration. A ship even its captain would not have recognized.

New structures—clearly little more than sheets of cheap