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

happened and see if he has a suggestion on what he might want us to do.” Glass winced as he touched a spot just above his left ear. “But let’s keep an eye on the Chinese boat. Just in case he realizes we are here and wants to do away with any witnesses.”

Ψ

Captain Yon Hun Glo, a pronounced frown on his face, went through the data replay one more time. The attack had been successful. This latest threat to the battle group had been eliminated. But he was still trying to understand what had happened. Both of his new wire-guided YU-9 torpedoes had sent back data saying that they had positive contact on a submarine. No problem there. Then there had been a stream of constant contact information from each weapon, right up until they exploded, destroying both the torpedoes and an enemy submarine.

But there was one major issue. There had been more than five minutes of time and almost six kilometers of range difference between the two explosions. It was as if the two weapons had attacked separate targets.

Yon played and replayed the audio tapes from the Wushiwu’s sonar system, trying to piece together these significant anomalies as he watched the computer replay. He could hear a wall of noise just as the first torpedo reported target acquisition. He immediately recognized the sounds of a torpedo countermeasure of some kind but launched far too close to be from the Kilo.

And Yon was baffled that the torpedo run showed that it was less than halfway to the Iranian submarine when it acquired that particular target. His sonar system had not shown anything at that range.

Yon sucked in a deep breath. There was only one possible explanation. An American submarine had somehow stumbled into the area between the Wushiwu and its intended target. With all the hostile activity in the area recently, it was not surprising that such a vessel might be there. A quick cross reference to his intelligence library confirmed his hunch. The noise was from an American ADC Mark 5 submarine acoustic countermeasure.

There was no other possibility. Yon’s first weapon had killed an unlucky American. The second, as intended, had done the same to the Iranian.

This end result presented Yon with a problem of mammoth proportions. He was ordered to attack any warship that posed a threat to the Wushiwu or his battle group. The Iranian clearly fit that criteria since the Iranians were most likely guilty of already attacking two Chinese ships. Killing him would create a minor furor to the outside world—assuming anyone ever deemed it necessary to announce that it had even happened—but any such outcry would soon disappear amid the world’s general loss of patience with the Iranians and their sponsorship of terrorism. Regardless, his PLAN masters would treat him as a hero.

But the American? That would be of considerably more consequence. He might well be hailed as a hero for destroying both “threats” to his country’s warships in international waters. Or, just as likely, Yon would be shot for trying to start World War III.

After much thought in the confines of his stateroom, Yon ultimately decided that discretion was the better course. He would report attacking the Kilo, but remain silent about the unintended attack. Allow the world to come to its own conclusions. By the time he returned home, and after the experts had done their own analysis of his tapes, the tragic loss of an American submarine with all hands would be old news.

22

The puzzle pieces were starting to fall into place. Admiral Tom Donnegan was now convinced that he was seeing the barest hints of a pattern beginning to form based on all the information being assembled. Making sense of seemingly unrelated datapoints was a knack that had paid off many times for the Navy’s top spook. And a good reason he was still doing the job long after most men his age had retired to a fishing spot or golf course.

But, as Donnegan often reminded himself, there had been other times when that sixth sense had not been so acute. Times that cost men and women their lives and his nation its advantage. But he also knew that in this game, there was no opportunity to replay the fourth quarter. He could only learn from mistakes and keep the impact of the unknowns negligible. And no second-guessing himself or anyone else.

Finally, after almost a week, NSA’s high-powered quantum computers had cracked Nabiin’s encrypted hard drive. That set a new Agency record for frustration. For a wild-eyed terrorist, this Prophet guy certainly had some sophisticated algorithms.

The analysts were now busy trying to make sense of what appeared to mostly be rants and ravings. Mounds of screed about the “End Times.” Pages of fulminating on the subject of something called the “Al-Mulhama Al-Kubra,” the “great battle,” the culmination of a chain of events that the Prophet believed had already begun worldwide. And apparently this Nabiin character considered himself to be the “guide” for someone else. Someone called “Al Mahdi.” Or perhaps the lunatic believed himself to actually be this Al Mahdi character. None of this made much sense to analysts accustomed to a very different type of radical, mostly tribal militant more obsessed with blowing up infidels or slashing innocent tourists than the finer points of violent theology.

Donnegan looked over the summary one more time, idly scratching his chin. He had a theory about such men. The more obscure and intense their beliefs, the more dangerous they were. Such obsession led to unpredictability. And unpredictability was far more dangerous than the usual wild-eyed doctrine.

Most of the more recent ranting seemed to be about someone called Masin ad-Dajjal, a devil who had risen to become the leader of two bloodthirsty, evil tribes called the Ya’jooj and the Ma’jooj. These groups appeared to be Nabiin’s real enemies, the focus of his rage. And as nearly as the analysts could determine, the guy had decided that the Ya’jooj and the Ma’jooj