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

full five minutes to finally get up the nerve to alert his supervisor. Then the supervisor spent another two minutes yelling at the young radar operator while trying to figure out for himself what was happening. And deciding if he would risk taking it higher up the chain of command. By the time the Hohhot’s captain was awakened, the line of whatever it was had approached to about ten kilometers out. Now it had resolved into individual targets. Thousands of them. Still low down. Still hugging the wavetops.

By then, too, other ships in the battlegroup were coming alert. Weapons were slewing toward the incoming radar blips, just in case they were determined to be a threat. Then, suddenly, the first of the Type 730 Close-In Weapons System spurted out a stream of thirty-millimeter slugs. Almost immediately, more guns came alive. HHQ-10 short range anti-air missiles burned across the sky. Tracers, missiles, and explosions lit up the darkness. That clearly revealed a gargantuan swarm consisting of small, propeller-driven aircraft slowly but inexorably moving toward the battlegroup. With a wingspan of barely four meters, the tiny, unmanned drones were difficult targets to hit. In the face of the withering fire from the Chinese naval vessels, hundreds were being punched out of the sky, even if it was mostly by accident, not aim.

Then the guns fell silent, out of ammunition. And no more missiles, either. The launchers were empty. But more than six hundred diminutive aircraft were still coming their way, and they were only three kilometers out. Crews rushed out on deck, lugging HHQ-10 missiles to reload the launchers while others rolled out drums of thirty-millimeter ammunition for the guns.

That was when the first wave of unmanned craft reached the Nantong. Carrying less than ten kilograms of explosives each, an individual strike did not cause much damage. But when more than two hundred aircraft smashed into the frigate, like so many bugs on a car’s windshield, the effect was crippling. They first struck the bridge and radar masts, rendering the ship blind and headless. Fires and secondary explosions rippled across the deck, up and down the length of the vessel.

The Hohhot and the Sin Tzu were next. On the destroyer, the story was very similar to what occurred on the unfortunate frigate. The warship was left burning, sightless, and, for all practical purposes, defenseless, even as the crew valiantly tried to save their ship.

The helicopter carrier had a much worse fate. The tiny aircraft slammed into the Shenyang fighters that were aligned along the flight deck, fully fueled, armed, and ready to support the operation that brought them to this spot in the sea. But they were not ready for the sudden onslaught now upon them. Each fighter became an exploding, flaming pyre. The secondary explosions from the fighters’ ordnance ripped mammoth holes in the deck and poured burning fuel from the aircraft down hatches and ladders, lighting more fires deep into the heart of the ship.

The Sin Tzu had been prepared for attack and re-attack. The ammunition and bombs had been staged on the hangar deck, ready to rapidly re-arm returning fighters. The fires raced down the hangar deck and reached the ordnance, creating more secondary explosions, adding to the dying ship’s agony.

More tiny planes slammed into the Renhai. The night sky was brilliantly lit by the flaming pyres that only minutes before had been indomitable fighting ships. But the ships on the starboard side of the formation, the Zaozhuang and the Chagan Lake, were untouched.

Now in survival mode, no one on any of the ships saw a second wave of drones, every bit as large and deadly as the first, flying in from the north.

The Zaozhuang was hit first and then the Chagan Lake. The entire attack was over in less than half an hour. The once proud battle group was little more than a cluster of burning hulks, even as the surviving crews battled just to keep them afloat.

Soon, the rising sun would reveal the scene, including the pillars of black, billowing smoke climbing into the clear, red-tinged sky.

Ψ

Nabiin the Prophet sat in the communications center on the Ocean Mystery, just a few kilometers over the horizon from all the mayhem. Even in the moonless night, he could see the building fires glowing on the horizon, as if the sun had decided to rise in the west this particular morning. The barest hint of a smile flitted across his craggy features as he glanced down at the satellite images on the console display below him.

Once again, his strategy was playing out perfectly. The unsuspecting Chinese had fallen into the carefully planned and baited trap, just as he knew they would. They had become victims of their own hubris, their cocksure belief that they had become a major naval power.

Where was that bold self-assurance now?

It would be only a short wait before the next step played out. And the fallout from that would reverberate around the globe.

Yawm al-Qiyamah—the End Times—had been unleashed. There was no longer anything the world’s infidels could do to stop it.

Ψ

Admiral Tom Donnegan sat at the head of the oak conference table, sipping cold, mucky coffee without tasting it. Jon Ward, his brand-new deputy, sat at his left hand, staring at reports, a puzzled frown on his face. The window behind Ward perfectly framed the last of the orange, gold, and red sunset lighting the sky over Arlington National Cemetery.

“You awake, Jon?” Donnegan suddenly asked.

“Brain-numb, maybe, but yeah. I’m awake. Travel makes me tired anymore. And besides, none of this makes sense, you know.”

Donnegan snorted. “Welcome to my world. Like one of the wife’s landscape jigsaw puzzles. With half the pieces missing. You seen these yet?”

Donnegan tossed a sheaf of photos across the table to Ward. He glanced at them.

“No, sir. But I read the brief.” Ward riffled through the photos of burning ships taken from a low-earth orbit satellite. They were sharp enough to make out men in the