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

“Yes. Yes, we are against the back wall. All of us.”

Martinelli detonated the primer cap. A half-second later, the steel door split into two sections, both crashing to the ground. The cell was open.

The members of the second SEAL team arrived just as Ward and Martinelli were escorting the prisoners out into the open room. They quickly herded the group—fifteen people—out of the cave mouth and up the cliff face to one of the waiting Ospreys atop the rock.

As the rescue continued, Ward and Martinelli strung charges around the room before they followed. No sense in leaving this base for terrorists to once again use. Better to turn it into a fine nesting place for seabirds.

But as the two SEALs emerged from the still-smoking cave, they saw one of the hostages had remained behind, not joining the others, and appeared to be waiting for Ward and Martinelli. They quickly aimed their rifles at him, just in case.

“No, no. I am Yves Monagnad, Ocean Mystery’s captain,” he explained. “I fear that the one man you most want is still not accounted for. We saw him just before...”

Just then, a speedboat roared from behind an outcropping just beyond where the pier had once stood. It had only one person aboard and was zooming at remarkable speed out into open water, quickly beyond the range of the SEALs’ weapons.

“That’s what I didn’t understand!” Monagnad shouted. “Where had Babak gotten to? Why was he not with his followers?” He frantically pointed at the boat, now growing dimmer and dimmer in the darkness. “That’s him! That’s the bastard! Do not let him get away.”

Ward started to send the word to one of the planes, but almost as if the pilot had heard Monagnad’s plea, one of the A-10s swooped down from the night sky like some giant bird of prey and unleashed a rain of hellfire. The chainsaw sound of the GAU-8A ripped the night apart.

Out in the water, the fleeing speedboat disappeared in a roaring explosion.

Monagnad watched, expressionless. Then he suddenly crumpled, sitting down hard, face in his hands, sobbing, his ordeal now over.

31

Tom Donnegan and Jon Ward had enthusiastically attacked the stack of after-action reports. This time the outcome was positive. Sometimes it was decidedly not. Thank goodness it had been successful with only one man slightly wounded. And all accomplished by two SEAL teams and a few very effective aircraft.

For his part, Ward was having a hard time believing much of the terse prose had been written by his own son, calmly describing the treacherously dangerous operation that he had just led. The prose was almost like dinner-table talk only a few years before when young Jim would describe the results of some first-person-shooter video game he had just conquered. Or recounted over breakfast the gist of the previous night’s high school basketball victory. The story was very different.

Donnegan looked up at Ward and sat back in his big chair, all the while idly rubbing a spot on his chest just above his diaphragm.

“This Monagnad guy, he’s a gold mine of intel. But dammit! Looks like we missed Nabiin by just a few hours. Could’a nailed the big fish and put this all to rest, if only…”

Jon Ward held up a hand.

“Tom, I remember a gruff old salt once telling me ‘should’a,’ ‘could’a,’ and ‘would’a’ were the sorriest-ass excuses ever invented by a sailor. Wonder who that old salt was?”

“Damn, you were listening after all,” Donnegan said with a snort. “Could’a fooled me at the time.” The old admiral suddenly winced and caught his breath.

“Tom, you okay?”

“Aw, I’m fine. Chili night at the flag mess. You look like you spotted something there.”

Ward re-read a paragraph in the report and stopped.

“Tom, you see this bit where Monagnad is talking about the stuff they loaded on the Ocean Mystery? Here, where he says they loaded a bunch of UUVs that look like torpedoes? What the hell is Nabiin going to do with a bunch of UUVs?”

The old intel master shook his head. “Don’t have the slightest idea. But you can bet it ain’t to study global warming or look for sea bass. Well, at least this Monagnad character gave us enough of a description of the Ocean Mystery’s new look so we can start a search for the thing.”

"Yeah, I already sent it out. At least we know what we’re looking for now and that certainly makes the job a tad easier. NRO tasked the satellites and CENTCOM is tasking the BAMS units, too. If that rust bucket is out there, we’ll find her.”

Donnegan nodded, still studying the fine details of the interview with the research vessel’s captain. Still idly rubbing his breastbone.

Ψ

The MQ-4C Triton unmanned aircraft conducted its broad area search from sixty thousand feet above the Gulf of Aden. Meanwhile, the big bird’s “pilot” sat in her air-conditioned and climate-controlled bunker in Bahrain, sipping Diet Mountain Dew and maneuvering the craft in an expanding circle, spiraling from the island outward. Since there was nothing to be gained from searching the Yemeni desert, the course quickly became a narrow ellipse. The pilot flipped the lid of her soda bottle like a coin and it told her to head back east first. Hundreds of ships and boats were there, but so far none met the description that had been programmed into the aircraft’s brain.

It took the Triton two hours to cover all the water up to the Gulf of Oman. Nothing. Then the unmanned bird swung around and flew back. By the time the craft made it to the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the sun had long since set in the west. Not that it mattered much to the UAV’s advanced sensors. They were all-seeing, day or night.

Next the pilot glanced at the fuel gauge readout in the tool bar window on her display. Still in good shape but something to keep an eye on. She swung the bird around