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

the awful explosion on the Nunn, the Carl Levin immediately spun around and raced back into what she hoped would be safer waters. Only then did the destroyer slide to a halt and offer assistance to its stricken sister ship.

Nabiin had achieved at least part of his goal. The American aircraft carrier was still safe, but the strike group accompanying the big ship was bottled up and would likely have to stay there for a long time. Shipping through the Suez Canal immediately came to a halt. With the proven threat of mines, no ship captain would risk his vessel, crew, and cargo by steaming through the danger area.

And the canal would necessarily stay closed for a long time. The nearest mine-hunting ships were the ancient American Avenger-class mine sweepers in Bahrain. It would take them over two weeks just to make the thirty-five-hundred-mile voyage to the Gulf of Suez. And then probably another month or more to complete sweeping it clear of the mine threat.

One of the planet’s busiest seaways was clogged. And one of the world’s most powerful naval strike forces was left virtually impotent.

Ψ

Ward burst into Donnegan’s office clutching a folder.

“Mines! The damn things were mines!” he shouted. “That damn Arab outsmarted us again!”

Then Jon Ward came to a sudden halt. The folder fell from his hand onto the shabby gray carpet.

Admiral Tom Donnegan, his surrogate father, mentor, boss, and friend, lay unconscious on the office floor beside the foot of his ancient oak desk.

Instinct took over as Ward jumped into action. “Jimmy!” he yelled. “Call nine-one-one! We need medics! Quick!”

Ward rushed to the prone Donnegan and rolled him over onto his back. The admiral was not breathing. Ward frantically looked but he could not find a pulse.

Ward was already starting mouth-to-mouth resuscitation when the admiral’s aide ran into the office, the phone still stuck to his ear.

“EMTs are on their way,” Jimmy Wilson reported. “Ambulance will be at the Riverside entrance in five.”

Ward performed five quick breaths and then shifted to CPR. He ordered, “Jimmy, grab the AED from the outer office. His heart isn’t...” Wilson immediately disappeared to find the automated external defibrillator.

As Jon Ward beat on the admiral’s chest, he pleaded with his old friend. “Papa Tom, stay with us! Stay with us! You got to fight, Papa Tom!”

Ward shifted back to mouth-to-mouth as Wilson raced in, carrying the orange and red AED device. As Ward forced air into Donnegan’s lungs, Wilson ripped open the admiral’s shirt and attached the adhesive pad over his heart. The automated device began reading Donnegan’s vital signs as the text screen popped up with instructions for continued CPR and resuscitation.

The pair continued working on Donnegan until the screen said that it was detecting a pulse. Donnegan coughed loudly and began breathing on his own just as the EMTs rushed through the door with a gurney trailing behind them.

Ward was still holding his old friend’s hand as the EMTs lifted him up onto the gurney. He continued to talk to Donnegan as they rushed down the corridor.

“Stay with us, Papa Tom.”

Over and over again he pleaded with the admiral while they exited the corridor, heading out to the Pentagon’s Riverside entrance and the waiting ambulance.

Then, as the emergency vehicle’s flashing red lights merged with all the others on the route away from the iconic complex, Jon Ward could only stand there and pray.

He needed Tom Donnegan to make it. Though they did not realize it, the rest of the world also needed the admiral to make it.

That was when Ward came to a startling realization. It was now up to him to step into Donnegan’s spot and try to help save the world from a fanatical madman.

Ψ

As the Darih al Mahit al Muqadas hastened back down the Red Sea at its top speed, Nabiin had an aide call ahead and arrange for a boat to pick him up as the ship passed Dhubab. That was a tiny fishing village on the shores of the Red Sea at a point just before it opened into the Gulf of Aden at Bab al-Mandab.

Three ancient Toyota pickup trucks and a half dozen heavily armed fighters waited there at a shaky pier, prepared to drive the Prophet down the coast highway, the infamous N2. The rutted and pothole-pocked road threaded narrow shelves between towering mountains and the deep blue sea before ultimately opening out onto bone-dry and desolate sand.

The drivers of the vehicles stood, waiting. They averted their eyes and bowed as Nabiin hurried over the walkway and onto the pier and then piled into the middle vehicle without acknowledging them. The men then jumped into their vehicles and immediately sped away.

They did not even slow to pass the many checkpoints along the route. They just sped right on through without even a wave. In Aden, a once great city now crushed by many years of poverty and neglect, they stopped only briefly to relieve themselves, refuel the vehicles, and grab some food. Then onward they raced across the mountainous desert terrain.

Night fell, but the trucks sped through the darkness, bouncing over unseen potholes and skidding through wind-blown sand drifts. The small convoy and Nabiin finally arrived in Al Mukalla, dirty, bone-tired, but safe.

Safe and inspired to carry out jihad.

Ψ

The Iranian missile submarine Boz-Manand cruised silently just below the surface of the Arabian Sea. Oman’s sand-blown coast was only forty miles to the north. The submarine was making slow, lazy circles, holding station and waiting for further instructions.

Arman Dirbaz used an old rag to wipe grease from his hands as he watched the previously malfunctioning carbon monoxide burner slowly come up to operating temperature. The engineer had just spent the last eight hours tearing down the recalcitrant machine and carefully rebuilding it. That came after replacing all the seals and charging it with the very last of the catalyst material they had on the submarine.

The task would have been much easier if he were not hampered by wearing the