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

nine dot three zero east. Twenty-five miles south-southeast of Al Mukalla.”

Joe Glass acknowledged and checked the charts. The SEALs were only five miles away from Toledo. In the water. Odd.

“Tell our friends that the taxi will arrive in thirty mikes. Officer of the Deck, come to ahead full.”

Right on schedule, the Toledo broached up a few hundred yards from the SEALs’ stalled speedboat. Ten minutes later the SEALs were all safely aboard and the big submarine was back down in the depths, safe from prying eyes.

Master Chief Johnston was taken directly down to the wardroom for treatment by Doc Halliday.

But even the hot submarine coffee was not enough to make Jim Ward and his team feel any better. They had not accomplished their mission.

And that simply was not acceptable.

Ψ

Captain Yon Hun Glo swung the periscope around, looking for anything he might see on the surface. As expected, there appeared to be nothing.

He had ordered the Wushiwu up from running deep and was ready to start the punitive cruise missile launches that his leaders had ordered. Silly as such a thing might be. He almost smiled when he thought about how a few innocent goats would suffer for the sins committed by a bunch of terrorists.

But then, as he reached the end of the 360-degree sweep, there was something. Something surprisingly close. But obviously very quiet or his sonar crew would have detected it before the periscope went up.

It was an old tramp steamer that filled his periscope’s field of view. And it looked very familiar. In fact, it appeared to be very similar to the images of the ship that PLAN Intel suspected had been somehow responsible for the attack on their battle group.

Satellite imagery had shown the vessel to be hanging around just over the radar horizon when that attack was launched. And the intel message for the previous evening had said that the Americans suspected that this same ship was associated with the mining of the Suez Canal. Odd and condemning that this same ship seemed to be in the area anytime there was mischief about.

Yon Hun Glo slowly swung the Wushiwu around until he could see the tramp steamer’s name painted across its stern. Sure enough, there was the name the intel reports had told them to be aware of: Darih al Mahit al Muqadas.

That sealed the ship’s fate.

An electrically driven YU-9 torpedo whooshed out from one of Wushiwu’s forward torpedo tubes and headed straight for the Darih al Mahit al Muqadas. The warhead exploded when it was directly beneath the steamer. That positioning was deliberate. The ship immediately broke in half, her back broken.

Both halves disappeared surprisingly quickly, settling deep beneath the waves, almost certainly before anyone aboard had a chance to get off the ship.

Ψ

“Torpedo in the water!” Master Chief Zillich called out from his seat at the sonar panel. “Hold a Chinese YU-9 torpedo, bearing three-two-six, drawing left.”

Joe Glass was on the verge of launching a counterfire weapon when Zillich suddenly shouted, “Down doppler on the torpedo! It’s moving away. Best bearing three-one-eight, drawing left.”

“What the hell?” Glass whispered as he looked at the screen on the geo display. “They’re not shooting at us?”

Then the picture became quickly obvious. The Chinese submarine was shooting at Sierra Four-Seven. That was the merchant ship they had been tracking coming up the Gulf toward them. But why would he be shooting at some merch? That part remained far from clear.

“Let’s go up and take a look,” Glass said. “But everybody stay ready in case he’s still trigger happy. Officer of the Deck, come to periscope depth. I want to see if we can figure out just what the hell is going on.”

Walt Smith, standing the OOD watch, responded with, “Come to periscope depth, aye, sir.” He turned to the watch team and ordered, “Diving Officer, make your depth six-two feet. All ahead one-third. Number two scope coming up.”

There was a sudden resounding boom, sufficient to rock the Toledo a bit.

“Guess their aim was true,” Glass observed. “Their torpedo hit something.”

“Speed ten,” Chief Johannson, the chief of the watch, called out. The big black sub glided smoothly up from the depths. Walt Smith danced the “fat lady”—the periscope—around until the boat was safely up at periscope depth. They arrived there just in time to see the Darih al Mahit al Muqadas starting to sink.

But there was something else. A speedboat, zooming away from the rapidly sinking ship. And that speedboat was headed directly at them.

“Captain, you’d better see this,” Smith called out.

Glass took the scope in time to see Nabiin racing toward them. It was exactly the same speedboat that Jim Ward had described. Right down to the bullet-shattered windscreen.

“Diving Officer, standby to broach the ship,” Glass called out. He did some quick mental math and ordered, “All ahead full. And somebody get that SEAL team leader up here. He’ll want to see this.”

Chief Johannson called out, “Number two scope indicates up. Speed limit fifteen.”

“Acknowledged,” Glass answered as he felt the scope buck against the increased sea pressure.

“Speed fifteen,” the diving officer called out.

“Broach the ship,” Glass answered. “Ahead flank.”

“All rise on the stern planes, all rise on the bow planes, broach the ship, aye. Coming to ahead flank. Depth six-zero feet, five-five feet, five-zero feet, four-zero feet. Depth three-six feet and holding. The ship is broached.”

Just then, Jim Ward stepped into the control room. He was familiar with the territory, he wore silver dolphins from his summer cruise aboard a sub while at the Academy, and, of course, was the son of a submarine skipper.

Glass was barely paying attention to the orders and reports. Instead, he was watching the speedboat and its driver, unable to avoid the behemoth that sprang from the sea directly ahead of him. There was no time to react.

The boat crashed up and over the submarine’s suddenly surfacing main deck. It was hurtling ahead so fast that it did two complete revolutions bow-over-stern before it landed upside down