Satan’s Tail. Dale Brown
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‘Probably. This is where they’ve been.’
A map of the Gulf of Aden came on the screen. Roughly 550 miles long, the arm of the Indian Ocean sat below the Arabian peninsula, sandwiched between the peninsula and the Horn of Africa. Somalia lay at the bottom, on the horn shape; Yemen was at the top, on the Arabian peninsula. To the left was the entrance to the Red Sea, which led to the Suez Canal at the far north.
Jed had shaded the areas along the coasts of Somalia and Yemen to show where the pirates had been most active – a swath roughly five hundred miles long.
‘The attacks have been mostly in international waters, where the ships try to stay. The pirates then go into the coastal zones where they know they’ll be safe,’ said Jed. ‘If the submarine is going to join them, it’ll come up from this direction here.’
He pointed at the right side of the map, on the horn, where Somalia butted into the Indian Ocean.
‘You don’t think it’s heading for the Persian Gulf?’ asked Dog. The Persian Gulf, which bordered Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, and Iran, lay farther east, just off Jed’s map. ‘The Libyans have worked with the Iranians before, and the Iranians are the ones to watch in the Middle East, if you ask me.’
‘Um, yes, but they’ve been pretty quiet since Razor’s Edge,’ said Jed, referring to the code name for an operation in Iran concluded some months before. Whiplash had destroyed an Iranian laser similar in design to the American antiair weapon known as Razor. ‘Besides, a NATO squadron is already operating there,’ he added. ‘There’s an American destroyer and two French ships guarding the Strait of Hormuz, and an Italian vessel farther north in the Persian Gulf. If the sub does try to get into the gulf, those ships will find it at Hormuz. The Gulf of Aden is much more problematic. If the submarine is in territorial waters, we can’t touch it, and may even have trouble just tracking it.’
Though Jed didn’t explain, Dog realized that the administration was reluctant to push the territorial waters issue, not so much because it feared foreign reaction, but because of congressional criticism of the Martindale administration for acting unilaterally over the past six or seven months. Even though the administration had twice prevented wars between China and Taiwan and once between China and India, the politicos used the international criticism to bash Martindale. Senate Majority Leader Barbara Finegold had as much as said so in an interview on CNN a few days before, when she promised to hold hearings on President Martindale’s ‘hidden foreign agenda.’
‘Why would the Libyans get involved with pirates?’ Dog asked. ‘Are they getting a cut of the booty or what?’
‘The pirates aren’t just thieves,’ Jed explained. ‘They’re part of a network of Islamic militants. They’re attacking shipping partly for money and partly to help fund an Islamic revolt in North Africa. Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia, maybe even Ethiopia and Yemen – they’re all in play. There are organizations in each country, and they’re each affiliated with Al Qaeda, the people who are operating in Afghanistan.’
‘And who funded the takeover in Brunei.’
‘Same people. The Brunei movement probably used some of the money the pirates raised. We don’t have any evidence that they’re involved with the Libyans, or this submarine,’ added Jed. ‘But there have been efforts to get Ethiopia and Yemen as well as Egypt and even Oman to join the conflict. Ethiopia and Yemen both scrambled planes a few days ago.’
‘To attack the pirates?’
‘More like to protect them. But they deny that.’
‘What happens if we find the sub?’ asked Dog.
‘It depends on exactly what you find. If there’s evidence of it working with the pirates, the Secretary of State will take it to the UN. He’s pushing for a resolution that will authorize action against them no matter where they are.’
The Dreamland Command Center was set up like a theater, with benches of computer displays arranged in a semicircle down toward the front screen. The displays could be tied to different systems during an operation, or used to tap into various databases. Dog stooped down to the one near him and tapped in the address for a mapping system, bringing up a detailed view of the Somalian coast. There were literally thousands of places a submarine might go along the coast of Africa.
‘Where do the pirates operate out of?’ he asked, looking at his map.
‘We’re not sure, exactly,’ said Jed. ‘They move from place to place, all along the coast. They hide among the local population, use old military bases, even civilian areas.’
‘In order to check some of these places out,’ Dog said, ‘we’re going to have to put Piranha right into them. And I mean right into them.’
‘You’re authorized to put Piranha as close as you have to. It’s understood that the probe may go into territorial waters. That’s why we want Piranha. As long as the controlling aircraft stays in international airspace.’
‘That’s easy, if nothing goes wrong. What happens if the probe gets hung up in the mud?’
In theory, the probes were expendable; the idea was to use them in a situation like this, where exposing men could be dangerous and politically inconvenient. But at the moment, they were also very expensive – each one cost roughly a million dollars. And there were only four.
‘They’ve passed all the trials with flying colors,’ said Jed. ‘And we used them in the Pacific. They’re funded in the next fiscal year for regular procurement.’
‘You’ve been in Washington too long, Jed. That’s not an answer.’
‘Um, sorry. It would depend on the circumstances. The, uh, political situation is pretty sensitive right now.’
‘So’s the technology.’
‘Not my call, Colonel.’
‘What if I find the pirates while I’m searching for the submarine?’ Dog asked. ‘Do I tell this Navy operation?’
‘Not unless it’s threatening them.’
‘Shouldn’t we be working with them?’
‘Mr Freeman – and the President – intended this to be separate,’ said Jed. ‘They’re pretty busy doing what they’re doing. They’ve been informed of the sub, and that we’ll be looking for it, but that’s the extent of it at the moment,’ he added. ‘Um, I didn’t think you and the Navy exactly got along.’
That was an understatement. The last time Dog had worked with the Navy, he’d nearly decked an admiral.
‘I get along with everybody,’ he replied. ‘Should I make contact with the Navy people or what?’
‘If it becomes “operationally necessary,” you can contact them. That’s in the Whiplash directive. So, you know, it’s kind of your call there. I think Mr Freeman and the President thought you’d want to keep your distance. I should mention that the Navy doesn’t put much stock in the reports of the submarine getting that far. Not at all, actually. They’re pretty much against wasting any resources to find it. That’s the word they use – waste.’
‘We can definitely get a mission package with Piranha prepared within twelve hours,’ Dog said. ‘But we need a base in the area to work out of.’
‘What about Diego Garcia?’
Located in the Indian Ocean south of India, the island atoll in the Chagos Archipelago had a long runway and secure if primitive facilities. It was the perfect staging area for an operation – except for the fact that it was a few thousand miles from the Gulf of Aden.
‘It’s a heck of a hike,’ Dog told Jed. ‘It’d be bad enough to make a bombing run up to the gulf from there. You’re talking about patrols that have to last several hours to be effective, eight or twelve ideally. You put a four-