“Sub’s moving southward, changing course,” said Zen. He brought Hawk One down to five hundred feet and rode the sub bow to stern. There were three or four men in the tower; no weapons visible. Hawk One was moving too fast to get a good look at uniforms, let alone faces, and the freeze-frame didn’t make it any clearer. “Looks like they’re headed toward the damaged ship. If they try to interfere with the rescue, I’m going to perforate their hull.”
“It may come to that,” said Bree. “Lets drop down a bit and make sure they know we’re here.”
“They’d be awful blind not to,” said Zen. He did a quick check on Hawk Two; its systems were all in the green and the computer had it in Trail Two, one of the preset flight patterns programmed into the Flighthawk’s onboard systems. To save communications bandwidth, a number of routine flight operations and patterns were carried aboard the robot, allowing it to perform basic functions without being told precisely what to do. In Trail Two, it homed in on the mother ship, staying precisely three miles off the V-shaped tail, varying its altitude and position as it flew, pretty much the way a “real” pilot would.
“Uh-oh. Got another sub surfacing,” said Chris as the Megafortress spiraled down toward the ocean. “Five miles beyond the cruise ship.”
“On it,” said Zen, jumping into Hawk Two as the Megafortress changed course to get a look.
In the few minutes it took to get in range, the submarine was already fully surfaced. Its conning tower was longer than the first sub’s, shaped like a rounded dagger with the knifepoint facing backward. Otherwise, the sub itself seemed to be roughly the same shape and size as the Kilo.
“Not in our library,” said Chris. “We’ll want to route video on this to Dreamland.”
Zen had the Flighthawk down to two thousand feet. Tipping the wing gently, he cruised around the submarine, trying to go as slow and steady as possible. There were no markings on it, let along a flag, but he felt sure this was what they’d been sent to find — the Indian hunter-killer that was blowing Chinese ships.
“Zen, they think it’s a modified Kilo,” said Chris Ferris. “But the conning tower looks like an Akula, which is a nuke boat. They’re real interested in this; it’s off their maps.”
Zen nudged lower for another pass. They’d just scored a major intelligence coup, but Zen wasn’t particularly impressed.
“What’s the Kilo doing?” Zen asked.
“Moving toward the wreckage,” answered Ferris. “Still on the surface. Think they’ll spit at each other?”
“I wouldn’t mind that,” said Zen. “As long as they don’t interfere with the rescue.”
“Collins, see if you can hail them.”
“Trying to communicate with them now,” said Collins. “Nobody’s acknowledging. Wait, here we go.”
Collins switched off for a few moments, then came back on the interphone to explain he had spoken to the captain of the cruise ship, who said he would do nothing to endanger his passengers or crew. He’d asked if the Americans would guarantee their safety.
“Tell the captain we’ll do what we can,” Bree said.
“He doesn’t seem to think that’s good enough,” he reported back. “He’s holding off. I gotta think the others are going to do the same, Captain.”
The sitrep showed Collins was correct: the surface vessels were no longer moving toward the debris field.
“We have a pair of Sukhois inbound,” warned Chris. “Coming at us at zero-ten, one hundred miles away, about five hundred knots.”
“Air-to-surface radars active,” said Torbin. “Two more planes behind them.”
“I confirm,” said Chris.
“I can jam,” said Torbin.
“Hold on till they’re in firing range,” said Breanna. “I’ll make the call then. In the meantime, let’s see what Dreamland thinks.”
“Gotcha, Cap.”
Zen turned Hawk One back toward the floating debris field. As the sun slipped steadily downward, a storm front approached, and while this was a warm part of the ocean (near the surface, the water temperature was roughly thirty degrees Celsius or eighty-six degree Fahrenheit), it would feel cold if you stayed in it long enough. No way the people clinging to the tops of the container ships and the debris in the water were going to make it through the night. They had to be rescued now.
“Orders remain to take no hostile action,” Breanna reported.
“Okay, but how do we get these guys to close in and pick up the survivors?” said Zen.
“Working on it, Jeff,” she told him.
“If we can get the subs to take their dispute outside, we can probably reassure the civilians,” said Chris. “Maybe get them to move this catfight to the south.”
“You want to try suggesting that to them?”
“I can give it a whack,” said the copilot. About a minute later, he came back over the interphone to announce no one had answered his broadcasts.
“Well, let’s show these jokers we’re serious,” said Bree. “Zen, I’m going to take it down low and buzz both of them, all right?”
“Hawk Leader.”
“Chris, keep track of the Sukhois. Open bay doors.”
“Open bay doors?”
“I want them to think we’re prepared to fire. We’re going to two thousand feet — no, one thousand. I want them to count the rivets.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
It was a serious calculated risk — at one thousand feet the Megafortress would be easy picking for a shoulder-launched SAM. On the other hand, the move was sure to get their attention. Collins began broadcasting an all-channels message, telling the submarines to stand off while the surface ships made the rescue.
“How are those Sukhois?” asked Bree as she dipped her wings toward the waves.
“Five minutes to firing range,” said Chris.
“Keep an eye on them,” said Bree. “Hang with me, Flighthawks.”
Zen rolled Hawk One just ahead of the big Megafortress as she pulled level. He tightened Hawk Two on Quicksilver’s tail; if one of the subs did fire a heat-seeker, he hoped to be close enough to help suck it off.
The video on Hawk Two caught one of the crewmen aboard the first Kilo covering his head as Breanna came over. The others had thrown themselves to the deck. The second submarine had started to change course south when they reached it.
“Maybe they got the message,” said Collins.
“They’re broadcasting?” Bree asked.
“Negative,” said Collins.
“We have communication from a Navy plane,” said Chris. “They’re en route; about two hundred and twenty nautical miles to our south-southwest. Call name is Pegasus 202.”
“Tell them to stand of until we what the Sukhois are doing,” said Bree.
As Zen edged back toward the debris field, he saw one of the freighters was once again moving toward the survivors. A small boat was being lowered from its side.
“Okay, this is shaping up,” he told the others, passing along what he was seeing. Breanna began a wide, banking track to take the Megafortress back up to a more comfortable altitude.
“Hold on. Somebody’s broadcasting to the civilian ships, in English,” said Collins. “Telling them to stand off. They want them to move out of the area. It’s the sub, that Kilo — definitely Chinese.”
“Pipe it in,” said Bree.
The accent made the words difficult to decipher quickly, but it was clear the speaker did not want the civilians nearby. Breanna clicked her transmit button when he paused, identifying her plane, then asking the speaker to do the same. There was no answer at first, then the speaker repeated, more or less, what he had said before, adding that the Chinese Navy had the situation under control.
“Other sub is diving,” said Chris.
“Those suckers are going to start shooing at each other,” Torbin warned. “Sukhois are tracking.”
“Collins, tell the civilian ships to move back,” said Bree. “Torbin, see if you can jam those radars so they can’t
