Syren's Song (27 page)

“What's the name of this company?” Golzari asked.

“I don't know. They never told me. I knew only one of them. Qin—he is the most experienced one with weapons and has killed people, including the American agent in Singapore. I was told he used to be a top sniper in the Chinese army.”

Golzari had a witness, a name, and a lead on a company.

“I know most of the firms with floating armories, Damien,” Stark put in. “I'll make you a list.”

“Tell me more about Zheng R&D. Who was your contact there?” Golzari asked.

“Hu,” Gala replied, closing his eyes.

“Yes, who?” Golzari asked again.

“Wait a minute,” Stark said. “That's not a question. That's a name. Hu. You don't think . . .”

“Hu?” Golzari said to Stark. “You think it's the same man we met at Eliot Greene's home in McLean after the episode in Yemen? I don't know. It's a common name in China.”

“Describe this Hu,” Golzari said to Gala.

Gala shook his head. “I saw him only once. He is a Chinese man. He is of medium age and has dark hair.” Golzari asked again, but Gala couldn't think of any distinguishing characteristics that would be useful in identifying Hu.

“When we get back to civilization we need to do more digging,” Stark said. Golzari remembered what the detective in Singapore had told him. “They have a long reach,” he said. “This Qin who works for Hu. He could be the same sniper who killed Abdi Mohammed Asha on Socotra.” Golzari was still bitter about losing his prisoner. He had been questioning Asha about the murder of the deputy secretary of state's son when a bullet shot from a mile away blew the man's head apart.

Before Golzari and Stark could hypothesize further a voice shouted down from the bridge. “Battle stations! All hands, battle stations. Captain, we have incoming! Lots of them!”

“They have come for me,” Gala said. “They have come for you.”

“Find out what else you can from him, Doc, and let us know right away if you come up with something!” Stark raced to the bridge with Golzari and Melanie on his heels. As they arrived, Warren burst onto the bridge from the starboard bridge wing. Olivia was peering out the port side, holding binoculars in her right hand and offering Stark the hand-held VHF radio with her left.
Syren
was facing north, with
Asity
four hundred yards to starboard. “Report, XO,” he said.

“
Somers
is inbound, balls to the wall, about twenty-one nautical miles off our port bow, about two-eight-zero degrees,” she responded. “They're being chased by three low-freeboard, high-speed boats painted in a blue-gray
camouflage pattern.
Somers
saw at least fourteen boats, but there may be more. It looks like they've formed a line stretching over thirty or forty nautical miles.”

“They were chasing Gala and hunting for us. They found us.” Stark switched the radio to channel one-seven—the channel
Asity
was monitoring.

“
Asity
,
Syren
Actual. Make flank speed course zero-nine-zero immediately.”
Asity
responded instantly and pulled away to starboard, but Stark knew that the old freighter was only capable of fifteen knots at best. She was a sitting duck if the incoming boats got past
Syren
.

“Helm, all ahead flank, steer course . . . steer course zero-eight-five,” Stark ordered. The great T-foils below the pilothouse and the trim tabs dug into the water, and
Syren
surged forward like a thoroughbred on the home stretch. The wind was rising, but the seas were not yet high enough that Stark had to worry about slamming the ship in between two waves. He had learned that lesson as a young Navy commander of this ship.

At thirty knots the ship could turn 180 degrees in less than a nautical mile.
Syren
was just picking up steam at twenty knots and turned easily toward the inbound
Somers
. Unlike mono-hull ships,
Syren
didn't heel when she turned, so the crew and security personnel about to enter battle had a stable and level platform.

Somers
was keeping just ahead of a pack of three small boats. Another four were closing in, and several more were popping up north and south of the grouping. Stark counted twenty altogether. Although the seas weren't kicking up waves, the small boats couldn't operate at their best speed. Their shallow draft made them too unstable. That was the only thing saving
Somers
' crew as the RHIB struggled to rendezvous with
Syren
.

The boats must have been sent out in a picket line like World War II German U-boats
, Stark thought. As soon as one of the ships sighted an enemy surface ship it notified the others and the wolf pack closed in on its prey. Vanni couldn't have known
Syren
's location, but he did know the direction Gala's boat had gone. From there he had simply sent out a line of boats a few nautical miles apart, giving them an effective search line of fifty or sixty nautical miles, like a giant net.
But U-boats have to communicate with each other to search effectively. And so do those small boats
. “Jay, can you set up two of those rockets aft of the pilothouse?” Stark asked.

“Easy, boss. Shouldn't take more than five minutes.”

“Then do it now. Set both at a forty-five degree angle, both astern, with one facing our port quarter and the other our starboard quarter.”

Warren raced down the ladder to his module.

“Don't forget what Gala said,” Golzari warned. “If a spar on one of the suicide boats taps our hull it will rip it apart.”

“We're going to play chicken,” Stark said, keeping his eyes trained on the boats. They were close enough now that he didn't need binoculars.

“You know, Stark,” Golzari muttered, “sometimes you're the exclamation point at the end of a really shitty sentence.”

Stark ignored him. “No offense, Treat, but step aside,” he told the helmsman. “I have the helm. We'll be maneuvering too quickly to issue commands.”

Treat got up and Stark took his place, strapped himself in, and quickly refamiliarized himself with the control panel. Harrison got into the OOD's chair to his right.

“XO, tell
Somers
to maintain their heading as zero-nine-zero,” Stark ordered. Harrison quickly complied.
Somers
acknowledged, and they could hear gunfire in the background. In another two or three minutes
Somers
would approach
Syren
's port quarter and pass along her port side. Two groups of three Tiger boats had closed their formation and were changing direction. They were now on a direct course for
Syren
. Harrison reported eight more boats several miles off their starboard bow and another six well south of the closest grouping.

“Golzari, tell me when Jay says we're ready.” Golzari took up a post where he could watch the scientist set up on the aft helicopter pad. Warren's head popped up only to watch
Somers
pass by.

All the security teams had been issued hand-held VHF radios, the only way of communicating locally. Harrison ordered them to stand by.

“Sir, first formation of six boats now two nautical miles,” Harrison said.

“Very well, XO. Turning to port.” Stark pulled the joystick to the left, forcing it until it would go no further.
Syren
began her 180-degree turn at fifty-two knots. As soon the ship's starboard security teams saw the small boats, they began to fire.

“Tell security teams and Warren to hang on,” Stark told Harrison. Then, “All stop.” Stark had experienced rapid deceleration on the original Navy
Sea Fighter
before and knew exactly what to expect. When the gas turbine engines tripped off, the 1,600-ton ship would stop abruptly, creating enormous inertia. A rapid restart combined with a wide-arc turn would harness the inertia and transfer it to the water, and a huge wave would form and radiate out toward the oncoming boats.

As
Syren
completed the turn and sped away, the six closest boats lost their limited sea-keeping ability. Three did not try to avoid the wave and simply flipped over. The other three decelerated but were still swamped, allowing
Syren
's gunners to train their weapons on the Tigers themselves.

The other two groups of boats managed to avoid the wake and were coming up astern of the ship on either side.
Syren
had lost the advantage of distance when she decelerated and turned, allowing the Tiger ships to overtake her.

“Dr. Warren indicates he and his assistant are ready,” Golzari said, returning the scientist's wave through the Plexiglas window.

“Get him in here.”

One of
Syren
's original weaknesses—and one reason the Navy
Sea Fighter
program was canceled—was the shadow zone around the ship; anything closer than 130 yards astern was invisible to those on the bridge. An enterprising young
Syren
crewmember had taken a commercial off-the-shelf camera and designed a monitoring system that gave the helmsman a full view of the ship's surroundings. Stark was benefitting from that now as he fought to keep the ship away from the attackers. As Golzari had said, a single strike on the ship would at the very least slow her down enough for the others to pounce.

“Jay,” Stark said as soon as the scientist entered the pilothouse, “what's the range of the rockets at a 45-degree angle?”

Warren shrugged. “I think about two miles, airspeed about two hundred yards per second. These aren't exactly like the Palestinian Qassams, though, so I can't be sure.

“I need it to be closer than that,” Stark said.

“Closer? R-squared is our friend, Captain. It gets closer and . . .”

“Jay, I want the range to be one mile.”

“Boss, we're within the pulse's effective envelope at a mile and a half!”

“Damn it, Jay, get the elevation so that it's one mile and signal when you're ready to launch.” Warren left the pilothouse and adjusted the rocket launchers.

“Sir?” Harrison asked quietly. “The sea state's changed. Looks like the Tigers are gaining on us, trying to vector in on each side.”

“He's ready, Stark,” Golzari said.

“XO, pull up the aft bridge camera on the second screen.”

“Aye.”

“Launch!” he ordered, and Golzari waved to Warren.

As soon as the cameras showed the two rockets launch, Stark checked the time on his watch and then increased
Syren
's speed to fifty-five knots. Back
when he had commanded the ship in her incarnation as
Sea Fighter
, with Jay Warren as one of the ship's designers, that had been maximum speed; the gas turbine engines had been limited to the RPMs required for fifty-five knots. Warren, always trying to improve the ship, suggested they change the governor settings to allow for higher RPMs, and that boosted the speed. On her best day now, with good sea conditions,
Syren
was capable of sixty-one knots. Fortunately for Stark and the crew, that day was this day.

Stark made three quick zigzag turns to create enough wake to slow down the suicide boats. Most were now only a few hundred yards behind them. He began a mental countdown.
Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one
. The rockets exploded over the Sea Tigers' suicide boats.

Stark had managed to speed
Syren
up enough to get her to the edge of the mile-and-a-half radius effect of the hafnium rocket, though a few systems around the stern were fried, including the hand-held VHF radios on
Somers
. The EMP bubble did, however, envelop all of the suicide boats, immediately shutting down their systems. Stark turned
Syren
again and slowed her to fifteen knots as he offered targets to the gun teams on deck. They hit one boat, then another and another until they had destroyed all of them, and their crews as well.

Stark popped another Percocet like it was a Pez candy as he sat in his rack. At least his hand had stopped shaking. He had taken a huge risk and won. The Sea Tigers' suicide boats had been destroyed at the cost of a few minor injuries to his ship and crew. Stark had shown the Sea Tigers as much mercy as they would have shown him and his crew. If their goal was death in battle, then he had allowed them to achieve it.

Olivia was back in command as they returned to station with
Asity
. Commander Ranasinghe had been informed of the outcome via hand-held radio. He offered congratulations but expressed his regret at not being involved. It was his friends and colleagues who had died when the Sea Tigers destroyed the Sri Lankan navy, and his country that was now in grave danger. He wanted into the fight. Stark promised that if the next plan worked, Ranasinghe would get the fight he wanted and the revenge he sought.

For now, all Stark wanted to do was to lie down on his side and rest, to recover from the lack of sleep, the torture, and the exhaustion that followed the
adrenaline rush. He looked longingly at the framed picture of Maggie on his desk and vowed—not for the first time—to stay in Ullapool with her after this was over. A knock at the door brought him out of his reverie.