The ASDS's active sonar continued pinging down the range, a few yards at a time, with the actual figure counting down on the main view screen. Ten yards…
The bottom of the yacht became visible, a dark shadow against a deeper blackness overhead, wedge-shaped, sharp-prowed, churning through the water straight toward the minisub's bow.
Rising parallel to the surface, the ASDS made contact first with its dorsal surface, scraping hard against the yacht's keel. The clang of impact rang through the minisub's interior, and Halstead felt the vessel roll sharply to the right.
Directly ahead on the monitor, he could see the yacht's twin screws churning through the dark water, illuminated by the minisub's lights.
With a second, louder clang, the ASDS's nose slammed into the yacht's starboard screw and rudder. Again they rolled hard, this time to the left, shuddering with the impact. The continuous metallic scrape of hull on keel sounded like the minisub was tearing open.
And then the sound, blessedly, ceased. Michaels tapped out commands on his touchscreen, pushing his joystick forward and to the right. The ASDS heeled hard over to starboard as it dropped into a sharp, descending turn. "Kill the lights!" he snapped, and Halstead hit the touchpoint on his own screen. Instantly, the scene on the monitor was plunged into darkness absolute.
"Are we okay?" Halstead asked.
"Never better," Michaels replied. "That did kind of jar the fillings in the teeth, though, huh?"
Halstead studied the sonar screen a moment. "Target has ceased movement," he said.
"Right! Time for you guys to do your SEAL thing!"
"Roger that!" Unsnapping his seatbelt, Halstead stood and, stooping to avoid hitting his head against the low overhead, began making his way aft toward the lockout chamber.
"Hoo-yah!" DiMercurio said, meeting him in the chamber and handing him an H&K MP5.
"Time to earn our pay," Halstead replied. "Let's get wet!"
Zaki grabbed hold of the console in front of him to keep from being thrown down. "What was that?"
The impact, sharp as it was, went on for several seconds, dragging down the length of Al Qahir's keel with a shuddering, grinding series of jolts.
"We've hit a reef!" the pilot snapped.
"Nonsense. Small Dragon Island is the closest reef around, and that's twenty kilometers behind us!.. "
Unless they were badly off course. Turning, he hurried back to the sonar station. "What's our depth?"
"Sir… I'm showing nine hundred meters! No sign of a reef or rock or anything we could have hit!"
Al Qahir possessed two types of sonar — the Tamir array for tracking submarines or other undersea noises, and a depth indicator, a simple-minded idiot by comparison. This last gave its readout as a depth in meters at the helm, and here, at the sonar console, as a visual graph showing the seabed as a contour line. Zaki peered at the display, then pointed. "What's this?"
The depth indicator showed a kind of shadow beneath and behind the yacht.
"Fish, probably," the sonar operator said. "You can use this instrument as a fish-finder, you know."
"Fish? Or something else?" The shadow was too small to be a submarine. Perhaps one of those lovestruck whales they'd been listening to?
The helmsman was turning the yacht's ignition key. The engines had stopped when they hit the thing, whatever it was, and he was trying to restart.
"What is the problem, Jabal?" he asked.
"Our right propeller is damaged, sir," the pilot said. "Both engines stalled when we hit. I think I can get the left engine going again, but the right screw is useless."
Zaki was suddenly worried… and not by the damage report alone. They might have hit a whale… but they might have hit something else as well.
He picked up the intercom microphone. "Attention! All hands!" he snapped. "Go to combat stations!"
Better, he thought, remembering an American expression, to be safe than sorry.
Or dead.
20
Muhammad Jabarrah had been in the yacht's large and luxuriously appointed lounge when Al Qahir had jolted hard, scraped noisily along something just beneath the water, then floated free, her engines dead. Several of the fighters relaxing with him in the common room leaped to their feet, looking alarmed. "That idiot pilot!" Jabarrah snapped. "We've hit a reef!"
"Are we sinking?" one of the fighters asked. He was a teen-aged Pashtun tribesman from Afghanistan, wearing a bulky orange life jacket over his combat fatigues. The kid looked shaken. Small wonder. People from his tribe had little experience with boats and rarely found themselves venturing onto the open ocean. He was probably terrified of drowning.
"I doubt it. But it sounds like one of the propellers was damaged." He could feel the shudder as the helmsman tried to restart the engines. Before becoming one of Zaki's strong men, Jabarrah had had a fair amount of experience piloting pleasure boats in the Arabian Gulf, and knew the feel of a badly bent propeller blade. Judging by the shock, he was willing to bet that Al Qahir's right propeller and rudder were either badly bent, or had even been knocked off. If the former, the yacht would need to be rigged to travel on one engine. If the latter, there would almost certainly be leaking around the damaged shaft. They would need to sound the well and determine how bad the flooding was, then take steps to seal it off.
A moment later, Zaki's voice came over the intercom. "Attention! All hands! Go to combat stations!"
The men scrambled to grab their weapons, and started bounding up the three short steps out of the common room and onto Al Qahir's aft well deck. Jabarrah followed, stopping when he was outside to take a long, calculating look at the ocean.
The night was overcast, dark, and calm, with a low and oily swell to the sea. He looked over the side and saw only black water. Looking astern, he saw that the ocean was empty for as far as he could see. Nothing, no waves breaking, to mark the submerged reef they'd just kissed.
Yes, but he knew how easy it was to ground on a reef, and these waters were notoriously treacherous in that regard. The pilot should have been more circumspect in his choice of course, and should have been traveling more slowly.
No matter. The accident made possible a course of action he'd been considering for some hours, now, ever since they'd left Small Dragon Island.
Turning, he retraced his steps back down into Al Qahir's lounge, then made his way forward along the main central passageway to a portside stateroom guarded by two fighters. "I'll watch the prisoners," he told them. "You are needed on the aft deck."
"Yes, sir!" one of the guards said. He was another young Pashtun, and he looked scared.
"Be careful," the other guard, a Pakistani, an older man, said with a wink as he slung his AK-47 over his shoulder and handed Jabarrah the stateroom key. "They are wildcats. They might bite!"
"I think I know how to handle a couple of women." He sneered the word.
The Pakistani grinned, nodded, and walked away up the corridor, leaving Jabarrah alone outside the door.
Excellent. Zaki would be occupied on the bridge for quite a while. It would take time to assess the damage to the propeller and keel, and to repair any leakage around the shaft. Al Qahir would have no trouble reaching Jakarta with one engine, propeller, and rudder out of commission, but it would take a while— possibly several hours — to make certain the yacht was still seaworthy. That gave Jabarrah plenty of time.