“Designate that source as sonobuoy twenty-three,” he said. “Maintain the search pattern.”
The operator drove the first drone in a straight line by the next sonobuoy and took a range check to verify the dolphins swam where expected.
Then the cetaceans offered an unsolicited report.
“They say they have a submerged contact at eleven o’clock,” the operator said.
Volkov’s back stiffened.
“Anything on either drone?”
Two heads shook.
“Query the dolphins for the range.”
“It’s medium range,” the operator said.
“But it’s not transmitting, since we don’t hear anything on the drones,” Volkov said. “That’s the Revival. Bring the dolphins and drone one back to the ship. Send drone two straight at the Revival, and prepare tube three for the Revival.”
As the buzz of activity rose, climaxed, and then fell during an exciting minute, Volkov received the reports of his orders having been followed.
The dolphins were returning, and the Revival was his.
Confident in his pending success, he pulled the trigger.
“Shoot tube three.”
CHAPTER 12
Commander Levy balanced against the Crocodile’s rocking deck.
Having raised his radio antenna, he watched the icons on his tactical plot adjust to the updated data.
A vector line showed the damaged Revival slinking away towards Haifa. His blood pressure surging, he reached for a microphone.
“Revival, this is Crocodile. Where are you going?”
No response.
“Revival, this is Crocodile. Answer me, damn you. I am the leader of this task force. Where are you going?”
“Crocodile, this is Revival. The leader of this task force is Captain Cohen aboard the Spear.”
“That’s just a formality. Since when would you dare consider him superior to me?”
“Since you failed to sink the Specter.”
Levy heard a new voice.
“This is Captain Cohen, task force commander. Stand down, Commander Levy. I’ve taken command of the blockade task force and am giving the orders now. Check your data feed if you have any doubt.”
The concept of being supplanted had seemed impossible, but Levy scanned the new orders in a phone notification backlog he’d ignored.
“I acknowledge, sir,” he said.
“I would’ve taken command of the assets earlier, but you used back channels to pull that stunt of getting ships to support your attack on the Specter. Such games end now. This task force is now designed to protect the blockade from all interference, and it begins with you following my orders. Am I clear?”
Knowing he could submerge and claim a communications loss at his whim, Levy feigned compliance.
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.”
“But there’s no need to send the Revival back to port when it can remain here as a weapons launcher, even if pinned to the surface with damage.”
“That is my decision. The Revival is returning to Haifa.”
“Can you explain why, sir?”
After a brief pause, Levy received his answer.
“Very well,” Cohen said. “The Revival took damage from the Wraith and surfaced before we could defend it with electronic jamming. Then the Goliath entered cannon range and landed rounds in the torpedo room. You should know that a surfaced submarine is too sluggish to maneuver around high-velocity rounds, and without jamming support, it was inevitable.”
“Damn it,” Levy said. “So it’s me, three corvettes, and a handful of missile boats against two submarines and the Goliath?”
“We’re not trying to win a slugfest. We’re protecting our boarding parties so they can enforce the blockade.”
Levy took a closer look at the noncombatant vessels on his display and made a quick count of thirty ships tagged as part of a blockade run.
“This is three times the size of any prior attempt,” he said. “Where did this liberal band of vandals find so many ships?”
“It’s obviously coordinated with the well-funded attack by the mercenary fleet. They all appear to have loaded their supplies in Turkish Cyprus. Why our intelligence community didn’t see this coming is a failure to be explained.”
“What’s the plan, then, sir?”
“Protect the boarding teams. You keep the Wraith away from them while the corvettes do the same against the Goliath.”
Levy unfurled a long mental list of flaws he analyzed in the plan, but he withheld his protest since he had the permission he wanted to attack a mercenary submarine.
“I understand, sir. But this still leaves the Specter unaccounted for between you and the Goliath.”
“We’ll use anti-submarine zig-zag approaches with helicopter support. The Goliath can’t shoot helicopters, Seagulls, and speedboats at the same time. We have numbers against the Goliath, and helicopters will keep the Specter in check.”
“I’ll take care of the Wraith, sir.”
“Very well. Head deep now and get to it.”
Levy took the Crocodile to one hundred meters and ordered his team to correlate the overload of sounds hitting his ship’s hydrophones with the task force’s radar data.
His self-confident sonar supervisor marched over the hunched backs of his seated technicians making sense of the busiest waters Levy had experienced. With a deep baritone, the man looked at his commanding officer while sending his verbal report throughout the control room.
“I’m tracking the blockade runners as hostiles in the system, sir. There’s thirty-two of them, and we need to keep them separate from the fifty or so neutral merchants and fishers.”
“Very well,” Levy said. “But keep separate tabs on the Goliath. Keep track of it.”
“Of course, sir. I’m commencing the sonar search plan for the Wraith now. I’m assuming a threat vector to the east, listening for Scorpène-class propulsion sounds, launch transients, and Black Shark torpedo noises.”
Levy found the supervisor’s confidence threatening, but he needed his competence against the mercenaries. The dichotomy unsettled him.
The distractions of speedboats trying to board a swarm of blockade running vessels unsettled him, too, but he needed to understand the maritime mess.
“Executive officer,” he said.
The portly man looked up from across the table.
“Yes, sir.”
“Make sure the low-bandwidth feeds from the task force land on the tactical plot correctly,” Levy said. “Make sure they align with our organic acoustic data. Make sure you can predict when each speedboat will intercept its targeted blockade runner.”
“I’m working on it, sir. There’s a Shayetet 13 commando team within five minutes of intercepting the northernmost runner.”
“But there are many more boarding operations,” Levy said. “You must track them all. Get some more junior officers and technicians here to help you. This will be intense work.”
During five minutes, the room swelled with bodies.
Then after several hours of driving northwest, the stench of armpits wafted over Levy’s nose as he turned the Crocodile east. As the deck tilted during the turn, he hovered over the tactical plot.