“It can’t be the Wraith,” Levy said. “The bearing is too far from where I shot.”
The supervisor took a hurried report from his technician, steered the selection of his hydrophone input to the direction of the new sound, and pressed his muffs into his hairline.
When the man looked at him, Levy saw defiance and scorn.
“It’s a torpedo, sir. On the left, drawing right slowly. It’s a shot in our face.”
“Why the hell did you take so long to hear it?”
“Because we were listening down the bearing of the torpedo you shot, sir, per protocol, and the incoming torpedo is coming from a different bearing. I recommend you evade to the left.”
Feeling victimized, cheated by some trick, Levy lacked the time to defend himself from the supervisor. He needed to save himself.
“All ahead flank, cavitate. Deploy active countermeasures. Left full rudder, steer course three-three-zero. Launch tube two down the bearing of the incoming torpedo with reactionary firing protocols.”
As the rumbling deck angled through the turn, Levy experienced a moment of good luck.
For scant valuable seconds, he held the Wraith’s torpedo on his hull sensors and his towed array sonar. The geometric separation of his hydrophones allowed him to triangulate a distance to the incoming weapon.
He had time.
A minute into his evasion, he dropped gaseous countermeasures and steadied at the Crocodile’s top speed. The system showed eight minutes before impact, and any delays his countermeasures could achieve would improve his lot.
But the torpedo shot through his countermeasure fields, indicating intelligent wire control. The Wraith’s crew heard his sprinting escape, and they would condemn Levy to the harshest laws of physics their torpedo could enforce.
What had seemed like time to orchestrate an escape had become inevitable failure.
Expecting to survive based upon the mercenary’s merciful limpet tactics, Levy felt more shame than fear. As he prepared to accept the revolting disgust of defeat, he cast a final desperate look over his tactical chart.
Hope sprang in the form of a blockade runner. He grabbed a stylus and connected the Crocodile’s crosshair to the irreverent ship.
“Come right to course three-four-eight,” he said.
As the ship turned, Levy felt the supervisor step beside him.
“I see what you’re doing, sir. It’s brilliant.”
Having churned through rapid and paradoxical doses of vulnerability, hubris, and luck, Levy kept silent and nodded.
“You’re going to turn the Wraith’s torpedo against a blockade runner,” the supervisor said. “They intended to shoot us, but instead they’ll hit a ship they’re trying to protect.”
His throat tight, Levy forced a response.
“Yes.”
“If the Wraith set that torpedo with a ceiling like it should have, you’ll have to surface us, which will make us vulnerable to the Goliath.”
With renewed hope and the transformation of the supervisor from his judge to an ally, Levy felt calm again and allowed himself a deep breath before responding.
“I’m not worried about the Goliath,” he said. “We’d face long-range cannon fire with the blockade runner as a shield.”
“That ship will protect us from the Wraith’s torpedo and the Goliath’s railguns, sir,” the supervisor said. “It escaped the reach of our limited boarding parties, but it’s perfectly placed for us. You’ve turned a defeat into a victory.”
Still processing the emotional overload, Levy scoffed.
“There’s still some deft seamanship to be demonstrated.”
“After you sawed that tiny fishing boat in half, sir, I don’t think you’ll struggle at all with this.”
Five minutes later, Levy surfaced on the far side of the cargo vessel, matching its speed and course. With assistance from the task force, he monitored the Goliath, which kept its guns working against helicopters and speedboats.
The supervisor tracked the Wraith’s weapon under the sacrificial vessel’s keel and then announced its uneventful climax.
“The incoming torpedo has shut down.”
“Commanded by wire?” Levy asked.
“Probably, sir. It’s too close to the merchant vessel to hear, but I suspect the Wraith sent a message up the weapon’s wire to cut off propulsion and flood it for sinking.”
Though he failed to fool the mercenary into damaging his side’s blockade runner, Levy had escaped. He sighed in relief and collected his bearings.
The battle would continue, and he needed electric power.
He came shallow and settled at snorkel depth to charge his batteries and to communicate with his countrymen. While receiving tactical updates, he remembered to transmit the underwater message intercepted from the Wraith for translation.
As he recovered from his near defeat and began to focus on his next steps in the battle, his veteran mechanic got his attention.
“I have the written text of the translation, sir.”
“What was being said?” Levy asked. “Read it out to me.”
The elder sailor cleared his throat and grinned.
“Come home, my babies. Vasily misses you.”
CHAPTER 13
Cahill noticed his shaking leg, and he shifted his weight to quell it.
Then the other one trembled.
“Bloody hell,” he said.
The comment passed unnoticed as tactical considerations consumed the bridge’s other occupants.
Seated in a rarely used, rear-facing console behind him, Dahan chattered in Hebrew into a headset that connected her with the Aman officers in the Goliath’s tactical control room.
She then switched to English, raised her voice, and offered another periodic update of the intercepted military traffic.
“The fifth Shayetet 13 commando boarding party has declared their vessel under Israeli control,” she said. “That leaves three boarding teams in process of boarding three vessels.”
“Very well,” Cahill said. “I count only four more speedboats at large. The commandos can’t board even half our vessels.”
“Overwhelming the defenses with our numbers is part of the plan,” Dahan said. “Why do you seem surprised?”
“I’m not surprised. I’m just verifying. Okay, I’m a little surprised. I’m not used to battles unfolding per plan, especially not backup plans where Pierre spends extra money to double the size of our blockade-running armada.”
As she faced away, he sensed her unspoken annoyance, and he shifted his focus to the less humiliating subject of warfare.
Beside him, Walker led the surface and air battle.
Conditioned to fight one-on-one submarine encounters or attacks on a handful of surface combatants, Cahill considered himself his executive officer’s student in tracking the swarm of ships and aircraft comprising the blockade and its challengers.
While trying to thwart the boarding operations, Walker had toggled the Goliath’s railgun rounds between speedboats and troop helicopters that attempted to hover over the blockade runners. With the quasi-neutral Israeli Air Force gaining interest in the mercenary fleet, electronic control aircraft patrolled the shoreline, providing jamming protection over the commandos.
Cahill’s executive officer had missed with every round, but the harassment had forced evasive maneuvers and had slowed the Shayetet 13 teams’ efforts. As the commandos boarded ships but ran out of bodies, Walker shifted his attention closer to the Goliath.