“Because we’ve still got work to do. Pierre wants us to attempt a new trick. He wants us to pick up Jake and Dmitry and carry them both in our cargo bed.”
A short silence preceded a growing chorus of groans.
“What’s wrong, gents?” Cahill asked. “This’ll be the first time we try it, but the ship’s designed for it.”
“It’s not the work, Terry,” Walker said. “It’s the waiting. That’s at least two days for rendezvousing and loading their slow and ugly arses. Then the extra weight will slow our trip back. That’s a full day we could be in the pub, lifting pints.”
“If you like your paycheck, you’ll do what Pierre says.”
“I like me beer, but I like me paycheck, too. So, I imagine we need to review the two-submarine loading procedure.”
“We’ll first need confirmation from Major Dahan’s team that the Crocodile has returned to port. We can’t risk that its commander is still coming for us.”
As he looked at her, she felt ashamed of her fearful reaction to the crash dive. She wanted to hide from him, and her usual curt and reserved manner served her in hiding her emotions.
“My team will confirm it,” she said.
“Very well, then,” Cahill said. “Since Jake and Dmitry have to move west to catch up to us, everything can wait until morning. It’s the middle of the night, and I’m ready for the rack. Or for a snack. Maybe both — a snack in the rack. I’m not quite sure.”
“I’ll have the cook set up midnight rations,” Walker said.
“You heard him, gents,” Cahill said. “Get some rest, food, or both. We’re relaxing until I say otherwise.”
As the group disbanded, an unwelcomed finality crept over Dahan’s heart. With the blockade run accomplished, her relationship with Cahill skipped from its clumsy and ephemeral dawn to its jolting twilight.
Tired, confused, and depressed, she sought solitude and began her journey to the port hull. As she walked away, the thought of the mission’s end saddened her.
The thought also frightened her.
She’d sought Cahill’s attention since seeing his image in a dossier two months earlier. From the narrative of his career as an Australian Naval College top graduate, a submarine commander in his domestic fleet, and lord of the Goliath, he’d struck her as a lion, a king among men.
Acknowledging her attractiveness, she knew she could pick from among the male officers of the Israeli Defense Force, and she’d enjoyed her fair share of attention. But a failed engagement to a cheating fiancé had soured her to the population of available suiters. But before she’d resigned herself to a bachelorette’s life, her commanding officer had placed a fantasy before her.
Terrance Cahill.
Rule-breaker who defied the Australian admiralty. Captain of the world’s most daring vessel. Rescuer of a stranded South Korean submarine. Scourge of the North Korean Navy. Freedom fighter against the Russian annexing of Crimea. Vandal-activist against Greek political corruption.
Her clandestine assignment to lead the intelligence team on the Goliath was a gift, and having fought beside him during his role as feeder of the Palestinians, she affirmed her intuition.
She wanted him in her personal life.
And with its tale of romantic solitude, his dossier proved his need for companionship. She wanted to rescue two souls from loneliness.
Her rational mind protested the logistical absurdity of courting a man living across the globe in Australia while she advanced her promising military career in Israel. But her heart made her hope and warned her of regret if she failed to try.
But as she contorted herself through the door into the tunnel between the Goliath’s hulls, she realized she hadn’t tried.
“Stupid Ariella,” she said.
Instead of enticing him, she’d overcompensated by being her curt and direct self, the military professional that had enjoyed advancement thanks to her devotion to decisive action. Though her former lovers had taken months to accept her brusqueness, she lacked time with Cahill to reveal her true personality.
Then she questioned if she retained a shred of Ariella, or if Major Dahan had consumed the woman. As her inner demons tormented her, she defended herself aloud as she crawled.
“Can’t a man tell? Isn’t it obvious?”
Confounding concerns consuming her, she reached the midpoint of the tunnel before recognizing the bondage of her cramped confines. At the deepest point in the tunnel, she considered the crawlspace an elongated coffin that smelled stale with its damp, thick air tasting dusty as she labored to expand her lungs.
Bowing her head to avoid the air-intake cross-connect, she watched her multiple shadows stretch under the thin grating that served as a floor. Her labored breathing echoed off the bilge, where condensation reflected light from the twin rows of LED bulbs that ran beside the crossing air duct.
The same sickness she’d suffered on the bridge assaulted her, and she hastened her movement beside hydraulic lines that fed an oversized block of metal. Dahan craned her neck and watched steel arms move outward through grease-coated holes into an invisible nook that shaped the hydrodynamic rear of the ship and housed the rocker that swung the stern planes.
Scrunching her shoulders, she slipped past the stern planes controller and forced herself onward. She focused on her breathing, which taunted her with its tinny echo, and perseverance rewarded her with a dogged-open door that gave way to the heat and hissing of the port hull’s MESMA plant six.
As her head emerged into freedom, she twisted and grabbed a bar attached above the door. She pulled her shoulders through the portal and then reached for a higher rung. With her waist freed, she walked her heels out and pushed her buttocks free. She drove her haunches backwards, making space for her legs to back into the compartment and transfer her weight to steps mounted below the door.
She felt free as she stood and gathered her bearings.
Within the ethanol-liquid-oxygen propulsion MESMA plant, the hiss of steam rang, and soothing heat wafted over her.
With his jumpsuit’s torso flopped over his waist, a technician exposed a sweat-marked tee-shirt. He was examining gauges on a control panel when he looked up.
“What brings you to the port hull, major? We don’t get many visitors, not even from our own crew.”
Recovered from her confined crawl, she told the truth.
“I’m walking the ship to clear my mind.”
“Good idea,” he said. “My name’s Johnson, if you need anything.”
“I could use some solitude.”
“If you head forward through the next two MESMA plants and keep going, you’ll find the best privacy on the ship.”
Dahan marched through MESMA plants four and two, reaching the open space that paralleled the starboard side’s galley and mess. The quiet compartment had dining tables, housed spare parts, and served as the recreational space for the crew.
Hundreds of spare railgun rounds covered the free spaces between pieces of exercise equipment. Some crates formed short walls around a treadmill, and others concealed the lower half of a Bowflex machine.
She continued to the port hull’s berthing area and crept through the space to reach the abandoned tactical control room that served as a redundant brain of the Goliath. She sat in a cool chair and faced a dark screen.
Alone in the dim light, she placed her elbows on the console and rested her forehead in her palms. The hull’s rhythmic rumbling relaxed her, and fatigue began billowing in her bosom.
She spread her arms over the console, leaned, and rested her cheek on her sleeve. Her mind slowed and took hold of the thought that bothered her.