“Maybe.”
“Either way, it’s a frightening thought. But it’s almost unthinkable. How could anyone be so sure she’d turn me to mush?”
Walker snorted.
“Don’t know, mate,” he said. “Who could imagine the most gutsy, paranoid, and tenacious nation on the planet, one that’s supposedly chosen by God to endure forever, daring to seduce the mighty Terrance Cahill?”
“No need for mockery.”
“Every bit of humor holds a nugget of truth. We need to watch her, Terry.”
Cahill swallowed.
“No, damn it. I need to watch her. If there’s any subterfuge here, I’m the victim.”
“Right.”
“And unfortunately, you’ll need to watch me.”
“How so?”
“Because if this is a devious ploy against me, it’s working.”
CHAPTER 3
Jake Slate stood from his folding seat on the Specter’s elevated conning platform and sensed an inappropriate dullness within his submarine’s control room. His team seemed dead, like the waters outside the Port of Gaza.
“It’s like a ghost town in here,” he said.
Seated at his Subtics station, Antoine Remy, Jake’s sonar leader, nodded his toad-shaped head.
“It’s like a ghost town out there, too,” Remy said. “I would hear a pin drop if there were someone to drop it. All the Israeli ships are enforcing the blockade much closer to shore than expected.”
At the Specter’s control station, the silver-haired Henri Lanier looked at Jake.
“Given the zeal the Israeli patrol boats have shown in enforcing the six-mile limit, we’re seeing Palestinian fishermen exercising caution and staying four miles to shore or closer. Nobody likes being shot, and the Israelis are making gunfire a habit.”
“It’s not a blockade,” Jake said. “It’s a stranglehold.”
“Condemned by the United Nations in multiple ways and in no uncertain terms,” Henri said.
“Yeah, well, if you believe everything the U.N. says about Israel, you’d think it was the worst nation in the world.”
“There are indeed wrongs to be righted,” Henri said.
“Right. But there’s a lot of stuff working out just fine that the prime minister shouldn’t be messing with. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here.”
“It’s difficult to know whom to trust.”
Jake stepped forward and pressed his palms into the polished railing around the conn. A young man wearing the green uniform of an Israeli Army Captain stepped aside.
“In this fleet, we trust Pierre Renard,” Jake said. “And if the presence of Captain Mizrahi standing beside me didn’t make it obvious, Pierre’s siding with the Aman military intelligence faction.”
The French mechanic stood from his station, approached Jake, and lowered his voice. The Israeli officer took the hint and started a slow exploratory lap around the control room.
“I’ve known Pierre longer than you have,” Henri said. “And I’d wager my life on his integrity.”
“But?” Jake asked.
“But, he lives in a murky gray area where wrong and right are blurred. Impeccable integrity or not, he can pick the wrong side by mistake.”
“Or be nudged the wrong way by money.”
“You understand my concern,” Henri said.
“Yeah, I do. And this mission popped up even faster than the last one. This machine of his — this growing mercenary fleet — may be spinning out of control.”
“But you and I both agreed to do this. As did Antoine, Terry, and even Dmitry.”
“Dmitry’s still auditioning for the job and had no choice but to agree,” Jake said. “The rest of us are conditioned to believe anything Pierre says.”
The Frenchman shrugged.
“I can see both sides of the Israeli argument. Decisive and resolute force has served them well in the past, regardless of collateral damage and international condemnation.”
Jake had thought through the mission many times and had talked it over with his key crew personnel and spiritual advisors. As a fledgling Christian, he considered his pending actions just.
“I’m committed. But you’re not getting cold feet, are you?”
“Perhaps,” Henri said. “I admit that we’ve discussed this to my satisfaction already, but I’m now rethinking it.”
“So, what’s bothering you?”
“It may be that I just realized this is our first attempt to intervene in a civil affair.”
“You mean a civil cold war, for lack of a better description?” Jake asked.
“Precisely, if not in name then de facto. Nobody else outside of Israel wants to get involved since the divisions among factions are too complex. Even Palestine is split between Fatah and Hamas.”
“Yeah. Egypt is playing it cool, too,” Jake said. “They aren’t much more fond of Hamas than the Israelis.”
The French mechanic shook his head.
“We obviously see ourselves as the heroes in this.”
“Well, yeah. Heroes, garbage men, or fools. Whatever it is, we’re doing something nobody else can or will do. But we know it needs to be done.”
“Do me a favor, and please remind me of this from time to time. I seem to be struggling with discernment on this mission.”
The sonar guru’s toad-head offered its profile, catching Jake’s attention.
“I hear a patrol craft,” Remy said.
“What kind?” Jake asked.
“Fast.”
“They’re all fast. What does that mean?”
“I mean really fast. It’s a Shaldag-class patrol vessel, based upon propulsion noise.”
“That thing can go almost as fast as a torpedo. Can you give me blade rate on the propeller and a speed estimate?”
“I would, except that there’s no propeller, at least not outside the ship,” Remy said. “The propulsion is a water jet. And… it just slowed. I can’t hear its jet anymore, but I can hear a fifty-hertz electric plant.”
Jake sat in his chair and watched the icon representing the new patrol craft shift across his tactical display. His mission required making the strength of the Israeli Navy, the submarines, reveal themselves. Patrol craft were deaf to his underwater movements and amounted to distractions.
Until the closest one became interesting.
“Gunfire,” Remy said.
“Where? Who?” Jake asked.
“From the Shaldag. It’s shooting at something, probably the distant civilian ship I was tracking towards the Port of Gaza.”
Jake recalled the patrol craft’s armaments as a twenty-five-millimeter Typhoon Weapon System and a twenty-millimeter gun. He considered them undersized for naval combat, but he knew his opinion would soften if he found himself on their receiving end.
“Is it hitting anything?”
“I can’t tell,” Remy said. “I just hear popping in small bursts. It’s warning fire, if I had to guess.”
“Well, shit,” Jake said. “I guess it’s time to rescue our first impromptu blockade challenger.”
“They’re far from the blockade,” Remy said. “I’d say they’re barely inside Israeli waters.”
“Regardless, the Israelis perceived them as a challenge, and we’re going to rescue them,” Jake said.
“Our orders are reconnaissance,” Henri said.
Jake appreciated the periodic challenges from the wise Frenchman and was willing to change his mind based upon the elder’s insights.
But not this time.
“It’s too damned quiet around here. If Antoine hasn’t heard anything by now, I need to make something show itself. It’s time to reconnoiter these waters by stirring things up. Let’s harass this blockade.”
“Understood,” Henri said.
“Firing point procedures, tube one. The target is the Shaldag. I’ll cripple it with a slow-kill weapon.”