Rogue Justice Read online

  ROGUE JUSTICE

  By John R. Monteith

  Braveship Books

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  About the Author

  CHAPTER 1

  Dmitry Volkov straightened his back beside the navigation table and questioned the definition of victory.

  For the moment, survival sufficed.

  “Any chance our weapon will hit?” he asked in Russian.

  “Impossible,” the sonar operator said. “The Israeli torpedo has a better chance of hitting us than vice versa.”

  “Very well,” Volkov said. “Our shot was reactive garbage, but I doubt the Israeli shot was much better aimed.”

  “Not much. You’re on the proper course to evade, and eight knots is adequate to make it pass safely behind us.”

  Volkov’s heart rate slowed.

  “You’ve turned off our phantom noise?” he asked.

  “Of course. I did so the moment I heard the hostile weapon.”

  Volkov had hesitated to play the recorded propulsion sounds of an Egyptian Type-209 submarine from his Scorpène-class submarine’s sonar system, but his mission parameters demanded that he attempt to convince the Israeli Navy of increased Egyptian naval activity.

  After transiting the Suez Canal, leaving Port Said, and crossing Egypt’s twelve-mile boundary into international waters, he’d transformed his ship, the Wraith, into the acoustic equivalent of an artificially loud Egyptian submarine to bait an Israeli vessel.

  Now that one had shot a torpedo at him, he considered a significant tactical goal achieved by making the Israeli Navy suspicious that its southern neighbors were sending submarines to challenge their superiority off the coasts of the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula.

  “Good,” Volkov said. “I’m glad that step is behind us and that accursed signal generator is off.”

  “I understand, but I think that piping out an abnormally loud signal strength may have had an unexpected benefit. It convinced the Israelis that we were closer than we really were. That threw off their targeting.”

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps their torpedo attack was designed to be no more than a warning to their neighbors to remember who possesses the stronger undersea fleet.”

  The sonar operator showed increased interest in the conversation as he turned his head towards Volkov and lowered an earmuff to his jaw to better hear his commander.

  “That’s an interesting theory, but we may never know.”

  “I’m sure we’ll never know” Volkov said. “And, thankfully, I’ll also never have to broadcast my position to a hostile submarine again. That was disquieting.”

  “There was never any real danger in that shot. You’d think we’d all be used to running from torpedoes by now, anyway.”

  “I fear you’ve lost your sense of reason, Anatoly. I hope that running from torpedoes never becomes a habit. We can tempt fate only so many times.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Anatoly said.

  “What did you mean, then?”

  “I mean if we have to keep running from torpedoes, nobody’s better at it than us.”

  “That much I can concede,” Volkov said. “And we evaded yet another, but now we have an angry adversary.”

  He recalled that Egypt had offered to delay any military escalation while diplomats sought peaceful resolutions to the Israeli prime minister’s threats of expansion.

  The southwesterly presence and violent response of the Dolphin-class submarine against his faked Egyptian vessel proved the Israeli Navy’s doubt of that offer. The attack also verified Volkov’s intelligence declaring the naval forces as supporting the Israeli prime minister’s policies of reclaiming the lands gained long ago in the Six-Day War.

  One errant hostile torpedo told him that fifty-one years had healed nothing.

  Though split among dissenting factions of its military, government, and public opinion, Israel followed its prime minister’s push to reclaim lands it had won in past wars. Some feared disobeying their nation’s leader for the risk of his retribution. Others feared his warmongering for the risk of collateral damage.

  Grateful to avoid becoming the first naval statistic counted in that collateral damage, Volkov represented the inception of the effort to prevent aggressive political speech from growing into unchecked military tension and the rekindling of war.

  “We need to maintain eight knots for ten minutes,” Anatoly said. “I still can’t hear the Israeli submarine yet.”

  “I don’t expect that you’ll hear it ten minutes from now either, when we slow.”

  “No, Dmitry. It must be too far away.”

  Volkov turned his thoughts towards his special weapons and glanced at the gray-bearded mechanical technician seated at the panel that controlled his ship’s propulsion, depth, and steering.

  “Tell the trainer to get his dolphins ready,” he said.

  The gray beard lifted a sound-powered phone to his cheek.

  “He’s getting them loaded into the tube,” he said.

  Volkov looked at the display on the navigation table and watched the icon of an Israeli torpedo drift behind his vessel. He realized that a lucky steering command sent up the hostile torpedo’s guidance wire could prove deadly, but he trusted fate to protect him from such misery.

  While glaring downward at raw sonar data on a screen-within-screen view, he pondered his mission.

  He understood why the Israeli prime minister sought expansion. Though the Sinai Peninsula presented few immediate problems to his nation, three conquered but non-annexed areas provided continual unrest.

  Covering an area one-fourth that of Israel proper, the West Bank fell under a blend of Israeli governance, Palestinian governance, and mixed rule depending on the block-by-block location. Despite tensions, the strange mélange of culture and religion functioned, although the United Nations exacerbated the pressure by condemning anything the prime minister ordered that resembled permanent Israeli settlements.

  The Gaza Strip, walled and blockaded while under Palestine’s Hamas rule, was worse. And the Golan Heights, which provided crucial water to Israel, offered another front that included spillover problems from the failed nation of Syria and from Lebanese Hezbollah militants.

  Volkov understood why the prime minister felt compelled to push his military influence deeper into the dangerous regions surrounding his nation.

  But he understood why people would resist. Backlash, desperation, violence. Diplomacy was imperfect, but it had held the disparate people in neighboring and intertwining lands together in some semblance of a functioning existence.

  “It’s hard to choose a side,” he said.

  “Excuse me?” the gray beard asked.

  “Nothing. I was just thinking out loud.”

  “About the problems in Israel?”

  “Well, yes,” Volkov said. “It seems so desperate from every angle. The only thing that gives me any hope is the position of the Israeli Military Intelligence Directorate, which makes perfect sense to me and is the one we’re supporting.”

  He glanced at a young man wearing the green uniform of an Israeli Army Captain, who nodded his concurrence. Some factions of the military resisted the prime
minister, and the intelligence officer rode Volkov’s ship as a gesture of trust, a measure of oversite, and as a conduit to possible real-time information. He also proved useful as a backup translator.

  “The situation in Israel has always been unstable,” the gray beard said. “The Six-Day War more than doubled their land, most of which they gave back, but they kept their military presence in the Golan Heights, West Bank, and Gaza Strip.”

  Volkov raised an eyebrow.

  “I didn’t know you were a student of history.”

  “I’m not. I’m just an old man with a memory.”

  “You certainly don’t remember nineteen sixty-seven.”

  “No, but I remember the aftermath in the seventies, including another short war. You can’t expect peace when two peoples have deeply rooted disagreements about their worldviews and about who owns the land.”

  “So should we give up and go home?” Volkov asked. “You make lasting peace sound hopeless.”

  “It is.”

  Volkov scolded his veteran.

  “Don’t tell me you consider this mission folly.”

  “Of course, I don’t. I’m here to stop aggressions. I also hope that my participation helps get supplies to women and children who would otherwise suffer without.”

  The comment reminded Volkov of his second fringe role in as many missions with his mercenary teammates. Though working in the same sea as his comrades, he felt unsure if they accepted him as an equal.

  Having assumed he’d been undergoing a rite of passage in their prior mission, he’d accepted being a distraction in distant waters. But now he wanted to fight where his skills could harmonize with those of his elite colleagues to create profound outcomes.

  He stuffed the doubt inside his gut and forced himself to focus on the positive. Lifting his chin, he summoned a lively tone.

  “Don’t be so negative,” he said. “You’re talking like a jaded pessimist. We might actually contribute to an enduring peace.”

  “I disagree, Dmitry,” the gray beard said. “If there were a path to lasting peace in these lands, humanity would’ve found it by now. People like us can only right the wrongs within our grasp.”

  “Yes, I’ll agree to righting wrongs we can change. Let’s get back to such business if that torpedo’s a concern I can consider a matter of history.”

  After glancing at his display, he deemed himself safe and aimed his voice at his sonar guru.

  “Does your hearing align with the solution in the system?”

  “Yes, Dmitry,” Anatoly said. “We’re free of the torpedo.”

  “You should inform our fleet command,” the gray beard said.

  “Spoken like a true son of the Russian Navy,” Volkov said. “Was it only six short months ago we were fighting for our homeland against our present employer?”

  “Roughly,” the gray beard said. “Time’s flown by so quickly. I’ve seen more real action since then than in my entire Russian career.”

  “Perhaps you are indeed our historian by virtue of age. You’ve lived our history, and you remember it.”

  “Fleet command, Dmitry?”

  “Right. Our employer is our fleet commander. Bring us to periscope depth and prepare for a satellite video and data link with Pierre Renard.”

  Volkov turned and stepped upon the Wraith’s elevated conning platform. The deck tilted as the submarine rocked in the swells, and he extended his hands to balance his descent into a bulkhead-mounted foldout chair.

  The video feed appeared.

  He tapped keys and lifted his chin towards the upper monitor where crow’s feet framed the piercing blue eyes of his French employer. Sharp features under silvery hair faced him.

  Leaning on the polished rail encircling the conning platform, one of the Wraith’s translators awaited orders. Volkov obliged, speaking in small phrases and letting the familiar two-way translations become a background drone.

  “I just exchanged inaccurate torpedo shots with a vessel I couldn’t detect,” he said. “The hostile torpedo was a SeaHake, which suggests an Israeli submarine.”

  “Very good,” Renard said in English, which the translator regurgitated in Russian. “Were you augmented?”

  “Yes. Per plan, I was simulating an Egyptian Type-209.”

  “Excellent,” Renard said. “You’ve managed to complicate the perspective of the Israeli Navy.”

  Volkov frowned at his boss.

  “I can’t help but think this ruse as an Egyptian submarine was doomed from inception. Won’t the Israelis figure out that I just took the Wraith through the Suez Canal? Won’t they also have spies watching the berthing of each Egyptian submarine?”

  “Yes and yes. They’ll surely know that our three-ship fleet is in the Mediterranean. They’ll also note that two Egyptian submarines are deployed, which happen to be conducting exercises to the west beyond Israeli detection. Therefore, the sum of all this subterfuge will be uncertainty in the Israeli Navy’s perspective, which is to our advantage.”

  Volkov attempted to measure his employer’s comfort level in micromanagement.

  “I intend to give chase to the submarine that attacked me.”

  “Interesting,” Renard said. “For what goal?”

  “I would use a slow-kill weapon to reduce the Israeli submarine order of battle by one.”

  “I see. But by using our custom slow-kill warhead, you’d reveal my fleet’s involvement against them, and you’d unravel the subterfuge of Egyptian involvement.”

  “I know, but you certainly wouldn’t have me use a heavyweight torpedo?”

  “I hope and trust that you’ll never use a heavyweight torpedo–or an anti-ship missile, for that matter–against Israel.”

  Volkov suspected Israel had been Renard’s past client, but such information lived in the untold stories he hoped to someday hear as he gained his boss’ confidence.

  “That’s good to know,” he said. “What’s your opinion on my proposed aggression?”

  “I agree with it. I’ll allow you the engagement. Let’s see how you do against Israel’s best. I trust you’ll use your dolphins?”

  “Yes. I have no other advantage.”

  “Very well. I’d wish you luck, but that’s not my way. I prefer to ask my commanders to remain charmed. I hope the good fortune that surrounded you in the Black Sea and in the Arabian Sea continues for you now.”

  Volkov tested his learning by answering Renard in English. Prior to the Frenchman’s call to arms against the Israelis, he and much of his crew had immersed themselves in English language training.

  “Thank you, Pierre,” he said. “I will do well.”

  The Wraith’s commander ordered his ship deep and then passed behind the backs of technical experts seated at consoles of the ship’s Subtics tactical system. He looked at his executive officer, a man in his late twenties who’d been a junior officer on a Russian Kilo-class submarine, and told him to take charge of the bridge.

  Volkov reached the torpedo room where a man as lithe and graceful as the animals he trained hovered over a makeshift aquarium in the compartment’s center passageway.

  “Vasily?” Volkov asked.

  The trainer kept his hand on a broached dorsal fin as he looked up and forced an uncertain smile.

  “I think they’re getting used to their cramped tank. They appear to have adapted since our last mission.”

  “My crew’s still fond of them, too, despite having to crawl around them. I assume you’ve already loaded Andrei?”

  “He’s in tube three.”

  Volkov glanced at the opened breach door on the middle of three stacked starboard torpedo tubes. He saw four sailors squeezing around spare weapons to maneuver a tarp attached to an overhead block and tackle system towards the centerline tank.

  “Dmitry, please,” the trainer said.

  “Oh, right.”

  At the trainer’s spurring, Volkov stepped back and let the sailors load the second bottlenose dolphin onto the tarp. With pr
acticed skill, the men lowered the canvas under the floating animal and worked beast and cradle together.

  They hoisted Mikhail and swiveled him towards the waiting tube, exposing a blue harness wrapped forward of his dorsal fin that carried a camera, a sonic communications transceiver, and a small explosive device. The animal began to wiggle, exposing long rows of small teeth, and he fluttered his tongue while releasing a staccato screech.

  “Relax, Mikhail,” the trainer said.

  “Was Andrei calmer when you moved him?” Volkov asked.

  “Yes, as always. Mikhail’s still so emotional.”

  “Such is his nature.”

  “Slide him behind Andrei,” the trainer said.

  Two sailors pushed the dolphin’s fluke as two others slipped the tarp from under the animal.

  “Close the breach,” the trainer said. “Good. Now equalize pressure. Slowly. Now flood the tube and start the clock. No more than four minutes. They can’t hold their breath forever.”

  With the tube flooded, Volkov ordered the muzzle door opened.

  “And once again my babies go into combat,” the trainer said.

  Back in the control room, Volkov stood over his sonar leader’s shoulder.

  “Hail them for a response. Minimum transmit power.”

  Anatoly called up the screen of recorded dolphin sounds and pressed the icon that invoked the chirps and whistles the cetacean duo would recognize as a request for an immediate response.

  “They responded immediately,” Anatoly said. “Range, two hundred and fifty yards, based upon the roundtrip speed of sound.”

  “Send them to six o’clock relative to our position.”

  “I’ve sent them a command to swim at six o’clock relative to our position of twelve o’clock, and they’ve acknowledged.”

  “Let’s see what they see,” Volkov said. “Query them for any submerged contacts.”

  “I’m ready to query them for the bearing to a contact.”

  “Transmit the query.”

  An exchange of chirps and whistles.

  “They have nothing,” Anatoly said.

  “Understandable. This acoustic environment is noisy for them, and that Israeli submarine is far away.”