Rogue Justice Page 3

  The comment’s brusqueness reminded Cahill of Israeli directness as he led them between two of the thick wooden blocks that cradled the ship’s underbelly. He assembled the entourage midway between the hulls.

  “The railguns are hydraulically raised and lowered into each weapons bay, which mark the highest points of the ship. Of course, that’s also where we run our masts and antennas, and we mount our phased array radar panels, there, and there.”

  He pointed at either side and then turned forward.

  “Above us is the aftermost lateral support beam that connects the halves of the catamaran. It’s also the largest beam since it holds the stern planes, which are those huge wings above us. It’s also the only path the crew can take between the port and starboard hulls.”

  “So, it’s a crawlspace,” Dahan said.

  “Real tight and hardly used,” Cahill said. “In fact, we essentially have two crews and two subcultures aboard the ship. Let’s keep moving forward.”

  He showed his future riders the repetitive crossmembers that held the halves together and supported the central bed that could hold the weight of two submarines. Hydraulic arms were retracted to either hull, ready to grab and stabilize the Goliath’s cargo.

  “We’re passing the sections that hold the MESMA units,” Cahill said. “Those are the French-designed air-independent power plants that can be added to Scorpène submarines. The submarines use one each, whereas we use six total, three per side.”

  “We had estimated six to eight,” Dahan said.

  “I had considered eight, but the increase would have given only an extra knot of submerged speed,” Renard said. “I deemed it unworthy of the cost given that the ship can make thirty-four knots surfaced.”

  “On the gas turbines,” Dahan said.

  “Yes,” Cahill said. “To my knowledge, we’re the only ship designed to submerge that can also run on the surface at destroyer speeds. Much of that speed is thanks to our bows, which are normally cuts of steel designed for Lafayette-class frigates.”

  “Or Kang Ding-class frigates, rather,” Renard said. “Same design, different production facility. Much as I respect French ingenuity, I must admit that the Taiwanese are my preferred hardware vendor.”

  “Regardless, this time, I have some alien corvette-like thingy on me port bow,” Cahill said.

  “That thingy is actually the best replacement component I could find on short notice.” Renard said. “And yes, it’s from a decommissioned corvette that was in processing for scrap.”

  “So, it’s true that you took a torpedo hit in the Aegean Sea,” Dahan said. “That explains the ugly bow on the port hull.”

  “Ugly?” Cahill asked. “I still find it a beautiful ship despite that temporary stubby bow.”

  Where he might have expected a perfunctory apology for the insult, Cahill knew better with Israelis.

  “You called her an ‘it’,” Dahan said. “Aren’t ships referred to as women?”

  “That habit has fallen from use,” Cahill said. “I don’t have a good reason, but it might have to do with the growing number of women on crews. I personally find it archaic because no matter how attractive a hunk of metal is, it pales beside the beauty of a real woman.”

  As he smiled, her unreadable stare stymied him. Unsure if she welcomed the flirtation, ignored it, or pondered the proper krav maga strike to silence him, he welcomed the Frenchman’s rescuing.

  “Let’s take a look at the domed bridge before we get everyone aboard and flood the dock,” Renard said.

  After slow, uncertain steps, Cahill felt his employer’s hand on his shoulder as he chuckled in his ear.

  “Remind me before I would ever teach you the art of negotiation to first coach you in subtlety,” Renard said. “It was a noble effort, but ill timed and ill placed.”

  “Sorry, mate. I just haven’t had me eye on a Sheila for years. She’s a beaut, and she caught me off guard.”

  After a return climb up the basin’s stairway, a crossing of the brow that bridged the pier to the back of his starboard hull, and a memorized walk through the cargo ship’s innards, Cahill made his way to his familiar watch post.

  Standing atop his ship restored his dignity, and he looked through the windows that interlaced steel bars stabilized. Water inundated the dock, and the Goliath’s commander watched ripples lap the underside of the port hull.

  Liam Walker, his executive officer and a former sailor from an Anzac-class frigate, lifted his eyes from a status screen.

  “I don’t like that makeshift port bow section, Terry. Not at all, I don’t.”

  “Likewise, mate, but it beats no bow at all. We tried that by accident already, and it was miserable.”

  “Forgive me for complaining, but I don’t like our Israeli riders either,” Walker said. “This is the first time we’ve had so many strangers aboard, and I really don’t like that they’re military types.”

  “You can’t get involved in a civil war without getting chummy with fighters from one of the sides.”

  “Good point. And I get the sense you wouldn’t mind getting chummy with their officer.”

  Cahill frowned at his executive officer.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You can’t take your eyes off Major Dahan.”

  “Am I leering at her? Is it that obvious?”

  “Sorry, mate,” Walker said. “I wish it were that simple. You’re not leering, you’re adoring. I think you’re suffering from an acute bout of infatuation.”

  The revelation hit hard, and vulnerability diffused throughout his chest and limbs like a poison mist.

  “Bloody hell, Liam. I’m screwed.”

  With ironic timing, her voice issued from the loudspeaker.

  “This is Major Dahan. I request permission to join you on the bridge, Mister Cahill.”

  He panicked.

  “I don’t know what to do. I don’t want her near me while I gather myself, but I can’t be rude.”

  “Shall I handle it?” Walker asked.

  “Please.”

  His executive officer tapped buttons and aimed his voice above the duo’s heads.

  “This is the executive officer, Liam Walker. Mister Cahill would be honored to have you as his guest on the bridge during our egress from Toulon. I’ve just unlocked the door, and we look forward to you joining us.”

  The latch clicked open and shut, and footsteps echoed up the stairs. Without thinking, Cahill stepped to the handrail and spied the creature who tugged his emotions in every direction.

  In this moment, she irritated him, and he glared at her, trying to make sense of her invasion into his world.

  As she met his gaze, the effort backfired.

  “Which part of my uniform impresses you the most?” she asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re staring at me. Something must impress you about my uniform.”

  “Um, the dark green part, I guess.”

  “It’s all dark green. Are you most attracted to my chest, my buttocks, or my groin?”

  The jolt woke him up.

  “No need to be testy, major. I was merely offering a hand to help you up.”

  He extended his arm, and she hesitated below him.

  “Do you help all guests to the bridge, or just the ladies? I don’t want any special treatment other than you refraining from undressing me with your eyes.”

  “Given that you’re the first lady to have ever boarded this ship, that’s an unfair question.”

  She remained a statue, and he returned to his console.

  “Suit yourself,” he said.

  The space felt cramped as she moved between him and Walker. With folded arms, she aimed a strong voice at him.

  “I’ve taught enough horny young Israeli soldiers lessons, and I won’t hesitate to use appropriate techniques to make sure your crew pays me the same courtesy. I’m a field-grade officer of the Israeli Military Intelligence Directorate, not a Barbie Doll.”

  She’d been on board less than thirty minutes, but he knew a sailor needed less than thirty seconds to offend a lady.

  “I apologize if any of my men have been inappropriate with you. I will have Mister Walker investigate how my men have treated you thus far, and I will deal personally with any sailor who has wronged you.”

  She stepped close to him and lowered her voice.

  “Your crew has behaved as well as sailors can be expected. My problem is with you. Keep your eyes off my feminine parts.”

  Petrified, he kept them glued forward at the basin’s rising waterline and forced a curt reply.

  “Yes, ma’am. Of course.”

  “You’re no longer military, and if you were, you’d still outrank me,” she said. “So don’t call me ‘ma’am’. It implies that I’m old, and that’s worse than objectifying me.”

  He wanted to disappear and hoped for a rescue as his executive officer reached for his blinking screen.

  “Pierre’s hailing us,” Walker said.

  “Speak to him in private,” Cahill said. “Let him know Major Dahan is with us on the bridge.

  Walker exchanged words with their boss.

  “He says it’s okay to share the news with her.”

  “Very well. Put him through.”

  The Frenchman’s voice filled the dome.

  “Dmitry has just contacted me with a one-way communications buoy on a thirty-minute delay. He’s barely cleared Port Said, and he’s already been harassed by an Israeli submarine. He managed to disable one, but then he stumbled upon another. This verifies Major Dahan’s prediction that the Israeli Navy is poised to defend potential interference from the Egyptians.”

  “What’s his outlook on breaking through?”

  “Not good. The Israel
is have regrouped from his early moves.”

  “I suppose that means I need to transport him through or around the problem.”

  “Indeed,” Renard said. “Make haste. I’ll have you out of that dock in an hour.”

  After the line went dead, Dahan spun around and headed for the staircase. Cahill called for her in hopes of salvaging a normal conversation.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “To check on my team’s surveillance equipment.”

  “You’re going to miss the exciting part where we get underway and accelerate to the open sea.”

  She stopped at the top of the stairs, turned her head, and offered him a profile of her sleek jawline.

  “I’ll be back when the time is right. And I’ll be the judge of what I consider exciting.”

  After she left, Walker shook his head.

  “She’s got you by your bloody wanker.”

  “Do you have to remind me?”

  “Maybe I do. This can’t be a good thing.”

  “Well, don’t you think she’s a beaut?”

  “I’m a married man.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “Fine. I can’t deny that she’s attractive,” Walker said.

  Cahill pondered a paranoid thought.

  “Do you think Israeli intelligence somehow knew I’d find her attractive?”

  “Now that’s a dangerous concept. That would mean she’s here to manipulate you and not just to help us.”

  “Perhaps. Or maybe just to assure her bosses that I do what Pierre signed us up to do.”

  “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.”