“Not long enough, apparently.”
“No,” the Admiral said. “And it did not end satisfactorily for anyone.”
He gave Rudi the last envelope. Inside were scribbled notes. They were almost unreadable.
“Written in the dark,” the Admiral explained, “after all power was lost. The words are in French. The next pages are a typewritten English translation.”
Rudi switched from the scribbled writings to the orderly translation and went through it slowly, reading aloud as he went.
“The engine room is flooded to the midpoint. We are dead in the water, bow pointed toward a surface we will never again reach. The Israeli captain has given us permission to write our families, to say our good-byes, but I wish only to commend him. He has treated us fairly. The governments of the world have their wars, but men of the sea are brothers and we are brothers who shall die together.”
Rudi looked up at Natal and then turned the page. “This is from a French sailor.”
The Admiral nodded.
“The boat is sinking slowly, so slowly that we must be at almost neutral buoyancy. It has been hours. And will be hours more before we are crushed. And yet, still they circle above us, angry wasps waiting to land one more sting.
“Occasionally, we hear another depth charge hit the water and then all we can do is wait. Most of us would welcome a direct hit to end things quickly, but they must not know how far down we’ve drifted, the detonations are so far above us.
“Do they know they’re killing their own? I wonder.”
There was one more page, Rudi turned to it quickly.
“It has been eleven hours. We are past the boat's test depth and the hull is creaking. Each groan seems like the hand of death, stroking our vessel in search of a weak point to crush it.
“There is no light and nothing to breathe except poisoned air. It stinks of oil and sweat and filth. The carbon dioxide is so thick that many of the men have fallen asleep already. In a way, I envy them. Others have gone forward in hopes of getting out through the torpedo tubes. But their attempt is for naught. We are too deep. They will be crushed, if they succeed at all.
“At least they have their vain hope. I have none, except that perhaps those in the other boat will make it to port. That those members of my crew and the Israeli sailors who are with them will survive to see their families again.”
The narrative ended there, followed by the name of the officer, which had been blacked out. The next lines of text told Rudi enough about the author to send a chill down his spine.
Honor, Homeland, Valor, Discipline.
Viva La France.
Viva La Minerve.
Rudi looked at the Admiral. “The captured French submarine was the Minerve?”
“You see why I can’t help you?” the Admiral said. “The French took the research data, the genetic materials and the bacterial cultures from the island. Our people took half of it back and left the rest on the Minerve. Both sailed for Israel, but neither ship survived.”
Rudi understood the task ahead instantly and clearly. “If the materials we’re looking for weren’t on the Dakar, they have to be on the Minerve.”
“It would appear that way,” the Admiral said, “but the French have been looking for that ship since the day she vanished. The search has gone on for two decades longer than our own search for the Dakar. I assure you, in all that time they haven’t found a trace of it. Nor have we.”
“That might play to our advantage,” Rudi said. “If they haven’t been able to find it, that means they didn’t sink it. It means the material on board stands a decent chance of remaining intact.”
“You’re right, of course,” the Admiral said. “But the Mediterranean is a big place. What makes you think you’ll be able to find it when both we and the French have been unable to do so?”
“Because I have to.”
56
NUMA VESSEL GRYPHON
“A STROKE of good luck,” Kurt said upon hearing the news.
Gamay reacted differently. “Really? Some luck.”
“It gives us a chance.”
She folded her arms and narrowed her gaze. If she ever became a mother, that gaze would go a long way to keeping her kids on the straight and narrow. “You realize the chances of success are next to none.”
“Better than no chance,” Kurt said, “which is what we have now.”
“Kurt’s right,” Rudi added from a video screen.
Everyone looked back at the screen, which had Rudi’s image on the left and Hiram Yaeger’s image on the right.
“And we need to do it quickly,” Rudi added. “This crisis is getting worse. This morning the Russians put out a statement saying they will no longer honor existing oil and gas contracts. All rates will be renegotiated to reflect spot prices as opposed to prices agreed upon months or years ago. OPEC is considering the same thing.”
“We all sense the urgency,” Paul said. “But if the French and Israelis haven’t been able to find this submarine after fifty years of searching, how are we supposed to find it in the blink of an eye?”
“By looking where they haven’t,” Kurt said. “We can rule out everything west of Toulon because Israel lies in the other direction. We can also rule out everywhere the French and Israelis have dragged sonar sleds over the last fifty years.” He turned to Rudi’s image on the screen. “Can you get that information for us?”
“I have the Israeli charts already,” Rudi said. “They spent a great deal of time searching for the Dakar publicly and privately. After the recovery of the logbooks, they spent two years in a clandestine search for the Minerve. They covered a large swath of the Med.”
“Getting the French data will be a little more difficult,” Paul said. “I’m sure they don’t want to admit their part in this.”
“No doubt,” Rudi said, “but I briefed the President before contacting you and he’s going to ratchet up the pressure to what he calls an unbearable level. I expect we’ll have the French records by nightfall.”
On the other half of the screen, Hiram spoke up. “And if that doesn’t work, we’ll turn Max loose on their records and see what we can dig up.”
Kurt broke out a chart of the Mediterranean and spread it across the table. He worked backward from their current position to Toulon. “Do we know the Dakar’s full route from the intercept point to the spot where the French caught and sank her?”
“We do,” Rudi said. “Why?”
“Because if the plan was to split up and double their chances of survival, we can rule out the Minerve taking the same course.”
“The Dakar took the straightest line possible,” Rudi said. “They were hoping speed would be their ally.”
Paul looked over Kurt’s shoulder. “If the Dakar kept to the northern Mediterranean, then perhaps the Minerve swung to the south, maybe even hugging the coast of Libya and Egypt.”
“You can rule Egypt out,” Rudi said. “The Israelis searched Egyptian waters, both in secret and in a rare moment of cooperation with the Egyptian government, in the eighties.”
“That still leaves a hundred thousand square miles to look through,” Gamay said. “I hate to be a pessimist, but we could have a fleet out here and not find anything for years.”
“We have had a fleet out here,” Kurt said. “For years.”
The glare came back. “What are you talking about?”
“I’ve done at least twenty surveys covering various parts of the Mediterranean myself,” Kurt said. “You and Paul have done similar work, three months off the coast of Italy last year. Two months around Elba the year before. Other NUMA teams have been doing similar work out here over the decades and NUMA isn’t alone in that.”
Gamay brightened and said, “I don’t recall spotting anything that looked like a sunken submarine. But we did catalog a large number of
sonar returns, including ten different aircraft, an Italian destroyer sunk by the British during World War Two and a containership that broke up in a storm off Tripoli.”
“And even though that wasn’t what you were looking for, the data was recorded,” Kurt said. He turned to the screen again. “Hiram, ask Max how many surveys NUMA has done in the Mediterranean since 1968. Limit it to surveys that used equipment capable of detecting a sunken submarine.”
Max answered momentarily. “NUMA has conducted three hundred and seventy-one manned surveys of the area in question. An additional one hundred and fifty-eight surveys have been conducted using autonomous underwater drones. Three surveys are currently in progress.”
“That ought to cover a fair amount of the seafloor,” Kurt said.
“Twenty-nine percent of the basin east of Toulon,” Max replied.
“Not as much as I’d hoped,” Kurt replied.
Rudi jumped in. “Like you said, we’re not the only ones who’ve been dragging sonar arrays around the Mediterranean. Hiram, have Max look over the old data for anything that might suggest a submarine resting on the bottom. I’m going to reach out to every country, aquatic organization and amateur wreck hunter I can find. You never know what information we might be able to beg, borrow or steal.”
Kurt took a quick look at the map. Their chances were rising. “In the meantime, we’ll head west.”
“Why west?” Paul asked.
“Because the Minerve won’t be found between here and Israel,” he said. “In fact, I’d suspect it’s well to the west of our current position.”
“And how do you know this?” Gamay asked.
“If the Minerve had reached this area, the French would have found it and sunk it, just as they sank the Dakar,” he said. “And if it passed through these waters unscathed, getting any closer to Israel, the submarine’s commander could have ordered the boat to the surface, radioed in to Haifa and called out a never-ending stream of IDF fighters to provide air cover and chase off the French antisubmarine patrols. Since neither of those things happened, we have to conclude that the Minerve never got this far.”
“That covers the waters east of us,” Paul said. “But what makes you think it will be found so far west? The two subs had similar capabilities, similar speeds. And they left the coast of France at the same time.”
“But the Minerve was operating with a damaged snorkel,” Kurt said. “Which means she couldn’t run underwater for long periods of time or at a high rate of speed. If you were on the run in that condition, what would you do?”
A longtime Navy man, Rudi answered this one. “Sit still and submerged during the day, conserving my batteries, and then run on the surface at night.”
“Which cuts her speed in half and limits how far she could have gotten.”
“I’m sold,” Rudi said. “Head west. We’ll contact you as soon as we have more to go on.”
Kurt took another look at the chart, picked a course that would take them south of Crete and toward Malta. He stepped to the helm, fired up the engines and got the Gryphon rolling. They’d covered ten miles when a radar contact appeared off the stern. It followed on an intercept course, closing in despite the Gryphon making thirty knots.
“What do you think?” Paul asked.
Kurt adjusted course to the south and the trailing contact followed suit. “I think someone out there wants to have a few words with us.”
57
KURT PUT ON more speed and adjusted the Gryphon’s course to the north. The mysterious radar contact reacted predictably, mirroring Kurt’s course change and continuing to close the distance.
Gamay came into the wheelhouse as Kurt straightened up. “What’s with all the twists and turns?”
“We’ve picked up a tail,” Kurt said.
“Faster than us?”
“Looks that way,” Paul said.
Kurt pointed to the panel on Paul’s left. “Check the cameras.”
Paul switched on the camera system, slaving it to the radar contact. The natural light spectrum was useless, since night had fallen, but the night vision lens clarified what they were looking at.
“Helicopters,” Paul said. “Two of them. Right on the deck. They look military to me.”
Kurt looked. Gun blisters underneath the nose were obvious, as were the lethal-looking missile pods on either side of the stubby wings.
“This is going to be rocky,” Kurt said. “Time to break out our presents. Paul, you’d better man the surface-to-air launch panel. Gamay, you’re the marksman of the group, you get on the CQW.”
The two of them nodded, with Paul taking a seat behind and to the left, the controls for the missile panel in front of him, and Gamay right behind him, setting up behind another screen, with her hands on a joystick that would control the rapid-fire mini-gun NUMA labeled Close-Quarters Weapon.
“Range, four miles and closing,” Paul said. “We can hit them in thirty seconds.”
“We can’t hit them until we know for sure they’re not friendlies,” Kurt said. “Aviators from plenty of different militaries sometimes practice mock attack runs on civilian vessels. I’d rather not blast them out of the sky or force them to practice evasive maneuvers they’re not quite ready for.”
“So, we can’t fire until fired upon,” Gamay said. “Not sure I like the rules of this game.”
“Three miles,” Paul said.
Suddenly the radarscope went white as if it were picking up ten thousand helicopters.
“They’re jamming our radar,” Paul said.
“Keep your eyes on the video display,” Kurt said. “They can’t jam that.”
Paul glanced at the monitor. The camera system had the ability to track ranges. “Two miles, according to the camera. Speed one hundred and forty knots, heading right for us.”
Kurt let go of the throttle for a moment and pressed two buttons on the panel in front of him. The first was labeled Foils, the second was labeled Armor.
From the wide aft section of the Gryphon, a series of heavy plates moved forward, covering the windows and the vulnerable areas around the fuel tank. Meanwhile, beneath the vessel, a pair of wings deployed on thick hydraulic struts.
“One mile,” Paul said.
The armor clinked into place as a flash on the screen told everyone they were under attack.
“Rockets,” Paul said. “Unguided.”
Kurt turned the wheel hard and shoved the throttle forward. The Gryphon heaved over to starboard, picking up speed in the turn.
The first wave of rockets hit behind and to port. A second wave was so far off that the explosions sounded only like distant thunder.
With the hydrofoils fully extended, the turbine engine howling in full voice, the Gryphon was passing seventy knots and hitting eighty before the helicopters reacted.
“They’re turning and following,” Paul said. “More rockets inbound.”
This time, the spread of rockets hit much closer. The first four up ahead and the second wave were straddling the Gryphon. One hit the water to the left, two to the right, a fourth slamming into the armor on the aft deck.
The Gryphon shuddered and surged from the impact but emerged from the firestorm mostly unscathed.
* * *
• • •
ON BOARD the lead helicopter, Alexander Vastoga couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
“Direct hit,” the gunner said.
“No effect,” Vastoga said.
By now, the helicopters had overshot the speeding boat. Vastoga looked out the window as it vanished behind them. “Turn back and make another pass. We get nothing if that boat doesn’t go down.”
“It’s heading north,” the pilot of the second helicopter radioed. “Speed, ninety knots.”
Vastoga shook his head. The boat was almost as fast as his helicopters.
“Close within five hundred yards before you open fire,” he ordered.
“Rockets or guns?”
“Both!”
* * *
• • •
THE Gryphon was flying across the sea, but it could not escape the helicopters.
“They’re coming in again,” Paul said. “Staggered formation. One at our six o’clock, one farther off the port beam.”
“You have my permission to fire,” Kurt said.
“About time,” Gamay replied.
She’d already switched her scope to infrared, now she activated a targeting laser. The range, speed and distance of the helicopter moving in from the port side were quickly logged and computed.
“Just out of range,” she said.
“Paul?”
“Radar is still jammed. There’s no way for me to get a lock on them.”
The helicopter trailing them launched another spread of unguided rockets. Kurt weaved to starboard, but that set them on a direct line for the second helicopter and it unleashed all eight of its remaining rockets.
One hit the forward deck, sending a shock wave through the Gryphon. A second hit low on the side of the hull, but the explosion was a glancing blow and the hull maintained its integrity. The same could not be said for the ribbed Zodiac attached to the back deck. It was blasted to confetti when a third rocket hit.
“I’ve had enough of this,” Kurt said.
He cut the wheel again, this time turning hard directly toward the nearest helicopter.
As the range closed, the lights on Gamay’s screen flashed green and she opened fire.
Near the bow, lethal fire spat from an innocent-looking dome. Inside, a six-barreled Gatling gun unleashed a hundred and fifty shells in three seconds. Half of these found their mark and the helicopter was perforated from front to back. Both the pilot and the gunner were killed instantly, saving them from suffering in the explosion that followed.
Sea of Greed Page 26