Praise for Rogue Crusader
"With his third novel Rogue Crusader, Qualified Submariner-turned-author John Hindinger capstones a stunning literary hat trick of vividly cinematic technothriller suspense! With breathtaking combat and espionage action, across a canvas of continents and under the Sea, in the Air, and on Land, Hindinger's visionary tale rings as true as the U.S. Navy SEALs’ hit on Osama Bin Laden!"
- Joe Buff,
best-selling author, Seas of Crisis, Tidal Rip.
*
Praise for earlier works by John Hindinger
Rogue Avenger (2007)
"After reading John Hindinger's extraordinary debut novel, 'Rouge Trident,' I had no idea how he was going to top his own performance. Now I know."
-Jeffrey Edwards, award-winning author of Torpedo
"Easy to read, easy to understand, and easy to enjoy (even if you didn't read Rogue Trident), Rogue Avenger is definitely worth picking up and definitely hard to put down."
-Rob Ballister, Lead Reviewer, Military Writers Society of America
Rogue Trident (2005)
"Rogue Trident is such a stunning action thriller that I devoured it all in one gigantic and delicious bite! John Hindinger is a rare talent indeed, with a commanding 'been there, done that' knowledge of high-stakes submarine warfare and brilliantly Byzantine world geopolitics."
-Joe Buff, best-selling author, Seas of Crisis, Tidal Rip.
"Rogue Trident mixes hard realism with great writing skills. The characterizations and dialog are done with gifted skill. The details about the workings inside a submarine are uncannily accurate and make the plot seem even more real. This is an outstanding effort for a first novel. One can only wonder what the sequel will be like."
-Bill McDonald, former President Military Writers Society of America.
*
ROGUE CRUSADER
John Hindinger
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010-2011 John Hindinger
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Chapter One
A bead of sweat dripped from Hana al-Salem’s jaw as the sonar display counted down distance to the Israeli submarine overhead.
As the reading inched towards zero, a thud echoed throughout the submersible Jammal. Salem cringed, and his stomach leapt into his throat.
“Careful!” he said.
Haitham al-Asad, the ex-naval officer seated before him, grabbed joysticks to level the tiny submarine.
“Leveling out,” Asad said.
“Did we just announce ourselves to the Leviathan?”
“Doubtful,” Asad said in a tone that impressed Salem with its calmness. “The rubberized tiles on our hull silence the impact.”
Salem tried to straighten his six-foot frame within the control center, but his dark hair brushed the overhead piping. He crouched again over Asad’s shoulder and watched the digital display.
“Bazzi reports that we have only thirty minutes of battery energy remaining at this speed,” Asad said.
“I know,” Salem said. “I heard him.”
“Sorry, Hana. I’m nervous.”
“I understand, Haitham. Work through your fear.”
The display ticked with glacial lethargy as Asad and Mahmoud Latakia, the retired Syrian Navy Warrant officer seated beside him, lifted the Jammal to the Leviathan again. As the sonar reading approached zero meters, Salem looked to monitors showing footage from external cameras. One showed a world eclipsed by the Leviathan’s keel, and the other showed the dual-arced panels of suction units atop the Jammal’s twin hull.
“Lower the after camera,” he said.
“Right,” Asad said.
Salem felt the Jammal’s ascent stop against the Leviathan’s underbelly. He held his breath as Asad flipped a trigger guard and pressed a button. Humming echoed from the Jammal’s overhead superstructure as a pump drained water and created vacuums within the suction couplings.
“We’re on, I think,” Asad said. “The midsection suction units are holding.”
“Up! Drive into them,” Salem said. “Just to be sure.”
Asad and Latakia exchanged a quick verbal volley and jostled joysticks. As the ship pressed against the Leviathan, Asad depressed buttons, and again Salem heard pumps whirring.
“Are we holding?” Salem asked.
“We’ve already cut back our thrusters,” Asad said. “The Leviathan is pulling us.”
The Jammal rocked, and Salem braced himself against one of the hull’s circular metal ribs.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Asad said. “We’re rocking with the Leviathan. They must have passed into deeper water.”
“We didn’t rock like this in training.”
“We trained on an old submarine that was being towed in calmer waters.”
“Is this a problem?” Salem asked.
“There’s flexibility - rocker arms - built into the suction panels,” Asad said. “We can only trust the design.”
Salem looked at a digital speed display.
“Ten knots,” he said. “We’re attached well enough to be towed faster than our top speed. This is good.”
“Latakia is using minimal thrusters and stabilizers,” Asad said. “Our battery is good for two hours now.”
“Look,” Salem said, nodding at analog gauges. “Number three starboard suction unit is losing vacuum. So is number ten port.”
Asad leaned to Latakia.
“Line up to pump from starboard midline unit three.”
Asad energized the pump. By Salem’s left ear, from the Jammal’s superstructure atop its parallel twin hulls, a whir rose and fell. Pressure in the suction unit dropped.
“Line up to pump from port midline unit ten,” Asad said.
Again the pump whirred and ceased, but pressure in the suction unit steadied.
“Poor mating,” Asad said. “Perhaps barnacles in the way. We’ll let its pressure rise and try again after it equalizes. We don’t need all of the suction units. We are well mated with the ones that are working.”
Salem felt relief to be a limpet on the Israeli submarine, but doubt started to eat through his mind. Grabbing hold of a submarine was one thing. Breaking into it and taking control of it was another.
*
Fifteen months before Salem’s mission, retired brigadier general Aaron Simon chuckled as he watched the missile leave the rail and begin its fifty mile trip to the White House.
“To the president, with love,” he said.
After retiring from the United States Air Force, Simon had become a vice president of product development for Raytheon. With a lifetime of wise investments, Air Force retirement pay, and a severance package from Raytheon, the seventy-three year old multi-millionaire found a life of leisure intolerable. To fill the void, he became politically active.
He had spoken out against defense policies, gained support among a small but powerful group of retired flag officers, and became the figurehead of a push to tighten security against air threats on America’s coastlines. He demanded automated air batteries at sensitive locations, and an inroad to the Armed Services Committee caused the concept to reach the floor for a vote. But when the bill stalled in Congress, Simon took a stronger approach.
Colleagues from his network of defense contractors helped him with a project of designing his own land attack cruise missile. He had lured most of them into providing their knowledge and labor to build prototypes with equity in a company he founded to undercut the big companies on price. Since Simon always got things done fast and right, supporters flocked to him in hopes of profiting from Simon’s new cruise missile.
The first prototype traveled ten miles across a friend’s ranch in New Mexico, and the second flew fifty. The third prototype had just traced a low-altitude contrail across the Virginia shoreline as Simon walked into the pilot house of his yacht.
He pulled plastic ear muffs over a full head of graying hair and yanked foam plugs out of his ears. He dialed an emergency channel and picked up a radio hand set.
“This is pleasure craft Lord Simon,” he said. “Come in
Coast Guard Station, Washington, over.”
“This is Coast Guard
Station, Washington. What is your emergency, Lord Simon,
over.”
“Coast Guard Station, Washington, this is the Lord Simon. I can’t tell you what I just did, because you would warn someone, and that would be cheating. So just trust me that you need to apprehend me. I’ll send you my location and wait for one of your crews to board me. Out.”
He sat in his captain’s chair and watched two monitors. One showed missile telemetry – the other Cable News Network from his satellite television.
Five minutes after launch, the tracking software showed the subsonic missile approaching Washington, DC on a photographic overlay of the city. CNN showed the floor of the New York Stock exchange as a heavy day of trading approached its finale.
Telemetry showed Simon that the missile dipped as it targeted the White House. Simon felt conflicted as his missile flew with flawless accuracy, seconds from mission accomplishment, and as the country he once served was revealing its weakness.
The missile zoomed over the White House, turned south, and continued over the Potomac River. It slowed, dipped, and crashed into the water.
He heard a Coast Guard vessel hailing him with orders to await their arrival. He swiveled his chair and silenced the radio, and when he turned back to the television, he saw breaking news on CNN about an unidentified object landing in the Potomac River.
“At least somebody knows how to react like they mean it,” he said to himself. “Too bad it’s not the people who count.”
*
Three months after Simon’s cruise missile display, the Trigger stood on the bridge of an Iranian supertanker.
Orphaned by the loss of a father to the Iran-Iraq War and by a mother’s death during childbirth, the Trigger lived with an aunt who failed to conceal her resentment of having to raise him. Arriving in this world in abandoned isolation disconnected him from humanity. He considered his given name meaningless and called himself “the Trigger” because it described the one thing that soothed his pain of living – destroying things.
Small arms bird hunting grew into a hobby of taking down big horn sheep with game rifles. In his teens, he discovered nitrogen-based chemical mixtures and started blowing things up, including carcasses of his prey. A university education in chemistry and engineering completed his formation into a munitions expert.
The name of “the Trigger” became known within spheres of extremist influence as he orchestrated a series of high-altitude tests of ship-launched ballistic missiles in the Caspian Sea. His last demonstration had placed upgraded Shahab III missiles, variants of the Russian Scud, into low earth orbit.
As he worked on his newest and grandest project, the Trigger stood beside the captain of the supertanker – a mariner he trusted from the Caspian Sea tests. Disliking given names, he addressed his companion by title.
“This disappoints me more than you, Captain.”
“I am certain of it. Are you sure that General Simon’s missile demonstration necessitates this?”
The Trigger kept his gaze on the open tank below, watching the launchers being disassembled under moonlight and soft halogen lighting. Deckhands unfurled a canopy as a crane hook slipped into the tank to retrieve a section of a missile’s launcher mounting.
“Yes, we must delay our attack,” the Trigger said. “Although I have yet to decide if General Simon is a fool or a genius.”
“He created a media circus courtroom trial that a nation of idiots is gobbling up with mindless gluttony,” the Captain said.
“You are missing the more important outcome.”
“I am aware that his missile demonstration stunt has driven up the value of his armament company.”
“It won’t last, and he knows it,” the Trigger said. “Making one prototype missile that can dive into a river is simple. Design and production of a fleet of missiles for sale in a highly competitive global armament market is an entirely different consideration.”
“Then he sounds like a fool to me. Why might you consider him a genius?”
“If his true intent was to shift the American defense strategy, then he has walked a delicate path to success.”
“I had suspected American military responses but was unsure. You have access to better sources of information than I do. Excuse me.”
The Captain raised a bridge to bridge radio to his mouth and ordered his deckhands to stay the swaying of a swiveling crane. When satisfied the motion had stopped, he lowered the radio.
“The American response to General Simon?”
“Since you will be risking your life in this,” the Trigger said, “you deserve to know. They are tightening their coastal air defenses. Anti-air systems of naval vessels in port are on standby, Patriot missile batteries have been deployed, and constant alert aircraft defenses have been expanded. The American sky is all but blanketed with missile defense coverage.”
“This creates a difficulty for us, but surely there are gaps we can exploit.”
“Indeed there are gaps which they will attempt to fill with warships armed with Aegis defense systems and Standard SM3 missiles designed for this very purpose.”
“All gaps?”
“That is uncertain. What is certain, however, is that if we can find an Aegis warship patrolling off the American coast, we have then found a gap in the land and air based defense net, which is an ideal location from which to launch our attack.”
“Ideal? I disagree. Aegis warships provide an impregnable defense.”
“Not impregnable. Even an Aegis destroyer’s missile defenses can be defeated.”
“Dubious,” the Captain said. “But if true, why wait? If we can somehow slip our missiles past the defenses, why not strike now?”
The Trigger felt a deep stab of sadness. He was unsure what caused the stabs, but they hit when he thought of mass death. His words passed through a drying throat.
“Because defeating an Aegis destroyer’s air defenses requires defeating the destroyer itself.”
The Captain snorted.
“How do you plan to defeat the world’s mightiest warship?”
“From below, and from inside,” the Trigger said.
“Inside? A mutineer?”
“Not quite, but just as useful. Better that you know no more about it.”
“Fine,” the Captain said. “But an attack from below? Our allies have very few submarines at our disposal, and they are constantly watched.”
“You are correct. We cannot use the submarine of any ally.”
“Then what are you planning?”
“We have allies who are planning to steal an Israeli submarine, and I have united with them in a coordinated purpose. We are fortunate that they have already invested two years into their operation. The timing is perfect.”
“I had heard rumor,” the Captain said. “The purpose is to launch its cruise missiles at Tel Aviv with the appearance of a mutinous self-inflicted wound. An admirable goal.”
“The rumor is true, and the launch against Tel Aviv was the purpose,” the Trigger said. “It is no longer. The Dolphin class submarine Leviathan will instead be at our disposal.”
“The rumor stated that no government is involved. This hijacking is led by inexperienced people. If it goes awry, we may never have a chance to launch our missiles.”
“Nobody is experienced in stealing submarines,” the Trigger said. “The task requires capable and intelligent men who can plan, execute, and adapt.”
He felt an awkward and rare sensation that he would later tag as reverence.
“You’ve met the man who will lead them, haven’t you?” the Captain asked.
“Once, outside the university in a planning meeting. He strikes me as insightful and driven. He is noted regionally as a rising leader in economic thought.”
“Men of pontification are not men of action. Let him lead a capital ship through high seas before I consider him capable.”
“I also doubted him until seeing him talk through a plan of his own design with a conviction and confidence of a man of action. Apparently, he has led underground resistance activities in Damascus for years while maintaining his status as a talented economist. If anyone can steal an Israeli submarine, he can.”
“I had considered you the most interesting, although depressing, man I’ve known. But should this Syrian man and I survive long enough to make each other’s acquaintance, I will reassess my opinion.”
“Do you care to know his name?”
“I would be impressed if you, the Trigger, who considers given names meaningless, would say it.”
“This man’s name is worthy of memory. It is Hana al-Salem.”
Chapter Two
Thirty minutes after Hana al-Salem had turned the Jammal into a limpet on the Israeli submarine, Leviathan, Haitham al-Asad and Mahmoud Latakia, the Syrian naval veterans, had redrawn vacuum in half of the suction units. The failing portside aft unit never held, and they had given up on it.
“Some of the outer units have caught,” Asad said.
“Our upward buoyancy and their rocking pressed them together?” Salem asked.
“Yes, it appears so, at least for a few of them.”
“May as well use them. Pump them dry.”
As the pump whirred once more, Salem noticed a speed display trickling down from ten knots.
“They’re slowing,” he said.
“Preparing to dive, perhaps” Asad said. “We’re in deep enough water.”
Salem felt the deck plates angle downward, and he watched the depth display count downward.
“Apparently so.”
He turned and crept aft to a motley team of soldiers, technicians, and linguists who were seated in cramped chairs in the starboard hull of the twin-hull submersible. He saw fear in their eyes. Metallic cracking popped from the ship’s metal shell, startling them.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Submarine hulls do this during depth changes. The Leviathan’s hull will make the same noise, and they can’t tell our hull noise from theirs.”
He walked to an older man seated by a panel of gages.
“Almost five hours left on the battery now. Asad and Latakia are doing well conserving energy.”
“That’s too little time, Bazzi” Salem said. “Get a new reading as we submerge with the Leviathan.”
Ten minutes later, the Jammal hitched a ride underneath the Leviathan at eight knots. At one hundred meters, the seas grew calm, and the rocking ceased. The Jammal expended no energy except maintaining suction.
“Seven hours now,” Bazzi said. “That will take us to nightfall.”
“Perhaps,” Salem said. “But check our atmosphere.”
“Oxygen is low. I assume that toxins are high.”
“Bleed in high pressure air from the tanks. I’ll get you help pumping our air out with the hand pump.”
Salem gestured to a soldier dressed in a wetsuit and sneakers who crept to him.
“This lever pumps air from our compartment into the port side hull,” Salem said. “Be careful not to jerk or it will make too much noise. Deliberate and rhythmic. When you’re tired, have a colleague relieve you.”
Another soldier caught Salem’s attention and pointed forward, and he noticed Asad working a joystick. He slinked forward.
“They’re turning,” Asad said. “We’re turning with them to minimize torques on the suction units.”
Asad worked the Jammal’s thrusters through the turn.
“We’re holding,” Salem said. “It looks like we lost only four or five units.”
“Right,” Asad said. “But we can probably get them back. And we’re steady on course.”
Asad twisted and leaned over a paper navigation chart. He ran an eraser over penciled markings and redrew a line representing their new direction of travel.
“This is crude navigation, and our gyroscope is questionable, but it appears they’re heading north.”
Salem snorted.
“Ironic justice,” he said. “I suspect they’re beginning a patrol with cruise missiles ready to strike Beirut and Damascus. A deterrent. An insurance policy.”
“We’ll know soon enough, Hana,” Asad said. “When we’re on the inside.”
Two hours later, Salem sat beside his friend and colleague, Ali Yousif, a professor of electrical engineering at Damascus University. He stretched his legs across the compartment.
“Your idea of incorporating motor generators into our design was a good one,” Salem said.
He felt the heavyset engineer’s shoulders bump him as he turned and smiled.
“I’m proud of it. Water spinning our thrusters backwards to charge the battery is hardly an efficient system, but it’s free energy provided by the Leviathan.”
“It’s buying us an extra hour or two of operations. It could make a difference.”
Yousif pointed to a slender man in a wetsuit, a mechanical engineer, who napped despite his body’s contortions in the cramped space.
“You’ll have to thank him when he awakes. His suction panel design is impressive.”
“I’ll thank him if his netting idea works,” Salem said. “That will be our grandest trick.”
An hour later, Salem awoke from dreams of a happy childhood. Stale air reoriented his awareness, and he realized that his neck hurt from sleeping sideways. His mouth had a foul taste of anxiety.
He crept forward to discover that the ex-naval sailors remained vigilant in monitoring and controlling the Jammal.
“We’re at one hundred fifty meters now,” Asad said. “There’s no reason for the Leviathan to go deeper, but we’re ready in case they do.”
“Good,” Salem said.
“I feel a turn to the left,” Asad said.
He jostled his joystick to twist the Jammal to the left with its unsuspecting escort.
“Damn,” he said. “They’re heeling into the turn. We’re losing suction units on the starboard side.”
After a ninety degree course change, the Jammal settled underneath the Leviathan. Ten minutes later, the Israeli submarine repeated the maneuver in the other direction, steadying on its original course.
“We lost most of the outer suction units, both sides,” Asad said. “The midsection units are holding us, but I don’t know for how long. I’m attempting to raise us and reconnect to starboard units.”
“My patience is wearing thin,” Salem said.
“Me, too,” Asad said. “One more turn, and we could fail. We can hasten our plans and attempt the ingress in daylight, but that increases the risk of being found. It’s your call, Hana.”
Salem’s instinct selected action over caution.
“It’s a large sea,” he said, “and I’ll take my chances of not being seen. We’ll deploy the netting and accept our fate. Flood the port hull and compensate for ballast. I’ll suit up and have Hamdan join me in the lockout chamber.”
Closing a watertight door separating him from the Jammal’s main compartment, Salem moved latches quietly. He sat, and the eldest of his Hamas-trained warriors, a man in his mid-twenties named Adad Hamdan, stared at him with eyes that had seen nothing but misery and disadvantage.
“Two atmospheres?” Hamdan asked.
“Yes, and remember to equalize before we go out.”
“I remember the training.”
Salem’s ears popped and he grabbed his nose and blew. He then reached for the straps to a SCUBA tank that rested in his seat’s webbing behind him. He pulled them tight and extended his hands overhead for his mask and mouthpiece.
Sealing the mask over his face, he breathed from the tank. He then let the mouthpiece fall to his chest and lifted the mask atop his head.
“Mine’s good,” he said.
“Mine, too,” Hamdan said. “We’re at two atmospheres.”
Salem pulled a console to his lap and energized it.
“Who designed this?” Hamdan asked.
“Yousif.”
Salem nodded to the bulkhead.
“The sound powered phone,” he said.
Hamdan slipped a headset over his ears, lifted a microphone to his mouth, spoke, and nodded.
“Ask Asad to open the port hull’s rear door.”
Moments later, he heard a clink and creak.
“They’ll hear that!” Hamdan said.
“That’s acceptable. We want them to think they’re running into a fishing net anyway.”
The computer console in Salem’s lap consumed his attention. He saw the world through the camera of the remotely operated vehicle drifting out the back of the uninhabited port hull of the Jammal.
Assisted by two spotlights, the ROV saw nothing in the deep blackness. But Salem knew where to drive it and tapped keys that commanded it upward.
“This will require some luck,” he said.
The Leviathan’s hull came into view, reflecting just enough light for discernment. The ROV hit it and bounced off. Salem drove it upward again.
“There’s the rudder,” he said. “Damn, I can’t get it. We’re moving too fast. Aiming for the stern plane…”
He heard the ROV crash against the Leviathan’s stern plane. He kept maneuvering it, hoping to get it close to the propeller. The last image the ROV sent was a shot of a swishing blade.
“Perhaps we should pray,” Hamdan said.
“I already am. Silently.”
Salem waited for seconds that seemed an eternity.
Then, the cacophony began. He heard nylon netting abrading the Jammal’s port hull rear door and thumping and bumping the Leviathan’s stern.
“What’s happening?” Hamdan asked.
“I sent the remote vehicle on a suicide mission with the harness of a trawling net attached to it. If all goes well, my brother, one hundred meters of netting is emptying from our starboard hull and wrapping itself around their propeller.”
Hamdan’s eyes opened wide.
“And then what? Will they try to shake loose?”
“We’re trusting that they’re humanitarians,” Salem said. “A net may be attached to a trawler that would be pulled under if they drive away. A good submarine commander knows this and will stop and come shallow to evaluate.”
Hamdan raised his sound-powered phone to his mouth.
“Thank you, Asad,” he said.
“What did he say?” Salem asked.
“He said the Leviathan is slowing.”
Thirty minutes later, Salem became anxious. The Leviathan had drifted to a dead stop, tried to free itself by running its screw in reverse, and had repeated the back and forth effort three times.
“When will they give up?” Hamdan asked.
“At least they’ve come shallower. We’re at one hundred meters, right?”
“Yes. That was Asad’s last report.”
The world tilted and dumped Salem against the lockout chamber’s rear door. Hamdan grabbed piping to steady himself and work the phone.
“Asad say’s we’re losing suction,” he said. “Their maneuvering is too radical.”
“Tell him to hold on as long as he can.”
“He wants to talk to you.”
Salem pushed his facemask behind his neck and slipped Hamdan’s phone over his ears. Asad’s voice seemed distant and electronic but anxious.
“They’re driving up steeply,” Asad said. “I’m not sure if we’re holding. I’ve lost most suction readings.”
Salem lifted the mouthpiece.
“What’s their intent?” he asked.
“Apparently, breaking free of the net is more important than…”
“What’s wrong?” Salem asked.
“We’re slipping free. Damn! What do we do? We didn’t plan for this!” Asad said.
“Steady us. Flood our ballast to control our ascent. And make use of our high-frequency sonar and short range cameras to watch for the Leviathan. Trust that the information you need is there.”
Asad leveled the Jammal at twenty meters.
“We can see just enough light,” he said. “We have both cameras, following the Leviathan’s last course.”
“They couldn’t have gone far,” Salem said into his mouthpiece.
“It depends on how effective our netting seized their screw. I suspect they’ll be shallow or surfaced. Either way, we’re searching at the right depth.”
“How’s our battery?”
“Ten percent,” Asad said. “It will drop rapidly as we search and chase. We can catch them, but we won’t have much battery to stay with them unless we reattach.”
“If they’re on the surface?” Salem asked.
“To remove the netting? Then we’re in good shape and will find them soon.”
“Do your best,” Salem said.
He lowered the microphone and lowered his head.
“To come this far and fail…”
“Hana?” Hamdan asked.
“Nothing.”
“You’re afraid of failing?”
“We need divine intervention. Just a little.”
Uncertainty caused Salem to feel his fatigue and anxiety. He slumped over in his wetsuit, consumed with rapid-fire thoughts paralyzing his mind until he heard Asad’s excited voice.
“Leviathan, bearing zero two zero!”
“Get us in front of it,” Salem said, reenergized. “Hamdan and I are going to swim out.”
“I can put you in front of their conning tower, but we have to hurry,” Asad said. “Our battery is nearly gone.”
“We’ll prepare our gear and leave on your mark.”
Salem pulled the mask over his face and pushed the breather into his mouth. Hamdan handed him a sarin nerve agent canister, which he clipped to his belt. Three canisters later, Hamdan handed him a nine millimeter pistol with a silencer and extra ten round clips sealed in a waterproof bag that he slipped into a pouch on his waist.
He also strapped suction cups to his wrists and over the knees of his black wetsuit and clipped twenty feet of elastic cord between his belt and that of Hamdan.
Hamdan equalized air pressure to the depths above the Leviathan, and he opened and shut valves letting a calculated amount of seawater into their lockout chamber. Water rose to Salem’s chest as he pressed the phone’s ear muff to his ear and lifted the mouthpiece.
“We’re ready,” he said.
“Almost there,” Asad said. “They’re at periscope depth and dead in the water. We’re at five meters.”
“That’s perfect. Let me know when we’re-”
“Go!”
Salem hung the phone on its latch and twisted a valve, and seawater glided up his mask. Hamdan opened an overhead escape hatch and pulled himself into the Mediterranean Sea. Salem followed, stopped, and closed the hatch.
He kicked past the Jammal’s thrusters and rode the beams of setting sunlight toward the Leviathan’s bright green tower. The rope between himself and Hamdan slacked as the soldier reached the welded ladder rungs on the submarine’s conning tower.
His breathing slowed when he saw Hamdan lock his belt to a rung, and he accompanied the soldier as a limpet on the Leviathan. The Israeli submarine remained motionless, testing his patience until he realized that its crew solved a problem for him by waiting until sunset to surface.
Two Hamas soldiers in wetsuits startled him as they landed on the tower’s higher rungs. One held a bag of meter-long aluminum bars wrapped in cloth. He withdrew the bars and screwed one into another like a pool cue. He continued until he had a long pole, which Hamdan held from the hull while attaching one of his sarin canisters to a hook on its tip.
Salem checked his SCUBA gear and noted fifteen minutes of air. A final soldier who had passed through the Jammal’s lockout chamber joined the team with a spare tank on his back, ready to buddy-breathe with those losing air.
The depths turned dark as the sun’s rays reflected off the swells and the rising silhouette of the Leviathan’s snorkel mast caught Salem’s eye. He thought he felt the submarine vibrate with the perceptible sound of a diesel engine, but only the ship’s gentle rise confirmed that the Israeli vessel was snorkeling and routing air into its ballast tanks to float to the surface.
He pushed off the ladder rungs to the submarine’s deck and placed his sneakers on its anti-skid walking surface. Above, the tower rose into the darkening night. Then his head pushed through the surface. To conserve his tank, he turned it off and breathed the humid evening’s air. Beside him, Hamdan did the same.
The sky turned indigo as the Leviathan’s deck rose through the surface of the sea.
“The hatch will open slowly,” he said. “When it does, turn your air tank back on, but keep your eyes on the hatch. Remember, you shoot. I drop.”
“Yes,” Hamdan said as he withdrew the silencer from its watertight bag and screwed it over the barrel of his pistol. Salem attached his silencer but returned his weapon in its pouch.
His world fixated on circular steel. Seconds ticked as lifetimes as he waited. He heard a clunk that stopped his heart, and the hatch cracked an inch.
“Air,” he said in a hoarse voice.
He tasted stale air through his mouthpiece and watched the hatch rise. He tore the pin off his sarin canister, and it belched poison. Moving with speed and clarity, he raced to the hatch, knelt to his side, and jammed the canister toward the Leviathan’s ingress.
The canister caught the hatch’s machined metal, and he pushed the hatch up with his free hand. Whiffs of poison subdued the Israeli sailor under the hatch, and Salem wrestled the heavy but free metal upward and pushed the canister inside the submarine.
Hamdan appeared by his side, helped him lift the hatch over its hinges, and disappeared into the Leviathan. Looking up, Salem saw the soldier on the conning tower gawking back at him. Salem extended his thumb.
The soldier tore the pin off his canister and lifted it with his aluminum pole to the induction mast intake, and it sucked the poison through the Leviathan’s diesel engines and pumped it throughout the ship.
Salem slid down the ladder into the Leviathan and found himself in the sleeping quarters. Stepping over the canister that spewed toxins, he stopped for a vicarious moment to watch a man on the deck shudder and die.
Tearing open another canister, he ran aft through a door into the control center. Hamdan’s first canister had sent sailors toward their shipboard emergency air breathers, but the Hamas soldier stopped each Israeli’s attempt to breathe with a silenced bullet. Salem tossed his canister to the deck to exacerbate the horror show of convulsing fatality.
He lifted his pistol toward a sailor clutching his throat near the control panel. His silenced round sent the man to the deck, and Salem darted to the panel.
He was relieved to find that neither mast capable of external communications had reached full extension, suggesting that no messages of a hijacking had been sent. He flipped two switches downward, returning every mast into the Leviathan except the induction mast that sucked poison into the ship from above.
The two soldiers who had been guarding the after hatch entered the control center. Salem pointed to a door leading to the technical control center and raised one finger. He then pointed to a ladder heading down into the electronic equipment space. A soldier raced into each chamber.
Sensing his improbable success taking shape, Salem swallowed back bile to keep from vomiting. He clenched his teeth and lips around his mouthpiece and inhaled, but he drew half a breath.
Salem heard Hamden’s reloaded weapon chirping behind him as he retraced his steps to the hatch. His lungs burning, he climbed out of the Leviathan. He heaved his chest to the deck, spat his mouthpiece, and inhaled the night air. Scrambling from the poisoned submarine’s innards, he crawled to the conning tower, gasped lungful after lungful, and then vomited.
The soldier from the conning tower descended to the lowest ladder rung and stepped in front of him. The smug, youthful look of bravado became fear as he stared back.
“Hana?” he asked.
Salem wiped his mouth.
“Half the crew is dead but some may still be resisting. Be swift, shoot straight, and get the spare tank to Hamdan.”
“We’re succeeding aren’t we, Hana?”
Quivering with a pounding heart, Salem knew that sarin nerve agent played no part in his reaction. No training could prepare him for his reaction to mass killing.
“Yes, boy,” he said. “We are succeeding all too well.”
Chapter Three
When the sonar system aboard the USS Annapolis, a Los Angeles class attack submarine, heard the Leviathan run into netting, Commander Brad Flint grinned.
“Better them than us,” he said. “Let’s get some extra ears listening on sonar for trawlers. I don’t want to join the Leviathan as the catch of the day.”
Flint twisted by the periscope’s cylindrical mass. At six feet, three inches tall, he had developed early warning instincts for avoiding protrusions in submarines, especially those that moved.
His executive officer, Alex Baines, a dark skinned African American with a solid, bulky build, had been a cheerleader at the University of Southern California. Flint, a reserved Oklahoman from the U.S. Naval Academy, spoke with a drawl in contrast to Baines’ perkiness.
“Two off-watch sonar techs are on their way up, sir” Baines said. “At least now we know what the Israeli fishing net extraction procedure is.”
“I would have done the same thing. Running only adds risk of dragging down the trawler that snagged you. I think coming shallow and trying to drive it loose was all they could do, and waiting until sunset was also prudent.”
“We should draft a message and tell squadron.”
“We’ll wait until they’re under again to transmit so they don’t sniff out our transmission.”
“There’s no hurry, sir. We’ll know soon enough if the Leviathan has been defeated by a fishing net.”
“Right,” Flint said. “Rig the control room for nighttime periscope operations and get our translators into the radio room in case the Israelis broadcast a message.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Baines said.
“When your mission is to spy on an Israeli submarine,” Flint said in response to the cheerful grin forming on Baines’ face, “this is as good as it gets.”
Flint positioned the Annapolis within two miles of the Leviathan, came shallow, and watched the Israeli submarine with night vision through the periscope.
“It’s fuzzy,” he said, “but I can make out people topside. It looks like they’re grouping towards the stern.”
He heard his sonar chief’s voice in a loudspeaker.
“Control, Sonar,” the chief said, “we heard some strange noises.”
“Define strange,” Flint said, his eye pressed against the periscope optics.
“Non-mechanical,” the chief said. “Human generated, either like banging, possibly raised voices.”
“You mean like a pissed off captain howling at his crew to get the net off his ship?”
“Could be, sir.”
A silhouette of a man on the Leviathan’s bow stood and attracted Flint’s attention. He wondered if he had missed the sailor on the first scan of the submarine’s deck, if he was a Leviathan diver returned from inspecting the submarine’s netting conundrum, or if the man’s sudden appearance was a riddle yet to be solved.
*
Wearing an Israeli officer’s submarine jumpsuit, Hana al-Salem crawled from the sea onto the Leviathan’s bow. He had sloshed in the water to cleanse traces of sarin from the garments.
Dripping, he felt lethargic as he stood, but he had taken comfort in watching the remainder of his team swim to the Leviathan while he waded.
The smallish image of Asad, dressed in a wetsuit, leaned over the hatch. Salem lumbered to him and noticed that his companion seemed in good spirits.
“The technical team is below,” Asad said. “Yousif barely fit through the hatch getting out of the Jammal, and then we nearly lost him. He lost sight of the Leviathan and panicked, but I swam back and calmed him.”
“I should have planned for that. Swimming on the surface at night without SCUBA gear – men can become disoriented.”
“You planned this well, Hana,” Asad said. “There was no room for added SCUBA gear, and shame on the able-bodied man that can’t swim thirty meters in calm seas when his life is at stake.”
Salem appreciated Asad’s enthusiasm.
“Latakia and Bazzi have found cutting tools inside the Leviathan,” Salem said. “They’re already working on freeing us from the netting.”
“It will take time to cut ourselves free.”
“How’s the Jammal?” Salem asked.
“I left it at five meters, with cells reversing in its battery. I equalized all starboard compartments, including the lockout chamber, and I left the drain valve open. It’s only a matter of time.”
“Three years of design and testing,” Salem said, “and it ends so quickly.”
“It served us well,” Asad said. “It was a brilliant design. It should slip quietly to its death.”
“Leviathan is our home now,” Salem said.
“How’s the atmosphere?”
“Open canisters are expended, and we’ve been ventilating clean air for fifteen minutes.”
“That should be enough,” Asad said.
“Men are breathing freely in the control center. Anyone who goes elsewhere is on forced air.”
“What about the Israelis?”
“Our soldiers were skilled,” Salem said. “They swept all compartments, and I doubt there are survivors, but be on your guard.”
*
Brad Flint tapped the shoulder of his executive officer, who was crouched into the Annapolis’ periscope.
“May I?” he asked.
Baines stepped aside, and Flint flipped his wire-rim glasses under his chin. Bending his tall frame, he reached for the periscope’s control handles and pressed his eye into the optics.
“They’ve closed the hatch and secured snorkeling.”
“Looks like they’ll make it before sunrise,” Baines said. “They’ve been working all night on that netting.”
“Yeah. And we’ve been working all night, too. Stooping over a periscope gets tough after a few hours.”
“Can’t wait until they submerge again,” Baines said.
“And there it is,” Flint said. “Ballast tanks are venting. They’re heading under. Get a message queued up telling squadron what happened. And get as much audio and video footage to them as the satellite can take.”
*
Salem stood on an elevated conning platform in the aft end of the Leviathan’s control center. He saw crimson pools and smeared footprints tracing lines the Hamas soldiers had taken dragging corpses to the forward hatch.
Lifting his gaze from the blood, he saw Yousif sitting next to the other three academics in beige leather chairs, facing four pairs of stacked monitors. They were scribbling hand-written notes onto loose leaf paper, translating operations manuals into Arabic.
Those with technical backgrounds made guesses at which information was worth summarizing, playing with the systems to guide them. Yousif turned toward Asad to ask a question, but Salem hushed him.
“We’re submerging,” he said.
To Salem’s right, Asad and Latakia sat at a ship control station, as they had in the Jammal. A clunk and whir above Salem startled him.
“That’s our induction mast,” Asad said. “I control all masts and antennae from here, except the periscopes, which you control with the hydraulic rings around them.”
“Here?” Salem asked, wrapping his fingers around the steel tube encircling a silvery cylinder.
“Yes. But first raise the handles. Then give the hydraulic ring a yank to counterclockwise and stand back.”
Salem twisted the ring, watched the periscope glide into the well at his feet, and walked to a monitor showing a video image of the world as seen through the periscope. The outside world turned dark.
When he looked over Asad’s head, the digital readout read fifteen meters. Latakia wore the earmuffs of a sound powered phone and held a mouth piece to his lips. He exchanged words with Asad that Salem found inaudible but optimistic.
“Bazzi has control of our propulsion,” Asad said.
Salem realized his lungs were burning from having been clenched shut during the dive. He exhaled as the digital readout crawled to thirty meters.
“Steady at thirty meters,” Asad said. “Speed is four knots.”
Sighing, Salem sat in the chair behind him.
“I believe we’ve accomplished the most ambitious phase of our task,” he said.
He reflected upon his deeds, found them unsettling, and chose instead to assess his next moves. A flaw in his plan surfaced to his mind.
“Damn!” he said.
“Yes, Hana? What is it?” Asad asked.
“Food and water. Contamination. I was so preoccupied with winning the ship that I didn’t think of it.”
“I took care of it,” Asad said. “Some dry stores may be wasted, but I verified positive pressure in the cold stores.”
“Meaning?”
“The refrigerated food was airtight during your assault. The food is good. There might even be some sealed dry goods. With our small crew, we’ll have plenty to eat.”
“And water?”
“I pumped the potable water tanks overboard and ran the distilling unit. But it didn’t make much. Two hundred liters. We’ll need to snorkel again to catch up.”
“Now is a good time to drain all standing water and to mark all potentially contaminated food,” Salem said.
“A saltwater washing of dry food stores, followed by extensive laundering of linens and clothing and a full ship cleaning,” Asad said.
Salem curled forward and rested his head in his hands.
“Hana?” Asad asked.
Salem raised his head.
“Yes?”
“Shall we head west now?”
Standing, Salem felt stiffness in his weary frame, and his mind kicked into gear.
“Not yet,” he said. “This submarine was heading toward Lebanon and Syria, and we just spent an evening on the surface. Somebody may be watching, or listening. We need to continue the charade – act like Israelis.”
Asad sighed and hunched his shoulders.
“I hadn’t thought that far yet,” he said. “But clues to their agenda may be in the torpedo room with their weapons load.”
“Latakia, can you manage up here?” Salem asked.
The retired warrant officer nodded.
“Follow me below, Asad,” Salem said.
Salem found the weapons arrangement to be simpler than he expected. Six racks, three per side, cradled reloads while ten breach doors lined the forward bulkhead. Piping for water, air, and hydraulics ran between the tubes and in unobtrusive recesses that struck Salem with its elegance.
Asad, short in stature, rolled to the balls of his feet and lifted his nose over the highest rack to inspect weapons. He checked all six.
“I’ll need translations of markings to be sure,” he said, “but I believe we have two heavyweight torpedoes and four Harpoon anti-ship missiles as reloads.”
“Let’s see what’s loaded,” Salem said.
Stacked in five pairs, ten tubes pointed forward. The inner six spanned the common five hundred and thirty three millimeters while the outer stacked pairs were the larger six hundred and fifty millimeter variety.
Asad grabbed a flashlight from a bulkhead frame and opened breach doors one by one. After inspecting all ten tubes, the loaded weapon tally included four heavyweight torpedoes, two Harpoon anti-ship missiles, and, in the larger tubes, four Popeye land attack cruise missiles.
“I’ll need translations to verify,” Asad said. “But I think we can assume that the outer tubes hold land attack cruise missiles. The inner tubes hold a basic anti-shipping load out.”
“How far are we from launch range of Damascus?”
“If these are indeed Popeyes,” Asad said. “Then we may already be in range. We’re not launching anything, are we?”
The concept intrigued Salem. An Israeli submarine conducting an unprovoked launch of cruise missiles on his homeland could create positive outcomes, but the endgame variables were too unpredictable and the immediate lives lost too great, he determined.
“No, but we can familiarize ourselves with the system and continue the charade of behaving like an Israeli submarine. We’ll get the team down here to-”
“Look!” Asad said.
He slid his thin frame between breach doors and reload racks and reached for a rectangular block of equipment that was perched under a red and yellow radiation symbol.
“It’s heavy,” he said as he snapped it from a cradle.
“What is it?”
“I believe it’s a radiation monitoring device.”
“Nuclear weapons,” Salem said. “The cruise missiles?”
“Yousif has a lot of instruction manuals to pour through. We’d better get him down here.”
*
Flint woke from a brief nap and felt freshened, but he knew that he’d need deeper sleep to recharge.
“Captain,” a sailor said after opening the door to his stateroom. “The executive officer says the Leviathan just opened an outer door.”
“On my way,” Flint said.
He wiggled his arm into his jumpsuit as he climbed to the control room. Baines sat in front of a sonar monitor.
“Thought you’d want to see this, sir,” Baines said.
“We’re recording?”
“They surprised us with the opening of the door, but we’re recording now. If this is a launch exercise, they’ll probably open more.”
Minutes later, the Annapolis’ sonar system recorded the Leviathan opening the outer door to a second torpedo tube. Then it recorded the closing of both.
“What do you think, XO? Did the Israelis just conduct a cruise missile launch exercise?”
“Yes, sir. Damascus, Beirut, or maybe one missile each. Not very effective if you have alerted air defenses, but a big deal if you don’t know the missile’s coming. This can count as a deterrent patrol for the Israelis.”
“This is an important discovery,” Flint said. “Let’s draft a message and get to periscope depth.”
“Aye, aye, sir. You may want to add that they’re done, and off to their next big thing, too.”
“What?”
“They just sped up and turned.”
Flint studied the frequency data of the Leviathan’s propeller blades.
“Okay, XO, hold on. Let’s figure out their new course. They may just be repositioning for another exercise volley.”
Thirty minutes of tracking the Leviathan led to a new discovery.
“Holy cow, XO,” Flint said. “They’re heading almost due west.”
“Not repositioning for another exercise volley,” Baines said. “They’re pushing into new territory for Israeli patrols.”
“Okay, we know what direction they’re going,” Flint said. “Let’s go shallow and share the news with squadron.”
Chapter Four
Jake Slate scratched his beard as a CIA intern who appeared too eager to impress led him down a hallway into the organization’s headquarters building in Langley, Virginia.
The intern stopped at a door with a keypad that he made no attempt to decipher. He knocked.
The door opened, and Jake saw a thin smile spread across the fair skinned face of CIA officer, Olivia MacDonald. A dark suit muted her athletic curves, but Jake noticed that office policy permitted her straightened auburn hair to caress to her collar.
“Thank you, Mister Johnson. I’ll escort Mister Jones from here,” she said.
The intern mumbled something nervous and nearly tripped as he excused himself. Unsure of protocol, Jake awaited Olivia’s guidance. She extended her hand.
“Olivia MacDonald,” she said.
Jake recalled the name he would forever use on American soil as he shook hands with the woman who had seduced him years earlier.
“Jacob Jones,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.”
She led him into a room that smelled stale and reflected bright, sterile lighting. As Olivia closed the door with a click, Jake glanced at absorbent, egg carton foam-like walls.
“This reminds me of the rooms we had in the navy for reading special…”
Olivia appeared in his face, and he felt her lips against his. Tasting of mint, her warm tongue probed his mouth, and her deceptively strong arms drew him in.
“Hi,” she said as she stepped back and released an honest smile. “I missed you.”
“I missed you, too,” he said.
“These soundproofed rooms are secure. You can tell the truth about anything, as long as doors are closed and everyone in the room is cleared for it.”
“I realized that when you just tried to swallow me.”
“It’s been four months,” she said. “I’m just excited. I mean, this is your first time back on American soil, and you must be excited to see your brothers, too.”
“It’s all a lot to deal with. I wasn’t exactly tight with those screwballs, you know.”
“I know. I just thought it would be nice to give you back a piece of your life.”
Jake shrugged. He had been struggling for an identity since he was a naval officer derailed by foul play during a blood transfusion. Unstable and lost, he still carried the anger from the malicious HIV infection and its ensuing cover up, the anger that had compelled him to steal a Trident missile submarine.
Eking out a transatlantic relationship with the CIA officer who had operated against him before befriending him felt awkward. To invigorate him, Olivia earned permission for him to return to America, provided he followed basic identity concealing protocols.
After months of growth, his bushy hair touched his collar, and his beard grew thick. He wore contact lenses that changed his blue eyes to brown, and he had already purchased a new, thinner nose before meeting Olivia.
“I appreciate the effort,” he said. “You’ve been great, and I love you as much as I always have. You just have to give me time to adapt to being home – if that’s where I am. Plus I want to get this reunion with the chumps done before we focus on us.”
“Sure. Follow me.”
She led him through another door into an equally sterile but larger room. Behind a desk sat two men. The first wore a leather jacket and sunglasses and appeared dehydrated, irritated, and hung over. His features were smooth but pronounced – less rugged than Jake’s – and his skin was olive.
“Holy shit,” he said.
“Joe?” Jake asked. “It’s good to see you’re alive.”
“Really? You care?” Joe Slate asked.
The second man looked older, thinner, and wiser than Joe Slate. He wore loose fitting garments of hemp.
“We all care about each other,” he said.
Jake snorted.
“Shit, Nick,” he said. “You’re always the peacemaker. I’ll never get you, but at least I know you mean well.”
“What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?” Joe asked, pushing his chair back as he stood.
“It means you’ve never done a damned thing for this family except suck up mom’s attention and energy from the day you were born until the day she died,” Jake said.
“Fuck you,” Joe said. “I’m out of here.”
The youngest Slate passed through a door on the room’s far end and slammed it shut with a sound-isolated thump.
“We’ll give him a chance to cool off,” Olivia said.
“Shit,” Jake said. “I don’t know what it is about him, but he always sets me off.”
“He’s grateful,” Nick said. “He’s grateful that you’re alive. He just doesn’t know how to show it.”
“Crap, Nick. Come give your little brother a hug.”
Jake walked around the table and embraced the eldest of the three Slate boys. Nick felt lithe but strong.
“You’ve hardly changed,” Jake said.
“Older and wiser,” Nick said. “I didn’t recognize you with the hair and beard. And you’ve beefed up.”
“Being rich leaves a lot of time for working out.”
“I always knew you were alive. I didn’t believe that you scuttled the Colorado. They made you out to be a dead hero, but I never felt your death.”
“Well, okay. Thanks, I guess.”
“The truth is far more impressive,” Nick said. “Olivia explained it to Joe and me an hour ago, and it’s still sinking in. But I think I understand why you stole your submarine. It makes sense with your pain. You thought you had no other choice.”
“I don’t know, Nick.”
“And then to risk your life on another submarine to stop a nuclear attack against an aircraft carrier - you saved tens if not hundreds of thousands of lives. You are a hero. It’s too bad that so few will ever know.”
“She told you everything?”
“Even the part where you stopped to repay your debt to Taiwan by facing Chinese submarines.”
“Well, I try not to think about it.”
“But you have to. These are life events. Perhaps now that I know the truth I can help you talk through it.”
Jake’s innards curdled.
“No, thanks, Nick.”
“Whenever you’re ready.”
Jake felt Nick clasp his palms over his hand as he bowed his head.
“He does this weird stuff sometimes.”
Olivia shrugged.
“Quiet, please,” Nick said.
After several moments, Nick raised his gaze.
“You’re still in danger,” he said.
“What?” Jake asked.
“I sense danger. I’m sorry.”
Jake yanked his hand back.
“That’s a shitty way to greet your brother.”
“These feelings are never one hundred percent.”
“I hope not.”
“There is something good I sense, though.”
“Oh?” Jake asked.
“I believe that you and Olivia are going to have a great time on vacation – wherever she’s taking you.”
*
During an elevator ride to a hotel penthouse, Jake reflected that he had never enjoyed his freedom. He lived as a free man in the south of France with minimal probation oversight, and returning to America obviated a void of identity. But he had to pursue coming home.
Remaining anonymous and officially dead was part of the equation of enjoying America, and he trusted Olivia to teach him. He had let her select Charlotte as a vacation destination since he had never been there and had little chance of being recognized. The intelligence agency that once hunted him now offered him his best protection of anonymity with an alias, a fake passport, and an escort in the form of an officer-turned-girlfriend.
After receiving a windfall in payment from his role in stealing the Trident missile submarine, USS Colorado, Jake patronized Europe’s finest luxury hotels. But this was the first American five star room he would enjoy. He entered a suite of the Westin Charlotte Hotel and, behind him, Olivia tipped the porter.
He leapt onto the plush king sized bed’s satin sheets.
“It feels good to be in an American room,” he said.
She joined him on the bed and kissed his neck.
“You seem tense,” she said. “I brought you here to relax. Plenty of people are living in secrecy like this. I’ve studied tons of cases and even seen a few. It will take getting used to, but everything will be fine.”
“What if my brothers go public?” he asked.
Olivia’s face shifted into stern analyst mode.
“Nick’s personality doesn’t support it. Joe’s more of a risk, but nobody would believe either of them.”
“Joe’s a loose cannon,” he said.
“If either of them convinces just one do-gooder with a badge from the wrong agency, you’re one photograph away from trouble. So don’t let them know where you’re going, and meet them only in secure places, at least until you trust them again.”
“Fine,” Jake said. “Let’s tear this city up.”
“Tear me up first,” she said.
Jake embraced her.
After showering away the scent of sex, Jake realized that the lovemaking seemed mechanical and distant as he followed Olivia to the street. A chill from the sidewalk lifted spring’s early warmth into the night. Olivia strolled ahead, the belt of her thigh-length black leather jacket slapping her jeans. She bowed her head, cinched her strap, and stopped.
“You okay?” Jake asked.
“Just concerned.”
“About what?”
“You. Us,” she said.
“Right.”
“We knew this wasn’t going to be easy.”
“Well, we didn’t exactly find each other as perfect matches on a dating site,” he said. “Can you imagine? HIV positive fugitive seeks HIV positive CIA seductress and rape victim for deception, fleeing countries, teargas parties, and combat deployments on submarines.”
She grinned.