“Sounds good to us here at SAS,” one of their officers said. “We’ll be glad to share the water work. Maybe split up a half-dozen boats that could be dumping. Do they go into deep water to fish, or do they sometimes work along parallel to the shore?”
“Boats do both in almost every fishing village along the coast,” the colonel said. “They want to get to the fishing grounds as quickly as possible.”
The colonel pondered the situation for a moment. “All right, we’ll all move back to Tel Aviv. A flight will take off from here at fourteen hundred. We’ll all be on it. You’re dismissed.”
On the way back to their quarters, the SEALs talked about the problem. “Work it over,” Murdock said. “We’ve got to find out how they get the goods on board the fishing boats and which one man on the boat drops the packages over the side. It could be that the boat owner knows nothing about the dirty tricks.”
26
Third Platoon settled into its quarters on the air base. They were Israeli spartan with double-deck bunks, a small dayroom, and a meeting room next door. With the delays getting off the ground at Rama and a mix-up in transport to their quarters, it was after 1800 before they were in their new digs. Chow followed quickly, and then they grouped around Murdock in the dayroom trying to get a handle on their new assignment.
“No way the fishing boat’s captain doesn’t know about the booby traps, if one of them is floating them into the beach,” Donegan said. “Those are little boats, maybe twenty-four to thirty feet, and with only three men on board. How could one man hide that?”
“Easy,” Jaybird said. “Three men on board. The owner or captain handles the boat at sea and drives to the fishing grounds. The two deckhands are sleeping if it’s anything like a boat I worked on one summer out of San Diego Bay.
“When the one guy is supposed to be sleeping, he isn’t. He waits until the boat is along a popular beach and he drops a box overboard. Inside he’s set a timer to explode the box apart but not set off the booby traps. The box splits, the items float to the surface, and charge in with the tide. By that time the fishing boat is ten miles out in the Mediterranean.”
“So how do the goods get on board?” Lam asked.
“Easy. The crewman, who is an Arab, packs the booby traps in a box marked ‘bread’ or ‘fruit’ or some other foodstuff and nobody would think a thing about it. Once it’s on board, the Arab takes that box and hides it until he needs it.”
“What Jewish boat captain would hire an Arab?” Mahanani asked.
“Lots of folks,” Senior Chief Sadler said. “The Israeli population is made up of twenty percent Arabs. They work everywhere. Why not on a fishing boat?”
“So it could happen that way,” Murdock said. He’d been sitting in listening. “What other ways could those little bombs be sprinkled on the water?”
“Pleasure craft at the right time and right place,” Fernandez said.
“How about a low-flying aircraft, drop the goods and beat it out to sea,” Luke Howard said.
“Yeah, but Israeli radar would be on him like a bear on a honey tree,” Ching said.
The room went silent.
“Come on, you guys. Part of the reason you’re getting paid the big bucks is your brainpower. How else could these bombs be spread?”
“Private powerboat.”
“A sailboat.”
“Some asshole on a surfboard pretending to be fishing.”
“All three of those would be so obvious the Israeli cops would be down their throats in a second,” Jaybird said. “The innocuous fishing boat fits the picture and the job. Must be hundreds of them sail out of a dozen ports along here every morning.”
“Senior Chief,” Murdock said. “Find out which tides the explosives usually come in on. Is it the first one of the day, like they could have been planted early in the morning, or are they more likely planted during the night and come in during the night?”
“If they are scattered at night, gonna be a hell of a tough job to catch the bastards,” Jefferson said.
“When do we get started on this one?” Frank Victor asked.
“Israeli cops have rented a fishing boat through private parties,” said Murdock. “They are going fishing in the morning at 0400. Lam, Jefferson, and I will be on board in deckhand outfits and with binoculars and long guns. We’ll go out to see what we can see. We’ll have to continue to the fishing grounds, fish some, and then come back with the fleet. Our captain and another crewman hidden on board will probably do most of the fishing.”
“Good, the rest of us get to go exploring Tel Aviv,” Jaybird said.
“Not so, oh, motor-mouth,” DeWitt said. “Tomorrow the rest of us have several projects. We’ll get assignments from Colonel Ben-Ami at 0800.”
“Doing what?” Ching asked.
“As far as I know, we’ll be checking out the supply operations that furnish these fishing boats with food, drink, supplies of all kinds. There has to be a contact here somewhere to help get the booby traps on board one or maybe more than one boat.”
“What else?” Canzoneri asked.
“How many fishing villages and ports do you think there are along this sixty-mile strip from Haifa to Tel Aviv?” DeWitt asked. “I don’t know, and any one of them could be where the explosives are coming from. It’s like a giant jigsaw puzzle, showing a black orchid on a black background. We’ve got almost nil to work with.”
“Best part so far is that nobody is going to be shooting at us,” Jaybird said. “How is Bradford coming along?”
Ed DeWitt looked up. “Had a report on him from the doctors. The slug missed all the vitals. Grazed a bend in his small intestine but didn’t rupture it; otherwise we’d be sending him home in a box. He’ll be transferred to the base hospital here in two days.”
Senior Chief Sadler looked at his notes on a clipboard. “So, we have chow at 0630 same place we ate tonight. We report here in our cammies, with no visible weapons, at our ready room at 0800. That’s it. Commander Murdock will tell his men when and where. You’re dismissed.”
The next morning at 0345, Lam, Jefferson, and Murdock stared at the boat beside them at the fishing dock. They all wore used deckhand clothes like the other fishermen had on; jeans or blue pants, T-shirts with various emblems on them, and loose blue work shirts for the chill of the morning. They wore used running shoes for stability on the fish-slippery decks. The boat wasn’t what they’d expected.
“This thing floats?” Lam asked. She was thirty-two feet long and made of wood that had been scraped and patched and painted for what Murdock figured could have been a hundred years. She smelled like fish from bow to stern. Twin outriggers stood straight overhead next to the skinny mast with antennas on it. The outriggers were on cables that were controlled by hand winches on the deck. A small, unpainted cabin hunched at the bow. There the real live fisherman who worked for the police made his final checks on the craft. He came out of the cabin and waved the three men on board.
“Good morning, gentlemen. My name is Ravid Sartan. I’m the captain of this magnificent craft. Welcome on board. I have talked with the Army people and know what to do. You can help or watch, but you must look like you belong to the crew so others don’t get curious. For now, two of you go below, one will help me cast off.”