Taleb tripped again, the man glancing downward as he stepped backward. Andrew leaped forward. He was faster than Taleb expected.
He caught Taleb by the neck. Taleb stomped on Andrew’s left foot, near where the ankle connected. The pain caused Andrew to stumble to the left, but his grip remained. He never let go of the man. He had his massive hands around Taleb’s neck, squeezing the breath from the demon. God’s will filled his being. Taleb was pounding Andrew in the stomach, bringing his knee up, trying to kick him in the crotch. He pulled
Taleb closer. The pain became pleasure with the knowledge of his own personal strength augmented by God’s.
Andrew felt Taleb slowing. He was winning. God’s will. Andrew stopped moving. He spread his legs to put more strength into the choke hold. Andrew looked down. Taleb’s face was turning blue and the man’s eyes bulged. He brought his face within inches of Taleb’s. “You are dying,” he spit into Taleb’s face through clenched teeth.
Taleb’s lips moved.
“Are you praying?” Andrew gasped out. “You should pray. Maybe God will forgive you for the demon you are.”
Taleb’s lips moved again. Andrew heard the word “Joshua.” His brother’s name. He leaned closer; simultaneously, he heard the rattling of the man pulling some air through the choke hold, so Andrew tried to put more strength into it. “What—” he started to say.
Taleb’s head came up, the forehead slamming into his broken nose. Simultaneously, the knee came back up, catching him in the crotch.
The pain was excruciating. Andrew stumbled backward a few steps, releasing his grip in the process.
Taleb fell to the deck on one knee, gasping for breath. His eyes watched Andrew, for he knew he could not survive another grip from this wild man. White stars dashed across his eyesight for several seconds.
Andrew reached up to touch his nose, but then saw Taleb watching him. Dropping his hand, he took a flying leap, his legs kicking out, intending to knock Taleb flat. His 220 pounds would knock most any man prone. He bent his legs in the air, and at the last minute shoved them outward.
Taleb rolled to the side, coming to rest on his back. He brought both legs up at the same time, bending them at the knee. He caught Andrew in the buttocks, knocking him toward the safety lines of the ship.
Andrew’s knees caught the top line, sending him over the side. He caught the bottom line, holding on. He looked below him at the water, seeing the demons swimming back and forth. “God…”
A hand came over the side. “Here, grab my hand.”
Andrew glanced at the demon above him. The black face stared back at him. He looked below. Demons on both sides of him. He had failed his God.
He felt Taleb’s hands grab his right wrist. Andrew grabbed Taleb’s left hand with his left one, letting go of his grip on the bottom line. Now, he could go to his death taking the demon above him with him into the waters below. God would protect him. God would raise him above the demons below. God would know how Andrew had fought the demons in God’s name.
Taleb put his boondockers against the narrow lip along the edge of the deck. “Let go. Don’t do this, Andrew.” He strained. Taleb was still weak from Andrew nearly choking him to death.
A shadow passed over them. Andrew looked up as something swung and hit him across the face. He let go. As he passed into unconsciousness, he felt the freedom of falling.
“About time you got here,” Taleb said. A hand reached out and pulled him to his feet.
Sergeant Norton tossed the piece of metal over the side. “You’re too good of a man to let him feed you to the sharks.” Taleb bent over at the waist and put both hands on his knees, catching his breath. He stuck his head over the side and vomited.
Finished, he apologized.
“You all right now?” Norton asked.
“Yeah,” Taleb said, grabbing his handkerchief and wiping his face.
“I take it he didn’t want to come peacefully?”
Taleb straightened, grabbed the safety lines, and looked down at the water below, expecting to see blood, or see the body, but there was nothing. “He’s gone.”
“He’s shark food now.”
“I don’t see him.”
“Maybe they ate him,” Norton said, joining Taleb alongside the safety lines. After a minute, she stepped away. “Come on. We did what the boss wanted. Now, we need to get back to our primary mission. Let the Department of Homeland Security worry about God’s Army. We got a bigger fish to fry, and with luck we’ll be off this thing by tonight and sleeping in real beds for a change.” She touched Taleb on the arm. “You sure you’re all right?”
He nodded. “Man had a death grip on my throat. Luckily, he was an amateur who had no idea of how to do it properly.” “Seems he did pretty good to shake you up this much.” Taleb shook his head. “He did that for sure. Strong as an ox. If he had been like some we’d faced, I’d be the one below the waterline.”
“There you go speaking Navy again,” she said. Norton looked at her watch. “We have to go.”
A minute later, the two disappeared through the covered passageway of the aft forecastle of the Capella. Behind them, with the exception of a few spots of blood on the gray deck, there was nothing to show what had happened.
FOURTEEN
“Hank, I’ve been watching everything on NTDS and it looks as if you have those contacts bracketed. What now?” Admiral Holman asked from the other end of the secure telephone.
Garcia shut his eyes for a moment. The what-nows are the big questions of every operation. “Admiral, I still have weapons tight. I think in the half hour since they fired torpedoes at us, if they had intended to sink Sea Base, they would have fired multiple salvos.”
“I can see the reasoning, Hank. That being said, can we afford to let them think we have no capability to return the favor? I don’t think I want them leaving Sea Base believing we are defenseless.”
Garcia squirmed in his seat. He slid forward and stepped down on the deck. Glancing up, he saw several pairs of eyes watching him, and he wondered for a moment if anyone was listening to the conversation. If so, what they hard would be one-sided, and what would they take away to spread throughout Combat and ultimately Sea Base?
“Admiral, we have four UUVs out there. Each one is heading toward a contact. I have four pairs of SH-36 helicopters hovering over each of the Chinese submarines.”
“Chinese submarines?”
“Contacts, Admiral. We are presuming they are Chinese.” “You are probably correct, Hank, but we should call them unidentified contacts until we know for sure.”
This was the three-star side of Holman that Garcia had not seen. The political side. The side thinking about what would happen long after this was over and the two countries were being skewed by the public. A short time in the early years of Holman’s career had been spent learning what the Cold War was like and pursuing the Soviets around the globe.
“Roger, Admiral,” Garcia acknowledged, and then continued as if the rebuke had never occurred. “The UUVs could be misinterpreted by the submarines. They might even believe that what is coming at them are torpedoes fired by us, but I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“If the submarines thought we had fired torpedoes, they wouldn’t still be hovering in the same location with their bows pointed at us. They’d be taking evasive action.”
“Ergo, they must know they’re Unmanned Underwater Vehicles.”
“Yes, sir.”
“They’ve been trailing us for five months and have seen what we can do with our Unmanned Underwater Vehicles.”