“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 gauges.
“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.”
The closed watertight door separating him from the Jammal’s main compartment, Salem 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.