Sea of Greed

“We’re running at that depth,” the dive officer insisted.

Either the weather had gotten suddenly worse and the waves larger or something in the snorkel had failed.

Every man in the control room looked upward, counting the seconds and hoping the snorkel would clear.

Cheval felt a wave of nausea, partly from fear, partly from the decrease in pressure. He looked at the clock, this time watching the second hand. Thirty seconds went by, then forty. The situation did not correct itself.

“Water in the periscope tunnel,” one of the NCOs called out. “Upper seals must be cracked.”

Cheval could think of nothing more fearful than water leaking into a submerged vessel. Even if it was just a trickle. He considered the sound of the wrenching metal, the shudder in the control room. “We must have hit something,” he said. “We need to surface.”

To Cheval’s surprise, the captain agreed with him. “Floating debris perhaps,” he said. “Take us up. Surface the boat.”

The dive control officer blew the tanks and changed the angle on the planes. The Minerve began to rise, bow first. Cheval noticed water trickling down the periscope tube. He looked to the depth gauge, saw that they were rising and sighed with relief as he felt the submarine break the surface and level off.

A second loud bang sounded and the suction vanished, causing Cheval’s ears to pop again. “Main vents open,” one of the men said. “Engines breathing outside air.”

“Ahead one quarter,” the captain ordered. “I’m going up to see what kind of damage we’ve taken.”

With the first officer at the helm, the captain led a damage control party up into the conning tower, opening the inner and then outer hatches.

Daylight poured in. Gray and monochrome but beautiful. As the last man’s legs went up through the hatch, Cheval stared jealously at the opening. Without thinking or asking permission, he stepped to the ladder and began to climb.

He reached the top, poked his head out and paused in shock.

The periscope and the snorkel were bent to the side at a thirty-degree angle. The steel was mangled and deformed from the impact. The antenna housing had been sheared off.

Stranger still, the captain and the damage control party were not studying the damage to make repairs, they were being held at gunpoint.

Black-clad men with submachine guns had forced them to their knees. Two motorized inflatable boats were peeling off behind them, heading toward the bow of another submarine.

Before he could process the scene and react, Cheval was yanked upward and thrown against the bulkhead of the conning tower. A large man with scruffy beard jammed the point of a machine gun into his chest. “Not a sound, if you want to live.”

Cheval nodded his compliance. He knew instinctively who these men were, who they had to be. “You’re Israeli.”

“My name is Gideon,” the bearded man said, nodding as he spoke. “Judging from the lack of uniform, you must be one of the French scientists. Which means you know what we’re after.”

Cheval hesitated, not out of defiance but from pure shock. “I know what you want,” he then said.

“Good,” Gideon replied. “Go down the ladder first. Do anything foolish and you’ll die first as well.”

Cheval led them back into the submarine, climbing down the ladder as calmly as possible. Halfway down, Gideon kicked him and sent him tumbling. The fall acted as a distraction and the crew in the command center were watching him when Gideon and another commando jumped down and landed on the deck.

With the machine guns drawn and the crew flatfooted, there was no way to resist.

“We have your captain,” Gideon told them. “We’re here to take back what you stole from us. No one will be harmed if you cooperate.”

As the Minerve wallowed in the swells, additional commandos came down the ladder. Leaving two men to guard the control room, Gideon forced Cheval to lead them deeper into the submarine. They took more captives in each compartment, surprising most of the men in their cabins. The French commandos were rounded up as well. All except Lukas.

“Keep the others under guard,” Gideon ordered. “Send two men to find this Lukas. Shoot him on sight.”

As the men moved off, Cheval took Gideon to Ben-Avi’s quarters and released him. “We’ve come to bring you back to Israel,” Gideon told Ben-Avi. “But not without the materials.”

“I don’t know where they are,” Ben-Avi said.

Gideon turned to Cheval. “Where are the bacterial cultures?”

“In the mess hall.”

Cheval led them to the mess hall, with Gideon, Ben-Avi and another of the Israelis right behind him. They entered the hall, where several stainless steel cylinders with black bands around each end stood.

Gideon ordered Cheval to the side and sent Ben-Avi to check the equipment.

“This is the primary strain,” Ben-Avi said, checking the first drum. “And this is—”

Before he finished his thought, the hammering of an automatic weapon rang out. Ben-Avi went down in a hail of bullets. Ricochets bounced around the mess hall and everyone dove for cover.