When Shadows Collide (An Arik Bar Nathan Novel Book 1)

by Nathan Ronen

  Suddenly, Rittner heard the lookout next to him shouting in excitement and pointing at the white trail of a small speedboat approaching them from Perim Island. Rittner was worried. Was it a tracking vessel arriving to establish the identity of the submarine? Had he fallen into an ambush?

  “Korabelnik!” he called out into his mic on the bridge. “How much longer?”

  “Fifteen minutes max, chief. We’re almost done,” the engine officer replied, breathing heavily.

  The speedboat drew nearer, made a U-turn, and disappeared. Rittner tracked it with his binoculars.

  Less than five minutes later, Rittner heard the lookout shouting again, pointing at the island. “Chief! There!” Someone appeared to be signaling them with a flashlight from the shore.

  A red and yellow dot ascended, approaching them rapidly from the island. Two seconds later, another dot followed it up into the sky, straightening and soaring toward them.

  Rittner looked at the points of light accelerating toward him as if mesmerized and felt his heart sinking. He knew what they meant, and time was short.

  The missiles accelerated after being launched. From the corner of his eye, Rittner had time to see them descending low enough to nuzzle the waves, like aggressive wasps targeting anyone who had dared harm their nest.

  The missile with the large warhead, carrying nearly 450 pounds of explosives, descended to a cruise altitude of a mere 16 feet above the surface of the water and accelerated once more. The missile was now cruising at a speed of more than twice the speed of sound, possessing the capability to break through a barrier of armored steel. The Al-Mandab missile’s guided warhead was constructed in a manner that made it very difficult for electro-optical defense systems to lock in upon it in mid-flight.

  The Barak 8 system designed to protect Israeli Navy ships had been automatically activated once it perceived the approaching threat. Anti-ballistic missiles were launched in a horizontal course to intercept and destroy the targets approaching at an immense speed of Mach two.

  * * *

  42Ship Anti-Submarine Warfare Readiness and Evaluation Measurement.

  43High-frequency waves used for long-distance communication.

  Chapter 31

  The Neptune Under Attack

  “Bridge, descend and submerge immediately!” Rittner shouted into the navy microphone he was holding, scaling quickly down the side of the ladder. He had time to yell at the lookout to follow him down, but the latter remained on the upper deck, raptly watching the expected collision point of the two approaching missiles and the defense missiles shot from the wall of the submarine.

  Two defense systems were installed aboard the Neptune: an underwater anti-torpedo defense system and an additional anti-missile system. The Israeli system’s precise sensors identified the approaching missiles and automatically shot interceptors at them; however, this time, it was in vain.

  The first missile hit the bridge and exploded. It blinded the submarine and killed the lookout, who did not have time to flee to the upper escape hatch. The remains of the second missile, intercepted by the defense system, hit one of the missile launch tubes, which, fortunately for the submarine, was empty and did not cause an explosion. The entire submarine shook.

  Despite the threat of leaks, which might grow worse at depth, they had no choice. The submarine embarked on a crash dive, leaving behind more surface missiles shot at it, which did not manage to connect and ended up in the sea.

  Rittner’s heart felt as if it was exploding in his chest, but he knew his crew expected him to act like a commander and was turning to him as a mentor. He sat down in the elevated commander’s chair and smiled pleasantly at those around him, projecting self-control and professionalism.

  “Crew!” Rittner commanded, his voice as cold as ice. “Check and report on bilges and leaks.”

  The officer on duty repeated the command on the PA system.

  Reports echoed back from every location. The bilges, where water would accumulate, were dry.

  “Check bulkhead sealing,” Rittner commanded.

  “There are flooding and leaks in the vertical launch tube and apparently we’ve lost the periscope, the launch mast, the radio masts, and the HF antennas,” the report came back.

  “Seal the bulkhead. Anyone hurt?” the commander asked.

  “The lookout who was with you is missing. He didn’t report back during the crash-dive,” his second-in-command reported.

  “Can we reach the Port of Eilat in our current condition?” the commander asked the engine officer, but the concerned look on his officers’ faces already made the answer clear.

  The Israeli Navy’s most sophisticated submarine was disabled and, most importantly, mute.

  “Here’s my call: we’re going in for emergency repairs at the American naval base south of the Port of Djibouti,” he instructed in a strained voice.

  “Lieutenant, you’re in charge,” Rittner called out, slowly leaving the command post.

  He was angry at himself for falling into the Iranian ambush. In his tiny cabin, he opened his personal footlocker, retrieved a bottle of Maalox antacid, and took a generous sip.

  He sat down to write the incident report on the encrypted email system, accepting full responsibility. The system would send the report automatically once Israeli communication satellite Amos-5 passed by overhead.

  The nearest American naval base was located to the southwest, slightly over a two-hour sail away in Djibouti, near Ambouli International Airport. It was the only permanent American base on African soil since 2001 and served, among other purposes, for fighting terror in Somalia and Yemen, coordinating the battle against pirate ships that occasionally tried to take over the giant oil tankers around Bab-el-Mandeb Strait.

  About an hour later, Tasnim, Iran’s official news agency, announced that Houthi freedom fighters in Yemen had managed to sink the Israeli submarine Neptune, carrying nuclear missiles, near Bab-el-Mandeb Strait.

  Despite the late hour, thousands of demonstrators flooded the streets of Teheran ecstatically, calling out, “Death to the Great Satan America and Little Satan Israel!” and burning American and Israeli flags. In the midnight newscast on Iran’s official TV network, the Teheran station’s anchorwoman ceremoniously announced the breaking news. It inspired thousands of Shiite celebrants throughout the Muslim world to set out in joyous processions through the streets of Teheran and Beirut, honking their car horns deafeningly and handing out candy and cake to passersby.

  Newscasts throughout the Arab countries hurried to spitefully quote the news from Iran and SANA, the Syrian Arab News Agency. Thousands of Palestinians embarked on a victory parade through the streets of the West Bank and Gaza, and Israel was forced to declare a night curfew in the area.

  Official Israeli channels remained silent as if the country was paralyzed with shock.

  In the prime minister’s residence on Balfour Street in Jerusalem, Ehud Tzur received a call from his military secretary. The news hit him hard, leaving him sleepless. With horror, he recalled the investigative committees assembled in Israel following the drowning of Israeli warship Eilat near Port Said in 1967 by an Egyptian missile boat. Forty-seven sailors had been killed during the incident and ninety-one wounded. Ehud Tzur could already envision the newspaper headlines a short time before the elections.

  He imagined the opposition calling for his head and perhaps even the appointment of a state investigative committee. The Israeli media tended to go wild immediately in response to any crisis, demanding that an investigative committee be appointed.

  Ehud Tzur decided to take action. He demanded that the chief of general staff and the heads of the intelligence and defense agencies provide him, within twenty-four hours, with possible courses of action in response to the terrible scenario in which the Neptune had been sunk by the Iranians or their proxies. IDF’s General Staff co
nverged for a nocturnal emergency meeting. Such an act, taking place in international waters, could not be ignored. So far, Israel had reacted to every limitation or closing of a water channel by declaring war, as the country was entirely dependent upon importing merchandise via sea routes. The only question was how to attribute the act to the Iranians; proof needed to be provided immediately.

  Captain Haim Bardugo, naval attaché at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC, was asked by the Israeli Navy commander to turn to his friends at U.S. Navy headquarters and the American Fifth Fleet in order to find out what had become of the Neptune in the Bab-el-Mandeb area.

  Iranian Basij cyberwarfare personnel mobilized for a psychological attack laden with ‘fake news,’ as they had learned to do in North Korea. Soon, the networks filled with false horrific descriptions regarding the loss of the Neptune. Iranian ‘trolls’ distributed falsified photos of the submarine in flames on social media, as well as photos of bodies floating in the water. Only the observant noted that some of the images had been taken from the Hollywood submarine movie “The Hunt for Red October.” Due to the rapid distribution of rumors on social media and WhatsApp, within a short time, the same rumors and images began to spread like wildfire on Israeli social networks. Social pressure created a surge of worry among the families of the submarine’s crew, conveyed to the members of Israel’s security establishment. However, the security agencies kept their silence.

  In democratic Israel, the seamen’s family members went on air to firmly demand maximum transparency. They mournfully asked that the government tell them what had become of the Neptune. Military reporters with long memories even compared its fate to that of the Russian submarine Kursk.44

  Commentators wondered whether a small, financially impoverished country like Israel could afford to maintain such a costly submarine fleet, and once again, questions were asked regarding the decision-making process in purchasing the submarine fleet and its immense price. Opposition politicians raised conspiracy theories regarding the involvement of the prime minister and his son in choosing the manufacturer of the submarines, accompanied by hints that the prime minister’s son had received a kickback. All this darkened Ehud Tzur’s mood as he paced in his office like a caged lion.

  Following the prime minister’s instructions, Chief of General Staff Shlomo Tal issued a comprehensive gag order until details of the Neptune’s actual fate were uncovered.

  It was only after hours of nerve-wracking waiting that an Orion naval patrol plane discovered the submarine. It was floating slowly on the waters of the gulf on its way to the American naval base in Djibouti. From the aircraft, the damage the submarine’s body had sustained was clearly visible. Its message, received via a naval Morse code signal, stated, “Everything’s okay. We’re on our way to Djibouti.”

  That same night, in Perim Island, the sounds of mystery aircraft echoed as they annihilated all Houthi camps off the face of the earth. Two days later, in Dahieh, a suburb of Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, mass funerals were held for the Hezbollah operators, who were declared to be shahids, or martyrs.

  Chief of General Staff Shlomo Tal went on air and dismissed the rumors as false propaganda by the Ayatollah regime in Iran. In the press conference, he claimed that the submarine had merely experienced a technical malfunction that caused a contained fire and that as far as they knew, one soldier had been moderately wounded.

  * * *

  44Kursk was a Russian submarine lost in the year 2000 due to a torpedo explosion in the Barents Sea, killing all 118 personnel on board. Russian General Staff concealed the fact that, initially, some of the crew members had survived and ultimately drowned due to Russian reluctance to expose the submarine’s secrets to British rescue teams.

  Chapter 32

  Division Heads Forum, Mossad Headquarters

  The most prominent change all the attendees noticed was the refreshments.

  The traditional offerings, which always consisted of disposable plastic plates placed in the middle of the conference table, laden with cheese pastries and lukewarm crescent-shaped sweet rugelach, served with carbonated or sweetened beverages, were gone.

  A side table offered a variety of sliced seasonal vegetables and fruit. Next to them were individual ceramic plates, utensils, and mineral water in glass bottles. “The Iron Lady” was also firmly devoted to health food, recycling, and the environment.

  At 8:50 a.m., Arik had already secured himself a seat at the large oval table and was busy appraising all the division heads and the heads of the special units who were sitting tensely in the room. Alex Haimovitz, habitually late, was missing as usual. Arik reached out for the internal phone on the table and called Alex. “You should get going. You don’t want the Queen Bee waiting for you.”

  At precisely 9:00 a.m., Mossad Director Raya Ron stepped confidently into the conference hall adjacent to her office. Her black hair was buzzed short in the back, while the longer front mane was styled with a red streak. She wore a black, tailored Hugo Boss power suit with a blue blouse and a black bowtie. She looked very much the businesswoman. Her black high-heeled shoes, by Italian designer Bruno Magli, added several inches to her tall frame. At the age of fifty-two, she was clearly a highly assertive woman who invested greatly in her appearance. She had a personal trainer and was fanatical about exercising and running every morning in the fields near her house, in a village in the Sharon region. She ate only organic food. A personal gym had been added to her bureau. No one knew a thing about her personal life. The only information was that she was a divorcée who firmly insisted on keeping her private life to herself. The gossips insisted she was a butch lesbian who was still not officially ‘out.’ The curious searched in vain for information about her on Wikipedia or Google. She was simply absent from social media.

  Her young new office manager, Yair ‘YaYa’ Knafo, who had served by her side as a young captain ever since they were in the army, transitioning with her to the Office of Intelligence, Strategy, and Regional Cooperation, stepped into the room immediately in Raya’s wake.

  A minute after Raya had already settled in her seat, the door swung open wildly and Alex entered, sweaty and carrying a large file of documents as usual. He looked down when confronted with the new boss’s angry glare.

  “Gentlemen,” she began, “you already heard about my vision at the general staff meeting held about a week ago. This is our first shared work meeting. I’ve read your reports closely and we’ll go into the details and your specific needs in the individual work meetings we’ll be conducting soon.

  “I’m glad to be the first woman who ever broke through the male monopoly on managing Israeli security agencies,” she continued. “They say one measure of intelligence is the ability to keep it short. I have three hours before the Heads of Agencies Committee begins in the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, which means we have two hours at most for our discussion.

  “In the summons to the morning meeting issued to you by my office manager, you were asked to prepare a brief report about the topic on hand, Iran, while emphasizing possible courses of action in response to the fact that Iran was involved in an attempt to sink our submarine in international waters.”

  She turned to Arik, second-in-command to the Mossad director, who was sitting to her right, and in a gesture of respect, asked, “Who should get us started?”

  “I suggest that Dr. Alex Haimovitz, head of the Intelligence and Research Division, give us a general review before we start discussing ideas and suggestions for our response to the Iranian action.”

  She looked to Alex, who was laying out materials on the table, and said, “I’m tired of general reviews. I’ve read them all. I’m asking for a targeted report on the Iranian enemy from a Mossad perspective,” she decreed, “especially in light of the severe blow to the Israeli ego recently sustained from the Iranians. We can’t simply let this pass without a response, especially considering tha
t this was an attack against us in an international sea lane.”

  Alex rose from his seat and turned on a Barco projector, which cast a map of the Middle East onto a giant screen. “I actually want to provide some introductory background,” he said, “which will clarify my division’s position with regard to our proposals for action against Iran. I think that the submarine incident is just one episode in an array of provocations and the balance of terror conducted by Iran, not just against us, but against the Saudis and the Americans in Iraq as well, primarily on the Syrian front we’re facing in the Golan Heights.”

  Ron smiled at him politely. The two of them had once competed for a promotion to Commander of the Military Intelligence Directorate’s (MID) Research Department, and Alex had beat her. Now she was his boss and was savoring the feeling. She remembered him from the long presentations he would give in various defense-related confidential forums.

  “Try to keep it focused, Dr. Haimovitz, short and to the point,” she replied. “Please remember I know my way around this material.”

  “I promise to try,” he said out loud while thinking, I don’t know if I can fulfill that witch’s expectations.

  Alex walked over to the podium and used a green laser pointer to indicate tiny Israel on the big map.

  “Seemingly, Israel is the strongest regional superpower in the area,” he began his review. “We have submarines with cruise missiles, we have satellites in the sky and missile-shooting drones in between. We have a nuclear arsenal. We have fleets of stealth bombers, we’re building high walls around the country, we’re mining the area all around us to death, and the obvious question is, why are we constantly frightened? Are the ones who are frightened actually the decision-makers, who are wary of increasing their risk factor too much?”

  Raya Ron was clearly displeased with this barb aimed at the government’s policymakers.