Four sets of eyes swept the horizon to the west. They saw nothing but the dim lights of a few distant freighters. The situation wasn’t yet critical. More like a holding pattern.
“Ten seconds,” Bauer said.
There was no need to expand. All attention shifted to the harbor.
It happened right on time. There were no bright flashes because the mines were belowDraco II’s waterline. The muffled thumps of the explosions, however, resonated across the sea seconds later. The synchronization of the blasts was nearly perfect. If Clark were to guess, three of the explosions occurred less than a second apart, the fourth perhaps two seconds later.
From where they sat, only the top half ofDraco IIwas visible above the breakwater. The lights on her bridge flickered twice and then extinguished, one dim emergency flood filling the void. A small deck fire broke out near the bow, and the ship’s superstructure was momentarily lost in a cloud of mist—water vapor generated by the blasts. When the mist drifted away, she was already listing to port.
“I’d like to take a snapshot of that,” Wu commented. “Maybe send it to President Yermilov.”
“I think he’ll get the picture,” Clark remarked.
“No doubt,” agreed Hyori. “But if our ride doesn’t show up soon, he may get mug shots of us as well.”
It was a valid point. The alarm was now raised. All eyes naturally began shifting back and forth. Shoreward to look for threats. Seaward for salvation.
Clark never stopped planning, adjusting to the circumstances. His team was floating in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, four frogmen bobbing on DPDs with nearly dead batteries. Their ride to safety was out of commission. The nearest land was two miles away, but that would soon be crawling with police officers. The nearest neutral shore, Cyprus, was eighty miles west—unreachable without commandeering a boat, which seemed a long shot. Given the currents here—Clark had left no stone unturnedin his planning—he reckoned their best bailout would be to float south until they were off the coast of Lebanon. That was a mere twenty miles. Hardly ideal, but feasible. The bottom line was that ifAphrodisiadidn’t show soon, they would be facing a long swim at the end of a hard night.
“How many patrol boats did intel say the Syrians had?” Hyori asked.
Clark thought back to the briefing. The fall of the Assad regime had put a dozen aging vessels in the hands of a rebel force that had never before dipped its fundamentalist toe in salt water. “According to the intel estimates, three Syrian navy vessels—one missile cutter and two patrol boats—are seaworthy and operational. But they rarely leave port. Their crews are probably in bed at this hour.”
“They must keep at least one on alert,” Wu argued.
“We’ll find out soon enough.”
“This wind is going to push us back to the scene of the crime,” said the Brit, reading the light swell on the sea.
This was in the back of Clark’s mind as well. The breeze wasn’t strong, but its direction couldn’t have been worse. They were slowly drifting back toward the breakwater. Fighting that movement, either by swimming or draining the DPD batteries completely, would expend valuable energy.
Clark was about to initiate a secure voice call withAphrodisiawhen a glimmer to the west caught his eye. It was little more than a silhouette—a vessel running lights-out. From his low vantage point in the water, he couldn’t make a solid ID at first. It could be Ding and Toussaint. Or it could be one of the smugglers that were endemic to these waters. He instinctively weighed the possibility of commandeering the vessel if the latter turned out to be the case. They had plenty of firepower, but marginal mobility on the spent DPDs.
As it turned out, that wasn’t necessary.
The boat came right at them, and soon they saw Ding’s wiry frame at the bow. AsAphrodisiaclosed in, he waved like a passenger on an ocean liner arriving in port.
“About time, mate,” shouted Wu.
“Sorry for the wait,” Ding called out. “Our boat was sinking.”
“That’s a sad excuse.”
The pleasantries continued throughout the recovery process, good humor fueled by a sense of relief. The exfil delay had been the night’s only glitch, and no one doubted that Ding and Toussaint had done everything in their power to overcome the problem.
The DPDs were lashed along the port side, and once the divers were on board, everyone grabbed lines to help haul them up on deck. Early on there had been discussions about acquiring a boat with a deck crane, but the DPDs weren’t so heavy that they couldn’t be heaved aboard by six strong men. John Clark thought that simpler. And simpler, in his view, was always better.
SoonAphrodisiawas motoring west. They would be in Cypriot waters in five hours. Moored to a dock five after that.
Ding told them about the flooding in the engine compartment. “But don’t worry, I fixed it.”
“Now I am truly worried,” said Hyori.
The divers all showered—the boat had pressurized freshwater and a hose, a rare luxury for paramilitary frogmen—and changed into warm clothes. Like soldiers everywhere in post-mission moments, their conversation turned casual. They began forming plans to blow off steam the next day, most of which involved drinking beer and basking in the warm Nicosian sun.
Clark came out of the wheelhouse rubbing his hair dry with a towel. “Don’t make your reservations at the cabana just yet,” he announced. “Looks like we’ve got new tasking.”
“Where now?” Hyori asked.
