The Steel Shark

Chapter 47

The Roc was almost to New York. It had taken Laila longer than she’d expected to find the prince’s ship. The ship had stayed in regular shipping lanes, and her people had to sift through many false positives. She had worried the giant yacht had slipped through her fingers.

“I’m sure.” Ambra pointed her pencil at a bright object on the screen. “That’s the prince’s ship.”

“The Roc.” The ship was huge, long and thin. The bow tapered to a knife-point edge, the stern rounded. A distinctive profile. No commercial vessels were that size, no military vessels that shape. The prince’s vanity had made his ship distinctive.

“The Israeli protest boat is here.” Ambra pointed at another ship a few miles away. That ship was aimed straight for New York, several miles ahead of the Roc, but the yacht gained on them with every minute. The people on board probably had no idea that the giant ship behind them was a royal superyacht that sought to destroy their lives.

“Are you sure it’s the protest boat?” If she had to shoot it from the water, she wanted to be sure.

“It’s a former Greenpeace boat. Slow old tub with noisy engines. Easy to see and hear.” Ambra pointed her pencil again. “Nothing else like it in this part of the ocean.”

Laila pictured the scruffy settlers aboard, come to complain to the United States and demand more support in their plans to steal more land from the Palestinians. They weren’t innocents in the conflict. Religious zealots who wanted to take all the lands for themselves. They didn’t care about the refugee problem and how its ramifications spread far beyond the borders of their tiny land.

Just as the refugees fled far beyond the lands of their birth, so too would the consequences spread throughout the world if these ragtag settlers were blamed for the crippling EMP discharge the Roc would send straight into the heart of New York. She’d thought of simply sinking their boat, but had decided that if this ship were to be sunk so close before the EMP discharge, tensions would rise.

“Once the Roc reaches that ship, it can discharge the device at any time,” Ambra said. “We can aim for the Roc’s engines. We can stop them without sinking them.”

Laila thought of the men aboard — the prince, the king, her cousins, her brother, her father, servants, and soldiers. According to Nahal’s evidence, few of them understood the true purpose of their voyage. Even fewer knew the prince intended to sink the Israeli ship and then the Roc as soon as it delivered its EMP charge. His men were trained to kill everyone but the prince and his allies. No one would be left to challenge him.

She had no love for the current king. She and her sisters and cousins had suffered under his tyrannical rule. He, too, thought of women only as beasts of burden and pleasure. Even so, he was not as vicious and ruthless as the prince. No one was.

Except for her.

She had to be.

“Hit her broadside,” Laila said. “We must send the device, and the prince, to the bottom of the sea.”

They had to act now, before they were detected. The Roc could outrun them if she chose, and the yacht was so close to New York that she didn’t have to stay afloat much longer to shoot the EMP weapon into the sky.

“Ready torpedoes,” Laila said and heard her words immediately echoed back from the torpedo room.

It had begun. And no one had doubts.

“Another ship is heading toward the Roc.” Ambra bent lower over the sonar table. “The engines are running on a weird frequency, or I would have picked it up on passive sonar. It looks like an old military boat. Probably just using the shipping lane. Unlikely to be armed.”

“Not a threat. Close on the Roc.” If she perceived a threat, she would sink the new ship later. For now, everything was about the Roc.

The helmsman was already changing direction. They were closing in on their target at their top speed of twenty knots. The Roc had a top speed of thirty-four knots, but she was still plowing ahead on her regular course at twenty knots, like a horse heading back to the barn.

The Roc didn’t know they were there. She was helpless before them. As helpless as Laila’s sister had been before the prince.

“Surface to periscope depth.” Laila wanted to see every bit of destruction. Flames. A hole ripped in the sleek hull. Bodies spilling off the decks. Blood and oil on the water. If the Roc launched lifeboats, she would shoot them, too. She would leave no survivors. All leadership would have to be rebuilt.

Ambra paced the tiny bridge. The planesman and the helmsman looked at her as if they expected her to do something besides pilot the submarine. Laila watched the women study Ambra. She hated to think what they expected Ambra to do. Mutiny?

But they had come too far to turn back now. They all knew it.

Ambra tucked her yellow pencil behind her ear and looked up.

Laila waited. Ambra knew her duty. They all did.

If they didn’t, she would remind them. Or Meri would.

She looked over to where Meri stood near the periscope. A pistol was tucked into her overalls. As Laila well knew, Meri wouldn’t hesitate to use it against any obstacle. Meri met her gaze, her expression resolute.

“Ready to fire,” Laila said.

And they were ready.