Vertical Dive by Michael DiMercurio

Author:Michael DiMercurio [DiMercurio, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: military fiction, submarine fiction
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Published: 2018-03-24T00:00:00+00:00

14

“How do I look?” Issam Zouabri asked, standing in front of Youssef Tagreb wearing the dress blue tunic, pants and officer’s cap of a Marine Navale lieutenant commander’s uniform, the stripes circling his sleeves.

Tagreb shook his head in admiration. “Resplendent, Salah.” Tagreb looked at his own uniform in the stained mirror, the sleeve stripes those of a capitaine de vaisseau, a full captain. He could carry off the illusion because of his age, but it was a double or triple promotion from the equivalent rank he had held in the Russian Republic Navy. The strange uniform carried a foreign navy’s symbols, but it reminded Tagreb of his past. Was it his imagination, or did the uniform make him seem taller, straighter, more a man?

Zouabri nodded, donning his black wraparound sunglasses. Abdul-Azim Fakhri, Zouabri’s vice-commander, stepped into the enclosed warehouse office that they had commandeered as a command center, wearing the uniform of a capitaine de corvette, a lieutenant commander.

“Is everything prepared?” Zouabri asked.

Fakhri nodded as he pulled a powerful automatic pistol—a Heckler & Koch HK MP-5 10 mm submachine gun—from a small duffel bag and snapped a huge clip full of lethal ammunition into it.

“Only one thing left to do before we leave,” he said. “Although it’s a shame. We are turning our backs on another week of amusement.”

Zouabri nodded, seeming distracted. Tagreb took in the pistol with alarm.

“Salah? Issam? What is going on here? What’s the gun for?”

Fakhri shot Tagreb a quick glance of contempt, then shook his head and moved to leave.

“Issam!” Tagreb shouted. “Stop that man now, or else I’m not going anywhere! You know as well as I, this mission fails without me.”

Zouabri held up his hand to Fakhri, who paused, a look of disgust on his features.

“What is it you want, Youssef?” Zouabri asked, his expression unreadable behind his black shades.

“I want what we promised. That the hostages would be given aid and released,” he said, irritated that his own voice sounded shrill.

“And, my friend, why is that?”

“Because, Issam, they are children. And innocent women. And they have suffered enough.”

Issam laughed. “They will all be dead in a day or a week from our missiles, Youssef. Is it not more merciful to release them from their lives this day rather than that one?”

“No, it is not merciful,” Tagreb said, more emphasis, a deeper timbre in his voice. “When they perish with their countrymen, they deserve to die going about their lives. In their schools, their churches, sleeping in their beds, dressing their children. Not tied up like animals, waiting for a rescue that will never come. You yourself taught me that there is meaning in how a person dies, Issam. It matters. Look at how Dostoyev died. His death reflected what he deserved from his miserable life. These innocents, they do not require such a death as you are extending to them. Should they die—no, when they die—from the missiles, that is different. In that case, they die as they were meant to. Together. As a nation.

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