Christine waited until Davy was fast asleep—he’d had a rambunctious night, and stayed awake later than usual. She covered him with a blanket and went to the doors that led to the veranda. She already knew that Nick, the guard she’d gotten to know best, was one of the two on duty there.
She went outside. “Hi, Nick.”
“Evening, ma’am.”
“Are you on duty much longer?”
“Two more hours,” he replied.
“I wonder if you could do me a favor.”
“If I can.”
She explained what she wanted.
“That’s not how it’s supposed to work,” he said.
“I know … but I won’t leave the embassy. It’s just down the hall.”
“Your husband would have my ass if anything happened.”
He looked inside at Davy—he was obviously fast asleep. Christine gave Nick her most heartfelt look.
He said, “I’d have to clear it with Miss Sorensen first—explain what you want to do.”
Christine knew it was a reasonable request, and she’d half expected it. “Sure.”
“Hang on.” Nick walked a few steps into the courtyard and had a hushed conversation on his lapel mic. After he stopped talking, there was a thirty-second pause. He finally turned back to Christine.
“Okay,” he said. “Go ahead.”
She couldn’t stop herself from hugging the man. Seconds later Christine was out the front door—the security team there was expecting her. As she walked away down the hall, she looked once over her shoulder at the two burly guards. She’d never seen such intimidating babysitters in all her life.
* * *
“Okay, we’re on,” said Matai, who was the first to see the message. “We have three boats fifteen nautical miles northwest of Argos. They’re holding a dead-on course for an intercept.”
A brief debate ensued about whether there was any possibility of this not being the predicted rendezvous. Tal said, “We need to be sure. Once we get wet, we’re committed. If these boats make a turn and go fishing, we have no choice but to come back on board. At that point we’ll have spent air and battery power on the DPDs that we can’t replace without going back ashore.”
The rest knew he was only playing devil’s advocate.
“Waiting and watching isn’t an option,” Aaron argued. “If these are the receivers, which is highly likely, they’ll be here in an hour, maybe less. It’ll take at least that long for us to maneuver close without drawing attention, get in the water, and make our approach to Argos.”
After a brief pause, Slaton said, “There’s really no choice. We drive as close as we can, prep to go, and in twenty minutes get one last update from the ops center.”
He looked all around.
There was no dissent.
* * *
The tiny armada never wavered in its course. They were making a beeline for Argos.
The DPDs were in place near the aft platform and all three divers suited up. Weapons were secured to each DPD, but if everything went as planned only one would be used.
The three men in wetsuits looked to Matai for guidance. He was standing at the helm with a night-vision scope. The ocular wavered as he steadied it to his right eye against the rocking boat.
“Thirty-two hundred meters,” he finally said. “We shouldn’t get any closer.”
Slaton and Aaron had already agreed that two miles was the minimum closure. With the receiving convoy approaching, Argos’ crew would be watchful. Only minutes ago Matai had used a new device from the technology section, an off-the-shelf diagnostic tool that had been tweaked by Mossad’s engineers. They called it a poor man’s RWR, or radar warning receiver—an allusion to the more complex devices on fighter aircraft that sensed enemy radar emissions. Built to detect specific radiofrequency bands, the unit would tell them if Argos’ radar was painting them. Not surprisingly, it was. There was no information about range or azimuth, which a more expensive device might have managed, but it gave confirmation on one point: they were being watched.
Matai put Argos dead on the port beam. He would steer a meandering course for the next hour, but barring emergency contingencies, this was as close as he would take the dive boat to the ship they were targeting.
“Fishing boats are more common than six-pack dive boats in these waters,” Matai said. “We should have brought something, a few deep sea rods or nets.”
“I doubt they have surveillance gear that can see us two miles away,” Tal argued. “All they’ll see is a small boat on their radar that isn’t getting any closer.”
“Probably,” Slaton intervened, “but while we’re gone you might gather up some mooring lines and hang around the transom. Try to look busy.”
“A longline fisherman,” Aaron seconded. “That’s good.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Matai said. He then referenced the navigation display. “This is the spot. Everybody ready for an update on waypoint one?” The three divers each addressed their wrist-mounted nav devices. When he got three nods, Matai said, “Mark!”
From that moment forward, the coordinate set for that position, an invisible symbol in the middle of the Red Sea pinpointed by a satellite constellation thousands of miles above, would serve as the primary reference point for their very small universe.
Three splashes followed. Then, one by one, Matai shoved the DPDs off the stern and into the water.