The Last Israelis - an Apocalyptic, Military Thriller about an Israeli Submarine and a Nuclear Iran (32 page)

“He’s still in a coma in Germany. So I guess he’s also among the last Israelis.”

“In that case, Sir, the Acting Prime Minister can provide the valid authorization.”

“I don’t think you understand, Daniel. There is no Acting Prime Minister because there is no government. There is no Knesset or Supreme Court. There is no Kotel or Old City. A nuclear bomb and thousands of conventional warheads hit Jerusalem. There is nothing left, Daniel. You can consider yourself the Prime Minister of Israel. But you have no state to govern. You are a homeless, itinerant Jew again, after 66 short years of sovereignty.”

“I understand, Sir.”

“I’m sorry…I’m sorry I don’t have better news, Daniel…You know our favorite Israeli expression?”

“It’ll be fine.”

“Yes, Daniel. We can’t say that any more. Because it won’t be fine now, and there is no more ‘We’ that can say it.”

“One last thing, Sir. Would you say that there is no point in launching a nuclear attack on Iran now? The crew will decide this, but I think it’s important to hear your thoughts as well.”

“Yes, Daniel. You should launch the strike. It’s the last thing left for us to do. Let them know we went down with a fight. Our light shone brightly for almost seven decades, and when it was finally snuffed out, you let the entire world know, and the world shuddered.”

“OK, Sir.”

“Goodbye, Daniel.”

“Goodbye, Sir.”

The Dolphin’s antenna and snort dropped back into the water.

“Dive to eighty meters.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Chapter 37: A Terrorist on Board

Destruction on such a massive scale is hard for anyone to fathom, and nobody on the Dolphin had any true sense of what had actually happened from the curt, 31-word update last sent by headquarters. But the struggling voice of Gabriel Cohen, quivering in awe at the grim loss, as it detailed the extent of the annihilation, brought the reality home to each crewmember. In an attempt to feel and understand the extent of the decimation, each man focused on specific loved ones that he had lost, and then branched out from there.

Daniel thought about how he would never again see, embrace, or kiss his wife, Sivan, just as he had been about to retire from the submarine force with still decades of time for her. The captain thought about his frail, 91-year old grandfather whom he never had the chance to visit one last time. His tales of rugged self-reliance and incredible survival had always inspired him, and now his life-story was brought to a cruel and absurd end: he miraculously survived the first holocaust against the Jews only to be killed in the second one. Daniel thought about his older children, Hila and Amir, and how he never got to say goodbye to either of them.

He took out of his pocket the folded up drawing that Esty had let him keep during their ephemeral shore visit. The captain unfolded the piece of paper and looked at it: a red crayon line that was mostly straight with the outlines of two starfish nearby. As the paper shook in his hands, he saw some teardrops fall onto the red crayon, smudging the color a little. He would never see her again – not with her drawings of sticks and stars, nor with his captain’s insignia on her shirt asking Mommy for more ice cream; not with a replacement for her lost starfish, nor with a boat that he would teach her to captain in the bathtub. All of that was gone forever, and this broke his heart the most.

From those lost souls, Daniel’s shaking, weeping mind moved to his parents, his siblings, his in-laws, his friends, his neighbors. All gone. It was too much for him to conceive.

Bao thought first about his longhaired Yoni. No trip with him to Vietnam. No delighting him with the news that he finally came out to the crew about being gay, and that they received it well. No cure for cancer to benefit the world and spite the UK universities that boycotted him. No more laughs and long debates. Just an eerie silence in some post-Armageddon void. And then he thought about his family. What an absurd and ineffably cruel end to their incredible voyage: from refugees fleeing Vietnam to building a new life in Israel and raising a generation of well-adjusted Vietnamese Israelis, only for everyone but Bao to end up incinerated in an instant.

Boutrous imagined the officer promotion ceremony that his parents would never get to attend several years from now – a ceremony that now would never happen. He thought about how he would now never be able to study law at the University of Haifa and how his parents will never see him get his diploma. He remembered his younger sister and brother, and his friends and neighbors in their Galilee village. He thought about how he’ll never again be able to visit Jerusalem and pray in its ancient churches, and how everything that had ever mattered to him personally, spiritually, and socially had vanished with the horrified voice of Gabriel Cohen.

Michael recalled his parents, and their tales of persecution and discrimination in the Soviet Union, and the hardships and sacrifices they had accepted so that he could have a better life in Israel. He imagined his father rising from the dead to curse the world for not having seen the obvious, or – even worse – for having seen it but done too little to stop it. He considered the drought-resistant crops that his father was developing and how the world would never see them or the other inventions that were being developed in his university lab. He realized that he would never again hear the violin music that his mother used to play at home. He thought about his friends and all of the jokes and stories they wouldn’t share over a shakshuka brunch. He realized that there would be no Israeli high-tech ventures for him and Eitan to join or launch together after their submarine service. There would be no more Israeli music, literature, or cinema, or any other form of Israeli culture. There would be nothing – just a void that was now their reality.

Jacob remembered his parents and how happy their lives had been. He thought about how his father had saved so many people at home and on humanitarian missions in Haiti, Japan, Chile, Congo, and countless other countries, and how there was no one to save him now. He remembered Clarice and realized that he would never move into her tiny studio or listen to her mellifluous voice while playing with the long tendrils of her hair. She was gone too. He thought about how he would never travel with her to Brooklyn and how even his dream of trying to live there for a while suddenly seemed utterly empty and inane. When he wanted to tell someone whether Brooklyn was just as he had dreamed or exactly the opposite, whom could he call? Did he really want to live as a guest in some other country after his own state was just razed? What joy could he possibly hope to find after such an overwhelming and devastating loss of everything that he had ever loved or cared about? He thought about the one person he loved – besides Zvi – who was probably still alive: his brother, the traveling hippie. Where was he when the news that his entire country and family, except his brother under the sea, had all been vaporized? Or was he so immersed in backpacker bliss and disconnected from world events that he didn’t even know?

Eitan thought about his parents and older siblings. What were they thinking when they realized that the Ayatollahs who had ruined their lives in Tehran had – with the long arm of their nuclear missiles – come back to destroy them and their new country? But as he thought about them, his chilling nightmare crept back into his mind as well. He saw the decapitated head of his cousin Isaac on the altar, looking at him plaintively.

“Please, Eitan. The father of our faith sacrificed only a ram. As a Jew, you must choose the ram.”

Eitan’s religious beliefs made him think that maybe God Himself had implanted the terribly prophetic vision in his mind, to ensure that the navigator’s moral compass would not be misaligned by the horrific news that Gabriel Cohen would deliver soon thereafter. While suicide is proscribed by Jewish law, Eitan struggled with the idea that – as the lesser of evils – maybe the submariners were 35 rams that should be sacrificed instead of millions of innocent Iranians.

Yisrael thought about Netta, and how stupid he felt about his jealousy-filled farewell. He realized that he would never be able to tell her how much he really loves her, and how much he now realizes the extent of her love for him. He remembered his parents, his younger sister, and his friends. He thought about his beloved grandfather who was at least spared this catastrophe. “One Holocaust was enough,” he said to himself. He thought about how he never had the chance to say goodbye to him, before he left this world, and how even the rest of his diary to be transcribed by Netta was now destroyed. As empty as his life had sometimes felt without children, how much more empty did it feel now? What was the point of anything now? He had no love, no country, and no purpose. Only the darkest form of nihilism lingered in the recesses of his mind.

The crew’s sullen mourning was suddenly disturbed by an outburst. “Th…There’s a…a terr…a…terrorist on board!” Zvi shouted out, with a wild look in his eyes, as he pointed at Boutrous.

Everyone’s morose reflections were abruptly displaced by Zvi’s strange and hysterical shouting. “She…She’s an Arab. We…we have to stop her bb…bef-before she kk-kills us!” he shouted urgently as he rushed towards Boutrous to tackle him.

Boutrous, who was still somewhat lost in his own grieving thoughts, couldn’t make sense of Zvi’s shouting, but saw that he was charging at him violently. Boutrous tried to dodge Zvi’s lunging body but was pinned up against the submarine wall. Boutrous defended himself as Zvi tried to swing at him, and the two were soon punching each other in whatever way they could.

The unexpected behavior from Jacob’s best friend, and the ensuing brawl between Zvi and Boutrous, pulled Jacob out of his sorrowful thoughts, as he rushed over before even Daniel could react.

“Zvi! What are you doing?! Stop that!” he yelled, as he ran up to the two and tried to break them apart. “Stop that, Zvi! Boutrous is our friend! You’re acting crazy!” Absorbing some blows from each sailor in the process, Jacob finally pried Zvi off of Boutrous and tackled him to the ground.

“Wh…Wh…What are you d-d-do…doing? She…She’s an Arab…A tt-terrorist,” Zvi shouted, trying to get back up, as Jacob struggled to restrain him. The two gradually stood up onto their knees, but Jacob held onto Zvi so that he couldn’t move away or get up onto his feet. Daniel approached with his gun ready.

Jacob looked up at the captain. “Sir, please let me handle this. I know how to calm him down.”

“W-W-We…We have to stop her…Or…or she’ll k-k-kill us all.”

“No, Zvi, no. You’re losing it. That’s a man, not a woman. And he’s not a terrorist. He’s a good man. He’s our friend.” Jacob held Zvi’s arms tightly and looked deep into his eyes, as the other submariners watched the scene, bewildered by it all.

“B…B-But I saw a b-b-bomb on her. Sh…Sh…She ha-has a b-b-bomb.”

“No, Zvi, no!” Jacob shouted. “It’s Boutrous. He’s our friend.”

“Are…Are you sure she…she’s not a t-t-terrorist?”

“Zvi, look at me. Where are we right now?”

“We’re…We’re in…in Hai…Haifa, at M-M-Maxim’s restr…restaurant.”

“No, Zvi! No. We’re not in Haifa. Look. Look around you, Zvi. We’re in the Dolphin submarine. Under the sea. We’re sailing towards the Strait of Hormuz. Look at that man,” he said, pointing at Daniel. “Who is that man?” Jacob asked his best friend. “Do you know that man?”

Zvi, still on his knees, had an anguished look as he tried to recall the familiar face.

Daniel moved a little closer and crouched down to Zvi’s level, speaking to him gently. “Zvi, do you know who I am?”

As reality gradually crawled back into Zvi’s mind, he began to cry. “Y…You’re the…the cc-captain…”

“That’s right, Zvi. I’m the captain. And who is that?” he asked, pointing to Boutrous, who was straightening himself out from the brief and bizarre fracas.

“Th…Th-That’s…B-B-Boutrous,” he replied.

“That’s right. That’s Boutrous. Come, let’s stand up,” Daniel said, helping Zvi to his feet. “You know, you just hurt him.”

“I…I dd…did?” he asked, bursting into tears.

“Yes,” Jacob explained. “You just attacked him, even though he did nothing to you. He’s our brother and our friend. A good sailor on our crew.”

Zvi turned toward Boutrous and approached him slowly, as the rest of the crew watched. “I…I…I’m sss…so sorry, B…B…Boutrous,” Zvi said between tears and with great difficulty speaking. “I…I’m sss…so s-sorry I att…attacked you…”

“It’s OK, Zvi,” Boutrous replied softly.

“I’m…I’m very ccc…confused now…Aaff…After everything we…we heard…I thought…I thought I was somewhere else...P…Please f-forgive me.”

“It’s OK, Zvi…We’re all confused right now,” he replied, as his eyes watered up. “I still can’t believe…I can’t even imagine it all…I have no words….”

Chapter 38: The Last Israelis

With the dramatic episode of Zvi’s wild outburst fully contained and concluded, the crewmembers drifted back into their dark thoughts. Each man returned to the same pattern of mourning, from the submariner’s closest loved ones, to more distant relations and friends, to places and pleasures that will never again exist in the land each crewmember once called home. The waves of loss reverberated in the minds of the 35 silent sailors, as they somberly and desperately tried to grasp the meaning of the total annihilation that had taken place about 39 hours earlier and 2,200 kilometers away.

Samir thought about his three young children and how all that was now left of them was the MP3 recording of Shadi’s singing voice. He thought about the election campaign that his wife would never undertake. She would never be the first Druze woman to be elected to the Knesset because there was no more Knesset. And she wouldn’t even be a doctor any more – only a memory to him. He thought about how the country that he, his father, and his grandfather had so patriotically defended no longer existed, and how the 400,000 Druze in nearby Lebanon, and the 700,000 in neighboring Syria would undoubtedly suffer from the radioactive debris slowly descending on them. And how in a single day the Druze had effectively lost the best economic and political conditions they had ever enjoyed in the Middle East. Samir was engulfed by sorrow and rage.