The Last Israelis - an Apocalyptic, Military Thriller about an Israeli Submarine and a Nuclear Iran
Authors: Noah Beck
Tags: #General Fiction
THE LAST ISRAELIS
Second Edition
By Noah Beck
Copyright 2013
All rights reserved
Table of Contents
PART I: A Picnic Before Doomsday
Chapter 6: A Promotion for Esty
Chapter 11: Mission Instructions
Chapter 12: The Native Arabic Speakers
Chapter 13: An Emotional Checkup on the Medic
Chapter 14: Geopolitics Over Poker
Chapter 15: Tensions on the Submarine Surface
Chapter 16: Miss Dolphin and Mister Life Vest
Chapter 18: Bad News from Headquarters
Chapter 19: Best Friends Long Before the Dolphin
Chapter 20: Encounter in the Arabian Sea
Chapter 21: Power Struggle Over a Nuclear Attack
Chapter 22: A Warning for the Dolphin
Chapter 23: An Accident by Enemy Waters
Chapter 25: Communication Problems
Chapter 27: Hunted by the Enemy
Chapter 28: Back from the Dead
Chapter 29: An Order to Attack
Chapter 31: Hunting a Kilo and the Second Debate
Chapter 32: Standing at the Altar
Chapter 34: Evolving Votes and Post-Armageddon
Chapter 35: When the Sirens Went Off
Chapter 36: One Last Message From Headquarters
Chapter 37: A Terrorist on Board
Epilogue: The Diplomatic Cable
Acknowledgement
This book would not have been possible without the valuable input provided by veterans of Israel’s submarine force, including one of its retired senior officers. I quickly learned that these individuals are exceptionally skilled and knowledgeable, precise and professional, and heroic yet humble. Getting to know them was a rare privilege, a source of inspiration, and one of the most enjoyable aspects of authoring this book. Their patience and good humor in answering my countless questions, even as they artfully dodged anything that might compromise national security, is immensely appreciated. As much as I wanted to acknowledge them individually, they insisted on absolute anonymity, and therefore must remain unnamed. I am also indebted to all of the family members and friends who took the time to review my manuscript and share their feedback with me: Eugie, Daniel, Guy, Chris, Bill, Adam, Cookie, Natasha, Steve, Lateesha, Mike, Victoria, Ante, Roy, Jo, Koichi, and Ofer.
Credits
Photo credits for images appearing on cover:
Photo of Dolphin submarine courtesy of the Israeli Submarine Force Veterans Association.
Photo of nuclear mushroom courtesy of National Nuclear Security Administration / Nevada Site Office.
Disclaimer:
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Preface
When I first began working on
The Last Israelis
in early April of 2012, I was operating under an extreme, externally imposed deadline: the P5+1 talks with Iran scheduled for May 24, 2012 in Baghdad. My quixotic goal for the novel was to impact those talks and hasten an effective resolution to the Iranian nuclear threat. Thus, the manuscript had to be produced at a grueling speed if it was to have any hope of being timely. But substantial rewriting – after helpful feedback from my early readers – led to two more drafts, causing me to miss both the Baghdad talks and the round of talks that followed on June 18th in Moscow. On July 2nd, I finally completed the manuscript and published it two days later, a few weeks before the July 24th nuclear talks between Iran and the EU in Istanbul.
As I write this, about eight months later, it is obvious that my novel has changed nothing to date (although this is hardly surprising, given how few novels alter the course of world events). Iran’s defiance of the international community has grown only bolder with the regime’s recent announcement that Iran will install IR-2M centrifuges that can enrich uranium at about quadruple the current rate of enrichment by Iran (using its less advanced IR-1 centrifuges). The much faster IR-2M centrifuges could enable the Islamic Republic to produce one weapon’s worth of highly-enriched uranium in about a week – the amount of time that IAEA inspectors might be absent before their next visit, effectively removing any early warning of Iran’s nuclear weaponization.
Of course, nobody wants war: it’s better to settle conflicts peacefully, goes the platitude. So the preferred approach is to resolve the standoff with diplomatic talks. But this has been tried for about a decade to no avail. As Iran gets closer to the nuclear finish line, it prefers to talk about talks, adding scheduling delays, various preconditions, and venue discussions to buy even more time. And Iran’s use of advanced IR-2M centrifuges now leaves even less time to “talk.” Nevertheless, I am still hopeful that in the little time that remains – with the bold use of sufficiently large carrots and sticks – world powers (particularly the United States) can induce Iran to change course without the use of force.
Iran’s refusal to halt its nuclear warpath only strengthened my resolve to expand the potential reach of the urgent message underlying
The Last Israelis
. Thus, in January of 2013, I decided to produce a second edition, this time adding paperback and audio book formats, to make the novel accessible to many more potential readers. Stopping Iranian nukes with a cautionary tale that inspires bolder leadership may be a strategy with poor odds of success, but it is certainly worth a try, given how high the stakes are. Time is short to avert Armageddon, and I can only hope that world powers will have enough courage and resolve to ensure that my novel stays firmly in the realm of fiction.
PART I: A Picnic Before Doomsday
I saw the ram goring westward, northward, and southward, and no beasts could stand before it, and no one could save [anyone] from its hand, and it did according to its will, and it grew.
—
Daniel 8:4
Chapter 1: Existential Issues
A nightmare gripped the Prime Minister of Israel. He twisted the corner of his pillow, which had transformed into something critical in his dream, until he suddenly awoke, hyperventilating. He released the pillow and looked around, as he tried to reorient himself to reality. Stepping out of bed, the Prime Minister tried to ignore his pounding headache; he had worked through many over the last week.
He had barely made it to the closet and stress was already assaulting him from every direction.
As he got dressed, competing pressures turned in his mind: political threats to bring down his governing coalition, a ballooning budget to balance, and – above all – a potentially existential military threat. There were countless conventional and chemical warheads already pointed at Israel, and nuclear warheads could soon enter the strategic picture. The emergency phone on his desk rang. He rushed to answer it.
The voice of the Mossad chief came over the line: “Mr. Prime Minister, our intelligence assets indicate that we have only a week left before Iran will have placed all centrifuges and other key nuclear weapons components in Fordo.” The head of Israeli intelligence was referring to the nuclear enrichment facility near Qom that was highly fortified against aerial attack, in part because Iran had built it deep inside a mountain.
“But wasn’t Fordo sabotaged?”
“Only in a minor way. Iran exaggerated the damage to make world powers think that there was more time to stop them.”
“So in a week we will have no more military option to delay their nuclear program?” he asked, in alarm.
“Yes, Sir.”
His headache throbbing, the Prime Minister hung up the phone and called the Chief of General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces. “We are fast approaching the zone of immunity. Modify existing military plans to launch a strike in 48 to 72 hours.”
“Yes, Sir.”
The Israeli leader now needed to coordinate with his strongest ally. His first impulse was to try to call the President of the United States, but there was no telling how long it would take to get through. More importantly, the Prime Minister didn’t want it to seem as if he was somehow requesting permission to defend his own country. This was more of a courtesy call among friends, to put the American President on notice, since the United States could easily be drawn into the conflict in the event of an Israeli strike. The Prime Minister also wanted there to be a historical record of his last attempt to persuade the world’s only superpower to eliminate a threat that no other country, including his own, could address as effectively and decisively. So he wrote a diplomatic cable to the President, knowing that a phone call from him would soon follow.
The cable detailed the many reasons to stop the Iranian threat by force. It also mentioned the closing window of opportunity for Israeli military action but included an accommodation: “I am preparing a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities sometime in the next three to seven days. If, in the next 24 hours, you provide me with a written reassurance that the United States will give Iran a firm ultimatum, backed by overwhelming force, requiring the complete and verified dismantling of their nuclear program starting within 48 hours, then I will cancel the strike.”
Immediately after dispatching his message, the Prime Minister called his chief of staff. “Get everyone into my study for a working breakfast, starting immediately. Then inform the security cabinet that I’m convening an emergency meeting scheduled for one hour from now. Bring the entire Iran dossier with you to the breakfast meeting.”
The premier would need to brief his security cabinet on the latest developments and address any objections or concerns that might be raised regarding an Israeli military strike. There was sure to be a vigorous debate, even though the idea of preemptively attacking Iran had already been vetted in the international press, thanks in part to various public pronouncements by former intelligence officials. “Things that should have been left for careful deliberation by the security cabinet alone turned into a political football covered by the world media,” he thought to himself, shaking his head. “This must be the most ungovernable democracy on the planet!”
The Prime Minister walked into a nearby room, where his entire staff was ready for his next instructions. He and his aides were soon perusing various intelligence reports and analyses to decide what to include in his presentation to the security cabinet. As the country’s top decision-maker looked over some documents, he noticed that his vision had become a bit blurry. He ignored the issue, since he hadn’t slept much during the last few nights and figured it was just fatigue.
After the breakfast meeting, the Prime Minister walked towards the car outside waiting to shuttle him to the security cabinet meeting. His headache intensified and, before he could make it all the way to the door, he suddenly fell to the floor, with some classified documents spilling out of the folder in his hand. His aides scrambled to get an emergency evacuation to the nearby Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem. The Prime Minister was unresponsive.
****
Within 20 minutes, the unconscious premier was at the hospital with his wife nearby. An entire nation would soon be worried about the health of its leader, but she was fretting about her husband. The doctors used magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography scans to investigate the problem before concluding that the Prime Minister had a brainstem tumor that was dangerously increasing intracranial pressure. The attending physicians immediately intubated him in order to decrease the pressure via hyperventilation; they also intravenously administered mannitol and high-potent steroids, while keeping his head elevated at a 30-degree angle.
The senior neurologist on the emergency medical team treating the Prime Minister addressed the leader’s wife and aides: “It’s quite serious because the brainstem affects vital functions like blood pressure, breathing, and heart rate. The good news is that the tumor is clearly separated from surrounding brain tissue, so it’s still possible to resect it with brain surgery. And advances in microsurgical techniques are making such surgery much more successful than in the past. We should be able to get him the very best treatment fast enough for his cognitive function to be preserved.”