Today we have a sneak peek from the military thriller by author Noah Beck: The Last Israelis.
Struck by a medical emergency, Israel’s Prime Minister falls unconscious. Soon after, Iran acquires nuclear weapons and threatens to destroy the Jewish state. Israel’s “second-strike” answer is the Dolphin, a powerful submarine armed with nuclear-tipped missiles. But its crewmembers are ethnically diverse and ideologically divided – a microcosm of the complex Israeli society they defend, making for a suspense-filled ride aboard the Dolphin.
The pressures of submarine life, threats at sea, crewmember rivalries, psychological instabilities, and an unthinkable dilemma make conflict among the crewmembers inevitable as Armageddon approaches. How will they decide the toughest decision ever made by 35 men?
The Last Israelis is available from Amazon, Amazon UK, iTunes, and Barnes & Noble.
Here is an excerpt from The Last Israelis…
Chapter 8: More Bad Signs
“Sir, I need your signature,” said a naval supply agent holding a clipboard.
Daniel put his plate of food down to look at the form he was supposed to sign. It was an acknowledgment that his submarine had received certain materials. There were blanks that he had to fill in to indicate the quantity received, and this meant that Daniel had to go back to the submarine to confirm the actual amounts. Duty calls, even on break. The captain briefly excused himself from his wife and daughter.
He walked with the supply agent past the fence surrounding the lawn area and over to the restricted walkway leading to the submarine. The two climbed the accommodation ladder up the sail of the Dolphin and then descended down another ladder into the main deck below.
The supply agent took Daniel around the various parts of the vessel so that he could see and then certify the quantity of each item that required a signature confirmation: fuel, drinking water, and food. The unusually large amounts of these provisions that had just been supplied could mean only one thing: they were about to embark on a very long mission. The extended period away from home that awaited him troubled him almost as much as what it actually meant. What did headquarters have in mind for him and his crew? Why would they need to be at sea for so long?
He climbed down the Dolphin’s accommodation ladder to the pier walkway. Before turning left to walk towards the family reunion beyond the fence, his instincts and curiosity told him to look right, to see if he could see anything of interest in the yard behind the naval command building. That area could be seen only from the viewpoint of the submarine, so everyone at the gathering remained blissfully ignorant of the men there running around in hazmat suits, conducting drills that simulated a chemical or nuclear attack. Thus, with a mere turn of his head to the right, Daniel had inadvertently received another piece of the disturbing puzzle. Was this going to be the mission in which the Dolphin would fulfill her raison d’être and launch a retaliatory second-strike on a country that had delivered a nuclear or chemical attack on Israel?
