Dark Vessel (COIL Book 4), page 30
Karl Coleman - This deadly mercenary has left victims around the world. When he is called upon to leave no witnesses, he promptly obeys—without a conscience to hold him back.
General Logan Forglade - The head of the TaTD, he uses his official rank to follow congressional orders—even when it means breaking the law.
Senator Nettleton – The politician who holds the purse strings for America's military inside its borders. His oversight is coveted as COIL faces its deadly enemies.
Rod Chang – Senator Nettleton's faithful assistant and advisor
Brody Sladrick – The super-agent who COIL can call on at any time, for any operation, under the most stressful situations.
*~*
Glossary of Terms
COIL – Commission of International Laborers -- A Christian threat assessment and assistance organization, operating inside countries that persecute Christians
CASS – Custom Access Satellite Service – A private corporation, operating underground, that designs and launches custom satellites.
Gustavia – Capital and chief port of St. Barts Island in the Caribbean
PRS – Pacific Rim Security – A division of the CIA (Langley) that operates specifically in East Asia, stationed in the Pentagon as Agency liaison
TaTD – Tactical anti-Terrorist Division; an autonomous branch of Homeland Security
Weltersand – A fictional operation used to investigate COIL foes.
*~*
Other Books by D.I. Telbat
Arabian Variable, a Covert Action & Christian Suspense; eBook
Called To Gobi, an End Times Chronicle; eBook, Paperback
COIL Extractions, a Short Story Collection, Book 1; FREE eBook
COIL Recruits for Christ, a Short Story Collection, Book 2; eBook
Dark Edge, Novella, Prequel to The COIL Series; FREE Audio, FREE eBook, Paperback
Dark Liaison: A Christian Suspense Novel, Book One in The COIL Series; Audio, Paperback
Dark Hearted, Book Two in The COIL Series; Audio, eBook, Paperback
Dark Rule, Book Three in The COIL Series; Audio, eBook, Paperback
Dark Vessel, Book Four in The COIL Series; Audio, eBook, Paperback
Dark Zeal, Book Five in The COIL Series; Audio, eBook, Paperback
Distant Boundary, Novella, Prequel of The COIL Legacy; FREE eBook
Distant Contact, Book One of The COIL Legacy; eBook
Distant Front, Book Two of The COIL Legacy; eBook
Distant Harm, Book Three of The COIL Legacy, eBook coming late 2017
God's Colonel, a Christian End Times Novel; eBook
Jaguar Dusk, a Christian Special Forces Novel; eBook
Primary Objective, a Christian Rescue Mission; eBook
Soldier of Hope, A POW Survival Story in Afghanistan; eBook
The Legend of Okeanos: A Tale of Restoration, Survival, and a Great White Shark; eBook
The Steadfast Series: America's Last Days, End Times Novella eBooks
Coming soon:
Fury in the Storm, Where Christians Dare, Bk1; Previously published as Sea Scribe
Tears in the Wind, Where Christians Dare, Bk2 in The Leeward Set
Visit Novel Update News for latest news on current and upcoming D.I. Telbat books.
*~*
About the Author
D.I. Telbat desires to honor the Lord with his life and his writing, and to bring awareness to the Christian Persecuted Church. He is best known for his Suspenseful Fiction with a Faith Focus in The COIL Series, and his futuristic novellas, The Steadfast Series: America's Last Days. On his Telbat's Tablet website/blog at ditelbat.com, he offers FREE Christian short stories, novel news, book reviews, Author Reflections, or challenges for today's Christian. Subscribe to receive his stories or related posts weekly, as well as exclusive subscriber gifts. Visit ditelbat.com/all-d-i-telbat-novels/ for a full list of his Audio, eBook, and Paperback novels. Read his complete bio at ditelbat.com/about/.
*~*
Contact
https://ditelbat.com/contact/
Follow us on Twitter! @DITelbat
*~*
~BONUS Chapter ~
DARK ZEAL
*~NEXT PAGE!~*
*~*
BONUS Chapter
Dark Zeal, Book Five in The COIL Series
D.I. Telbat
Chapter One
An explosion lit the night sky. Far away, Gaza City was illuminated by the flash. Shrapnel in the form of sparks showered the low clouds like a grotesque fireworks celebration. Corban James Dowler stopped paddling the sea kayak and counted the seconds until he heard the rumble of the precision missile's detonation. Five seconds. Continuing toward the bombarded city, he knew he was still over a mile from the beach.
Though nearly sixty years old, well under six feet, and soft around the middle, Corban's strokes with the paddle were still powerful, his aging muscles recalling rigorous conflict of recent years.
He stopped paddling again. An Israeli Sa'ar 4.5 class missile boat four hundred yards to the north fired a volley inland, punishing Hamas terrorists who were probably spotted by an Israeli Hermes drone far overhead. Corban hoped he couldn't be seen in his small carbon-fiber kayak. Though he wasn't an enemy of Israel, his mission would be more easily executed if the Israeli Defense Forces, also known as the IDF, didn't interfere.
The wind shifted and Corban gagged. Raw sewage from al-Shati and Jabalia refugee camps had been dumping into the Mediterranean Sea for months. Due to lack of electricity, fuel, and spare parts, Gaza's treatment plants and sewage management systems had been abandoned. Israel had been forced to tighten the blockade on the narrow Palestinian strip of land, and Hamas and other terrorist organizations seemed committed to taking every civilian in Gaza down with them.
Whatever the odor or risk of disease, Corban had to push through it. Like other missions, this one was more important than his personal safety.
Corban drifted in the dark current, feeling his cargo of two forty-pound waterproof packs fastened behind him. Lives depended on their immediate delivery—even if it meant walking into the barrels of Hamas rifles.
When he began paddling again, he was careful to breathe through his mouth. The stench was overwhelming, seeming to penetrate his dry suit and cling to his skin and hair.
Twenty minutes later, Corban rode a wave onto a sandy but littered beach. Careful not to tip his cargo into the pollution, he stepped out of the kayak and dragged it beyond the high tide mark. He set the narrow boat against a retaining wall that once supported a thriving restaurant. If he needed to exfiltrate by sea, he doubted the kayak would be bothered before noon the next day. Finally, he peeled off the kayak skirt and dry suit, and tucked them into the hollow bow.
One on top of another, Corban strapped the two forty-pound packs high up on his back for maximum mobility. Only then did he draw an NL-1 air pistol from his belt. Using the light from a series of inland flashing explosions, he checked the non-lethal weapon. Its pellets contained a knockout toxin that, if inhaled, would render a target unconscious for twenty minutes. The NL-1 held thirty pellets adjacent to a CO2 cartridge inside the pistol grip. The weapon wasn't much against live rounds from a Hamas rifle, but Corban hoped he wouldn't come across the militants at all.
From the other side of his belt that held up his black cargo pants, he tugged his satellite phone and checked the screen. It was still dead. The Israelis were jamming every signal in and around Gaza. But that didn't matter. Corban clipped the sat-phone back onto his belt. As long as he was in and out in twelve hours as planned, nobody would miss him.
Corban didn't need a GPS for guidance as he left the beach on an eastern route. He knew Gaza City well, having set up a safe house in the neighborhood of Rimal two years earlier. The refuge had also been a center of operations for three other missions. No one lived at the house, but Lord willing, his Christian contact would be there to escort him to his primary destination.
The Old City of Gaza sat on a low-lying round hill forty-five feet above sea level, two miles east of the beach and port. Between central Gaza City and the beach lay the residential district of Rimal, originally built on the sand dunes that now caused cracks in the street pavement and blew in swirls through bomb craters. It was around one of these craters that Corban skirted as he moved down an empty street. Stepping onto a crooked sidewalk, he placed his back against a stucco building. Bullet holes peppered the wall at his back, but Corban's eyes were on the dark sky. He was more concerned about the Israelis mistaking him for a Hamas "freedom fighter."
He peeked around a corner and saw two Palestinian soldiers dart from a doorway toward him. The sky was dark, but the two men were visible from nearby fires and distant explosions. Each soldier carried an AK-47, the mass-produced and disastrously inaccurate rifle. Corban waited until they were ten feet away, then he emerged from his corner and fired at their chests. They brought their rifles up while still running, but the tranquilizing toxin acted before their trigger fingers could react. They crumbled at Corban's feet and he dragged them to the wall. One of the soldiers appeared to be a teenager. The other one had a thin beard and a Hamas identification card. The Hamas terrorist group—religiously rather than politically-driven—had been voted into Gaza office in 2006. Gaza had never been in worse hands. From the card, Corban confirmed whom he needed to avoid completely. More cautiously now, he jogged down the street, his packs jostling against his shoulder blades.
When he reached a darkened apartment building that was covered with shrapnel divots, he ducked through an archway and ran down the sidewalk. He ascended steep stairs to the third floor and knocked twice, then twice more. The door cracked open and a familiar face peered out.
"Open, Jachin," Corban said in Arabic. "I'm here."
"God be praised!" Jachin Numan threw open the door and kissed Corban on both cheeks. "Come!"
Corban closed the door and locked it. He ensured the windows were adequately sealed with black plastic as Jachin lit a candle in the single bedroom apartment. They were alone in the COIL safe house. Kneeling, Corban unstrapped his packs. Jachin lifted each pack off and set them on a splintered table—the only furniture in the haven besides a mattress leaning against the south wall.
"You brought everything, Corban?" Jachin's hands worked at a pack's zipper so shakily that Corban had to unzip it for him. "Huldah has only one day of insulin left. We have to get to her tonight!"
"There's enough here for six months." Corban ran his fingers over vials packed in foam. He understood the man's desperation since Corban had a daughter with medical needs as well. "Be still, my friend. Let me look at you."
Jachin tore his eyes from the life-saving medication and gazed into Corban's eyes. Both men flinched as a bomb exploded a few blocks away, shaking the walls and dusting the floor.
"My daughter owes you her life, Corban." Tears welled in his eyes. "My whole family owes you."
"No, my friend. You owe me nothing. I serve God by helping you, so I'm the one who is thankful." Corban zipped up the pack. "You're thin, Jachin. Have you been eating?"
"Chard and lentils . . . without the lentils." Jachin grinned, the thirty four year old's malnourishment showing in his discolored gums. "Your presence has filled me."
"How's your wife? And your son, Levi?"
"Leah is eternally beautiful, and Levi, even at twelve, keeps the family fed. His courage frightens me when he runs for food and water, but he knows the streets better than me now."
"And Huldah? She's still embroidering with the needles I brought last time?"
"She is. Look." Jachin lifted his chin to show his name embroidered in Arabic on his collared shirt. "She's a wonder with the cloth. The neighbors pay us in rice for her patchwork. God has given us amazing children."
"I have more gifts for them." Corban patted the second pack. "And Bibles. How is the church, my friend?"
"It's a struggle to meet, but we pray together at three o'clock every day, whether we are all in one place or many. Tell me, Corban, what's that smell?"
"I arrived by sea." Corban sniffed his black turtleneck. "It was the safest route, but my friends must pay the price for my odor."
"Oh, it's nothing. Shall we leave? It'll be difficult to reach my house before dawn."
"Give me a moment."
Corban moved the mattress away from the wall and used the candlelight to find a lever at the foot of the wall. He yanked on the lever and the wall clicked. A hidden counterweight allowed Corban to swing the entire wall panel up to the ceiling where he braced it open. Behind him, Jachin moved closer and whispered words of amazement.
The removed wall panel, as large as a garage door, exposed a shallow space packed with NL weapons, water and food rations, and other emergency COIL gear. Corban selected a briefcase and opened it next to the candle. He used a clear adhesive to glue a full beard to his face, then closed the case. From a stack of vacuum-sealed clothes, he chose a T-shirt with a Lebanese footwear emblem on the front.
"How do I look?"
"You look Palestinian, like a loyalist. The Israeli missiles will target you before me."
"The Israeli missiles will target me as it is." Corban chuckled. "I just don't want to look too Western where we're going."
"Perhaps you should bring a bigger gun." Jachin nodded at the cache of non-lethal weapons much grander than the air pistol now under Corban's long shirt. "Where we're going, we'll see only Hamas."
"I can move faster without one."
Corban closed the secret panel and the room returned to its humble appearance. Jachin blew out the candle and Corban helped him into the lighter of the two packs. After Corban shouldered the other one, he opened the apartment door. They stood in the doorway a moment listening to the gunfire mixed with explosions.
"They're close," Jachin whispered. "There are rumors Hezbollah will join Hamas in the offensive against Israel. Hamas from here and Hezbollah from Lebanon. Even ISIS is involved, they say, by smuggling weapons to Hamas."
"Syria and Iran can join if they want," Corban said. "My money is still on Israel. Look. A Saraph helicopter. It's hunting."
The men watched the Israeli gunship, sister to the American Apache, sweep a street with its mini-guns. It flew on, leaving nothing alive.
"If anything happens to me . . ." Jachin set a hand on Corban's shoulder. "Be sure to get my daughter the insulin. Huldah will not last another week."
Placing his hand on Jachin's, Corban prayed.
"Lord God, You know our mission in these wicked times. Watch over us, we ask, and bless Jachin and Your servants for their faithfulness in this violent land."
"Amen."
Corban led the way down the stairs and across the first street. Though he couldn't see the military's eyes far above, he continued to glance skyward. He was now twice as visible with Jachin in tow, but Corban couldn't carry both packs all the way to the Palestinian Christian's house. The young man was weak, but he didn't complain under the heavy load.
After three blocks, Corban paused to study the next street before crossing. Even without consistent electricity in the city, countless fires acted like street lamps. They were traveling south toward the Zeitoun neighborhood where Jachin's family lived near the football field. Buildings towered around them. When Corban glimpsed a ground force moving south through the rubble a block to their left, he told Jachin.
"Israeli or Hamas?" Jachin asked at Corban's shoulder.
"I'm guessing Hamas. Israel wouldn't continue to shell the area if their own ground troops were here." Corban studied Jachin. "How are you not winded? I'm exhausted."
"My family. I'm compelled beyond exhaustion."
"You're a machine, Jachin." Corban saw a dozen more dark figures cross the street in the distance. "Whoever they are, a conflict is sure to meet them soon. We should distance ourselves from them. We'll have to go farther east. It'll set us behind, but we don't have a choice."
Together, they darted across the pavement. But before they could reach cover, Corban was thrown into the building in front of them. He landed on his side and rolled over to look into Jachin's frightened face.
"You okay?" Corban helped Jachin to his feet and noticed a crater the size of a car in the street where they had been an instant earlier. "I think that missile was meant for us."
"My ears are ringing!" Jachin yelled, checking his limbs. "Maybe we should wait until daylight!"
"Too many people will be about during the day. Besides, Israeli spy planes see in the day or night. Come. Stay close to me."
Corban dusted off his jacket and crept against the building as he led the way east. He wondered if he would ever retire from this call on his life. Someday, he would have to leave the stealth missions to the younger generation of Christian operatives. But so many were in need around the world. Every available laborer had to be in the field. That meant him as well, Corban mused, even though he had to spend more time away from his wife and daughter.
"Janice," Corban said aloud, tightening his pack straps, "I hope you're praying for us . . ."
~End of Bonus Chapter ~
Dark Zeal
ditelbat.com/book/dark-zeal/
D.I. Telbat, Dark Vessel (COIL Book 4)
