Silent Waters (eBook)

Coming of Age in the Israeli Navy SEALs

Omri Bezalel (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025
407 Seiten
Publishdrive (Verlag)
979-8-9919191-3-5 (ISBN)

Infos

He joined Shayetet 13 to serve his country. He didn't know it would cost him everyone he loved.

Yoav isn't your typical Israeli Navy SEAL. Sensitive. Thoughtful. Reluctant to become a killer. But in Shayetet 13-Israel's most elite unit-there's no room for softness.

When his best friend Goldberg is killed in combat beside him, Yoav starts a secret relationship with Goldberg's fiancée-a sharp-witted intelligence officer who sees through his armor. Their love might be the only thing keeping him sane...or it might destroy him from the inside.

Based on real missions. Written by someone who lived them.

Silent Waters is a raw, intimate portrait of love, loss, and survival in modern warfare.

For readers who devoured The Things They Carried and binged Fauda.

Textauszug

1

Headlines

March 2007

Erez had the worst headline I had ever read.

His sister had set him up with her friend Hadas one weekend in early 2006. Erez and Hadas spent an entire night walking through Tel Aviv, then sitting on Gordon Beach, listening to each other and to the sounds of the dark Mediterranean water caressing the sand. He only kissed her; that’s how much he liked her. His team was forced to stay on base the next weekend, so Hadas visited and brought him a picnic lunch. The following week, in Nablus in the West Bank, a Terrorist shot Erez. The bullet entered Erez’s thigh, changed trajectory, and shot through his intestines, right lung, and throat, killing him. His newspaper headline read, “Hadas’ Tragedy: Two Boyfriends Dead in Six Months.”

Turned out Hadas had had a two-year relationship with a fighter-pilot who crashed and died during a training exercise only six months before she met Erez. The image on the front page of the newspaper was of Hadas crying over Erez’s grave. In the upper right corner was a smaller picture of Erez next to a picture of her fighter-pilot boyfriend.

With all due respect to the fighter-pilot, he had already received his headline and should not have shared Erez’s. And with all due respect to Hadas, she had known Erez for two weeks and they had only kissed. But headlines sell newspapers, even I understood that. When I mentioned it to Erez’s father after the funeral, he shrugged. I realized the headline didn’t matter to him. It only mattered to us.

We were Team Ethan, an operational crew of eleven Shayetet Naval Commandos, the Israeli equivalent of U.S. Navy SEALs. We were an organic team, which meant we had started and finished training together, then became operational. We were all roughly the same age, 22.

On March 4, 2007, our team was having a quiet evening on base in Atlit, eighty kilometers north of Tel Aviv. Some of us watched Kill Bill in the rec room, a few guys were playing ping pong, others read or listened to music in their rooms. Goldberg and I were snorkeling in the bay, a pastime that had been a favorite of ours since we were kids growing up in Ramat Aviv, a Tel Aviv suburb near Tel Baruch Beach. The beach had been our second home.

We heard a sharp whistle and saw Yair on the shore moving his finger in a circular motion. Our unit’s hand signal for “Hurry the fuck up.”

We swam in, threw on our uniforms, and joined the team in the classroom for the briefing. Ethan, our commander, stood in front of a projector and pointed with a laser to a satellite photo of a house in southern Gaza. He was calm as he went over the mission: to arrive by sea, reach the house, and arrest the Terrorist responsible for the Eilat bakery bombing that had killed three Israelis in January. It had taken Intelligence three months to find him. Now it was our turn.

We sprinted to the equipment room, where we each had our own mesh cage with the gear we needed for any given mission. I laid my vest on the large wooden table that took up most of the middle of the room, then got my seven empty magazines and loaded each with twenty-nine 5.56-millimeter bullets.

“So who’s it gonna be?” Goldberg asked as he blew grains of sand out of his M-16 with the air pressure machine.

We smiled. As soon as the mission had come down, each of us had come up with what our headline would be the next morning. It was called, “The Headlines Game.” And whoever had the best headline was the one who’d be killed that night.

Yair checked his flashlight. His heart was as tender and good as his body was massive and strong. We called him The Gentle Giant or Fezzik, after Andre the Giant’s character in The Princess Bride.

“I booked a cabin up north for Meital and me this weekend,” Yair said. “‘Meant to Surprise Wife with Romantic Weekend, Instead Surprised Her with Funeral.’”

Benny cackled. “Points off for butchering the headline.”

“I’m not a journalist,” Yair said, “let them come up with the catchy wording. I’m just providing the story.”

“Uh-uh, here’s the winner,” Avishai said as he changed the batteries of his night vision goggles. “My parents are in London and the airport is on strike. ‘Son Dies, Parents Can’t Get Back for Funeral.’”

“Okay,” I said. “There’s potential there.” I glanced at Goldberg, knowing he had a shot at being that night’s winner.

“Potential, but not a winner.” Goldberg stopped packing his vest and looked at us. “I bought Rona a ring.”

The guys hooted and slapped Goldberg on the back.

“‘Soldier Dies Day Before Proposing.’” A low whistle. Goldberg took a bow. We nodded our heads as we imagined the headline in big red letters against a black background. The newspapers would probably print Rona’s picture under it.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, congratulations Goldberg, but save your bows,” Benny said with a grin. “It’s me this time.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“Tomorrow’s my dad’s memorial. Check it out:” he raised both hands for effect. “‘Mother Meant to Attend Husband’s Memorial, Goes to Son’s Funeral Instead.’”

The room erupted. Benny had come up with the game and we could always count on him for a good headline, but that was the best any of us had heard, with just the right combination of poetry and tragedy.

Benny raised his arms in the air and sauntered around the room. “Are you not entertained?” he yelled in his best Russell Crowe impression. Avishai smacked his ass and Benny put his fists to his face, bobbing and weaving, mock boxing. Benny went back to his gear and shook his head, the small smile on his face disappearing as he fastened his knife to his vest.

With time to burn before the mission, we had an early dinner and then hung out in the rec room and waited for the green light. The mood was relaxed, as it tended to be before routine missions. Yair napped, Avishai played Snake on his Nokia, I read, and Goldberg, sitting next me, listened to music. The CD case beside him was Blood Sugar Sex Magic by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I was the only one who knew that the CD he actually kept inside that case was Avril Lavigne’s debut album. Goldberg’s taste in music was usually similar to mine. The Chili Peppers and Pearl Jam were our favorite bands. We had gone together to see Aerosmith play at HaYarkon Park when we were eleven. But Goldberg’s guilty pleasures were Britney Spears and Avril.

Ethan came in and told us the mission was a go. We grabbed our gear and jogged to the beach, then down the 30-meter dock that protruded from the shore. The dock was made of cement and was wide enough for John Deere tractors to pull our Morena boats to the end of the dock.

The Morena was Shayetet’s American-made, eleven-meter Naval Special Warfare raiding boat. Its V-shaped bottom was made of Kevlar and fiberglass. In the front of the boat were five seats for the boat operators; in the back were six more for passengers. Its sides were encompassed by a hard, inflatable rubber tube so it could safely bump and attach to other surfaces like ships and docks. Fast and silent, it could reach within twenty-five meters of shore after sailing hundreds of kilometers. Perfect for covert operations in enemy waters.

The tractor detached the Morena at the end of the dock next to a massive crane. Goldberg and I grabbed the crane’s four thick yellow straps and attached them to each of the Morena’s corners, then got off and stood to the side as the crane lifted the boat.

“Have you decided how you’re gonna propose?” I asked.

“What do you think about skydiving?”

“You think if Rona believes she’s about to die it’ll make her say yes?”

“I just want it to be special.”

“The minute you ask, it will be,” I said. I meant it. I was happy for them both, even though I didn’t understand the rush. We were so young. I had told him as much when he had revealed his plan to buy her a ring a couple of months before when we celebrated his birthday.

“We don’t have to get married tomorrow or next year or even five years from now,” he had replied. “I just want the world to know that she’s mine. And I’m hers.”

I imagined it had something to do with Rona completing her service. She had served on base with us and had been discharged a month and a half before. He would never admit it, but I thought Goldberg was worried about Rona starting Tel Aviv University and having a world so different from ours open up to her.

Either way, they were my best friends; Goldberg since we were nine years old, and Rona since I met her on base four and a half years before. I had always assumed they would get married, I just hadn’t expected Goldberg to buy a ring so soon.

The crane swung the Morena toward the sea and lowered it. The boat stopped when it was level with the dock and Goldberg, Yair, Avishai, and I got on. We were wearing black onesies that zipped up from the front and black mesh shoes that were good for both swimming in the sea and hiking long distances on land. We had on our black vests that had inflatable linings to help us swim, and attached to it were diving fins, waterproof flashlights, knives, and a pen-like fireworks gun that could pop off a powerful red light into the sky if we ever needed to disclose our position. Whatever wasn’t waterproof, mainly our M-16s and ammunition, we kept in a sleek...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 1.10.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• Schlagworte: coming of age books • Fiction war books • israel palestine • jewish fiction novels • Modern historical fiction • Special Forces war stories
• ISBN-13: 979-8-9919191-3-5 / 9798991919135