Deep Sleep (Devin Gray #1)
Steven Konkoly
PROLOGUE
Maya Klein picked up the pace as she passed another tight pack of shirtless university-age boys on the beachside promenade. Men, really. Short-haired, lean, and muscular—carrying beach towels instead of Tavor combat rifles for the first time in months. Recent basic training graduates on leave. A prominent fixture on the beaches just north of Haifa, near her family’s home.
She’d been fascinated by them for as long as she could remember, especially the fierce-looking young women, who projected invincibility and pride as they roamed the promenade. She’d followed them around as a child, watching in awe as they rebuffed one group of men after another before staking their claim at a beachside café or stretch of sand and defending it from those persistent invaders.
Maya would join their ranks soon enough. She would ship off in a few weeks for a base in the Negev Desert to start tironut, the Israeli Defense Forces’ basic training course. Four months from now, as a newly minted IDF combat soldier on leave, she’d walk this same promenade with her squad mates before reporting for duty with the Bardelas Battalion stationed along the Egypt-Israeli border.
Her daily runs along the promenade and through the sand were part of her preparation to meet the challenges of basic training. When she finished the hour-long run, she’d cool off in the Mediterranean before heading home and executing a forty-five-minute calisthenics routine. After lunch, she might head to the gym to lift some weights. She was determined to show up in the best shape of any of the recruits, including the men.
She had nearly reached the end of the beachside promenade, where she would slog the rest of the way through the ankle-deep sand just above the high-tide line, when the city’s air-raid sirens began to wail. Like everyone on the promenade and beach, her first instinct was to stop and scan the hazy blue sky to the northwest, above the midrise apartment buildings that dominated the horizon. Toward Lebanon, where most of the rockets originated. After a few seconds of staring at the sky, everyone sought hard cover, which was less than plentiful on the beach.
Maya hopped the staggered and mostly uneven rock wall that lined the Mediterranean side of the promenade and lay flat against the hot sand behind the one-and-a-half-foot-high barrier. As long as she kept her head down, the rock should protect against any shrapnel—unless the incoming rocket landed in the thin strip of beach directly behind her. Or it struck the promenade in front of her. Nothing she could do about that, but the odds were slim in either of those cases. In fact, the odds were slim that any of the rockets would hit a populated area.
Israel’s Iron Dome air-defense missile system consistently intercepted close to ninety percent of the rockets fired at populated areas in Israel. The few that had gotten through had fortunately caused minimal damage or casualties. Most people still took the sirens seriously, but the overall drop in anxiety was palpable. Taking cover if you got caught out in the open was treated more like a temporary inconvenience than a matter of life or death.
She’d lived the first half of her life in fear of Hezbollah and Hamas rocket attacks. The deployment of an Iron Dome battery on the outskirts of Haifa in 2013 had been life changing for everyone. She peeked over the rock, surprised to see the sky filled with white contrails. Far more than she’d ever seen before. Thirty to forty already in a slow arc, high above the horizon, and more joining them every second—rising skyward from the launchers west of the city. A few moments later, the outgoing barrage ended. Based on the number of contrails, Maya guessed that the battery had fired all its missiles at the incoming threat. An unprecedented event, which didn’t bode well for the city of Haifa and its surrounding suburbs.
She lowered her head and thought about her parents and sister several blocks away. They’d all be in her room right now, waiting for the sirens to stop wailing. Maya’s bedroom had been designed as the apartment’s safe room, featuring reinforced walls and a blast-proof window. Her family would be safe from shrapnel or nearby blast effects, but a direct hit to the building would likely kill or injure all of them. Slim odds, she told herself.
When the usual cacophony of distant, sharp aerial detonations didn’t materialize, she started to worry. Something wasn’t right. The interceptors would have reached their targets, and the sound of the explosions destroying the enemy rockets would have traveled back to the beach by now. She lifted her head a few inches above the rock to check the sky, catching a distant glimpse of an explosion toward the harbor. Something had gone very wrong with the Iron Dome system. There was no other explanation.
The beach shuddered, a searing flash and earsplitting crunch hitting Maya almost instantly. She pressed her body flat against the sand next to the rock wall, as fragments of glass and steel ripped overhead, peppering the sand behind her and splashing the water. She stayed put after the last concussive boom washed over the promenade, remembering the primary purpose for the deployment of an Iron Dome battery to Haifa: to protect the critical oil refineries and prevent a devastating secondary explosion that could vaporize much of the city.
After a few excruciating minutes listening to the screams and cries up and down the promenade, she got up to help with the wounded. Maya didn’t get very far before coming across a young female soldier tying a tourniquet. Maya knelt next to the unresponsive man’s chest and checked his breathing. She didn’t need to confirm a heartbeat. A thick stream of bright-red blood pumped rhythmically from the mangled stump just below his knee.