The Nylon Hand of God

by Steven Hartov

  “It’s just a van,” Eckstein whispered.

  “Or a jeep,” Benni cautioned.

  The vehicle came on more quickly now, then all at once its lights extinguished, the engine gunned as if struggling over an obstacle, and a strange jumble of piping was racing up the shallow grade. It stopped halfway up the slope as Eytan and Benni rose to their feet, mouths agape.

  Sadeen was beaming as the pair approached him. They walked around the Autobecane moped and stared. Across the handlebars, a length of steel pipe had been slipped through plumber’s T’s, which were welded to the bike. In turn, a pair of large headlights had been clamped to the pipe ends, their wires leading to a chain-saw battery strapped to the fuel tank. At the right rear of the moped, the exhaust pipe was covered by an empty olive oil can, drilled with a pattern of small holes and girdled by a heavy link chain.

  Horse came walking up the grade. He had dismounted on the road and was carrying a large camel-hide suitcase. And he was smiling.

  “I think it will work,” he said as he approached. “Perhaps as close as two hundred meters range. At that point he will stop. Klump will have to show herself.”

  Benni rubbed his jaw, and even though he shook his head, he said, “It might.”

  “And how are you going to jump this sculpture?” Eckstein asked warily.

  Sadeen raised his palms proudly. “The whole thing comes apart. We will seal it up in a camel rug, and I will go out with it. Like a stripped-down fifty-caliber.” He dismounted the contraption and lifted it easily. “It weighs about the same.”

  Eckstein had himself jumped with MAGs and 52 mm mortars, but never a fifty, and certainly not HAHO. “Let’s see what Didi says.”

  They helped Sadeen roll the moped down into the wadi, whereupon a raucous discussion ensued as to its viability. However, Baum and Eckstein attested to the effectiveness of the ruse, at least as a time buyer, and Sadeen ended the argument by calling for a better suggestion.

  “Hijack,” Schneller insisted.

  “That will also be my preference,” Sadeen agreed. “But if no real vehicle appears, we will have this option.”

  Nimrodi, the master of loadmasters, had the final word.

  “Didi will give you the largest canopy,” he said to Sadeen. “We will drop you first, but the rest will not form up on you. And if that thing gives you any trouble, you will cut it away, my friend.”

  The engineer grinned and bowed to the colonel.

  O’Donovan let out a low whistle. He was watching Horse, who had gently laid his suitcase on the packing mat and opened it. The men gathered around and murmured their approval.

  His model of Martina’s camp could have been constructed by an architect. It was nothing like the quickly assembled sand tables usually presented by field intelligence officers. The slopes, contours, and dunes of the target were rendered in hard brown plaster, the mounds of the submerged trailers topped with cardboard conical vents. Where every bush and cactus appeared in the aerial shots, they were mimicked by parsley sprigs, and every significant rock was a glued-down pebble. A jet aircraft had been carved from cheese, then covered by a net of dyed cheesecloth. Another such net obscured a hole past the northeast boundary of the camp. The access road was a strip of pasted salt.

  “Bloody fucking excellent,” Didi whispered as he went back to work. Most of his rigging had been accomplished, but there were two chutes left for repacking.

  “Well, we’re all here,” said Eckstein. “Let’s work on it now.” He helped Horse move the model off the packing mat and onto the flat sand. Though the men were tired, they did not complain, for aided by the appearance of familiar tools, they had begun the self-deception necessary to undertake the venture. They gathered around the model and sat in a semicircle.

  Eytan looked for Benni, then spotted his partner sitting by himself on a large slab of granite. The moon had breached the peaks of the Atlases, and it bathed Baum in a gray shroud as he looked up at it, his fingers playing a slow minuet on his knees.

  “It is time for confessions, gentlemen,” Benni said.

  The men fell silent, turning their heads to the colonel, wondering what he had in mind.

  “Okay.” O’Donovan tried to break the spell. “I took a buck from the church basket when I was seven.”

  No one laughed.

  “I have never made a free-fall jump in my life,” said Benni.

  The men stared at their commander in shocked silence.

  “Encore?” Nabbe whispered.

  Benni turned on his rock. He was looking down at his feet like a schoolboy. Had the light been more generous, his blush would have shown.

  “Tel Nof, yes,” said Benni, meaning the standard military jump course at the airborne school. “And the occasional refresher, of course. I did the father and son thing two years ago.” If your son was a paratrooper and your legs were still good, it was a family tradition. “But free fall?” He looked up and tried to work a smile. “No, my friends. Never.”

  The men watched, realizing from Benni’s expression that he was not revealing fear. On this operation he would probably agree to jump with an umbrella. His confession was that of a slow runner, the worry that he would hold the team back, be unable to keep up. He might fail to deploy and thereby diminish their numbers, or wander off into the sky while they went on to try to rescue his daughter. Without him.

  Didi and Amir rose from their labors and walked quietly to the edge of the circle. The men looked up at them, while the pair glanced at each other and then focused on Baum. He had purposefully concealed a truth they should have known. They were not angry, for they understood, and the plea in Baum’s eyes was too much to bear.

  “No worries,” said Didi. “Me and Lapkin will take you out, AFF style.” Accelerated free fall was a technique used to quickly advance novice skydivers, but it usually entailed hours of instruction. “We’ll pull the rip cord for you, and you’ll just follow the group.”

  That was it. Decision made. Problem solved. The two riggers returned to their work, although, excluding Horse, every man there was remembering his first free falls. They had not been made at night, nor with combat gear, and certainly not at the head of a deep-penetration raid.

  Jerry Binder had come down off his rock and was squatting at the edge of the circle. In his heavy New Yorkese, he began to sing his macabre version of a Bob Seger tune.

  Like a rock, fallin’ from the sky,

  Like a rock, I ain’t gonna cry,

  Like a rock, no better way to die,

  Like a rock . . .

  Chapter 22: The North Atlantic

  Dr. Ali-Hamza Asawi should have been the happiest man in Tehran.

  For five long years he had dedicated all of his intelligence efforts to the success of Project Mahdi, whose commission by a small inner circle of the Revolutionary Council had laid him naked under their scrutiny and whose outcome would determine his future in all aspects. Five mind-straining years, not to mention the germinal phase, for before verbalizing his concept to a single soul, he had spent six months thinking, planning, studying the tactical intelligence histories of Western powers, devising and discarding plots, distilling fantasy from probability.

  And then, when his confidence outweighed his doubts, he had presented the essence of Mahdi to Larijani, the Presidential Adviser on Intelligence Affairs. And finally he had been honored to lay the plan before Rafsanjani himself, holding his breath until the presidential nod tipped the scales. Apparently, Asawi’s fussing over a proper code name for the project had been wise, for “The Rightly Guided One” appealed to the president’s belief that nuclear power was somehow divine.

  Then the work had begun, each step in the process carefully masked by open diplomatic and trade efforts. While thinly covered consular officials were inquiring about technical components on the open market,SAVAMA agents were photographing Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces in the crumbling republics. While the foreign minister signed nonproliferation pacts in Paris, Asawi’s men were b
ribing hungry Kazakh officers in Alma-Ata. While the arms of Hizbollah were being twisted into unnatural postures, and a German terrorist was being primed for a deceptive drama, the bunkers of Isfahan were being readied to receive a smuggled prize from the forests of Semipalatinsk.

  So at last, here he was, less than a day away from the glory of Mahdi’s birth.

  He should have been having his Dior double-breasted pressed and his Bally loafers polished, alerting his staff that he would soon be taking a well-deserved holiday. He should have been preparing his home to receive government well-wishers and gifts of accolade, as he joyously anticipated his status as the honored guest at a presidential reception. He should have been the most envied intelligence officer in the Persian capital.

  Except that he was nowhere near Iran.

  The iron rail of the three-hundred-foot trawler seemed as cold as a block of dry ice, yet Asawi welcomed the chill against his sweating palms, a surviving shred of dignity the only thing keeping him from pressing his forehead against the metal as well. He could no longer stay in the ship’s small infirmary, and there was no point to it, at any rate. How could you find relief when, lying on a tattered bunk, you had to brace every limb against the bulkheads to keep from being pitched to the floor? So he had staggered out onto the work deck to inhale deep drafts of brittle Atlantic air. The crumbs of salt crackers that failed to settle his stomach were glued to his gums, and he watched the empty fishnets swinging over holds still reeking of tuna oil. The tattered red and white stripes and single star of the Liberian flag whipped from a guy wire, as if that African slum still hoped to become a state of the Great Satan, and the masthead drew crazy figure eights in the purple sky.

  Asawi was stunned again to see the green wave crests arch impossibly high, and he understood how novice sailors sometimes hurled themselves into the sea, for anything seemed better than remaining on this pitching platform. The strings of drool began to gather at the back of his throat, and he was able to suppress the inevitable only because a Hizbollah guard, wearing a black slicker and a Kalashnikov, turned from his position at the bow and smiled arrogantly at him.

  Asawi pressed his shivering lips together and managed to turn them up. The guard faced forward again, and Asawi tried to focus on the man’s figure being drenched in spray. Yet this was unlike a road vehicle, where you could mitigate motion sickness by focusing into a middle distance. Here the foaming panorama flung itself across the bow every which way. He closed his eyes, yet that only made it worse, like lying in a darkened bedroom with a raging hangover.

  A drink. What he would have given for a Dewar’s on the rocks. But that was hardly a possibility aboard this rattling can stuffed with unwashed religious fanatics. Perhaps he should have been grateful, for at least he had not suffered a full two weeks aboard as the trawler waddled from the Gulf of Oman, through the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean, around the Horn of Africa, back up through the South Atlantic and finally to the winter waters off the West African coast, where it steamed in circles now, waiting for a single-burst transmission relayed through Beirut. The men of Hizbollah were hard, primitive, their company a wretched bore, as their conversation rarely varied from Koranic platitudes. But they were not foolish.

  As Mahdi progressed, the Israeli prisoner had been moved from the Bekaa Valley to a secret location in Iran near Bandar’ Abbas. He had been loaded aboard ship, then secretly deposited in Somalia, hidden inside a modified tractor crate, and flown to Gambia, while the boat continued to make its way. If the Israelis intended to renege on their agreement, they would most likely attempt a raid on the high seas, where their commandos would find themselves assaulting a prizeless vessel. Yet the proof of their sincerity was in the ship’s undisturbed cruise, and Dan Sarel was picked up again in Banjul.

  Asawi had neither expected nor wanted to witness these transactions. He had always thought to receive progress reports via encoded transmission, while he sipped champagne and snatched a flimsy from a motorcycle messenger. Yet apparently Sheik Tafilli, the Hizbollah negotiator, had grown tired of walking a lonely point out there in the face of his hated Israelis. Tafilli had convinced his own commander, Sa’id Abbas Mussawi, that their Iranian paymasters could be trusted only if one of them, preferably of considerable rank, came along for the ride.

  And so Asawi had received the ghastly news from Larijani himself. He was to leave Tehran immediately and be flown to Cape Verde, a small pile of typhoid-riddled islands off Senegal. He had packed only his dress clothes, assuming that at the very least his accommodations aboard ship would be fitting. But when the Liberian trawler Wologisi, rust dripping from its scuppers and its stench preceding its arrival, butted up against the docks in Praia, he realized that he was overdressed for the occasion.

  “Kîf hâlak yâ sîdi?”

  Asawi barely heard the voice inquiring after his welfare, for the roar of the sea seemed to be coming from inside his head. Yet he managed to turn, heard the bang of knuckles on hollow steel, and looked up.

  Sheik Tafilli was bending over the rail of the Wologisi’s bridge. In port he had discreetly worn a British pea coat, watch cap, and fisherman’s boots. Now he had switched to an Egyptian commando tunic, a black-and-white kaffiyeh wrapped tightly around his face. His black beard dripped sea spray, his teeth flashed as a web of lightning stabbed the horizon, and Asawi had the distinct sensation of watching one of those jingoistic American Chuck Norris films on cable television.

  “Ilham’ dilla,” Asawi managed, though he felt no gratitude to God for anything at the moment.

  “You have a radio message,” Tafilli called. Unbelievably, he lifted a green apple to his lips and took a large bite.

  “What did it say?”

  “Red Tide.”

  Asawi nodded, then turned away and gripped the railing again, watching the near sea as it formed another wave that would have unnerved an Australian surfer. Red Tide. That was it, then. The Israelis had transferred the equipment. Now the Jews would steam full ahead toward the rendezvous point, no doubt beneath an air umbrella and accompanied by a small armada, for that was their foolish wont, to focus exorbitant power on the recovery of a single soldier. Despite their reputation, they had limited resources, and thanks to the Syrians they were constantly on guard along their northeastern borders. So any major foreign operation drew off remaining intelligence and reconnaissance power.

  The final stage of Mahdi had arrived, and he had always dreamed of issuing the order from the subterranean control rooms of the Defense Ministry, surrounded by envious generals of the Revolutionary Guard. Yet here he was, the joy sucked out of him by the twisting voyage aboard this stinking scow, and instead of being filled with pride, he was brimming with nausea. He turned back and looked up at Tafilli.

  “Send them Sunlight,” he called.

  The sheik cocked his head, then pulled the apple away from his mouth. “You do not wish to come up and send it yourself, Doctor?”

  Asawi thought for a moment. Yes, that would be proper, and the SAVAMA recipients might ask for his call sign as confirmation. But he was very afraid that if he stepped into the stuffy wheelhouse he might lose control of his stomach, and he could imagine nothing worse than having that image passed down through the ranks of Hizbollah like some tribal legend.

  “It is all right.” He waved weakly to Tafilli. “Just send it, please.”

  “Mitl mâ bitrîd.” Tafilli shrugged and disappeared.

  Sunlight. Asawi hoped that there was none of that now in the mountains near Alma-Ata, that the peaks of Kazakhstan would be smothered in cloud and the roads hidden from prying satellites. A chicken truck containing the detached forty-kiloton nuclear warhead of a Soviet Scud-B would begin to race astride the Kazakh border, toward the point where Russia and Iran linked at the shores of the Caspian Sea. Sometime between midnight and dawn, it would encounter the well-paid renegades of the Kazakh engineering corps, who would guide it from a darkened beachhead onto a pontoon bridge and into the hold of a former American LST.
The landing ship would pass quickly into Iranian waters, where it would be boarded by naval troops and hoist the green-white-and-red colors long before reaching Rasht.

  He looked down at his soaked blue suit, the fine wool stained with disgusting yellow gobs of his breakfast. Despite the cold, he left his rain slicker open, for there was not enough air in the entire Atlantic to cool his fever. But at least the boat would stop its spiraling now, steam for the Mediterranean, and perhaps find a calmer sea there. Yet if he was suffering here on the open deck, he wondered how the Israeli commando was surviving the final hours of his imprisonment below. . . .

  Captain Dan Sarel had not been given the slightest hint that his freedom was imminent. The naval commando had been moved so often during the uncountable years that he had ceased to wonder or ask. Asawi still marveled at the man’s reported intransigence, and like a research biologist in possession of a fascinating mutant, he was reluctant to let SAVAMA give him up, except that the reward was far greater than Hizbollah’s worthless Sheik Sa’id.

  The Israeli was only a husk of his former self, half dead and devoid of all emotions except defiance, SAVAMA had not been able to elicit a decent sentence from the man, so they had destroyed him instead. The physical tortures, which brought him to the brink of death, were followed by hospitalizations. His recovery periods were then followed by experimental assaults, weeks of exposure to sound effects, during which he was straitjacketed so he could not protect his ears. And then he was bathed in stretches of utter silence, until the process was resumed with the truncheons.

  “We will exchange you when you talk,” Sarel’s interrogators had promised him over and over. The commando remained unimpressed. Five years from the date of his capture, he was shown a glossy color folder. It was an appeal to the international community, printed by his wife and showing the six-year-old daughter he had known only as an infant. He spilled whatever tears he had left, and his captors waited optimistically as he murmured his first long soliloquy.