Ishmael Covenant

by Terry Brennan

  “This building here, the one you called a fortress, contained the offices of the meatpacking company and some of the work areas. These buildings on the other side of the alley were also part of the complex. They look like larger warehouses from where the meat was shipped. That compound also has walls around it, topped with barbed wire.”

  Hernandez picked up the photo. “And I bet you’re going to tell us we don’t know which building she might be in, right? We just upped the difficulty meter.”

  “Precisely,” nodded Levinson. “We have to hit each one of the compounds at the same time and penetrate each one of the structures as quickly and quietly as possible. I can’t be certain she’s there. But I can be certain of one thing. If she is there, and we’re not swift and we’re not silent, Mrs. Parker won’t be alive when we reach her.”

  Mullaney thought Levinson’s plan was a good one. But he didn’t like their odds.

  They would enter the alley from the far end, near Ha-Banai Street—four squads, twenty men, in two innocuous commercial vehicles: a small truck bearing the name of a corrugated box manufacturer and an electrician’s van. Two of the DSS agents would be imbedded into each of the squads. The small truck, with two squads, would stop about two-thirds of the way down the alley, pulling behind a tractor trailer on the left that was parked against the wall of the warehouse complex. The electrician’s van would enter the alley fifteen minutes after the truck and continue to near the end of the alley, pulling into a deep parking area for the building complex on the right that included the offices … the one that looked like a prison.

  Before the van entered the alley, the two squads in the small truck would slip out of a sliding side door against the wall. They would use the fender and hood of the truck, blocked from view by the tractor trailer, to scale the wall of a complex that was adjacent to and behind the targeted meat warehouse. The two complexes were separated by only a cyclone fence. On their side, stacks of wooden pallets were up against the fence every few feet. Using the pallets as cover, they would cut the cyclone fence, then wait for the go signal. From their position they could fan out quickly. There were two single-story warehouse buildings, a huge, long one against the alley wall and a smaller, square one to the left. Six of the agents would break into pairs and find or make a way through the three doors in the side of the building. The four other agents would enter the smaller building. Their mission was to penetrate each of the warehouse buildings within seconds. Depending on the opposition.

  Mullaney and Hernandez were with Levinson and seven others in the electrician’s van. All of them thought it most likely that Parker would be kept in the complex that resembled a prison. As soon as the van came to a halt in a parking area between the two main buildings in the meatpacking complex, the ten men would race out of doors in the side and back of the van.

  These two buildings would be more difficult. All the windows in both of the buildings were covered by thick bars. The smaller building, the offices, was two stories tall and surrounded by a ten-meter-high metal wall topped by razor wire. Along the alley side of the offices was a metal staircase that led to a fortified door on the second floor. The larger, single-story building to the right appeared to have no doors other than the loading dock door which was twenty-five meters away, down and locked. That would be their only way in.

  Four men would take the office building, scaling the metal wall, up the staircase, forcing open the barred door on the second floor. Mullaney and five others would run down the side of the larger building, snap the locks on the loading dock, and gain entry that way.

  They had no idea what they would find inside and no clue as to the number of armed kidnappers they would encounter.

  It was a complex, challenging operation in the best of circumstances, but highly unlikely of success when thrown together at the last minute. Half its personnel had never before worked together.

  As he continued to observe the urgent preparations inside Shin Bet headquarters, Mullaney tried but failed to conjure up a better plan. He had little hope and rising fear about this one. As the lieutenant and Hernandez were briefing the entire team, Levinson came alongside Mullaney and pulled him away from the table. Standing in a corridor outside the room, Mullaney could see that Levinson was struggling with something. What now?

  “Brian … listen …” Levinson kept his voice low, confidential. “Once you called us in, we devoted a ton of resources to the task of finding Mrs. Parker—Shin Bet, Mossad, IDF security. We were looking everywhere and at everybody. Mossad religiously monitors all communications in Israel—into, out of, and internally. Every type of communication. We listen to it all, and we record it all. We added some keywords to these sweeps—Mrs. Parker and Palmyra Parker. We had a high number of hits, almost all of them innocent, surrounding her work to prepare the residence. But when we heard that Mrs. Parker said her abductors were speaking Turkish, we altered the scope of our search. Don’t ask me how, but we intercepted these.”

  Levinson pulled a folded piece of paper from the breast pocket of his shirt and handed it to Mullaney. “These are excerpts of three wireless telephone conversations—the first between Turkey and the United States and the other two between Turkey and Israel. Each of these conversations occurred not long before Mrs. Parker went missing. Reaching out this far, our technology is limited and subject to outside forces, so whatever we intercept is generally incomplete and sketchy.”

  Facing Mullaney were snippets of three conversations. It was like looking at a verbal jigsaw puzzle, with many missing pieces on each line. But what had been captured reached out and grabbed Mullaney by the throat. All three conversations mentioned Palmyra Parker by name. And the second and third also made mention of a package.

  Mullaney pulled his attention away from the words and looked at the time stamps on the conversations. The second one took place only seconds after the first one concluded. Calls to and from Turkey in the last ten hours that mentioned Palmyra Parker? This was no coincidence.

  “Brian …” Levinson came alongside Mullaney, to his left, and pointed to the piece of paper with the first message. “Look at the originating signal.”

  Mullaney lifted his eyes to the top of the page. Above the disjointed, incomplete sentences were identification codes for the originator and receiver of the calls. He dismissed the codes of the calls from Turkey, which looked like a disposable, untraceable mobile. But he couldn’t take his eyes off the code identifying the calling device from the US. The code was a signature address, like the signatures that computers receive when they are linked into a network. Each device has a unique signature. But similar devices, devices used by the same company or on the same network, have similar signatures. It was one way of identifying and locating the device.

  He lifted his eyes from the sheet of paper and looked at his long-time friend, Meyer Levinson. He didn’t want to believe what he was seeing. But Meyer’s eyes told him it was true.

  “This is the signature address for the State Department.” The words almost stuck in Mullaney’s throat. “This address is for one of the encrypted satellite phones we use at State. I know. I had one back in DC.” Mullaney looked down at the sheet again, hoping to rebut the information, find a weakness in the evidence.

  “I’m sorry, Brian. That doesn’t look good,” said Levinson. “But we can’t solve that problem now. We have a tough enough job staring us in the face. So I have to ask … who knows about this op?”

  Mullaney knew what Levinson was asking. He didn’t understand a lot about what was on the sheet of paper in his hand. Figuring that out would have to wait. But he knew a lot about the DSS agents on his team in Israel. He had reviewed their files and talked to their peers extensively before he left Washington. This was a solid group of professionals with no obvious allegiances elsewhere. All of them had been vouched for by people he trusted.

  “As far as I know, only my team of agents even knows we’re here,” said Mullaney, stuffing the folded paper into the back pocket of his pant
s. “But that’s no guarantee. So watch your back. Let’s go.”

  “Right,” said Levinson. But he didn’t turn to go back into the meeting room. Instead, he put a hand on Mullaney’s shoulder. “And Brian, when this is over, you need to tell me about the box.”

  Mullaney’s eyes opened wide and he was about to claim ignorance. Instead he smiled. Mossad was monitoring all conversations. Even his. “Okay, Meyer. I owe you that one. If … when … we come home from this, I’ll tell you everything I know about the box. You won’t believe that either.”

  28

  Holon Industrial District, Tel Aviv

  July 20, 4:13 a.m.

  Halfway down the alley, the driver cut the lights of the electrician’s van. There was enough light pollution from the surrounding area that the alley, though bordered by buildings on each side, enjoyed a sliver of dusk down the center of its length, heavy blackness on each side.

  Seated in the back with the other members of the strike force, Mullaney couldn’t tell if the small truck that entered the alley fifteen minutes earlier was in the right position or if the other two squads had made it over the wall and were waiting for the go order. But there was no communication on the radio and, thankfully, no gunfire, as they rolled down the alley. That was a good sign.

  Outfitted with black Kevlar body armor, a black helmet with night-vision amplified goggles, and a Shin Bet windbreaker emblazoned on each side with Hebrew letters, Mullaney refocused his mind on his job. Out the door with Levinson, double-time along the side of the building to the loading dock, and then silently force open the gate that closed over the dock.

  The last drone pass didn’t show any sentries on this side of the building. On the pictures, there were two up front—complicating the assignment of the other squad, which was to climb the staircase and gain access to the offices through the second-floor door.

  The driver nursed the electrician’s van, its engine idling quietly as it rolled along in neutral gear, into the open parking area between the two buildings on the right near the end of the alley.

  Showtime. Mullaney’s palms itched. A trickle of perspiration rolled down his neck under his collar. It felt like someone had taken his stomach out for a walk. Always like this before a mission, even when there wasn’t a potential leak in his team. Mullaney pulled in a deep breath.

  The back door swung open.

  “Go,” Levinson whispered into his radio, the entire team getting the same message. And Mullaney jumped into the dark.

  Following close behind Levinson, Mullaney sprinted along the side of the building toward the loading dock, his Heckler & Koch MP5 held closely to his chest—safety off, finger off the trigger. All DSS agents were trained like that. He wondered about the …

  Levinson dropped to a knee, Mullaney almost running up his back. He skidded to a halt, his left shoulder scraping against the masonry wall. He could hear the heavy breathing of Tommy Hernandez behind him.

  The sliding door that covered the width of the loading dock was secured by two huge padlocks halfway down each side and a third massive padlock connecting the bottom of the door, at its center, to a metal cleat cemented into the ground. Levinson reached his right arm out to the side and motioned forward. A Shin Bet officer came alongside and handed something to Levinson then hustled along the length of the door. Levinson wrapped something around the shackle of the padlock in front of him, the soldier doing the same thing to the lock in the middle of the door and then the one on the far end. The soldier took a knee, pulled something out of his pocket about the size of a cigarette lighter and squeezed it in the middle.

  A light sizzle floated on the night air, a faint odor of burning metal. Levinson caught the body of the lock as it fell away from the shackle, the soldier doing the same thing on the other side. Carefully, both of them removed the remnants of the shackle from the door and its frame. The soldier came to the middle of the door, removed the pieces of the middle lock and looked in Levinson’s direction. With a hand signal, both pushed upward on the door at the same time, which swung up several feet on well-oiled hinges. No sound. It took only seconds.

  Levinson pressed against the corner of the loading dock and the soldier flattened against the pavement, each scanning the interior. The night remained quiet, but the radio crackled … and Mullaney’s hopes plummeted.

  “Beta team … no guards in the warehouse compound.”

  Levinson shook his head and glanced back at Mullaney. He held up his right hand, a steadying gesture, and led his party inside the larger building, the temperature dropping significantly as soon as they scuttled low through the loading dock. A corridor as wide as the loading dock itself, ran straight ahead and split the space in two—walls barely discernible to the left and right.

  Mullaney flipped on his night-vision gear.

  The metal walls on either side of the corridor looked like they were insulated, massive, walk-in refrigerators or freezers. Each of them had double-wide doors in the middle, ten feet across, and a single, smaller entry door at the near corner. There was no light. There was no sound. Only cold. And dark.

  Levinson was in a crouch against the wall at the end of the loading dock. He reached behind him, pointed at the lieutenant, raised two fingers, then pointed down the corridor—two-man teams at the entry doors and on either side of the double-wide doors on both sides of the corridor. He pointed at Mullaney and himself and pointed to the entry door on the right. A slight wave of his fingers and the six pairs, crouching close to the floor, moved in silent harmony, surrounding the doors.

  There was no visible lock on the small entry door. Levinson edged back to cover as Mullaney reached for the door’s handle.

  “Alpha team … offices are clear. No sentries.”

  Mullaney’s hand stopped in midair, despair hanging heavy on every muscle. We’re too late.

  Levinson gave him a nudge on the shoulder.

  The handle turned freely. The door was unlocked. Mullaney drew in a breath and eased it open.

  The room inside, colder than Moscow in January, was a black void. Mullaney scanned the room with his night vision, turning the thick darkness into a watery shimmer of green. The meat locker was huge, hundreds of large, metal hooks hanging from a winding course of rollers that twisted above the room. The room was empty. Except for one chair in the middle of the floor. Mullaney made one more scan with his night vision then looked alongside the door for a light switch.

  “This side is clear.” It was Hernandez’s voice.

  “Clear,” Mullaney replied, but blackness enveloped his voice as the cold squeezed out all hope. He stood and looked back at Levinson. Both raised their night vision gear and Mullaney flipped on the light switch.

  A lone metal chair sat in the middle of the room. As he walked toward it, Mullaney saw the one thing he feared more than finding Palmyra Parker’s body.

  Clumps of black hair, covered in blood, on the floor surrounding the chair.

  Useless!

  Seated on the edge of the loading dock, his head hanging between his shoulders, Mullaney was being assaulted by every lie from his past that—for so many years—he had accepted as true. Some lies others had hurled at him. Some lies he had hurled at himself.

  It’s all your fault.

  You’re just not good enough.

  What’s wrong with you?

  Can’t you do anything right?

  Ahhh, you’re useless!

  He was rescued from most of those lies by his diligence, meticulousness, and determination. And by his faith. But lately, his failures had been piling up. Doubt was becoming his daily companion. Maybe he wasn’t …

  He felt the arm wrap itself around his shoulders—figured it was Hernandez trying to cheer him up—as the voice spoke in his ear.

  “You will find her. She is the guardian. She will be safe.”

  He looked to his left. No one was there.

  Tommy Hernandez sat down on Mullaney’s right side at the end of the loading dock.

  Mu
llaney looked at Hernandez then turned his head back to the left. There still wasn’t anyone there.

  “Didn’t you just … weren’t you …”

  “What?” asked Hernandez, looking at Mullaney as if he had two heads. He reached out and put a hand on his friend’s arm. “We’ll find her. She’ll be okay.”

  If only that was true, Mullaney thought. They might find her, but Palmyra Parker would likely be far from okay. The question he didn’t want to ask himself: Was she alive? He looked out through the loading dock to the alley outside. Colonel Levinson was on his mobile phone. The word would be getting out.

  “Brian,” said Hernandez, “if she was dead, they would have left her body.”

  “Somebody needs to call Atticus.”

  Mullaney realized he was speaking out loud.

  Tommy was reaching for his phone.

  “No … I’ll do it.” Mullaney was searching through his pockets for his phone when he heard Levinson call out.

  “Brian!” Then he clicked his mic. “Right, boys … load up, on the double … we think we’ve spotted them.”

  Hours on the treadmill paid off. Mullaney, running at a full gallop, was only one stride behind Levinson as the team piled into the back of the electrician’s van. Levinson grabbed hold of Mullaney’s Kevlar vest and pulled him down next to him on the bench that ran the length of the van. “Reconnaissance picked up a four-vehicle convoy of black SUVs speeding south on Route Four, between Ashdod and Ashkelon, about ten minutes ago,” Levinson yelled as the driver started up the engine and catapulted out of the alley and into Halahav Street.

  Mullaney grabbed a strut to keep from being tossed across the inside of the van. “How can you be sure?”