by D S Kane
He heard Ben-Levy’s scowl.
Avram took a deep breath to calm himself. “Stop acting like a teenager. We will find a way.” He terminated the call, smiling. It was the first time he'd ever hung up on Ben-Levy and it felt good.
He turned to his lieutenants. “Into the trucks. Follow mine.” He boarded the passenger side of the lead truck and gave the corporal in the driver’s seat directions.
Fifteen minutes later, the stolen trucks coasted to a nearly silent stop. The team Avram brought with him formed a double line and waited.
Avram scanned his wristwatch. They had eleven minutes remaining to terminate the sub’s crew. He used hand signals to move them down the road adjacent to the beach. He scanned the map as they neared their objective. Now he could barely discern voices in the distance. He called his men to a halt.
He mounted the dune and counted the targets around the distant campfire with infrared field glasses. Using hand signals, he gave silent orders to the IDF soldiers he commanded. They spread out along the flanks of their targets.
He reviewed his plan against his mental checklist. All was a go. Pressing the button on his ear bud, he whispered. “Snipers, ready. On my signal. No prisoners. Infantry, commence firing. Go, go, go.” By the time he finished his last word, the targets were all on the ground, most of them dead. Shimmel thought, one of them must be Aziz Tamil, the famed terrorist no one’s ever seen. But, which one? He ordered his second-in-command to photograph each dead face.
In several minutes the man returned, smiling. “Sir, we found him. The only one whose face was covered. And he’s still breathing.”
Avram considered whether this might prove useful to him tonight. “Let me see him, Moshe.”
The man’s head was covered in a ski mask with a hood atop it. He’d been shot in his shoulder, but the bullet had sheared his arm off. Shimmel saw no way to staunch the bleeding. The man would surely die soon. Shimmel removed the scarf and ski mask covering Tamil’s head. He said, “We know who you are. We know your password to acquire the submarines. Your team is dead. Every one of them. I intend to kill you. Before I do, you have one chance for a reprieve. Tell us everything you know and live your life in a prison cell. Make a choice now.”
The wounded man spit at Shimmel. “I am dead already You are a fool if you think I will listen to your lies.”
Shimmel nodded. “I understand. I’ll give you time to pray. Is that what you want?”
The terrorist shook his head. “I die a martyr. And I’ll go to heaven. You will go to hell. Get it over with.”
Shimmel nodded and chambered a round. He pointed the Beretta at Tamil’s left eye. “Last words?”
The terrorist screamed, “Death to all Jews!”
Shimmel shook his head and pulled the trigger. He ignored the coppery odor of the man’s death, mixing with the smell of his fear and the after-death smell of his feces as his muscles went limp.
He mouthed the words Tamil had said until he could mimic the terrorist’s voice. He smiled and placed the terrorist’s scarf in his pocket.
He noted the paunch and raised the dead man’s shirt. A pillow to make a thin man fatter. “Ah.” He removed a shoe and examined it. The heels made Tamil three inches taller. Tamil was full of surprises. But his tricks had made him similar in size to Shimmel. But no one had ever seen Tamil, so he could easily assume the man’s identity. He smiled as he walked away from the corpse.
Jon’s sight and hearing returned to normal, but he felt his shoulder going numb. Dizziness threatened to cause him to black out. He opened the buttons on his shirt and pulled the shredded bloodstained fabric off his wound. He examined the area. The bullet puncture was shallow and no longer bleeding much. But he knew he’d need a doctor before too long. He used his cell phone’s Internet connection to find a local surgeon, three miles away. He staggered toward downtown, planning to arrive at the doctor’s home office just after dawn. With enough money, nothing would be reported to Vlad’s police.
The surgeon took the equivalent of two thousand dollars for treating his wound and promised not to report it. Jon left the doctor’s office with dissolving stitches in his left shoulder and a bulky bandage underneath his shirt. There was another bandage wrapped around his right hand.
He needed a change of clothing but there was no way he could risk going back to his hotel. Where to go?
When this plan failed, another team had died. Now, he had no plan, but there was no plan which could fix his situation. He felt useless. Rage mounted within him as he paced downtown. He wondered if Houmaz had alerted the Russian mafiya about him. But, of course he had. And, given that, he knew he had to leave Vladivostok now. Before they searched for him. Where to go? London, maybe. And do what?
No, there had to be a way to uncover Houmaz’s next move. But exhausted, Jon couldn’t figure these things. He took a taxi to the airport, his mind reeling. He bought fresh clothing at a store in the terminal and sat to think. What should I do now?
The sunrise deepened as Major Shimmel rushed his preparations. Near the shoreline, the submarine’s new crew awaited, ready to load into the rafts, on his orders.
About a hundred yards out, the lead sub rose from the depths, water rolling off its sides.
“Time to go. Arabic only from here on out.” Shimmel donned Tamil’s scarf and a caftan he’d taken off another one of the dead. He made sure the scarf covered his mouth and nose.
He dropped into one of the rafts lined up on the beach. The others filled their rafts and pushed them into the cold Sea of Japan. Gray fog whooshed past them as they paddled.
As they reached the lead sub, its original Russian crew tossed ropes down to them. Before they closed the distance, a second sub broke the surface. Avram scanned the rafts, calling out in Arabic to send his crew to cover both subs. “Sayed, take rafts three and four to the other sub. Stay in the conning tower so we can use our satellite phones to coordinate the two submarines’ movements.”
“Sayed” was Moshe’s call-sign. It took Moshe a few seconds to reply. “Okay.”
Avram's team climbed onto the conning tower. He faced the sub’s Russian crew. “Who’s in charge?”
A bearded, dusky-skinned man climbed up the bridge. “I am. What’s your countersign?”
Shimmel smiled. “Strangelove.”
The other man nodded. “Come below. I am Tariq Houmaz.”
Avram watched Moshe’s team climb onto the other sub’s conning tower. He pointed down into the sub’s interior and Moshe nodded from about sixty yards away.
Avram made his way to the ready room. His immense size made it necessary for him to bend his neck to avoid the ceiling. “I am Aziz Tamil, captain of this vessel. We received your orders. We’re ready.”
The bomb maker nodded back. “We’ll take your rafts.”
As Shimmel pointed to one of his own crew, the scarf fell open, away from his face. He turned and replaced it, but the bomb maker had seen him. Too late. “Give him the rafts. Now.”
In seconds, Tariq Houmaz and the Russian crew were gone from the bridge and paddling toward the shoreline.
No longer Aziz Tamil, Major Shimmel removed his caftan and the scarf. He shook his head. Through the periscope, he watched the terrorist’s raft disappear, followed by the Russian crews of both subs. His second-in-command, Emil Schmidt, touched his sleeve. “Major, why didn’t we just kill him?”
Shimmel’s fists clenched at his missed opportunity. He faced Schmidt. “Orders from Mother.”
As Houmaz led the crew, paddling away, he committed the facial features of Aziz Tamil to memory. Dragging the raft onto shore, he pulled his cell from the inner pocket of his jacket. He punched in a number, waiting while the wavelets hit the shore in incessant rhythm that gave him a headache. “Pesi, it’s Tariq. Do you have a photograph of Tamil?” He paced the beach. “Yes, I know the story we’ve read. No photo of him? You sure?”
The voice on the other side became shrill.
“Our first time using h
im? Why are we doing business with a stranger?” Tariq’s brows furrowed. “Brother, there’s too much riding on this. See if you can dig out anything about him.”
He pulled a pen and a piece of paper from his pocket and drew a rough sketch of the face of the man who called himself Tamil. He noted the height of the man was well over six-foot five. After folding the paper and dropping it in his pocket, he walked off the beach and hailed a taxi to the airport.
Getting out of Vladivostok as fast as possible would be his top priority.
Houmaz thought about what had just happened. Something didn’t seem right. Tamil’s accent and behavior, his gestures, were all Arabic. Probably Saudi. But his face looked European. Houmaz wondered if he might have made a mistake. Who were the men he’d given his submarines to?
Shimmel mounted the conning tower and waved to Moshe on the conning tower of the other sub. He had both his navigators set course for Oman, the first stop on their way to Haifa. He wondered if Houmaz would remember his face. Shit. Of course he would. “Moshe, let the sub’s underwater antenna drag out with the communications array. I have to call Mother. Time to dive.”
Shimmel ducked into the sub and closed the hatch. He dropped down one level and gave orders to the communications officer. In a few minutes the officer met him in the ready room. “Done, major.”
Shimmel placed headphones over his ears and punched in the secure number.
“Status?” The gruff voice was filled with impatience. Shimmel could taste Mother’s frustration at having to wait.
“It’s Avram. I think your decision to let Houmaz live will come back at us.”
The raspy voice chuckled. “Nonsense. We’ll get more intel from him by tracking who he contacts and what he says to them. Besides that, he’s now property of one of our allied intelligence services. So, for the time being, he lives. When he ceases to be of use to our allies, we’ll send him to a better place. By then, we’ll know everyone in his network.”
Shimmel frowned. “He saw my face.”
“So what? When word of this debacle makes its way onto Al Jazeera, he’ll become a pariah to his people. What can one lonely terrorist do?”
“One lonely terrorist can figure out who I am and murder my wife and child. Please put a protection detail on them.”
Ben-Levy changed his tone. “Major Shimmel, Israel is too small to have available resources just waiting to help us whenever we request. Everyone is assigned and busy. I have no way to do that. As for Mossad, our ventures are aimed outside Israel only. If you want protection within the country, you’ll have to deal with Aman, not SHABEK.”
“Then get them to help.” Shimmel realized he was shouting.
“It probably won’t work. I know what they’ll tell you. If we did that for everyone who’s at risk, the entire population of Israel would all carry guns to protect each other.” The spymaster’s voice got softer still. “Look, I’ll call them for you. Give them a chance to reassign some resources. Maybe they can. But don’t count on it.”
Shimmel cursed to himself.
Ben-Levy’s voice sounded calmer. “How is the crew working out?”
Shimmel paced the ready room. “The training we gave them on the Russian sub replicas, and the operations manuals Drapoff hacked from Russian military intelligence did the job. Our men are handling both subs well, and with practice drills, I expect their performance to improve fast.”
Ben-Levy’s voice became quieter, just above a whisper. “Tell me about the submarines. What technologies do they offer?”
Shimmel closed his eyes. Shook his head to clear the fear for his family in Tel Aviv from it. “The comm array is beyond what we’ve developed. The prize here is the missiles. Twenty nuclear-tipped ICBMs in each sub. Each missile is equipped with a twenty-megaton warhead. And something unexpected. The sub’s countermeasures. They use the hydrophonic decoy system we developed to trick underwater sonar microphones that track submarines. This technology was stolen from Ness Ziona.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Moshe inspected them. We were hoping for another source, but the Institute’s trademark is stamped on their cover. They’ve been adapted for underwater use, but the originals are also there.”
“So, we have a mole.”
“Absolutely. Look into that before more products find their way to the mafiya and terrorists.”
“I will.” He could imagine Ben-Levy’s frown.
But, what Ben-Levy asked next told Shimmel how his new handler’s concerns were prioritized. “How soon will you reach the Gulf of Oman?”
Not for the first time, Shimmel wondered what he’d gotten himself into. He wondered what would happen if Houmaz was able to identify him. He worried about his family.
Chapter Thirty
Trans-Siberian Express terminal, Vladivostok, Russia
September 20, 6:29 a.m.
For the second time in less than eight hours, Tariq Houmaz sat on the same bench in the train terminal. He felt the urge to pace but didn’t want to draw attention to himself. He didn’t want to use the airport since, if his suspicions were true, he’d been betrayed. The train would be safer. At worst, jumping off a moving train didn’t require a parachute.
The incoming train would take him west to a station where he could transfer and head southeast into Chechnya. From there he planned to take a plane to Kabul, Afghanistan. His driver would meet him at the airport and take him to Upper Pachir in the Nangarhar. Back to his lovely mountain caves.
Remembering the face of the shooter in Vlad he’d wounded, he considered how he’d failed. In the old days he’d have sent a bullet into the man’s brain, not his shoulder. He’d find out the man’s name and kill him as soon as he could. The shooter must be crazy, trying to kill him twice. No one tries that with me.
He could hear the train before he saw it. The rattle of the tracks, the smell of oil burned by grinding steel, then the headlight beam coming off the locomotive. He rose and found his body creaking and stiff. He hadn’t slept well for two days. The only time he’d fallen asleep, the Brits and the Jew had visited him. Now, he was bone tired. No backpack to carry this time; the money it had held was gone.
Passengers exited the cars of the arriving train. When the crowd had thinned, he climbed on board and watched through the windows to see if anyone he recognized approached or surveilled the train.
He had a clear view of the platform. Watching, he saw fewer than twenty people board after him. The train jolted and then gained speed. He closed his eyes and drifted off, his hand on the Beretta inside his jacket holster, covered by a coat on top of his lap.
Every noise woke him. People entering the car, the train turning as it twisted around a mountain, the whistle as it neared a crossing. By noon he couldn’t take it and gave up trying to sleep. He caught his reflection as the train ran through a tunnel. I’ve aged so much this year, he thought. This too comes with the job. But I’m not yet ready to die.
There were things he needed to do now, urgent tasks. He made a plan as he waited for the train to arrive in Chechnya.
Chapter Thirty-One
Sea of Japan
September 20, 3:45 p.m.
The two subs had names that Avram Shimmel translated from Russian as “Buttercup” and “Thor’s Hammer.” He chuckled as the he read the names off the covers of the manuals. Fluent in Russian, he noted differences from Michael Drapoff’s hacked translation of the operating procedures, stolen from the Moscow Center computers. Drapoff was the best hacker in the Mossad.
So far, nothing was amiss, and the new countermeasures seemed to be working as advertised. He projected they’d arrive at their initial nesting facility near Muscat, Oman in two weeks. When they at last signaled their arrival, Shimmel would disembark back to Tel Aviv and be debriefed. He imagined the sweet faces of his beloved wife and daughter, and yearned to hold them again.
But Houmaz had seen his face. With every passing day he grew more certain the bomb maker would find out who’d stol
en his property. Avram wanted to be back in Tel Aviv with his pregnant wife, Sharon, and little Golda.
He hated submarines. And after his trip there, he hated Vladivostok. He was still coughing from the rancid air. Avram swore he’d never go back there. Never again.
Lester Dushov stood up high enough so he could see across the mountains into Dongning, China. “Not really much of a city.” The sun was setting bloody red against the mountain ridges.
Michael Drapoff watched the senior operative scan the valley below them. They’d been crisscrossing the border between Russia and China for seven weeks now. He turned toward Shimon Tennenbaum. “Sleepy, yeah. But at least they have wireless router connections. Let’s do what we came for.”
Shimon nodded and began wiring landmines across the road. While he completed his chore, Drapoff entered new data into the Chinese computers in Beijing, piggybacking on the town’s wireless.
Ari Westheim and JD Weinstein stood guard duty with Dushov.
The trip here, east from Korfovka, Russia, had taken four days. They’d traveled after dark, using the daylight to set up Claymore mines. Then they’d hack the position of “enemy troops” sent by whichever country was supposed to have initiated the border incursion, into the “attacked” provincial capital city’s government computer. They’d hide, watch troops arrive, and trigger the explosives.
Theirs was a false flag operation. The irony, as Michael thought about it, was that a Chinese general, Sun Tzu, had invented this type of tradecraft about twenty-three hundred years ago. And he’d done it to deceive other Chinese.
When they landed in Vladivostok twelve weeks ago, they’d stolen a boat and motored northwest through Amurskiy Bay to Ansan, Russia. There, they’d posed as Chinese troops, covering their faces with scarves against the cold weather. They wore sunglasses during the day so no one could see that they were guilou, or round-eyes.