by Paul Usiskin
Dov made a call. He did it without the flourish of a man of influence. He spoke to the Chief of Staff. ‘You’ll give us Sayeret Matkal? And we should ignore the bureaucrats....Yes you mean the politicians. Thanks Mikki.’
Aviel wasn’t overawed.
‘You’ll need to start rehearsing the retrieval op asap, once we pinpoint which sphere or spheres the victims are in and the size of the TNT2 force.’
Dov asked Amos back in and congratulated him on his act with Irit and he beamed. Dov waited to see how he’d leave, de-materializing or normally. Amos remained. There was a knock on the door and an ‘Errr’ and Shimon Ben Shimon came in and handed Dov a sheet of paper. Amos knew he was coming, Dov thought. ‘Errr, wanted to give you my bill Dov ... it’s for,’ and he quoted a figure.
‘Where did you stay in the end?’ asked Dov.
‘He found a bed and breakfast,’ Amos told him.
‘Errr yes, it’s not included in the bill.’
‘Pay it Amos, fast-track the payment. Shimon’s earned it.’ Shimon smiled.
‘But Dov...’ Amos started, glimpsing the total.
‘I’ll sign the authorization now.’ He did, handed it to Amos who then wasn’t there.
‘Tell me something,’ Dov said to the still smiling Shimon, ‘ever worked for a company called Lodestone or the Stonemount multi-national?’
‘Errr ... I wish. They’re too big not to know, the programmers’ network’s very tight especially at my errr level. But I’ve never worked for them.’
‘Good,’ said Dov standing and shaking Shimon’s hand.
‘But Dov, errr, they’re so big I might have worked for them and never knew about it.’
*
No one had ever slapped Yakub before. At first he was silenced by the shock of it, then he yelled with pain and anger. You’d slap me? he thought.
The woman had dived in after him and grabbed his head and pulled it above the water. He wasn’t as good a swimmer as a runner, but she was very good. She swam with him in a classic rescue position, taking them back to the jetty. She shoved him up onto it and joined him and that’s when the slap came. When he yelled she did it again, because this slap was to the side of his head aimed at his ear, which rang and went numb all at the same time. And then she hoisted him over her shoulder and carried him back to his room. She unceremoniously stripped off his soaking clothes, ran the shower with hot water, pushed him under it and held him there until he was warm enough, then she turned it off and pulled him out and threw a towel at him and produced dry clothes, and left.
Once dry and dressed, Yakub sat on the floor looking at the ceiling light. He smiled, first because the red plastic car was out there in the sea so someone would find it soon he was sure, and second because the woman had brought him back, and however roughly, had looked after him. That told him that she cared about him for some reason; it made him feel grown up and for a little while more, safe.
*
Two days before the election, the weather changed. The skies cleared of their angry dark clouds, and assumed their brilliant blue as the sun came out and Israelis contemplated how they’d vote. People wore light coats and sweaters, memories of war and sirens and bomb shelters distant, news that the rain fall had raised the level of the Sea of Galilee gladdening many, the fate of a handful of young kidnapped Palestinians of no consequence to them. The murder of the two had been kept out of the news.
But the original news of the kidnaps had fired up Shoshi and Miri Biderman. They had a good idea of the state of mind of their Palestinian counterparts and they wanted others to identify and sympathize, so they uploaded their social media campaign, Save Our Souls, with messages urging all their friends to blast the Prime Minister, relevant Ministers, Knesset Members and the heads of the police and the IDF directly, to help save the lives of the kidnapped Palestinians.
The girls sent this on FaceBook and an edited version on Twitter: ‘SOS. Our Jewish souls will be empty if seven Palestinian hearts stop beating,’ and that trended internationally. Two papers, one left of centre and the other right, openly opposed to the Prime Minister, highlighted the SOS message and demanded to know what as Prime and Defense Minister the Man was doing about it.
Opinion polls suggested the far right and the religious parties were surging. Ministers were tight lipped when pushed to comment on the SOS campaign. TV news cycles had headlined it, the election was so lackluster.
In his office in the building down the hill from the Knesset, the Man’s senior advisor thanked the campaign advisor they’d flown in from the US, with obvious insincerity; he’d cost the party a cool half million dollars for advice the Man concluded hadn’t worked, and the speed with which he was escorted out by two security men felt like he’d been fired.
The driver who took him straight to the airport later played back to the PM’s chef de bureau, the angry call he’d recorded in which the campaign advisor shouted at someone called Sheldon. ‘These guys? Thumbs up their asses. They deserve to be kicked, I mean I ain’ never seen such indo-lence. They make you think they’re doin’ voters a big favor bein’ their candidates and as for a campaign, all’s I’ll say is what campaign? I know you’re on their side politically and all, but frankly, with that lake of tax free dollars you can dip into, you’d be better off putting it somewhere more productive, I don’ know, a university, the Dead-Med canal, sump’n that’ll make a difference, cos sure as hell these guys ain’ gonna.’
*
The grounds were lush and green from the recent rains at Dimi Demidov’s new home, the paths gleaming, bordered by palm trees, glossy fronds reflecting the winter sun’s rays. Dimi stood on the bridge overlooking the stream that fed the ornamental lake, not quite believing the change in his luck. One of his two handlers stood nearby waiting to accompany him to the dining hall. Lunch time approached and with it another of his favorites, borscht with boiled potatoes, seasoned with dill and a couple of spoonfuls of smetana. The shot, when it came did more than the hole Dov’s automatic would have made. The .50 caliber round exploded Dimi’s head like a watermelon, and what was left of him fell over the railing into the lake.
In Jerusalem, Shimon Ben Shimon passed out at his desk in his temporary cluttered electronics lab at the Justice Ministry. All his vital signs were stable but it took several hours for his bloods to reveal traces of a toxin that had put him into a coma.
*
The change in the weather enabled the drones to begin their intensive passes over Maoz Yam. Despite the urgency of the mission this took time, not only because the site was big, twenty empty spheres, but because thermal imaging analysis was elaborate.
The spheres were in four rows of five, each with a steel girder tower inside.
Aviel sat in the Trigon command and control center watching the drone video images, running and re-running the recordings for any human heat signatures. There were none. The flights had begun before dawn six hours before. Nothing showed up.
He yawned and sipped cold coffee, rubbing at tired eyes, stretching in his seat as the flight operators flew their remote controlled craft. It was surreal, this hi-tech warfare. It removed the empathy he ought to have felt for the young Palestinians in the spheres. What if Dov was wrong? What if they’d already been killed or moved elsewhere. But if they were still alive they’d be shadowy blobs on drone thermal image monitors. He shook his head and thought about his career. By the time Dov had asked for him in the Defense Ministry scandal investigation, his star had begun rising and after being cleared of the Yardena Rotem rape, he was awaiting recall from Washington for his next post, one step from Commissioner. If Trigon was a success, some of the kudos was sure to rub off. If it failed, the shit would stick to him. No public career could be absolutely fire-walled.
Amos called for an update.
‘Nothing to see except rats and mice,’ Aviel told him.
‘They’d get in
anywhere wouldn’t they?’
‘Sure, there’s all sorts in and around the dunes, foxes, birds, it’s a regular wildlife sanctuary.’
‘Maybe you’re approaching this the wrong way.’
‘How so?’
‘Let’s assume TNT2 consists of trained ex-IDF personnel. They’d be using the very latest gear, including anti-heat signature measures.’
‘Right, that’d make them hard to impossible to detect, and it’s likely they’d have used them to hide their victims. Nothing’s showing up in any of the spheres. Their counter measures are working, if in fact they’re hiding them inside them, and we’ve only Chizzik instinct to say they’re there.’
‘Nothing showing up at all?’
‘Wait one, I’ll switch feeds to you. Got it?
‘Yes.’
‘Watch the screens. There’s no body heat signatures.’
‘Except rats and mice you said.’
‘This is boring Amos.’
‘OK, be bored a moment longer. Do the rats and mice show up in every sphere?’
‘As far as I can tell.’
‘Think about it. Bodies give off a heat signature. If you and I know that then so must TNT2. So, look more closely. If the rats and mice don’t show up in one or two spheres, it may be they’re in spaces hidden by counter-measures. So track them and if they suddenly disappear from the screen inside the spheres, then that’s where the victims are.’
Aviel wasn’t bored anymore and kicked himself gently, for not having imagined that rats and mice would use the gas feeder pipe channels he’d seen on the site plans. He re-focused on them. The feeder pipes were routed under the dunes and out to a purpose built jetty, an obvious exit point for the TNT2 unit.
On its face, it looked simple once it was known where the victims were being held. He’d send Unit Trigon to the spheres identified thanks to Amos and they’d extract them.
Oh yeah? Well no.
Aviel thought through the end game. How do you get them out? Do you go up to the designated sphere, knock on it and say ‘Are you all right in there? It’s safe to come out now’ and stand ready with mugs of hot mint tea and bakhlava? How exactly do you get in and out of a storage sphere? How do you identify the defending force and neutralize it, if you can’t pinpoint its personnel? Are there escape routes they know about that you don’t?
He’d overseen Unit Trigon’s practice runs on an empty sphere at a natural gas facility in Ashdod. The spheres Stonemount had originally commissioned for Maoz Yam had maintenance hatches in the base, which made life easier. Sealed spheres necessitated cutting away a panel to access the interior, a very tedious process with acetylene cutters, or you’d get into the sphere through a feeder pipe, they were big enough for a man to crawl through, though not with full gear.
Just after dusk Aviel issued the GO order and Unit Trigon began infiltrating the site.
Man is a sentient being but that doesn’t mean that at the beginning of time he was complete and practically perfect in every way. His development took eons. One vital result of that vast passage of time was that the 21st century human brain could detect pulsations that are unseen and unheard. It’s a system still more sophisticated than any hi-tech reproduction, identifying those pulsations, categorizing them by feelings or senses, constantly detecting and interpreting.
Elite commandos are trained to heighten these senses, and once on the Maoz Yam site, Unit Trigon were guided by them. It was primarily sound on which they relied at the outset, moving forward, staying still, listening, discarding extraneous sounds, waiting for any human sound signatures from within the spheres. Of course they cheated and enhanced their natural senses with night vision, ultra sensitive sound detection and drone thermal imaging.
Words muttered in Arabic, ‘Filthy animal! Get off me!’ followed by the rat’s squeak as it was kicked and a dull thump as it landed against the sphere wall and scuttled away. Aviel reran the recording. It was seconds in which the Arabic was followed by the kick, and only the sound waves showed up, but then there was the heat signature of the rat going through the air. Those seconds were enough. It was a sphere in the middle of the site.
‘It wasn’t there a second ago and now its body heat is clearly identified.’ Aviel spoke via his head set mic, pinpointing where in the sphere the rat had hit the wall and from that assessing where the foot that kicked it was and where the voice had come from. The two TNT2 sphere guards were neutralized, as in not expedited. A secure perimeter was set up around the base of the sphere and a commando reported that there was a maintenance hatch, for which Aviel praised the heavens. The commando opened the hatch, ignoring the stench of humans held in a confined space for days, whispering in the Arabic he’d practiced, ‘Anti-terror rescue unit. Lie down.’ He was joined by an IDF medic and moments later three young Palestinians were out in the evening air and passed back to the medevac team.
It wasn’t clear what had made TNT2 decide to start moving their captives at that time but within seconds of the first rescue, sounds of voices barking orders and frightened responses emanated from another sphere.
Three commandos dumped their diving gear on the beach below the dunes that bordered the western edge of the Maoz Yam facility. They belly crawled towards the jetty and the pipes’ outlet. One commando choked back a groan as his knee came down on something on the sand. His fingers felt around the object, delicately probing to be sure this wasn’t an IAD. The other two had stopped. The commando lifted a toy car to his face, swore and pocketed it. He caught up to the others. They neutralized two TNT2 terrorists securing the jetty and entered the pipe. Armed only with silenced handguns and combat blades, they came up inside the sphere, calmed the two remaining Palestinians, accessed the hatch, exited, silenced one more TNT2 gunman and expedited the second.
Despite their attempts to minimize sound, the dying terrorist’s boots kicked involuntarily against the sphere and a voice whispered ‘Gidi? All OK?’
The answer was a thunk from a silenced Tavor that set off a firefight. For those involved it was all about who could identify and hit a target first, because both sides were identically armed and equipped. Bursts of fire were suppressed drumbeats, muzzle flashes virtually eliminated by flash-hiders. Ultimately it was a numbers game and the TNT2 terrorists were overwhelmed. There were four TNT2 fatalities, seven wounded. Unit Trigon suffered one fatality and three wounded.
All five Palestinians were unharmed and were checked over by IDF medics before being flown by helicopter to Hadassah Mount Scopus for physical and mental evaluation. They’d been split up into two groups, three in a sphere in the second row, third sphere down, the other two were in the third row along, a penultimate sphere. Eskimo tents made of heat reflective material had been erected inside the base of each sphere, tethered to the inner girder tower. The material had been developed for IDF Special Forces snipers, a fabric that produced no heat signature under thermal imaging and was lightweight and breathable. The Palestinians had been made to wear clothing of the same material, full length ponchos with hoods to cover their bodies and heads, and face masks. When the TNT2 teams had done a dry run inside a tent, in a sphere, nothing showed up on their thermal imaging camera. The Palestinians were provided with drinking water and shown how to use the oxygen tanks. Each Palestinian was also roped to the girder, enough to move within and just outside the tents.
Like the Bidermans, the Palestinians had quickly become disoriented but there was no chance of a Stockholm syndrome effect. They understood they were targets of a Jewish terrorist group, but they couldn’t work out where they were. After the initial shock, they’d tried to remain mentally stable. But they’d lost track of time and were weakened by the lack of food, and the need for regular use of oxygen. They’d struggled against despondency, not easy in spheres that stank of waste-filled buckets and their bodies. Being released from such demeaning circumstances produced overwhelming expressions
of gratitude to their rescuers; they forgot it was Israelis who’d kidnapped them in the first place. By the time their helicopter touched down at Hadassah they were mute and numb.
Dov was already there, visiting Shimon Ben Shimon, having flown Ephraim up from Abu Kabir with him to carry out a careful investigation on Shimon’s inert but still breathing body.
*
Orli began their FaceTime after he got back from Jerusalem with ‘That rescue of those poor Palestinians was amazing, wasn’t it? Say what you like about the problems we’re facing but we know how to do the right thing.’ He merely nodded. ‘They said the operation was supervised via the Justice Ministry. That’s where you work isn’t it?’ He nodded again. Then she smiled knowingly. ‘Kol Hakavod - more power to you Dov.’
32
‘My husband was very successful during his years as a Jewish Agency emissary in Russia,’ the widow told Irit with obvious pride. ‘He was responsible for hundreds of new immigrants.’
Irit looked around the small orderly living room in the kibbutz apartment building. It had taken her a day to draw up a list of emissaries who’d worked in Perm. This was her third interview and she’d missed lunch. Starting from scratch, she’d learned that the Jewish Agency’s efforts in the Urals centered on Yekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth largest city, from which its representatives fanned out to other Ural Jewish communities.
‘We first went there in the early 1980s after years of refusenik repression. Jews were refused travel permits, especially for Israel; when they dared protest they were imprisoned. International pressure eventually worked. It was the fulfilment of a typical Russian threat made when the pressure was at its height. A Soviet general told a visiting Israeli politician, ‘Be careful what you dream, one day it might come true and then you’ll have more Russian Jews than you’ll know what to do with.’ He was right, we were overwhelmed, and then so was the country. My husband couldn’t keep up. He almost had a nervous breakdown.’