by Oliver North
The Jericho Sanction was the code name for an Israeli preemptive action against any hostile nation threatening to attack the Jewish state with a weapon of mass destruction. The code name referred to the Jericho 2 nuclear missiles deployed at Zachariah, west of the Dead Sea, south of Hebron.
Israel had often told the world publicly that it would not introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East. However, that statement contained enough ambiguity to confound anyone who questioned its real meaning. Besides, nearly every intelligence service in the world knew that Israel already had “the bomb.” The only question was how many.
The Jericho Sanction called for a limited, preemptive nuclear first strike. But there was another plan that kept potential enemies guessing. In addition to the Jericho Sanction, Israel also had plans for an all-out nuclear war, its strategy of last resort. Dubbed “the Samson Strategy,” after the biblical character who was killed while destroying his enemies, the plan called for an in extremis strike, using Israel's entire nuclear arsenal, even if it brought Armageddon to the land.
Though it was illegal to write or talk about the subject in public, the Israeli nuclear weapons had been around since right after the birth of the Jewish state in 1948. The rationale was simple: Israel was home to fewer Jews than Hitler had killed in the Holocaust, and these survivors, living in the Jewish state, regardless of their political ideology, were committed to the survival of both the nation and the Jewish people. “Never again!” were their watchwords. They built their first nuclear weapon in 1964, and then acquired the technology to keep improving it and others. Most foreign intelligence agencies currently estimated that the Israelis had some two hundred nuclear weapons. In reality, they had many more.
The Jericho 2 nuclear missiles had a range of from 1,500 to 4,000 kilometers with the Shavit space launchers. This was a strategic improvement over their Jericho 1 missiles and their limited range of only five hundred kilometers. Unlike the Russian and American nuclear missiles launched from submarines or fixed land-based silos, the Israeli missiles were each mounted on a forty-two-foot TEL, a mobile transporter/erector/launcher. Most of these were housed in limestone caves in western Israel, not far from the Tel-Nof Air Base. Other nuclear missile sites were scattered across the nation to give the nation a strategic advantage against enemy attacks from any direction. These well-dispersed sites also insured that some would survive an enemy preemptive strike and ultimately prevail in a nuclear conflagration, since Israel possessed more weapons of mass destruction than its adversaries did. Even if all of their potential enemies launched all of their combined weapons of mass destruction at the same time, Israel would still be able to respond with enough nuclear firepower to destroy any number of enemy cities, enough firepower to unleash a horrific Armageddon.
While the Israelis were cognizant of the potential apocalyptic consequences of using nuclear weapons, they also knew they could not permit themselves to be intimidated by a madman like Saddam, or some militant mullah bent on launching a doomsday jihad.
None of these thoughts brought any comfort to the already troubled mind of Major Rotem as he sat in his office. His two visitors left after relaying their information about Newman's true mission. This was pretty heady stuff for the Duvdevan major to consider. But he knew two things: he needed to get to Newman right away and make him aware of what was now known; and right now, from what he could see, nobody was working on rescuing their wives.
25 Piers Harbor
Iskenderun, Turkey
Sunday, 22 March 1998
1835 Hours, Local
Peter Newman excused himself and went topside of the Pescador II, now anchored at the docks in Iskenderun Bay. The short trip across the bay had been relaxing and comfortable. There were small swells and only a few whitecaps as they sailed from Karatas to Iskenderun that afternoon. The rest of the day was spent going over his cover story the phony documents, the maps, and the pocket litter Bill Goode had provided while they waited for Samir Habib and his father, Yusef.
When the two Christian Arabs arrived, they had a warm and emotional reunion. Both of these men had risked their lives several times to save Newman three years earlier, and the transparent goodness of their unselfish acts had remained with Newman since those difficult days. And while he had seen Yusef once since then, at Christmas '95 in Bethlehem, he had not been with the father and son together since those desperate days when he was trying to escape Iraq as the sole survivor of a betrayed mission.
Now, with Bill Goode below in the galley preparing the evening meal with the help of his two rescuers, Peter Newman had climbed back on deck for a few minutes of solitude. He looked past the calm seas into the western skies, to the slowly setting sun and the radiant edging it gave to the cumulus clouds forming in the distance. The evening breeze was picking up, and Newman felt its soft presence, tinged with cool saltiness, blowing through his hair and across his face.
He took time to think about Rachel...and little James. How he missed them both. He felt a tug of emotion at his helplessness and loneliness and wished for the thousandth time he had not left them alone on the day Rachel had been kidnapped. He also wished he could talk to his wife on the phone, reassure her, and tell her that he loved her. But he had already tried that tack with Komulakov and had gotten nowhere.
Newman looked at his watch—it was midmorning in the eastern U.S. Maybe he could at least check in with his sister and see how his son was bearing up. Newman went below to his spacious cabin, retrieved the satellite phone from his duffel bag, returned to the deck, punched in a number, and waited for the overseas connection to engage.
His sister Nancy answered and recognized his voice right away. “Oh, Pete...I'm glad you called. We've been so worried about you and Rachel. Are you all right? Have you heard anything from Rachel? Is she all right? What's happening?”
He told Nancy he had met briefly with Rachel and the kidnappers, and that Rachel was alive and well. “We're working on trying to deal with their demands…and looking for ways to get her back safely.”
Nancy had many more questions about what was being done, who was doing it, and many others he couldn't answer; and he deflected her queries with other information, hoping Nancy would understand.
“Is James OK? How is he adjusting?”
“Well, he keeps asking about his mommy and daddy...and cries at night when I put him to bed. He says that his mommy tucks him in bed, and that his daddy helps him say his prayers. It isn't quite the same when we try to do it.”
Newman choked a little on her words, and felt tears welling up in his eyes. He had been too busy, first in trying to rescue Rachel and now with the nuclear weapons recovery, to permit himself many thoughts about his son. Now hordes of feelings and memories flooded over him, and his shoulders sagged with the heaviness of his loss.
“What's he doing now?”
“He's playing with some toys that we bought him, and his teddy bear,” Nancy said softly. “He's doing fine, Pete...don't worry. You'll see him, and Rachel, soon.”
“Put the phone by his ear...let me talk to him...see if he recognizes my voice.”
He heard her talking to James. “James...do you want to talk on the telephone? Your daddy is calling on the phone. Here, why don't you talk to him?”
Newman heard the rustle of the phone as it was placed in his toddler's hand.
“Hey, buddy...how's my boy? Are you having a good time visiting Aunt Nancy?” He tried to keep his voice upbeat, despite the tears running down his face.
“Daddy...,” James said, so softly that Newman barely heard his voice.
“Yeah...this is Daddy, son. Can you talk to me?” There was silence at the other end. The little boy did not know how to use a telephone but was likely transfixed by hearing his father's voice. Newman tried to coax some kind of response, asking leading questions about what he was doing. But the boy said nothing.
Eventually Nancy came back on the line. “He knows that it's you, but when you ask him questions, he just
nods or shakes his head. He doesn't know he's supposed to talk. But his eyes lit up when he heard your voice. I'm sure you made him happy by calling.”
“Yeah...uh...listen, Nancy, I've got to get going. I really appreciate what you're doing for us. I hope we can get things sorted out and find Rachel soon. Keep us in your prayers, OK?”
“Of course, Peter. And don't worry about James. He'll be fine. Just concentrate on finding Rachel. And be careful.”
“Thanks, Sis...I will. Good-bye.”
As he hung up, the breeze that had been so exhilarating just moments ago now made him shiver. As he looked to the western sky, the sun had fallen behind the clouds and their once-golden edges were now dark gray and foreboding. Newman clenched his jaw and turned to go back to work. He headed toward the salon of the Pescador II, where Bill Goode, Samir, and Yusef were waiting.
MI6 Ops Harbor Site
Judayyidat Ar'ar, Saudi Arabia
Sunday, 22 March 1998
1845 Hours, Local
British MI6 Agents Thomas and Blackman and their contingent of shooters had flown from Rafha aboard two U.S. Marine CH-53s earlier in the day. The big U.S. helicopters, ostensibly part of a joint U.S.-UK desert training exercise, had landed in a wide wadi just west of the hilltop now being used as an observation post by the MI6 operatives. The twenty-one Four-Two Commando Royal Marines were now deployed in a perimeter around a grimy little one-story cinder block building that had once been a monitoring station for the now defunct pipeline between Karbala, Iraq, and Badanah, Saudi Arabia.
Inside the structure, Thomas and Blackman had set up their communications gear and night-vision equipment so they could keep an eye on the dusty border station on the boundary between Iraq and Saudi Arabia. With binoculars, Thomas could see the Iraqi outpost at Judaiat al Hamir about a kilometer away, where the truck carrying the four prisoners was supposed to cross.
Beyond the isolated border post, he could see the ribbon of highway running to the northeast that the truck was due to come down. Aside from the border post itself and a few stone buildings beyond, there was nothing but desert as far as the eye could see. While that was good from the standpoint of not drawing unwanted attention, it also left them vulnerable to any breakdowns the truck might suffer, as well as make the truck an easy target for Iraqi aircraft if the plot was uncovered and reported before the truck could get across the border.
Blackman, meanwhile, had set up a flat plane antenna plugged into a sat comm transmitter/receiver, which was in turn plugged into a port on his laptop computer. The whole setup was being run by a tiny, gaso-line-powered generator that was humming away in a small sand pit on the bank of the Wadi Ar'ar.
“Joe...take a look at this,” Blackman said to Thomas.
“What do you have?” Thomas said as he stepped away from the window.
“Some very interesting stuff,” Blackman said, peering at the screen. “This is the new ‘Battlefield Threat Warning System' our chaps built with the American satellite wonks. It's designed to give units in combat some real-time intelligence information from every overhead platform that NSA, NRO, and GCHQ can access.”
“Quite some toy. How does it work?”
“The computer automatically displays a terrain map of the area where we're located, based on our GPS plot. Then, each successive overlay shows what the thermal, RF, visual, radar, and laser sensors are picking up on each satellite pass. Here,” Thomas said, pointing to the lower right side of the screen, “it tells me how old the information is and how much longer before this particular sensor will pass over us again. According to this, the last satellite visual pass, twelve minutes ago, shows that the truck with the four prisoners and two Iraqis is proceeding as planned. It crossed the Euphrates at Al Musayyib. At Karbala, instead of turning south down toward An Najaf, it took the right fork toward An Nukhayb. They should be about halfway there by now.”
Blackman nodded and consulted a map on his own computer screen. “At that rate, I put them about ninety-two kilometers north of the border.” He zoomed out to reveal a larger portion of Iraq, and said, “I sure hope Saddam doesn't have any of his aircraft up tonight, ‘cause according to the terrain map, it sure is open out there.”
“Can you make that thing give you the latest NRO radar imagery?” Thomas asked.
“Yeah,” said Blackman, “I can get all kinds of different overhead readouts from the birds. Watch this.” The MI6 agent typed in a series of numbers and letters and hit the Enter key.
“This view shows radio frequency spectrum in the area of interest. If Saddam has any aircraft up and they so much as key a mike, this'll show it… Hey, what's this?”
In the upper left corner of his screen, a blinking icon showed tactical UHF radio transmissions emanating from just across the Iraqi border in Syria, at a place called At Tanf. He was puzzled. The frequency in the blinking icon showed a spectrum reserved for NATO military use.
“Hey, Eddie,” Blackman called out across the room to his RTO. “C'mere, will you? Can we check on this signal?” The young radio operator looked at the computer screen. “Any idea what this is?”
Eddie looked at the flashing icon on the screen, broke open a small spiral-bound notebook, checked the frequency against the list on one of the pages, and said, “Well, it's not a taxicab.”
“Yes, well, thank you, Sergeant Willis. Now that we know what it isn't, can you tell me what it is?”
“Well, according to this GCHQ manual, and assuming the satellite is correct, there are at least two Marconi DM-3 high-power, hand-held, UHF radios broadcasting in Syria on a frequency assigned to NATO.”
To no one in particular, Blackman said. “That's very strange.”
“Yes, sir, quite. Shall I notify Riyadh?” asked Willis.
“Good idea. Do that, Eddie,” said Blackman. “They may not have seen this. That's one of the problems with this system. It pulls in so much information that something important can get lost in the noise. A little bit like drinking from a fire hose.”
“Shall I also alert the Americans down by Rafha?”
“Yes...alert the Marine helicopter detachment, but don't bother with their CIA or NSA people. They always tell you they know everything. The last time I tried calling them about a matter like this, I was told, in so many words, to mind my own business.”
Qadi Sh'lyah Cafe
Ar Ramadi, Iraq
Sunday, 22 March 1998
1855 Hours, Local
The restaurant Leonid Dotensk had finally chosen was well below his usual standard. But this little town on the west bank of the Euphrates wasn't Paris, Amman, or even Cairo. And to his hungry crew, it hardly mattered. Their appetites honed by a full day of manual labor, they had grumbled constantly as he pressed on right through Baghdad and past the pleasant ambiance of the Al Rashid Hotel.
“I should think we deserve a reward after finding these, Mr. Dotensk,” the man driving the truck said when they headed out of the capital, past the grotesque statue of Saddam's two huge forearms rising up out of the ground and grasping two enormous crossed swords.
“Quiet, Yuri. You are being well paid. And I am not going to stop until we get beyond the military checkpoints near the Markab and Habbaniyah air bases.” But even after breezing past the air bases, he had the drivers continue on for another twenty-five kilometers in the gathering darkness.
Dotensk finally stopped at this nondescript place, not because he knew the restaurant had good food, but because it was next to the highway and it was open—increasingly rare these days, outside of Baghdad. He told the men to eat in shifts and, now that he had finished, Dotensk came back outside to the two men guarding the truck.
“You may go eat,” he told them. “I will stay here and watch the truck. Tell the other two to come out when they're finished.” The two former KGB thugs who had been waiting in Dotensk's Mercedes eagerly complied—they were starved.
Dotensk lit up a cigar and a huge blue cloud of smoke rose around his face. The evening wasn't a
s cold as expected for this time of year, and he sat on a nearby bench to keep an eye on the truck. Only a few people were out on the streets. Most were at home having their own meals. Those who were still walking by were mainly laborers whose hours were longer than office workers’.
As he sat there enjoying his after-dinner cigar, a dark green Nissan Pathfinder with the insignia on its door of the Amn Al-Khass, the much-feared Special Security Service, pulled up behind the truck. As Dotensk watched, two men in uniform got out of the vehicle and walked up to the truck that was carrying the three nuclear weapons. The Ukrainian arms merchant quickly rose to meet them.
“Good evening,” he said in Arabic. “Can I help you? I am the owner of this truck.”
“Let me see your identification,” one of the policemen said. The other man moved behind the Ukrainian, causing the hair to stand up on the back of his neck.
“Of course.” He offered them the documents showing that his truck was carrying computer mainframes and other industrial equipment. “You will see that everything is in order.”
The two uniformed policemen ignored him and climbed into the back of the truck, shining their flashlights onto the cargo. One of them took his truncheon and struck the wooden cases. He pulled on the metal strapping to see if it was intact. Dotensk winced, hoping they wouldn't ask him to open the crates. If they discovered the lead lining in the boxes, they would certainly be suspicious.
“Uh...are you looking for something in particular?” He kept his right hand inside his jacket pocket, closed around his 9mm automatic pistol.
One of the policemen held a sheaf of faxes in his hand. Dotensk could see mug shots of several men. The Iraqi took them one by one and reviewed them, looking at each one and comparing them to Dotensk's face. Satisfied, he handed Dotensk his identity papers. “Are there others with you?”
Dotensk nodded. “Inside the restaurant having their evening meal.”
“Come with me and point them out.”
They went inside and Dotensk took them to the table where the four were eating. The policeman with the faxes shuffled through them again, comparing each one to the faces before him, while his partner stood next to him with his hand on the butt of a 9mm Makarov pistol, holstered on his hip. When he finished looking through the faxes, the Iraqi then asked to see the ID papers of the four men. They complied, all the while continuing to eat casually.