by Niv Kaplan
They now had money to try and get Black Jack out.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Mai-Li received the call past midnight and for the second time it caused her to alter everyone’s plans. She raced to Ali’s room to wake her and the two slipped out of the hotel to find a taxi.
They turned up at the military base at two in the morning and demanded to see the foreigners. The Indian corporal at the gate who was unaware of the covert activity in the base hastily called his sergeant who called his lieutenant who still had no idea of what was going on.
“There’s a team of foreigners at your base,” Mai-Li tried to explain. “Leader’s name is Harley. We need to talk to him urgently!”
The three soldiers looked at each other ignorantly.
“This is an Indian facility,” the lieutenant insisted. “There are no foreigners here, Miss.”
“Get the base commander,” Ali pitched in. “He’s got to know.”
“But he’s asleep,” the sergeant said in horror.
“This is an emergency!” Mai-Li pleaded. “Why else would two women be here in the middle of the night for God’s sake?”
The three moved away to converse. Finally the lieutenant walked briskly away.
Harley showed up with the base commander ten minutes later, bleary eyed and upset. He nodded at the women, reassuring the troubled soldiers, then came walking out.
“This’d better be good as our cover is now blown!” he whispered menacingly as he moved away from the gate, guiding the women by their elbows.
“Sam called from Eilat,” Mai-Li said, straightening her gaze at him. “They’ve located Jack.”
“Yes, and ..?” Harley spit out angrily.
“There’s an opportunity to spring him before he gets to trial...”
Harley looked at her hard, trying to comprehend the information.
“We’re hours away from...” he began saying.
“Sam said to abort,” Mai-Li interrupted. “Jack’s more important.”
“But...”
“It’s a one shot deal and Sam wants you. If we miss, Jack could be in there for life.”
Harley grabbed his head with his hands and turned taking a few steps away then abruptly returned.
“He’s got three hundred thousand to pay you,” Mai-Li blurted out, anticipating his next objection.
Open mouthed, Harley looked at Ali.
“We can do this some other time, Joe,” Ali reasoned.
“But those kids? I thought it was about them...”
“It is,” Mai-Li put in. “Jack’s contributed to saving more of them than anyone I know and he’ll go on doing it if we can only get him out!”
Harley’s anger suddenly deflated. He took a deep breath and pulled the women further from the gate.
“OK, fill me in,” he instructed.
“Jack will be moved from the Sharm el Sheikh Hospital to be tried in Dahab in three days,” Mai-Li clarified. “There’s an opportunity to grab him en route. That’s all Sam was willing to say. He said we must get to Israel in the next day or we lose the opportunity. There’s an El-Al flight leaving Bombay this afternoon. We need to be on it.”
Though he was famous for keeping a cool head and decisively responding with corrective measures under fire, Harley was a meticulous planner who hated makeshift operations. It was his recipe for success.
“This is extremely short notice,” he complained to the women as they huddled in front of the gate, the Indian soldiers carefully scrutinizing them. “I don’t know who I need to take or how we get out there in time.”
“Get them to fly us to Bombay with military transport,” Mai-Li suggested.
There was a pause. Harley shut his eyes in concentration. “I’ll need to talk to the base commander,” he finally said. “You girls find out if we can get to Bombay using commercial transport. I’ll also need to talk to Sam. Can you get me his number?” he addressed Mai-Li.
Impulsively Mai-Li reached up to embrace Harley by the neck, kissing him on the cheek.
“We’ll need to call off the media,” she said as she and Ali sprinted for their taxi waiting nearby.
Harley had his own burden of explaining to his men, the base commander, the Indian Special Forces, and the folks back home and he needed to make it stick if they ever wanted another crack at the Lambda-B organization. His involvement and all the preparations had by now made it a personal affair Harley needed to see through. Money was always just a means to an end and he was now ready to even do it for free. He hated being forced into making a hasty decision, one he feared could be costly due to lack of appropriate preparation, but he sympathized with Sam and his loyalty to his people. They had only one shot, as flimsy as it may be, at saving Jack, versus a possible second round in Kashmir. He would have done the same for one of his men.
*****
Kasuma rented a car in Nueba and drove to Sharm via Dahab where she made a brief stop to meet a colleague who confirmed the information she had passed on to Kessler whereby careful and discreet preparations were being made for a swift trial of the American. Hassan, her informant, had been to the now infamous building where Clair had been held and from which Ortega tragically tried to escape, that housed the court, the police station, and the jail.
He had also been to the beach café where he heard the notorious Abdullah Fuad, attorney at law, shoot his mouth off promising vengeance in front of a crowd of police officers. He, of course, would support the prosecution with an incriminating testimony as their star witness.
Kasuma was on her way to her most dangerous mission to date. She had agreed to physically follow the convoy escorting Jack from Sharm to Dahab and alert the rescue team on its whereabouts. Now that they were certain Jack was not going back via the A-Tur prison, she and Kessler had agreed it would be the only sensible way to make certain they would be ready in time and strike the right vehicles. Alternatively, her presence would allow them to make adjustments or even abort the mission if need be. Kessler had equipped her with a powerful hand-held short wave radio, one that could transmit far enough to alert the rescue team who would be setting the ambush along the coastal road. The team would be offloaded by an Israeli vessel in close vicinity to the coast where they would use small rubber boats for the insertion, an undertaking they planned to complete before dawn. The team was to find a way to keep out of sight within striking distance of the highway at an agreed spot. Kasuma would provide continuous reports of progress until it was time to strike.
She reached Sharm in the afternoon, checked in at the Hilton and went directly to the hospital where another acquaintance, an anesthesiologist named Summer, was expecting her.
The hospital was a rectangular reconstructed two-storey building with an added new wing that housed outpatient infirmaries, several shops and a cafeteria.
She found Summer in the cafeteria having coffee but before she could approach him, he signaled for her to stay put, then follow him as he made his way out of the hospital. He walked briskly toward the Sharm beach promenade, crowded with tourists clustering the colorful array of shops, restaurants, hotels and casinos along the half-moon Ofira Bay, the Red Sea waters sparkling in the afternoon sun.
Summer walked down to the beach, took off his shoes and sat, feet immersed in the water. Kasuma did the same. As she sat, she handed him an overstuffed envelope, in it a bundle of bills of Egyptian currency.
Summer was the one who had informed her of the ensuing change of plan. Initially, he had reported, they wanted the American out of the hospital and back in prison quickly, but when they realized he could not be moved for at least a week, nor could he be treated at an inferior facility such as the A-Tur prison, they opted to keep him and send him to Dahab, direct.
“They have him well-guarded down in the basement,” he informed Kasuma, gazing out toward the bay. “Been there since the operation.”
“How’s he doing?” Kasuma inquired, shielding her eyes with her palm from the intense sun.
“Has
n’t been any unusual activity so I assume he’s OK,” Summer said. “The talk is that he’s leaving sometime this week but a firm day hasn’t been established.”
A dog ran by chasing a stick, two blonde kids chasing after him, shouting in a foreign language. It was a Sunday and she figured Jack would be moved on the Tuesday, Wednesday at the latest if the trial was to begin this week. But she had to be precise if she was to minimize risk for the troops.
“How much advance notice can you give me?” she questioned.
“Come back tomorrow, same time, I might know something,” Summer said without commitment.
Kasuma had no choice but to abide. She was on extremely shaky ground even with the large bribe money she had paid. The entire affair was uncharacteristically hushed and sources were dreadfully limited.
She reached for her shoes and left with them in her hand, silently making her way along the water line, the low waves caressing her bare feet. She had another person to see for cross-reference; a second envelope was concealed on her body for that purpose.
She walked on the beach along the bay, converging with the boardwalk after a while, then doubled back and made her way among the hordes of people toward the hospital.
Faisel was a lanky male nurse who moved like a giraffe among his fellow countrymen who, on average, were a head shorter than him. Kasuma had no problem spotting him attending to a line of patients in the emergency room. Nurse Faisel did not know her so she got in line and patiently waited her turn. When she reached him she handed him a small note with her name and the name of her referral. Faisel looked at the note uncomprehendingly for a brief moment, then took her by the hand and led her behind a partition.
“You must leave immediately!” he told her worriedly. “The place is infested with undercover police. Everyone's paranoid. I’ll need to see you after work.”
“When’s that?” Kasuma inquired.
“Later, around seven.”
“Where can we meet?”
“Wait for me at the Reef Café on the boardwalk,” Faisel whispered, taping a bandage around her arm then leading her back from behind the partition to the waiting crowd. Kasuma thanked him, holding her hand for show, then slipped out of the building.
Lieutenant Hamoodi, Chief Halil’s second-in-command, walked nervously back and forth, in front of a handful of men watching him.
His job was to secure the transport of the American to the trial in Dahab. Chief Halil did not trust his Sharm counterparts and had sent his deputy and most trusted men to oversee the proceedings and provide escort.
“Are you sure it’s her?” Hamoodi was asking one of the four men he had brought along from Dahab.
The undercover police officer was looking at a photo sent from the border station at Taba of a woman suspected of being “friendly” with the Israelis.
“Name is Kasuma, a prominent daughter of Chief Abu-Kadim of the Tarrabin,” the man said with contempt. “They’ve suspected her for years.”
“So why haven’t they arrested her?”
“Preferred to watch her at a distance, I guess,” the officer observed. “Maybe she’s more useful this way.”
“So they think she’s involved in this?” Hamoodi questioned his team.
“They did not elaborate,” another officer clarified. “Said to keep an eye on her but refrain from making contact.”
“So, do you think she’s involved in this?”
“Well, if it’s her, then her presence here is definitely suspicious,” a third officer remarked.
Hamoodi resumed his pacing. He was at a loss as to what to do because clearly, if the woman was involved, he could not ignore her presence, but nor could he imagine the type of threat she could pose. Short of kidnapping the American from the basement or en route to Dahab, there was not much she could do and she would have to be insane to attempt anything with the level of attention given to the matter.
It could be pure coincidence.
“Where did you say you spotted her?” he asked his deputy once again.
“Entering the emergency room. She stood in line for treatment, then came out with a bandage on her hand but I could have sworn she didn’t seem to be injured when she came in.”
“Did you notice her hand when she walked in?” Hamoodi queried.
“Not really. I focused on her face, then, from where I was standing, I could only watch her back.”
“Did she approach anyone? Talk to anyone? Do anything peculiar?”
“She stood in line for quite a while then went behind the podium for her treatment. The nurse was the only one she had any contact with.”
Hamoodi mulled the information over.
“Where did she go after that?”
“Toward the beach. I didn’t want to leave my post or I would’ve followed her.”
“Shame. We could have at least found out where she’s staying.”
Hamoodi was thinking of the nurse. If anyone could help her, he or she would have to be someone with information from inside the hospital. A nurse was definitely a prospect. His man did not notice the woman wounded in any way yet she stood in line for treatment and talked only to the nurse. If indeed she was healthy, the nurse was her contact.
“Can you identify the nurse who treated her?” he queried.
“Not a problem. The man looks like a giraffe.”
“Get on him first thing tomorrow morning and don’t let him out of your sight. The rest of you remain in your posts but keep an eye for the woman,” Hamoodi instructed.
It was night and they all needed a break. Hamoodi joined his men for a drink at a local bar then left them. He went back to the hospital to check on the prisoner. The two prison guards were outside the basement playing Shesh-Besh, smoking and drinking coffee. He joined them for coffee, smoked a cigarette and watched as they rolled the dice.
A male nurse appeared and entered the room to check on the patient.
Hamoodi had an inspiration. He decided to test the waters by supplying disinformation. When the nurse came out he informed him that the patient’s transfer would be delayed one day.
He then went back to his hotel room for a nap. In two days, his prisoner would be moved to Dahab. If anyone tried anything, he would be a day late.
Kasuma received no new information from Nurse Faisel when they met at the Reef Café. He stuffed the envelope containing the cash in his pants and proceeded to tell her what she already knew.
“Meet me here at the same time tomorrow and I’ll confirm his departure,” he said gazing down at her with an aura of importance. “I’ll need some more cash for my colleague.”
“How certain can you be of the departure time?” Kasuma queried him.
“As certain as I am the sun will be up tomorrow,” Faisel said condescendingly. “My colleague is the one looking after him.”
“Will I have 48 hours to prepare?” Kasuma inquired, feeling more confident.
“I believe so,” Faisel concurred. “What exactly are you preparing for?”
“That’s my business,” Kasuma said bluntly. “And you’d better forget you ever met me.”
Faisel raised his hands in submission to indicate this was not his fight. He gulped down the Cola he had ordered and got up to leave, hitting his head on the erected lampshade above their table. Ducking to get out, he left rubbing his head.
The following day, Kasuma remained in her room until it was time to meet Summer at the beach.
They met at the same spot.
“He’s being moved Wednesday morning,” the anesthesiologist revealed. “Bright and early!”
“I need to ask you if you are absolutely certain,” Kasuma pried. “Higher forces are at work.” She smiled apologetically raising her hands to the sky.
“I was having lunch with Doctors Fiad and El-Gaziz, his anesthesiologist and surgeon. They both confirmed he’s to be moved Wednesday,” Summer assured her.
Kasuma looked at her watch. It was just past noon, Monday. Kessler had asked for 48 hours. I
f she informed him now, he would barely have that. If she waited to confirm the news with Nurse Faisel at seven, it may be too late.
She thanked Summer and rushed to her hotel room where she made a phone call. She figured chances were slim that Jack would be moved before Wednesday. If anything, he could be moved later and she preferred to alert Kessler early than late.
That evening, at the Reef Café, when Nurse Faisel informed her the day would be Thursday, wheels had already been put in motion and there was nothing she could do to delay it. It would force the troop to hide on the coastline an extra day but at least they would be in position. No telling when exactly the entourage was going to leave. Worst case they would strike Thursday morning, best case Wednesday morning and anywhere in between.
She, in any event, planned to be in position from Wednesday morning on.
CHAPTER THIRTY SIX
The submarine made its way, silently submerged ten meters deep in the black waters of the Gulf. The sailors had made room for the exhausted troop who now lay fast asleep on the narrow bunks of the constricted tube.
They had arrived in Eilat not ten hours before and managed several briefs from Sam, Kessler, the Israeli Navy and Intelligence personnel before boarding the Navy sub which was to drop them in rubber boats within international waters, roughly five kilometers from the Sinai coastline. Two Israeli Navy commandos were to escort them to the coast then return and stay with the sub until they returned. Any scrap with Egyptian authorities, and they were on their own.
“Man the bridge,” the loudspeakers roared across the length of the vessel, from its engine room to the torpedo room to the communication hub.
Someone was tugging at his shoulder. A corporal had been sent to wake him up.
“The captain wants to see you,” the sailor said in lame English.
No stranger to submarines, careful not to bump his head, a disoriented Harley slipped out of the bunk and followed the sailor to the captain’s quarters, wary of seamen rushing purposefully by, squeezing through the narrow abrasive corridor, an array of hoses and gauges embellishing its interior.