by Ward Larsen
“Nothing at all,” Davis said.
“Well … it meant something to the director.”
“What did he say?”
“He didn’t want to talk about it.”
“You know what your problem is around here?” he said. “You people keep too many secrets. In the military everything is right out there. The information might be good, or it might stink, but it’s always available for everybody to see.” Davis went back to his search as a woman arrived with a message for Sorensen. When she read it a look of pain washed across her face.
“What now?” he asked.
“It’s from our team at the airport in Basrah. I told you they’d found two bodies in the desert nearby. Well, it seems there were also two shipping containers in the bed of that pickup truck. They were stenciled in Cyrillic, so it took some time to figure out what had been in them—apparently our friends loaded up a couple of Russian-manufactured industrial agitators.”
Davis turned to face her again. “Agitators? Like … for mixing things?”
She nodded. “On a big scale, apparently.”
“What’s the status of that team you sent into Syria? Have they confirmed whether this threat is real?”
Sorensen checked her watch. “No word yet. But we should find out soon.”
* * *
The Rapid Reaction Team lived up to its name.
Hurriedly dispatched from the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, an armored Chevy Suburban drove at breakneck speed toward the Syrian border while advance warning was forwarded through diplomatic channels: a Red Crescent medical facility outside Damascus was in dire need of emergency supplies. The lead guard at the border checkpoint might have gotten the word, because he waved them through, although not before inspecting a single passport in which the driver’s photograph was obscured by a hundred-dollar bill.
The special embassy detail was comprised of two men and two women, and when they pulled to a stop at the tiny farmhouse outside Aadra thirty minutes later, all four doors of the specially equipped Suburban rocked open simultaneously. For any other CIA station in the world it would have been an astonishing response—four qualified personnel assembled within minutes, and sent across an unfriendly border with all the equipment and training needed to quantify a radiological threat. For the Beirut station it was a well-practiced drill.
The team trained endlessly, and during the last year had been scrambled on no fewer than four occasions, all reports of chemical weapons that had turned out to be spurious. Perhaps softened by these false alarms, the team’s leader was casual as she stood regarding the house. It was a beaten-down affair, even by local standards, the roof warped and the square windows footed by broken glass. The front door was open, swinging aimlessly on the breeze, and there was not a trace of smoke from the stovepipe chimney on a chilly February afternoon. By all appearances the place was abandoned.
The leader spun an index finger in the air. Everyone knew what to do. One of the men, the best linguist, went to the house and began calling out in Arabic to ask if anyone was home. The other man stayed near the still-running vehicle—their best escape if it came to that. The second woman came to stand by the leader’s side.
Getting no response to his calls, the linguist cautiously stepped inside. As the team leader waited, she studied the workshop in back, which had figured centrally in the briefing. The shack was sided by the biggest tree on the property, a leafless acacia that looked like a pencil sketch in the falling late-day light.
“Should I put on a suit?” the woman at her side asked.
The leader looked left and right. The nearest neighbor was five hundred meters away, but somebody might be watching. The last thing they wanted was to start a panic. “No, not yet.”
“House is clear!” called the Arab-speaker from the open doorway.
The two women walked around the side of the house watchfully, steering toward the workshop. The second woman carried a radiation detector tuned to sense gamma emissions, a bulky handheld device. They were halfway between the workshop and the house when the team leader saw a fuzzy mound at the base of the acacia tree. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Yep,” her second replied.
It was a carcass of some kind, the species indistinguishable—nothing remained but a pile of bones and a few shards of hide.
“Goat?” the leader asked.
“Or a big dog. And look over there.”
In the distant field were two larger carcasses, either sheep or calves, judging by their mass.
“Anything on the meter?”
“Crap!” said the second woman. “I forgot to turn the damned thing on!” She activated the device, and both immediately heard a crackling electrical buzz. The needle on the gauge jumped straight into the red zone.
The two women instinctively took a step back, and the one in charge announced the obvious, “Yeah, Brenda, I think we’d better go put those suits on.”
FIFTY-SEVEN
Beirut is a place with a great many guns. The police and military have their share, and dozens of religious and ethnic sects keep extensive arsenals. After a long and bloody civil war, the perceived need for protection is universal. Unfortunately for Slaton, even in the midst of so much firepower, there was little chance of a weapon being cheerfully issued to an Israeli assassin.
He arrived at the Central Beirut bus station at 4:21 that afternoon. Near the ticket counter he found a brochure detailing the system schedule, and after buying a kebab from a grizzled sidewalk vendor, he sat on the steps of the old municipal hall and studied the map. He concentrated on routes that paralleled the Green Line—even today, few modes of public transportation crossed the demarcation zone, the city remaining split into a Christian east and Muslim west.
Along this line, the factions had dug in during the tenuous peace, like contemporary, urban variants of the trenches of the Somme and Ypres. The official cessation of hostilities had been over twenty years ago, yet truces here were a fluid concept. The more recent civil war in Syria had spilled into Lebanon, driving flare-ups and divisions among the belligerents that were smiled upon elsewhere. Israel, for one, was perfectly happy to sit back and watch ISIS tap swords with Hezbollah. So it was, all along Beirut’s wavering Green Line, militias held their ground determinedly, flew their flags with swagger, and stockpiled weapons for the next battle. And during the intervening lull in action, as was typical of armies everywhere, the mood of the troops would be a lazy one.
Slaton boarded a bus for what turned out to be a short ride, finding what he wanted two hundred yards west of Martyr’s Square, in a zone controlled by Sunni Arabs. He remained in his seat until the next stop, then exited and backtracked, and studied everything for a second time.
The building that had caught his eye was no more than a shell, the upper half wrecked by artillery barrages, and rubble piled high around the bullet-scarred foundation. The first two floors, however, appeared largely intact, and at the only viable entrance Slaton saw two armed men. One was tipped back in a chair with a shotgun in his lap. The other stood casually, his Kalashnikov resting against a nearby wall as he thumb-typed on the screen of a mobile phone. They were Sunni, certainly, evidenced by the blue scarves of the Future Movement, two men who’d been given guns and told to keep an eye out for nothing in particular. The building was a militia stronghold, proved by the banner hanging over the entrance, and by the fact that Slaton had not seen a policeman or a Lebanese Army soldier, in a city that crawled with them, within five blocks of the place.
There were two possibilities as to what lay inside. He might be looking at a command center, a place where senior officers met occasionally to strategize, and more frequently to drink strong coffee and discuss the latest rumors. The other option, and the one more to Slaton’s liking, was that this was an armory. Given the condition of the building, and the fact that the only vehicles outside were two beaten trucks, he leaned toward the latter being the case. Like all armies, the militias of Lebanon positioned their arsena
ls thoughtfully, situated near enough to the front lines that arms could be brought to bear quickly, yet not so close that they could swiftly be overrun by an enemy.
Slaton was studying the place, trying to verify its purpose, when the answer was gifted to him. Two men emerged from the building, each cradling an armload of weapons. One after the other, they dropped an assortment of rifles, two with grenade launchers, presumably not loaded, into the bed of the lead truck, a dusty Isuzu pickup that was missing its tailgate.
He watched intently as the men went back inside. They soon returned with a second load—another armload of rifles for one, and the other struggling with a pair of metal ammo boxes. After depositing everything in the Isuzu, they bantered briefly with the guards, the sentry with the phone now done with his text.
Having worked with all variety of military units, Slaton thought he understood what was happening. There was an outside chance this cache of weaponry was being moved to a new location, but the far more likely answer aligned with the workings of an infantry unit, which was effectively what these militias were. No foot soldier was useful until he could shoot straight, and that required training. Target practice, however, was not an urban exercise—too many innocent bystanders, not to mention a watchful enemy two blocks away who might dangerously misinterpret a hundred-round barrage.
Slaton was convinced that the trucks he was watching would depart soon, probably heading east. Sometime tonight, in a nameless sand swale somewhere in the desolate Bekaa Valley, a rendezvous would take place. Squads of new recruits would be briefed by the equivalent of noncommissioned officers. An old sergeant would hold up an older rifle and explain where to find the trigger, although not before emphasizing which end was to be kept pointed downrange at all times. When the talking was done, the rest was straightforward. Teenage boys and out-of-work waiters would spray bullets for an hour in the direction of ill-lit paper targets and spent gin bottles. After a brief intermission, more advanced firepower would be demonstrated by the instructor cadre, and sometime before midnight two dozen weapons, hot-barreled and laced in the acid tang of spent gunpowder, would be dumped back into the truck for the return trip to the armory. Mission complete.
Slaton began moving along the relatively quiet sidewalks of Independance Street—even years after the end of hostilities it remained a no-man’s land. He crossed the street on an angle, masking behind a slow-moving produce truck. The four men chattered for a time, until one went to the cab of the Isuzu, which was now fully loaded, and pulled it twenty meters forward along the curb. Slaton adjusted his pace, anticipating that the driver’s partner would reposition the other truck, a Mitsubishi SUV, directly in front of the entrance.
That was exactly how it happened.
The rest was no more than timing. On reaching the adjacent sidewalk, Slaton governed his pace and concentrated on the Isuzu. When the driver got out and headed back to the entrance, Slaton noticed what was not in his hand. He was ten steps from the truck when both men disappeared inside, leaving only the guards—one had gone back to his phone, and the other was watching Slaton, but not in an anxious way. Peace had a way of softening men.
Slaton glanced into the cab of the Isuzu and took inventory: windows open, doors unlocked, rearview mirror, shift lever of a manual transmission. Best of all—a set of keys hanging loose in the ignition. Slaton bolted toward the cab.
He had the motor cranking before the first shout. By the second Slaton had a hand on the wheel and another on the gearshift. Lying flat across the bench seat, he adjusted the mirror to see what was happening behind him. The guard who was standing had reacted first, and in the oblong reflection Slaton watched a Kalashnikov come level, followed by a hesitation while its operator fiddled with the fire selector. As Slaton popped the clutch the soldier got off one wild burst, more an alarm to the others than a threat. The truck lurched into motion, and the AK’s barrel dropped when the guard realized what was happening—tires squealing, the Isuzu was coming straight at him in reverse.
Slaton spun the steering wheel and the back left tire bounded onto the curb. There was a flash in the mirror as the second guard, having clambered out of his chair, made the only sensible move—he dove for the safety of the entrance alcove. His partner was right behind him, the Kalashnikov clattering to the sidewalk. The truck gained speed, and Slaton spun the wheel hard right. In a perfect strike, the Isuzu’s right rear quarter-panel smashed into the other truck. Slaton slammed the shift lever into first and floored the accelerator. Steering back into the road, he ventured a look back and saw the left front wheel of the Mitsubishi cocked at a hopeless angle.
The guards recovered and shots rang out, the rounds absorbed somewhere in the truck’s light frame. Slaton looked up only once to gauge a turn onto the first side street. He misjudged slightly and the Isuzu clipped the curb, vaulting onto two wheels before the undercarriage crashed back to earth. With the guards’ line of fire broken, Slaton sat up straight and drove for a mile like a Formula 1 madman. Another turn put him on a busy Yerevan thoroughfare, where he slowed to the pace of the local madmen.
Two miles later he found what he wanted—a large retail store, Swedish furniture apparently, with a loading dock at the rear. Slaton steered toward a spalled concrete platform where twin receiving doors were locked down tight. The truck wasn’t handling well—something had given way in the chassis—and he clipped a Dumpster before grinding to a halt in a hiss of steam.
He got out, walked quickly to the Dumpster, and began foraging. An eight-foot-long box that had once held a floor lamp he discarded as too cumbersome, and a rectangular wooden crate he deemed too small. Slaton settled on a beach umbrella sleeved in a colorful four-foot nylon carrying bag. He removed the umbrella and found it in two sections, a lower pole meant to screw into the sand, and an umbrella that was damaged, its fabric detached from a floral of plastic ribs—no doubt the reason it was here. Slaton ripped the multicolored fabric from its frame, kept the nylon sleeve, and tossed the rest back into the Dumpster.
He eyed the truck’s bed like a child at an ice cream counter. Rifles predominated, mostly AK-47s, but also a pair of Turkish-made Kalekalip sniper rifles. Slaton was reaching for one of these when he spotted a third type—a compact SVDS. The Russian-made marksman’s weapon was common here, although this particular item had, quite literally, been through the wars. The SVDS was a respectable long gun, rugged and tight, and after a brief inspection he deemed the weapon serviceable. Better yet, it was topped by a night-vision scope—not a complex IR illuminator, but a more reliable starlight scope, a passive system designed to amplify low levels of ambient light. When Slaton uncovered a box of standard 7.62 millimeter cartridges in the first ammunition box, his decision was made.
He divided thirty loose rounds into four pockets, slipped the gun inside the umbrella fabric, and that into the nylon sleeve. Slaton drew the drawstring tight. The shape of the sheath was slightly altered, but hardly noticeable. He saw a beaten six-pack cooler in the cab of the truck, opened it, and found the remains of someone’s lunch.
One minute later he was walking along General Chehab Street. He passed beneath the long shadow of the Lebanese Canadian Bank, and near an empty police car he discreetly dropped the Isuzu’s keys into a poorly managed hedgerow. With one more right turn, Slaton was strolling a beachside path with an empty blue cooler in one hand and an umbrella in the other, a brick-red sun kissing the shimmering sea.
FIFTY-EIGHT
There are three ways to mitigate exposure to radiation: time, distance, and shielding. With the first two implausible, Ghazi relied on the last. He used extreme caution with the first canister. He was forced to manipulate the transport casks by hand until they were nearly open—simple enough once you knew how the assembly operated, and with the right tool to key the retaining ring and initiate aperture rotation. That done, Ghazi began the most delicate part of the operation.
His work area was shielded by eighteen inches of lead brick, with a small viewing port construc
ted of lead-lined drywall and special glass that also contained lead. He worked with industrial tongs, and once the first container was open he moved it with great care toward a mixing chamber fashioned from one of the fifty-five-gallon drums. Inside the barrel, two agitators ran continuously to dissolve the cesium chloride, a readily soluble salt, into thirty gallons of water. Behind him on the amidships deck were the three two-thousand-gallon bladders, each filled with ordinary water and connected by a network of pumps to the hopper tank. Ghazi would initiate that transfer soon, before takeoff, but the drum laden with the slurry of radioactive material would be combined after takeoff using a remotely activated switch. Ghazi expected some leakage from the doors, and he thought it best to reserve as much radiation as possible for their target.
“Is it working?” called Tuncay from fifty feet away. Ghazi had told him to keep a distance once this stage was reached—in truth, more because he didn’t want to be disturbed than any kind of safety hazard. Radiation had its benefits.
“Yes,” shouted Ghazi. “Everything is fine.”
“I will tell Ben-Meir and Walid you’ve begun the final stage. How long will it take?”
“Two hours,” Ghazi called out. “No more.”
The pilot disappeared down the painter’s ladder.
The first canister took nine painstaking minutes. When it was done, Ghazi could not help but glance at the dosimeter attached to his shirt. So far so good—the reading was moderate. Once he got a rhythm, he was sure the others would go more quickly.
“One down, fifty-one to go,” he muttered into a wall of lead.
* * *
An hour later Slaton was seated comfortably in the lounge of the five-star Phoenicia, enjoying a café au lait and, more importantly, a commanding view of the hotel entrance. He had quickly solved one of his problems, that of firepower, while waiting for actionable intelligence from Langley. Now he needed transportation.