by Allan Topol
Then she compartmentalized and thought of Nasser and the mission at hand. All of her senses were finely honed. She knew what she had to do, and she would do it.
The compound was a château-like structure that had once been the winter home of a wealthy Saudi prince, before Nasser commandeered it for his revolutionary movement. With its gray stone walls and floor-to-ceiling windows, it could have been in the South of France, and perhaps it was a copy of a château the prince had seen there.
At the front gate to a high barbed-wire-topped fence, she met two guards armed with AK-47s. In the classic revolutionary mode, they had strips of bullets crisscrossed on their chests. They were young—no more than sixteen, she guessed. Sagit was wearing green military fatigues that were standard for the Iraqi revolutionary government, and her head was covered with a cloth. Yet since she was a woman, she could see the two of them undressing her mentally.
The mole had apparently done his work because as soon as she announced, “Hanan Abdullah,” one of the guards opened the gate, and the other led her inside.
The compound seemed deserted, just as the mole has said it would be. One of the two guards led her across a dusty center courtyard, where David was hoping to land the helicopter. At the entrance to the château, two of Nasser’s aides—the mole and a man named Hassan met her. She held out the envelope with the letter from Saddam to Hassan, who opened it and read it carefully, while the mole searched her bag and ran his hands roughly over her body, pausing for just an instant on her breasts.
They led her inside the building, to a first-floor office where Nasser was sitting at a desk and writing. He was exactly as the mole had described: a man trying to emulate Saddam Hussein in appearance, but who had a charismatic look, and a smile beneath his thick mustache that offset the harsh cruelty in his eyes. He, too, was dressed in military fatigues with a pistol at his waist.
When Hassan handed Nasser the letter, he examined it momentarily and said, “Saddam is a friend. Any friend of his is my friend. Any enemy of his is my enemy.” He said it in a matter-of-fact voice, letting the ominous words speak for themselves.
Hassan and the mole retreated while a woman brought in two cups of coffee and deposited them on a table in front of a sofa. Nasser pointed to Sagit, signaling that she should sit on the sofa, and he pulled up the desk chair to the other side of the table.
The thought that kept running through Sagit’s mind was how am I going to add the soporific to his coffee? There has to be a disturbance. He has to be called away, but how?
She decided to begin talking, hoping something would develop. “Saddam has followed closely what happened this morning with the Saudi king,” she said, speaking Arabic quickly with a perfect Baghdad accent. “He wants to know if you’re prepared to advance your own revolution. To move now before Colonel Khalid can solidify his rule.”
A wary Nasser replied, “If I were to do that, how much support would he give me?”
“Whatever you need. He has money in French banks that can easily be shifted to your account to purchase arms.”
“That’s an attractive offer, but Tehran made a similar offer.”
She pretended to be dismayed. “Their government is more unstable, less likely to be in power for future support.”
Nasser was noncommittal. “Who knows?” he replied, enjoying being courted by the two bitter enemies.
“Saddam will help you with the Americans. He knows how to handle them.”
“The war in Kuwait was not comforting.”
“But since then we have been winning, slowly but surely. You must have patience and strength to persevere.”
Suddenly, Hassan appeared in the doorway, that he signaled Nasser to come outside the room. As soon as he was gone, Sagit reached into her bag, took out the small bottle of soporific, and squirted a couple of drops into Nasser’s coffee.
For an instant she felt relief, but that quickly passed as she overheard what Hassan was telling Nasser. He had called Baghdad for confirmation and learned that Saddam hadn’t sent an emissary to Nasser, and he didn’t even know a woman named Hanan Abdullah.
Quickly, she punched the alarm button twice on the two-way wristwatch—the signal to David that there was trouble.
When Nasser returned, his face was bright red, and he was furious. Hassan and the mole waited at the entrance to the room.
“Who are you?” he demanded to know.
“Hanan Abdullah.”
“You’re lying. Who sent you?”
“Saddam Hussein.”
He pulled the pistol out of its holster and aimed it at her. “Who are you?”
“Hanan Abdullah.”
“Shooting would be too merciful for you,” he shouted. He walked over to his desk, put down the pistol, and picked up a sword that had been resting in the corner. As he held it menacingly above his head, he shouted, “I’ll hack your limbs off one by one. First your arms and then your legs. I’ll keep cutting until you tell me the truth or until you bleed to death. Well, what do you say?”
“I am Hanan Abdullah.”
Slashing the sword through the air, he rushed across the room. As he did, she reached up to her head and grabbed the hair pin David had given her. She waited for the last instant, until he was so close to her that she could feel the air move from the sword. Then she aimed the hair pin like a dart going for exposed skin so his clothes wouldn’t destroy its effectiveness. She caught him below his left ear as he was preparing to bring the sword down on her arm. When the dart struck him, he was stunned, and he instinctively reached up to pull it out with his free hand. Then the poison did its work. In an instant, he dropped his sword and collapsed to the ground.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Hassan and the mole rush into the room, each holding an AK-47. As soon as she saw them, she raced for the desk and grabbed Nasser’s pistol. While the astonished Hassan stood paralyzed, watching Nasser convulsing in the throes of the immediate death David had predicted, she fired and caught Hassan squarely in the heart.
Terrified, the mole stood still and stared at her with huge quivering eyes, not knowing what to do.
“I don’t want to shoot you,” she said. “I’ll knock you out with a punch. You’ll be okay, and your secret will be safe.”
Quickly, he nodded his agreement, and she punched him in the head, leaving him dazed but conscious. Still, he kept his eyes closed.
Gripping Nasser’s pistol, she ran toward the front of the château. The helicopter was hovering above the center courtyard when she stepped outside. She watched David jump out of the chopper and exchange shots with one of the two guards who had been on the front gate. But where was the other guard?
The bright sun and swirling sand were blinding her. She looked around searching for the other guard, hoping David had already killed him. Suddenly she heard the sound of an AK-47 firing. Instinctively, she whirled in that direction, shooting her own gun as she did. For an instant, her eyes locked on the eyes of the young man aiming at her.
She continued firing until bullets ripped into the right side of her upper body and shoulder. The pain was excruciating. Her knees buckled, and she collapsed onto her back on the ground.
From above, she heard more machine gun fire. She was hallucinating... Yael... Leora... David. Then she drifted out of consciousness.
Her last thought was: Please God, don’t let me die. Not now.
* * *
David’s shots killed one of the two guards. Then he watched in horror, without a clear shot, as Sagit was ambushed by the other guard. “No!” he screamed, his gun raised in case the second guard was still alive, but the man wasn’t moving. Sagit had killed him.
He bent over to feel the pulse on her left wrist. It was faint and thready. Blood was gushing from her right shoulder. She was unresponsive. He needed something to bandage her, and fast, to stop the flow of blood. There had to be something inside the château.
He dashed past the bodies of Nasser and Hassen, both of whom were dead, and i
nto a bedroom. A woman was cowering behind a chair in a corner, and he ignored her as he frantically ripped sheets from the bed and ran back into the courtyard. Bending down, he hastily bandaged Sagit’s wounds. As he did, he suddenly became conscious of a warm fluid trickling down his right leg and into his boot. Shit, I must have been hit, he realized. The blood was coming from his thigh, and he tore off a strip of one of the sheets and wrapped it around his leg. Then he scooped her up into his arms. As he hobbled with her across the courtyard, he shouted, as if his loud voice could penetrate her unconsciousness, “I’m not going to let you die. I’m not going to lose you.”
Daphna had landed the chopper, and he placed Sagit down carefully on the floor in the back and covered her with a blanket.
“Start the engine,” he barked to Daphna.
When nothing happened, he looked at her. She was sitting at the controls, staring into space, paralyzed and freaked out from the shooting she had just witnessed. From behind, he grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her hard. “Get hold of yourself,” he said roughly, trying to shake her out of her stupor. “It’s up to you. We’ll all make it if you can get us the hell out of here.”
His harsh approach worked. She snapped out of it.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be okay,” she said. Her voice was still tentative, but she started the engine. As it sputtered to life, blowing sand on the ground, she asked him, “Where are we going?”
David tried to decide: where can I take Sagit? Israel was too far away, given the seriousness of her wounds and the range of the helicopter. Even if Khalid could have one of his pilots fly her there in a jet, it would take too long. A Saudi hospital wasn’t an alternative for a Mossad agent, particularly now, after Khalid’s attack.
No, there was only one choice. The big American military base at Dhahran had a hospital. The same base he had escaped from five years ago when he broke General Chambers’ jaw. There was only one problem: how could he get in?
He directed Daphna to start flying toward Dhahran. Below the chopper was only desert, miles and miles of sand dunes and nothing else in the barren inhospitable terrain. Underneath all of that sand lay huge reservoirs of oil, but right now none of that mattered to David. All he cared about was saving Sagit.
David directed Daphna to jettison all of the MD 500’s missiles, sending them crashing onto the endless sand below. Then he grabbed the helicopter’s radio and called the Dhahran airbase’s communications center. “Israeli civilian in unmarked Saudi helicopter carrying wounded Mossad agent requests permission to land and asks preparation of base hospital for major surgery.” There was a long pause.
“Do you read me?” David called, trying to conceal the panic in his voice. “Do you read me?”
The American base gave David a two-pronged response. First, four F-15 fighter jets, which had been on Con Delta alert with pilots in the cockpits since the Americans received word that Colonel Khalid had launched his attack, shot down the runway and headed toward the helicopter.
Then the base radio operator replied to David in a firm voice, “Permission NOT granted. For security reasons.”
“We’re unarmed,” David shouted back angrily. “All missiles were jettisoned. You can see that with your long-range scopes.” David thought that they must have already observed the absence of missiles, but that still didn’t cut it because the Americans were worried that he was on a suicide mission. “This is humanitarian,” he added, softening his voice. “I told you I’m carrying a seriously wounded Mossad agent.”
A gust of wind whipped the helicopter sideways.
Gripping the controls tightly, Daphna struggled to keep them on course. On the ground below, an encampment of Bedouins watched the chopper rock from side to side until Daphna had the helicopter leveled. The four F-15s were now directly overhead. David guessed that the pilots had their fingers on the buttons to fire heat-seeking air-to-air missiles the instant the order was given from Dhahran.
“Repeat. Permission not granted.”
“You’re making a serious mistake, you turkey,” David said, displaying a confidence he didn’t feel. “I want to talk to your commanding officer.”
In a voice brimming with authority, the operator replied, “General McCallister, the base commander, personally denied the authorization to land.”
“Then fuck the authorization,” David shouted back into the microphone. “We’re coming in.”
“This is a warning. If you get within five miles of the base perimeter, missiles will be fired to shoot down the helicopter.”
Daphna looked at him in fear.
“Slow your speed, but stay on course,” he ordered her.
Then suddenly out of nowhere three American Apache helicopters appeared. They circled behind the MD 500. One remained directly behind, while one took a position to the left of the MD 500, and the other to the right.
The presence of the Apaches, each with the pilot in the rear and the copilot gunner in front, was too much for Daphna. She was over Northern Israel again. They had been hit. The blood was running down the back of Yuri’s head. She was trying to get back to base, and...
Totally unstrung, she lost her grip on the controls, and the helicopter veered sharply out of control, swinging wildly. Seeing the glazed look in her eyes, David realized what was happening. If he could have flown the chopper, he would have seized control and done it. But that wasn’t an option. So he slapped her once hard on the side of her face, and then again. She pulled her head back with a start. “I’ll be okay,” she said, glancing at the Apache on her left, close enough so she could see the white USAF letters on the gunner’s helmet.
David sized up the situation. He had no doubt that if they continued on this course for an unauthorized landing, they would be shot down, given the security that normally pervades the base and that had to be magnified after Khalid’s attack. The Americans would never take a chance that he wasn’t on a suicide mission. He decided to take a different tack.
“You tell Mac McCallister that Greg Nielsen’s in this chopper. He’ll remember me from five years ago.”
“Who did you say you were?” the incredulous radio operator asked.
“Yeah, I’m the one who broke the jaw of that dumb fuck Chambers five years ago.”
The stunned silence at the other end of the radio led David to conclude that the Dhahran radio operator had heard of him. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the slip of paper Sagit had given him before they took off.
Then he shouted into the radio microphone, “You tell Mac to call Margaret Joyner in Washington.” He reeled off the phone number. “You tell him that the name of the wounded Israeli is Sagit, and if she dies I’ll do a lot worse to him than I did to General Chambers five years ago.”
The radio remained silent as the chopper moved closer and closer to Dhahran. Ahead, he could clearly see the base military structures, surface-to-air missiles ready to fire at a moment’s notice, and the rebuilt Khobar housing complex. David looked over his shoulder at Sagit and was alarmed. Her face was ashen—devoid of any color and life. Her eyes weren’t moving. If she was still alive, it was only by a thread.
They were ten miles from Dhahran. If they turned back, Sagit was as good as dead. The Israelis had a wonderful expression he had learned: ain barera. “No alternative.” That described their situation right now.
Daphna was gripping the controls with white knuckles. She looked over at him in disbelief. “I think they mean business,” she said in a trembling voice.
“Stay on course,” he told her. “Start to cut altitude. We’ll come in under the missiles.” Even though he said it, he knew that would probably be futile because they would no doubt be heat-seekers. David held his breath as the chopper began to drop.
Suddenly, his radio crackled to life. “Permission to land is granted. Proceed to the chopper pad next to the base hospital. Do you need directions?”
David blew out his breath in relief. “Have you moved it in five years?”
“Negative.”
“I know where it is.”
As soon as Daphna touched down, a team of medics with a stretcher on wheels and emergency equipment ran out of the hospital toward the helicopter, ducking under the still-moving blades. David jumped out himself and watched breathlessly as they struggled to bring the moribund Sagit back to life. They placed her on a board, inserted a breathing tube down her throat, attached leads to her chest and hooked her up to a monitor. Then they assessed her, while a nurse inserted a catheter into her left forearm and hung IV fluids. All the while, a young woman was calling out orders for medication, and David moved up next to her. Her name tag said Captain Deborah Marks.
“Into surgery now,” the captain shouted, and they wheeled the stretcher into the building as fast as two medics could run alongside.
David grabbed the captain by the arm. “I want to talk to the surgeon who’s in charge.”
“That’s me.”
God, she’s young, he thought. “Well listen, Dr. Deborah,” he said. “Please...”
And he started to cry, like he’d cried when he heard that his father had been killed so long ago, and when he heard that Yael had died in the bus bombing.
Captain Marks motioned to one of the orderlies to take care of David. Then she ran after the stretcher into the hospital and through the swinging double metal doors that led to the operating rooms.
A medic cleaned and bandaged David’s superficial thigh wound. Then he and Daphna began the awful waiting for news about Sagit. Time went by slowly for them. He drank coffee, and she smoked cigarettes. For eight straight hours, exactly on the hour, because this was the military, someone emerged from the operating theater to give them a report, but it was always the same: “Surgery is continuing. No word yet on whether the patient will survive.”