On two or three of the less dangerous missions she had insisted on joining the frontline force, once successfully blowing up an empty Israeli tank. And she now assumed she could take part in any mission she wished. And the General mostly shrugged and agreed. However, Shakira was not permitted to join this gathering on the Golan Heights, and she was currently sulking back in Damascus, while the former Major Kerman briefed his troops for tonight's insertion into Israel.
He was only just back himself from a third mission inside the Israeli border. The operations had been spread over one and a half months, each one lasting seven days and seven nights. Each time Ravi had taken just four men to the observation post he had established on the slopes of the mountain that rises up to the ruined battlements of Nimrod Fortress.
This thirteenth-century Syrian castle, which they had once defended against the marauding Crusaders, occupies a select place in the folklore of the nation.
It was a devasting blow when it fell into Israeli hands in the Yom Kippur War. But that's what happened, and borders were constructed to its east, and there it stood high on the Golan plain, surrounded by the wreckage of a thousand tanks, and several hundred ghosts of Syria's fighting men.
Nimrod Fortress, located now in Israel, has one of the most commanding views in all of the Middle East, spectacular vistas of the lush farmland of the Northern Galilee. It was from this high garrison in the 1967 war that Syrian forces launched attack after attack on the Israelis below, blasting shells into the kibbutz communities of Dan, Ashmura, and Shi'arYashuv.
On that occasion the Israelis outflanked them, counterattacking behind the defenses, forcing the total surrender, or abject retreat of all Syrian units on the Golan. It was, if anything, worse in 1973, after the Israelis struggled up to the Heights, the odds stacked against them, and with stupendous courage, hurled the attackers back, driving on toward Damascus, before the United Nations demand for peace was heeded.
No Syrian can even think about the Golan Heights, and the annexing of the ancient Nimrod Fortress without a rising sense of rage, frustration, and, in the Arabian ethic, an obdurate, unending desire for revenge.
If that awareness was powerful in 1973, it became obsessive after the end of 2004, because in the final months of that year the Israelis committed the unthinkable. They bulldozed the entire interior of the ancient fortress, and turned it into a high-security prison, constructed with massive granite blocks, inside the old castle ramparts. Behind its towering, gray, five-foot-thick walls, was incarcerated fifty of the most important political prisoners the Israelis had ever captured.
It was packed with personnel from Hamas and its sister organization, Hezbollah, along with various other highly influential members of the Islamic Jihad.
Nimrod Jail thus stood as a terrible symbol of Israeli power, constructed, perhaps, in anger at a violent rash of terrorist attacks at the end of 2001, but as inflammatory, in its way, as the division of Jerusalem itself.
On their most recent mission, Ravi Rashood and his team had again watched the place ceaselessly for one week, observing the jail, noting the comings and goings of the guards, observing the change of shifts, counting the minutes of the four-man outside patrols, measuring the distance from the main gate to the lower level of the old rock-built foundation, gauging the precise time it took one guard to walk down there, and then assessing the time that would be needed for other men to make the short journey, some of whom may be weak, or even ill.
Trying to log the timing of the lights in the main courtyard had proved to be almost impossible from the vantage point of the Hamas recce group, huddled in their hide, close to the top of the escarpment, but still forty feet below the ground level of the jail. After days of observation, General Ravi had finally said, in his now impeccable Arabic, "If it's not accurate, we don't need it. We'll attack in the daylight."
This last remark had sent a tremor of concern through the four-man team that accompanied the General. What! Try to storm this Israeli stronghold in broad daylight? No covering darkness? No element of surprise? Risk being seen and obliterated on the steep upward slopes of Nimrod, probably by heavy artillery? Sir, we wouldn't have a chance!
Above them they could see the evidence of Israel's defenses on an encircling ridge outside the jail walls. There was obvious artillery, plus machine gun nests, and rocket launchers. The Israelis, whatever else, were not stupid, and they understood the possibility of "some lunatic terrorist group taking a shot at the jail." But they'd made provisions for that, insuring that no attacking battalion would have a prayer of survival.
General Ravi was thoughtful. He dictated on a slim microphone, directly into his computer, the strength and direction of the fixed artillery positions. He assessed the time it would take for the Israelis, caught unaware only briefly, to turn those killer weapons on to their enemy.
For an hour he had said nothing, listening patiently to the apprehension of his men. But he never stopped making his notes, using his calculator, dictating his responses.
Finally, he had said, quietly, "We'll attack in the daylight. I have not yet decided time and date."
Now, back in the Golan compound, direct from the jaws of the Israeli Lion for the third time, he rose to speak to his warriors. And there was not a sound in the long tent as he raised a long polished stick and pointed it at the first map, tapping it on the Syrian Disengagement Line east of the tiny village of Hadar.
"We leave Syrian territory right here," he said. "And begin our crossing of No Man's Land, south of the village. It's about five miles across, and we can safely take the big truck in for a little over a mile without attracting Israeli attention, maybe a little further, depending on the weather.
"I have marked our entry point into Israel right here, 33.18' North, 35.40' East. You will find it is one thousand yards upstream of the nearest Israeli observation post, and we expect a patrol to come by, heading north, every thirty-two minutes, and then returning south, eight minutes later. That gives us a clear insertion window of twenty-four minutes. We will cross the border under cover of darkness, in four-man groups.
"There's thirty-six of us, which means nine short dashes across the line, one after the other, with two minutes between each start. We regroup, right here, one mile inside Israeli territory, east nor'east of Mas'ada. We will all wear dark combat gear, with black hoods. Each man will carry in addition to his water canteen, a carbine pistol, his MP5 submachine gun, and a combat knife. Team leaders will in addition have a compass, a cell phone, a Global Positioning System, and two hand grenades to distribute among his team. These will only be used in dire circumstances. Questions?"
Sir, any details on the holding area before we make the dash across the line?
"Yes," replied the General. "The Israeli Disengagement Line runs between two sloping hills. But the ground is flat between them for about sixty yards on their side. On our side, there is a hillside, kind of scooped out like the inside of a spoon. It's very rocky and provides outstanding cover for all of us until the Israeli patrol comes by heading south. I'm hoping it's not too dark, because I found the terrain very awkward on the recce. If there's no moon you'll walk as swiftly as you can without colliding with the rocks, but once you reach the Israeli line, the ground flattens right out, and if it's dark you can run like hell, due west to the RV Point."
Any details about the RV, sir?
"Yes," said Ravi. "I was there with the second recce team. That means five of us have firsthand knowledge. I will lead the first team across the line, and one man from my original group will run with Groups Three, Six, and Nine. That means everyone will be within two minutes of a little local expertise.
"The RV Point itself is close to the top of an escarpment, way off any road or track. It's uninhabited, no livestock to speak off, and I do not expect to see anyone. Should someone stumble into our path, you will take them out instantly and silently, man, woman, or child, preferably with the knife. Then hide the body."
He stopped for response. Bu
t there was none. He had trained them well, and each man understood his responsibility, and above all, the high stakes involved.
"Once we reach the RV Point," the General continued, "we are five and a half miles from the lower hills below the Fortress. If we cross the Israeli Disengagement Line at around 2300 hours, we should be on our way by 0100, in four groups of nine men, moving cross-country, in the darkest part of the night.
"I have personally completed this journey three times. I was not trying to break any record, just moving easily, through farmland, and it takes under two hours. But we do have to cross a shallow river."
The General pointed to a thin blue line on the map. "Sometimes," he added, "this is just a muddy puddle. But right now it's a river. Thigh-high. Keep your arms up, weapons dry. Okay?"
Everyone nodded. The General sipped from a glass of water, and then pointed again with his baton. "This, right here, is the road up to the fortress. It's a mountain road, but it has only one hairpin bend. The rest are gentle, but steep slopes. The Fortress is hundreds of feet above the flatland around it. I have marked a spot with this X, right here. And I want you to look at this much larger scale map here, which shows the road from its lower levels and then the two miles up to the Fortress itself. Here's the X, okay?"
The entire assembly moved forward, each man holding his own map, and watching the General's pointer.
"Right here," he said, "fifty feet below the road, is an overhang of rocks, about one hundred yards long, with a lot of undergrowth. It's about one third of the way to the top, a mile below the Fortress and less than that from the point the road rises. That overhang provides complete cover from the road. We'll be in there by 0300, which gives us time to cut and improve the cover of the brushwood. I will personally carry in the two pairs of pruning shears we'll need for this phase of the operation. There'll be two shovels waiting for us. By 0600 we'll have our communications straight, and by first light we'll be invisible from the road. Anyone strays near us, he dies. Is that clear?"
At this point, Shakira's brother, Ahmed Sabah, to whom Ray Kerman almost certainly owed his life, said quietly, "General, I think I may have missed something. But I have absolutely no idea what we are going to do at this jail… "
"That's because I have not yet told anyone," replied the CO. "I am just coming to that."
"I think my comrades would feel better if you were able to tell us right now," replied the young Palestinian. "I feel as if we are all somehow in the dark."
General Rashood smiled. "Well, since we're leaving tomorrow night, and no one's leaving here before then, you may as well know now, as you wish."
He replaced his baton on the table, and sat down, once more between the two Syrian officers. He consulted his notebook and told them, "This jail, with its fifty prisoners and approximately thirty-six guards, is resupplied with food only once a week. Every Friday morning, a huge twenty-eight-wheel truck, from the military garrison on Route 90, fourteen miles north of the Sea of Galilee, arrives at the main gates of the jail at 1100 sharp. I've logged it in three times, and it's never been late. Its delivery this Friday morning, however, will contain a surprise. There will be no bread, flour, frozen meat, milk, and eggs on board. There will be thirty-six Hamas warriors. Us."
The gathering was utterly stunned, like the home crowd at a soccer game when one of their own players accidentally bangs the ball into his own net. No one spoke, and they struggled to betray no fear, or even surprise. But the collective gasp, a kind of stifled WOW! could still be heard.
No one wanted to be the first to raise a thousand questions. Instead they just waited for their new warlord to clarify the situation.
General Rashood stared out at his men. And then he spoke again. "The supply truck contains a driver and an assistant, both of them soldiers wearing the uniform of the IDF. The road is lonely. I counted the traffic for the hour prior to the truck's arrival and again for the hour after its departure at 1300 hours.
"My conclusions were simple. No vehicle climbed the hill before the truck. And the only vehicle that went down the hill after the truck was the prison van itself, transporting guards down to civilian living quarters six miles away, at the change of the shift. Since the Israelis closed the road to tourists and civilian traffic that road has been practically deserted."
But how do we get in the truck instead of the meat and eggs?
Suddenly everyone wanted to know that. General Rashood carefully answered. "At 1050, a car driven by two Arabs in traditional dress will drive up the road and stop thirty yards before our hide. It will pull up in the middle of the road, and its driver and passenger will walk around the front and lift up the hood.
"At this point, Ahmed and I will move up from the hide and station ourselves on either side of the road. When the supply truck is forced to stop, ten minutes later, for the apparent breakdown blocking the road, the two IDF men will most certainly disembark, and we will kill them both, using the knife. Plainly, we do not want gunshots within a mile of the jail.
"At that moment the road will be deserted, except for us, and the stretch we will occupy cannot be seen from the jail. All of you will rush up the escarpment and unload that truck, drag out the cases and throw 'em over the edge. It's a massive vehicle; really a ship's freight container being hauled by a powerful front end. And it carries a ton of stuff. It may even be going on to deliver in other locations. But there's thirty-six of us, and we're going to empty it. Meanwhile, the broken-down car will head back down the hill where it will break down again, sideways, once more blocking the road. In the unlikely event any other vehicle arrives, the occupants will be killed instantly.
"By now everyone will be in the truck. You guys in the container, which will be open at the rear, covered only by tarpaulin. Ahmed and myself will be in the cab, wearing the Israelis' uniforms. I'm driving."
But what happens then, sir? How do we get in the jail? What if there's a password? What if they want to search the truck before they open the gates?
The General explained, again with care, how he had lain in wait for the truck, crouching on the escarpment the previous Friday, listening in the quiet of the morning, way up there on the ridge of the Nimrod.
"There was no password," he said. 'The delivery was obviously expected. And the driver gave two light beeps on the truck's horn. The guards on the outside flanks of the jail, in charge of the artillery, did not even walk around. The gates opened and the truck drove directly inside.
'Two days from now, that precise moment represents our H-Hour, the instant we hit. When the truck has moved into the jail, through the gates, out of sight of the outside patrols, but not far enough inside for anyone to close the gates. That's our H-Hour. That's when I hit the brakes, and you guys hit the ground."
General Ravi, still every inch the SAS Commander, stood up once more and moved back toward the third map. "Gentlemen," he said, "this is the map of the jail, constructed from satellite pictures we have obtained, and refined for us by our staff in Damascus. For the next three hours we will work on the detail of our attack, each man reporting to me for complete instructions of his personal duties. Like all highly briefed Special Forces, we want no surprises, no confusion, and as little opposition as possible."
The General knew he was putting his foot soldiers through a crash course of preparation, which would not have been good enough for the SAS. Only his twelve most trusted men had been party to the infinite detail of the operation— the ones who had accompanied him to Nimrod.
Ravi was torn between the SAS method of briefing, practicing, rehearsing, and more, and the need for secrecy. He could have staged a dummy run somewhere in Syria, but he was uncertain about security leaks, of the Israelis finding out something was going on, and he elected to play his cards close to his chest.
"It's 1600 now," he said. "We'll be through by 1900. We'll break for dinner, and sleep as long as possible. There'll be a two-hour meeting tomorrow at midday, then rest in the afternoon. We'll eat early, final short briefing
at 2200, trucks away at 2300 sharp."
11 P.M., Thursday, April 28, 2005
Hamas Compound, Golan Heights
The two unmarked army trucks growled softly into the night, heading west, trying to stay out of the howling low gears, trying to keep their headlights down yet still miss the rocks, trying to navigate a more or less straight line to the Syrian Disengagement Line.
General Rashood, who had traversed the route a dozen times with Ahmed, sat next to the driver of the lead truck, watching the compass, peering through his night goggles, doing his best to translate familiar landmarks from the granite-strewn sunlit landscape of his memory, into the spooky, greenish glow of the Russian-made binoculars.
They bumped and bounced their way forward, driving up small, rough tracks, cutting across flat areas, glad to be on smoother, quieter ground, but anxious to regain the cover of the rocks. They were literally between the rock and the hard place and, on reflection, the bumping, lurching tracks between the jutting granite had the edge. Uncomfortably safe, as opposed to more comfortably exposed. To the Israeli satellites, that is.
They reached the Syrian Disengagement Line, and Ravi signaled to the patrol that awaited them, all was well. They drove on into No Man's Land, beginning to come down off the heights, moving over a gentle downward slope almost all the way.
The General ordered the headlights doused at the border, and the little convoy was now dependent on the night goggles through which he was staring. They kept going for a mile and a half, and then Ravi could see lights way up ahead, magnified by his glasses, and unmistakably those of vehicles, lower down the slopes, maybe three and a half miles away. He took off the goggles but could see nothing through the dark with the naked eye.
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