Ahmed, carrying one of the cardboard boxes from the cab of the truck, had made immediately for the main gates out of the courtyard into the prison block, and surprisingly found them open. He pushed them both inward, and his two bodyguards, especially trained by the General himself, rushed in, machine guns blazing, cutting down the two duty guards who were both gazing out of the window, wondering what to do, and trying to dial numbers on their cell phones.
Up above, on the second-floor cell-block landing, another guard rushed to the steel rail and looked over, yelling in English, "WHAT THE HELL'S GOING ON?" This was a big mistake because Ahmed's bodyguards looked upward and instantly shot him dead. Which left no active guards on duty in the prison. Nimrod, for the moment, belonged to General Ravi Rashood.
His men swarmed into their designated positions, using keys taken from the work belts of the dead men to open the gates to the lines of cells, in which were incarcerated the most dangerous terrorists in all of Israel. These were forty-seven ringleaders of bombing attacks conducted on behalf of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Islamic Jihad over the past several years. Many of them were well-known Palestinian leaders, but this place contained men who would never be released onto the streets of Jerusalem or Tel Aviv or Hebron ever again.
The Israelis called them political prisoners. In a sense they were. But only in a sense. All of them had found their way into this specialist high-security jail because of diabolical acts of mass murder and killing. And the Israelis were confident the mountaintop site, surrounded by miles of low farmland, would make the place as secure as Alcatraz, the wickedly exposed countryside being as dangerous and unhelpful to a fugitive as the wide, swirling currents of San Francisco Bay.
So far they had been right. And they may still be. General Ravi knew he had time to free the prisoners. But the getaway needed to be as flawless as the attack itself.
He went to work issuing the contents of his cardboard box to yet two more men he had personally trained. He gave them each a high-powered, battery-operated electric drill, each one of which would drive two small round holes into the locking bars of the cell gates. The second box was opened on the floor and he began to take out the reels of detcord, handing each one to a separate man. This stuff was precious, absolutely beloved to both the SAS and the U.S. Navy SEALs. Although it is really just a fuse — light it and stand well back — it is unlike any other slow-burning fuse used by Special Forces to detonate high explosives.
Detcord burns at five miles per second. Wrap a few turns around a good-sized oak tree and that stuff will blast the trunk in two. Its core is called PETN, a slim-line explosive that can be aimed with great accuracy. Detcord explodes so fast, you can hook it up to several targets, join the cord together, and knock down the lot, all at one time.
By now one of Ravi's drillers had reached the top of the open staircase. The second drill was already working the lower level, and the scream of the motors was filling the air. Each driller hung a small precision piece of machined steel over the lock, and drilled into two preset holes, boring two more holes accurate to a hundredth of an inch, straight into the unseen steel locking bar behind the outside shield.
And right behind them raced the guys with the detcord, one on the reel and the other shouting in Arabic into the cell:… Hamas! We're getting you out… Grab the cord and shove it back through the second hole… Hurry!
No short instruction was ever carried out faster. As the length of cord was returned through the hole, an entirely new man moved up to grab it and drag it through, then wrap it around the bar twice more, and cut it to length with the pruning shears they'd used for the bracken. Another man was ready to tie the end hard to the next length coming from the next-door cell.
Ravi intended to blow the locks four at a time. And in strict relays his men drilled, threaded, dragged, wound, cut, and tied the lethal detcord, one task per man. The work proceeded with lightning speed as two of the General's NCOs patrolled the cell blocks shouting clear instructions: "When your detcord's in place, retreat to the far wall of your cell. Lie flat facing the ground against the wall. If there's a mattress, get it against your back, between you and the explosion on the door lock."
Six minutes after the first drillings had begun, General Rashood fired, and the explosions ripped into the first four locks, blasting them to pieces. Each of the doors swung open, and two men rushed into each cell to help the inmate to his feet. Thankfully, they were not manacled and there were no injuries so far. It had taken approximately ninety seconds to liberate each man, but on the lower level, Ahmed was conducting a concurrent operation, and almost immediately there was another mighty blast and four more doors swung open. Following the same procedures precisely, sixteen men were now engaged in walking the eight freed men to the muster point behind the truck in the courtyard.
Reassessing the time, Ravi now calculated he had eight men out in seven minutes. And he guessed they would get faster. That meant forty-two minutes maximum for all forty-seven. He had under a half hour's work, but his mind was haunted by the face of the man he had seen on the telephone in the office. Had he got a message away? And what had he told the Military HQ? Was there a direct hot line? If there was, it was trouble. If not, there was an excellent chance they'd have time to spare.
He had always known the quandary, the weak spot in the operation. Should he have gone in and knocked out the main electric supply to the jail? Or would this have started off an automatic alarm, which would have damn nearly blown the operation before they even made it inside the gates? He had estimated that was a risk too great to take, but now he did not know whether Israeli Paratroopers were on their way to Nimrod in helicopters.
He had already dispatched two lookouts to the high ramparts of the jail, to scan the skies. They'd been up there five minutes now and could see nothing in the clear blue of the morning. They had principally to look one way. Not east toward the Syrian border, not north to the Lebanon frontier, just south, toward the Israeli military.
The General climbed the gantry to the highest wall of the jail and dialed a number. The lookouts heard him snap, "HIGH ROLLERS GO!"
Back on the ground, fifteen minutes had passed and sixteen men were free. His 2 I/C (Explosives) was now detonating on the upper floor and Ahmed was in command of all explosions on the lower area. Two shuddering bangs in quick succession signaled eight more prisoners free. And still there was no word from the lookouts high above.
Ravi's delight at the absolute precision of the detcord blasts was tempered only by his chilling awareness that the Israeli Paratroopers could arrive any second, in helicopter gunships. He could not have known that possibility had disappeared because the man in the office on the phone had only had time to shout, "THE JAIL IS UNDER ATTA… "
At the other end, the nineteen-year-old girl soldier who had received the call was replying, "I did not quite catch that. Who is speaking, please? This is Israel Army HQ Northern Command."
The line was now dead, issuing an ominous dial tone and nothing else. The operator tried again, tapping the phone cradle up and down, saying, "Hello… hello… Is anyone there?"
But there was no further sound. The girl called her supervisor and reported she had received a "funny-sounding call."
"I thought they said something about a jail underwater," she said. "But the line went instantly dead."
"What jail?"
"They never said, sir. But I was sure I heard 'jail.' And I thought I heard 'underwater' but it didn't make sense… The caller did not say another word."
"Well, let's give it another few minutes and see if anyone calls back. If not, it sounds like a wrong number. You think jail could have been gale, stale, rail, or some other word?"
"Well, I suppose it could have been. But I did think it was jail. If it had been gale, and underwater, it could have been a ship's distress call on the wrong frequency. But I still think it was jail."
"Okay. Let's leave it for fifteen minutes and see if we hear anything else. By the way, did you an
nounce who you were, you know, Northern Headquarters, etc.?"
"Yes, sir. I did. Right at the beginning. And after, the line went dead."
"Okay. Good girl. Lemme know if they come through again."
Meantime, back on the Nimrod ramparts, one of the lookouts spotted the first helicopter, clattering in from the north, flying low over the Lebanese border, straight toward the jail.
"HELO INCOMING, SIR!" roared the lookout. "HIGH SPEED… DEGREES THREE SIXTY… LOW ALTITUDE."
General Rashood swung around and charged back outside through the main gates, past the group of truly incredulous political prisoners, who were mostly too stunned by events even to speak, even to express their thanks. They just stared, as the Hamas CO, holding a pair of Israeli binoculars he had just stolen, trained them on the northern skies.
There it was, one mighty Sikorsky CH-53D Sea Stallion hammering its way toward them, making 130 knots through clear skies. It looked military, it sure as hell had once been military. But right now it was painted bright white with blue trim, with a commercial insignia in Arabic presented boldly in still-wet paint, stay cool with frosty's. On the fuselage, a contented polar bear licked a giant ice-cream cone.
Down on the lower rampart below the level of the jail, two of Ravi's men were holding orange flags aloft, waving in the big assault chopper, which was originally designed to carry thirty-eight U.S. Marines fully loaded for combat.
But this morning it was empty, and the General bellowed his next order: "EVERYONE TO THE LOWER LEVEL… STRAIGHT DOWN THE HILL TO THE GUYS WITH THE FLAGS… THEN BOARD THE HELO… GO! GO! GO!"
Two distant thumps told him that eight more prisoners were out, and he stood in the courtyard waving them on as they ran into the yard. "STRAIGHT ON," he roared. "STRAIGHT ON… KEEP RUNNING… STRAIGHT DOWN TO THE HELICOPTER… ALL ABOARD… ALL ABOARD… WE'RE OUTTA HERE… RIGHT NOW… GO! GO! GO!"
Ravi knew the Sikorsky, right now on loan from the Syrian Army, was built for soldiers carrying huge packs and weapons. These prisoners had nothing, and it would thus carry more, maybe fifty if necessary with its overload capacity. He had counted on a total of eighty-six and had instructed his loadmasters to board the first thirty-two prisoners, plus sixteen of his own men on the first journey.
By now the Sea Stallion was on the ground and the prisoners were pouring through its open doors. And right then, the lookout called again: "HELICOPTER INCOMING, LOW ALTITUDE… DEGREES THREE SIXTY… HIGH SPEED… IDENTICAL… REPEAT, IDENTICAL… "
All forty-eight men had clambered aboard the helo, and it was already lifting off, shuddering upward almost vertical. Then it tilted, its engine howling, and rocketed east, thundering toward No Man's Land and then the Syrian frontier.
The second Sea Stallion was now making its approach, and more and more prisoners were racing down the path toward the lower rampart. Two more bangs signaled eight more men were free. Thus far, General Ravi's men had been inside the jail for three quarters of an hour, and there was just one more batch of prisoners to release.
The second helicopter circled, wearing the same commercial livery, and as it did so, the Ops Room in the Israel Army's Northern Command Headquarters burst into life. A young Captain was listening intently as a supervisor stared at a computer screen, calling the information. "Another one, sir. No doubt. Incoming helicopter. Three sixty degrees. Speed one hundred knots. Altitude under five hundred. American built. But no military radar. Destination Nimrod Jail…
"First helo taken off, track 238… headed zero-nine-zero, speed one hundred thirty knots. Altitude under one hundred feet"
"How long was it on the ground?"
"Four minutes maximum, sir."
"ANY COMMUNICATION FROM THE JAIL?"
"Trying, sir. No response."
A new voice (stressed) "… Did someone say JAIL?"
"Right. Nimrod."
"Holy shit!"
"What's up?"
"One of my operators took a call this morning, a garbled sentence. She thought it said, 'the jail is underwater,' then the line went dead and no one called back. No one mentioned the name of the jail or anything.
"I wonder if the real sentence was, 'the jail is under attack,' not water, but he couldn't finish the word."
"AIR CREW GO TO ACTION STATIONS. GUNSHIPS TO NIMROD JAIL–IT MAY BE UNDER ATTACK. ASSAULT GROUPS ONE AND THREE."
The station Commander bellowed for someone to connect him to the observation post up on the Disengagement Line, due east of Nimrod.
"Yes, sir. We saw him alright. A big single-screw helicopter, traveling east to Syria. Commercial aircraft, sir. No military radar. It was white, looked like an ice-cream van with a rotor."
"A WHAT!"
"An ice-cream van, sir… white and blue. It had a big polar bear painted on it."
"A WHAT!"
"A polar bear, sir. It was licking a pink-and-white cone."
The phone crashed down. "FUCK ME!" yelled the Captain.
It took twelve minutes to fire up three IDF helicopters, load up the troops, and get off the ground for the twenty-mile flight up to Nimrod. But as the Israelis took off, General Rashood's second big Sikorsky was ready to go. Its rotor was screaming, the big passenger door was wide open, and the General was running for his life down the path, leaving the massive Israeli truck an inferno behind him, flames from its fuel engulfing the entire front side of the jail.
Ravi hit the fuselage of the Sikorsky running, hauled himself up, and rolled into the rear cabin. Someone slammed the door and they took off instantly flying east out toward the Syrian border, hanging on grimly to a ten-minute start, although this was as yet unknown.
Sprawled in the rear, the General was talking to his men.
"Well, we never lost anyone, and we got 'em all out. Not a bad morning's work."
Just then, the Navigator called back, "Sir, I got three paints on the screen right here, maybe fifteen miles off our starboard quarter, right on our four o'clock, heading for Nimrod. High speed."
The General nodded, unsmiling. "As the Iron Duke might have mentioned, this had been a damned close-run thing. Another five minutes in that jail, we would not have made it."
As the Sikorsky Sea Stallion thundered into Syrian airspace, the Israelis were on their final approach to Nimrod. They could already see the truck blazing in the gateway and the obvious bomb damage in the courtyard. As they drew nearer, they could also see two figures apparently asleep on one of the big artillery pieces.
Soon they would discover a jail entirely devoid of inhabitants. There were no guards, no prisoners, and a total of twenty men dead. All officers of the jail. "Mother of God," breathed the Commanding Officer as it began to dawn on him that every single lock on each cell door had been skillfully and professionally blown out. As indeed had the impregnable reputation of Nimrod Jail itself.
Somewhere out there, beyond the rugged landscape of the Golan, there lurked the most dangerous enemies of the State of Israel; men who had proved they were prepared to die in the cause of attacking, killing, and maiming the Jewish populations of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The young Commander, whose parents had both been killed in the momentous Israeli drive to the Golan Heights in 1973, was not looking forward to making his report.
Twenty minutes later, when he did so, on the helicopter's radio his message sent a frisson of pure anxiety around the Northern Headquarters of the Army. How could this have possibly happened? It was plainly state-sponsored, and brilliantly planned. But by whom?
The CO of the Northern Command requested the satellite be adjusted to photograph Syria's military bases, particularly the ones in which helicopters were parked. Over many days, photographic evidence came in showing lines of the choppers, all painted in grim, functional desert light brown, with insignia. No one knew that beneath two coats of this smart Syrian Army livery, two giant polar bears licked their respective cones, uncaring that they would never be seen again.
It took two days for the Israelis to admit what had happened, that they ha
d somehow been the victims of one of the most spectacular jailbreaks in history. The incident at Nimrod had probably been the most daring raid on any jail in the world, at least since Britain's Great Train Robber, Ronnie Biggs, was "sprung" from Wormwood Scrubs on top of a furniture van in West London back in the 1960s. But there was only one of him.
Israel had just lost every one of her forty-seven most lethal political prisoners. They were sworn enemies of the State, who had been incarcerated in a purpose-built prison designed to render escape impossible. Where were they all now? God alone knew that. They were surely no longer in Israel, and they were probably beyond the reach even of the Mossad, being sheltered in some country that was innately hostile to Israel and would offer no information or cooperation.
The Israelis were careful with their press release, desperately trying not to look incompetent or, in this case, even ridiculous. It was released quietly, from a Government Department to the Jerusalem Post on the quiet news evening of Saturday, April 30. It was faxed at around eight-thirty in the evening, complete with the name and phone number of the Press Officer, Abe Stillman, who was no more a Press Officer than Arnold Morgan. Mr. Stillman was a Senior Field Officer from the Mossad. He knew how to blockade dangerous questions, and he knew how to lie with absolute impunity.
The release read as follows:
Twenty prison officials have died in a Palestinian terrorist attack on a jail in Northern Galilee. The dead men all worked at the Nimrod High-Security Prison. They were on duty at the time, some of them working outside the walls of the jail.
The terrorists are believed to have rammed the gates open with a freight truck and then shot down the guards in a cold-blooded, cowardly massacre of civilian personnel.
It is not yet known which group was responsible, but Israeli Security Forces are assuming that either Hamas or Hezbollah carried out the raid.
It is also known that certain prisoners escaped by air, in two civilian helicopters. They are believed to have flown into Syria, but the Syrian military has denied all knowledge of the attack.
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