From the lack of presence of the local forces at the airport, it didn’t appear that there would be any more interference. The local regular Iranian forces, observing the extent of the smoke from the attacks in the city and news filtering back about the swiftness and strength of the Israeli attacks, decided they were not about to make any overt moves against the Israelis, especially after the news of the destruction of the armoured column spread very quickly among them. Even though radio and cell phone communications were down, the Iranian forces were still able to communicate among themselves via walkie-talkies.
Most onlookers were curious about the handcuffed prisoners with black bags over their heads — particularly the one, Gheybparvar, who was being supported by two of the other prisoners. Many were guessing — and some even hoping — that it was one of the senior mullahs, or even General Soleimani.
The prisoners were escorted off the bus and hustled on to one of the waiting aircraft. The prisoners were in fact Gholamhossein Gheybparvar, the Basij commander; Generals Ali Jafari and Ali Fadari, the two most senior commanders of the IGRC; and some senior officers, including Ali Nazir Ruahi, who was probably one of the most feared men in Iran. Ruahi had taken great pleasure in administering life-threatening beatings for perceived dress code infractions on the streets of Tehran, but now he was a scrawny man fearing for his life as he was roughly pushed onto the ramp and into the transport.
Sarah and Ari’s teams basically emasculated the IRGC and Basij leadership; as forces, they were no longer a factor.
It wasn’t lost on the surviving Basij and IRGC that their headquarters had been destroyed and their leaders taken down by the hated Israelis.
Once the eight vehicles were abandoned on the tarmac, Ari and Sarah directed their teams to load onto the waiting aircraft. Each plane could accommodate more than eighty soldiers. In one designated as a medical evacuation craft, medics and a flight surgeon anxiously continued to work on Alli Landa. But she died shortly after lift-off, her hand in Sarah’s.
Sarah sat by the side of the gurney as still as a stone. The medic, Nathan Gross, his uniform covered in Alli’s blood, folded over with rasping sobs. “Her wounds were too devastating. I’m so sorry. I tried. I’m so sorry…”
Sarah brushed aside his arm and said, “Alli knew the risks. We all did. When we land, the teams and Colonel Lazarus need to see you as a strong, proud leader. Now get that piece of blubber squared away.” Sarah knew she had to be strong and show the leadership she was recognized for in the Sayeret. She then helped Nathan Gross to his feet and walked toward the cockpit. Before returning to his duties to aid the injured, he reverently covered Sgt. Alli Landa’s body.
CHAPTER 58
Suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, 0400 hrs
As news of the attacks broke throughout the Middle East and Europe as the world woke up, the Sayeret team in Lebanon had stealthily surrounded the house of Leila Adnan, the TV anchor. They waited until 0400hrs, and when the general’s security team was at its most vulnerable, they stormed the house where General Soleimani was being energetically serviced by his mistress. Leila was sitting astride his chest with her lustrous black hair flowing over his crotch as her head bobbed up and down. Just as he began to climax for the second time that night, one of his aides urgently rushed into the room to deliver the news about the attacks on Qom and Tehran.
General Soleimani tried to ignore the compromising position he had been found in. He pushed Leila off of him and started bellowing orders. As he did so, the Israelis charged into the bedroom, knocking the aide aside, and dragged Soleimani naked from the bed, Leila screaming in abject terror. The TV anchor recovered enough to cloak herself in some sheets while Soleimani was unceremoniously hustled down the stairs. There, the commandos helped him put on underpants and a shirt, and then they paraded him in handcuffs and chains through the lobby and across the courtyard in front of the shocked and stunned household staff.
Leila Adnan continued to shriek from the upstairs bedroom as Soleimani was roughly dragged off toward a waiting automobile newly manned by Sayeret. The three IRGC men who formed Soleimani’s protective detail were dead.
Soleimani, manacled in his briefs with dishevelled hair and bare feet, looked nothing like a general in command of the Iranian forces in Lebanon and Syria.
The Iranian general, who was known for a haughty air of supreme arrogance and unprecedented brutality, recovered enough to begin making demands of his captors. He questioned who they were and where they had come from.
“Do you know who I am? I am the revered General Hussein Soleimani, Commander of the Quds Force. My men will hunt you down all over the world for your cowardly Zionist attack on the armies of God and the great Iranian Revolution!!”
One of the Sayeret commandos, Staff Sergeant Emmanuel “Manny” Ungerman, who was over 6 feet 4 inches tall and weighed 275 pounds of solid muscle, grabbed the general by his crotch and neck and threw him unceremoniously into the back of his Mercedes GL 550 SUV. Soleimani was shaken to the core over how easily he had been captured and deposited in his own vehicle.
Ungerman climbed in the rear door and seated himself next to Soleimani, then leaned in until he was face-to-face with him. He said to him in perfect Farsi, “Listen, you piece of shit, I am Staff Sergeant Emmanuel Ungerman of the Israeli Sayeret. You’re going to Israel. Aren’t you lucky? You get a free ride courtesy of the IDF.”
Soleimani was apoplectic. He began snarling and then he lunged at Ungerman. The Israeli giant held him back with one hand and continued in Farsi. “You don’t command anything anymore. You are now a captured war criminal. Any hanging or executions you attend will be your own, you slimy bastard. Your own people will celebrate.”
The Sayeret had landed on the Lebanese coast and rendezvoused with an advance team, which had commandeered a series of vehicles for Major Avigold’s team. The team, code-named “Hijack,” had delivered several vehicles without injuring their hapless occupants, who then were restrained in plastic cuffs, gagged, and held in a storage warehouse where they were guarded by Hijack until the mission was over.
Once General Soleimani was secured, he was driven to the Israeli border through Hezbollah-controlled villages in his own Mercedes G550 SUV.
The Hezbollah troops believed he was on one of his snap inspections and stood in awe as the great man raced by. The Hezbollah commanders were fearful of providing any cause for the general to unleash his notorious temper on them. They were totally unaware of what was transpiring.
Major Benyamin Avigold led the kidnap raid and was seated next to General Soleimani with Sergeant Ungerman on the other side in the armoured Mercedes. Avigold helped Ungerman check the chains and manacles. The massive sergeant made sure that he yanked the chains as hard as he could.
“Major, he’s not much of a general now, is he?” Ungerman addressed Major Avigold in Farsi.
Soleimani had difficulty comprehending the recent chain of events. As much as anything, he was struggling to reconcile what had happened to him with where he had just been. He was stunned and disoriented after his rough treatment at the hands of Ungerman. The Iranian general could not process what had occurred. Then the enormity of it all began to sink in. Here he was, captured by the hated Zionists, riding in his own special vehicle next to one of the most intimidating men he had ever seen, a giant of a Zionist who spoke fluent Farsi. Soleimani’s wrists felt like they would separate from his arms. Then, to add insult to injury, here he was being driven away by Israeli commandos in his own special and distinctive automobile.
What distressed him the most was the complete lack of protection from his personal bodyguards and protective detail. Other than the three security men who had been minding his Mercedes, there had been no resistance.
CHAPTER 59
Musudan-ri Missile Facility, North Korea
Six kilometres outside the Musudan-ri missile testing site, a team of four Mossad agents led by another Israeli Vietnamese, Nuc Phonh Ven, and eight South Korean Seals worked their
way down a steep embankment to the tracks of a dedicated rail line running directly into the site. Nuc Phonh with his team — Jona Bilt, Sasha Berkman, and Nahum Davitz, each of whom had taken on Israeli names — had identified the railroad as being the one that carried all supplies and personnel into Musudan-ri.
The South Korean Seals had extensive knowledge of the tracks and train operations. While at Rosh Pinah during their training and again in South Korea before departing to North Korea, they had studied real-time satellite imagery to acquire detailed intelligence. The live footage showed trains slowing down for the steep hill and curve at the foot of the embankment they had just descended.
The train was carrying bomb components and the missile’s second- and third-stage assemblies and a senior delegation of Iranian and North Korean engineers and scientists. The North Korean operation was under the direct command of General Ri-Yong-Gil, the top military commander in the North Korean armed forces. Kim had specifically charged Gil with ensuring the success of the operation; as a result, he was travelling with his aides and the scientists. The train was heavily guarded by special forces and also was being provided air cover by helicopters carrying more special forces in case of any attack.
The South Korean Seals, with Nuc Phonh and his team, had hidden at the foot of the embankment for twelve hours. Their plan was to climb under the carriage trucks of the train as it moved slowly round the curve and place explosives under each compartment. Their primary targets were the car carrying the general and his staff, the one carrying the Iranians, and the special transporter with the missile and bomb components. This was fraught with risk, since discovery would mean instant death at the hands of the North Koreans.
Before the train approached and slowed to less than ten kilometres an hour, Phonh and his men moved down to the side of the tracks and hid under Ghillie suits (seasonal camouflage) to await the train. They had trained for this in Israel and Greece and were confident that they would be practically invisible in the darkness.
As the train lumbered by, each operator ran and climbed under the carriages. They had packs of Semtex and pencil fuses, which they proceeded to attach to the underside of the cars. The DM62 locomotive was required to be destroyed and this presented a challenge, since there was no way for the operators to gain access to the engineers’ cabin. During training, one of the commandos in Israel remembered the details of sabotage operations carried out in France by the Resistance against the Nazis during the Second World War. At that time, Resistance fighters had managed to attach explosive charges on the tracks that would be set off as the locomotive crossed over them, derailing the train and destroying it.
The destruction of the locomotive was crucial for the Mossad, since it was feared that the North Koreans would simply deploy it again for replacement components and missiles. Without the DM62 heavy-duty locomotive — one of only three North Korea had obtained from Russia — their ability to deploy another train quickly would be difficult. Phonh and his crew had practised the operation so many times that they had their actions timed down to the last second.
Before they set up by the tracks to wait for the train, two operators placed the special explosive charges down the track exactly where the locomotive would be as the rest of the charges went off. Once the charges on the undercarriages were attached, the Mossad and Korean Seal teams dropped down to the tracks and timed their escape as they rolled away from the under carriages. As soon as the train was past, they evacuated the area and waited for the huge engine to be derailed. Within two minutes of the team’s retreating from the area, so far unseen, the huge Russian-supplied locomotive triggered a massive explosion on the tracks and immediately derailed and rolled over onto its side, dragging two other cars with it. Within seconds, all the other cars erupted in explosions that destroyed the missiles and their equipment. All but one of the Iranians were killed in the explosions, as were most of the North Koreans on the train. General Ri-Yon-Gil was severely wounded and would ultimately succumb to his wounds.
As the ambush on the train was taking place, a second team, led by Hoc Un Pho, hijacked three trucks, eliminating the guards assigned to protect them. Later they determined that several of the special forces guarding the trucks were members of the Quds Force. This of course was even more confirmation of the close strategic alliance between North Korea and Iran. The transport trucks were carrying critical casings and castings from the Yeongjeo-ri facility. The Israelis then drove the trucks into the missile firing site and abandoned them.
The operators had been forced to improvise once they gained access to the site. While the three trucks were being parked and abandoned as close to critical infrastructure as possible, three of the Israelis had managed to set explosive charges on two of the missile transporters. They continued to be undetected during the ensuing chaos, when the military commander of the facility was informed of the train derailment and explosions. Once inside the missile centre, the Mossad team deployed high-explosive satchel charges on centrifuge banks and key buildings around the site. They achieved this by racing around, adding to the chaos as the North Korean major in charge of the military garrison tried to marshal enough forces to go to the site of the train derailment and explosions.
Once the North Koreans organized and raced off to the train, Hoc and his team liberated one of the trucks and began the drive back to their exit point twenty-five miles down the coast. Explosive charges set in the two remaining trucks and the key placements around the facility were timed to detonate twenty minutes after the Israelis departed. Once they cleared the facility, the Mossad team set off south and east from Musudan-ri. As they were driving away to their exfil point, they heard the massive explosions in the distance caused by the two trucks detonating followed by a continuous string of even larger explosions as the charges they had set detonated and destroyed the critical infrastructure at the testing site.
The damage was immense. Storage tanks containing volatile liquid propellants for rockets were destroyed, which alone caused devastating explosions and damage.
In the immediate chaos after the train derailment, two South Korean Seals and one of Phonh’s commandos managed to gain entrance to the missile bunkers that had been bored into one side of the mountain facility. They were able to attach satchel charges and some Semtex charges to the missiles being stored out of sight of passing American satellites.
Satellite images would later show that, besides the ICBM destroyed on the train, there were seven other missiles of various sizes already deployed on mobile transporters. Analysts back in Israel and at Langley observed that the whole side of the mountain had collapsed under tons of rock as a result of the massive explosions inside the bunkers. Coupled with the initial explosions, volatile rocket fuel being loaded on to the missiles blew up, and because of the confined spaces, massive fireballs of intensely heated fuel barreled through the chambers, destroying everything and everybody in their paths.
At the time of the explosions, seismologists in Japan and Guam registered a 5.2 earthquake in the North Korean region of Musudan-ri.
CHAPTER 60
After arriving at a deserted beach area, the Musudan-ri team, as planned, lay hidden among the shoreline rocks and scrub for one full day. Intelligence coordinated from the South Koreans had correctly led them to understand that as soon as any breach occurred at Musudan-ri, the North Koreans would deploy aircraft, ground vehicles, and dozens of heavily armed foot patrols.
The South Koreans had agreed to operate decoy activities further north, close to the Chinese and Russian borders, which would pull northern forces away from the area and allow the Israelis to extract at night. It would also confuse the North Koreans, who were always suspicious of their neighbours. They never knew if, how, or when China would move to eliminate the North Korean nuclear threat.
The South Korean Special Forces, who had accompanied the Mossad teams as far as the train derailment, had positioned three large Zodiacs at the extraction beach, each equipped with three 250-horsepower o
utboard engines capable of fifty-plus knots. Once the northern boats and aircraft cleared the area, the group boarded the Zodiacs and raced out to sea. After an uncomfortable ninety minutes, the three Zodiac craft completed a prearranged rendezvous with a Panamanian coal carrier destined to unload its cargo in Vietnam. Once aboard the freighter, the ship’s course was altered, and it headed for Japan. After the freighter docked in Kyoto, the commando teams were quietly ferried to a waiting chartered plane that transported them back to Rosh Pinah. The South Korean Seals would accompany them to guard and escort the captured Kim Jong-un leadership when they arrived from Australia.
CHAPTER 61
Israel/Lebanon Metula border crossing
Soleimani’s dark, hate-filled eyes drilled into Major Avigold’s. Finally, still living in delusion, Soleimani hissed, “Who do you think you are, you Zionist pig? Stop this car immediately! That is an order!”
Staff Sergeant Ungermann jabbed the general in the ribs so hard with his right elbow that Soleimani doubled over in pain, attempting to catch his breath. Ungermann growled in Farsi, “Listen you piece of garbage, we do the commanding from now on.”
The look of incredulity on Soleimani’s face said it all. He was so used to being in charge and ordering all around him to do his bidding that his current circumstances simply did not register. At the same time, Major Avigold rapped on the divider window in the car and spoke in Hebrew to the driver and commando in the front seat. “Our client is a general and I am a major. He has ordered us to stop the car.”
The End of Terror Page 19