by Ward Larsen
Zhukov had long held himself to be above such failings. He was a product of Russia’s finest military academies, places where honor and creed and faith in the Motherland were ingrained to the core. Where service to country put one on a higher moral plane. Now that view seemed suddenly quaint, like an old-fashioned propaganda film where every man was brave and every woman virtuous. The truth of it all struck Zhukov with alarming suddenness: He was at that moment acting on direct orders from the president of the Russian Federation. Zhukov, a decorated soldier who had bled for his country, had been reduced to being nothing more than Sergey Petrov’s con man. Of course, it would not be without compensation. The Jaguar and the dacha to begin. And one day? he thought. Perhaps the platinum mine instead of the rail line.
It was then and there, in a quirky Moroccan restaurant behind a fine fillet of snapper with cilantro and lime, that Viktor Zhukov’s long-held fortress of duty and honor suffered its terminal breach.
* * *
While Zhukov and Tikhonov were perusing the dessert menu at La Kasbah des Sables, twenty miles away a large airplane was landing at the Tazagurt airfield. The transport was a regular arrival, although not on any fixed schedule—it came on an as-needed basis to deliver whatever components were necessary to keep RosAvia’s research moving.
While Tazagurt was not an official port of entry for international flights, special accommodations had been made. This fell under the auspices of the negotiated joint agreement between Russia, Morocco, and the RosAvia Corporation: In exchange for the expenditures involved in building an airport and its associated research facilities, Morocco allowed RosAvia to import direct shipments to the airfield with expedited customs and immigration handling.
The jet was an Ilyushin Il-76, a four-engine strategic airlifter operated by a minor, and very discreet, subsidiary of RosAvia. The pilot brought the big jet to a stop using half the available runway, and from there he steered toward the hangar. A ramp worker with lighted wands guided the jet to its regular spot, and there the aircraft commander set the parking brake. Only after the chocks had been installed did the aircraft’s integral stairs begin to lower.
The first person to deplane was an athletic young man dressed in plain khaki pants and a dark green shirt. He went immediately to the back of the aircraft, and stood waiting on the tarmac while the rear loading ramp was lowered.
As if on cue, a customs inspector, who’d been forewarned of the arrival, and who was a regular overseer of RosAvia’s shipments, stepped smartly across the ramp from the small administration annex near the hangar. Dressed in a neatly pressed uniform, he too went straight to the rear loading ramp. There the Ilyushin’s captain was waiting with two manifests: one for crew and passengers, the other for cargo.
The inspector took the manifests in hand, but didn’t look at either. Instead he waited patiently while the young man walked up the inclined ramp. From the great cargo bay he retrieved two suitcases. One was a hardened case, four feet long and two feet wide, and of a weight and sturdiness that implied some kind of tools or equipment. Which, in a sense, it very much was. In his other hand was a simple roller bag.
The young man carried both off the aircraft and presented himself to the customs inspector. He handed over his passport, and observed, as he’d been briefed, what was a well-practiced drill. The document was returned within seconds, minus five bills, each of the one-hundred-euro denomination, that had been folded inside. The inspector nodded once, then watched in silence as the young man lifted his suitcases, set out across the tarmac, and disappeared into RosAvia’s administrative offices. Only then did the customs man address the manifests in his hand.
Five minutes later the sergeant reached the streetside parking lot. He set his luggage next to the trunk of a nondescript sedan, the key to which he’d collected from a receptionist in the RosAvia building. He lifted the trunk open to find a second equipment case, similar to the one he was carrying but of a slightly different shape. He pushed it to one side, and with a bit of maneuvering everything fit. Closing the trunk, he took up the driver’s seat. After one look at the map on his phone, he started the car and set off on a two-hour journey to the seaside south of Casablanca.
FORTY
A moonless night on the Gulf of Aqaba is a very dark place. No night, however, is dark enough for four operators on a hastily planned mission.
The ersatz dive boat pounded through three-foot swells. They were making good time, with Matai at the helm, but the ride was punishing. Slaton would have preferred calm seas—not because he minded the discomfort, but for more practical reasons. The DPDs, the dive computers, the guns. How many times had he seen missions fall apart because equipment had failed under harsh conditions?
As they beat a path southward, Slaton used the time to plan for contingencies. What happened if they had only two operable DPDs to begin? What if one failed midway through the mission? Did they need a rendezvous plan in case someone lost their GPS signal, an old-school backup based on dead reckoning and light signals? If everything went to hell, could they swim to the shores of Saudi Arabia?
They’d covered half the distance to their target, and in an hour Argos would begin to show up on radar. Aaron was in constant communications with Mossad headquarters, and he relayed the disappointing news that their mission would have only partial drone coverage—the Israeli Air Force was leery of encroaching on Saudi airspace.
The three men going in the water—Slaton, Aaron, and Tal—would have full facemasks with comm while they were submerged. Even so, coordinating an underwater assault at night required extensive planning. To begin, they studied information Bloch had provided regarding currents in the designated area. The team spent twenty minutes hanging on to a bulkhead and going over comm protocols and visual signals. A precise course between the drop point and Argos was loaded into everyone’s GPS unit, and it was agreed that no high-intensity lights would be used—a dead giveaway in the crystalline Red Sea waters—but that chemical glow sticks would be mandatory in the initial approach.
Sonar on the DPDs could be used to approach Argos, which would stand out like a mountain against the otherwise barren seascape. Sonar would also be critical on egress to rendezvous with the dive boat. On one point everyone was in agreement—given what they were attempting, nothing would lead to disaster more quickly than three divers floating twelve miles out to sea, out of air and ideas, and trying to find their ride home.
The team coordinated how they would stay together using signals with the light sticks, and how to rejoin if they became separated. They covered the rules of engagement if they were seen or attacked, and how to respond if one of them was captured. On this last point there was no argument, nor any request for direction from headquarters—either they all came back, or none of them did.
Matai, who would stay with the boat during the underwater approach, gave a heads-up that they were ten minutes from Argos’ position. On that cue, everyone began gearing up. Wetsuits were donned, scuba rigs checked, and each DPD was powered up and put through a system test cycle.
“Battery is eighty percent on number one,” Aaron said.
“It showed one hundred back in port,” Matai responded.
“Is that enough?” Slaton asked.
“Maybe,” said Tal. “If things go as planned, we can run slow on the egress.”
“And if they don’t,” said Slaton, “we’ve already briefed how to handle it. Two men on whichever sled has the better charge, and we sink the bad DPD.”
Nods all around.
The engines slowed abruptly, and the boat settled on the sea.
“I’ve got a hit on radar,” said Matai.
All four men went to the helm and looked at the screen.
“Right where she’s supposed to be,” said Aaron.
“All right,” Slaton said. “I think this would be a good time for one last sit-rep.”
* * *
The Red Sea mission was being overseen by Mossad’s headquarters operation center. Deep
in a bunker in the Glilot Junction complex, sixteen sets of eyes—intelligence chiefs, analysts, and sensor operators—were watching both Argos and a small dive boat in real time. A drone was giving maddeningly intermittent coverage as the operator did his best to navigate the latticework of airspace at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba. It wasn’t a particularly busy area in terms of air traffic, but the skies were monitored closely by suspicious neighbors all around—the never-ending “Game of Thrones.”
Also under watch at the ops center was the Saudi shoreline, and it was activity there, near a place called Gayal, that generated the first outbound message of the night. The town lay behind a spit of sand—the outline of which vaguely resembled a shark—that reached seaward to form a natural harbor. Just after midnight, three small vessels, between twenty-five and forty feet in length according to analysts, set out from the docks. Everyone in the ops center watched the tiny flotilla round the edge of the peninsula, and within minutes two salient points became clear. First was that the boats appeared to be staying together, an amateur convoy of sorts. Second was that they’d set a course that led straight toward the freighter Argos.
FORTY-ONE
Christine waited until Davy was fast asleep—he’d had a rambunctious night, and stayed awake later than usual. She covered him with a blanket and went to the doors that led to the veranda. She already knew that Nick, the guard she’d gotten to know best, was one of the two on duty there.
She went outside. “Hi, Nick.”
“Evening, ma’am.”
“Are you on duty much longer?”
“Two more hours,” he replied.
“I wonder if you could do me a favor.”
“If I can.”
She explained what she wanted.
“That’s not how it’s supposed to work,” he said.
“I know … but I won’t leave the embassy. It’s just down the hall.”
“Your husband would have my ass if anything happened.”
He looked inside at Davy—he was obviously fast asleep. Christine gave Nick her most heartfelt look.
He said, “I’d have to clear it with Miss Sorensen first—explain what you want to do.”
Christine knew it was a reasonable request, and she’d half expected it. “Sure.”
“Hang on.” Nick walked a few steps into the courtyard and had a hushed conversation on his lapel mic. After he stopped talking, there was a thirty-second pause. He finally turned back to Christine.
“Okay,” he said. “Go ahead.”
She couldn’t stop herself from hugging the man. Seconds later Christine was out the front door—the security team there was expecting her. As she walked away down the hall, she looked once over her shoulder at the two burly guards. She’d never seen such intimidating babysitters in all her life.
* * *
“Okay, we’re on,” said Matai, who was the first to see the message. “We have three boats fifteen nautical miles northwest of Argos. They’re holding a dead-on course for an intercept.”
A brief debate ensued about whether there was any possibility of this not being the predicted rendezvous. Tal said, “We need to be sure. Once we get wet, we’re committed. If these boats make a turn and go fishing, we have no choice but to come back on board. At that point we’ll have spent air and battery power on the DPDs that we can’t replace without going back ashore.”
The rest knew he was only playing devil’s advocate.
“Waiting and watching isn’t an option,” Aaron argued. “If these are the receivers, which is highly likely, they’ll be here in an hour, maybe less. It’ll take at least that long for us to maneuver close without drawing attention, get in the water, and make our approach to Argos.”
After a brief pause, Slaton said, “There’s really no choice. We drive as close as we can, prep to go, and in twenty minutes get one last update from the ops center.”
He looked all around.
There was no dissent.
* * *
The tiny armada never wavered in its course. They were making a beeline for Argos.
The DPDs were in place near the aft platform and all three divers suited up. Weapons were secured to each DPD, but if everything went as planned only one would be used.
The three men in wetsuits looked to Matai for guidance. He was standing at the helm with a night-vision scope. The ocular wavered as he steadied it to his right eye against the rocking boat.
“Thirty-two hundred meters,” he finally said. “We shouldn’t get any closer.”
Slaton and Aaron had already agreed that two miles was the minimum closure. With the receiving convoy approaching, Argos’ crew would be watchful. Only minutes ago Matai had used a new device from the technology section, an off-the-shelf diagnostic tool that had been tweaked by Mossad’s engineers. They called it a poor man’s RWR, or radar warning receiver—an allusion to the more complex devices on fighter aircraft that sensed enemy radar emissions. Built to detect specific radiofrequency bands, the unit would tell them if Argos’ radar was painting them. Not surprisingly, it was. There was no information about range or azimuth, which a more expensive device might have managed, but it gave confirmation on one point: they were being watched.
Matai put Argos dead on the port beam. He would steer a meandering course for the next hour, but barring emergency contingencies, this was as close as he would take the dive boat to the ship they were targeting.
“Fishing boats are more common than six-pack dive boats in these waters,” Matai said. “We should have brought something, a few deep sea rods or nets.”
“I doubt they have surveillance gear that can see us two miles away,” Tal argued. “All they’ll see is a small boat on their radar that isn’t getting any closer.”
“Probably,” Slaton intervened, “but while we’re gone you might gather up some mooring lines and hang around the transom. Try to look busy.”
“A longline fisherman,” Aaron seconded. “That’s good.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Matai said. He then referenced the navigation display. “This is the spot. Everybody ready for an update on waypoint one?” The three divers each addressed their wrist-mounted nav devices. When he got three nods, Matai said, “Mark!”
From that moment forward, the coordinate set for that position, an invisible symbol in the middle of the Red Sea pinpointed by a satellite constellation thousands of miles above, would serve as the primary reference point for their very small universe.
Three splashes followed. Then, one by one, Matai shoved the DPDs off the stern and into the water.
FORTY-TWO
To be submerged in the ocean at night is akin to drifting in outer space. With neutral buoyancy, there is an impression of weightlessness, the body floating in a spherical void. The visual impression is even more disorienting, absent any background of distant stars. The darkness, particularly on a night without moonlight, is effectively absolute, giving no sense of up or down. On an entirely different level, there is the matter of large marine predators, the likes of which thrive amid the shallow reefs of the Red Sea. Such uneasy circumstances, once combined, create a devil’s playground for the imagination. But then, as the old joke went, it was the sharks who had to worry when Special Forces operators were turned loose in a shared ecosystem.
Slaton cracked the chem light that was strapped to his forearm. A dim glow came to life, and within seconds he saw two others, vague points of light in the pitch black sea. Each man had been assigned a unique color: Slaton was green, Tal red, Aaron blue. With visual coordination established, a successful comm check came next—they’d performed one on the boat, but systems had a way of degrading under twenty feet of seawater.
By design, the lights on the DPDs were easily managed—their controls were lit in a subdued green hue for night work. Slaton took up position on the lead unit and adjusted the rheostat to give the minimum illumination for a readable display. There had been considerable debate about the depth at which they would traverse the two
-mile gap to Argos. Going deeper offered better cover for their scant emissions of light, but shallow depths were slightly advantageous in terms of power and air use, allowing for a deeper and more lengthy dive if necessary—even using advanced gas mixtures, the human body had saturation limits. In the end, they’d compromised on a depth of thirty feet for their ingress.
With all checks complete, they began their descent. Slaton heard the dive boat above them as Matai gunned the motors, low frequency vibrations that conducted strongly through the water. Matai’s plan was to initially angle away from Argos, lessening any attention they might already have drawn. He would not, however, divert more than a mile from their waypoint for extraction.
Within minutes the team was at thirty feet and under way. Slaton took the lead of a wedge formation, one man on either side. After the pulse of the outboards faded, the only remaining unnatural sound was a faint hum from the DPDs—their electric motors and ducted propellers had been designed for auditory stealth.
It was an otherworldly sensory environment in the open ocean at night. Slaton heard lobsters clicking, and occasional grinding noises as reef creatures went about their nocturnal business. It struck him that the water seemed unusually warm—for all the problems they might face tonight, hypothermia wasn’t among them.
He kept a steady course toward Argos, checking occasionally over either shoulder to ensure Tal and Aaron were in position. As they glided together through the ebony sea, he felt confident—everything was going according to plan.