by Connor Black
As these stories streamed around the world, country after country turned against Israel. The damage Hamas caused by their rockets was nothing compared to the damage the press caused Israel. It showed once again that the pen is mightier than the sword.
For whatever reason, that had been my thought for a fleeting moment this morning when Mahmoud’s son didn’t want to go to school. When he spoke to his father, his tone didn’t match that of a boy not wanting to go to school because he didn’t want to sit in class or deal with an obnoxious classmate. It had a bit more edge. The tiny difference in his tone didn’t register until now.
Behind me, the low throbbing of IDF helicopters signaled their arrival to support the Sakeen team. And with the thump of rotors pounding the air, all of the pieces fell into place.
The rocket launch site was a decoy. That’s why it was in the open and so tactically poor. The sarin wasn’t weaponized. It wasn’t even in those rockets. Hamas didn’t have anything nearly sophisticated enough to launch a chemical weapon through Iron Dome and into an Israeli city like Tel Aviv. They wouldn’t waste a weapon of mass destruction by loading it onto an unreliable delivery mechanism that had little chance of making it to a populated area.
They would use it right here. On their own people.
They knew the launch site would eventually be discovered. And once an IDF team attacked the site, they’d release the sarin gas. They’d point the finger squarely at Israel. The Secretary’s visit would only compound the level of attention. It would be a global atrocity. It would be a tipping point, legitimizing the plight of the Palestinians and turning the entire world against the Israelis forever.
Behind me, the first clatter of automatic weapons’ fire sounded. If Hassan was going to use the sarin and place blame on the Israelis, it was going to happen soon. It was going to happen while the IDF was attacking the lot. There was no time to waste. There was no time to weigh and assess all of the options. I had to go on instinct, and right now, my instincts were screaming that this had to do with the boy. It had to do with Hassan going south instead of west. It had to do with the ‘bad men’ at the school.
I doubled my pace and got on the radio. “Hillary is in transit to a school a kilometer to the south,” I said, making sure the command center and our team knew where I was heading. “I think that’s where they’ll release the sarin.”
“Hillary, Base,” came the reply. “Be advised that Sakeen team is engaged at the target site, and we don’t have support to the south.” The IDF wouldn’t send a single man out to support me until there was confirmation or they could use an APC for some sort of protection transiting the city.
But immediately after their reply, I heard Uri’s voice on the radio. “One and Two are right behind you.”
Joe came on a minute later, the sound of gunfire echoing in the background as his mic was activated. I knew he was engaged with the Sakeen team in securing the site.
“Keep us posted, Hillary. I’ll come down with the cavalry once this site is secure.”
I shifted two blocks east based on the rough direction Mahmoud had given this morning and then resumed a southerly heading on a hard pack dirt street. A few blocks further, I could see the end of a Toyota Hilux with a tall metal rack in the back. In front of it was a low wall and what appeared to be the top of a swing set. It had to be the school. Shifting east, I found an alley parallel to the street I was on and slowed my approach.
I arrived at a block opposite the school that had been flattened in one war or another. Jagged stubs of walls tenuously supported the angled remains of collapsed floors. Staying low and slow, I made my way over rubble, dust, and jagged pipes until I found a suitable OP.
The school was low—only two stories—and wide, a U shape with a courtyard in the center that held two swing sets, one standing and the other collapsed at one end, sagging and disused. Behind them, on the first level, was a long line of windows where I could see a woman standing. Her arms moved, and I could just hear the sound of kids singing in Arabic. The teacher.
At the right side of the building, a sentry stood, looking down the street. I lowered my head slightly and moved the keffiyeh over it, knowing the muted tones and fishnet pattern would blend in with the rubble. I watched him scan across the street and his eyes moved right past me. Soon after, he turned and walked around the side of the building.
Just as he moved out of sight, another sentry came around from the left corner of the building. Like the first, he wore a black keffiyeh tied to cover his face and held an AK-47 at the low ready. They were using a roving patrol rather than the fixed pier sentry seen at the lot, circling the building anti-clockwise. Better for them. Worse for me.
Some movement inside the school turned my attention back to the windows. A man had stood up and was gesturing towards something on the floor. He was in a room just to the left of the one filled with children.
A second man stood up, and it was apparent that they were arguing. The second man’s back was to the window, his hands animated in heated conversation, holding something small. He turned, gesturing back to whatever was below the windowsill, and I was able to see his face.
It was Hassan. And everything I saw told me that they were preparing a device to release the sarin right here in the school.
“I have a visual on Hassan. He is working on a device in a school one click south of the rocket site,” I said into my mic.
“We are four blocks away,” said Uri over the radio.
As I was about to reply, the sentry now covering the front of the building stopped. He took a radio off his belt. After listening for a few seconds, he went out to the Toyota parked hastily in front of the school. Arriving at the bed, he slung his rifle over his back and withdrew several large pieces of metal. Olive in color, they appeared to be scraps of artillery. After filling his arms like a lumberjack holding a load of wood, he went to the front window, just outside of where Hassan and the other man stood. They had him adjust his position slightly and then gestured for him to break the window.
He set down the metal scraps and unslung his rifle. Gripping the receiver and barrel, he used the stock to smash the window in with a sharp, loud crash. He then picked up the pieces and threw them through the window.
Dozens of little faces popped up in the windows of the room where I’d seen the teacher before, pressing against the glass, trying to get a look to the side to see what the noise was. More appeared in the windows of the second story. Tiny, innocent faces. The building was completely full.
I took a deep breath, trying to form a plan. At the NZSAS facility in Papakura, we’d trained for dozens and dozens of scenarios. And while not one of them covered a building filled with innocent children and sarin gas ready to be released, there were principles of many drills that applied. Naturally, all of them involved one or more fire teams of five. We would be three shooters, two of whom I’d only met thirty-six hours ago. Needless to say, there was going to be some improvising.
I began to back out of the rubble and conveyed my plan to Anat and Uri. By the time I reached the cover of some bins and a partial wall at the north side of the school, Uri was already there. As I crouched down next to him, Anat came on the radio to say she was in position.
While an ideal way of clearing the building would have been from the roof down, not to mention having a half-dozen more shooters with us, we were going to need to come in from the ground floor. Anat was set up in the rubble where I’d been, across from the front of the school with a good line of sight to both the front and north sides. She’d be able to alert us to movements, provide cover, and take anyone who exited the front or tried to escape in the Toyota.
Uri and I would quietly take out the next sentry who came around, and make entry via a side door. Our hope was to find a clear path to the front room containing Hassan and the device. Staying fast and quiet was important, because with so many children in the school, there’d be chaos as soon as the first round was fired.
The sound of a se
ntry rounding the corner reached us. I pivoted and crouched low behind the stub of wall that concealed us. As Uri pressed in behind me, I knew he had his Tavor bullpup up and the sentry sighted in. I withdrew the knife I’d taken from Anat and quietly opened the blade.
There were 4 meters separating me from the sentry, and I knew my first step had to be silent and the next two explosively fast. As he was walking from my left to right, I waited for his right foot to begin to swing forward before uncoiling. Ideally, his body would be out of position to react and I would be there quickly enough to get a hand on his mouth and the knife to his neck. But as I planted my second step, he reacted.
He pivoted, but since I was on the outside in relation to how he held the rifle, it was going to be an inefficient move. I adjusted immediately, grabbing the base of the barrel and pushing it up and across, accelerating his turn. As his body position opened, my right hand drove the knife hard up into his throat. He went limp with only a slight gurgling noise almost instantly. By the time I’d lowered him to the ground, Uri had already backed into the side of the building at the door frame. I immediately went to the other side of the door, and after taking the SIG from my waistband, nodded. We were prepared to risk the noise of kicking the door in, but Uri tried the knob anyway. To our surprise, it opened.
I went in first, taking the center and one side. Uri was immediately behind me, taking another slice of the pie. We’d arrived in an empty hallway, illuminated by a few bare fluorescent bulbs hanging from the ceiling. Seeing it was clear, Uri went outside and dragged the sentry in. I removed the magazine from the sentry’s AK and un-chambered a round. The rifle I put beneath the body, and the magazine went into a rubbish bin as we leapfrogged one another down the hallway.
We arrived at a set of double doors, and I said to Anat with only a whisper, “In position. Ready to breach the room.”
“One man standing, dead center of the room. Hassan has just ducked down, out of sight now.”
I turned to Uri and nodded at his bullpup rifle. “You have to take the man standing with that. We don’t want to risk your rounds passing through the body and hitting the device,” I said quietly.
He nodded. I reached down and gently tested the doorknob. This one was locked. I checked again to make sure Uri was ready, and then drove my foot into the left hand door just above the knob.
The instant it opened, Uri charged forward. His weapon fired twice, double-tapping one militant almost instantly. I swung in behind him, the SIG up and ready. Both eyes open, I instantly assessed the room.
It was some sort of assembly room where all of the kids in the school could gather, with a half circle of rugs and a few chairs, all facing a small table that held a wooden box of some sort. The militant Uri had taken was lying on the floor just to the left of the device. Not one, but two men were squatting low by the table. One was directly between us and the device. My sights swept by him and stopped at a third militant at the end of the table, holding a pair of pliers. With my focus on him, I squeezed the trigger just as the front and rear sights came into alignment. He collapsed immediately.
The position of the man in the center was still a problem, and he knew it. He’d gotten himself into a crouch, but was still between us and the device.
His head turned slowly, and I saw it was Hassan. One of his hands was reaching up and into the box as he said, “Are you willing to take the risk?”
Both Uri and I knew we needed a safer angle and had begun to edge around the perimeter of the room. Hassan knew he had only seconds, but his hand wasn’t finding whatever he needed in the box. As he edged up to look inside, his head snapped back and a puff of red mist erupted. He collapsed right there, his hand scraping down the edge of the box as he went to the floor.
It had been Anat from across the street. A perfect shot.
We could hear children screaming in the next room. There was likely panic in the floor above as well.
“We need to get them out of the building,” Uri said.
“Still at least three more tangoes. They’ll kill these kids as soon as they walk through the door,” I said.
He nodded towards the device as if to say look at the alternative.
A second shot came from across the road. “Two left, now,” said Anat over the radio. She’d obviously taken out one of the sentries just outside.
I turned to Uri and said, “Get them down for now, sheltered ready to exit quickly.” As I moved to look at the device, the sound of a three-shot burst came from the back of the building. Both of us went low and weapons went up, back towards the doorway.
“Should be only one now,” came Joe’s voice over the radio. He’d arrived, and just in time. “Coming in the back now with three friendlies. We’ll take care of the kids.”
I heard his voice echo through the hallway as he spoke to the IDF soldiers with him, then turned to the front of the room.
Before us was a rough wooden box. Inside were two large plastic canisters, each filled with a clear liquid. The release of sarin as a gas would require the two chemical compounds to mix and then be expelled in an aerosol form. What worried me right now wasn’t the jugs, but the timer dangling off the corner of one at forty-two seconds and counting.
Timing devices weren’t as common in IEDs as they were in the movies, given their perchance to go wrong far more often than simple radio-detonated devices. But Hassan had apparently been well trained enough in Lebanon to handle the complexity.
Seeing that the timer had been triggered changed the situation dramatically. We did need to get the kids out, despite one militant unaccounted for. They needed to get away. Far away, and fast.
“New plan, Sterbs. Get the kids clear now. I have a timer det. that’s activated at forty seconds. Anat, cover the kids as they clear out.”
From above me and through the wall to the room next door, I heard the volume and urgency of voices increase. I tuned it out to focus on the matter at hand.
Uri stood next to me and I talked through what I could see, more to help organize my thoughts than anything.
“Power source to timer,” I said, tracing the wires, “to the charge.” My fingers ended at the explosive-lined bottom of the box. “The charge goes off, and the thin walls of these canisters immediately evaporate. The chemicals mix just as they are aerosolized.”
“Any anti-tamper circuits?” asked Uri.
Thirty-one seconds.
“Possibly. Two extra wires here. There might be another power source underneath. But they all lead here to the charge.”
I hope.
The somewhat rectangular jugs fit quite snugly in the wooden box, limiting my ability to see where the wires terminated. I put my hands in between the jugs and the interior of the box, gently feeling for where a blasting cap would have been inserted into the charge. As my fingers moved along, I saw the timer click down: twenty-two seconds; twenty-one; twenty.
My fingers hit something.
And just then, I felt Uri spring across my back and fire his weapon. I pulled my hands out and drew my weapon as two bodies collapsed, their weapons clattering to the floor almost simultaneously. The last militant lay on his back in the doorway, a pool of blood around his head.
Uri Novgorod was down as well. He had taken the round meant for me, and had somehow returned fire just as he was hit. And now he lay at my heels, a massive wound in his chest expelling blood at an alarming rate. His eyes were open, staring straight at me, blood trickling out of his mouth.
I tore the keffiyeh from my shoulders and, balling it up, immediately placed it over the wound. He groaned at the pressure, bloody bubbles escaping from the corners of his lips. Unable to speak, he shook his head side to side and his eyes moved like darts to the wooden box. He’d been a soldier, and as a soldier he knew the mission came first.
With great pain and reluctance, I turned back to the box and wedged my hand inside. Fourteen seconds.
My fingers gripped what I knew to be the blasting cap. I pulled it out, and separated t
he det. cord. Ten seconds.
My hands moved further around the perimeter of the box, and I felt a second piece of det. cord. And then, a second blasting cap. Again, I removed it and separated the two. Seven seconds. I continued to probe, completing my loop around the device. There was nothing else. I disconnected the power source taped to the top of one of the jugs.
The timer stayed illuminated. Four seconds.
I gently lifted the left-hand jug where I’d found the second blasting cap and felt the rectangular shape of another battery. I pulled it out and ripped the wires off just as the timer hit two.
It went black immediately.
“Clear!” I said into the mic and immediately bent down to Uri. His eyes were unmoving, still snapped hard to the side towards the box. I gently closed his eyelids.
“We did it, my friend. We saved these children. You saved these children. Every last one,” I said. Gripping his broad shoulders firmly, I closed my eyes and said a prayer for him.
An hour later, our neighborhood of Gaza City was an absolute hive of IDF activity. One EOD team was removing the rockets from the launch site, towing them to the desert for disposal. A second team that included two chemical weapon experts had been brought to the school via helo from Tel Aviv. Significant security forces for each site had been deployed, though Hamas appeared to be lying low for the moment.
Haley had come in on the helo, and was with us as Uri’s body was put on a stretcher. She stood close to Anat, an arm around her.
“That bullet was meant for me,” I said. “I had both hands in the device as the timer ticked down. He heard, or maybe just sensed, the threat. He leapt behind me, and took the round as he fired his own weapon. Without him, every child here, along with everyone within a few blocks, would have died. Died absolutely terrible deaths.”