by Harold
Ashcroft raised his hand. “How much damage could one of these things do, Doctor?”
“A one KT detonation could level an area of two, maybe three square miles. That may sound like a lot but actually it’s not. Remember, these things are demolition devices, meant for sabotage rather than strategic or even tactical use. The effects could be heightened by adding radioactive materials to produce a ‘dirty bomb’ that would increase lethality, but that would take some expertise.”
Langevin began pacing, warming to his subject. “Now, we need to remember. The Soviets weren’t slipshod or crazy. They knew the possibility that some of these things could get into the wrong hands. So they put PALs on each weapon—permissive action links. That means that anybody who had a nuke would need the correct codes to enable a detonation for that particular package.
“There’s more. The shelf life of a backpack nuke is pretty limited in any case, but once the weapon is separated from its power source it relies on a battery. At that point the clock’s ticking before the weapon goes flat line.
“Now, I already alluded to the maintenance problems. It’s safe to say that as a general rule, a backpack needed inspection and probably upkeep twice a year—maybe more. So . . .”
Ashcroft interrupted. “So anyone who bought one of the damn things would need some know-how or support to make it work.”
The scientist nodded. “Correct. Depending on the type of weapon, the operator needs four to ten minutes to detonate it.”
Rick Barrkman’s baritone arose from the back row. “Doctor, how in the world do we know where to begin looking for these things?”
Langevin arched an eyebrow and looked to Omar Mohammed.
“I was coming to that little item,” Mohammed began. “Originally we were going to the field with IDR liaison, Druze officers who have worked with special operations command. But the recent casualties have made that difficult, so we’re relying on direct radio contact with Northern Command. If we find anything, we notify them as soon as possible, but not at the risk of allowing a weapon to get away.”
“Doctor, how secure is the comm?” Furr did not want to take communications for granted.
“Each team has a frequency-agile radio that has been tested for compatibility with Northern Command. That’s in addition to our own radios for talking between our teams and El-Arian. I speak Hebrew; but if for some reason I cannot communicate, the Israeli command net will have English-speaking operators on hand until further notice. The authenticator codes are on cards with each set. Before we leave, we will check out another operator on each team.”
Green’s lips curled beneath his mustache. “Gosh, Doctor, where’d we ever get such high-priced equipment?”
Mohammed returned the door-kicker’s mirthful tone. “Let’s just say that I have a very rich uncle.”
Rob Furr still had concerns that he wanted discussed. “Dr. Mohammed, I don’t want to play what-if all day, but there’s just a lot that could go wrong and I’d like to know what sort of planning is involved. Like, what if we get one of these nukes and Dr. Langevin isn’t available? None of us knows how to disarm the thing.”
Langevin rose to his feet. “If I am KIA, you mean.” Without awaiting a response, he continued. “In that sorry event, women around the globe will tear their hair in a frenzy of grief.” He managed a straight face. “But of lesser concern, you should keep ‘the thing’ as secure as possible and call for help. Obviously, you do not want it to fall into the wrong hands again, and I will show you how to render it inoperable. I have written instructions with pictures.” His message was implicit: Even you knuckle draggers can understand them.
“Another thing,” Ashcroft said. “I like to think I can get out of trouble as fast as I can get into trouble. Are we gonna have to walk out through Indian country?”
“No, you will not,” Mohammed replied. “Northern Command and the Beirut embassy both have helicopters standing by. As soon as they hear that you have recovered a weapon, the helos will be on the way.”
Barrkman had sat patiently through the what-if session. “Sir, I would like to ask my question again. How do we know where to start looking?”
Mohammed lowered his voice to emphasize the seriousness of his words. “The border has been divided into operating areas for us and for . . . other assets. That’s as much as I can say for now. If necessary, some of those assets can be directed to you via Northern Command.”
“So there’s Israeli teams out looking, too,” Barrkman replied.
Mohammed made a point of looking around the room. “Other questions?”
Pitney finally spoke up. He was getting fidgety with all the discussion. “Yes, sir. When do we leave?”
“Right after dinner.”
* * * *
NORTHERN ISRAEL
Brigadier General Solomon Nadel strode into the special operations office. It was past dinnertime but the watch officers were accustomed to seeing the brigade commander at odd hours.
“Sir, Colonel Livni is not here just now,” the major said.
“That’s all right. He’s entitled to some rest.” Before the staffer replied, Nadel nodded at the map of the operating area. “Show me the teams.”
The major traced a finger across the border. “Aleph, Beth, Gimel, and Daleth, east to west.”
“Three men each?”
“Yes, sir.”
Nadel tracked his scan across the map. “How did you decide where to deploy them?”
The major grimaced. “Feldmann.”
“What?”
“Sergeant Feldmann. Colonel Yak . . . Livni. . . places great confidence in his intuition.”
“Sergeant Peanut Butter?”
A grin replaced the grimace. “You heard about that? Uh, sir.”
“Heard about it? Hell, I was there!”
“Well, General, that’s the thing about Feldmann. They say he’s always right or he’s never wrong.”
Nadel shook his head, as if just awaking. “What’s the difference?”
“Nobody knows, sir. But when the leader of Team Gimel saw the layout he said, ‘If Feldmann thinks that’s where we’ll find them, that’s the sector I want.’”
“God help us,” Nadel responded. Then, looking closely at the map, he added, “And the others?”
“Sir?”
“The other teams.”
The ops officer shifted his feet. He doesn’t want to discuss it, Nadel thought. “Well, General, I don’t know if . . .”
“Well, I know. Major. Yakov and I already discussed it.”
“Ah, yessir. I’m sorry, sir. The Americans have two teams in this area.” He traced the region north of the IDF zones.
“Are you in contact with them?”
“Yes, General. We ran a routine communications check about half an hour ago.”
“Then we’ve done about all we can.”
The major grinned. “For now, anyway.”
“Yes, for now.”
* * * *
SSI OFFICES
Marshall Wilmont had nothing encouraging to say. “Right now it’s doubtful that we’ll recover any of the bodies. Officially they’re all MIA, but Brezyinski saw Frank and Boscombe killed, and apparently Lee was fatally wounded.”
Carmichael said, “Marsh, I’m not criticizing Breezy in any way, but you know there’s always room for doubt. Eyewitnesses are wrong all the time.”
Derringer rapped the table. “What about the other two? Furr and . . .” He checked his notes. “Barrkman.”
“Breezy found them between the villages,” Wilmont replied. “Apparently they saved his a . . . neck. A real last-minute rescue.”
Carmichael’s mind was clearing, sorting options. “Where’s the Israelis in all this? I mean, we were contracted to them on behalf of the Druze. What happened to the backup we were promised?”
“I’ve asked Mr. Baram to see us this afternoon,” Derringer explained. “He might have something more by then.”
Carmichael rattl
ed a printout. “Thank God we still have e-mail contact with Nissen. With our encryption it’s more secure than the phone. He confirms that Omar and Bernie have arrived. Because of the local situation at El-Arian he sent most of his team to meet them in Hasbaya. The embassy arranged helo transportation and will get our people to the search area.”
Wilmont ran the time zones in his head. “If they start now it’ll be well after dark.”
Derringer drummed his fingers in the rudimental pattern that said he was thinking again. “They might as well, because the opposition isn’t likely to wait.”
* * * *
NABATIYEH GOVERNATE
It was time.
After the evening Salat-ul-Maghrib prayer, Imam Sadegh Elham raised his hands in a benedictory gesture. “Remember the words of the father of Ahmed Assil, the first suicide bomber, who said, ‘What else is there for a man but to sacrifice his son for his religion?’”
The two special weapons teams knew they did not need to respond to the rhetorical question. Instead, they listened with growing impatience to be on their way. But the priestly commissar had more words of inspiration.
“We will not bow to the great Satan, the arrogant power-hungry tyrant that plans to rule the world. We will shout the slogan we learned from Imam Khomeini louder, higher, stronger: Death to Israel! Death to America!”
The jihadists joined the chant. “Death to Israel! Death to America!”
Fervently shaking his fist, Ahmad Esmaili shouted as long and as loud as anyone.
Then, map in hand and compass dangling from his neck, he led his five-man team into the Lebanese night.
* * * *
44
NABATIYEH GOVERNATE
The two jihadist teams separated soon after leaving the Hezbollah base, but both headed generally southwest. Neither knew the route or the target of the other, but Esmaili could read a map. He reckoned that both units would try to penetrate the same six-kilometer front along the Lebanon-Israel border. It just made sense: it was one thing to toss off a phrase about “suitcase bombs” and quite another to hump that thirty-kilogram weight across broken terrain at night.
Esmaili was not surprised when Abbas Jannati ordered Modarresi Ka’bi to carry the device for the first part of the trek. Apparently neither was Ka’bi who, for all his undoubted devotion, lacked the younger man’s athletic frame. He stopped frequently to hoist the load higher on his shoulders, and though he seldom complained, it was clear that he would be just as pleased to share the honor of carrying the RA-series weapon to its destination.
At length Ka’bi called a halt. “Brothers, forgive my body’s weakness, but I must rest.” Without awaiting approval, he slipped the harness off his back and sat down, leaning against a rock. He pulled a water bottle from his cargo pocket and drank deeply.
Esmaili gestured to his teammates. Hazim and his two partners walked about twenty paces away and faced outward, keeping watch. Ka’bi rubbed a shoulder. “We would make faster time on level ground.”
“You state the obvious,” Jannati hissed. “But we could be seen near the road and that must not happen.” He turned to Esmaili. “How are we progressing?”
The cell leader consulted his map, using a red-lensed light. “We have come perhaps four kilometers. It is a little over ten to the border.”
Jannati glanced over his shoulder at his colleague. “Perhaps it would have been better to come this far by vehicle.”
Esmaili folded the map and tucked it in his shirt. “No, the risk is too great. The militia patrol this area sometimes, and they would surely stop any vehicle this time of night. That has already happened, you know.”
The nuclear warrior nodded. “Yes, I heard. That was unfortunate. We can only trust that it did not betray our plans to the Zionists.”
“Brother, do not worry so much. God will guide our path.”
Jannati stretched out a hand and clasped his escort’s arm. Then he rose and picked up the weapon.
As he resumed the march, Esmaili congratulated himself upon his growing ability to sound sincere on religious matters.
* * * *
SOUTHERN LEBANON
It was blind, dumb luck.
The leader of Team Gimel called a halt to change batteries in his night-vision optic. He had used the device more than expected, because his tactical sense told him the men he hunted would keep to the depressions and shadows. Twice he had been startled by thermal images nearby, but neither were hostile. The first had been a group of four people, apparently a family settled for an uncomfortable night in the countryside. He had crept close enough to overhear their muted conversation and determined that they were more refugees from Amasha.
The second image had spiked his adrenaline because it moved. The lieutenant had flicked his safety off before he realized it was a stray goat.
While the officer installed a new battery, his NCO caught something moving toward them. In a hoarse whisper he called, “Alert. Right front.”
The commandos went on point just as the strangers saw the Israelis. For a cloud-shrouded moment both teams looked at each other in the nocturnal grayness, less than twenty meters apart.
The Hezbollah team responded as briefed. Backing away the leader called in Arabic, “Where is my daughter? Where is Fatima?”
When there was no reply, the Iranian concluded that the strangers were hostile. He ordered his men into a semicircle, weapons pointed outward.
The sergeant, who spoke fluent Arabic, responded convincingly, “We have not seen her.” Immediately he berated himself: I should have said I have not seen her. Now they know there are others.
“What is your village?” the voice demanded.
The lieutenant was beside the sergeant. “Tell them you don’t understand.” Then he was gone, moving left. The third man obeyed a signal to flank right.
“What did you say?”
There was muted, rapid talk in the dark. The NCO thought it sounded agitated, perhaps an argument.
The jihadist asked again, “What village are you from? Have you seen a little girl?”
Seconds later the lieutenant’s voice rasped over the tactical headset. “Four or five men, all armed.”
“I see five,” the corporal said from the opposite flank.
The Israeli officer recalled his initial doubts: three men were too few to handle a determined enemy but with only twelve operators, the fourth team afforded more coverage. Now came the crunch. “Moshe, ask them to come to us.”
The sergeant opened his mouth to speak when the Iranians started shooting.
In the next fifteen seconds, eight men fired more than 130 rounds. The dank night was split by muzzle flashes from AKs and Galils, and both sides took casualties. As the focus of the Muslims, the Israeli sergeant had little chance. He took four rounds through the torso and crumpled to the earth.
The lieutenant and the corporal used their positions to advantage. They shot down two enemies before the other pair shifted fire to them. The officer was hit in the legs, fell prone, and kept shooting. The corporal fired an ineffective burst at a fleeing shape and another fighter eluded him.
The fifth man had the weapon.
The lieutenant called on the team channel. “Moshe, are you there?”
Moments ticked past; the pain began rising above his knees. Finally the corporal responded, “He’s dead.”
“Levi, I’m hit. I can’t move. Can you find the package?”
“I’m moving.”
The corporal executed a tactical reload and scampered through the area, littered with empty brass and bleeding bodies. He searched for several minutes when he heard a high-pitched scream: “Allahu akbar!”
Turning in that direction, the commando closed the distance, his pulse accelerated with physical effort and impending dread. Gunfire erupted ahead of him, scything, searching fire. The Israeli recognized the situation: the surviving gunman would hold off any pursuers while the weaponeer activated the device.
The nocturnal hunter
swung wide to his left, seeking an opening from the flank. It took longer than he wanted, but he was the only remaining chance.
The next thing he heard was an incredibly loud explosion emitting a blinding, searing light.
* * * *
45
SSI OFFICES