The Hijack s-2

by Duncan Falconer

  The Hijack

  ( Stratton - 2 )

  Duncan Falconer

  When an undercover operation monitoring the Real IRA goes horrifically wrong, British Intelligence turn to the one man who can get their agent out: Stratton, SBS operative with a lethal reputation. It’s a dangerous race against time: if the Real IRA get to the Republic before Stratton gets to the Real IRA, his colleague is as good as dead.

  But the battle in the Northern Ireland borders is just the beginning. For there can only be one way the Real IRA knew about the British agent: someone within MI5 is tipping them off. Then the surveillance mission in Paris to identify the mole ends in disaster: Hank Munro, US Navy SEAL on secondment, is captured.

  Munro’s wife Kathryn is distraught, and turns to priest Father Kinsella for support. Kinsella, though, is not the holy man he seems, and Kathryn becomes an unwitting part of a deadly Real IRA plan, a terror attack the likes of which London has never seen . . .

  The Hijack

  Duncan Falconer

  To my Palestinian friend,

  my Israeli friend, my Russian friend

  and my dear English friend

  Chapter 1

  The approach to the English Channel, two hundred miles due south of the Devon coastline, was the furthest from home Abed Abu Omar had ever been in his life. At forty minutes past midnight it was wet and gloomy, but, despite the constant drizzle that had gradually soaked him and his men since they left the Spanish coast the afternoon before, the desert in winter had sometimes been much colder, and he had spent many nights during his younger days without wood to burn or food for his belly.

  The cloud was low but allowed visibility in all directions for several miles. The heavy swell that had arrived with the setting of the sun contributed to the conditions, making them perfect for the mission.Allah was indeed smiling down upon the twenty Arabs huddled under their glistening army-surplus ponchos, equally divided between two wooden, open fishing boats tied alongside each other and holding position, their engines silent. The signal-strength indicator on Abed’s GPS flickered as it struggled to maintain a link with the navigational satellites through the cloud. The last positive reading indicated they were some five hundred feet off the proposed rendezvous point, but that was not a great concern to him. With this particular target he could afford to be much further from its track without fear of missing it.

  The day before, Abed had received a message on his satellite phone informing him the vessel had been sighted passing Gibraltar and the Pillars of Hercules where it entered the Atlantic. Short of a mechanical breakdown, or some other unforeseen incident, it would soon be in sight.

  Everything had so far gone to plan: the secret training in the desert camps of Lebanon, Syria and Jordan; access to the various ships owned by sympathisers in the Persian Gulf; the procurement of equipment; the preparation of the two second-hand boats purchased in Spain; and the arrival of the men from various places in Europe, America and the Middle East. The easiest part had been the acquisition of their weapons: not a gun, bullet or explosive device among them. Each man carried a Spanish garrotte, a dagger and a scimitar - the latter imported into Spain as antique artefacts - and they could use each of them with practised skill. For twelve months they had prepared and trained together for this moment, although it did not become a certainty until four months ago. Even now, with the time measured in minutes, there was still a possibility the operation could be aborted.That could happen right up to the point of no return, but Abed believed it was now unlikely. The sheiks, the masters, were as committed to the operation as Abed and his men.

  He had not spent all of his short life, twenty-eight years, like so many of his people, waiting for the day he could serve Allah against Zion and its supporters and, if need be, make the ultimate sacrifice for the cause. Nor was his decision finally to take up the sword because he had been born and raised in the largest prison in the world, the Gaza Strip, or because so many people he knew had been killed or incarcerated. They were not the reasons he was here, although they had contributed over the years to the smouldering ember of hatred in his heart that one night burst into flames.

  Abed’s place of birth was Rafah, a Palestinian refugee camp in the south of Gaza along the border with Egypt. Up until just over a year ago, when he was smuggled out to begin his training for this mission, he had spent his entire life on the narrow strip of land eighteen miles by five that was the most densely populated place on earth. Gaza was surrounded on three sides by a narrow strip of noman’s-land, heavily fenced and razor-wired, and watched over by towers manned by lookouts and heavy machine guns. Like the Berlin Wall during the Cold War, or an American high-security prison, it meant death to anyone who tried to penetrate the perimeter day or night. The graveyards were littered with those who had made the attempt. On the map, Gaza looked like a long, crooked rectangle surrounded by desert on three sides and the Mediterranean Sea, constantly patrolled by naval gunboats, F16s and helicopters, on the fourth. Only a privileged few, those who had foreign passports or special permits, were allowed to leave Gaza. Several thousand Palestinians were admitted through the Erez Crossing in the north into Israel on work days as cheap labour for the Israeli factories the other side of the border, but their passes were for twenty-four hours only and did not allow travel beyond the place of work.To be caught outside Gaza without a proper permit meant imprisonment, often for many years.

  Abed lived with his mother in a breezeblock terraced hut with dirt floors in all but the main room, which was concrete. This was also the only room with electricity, when it was available. They had their own running-water supply - a tap in the unroofed entrance - and since the Israelis blew up the sewage works at the beginning of the current intifada, the toilet was a bucket behind a curtain at the end of the hallway which was emptied into a large hole in the ground in a derelict house near no-man’s-land fifty yards away. Despite the conditions they were well-off compared to most others in the camps. The average income of a refugee family was ten US dollars a month. There was little industry left in Gaza, certainly nowhere near enough to provide work for those who were able. The population was more than a million, half of which was under fifteen years old, and a meagre living was scraped any way one could.

  Abed was eleven years old when it occurred to him that his mother regularly received money although she never worked, but it was not until his teens that he asked her where it came from. He loved and revered his mother who had always cherished and cared for her only child, her one reason for living in this vile jail, something she often said to him after kissing his forehead each night before he went to sleep. The day he asked about the money she sat him down and explained how she came by it, also revealing for the first time the truth behind another great mystery of his life: his father. Her story was disappointingly brief for one of such importance, sketchily describing how Abed’s father had escaped the country by fishing boat to Cyprus soon after Abed was born, and from there how he made his way to England where he settled to live and work. The plan behind the escape was that one day Abed and his mother would follow him and they would all be together again, away from the poverty and humility of the camps. However, his father had failed to get the necessary paperwork and visas, or perhaps the Israelis had refused to recognise them; Abed’s mother was never clear about these kinds of facts and did not seem particularly interested in the smaller details. As far as she was concerned, they were trapped in Gaza, his father was in England, and that was that.

  Like most of the older generation in the camps, she had grown to accept her way of life and had long since given up the dream of one day being free to live like those in other countries, in a proper house with utilities, a garden and the freedom to go where she wanted. The camp was ove
r fifty years old, established in 1948, when the first people were forced out of their homes from towns and villages all over Palestine and herded like cattle into dozens of camps in Gaza and the West Bank, to live in crowded tents without proper medical facilities, food or sanitation. In time, they started up basic industries, made bricks and built small huts; these were closely packed together as their numbers grew, and only temporary abodes for they all hoped and believed that one day they would return to the farms and land they had owned for hundreds of generations. Her dreams, like those of most others, had withered with time. She had been born in Rafah camp, in an old British army tent barely a hundred yards from the hut she now lived in and where she knew she would die.Whatever the reasons for Abed’s father’s failure to get them out, the fact was they could not leave to join him, and he could not return without having to remain in Gaza for the rest of his life. He had chosen to stay in England where he could earn enough money to send them some each month so that they could live more comfortably than most.

  The money arrived in his mother’s bank account promptly until Abed was twenty years old, then shortly after his birthday it stopped. His mother was philosophical about it, supposing Abed’s father had died and that there was nothing they could do about it anyway. That part of their lives, the more comfortable times, was over. She had always seen it as a bonus and now they would live like everyone else in the camp: almost solely dependent on help from the United Nations.

  Abed remained curious about his father and asked her many questions about him: where he lived in England; if he had ever written to her; and if he was still alive the reasons why he might have stopped sending money. Abed’s mother showed no interest in discussing the subject. Then one day he pushed her too far and demanded he had a right to know about his father. She lashed out at him with a venom he had never seen before and yelled that it pained her too much to talk about it and she didn’t want him to mention his father ever again.

  He did not.

  Abed left university that same week and found work with a nearby metalsmith where he earned enough money to subsidise the UN rations, without which everyone in the camps might starve.

  If he ever suspected his mother’s stories about his father were lies, it never prepared him for the day he learned the dark and terrible truth, the same day he was smuggled out of Gaza, a truth that was like a cut across his heart he would always feel.

  Abed had been asked many times to join the ranks of the local freedom fighters such as Fatah, Hamas, or factions like the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. He always respectfully declined. His family was Christian Orthodox, a tiny minority among the Muslims, although it was not strange to find a Christian fighting for the Jihad, only unusual because of their small number. Abed was Palestinian and shared the torment inflicted upon his race that did not distinguish between Muslim and Christian, but his heart did not allow him to join the fight. It had not been wounded enough, not yet.

  Abed showed above-average intelligence and athleticism in college and it was noticed by those who watched how patient he was. He was a listener more than a talker and did not display the characteristic hysteria that most Palestinians expressed after an Israeli raid and during the funeral that immediately followed a death, or when the futility of it all became overwhelming. There was something interesting about him, though most could not say with precision what it was. He was not a follower, and even though as a boy he rarely joined in the ritualistic, almost daily, stoning of the occupying army, which for some meant paying the ultimate price, he was never taunted for being a coward. It was obvious to everyone he was not, even though he had never done anything brave. Patience is a revered virtue for the Arab, especially among those who live in the camps. The men who watched were confident he would turn one day. Some men will always offer the other cheek and others never.And some, and they expected Abed to be of this type, might offer it once or twice before something pushed them over the edge. This could be relied upon in Gaza because there was no shortage of pushing by the enemy, and much was expected of Abed when that day came.

  What changed Abed’s mind about joining the Jihad, what pushed him over the top to take an active role in the struggle, was relatively sudden, although it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Some picked up arms out of despair, sometimes strapping explosives to their bodies and blowing themselves up along with as many of the enemy as possible. Others joined out of sheer anger, frustration and hatred.Abed best fitted this latter category, though he didn’t discuss his innermost feelings with anyone, not even his mother. It was not a desperate act and he would certainly never throw his life away on a suicide bomb attack.

  The event that wrenched open his heart and ignited the embers happened during the week he turned twenty-six years old, the same week he opened a metal shop of his own. The peace for him ended late one Sunday night during an Israeli incursion into the Rafah refugee camp.

  These attacks were not unusual by any means and happened nearly every night somewhere in Gaza; raids by tanks, armoured personnel carriers, and Apache helicopter gunships, deep into the towns from any one of the numerous military outposts that surrounded the Strip. After the 1967 war, the Israelis decided they wanted Gaza for themselves and gradually carved chunks out of it by building settlement fortresses for their own people to occupy. By the time Abed reached his twenties, almost 50 per cent of Gaza had been confiscated to house only a few thousand Israelis. The explanation for the nightly incursions was to protect the settlements and discourage the Palestinians from attempting to expel them.

  The first clue that danger was in the wind that night for the people living in Rafah camp was a cessation in the sporadic bursts of machine gun fire in no-man’s-land along the border a street away.There was always a burst every ten minutes or so. A saying in the camp was that one slept with the gunfire and was woken by the silence.

  Abed sat up in his bed, his ears searching to confirm the sounds he was as familiar with as the wind whistling through the date trees and the waves crashing on to the beach. When he was sure the distant creak and rumble was that of tanks and APCs, he put on his jeans and trainers and went to the front door, opening it just enough to peer carefully into the dark street. As the metallic clatter grew louder, there was the unmistakable crunch of a nearby building being crashed through. It appeared that Abed’s neighbourhood was the night’s target. That was not new, of course. Rafah had been attacked dozens upon dozens of times in the past few years, but there had not been an incursion into Abed’s immediate neighbourhood for several months.

  He was tempted to make his way down to the corner of the block to the main street that led to the marketplace to take a look and confirm what by now was obvious, but the snipers would most likely already be on the prowl, and if he was seen he would be shot. They were not the only unseen danger; the Apache gunships would also be hovering high above, their engines cloaked by noise suppressors, watching through night vision aides for anything living to show itself in the battered streets below. Many residents, regardless of age or gender, had died with a bullet to the chest or brain because they had been too curious and had not fought the urge to look out of their window during such times.

  There was another loud crash from the opposite direction, followed by the guttural revving of a massive engine: another tank. They were penetrating from several directions. Whatever their area of focus was, Abed decided his home must be close to it, if not directly in it.

  Suddenly the house at the end of the street crumpled and a tank brushed aside the front of it as if it were made of sugar blocks. A burst of machine gun fire followed as the tank continued past Abed’s block and on to the next.

  There was another long rattle of machine gun fire from behind the house which was very close. Then came the sound of someone running down the street towards him. The next burst of fire was different, lighter. Abed knew it was not the enemy. It was erratic and had the desperate characteristics of the hunted, not the hunter.

  Abed could make o
ut two men in his street carrying AK47 assault rifles, an easily recognisable weapon since they were often on display in Gaza City during the daytime when the Israelis rarely attacked. Israeli soldiers carried mostly American M16s or Canadian versions of the same model. They never used AK47s.

  The men paused outside Abed’s house looking uncertain about where to go next, with little time to decide. Abed remained still, watching them from the shadow of his door, which was slightly ajar. One of them sensed Abed and looked straight at him, and for a moment Abed wondered if they were considering an escape through his home. If the enemy suspected, it would mean the end of his home, literally, and possibly his incarceration. Despite the dangers, Abed opened his door to offer them entry.

  ‘Close your door,’ the man said. ‘Stay out of sight.’ He was tall and lithe and gripped his rifle close to his body, his finger through the trigger guard, ready to use it in an instant. Abed did not know him although he looked vaguely familiar. The man was not from Rafah camp. Perhaps he was from Khan Younis, the larger town just north of Rafah.The man tapped his partner who was covering the other direction and they ran down a narrow alleyway opposite Abed’s front door.

  A moment later he heard more running in the direction the men had come from, and he instinctively closed his door and carefully drew the bolt across without making a noise. There was a roar of engines and the sound of masonry crumbling; one of the buildings behind Abed’s home had gone down. Then many footsteps charged past his front door and gunfire erupted, followed by shouts in Hebrew. Everyone in the camp would be wide awake by now. Families would be huddled together in fear, praying their door would be passed by, that they would be among the lucky ones tonight.

  A helicopter roared overhead drowning out all other sounds. Abed froze in the darkness as the helicopter’s searchlight shone through gaps in the corrugated roof above the front door sending shafts of light across his face. As the helicopter moved on, a voice speaking in Arabic came over a hand-held loudspeaker.