Hi-Tech Hijack

by Dov Nardimon

  “If this heat goes on for much longer all the substances in the lab refrigerators will be ruined. The insulation won’t keep the cold infinitely,” he said as his glow-in-the-dark wristwatch indicated it was already nine o’clock.

  “If this goes on, we’ll be ruined, too. Alfonso, I feel like I can’t breathe.”

  “Yes, me too. We have to do something. I’m going upstairs.”

  “But the elevators won’t work either.”

  “I’ll take the stairs and use my cell phone. There must be reception outside.

  “Wait, I’ll come with you. I don’t want to stay here alone.”

  They left their apartment and saw the head guard. “Do you know what’s going on?” asked Alfonso.

  “I have no idea,” he said in embarrassment. “The guards outside the Israelis’ rooms and in the hallways are yelling that they can’t stand the heat, and I can barely keep them in their places. The two Israelis are banging on their doors asking to be let out. I went by there and tried to calm them down. I had to shout. I told them this isn’t anything against them and that we’re all suffering from this heat. Eddie must have calmed down or passed out, but Reuben keeps shouting and crying by the door.”

  “Come with us. We’ll go upstairs and I’ll try to find out what’s going on,” Alfonso told the head guard. They walked quickly through the hallways. The fluorescent emergency light showed them the path and shone on the sweaty, quizzical faces of the guards. It was a little bit cooler next to the fire escape thanks to the elevator shaft and stairway that took out some of the hot air. The chef and cleaning staff were there breathing heavily and waiting for permission to go upstairs.

  “Sorry, but no one leaves just yet. We’re going upstairs to see what’s going on.” Alfonso passed by them and started going up the stairs with the head guard behind him. Climbing the forty-eight steps to the surface was exhausting. Hot air always rises up naturally, and it surrounded them as they climbed. Alfonso reached out a hand to Isabella every now and then, but she gestured him to go on ahead—she was fine on her own.

  A breath of fresh air welcomed them as the door was opened. May in Saudi Arabia isn’t the coolest, but everything is relative, and Isabella gave out a sigh of relief and took a deep breath of fresh air as Alfonso tried to use his cell phone. He tried for several minutes, but to no avail.

  “That’s strange there is not communication. There’s a cellular antenna in the southern compound.”

  “The power outage must have disabled that as well,” said Isabella.

  “Apparently so. We have to let everyone out.”

  “I think we have to. But what do we do with the Israelis?”

  “We have to let them out too if you still want to use them,” said Alfonso impatiently. He turned to the head guard and told him to bring everyone out to where they were standing. “Cuff the Israelis and blindfold them. They can’t know where they are.”

  At 9:30 p.m., all the people from the underground facility were upstairs—sixteen people in total including the two Israelis, the chef, two cleaners, eight guards, and their commander. Eddie and Reuben were kept inside the building entrance with the doors wide open, sitting on waiting chairs opposite the elevators. Reuben found an outlet for his fears and stress with endless questions.

  “Where am I? What are you going to do to us? You promised you were going to let us go in the end.”

  Alfonso told him to shut up a few times, but Reuben couldn’t help it and only a slap from Isabella put an end to his frightened mumbling. Eddie sat in his chair quietly. Most of the people were standing outside the building, but within the fenced area, just staring and waiting for something to happen. There was no way out of the area, as the large van was inside the disabled freight elevator on the bottom floor, and they had no way of bringing it up.

  Chapter 59

  The observation post placed by the land force identified the doors opening and Alfonso, Isabella, and the guard emerging. Word was sent to Colonel Johnson, who informed all the troops that the action that had been scheduled to begin at 10:00 p.m. is now being pushed forward to 9:00 p.m.

  The helicopters that landed and waited several miles away silently started their engines. When the signal was given, all three land companies turned on their vehicle lights. Each third vehicle, those of the company commanders, had been equipped with a huge floodlight. All the lights were aimed at the building and the cluster of people outside it. Seconds after the lights came on, the sounds of the helicopter engines were heard, and before the dazed bunch knew what was going on, the chopper carrying the commando warriors landed inside the fenced-in area about one hundred feet from the building. The three other helicopters stayed in the air several dozen feet above ground covering the warriors storming the scene and making sure no one fled it.

  The Navy Seals jumped out of the helicopter before it even touched the ground and raced toward the building. The first six charged at the group of people who were standing outside dazed and confused by all the light and noise. They disarmed the eight guards using only the butts of their riffles before they even had a chance to react or resist.

  “Stay still, and you will not be hurt!” yelled one of the commando soldiers, and Nir, who exited the chopper last, repeated the instruction in Arabic while following Lieutenant Colonel Rossini, his deputy Major Jack, and a third warrior into the building.

  Alfonso heard the shouting outside, and in the mere seconds it took for the soldiers to enter, he understood this was not the help coming to sort out the electricity problems. In the blink of an eye, he came to the obvious conclusion that those men outside were there to free Eddie and Reuben, uncover PSSIC secrets, and learn his own role in this.

  “We’re in danger,” he said to Isabella in Spanish and tried to move toward Eddie and Reuben. There were two guards standing between them and him, and he pulled out a gun and pointed it at them. The guards moved aside, but Lieutenant Colonel Rossini had already entered the building and spotted Alfonso. He lunged at him trying to push his arm to the ground.

  A single gunshot was heard followed by someone crying, “I’m hit!” in Hebrew. Rossini knocked Alfonso to the floor and released the gun from his hands. Reuben, who had been shot, fell to the ground.

  Major Jack fired a few shots in the air and shouted, “Everyone lie down on your stomach with your arms stretched forward.” Nir was right behind him, and repeated the command in Arabic, not that the frightened bunch felt it necessary to wait for a translation. Isabella lay down beside Alfonso and found herself next to Reuben. Blood from his wound started to flow in her direction. Isabella quickly took out the syringe she had in her lab coat pocket, inserted the needle into it, and jammed it slowly into Reuben’s right leg. The pain of the gunshot wound in his abdomen was so intense he didn’t even feel the syringe that was full of the substance Isabella had intended to inject into the monkey’s flesh. The soldiers quickly moved from one person to another collecting all rifles and hand guns. It took them less than a minute.

  Nir ran toward Eddie who was sitting in his chair blindfolded and cringing, but then he spotted Reuben, his brother-in-law, lying on his stomach and kneeled down to pick him up. There was blood all over his abdomen. Nir turned Reuben on his back, pushed away the guards who were lying around him, and yelled, “We need the doctor and the medic! Call in the second chopper.” One of the soldiers tossed him some field dressing, and Nir pressed down on the source of the bleeding.

  In the meantime Rossini and his men handled the rest of the group. They removed Alfonso and Isabella hunched and shaking from the building and put them into the chopper. They handcuffed and blindfolded them. Jack removed Eddie’s blindfolds and led him to the chopper:

  “We’ll un chain you later. I don’t want to waste any time right now.”

  “The head guard has the keys. He’s the one with stripes on his shoulders,” said Eddie as he ran to the helicopter and was aided up by another soldier. Two minutes later, one of the soldiers came in with a set of k
eys and released Eddie’s cuffs. Eddie was going to get straight back out into the building, but the soldier stopped him.

  “Orders are for you to stay and wait here,” he said.

  The second chopper arrived and landed on the other side of the building. The doctor and medic carrying a stretcher rushed in, accompanied by some Green Berets. Within minutes and still fully conscious, Reuben was loaded unto the chopper with an IV in his arm. Nir came with them, and the helicopter took off immediately toward the military hospital at the Riyadh airbase.

  The Green Berets helped the Seals gather all the guards and workers in the corner of the building. At the same time, two soldiers took the head guard to open the entrance gate, and one of the Bradley personnel carriers entered and parked next to the building. The soldiers took out rucksacks loaded with explosives, detonators, and fuses and prepared them to be lowered underground.

  Eddie, watching them from inside the chopper, jumped out, and approached Rossini. “You’re going to blow up the facility. Let me lead you down.”

  “It’s all right, young man. We have exact blueprints of the area downstairs.”

  “But you don’t know what’s in every room.”

  “Correct, but I can’t let you go down there. My mission is to get you home safe and sound. What you can do is take a look at these blueprints and tell me what’s in every room.”

  Two commando soldiers spread open the underground blueprints under the vehicle headlights, and Eddie leaned over to take a look. He marked the lab rooms, Alfonso and Isabella’s apartment, and the rooms where he and Eddie had been held. “The lab rooms are most important. Don’t touch or open any containers. Some have extremely dangerous Ebola cultures in them. I suggest you take the computer from Isabella’s room—it should have all the information gathered so far. It would be great if you could also take Reuben’s laptop and mine. I think Alfonso’s computer is at the apartment. There could be some useful information on that as well—not necessarily scientific, but significant from an intelligence point of view.”

  “Good thinking about the computers. The CIA would love to know more about this organization.”

  “Umm, there’s one other little thing. There are some caged monkeys down there. It would be nice if you could let them out.”

  “We’ll see how we are on time. We have to be out of here in fifteen minutes,” said Major Jack.

  “Try, if it’s not any danger to you, of course,” said Eddie.

  Led by Major Jack, four commando men carried the explosives and went underground. Lieutenant Colonel Rossini and another soldier stayed up with the Green Berets who in the meantime blindfolded all the other people.

  Jack reported to Rossini over the radio about his progress in the maze of underground rooms and hallways. At some point he said, “I found all the computers just like Eddie said—Isabella’s, Alfonso’s, and the laptops. As for the monkeys, I think they’re done. It’s so hot down here I think they’ve passed out or died. We’re having a really difficult time breathing down here ourselves.”

  “Then hurry. We can’t have anyone passing out because of the monkeys,” said Rossini.

  A few more minutes passed before one by one the soldiers started to emerge sweating and breathing heavily. Jack appeared last, rolling an electric cable toward the Bradley. The wire was attached to a generator. The electrical cable was a backup to the wireless system that was meant to set off the charger placed in one of the rooms in case Wi-Fi shielding was in place.

  “Ready to explode,” Jack shouted. “Everyone step away from the building.”

  The detainees were taken away from the entrance to the farther side of the fenced area. The building doors were closed, and Rossini signaled for Jack to turn on the generator. A few tense seconds passed before a dull sound was heard, followed by the earth under their feet shaking. Some cracks appeared in the entrance building and the door shook and trembled, but remained closed.

  “Very good,” said Rossini to Eddie, standing next to him. “The shock was contained inside. There’s definitely not much left of the labs down there.”

  “Yeah.” Eddie sighed. “Three years’ worth of research and development are now evaporated.”

  “You’re not sorry we showed up and killed your research, I hope?” said Rossini, smiling.

  “Not at all. Life is more important. I hope Reuben’s all right.”

  “We’re going on board the chopper and will be in the base near Riyadh in half an hour. That’s where our hospital is.”

  Rossini signaled for the commando men to retreat to the helicopter. As planned, the Green Berets stayed behind to guard the detainees until after the chopper took of9f. Once it did, they joined the rest of the Bradley company that sped back to Al-Yamamah, leading Colonel Johnson’s land force.

  The Chinook made its way to Riyadh accompanied by the two Apaches. Silence fell over the compound—a stark juxtaposition to the noise of helicopters and vehicles that left minutes before. The detainees started moving in disquiet, trying to remove each other’s blindfolds. It would take several more hours before the morning guards would arrive to find the cuffed bunch huddled around the cracked building.

  Chapter 60

  The monotonous sound of the helicopter’s propeller making its way north toward Riyadh had a certain calming effect on Eddie. He had so many questions that needed answering, but an overwhelming fatigue took hold of him, and he simply sat there quietly staring at the Seals who were also silent, every man with his own thoughts.

  At 10:30 p.m., the helicopter landed at the American airbase near Riyadh. A civilian vehicle with a diplomatic license plate of the United States embassy waited for the soldiers that led Isabella and Alfonso inside. The vehicle immediately left the base and headed back to the American embassy in Riyadh.

  A military vehicle took the soldiers and Eddie to rooms that had been prepared in advance where they could rest and freshen up. The soldiers also changed back into US military uniforms. Eddie wanted to go see Reuben. Jack volunteered to give him a lift to the hospital, which was in a different section of the base.

  “Keep in mind we’re leaving for Tel Aviv before dawn. John Foster, the head of CIA, should be here any minute, and he wants to question Eddie.”

  “Let us know when he gets here. Tell him to come to the hospital and interview him there,” said Jack, and he showed Eddie to the Jeep that took them to the hospital.

  At around eleven o’clock, George and the two techs returned, happy and cheerful, back from dinner to the southern PSSIC compound. By the time they got back and had received confirmation from Israel about the successful outcome of the operation, Amit had everything back in working order—the generators were reconnected with the command board, the grid was back on, and the communications center was back up and running.

  “There was some sort of malfunction after what felt to me like a small earthquake over on the north part,” he told the team, reversing the chain of events. “I shut down power temporarily, which caused the communications to crash, but I was able to get everything back in order, and I think it is ok now. Though the indications lights show that the air-conditioning in the southern part isn’t working. I asked the guards at the main gate if they felt the tremor too, but they were too busy watching TV. Maybe it was just me.”

  “Don’t worry. In the morning when people arrive at the north compound and turn on their air-conditioning, the indication lights will start working again. This has happened before,” said George.

  “I hope you had a good time,” said Amit, changing the topic of conversation.

  “It was great. Thank you from all three of us,” said George. “We really appreciate the gesture.”

  “It was my pleasure. Did you book a cab for me for one a.m.?”

  “I did. It’ll be waiting for you at the hotel to take you to Riyadh. There’s hardly any traffic this time of night, so it shouldn’t be more than a two-hour drive to the airport. You should be there by three o’clock, two hours before your
flight to Rome.”

  “Great. Let’s go then.”

  One of the techs stayed on for the rest of the night shift, and George and the second tech took Amit back to the hotel at Al-Yamamah.

  When they got to the hotel, Amit wished them good night and went up to his room. Ten minutes later he got a call from reception saying there was a car waiting for him. He went down with his little trolley suitcase, asked the receptionist to cancel his taxi that was booked to take him to the airport at one o’clock, and exited the hotel lobby straight into the American embassy vehicle that was waiting outside to take him to the Riyadh military airbase. There was no intention of leaving anything to chance. The plan took into account the possibility that once the action was revealed, there could be a state of emergency declared in Saudi Arabia, and the border police would be checking everyone like a hawk, especially someone who came into the country only a few days before and was now leaving.

  The American military hospital at the Riyadh base was only a two-minute drive away from the base airport.

  Someone at the front desk told Eddie and Jack where the operation rooms were.

  “He’s been in surgery for quite a while now.”

  Outside the operating room stood an armed guard who saluted at Jack and said, “I’m sorry, no one’s allowed in.”

  “Tell them I’m here with the second Israeli.”

  The guard dialed and handed the phone to Jack who spoke briefly with someone inside and told Eddie, “I just spoke to Nir who was with Reuben right until they took him in to surgery. They found an entrance wound and exit wound, and the bullet seemed to have missed any vital organs. They’re working on stopping the bleeding. They should know more within the hour.”

  “I hope we can take him back home with us.”

  “Not sure if the doctors will agree to that.”