by Andy Maslen
“Of course I meant it, you idiot.”
“Good. Because I—”
“What the fuck’s that?” Gabriel asked, looking up before Eli could finish her sentence.
It sounded as if an attack by killer bees were imminent. A harsh buzzing filled the air. Gabriel turned a full circle before locating the source of the noise, which was growing louder with every passing second. He pointed to a grey cloud advancing on them from the north, from the direction they’d just ridden. It had to be a couple of hundred feet across and flying at maybe twice that altitude.
“What the hell is that? A swarm of locusts?”
Eli shaded her eyes with one hand and squinted.
“I think it’s our way in.”
A few seconds later, the leading edge of the swarm reached them. Craning his neck, Gabriel understood why Uri Ziff had been so cagey about the precise nature of the Israelis’ plans. The first ten or twenty members of the swarm buzzed overhead. Each individual was roughly six feet across, configured into an X-shape, and lifted by whirring rotor blades at each of its four extremities. Dangling from a wire loop beneath its centre was a small, white, finned projectile. As he gaped at the drone swarm, he tried to count the identically configured craft. After estimating his way to fifty he gave up as hundreds more flew over the cave mouth, headed on a straight-line course to the Iranian nuclear weapons factory. The noise was intense, as the swarm of Israeli drones continued to pass overhead.
“There must be at least three hundred of them,” Eli shouted.
Gabriel nodded, still staring. Trying to imagine the effects on ground troops when this monstrous, mechanised horde arrived and started delivering their payloads.
They stood, shoulder to shoulder, watching the drone swarm cover the final mile of its journey to Vareshabad.
Mini-Spike
MOSSAD HEADQUARTERS, TEL AVIV
LOCAL TIME 2.40 P.M. 1 HOUR AND 20 MINUTES TO LAUNCH
The female drone controller – the sensor, in the parlance – swivelled in her seat. She looked up at Director Peretz.
“Ten minutes to target, Director. Look.”
She pointed at her screen. Relaying video from a forward-mounted camera on the lead drone, it showed the collection of white buildings that Gabriel and Eli were seeing 1,243 miles to the east. The video was a little jerky, but Peretz could imagine he was back behind the controls of his beloved F-16, flying sorties over Lebanon.
“Very good. When we get there,” – he realised that “we” wasn’t really the right term, but somehow having a pilot’s eye view of the terrain made it seem appropriate – “wait for the defensive forces to begin shooting. Then attack. I want as many of them out in the pen as possible.”
“Yes, Director.”
“Tell me again about their armaments.”
“Each drone carries a single munition. A modified high-explosive warhead derived from the Mini-Spike missile normally carried by our infantry. No guidance systems, no rocket motor or fuel. Just an injection-moulded plastic body with tail fins to impart spin. They only weigh two kilos instead of four. When we hit the fire button on the joystick, the whole swarm drops its payload. Three hundred detonate-on-impact warheads. Even if the guards hit twenty percent, which is unlikely, the remaining drones should still clear the way for our two agents on the ground.”
“Let’s hope so,” Peretz said.
Melkh
VARESHABAD
As well as commanding a garrison of 175 Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Major Darius Esfahani was a keen student of Middle Eastern history. He found it fascinating that the project the scientists were engaged in had been codenamed “Melkh.” Locust . Not that his superiors, or his men, had asked him, but had they, he could have told them that the largest ever recorded locust swarm in the region was in 1915. The Ottoman Syria locust infestation, to give it its full title, had virtually destroyed the summer harvests in Palestine, Lebanon and Syria. The name, he felt, was apt.
Esfahani had just completed his afternoon walkaround of the facility when something pricked at his awareness, making him look up. He frowned. A low, dark-grey cloud was advancing from the northwest towards Vareshabad. No. Not a cloud. It was far too low. And far too small. And it appeared to be composed of separate … what? He couldn’t tell. He called over a corporal who was manning an observation post and asked for his binoculars. He brought them up to his eyes and adjusted the focus knob between the barrels.
His brain struggled to process the confusing signals his eyes were sending Then, when he realised what was almost upon them, he mentally recited a short prayer. O, Allah, protect me against them however You wish.
He turned to the corporal, who was standing to attention by his side.
“Sound the general alert! Now!” he said.
The corporal ran back to his post and hit the alarm button. Esfahani raced to the armoury and grabbed a short-barrelled assault rifle, an unlicensed copy of the American M4 carbine.
In the drone command centre in Tel Aviv, Peretz authorised the two operators to begin their attack sequence. They spoke to each other, and the controller, a disembodied voice elsewhere in the building, in terse fragments:
“Control, two friendlies waiting outside strike zone. Confirm?”
“Copy, sensor confirms.”
“Copy, pilot confirms.”
“Approaching target. Ground forces, vehicles, all buildings live targets.”
“Pilot copies.”
“Sensor copies.”
“Ground forces readying weapons, small arms, RPGs.”
“Pilot copies.”
“Sensor copies.”
“Pilot, Control, request weapons loadout?”
“Copy. I have three hundred Mini-Spikes, on three hundred Hornet drones in the target vicinity.”
“Pilot, Control. You are cleared hot on all targets. Confirm?”
“Copy, pilot confirms. Sensor, prepare to spin up all weapons.”
“Copy. Pre-launch checklist. PRF code.”
“Entered.”
“Launch triggers armed.”
“Armed.”
“Code weapons.”
“Coded.”
“Weapons status.”
“Weapons ready.”
“Pre-launch checklist complete.”
“Pilot, Control. You are clear to engage target at your discretion.”
“Pilot clear to engage target. Sensor, ready?”
“Copy.
“Master arm is hot. Three, two, one, rifle.”
The swarm arrived just as Esfahani emerged from the concrete bunker housing the armoury. He looked up and felt a great fear descend on him. Hundreds of drones, hovering a thousand or more feet overhead. Without thinking, he raised the carbine to his shoulder and began shooting. The rifle’s fire selector switch was set to AUTO, and he emptied the magazine in a few seconds.
All around him, his troops were gathering. Those on duty were already armed. Those arriving from the barracks or the mess hall were following his own movements: rushing to the armoury before emerging armed with carbines like his own, light machine-guns, sniper rifles, even a couple of rocket-propelled grenades – whatever came to hand first.
“Fire at will!” he screamed, slamming a new magazine into the receiver of his own rifle.
The noise was deafening. In seconds, the air had turned a grey-blue and Esfahani’s lungs were full of pungent smoke. The smell of burnt propellant and the ejected brass cartridge cases intensified. A shout went up as one of his men scored a hit and a drone crashed out of the sky. Then the man, and the five closest to him, were vaporised into a pink mist that quickly combusted in the explosion as the drone’s payload detonated on impact.
Realising that whoever had sent the drone swarm – The Israelis , was his first thought – would be following up with ground troops or an airstrike, Esfahani ran for his office. He needed to get word to Tehran.
From their vantage point, Gabriel and Eli watched the attack. They saw the
sparkling muzzle flashes of the small arms. RPGs left their characteristic white smoke trails as they shot upwards before the fuel ran out and the projectiles returned to earth, detonating harmlessly way beyond the facility’s perimeter fence.
For a few seconds, the scene on the monitors in front of the two operators remained one of intermittent muzzle flashes and the occasional brighter burst from an RPG. Then, as three hundred Mini-Spikes reached the ground and detonated, the screens turned white. When the onboard video sensors started operating again, the scene had changed. Each warhead had left a black starburst on the ground. Bodies, and body parts, lay everywhere, fires raged, and smoke drifted left to right across the picture.
Peretz’s phone buzzed on his hip. He looked at the screen before answering. His lips compressed. He turned to Mizrahi and Ziff who were both standing to his right.
“It’s the PM,” he said.
He tapped the screen.
“Prime Minister.”
“What’s happening Daniel?”
“We’ve just attacked. Three hundred warheads dropped onto the facility.”
“And the agents?”
“Waiting for our signal, sir.”
“Well, fucking give it! It’s almost three. You have till four, then I’m launching my attack. A Jericho. We’ll show the world that Israel does not wait for annihilation. We act!”
The call ended, Peretz took the phone from his ear and stared at the fading screen. He turned to Ziff.
“Send the codeword. They need to go now. We need confirmation that Darbandi’s dead and that the missiles are destroyed by four our time, or he’s going to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike. And then, God help us all.”
“What? He’s going to use a nuclear missile when our people are in there?”
Peretz sighed, hating the situation he’d been placed in.
“Uri, you know as well as I do that, weighed in the balance, two lives do not count against eight and a half million.”
“Then, we should tell them.”
“No, my friend. What if they cut and run? They don’t need to know about the PM’s plan. It will only … distract them.”
“They won’t cut and run, as you put it. They’re professionals. They have a right to know.”
“No, Uri, they do not. They have a right to the information that I, as Mossad director, deem it necessary for them to know. Now, send the code.”
Factory Visit
VARESHABAD
Eli looked down at her phone. A single word scrolled left to right across the top of the lock screen.
לִתְקוֹף
Attack.
She pocketed it again and spoke.
“We go now.”
Ahead of them, they could see the orange fire and thick, black smoke from Vareshabad boiling up hundreds of feet into the air. Even from a mile away, the noise of the bombardment had been immense. As the warheads hit the ground and detonated, the individual flashes had combined into a distant light show, bright despite the harsh sunlight. Jets of burning chemicals speared into the sky, burning in bright greens, blues and pinks and trailing white smoke.
They started the Tigers, kicked them into gear and roared across the remaining mile of scrubland towards the white factory, which was now obscured by the cloud of oily black smoke.
A couple of the drones must have hit the gates with their missiles. The metalwork was twisted and blackened, burst apart and ripped into a tangle of sharp-pointed steel brambles. The guard post to the left had taken a direct hit. Nothing remained but a black starburst on the tarmac and a scattering of unpleasant, charred gravel, black on the surface and red at its core.
Gabriel pulled his bandanna down. Then immediately wished he hadn’t. The smell of burnt flesh was everywhere. He felt a sudden urge to vomit, and took a shallow breath, trying not to imagine particles of carbonised human being entering his lungs.
“Darbandi’ll be in the underground levels. Or they’ll be trying to get him out.”
Eli nodded.
“Go in together or split up?”
“Split up. By the look of all this,” he swept his arm round at the devastation wreaked by the drone swarm, “the guards ought to be no problem. Radios to Channel 3. And watch yourself, OK?”
She nodded again. “You, too,” she said, then replaced her own bandanna.
They dismounted, and ran towards the complex of buildings, pulling back their rifles’ charging levers as they went.
The drone swarm and their deadly eggs had reduced what had been a hive of activity to a charnel house. Body parts lay everywhere. Some recognisable, many just pieces of blackened meat.
Where the factory’s defenders had avoided direct hits, they had nonetheless been flung against walls or blasted up into the air to be caught on electricity pylons, cooling towers or communications masts. The air was thick with the familiar yet horrific stench of a full-scale military attack. Combustion gases from the high-explosive warheads, the sharp tang of gunsmoke, the coppery stink of freshly spilled blood. Fires burned where combustible supplies or vehicles had been heated to ignition by the explosions, adding an acrid overlay of burning rubber, plastic and chemicals.
Gabriel saw Eli veering left towards a roadway that led to the rear of the complex. He headed for the largest of the white blocks. The double glass doors at the main entrance to the factory had been shattered in the drone attack. Millions of twinkling fragments covered the ground. Without slowing, he leapt through the empty steel frame, swinging the muzzle of his rifle through a sixty-degree arc.
He was in some sort of reception area. No cut flowers or fancy furniture. Just a rudimentary desk and a steel security barrier. Beyond both, a single door surmounted by a pair of security lights – red and green – seemed to offer access to the innards of the building.
As he strode towards the gates, readying himself to vault them, the door opened and a man wearing the bottle-green uniform of the Revolutionary Guards appeared, an assault rifle at his hip. His eyes met Gabriel’s. On his face a mixture of expressions appeared to be warring for supremacy: fear, surprise and aggression. Baring his teeth, he loosed off a burst from what Gabriel saw was an AK-47, or some sort of copy. But in the time it had taken for the guard to process the fact that he had an intruder to deal with, Gabriel had dived sideways behind the reception desk. The guard didn’t have time for a second burst. Gabriel fired along the ground under the desk, hitting the guard in the ankles and sending him, screaming, to the floor. Gabriel’s next burst hit him full in the face, smashing his skull in a welter of blood and brain matter.
Then Gabriel was on his feet again. He used the dead man’s rifle to shoot out the door lock then kicked hard to send the door swinging back against the wall. He shouldered the AK and moved through the door. He found himself in a white-painted corridor. At the far end, twenty feet away, a lift awaited. The walls were plain all the way down the narrow space, no doors to left or right. He ran down the corridor, finding a brief moment to hope Eli was doing as well as he was.
At the lift, he pressed the button to go down. The doors immediately slid apart with a hiss. He stepped in and scanned the control panel. The floors indicated ran from 2 through 0 to -2. He stabbed a finger at -2, figuring that if he were going to protect a bunch of nuclear scientists, he’d push them as far down into the bowels of the earth as possible. And if he didn’t find them there, he’d work his way up on foot until he found Darbandi.
The lift jerked into motion, and Gabriel took a few deep breaths as it descended. Tucking his arms in tight against his ribs, he went down on one knee against the left side of the lift, bracing his back. He aimed both rifles at the door. Anyone wearing a uniform or carrying anything more dangerous than a clipboard would fall under a combined burst of 7.62mm and 5.65mm full metal jacket rifle rounds.
The lift stopped with a bump.
Gabriel let his latest breath out in a hiss.
The doors opened.
In Tehran, General Arom Garouhd replayed
the conversation he’d just had with Major Esfahani, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards out at Vareshabad. The Major’s final words had been chilling.
“We’re under attack! A drone strike. Hundreds. My men are all dead or soon will be!”
Then Garouhd called the commander of the Iranian Air Force, Brigadier General Reza Ebram, and asked for immediate help. Both men knew what was at stake if Vareshabad fell. Their own positions to begin with, if not their heads.
Within twenty minutes, six twin-engine Mikoyan MiG-29s were taking off from Mashhad tactical fighter base and heading west towards Vareshabad, a flight of some 553 miles. The Russian-supplied fighters were primarily designed for air-to-air combat, but they were the nearest planes Ebram had available.
From his vantage point flying through a cloudless sky at 20,000 feet, Sarvan – Captain – Karim Mansourian saw the smoke and flames that had engulfed the factory at Vareshabad several minutes before he overflew the site. He radioed back to base to confirm that Major Esfahani had been telling the truth. But as he turned to fly over the site a second time, dropping to just 3,000 feet, he could see no massed troops, no heavy armour, nothing to indicate an attack was in progress.
Then, off to the northwest, he caught a flicker of movement, as if a flock of starlings were wheeling over the desert, the outlines of the amorphous shape shifting and changing as individual members adjusted their position to avoid a collision with a neighbour.
He banked sharply to port and gave chase, issuing a sharp order at the same time.
“Green Flight. Intruders to northwest. Follow me. Confirm.”
“Two.”
“Three.”
“Four.”
“Five.”
“Green Six.”
Keeping close to the side of the massive white building, Eli ran down the roadway, rifle at the ready across her body, fire selector set to AUTO. All she encountered were more mangled corpses and shattered vehicles, where the Mini-Spikes had landed. The quality of the smoke was different here: whiter, with a sharp chemical tang. Wishing they’d thought to bring breathing apparatuses, she ran on, holding her breath while skirting the thickest part of the cloud.