by Gary Haynes
He hadn’t seen the spy, whose nationality and identity had been guarded jealously by his Palestinian brothers. But when he’d collected the sandals, he’d heard that the spy was being taken to Beirut. A man he hadn’t recognized, who was said to be the group of Palestinians’ leader, had told his men to keep the spy fresh until a great jihadist act had occurred, something whispered to be the Silent Jihad. He didn’t know what that meant. But then the leader had ordered that they send photos of the spy’s decapitated head to the US Secretary of State. He didn’t know why, but the thought of it appealed to him. When the other Palestinians had asked their leader if they’d meet him there, he’d said that he would meet them in Paradise.
Chapter 89
Crane had used his contacts with the Mossad to agree safe passage from northern Israel across the border with Lebanon, together with Gabriel’s team of CIA paramilitary operatives, and they had entered the outskirts of Beirut, the Lebanese capital, a few minutes ago.
The city had changed a lot since the civil war and had undergone major architectural and infrastructure reconstruction. Located on a peninsula, it had been inhabited since the fifteenth century BC, and was one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the Middle East. Once, decades ago, it had been the playground of wealthy Arabs and Europeans, but no more.
A sea breeze ran through the few remaining palm trees, but the blacked-out windows in the two adapted minivans supplied by the Mossad were closed, the glass impenetrable to all but a projectile from an anti-material rifle.
Gabriel and the other paramilitaries, who looked recognizably Arab, were upfront, so that they could be seen through the clear windshields. The minivans had Beirut plates and kept at least four cars apart to avoid any hint of suspicion. But the drivers weren’t averse to using their horns, which would be expected. The whole team, including Crane, spoke fluent Arabic, and were well-versed in the customs and culture of the Greater Middle East.
They passed one of the many makeshift mausoleums, an old open-fronted store that had been transformed into a shrine to the martyrs of Hezbollah, who were still bankrolled by Iran. Small marble slabs, inscribed with the names of the martyrs and inset with their photographs, were draped with garlands of plastic flowers and yellow sashes, the colour of courage. Candlelight flickered and flags billowed.
Most of the young fighters, Crane knew, had died fighting the Islamic State group in Syria, while others had been killed in skirmishes with Sunnis in their own neighbourhoods. They called the Sunnis, “Takfiris”, and regarded all Israelis as expansionist Zionists. The country was now so screwed up that it was common for Hezbollah fighters to believe in the so-called American Project. This was a belief that both the US and Israel had created the Islamic State group to bring chaos to their country. Crane had had heard a lot of conspiracy theories in his time, but he had to admit that this was one of the craziest.
The terrorists who had taken Tom had tried to be cute. The Mossad had told him that the GPS tracker in the sandal had been located in the centre of Tripoli, which they didn’t advise any American to visit, anyone other than an Alawite for that matter. But the GPS Tom had swallowed had been traced to southern Beirut, although it was possible, of course, that it was just another ruse.
Crane knew that Tom could have been sold to a Sunni group in Tripoli; or here in Beirut he could still find a corpse. But he had had to make a quick decision and, given the likelihood that out of the two GPSs the one inside Tom’s stomach was the best option, he had decided on Beirut.
For him, however, the very name conjured up demons, but he had a debt of honour to fulfil, the way he saw it, to the general. But the closer they got to their relatively isolated destination, the edgier he felt. He knew that in the troubled suburbs outside the windows almost every household had a weapon. Even a seven-year-old kid could use an AK-47 effectively. But the Shias also had M16s, Chinese handguns, Russian hand grenades, and metal-tipped 7.60 rounds from Belarus for their Kalashnikovs, all sold by nefarious and well-protected Muslim arms dealers.
As they left the predominately Shia neighbourhood, the streets became narrower, the sidewalks sheltered by scruffy awnings. The mosques were protected by huge concrete security bollards and Lebanese Army APCs, with heavy machine guns. Teenagers wearing ball caps and sneakers hung about by burnt-out cars, smoking cheap cigarettes. Old men were sitting outside rundown coffeehouses, fingering their prayer beads. The red, orange and yellow houses, with AC vents on the outside, were replaced by windowless and bland apartment blocks, with flapping drapes and sandbags used to protect the occupants against high-velocity rounds.
They stopped outside a hollowed building, which was sandwiched between hardened waste grounds. The building had been a police station. It was surrounded by a skeleton of amateurish and unsafe-looking scaffolding. A young boy, with a dirty face, was standing outside, vainly attempting to sell balloons to a group of men in white shirts and baggy trousers who were walking by.
Opposite, laundry hung from twisted railings and precarious plastic lines, like flags of surrender against the blackened walls of an apartment block. Crane pressed a switch and the window slid down. The heat hit him like a hot blanket. He heard the noisy little birds in tiny wicker cages being carried by one of the men first, and then the distant discharge of small-arms fire.
A few minutes later, all extraneous noise was overcome by the sound of ancient engines from rusted Mercedes and Toyota pickup trucks, the men inside anxious, he knew, not to be mistaken for Shia militia, who travelled around the beleaguered city in modern SUVs. The men, CIA-funded assets, were a disparate group of Palestinians, Lebanese and Syrians, who, due to their secular stance and the cash, had thrown in their lot with the US. They would lead Crane and the others to where Tom was being held, or at least where the GPS tracker was situated.
He watched Gabriel exit the minivan and walk over to the bearded man who had gotten out of the front passenger seat of the Mercedes. He was wearing wraparound shades and smoking a cigarette. They shook hands and after a brief conversation Gabriel motioned to the minivans with his hand.
Suddenly, he wondered what the hell he was doing here, although he’d agreed with Gabriel that he’d be a strict observer. But he knew deep in his gut that he should’ve been monitoring everything from Langley on live video screens from satellite imagery, high-level drones and concealed cameras attached to the operatives. And yet here he was, and come nightfall anything could happen.
He got out. They had to change vehicles, because the minivans would be too conspicuous at their destination and walking in on foot would be too risky. He looked around. Light glinted off a cracked mirror of a moped, and somewhere in the distance someone was eating freshly baked flatbread and grilled chicken.
According to the GPS tracker, which Crane was constantly updated on by the Mossad, Tom was being held in Shatila refugee camp, home to ten thousand Palestinians in southern Beirut. This number had burgeoned due to an influx of impoverished Syrian refugees fleeing from their own civil war, and the camp was now occupied by almost thirty thousand Sunnis, who lived in plastic and tin squalor.
Let him be there, Crane thought. Let him be alive.
Chapter 90
The heat of the day had given way to a bearable evening, a cool onshore breeze aiding the drop in temperature. It had been stifling in the assets’ vehicles, too, especially after the efficient AC in the minivans. As twilight had given way to darkness they had parked up in a dirt-packed street no wider than an alley, the nearest structures looking like abandoned farm outbuildings, built from crumbling sandstone, with irregular corrugated-iron roofs. A few refugees had walked by, but their faces had been edged with desperation, the women hunched over in hijabs, the men narrow-shouldered and all but emaciated.
In truth, Crane hadn’t expected anything different on the ground. It was difficult to keep a man hidden in a well-populated area, and although the refugee camp was overflowing with humanity, they were now on the southern outskirts, far from the
stench of a makeshift waste dump that had almost made his eyes water.
The target site was two hundred yards away, around three tight corners, and suitably out of sight. It was a single-storey concrete blockhouse, with a flat roof, that looked like a latrine, but was a cosy retreat here in the camp. And that meant that people would avoid it. Only the criminal gangs who preyed on the weak could afford to have somewhere like that to live in, and, like the Shia militias, the gangs were universally feared by the refugees.
The satellite imagery from Langley, which had been relayed to laptops as the minivans had passed through central Beirut, had shown two guards, who’d been replaced every six hours. They hadn’t carried assault rifles, but no doubt had handguns. The satphone messages had confirmed that that hadn’t changed, and a heat signature showed that a live body hadn’t moved inside the building, either. Intermittently, a second heat signature had showed up, which was likely a third guard. If it was, the third guard was in situ tonight.
An hour later, Crane waited in the Mercedes with two Lebanese assets as Gabriel and six of his men set off. Normally they’d be wearing ballistic vests, heavy Kevlar helmets and four-pointed night vision goggles. They’d be carrying Heckler & Koch HK416 submachine guns fitted with red-dot sights and suppressors. But not tonight. They wouldn’t get within fifty yards of the target sight without something going wrong and an alarm being raised. This wasn’t a shoot-to-kill mission, it was a rescue mission, and that meant blending in.
They had Glocks with suppressors tucked into holsters slung under their arms and concealed with short jackets or unbuttoned shirts over T-shirts. They had two-way radios in the form of flesh-coloured earpieces and miniature lapel microphones. They had two, four-inch breaching charges that used primary charges with timers so that connecting wires weren’t required and ensured that a door blew outwards, not inwards. Basic.
But it was doable because the team sniper had a custom-made rifle with eight detachable parts that could be concealed among the team. It was doable because the rifle was chambered in EXACTO “fire and forget” smart-tech bullets. EXACTO was extreme accuracy tasked ordnance, .50 caliber rounds that manoeuved in flight, incorporating a real-time optical guidance system, which automatically adjusted the bullet’s trajectory to take account of wind, target movement, humidity, and other factors that would otherwise hinder a kill shot.
Yes, Crane thought now. Doable.
Chapter 91
Five minutes later, Gabriel and an operative were walking down the narrow street, punctuated with stunted trees, smoking cigarettes like all the men seemed to do. It helped the refugees to mask the stench, which otherwise clawed at the back of the throat. The moon was a half crescent, its muted light picking out the pieces of silver paper and broken glass in the ground, an almost mocking illusion that there were riches to be found here. If a man had a half-broken-backed donkey here, he was deemed rich.
As they got to within ten yards of the building, the two guards, who’d been slouched against the blocks, stood upright and turned to face them. Gabriel and the operative were chatting in Arabic and appeared amiable. In his earpiece, Gabriel got the five quick confirmations that his other men were in position. Two either side of the building to prevent an escape, and two on the roof, in case the guard inside burst out the front or the rear. And the sniper, lying down on a small hillock, utilizing the dense scrub as natural camouflage.
The men had left him there on their way to their positions and Gabriel knew that he had snapped the stock, barrel, clip, suppressor, and other rifle parts together deftly in less than a minute. The suppressor, like the Glocks’ suppressors, wouldn’t make a shot silent or invisible, but it would reduce the sound and muzzle blast significantly.
Before they got parallel to the guards, which could be fatal, Gabriel called them over. They were hesitant at first, but he said that he and his friend had taken a wrong turn in the warren of streets and tracks. He needed the sniper to get a clear view, just once and briefly. As the two guards stepped out from the wall, he gave the order.
Gabriel knew that the sniper had spotted the lead guard with the state-of-the-art optical sight, which sent signals to the bullet. Once discharged, the bullet was guided by four fins and a built-in sensory mini computer, which repeatedly readjusted its path to home in on the target, and was accurate up to two thousand yards.
A split second later lead guard’s head looked as if it had been made of water melon rather than skin and bone. The impact of the heavy round demolished over a quarter of his skull, as if it had been hacked at with a machete. He buckled violently to the ground.
Gabriel had banked on the second guard being stunned into inaction, and besides both he and the other operative had drawn their Glocks and, as the man’s eyes widened, they shot him four times in the chest.
The operative at the front of the roof dropped down, and the one on the left side ran out, and they dragged the bodies around to the left side, where they were dumped into a ditch. Simultaneously Gabriel affixed the sticky breaching charges to the hinges of the metal door, as the other operative covered him. If anyone came up the track from either end, the sniper would take them out, irrespective of their guilt or innocence.
They had three seconds to take shelter at the flanks, and they made it with a second to spare. The explosions were dull, accompanied by two brief bursts of grey smoke. But the door was thrown backwards, as planned, and appeared to be suspended in midair for a split second before hitting the ground and kicking up dust.
Chapter 92
Inside the building, the third man was sitting in a deckchair, listening to a handheld radio that was on a low volume. A hurricane lamp was beside him on the bare ground. He was eighteen years old and wasn’t armed. His job was to check on the prisoner from time to time, make sure he was functional and give him water, fruit and bread.
He didn’t have the wits to figure out why the prisoner refused to eat but drank, and what’s more he didn’t care. He cared about making enough money to feed his mother and six siblings, his father having died in a barrel bomb attack by the Syrian Army in Aleppo.
He couldn’t tell what had happened first – the sound or the limited blowback from the blast. But he was struggling to breathe now, and the shock had left him numb. He sensed blood running down his face, but his mind was playing tricks and it was imaginary. Blearily, amid the dust cloud, he saw two shapes moving through the doorway. As instinct kicked in he raised his hands, still seated, and cried out.
Gabriel knew that four operatives had the corners of the building covered, checking the immediate vicinity as agreed, and the sniper was still in position. He would have given the kid a double tap, but, noticing that there was no sign of Tom, he guessed he was in a hole, and that meant the kid couldn’t finish his prisoner off.
He could see that the kid was no threat so he stepped forwards and kicked the chair with his boot, sending the kid flying backwards. The operative beside him rushed over, applied flexi-cuffs and pulled up the kid’s shirt, making certain that he wasn’t wearing a suicide vest. He told the kid in Arabic that if he moved he’d shoot him in the face.
Gabriel took out a slim flashlight and checked the floor, seeing a padlocked trapdoor. He nodded to the other operative who frisked the kid and tossed over a key ring, with two keys. He didn’t bother asking the kid which one it was and in normal circumstances he wouldn’t have opened the door unless he was wearing protective gear and his body was shielded by a blast shield. But this was different.
He unlocked the padlock and instead of shining the beam down, said, “Tom, it’s Gabriel. Ankara, at the hospital, remember?”
Chapter 93
Tom was in a pit about twice the size of a manhole. He had cramp in his legs and blinked repeatedly, even though the light coming from above was muted. He’d been focussing on images of his farmhouse near Arlington County when he’d heard the gunshots and the blast, and had guessed what was happening.
He looked up now and saw Gabriel
crouching over the hole. Gabriel reached down with his free hand and Tom felt weak at first and unsteady on his feet like a newborn foal. But as adrenalin kicked in, he grabbed the edge of the hole, and with Gabriel’s help, found himself lying on the ground, gasping.
He looked over and saw the kid with his hands tied behind his back and tears flowing down his terrified face. The kid hadn’t abused him or spat in his water, but the hole had been dark and suffocating, and if he hadn’t had the GPS tracker inside his stomach lining to give him hope, he knew he would’ve been in danger of going mad.
Gabriel helped him to his feet.
“Thanks, man. I owe ya,” Tom said.
Tom and the other operative exchanged tight nods. The paramilitary put his hand in the cargo pocket of his pants and took out a cellphone and a black-handled knife, with a folded blade, and handed them to Tom. Then Gabriel held out the Glock to Tom and motioned with his head towards the kid, who made a staccato noise as if he was struggling to draw breath.
Tom knew exactly what Gabriel meant.
“I’m not an executioner,” Tom said.
Gabriel shook his head a fraction and raised the Glock. But Tom stepped forwards, shielding the kid with his back.
“Lift him up,” Tom said to the other operative.
He did so and before the kid had a chance to plead for his life, Tom swivelled around and hit him with a right hook, flinging the head back and spinning him to the ground. The impact of the punch had made a sound like a breezeblock being thrown onto a tiled floor, shattering the jaw.
Tom turned to Gabriel. “He won’t be talking to anyone for a while. Now let’s get going.”