The Sinai Directive

by Rick Jones

  “So, we send a team to Tunisia,” said Lehrer. “What—and I’m just saying—happens if these weapons are elsewhere? Like in the Philippines or Columbia? Or perhaps somewhere we don’t know about and is off our radar.”

  “We know everything there is to know about Abesh Faruk and his business,” Rosenberg answered.

  “We didn’t know about the nukes,” Meier returned. “Who’s to say that we know all that there is . . . when that might not be true?”

  Rosenberg tented his hands together and began to bounce the tips of his fingers against his chin in thought. Then: “We’ll dispatch recon units to all three locations. But we’ll send a master team to Tunisia.”

  “A Kidon unit,” Meier suggested.

  “No. Our Kidon is in Zurich. For such an undertaking against Faruk’s heavily armed fortresses, we’ll need to dispatch the Sayeret Matkal.” The Sayeret Matkal was Israel’s specialized commando force that had been mythologized since the Raid on Entebbe, and one of the world’s most elite combat group. Rosenberg looked at Meier. “Abraham, make the contacts and see this done. Coordinate events to send units immediately to Faruk’s arsenals. But focus mainly on Tunisia. They’ll have the necessary information to assemble teams and their goal to appropriate the devices. We have our Kidon asset in Zurich to watch Faruk’s every move. If the opportunity presents itself, then our operative will respond accordingly to neutralize any future threat that this man may pose to the state of Israel. On the Sinai Directive, the Vatican Knights will deal with the problem that is Ahmadi’s group. Everything begins and ends with them. They are the absolute tip of the spear in this operation. To deny Ahmadi the golden calf is to deny Faruk. If this happens, then the barter deal is off. That leaves us with the task of appropriating the nukes over time.”

  Meier and Lehrer got to their feet. But it was Lehrer who spoke. “Then let us pray that the Vatican Knights will be successful in their endeavor.”

  Rosenberg eased back into his seat with his hands still tented. “I have no doubt that they will, since they are being led by the Devil’s Magician.”

  Meier gave off a marginal grin. “Is this to say that Kimball Hayden is back in the fold?”

  “It’s what I’ve been told,” Rosenberg responded.

  That was all that needed to be said, as the members of the Political Action and Liaison Department disbanded to perform their required duties.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Southwest of Jabal Maqla

  With a sense of urgency, the Vatican Knights double-timed their way to the southwest base of Jabal Maqla. The sun was directly overhead, the heat not yet reaching its zenith. Standing before the face of a vertical wall that was above two hundred feet in height, Kimball set up his BGAN system to communicate with the Vatican, knowing that the geospatial satellites had been properly positioned over their location to receive the feed.

  Removing the Ismarsat system from his backpack along with a small laptop, Kimball set the unit upon a stone that was roughly the size and shape of a sarcophagus. After booting up the system, which was trying to get an overhead fix, it took almost four minutes before the cyber connections were made between Jabal Maqla and the Vatican.

  On Kimball’s screen was Father Auciello.

  “You’re coming in just fine,” the priest informed him. On the small screen of Kimball’s laptop, Father Auciello’s head was about the size of a golf ball.

  “Same here,” Kimball returned. “As you can see, we have a climb ahead of us. Straight up. Have you the precise coordinates of the asset’s location?”

  “We’ve done data crunching on our end,” said Auciello. “We’ve run all the simulations based on the writings of Moses given the hints of planetary locations in respect to the moon’s position during the Exodus.”

  “And?”

  “There’s a seventy-six percent chance that the location of the golden calf is approximately ten clicks from your location, but within a one-thousand-foot circumference.”

  “A thousand feet?” In a thousand-foot circumference, that came to roughly twenty acres of land, which was a lot of territory to cover. “You can’t pinpoint that to an area that’s far less? Like on a dime.”

  “That was the highest mark of the simulation runs,” Auciello answered. “The other two were sixteen and eight percent, respectively. Obviously, we’re going with the highest computation here.” After a pause, the priest added: “And there’s something else. Ahmadi’s group arrived at the southeast side of the mountain chain last night. They still have quite a distance to cover before they make it to the same coordinates marked by our simulators, maybe four hours. But their climb is a steep rise that’s almost constant. I’m sending you an overheard thermal feed of their position in accordance to yours.”

  Kimball’s screen winked off. Then an infrared imagery popped up on the monitor with nothing but dead and elevated terrain between the terrorist faction and the Vatican Knights. Anything that threw a heat signature came up as red, amoeba-like forms. For Ahmadi’s group, Kimball counted nine. The Vatican Knights only numbered five. But with Sherpa, that made six.

  “What’s the current distance between them and us?” Kimball asked.

  Though Father Auciello could not be seen onscreen, his voice was quite clear. “Twelve miles,” was the priest’s answer.

  “Copy that.”

  “And, Kimball?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Godspeed.”

  “I hear you. Out.” Kimball quickly folded the lid to his laptop and focused his attention at the obstacle of the sheer wall, the Vatican Knight winking an eye against the brightness of the overhead sun. Though the wall had its rocky ledges, it was largely a vertical climb.

  Isaiah approached and took position beside Kimball to scope the wall. He, too, had to wink an eye against the brightness of the overhead sun. “Twelve miles out,” he said. “That’s not a whole lot of distance between two groups who are converging on the same location.”

  “Yeah, I agree. Father Auciello said that Ahmadi’s group was in a constant climb from the southeast. And we’re staring at ours.” The mountainside had the height of a twenty-story building.

  Kimball called out to Sherpa and beckoned to him to approach. With his AK-47 slung over his shoulder, Sherpa appeared by Kimball’s side.

  “Yeah.”

  Kimball pointed to the wall. “Ahmadi’s men are coming in from the southeast, maybe four hours away. How long to get around this wall to make it to topside?”

  “From here, six hours. That’s why we’re going straight up. To cut off a few of those hours.”

  Saving five hours would be vital against Ahmadi’s forces, Kimball considered. But the process of carving away that time would be not be an easy task. This wall would prove to be a challenge, and perhaps as much of a menace as the terrorist cell they were about to clash with.

  But Sherpa seemed unaffected by this, the challenge of the climb suddenly simplified when he set his AK-47 aside and shrugged off his backpack. Inside was the piton gun for the firing of climbing stakes, air cylinders to provide enough power to jettison the pitons into the wall, and two rolled cords of titanium filament. He also removed two units that were alien to Kimball. These were the line ascenders. Once the titanium lines were fixed to the pitons, then an ascender would be attached to a belt affixed around their waists and then to the filament, and with a flick of the switch the pulleys would tighten against the cord and pull them upward.

  After he set the air cylinders inside the gun, he attached the end of a titanium line to a piton, then fastened the spike to the weapon’s end. Sherpa then pointed to a ledge that extended from the wall, about one hundred feet up. “See that outcropping?” he stated rhetorically to Kimball. “That’ll be our first point. From there, I’ll set off a second piton just beneath the mountain’s top. Once we’re topside, we’re looking at another fifteen hundred feet of climbing—the angle, however, minor.”

  Kimba
ll touched the tip of the piton with the point of his finger. It was definitely sharp enough. The question was, did these cylinders have enough force to punch these spikes four inches deep into a rock wall.

  Sherpa, intuiting Kimball’s concern, said, “I’ve used these many times before. We’ll be good.” Angling the weapon to an area left of the wall’s protrusion, the Company man took precise aim and pulled the trigger. The kickback was savage as the weapon bucked hard into his shoulder, the air cartridges shooting the titanium wire upward with a whipping sound and incredible velocity. As the looped wire on the ground unraveled with blinding speed, it took less than two seconds for the piton to punch its way home. Sherpa’s aim was true to the mark. Handing Kimball the piton gun, Sherpa tested the wire by grabbing and pulling himself up until he was off the ground. It easily held his weight. Releasing the line, he took back the gun and returned it to his backpack. Then grabbing a line ascender and giving a quick lesson on its nomenclature and proper use, he exhibited how to attach the device to the line and then power the unit. He simply slid the line into the opening between the rail and the pulleys, hit a switch that powered the pulleys to squeeze themselves against the lines, and showed them a second switch that would cause the pulleys to roll up along the cord. “This switch,” he said, placing his finger on the control, powers you along the line as soon as its attached. It only works if the wire is properly attached. It it’s not, it won’t work. It’s a safety feature. Once I get on that ledge, then I’ll secure a second line from the ledge to the brim of the mountaintop. And again, we’ll use the ascenders to winch us up. Questions?”

  “Seems simple enough,” said Jeremiah.

  “Good.” Sherpa then made a gesture for someone to hand him his backpack and weapon. Once his bag and his AK-47 were in hand, he hit the throttle. The ascender started to hum as the unit started its upward crawl with Sherpa in tow. “It’s a slow climb,” he said to the Vatican Knights. “About twenty feet per minute.” At twenty feet per minute, that was a ten-minute climb per man from base to top level. In just under two hours by Kimball’s estimate, the entire team would be topside and well ahead of Ahmadi’s terrorist cell. Still, there would be the egg hunt of locating the golden calf, which would be time consuming.

  When Sherpa reached the outcropping five minutes later and one hundred feet up, he disengaged himself from the line and gestured to Roman to begin his climb, who attached himself to the line with the second ascender. While Sherpa was prepping the piton gun for its second shot to the rim, Roman fastened the unit and hit the switch. With the ascender humming to life as the power kicked on, Roman started to move upward, albeit slowly.

  “When you reach the ledge,” Kimball told him, “reverse the settings so that it returns.”

  Proffering a thumbs-up, Roman continued his upward journey.

  Kimball, choosing to be the last to make the climb, rebooted his laptop to monitor Ahmadi’s movements. The red shapes coming from the southeast were making good time considering the angle of the incline. This told Kimball that Ahmadi’s men were in peak physical form. What had been a twelve-mile divide was now ten, the gap between them shrinking at an unprecedented rate.

  Then there was a second whump of gunfire as Sherpa set off his second piton, Kimball then looking up in time to see the stake drive deep just below the mountain’s edge. After Sherpa tested the line to see if it would hold his weight, which it did, Kimball turned his attention back to the screen.

  Ahmadi’s group was spread over the trails, nine in all. Then he closed the laptop and BGAN system, placed them inside his backpack, and prepared himself for the climb.

  Sherpa then scaled the second line to the mountaintop. As soon as he was topside, he allowed the ascender to descend along the length of the titanium cord until it reached Roman who, after joining his belt to the unit and switched the settings, began to climb. Since the rule was one man per line, Jeremiah, who was the third man to make the upward crawl, reached the ledge just as Roman made it topside. And that was the way it went until Kimball’s team, along with Sherpa, stood upon the hallowed mount where Moses received the Ten Commandments.

  Everyone appeared in awe of the rough stretch of land before them except for Kimball Hayden, who thought it looked like any other mountaintop in the chain—dead and barren and isolated.

  Taking point, Kimball led the Vatican Knights forward.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Southeast of the Jabal al-Lawz Mountain Range

  Although Ahmadi’s team was spread out amongst several trails that angled upward from varying and challenging rises of forty-five degrees or more, their pace was incredible with the Bangladeshi serving as their workhorse.

  They were taking trails that had been established by Nature, those winding paths that had no obstructions or large-scale stones to alter their course, the pathways clear designs that had been provided by Allah to give them a clear passage to the mountaintop.

  Amal Purakayastha pressed forward like a man who thirsted for water under a desert sun after seeing a waterhole in the distance, only to realize at journey’s end that it was nothing more than a battery of heat rising off the terrain. Ahmadi hoped that Purakayastha’s motivation was driven by the insight of knowing the relic’s actual location.

  As the terrorist cell meandered upward along the incline with the mountaintop in view, Ahmadi’s men did not slow down. Nor did the Bangladeshi. Though the team appeared breathless with their chests heaving and pitching for the intake of oxygen, their legs were propelling them towards a treasure that was close to being within arm’s length. And when they finally crested the summit, they could see the entirety of the mountain chain. It was as inhospitable as any place on Earth, nothing but dust and rock. Not even small tufts of sprouting weeds or sage existed for as far as their eyes could see.

  At the top, the Bangladeshi checked his smartwatch for the provided coordinates. According to the intel provided by Faruk’s analysts, the Biblical icon was approximately four miles southwest of their position and somewhere within a six-hundred-yard perimeter.

  “We are close, yes?” Ahmadi asked him.

  Purakayastha shut off his smartwatch and pointed to an imaginary point before him. “Approximately four miles ahead,” he said.

  “You know exactly where it is?”

  “I know the whereabouts,” he returned. “But not the exact location. If it’s there, we’ll find it.”

  Ahmadi knew that his dreams of unification between the tribes of the Middle East against Israel was contingent upon finding the golden calf. He had never tasted a need for discovery as badly as he did now. Everything weighed upon this pagan idol, which was nothing more than a few pounds of hammered gold in the form of a calf, and something that could alter world events. Though the nature of the transfer was a barter of goods, in the end it was still gold for weapons, and a form of cash payment.

  “You’re sure that the relic exists?”

  The Bangladeshi continued to look over the landscape. Without looking at the Arab, he said, “I do only what I’m commanded to do by Abesh Faruk, and I ask no questions. I’m only tasked to find a treasure he believes exists. But to answer your question, yes. I believe the golden calf is out there. Somewhere. And if it is, as I just stated, we’ll find it.”

  Ahmadi contained his inward smile. Hope was a beautiful thing, he considered—to believe that this relic had the ability to move mountains, even the one they stood upon, because it truly existed somewhere on top of this mountain wasteland.

  Without saying a word, the Bangladeshi started to march forward after readjusting his backpack, with Ahmadi and company right behind him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Zurich, Switzerland

  Though Angelika Hartmann tried her best to press upon Abesh Faruk a morning date, he declined because of a skyped business appointment that could not be adjusted. However, he was able to meet her for brunch at a restaurant in Zurich, where breakfast prices began at sixt
y-five Swiss francs.

  Close to the table were Faruk’s bodyguards whose beefy frames became the deterrents to anyone who would consider approaching the arms dealer, since Faruk believed that their physical size and cruel appearances would be a psychological warning to others to stay away.

  Standing by the doorway wearing his chauffer uniform that was impeccably clean with straight pleats and no wrinkles was Rico, Angelika’s driver who was tall and slender with an athletic build. With his hands clenched behind the small of his back and his feet slightly apart, he stood rooted in place as he maintained a keen eye on her as she sat at the table with Faruk.

  “I apologize for not being able to make an earlier time, my dear. I would have, but I had a business engagement that could not be changed. But I am delighted that you accepted my offer for brunch.”

  Angelika was wearing a wide-brimmed hat that hung over one side of her face in a mystique and femme-fatale way. Picking up a flute of champagne, she said, “I understand, Abesh. Business before pleasure, right?”

  “If it could have been any other way, my dear, I would have done everything in my power to change events in my life to see you. But yes—business before pleasure, I’m afraid. It is unfortunately the bane of my business, which is to sacrifice my personal pleasures for my ongoing operations. I am, after all, a captain of industry.”

  She sipped her champagne. Placing the flute aside, Angelika smiled and asked, “I’m just glad you were able to fit me into your busy schedule. I must admit, Abesh, I was not able to sleep after I left your estate last night.” This was true. But she knew that Faruk’s ego would accept her regard for him to be one of admiration instead of what she truly felt for him, which was undeniable disgust.