Barracuda 945 (2003) Page 9

  "The RV Point itself is close to the top of an escarpment, way off any road or track. It's uninhabited, no livestock to speak off, and I do not expect to see anyone. Should someone stumble into our path, you will take them out instantly and silently, man, woman, or child, preferably with the knife. Then hide the body."

  He stopped for response. But there was none. He had trained them well, and each man understood his responsibility, and above all, the high stakes involved.

  "Once we reach the RV Point," the General continued, "we are five and a half miles from the lower hills below the Fortress. If we cross the Israeli Disengagement Line at around 2300 hours, we should be on our way by 0100, in four groups of nine men, moving cross-country, in the darkest part of the night.

  "I have personally completed this journey three times. I was not trying to break any record, just moving easily, through farmland, and it takes under two hours. But we do have to cross a shallow river."

  The General pointed to a thin blue line on the map. "Sometimes," he added, "this is just a muddy puddle. But right now it's a river. Thigh-high. Keep your arms up, weapons dry. Okay?"

  Everyone nodded. The General sipped from a glass of water, and then pointed again with his baton. "This, right here, is the road up to the fortress. It's a mountain road, but it has only one hairpin bend. The rest are gentle, but steep slopes. The Fortress is hundreds of feet above the flatland around it. I have marked a spot with this X, right here. And I want you to look at this much larger scale map here, which shows the road from its lower levels and then the two miles up to the Fortress itself. Here's the X, okay?"

  The entire assembly moved forward, each man holding his own map, and watching the General's pointer.

  "Right here," he said, "fifty feet below the road, is an overhang of rocks, about one hundred yards long, with a lot of undergrowth. It's about one third of the way to the top, a mile below the Fortress and less than that from the point the road rises. That overhang provides complete cover from the road. We'll be in there by 0300, which gives us time to cut and improve the cover of the brushwood. I will personally carry in the two pairs of pruning shears we'll need for this phase of the operation. There'll be two shovels waiting for us. By 0600 we'll have our communications straight, and by first light we'll be invisible from the road. Anyone strays near us, he dies. Is that clear?"

  At this point, Shakira's brother, Ahmed Sabah, to whom Ray Kerman almost certainly owed his life, said quietly, "General, I think I may have missed something. But I have absolutely no idea what we are going to do at this jail. . ."

  "That's because I have not yet told anyone," replied the CO. "I am just coming to that."

  "I think my comrades would feel better if you were able to tell us right now," replied the young Palestinian. "I feel as if we are all somehow in the dark."

  General Rashood smiled. "Well, since we're leaving tomorrow night, and no one's leaving here before then, you may as well know now, as you wish."

  He replaced his baton on the table, and sat down, once more between the two Syrian officers. He consulted his notebook and told them, "This jail, with its fifty prisoners and approximately thirty-six guards, is resupplied with food only once a week. Every Friday morning, a huge twenty-eight-wheel truck, from the military garrison on Route 90, fourteen miles north of the Sea of Galilee, arrives at the main gates of the jail at 1100 sharp. I've logged it in three times, and it's never been late. Its delivery this Friday morning, however, will contain a surprise. There will be no bread, flour, frozen meat, milk, and eggs on board. There will be thirty-six Hamas warriors. Us."

  The gathering was utterly stunned, like the home crowd at a soccer game when one of their own players accidentally bangs the ball into his own net. No one spoke, and they struggled to betray no fear, or even surprise. But the collective gasp, a kind of stifled WOW! could still be heard.

  No one wanted to be the first to raise a thousand questions. Instead they just waited for their new warlord to clarify the situation.

  General Rashood stared out at his men. And then he spoke again. "The supply truck contains a driver and an assistant, both of them soldiers wearing the uniform of the IDF. The road is lonely. I counted the traffic for the hour prior to the truck's arrival and again for the hour after its departure at 1300 hours.

  "My conclusions were simple. No vehicle climbed the hill before the truck. And the only vehicle that went down the hill after the truck was the prison van itself, transporting guards down to civilian living quarters six miles away, at the change of the shift. Since the Israelis closed the road to tourists and civilian traffic that road has been practically deserted."

  But how do we get in the truck instead of the meat and eggs?

  Suddenly everyone wanted to know that. General Rashood carefully answered. "At 1050, a car driven by two Arabs in traditional dress will drive up the road and stop thirty yards before our hide. It will pull up in the middle of the road, and its driver and passenger will walk around the front and lift up the hood.

  "At this point, Ahmed and I will move up from the hide and station ourselves on either side of the road. When the supply truck is forced to stop, ten minutes later, for the apparent breakdown blocking the road, the two IDF men will most certainly disembark, and we will kill them both, using the knife. Plainly, we do not want gunshots within a mile of the jail.

  "At that moment the road will be deserted, except for us, and the stretch we will occupy cannot be seen from the jail. All of you will rush up the escarpment and unload that truck, drag out the cases and throw 'em over the edge. It's a massive vehicle; really a ship's freight container being hauled by a powerful front end. And it carries a ton of stuff. It may even be going on to deliver in other locations. But there's thirty-six of us, and we're going to empty it. Meanwhile, the broken-down car will head back down the hill where it will break down again, sideways, once more blocking the road. In the unlikely event any other vehicle arrives, the occupants will be killed instantly.

  "By now everyone will be in the truck. You guys in the container, which will be open at the rear, covered only by tarpaulin. Ahmed and myself will be in the cab, wearing the Israelis' uniforms. I'm driving."

  But what happens then, sir? How do we get in the jail? What if there's a password? What if they want to search the truck before they open the gates?

  The General explained, again with care, how he had lain in wait for the truck, crouching on the escarpment the previous Friday, listening in the quiet of the morning, way up there on the ridge of the Nimrod.

  "There was no password," he said. 'The delivery was obviously expected. And the driver gave two light beeps on the truck's horn. The guards on the outside flanks of the jail, in charge of the artillery, did not even walk around. The gates opened and the truck drove directly inside.

  'Two days from now, that precise moment represents our H-Hour, the instant we hit. When the truck has moved into the jail, through the gates, out of sight of the outside patrols, but not far enough inside for anyone to close the gates. That's our H-Hour. That's when I hit the brakes, and you guys hit the ground."

  General Ravi, still every inch the SAS Commander, stood up once more and moved back toward the third map. "Gentlemen," he said, "this is the map of the jail, constructed from satellite pictures we have obtained, and refined for us by our staff in Damascus. For the next three hours we will work on the detail of our attack, each man reporting to me for complete instructions of his personal duties. Like all highly briefed Special Forces, we want no surprises, no confusion, and as little opposition as possible."

  The General knew he was putting his foot soldiers through a crash course of preparation, which would not have been good enough for the SAS. Only his twelve most trusted men had been party to the infinite detail of the operation— the ones who had accompanied him to Nimrod.

  Ravi was torn between the SAS method of briefing, practicing, rehearsing, and more, and the need for secrecy. He could have staged a dummy run somewhere in Syria, but
he was uncertain about security leaks, of the Israelis finding out something was going on, and he elected to play his cards close to his chest.

  "It's 1600 now," he said. "We'll be through by 1900. We'll break for dinner, and sleep as long as possible. There'll be a two-hour meeting tomorrow at midday, then rest in the afternoon. We'll eat early, final short briefing at 2200, trucks away at 2300 sharp."

  11 P.M., Thursday, April 28, 2005

  Hamas Compound, Golan Heights

  The two unmarked army trucks growled softly into the night, heading west, trying to stay out of the howling low gears, trying to keep their headlights down yet still miss the rocks, trying to navigate a more or less straight line to the Syrian Disengagement Line.

  General Rashood, who had traversed the route a dozen times with Ahmed, sat next to the driver of the lead truck, watching the compass, peering through his night goggles, doing his best to translate familiar landmarks from the granite-strewn sunlit landscape of his memory, into the spooky, greenish glow of the Russian-made binoculars.

  They bumped and bounced their way forward, driving up small, rough tracks, cutting across flat areas, glad to be on smoother, quieter ground, but anxious to regain the cover of the rocks. They were literally between the rock and the hard place and, on reflection, the bumping, lurching tracks between the jutting granite had the edge. Uncomfortably safe, as opposed to more comfortably exposed. To the Israeli satellites, that is.

  They reached the Syrian Disengagement Line, and Ravi signaled to the patrol that awaited them, all was well. They drove on into No Man's Land, beginning to come down off the heights, moving over a gentle downward slope almost all the way.

  The General ordered the headlights doused at the border, and the little convoy was now dependent on the night goggles through which he was staring. They kept going for a mile and a half, and then Ravi could see lights way up ahead, magnified by his glasses, and unmistakably those of vehicles, lower down the slopes, maybe three and a half miles away. He took off the goggles but could see nothing through the dark with the naked eye.

  "Okay, guys, this is it. This is the end of our ride. Trucks return to base, everyone else split into team formation. I'll lead, the rest of you stay in your 'fours' and follow tight behind. Any problem, no shooting . . . the knife, always the knife. Stay alert."

  The men from Hamas jumped lightly down onto the damp spring grass and zipped their jackets against the cool night air. They wore standard molded-rubber desert boots, supple, expensive equipment, calf-high, tight fastened. Even if they crossed the river, minimal water would leak in.

  They set off across the desolate night acres of the Buffer Zone on the Heights, moving swiftly, at the jog, following the ex-SAS Major who had recced this very path several times before. After twenty minutes they saw the lights of the Israeli Patrol moving north up the westward Disengagement Line. Each man flung himself flat on the ground, heeding General Rashood's warning that high-powered night goggles could pick up running men at two miles.

  When the lights disappeared, they picked themselves up and ran on west some more until the lights returned, this time heading south, back down the Line. Again they all hit the deck and then powered forward when the coast was clear, running hard now, going for the hide under the spoon-shaped rock, just short of the Line itself.

  The General led them safely into the shelter of the rock, and they fanned out in the formations they had practiced, unseen from the path of the Israeli patrol. Each man was supremely fit, but breathing heavily after the run in. They huddled together, between their own guards, front, rear, and up on the granite cliff face.

  Ray Kerman watched the jeep driving toward them, and there was not a sound as it came by at around 30 mph. They waited until it returned, exactly eight minutes later, and Ray watched it go south. Two minutes more, and he called softly, "This is it, guys. . . Form up and let's go. . . See you at the RV point. . . Groups of four . .. two-minute intervals . . . fast and quiet . . . Watch the GPS now. . ."

  With that, he and his three-man team set off, again running hard, straight across the Israeli Line, pounding over the ground, right on the heels of the General, who still wore the night goggles, peering in front of him through the deserted landscape. They ran strongly for eight minutes, when Ray stopped to check the GPS.

  On course, he reduced speed to a steady jog, and within a few moments they hit the rising ground, breasted a low hill, and then climbed again for fifty yards before striding easily into a natural rock fortress around seventy-five feet across. They'd have to climb the west wall and slide down to level ground before the next stage of the journey. But he had selected this desolate place carefully, and he had buried six containers of water on his last visit. He'd also hidden a shovel, which he now found and began digging the earth away.

  One minute later, Team Two arrived, then Team Three, and Team Four. In forty-five minutes they were all there, gulping water, and preparing for the five-and-a-half-mile walk in, across rich, brilliantly created Israeli agricultural land, just now beginning to yield superb crops of apples, pears, and almonds, peaches, plums, and cherries.

  So far they had covered only a few miles from the compound, but the landscape was changing before their eyes. At least it would have been if it had not been pitch black, from the arid, rocky wastes of the Syrian side of the Golan, to the lush, irrigated triumph of Israeli farming policy.

  It was exactly 1:15 when the Hamas General led his lead team of nine up over the granite "wall" and began the fifty-foot grassy slide to the ground. They achieved this in near silence, and when the group was all present and correct, Ravi Rashood checked the GPS and whispered, "Okay, guys. Here we go. Follow me."

  Behind them Group Two was high on the ridge preparing to slide down as soon as the leaders were under way. Within twenty minutes all thirty-six of the armed, hooded figures were walking softly through the fields, approaching Highway 91, north of Mas'ada, heading west.

  Ever cautious and acutely aware of the possibility of radar, patrols, and intense Israeli surveillance, General Ravi ordered his men back into four-man groups for the highway crossing. His caution was well founded. There was bristling danger on that highway, because on Ravi's last sortie to Nimrod, an Israeli security detail had indeed picked up shadowy, furtive movement. It was, in fact, a fluke. The driver had been parked on a high ridge, peering through long-range night goggles about a mile south to the shallow, narrow valley the Hamas warriors now occupied.

  Through the pale green landscape shown in the lenses of the binoculars, the guard had been only half focused. But up here, observation was hair-trigger sensitive. The guard had no idea what he had seen, but everyone at Northern Command knew that no big animals lurked on the Golan. It did not really matter what the guard had seen, anything was enough. And for the past week a four-man Israeli foot patrol had been sweeping a five-mile strip of Highway 91, operating in pairs, each armed man wearing black camouflage cream and soft desert boots.

  Right now, the south-moving pair of Israeli guards was heading near silently down the middle of the deserted highway, not twenty-five yards from where Ravi and his three men were about to make the first dash across the blacktop, into the safety of the dark, verdant farmland.

  Ravi's four were already split into pairs, the first two men poised to bound up the bank and rush across the highway, half crouched, weapons poised. He and his bodyguard would provide them with covering fire if necessary.

  "Now!" hissed Ravi, and the two Hamas fighters broke cover, heading for the center of the highway. But they never got there. The first Israeli guard saw them, bang in front of his astonished eyes. And he had his weapon leveled, a short-barreled MP5 machine gun.

  "HALT!" he yelled in Hebrew. "FREEZE! RIGHT THERE. HANDS HIGH!"

  The Hamas warriors froze and raised their hands, then-machine guns still dangling around their necks. The guard, standing only four yards from them, but ten yards in advance of his colleague, began to move forward, gripping his MP5 tightly.
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  But as he did so, Ravi's bodyguard came off the bank with a bound that would have made a jungle leopard gasp and plunged his combat knife clean through the second Israeli's back, ramming the life-ending blade through the center of the heart.

  The only sound was the scuffing of this Israeli's boots as he fell backward into the Hamas killer's arms. The lead guard turned, swinging around almost involuntarily, calling sharply, "IZAK?"

  Big mistake. Ravi Rashood was up to the bank and on him. With his left hand he clamped an iron grip on the barrel of the Israeli's MP5, wrenching it sideways. And then he brought his gloved right hand down in a murderous chopping arc, hammering the handle end of his combat knife into the space between the guard's eyes, smashing the central forehead bone.

  Back came Ravi's lethal right hand, and, still holding the knife, he rammed the butt of his fist with upward force into the nose of the guard, driving the bone deep into his brain. In the hundredth of a second before he died, the Israeli could probably have guessed how SAS Sergeant Fred O'Hara had felt months before in a Palestinian house in Hebron.