To The Death Part 8

David Gavron produced a slim gold ballpoint and a wafer-thin leather notepad, and looked up expectantly.

"He's in Syria," said Arnold. "Damascus, Old City, right inside the Roman wall near the eastern gate. Bab Touma Street. Less than a hundred yards from the Bab Touma Gate itself, left-hand side of the street coming in from the Barada River bridge.

"Sorry we don't have a street number, our informant did not know, and if he had known he'd have told us. He said it's a big eighteenth-century house right around the corner from the Elissar restaurant."

"That's fantastic, Arnie. Does he live there with his wife?"

"What wife?"

"Oh, a Palestinian girl he met right after he defected from the Israeli army. I heard they were married almost immediately. She's supposed to be very beautiful. And she's also very dangerous-apparently gunned down two French secret servicemen a couple of years back, in Beirut."

"She had a good tutor," said Admiral Morgan.

"None better," said David Gavron. "Ex-SAS major, wasn't he? His background's still a mystery, and the Brits won't tell even us who he really is."

"Nor us," said the Admiral. "I think the guy embarra.s.sed the h.e.l.l out of 'em. Ramshawe says he's from a rich family, Iranians living in London. He went to Harrow School and then the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, ended up commanding their top special forces, and then jumped ship and joined the G.o.dd.a.m.ned Palestinians."

"Harrow's one of their top private schools, right?" asked Kathy.

"Sure is. Churchill went there. Guess they taught him about patriotism."

"Probably taught the former Major Kerman too," said David. "But he couldn't sort out who he was, not until he ended up back in the desert. Funny, isn't it? Turning his back on everything like that, becoming an enemy of everything he'd ever known."

"Sure as h.e.l.l is," responded the admiral. "Can't hardly imagine waking up one morning as a decorated, serving British Army officer, and suddenly deciding to be a G.o.dd.a.m.ned Arab terrorist! Jesus Christ. Must have been some turning point."

"Arnie, are you planning to get after him?" asked the amba.s.sador.

"Not right now. Not with the Middle East peace talks coming up. We couldn't afford to get caught, or even suspected."

"Happily, my former organization suffers from no such constraints. You may leave it to us."

"I had hoped so, David."

"Yes, I guessed as much. There is, after all, no such thing as a free dinner. Especially one as good as this."

1645 Monday 6 February 2012 Mossad Headquarters King Saul Boulevard Tel Aviv.

Inside the briefing room, the atmosphere was subdued. The Israeli general, a man in his sixties, standing in front of the big computer screen on the wall, spoke quietly and firmly, pointing with his baton at the illuminated map of Bab Touma Street, Damascus.

"Right here," he said, "we have rented an apartment on the third floor. It's pretty basic, but it has a bathroom, cold water only, and electricity. Our field agents have moved in a couple of mattresses and some blankets. But you're going to be uncomfortable. There's no workable kitchen and nothing to cook on. We have installed an electric kettle and a coffeepot. There's not much else."

Before him, sitting at the conference table, were four ex-military secret service officers. All of them, for the moment, wore olive-green uniforms and had duffel bags slung on the floor next to them, alongside their M-16 machine guns. Two of these men wore the coveted wings signifying membership in Israel's elite parachute division. They both wore officers' bars on their shoulders. All four of them had the distinguishing three small Hebrew letters st.i.tched in yellow above the breast pocket.

"You will see from the map, gentlemen, that this apartment has a commanding view of the big house directly opposite, and we were d.a.m.n lucky to get it. An old Arab man used to live there, and we paid him generously to get out. While you are in residence, you will ignore his mail, answer the door to no one, and use cell phones only under the most dire circ.u.mstances.

"You will eat a proper meal only once a day, and that will be after dark. For that you will leave by the back door, and never, under any circ.u.mstances, use the same restaurant twice. Fortunately, Damascus stays open very late."

One of the paratroopers asked about the getaway, and the general answered sharply. "Right here," he said, pointing with his baton, "one street back, is a locked garage, right before house number 46. You will of course recce this, and inside that garage you will find a very old, battered-looking wreck of an automobile, plainly on its last legs.

"However, it has been expertly converted, four new tires, new transmission, brand-new Mercedes engine, everything directly out of the show-room. When you leave, you will be in Arab dress and you will make your escape in the old car, which will run like a Ferrari and attract the attention of no one. There will be two heavy machine guns in the back in the event of an emergency.

"You will drive out of the east gate and turn hard right down to the circle, and then it's marked, straight down the highway to the airport that lies to the southwest of the city.

"Two of our field agents will meet you. One will get rid of the car; the other will escort you to a private Learjet, and you will take off immediately for Israel. The agent already has your pa.s.sports. You will not need them for entry into Syria. There will be no record that you were ever in the country."

The general, whose name was never mentioned, stood before them in full uniform, his steel-gray hair cropped tight, his posture still rigidly upright. His face was a picture of military sternness as he outlined the operation designed to execute Ravi and Shakira Rashood, the sworn and proven enemies of Israel.

There have always been officers in the Israeli Army whose determination borders on fanaticism. They are men who will stop at nothing to keep their nation safe, and this particular general was most certainly one of them.

As a twenty-year-old infantry lieutenant, he had fought shoulder to shoulder against the invading Egyptians with General Avraham Yoffe, when they smashed their way through the Mitla Pa.s.s in the Sinai during the Six-Day War in 1967. They were six bloodstained days of pure heroism by the Israelis. In less than a week, they destroyed four armies and 370 fighter-bombers belonging to four attacking nations.

The general had not been brought up to drop his guard against enemies of the state.

And here in the plain white-walled briefing room, in the heart of Israel's Inst.i.tute for Intelligence and Special Operations, he was once more planning a deadly strike against a couple of Palestinian terrorists who had posed more trouble for his nation than the Egyptian Second Army had done thirty-nine years previously.

It was a typical Mossad briefing. Two guards on the door, no cell phones permitted. The four men who were going in tonight had made their wills and had their last contacts with home. They would not carry any written notes with them when finally they were released, and they would leave from the rooftop, by helicopter, to the Israeli Army's Northern Command HQ base for a short stopover. The sixty-mile onward flight to Damascus would take them over the Golan Heights, along the north-running 1974 Ceasefire Line, and then east over the desert into the southern area of the city.

The leader, sitting pensively, listening to the general, was Colonel Ben Joel, fortyish combat veteran, unshaven, former Special Forces, who had been involved in the revenge attack on Ya.s.ser Arafat's house in Gaza. Ben was an infantryman, a ground-to-air communications officer, and an explosives expert, more accustomed to fighting with a club and tear gas against rioting crowds of Arab youths.

His number two was Major Itzaak Sherman, son of a true Israeli patriot, the legendary, highly decorated Sergeant Mo Sherman, who had gone into Entebbe Airport alongside Jonathan Netanyahu to rescue the hostages in 1976. Sergeant Sherman was a choral conductor in Tel Aviv, and no one in the aircraft ever forgot him, standing up as the commandos screamed in from the east, low over the pitch-black northern waters of Lake Victoria. Sergeant Sherman conducted these armed daredevils as they sang at the top of their lungs that most haunting patriotic song of Israel, "Onward-we must keep going onward!"-shutting out the fear of the great unknown that faced them when they landed.

As they dropped below a hundred feet, howling toward the runway, Mo Sherman hooked up the sound system to the bittersweet anthem written by Paul Ben-Haim and each man grappled with his onrushing task to the glorious strains of "Fanfare to Israel."

Those who were there swear to G.o.d that that music made them all feel fifteen feet tall, revved them up for the murderous firefight to come in the airport, the fight in which Yanni Netanyahu was mortally wounded. Mo Sherman, brokenhearted, helped carry the young leader's body into the aircraft for the homeward journey.

And here was Mo's son, Major Itzaak, preparing to go into another hostile foreign country and carry out his unquestioning duty on behalf of his government. His father's last words to him were simple: "Go bravely, son, and make sure you do not let anyone down."

The third man was another ex-member of the Israeli Special Forces, a newly promoted Mossad agent, Lt. Colonel John Rabin, aged forty-one. His own father had died in the Sinai on the opening morning of the Yom Kippur War, along with hundreds of young soldiers facing the Egyptian tanks. John never knew him, but followed in his footsteps as a career combat soldier. Like Ben Joel, he was an explosives expert, but a specialist, said to be the best in the Israeli Defense Force.

The fourth member of the team was one of those Mossad hard men whose background was not publicized. He was a five-foot, ten-inch iron man from a small town south of Hebron. He was ma.s.sively strong, skilled in close combat, and a maestro with a knife, a man who'd kill you as soon as look at you. His name was Abraham, and he was on the team as a personal bodyguard to the other three.

His wide smile and cheerful manner did not provide any clue to his true disposition. But the others liked him immensely and were delighted, to a man, that Abraham would be with them.

Midnight, 6 February Northern Command HQ, Galilee.

The wide single rotor flailed the cold night air as the Texas-built Sea Panther lifted slowly off the runway. It rose vertically for fifty feet, then tilted north toward the Sea of Galilee and rocketed away into the night, climbing to five thousand feet. When it reached the Ceasefire Line, it would drop down drastically, in order to come in under any Syrian radar that might be active. Unlikely, but remotely possible.

To the rear of the pilot sat the four Mossad special operators: Colonel Ben Joel, Major Itzaak Sherman, Colonel John Rabin, and Abraham the bodyguard. All of them were in Arab dress for the insert. And each one of them carried his personal light machine gun, strapped beneath his white robe.

They carried only food and water in their traveling bags, and no ident.i.ty. All of their operational equipment was already installed in the apartment on Bab Touma-the high explosive, the detonators, the timing devices, the electronic wiring, the tool bag, a laptop computer, a long-lens camera, the binoculars, two cell phones, the front and back door keys, four mugs, one spoon, a bag of Turkish coffee, and a bag of sugar, plus two thousand Syrian lira. lira.

They flew at almost two hundred miles an hour, in silence, for a half hour before the pilot called back, "We've cleared the Heights and we're descending to around fifty feet . . . get ready . . . ten minutes." "We've cleared the Heights and we're descending to around fifty feet . . . get ready . . . ten minutes."

The Sea Panther came clattering over the cold, silent desert at the farthest possible point from Syrian military radar. None of the operators detected them; no one had the slightest idea they were there. The pilot used night goggles to spot the road running up from the south, and then called: "This is it, guys, we're landing."

The army helicopter touched down just before 0100. The loadmaster jumped out and held open the door, with his other arm pointing toward the road. All four of the Mossad hitmen followed him out and, without a word, walked away from the aircraft, which was up and flying home thirty-six seconds after it had landed.

After a hundred yards, they reached the long straight road that led to Damascus, and they stood on its edge in the dark. In the distance they could see headlights coming toward them, very fast. When the vehicle reached them, it skidded to a halt. It was a big old clapped-out American Ford, its side door dented, one window cracked, in desperate need of paint, or even a clean. On the plus side, it was right on time.

Abraham automatically climbed into the pa.s.senger seat; the other three piled into the back. The driver, an Israeli field officer known to Ben Joel, just said, "Hi, Ben. Everyone aboard? Okay, let's go."

They were around thirty miles shy of the city, and the car was as quiet and fast as a brand-new Mercedes Benz. According to the driver, they had taken a new Mercedes, stripped off the body, and somehow fitted an aged, rusting thirty-year-old subst.i.tute over the cha.s.sis.

It now looked as if it belonged in an Arab side street, which was, after all, where it was now headed, and where it would spend the rest of its life, a totally forgettable, undercover adjunct to the most dangerous secret service on earth.

"Did the pilot contact you, Jerry?" asked Ben Joel.

"No need. I had your ETA and GPS numbers. I just waited a mile up the road until I heard the helo. Then I hit the gas pedal and here you all are."

"Pretty neat," said Colonel Joel. "Are we likely to be stopped or checked at the edge of the city?"

"h.e.l.l, no. This isn't Baghdad. And even if the police were on the lookout for someone, they'd never check this thing. We look like a group of local Bedouin bringing vegetables to the market. No problem."

The car sped on, straight up Route 5, over the railroad and down the freeway into the city. They hardly saw another car until they reached the streetlights of Damascus. Jerry took a swing to the western side and came in along Kalid Ibn al-Walid Avenue. They swung right just before the Hejaz Railroad Station and skirted around the north side of the Old City wall.

They drove through the Bab Touma Gate and headed down the street of the same name. Jerry took the second right, drove for fifty yards, and parked in the dark, right next to a grim-looking back door to somewhere. He ordered them all out, produced a key, and opened it.

"There's no light in here," he whispered. "Follow me up to the third floor." And in single file they crept up the narrow staircase. Finally, on a narrow top-floor landing, he groped for another door, opened it with a key, and switched on a light.

"There's one other apartment on this level," he said. "We had to buy the f.u.c.ker, make sure no one was in residence." Abraham and Itzaak both laughed.

Jerry waited around for less than five minutes, just pointing out the bathroom and the coffeepot, before he showed them the view. And now he turned out the light and walked to the window. "That's your target right there," he said, pointing directly across Bab Touma Street. "That big place with the steps up to the front door. There's two guards right inside it. Be careful at all times."

And with that, Jerry was gone, leaving Ben Joel and his men staring out at the two-hundred-year-old townhouse across the street, where Ravi and Shakira Rashood, protected by at least two armed guards and probably more, were doubtless sleeping the untroubled sleep of the innocent.

Colonel Joel called his team to order. "It's almost 0220. We'll have something to eat, get some coffee, and begin the operation at 0300," he said. "Four-hour shifts. Abraham, Itzaak, you crash out on those two mattresses in the bedroom. John and I will open the surveillance chart, and maybe Abe will fire that computer up while I get the range on these binoculars.

"We'll watch the house in twenty-minute takes, and John can start preparing the weapon. We have no schedule for H-hour-that's H for Hit. It's entirely up to us. We just need to call home base when we're going in.

"Problems?"

The other three shook their heads. And Colonel Joel put out the light, while he drew back the thick black curtain that covered the window. He raised the binoculars and focused on the house across the street.

"Okay," he murmured, "there are curtains on the windows in the upper floors, but none on the street level. The main reception room is situated to the left of the front door looking in. There's a gla.s.s-patterned window above the front door. I can see the light from the pa.s.sage spilling in. I guess the guards are stationed right there where it's light."

Roger that, sir. Abraham was instantly on the case, typing out every word uttered by his team leader. Abraham was instantly on the case, typing out every word uttered by his team leader.

Ben Joel drew the curtains over the window. And turned on the light. He reached for his sandwiches and chocolate and said quietly, "Since we are under orders to make the hit in the hours of darkness, it's going to be in that front room left of the door. It's the only one we can see into after dark. That's if we use a controlled explosion. Otherwise we'll have to knock down the entire house, and that would cause havoc."

"Whatever it takes," said Itzaak. "The mission is to kill Rashood, and we've got enough high explosive in here to knock down the Wailing Wall. We'll just do what we must."

"Correct," said Colonel Joel. "Let me have some of that coffee, will you?"

"Looks like we'll have to get rid of the guards," observed Abraham.

"No way we'll get in there without," replied Ben. "Unless there's some time in the day when the house is left unprotected."

"Can't imagine that," said John Rabin.

At 0300, they started work. Colonel Rabin was locked in the tiny kitchen with his explosive and detonators. Ben Joel stood in the dark with his gla.s.ses trained on the house across the street. Three times every hour, they changed places, while Ben entered the surveillance chart on the computer, mostly reporting no movement.

A little after 0600, there was a change. The front door of the Rashood residence opened and two youngish men dressed in jeans and loose white shirts emerged into the dawn. Colonel Joel grabbed the camera and fired off six pictures of them.

They turned left out of the house and walked together down Bab Touma toward the Via Recta. Ben looked carefully for the arrival of two more guards, but none showed up. But then he saw movement in the main downstairs room of the house: two other men, both carrying machine guns, were standing there staring out of the window. The powerful Mossad binoculars picked them up starkly. Neither one of them was Ravi Rashood.

When the watch changed and Colonel Rabin emerged from the kitchen to take over at the window, Ben Joel told him, "The guard duty changed at 0600. Two of them left, but the other two, who took over, did not come in through the front door. That means they were already in there. It's a big house. There may be a guard room where they can sleep."

"Unless there's a back door they use?"

"We'll recce that today, and maybe watch that door for a few hours-check when it's used."

"Okay. Do we need more help? Two watches will stretch us a bit."

Colonel Joel was pensive. "Quicker we get this done, the quicker we can get the h.e.l.l out. Let's just go for it-I'll get around the back end of the house this morning around 1100. Is the weapon ready?"

"Affirmative. I need about thirty minutes to check the timer. Any time after that, the bomb can be put in place."

"Size?"

"I've made it in two halves. If we just want to blow that front room to eternity, we use just one. If we don't mind knocking the f.u.c.king house down, we use the lot."

Ben Joel chuckled. "Okay, John. It's getting light; stay back behind that curtain. I've cut two holes in it for the binos. Don't take your eyes off that place even for twenty seconds. I'll get us some coffee."

The watch changed at 0700. Abraham and Itzaak came on duty. Abraham left immediately to check out the garage where the getaway car was hidden. Then he skulked around the side streets and finally walked slowly into the street right behind Ravi Rashood's house, adopting the gait of an old man.

There was a small backyard to the property, and that yard was surrounded by a twelve-foot-high wall. A hefty wooden gate, painted green, was shut tight, and it was secured by a chain and a large padlock.

"Jesus," breathed Abraham. "You want to get in there, you'd have to blow that gate down with dynamite."

Right now the street was absolutely deserted. And Abraham took a risk. He walked along the wall and stopped at the gate, pretending to take a rest. But he had a good look at the padlock, and found what he was searching for, rust. And there it was, right there on that thick, curved steel bar. No one had opened that door for a very long time. Abraham kept going, slowly, his white robe billowing in the light February breeze. The street was still deserted.

He walked past the back of the next house and saw a white truck parked against the high wall. For a split second he debated climbing onto its roof and taking a look into the backyard, but he dismissed that as too risky.

He continued for another hundred yards, and to his mild surprise saw a builder's ladder lying on the ground, alongside a house on the left-hand side of the street. There was also a group of paint cans and a small cement mixer. This was work in progress.

Abraham considered borrowing the ladder and using that to take a good look into the Hamas colonel's backyard, but thought better of it. I could give it a go after dark, I could give it a go after dark, he decided. he decided. Wouldn't take more than five minutes. Wouldn't take more than five minutes.

Once more he took a devious route, checked out local cafes and a couple of restaurants, and then made his way back to the rear door of the apartment building, used a key to let himself in, and climbed the stairs.

Ben Joel, still unshaven and still awake, was talking to Itzaak at the window. Abraham told him the car was in place, keys under the front seat, and that the back entrance to Mr. and Mrs. Rashood's home was bolted and barred, unused, and obviously secured.

He also explained he had not looked over the wall, but had found a way to do so, by borrowing a ladder and maybe using it after dark.

"I'm not too certain about that," said the colonel. "What if you got caught?"