Shock Wave, page 4
Liz looked as perky as ever, khaki slacks, white blouse, ring curls of brown hair touching her shoulders, and even thinner than Bridget remembered. The stress of temporary command, perhaps. Liz was smart and learned fast but had less than three years under her size twenty-six belt.
“It’s a shit show. There’s finally some movement on the comms intercepts and we caught a couple of suspicious bank transfers, but the money bounced and we lost track of it. Something’s up but we don’t know what, and that’s worse than not knowing anything at all. The president wants Epsilon, and he wants it yesterday.”
“To do what?”
“To find out what the hell is going on. We put a mission together for consideration.”
Bridget took a breath and the shooting pain came again. “I have a lot of reading to do. Brief me later, okay?”
“No time. Decision meeting is in an hour in Hadley’s office.”
“An hour? You should have told me.”
“As I mentioned, I was ordered not to add to your stress level. No one thought you’d be here today or were in any kind of shape to be involved at long distance. And, honestly, looking at you, I’m not sure you are.”
That got an irritated look from Bridget, but she swallowed her comeback, saying only, “Thanks.”
“Sorry, Bridget, I—”
“No, it’s okay. You’re probably right. But it doesn’t matter. I’m here.” She shifted in her chair to find a less uncomfortable position. “Lay it out for me.”
Liz sat next to the desk, facing Bridget, and opened the file on her lap. “We think Eilat and Aqaba were a clue. We’ve shut the terror networks down in much of the region. But the Palestinian jihadis are separate from the newer groups in Iraq and Syria.”
“I know the history.”
Liz flipped a page. “So, there’s a jihadi group called Al-Hakam Al-Islamiyah, the Ultimate Islamic Judge, or A-HAI.”
“We used to call them A-HOLE. This is my specialty, remember.”
“Right. Sorry. So, you know they did some nasty attacks several years ago, then refused to merge with Hamas when most of the groups did. Then they fell off the grid.”
“Let’s get to the part I don’t know.”
“Well, the guy who escaped the roundup, Assali, is connected to A-HAI. He was involved in their early years. Started out as a wannabe, couldn’t cut it as a fighter, became a sort of liaison-financier.”
“Hmm. Okay, that I didn’t know. So, you think he went back to his old buddies when we took down his operation?”
“Exactly. If Assali and his masters want to keep pressure on us, that would be a relatively easy way to do it— use his oldest and deepest network. The Eilat-Aqaba strike would fit.”
“Yes. But you seem to be long on assumptions and short on facts.”
“We are. But it’s all we’ve got. If we’re wrong, at least we’ll find out.”
Bridget looked out her window into the bullpen of cubicles where the staff was hard at work. “So, what’s the plan?”
“We put an operative in an Israeli prison, have him connect with some A-HAI guys held there. Then they all get released in a prisoner exchange so our man can find out what they’re up to.”
“Sounds simpler than it is. The Israelis don’t like to release prisoners. And it sounds like a lot of risk on a ‘maybe.’”
“It’s not as bad as a ‘maybe.’ There’s more in the file.” Liz handed it over.
“Okay, but it will take months to train up an Arab-American to take this on.”
“Not if we use Abdallah.”
“Abdallah? Afghan-American? Just back from a brutal mission?”
“Well, I can’t speak to the ‘just back’ part, but the profile has him arrested by the Israelis while sneaking into the country to join the jihad. He wouldn’t be the first one. Should work.”
“‘Should work.’ Jesus, Liz.” Bridget leaned back in her chair.
“Give us some credit, Bridget. This is a fully formed mission profile. We didn’t come up with it in the coffee room this morning.”
Bridget stared at the file. “Okay. I’ll have a look.”
“Two more quick things.” She handed Bridget that day’s Style section from the Washington Post. It had a quarter-page portrait of Bridget in her army uniform under the headline “CAPTAIN BADASS: SHE TOOK A BULLET TO CATCH WORLD’S MOST WANTED.”
“Oh, good Lord.”
“Yeah. Friendly article, though. Nice picture, too.”
It was the one the army had taken before Bridget’s second deployment to Afghanistan—the one they would have published with her obituary. The good news was that she was ten years younger in the photo. Bad news was it felt like thirty. And the worst news was that she was famous—the last thing the head of the president’s favorite covert counter-terror organization wanted.
Liz stood to leave. “And I like the new nickname, Captain Bad—.”
“First person who tries it . . .”
Liz laughed. “I’ll put out a warning.”
Bridget tossed the paper aside. “What’s the other thing?”
“Did they tell you Abdallah is missing?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Faraz opened one eye.
The room was sideways—lit by rays from a distant streetlamp. He saw cheap paneling, a kitchenette littered with fast food wrappers and snack bags, a coffee table with more of the same plus several empty beer bottles and a nearly empty bottle of cheap vodka.
Oh, Allah.
Faraz closed the eye. He wanted to go back to sleep. But there was something he had to do first. He pushed himself off the sofa, steadied himself against a wall and made it to the bathroom.
What the hell was he thinking? He hadn’t had a drink in more than a year, hadn’t planned to drink ever again—perhaps one positive thing to come out of his time living as a jihadi.
That didn’t last long.
One walk through the Pentagon was all it took to send him on a two-hundred-fifty-dollar taxi ride to Delaware and the best room in the cheapest motel half a block from the beach and half a block the other way from Henry’s Liquors and Convenience Store. That was . . . well, several days ago, anyway.
Faraz’s head hurt. He found a piece of cold pizza on the counter and ate it. There was one beer left in the fridge, and two good shots of vodka sparkled in the bottle.
But no.
He went back to the bathroom, leaned over the sink and splashed cold water on his face. The cracked mirror showed neither a jihadi nor a soldier. His stubble was too short for one, too long for the other. Who was looking back at him? Hamed? Karim? Lieutenant Abdallah?
Faraz turned toward the tub. He’d tried to kill himself in a tub just like it a few months ago. He was not doing that again, though the vodka had come close. He turned on the water, took off his clothes and hoped that a shower would make him feel human again, help him figure out what to do next.
* * *
Half an hour later, wearing his last clean T-shirt and the previous day’s underwear and jeans, Faraz raised the blinds to see the first bit of light in the eastern sky. The shower had helped, but he needed to get out of this room. He threw his things into his backpack and went downstairs, where he tossed his key into a basket on the front desk, took a free paper cup of coffee from a machine in the lobby and headed for the beach.
The expanse of sand at the end of the street brought back bad memories of the Syrian desert, so Faraz raised his gaze to take in the ocean. He turned right to walk south and watched the sun rise. Breathing the sea air and getting his blood flowing, he was indeed feeling more human, but he was no closer to having a plan.
Faraz heard the sound before he saw anything. There was no cover on the beach, but instinctively, he dove to the ground.
The chopper came out of the sun. He shielded his eyes as the backwash hit him with a cloud of sand. He saw it was an army Black Hawk. Strange. Why would a chopper land on the beach, and why an army chopper?
He squeezed his eyes shut. Maybe this was yet another bad dream. But when he opened them, he was still on the beach and the chopper was still there, too.
A soldier emerged, walked toward him and yelled over the noise, “Lieutenant Abdallah?”
What? How does he know my name?
The soldier reached him, held out a hand and shouted again. “Lieutenant Abdallah, sir?”
Faraz took the hand and stood, still not sure what was going on. Then another figure emerged from the helicopter.
The soldier spoke close to his ear. “Sir, Ms. Davenport needs to speak to you.”
“Davenport? Holy shit.”
“Sir, please.” The soldier gestured at the chopper and pulled Faraz toward it.
As he got closer, Faraz could see that indeed it was Bridget, in flight suit and helmet, holding onto the helicopter door for support.
“Hello, Faraz,” she shouted over the rotor noise. “You’re a hard man to find.”
“How did you—?”
“Credit cards. Wanna go for a ride?”
“A ride to where?”
“Fort Meade.”
“The major?”
Bridget nodded.
“I don’t know, ma’am.”
“Faraz, we need you. This can’t wait. If you can’t do it, we’re screwed. Your call, but, please, take the briefing.” Bridget shifted her weight. It was a mistake. She winced.
“I heard you were wounded pretty bad.”
“I’ll survive. But the general would kill me if he knew I’d come on this little joyride.” Bridget lifted her shirt to show him part of the bandage.
Faraz didn’t want to go back into her world. But what choice did he have? If he refused to board, she could AWOL him and have the crew arrest him. She’d gone to a lot of trouble to find him, and he was done with that motel room. Fort Meade was at least not the Pentagon.
“No promises,” he said.
“Just a briefing.” She gestured toward the chopper doorway.
“All right, ma’am.” He stepped onto the helicopter and offered Bridget a hand.
The Black Hawk lifted off as soon as their seatbelts were fastened. Faraz watched the beach shrink below them. They banked over Henry’s and tilted forward for extra speed on a beeline for the base where he had “died.”
A training accident. That was the official story. The one they gave the newspapers. The one they told his parents. When he let that happen, he told himself he could go back someday, relieve their pain. But he’d never made it. And somewhere deep inside, he had to admit that he knew even then that there was no going back.
It had taken a multi-day bender to remind him.
The proof was being on the chopper, talking about a new mission. He thought getting sucked back in should have made him feel worse, but it made him feel better. He had a purpose, a job if he wanted it.
“Just a briefing.” “No promises.” Those were the beginning of a new stream of lies—lies he would tell others and lies he would let himself believe.
Faraz ran his hand across his chin. That stubble would have to go. Or maybe it was a new beginning.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Five days later, ten operatives of the recently dormant A-HAI jihadist group approached an Israeli checkpoint.
Their leader, Iyad al-Hamdani, was excited to be back in the field. He was not much of an ideologue and certainly no Islamic scholar. His fuel was hatred. He’d been taught about the Zionists’ theft of his homeland, including his family’s ancestral home in Jaffa, since before he could understand the stories. They fled to a village in the West Bank, not far from Jerusalem, in 1948, then fell under Israeli occupation in ’67.
For the last few years, lack of funds had forced him to suppress his hatred. Now, under the renewed generosity and direction of his old benefactor, Mr. Assali, he was back in business.
Iyad had enjoyed his trip to Eilat and the crossing to Aqaba for “shopping.” His old comrades were happy for the work, happy to be back in the jihad, even happier to receive some of Assali’s money. And Iyad had renewed his relationship with the watchmaker—“the old man in the Old City,” he called him—whose skills extended to making and smuggling devices that had plagued the region for decades. Their reappearance in the two southern cities cemented the relaunch of A-HAI. Now, step two.
There were three men with Iyad in a white van waiting in line to cross from the West Bank into Israel proper. His long frame was hunched over in the front passenger seat with an AK-47 on his lap. He ran his right hand through his close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair. He pulled at the kufiyah he wore like a scarf, ready to raise it over his face, and peered through the layer of sand on the windshield.
The driver tapped rapid-fire on the steering wheel. The two men in the back squatted on the bare metal floor. Each had one hand on his weapon, the other on the door handles on either side.
“Bi hudu, ya shabaab,” Iyad admonished. Easy, boys. This was their first operation, but not his. At forty-two years old, Iyad looked like a man who had earned his premature wrinkles through years of stress and imprisonment. His dark eyes scanned for the rest of his team.
Four of them were in a gray car ahead of him in the line. The other two came from behind on foot, walking fast between the rows of cars. One of them was dressed as a woman with a pillow tucked under his floor-length traditional abaya dress to make him appear pregnant.
The frantic “husband” shouted in Arabic, “Please! Something is wrong. We must get to the hospital.” The “wife” leaned on him and held her swollen belly.
One of the Israeli soldiers shouted back. “Stop! Stay where you are.”
The couple kept moving toward him. “Please, she needs a doctor,” the husband begged.
“Stop. We will help you, but you must stop.”
The couple increased their speed, approaching to within two car-lengths of the soldier.
“Please, sir.”
The “woman” tripped and went down on one knee. Her right hand went under her abaya and came out firing a machine pistol. Two soldiers fell immediately. At short range, high-powered bullets hurt like hell even when your vest saves you.
The “husband” ripped open the Velcro-ed back of his “wife’s” abaya and unhooked an AK-47 from a shoulder strap. He used a car for cover and started shooting. His comrade dove into a gully by the side of the road, narrowly avoiding the Israelis’ return fire.
The side doors of Iyad’s van flew open. One of his men stepped out with a grenade launcher and turned the Israeli guardhouse into a storm of concrete shrapnel. Vests and helmets would not save those inside.
People in the other cars screamed. Iyad saw some lie down to avoid the gunfire. Others exited their vehicles in a panic, adding to the chaos and blocking the sight lines of the surviving Israelis.
The A-HAI men in the gray car got out, took cover behind the vehicle’s doors and laid down covering fire. The two men from the back of the van ran forward until they reached the nearest wounded Israeli and pinned him to the ground. Iyad arrived and knelt down to be sure the man was alive. The soldier rolled over and raised his hands to defend himself.
Iyad put the AK to his head. “B’sheket,” Iyad said in Hebrew. Quiet.
“Yalla,” Iyad said to his men. Let’s go. They dragged the soldier toward the van. He fought them. Iyad used the gun butt to hit him on the side of his head. The soldier stopped fighting and the men moved faster, bending low to avoid the gunfire from the surviving Israelis.
When they were nearly there, Iyad shouted, “Ya, Allah! ” Damn it. He fell and grabbed his left arm. One of his men helped him up while the other pushed the soldier into the van.
While the men gagged and tied the soldier, Iyad leaned against the vehicle pressing his right hand onto the wound. He peeked around the edge to find the source of the incoming fire. He saw some Israeli civilians on the side of the road. They were armed with handguns, as many Israelis were, and they knew how to use them.
“Over there,” Iyad said, showing his men where to fire. Their barrage forced the Israelis to take cover. Two men from the second team moved to get a better angle but were cut down by gunshots.
The “husband” and “wife” ran toward Iyad between vehicles. Iyad heard the report of a rifle and saw the wife’s head explode. He looked toward a hill two hundred meters away. Another bullet pierced the van’s side, sending Iyad’s men diving to the floor. The Israelis apparently had a sniper he hadn’t accounted for in his plan.
The “husband” got to the van, panting. “We must go,” he said.
Iyad went to the driver’s door. “Move over. I will drive.”
“But your arm,” the driver objected.
“Move!”
The driver obeyed, climbing over the gearshift into the passenger seat. The Israeli soldier moaned in the back.
The two survivors of the other team had already started their U-turn. Iyad followed them but continued around the back of the line of cars to make a full three-sixty. More sniper bullets hit the van and the road.
One of his men came to the front. “Commander, no! What are you doing?”
“Guns out,” Iyad ordered.
Two men held AK-47s out the passenger’s window. Iyad’s shoulder bled into his shirt. He cursed the pain but kept his hands on the steering wheel. He floored the accelerator and threw up gravel as the van swerved onto the shoulder and sped toward the Israeli civilians taking cover in the roadside ditch. One of them got up and took a shot at them, then turned to run for better cover.
Iyad stopped the van. “Atlaq!” he ordered. Fire!
His men complied and he saw the Israeli fall. “Get him!”
“Commander—”
“Now!”
Two of his men scrambled out of the van’s side door and moved toward the wounded Israeli.
A bullet shattered the right side of the van’s windshield and hit the former driver in the face. He fell sideways onto the gearshift, without making a sound. The other men hit the ground.
“Go, go!” Iyad screamed at them. He pushed the dead man up against the passenger-side door.
The attackers got to the Israeli and started to drag him toward the van. The sniper stopped firing now, clearly unwilling to risk hitting one of his own. As they reached the side door, Iyad could see they had a woman.
“It’s a shit show. There’s finally some movement on the comms intercepts and we caught a couple of suspicious bank transfers, but the money bounced and we lost track of it. Something’s up but we don’t know what, and that’s worse than not knowing anything at all. The president wants Epsilon, and he wants it yesterday.”
“To do what?”
“To find out what the hell is going on. We put a mission together for consideration.”
Bridget took a breath and the shooting pain came again. “I have a lot of reading to do. Brief me later, okay?”
“No time. Decision meeting is in an hour in Hadley’s office.”
“An hour? You should have told me.”
“As I mentioned, I was ordered not to add to your stress level. No one thought you’d be here today or were in any kind of shape to be involved at long distance. And, honestly, looking at you, I’m not sure you are.”
That got an irritated look from Bridget, but she swallowed her comeback, saying only, “Thanks.”
“Sorry, Bridget, I—”
“No, it’s okay. You’re probably right. But it doesn’t matter. I’m here.” She shifted in her chair to find a less uncomfortable position. “Lay it out for me.”
Liz sat next to the desk, facing Bridget, and opened the file on her lap. “We think Eilat and Aqaba were a clue. We’ve shut the terror networks down in much of the region. But the Palestinian jihadis are separate from the newer groups in Iraq and Syria.”
“I know the history.”
Liz flipped a page. “So, there’s a jihadi group called Al-Hakam Al-Islamiyah, the Ultimate Islamic Judge, or A-HAI.”
“We used to call them A-HOLE. This is my specialty, remember.”
“Right. Sorry. So, you know they did some nasty attacks several years ago, then refused to merge with Hamas when most of the groups did. Then they fell off the grid.”
“Let’s get to the part I don’t know.”
“Well, the guy who escaped the roundup, Assali, is connected to A-HAI. He was involved in their early years. Started out as a wannabe, couldn’t cut it as a fighter, became a sort of liaison-financier.”
“Hmm. Okay, that I didn’t know. So, you think he went back to his old buddies when we took down his operation?”
“Exactly. If Assali and his masters want to keep pressure on us, that would be a relatively easy way to do it— use his oldest and deepest network. The Eilat-Aqaba strike would fit.”
“Yes. But you seem to be long on assumptions and short on facts.”
“We are. But it’s all we’ve got. If we’re wrong, at least we’ll find out.”
Bridget looked out her window into the bullpen of cubicles where the staff was hard at work. “So, what’s the plan?”
“We put an operative in an Israeli prison, have him connect with some A-HAI guys held there. Then they all get released in a prisoner exchange so our man can find out what they’re up to.”
“Sounds simpler than it is. The Israelis don’t like to release prisoners. And it sounds like a lot of risk on a ‘maybe.’”
“It’s not as bad as a ‘maybe.’ There’s more in the file.” Liz handed it over.
“Okay, but it will take months to train up an Arab-American to take this on.”
“Not if we use Abdallah.”
“Abdallah? Afghan-American? Just back from a brutal mission?”
“Well, I can’t speak to the ‘just back’ part, but the profile has him arrested by the Israelis while sneaking into the country to join the jihad. He wouldn’t be the first one. Should work.”
“‘Should work.’ Jesus, Liz.” Bridget leaned back in her chair.
“Give us some credit, Bridget. This is a fully formed mission profile. We didn’t come up with it in the coffee room this morning.”
Bridget stared at the file. “Okay. I’ll have a look.”
“Two more quick things.” She handed Bridget that day’s Style section from the Washington Post. It had a quarter-page portrait of Bridget in her army uniform under the headline “CAPTAIN BADASS: SHE TOOK A BULLET TO CATCH WORLD’S MOST WANTED.”
“Oh, good Lord.”
“Yeah. Friendly article, though. Nice picture, too.”
It was the one the army had taken before Bridget’s second deployment to Afghanistan—the one they would have published with her obituary. The good news was that she was ten years younger in the photo. Bad news was it felt like thirty. And the worst news was that she was famous—the last thing the head of the president’s favorite covert counter-terror organization wanted.
Liz stood to leave. “And I like the new nickname, Captain Bad—.”
“First person who tries it . . .”
Liz laughed. “I’ll put out a warning.”
Bridget tossed the paper aside. “What’s the other thing?”
“Did they tell you Abdallah is missing?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Faraz opened one eye.
The room was sideways—lit by rays from a distant streetlamp. He saw cheap paneling, a kitchenette littered with fast food wrappers and snack bags, a coffee table with more of the same plus several empty beer bottles and a nearly empty bottle of cheap vodka.
Oh, Allah.
Faraz closed the eye. He wanted to go back to sleep. But there was something he had to do first. He pushed himself off the sofa, steadied himself against a wall and made it to the bathroom.
What the hell was he thinking? He hadn’t had a drink in more than a year, hadn’t planned to drink ever again—perhaps one positive thing to come out of his time living as a jihadi.
That didn’t last long.
One walk through the Pentagon was all it took to send him on a two-hundred-fifty-dollar taxi ride to Delaware and the best room in the cheapest motel half a block from the beach and half a block the other way from Henry’s Liquors and Convenience Store. That was . . . well, several days ago, anyway.
Faraz’s head hurt. He found a piece of cold pizza on the counter and ate it. There was one beer left in the fridge, and two good shots of vodka sparkled in the bottle.
But no.
He went back to the bathroom, leaned over the sink and splashed cold water on his face. The cracked mirror showed neither a jihadi nor a soldier. His stubble was too short for one, too long for the other. Who was looking back at him? Hamed? Karim? Lieutenant Abdallah?
Faraz turned toward the tub. He’d tried to kill himself in a tub just like it a few months ago. He was not doing that again, though the vodka had come close. He turned on the water, took off his clothes and hoped that a shower would make him feel human again, help him figure out what to do next.
* * *
Half an hour later, wearing his last clean T-shirt and the previous day’s underwear and jeans, Faraz raised the blinds to see the first bit of light in the eastern sky. The shower had helped, but he needed to get out of this room. He threw his things into his backpack and went downstairs, where he tossed his key into a basket on the front desk, took a free paper cup of coffee from a machine in the lobby and headed for the beach.
The expanse of sand at the end of the street brought back bad memories of the Syrian desert, so Faraz raised his gaze to take in the ocean. He turned right to walk south and watched the sun rise. Breathing the sea air and getting his blood flowing, he was indeed feeling more human, but he was no closer to having a plan.
Faraz heard the sound before he saw anything. There was no cover on the beach, but instinctively, he dove to the ground.
The chopper came out of the sun. He shielded his eyes as the backwash hit him with a cloud of sand. He saw it was an army Black Hawk. Strange. Why would a chopper land on the beach, and why an army chopper?
He squeezed his eyes shut. Maybe this was yet another bad dream. But when he opened them, he was still on the beach and the chopper was still there, too.
A soldier emerged, walked toward him and yelled over the noise, “Lieutenant Abdallah?”
What? How does he know my name?
The soldier reached him, held out a hand and shouted again. “Lieutenant Abdallah, sir?”
Faraz took the hand and stood, still not sure what was going on. Then another figure emerged from the helicopter.
The soldier spoke close to his ear. “Sir, Ms. Davenport needs to speak to you.”
“Davenport? Holy shit.”
“Sir, please.” The soldier gestured at the chopper and pulled Faraz toward it.
As he got closer, Faraz could see that indeed it was Bridget, in flight suit and helmet, holding onto the helicopter door for support.
“Hello, Faraz,” she shouted over the rotor noise. “You’re a hard man to find.”
“How did you—?”
“Credit cards. Wanna go for a ride?”
“A ride to where?”
“Fort Meade.”
“The major?”
Bridget nodded.
“I don’t know, ma’am.”
“Faraz, we need you. This can’t wait. If you can’t do it, we’re screwed. Your call, but, please, take the briefing.” Bridget shifted her weight. It was a mistake. She winced.
“I heard you were wounded pretty bad.”
“I’ll survive. But the general would kill me if he knew I’d come on this little joyride.” Bridget lifted her shirt to show him part of the bandage.
Faraz didn’t want to go back into her world. But what choice did he have? If he refused to board, she could AWOL him and have the crew arrest him. She’d gone to a lot of trouble to find him, and he was done with that motel room. Fort Meade was at least not the Pentagon.
“No promises,” he said.
“Just a briefing.” She gestured toward the chopper doorway.
“All right, ma’am.” He stepped onto the helicopter and offered Bridget a hand.
The Black Hawk lifted off as soon as their seatbelts were fastened. Faraz watched the beach shrink below them. They banked over Henry’s and tilted forward for extra speed on a beeline for the base where he had “died.”
A training accident. That was the official story. The one they gave the newspapers. The one they told his parents. When he let that happen, he told himself he could go back someday, relieve their pain. But he’d never made it. And somewhere deep inside, he had to admit that he knew even then that there was no going back.
It had taken a multi-day bender to remind him.
The proof was being on the chopper, talking about a new mission. He thought getting sucked back in should have made him feel worse, but it made him feel better. He had a purpose, a job if he wanted it.
“Just a briefing.” “No promises.” Those were the beginning of a new stream of lies—lies he would tell others and lies he would let himself believe.
Faraz ran his hand across his chin. That stubble would have to go. Or maybe it was a new beginning.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Five days later, ten operatives of the recently dormant A-HAI jihadist group approached an Israeli checkpoint.
Their leader, Iyad al-Hamdani, was excited to be back in the field. He was not much of an ideologue and certainly no Islamic scholar. His fuel was hatred. He’d been taught about the Zionists’ theft of his homeland, including his family’s ancestral home in Jaffa, since before he could understand the stories. They fled to a village in the West Bank, not far from Jerusalem, in 1948, then fell under Israeli occupation in ’67.
For the last few years, lack of funds had forced him to suppress his hatred. Now, under the renewed generosity and direction of his old benefactor, Mr. Assali, he was back in business.
Iyad had enjoyed his trip to Eilat and the crossing to Aqaba for “shopping.” His old comrades were happy for the work, happy to be back in the jihad, even happier to receive some of Assali’s money. And Iyad had renewed his relationship with the watchmaker—“the old man in the Old City,” he called him—whose skills extended to making and smuggling devices that had plagued the region for decades. Their reappearance in the two southern cities cemented the relaunch of A-HAI. Now, step two.
There were three men with Iyad in a white van waiting in line to cross from the West Bank into Israel proper. His long frame was hunched over in the front passenger seat with an AK-47 on his lap. He ran his right hand through his close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair. He pulled at the kufiyah he wore like a scarf, ready to raise it over his face, and peered through the layer of sand on the windshield.
The driver tapped rapid-fire on the steering wheel. The two men in the back squatted on the bare metal floor. Each had one hand on his weapon, the other on the door handles on either side.
“Bi hudu, ya shabaab,” Iyad admonished. Easy, boys. This was their first operation, but not his. At forty-two years old, Iyad looked like a man who had earned his premature wrinkles through years of stress and imprisonment. His dark eyes scanned for the rest of his team.
Four of them were in a gray car ahead of him in the line. The other two came from behind on foot, walking fast between the rows of cars. One of them was dressed as a woman with a pillow tucked under his floor-length traditional abaya dress to make him appear pregnant.
The frantic “husband” shouted in Arabic, “Please! Something is wrong. We must get to the hospital.” The “wife” leaned on him and held her swollen belly.
One of the Israeli soldiers shouted back. “Stop! Stay where you are.”
The couple kept moving toward him. “Please, she needs a doctor,” the husband begged.
“Stop. We will help you, but you must stop.”
The couple increased their speed, approaching to within two car-lengths of the soldier.
“Please, sir.”
The “woman” tripped and went down on one knee. Her right hand went under her abaya and came out firing a machine pistol. Two soldiers fell immediately. At short range, high-powered bullets hurt like hell even when your vest saves you.
The “husband” ripped open the Velcro-ed back of his “wife’s” abaya and unhooked an AK-47 from a shoulder strap. He used a car for cover and started shooting. His comrade dove into a gully by the side of the road, narrowly avoiding the Israelis’ return fire.
The side doors of Iyad’s van flew open. One of his men stepped out with a grenade launcher and turned the Israeli guardhouse into a storm of concrete shrapnel. Vests and helmets would not save those inside.
People in the other cars screamed. Iyad saw some lie down to avoid the gunfire. Others exited their vehicles in a panic, adding to the chaos and blocking the sight lines of the surviving Israelis.
The A-HAI men in the gray car got out, took cover behind the vehicle’s doors and laid down covering fire. The two men from the back of the van ran forward until they reached the nearest wounded Israeli and pinned him to the ground. Iyad arrived and knelt down to be sure the man was alive. The soldier rolled over and raised his hands to defend himself.
Iyad put the AK to his head. “B’sheket,” Iyad said in Hebrew. Quiet.
“Yalla,” Iyad said to his men. Let’s go. They dragged the soldier toward the van. He fought them. Iyad used the gun butt to hit him on the side of his head. The soldier stopped fighting and the men moved faster, bending low to avoid the gunfire from the surviving Israelis.
When they were nearly there, Iyad shouted, “Ya, Allah! ” Damn it. He fell and grabbed his left arm. One of his men helped him up while the other pushed the soldier into the van.
While the men gagged and tied the soldier, Iyad leaned against the vehicle pressing his right hand onto the wound. He peeked around the edge to find the source of the incoming fire. He saw some Israeli civilians on the side of the road. They were armed with handguns, as many Israelis were, and they knew how to use them.
“Over there,” Iyad said, showing his men where to fire. Their barrage forced the Israelis to take cover. Two men from the second team moved to get a better angle but were cut down by gunshots.
The “husband” and “wife” ran toward Iyad between vehicles. Iyad heard the report of a rifle and saw the wife’s head explode. He looked toward a hill two hundred meters away. Another bullet pierced the van’s side, sending Iyad’s men diving to the floor. The Israelis apparently had a sniper he hadn’t accounted for in his plan.
The “husband” got to the van, panting. “We must go,” he said.
Iyad went to the driver’s door. “Move over. I will drive.”
“But your arm,” the driver objected.
“Move!”
The driver obeyed, climbing over the gearshift into the passenger seat. The Israeli soldier moaned in the back.
The two survivors of the other team had already started their U-turn. Iyad followed them but continued around the back of the line of cars to make a full three-sixty. More sniper bullets hit the van and the road.
One of his men came to the front. “Commander, no! What are you doing?”
“Guns out,” Iyad ordered.
Two men held AK-47s out the passenger’s window. Iyad’s shoulder bled into his shirt. He cursed the pain but kept his hands on the steering wheel. He floored the accelerator and threw up gravel as the van swerved onto the shoulder and sped toward the Israeli civilians taking cover in the roadside ditch. One of them got up and took a shot at them, then turned to run for better cover.
Iyad stopped the van. “Atlaq!” he ordered. Fire!
His men complied and he saw the Israeli fall. “Get him!”
“Commander—”
“Now!”
Two of his men scrambled out of the van’s side door and moved toward the wounded Israeli.
A bullet shattered the right side of the van’s windshield and hit the former driver in the face. He fell sideways onto the gearshift, without making a sound. The other men hit the ground.
“Go, go!” Iyad screamed at them. He pushed the dead man up against the passenger-side door.
The attackers got to the Israeli and started to drag him toward the van. The sniper stopped firing now, clearly unwilling to risk hitting one of his own. As they reached the side door, Iyad could see they had a woman.
