Tsunami Connection (20 page)

A whispered phrase, "Camel turds," halted the
progress of the group. They all braked and waited, losing precious time.
Invisible nothings lay down beside their bikes. The point person, alternated
much the way geese change the leader of the flying v-shape, tried to verify
possible contact with other human beings.

"Boy, grazing animals. Hungry," the point person
said, meaning they had not been spotted. "Instructions?"

Kefira waited, breathed deeply, balancing the cost of a life
against the mission's success.

"Water," she communicated a symbol using the
eyewear, meaning use tranquilizer darts.

The sheep started moaning, sensing something in the air. A
silenced Heckler and Koch rifle, adapted for tranquilizer darts, let one round
out making only a 'pht' sound. The boy fell, a dart in the center of his
temple. His family home and his two sisters, father and mother were identified
at 500 meters east. The group circled. Sleep was swift. The team returned to
Kefira, who was guarding the transports from her position in the back of the
arrowhead shape. They again moved forward in unison. Kefira felt proud to be
able to save the lives of innocent civilians. The meditation took over, body
and movement submerging cares.

The Bedouin wandered content in their lifestyle. In the home
of the Nadji Bedouin family, now sedated, a smoldering cook fire burnt two
pieces of flat-rolled pita, barely smoking. No blood drained into the heat of
the day, congealing in the dusty hard pack. The soldiers had been invisible as
they entered the scene. Though the Bedouin family likely never would have even
noticed the passing of the spear, erring on the side of caution dictated
Kefira's strategy.
All of us will feel safer now
, thought Kefira.

Kefira's eyewear reported in a burst of video. Her cloaking
device exposed her to risk as she transmitted to the lurking Dolphin submarine.
The submarine was patrolling in international waters with its antenna up to
receive messages from the two teams as they penetrated Syria. In a classic
pincer attack, the two teams of six highly trained Special Forces troops; one
commanded by Zak; the other run by Kefira, converged on the target at a
twenty-minute spaced interval.

Their relative successes would always be a likely predicator
of future leadership roles in the Mossad. Mission accomplishment rates were
also an indicator of the potential winner of the years-old bureaucratic
struggle between Sam and Yochana to be the one to recommend the future leader
of the Mossad. An orthodox matriarchy versus an emerging patriarchy guided this
struggle.

In many ways, this insertion of troops was the climax of
years of skirmishes between these two consummate bureaucrats. Yochana sent a
second heavily encrypted message. It was a
jpeg
of an as yet
unpublished, group military identification insignia patch. A Star of David with
a spear altered by the fact that it was headed by the symbol of womanhood, a
circle with a cross on it decorated her goggles screen. Kefira shook her head and
erased it from her eyewear's memory. She was fighting a losing battle with
Yochana. Her growing feelings for Zak, though clouded by a lesbian affair with
Michael MacAuley, sometimes interfered with her ability to achieve at all
costs.

March 25, 2012

Zak's group rode point for the two
teams. Much to Yochana's annoyance, he had drawn the short straw in the Dolphin
submarine. They had the same means of transport and were progressing over the
hard pack and shrub to a site about eighteen kilometers from the shore. It
seemed an unlikely place to store weapons, the logistics of transporting them
to waiting delivery devices would be a headache of planning. He had fleeting
doubts about his earlier convictions in relation to the information he and
Kefira had extracted from Michael MacAuley.

"Not time for doubt," he thought in a whisper to
himself, not touching his communicator.

They pushed forward, knocking the kilometers off toward
their destination. The satellite photos showed stone structures on the surface,
an ordinary hamlet, built in the same place repeatedly through the centuries
because of the location's proximity to a water source. It was the heat
signature under the structure that intrigued.

How was it possible that all the previous pictures from
the 'eyes in the sky' had not identified the existence of a large underground
cavern at this place?
he thought, pushing on and sipping from his vehicle's
supply of liquid. He was depleting his vehicle's supply first to help maintain
his body temperature by leaving the liquid in his suit to keep him cool.

The point man made a perfect imitation of a camel moaning,
their agreed upon signal for visual sighting of the target. They all stopped
after fifty more feet, also a prearranged pattern. No longer moving, the riders
heard the silence around them loudly in their ears. Zak dared not use his
communicators, as even momentary loss of cloaking could be disastrous at this
point. All of them activated the alternate invisibility devices on their
transport.

Up to this point, they had been effectively using their
personal units to conceal themselves and their bicycles in order to conserve
battery power. The two lead point people of the arrowhead crawled forward in a
pincer directed at the second entrance identified by the heat signatures in the
imagery intelligence. They arrived at their destination and started digging, in
alternating shifts, on the softer sand while the second operative actively
surveyed ground zero, hands on her weapon of choice, eyes riveting in all
directions.

The young woman on guard watched the sand moving away,
spread by an invisible force, and despite her training had a frisson on the
back of her neck. A large flash vaporized her before she could think more. Her
partner, who had been clearing sand from the theoretical second entrance to the
underground chamber, disappeared in the same instant. The next two members of
the team vanished in the same burst of explosive energy as the ground shook,
leaving a gaping hole in the hard terrain that lay under the softer surface
sand near the waterhole. Zak and the one remaining member of his team survived
because they were partially buried behind the small hillock.

The brunt of the detonation that killed four members of his
team instantly and left Zak and one soldier severely concussed also left a
gaping hole in the hard pack, exposing a limestone cavern that the sea had
shaped perhaps centuries ago.

Kefira's point person spotted this gaping hole first, just
after the force of the blast knocked her off her transport. The other members
of the Colonel's unit, being just that much farther from the center of the
blast, got off their bicycles and waited. Kefira's heart pulsed. For the first
time in her life, her emotions were overwhelming her training.

He's gone
, she thought, a sob filling her being as
training snapped back into force.

Kefira surveyed the scene in front of her. She cursed
MacAuley. This had his signature all over it. He had booby trapped the site he
told them about in Argentina. It was his sick revenge.

We were too eager
, she thought and then continued
reflecting.
It was too easy to get that information from MacAuley
.

Kefira had no time for personal thoughts. Her unit moved as
one and spread out around the approaching hole in the desert. The third point
of the arrowhead patrol formation briefly communicated, "Three
friends," signaling at least some survivors.

The smell reminded her of the day in the Sinai about a year
earlier when she lost most of her team. The scars resurfaced. Visions floated
in front of her eyes. She knelt on one knee, overcome by grief, then shook
herself and stood. She could not endanger the unit by communicating more now.
They needed to remain cloaked for their own safety. It was her job to video the
evidence. After testing the strength of a peg placed by her second in command,
she used thin, ultra strong climbing rope to rappel into the exposed chamber.
Her compatriots stood guard. One of them, at a distance, comforted the two
unconscious survivors, Zak and his lieutenant. Both soldiers were comatose,
stinking of cordite; the explosion had blown off their headgear.

In front of Kefira were heavy pine boxes. Their labels were
in Arabic, Chinese or Russian. The explosion had blown away the tops of some of
the boxes. She proceeded to film. Her camera captured a second chamber opening
up as she descended a steep staircase made of limestone. She noticed the
telltale signs of the bomber. This bomber was an expert. He had shaped the
explosion to kill anyone who entered without destroying the contents. The booby
trap was very professional. Again, she thought of MacAuley. Shaped charges were
his specialty.

The cave in front of her was visible, because the bomber
designed the blast to save the inside of the cave. Then she saw them, the
crates for which Sam and Yochana had told her to look. Their markings listed
clear indications of their content. It was the weapons of mass destruction, the
nerve gas canisters even showed some symbols suggesting radioactive isotopes.
Her camera captured the evidence that was needed to justify an airstrike in a
foreign country.

Moving some crates, she noticed a door built into the back
of the exposed cave. It was metal and out of place in the dusty debris. There
was an electronic keyboard on the lower surface. It glowed green.

"Lieutenant. Down here. Plastic necessary," she
signaled with eyewear symbols, her cloaking disappearing for the time she
communicated.

She heard scraping sounds behind her. Her second appeared.
Without any instruction, he applied a small piece of rounded putty to the area
near the keyboard and some more near the four places where hinges likely sat on
the inside of the door. They both stepped aside and the plastic blew out the
door.

Kefira entered the room, expecting a large stockpile of
identifiable warheads. To her surprise, she saw rows of computer consoles and
large Chinese-made monitors. She captured all of the equipment in front of her
on video. There were instruction manuals, all in Chinese. The purpose of the
room was not readily evident to her. She took as many of the manuals as she
could, broke open one of the computers and removed its hard disk, and then she
saw it. There was a laptop computer near a router controlling a Wi-Fi
networking system. She picked up the laptop and stored it under her weapon on
her chest, in a pouch specially designed for this purpose. She then opened the
manuals and filmed the first few pages, and placed one manual under her weapon
belt.

She signaled "leave" to the lieutenant
accompanying her. They returned to the nylon rope and climbed to the surface,
having seen the entrance to several other rooms underground. All the rooms contained
crates with markings suggestive of weapons of mass destruction. On the surface
again, she pressed the part of her belt that permitted encrypted comms with the
Dolphin submarine. She relayed the whole video message and signaled on the
coded video relay: "Strike."

It was her confirmation for Sam and Yochana that the cave
contained the weapons they had believed it would. They were to look at the
evidence and make the final decision about launching an airstrike to destroy
the cache of weapons. It was Kefira's expert opinion that they should strike.
The Colonel, however, was not a politician. This decision had so many political
ramifications that the Dolphin would be in communication with the Prime
Minister and the Cabinet. Kefira had something more important to do. She had to
patch her disintegrating life back together. Her mission accomplished, she had
to get her teams back to safety.

The reduced stress brought on by reaching the mission
objectives washed over her as she groped to get out of the hole left by the
explosion. Kefira was organizing their retreat. She knew how she could take Zak
out. The bikes were equipped with specially designed, collapsible, wheeled
stretchers that could drag the wounded behind them. Furthermore, Kefira could
tow Zak's amphibious transport by attaching it after hers. The realization that
she might be able to bring him home comforted her. The rhythm of accomplishing
that task helped her overcome her uncertain emotions. Her team had practiced
this kind of operation many times. 'Leave no one behind' was their motto.

In minutes, they were striving to move as fast as possible,
as the crow flies, across the terrain. Zak and his second officer were
unconscious. Later, Kefira and her second officer would tow them behind their
amphibious transports. The risk was high at that moment because the trailers
were visible. They were too long for the cloaking system design. The riders
were still invisible. Pushing to the limit, the young men and women strove to
reach their underwater transports on the seashore.

As they drove, Kefira remembered the video of MacAuley's
interrogation. He had kept on saying, "The room. The room." Zak had
been unable to figure out his words at the time. She had one more piece of the
puzzle. He had given Zak the longitude and latitude of the weapons cache and he
had talked about the training room, but having seen the so-called room, she
still was none the wiser.

The smell of the sea brought her back to the present. She
had traversed the hard pack with her team. They had switched to alternating
carriers for the two wounded as they progressed over the sand-covered limestone
interspersed with low, gnarled shrubs. She touched the device that controlled
their amphibious transports. The lurking amphibious carriers materialized from
their underwater hiding places. The morning sun was already hot.

One by one, the soldiers climbed into their vehicles. Kefira
and her second in command remained behind as the others submerged and made
their way back to rendezvous with the Dolphin in international waters. The
ex-IDF Colonel attached the towing device. Her second attached the breathing
cables and electricity sharing control cables. The two of them carefully poured
Zak into one of the vehicles, and his second in command into a vehicle behind
Kefira's second in command, and then sealed them in place. They then got into
their own transports and prepared to submerge. Just as she was closing her
seal, Kefira heard the screech of low flying fighter-bombers crossing overhead
at the speed of sound, getting set to launch bunker bombs. Kefira and Zak had
succeeded. They had the proof to justify their act of war for the international
community. The cost for Kefira was high. She wept the whole way back to the
Dolphin.