The hotel
Beirut, Lebanon
The two men were no longer in sight, but he could feel their presence. They were watching. Asefi turned back to his food, picking at it with a fork. His appetite left something to be desired.
The big man had been the sniper-or was there a third?
He looked out the window of the hotel restaurant at the street outside, the sunlight streaming in through the glass. The fork trembled in his hand as he thought of the deception he was perpetrating. Hossein and his men didn’t have the toxin-he knew that. But they linked him to the Ayatollah, and if they were dead…
His eyes closed as he imagined the firefight between Hossein’s picked guerillas and the-Americans, maybe? It was not so much that the man looked like an American, but he acted with the confidence of one. A cowboy.
A shadow fell across his plate and he glanced up. “Come on, Achmed,” the man announced in Russian. “It’s time to go.”
A worried expression crossed Asefi’s face. “I thought our business together was concluded?”
Harry smiled. “Nyet. I sincerely wish it was. But it is not our lot to be so fortunate. You’ll come with us until we’ve verified the information you provided.”
12:13 P.M.
The foothills of the Golan
The patrol wasn’t going anywhere. Hossein came to this realization after half an hour of watching the Israeli Humvee through the lens of his binoculars.
They had hidden the Land Rover about half a mile back, leaving two men guarding it. Now he, Mustafa, and another of the militants lay in the bushes on the outskirts of the village, their weapons trained on the four Israeli soldiers.
No more time, Hossein decided, reaching for the pistol at his hip. Motioning for his men to stay put, he screwed a silencer into the muzzle and rose to a crouch.
Forty yards. He could have made the shot, but there was no room for error. One shot and the remaining soldiers would react. With two of them inside the house beyond the vehicle, he wouldn’t stand a chance.
He moved into an alley between the houses, marveling at the incongruity of modern Palestine. A donkey grazed in the courtyard of a house surmounted by a television aerial. The old and the new fused together in an inseparable bond.
A wheelbarrow full of bricks stood in front of a house farther down the street and Hossein moved toward it, shoving his pistol into the load.
One of the two soldiers on guard looked up at his approach, dismissed him as a common laborer and continued to scan the street.
It was a fatal mistake. Five yards away, Hossein dropped the handles of the barrow and grabbed the pistol, his arm a blur as he brought it to bear.
The pistol coughed, a bullet spitting from its cold muzzle to strike the soldier in the middle of the forehead. A young man, he observed dispassionately, almost young enough to be his son.
His body fell backward, thudding softly against the metal of the Humvee. His comrade reacted, the muzzle of his weapon swinging upward in a sickeningly slow motion.
Hossein squeezed the trigger again. Target down. He ducked and moved forward, unclipping a stun grenade from the belt of the second man.
Alerted, the last two soldiers emerged from the door of the dwelling just as he pulled the pin on the grenade, lofting it into the air.
Thunder and lightning. The major shielded his eyes as the stun grenade went off, a blinding flash lit up the area.
He raised himself up, the pistol in both hands. Chaos. Surprise. The Israelis had been blinded by the blast and he shot both of them, one after the other, watching as their lifeless bodies crumpled to the ground.
The way was clear. The path to Al Quds…
4:25 A.M. Eastern Time
NCS Operations Center
Langley, Virginia
“I need a sitrep, Carter,” Kranemeyer announced, bustling around the end of the cubicle. “Do we still have eyes on the Land Rover?”
Carter didn’t respond for a moment, his eyes focused intently on the screen before him. A command prompt appeared and he clicked on it, the resolution of the image changing as it zoomed in.
“Bet your life we do. More than that, we’ve got a situation.”
“What’s going on?” the DCS asked, shifting his weight on his prosthetic leg to lean toward the screen.
“Watch this-three minutes ago.”
The view was uncanny, a true top-down birds-eye view. The perspective of the gods. It always reminded Carter of the original Grand Theft Auto games he had played as a teenager.
A figure moving down the street, toward a patrol of Israeli soldiers. The analyst clicked another button and slowed the scene down. “Watch here-between frames 2375 and 2394.”
“He pulls a pistol,” Kranemeyer announced slowly, narrating the video as it continued. “One man, two men down. Stops. Whoa!”
The explosion spread out over the satellite imaging, concealing the scene from view for a few seconds. The DCS grimaced. “Flash-bang. It’d have to be. There. Two more men down. He utilized his element of surprise to the fullest-we’re dealing with a professional. What’s their present heading?”
“Currently-south-southwest. Toward the West Bank. At their present rate of speed, they’ll be within the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority in two hours.”
“We’re going to break a lot of laws today,” Kranemeyer observed, shaking his head.
The comment drew an ironic look from the analyst. “When don’t we?”
1:13 P.M. Local Time
Mossad Headquarters
Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel
“It’s a match?” General Shoham looked from the analyst in front of him down to the grainy surveillance photo on the desk.
“The computer says the match is 83 % positive.”
“The computer?” the Mossad chief asked, more than a touch of sarcasm in his voice. “And what say you?”
The analyst hesitated and Shoham waved his hand impatiently. “Make the call. Is it Nichols?”
A brief nod, then the man replied, “Yes. It’s him. I’m certain of it.”
“I concur,” Shoham acknowledged, picking up the picture and transfixing it with a hard glance. “The question is-what is he doing crossing the border from Lebanon an hour ago, and who is the man with him?”
“I don’t have that answer, sir. We should have information on their identities within the hour.”
“Or who they said they were,” was Shoham’s brief retort. “Lies within lies. Bring me what you know as soon as you know it.”
2:01 P.M.
The road to Nablus
“Who are you?”
Harry sighed with irritation. It was the third time Asefi had asked him the question, and his mood had not improved with the repetition.
“A friend,” he responded sarcastically.
“They’ll be looking for us,” the Iranian observed, glancing out the window of the car as he drove. “Tradecraft says that you don’t steal a car unless you have to.”
“I had to,” was Harry’s brief reply. “And I seriously doubt the Israeli police go looking for cars stolen in Beirut.”
“I don’t understand why we can’t go our separate ways.”
Harry’s gaze shifted from the road in front of them to Asefi, giving the man a hard look. There was no way the man didn’t understand the rationale behind the situation. There was an object in his chatter, an ulterior motive.
“What if we’re stopped and I’m like this?” the Iranian demanded, gesturing with the right hand that Harry had cuffed to the steering wheel. “They’ll search the vehicle and us.”
“Then I suggest you drive in such a manner as not to attract attention.”