Nagib was still responsible for carrying out the analysis of the samples that were collected in the Kirtland base and the vicinity. He was in charge of a small team of lab technicians and analytical chemists who did the work but was no longer in the field to collect the samples. He was instructed to closely screen the samples that were taken inside the storage facilities as they would indicate if any of the stored nuclear weapons caused contamination. This suited him well as he believed he would be able to learn about the construction of the weapons from the analysis of these samples but soon realized that this was not the case. In fact, no traces of radioactive materials were found on the swipe samples that were collected in the storage facilities.
Nagib liked living in Albuquerque where he had rented a studio apartment near the university and had made many friends among the student crowd. He was not an observant Muslim and enjoyed a few beers or cheap Scotch at parties, liked Mexican food that often contained pork meat and most certainly had fun with some of the female students who were intrigued by the handsome foreign man who had earned a doctorate and was gainfully employed. Combining all these joyful deeds with weekend skiing vacations in the nearby Taos ski resorts, something that happened at least once a month in winter, kept him going. There was nothing he liked more than taking a good-looking, all-American, preferably blonde, girl to spend the days on the ski slopes and the nights in a comfortable king-size bed after a good meal and a bottle of local wine. The girls also liked this but he seldom took out the same girl more than once or twice as he was not interested in a long-term relationship. So he reached the decision to remain employed by GCL at least until he became a US citizen.
Nagib had gotten so used to the good life in Albuquerque and felt that he was given an opportunity to fulfill the American dream and he had almost forgotten his grand plan to avenge the destruction of his ancestral home. He was even considering settling down with a nice woman, preferably of a Palestinian Muslim origin but like himself not really devout, and starting a family and a new life in the land of the free. However, one day he received a phone call from his father who told him that Yassir, his brother, who had been incarcerated in an Israeli prison for several years, was freed in a deal in which over 1000 convicted Palestinian detainees were released from Israeli jails in exchange for one Israeli soldier that had been held by Hamas in Gaza. Yassir was not allowed to return to his family home that was rebuilt in the village near Hebron in the West Bank and was sent to Gaza where he had to remain in a kind of exile. Nagib's father said that his brother had joined the military arm of Hamas and was the commander of a group that launched rockets into the Israeli territory. This was curtailed when an Israeli drone fired a US made rocket at Yassir's group just as they were getting ready to launch one of their rockets, killing all its five members. His father said that his brave brother Yassir was now a martyr, a Shahid, and that it was Nagib's duty to avenge his death. Nagib who had loved his brother and admired his courageous fight against the Israeli occupation was shocked by the news of his death. After this phone call Nagib abandoned all the plans of settling down in the US and continued to plot his revenge with even more determination and motivation. Nagib and his father were both unaware of the fact the phone call was recorded by the Israeli army intelligence unit responsible for monitoring all calls from the Palestinian Authority, and that the transcription of the conversation was passed on the Israeli Security Agency (ISA) and brought to the attention of the section in charge of following suspected terrorists and their families.
Sergeant Benny Avivi raised his head and peeped over the top of the protective armor of his vintage World War II half track and saw a Centurion tank moving rapidly along the dirt road leading from the direction of the Suez Canal to the point on the map that was marked as Tassa, which served as the temporary headquarters of the Israeli forces. Benny could just make out the tactical marking on the side of tank and knew that it was the tank in which Colonel Dan, the commander of his regiment, led his unit to battle against the Egyptian forces that had crossed the Suez Canal in a surprise attack two days earlier. Benny exchanged a look with Captain Moshe, his company's executive officer. They had heard the call sign of the regimental executive officer who was now ordering the remaining tanks to hold the line firmly and stop the advance of the Egyptian tanks and infantry. Both immediately understood that the regiment commander was either dead or seriously wounded. The rest of the troops in half track 3B were apathetic or in shock and did not understand what was happening. A few minutes later Benny's company commander led the six half tracks up the hill called Hamotal in the code maps where half a dozen Centurion tanks were arranged in positions facing west and south opposite the Egyptian forces that were now withdrawing back to their original positions after failing to take Hamotal. Benny's crew had recovered by now from their state of shock and got busy carrying the dead and wounded soldiers from the damaged tanks to the half track and evacuating them to the field hospital that was set up at Tassa. Benny noticed thin electrical wires on the ground and was told that they were used by the Russian-made anti-tank wire-guided missiles that caused so much damage to the Israeli tanks. The massive use of these relatively primitive yet effective anti-tank missiles had been something of a tactical surprise that gave the Egyptians an initial advantage and caused heavy losses until IDF tank crews developed countermeasures that greatly reduced the success rate of the missiles.
After five months of emergency reserve duty, 26 years old Benny Avivi returned to his laboratory at the renowned Weizmann Institute of Science where he was a doctoral student in the Chemistry Department. Many of his fellow students did not return to their studies after the Yom Kippur War, also known as the October War. Some of Israeli students were dead, injured, pronounced as missing in action or had simply lost interest in pursuing a scientific career after the sights they had seen in the war, while some of the foreign students left Israel and returned to their home countries where life was not as exciting and wrought with uncertainties. Benny continued his research project and decided that he could do more for his country as a scientist than as another sergeant in armored infantry.
Benny completed his doctoral dissertation in 1976 and then spent two years as a post-doctoral research fellow in one of the University of California campuses. After returning to Israel he accepted a position in the analytical chemistry department of the famous Israel Institute for Biological Research (IIBR) and eventually became the head of that department. Benny also started a family together with his wife, Anna who held a Ph. D. in electro-optics and was employed at the Soreq Nuclear Research Center as a senior research scientist. As his retirement got close Benny took a Sabbatical leave at the chemistry department of NMSU while his wife got a temporary position as a guest scientist in the physics department. Benny was invited to serve as an external examiner during Nagib's final doctoral examination and thesis defense.
Benny's eldest son, David had served as a squad leader in an elite Special Forces unit of the Israel Defense Force (IDF) and after that studied physics at the Technion before joining the Mossad as an analyst and later as a field agent. He had accrued a lot of vacation time and managed to get special permission to join his parents in Las Cruces for a few months and take a couple of advanced courses in nuclear physics at NMSU. David took a couple of trips to visit the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History in Albuquerque and learn about the Manhattan Project and the Cold War era. He also visited the smaller and less famous Bradbury Science Museum in Los Alamos.