Esther's Sling (34 page)

Yosef spoke slowly. “You must move on. You cannot stay here.”

“This is our tea stand. This is our living. We cannot leave.” The tea hut was a family business. Family members took turns manning the location. It was very late in the season, but the family expected traffic the coming weekend and the two men were there to make the last bit of money before the winter hiatus. “Why do you ask us to leave? Who are you?”

“Border Guard,” responded Yosef. “Kurdish rebels are in the area. It is not safe. You must move on.”

“We are from Kermanshah. We cannot leave. The drive is too long. This is our livelihood.”

“I am telling you to go now. I will not tell you again.”

“You have no authority. Go tell the truck driver to leave. This is our business. We do not leave.” Kurds were famous for two things: a hatred of authority and the stubbornness to back that hatred. Yosef understood these two foundational facts only too well.

Behind the rock Yoni Ben Zeev could not hear the discussion and would not be able to understand even if he could. Yosef was the only Kurdish speaker on the team. The captain expected the car to start up and leave any moment. The fact that it had not made him nervous. Daylight was approaching rapidly and with daylight came traffic. No one could witness the team boarding the truck.
What is taking so
… The captain’s Generation III intensifier tube included technology to protect him at moments like this. Two bright flashes lit the parking area for brief instants in quick succession. The technology in the advanced night vision monocle cut the intensification within several nanoseconds in response to the intense flashes of light, sparing the vision of Ben Zeev and each of his team watching the car at that moment.

T
he captain instantly realized what he had just witnessed. “Everyone advance,” he yelled to his team, leading the way down from their perch above the parking area.

It took Ben Zeev only half a minute to reach the car. Yosef was already inside the vehicle looking for phones or any other communication devices. In the front seats were two dead Iranian Kurds from Kermanshah, each with a single bullet hole just on the left edge of their sternums. The men had died instantly within a second of each other, a single 9-millimeter round piercing each heart. Yosef emerged out of the car with each man’s wallet and the single cell phone he had found on the driver. “Manu, check the back seat for phones or radios.” He then spoke to his commander. “No choice, boss. They weren’t going to leave.” He simultaneously leaned down to pull up the trunk release latch.

Ben Zeev did not want this, but the decision had been made and the results could not be changed. “Push that car down the road and off the end of that hair pin down there. Don’t start it up, we don’t need an explosion right now. In fact, wait until we are ready. The car will be the last thing we do. Yosef, you continue searching the car. Benny will help you. Manu, you come with us.” The captain directed the rest of his team toward the truck, issuing orders to empty just enough cartons of Charmin from the back to get eleven men in the rear of the trailer. They had to carry the cartons up the mountain a small distance to dump them behind a rock formation. His men got to work as Yoni Ben Zeev turned back to Yosef. “Put those wallets back and take the battery out of any cell phones you find. I want to make it as hard as possible to find these guys … assuming we avoid a bon fire.”

“Ahead of you, boss,” replied Yosef. He checked each wallet to make sure these men were who they said they were. In the driver’s wallet, a family photo of the man, his wife and four children stared back at the Israeli commando from Erbil. “You dumb bastard,” he murmured under his breath before returning the wallets to each man’s pockets. While Benny looked through the trunk, Yosef removed the battery from the only cell phone they could find. He tossed the phone, the battery and its displaced cover into the rear seat.

Captain Ben Zeev walked over to the tractor, opened the passenger door and got in to greet a now very frightened Hamak Arsadian.

“What just happened
?” asked the Armenian, his voice trembling noticeably. He knew the answer but somehow expected a reassuring response.

“We had no choice, Hamak.” The captain reached across the center console of the cab to hold the Armenian’s upper arm in an effort to calm the man. “It is great to see you. How are you?” Yoni retrieved his left hand and extended his right hand to the truck driver.

Arsadian shook the captain’s hand. “I was okay.” He took a deep breath. “Now I don’t know.”

“You will be fine. What happened to you?”

“The Iranians set up a roadblock in Dezli. I was stuck there until an hour ago along with a bunch of others.”

“Well, we are all where we need to be now. We can get going in a minute.” The captain looked around in the cab. “I have to change. Send the three two one code.” As Ben Zeev stepped back out of the cab, Arsadian reached over and went through the same process of pushing buttons on his navigation system that he had done when he cleared customs the prior morning. At Olympus, which could track the truck and already knew that it had reached Point Kabob II, the simple code meant that the team and the driver were united and proce
eding forward with the mission.

Captain Ben Zeev leaned into the tractor and opened a compartment behind the passenger
seat. He pulled out a coverall and winter jacket. He removed his Iranian uniform and put on the clothes of a driver’s helper, the ubiquitous assistant who accompanies truck drivers the world over, working for short wages and small tips. On the bottom of the small storage compartment was a rubber mat that kept items from rolling around. The Israeli officer lifted up the pad and removed an Iranian driver’s license that featured his photograph. He was now a day laborer named Younis Mohammed who had been picked up by Arsadian in Tabriz to help unload the truck at its destination in Ahvaz.

As the captain changed, Yosef pushed the deceased body of the Kurdish tea stand operator to the side and wedged his small body into the left half of the driver seat. He started the Corolla, turned it around and drove it down the road to the first switchback where he pulled off the road. Benny ran down the road after him and quickly arrived by the car, the pair now waiting for their host vehicle to arrive before pushing the small Corolla over the edge of
the mountain in front of them.

It took only a few minutes until the truck arrived and c
ame to a stop on the downside leg of this particular switchback curve. The rear doors of the trailer were open, inviting the two remaining commandos to safety. Yosef got back in the driver seat and turned the key enough to allow him to place the shifter into neutral. He then turned the key back off and stepped out, closing the driver door behind him. “Okay,” he said to Benny. The two men pushed the Corolla a few feet and it quickly gathered momentum. They turned toward the trailer, running to hop into the back. The Toyota gained speed and, after travelling ten more feet, the earth beneath it rapidly transitioned to a very steep downward pitch. The car began to careen down the mountain, travelling about 250 feet before smashing into a rock formation that instantly arrested its motion. Thankfully for the team, the car did not explode. Ben Zeev was grateful for the quality of Japanese engineering.

The captain, now acting as Arsadian’s helper, was waiting for Yosef and Benny at the back of the trailer. He handed his AKM and backpack, which now contained his border guard uniform and night vision equipment, up to his men and closed the trailer doors. He then ran up the side of the
truck to take the passenger seat in the cab.

The Armenian drove the big rig with its elite cargo down the road for about 15 minutes. They were going downhill
, and the main purpose of the tractor’s big diesel engine now was to provide engine breaking to manage the speed of descent. Ben Zeev was not yet ready to relax. The team had more work to do in the trailer, work that was originally planned to occur while they were at Point Kabob. To the east, the first hints of orange began to appear on the horizon. Sunrise was only about fifteen minutes away. Finally the Armenian saw a lush area of vegetation and bushes on the left where a small stream intersected the road, passing underneath it through a man-made culvert. He slowed the truck and pulled over to the left hand side. “This looks good,” he stated to the captain, the two men communicating in Farsi, the only common language they shared. The Armenian understood Hebrew no better than the day he first heard it spoken between his mother and Rabbi Rothstein.

“Agreed.” Ben Zeev jumped out of the cab and ran to the back to liberate his men. He opened the doors. “Sunrise in fifteen minutes. You know what do. Let’s move. Yosef on front point. Benny back here.” The two men who had the dirty assignment of body disposal would sit this drill out
, keeping watch over the road above and below them. Most of the rest of the team hopped out as Ben Zeev pulled himself up into the trailer. “Find a good spot,” was the last order the captain gave as his men went to work. They had to dump 200 cartons of Charmin in the brush, hoping that the valuable waste would not be found for a couple of days at least.

The team accomplished its task efficiently. They had practiced this maneuver with empty cartons a half a dozen times. The weight of the loaded cartons, as Ben Zeev expected, did not slow his men down. The cartons were off loaded in under five minutes. Inside the trailer, the men rearranged the remaining cartons so that they were packed in all the way to the rear door, looking as they did 24 hours before when the truck left Yerevan. From the rear door moving forward, 248 remaining cartons of Charmin toilet paper were packed solidly, leaving an open void in the trailer about 20 feet deep at the front. The five men inside were now trapped by the cartons between them and the rear door. Along the ceiling, lights were flush mounted every six feet, providing a well
-lit working environment.

Now one of the men did as he had rehearsed many times before and, using the blade of a combat knife, wedged up a single strip of two inch wide oak that lined the floor of the trailer. This specific strip of oak was easy for him to pick out because it
had been intentionally stained with red paint at each end. It was right in the middle of the floor and, like all the oak strips, ran lengthwise along the trailer floor. After it was pried loose, another man grabbed it, lifted it up and placed it out of the way on the trailer floor. The man with the knife now dug his blade under a small metal plate on the subfloor, in the process cutting through security tape that had been placed over the plate after the trailer was loaded in Tel Aviv three weeks earlier. The plate raised up enough for him to put his fingers underneath and pull a wire handle upward, releasing a hidden latch and allowing the floor on the driver side of the trailer to pivot upward on a hinge.

Another man grabbed this floor and pivoted on its hinges into a vertical position
until it rest perfectly against the sidewall. Two latches that looked like ordinary tie down points on the wall now were revealed to be clips that locked the false floor open. The first man now dug his fingers under the flooring on the passenger side of the trailer and the floor lifted, pivoted and was locked against the sidewall on the passenger side of the trailer. Two other men next took hold of two silvery blankets that were now exposed and lifted each up and away from the floor to reveal the secret cargo that Arsadian had been carrying from Yerevan. The newly revealed compartment was eight inches deep, eight feet wide and ten feet long. Inside this void, form fitting foam kept various weapons, ammunition, gear, food, computers and other devices secure. The team had all it needed to complete its mission.

A man reached down and grabbed a cargo net that was then unrolled and lashed to each sidewall to hold in place the wall of cartons that formed the rear of the newly created interior room. Reaching into the now exposed compartment, adjacent to the passenger sidewall, a commando unlatched a previously hidden hatch to open access to the ground underneath. The six other
team members who would ride in the trailer were waiting to board. The last man in was Yosef, who closed the hatch behind him as Ben Zeev returned to the passenger seat of the tractor.

Sergeant Yosef Hisami was the man in charge whenever the captain, as now, was out of sight. This was despite the presence of three other officers inside the trailer. Hisami’s leadership was by acclamation. It was earned through the respect of his comrades. The man who liked to call Ben Zeev
“boss” was a natural leader at the age of 23 who stood only five feet seven inches. He would brawl with a man a foot taller to help his mate. But each man knew better than to call him “boss” – that moniker belonged only to Ben Zeev, he would retort.

Yosef reached into the compartment to pull out a sealed plastic bag full of blueberry crisp
Clif Bars. He dug his finger into the plastic to create a tear and pulled the bag open. “We have blueberry, blueberry or blueberry,” he joked in Farsi, maintaining the mission protocol that the team speak only in the native Persian tongue. He started to toss one energy snack at a time to each hand outstretched in his direction. Some of the men thought they saw his hand shaking. Everyone on the team tried not to think about what Yosef had just done, but each man could think of nothing else. For some, the incident only cemented their opinion that the “mountain goat” was the rock of the unit – the man that would be there for them when the situation was dark and in doubt, the man that each one would pick first to join them in battle. These were the professional soldiers, the men who knew that when you peeled away all of the platitudes and slogans, killing was what they did for a living. Others, especially the technical experts like Manu, could only think about the fact that two innocent civilians had been murdered in cold blood and the man who pulled the trigger seemed to never give it a second thought.