Tracks (46 page)

“Success means we get the guy
and we remain unidentified,” Colonel Dori concluded.  “We fail if we are
identified and if there are casualties.  This mission is top secret. 
None of you are to ever speak about it to anyone.”

None of the soldiers,
including Colonel Dori, knew the real reason behind their mission. In fact, no
one on the boat knew, except for Kessler.

Kessler’s job was to interrogate
the prisoner and hopefully milk the information about Sons of Jihad out of him
while still on the boat.

Then he was to make him
disappear.

Three Land Rovers waited for
the force near a small dock, as the Zodiacs silently made their way to shore. 
A Lebanese patrol boat had come with a half a kilometer of them but did not
notice them as the Navy men cut the engines.

The dock was well
chosen.  It was part of an abandoned section of the Beirut airport
concealed by old rundown buildings.  The troops silently ditched the boats
treading in shallow water, running up a sandy ramp to the waiting Land Rovers.

Aziz was joined by Colonel
Dori and five men in the front vehicle.  Twelve others dispersed in the
two remaining vehicles.

The drive took a half hour.   

They arrived a kilometer away
from the house at one thirty in the morning.  The time was chosen
carefully.  Aziz’s surveillance reported Abu Salah arriving home regularly
between 23:00 and midnight so the attack was planned for two in the morning.

The Land Rovers veered off the
paved road and parked amongst a copse of trees.  The force disembarked
from the vehicles and waited for a signal to move.

However, that signal did not
come.

The man Aziz had assigned to
watch the house was waiting for them at the spot with news that Abu Salah had
so far failed to arrive.  It was peculiar since it was a Friday, a day
which most Muslims spend at home after prayers.  The day for the operation
had also been selected with care.

A quick conference took place
between Dori and Aziz.

“Is this the only way to the
house?” Dori queried.

Aziz nodded eyeing his man who
also nodded.

“Is it the reinforced Hummer?”
Dori asked.

Once again Aziz nodded.

Dori called over two of his
officers.

“Change our plan,” he
whispered.  “We ambush the vehicle right here.”

“That is if it gets here,” one
of the officers pointed out.

They all eyed Aziz who
squirmed uncomfortably. 

“He will come,” his man said
with confidence. “He never misses coming here even extremely late.”

“How
late?”
Dori questioned.

“As late as this,” the man
said.

Dori looked at his watch and
made a decision.

“Call the men,” he said to his
officers.

Everyone crouched in a circle
as Dori explained the plan.

“We shoot the tires with silencers
then we wait hidden on both sides of the road.  If they get out, we storm
them.  If they start shooting, we use silencers.  Shoot to kill all
except our target which you’ve all seen photographs of.  He’s a heavy set
man with a noticeable limp. 
Any questions?”

“How late do we wait?”

“We give him until four. 
If he doesn’t show, we scram. 
Everything clear?
 
Danny and Weiss, you shoot the tires.  Both ends!  Is that clear?”

Everyone nodded and spread out
along the road to wait.

It was another hour before the
Hummer showed up moving slowly on the bumpy terrain.

There were several metallic
clicks as the silenced M-16s fired and the Hummer jerked and skidded to a halt.

Both its front doors flew open
and out came both the driver and one of the bodyguards to inspect the
damage.  As they surveyed the tires with a flashlight they were stormed
from behind and flattened on the ground.  

The troops all had night
vision equipment and it was easy to spot Abu Salah in the back seat with a bodyguard
by his side.  They stormed the vehicle before
either had
time to respond, entering the Hummer through the open front doors and pointing
the machine guns at the surprised men inside.

At gunpoint the four men were
relieved of their weapons, handcuffed and herded to the trees where the Land
Rovers stood waiting.  The Hummer was driven on its punctured tires
farther beyond the trees and into a ditch.

The ambush took no more than
five minutes then the Land Rovers headed back to the waiting boats.

CHAPTER
FORTY THREE

Abu Salah eyed Kessler with
contempt.

The makeshift interrogation
room on the destroyer was the detention cell on the lowest deck by the engine
room.  Abu Salah was seated, handcuffed to a metal chair a mere three feet
away from Kessler.

The door was shut and the room
reeked as sweat dripped from the prisoner.

Colonel Dori had made an on
the spot decision to take all four Arabs back to the boat to avoid leaving
tracks.  The other three, Abu Salah’s bodyguards, were held under heavy
guard each in a separate room on the boat.  Kessler had given strict
instructions not to talk to them except to allow them to relieve themselves or
give them water.

“You are here because I need
information,” Kessler said to Abu Salah in Arabic.

The heavy set man moved
uncomfortably in his seat, his white shirt under a black jacket dripping with
sweat.

“You’ve been supplying arms to
several groups down south that are threatening my country’s border,” Kessler continued
as if unaware of the man’s discomfort.

“I need water,” Abu Salah
groaned, his mouth dry.

“As soon as you give me what I
want,” Kessler replied.

“What do you want?”  Abu
Salah asked impatiently.

“I want the names of the
organizations you supply and I want to know where these arms are being kept so
I can destroy them.”

“You are joking,” Abu Salah
snickered.

Kessler remained silent
looking at him intently.

“You went into all this
trouble for this?” Abu Salah scoffed.  “I sell farming equipment.”

“Does farming equipment come
with bullets and explosives?”

“I sell tractors and plows.”

“You supply weapons to
terrorists,”
  Kessler
accused.

“Where did you get that idea?”

“Why else would you be
travelling around in a reinforced Hummer with bodyguards?”

“I am a rich man.  I need
protection from criminals and thieves.”

Kessler was biding his
time.  He had the lists Aziz had confiscated in his raid which easily
proved Abu Salah was an arms dealer and he had addresses and descriptions of
Abu Salah’s depots Aziz had provided him as well.

“Are you familiar with Al
Qaida?”  Kessler suddenly asked. 
“The organization
who tried to blow up the Twin Towers in ’92 with a truck full of explosives?”

“Who isn’t?”  Abu Salah
retorted.

“Do you have any contacts in
Iran?” 

“For
farming equipment, yes!”

“They supply you with
weapons,” Kessler accused.

“They supply me with farming
equipment,” Abu Salah said quietly.  “And you are going to have one
gigantic diplomatic scandal on your hands if you don’t release me.  Now
can I have some water?”

Kessler scrutinized him
deliberately for a few seconds then knocked on the door.  An armed sailor
looked in. 

“Get us some water,” Kessler
said and was provided with a plastic bottle which he poured into the prisoner’s
mouth.

Abu Salah gulped thirstily,
the water dripping all over his neck and clothes.

“Does this refresh your
memory?”  Kessler asked once the entire bottle had been emptied down the
prisoner’s throat.

 Abu Salah looked
smug. 

“I demand my immediate
release!” he declared.  “I am a Lebanese businessman and you have no right
to hold me here like a common criminal.”

“Here’s the deal, Ahmed,”
Kessler muttered threateningly, calling him by his first name for the first
time. “You give me the organizations and locations of the arms you supplied
them.  I blow them away, then you get to go back home.  How’s that
sound?”

Abu Salah looked surprised for
a brief second then reiterated his mantra.

Kessler fished out the lists
from his breast pocket and flashed at him.

“We have lists of transactions,
payments made to various suppliers, lists of various armaments purchased, and
their distribution sites.  None of it is farming equipment.  Now do
you want to cooperate or does this sorry little show of yours go on?”

“You’re bluffing,” Abu Salah
said.

“These lists were downloaded
off a computer from one of your command posts.  You may recall a small
raid in the Shiite area where some weapons were stolen from you?”

Abu Salah looked blank.

“The weapons were just a
diversion.  We were after the info you had in the computer,” Kessler said
holding up the lists again.  “Now can we do business or not?”

A hint of panic crossed over
the prisoner’s face as he squinted to try and decipher the small print on the
paper in Kessler’s hand.

“Al Qaida is mentioned as well
as Hezbollah and the PLO,” Kessler surmised. “I need names and I need locations
so I can eliminate this threat against my country.”

“I don’t have a clue where
they keep the stuff,” Abu Salah finally said, admitting his involvement.

Kessler did not expect him to
know much beyond his own distribution sites but he had him where he wanted him.

“If you cooperate with me in
the next five minutes, I’ll send you right back home tonight, the same way you
got here,” Kessler said patiently.  “Do we understand one another?”

“I only know my depot sites,”
Abu Salah defended himself.  “I send it,
then
Allah knows where it goes.”

“That’ll do,” Kessler
said.  “I’ll read off your customers from this list and you tell me where
each site is.”

“There’s only a couple in the
South,” Abu Salah said trying to minimize the damage. “The rest are in
Beirut.  Are you going to bomb Beirut now?  That’ll start a war!”

“You leave that to me.  I
will not start a war on account of you,” Kessler assured him.  “Now can we
begin?”

The prisoner sighed. 
“Can I get some more water?”

“He looked shocked when I
casually mentioned the Sons of Jihad,” Kessler described his interrogation
session to Harry Fleming and Doug Collins when the Achi Eilat docked back in
the Navy port near Haifa.

“It was a tense moment, I must
admit,” Kessler revealed to his two colleagues.  “He looked at me
wondering if I really had that name on the list.  I said it right after
Islamic Jihad so I guess it seemed authentic.  Anyway, I was worried he’d
baulk, but he spilled it finally.  He gave me a location in the center of
Beirut, which seemed logical from what we know but we need to have it
thoroughly checked though before we proceed.”

“Yes, yes,” Harry Fleming was
saying.  “Good for you, old chap.  I didn’t think you could pull it
off.”

“What do we do with
him?”  Doug Collins was asking.

“It’s him and his goons,”
Kessler informed them.  “We took three of his bodyguards for the ride as
well.”

“You did what?”  Fleming
jumped in.

“We had to improvise,” Kessler
said. “We couldn’t leave tracks.”

“Well, you certainly did just
that,” Fleming commented.  “It’ll get noticed four times as fast.”

“It might, but they’ll never
figure out what we were after.”

“So what do you plan to do
with them?”  Collins pressed.

“You should not concern
yourselves with this, Gents.  It’s our problem, we’ll deal with it.”

“How involved are they?”
Collins asked.

“Not at all, in my
opinion.  They only supply weapons.”

“We’ll inform our people,”
Collins said.

“You do that, but wait until we
meet again before we make any moves.  I still need a confirmation on the
location.”

“Right.
 
We'll keep you updated.  Good job, David.”

An open military jeep
screeched to a halt next to Kessler who jumped in, hurrying to a nearby
helicopter pad.  He needed to meet with Aziz to verify the location. 
Until then, Abu Salah was not going anywhere. 

CHAPTER
FORTY FOUR

Natasha arrived in Beirut with
Mike Devlin.

She, a
Russian journalist from an obscure publication in St. Petersburg.
 
He, a Scottish photographer from Edinburgh, her colleague and
boyfriend.

The tall blonde received
admiring looks from the Customs and Immigration people as she presented her
papers with seductive charm and an abundance of confidence.  Her boyfriend
was dismissively overlooked.

Natural blonde, they learned,
was a rare and exotic commodity in the Middle East.

Past Baggage Claim they were
met by Fiad.  Disguised as a taxi driver, he drove them to the apartment
where they met Elena. 

The girls hugged and
kissed.  Elena made coffee and they sat down to bring each other up to
date.

“You’ve done some serious work
here,” Natasha commended after Elena had described to them in some detail her
activities since arriving in Beirut.  Looking around the apartment it was
obvious that it had become a hub of intense activity.

“When do we get started?”
Devlin asked somewhat impatiently.

“You’ve just come a long
way," Elena said.  "Why don’t you two get some rest? Aziz will
be here later to brief you.  He asked me to hold off until he showed.”

But Mike Devlin was not the
sort to relax.  He prowled around the apartment scrutinizing Elena’s
research tools, summary tables, maps and drawings she had prepared over the
length of her stay.

“Mai-Li and Rolston are due in
tomorrow,” he said matter-of-factly.  “Are they coming here?”

“Don’t think so,” Elena
replied.  “Aziz wants to keep you couples separate.”

“Good man,” Devlin commented.
“That’s how it should be.  Where will they stay?”

“Don’t know,” Elena
said.  “He was very vague about it.”

  “I like this man,”
Devlin smiled.  “No reason for us to give one another up if we get
caught.”

“I believe that’s his
intention,” Elena said, “but I could be wrong.  This man has his own
agenda and doesn’t consult me much.”

“Have you seen the
location?”  Natasha asked.

“Aziz has.  He’ll tell
you all about it. 
More coffee anyone?”

Devlin settled on the couch
while Natasha went to shower.  He was out cold when she got out.  The
girls raised his feet up on the couch and covered him with a blanket.

“He’s more than a little
uptight, this one, isn’t he?” Elena remarked.  It was her first time
meeting Mike Devlin.

“It’s his first operation
since Harley died,” Natasha explained.  “He’s in charge now so I guess
he’s a little on edge but they tell me he’s quite a cool customer under fire.”

“Aziz won’t like being
pushed,” Elena whispered as they moved away from the sleeping Devlin into the
kitchen.

“I’ll talk to him,” Natasha promised. 
“How do you get along with these people?”

“They treat me like royalty,”
Elena divulged. “Twenty-four hour guard and anything I ask, they get me. 
They’re really quite capable.”

“That they are,” Natasha
agreed.  “A lot’s riding on it.”

“So how’s Sam doing?” Elena
asked.

“Not himself, as you can
imagine.”

“Poor
Sam.
  He’s probably going mad.”

“He is,” Natasha said. 
“Can you blame him?  It’ll be only a little short of a miracle if we find
his Sammy.”

Elena looked up at her with
tears in her eyes.

“I want this to be over.”

“We’re almost there, sweetie,”
Natasha said in a consoling tone.

Elena wiped her tears and
poured some more coffee in their cups.

“Where’s Sam now?” she asked.

“He’s in Cyprus with Lizzy and
Jimmy.  They have a boat.  Copeland and Long-John are joining them
there.  They’ll be ready when we need them.”

“Good idea to keep Sam there,”
Elena remarked.

“It took some convincing by
that man on the couch and Jack,” Natasha pointed to the sleeping Mike
Devlin.  “Sam wouldn’t go down without a fight.”