Tracks (50 page)

“We can’t leave tracks!” Jaras
emphasized.

“You do what you need to
do.  I’ll replace the wires while you’re at it,” he reassured him. 
“This may not activate the alarm but it’ll keep them from noticing the
damage.  Worst case they’ll think it simply broke and needs repair.”

“Good man,” Jaras said. 

Elena heard two clicks on
Amar’s
short wave radio and quickly followed him along the
contour of the hill following the route taken by Jaras.  Within minutes
they were through the front door. 

The house was fashioned
western style with leather sofas, oak furniture and decorative lighting. 
Jaras was already rummaging in the living room to her right and the alarm man
was busy with something at the door.

Amar went left into the
kitchen area so Elena climbed up the stairs to the second floor where she found
the master bedroom and immediately went for the dresser drawers at the side of
the large king-size bed.  She opened all the drawers, looked behind
drawings that hung on the walls, went into the bathroom, even looked under the
bed, but found nothing of value except for a recent family photo among many
other family photos that stood on a shelf above the bed, which she took and
skipped to an adjacent room which was an office of sorts with a computer and a
copier/fax machine on a large oak desk facing the window and a swivel chair
tucked into the space beneath.  She sat on the swivel chair and began
opening drawers.  The two top drawers were locked and the rest were filled
with office supplies, business cards and various brochures which meant nothing
to her.

She got up frustrated and saw
a single fax that had arrived on the fax machine tray which she stuffed in her
pocket without reading it.  Then she looked again behind various photos
that hung around the office walls and found a safe tucked behind a large photo
of an old Coca Cola
ad.

She was about to run and get
help when Amar appeared in front of her.

“We need to get the hell out,”
he said and pulled her after him.

Aziz was situated on a hill across
from the house which allowed him a good view of the neighborhood and the road
leading to the house.  He saw the car speeding up the hill well before he
realized it was heading for the house.  It was a shiny white BMW with a
single driver.

It was 9:10!

Three clicks on the short wave
radio alerted both Jaras and Amar but by the time they fetched Elena, they were
too late.

The BMW flew by the parked
Subaru and was at the driveway before the team could be out the door.

“Shut the door and wait
inside! We may have to take this guy!”  Aziz commanded as he saw the car
pull up to the driveway of the house and into the covered parking space.

A man in a black suit came out
of the car and heaved a suitcase out of its trunk. 

As he approached the balcony
and fussed with the alarm box at the front door, Jaras came out the house
pointing a pistol.

The man dropped the suitcase
and raised his hands in shock.

“Jaras take him in his car!”
Aziz commanded over the radio.  “Amar you follow with the Subaru!”

Jaras pointed to the suitcase
instructing the man to pick it up and led him back to his car.

“Don’t forget the alarm box
and door,” he said to the alarm man who was already busy closing it up.

Elena, Amar and the alarm man
retreated back to the Subaru as Jaras forced the man to drive the BMW at gun
point.

“Anyone know who this is?”
Aziz asked over the radio.

“It’s the husband,” Elena
said, recognizing the man from the photo she took from the master bedroom and
now held in her hand.

CHAPTER
FORTY EIGHT

The report was vague but the
urgency was apparent so Kessler caught a ride with an Air Force chopper from
Marge A’youn to Tel Aviv and called an emergency meeting with his two
counterparts.

Group Captain Harry Fleming, the
British liaison and Colonel Doug Collins, the American, were awakened out of
their beauty sleep at three in the morning and driven to the meeting by their
respective chauffeurs.

They met at the special
office, the apartment near Dizengoff Center. Kessler was expecting a barrage of
complaints but his two colleagues simply slipped on to the couch in the living
room with boiling cups of coffee he had prepared in advance, and tried to focus
their bleary eyes on him.

“The team has hit a glitch
which may force us to act immediately,” he began, lowering himself on a swivel
chair, facing them.  The two officers straightened a little on their
couch.

“A report came down today that
they had hijacked someone who may cause the operation to be exposed.”

“How’s
that?”
Collins asked.

“They were going to break into
someone’s house to try and retrieve some information before they make the grab
but ended up having to hijack someone else and they feel it’s only a matter of
time before the organization is alerted and goes underground.”

“That’s no good,” Fleming
remarked.

“They’re asking if we’ll be
ready in the event they need to move in the next twenty-four hours, which is
now only eighteen,” Kessler said looking at his watch.

“That’s not enough time,”
Collins complained.

“We need at least a day to get
the troops ready and in position,” Fleming pitched in.

“Can you get your people
ready?”  Collins asked Kessler.

“If we go in by air, then
yes.  If it’s via the sea I doubt it.  The bigger issue is if we’ll
have time to coordinate everyone who’s involved.”

“Do we even know where we need
to go?” Fleming questioned.

“Not yet but they want us to
be ready at a moment’s notice.  They’ll give us exact locations as soon as
we are set,” Kessler informed them.

“It means we need the troops aboard
a ship or at a landing strip,” Collins mused. “Did they say who they hijacked?”

“No, they didn’t because I
instructed them not to,” Kessler admitted.

“Why
in God’s name not?”
Fleming retorted.

“Because
there’s no safe passage for information across the south!”

“Oh,” Fleming raised his
eyebrows.

“We always assume it’ll fall
into the wrong hands or as a minimum be read by others before it reaches us,”
Kessler explained.  “Without reference to names or organizations we avoid
a complete bust to the operation in case anything does go wrong.”

His two counterparts were
looking skeptical.  They were sure he was withholding information but were
too weary to make a fuss.

“Air
or land?”
Fleming finally asked.

“Air is the only real option
if we’re to be ready in time,” Collins suggested.

“I agree,” Kessler said. “I
can have my guys ready at the air base in three hours.”

“What about you, Harry?” 
Collins asked his colleague.

“We’ve got a team standing by
in Cyprus.  I can have them ready before afternoon tea,” Fleming joked.

“What about Harley’s people?”
Kessler asked.

“They can back us up with that
speedboat of theirs,” Fleming offered, clearly still not happy with their
involvement.

“Doug?”

“We can join the Brits
tomorrow night the earliest.”

“OK, then, we can fly our guys
there as well and we can all make preparations there,” Kessler summarized.

“That all depends on the
information you
  get
us,” Fleming reminded him.

“I’ll do my best.” 
Kessler said and went to pour some more coffee, thinking they were running out
of time.

*****

The suitcase contained mostly
clothes and personal effects.

However, the briefcase
contained details of foreign and domestic bank accounts with lists containing
names and organizations, references to various places of business, and a log
book of transactions and payments.

They had hit the jackpot! And
it was all there neatly filed into several thin folders inside the prisoner’s
briefcase.

They could not find any direct
mentions or references to Sons of Jihad but it was obvious their prisoner was
heavily involved in financial activity which they assumed funded parts of the
operation.

Now all they needed to do was
to get him to confess and they felt sure they had a seamless link to the
organization.

Rafik Ammad was eighteen when
he joined the Fattah movement of Yasser Arafat in 1977.  In 1976 the
Israelis launched an attack into Southern Lebanon and took over the entire area
south of the Litani River.  Young Rafik grew up in the city of Tyre by the
Mediterranean and had to retreat and evacuate when the Israelis came charging
in.

His older brother Kaasam, a
Fatah squad leader, was taken prisoner and the family had to hastily leave
their house and all their belongings and flee.

Rafik never forgot that.

They ended up in Beirut,
essentially homeless, and were scooped up by the PLO and given a home in return
for Rafik joining the ranks.

He did so with a vengeance and
was sent to a training camp north of Beirut where he mastered a host of
sabotage skills which he put into use for the next two years against the
Zionist enemy at the southern border.

He quickly stood out among his
fellow militia men and it was not long before he was put in command of a PLO
outfit that numbered 20 guerrilla fighters.

He commanded a range of hit-and-run
operations across the Litani River and into no man’s land of Southern Lebanon
including at least two infiltrations across the Israeli fence where they
planted several land mines and improvised explosive devices along the border
road where Israeli military vehicles patrolled day and night. Their bombs and
mines were discovered both times but Rafik gained valuable experience studying
the Israelis operation tactics which he put to good use when he was next
assigned to a Bakaa Valley intelligence unit, whose responsibility was to
monitor Israeli military maneuvers at the border with Syria where most of the
PLO’s supplies came from, right up to and including the ‘82 war when the
Israelis invaded once again in force.

Having lost most of his
intelligence unit during the war, Rafik quickly advanced in the ranks and
became the head intelligence individual in the region.  He hung around the
Israeli-occupied territory for a long while after the cease-fire, supplying
valuable information to PLO leadership on alternative supply routes.

This earned him a position of
trust in the PLO intelligence hierarchy and soon he was placed as special
liaison to the Head of Intelligence at PLO headquarters in Beirut. His specific
task was counter espionage, recruiting operatives from abroad to expose western
agents operating within the PLO organization.

When the Shiites began to take
matters into their own hands and Arafat was flushed out of Beirut, Rafik was
asked by to stay and join an organization called Sons of Jihad.  Having
gained valuable contacts in his world travels for Arafat, he was given the task
of raising capital to finance the organization’s costly activities.

He met Nyla at the compound
shortly after joining the organization and they quickly became a couple. 
A year later they married and had the children in quick succession. Rafik had
by then solidified his position in the organization and was making a nice
salary which, together with
Nyla’s
, allowed them to
move to one of the better neighborhoods of Beirut and employ a maid. The
organization assigned them bodyguards which were a necessity around the battle
riddled city. The job demanded Rafik spend most of his time abroad and he felt
much more comfortable having Nyla and the children escorted around the city and
guarded at the house.

He was back from one of his
assignments abroad when he was surprised and taken hostage.

He had no idea who had
abducted him but he knew he was in trouble when they reached an isolated farm
house two hours north of Beirut where he was thrown into a bomb shelter and
locked in behind a fortified metal door with only a small hatch through which a
few rays of light managed to filter.

He knew he was done for when
they tied him to a chair and started grilling him about his activities. 

He had neglected the mandatory
security measures he was required to abide by, being so exhausted after a
thirty-hour trip from Sau Paulo, Brazil, and did not report his arrival or wait
for an escort.  That had most likely cost him his job if not his life. 
Even if he survived the interrogation and managed to remain silent, he as well
as his
wife,
would be suspect and a liability in the
eyes of the organization.  If they were not executed, they would be exiled
where no one would ever find them.

“The kids!” he thought, a cold
shiver wrapping itself around the back of his neck.

There was only one way to save
them…