“The man who killed Alexander Fortuna.”
“Andreas?” asked Khalid, a hint of shock in his voice.
“Yes. He’s bound, weaponless, and outnumbered. Keep it simple.”
“Oh, I will,” said Khalid angrily.
“And don’t hurt him. He is to be delivered. That’s it.”
The phone clicked out.
Khalid tried Youssef, but there was no answer. He took a last puff on the cigarette, then dropped it to the ground. He stepped back onto the bus. The sky was almost pitch-black outside, the only light being the light of the stars, and even that was partially blocked by the fir trees whose branches hung overhead. The air was humid and fetid. The smell of the forty-two Hezbollah soldiers—and his own odor—filled the tight space in stench.
After a few minutes more, Khalid clapped his hands twice, loudly.
“It’s time,” he ordered.
RAMLET AL-BAIDA
BEIRUT
The eight Israeli commandos moved inland from the deserted public beach, one at a time, at different points along the dark, empty boardwalk. They spread out over a quarter mile so that any sighting would be of only one man, alone.
The distance to Rafic Hariri Airport was just more than three miles. They would split up and move across the western edge of the city along eight separate routes. It was an indirect infiltration; the airport sat on the water on the opposite side of Beirut, but the Lebanese patrols near Rafic Hariri were virtually impenetrable. Crossing the city was the only option.
Each commando began a fast jog. Eight different routes through the coastal neighborhoods, down eight separate streets.
Each man knew the neighborhoods of Beirut well, better even than many of the city’s inhabitants. Through a secretive network of informants, they knew where Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) tended to congregate. Each man knew he had to avoid being caught. Hezbollah had friends throughout Beirut, including many in the senior leadership of LAF. Many had learned to play both sides of the conflict between Hezbollah and the Lebanese government, knowing that it was a question of when, not if, Hezbollah someday ruled the entire country.
The capture of one of the S’13 commandos this night by LAF could quickly lead to a transfer of the Israeli prisoner to Hezbollah. Then, a terrible journey would begin to one of the Al-Muqawama camps in the Bekaa Valley.
Meir ran at a six-minute pace up the street. A baseball cap was pulled down low just above his eyes. The windbreaker covered his weapons.
Meir’s short-cropped brown hair was soaked with sweat that then covered his face. Beneath the windbreaker, sweat drenched his arms, back, and torso. He ran with his head down, along the sidewalk, a jogger out for a night run. Meir had taken the busiest route, along Rafic Hariri to Al Akhtal El Saghir. He jogged past storefronts, electronics stores, past throngs of Lebanese, past cafés and bars. A few noticed Meir as he ran along the tar edge of the cracked street, enough to look up, but people went about their business. At one street corner, Meir ran past two LAF regular corps soldiers, who noticed him but did nothing.
On seven other streets, the other members of the S’13 recon team moved toward Rafic Hariri, a little more than three miles from the public beach. For the most part, the quickly designed infiltration to Rafic Hariri went smoothly.
Not for Ezra Bohr.
Bohr, a twenty-two-year-old commando from East Jerusalem, ran through a poor neighborhood abutting the coastline, less busy this time of night. He ran south along a thin, winding, darkened street barely wider than an alley, toward the airport. A mile into his run, beneath a lone streetlamp two blocks ahead, Bohr saw three men loitering against the wall of an apartment building, smoking cigarettes.
As he came closer, they stepped away from the wall. They stared down the dimly lit street at the approaching runner. The young Israeli felt his heart race. The perspiration poured down.
“Jew,” said one of men, pointing.
Bohr quickened his pace slightly as the men stepped toward him. He saw an alley halfway between him and the thugs. Sprinting, he ducked right into the alley as the three men dropped their cigarettes and began a sprint toward him.
A dozen feet inside the shadow-cast alley, Bohr stopped. He listened to the footsteps of the Arabs as they ran down the street. He reached down to his left calf and grabbed the SOG combat blade from its sheath.
Dim light from the street cast diffuse shadows into the alley.
The Arabs moved quickly and entered the alley at a sprint.
Bohr pressed against a cement wall and held the blade in his right hand. He waited for the first man to pass, then lurched at the second and slashed the razor-sharp blade at the thug’s throat, dropping him with barely a sound. As quickly as he stabbed him, Bohr pulled the blade out. He took a step back and waited. The third punk entered the alley and tripped on the corpse of his dead friend. He let out a yell as he tumbled forward. Bohr swung the blade viciously down, stabbing the man in the chest, a quick hole in the man’s heart that killed him instantly.
The first Arab heard the yell from the second man, then turned and came at Bohr with a silver switchblade. Bohr stepped back, evaded the swinging arm of the thug, then lunged, stabbing him deeply in the gut. As the Arab tumbled to the ground next to the others, screaming, Bohr completed the kill with a quick stab into the man’s carotid artery at the base of his neck.
It had taken less than a minute to kill the three attackers. Bohr watched the alley entrance for movement. Seeing none, he moved back to the street. He began his run. He glanced at his watch, then quickened his pace slightly to make up for lost time.
BEIRUT RAFIC HARIRI AIRPORT
Khalid pointed to the opening in the fence at the end of the runway. He nodded to the first Al-Muqawama soldier.
“Go,” he barked.
The soldier ran across the dark tarmac at the end of the runway. He moved toward the dirt edge of the blacktop, running in a low crouch, Kalashnikov at his side. At the corner of the runway, he went right. He arrived at a line of low cement barriers.
Khalid surveyed the airport. He waited several seconds for signs that his first man had been discovered. Seeing none, he nodded to the next terrorist in line.
“Go,” he barked.
Khalid sent half the men, twenty-one in all, in fifteen-second intervals. They moved to the edge of the runway, up along the cement barriers. After the last soldier moved out, Khalid held his hand up. He looked at the first man in the line.
“Wait here,” said Khalid. “Do nothing unless there’s trouble.”
“Trouble?”
“Airport security. That sort of thing. We’ll be back quickly.”
Khalid stepped back through the fence. His men were at the cement barriers at the point in the runway where the C-130 would be turning and lowering the ramp. In the dim light, he could just make out the tops of the heads of his soldiers.
Khalid followed the others to the cement barriers. He took up his place at the end of the line of soldiers, crouching.
In the distance, he heard the loud engines of a jet preparing to take off. The plane moved down the runway. Its nose lifted up, followed by its front wheels, and soon the jet was off the tarmac, sailing loudly overhead. The Al-Muqawama soldiers watched from their positions behind the barriers.
One of the soldiers, down the line from Khalid, leaned forward, pulled a cigarette from his chest pocket, and lit it.
Seeing the spark at the end of the lighter, Khalid jumped up, ran to him, and yanked the cigarette from his mouth. He threw it to the ground and stubbed it out with his boot.
“Stupid idiot,” he whispered, staring at the young terrorist. “
Stupid fucking idiot
.”
He grabbed the lighter from the man’s hand and hurled it into the dirt field beyond the tarmac. Khalid moved back to his position at the end of the barrier.
A few minutes later, another plane took off. Then, the low drone of an approaching plane rumbled in the distant sky. The terrorists got up on their feet as the plane descended.
The roar of the plane’s engines was what the Hezbollah soldiers heard first, then they could see its red and white lights. The silver nose of an approaching jet appeared. It came smoothly toward the runway, its wheels touching down. The jet landed and sped down the tarmac. It wasn’t the plane they were waiting for. The Lufthansa jet came to a sudden halt, more than a quarter mile from the soldiers, then turned back around toward the main terminal.
Khalid leaned back against the cement barrier, relaxing slightly, along with the other soldiers.
But as the Lufthansa jet taxied back toward the terminal, there came a sudden noise from somewhere off in the dark, distant sky. It was the deep drone of another plane, accompanied by the high-pitched sound of straining metal.
Khalid looked for the lights; there, in the sky above the main terminal, he saw the silhouette of an approaching cargo plane.
The plane was tilted sideways, its wings tipped diagonally. The right wing struggled to level out. The plane crossed perilously close to the top of the control tower. The dipping right wing of the C-130 seemed to almost brush the top of the tower.
The noise grew louder. The deep pounding of the plane’s four propellers combined with the high-pitched scream of the broken hydraulic.
“It’s going to crash!” yelled one of the men.
The cargo plane barreled over the control tower, leveling out as it approached the tarmac.
It was at this point that Khalid registered the plane’s missing landing gear.
Emergency sirens sounded at the main terminal building.
As if in slow motion, the plane lumbered to the tarmac, dropping like a wounded duck. The right wing, which had been dipping, popped up. The plane leveled, bleeding off airspeed.
Khalid stood. Sweat poured down his face as he watched the distance between the plane’s bare underbelly and the black tarmac shrink, then disappear.
LEBANESE UNIVERSITY
BEIRUT
Kohl Meir came to Old Saida, on the outskirts of Lebanese University. He turned into a parking lot behind a tall cement dormitory, just east of Rafic Hariri. In the distance, he could see the airport.
Meir was the first of the commandos to arrive at the meet-up point.
Within a minute two more commandos had arrived. Within three minutes, the remaining men, including Ezra Bohr, were there, eight in all.
The team moved toward the airport. Running in pairs, they sprinted in the shadows, across the dark lawns of the Lebanese University campus.
Meir registered the loud roar of an approaching plane.
“
Pick it up!
” Meir commanded.
At a hard sprint, Meir led them past the walls at the western edge of the campus. They came to a service road that ran along the south perimeter of the airport. Meir led the seven commandos across the service road. At the other side of the road was a chain-link fence. Two commandos removed wire cutters from their waist belts and began to furiously cut metal.
The could see the white fuselage of the jet descending from the north.
“
Hurry, hurry, hurry!
” barked Meir.
After a minute of cutting, Meir reached down to the bottom of the fence and lifted it up. He held it as his commandos crabbed through.
They ran across a hundred-yard apron of gravel and dirt as the descending plane came closer, a commercial airliner, the bright yellow Lufthansa logo on its side. Its tires touched down on a runway to the north, followed by the earsplitting roar of the jet braking.
The S’13 squad stopped at the edge of the tarmac. They were halfway down the runway, cloaked in darkness. Each commando ripped off his running jacket. They unstrapped their carbines from their backs and the SMGs from their chests.
On the tarmac, the commercial airliner that had just landed quieted, the high pitch of its braking replaced by the deep barreling of an approaching plane. In the distance, above the brightly lit main terminal building, the PAF C-130 suddenly appeared out of the dark sky.
The plane’s wings were sloped at a forty-five-degree angle, the right wing hanging perilously low. As the plane descended, the wing looked as if it was aimed directly at the control tower. The pilot was clearly struggling to prevent the plane from going completely sideways and tumbling over onto its back.
Meir watched, mesmerized, as the plane dropped toward the tarmac in front of him. The wing recoiled and passed just feet above the control tower, then leveled as it continued a rapid descent. Then it struck the ground. Sparks burst from the belly of the plane. Flames abruptly shot out from the fuselage. The plane slid, out of control, down the runway. The sound was horrible; metal ripping apart against the cement tarmac.
One of the Israeli commandos removed a small night vision thermal monocular. He scanned the fence line around the airport. Meir took the monocular and looked through it. He found the cut in the fence line at the end of the runway left by the terrorists. Several hundred yards in from the fence, Meir saw movement in the dim light. He adjusted the magnification. He saw the telltale red from the body heat of men at a cement barrier. He counted heads.
“They’re here,” said Meir, pointing calmly.
The C-130 kept sliding, gaining momentum as it moved in a fiery slalom down the runway. Sirens roared at the terminal. Flames on both sides of the fuselage plumed as the fire spread. The front of the plane began to rotate to its left and the plane began a slow, destructive spin as it slid.
Meir stared through the monocular. Straight ahead, across the tarmac, he counted yet more men, waiting for Andreas.
“I’ve got Hezbollah all over the place.” said Meir. “At least a dozen, maybe more. We need to move
now.
”
Meir looked again at the cement barriers at the end of the runway. He saw the silhouettes of men, now standing. They started moving toward the plane, anticipating where the plane would come to a stop as the flames grew brighter around the fuselage.
Meir removed a small earpiece and inserted it in his left ear.