to learn, growing up in Montana. Was it possible he was… scared?
But nothing scared him. Not bullets or grenades or nuclear bombs. And since nothing scared him, he couldn’t be scared now. So, good, he wasn’t scared. He was irritated. Because drowning would be an irritating way to die after everything he’d survived, and if this raft sank, he’d probably drown. Not scared. Irritated.
Wells was glad to sort that question out.
“Don’t be frightened,” Nicholas said. “If I wasn’t sure you’d make it, I wouldn’t let you go. You think I want you to drown, your boyfriend bothering me? It’s simple. We drop it in. You get in, push the red button, the engine starts.” Nicholas handed Wells a plastic yellow Garmin GPS, the landing position flashing a black X. “Aim at that.”
“Simple.”
“And one more piece of advice.” Nicholas pointed at the dim lights along the coast. “See that red light? On the left? That’s Syria. Stay away from the Syrians. They’re not nice. Otherwise, no problem. Smooth water. A big bathtub. It takes about an hour. Very flat coast, low draft, you ride right to the beach.”
“And when I get there I leave the raft?”
“For a hundred thousand dollars, I can buy a new one.”
Wells spent the five-mile ride promising himself he would take swimming lessons when this mission was done. But Nicholas was right. The trip was easy. The eastern Mediterranean was as dull as a lake, the waves no more than two feet. The raft rocked lightly as Wells navigated toward the
An hour later, he was a half-mile from shore, close enough to hear the occasional hum of engines on the coast road. The beach ahead was empty and unlit. Even so, Wells was exposed. The moon was low in the sky, but starlight shone off the water. The shore was flat and ran straight north-south, no nooks or crags to hide behind.
No wonder Nicholas had insisted on staying out to sea. Three hundred yards out, Wells revved the outboard, trying to close quickly. He needed a muffler. Fortunately, this stretch of coast was lightly developed, probably because of its nearness to Syria, which had a habit of invading Lebanon.
Fifty yards from shore, Wells cut the engine to just above idle, let the waves carry him in. He didn’t see Gaffan. But as he reached the beach, a Jeep pulled off the road and flashed its headlights. Gaffan stepped out. Wells hefted the crate from the raft. “I brought you a present.”
THEY LOADED UP, HEADED south. After a mile, Gaffan turned left, inland, passing between citrus groves. “Hit a checkpoint on the way up,” he said.
“Army or police?”
“Couldn’t tell. Either way, we should ditch that crate.” Gaffan parked beside a building that looked like a garage for farm equipment and cut the headlights. Wells stepped out, listened for dogs or traffic, heard neither. He popped the trunk, pried open the crate, pulled out their arsenal: AKs, pistols, grenades, ammunition, silencers.
“Nice.”
“I checked it on the boat. It’ll do.” Wells transferred the weapons to a canvas bag, stowed the bag in the Jeep’s spare tire compartment, tossed the tire and crate in a ditch behind the garage.
He checked his watch. Five a.m. Another night gone. Working for the agency had downsides, but it meant quick access to vehicles, safe houses, and identification. Wells would have gotten from France to Lebanon on a fresh passport in hours instead of days and had a pistol and sat phone waiting.
“It’s a lot slower when you’re on your own,” Gaffan said, as if reading his mind.
“Yes and no. On a government ticket, we’d have to check in with the head of station, get an in-country brief—”
“I know you’re supposed to do those things. But did you ever actually, John?”
“I didn’t always.”
“Ever?”
“I can’t remember.”
“I’m picking up some bad habits from you.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
They headed south toward Beirut on the coast road. The checkpoint was south of Tripoli. The paramilitary police looked them over, waved them through. “If they ever stop us, play the stupid American,” Wells said. “Touristico. They are always ready to believe it. Definitely don’t let on you know Arabic.”
“Roger that. So when we get to the Bekaa, what are we looking for?”
Wells had spent the ride from Cyprus mulling that question. “We know it’s a big operation, a bunch of guys. It’s been going a while. That credit card’s four months old. And it’s got to be more than just a crash pad. The logistics don’t work. These ops are happening two countries away.”
“So a full-on training camp? A base?”
“At least a house where they plan missions. Maybe just a few guys, maybe a couple dozen.”
“All Saudi.”
“Hezbollah run the Bekaa. They’re Shia, and Iran’s behind them. Maybe Abdullah and Miteb have it wrong and this is an Iranian operation to destabilize the Saudi government.”
“But you don’t think so.”
“Abdullah, he’s old, angry, but he’s smart. His brother, too. If they think this is coming from inside their family, then I believe them. And the guy I saw in Italy, he was Saudi, not Iranian.”
“Anyway, what would the Iranians get out of it?” Gaffan said. “They’ve got their own problems.”
“True. Figure it’s Saudi-run. Even so, they can’t operate here without Hezbollah. They must be paying for protection. Which means if we make too much fuss, we’ll have a problem.”
“Will your friends help?”
“Don’t count on it.” Wells recounted his last conversation with Shafer. “Duto probably wants to see what we find before he decides to bail us out.”
“He’d do that?”
“He’d enjoy it. Any case, we’d best find them quick, before Hezbollah figures out we’re looking.”
“Then hit them?”
“Depends on the target. If it’s fortified, no. But if we can get in and out without waking the neighbors, maybe.”
“So how do we find them?”
“That’s a very good question.”
BEIRUT LOOKED LIKE A cross between Miami, San Francisco, and Baghdad, a hilly, densely packed city with a waterfront promenade — and every so often a bombed-out building as a reminder of the civil war that had raged from 1975 to 1990. Wells and Gaffan rented two rooms in a Sofitel in East Beirut, the Christian quarter, to shower, shave, and nap.
By noon they were up, following a highway that rose into the mountains. The Bekaa’s farms and vineyards were closer than they seemed. Lebanon was a bite-sized country, one hundred fifty miles from tip to tail but less than fifty wide.
At the crest of the highway, uniformed soldiers manned a checkpoint, backed by an armored personnel carrier under camouflage netting. A soldier waved the Jeep over. “Identification,” he said in Arabic.
“Excuse me?” Gaffan said in English.
“Identification. Passports.”
Gaffan handed over his passport, Wells his driver’s license.
“Your passport, please,” the soldier said in English.
The passport was a problem. Specifically, the lack of a border entry stamp in the passport was a problem. The agency specialized in handling these details.
Wells tried to look sheepish. “I’m sorry, captain, I left it at the hotel.”
“Which hotel?”
“The Sofitel. In East Beirut.”
“And why do you come to Lebanon?”
