Alpha One. Over.”
Nothing but static.
He moved away from the interfering mosque wall.
“Alpha One?”
Through the haze a choppy voice was just audible.
Conte cut in with the transmitter button. “If you can hear me, we’ve got a change of plan. We’re under fire.” Raising his voice, he carefully articulated his next command. “Pick us up on the southeast corner of the Temple Mount esplanade, beside the El-Aqsa Mosque. Over.”
A pause.
More static.
“Roger. On my way,” a faint voice crackled back. “Over.”
Conte concealed his relief. Just over the jagged mountain range to the south he detected a dark shadow against the night sky.
The chopper was approaching rapidly.
He clicked his XM8 to fully automatic, activating the grenade launcher and the others did the same. Fearing they might inflict damage on this sacred place, he knew that the Israelis would be reluctant to fire heavily on them. But his team wouldn’t be nearly as accommodating.
“We’ll need to take those guys down to clear the area,” Conte commanded. On his signal, the mercenaries rushed toward the gate in neat formation, carbines drawn.
The chopping sound of rotor blades now had the Israelis’ attention, many gazing skywards at the black shadow gliding low and fast toward Temple Mount.
From their shadowed position high up on the retaining wall, Conte and his men sprayed the soldiers with a curtain of firepower. Within seconds, eight had fallen. Others were scurrying for cover in the open plaza below, while reinforcements spilled into the area from the network of narrow streets feeding in from the Jewish and Muslim Quarters.
The Israeli Air Force Black Hawk suddenly rose over the embankment’s southeast corner, its profile decked out in desert camouflage temporarily confusing the IDF soldiers with its familiar markings. But Conte could also see a group of men maneuvering to better positions along the embankment’s southwest corner. Immediately to his right, Doug Wilkinson, the assassin from Manchester, England, suddenly recoiled, clutching his upper arm, dropping his XM8.
Sliding his finger to the carbine’s second trigger, Conte centered his sights on the cluster of soldiers below and fired. The grenade rocketed off its rifle mount streaming an arc of smoke and orange sparks until it exploded, hurling fragments of stone into the air. Other grenades followed with a fiery barrage of exploding stone and shrapnel that forced the Israelis back in chaos.
The rotor blades were close behind the team now, throwing up a dust storm. The Black Hawk bounced down on the platform, coming to rest beside the El-Aqsa Mosque.
“Go now!” he yelled, waving the team toward the chopper. “Get the cargo on board!”
Retreating from the gate, Conte spotted yet more IDF soldiers between the cypress trees on the opposite side of the Temple Mount, quickly closing in on the vicinity surrounding the Dome of the Rock platform.
It was going to be close, he thought.
The box was rapidly stowed in the chopper and then his men clambered aboard. He ducked under the rotor blades, jumping inside.
Under heavy gunfire, the Black Hawk lifted off the platform and tore away from Temple Mount. Hugging the Ha-Ela Valley floor, it swept across the barren expanse of the Negev Desert, heading southwest. The chopper’s low flight path was well beneath radar range, but even at higher altitudes its state-of-the-art cloaking technology would render it virtually untraceable.
Within minutes the lights of the Palestinian settlements along the Gaza Strip came into view. Then Gaza’s beaches rapidly gave way to the dark expanse of the Mediterranean.
Eighty kilometers off Israel’s coast, a custom-built twenty-meter Hinckley motor yacht had been anchored at precise coordinates programmed into the flight console. The pilot maneuvered the Black Hawk over the yacht’s aft deck, easing down to hover in the hold position.
The box was carefully lowered to the Hinckley’s crew, then one by one the team rappelled down the line. Wilkinson tucked his wounded arm tightly to his side as Conte clipped him to the line. All things considered, the wound was relatively minor. When Wilkinson had made it on deck, Conte went next.
Setting the autopilot controls to hover, Conte’s pilot evacuated the cockpit, stepping over the two dead Israeli pilots who earlier that evening had set out from Sde Dov airbase on a routine surveillance mission along the Egyptian border, blissfully unaware of their heavily armed replacement hidden in the rear.
With cargo and passengers secured, the Hinckley’s engines fired up and the craft moved off, slowly gathering speed. Conte loaded another grenade and found the chopper fifty meters away. A split second later the latest state-of-the-art in American military technology ripped apart, lighting up the night sky in a flaming ball.
The yacht accelerated to its cruising speed of twenty-two knots and headed northwest across the Mediterranean’s choppy waters.
There would be no more fighting that night. As Conte had anticipated, the Israelis had been totally unprepared for an orchestrated stealth attack. But the messy confrontation and high death toll meant his fee just went up.
3
MONDAY
Three Days Later
******
