Derringer rapped the table. “What about the other two? Furr and…” He checked his notes. “Barrkman.”
“Breezy found them between the villages,” Wilmont replied. “Apparently they saved his a… neck. A real last-minute rescue.”
Carmichael’s mind was clearing, sorting options. “Where’s the Israelis in all this? I mean, we were contracted to them on behalf of the Druze. What happened to the backup we were promised?”
“I’ve asked Mr. Baram to see us this afternoon,” Derringer explained. “He might have something more by then.”
Carmichael rattled a printout. “Thank God we still have e-mail contact with Nissen. With our encryption it’s more secure than the phone. He confirms that Omar and Bernie have arrived. Because of the local situation at El- Arian he sent most of his team to meet them in Hasbaya. The embassy arranged helo transportation and will get our people to the search area.”
Wilmont ran the time zones in his head. “If they start now it’ll be well after dark.”
Derringer drummed his fingers in the rudimental pattern that said he was thinking again. “They might as well, because the opposition isn’t likely to wait.”
It was time.
After the evening
The two special weapons teams knew they did not need to respond to the rhetorical question. Instead, they listened with growing impatience to be on their way. But the priestly commissar had more words of inspiration.
“We will not bow to the great Satan, the arrogant power-hungry tyrant that plans to rule the world. We will shout the slogan we learned from Imam Khomeini louder, higher, stronger: Death to Israel! Death to America!”
The jihadists joined the chant. “Death to Israel! Death to America!”
Fervently shaking his fist, Ahmad Esmaili shouted as long and as loud as anyone.
Then, map in hand and compass dangling from his neck, he led his five-man team into the Lebanese night.
44
The two jihadist teams separated soon after leaving the Hezbollah base, but both headed generally southwest. Neither knew the route or the target of the other, but Esmaili could read a map. He reckoned that both units would try to penetrate the same six-kilometer front along the Lebanon-Israel border. It just made sense: it was one thing to toss off a phrase about “suitcase bombs” and quite another to hump that thirty-kilogram weight across broken terrain at night.
Esmaili was not surprised when Abbas Jannati ordered Modarresi Ka’bi to carry the device for the first part of the trek. Apparently neither was Ka’bi who, for all his undoubted devotion, lacked the younger man’s athletic frame. He stopped frequently to hoist the load higher on his shoulders, and though he seldom complained, it was clear that he would be just as pleased to share the honor of carrying the RA-series weapon to its destination.
At length Ka’bi called a halt. “Brothers, forgive my body’s weakness, but I must rest.” Without awaiting approval, he slipped the harness off his back and sat down, leaning against a rock. He pulled a water bottle from his cargo pocket and drank deeply.
Esmaili gestured to his teammates. Hazim and his two partners walked about twenty paces away and faced outward, keeping watch. Ka’bi rubbed a shoulder. “We would make faster time on level ground.”
“You state the obvious,” Jannati hissed. “But we could be seen near the road and that must not happen.” He turned to Esmaili. “How are we progressing?”
The cell leader consulted his map, using a red-lensed light. “We have come perhaps four kilometers. It is a little over ten to the border.”
Jannati glanced over his shoulder at his colleague. “Perhaps it would have been better to come this far by vehicle.”
Esmaili folded the map and tucked it in his shirt. “No, the risk is too great. The militia patrol this area sometimes, and they would surely stop any vehicle this time of night. That has already happened, you know.”
The nuclear warrior nodded. “Yes, I heard. That was unfortunate. We can only trust that it did not betray our plans to the Zionists.”
“Brother, do not worry so much. God will guide our path.”
Jannati stretched out a hand and clasped his escort’s arm. Then he rose and picked up the weapon.
As he resumed the march, Esmaili congratulated himself upon his growing ability to sound sincere on religious matters.
It was blind, dumb luck.
The leader of Team Gimel called a halt to change batteries in his night-vision optic. He had used the device more than expected, because his tactical sense told him the men he hunted would keep to the depressions and shadows. Twice he had been startled by thermal images nearby, but neither were hostile. The first had been a group of four people, apparently a family settled for an uncomfortable night in the countryside. He had crept close enough to overhear their muted conversation and determined that they were more refugees from Amasha.
The second image had spiked his adrenaline because it moved. The lieutenant had flicked his safety off before he realized it was a stray goat.
While the officer installed a new battery, his NCO caught something moving toward them. In a hoarse whisper he called, “Alert. Right front.”
The commandos went on point just as the strangers saw the Israelis. For a cloud-shrouded moment both teams looked at each other in the nocturnal grayness, less than twenty meters apart.
The Hezbollah team responded as briefed. Backing away the leader called in Arabic, “Where is my daughter? Where is Fatima?”
When there was no reply, the Iranian concluded that the strangers were hostile. He ordered his men into a semicircle, weapons pointed outward.
The sergeant, who spoke fluent Arabic, responded convincingly, “We have not seen her.” Immediately he berated himself:
“What is your village?” the voice demanded.
The lieutenant was beside the sergeant. “Tell them you don’t understand.” Then he was gone, moving left. The third man obeyed a signal to flank right.
“What did you say?”
There was muted, rapid talk in the dark. The NCO thought it sounded agitated, perhaps an argument.
The jihadist asked again, “What village are you from? Have you seen a little girl?”
Seconds later the lieutenant’s voice rasped over the tactical headset. “Four or five men, all armed.”
“I see five,” the corporal said from the opposite flank.
The Israeli officer recalled his initial doubts: three men were too few to handle a determined enemy but with only twelve operators, the fourth team afforded more coverage. Now came the crunch. “Moshe, ask them to come to us.”
The sergeant opened his mouth to speak when the Iranians started shooting.
In the next fifteen seconds, eight men fired more than 130 rounds. The dank night was split by muzzle flashes from AKs and Galils, and both sides took casualties. As the focus of the Muslims, the Israeli sergeant had little chance. He took four rounds through the torso and crumpled to the earth.
The lieutenant and the corporal used their positions to advantage. They shot down two enemies before the
