State of Attack (12 page)

But the ricochet hit the left side of the thigh of one of the two men who’d come to Ibrahim’s aid. He didn’t see any of the man’s blood, just heard a yelp as a puppy makes when it gets its paw stood on. As the man twisted to the mud, Ibrahim saw that he wore a ski mask and a combat jacket. The able fighter didn’t flinch and opened up with his Uzi submachine gun, peppering the splayed bodies beneath him until he’d emptied the clip. Stockless, with a telescoping bolt design, the weapon was a mere seventeen inches long. It was light and easily concealable compared to an AK-47, but at close quarters the Uzi was as lethal as an SMG three times its size.

When the muzzle blast had ended, the man, whose face was covered by the drawn-over ends of his tasselled headdress, bent down to his comrade. Just then he shouted up the shaft. “Ibrahim is alive,’ he said.

Ibrahim stood up and moved forwards, his hand on his Glock, although it was hanging low. He watched the man unwrap his headdress and use it as a makeshift tourniquet, the victim squealing when he’d raised the leg and had tightened the knot.

“Come, Ibrahim, come quick.”

The voice came from just beyond the exit to the tunnel and it was Arabic rather than Hebrew. Ibrahim put his hand on the man’s shoulder as he comforted the other. His face was densely bearded and his eyes were bloodshot.

“God be with you with you, brother,” Ibrahim said.

“And with you. This is my nephew,” the man said, as he took off the other’s ski mask.

The nephew was no more than seventeen years old, Ibrahim thought, the face contorted in agony, as he moaned and mumbled verses from the Qur’an.

“Go,” the man said.

“Thank you, brother.”

“Quickly now,” the same voice from beyond the end of tunnel said.

After Ibrahim had scaled the steel ladder, an open hand appeared from where the shaft connected to the second basement. Ibrahim ignored it and clambered up the slight incline and surveyed the scene. The concrete floor was covered with rubble and detritus. There was a huge hole in the floor above that extended up two storeys to the ceiling proper. Bright sunlight was pouring in at angle, filled with visible dust, sparkling intermittently like tiny diamonds.

Five Hamas fighters were standing among the wreckage, one holding an RPG, the others Chinese Type56 assault rifles, with their distinctive curved magazines. Ibrahim knew that they’d been smuggled in by special units of the Revolutionary Guard from Iranian ports, a journey to Gaza via Sudan and the Sinai. One of them walked over and, shouldering his rifle, replaced the slab that had covered the tunnel exit and kicked over some brick dust and debris to camouflage it.

The fighters wore civilian clothes, T-shirts and jeans, rather than the back or khaki uniforms of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the Hamas-affiliated military wing of which they were a part. But they all had their faces and necks covered by cloth masks, with only their eyes showing. Around the masks were the emerald-green headbands of the Brigades emblazoned with Arabic text, stating, “There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his Prophet”.

If anyone needed proof of Shia Iran’s hatred of Israel it was that they’d wholeheartedly backed Hamas in the Palestinian conflict with the Jews. Hamas were Sunnis, after all. But now there was talk of the Iranians teaming up with the US to help out in Iraq, although Ibrahim guessed that was to assist them in their negotiations over their nuclear programme. Whatever, he’d always known they weren’t to be trusted.

He knew Hamas would never degrade itself in such a manner. Founded in 1987 during the First Intifada, the uprising against Jewish occupation of the Palestinian territories, Hamas was an acronym for
arakat al-Muqāwamah al-
Islāmiyyah
, or Islamic Resistance Movement. It sought an Islamic state free of Israel and was funded mainly by wealthy Sunnis in the Gulf States, and, of course, Iran. The geopolitics of the Middle East was complicated, he knew.

“A patrol?” Ibrahim asked.

He passed his hand over the ground where five dead Israelis lay, their faces covered by gasmasks. Blood oozed slowly from scorched entry wounds over their already sodden uniforms. Given their kit and insignia, he knew they were regulars rather than Special Forces. This confused him. If they were after him they would have used elite troops, but the dead could even be conscripts.

“A patrol, yes,” the man who’d covered the exit said. “And more will come soon. Border guards. We must go now. They went down the tunnel to escape, brother. They weren’t looking for you.”

“And the Egyptians in the tunnel?” Ibrahim asked.

“Jihadist brothers. They were protecting the other end of the tunnel from outside the house. We radioed them.”

“We have a present for you too, brother,” the man carrying the RPG said.

“A present?” Ibrahim asked.

“You will not be disappointed, brother.”

As his Hamas brothers nodded, Ibrahim wondered what sort of present they had for him in Gaza City. It had been a bizarre day on many levels, he thought.

Chapter 30

Crane had asked for an early meeting with the Director of the CIA. Given he was the head of the Clandestine Service, it wasn’t difficult to arrange, especially due to the teaser he’d said on the secure landline a couple of hours ago.
We haven’t seen anything like this before.
It wasn’t a cheap trick, either. Fresh intel had just come in from the Mossad, and when Crane had been handed the printout he’d shouted a string of expletives that even he’d felt ashamed of afterwards, especially given that his female assistant had to suffer hearing the tirade.

In the Original Headquarters Building at Langley – otherwise known as the OHD – he entered the voluminous main lobby, passing over the famous CIA granite floor seal. More than fifteen feet in diameter, the seal comprised an eagle’s head and the shield decorated with the sixteen-point compass star, representing the gathering together of world intelligence data.

He took an elevator to the first floor after glancing at the Memorial Wall on the north wall. Flanked by the Stars and Stripes and the CIA flag, there were one-hundred and two stars, a simple yet profound tribute to those men and women of the agency who’d been killed on active service for their country.

Getting out, he walked over the gleaming black and white tiles, past the row of official portraits of the former directors hanging on the wall to his left, beginning with Rear Admiral Sidney W. Souers. It had been agreed that he’d meet with the present director in an ultra-secure, lead-lined office that was swept for bugs four times a day and was off limits to all but those with sensitive compartmented information security clearance. If anyone entered it who was without the electronic pass around their wrist, the computer screens would shut down, the lights would go out and the alarms would sound.

Either side of the office door, two CIA operatives were standing still, their black lounge suits concealing, he knew, Beretta M9 semi-autos. Recognizing him, they nodded. The door was opened by the youngest guy with a Marine-style haircut.

Crane looked at him before entering. “You got alopecia, son?”

“No, sir,” he replied.

Crane smiled and walked inside the office.

CIA Director Martina Truman was a trim, olive-skinned fifty-five-year-old, with earlobe-length grey-brown hair and a small mole above her right eyebrow. Sitting at a chrome and glass desk to the right of the door, she wore a navy-blue jacket with a silver broach over a silk blouse. She looked to be of Mediterranean descent, but her family had originated from County Cork in Ireland. Her eyes looked as if they were made from shiny black ceramic.

She’d risen quickly, mostly due to her managerial skills, but also because she’d received two Distinguished Intelligence Crosses, which was almost unheard of, given that in the history of the agency only thirty-six had been won. The highest decoration awarded by the CIA, both citations read:
For voluntary acts of extraordinary heroism involving the acceptance of existing dangers with conspicuous fortitude and exemplary courage.
No one in the CIA disrespected Martina Truman, especially Crane. He had recommended her for the second cross.

She’d put on a desk lamp and was sipping a glass of what Crane knew to be green tea. She only ever drank green tea. Zero calories, he knew. As he walked over to the chair opposite her and the door was closed behind him, she said, “I’d offer you one, Dan, but it doesn’t taste so good with sugar in it.”

“I like my sugar,” Crane said. “It takes the edge off.”

“Off what?”

“My propensity for rudeness.”

“Dan, you’re the rudest man I know. You should be one of those radio talk show hosts. You’d get rich.”

“I am rich, Martina. The good Lord put me on this earth for a purpose and in doing His will I am rich in spirit,” he said with a broad smile.

“I never could tell whether you’re lying or not. So what’s getting you so twitchy?”

Crane sat down and his expression changed to one of stern seriousness. “The Mossad have fresh intel. The attacks are going to be against the US military, our main allies, too. The Brits, French and Germans.”

After her initial shock they had discussed the intel in as much detail as there was, which wasn’t a whole lot, and there were only snippets of further intel coming through intermittently. But one thing was clear. The attacks were not going to be carried out against the military on foreign soil. They were going to be targeted in their bases in the homeland.

“I’ll be advising FPCON BRAVO, director,” Crane said. “We don’t have a specific target. We don’t even know the nature of the attack at this time. We can’t say this is a localized condition.”

FPCON stood for Force Protection Condition. It was a terrorist threat system overseen by the Department of Defense. FPCON described the amount of measures needed to be taken by security agencies in response to various levels of terrorist threats against military facilities on the continental United States.

There were five FPCONs in total and the final word on which one was appropriate was down to the commander of US Northern Command. FPCON BRAVO, which Crane felt was appropriate, applied when an increased and more predictable terrorist threat activity existed, but nothing indicated that a particular installation was being targeted.

As a result of it being implemented extra armed guards would protect military facilities. It also included keeping all personnel involved in antiterrorist plans at their places of duty, limiting access points to the absolute minimum, strictly enforcing control of entry, double ID checks, and an increase in the random search of vehicles.

She nodded. “Who’s behind it?”

“The finger is pointing firmly at Ibrahim.”

“Ibrahim, huh. The elusive Sword of Islam.” She sat back and her dark eyelashes fluttered.

“Looks like he’s got ambitious,” Crane said. “Not content to be a mujahedeen all over the Middle East. He’s back in Gaza, according to the Mossad.”

She leaned forwards now and moved her fingers into a ridge. “Are you sure?”

Crane began to ride the chair. “Only what the Israelis are telling us. It’s all second hand in that sense.”

“How are the Israelis getting their intel?”

“A male Mossad operative infiltrated this Hamas offshoot. There’s an old guy pulling the strings but we don’t know who he is. They call him the Amir. But I heard a few minutes before I came in here that the Mossad guy has disappeared.”

“Let’s hope he hasn’t been taken alive. If he has, he’ll be dead by now or wish he was, the poor man.” She stopped, looked a little embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Dan.”

“It’s okay,” Crane said, knowing that she knew all about his incarceration by Hezbollah back in the eighties; all about his twelve-month recovery in body and mind, too. But nobody recovered one-hundred per cent from an ordeal such as his. The scars on his body had faded, but he still had nightmares as vivid and real as the days they’d tortured him.

“How many do we have on the ground in Gaza?” she asked.

“Five operations officers and a specialist cryptographer. Fifteen more officers on the way from Syria. A dozen paramilitaries from the US.”

“Let’s just hope we get the chance to lift the sonofabitch, Ibrahim,” she said. “I want you to put together a group only answerable to me. I’ll leave it to your discretion where you find them.”