Massive Attack (A Guy Niava Thriller Book 1)

by Dana Arama

  He was mad. Much more so than he ever had been before. He was mad and I had to get out of there before it was too late. But the door was closed, and Yassin hadn’t signaled that the meeting was over yet. It felt as though the walls of the basement were closing in on me. I asked with studied calm, “Do you have a plan for how you’re going to do it?”

  “Not entirely. But I have preliminary plans, fantasies of attacking a ground station. That would paralyze the heart of the satellite. I still don’t know if I should take over the station or blow it up. Maybe we’ll just attack the satellite itself. I don’t know yet. I’m not sure of the way, but I do know that it is going to hurt.” He was serious and for a moment seemed lucid. “It all depends on the people I manage to recruit. A cyber-attack is totally different from a physical attack.”

  I said, “I understand.” I was being deliberately vague, and it must have seemed as though I wasn’t as interested as he’d have liked, because his madness immediately flared up.

  “Maybe I’ll be able to recruit hackers to cause a satellite war. American satellites to attack Israeli satellites or vice versa. Divide and conquer, Murat, divide and conquer.”

  “When are you planning this attack?”

  He didn’t answer, so I repeated, “Yassin, when are you planning this attack?”

  “In the near future,” he answered mysteriously. I didn’t like this vague time period at all.

  “This isn’t a simple attack at all,” I said. I wondered if he would ask me to take part, perhaps to supply him with weapons. He liked secrecy, but if I didn’t include the Russian mafia it would be a blatant violation of my agreement with them.

  Yassin laughed. He laughed so hard that he stopped playing, rolling his head back as if I had told the funniest joke and he was the sole spectator in my one-man standup comedy show.

  “What is so funny?”

  “It is not easy for the less successful. But it is very true for me and honestly, it is really not that difficult. There are some who have tried, but I will succeed! I just can’t allow people like you, the ones I call brother, to mess up my plan.” He gave me a warning look. A second later he smiled at me as if he had not threatened me a moment ago and added, “I will let you in on a big secret, a very well-kept secret. The attack yesterday in Paris also wasn’t easy. Some of the people were Parisians, but others I recruited myself. The same goes for the weapons. Most of the financing was mine. The timing, I decided! Now think how poetic it could be, to plan an attack on American soil next week, only a few days before Thanksgiving?” His hard look sent shivers down my spine. He added, coldly, “Whoever is left alive will have the holiday to give thanks.”

  All the thoughts on terror, all the photographs from Paris which I had ignored, all of them resurfaced in my mind, and the only thing I could think of was ‘how do I get out of it?’

  I asked, “So it will be before Thanksgiving?”

  “Are you interested? You already have plans for the coming week?”

  “I am interested in knowing.”

  “You ask too many questions,” he answered in a low warning, tone, “Are you planning on leaving here and going to alert the Americans?” The seven wonders surrounding him were listening intently to our conversation. I got the feeling that they were only waiting for a small signal from him to kill me.

  “Are you crazy? You are attacking Israeli targets on American soil. And me? I am running from the Americans,” I reminded him quietly. “They are looking for me because of the kidnapped Israeli kid, whose whereabouts are unknown to me at the moment.”

  He ignored my hint about the kid and said, “Because the Great Satan and the Little Satan are bound together, this is nothing better than attacking the one on the other’s land. The Great Satan will not be able to supply protection. Israel will understand that it is isolated, under attack and without means of retaliation.”

  I wanted to tell him that he was a megalomaniac, but we were beyond that now. He was a sociopath, the son of a British aristocrat, and megalomania was in their genes. He had chosen his path and the Islam was a tool in his hands to fulfill his devilish plans. If he didn’t have extreme Islam to hang onto, he would have become a serial killer. I didn’t want to take part in these kinds of crimes, but I knew now, since the plans had been exposed to me, that I had no choice but to offer my services. If I didn’t, I would not be allowed out of this basement alive. I put a smile on my face, which I hoped didn’t look too fake and asked, “And how can I contribute to this event?”

  ***

  “I don’t have a lot of time. I have less than two weeks and I have many preparations to make. This is a singular opportunity.”

  “How do you plan on attacking without enough intel?” I tried to use reason to dissuade Yassin from carrying out this disturbed and overly ambitious plan that I was being unwillingly dragged into.

  He scowled at me, reminding me of my father when he was disappointed in me. “Murat, Murat, Murat. You are a prince. Think like a prince. People like us are godsends from Allah. With his help and ours, the infidels will suffer the consequences.”

  “Prior knowledge, Yassin, prior knowledge.” I refused to get carried away in his religious exuberance. Even though I was born Albanian, to a Muslim family, I’d never had any kind of special interest in God. As a matter of fact, the first time I had sworn to do something in the name of God, was when I’d promised to look after the kid, and He had disappointed me already.

  “How are you planning on attacking a satellite when you don’t have the faintest clue how satellites work.”

  “But I can obtain a father who is worried about his son, who understands a lot about the subject…” Yassin looked at me for a moment as if I were a child and added arrogantly, “People like me are capable of planning an attack so intricate and so devastating that it will be unstoppable. You can’t even begin to imagine what is going to happen here. I can see that you can’t comprehend the scope of the disaster that is going to occur. You haven’t understood a thing, even though you had a list of all the equipment in your hands. The satellite that I desire is just a small detail in the array of a massive attack. What I am planning is going to be a work of art. It is going to turn the damage to the Twin Towers into something unimportant in the history books. After my attack, the whole landscape of the Middle East is going to change. Islamic leadership is going to change, the amount of world terror is going to change. If I say I want a satellite, who is going to stop me?”

  “Who do you want to attack, and where and how. When you say: ‘I want to ruin their satellite…” How do you think it is going to happen? Do you know what a weapon against satellites is? Only a few countries have such an ability…” Suddenly, it sank in. “You are planning on stealing such a weapon, aren’t you?”

  “Why steal, when I can buy?”

  I didn’t answer him. My thoughts were galloping. I knew the right person in Russia who could sell me such a weapon. The Russians had such a weapon. I was sure of it. I wondered if they would be willing to sell it to me or Yassin without the intervention of the Red Mafia. I thought about the pact I was about to break with the Russians. Should I bring them in as a mediator? Would my reference buy me any credit? It will definitely buy me a few more years to live. I wondered what percentage they would take for themselves.

  Yassin laughed mockingly, the way he used to when we were kids. “I am sure you are already calculating how much you are going to make from this deal.” Then he became serious. “There are other ways to hit a satellite. Do you remember the Talk-Talk breach, the British communication company?”

  “I read they are still trying to fix the problem.”

  “That’s right. The damage didn’t occur because someone sabotaged one of their satellites. It occurred because someone infiltrated their computer system.”

  “So, what are you planning? To break into the Israeli satellite’s computer system?
”

  “Maybe I am planning on stealing their satellite. Or destroying it. Or maybe none of the above.”

  I picked up the glass of tea, but my hands were unsteady, and the boiling drink spilled across the table. I jumped up and my chair fell backwards. There was something eerie in Yassin’s quiet answers that made me shake uncontrollably. Yassin’s men, who moments ago had been deep in fanatical prayer, now stood around me, guns drawn. The look on Yassin’s face changed. He looked as if he had suddenly remembered something important. “Omar, I need you to bring me Juliana and the boy.”

  “When?” asked the man called Omar.

  “Start working on it immediately. They can be here by tomorrow. I want them here, next to me. Soon I will be in the headlines and I will become wanted here, and in England as well. Juliana and the boy are my weak spot. If Allah decides that I should die a martyr’s death, I want my son and my wife with me in heaven. Even though it isn’t very likely -- from here we would most likely make our way to one of the Arab countries waiting to grant us a king’s welcome.” And then he turned to me. “You…” He pointed a finger at me and smiled. “You are very lucky.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief and hoped he hadn’t seen it. I wanted to hear him say the words, ‘You are not needed’ or ‘You can carry on living’ or even, ‘Your contribution will be getting me the weapons’.

  “Why am I in luck?” I asked. All those sentences or one similar one, would be a sign I would be getting out of here.

  “Because you can die a martyr’s death without anyone trying to stop you.”

  Guy Niava,

  The outskirts of the estate, November 14,

  2015, 1:10 p.m.

  We are going to leave the room with El Desconocido. You, Laura, keep Zorro alive. Is that clear?”

  The air in the room was frozen. I looked around at all those present. They were all staring, as if magnetized, at the barrel of Laura’s gun, which remained pointed at Zorro.

  I added in simple Hebrew, “If you kill her, we will all die.” I hoped she understood.

  It was a very intense moment. I couldn’t say that it endangered the mission, because the information had already been received by those who were supposed to receive it, but the situation was unstable. If she took the shot, the whole balance of the room would change, and the next shot would be at me.

  “Laura, get a hold of yourself! Now!”

  She moved the gun away with the same deliberate slowness she had used to point the gun at Zorro. The ice had melted a little and I could almost hear it crackle. We all began to breath freely again.

  “Raphael, I need you to calm your men and have them put down their weapons. We will leave quietly. Gail and your soldier will accompany us, and we will part as friends.”

  “Where are you going from here?” he inquired and then added, “I will need to send someone to pick them up.”

  “We’ll be going north, and our people will pick us up. They will let you know when they are safe. They won’t need to be picked up, but they may need a security escort after we leave the area.”

  He nodded and said, “I am not happy about this, but I will be even unhappier if the Mossad hunts me down.” He smiled at Gail and said, with surprising tenderness, “At least I am sure that your sister will protect you.”

  Gail looked angrily at Laura and announced, “She never looked out for me when we were kids, but I am sure now that she will look after me so well that I doubt she will let me return to you.”

  “Don’t let that worry you now. Nothing and no one will come between us.”

  “I want you to restrain them before we open the door,” I said, cutting their love scene short.

  El Desconocido shot me a disdainful look, but without arguing picked up the phone and pressed a button. Apparently, it was an estate-wide public address system, for we heard his voice throughout the estate: “Amigos, soldiers…” Outside, the noises quietened down. “I am leaving the room with friends. Put your weapons down, because now is not the time for war.”

  Zorro translated his words. El Desconocido was definitely planning to hunt us down. This was not the time, which meant that the right time was yet to come. Our invasion had harmed his soldiers, killed some of them even, and now we were taking his beloved. Those were actions that a drug lord, no matter how civilized, could not accept peacefully. Our actions required retaliation, but not now. El Desconocido was smart and level-headed. He would retaliate, but at a time and a place of his choosing.

  “Gail will leave first. Just so you are aware, in case you weren’t clear enough with your men, she is going to be in the line of fire.”

  El Desconocido once again picked up the phone and his voice was heard outside. “I am warning you… Put your weapons down! If anyone dares to shoot, I will roll his body in tar and burn him and his family alive!”

  The door opened slowly, and Gail peeked outside first. “Don’t shoot!” she ordered.

  They were everywhere and very angry. It was no wonder; we had humiliated them, entered their guarded territory, killed their friends. They were angry and what kept them at bay was the look on their boss’s face and his threat. Would someone defy his word? I wondered if one of them was family or friends of one of the soldiers that had been hit – if so, their need for revenge would be stronger than the need to obey an order.

  Everyone else in the room followed, with El Desconocido in the middle and Gail in the front. We walked like in a funeral procession, the silence around us extremely tense. With a serene expression on my face, I tried to ascertain any movement, slow or sudden, a defiant gaze or a silent signal between two people. I also sharpened my hearing to hear a gun or rifle being loaded, a rapid movement followed by a swish of material or a crunch of gravel underfoot, a second before taking position to shoot. There had been no promise that there wouldn’t be someone who’d like to take the opportunity to kill off everyone in our gang, including the boss, to take over his position.

  “Hurry up!” I ordered quietly and the whole gang took longer strides.

  We entered what looked like a garage. There were seven vehicles. “Which car would you like?” El Desconocido asked the room -- but I knew expected an answer from me.

  “We’ll take this one,” I said and pointed towards a white van, similar to one the dead meth cooks had used.

  I preferred this van to a Jeep, which was open and would therefore turn each and every one of us into targets. The van provided a cover from snipers. I just hoped it didn’t have a built-in GPS, or if it did that it didn’t work or was otherwise faulty. A slow connection will allow us to continue with our plan without revealing our direction in real time.

  “The keys are in the vehicle. Just allow me to say goodbye to my beloved.”

  Zorro’s eyes widened, but Gail sidled up to him, arms open for a hug, and didn’t seem to want to let go. She stood on her tiptoes, her arms around his neck, his hands on her hips. He burrowed his face into the curve of her neck and inhaled deeply of her scent. Suddenly Hadas’ face flashed through my mind. I turned my head away from them involuntarily.

  “Okay, okay, we don’t have all day.” Zorro clearly found it hard to deal with her loss. The two lovers parted, and Gail climbed into the back of the van. El Desconocido pointed at me and announced, “I am holding you responsible for her safety. Don’t let Zorro near her. Don’t let her even touch one strand of hair on her head. Make sure she comes back by the end of the day.”

  “We will set her free as soon as we are out of danger and regroup with the American forces who are waiting to pick us up at the northern border,” I said. “That is where I’ll relinquish my responsibility.”

  I ordered Laura to climb into the back of the van. I directed Gomez to sit in the driver’s seat, with Zorro next to him. I sat on the other side of Gail. This was an effective way to separate the enemy forces. Gomez started the van and El Desconocido wa
tched us as we drove off. Through the back window I saw all his guards surrounding him. One of his men lifted his rifle but El Desconocido stopped him with a brief gesture.

  The van drove along the dirt road, leaving a trail of dust behind. We drove for about ten minutes, and all that surrounded us were farms. Soon we reached the junction and I ordered Gomez to turn south.

  “But you told El Desconocido that you were going north, towards the United States.”

  “And now I am changing my mind. Go south, please.” I saw the distress on Gomez’s face and his unwillingness to turn the wheel in the direction I’d requested. Zorro lifted her weapon towards him and repeated my request in her own words. “South. ¡Ahora!”

  In my hidden earpiece, I heard the voice of the satellite controller, saying something I’d waited two days to hear. “He is trying to call the United States. We are tracing the number.” The rest of the sentences were instructions to the pick-up point on the Guatemalan border, directions I’d passed onto Gomez.

  I caught a conversation between Gail and Laura, which started as intimate whispers, but very quickly the volume rose.

  “I can force you to carry on with me!”

  “And what good is that going to do?”

  I thought that maybe it would be a good idea to separate the two, but I’d seated everyone so I could be in the optimal place to keep an eye on everything.

  “Come back and live with me!” I saw tears in Laura’s eyes. “You won’t have to see him or speak with him or hear from him. You’ll live with me.” Her tone was somewhere between giving an order and begging.

  “I love him.” Gail’s voice was quiet and in control. She pointed towards Zorro with her head and added, “She understands me.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, she can have him. They’re from the same world, Gail. You’re not!”