by Jack Leman
The message was very odd and signaled that something special was going on.
Oded took the report and rushed to the fifth floor to see the Director. Rushing out of the elevator, Clarit, the Director’s private secretary, met him. She was in her 50s and she tended to treat everybody, except the Director, as her children. But they all knew she was a woman of steel. She didn’t restrain from telling her mind to whoever dared argue with her. You didn’t want to be around her when she blew up.
“Wait a minute, Oded, I will see if he is free…” she said and entered the Director’s office.
Director Tamir was in deep thought. This morning he had received a phone call from his colleague, Brigadier General Amit Ahav, the Commanding Officer of the Israeli Air Intelligence Group (IAIG). He had told him their analysts had discovered a suspected fruit juice truck that might carry an Iranian missile in the streets of Damascus. His first question had been:
“How serious is your information?”
“Our computers confirmed the result of the imagery. I would say the information is 90 percent correct.” In the business of information gathering, that percentage was almost equal to a certitude.
“What’s its range?”
“According to our intelligence report, it can reach something between 150 and 350 km depending on the version.”
“That puts all the large cities of Israel within the range!”
“Yes, Tamir, unfortunately.”
Tamir had nerves of steel, but eight years at the head of such an organization as Mossad consumed him and his nerves. For a moment he thought of visiting a doctor for his stomach pains, but dismissed the idea immediately. He tapped his pen on the desk; he had more important things to do.
He turned to Clarit and nodded.
“Come in…” she said, holding the door for Oded.
The office of Tamir Cohen, Director of the Mossad, was as decorated and welcoming as a Protestant Church. He was not a pompous man. Just by looking at him you wouldn’t believe that he had been a brilliant Major General in the IDF, fought in the 1973 war as a tank battalion commander in the Sinai, and then spearheaded the mechanized divisions entering Lebanon in the 1982 war. He had been on very good terms with Ariel Sharon, who had put him in charge of counter-terrorism in Gaza. In the coming years he advised prime ministers on security measures until they appointed him to run the Mossad. His nomination was welcomed by all the staff. He soon proved true to the prestige he carried and turned the Mossad into a tremendous asset for the State of Israel. His unconventional methods and sharp analytical mind brought Mossad to fight with success against terrorism targeting Israel or Israelis anywhere in the world.
“Sit.” He motioned Oded to a chair. Maybe the office wasn’t pretentious, but just the fact of sitting across the big boss of the Mossad was intimidating enough.
“Sir, we are getting unusual communications traffic from the Syrian Air Force Intelligence Directorate in Damascus. Apparently, they gave an order to increase the alert level to block all routes from Damascus to the Lebanese border. The orders are to apprehend a fruit juice truck.”
“Fruit juice truck?”
That couldn’t be a coincidence.
Oded had all the attention of Tamir now.
“Sir, we also have information that the Syrian Air Force Intelligence alerted the Iranian al-Quds Intelligence in Damascus, who ordered Hezbollah to block the Lebanese border and to raise roadblocks on all roads going to the border.”
That was terrible news. If the Syrians, the Iranians, and Hezbollah were looking for the missile, it meant that they didn’t have a clue where the missile was or who had it. One thing was sure: they didn’t have it. So many groups would love to put their hands on such a weapon. This was a major security issue.
Tamir turned to Oded and asked.
“Do we have an address to start our search?”
“Before giving you an address, I would like to show you the transcript of a cell phone recording we made last night. It’s from Captain Hamza, the second in command of the Syrian Air Force Intelligence, who is calling a non-attributed number with orders to urgently send a team to the following coordinates. We checked the coordinates with our satellite pictures and it corresponds to a warehouse near Damascus.”
He didn’t need to tell his director they had recently succeeded in bugging the cell phones of most of the Syrian Intelligence officers. They had introduced in the cell phones a small virus code written by an Israeli startup, using an innocent-looking SMS publicity message sent from a local phone number. It gave them virtually the command of the infected mobile phones. They could eavesdrop on the conversations being held in the room even when the phone was not in use, or activate the camera unbeknownst to the owner.
“Yes… then?” Inquired impatiently the Director of the Mossad.
“An hour later the Syrian second in command received a call from the same non-attributed number, revealing that the warehouse was empty except… the bodies of six Syrian Special Forces soldiers… apparently executed.”
Tamir was flustered. He was more and more convinced an uncontrolled group, or terrorists, had hijacked the missile.
“We checked the address, Sir, it’s near the Bulgarian Embassy in Damascus. Just across the street, there is a small industrial zone made up of small warehouses and car repair shops. I tried to check if we had any assets nearby, but I don’t have clearance for that information.”
Tamir picked up his phone and asked his secretary,
“Put me through Commanding officer at 89th Commando Brigade Headquarters.”
They waited in silence for a minute before the telephone rang.
“Meno, its Tamir… yes we will be there for the barbecue party thanks. Listen, we have a problem in an area near the center of Damascus. Do you have any assets who can make a visual check nearby? It’s important and we must do it quickly.”
He listened to the phone, covered it with his hand and whispered to Oded:
“There is a Duvdevan team somewhere there,” and continued to talk to Meno.
Duvdevan, also called Unit 271, was famous for running a network of undercover agents behind enemy lines. They were present in all the Arabic countries bordering Israel and were constantly feeding firsthand data to all the Israeli Intelligence Agencies.
“OK, Captain Oded Haim will call you in five minutes to give you the details… thanks Meno,” and he hung up.
“I don’t know if the assets available on the ground are our boys or locals, and it doesn’t matter at this point. Just establish a liaison with the Commando Brigade’s office and fill them in with the details you have. Let me know as soon as you get additional information.”
“… and ask Air Intelligence HQ if they have a team over there who could intervene…”
With that, Oded was dismissed.
19- Thursday 10:00 am
Al-Kisweh
20 km south of Damascus
The sun must have been up and bright by now, but the inside of the hangar was dark. The temperature was much cooler than outside. Ghassan walked the perimeter inside the building with his flashlight and saw that most columns had resisted the shock of the bombing. The ceiling seemed to have held up well despite some visible cracks in the cement. The entrance had no doors, but the ramp prevented any onlooker to see inside the basement. He avoided getting close to the militiamen and retreated towards the truck. He looked with anxiety at his Seles truck. The roof of the truck was one meter from the ceiling. When they arrived at the basement, the truck had passed unhindered from the entrance into the basement, but they needed some open place to reach their operational position and raise the missile, which meant they eventually had to be in open air above ground.
He looked around him, and he counted close to twenty uniformed militiamen. They seemed to be well disciplined. A group was disassembling and oiling their weapons under the supervision of a sergeant and those who had finished gathered in a corner to have a cigarette. They were discussing excite
dly, pointing with pride to the truck. A squad had taken defensive positions and was guarding the entrance of the basement.
He thought he heard some children play outside. He started walking out of the building to check, but was rudely stopped by a guard who pointed his machine gun at him.
“You cannot go out!” he said.
Ghassan froze. He could not see it, but he was sure the guard had his finger on the trigger and would not hesitate to follow his orders and shoot him.
This time he was sure that he heard children playing nearby, which meant that the place was inhabited. He retreated slowly and walked towards the truck. Sergeant Fuad was observing him with his back to the door of the truck. His cigarette glowed in the dark. Ghassan approached him until he could see his eyes. Fuad’s eyes were filled with anger and disgust.
“Why did you do that? Why do you work for these guys?” he asked.
Ghassan felt the heat of shame building in him. He said in a shaky voice:
“I am not working with these guys, but I have to do what they tell me to. They are holding my family hostage. All of them: father, mother, wife and my three children.”
The engineer nodded, but his anger had not subsided. Ghassan waited for Fuad to acknowledge at least the difficult circumstances he was in, but all he saw were two glaring eyes. They heard a group of fighters walking towards them and stopped their awkward discussion. They turned towards the leader of the group and stood with their chin up as a team.
“Good! You see, things go the right way when you obey my orders… My name is Abu Amr. As you might have already guessed, we are from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Syria. My men will take care of the security of the hangar, and there are lookouts posted outside. So, you do not go out unless you are told by me or my second in command, Youssef. Do you understand, Major? I saw you a minute ago trying, but be advised that my men have orders to shoot you. The second thing is I don’t want you to talk to my men except to Youssef here,” showing the man to his right, “… and Karim,” showing a short man wearing fatigues but carrying no visible weapons. “Understood? Youssef will cater to all your needs. Karim here,” he said putting his hand on the shoulder of the young man by his side “… is an electrical engineer and will assist you in your tests.”
They both nodded, but Ghassan wondered which tests he was talking about.
“Now…” continued Abu Amr.
“I want you to make all the pre-launch tests and confirm that when the order is given, you can be operational within 20 minutes… Once the tests are confirmed, can you be operational in that timeframe, Major?”
“Yes, I can do that,” said Ghassan, without thinking.
“In that case, get on with it; the quicker we complete the tests, the better for us all!”
They were dismissed. Ghassan and Fuad looked at each other and moved towards the truck with Karim in tow. A guard with his AK-47 hanging from his chest escorted them discreetly.
So, the operation was about launching the missile…
But first, they had to slide back the canopy of the truck and unload the generator.
Fuad started the engine of the truck and pressed a button on the dashboard. The Seles canopy started sliding backwards. The tip of a single large missile resting on a launcher rail appeared from under the canopy. The black tip of the missile contrasted with the white painting of the body. In the warehouse, everybody watched with awe this display of power; nobody in the hangar had seen from such a close distance a nine meter long missile with 250 kgs of high explosives. The idea of sharing the room with such a quantity of explosives was overpowering.
Fuad was checking from his rear window and he stopped the canopy from opening once he saw the generator appear on the bed of the truck.
They unloaded the Iranian made KIA generator with the help of the small crane installed on the truck. Having checked its fuel tank, Fuad pressed the start button, and the generator came to life. The sound of its engine was not regular. On the control panel, the needle of the gauge measuring the output was moving wildly. Fuad connected the generator to the power supply system of the truck. Once connected, the headlights of the truck flickered.
“I told you there was a problem,” whispered Fuad, looking into Ghassan’s eyes. A worried look appeared on Karim’s face. He squinted his eyes and concentrated on the sound the generator made. He gently put his hand on top of the generator and said, “It must be the alternator. I can feel the uneven vibrations. We need to open it up and see.” At least he seemed to be familiar with generators.
They killed the engine and opened the side panel of the generator. Karim dismantled the alternator panel and extracted the integrated circuit, which was the heart of the system. He put his flashlight under the green board and closely scrutinized it.
“Ah!” he mumbled as he pushed the board and the light towards Fuad. “Do you see?”
Fuad nodded. “Yeah, I see a thin fissure running from the edge here towards the center of the board.” There is no way to predict where the fissure will move next, disabling a component of the board.
Ghassan observed the two men discussing the fate of the board. He prayed the failure of the board would stop any planned launch, because he knew there was no way to repair the integrated circuit, it had to be replaced; and they did not have a spare in their inventory.
He looked back at the protruding tip of the missile. They had produced three missiles of this converted type. Each of them carried different experimental electronic equipment. The Israelis had destroyed two of them just before their delivery by the Iranians to Hezbollah in a warehouse of the Industrial Zone where they were at the moment. The missile on the truck was the last of the Fateh family of improved missiles.
Originally it had been a Fateh-110 surface-to-surface Iranian missile with a range of 250 km. They were built under license in Syria under the name of M600 or Tishreen. The Syrian-Iranian research and development team, which Ghassan was part of, had increased the range to 450 km, and had upgraded its guidance system.
The Syrians had tested the new missile a few times during the Syrian Civil War, but the results were not satisfying. The missile lacked the accuracy needed from such a weapon. They had landed some 500 meters away from their intended target and only scared the enemy with its noise.
The breakthrough came when they replaced the heavy steel body of the missile by light composite materials initially produced for civilian vehicles. The composite materials weighed much less than steel but formed a sufficiently resilient body. With a lighter overall bodyweight, they could either increase the normal payload of 250kg high explosives to 350kgs, keep the 250kgs explosives but extend the range, or improve the technical capacities with additional electronic equipment.
The Iranians had produced an advanced guidance system called Mobin, which was retrofitted on these three newest Fateh missiles. The latest version, which was now laying on the ramp of the truck, was the type Fateh-313. It had a GNSS or Global Navigation Satellite System. It used the American commercial GPS satellites to calculate precisely the coordinates of the missile and adjusted its flight accordingly. The guidance system could home in on GPS coordinates with a precision of 5 meters with a range of 600 km. Once the coordinates were introduced in the guidance system, you could launch the missile and forget it.
Another novelty was the missile’s on-board electronic counter-countermeasure system (ECCM). The easiest way to get rid of a missile is to mislead his electronic systems or cut his communication with the system guiding it. Once you jam the communications, the missile is lost and self-destructs. To that effect, the defenders use powerful jammers, which saturates all the frequencies with radio waves. That’s the traditional ECM, electronic countermeasures.
The ECCM which was on board of this missile prevented its guidance system from being jammed. Its on-board systems confused the missile-hunting interceptors, the Patriot missiles or rockets of the Israeli Iron Dome system, by projecting an image that looked like a decoy flying at a dif
ferent altitude than the real missile, and confusing the tracking radars. When the interceptor rocket came at the decoy’s proximity, it would explode without any damage to the Fateh.
If the Israelis suspected the Syrians could launch a missile with such advanced technology that would include all Israel within its range, they would bomb Damascus flat. They had kept the range and the precision of the missile secret, even from its operators like Sergeant Fuad, whose duty it was to enter the target data in the computer. Only Major Ghassan knew the efficiency of the missile, or so he thought. Since they took them hostage, the idea that some of that secret information might have been leaked had crossed his mind, but he refrained from asking Abu Amr questions about it. The leak must have come from above his grade, probably from the offices of the Ministry.
As Ghassan turned his attention to Karim, who was waving the damaged integrated circuit under Abu Amr’s nose, he suddenly had an idea about a plan to ditch the launching process.
20-Thursday 11:30 am
Ras al-Zayn
30km West of Damascus
She peeked into the street from the door of the courtyard. It was the third time she looked, and the street was still empty, but she didn’t have the guts to go out. That idiot, Said, had said he would be around her house at 10, now it was 11:30 and she hoped he had buzzed off by now. She heard her heartbeat in her ears. That’s it, she thought, and opened the door and stepped outside. She looked left and right, no-one in sight. She hurried to the warehouse and felt safe again when she was inside with her back on the door. She waited for her eyes to adjust to the dim light. Just in case someone arrived, she filled her bucket with brine. She wanted to be ready to leave the premises quickly.
She squeezed between the containers and reached the wall. She stopped and strained to hear the sounds from the street. No noise except the beat of her heart. She lifted the handle and dialed Ghassan’s mobile number. She waited and listened to the static, then it rang. Once, twice and a third time, maybe a bad time to call, she thought, and was ready to hang up when the phone was picked up. She waited. She heard breathing; then a voice she didn’t recognize said “Hello”; she hung up immediately without making any noise.
