The End of Terror

by Howitt, Bruce

  Soleimani, who spoke and understood some Hebrew, was surprised and it showed on his arrogant face. “I am glad you understand the chain of command, Major,” he spat out.

  Macha had the border crossing between Lebanon and Israel at Metula alerted and the Mercedes was now at the border. As they crossed into Israel, Major Avigold, the commander of the kidnap operation, notified Hijack that they could release their civilian captives and reunite them with their “borrowed” vehicles.

  The Lebanese guards at the Metula crossing were regular Lebanese soldiers, not Hezbollah or Islamic militia. When they understood what was unfolding, they had no problem cooperating with the Israelis. They hated and despised the IRGC and Hezbollah and had a great loathing for General Soleimani. Some of them actually cheered when they saw he had been captured. This only added to Soleimani’s boiling fury.

  At Major Avigold’s command, the car stopped, and the general was allowed to alight. Major Avigold saluted him and said, “General, it has been a pleasure escorting you. Soon you will join your masters, after a short helicopter ride courtesy of the IDF.”

  The hard mask of anger and disgust on Soleimani’s face said it all. As Avigold’s driver and Sergeant Ungermann hauled him, still struggling against the shackles, to the waiting helicopter, they noticed that Soleimani had soiled himself. The great general was a very different person than the one who had been bedding his mistress three hours ago.

  For the Israelis, this was vindication. Soleimani had been in their sights for a long time. For twelve years, he had been a dictator ruling Lebanon with an iron hand, and for the past seven years, he had been the guiding force behind the Assad forces in Syria, who were just puppets on the Islamic Revolutionary Guards’ string.

  Israel had had Soleimani scheduled for assassination by the Mossad in 2011. Somehow, the information leaked to the Americans, and the US president and his secretary of state were furious. They knew it would jeopardize the secret nuclear deal they were negotiating with Iran. The United States had passed the information through the secretary of state to the Iranians. Iran made it clear that they would immediately break off the secret talks if anything happened to Soleimani as a result of Israeli actions. The US president was emphatic in a direct discussion with the prime minister — all hands off Suleimani. This single action cost the American president all his political capital with Israel.

  CHAPTER 62

  Tehran and Bandar Bushehr, two hours later

  Word filtered back to the remainder of the Iranian military leadership that there had been massive explosions and destruction at all seven nuclear facilities. The only exception was Bandar Bushehr, where the Sayeret team were compromised by a patrol and had to fight their way out to the extraction point. Otherwise all teams had been successful.

  The Bandar Bushehr team, led by Lt. Aaron Lazar, had set up their overwatch sniper, Trooper Jona Grosner, and were working their way down a hill to the main gate of the facility when an Iranian patrol spotted them. Trooper Grosner was able to keep the Iranians at bay and disabled their vehicle, but the alarm was called in and Lt. Lazar determined that they would not have time to enter the main electrical controls area to place their explosives. They quickly set explosives with a detonator for fifteen minutes in a main air duct over the counters of the control room, then scurried away toward their extraction point.

  Surprisingly, security at the plant was relatively light and at first hesitant to react to the warning from the jeep patrol. This allowed Lt. Lazar and his men to get in and out without any serious opposition.

  Since Bandar Bushehr was on the western side of Iran, their extraction plan had been to be picked up by Israeli navy commandos from the coast and transported to one of the Israeli submarines lurking in the Persian Gulf.

  Unfortunately, their hastily deployed explosives had not been properly located in the key target areas, so the resulting explosion was only a third as great as it should have been. Even so, it caused tremendous damage, and when the other six sites exploded more or less at the same time, the Iranian regime realized that their long-term nuclear strategy was in tatters and no longer viable.

  After eluding Iranian military patrols, the team lay low for one full day and night in an abandoned industrial building near the Bandar Bushehr harbour. At one point around 1800hrs, a small Quds Force patrol of four men entered the building searching for the team. Sergeant Lazar and three of his commandos moved quietly behind the Iranians and silently dispatched them with their combat knives. Trooper Nahum Weiss quickly slipped outside the building and checked for any reinforcements that may have been on their way. After staying concealed behind some discarded oil drums, he came back inside and reported to Lazar that all was clear. The Israelis then collected the bodies of the Quds soldiers and hid them under corrugated metal sheets that were lying around the floor of the building. Until they ripened and the flies gave away their location, they would remain hidden for forty-eight hours, giving the Israeli team time to extract.

  Later in the night, once they had established communication with the submarine via the AWACS, they quickly made their way to the beach and were picked up by two Zodiacs, which carried them out to the submarine Rahav.

  Iran was now in turmoil. The leadership had been kidnapped and being held in the Little Satan’s hands. Their nuclear plants, on which they had squandered billions of dollars in treasure and political capital, were totally destroyed. Their vaunted Republican Guards and the Basij had been decapitated; all of their leaders and commanders had either been killed or captured. Their one source of cash revenue — oil — was immobilized, since the Kharg terminal was destroyed and the oil storage facility at Bandas Abbas was a smoking ruin. Adding to the IRGC misery was the knowledge filtering in that similar destruction had happened in North Korea, thus cutting off any rescue of their nuclear plans and programs or an ability to threaten Israel and any other countries opposed to their terror regimes.

  There was no guiding authority, and the various factions within the country would soon begin to squabble among themselves. They each vied for power as the Opposition Party coordinated its efforts to wrest control from the remaining clerics and mullahs.

  CHAPTER 63

  North Korea

  Mossad operators of Vietnamese Chinese descent were finalizing their mission to decapitate the leadership of the Kim regime. For this operation, they had another team of agents hidden in plain sight in Pyongyang, where their objective was to destroy the seat of Kim Jong-un’s government.

  They recognized that getting up close to Kim and his cronies was not feasible. Eli Naftalin had acquired intelligence that indicated Kim and his leadership group would be celebrating the intended missile and hydrogen bomb test at the National Assembly parade. In Kim’s usual bombastic fashion, he had ordered a series of parades to celebrate the planned nuclear missile launch and detonation.

  Meanwhile, Naftalin had devised a plan in which his Vietnamese operators would infiltrate the depot where the parade was assembling, again posing as Chinese dignitaries. They had arrived with some pomp and circumstance, completely deceiving the North Koreans in charge. Once inside their trucks and SUVs, they had managed to gain access and then take control of two of the missile carriers and their missiles.

  The Israelis had originally intended to fill the fuel containers of the missiles with thousands of ball bearings and metal shards as well as several kilograms of enhanced Semtex. The plan was that when the transporters passed beneath the reviewing stand where Kim would be celebrating, the explosives would detonate, sending ball bearings into the stands in a hail of death and destruction. After very careful due diligence, the plan was abandoned on two counts — first, the terrible toll in civilian and collateral lives, and second, the Israelis were not convinced the plan would sufficiently neuter the Kim regime.

  After much review and often heated debate, another plan was conceived. The operators would release a noxious but nonlethal gas by way of several drones that would fly by the reviewing stand
. The gas would incapacitate all the people and security forces on or around the stand, but only temporarily. Anyone inhaling the gas would involuntarily vomit and lose control of their bladder and bowels. Such physical acts, it was hoped, would psychologically affect the actions of the North Koreans. Analysts back in Israel had determined that when people, particularly men, uncontrollably urinated or defecated there was a feeling of shame which clouded their thinking; it made them less aggressive and more compliant.

  The Mossad teams, in conjunction with the South Korean Special Forces, had set all the explosives on the Musudan-ri missile and nuclear site to explode after the initial parade in Pyongyang commenced. The Israelis, who were impersonating Chinese observers, had cleverly positioned themselves so as to release the drones carrying the gases as the missile transporters passed under the reviewing stands.

  Pho Hoc Luong was keenly observing the stand where Kim and his generals were gathered and noticed a disturbance among the leadership. They had just been informed about the Iranian operation and, while digesting that news, word suddenly came in that the Musudan-ri missile facility had also just been attacked. For about thirty seconds, there was pandemonium on the stand where Kim was seen gesticulating wildly and yelling at one of his generals. The gas-bearing drones flew rapidly along the line of the reviewing stand. The drones had been engineered to fly at a high rate of speed. Because of their speed and size, they were almost invisible to the naked eye until it was too late to take any evasive action. Within seconds, the one hundred-plus people on the stands, including Kim, collapsed. The North Korean soldiers surrounding the stands were also incapacitated.

  The initial shock and surprise allowed the Mossad and South Korean Seal teams to quickly insert themselves and collect the unconscious bodies of Kim and his key aides and military leaders. The sense of panic only increased as the North Korean soldiers were aghast at what they were witnessing and receiving no direction or orders.

  The Israelis and South Koreans took advantage of the momentary breakdown and carried the inert North Korean leadership into their two trucks that were part of the parade, then immediately drove out of the capital for the coast. Most North Koreans who observed this at first believed that the evacuation of the leadership was for their safety. It was only after an hour or so, when some semblance of order was restored, that the remaining people in authority recognized what had actually happened.

  The operators left the city unimpeded and continued west down the Youth Hero Highway that linked Pyongyang to the port of Namp′o. As their captives began to recover from the effects of the disabling gas, they struggled against their bonds and tried to understand what was happening to them. Kim and two of his aides were whispering, “Mok un Ling, where are we?”

  “Dear Leader, we appear to be in an army truck travelling at high speed. I don’t know where we are or where we’re going.”

  All three men were sitting, bound, in their own filth on the floor of the truck.

  “You are an imbecile!!” Kim shouted. “You are supposed to know where I am at all times!”

  At this point, one of the South Korean Seals, Lieutenant Hoo Soo Luk, cuffed the aide around the side of the head, glared into the enraged eyes of the Dear Leader, and shouted at him in Korean, “Shut the fuck up, you piece of blubbery trash! Your time has come, Dear Fucking Leader. Where you are is on your way to the International Court in The Hague, to be held to account for the thousands of crimes you have committed against humanity.”

  Then, with a vicious kick to Kim’s side, he exclaimed again, “Now, shut the fuck up!”

  Kim and his aides were so shocked by this attack on his Dear Leadership that they recoiled against the sides of the truck and remained silent for the balance of the road trip. The more time spent on the road, the greater the stench from urine, vomit, and feces in the prisoner transport.

  Kim the Dear Leader was so traumatized that he had become virtually incoherent. His shouting and attempted intimidation were not getting any results. The realization was sinking in that he was completely stripped of any power. Combined with the total humiliation of sitting in his own excrement in a vomit stained uniform, the cold truth hit hard — he was no longer the Dear Leader.

  CHAPTER 64

  Port of Namp′o, North Korea

  When they arrived dockside in Namp′o, the trucks drove directly alongside the Monrovian flagged freighter, Jubilant. The Jubilant had unloaded grain from Argentina and was waiting at the docks. In reality, the freighter and its crew were a deep cover Mossad asset regularly deployed to track illegal arms shipments from North Korea to Sudan and destined for Gaza and Hamas. Once the teams and their human cargo arrived at the dockside where the freighter was berthed, they quickly embarked.

  Surprisingly, the raids in the capital and destruction at the Musudan-ri missile facility had completely disoriented the military infrastructure of North Korea. During the drive from Pyongyang, there had been a total absence of military roadblocks and checkpoints. As they drove through, the Mossad operators observed they all appeared abandoned and deserted.

  Back in Pyongyang, the remnants of North Korean leadership were in such shock that their mounting fear caused them to delay issuing orders and implementing actions to stabilize the situation. So great was their fear of the Kim family and their ferocious outbursts that they were petrified of issuing any actionable order lest they be criticized or worse, countermanded by Kim or one of his family. The generals and military experts were still unaware of Kim’s capture and abduction and lived in fear of Kim and his sister.

  Once on board the freighter, Pho Huc Luong gave orders to the captain to release the mooring hawsers and begin setting a course for Darwin, Australia. The freighter was riding high without any cargo and could easily travel at 25 knots. Pho Luc wanted to get out of the harbour into international waters as quickly as possible, in the unlikely event that the North Koreans would connect the dots and try to restrain the vessel from leaving. Once in international waters, the freighter would be shadowed by South Korean naval assets and protected until she was well on her way into the South Pacific. The anticipated voyage would be six days.

  During this time, Kim and his entourage were kept in solitary confinement, in small, specially constructed holding cells. They would be watched and guarded 24 hours a day by members of the South Korean Special Forces. The cells were only eight feet square, each equipped with a straw mattress, a galvanized steel bucket for use as a toilet, and another chipped and rusty bowl filled with water of dubious cleanliness. There were no toiletries such as soap or toothbrushes and toothpaste. Toilet paper consisted of a few sheets of Chinese newsprint, which was rough and mostly ineffective. To round out the prisoners’ misery, their captors had also introduced a number of rats into the cells.

  The prisoners were fed a meal of tainted fish and maggot-infested rice once a day, accompanied by a small plastic bottle of stagnant water. Each prisoner competed with the rats for their meagre rations. A single caged low wattage light bulb burned 24 hours a day. The idea was to totally demoralize Kim and his group by exposing them to the similar treatment his own imprisoned citizens had experienced.

  By the third day, Kim and his top generals were feeling the pain of solitary and abusive confinement coupled with seasickness as the ship plowed through the rough Southern Seas. Each morning, they were awakened at 0500hrs and ordered out of their cells for interrogation. They were paraded individually to a small cabin where they sat in front of three military officers who proceeded to shout and scream at them. They were ordered to answer questions about the cruel and wicked behaviour of the regime. After each interrogation, they were taken back to their cells and as they entered they would be beaten with bamboo clubs. On occasion, the South Korean Seals would throw the prisoners to the hard steel floor and beat the soles of their feet just as the North Korean guards did in their prison camps.

  On the fourth day, Kim was totally demoralized and disoriented when he was abruptly dragged off his toilet buc
ket and paraded to the interrogation room. He had lost any semblance of bombast or dignity. As the guards dragged him to the interrogation room, he began to whimper and moan. The interrogating officers again unleashed furious shouting and screaming at him until he fell off the chair he had been placed on and curled into a fetal ball on the harsh steel deck, moaning and crying like a child. This was the Great Dear Leader. Now the South Koreans observed him as the Big Sack of Shit.

  By the time the ship docked in Darwin, Kim and his fellow prisoners were but shadows of their former selves. Completely broken in spirit and physically humiliated, they limped off the freighter in chains and onto a prison bus that drove them to the Darwin International Airport. The Israelis had arranged with the Australian government for an Israeli government plane to land at Darwin International. The prisoners were then shown to a secluded area within the airport, where they were allowed to shower and don clean blue prison garb, all the time under heavy guard of the South Koreans, who continually threatened and intimidated the prisoners.

  The South Korean Special Forces would accompany the Mossad operatives on the flight back to Rosh Pina as guards and escorts for their very important prisoners.

  During the voyage from Namp′o to Darwin, Kim had gone through many stages of disbelief, raging anger, and abject depression, exactly what Eli Naftalin had planned for him at Rosh Pinah all those months ago.

  At least now as he recognized and understood who his captors were, a great fear seized Kim Jong-un. All the sabotage and attacks on his nuclear operations have been carried out by only one nation, Israel. His understanding was that the ayatollahs in Iran would be wiping Israel off the map. That plan obviously had not materialized.