Critical Error

by Murray Mcdonald

  As they approached the I-95, the sniper watched as they selected the I-95 S Trenton. They were heading somewhat surprisingly towards Washington. As the toll booths approached, he slowed down. At this time of night, the roads were quiet and the potential for being spotted increased dramatically. Washington was good. He made a call, a little more firepower was required.

  Chapter 35

  The Knesset Building

  West Jerusalem

  6.00 a.m. local

  Ben Meir closed the report and glared at the men in front of him. The chief of Mossad, Shin Bet and the Unit bowed their heads as if back at school and they had been called to the headmaster’s office.

  “You’ve just given me a 5,000 word report that could have been written in five, We. Don’t. Have. A. Fucking. Clue.”

  Nobody dared point out that that was technically six words.

  The chiefs of Mossad and Shin Bet both looked at Daniel Rosenberg, the head of the Unit and the man whose men were responsible for watching and losing the weapons.

  Ben didn’t miss the subtlety of their attempt. “Don’t look at him to take the blame, you’re all bloody useless. Now get out of here and find those weapons before those Arab fucks destroy us!”

  As the chiefs left through a side door, Ben pressed the intercom bottom and screamed “Next!”

  The day had started badly and he had no misconceptions that it was only going to get worse.

  “Good morning, Mr Meir,” said the head architect of the Jerusalem building project as he entered Ben’s office.

  “I’m not so sure you’ll think it’s that good a morning,” offered Ben as a greeting.

  The architect was responsible for a key component of Project Ararat, although of course he had no idea that was the case. As far as he was concerned, he was responsible for the building of a major new airport and a number of key government buildings. World renowned, he had dropped everything to take on the project for his spiritual homeland and holy city.

  “With two months to go, everything is on target. The sun is shining on another beautiful day and I’m not sure there is anything you can say that will spoil it.”

  Ben looked at the architect and almost felt sorry for him.

  “Well, try this,” he offered, straight-faced. “You don’t have two months, you have twelve days.”

  The architect initially laughed but on seeing Ben’s face, he stopped and looked questioningly at Ben who simply nodded in return.

  The Architect slumped a little in his seat.

  “Well that certainly did it,” he said, resigned to the enormity of the task that lay before him. “Resources?”

  “Whatever I can spare but at least a thousand engineers are on their way to your sites as we speak.”

  Ben pressed the intercom button. “Next!” he screamed. The architect took that as his cue to leave and quietly left through the side door, contemplating exactly how to get sixty days of work completed in twelve.

  Ben looked up as the next cheery “Good morning” made its naive way towards him.

  This was going to be a particularly nasty one, thought Ben. Logistics for project Ararat were a nightmare already. The head of the group had argued he needed a hundred days not sixty. Now he was about to find out that he only had twelve.

  Ben caught sight of the anteroom to his office. There were at least another three waiting beyond logistics and many more were scheduled to arrive throughout the morning. It really was going to be a particularly horrible day.

  Chapter 36

  Rebecca had called Ben as she left the Howard Johnson. There was no link to the terrorists but the cover up of the attempt on the potential presidential candidate was not something she could ignore. The receptionist was not sure but the guy who had checked into the room ‘looked like that handsome Senator, the one that could be President’. As there were only really two contenders, the Vice President and Senator Baker, Rebecca had to assume it was the latter. This revelation, combined with the obvious high level cover up by a senior member of Homeland Security, was intriguing. Two calls to contacts alerted her to even more bizarre goings on earlier in the day and before she knew it, two plus two made a mind blowing political conspiracy. Ben was as interested as she was as to what was going on and promised to get back to her. In the meantime, she was to use all her guile to find Senator Baker and report back if and when she did.

  Rebecca had not been to America since the birth of Josh. However, it had been her favorite assignment. She loved America. Everything about it excited her, the vastness, the buildings, the power. The freedom to go wherever you wanted, no checkpoints, no looking over your shoulder, no worrying whether the man who looked Arab had a backpack loaded with explosives and nails or a heavy jacket to cover the explosives strapped around his waist. Freedom. She began to think how Josh would have loved America and before she knew it, the what if crept in. What if she had moved to America to raise Josh and then the why, why had she not…

  Her phone rang and interrupted her thoughts. “Hi, the car is where you wanted.”

  It was the Sayanim who worked at Hertz. He had secured a car for her, off the books and completely untraceable to her. She ended the call and stepped out from behind the dumpster at the back of the Howard Johnson. The Sayanim had parked the car exactly as instructed; the keys would be under the wheel arch. By the time Rebecca got to the car, the Sayanim was already half way back to the airport terminal. He had delivered many cars in his time and had prided himself on never once bumping into any of the operatives. Deniability was key and if he didn’t see them, he could deny everything about them.

  As she arranged her driving position, she switched on one of the extras that most Hertz customers never knew was an option, the police scanner. The other was a Sig Sauer P228, complete with silencer, two spare mags and a box of 9mm shells. Of course, both were an option but only if you happened to work for an Israeli intelligence agency and knew a particular Sayanim. She knew that the Senator had escaped. What she didn’t know was if anybody was in pursuit. With little or no leads, she would just have to work with what she had at her disposal which was very little. She had contacts across America and of course the Sayanim if required but her role was to remain under the radar which is exactly where she planned to be. She pulled out of the lot and headed in the direction the Senator was reported to have gone in, which was left! Nothing to go on would have been an understatement.

  The murder of a young couple came over the scanner. It was ten miles away and from what she could glean from the radio chatter, professional and without motive. She had her lead. Rebecca input the address mentioned and accelerated towards Edison, N.J.

  “Hello?” she answered her phone on the first ring.

  “Hi, it’s Ben,” said Ben unnecessarily. “I’m sending through everything we have on Senator Charles Baker and his brother Sam.”

  “Brother?”

  “From what we can gather, his brother has become embroiled. In any event, see what you can do. But,” he emphasized. “Finding the nuclear device is the priority, OK?”

  “OK.”

  Rebecca replaced the phone on the seat next to her and heard the tell tale ping of information being delivered. As soon as she got to Edison, she’d have a look. Something was not sitting right. Ben’s interest, the timing; too many things were happening at once that had major global ramifications. Rebecca had been out of the business for six years but one thing had remained with her above all else, there was no such thing as coincidence. She also knew Ben better than he thought and she knew he was holding back. Call it female intuition, call it experience, call it whatever the hell you wanted, the whole thing stank.

  The shootings in Newark were reported as happening less than 30 minutes earlier. Rebecca pushed the accelerator as far as it would go.

  Chapter 37

  Mohammad Deif looked in disbelief as the small phone rang. Nobody knew the number, nor that he even had it. Its only purpose was for the sending of tweets to Pock-Mark. Even
Pock-Mark didn’t know the number. It could just be a wrong number, a pure fluke but something deep down told him otherwise. Deif looked around him. He was in the center of Paris, crossing the Seine. Had he been in Gaza, he wouldn’t have even considered answering, the likelihood of an Apache gunship being on the other end would have been too high. However, not in Paris. Nobody was watching him, at least not that he could see.

  “Hello?”

  “Mohammed, my friend!”

  The voice of The Sheikh chilled Deif’s blood.

  “My Sh…”

  The Sheikh cut him off. “Let us be careful, Mohammed, we don’t know who may be listening.”

  “Of course…” Deif caught himself just in time and managed not to repeat his earlier mistake.

  “I believe you have ignored my wishes?” the Sheikh asked matter-of-factly.

  Deif knew the day would come when he would have to answer to the Sheikh. He had just hoped it would be after the event and not before. He also believed the Sheikh would have been grateful as it was he who had tried the very same once before but his tone suggested otherwise.

  “Am I privileged enough to know where your new destination may be?” pushed the Sheikh.

  Deif remained silent. He truly believed in a need to know mentality towards information and as much as he owed the Sheikh, the Sheikh did not need to know. Deif was acting on behalf of Allah. It was Allah who had told him that he could do more for his people. It was Allah who had told him to strike the Americans as well as the Jews. The American people would not be so quick to jump to the Jews’ defense after they understood the consequences of their allegiance.

  “I am sorry, Allahu Akbar.” Deif ended the call and tossed his only link with Akram Rayyan into the River Seine.

  He turned North and headed for the Gare du Nord. Even if the Sheikh tracked him to Paris, he wouldn’t be there long. His TGV train to Marseille was due to leave in 15 minutes. He had one job to take care of in Marseille before moving on to his eventual hideout, Saint Raphael, a small French resort on the Cote D’Azur. Mohammed Deif, mastermind of the downfall of the Zionist state, would spend the next two weeks relaxing in total luxury in the secluded coastal retreat of a Palestinian exile. As with every other part of his plan, nobody knew anything that they didn’t need to know. As all parts of the plan were now in play, there was nothing left to do. With no word from him, the five different teams would follow their orders and detonate the devices at midnight Yom Kippur. As such, nobody needed to know where he was and nobody did. Even the Palestinian exile did not know his summer mansion would become Deif’s hideout. As with most Cote D’Azur homes of the rich and famous, they sat idle for eleven months of the year. They did France in August.

  Chapter 38

  If there was one thing Sam had learned from the CIA, it was the art of deceit and he had become a master. The Georgetown townhouse he approached had a shell corporation listed as its owner and anyone digging would find a number of further shell corporations behind that one. If they ever were lucky enough to reach the end of the line, they would find a small office in a remote Caribbean island with a name plaque on the door. Inside, they would find a desk, a phone and a coffee machine all owned by the same shell corporation that owned the townhouse. It really was a dead end.

  Sam winced as he stretched over to the glove box. The pain in his shoulder had lessened but it would be some time before the ligaments and tendons healed. The Senator pushed Sam’s attempt away and opened the glove box for him.

  “Is it this?” he asked producing a small remote control with two buttons, one arrow pointing up and one down.

  “Yep,” replied Sam, the pain still apparent in his voice. Both Clark and the Senator had offered to drive but Sam insisted that he wanted to keep one eye ahead and one behind. The niggle that someone was following them had not gone away. He checked the mirror again. Normally, with this feeling, he would not have gone near the safehouse but he needed to get his brother out of sight. With the road clear behind, he barked his instructions.

  “OK, hit the Up button!”

  Sam didn’t miss a beat. The garage door, two houses ahead, lifted up and he continued at speed towards the opening door.

  “OK, hit the Down button!”

  The Senator looked in horror at the half-raised door they were careering towards. Every instinct told him to ignore his brother. However, decades of knowing that his brother knew best resulted in blind trust and he pressed the Down button.

  “What the hell are you doing?” screamed Clark from the backseat as the car turned sharply and the door stopped its upward motion, stalling briefly before beginning to close on the fast approaching car.

  Both the Senator and Clark ducked as the car sped towards the narrowing gap, the screech of the tires adding to the drama and eliciting a small scream from Clark. The garage door snapped shut behind the now stationary car. A small scrape on the trunk would be testament to just how close it had been.

  Sam turned to Clark. “In answer to your question, making sure nobody sees where we went.”

  The sniper followed from a discreet distance, always keeping a number of cars between himself and the Toyota. It was only when they reached the outskirts of Washington at 1 a.m. that things began to get somewhat trickier. With little traffic on the streets, he had to drive without lights and let them remain a full turn ahead at all times. It meant he had to hold well back and dart forward after they turned to ensure he didn’t miss their next one. Everything had gone fine until the final turn onto Q street NW in Georgetown. He had watched from five blocks back as they had turned into the street and, as he had done many times before, he darted down 31st St NW and crawled towards the entrance to Q Street.

  As his car emerged onto Q Street, he could see nothing but empty road ahead. He had Senator Baker and Agent Clark’s home address and this was neither of their streets. He sped down the street and looked for taillights on any connecting streets. After two minutes of driving around, he had either lost them or they were back near Q Street. Not wanting to contemplate the former, he parked his car next to Tudor Place and began to walk along Q Street. It was 2 a.m. and very few residents would still be awake in such an affluent suburb. Homes with garages were going to be of interest. Homes with garages and signs of life would be prime suspects.

  The sniper worked his way carefully down the street. As much as he wanted to find them, he didn’t want them to find him first.

  It was halfway down the street that he saw the movement, indiscernible to all but the most vigilant. It was the flicker of a street lamp on a face in the corner of a window. The sniper did not react. He had them. He turned and retraced his steps back to his car. He retrieved his phone from his pocket. Comfortable that the glow from the handset would not give away his position, he hit the speed dial button.

  “Where are you?” he asked his young apprentice. The sniper had to resolve his weaponry issue. He had called his apprentice, a young man who had, much like the sniper, fallen foul of a poor psych evaluation. Although what was poor for some was ideal for others and the young apprentice was certainly proving himself well in the contract killing business.

  “OK, you’re about 45 minutes behind me, I’m…” had the moonlight not caught the tip of the blade, the Ka-bar 1222 would have sliced the snipers throat wide open.

  Sam cursed as the sniper moved at the last instant causing him to catch nothing but the tiniest piece of flesh. The nick that should have been a slice didn’t even produce so much as a drop of blood.

  Sam had sensed being followed but hadn’t been sure. As he directed Clark and his brother to the lounge, instructing them not to go near the window or put a light on, he had slipped out and taken up position in the bushes. If somebody had been following, they would need to recce the area and try to pinpoint their location. It had taken five minutes for the sniper to appear. Sam had seen enough snipers in his time. The man’s use of light and shadow, steadiness and control of breathing, pretty much nailed the guy’s expe
rtise. He was good, spotting the almost imperceptible movement in the window was impressive. Clark had obviously tried to peak out of the corner of the window but the street light had reflected on her skin very briefly as she moved. Sam had watched as the sniper, having spotted the movement, immediately began to retrace his steps. Sam had followed and had had to use every ounce of his training and experience of tracking to ensure the sniper did not spot him. Sam had to know if the sniper had called in their position or whether he was making sure before he did call it in. On hearing the conversation and the fact that whoever he was calling didn’t know where he was, Sam moved. He had moved silently from the bush and swung the knife in a tight arc towards the snipers throat which would ensure an instant kill and silence.

  As the phone clattered and smashed to the ground, the sniper avoided the blade and was already bringing his silenced pistol to bear with his other hand. Sam was just recovering from his initial strike as the silencer closed in on his face. Like his opponent, Sam reacted quickly and as the sniper depressed the trigger, Sam’s left hand burned as he pushed the barrel from his face and towards the sniper’s car. Two bullets tore through the side panel and rear tire respectively. With little strength in his left hand, Sam had no option but to drop the knife and use both hands against the pistol. Seeing an opportunity, the sniper took it and delivered a massive punch to the side of Sam's head. As Sam was forced from his feet, his two-handed grip on the pistol, although weakened, was enough to wrestle the gun free from the sniper. Sam was down but with the pistol within his reach, he was most definitely not out.