by Connor Black
“Base, you have a forward observer on scene. I suggest you take advantage of that fact and put me on the mission net!” Given my position so close to the militants below, I didn’t shout. But I did use a command tone that left no room for doubt that I wanted to be put in contact with the Sakeen team leader.
The line was silent. After a full minute came the reply. “Roger, Hillary. Switching channels. You will be put on the net. Contact Sakeen Six.”
Well, if the Israelis were anything, they certainly were decisive. I keyed the transmit button twice in acknowledgment, giving the command a minute to adjust the communications network and contact the quick reaction force themselves before depressing the button again.
“Sakeen Six, Hillary.”
“Hillary, this is Sakeen Six,” came the reply. It was the QRF commander. We hadn’t met, but he certainly had a sense of humor. “I understand you are enjoying the sights and would like to extend your visit.”
“Roger, Six. Just lovely here. Have you been advised that our friend is at my pos?”
“Ken,” he replied. “Problem is, we are two hours out.” The change of mission from extraction of one asset—me—to securing a rocket launch site was not insignificant. I imagined they were adjusting the force structure and poring over maps of this area of the city as quickly as possible. They’d need to establish the best formation for an assault, not to mention make their way from the border.
“Not sure he’ll be here that long.”
“Understood. Our other option is air.” He meant a helicopter assault using hellfire missiles.
“Too close to civilians in the hospital,” I said, though I knew he understood this.
“Yes, this is the problem. It is always the problem with Hamas. Talk me through the location and your position.”
“On your map, do you see the hospital?”
“Yes. The Al Manaf Hospital.”
“The hospital is on the north side of an east–west street. It widens in the front, where there is a small square. The west side of the square is presently blocked from civilian traffic.
“Due west of the hospital is the lot in the imagery. It is approximately 150 by 100 meters. It is hidden from the street by a utility shed, and there is only one narrow entry point that they are using to transport material in. It’s a natural funnel you can use.”
“Your position?”
“The abandoned apartment building west of the lot. From the roof, there is a good field of fire over the east side of the lot, though there is some camouflage netting covering portions of the location.”
There was no immediate response this time. I knew he was marking my position on a map with his team.
“Roger, Hillary,” was his response. “We’ve sent an advance team in covertly to your position that will provide overwatch for us. They are ninety minutes out. Please keep us advised of any changes. Six out.”
So an hour and a half for his advance team and another thirty minutes until the QRF arrived. I moved back to a window and saw Hassan’s Toyota was still there. Adjusting position, I checked the north end of the lot where there was a fence. Ideally, a first squad would start from there and flush the Hamas soldiers into the chokepoint they’d been using for the trucks. A second squad stationed there would have an easy clean up. Tactically, this was better for the attacking force than the defending force. Hassan was not in sight, and must have been somewhere under the netting. I decided to recon the area to the north of the lot.
Before descending the stairs, I went to a corner of the floor I was on and scooped up a handful of dust. In between the first and second floors, I backed down. Once I had the landing where the stairs turned at eye-level, I opened my hand and blew the dust across the surface. After taking a close look, I made my way down and out, back onto the street. Assuming a hunched posture, I moved west for a more roundabout route.
Turning a corner, I found myself on a busy street, filled with curbside vendors. One particular shop had several rows of scarves, all hanging from wooden poles. I selected a tan keffiyeh with a dark fishnet pattern and purchased it. The muted colors blended into the landscape of dirt streets and concrete buildings and it could prove useful. Further down the street, another vendor sold phones and accessories. I purchased a set of knock-off earbuds that I could connect to my phone in order to keep my hands free when using the radio.
The street behind the hospital and the lot was dirt. It was narrow, filled with garbage cans, rough little sheds, hastily-parked cars, and the odd cat darting here and there. It was essentially an alley. And with no one present, a bit more of a trap for me than I would have liked. I could see the other side of the fence that bordered the lot. It was flimsy corrugated metal held together with rusty nails.
I caught a whiff of tobacco smoke, and at the edge of my vision saw a man up on the hospital balcony. A sentry covering the preparation of the rockets for launch. I veered left, into a gap between some small apartment buildings on the north side of the alley. While I hadn’t looked up, I knew he’d seen me. My hope was that my stride was natural and confident enough to appear to just be a local heading home.
My heart beat a little faster as it looked like the passage was blocked. But there was no way I was going to return to the alley. I pushed on between the buildings, the path zig-zagging like a maze, narrower at every turn.
Finally, I arrived at a small wooden gate, bent on rusty hinges. I gave it a push, and suddenly found myself out in the open on a street once again filled with people, cars, and the business of the day. I exhaled with relief, and blended back into the flow, intent on returning to the abandoned apartment building.
Again, I kept my approach and entry cautious. There were no new sounds, and the dust in the stairwell hadn’t been disturbed. Once I reached the third floor, I took off my shirt, reversing it to the off-white and gray pattern in order to blend in with the masonry of the apartment building better. The keffiyeh went around my neck. Looking down, I felt the colors fit the surroundings well, and the keffiyeh provided a nice change of shape to help with concealment.
I could hear noise from the workers. Slowly moving into position, I saw they were still at work on the launch rails. It looked like, once they were done, there would be eight in total. To the right, Farid Hassan’s Toyota remained, as did the rockets.
I scanned above the lot, looking for sentries other than the one I’d seen on the back corner of the hospital. There were none. I wasn’t familiar with how Hamas’s militant wing deployed security teams, but this set up continued to bother me. I knew they used schools and hospitals for storing and launching rockets, causing the Israelis significant challenges in attacking militant sites. Despite being next to a hospital, though, this location was terrible. There were only two ways in and out, and both could be easily sealed by an attacking force. And the fact that it was essentially in a hollow between two buildings made it more like a shooting gallery than a defensible position.
Connecting my new earbuds to the phone, I went back on the tactical net.
“Sakeen, Hillary.”
“This is Sakeen Six. Go”
“Be advised, I am adding to my previous report. To the north of the lot is a narrow alley running east–west. It is bordered by a thin fence only, and easily breached. Recommend assaulting north side fence from both ends of the alley and pushing them into the south side chokepoint.”
“Roger, Hillary. That is what we see as well. Is the target still on site?”
I knew they’d proceed whether Hassan was there or not, given the threat the rockets posed, but I was glad that he was still on the front burner.
“Likely, but I have lost visual,” I replied.
“Roger. Be advised, covert team of two will be arriving at your location shortly.”
“Roger,” I said.
Switching gears, I went back on the net, wanting to talk to Haley.
“Dilbert, Hillary.”
After a moment, she came on the net.
“Dilbert.
”
“Any update on your end?”
“Our hosts have been able to positively place Hassan in Homs, Syria ten days ago. We can also connect a phone call he made to that location eight days prior. Burner phone in an industrial district.”
“The call must have been to set up a meet in Homs. Who did he meet with?”
“We don’t know. This report was from an asset Mossad has in Syria. Pretty thin, but combining it with the phone hit improves the intel quality. There was a partial recording. Mostly garbled, but they pulled what they think is the operation’s name: Simoom.”
“Arabic for a hot wind in the desert, right?” I asked.
“Close. It’s a term meaning ‘poison wind’, a reference to winds that come up from the south that are so hot, they can actually kill people. Apparently, it’s common for Hamas to give its missions forbidding names. They’re seeing what else they can pull up.”
“A ‘wind’ of rockets, maybe?”
“Possibly. Tell me about the rockets at the site,” she replied, clearly onto something.
“The materials are simple. They’re metal, crudely welded, and filled with a primitive propellant. Nothing you’d need to go to Syria to get. These look made here, based on plans they’ve been given from Lebanon and Iran.” I paused, considering more than the rockets themselves before continuing. “And placing rockets in this open lot doesn’t feel right. Tactically, it’s a disaster for them.”
Before she could reply, a female voice came over the net.
“Break, break. Hillary, Base. Two friendlies approaching your position.”
“Roger, Base,” I said.
I heard footsteps in the stairwell.
“Wait one, Dilbert,” I said. Two clicks came in reply.
A large woman appeared, wearing an olive green hijab and bulky brown dress. And while the heavy figure threw me for a second, the brown eyes betrayed her.
I said, “Not sure what you’re having for breakfast these days, Anat, but you might want to cut back a bit.”
Her face was hidden by the hijab, but the corners of her eyes turned up in a smile.
Agent Novgorod came up the stairs just behind her. “American breakfasts. Cheese on everything,” he said.
“So you two are doing overwatch for this op? Was that the best IDF could do?”
“Budget cuts,” said Uri Novgorod with a smile.
“Enough, you two. Now, help me get out of this,” said Anat. She pulled the hijab down, wrapping it more as a scarf. Uri unzipped the dress from the back, and it fell to the ground. Beneath it was a tactical vest from which two Tavor assault rifles hung. Their short bullpup configuration made them a good choice for carrying covertly, but I was not excited to see only two.
Uri apparently saw the look on my face. “We tried to hang three on the vest, but she could barely move,” he said.
After Uri unclipped one for himself, Anat withdrew a SIG P226 and two additional magazines and handed them to me. “This will have to do,” she said. I took the pistol and moved the slide back, revealing one round was already chambered. Ejecting the magazine, I saw that it was full and re-seated it. Never assume. The pistol went into the jeans at the small of my back. The extra magazines into a back pocket.
I saw the end of a knife handle poking out of a small pouch on the webbing of Anat’s vest and pulled it out. A green Zero Tolerance folding knife.
“If all you have for me is a handgun, I’m taking this as well,” I said, putting it in a front pocket. She made a gesture along the lines of go right ahead. The subtext was, if it comes to a knife fight today, then things have gone terribly wrong.
We moved to the windows on the eastern wall of the apartment building, Uri taking one on the south end, Anat and me at the opposite end. Anat explained that the Sakeen patrols were rolling and were now split into three elements. They’d go as soon as they were in position, ten minutes from now. When the assault began, we’d be on overwatch, taking out any militants on the east side of the lot, directly opposite our position. We talked through the assault, and Uri and Anat took their positions.
I went through our building once more to make sure we were secure. As I was returning to the third floor, I triggered the radio once more and said, “I’m back, Dilbert. What else do you have?”
“We’ve been sorting through Vatchenko’s investments, peeling away those he made for operations we shut down. There’s a common vector.” I knew from our background on Vatchenko that this was no small feat. While a typical investor might make trades regularly, they’re fairly easy to trace. Vatchenko had literally dozens of accounts around the world, buried within shell companies. And they traded with staggering frequency following automated procedures twenty-four hours a day.
“What is it?”
“There’s a common thread in pharmaceuticals and protective devices in the region. Enough so that I think he was planning for a chemical weapon attack.”
My stomach tightened as I made the connection. “Simoom. Poison wind.”
“Exactly. We think Hassan was purchasing some form of chemical weapon when he was in Syria. There was a factory in Homs at one point that was known to manufacture chemical weapons. Their main product was sarin.”
The feeling that comes from knowing a chemical weapon could be used in the theater of battle can only be described as dread. An enemy you can see triggers a series of actions. Enemy comes at you with a gun, you disarm him or take him down. Enemy leaves an IED, you disarm it.
But when the enemy deploys sarin gas, it’s invisible. It’s a threat you can’t see, smell, or taste. Until it’s too late. Until your nerves suddenly go haywire. And by then, you’re convulsing, knowing the next step is paralysis. And then death. It’s complete torture for the last five, perhaps even ten, minutes of life.
“But here’s the thing: his pharma investments were long, betting the companies will rise in value. But he actually gambled much more in short plays. Betting the market will go down. And on those, his plays were broad, completely across the board in the industrial and financial sectors. Specifically, Israeli companies.”
“He’d calculated an Israeli collapse,” I said. “But firing a chemical weapon would galvanize Israel, not ruin it.”
By this point, I’d made it back to Anat’s position where she’d readied herself to take out any sentries on the far side of the lot.
“You getting this?” I said, making sure she was monitoring our commo net as well as that of the assault force.
“Yes. There will be no collapse from these rockets. They are M-75s. We’ve stopped thousands of them.”
“Ever been used for a chemical attack?”
“Lo,” she said. No. “They are unguided and unreliable. They are also slow, and easy for Iron Dome to handle.” Iron Dome was Israel’s defensive shield against incoming rockets and artillery.
I draped the keffiyeh over my head to break my silhouette and stole a glance down to the lot, checking the rockets. I also saw that Hassan’s truck had not moved.
Going back on the radio, I said, “Dilbert, you were right to ask about the rockets. It doesn’t add up. These things look like they were made in a shed. The business end is just a simple cone on the end of a large pipe.”
To deploy a chemical like sarin, some level of sophistication in the payload portion of the rocket is needed. At the very least, range or altitude triggers would be needed to allow aerial disbursement so the payload didn’t simply tunnel into the ground. These things had rough cut fins and crude welds. I couldn’t see how someone with any sense would load a volatile chemical into a rocket that looked like it was not even going to fly straight.
“Hillary,” she said, “it’s something else. Buying the sarin was for something more. Something bigger.”
I was about to respond when a flurry of shouting came from below. I looked down to see a group of fighters moving towards the Toyota. In the center of them was Hassan.
Anat held her hand to her ear, and then said, “Sakee
n team is five minutes out.”
“Looks like word has already spread. Hassan is scattering. I’m going to see where.” And with that, I moved down the stairwell with haste.
10
By the time I made it to the street, I was only able to catch a glimpse of the rear of the Toyota as it headed south. Diesel smoke sputtered from the back, where four men stood in the bed holding onto a rough cage. I looked around for a car, motorbike, or even a bicycle to use, but the streets had cleared. Only people on foot remained, the stragglers, hurrying one another away from the hospital. Word had spread and they weren’t taking any chances.
I caught the grumbling sound of Israeli APCs coming in from the east, and knew the Sakeen team was close to their assault on the lot. With Hassan out of reach, I turned to go back into the apartment building.
But the Sakeen team was coming in from the east. And Hassan had gone south. Why hadn’t he gone west, to the opposite direction? There was a huge portion of Gaza City to the west in which to get lost, and it would have put the most distance between himself and the incoming assault team.
Why south?
I turned back around and ran after Hassan. My mind was slowly forming a picture. It was still fuzzy, but beginning to galvanize. I had to trust my instincts, no matter how grim they were beginning to feel.
The strange feeling I had was from a few headlines I remembered from the summer of 2014. Hamas had fired more than 3,000 rockets from Gaza into Israel. And knowing that Israel would retaliate, the Hamas fighters used hospitals, homes, and schools as launch sites. They knew that any retaliation strikes would harm innocent women and children, and set a tone for the world of Palestinians as victims.
And there were retaliation strikes. Firm, punishing, and deadly. But also, incredibly precise. The IDF went to extreme measures to limit civilian casualties, from the type of munitions used to the ‘roof knockers’ and text messages that notified innocent civilians prior to any assault. Yet still there were casualties. And soon front pages everywhere showed helpless Palestinians dead and mutilated. More often than not, the fact that Hamas had purposely used human shields—often trapped or held in place otherwise against their will—was buried far beneath the lead, if mentioned at all.
