THE WAVE: A John Decker Thriller

by J. G. Sandom

  Major Ben-Ami turned on his heels and strode away, leaving the prisoner under the watchful eye of a young corporal who stood there fingering the Zelda’s 30-caliber machine gun. El Aqrab sat on the grass. It felt wet and cold in his hands. The corporal shifted the machine gun to keep the Arab in his sights. El Aqrab looked up at him, and smiled, as if posing for a snapshot. The radio crackled and the Major reappeared.

  “Eagle to Raven. We have the device. Do you copy? We have the device.”

  “This is Raven. Is it hot?”

  “That’s affirmative, Raven. We have a solid reading from all counters.”

  “Press the red button,” said El Aqrab, “on the side of the panel, just to the right and below the fuel chamber.”

  The Major repeated the instructions.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Captain Rifkin said.

  “Why not?”

  “I just don’t.”

  El Aqrab climbed to his feet. He took a step closer to the APC. “Press it,” he repeated, “or the countdown will begin automatically. Do your men want to die?”

  “You heard him, Eagle,” the Major said. He sheered the words off with clenched teeth. “Just do it. Press the button.”

  There was a momentary pause. Then the radio crackled once again and Captain Rifkin said, “Affirmative. The button has been pressed. Do you copy? The button has been pressed.”

  “We copy.” The Major turned to El Aqrab. “What now?” he asked.

  El Aqrab shrugged. “Now? Now, you release me.”

  Just then, a new sound overwhelmed the stillness of the valley. Four F16 Block 60s thundered overhead, followed trimly by six Apache helicopter gun-ships. They swept in from the south, circling the hilltop and the APC. The winter grasses billowed underneath.

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” the Major shouted above the din. “Orders,” he added, looking up. The choppers were coming down. They were landing all around them. “From the Prime Minister himself. You are to accompany me back to Tel Aviv.”

  Major Ben-Ami pointed vaguely in El Aqrab’s direction and a young commando approached him from behind, swinging another pair of plastic handcuffs in his hands.

  “I don’t think so,” said El Aqrab in Arabic.

  “What’s that?” demanded the commando.

  The radio coughed. “Raven, come in. Eagle to Raven.”

  “What is it, Eagle?” the Major said.

  “The device. It’s started working. It just went on, all of a sudden. It’s counting down, sir. Sixty. Fifty-nine. Fifty-eight . . . ”

  The Major turned and glowered at El Aqrab. He towered over him. “What kind of game is this?”

  “I could provide you with the disarming sequence? Would you like that?”

  The Major drew his sidearm. “So help me God, I’ll shoot you right here and now if anything happens, El Aqrab, believe me. What’s the fucking sequence?”

  “No you won’t.” The Arab smiled, revealing his extended canines and a network of fine wrinkles round his eyes. Laugh lines. Barely visible. “You will withdraw or the bomb will explode, and Beersheba and everyone in southern Israel will die – like that.” He snapped his fingers for effect. “But if you pull back, I have instructed my associates to disarm the bomb remotely.”

  “ . . . forty-three, forty-two . . . ”

  “Now go,” continued El Aqrab. “Go!” he shouted. “Before it’s too late.”

  The Major turned without a word and hopped back up onto the APC. In a moment, the entire vehicle was covered with the Sayerot Mat’kal commandos. The armor plating bristled with their camouflage. The Zelda shuddered and began to move, slowly at first, like a giant hedgehog, bumping along the road, then picking up speed. In seconds it was hurtling down the narrow country lane at more than 50 mph, between the cypress trees, powered by its brand-new turbocharged 6V53T engine.

  The helicopters gradually ascended, swung round, and started south. The F16s blew overhead, away. The bold roar of their movements faded, only to be replaced by yet another engine, another helicopter, swinging in low from somewhere to the north, from Lebanon. It was painted in jungle camouflage. It hurtled down across the hill, flared for a moment, and then descended, fashioning a bowl in the winter grasses with a furious wind. A moment later it was down.

  The rotors continued to spin. El Aqrab ran across the hill and dove directly into the waiting open door. Without pausing, the helicopter jumped into the air, nervous as a grasshopper. It slid across the hill, regained transitional lift, and hurtled up into the sky.

  Chapter 25

  Tuesday, February 1 – 5:27 AM

  Beersheba, Israel

  Rifkin continued to monitor the countdown as he worked. He had already removed the outer casing of the console but he could still see the LED display, the numbers flashing constantly in red. Gal Baror held the casing a few centimeters above the device as Rifkin looked beneath. A Medusa’s tail of fine wires dangled from the shell. He tried to pick them out, to distinguish them in the bright halogen and LED light emanating from the Black Diamond headlamp on his head. He slipped a tiny dentist’s mirror underneath. He looked about. There was the ground. Those, over there, were hot. He peeled back the plastic coating of each wire in his mind, feeling their temperature, testing them for charge against the tongue of his imagination. He followed them as they snaked around the chassis, as they seemed to come to life, wiggling like intestines, like the insides of so many of his friends and colleagues blown to smithereens. “ . . . nineteen, eighteen, seventeen . . . ”

  Rifkin picked up a pair of wire cutters and used the dentist’s mirror to separate two wires underneath the casing. “Please resist the urge to pull the casing away,” he mumbled to Gal Baror. Gal eased the casing down a hair. “Thank you,” Rifkin said. There were two wires, side by side, beside the flat head of the dentist’s mirror. One was green. The other was blue. “ . . . eleven, ten, nine . . . Are you still there, Raven?”

  “Yes, we’re here, Eagle One,” the Major’s voice responded. It echoed through the confined space of the tunnel, reverberated against the cistern. “We’re with you.”

  “ . . . six, five, four, three . . . ” Captain Rifkin insinuated the wire cutters underneath the casing, the shiny metal blades around the light blue wire in the mirror, and snipped. “ . . . two.”

  The numbers froze: 02. The digits simply sat there on the bright red LED. Motionless. Petrified. Rifkin found himself breathing. He had closed one eye unconsciously. He opened it again, very slowly. The display still read 02.

  “Raven, come in. This is Eagle One. The sequence has been terminated. Do you copy?”

  * * *

  “Copy that. Congratulations, Captain.” Major Ben-Ami turned toward the driver of the APC and raised his hand. The Zelda slowed to a crawl, then stopped. “Come in Sparrow One,” he said. A moment later he was connected to the pilot in the lead Apache helicopter. “This is Raven,” he began. “Commence immediate retrieval.” He peered out through the bulletproof window and scanned the far horizon with a pair of powerful binoculars.

  El Aqrab’s helicopter grew smaller by the second. In a moment it would be across the Blue Line into Lebanon. The air above the APC vibrated as the Apaches swiveled north in hot pursuit. They blazed across the hill, thundered along the valley floor. They closed the distance and although they could have fired upon the fleeing helicopter, could have incinerated her with rockets, they punched to a hard stop, flared at around a hundred feet, and hovered like a gyre of eagles above the invisible Blue Line.

  “She’s gone, sir. Raven, do you copy?”

  “Sparrows, return to base.”

  “Sir?”

  “Return to base,” the Major repeated. “Under no circumstances are you to cross the Blue Line into Lebanon.”

  The Apache helicopters turned and headed south. Major Ben-Ami lowered his binoculars and watched with the naked eye as El Aqrab’s helicopter faded slowly into the pale blue sky. That’s when he saw the Leb
anese Army gunships – five desert camouflage Apaches. They materialized from nowhere. Once again, the Major picked up his binoculars. There they were, in a flash of light. He steadied his elbows on the rim of the APC tower. El Aqrab’s helicopter was hemmed in on every side. No matter how she tried to feint or dodge, she could not gain the altitude required to outrun her pursuers. It was only a matter of time. They pressed the air about her, pushing her down. El Aqrab’s ship was forced to land atop another hill, beside an orange grove, less than a mile within the Lebanese border. She’d barely hit the ground when the helicopter was surrounded on all sides by the five Apache gunships. Commandos streamed out across the hill, between the fruit trees, surrounding the green chopper. Then someone pulled the door open, and dragged the pilot and co-pilot from the ship.

  “Come in, Falcon. Do you copy?” Major Ben-Ami said. The radio remained silent. “Do you copy, Falcon?” he repeated. “Do you have the package?” He squinted through his binoculars. It was hard to see the pilot and co-pilot despite their crimson flight suits. They were surrounded by the Lebanese commandos. He adjusted the focus but it didn’t seem to help. “Do you have the package?” he repeated. “Come in, Falcon.”

  “That’s a negative. We do not. Just the pilot and co-pilot. I repeat. We do not have the package.”

  Major Ben-Ami hung his head. It was a ruse. El Aqrab had never boarded the green helicopter. Or, if he had, it had only been for a moment. Then he’d slipped away somehow. The Major spun about and looked back up the hill. “Go back,” he shouted with frustration at the driver. “Back up the hill. Now!”

  The armored vehicle turned around and charged back up the lane. A few minutes later, the APC popped out from behind the cypress trees. It shuddered to a stop. The commandos hit the ground, fanned out across the hilltop. They streamed beyond the original perimeter. They scoured every bush and tree and stone, and still they found no trace of El Aqrab. The terrorist had vanished, as suddenly as the morning dew.

  “Come in, Raven,” the radio crackled. “This is Eagle.”

  Major Ben-Ami stood almost at attention by the APC. Without even turning, he lifted a hand, snapped his fingers, and the communications officer handed him the microphone.

  “This is Raven. Go ahead, Eagle.”

  “Sir, I’ve got bad news,” said Captain Rifkin.

  The Major ran a hand back through his close-cropped hair. He sighed and said, “Report, Eagle.”

  “The casing was hot, sir. We measured RADs. But now that we’ve had a chance to open it, well . . . it’s empty, sir. There must have been some HEU inside the fuel chamber at one point. But it’s no longer there. Do you copy, Raven? The device is empty.”

  “Copy that, Eagle. Understood. Thank you. Return to base.”

  Major Ben-Ami felt himself age fifteen years in the space of those three words. Return to base, he repeated to himself. His mouth felt dry as Sinai. He hung his head. That’s what will happen to me now, he thought. I will return to base, and never leave again . . . as long as I live.

  * * *

  Warhaftig had set up a communication link with an Israeli security officer in Beersheba, some guy named Seiden, who was standing by. Acting Chief Seiden was in contact with the local Beersheba Bomb Squad in the cistern below. Decker, Warhaftig and a host of other agents were packed inside Warhaftig’s office, listening to the radio transmissions on the speakerphone.

  “So much for your prediction,” Johnson said to Decker.

  “It isn’t six AM yet in Beersheba.”

  “No, but the bomb’s already reached its designated countdown. They stopped it at 02 . . . even if it was a dud.”

  “He’s right,” Kazinski said.

  “Sir, I recommend you contact Seiden and tell him to pull his men out right away,” said Decker. “We only have eight minutes left.”

  “We’ve wasted enough time on this, Decker. It’s late. Acting Chief Seiden, thanks for your help. This is SAC Johnson, signing off.” He hit the button on the speakerphone. “Everybody out of here,” he said. “I was meant to meet the AD for drinks an hour ago.” He stood, shooing them away like flies. Then he put on his jacket and coat, and headed out the door.

  * * *

  Almost immediately after the SAC had disappeared into the elevator, Decker returned to Johnson’s office surreptitiously, and re-established the connection with Beersheba.

  Seiden was surprised to hear his voice. “I thought we’d lost you,” he said.

  “SAC Johnson had to go. Where are your men now?”

  “They’re on their way out of the well.”

  “Please call them, Chief Seiden. It isn’t safe. They have until six AM Beersheba time.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but we found some PC wallpapers on a suspect’s personal computer here in New York. One of them featured the words, ‘Pregnant She-Camels,’ and ‘When Hell is Stoked Up,’ plus a number. That number corresponds to an event that we believe will occur at six AM Beersheba time. An event such as the detonation of a bomb.”

  “Did you say, ‘Pregnant She-Camels’?”

  “That’s right. It’s a quote from the Qur’an.”

  “I know,” said Seiden. “I was there right after El Aqrab was captured.”

  “In Tel Aviv?”

  “Yes. I saw the file.”

  “What file?”

  “The video he made. Of the event. As he always does. I saw the way the fire burst out of those boys, the words. They are the same. ‘Pregnant She-Camels.’ And ‘Hell.’ What do they mean?”

  “We don’t know for sure but I believe they’re somehow tied to Beersheba.”

  “You mean an omen?”

  “Each PC wallpaper not only predicts the next event, it features a number corresponding to a specific moment in time. The first was 540,000, set when Baqrah stole that HEU in Kazakhstan. The second was 205,200. The difference is ninety-three hours. And ninety-three hours from the time Baqrah stole the HEU is six AM your time. Exactly. Which is . . . ” Decker looked down at his watch. “ . . . three minutes from now.”

  For a moment Seiden did not speak. Decker could hear him breathing on the other end. “I’m not exactly following you,” he said, “but I believe you think you’re right. And that’s good enough for me.” He shouted to someone standing by. “Contact Rifkin. Tell him he has two minutes to get the hell out of there. Now!”

  * * *

  Captain David Rifkin finished re-assembling the device with the attentive assistance of Gal Baror. It had been an agonizing day for the young recruit. He had equipped himself well, and his uncle was proud. They packed the device into a clear plastic bag and filled it with a snowy white foam that looked like shaving cream; it solidified immediately, sealing the aluminum case within. Rifkin slipped it carefully into his duffel bag. They packed up their tools and instruments, picked up their flashlights, and started back along the tunnel. That’s when they got the call from Seiden. “We’re on our way,” said Rifkin.

  They ran as quickly as they could along the darkened tunnel, when Gal misplaced his step, and reached out for support against the wall. There was a little sound, like the breaking of a twig, a gentle snap, and then a bright light filled the tunnel. Rifkin and Gal jumped back unconsciously. The light, as bright as an acetylene torch, continued to crawl along the passageway. They couldn’t tear their eyes away.

  “Oh, shit,” said Gal. And then the world exploded. It was as if they were inside a firework. Talons of fire raked the air, descended from the ceiling, slashed at their bodies like phosphorescent claws. They tried to run but they were trapped. The more they struggled, the more some sort of netting settled into place around them. Their shirts burst into flames. They heard their own skin sizzling. It smelled of burning hair. They watched in horror as a line of pale green fire began to snake across their chests, began to curl from left to right, bold loops, uncompromising arcs, seductive curves, until with one last breath of flame-fill
ed air, one final baleful moan, their lungs imploded and their horrified expressions melted off the bone.

  * * *

  There was a camera on the wall. It recorded the events dispassionately, dispatching the signal with a measured, cool efficiency through the RCA connectors, and then down into the wire on the floor. It ran along the tunnel, around the trellis which had held up the device, into a crack and down along a sleeve behind the cistern where a video recorder purred and clicked and stopped, reclining finally into sleep mode. It was exactly six AM.

  Chapter 26

  Tuesday, February 1 – 9:42 AM

  Cairo, Egypt

  The Egyptian mule Auwal Al-Hakim had not had a solid meal in days, not since Kazakhstan. His stomach growled. He cursed and curled himself into a ball, and pressed his back against the cracked stone wall of the apartment. Where was Nasir? The boy had promised to return by nine and it was almost ten o’clock. He did not trust him. He was a member of al-Jihad, not of the Brotherhood. Al-Hakim sat up, curling his arms about his knees, his frayed and ragged trouser legs, and started to rock back and forth on his haunches. There was a window in a corner of the room that overlooked the el-Hakim Mosque and, across the Sharia Ramses, the Sultan Baybars Mosque beyond.