Once Ahmed was satisfied they were alone, he slipped a small penlight from his pocket and fanned it about the garage as a last precaution before stepping through the door. Ashrawl followed close behind Ahmed, his eyes searching for anything that might be trouble.
A deep thud reverberated throughout the garage, and Ahmed dropped to one knee. He remained frozen there for several seconds, while Ashrawl stood trembling a few steps behind him. When the sound died away, Ahmed stood and started to run towards a group of a half dozen parked cars. The quickness of Ahmed’s move took Ashrawl by surprise. In his haste to follow, he tripped, falling face first into the sandy floor of the garage.
Picking himself up quickly, Ashrawl stumbled after Ahmed, but before he could catch up, a series of five explosions in quick succession reverberated throughout the garage. The force of the shockwave knocked both of the men to the ground. Sand, dust and small pieces of concrete fell on them from the ceiling above.
Recovering quickly, Ahmed threw Ashrawl’s luggage into the boot of a dark green Mercedes and began waving for Ashrawl to hurry.
The sound of heavy machine guns could be heard overhead as Ashrawl reached the car. Ahmed roughly shoved him into the back seat then leapt into the driver’s seat and started the car.
“Lie down on the floor and be absolutely quiet, or I will kill you myself,” Ahmed snarled. Ashrawl remained silent and tucked down as low as he could get.
They exited the garage a few streets over from the safe house. Ahmed quickly made several turns, checking after each one for anyone following them. He did not turn on the car’s headlamps, making the rapid trip through the narrow streets an exciting adventure. It was much like trying to run a maze with your eyes closed. Several times, Ahmed just missed pedestrians, though he was unable to avoid several car fenders as they swung around blind curves.
The alternative would have alerted the Israelis to a car driving away from the safe house they were attacking and invite a rocket up their tail pipe for their trouble. Twenty minutes later, Ahmed slipped out of Nablus. Praise be to Allah!
An hour and a half later, they stopped in front of a one-story, mud brick house, which had last been stuccoed sometime last century. There was a short stucco wall in front of the house and a small olive orchard to the immediate south of the house. In every other direction was desert. The house was dark and run-down. It appeared to have been abandoned.
Ahmed exited the car and retrieved the luggage from the boot, setting it down in a cloud of dust just inside the wall. Opening the door, he ordered Ashrawl out of the car.
David Ashrawl slowly crawled out of the car and stretched. He looked around, peering into the darkness, but saw nothing except the dark shadow of this old, run-down house. “Where are we?” he asked.
“You don’t need to know,” Ahmed stated curtly.
“What are you saying? I’m the one whose life is on the line here. I need to know where I am,” Ashrawl whined.
Ahmed turned towards Ashrawl, grabbed the man by the throat with one hand and lifted him off the ground. Ashrawl’s eyes went wide as he squirmed and wiggled trying to escape, but Ahmed’s grip remained secure. Pulling Ashrawl close, Ahmed spoke quietly, venom dripping from his words.
“You are a cockroach who is afraid of his own shadow. You live in luxury while your people die, struggling to escape the stranglehold of the Israelis and the Great Satan, America. I am a soldier in the service of Allah, so I must follow my orders and protect you. I do not have to like it, nor do I have to protect you further.” With that, Ahmed tossed Ashrawl to the ground, climbed into the car, and drove away without another word. Ashrawl sat for several moments, watching the taillights fade into the distance before he picked himself up and looked around once more. As he started to dust himself off, he was startled by the sudden appearance of a man who stepped out of a deep shadow to left side of the house. He held an assault rifle in front of him. “Ashrawl?” he asked.
“Yes,” Ashrawl answered hesitantly, not at all sure what to do.
“Pick up your luggage and follow me,” the man stated as he turned and walked around the corner of the building.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Three assault helicopters appeared on screen in attack formation, and almost immediately, the lead chopper fired a rocket into the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade Headquarters building. It caused a huge fireball to erupt into the night sky. Twenty seconds later, five more rockets streaked away from the three choppers and into the building, blasting the top two floors to rubble. Flying shrapnel went in all directions, shredding cars in the street along with the windows in nearby buildings.
The Kilauea team watched the unfolding battle in the satellite’s infrared mode, which caused the helicopters to appear bright yellow against the black background of the screen and the flames of the explosions a bright white.
“Damn, this is better than an Arnold movie,” Steve blurted out.
“Shut up!” the rest of the team replied simultaneously.
The two flanking helicopters, American-made AH 64 Apache attack choppers, swung wide of the target which was slightly less bright white now and began firing their machine guns at the nearby buildings. The fifty caliber shells glowed white as they stitched their way across the screen.
The transport helicopter was an American UH 60 Blackhawk. It was armored with Kevlar panels and bullet resistant Plexiglas windows that provided protection against the small arms fire. Otherwise, in the close quarters of urban warfare, it would have been a death trap. It swung in above the building next to the al-Aqsa Brigade Headquarters and deployed several ropes. Instantly, figures in all black began sliding rapidly down to the roof below.
That was when the trap was sprung. The target area was suddenly bathed in bright white light from a number of large spotlights mounted on buildings all around the guest house. Defenders concealed on the roof began firing at the fast-roping figures in a deadly crossfire. Four of the six figures fast-roping to the roof were hit as they slid down. It was easy to tell who was hit as they simply collapsed on to the roof and laid motionless. Although it took less than a minute for the Israelis to shoot out the lights and eliminate the defenders on the roof, the damage to the Israeli attackers continued due to the additional defenders on and in the nearby buildings which were all two stories taller than the guest house. It appeared that only two of the ten figures that fast-roped down were unhurt and returning fire.
The gunships strafed the nearby buildings slowing the rate of the attacking fire although it did not eliminate it. The gunships kept circling, trying to find an angle of assault as more lights winked on, stationed on roofs further away. It kept an unwelcome spotlight on the Israeli attackers.
The team sat silently watching the drama unfold on the screens before them. It was like watching television without commercials, but with better special effects, except this was real. The main assault chopper, the UH 60, slowly lowered to the roof of the guest quarters, landing near the troops that had fast-roped down. As it did so, it was bathed in a hail of lead from all directions.
Three feet off the roof, a half dozen more soldiers quickly jumped out and scattered across the roof, firing in support of their fallen comrades lying prone on the roof deck.
The attack choppers swung back in and fired on the nearby buildings in support of the troops on the roof, but it did little to reduce the heavy fire faced by the new group of attackers. Despite the attempt by the choppers to engage the defenders, the new attackers on the roof were quickly killed or wounded. Then, to make matters worse, several heavily armed men suddenly burst from the stairwell at the back of the guest house. They spread out taking shelter behind the large air ventilation units scattered about that end of the roof. From their positions, they controlled the entire roof and kept the Israelis pinned down. The only protection afforded the Israelis was to lie prone on the roof and pray their body armor held up to the barrage.
The firefight was very intense, and the Israelis were taking heavy causalities from
the look of things, as one after another of the Israeli attackers ceased firing back. The defenders were taking causalities as well, but far fewer, since they had the protection of the large ventilation units, the element of surprise, and the high ground on their side.
One of the flanking helicopters swung around again, flooding the doorway to the stairs and the nearby ventilation units with fifty caliber machine gun fire. Then a second gunship slipped in close, raking the roof of the Brigade headquarters building with its machine guns, and for a moment, there was a lull in the rate of fire from the defenders.
When the defenders fell silent, five Israeli soldiers that had been pinned down leapt up and raced for the stairwell leading into the guest house. Just as they reached the stairwell, the defenders opened fire, killing two of them and driving back the other three.
The Israeli attackers were now surrounded. The video screen flashed continually with thousands of rounds flying in all directions. The strobe effect made it extremely hard to see exactly what was happening. But after just a couple of minutes, though it seemed an eternity, Tom and the team began to quietly urge the Israelis to retreat. Tom even shouted at Ron to do something at one point, as though Ron had some way of making the Israelis move out of harm’s way. Like everyone else, all Ron could do was watch in horror.
The UH 60 dropped onto the roof again, blocking the fire from the left and giving the Israeli attackers a slightly better chance to retreat. To the team’s surprise, three of the Israeli soldiers pinned down near the stairwell jumped up and sprinted for the chopper under heavy fire, each pulling at least one fallen comrade behind him. A member of the chopper crew leapt from the chopper and raced to the rescue of two fallen comrades that were halfway across the roof. With a complete disregard for his own safety, he ran up and scooped them up, one under each arm.
Sadly, as he sprinted back to the helicopter, the defenders focused upon him and his two comrades, en masse. As if orchestrated, every defender turned and fired on the rescuer and his two charges, cutting them down in a wicked hail of bullets, leaving all three completely motionless twenty feet shy of the helicopter. It was the same story with most of the retreating Israelis. They were shot down after only a few feet. The two who did make it back to the chopper were shot down as they started to climb aboard.
The flanking helicopters swept in from the darkness once again and began firing small rockets at the neighboring buildings to the north and east, which immediately burst into flames. They continued to deluge the stairwell with fifty caliber machine gun fire, still attempting to provide cover for the extraction effort.
An RPG streaked across the screen from the headquarters building, impacting the stationary UH 60 through the open cargo door. The RPG exploded inside the helicopter, causing a bright white flash. The helicopter itself exploded immediately afterwards showering the Israeli attackers on the roof and the flanking helicopters with shrapnel. The shrapnel and shockwave forced the flanking helicopters to limp away to avoid further damage and the real possibility of being shot down themselves. The UH 60 was left smoldering on the roof, still under fire from the Brigade defenders.
Two new Apache choppers swung in from the darkness and took up flanking positions. They opened fire with over a dozen rockets on the Brigade headquarters building and the building to guest house’s left. The rockets caused the heavy fire from those buildings to cease which allowed the Israelis to swing in another UH 60, carrying a small group of attackers, who fast-roped down to the roof to clear a space for another attempt at extraction. The UH 60 quickly dropped to the roof, just feet from the downed chopper and a half dozen fallen comrades. The men manning the twin fifty cal machine guns on this chopper laid down a continuous shower of lead towards the rear stairwell and the second floor window where the RPG had come from. This allowed the Israelis to gather their fallen comrades and load them into the chopper. In less than three minutes, the bodies were loaded and the chopper lifted off, leaving the burning hulk of the main attack chopper on the roof of the guest house.
The team sat in stunned silence, deeply saddened by the loss of life their allies had suffered. Finally, Ron spoke. “Damn! That had to be a setup. The Israelis never get their butts kicked like that. Someone had to have set them up. Whoever provided the intelligence will have a lot of questions to answer, and they better have a really good answer, or they’ll be dead in forty-eight hours. Damn!”
“They lost a dozen men, maybe more. The Israelis are going to be really pissed. You watch. In a minute or two, a shitload of missiles will come flying in. The Israelis will level the whole damn neighborhood,” Ron pointed at the screen just as several white streaks slammed into the target buildings, causing bright white and red flashes to fill the screen before it went blank.
“What do we do about our guy now?” Pam asked.
“I don’t know. Not yet, anyway,” Tom replied. “Though I think it’ll be up to us to get him now.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
President Starks stormed into the Oval Office with Bascome in tow, fresh from the situation room where he had witnessed the failed Israeli mission to capture David Ashrawl. He stomped across the Oval Office, after having slammed the door behind them. Upon reaching his desk, he dropped heavily into his chair and slammed his fist on the desk sending papers flying and swearing loudly.
“Shit! Those damn Israelis really fucked it up this time! Hell, they couldn’t handle a simple snatch and grab mission!”
“Yes, sir, I heard it went bad a minute ago,” Combs stated soberly as he stepped in from his office, having heard the President enter the Oval Office along with everyone else in the White House.
“Jason, I tell you, the world is filled with stupid, arrogant, self-righteous assholes,” Starks stated.
“Yes, sir, I can agree with that,” Jason Combs replied, thinking that Starks was a pretty good judge of character, mostly his own.
“I should have never let those damn Israelis handle this. Our boys wouldn’t have fucked this up. They knew how important this mission was, and the best they could come up with was a cockamamie plan which they screwed up and got their asses shot off. Now, Ashrawl has gotten away. We’ll pay hell finding him again,” Starks continued to complain.
“At least we weren’t officially involved, sir. So, there’s no egg on our face,” Combs replied.
“We need to get our hands on this guy Ashrawl, or Ass Wipe, or whatever you want to call him. He’s got to know who’s really behind these terrorist attacks. But no, the Israelis fucked it up. Now he’ll disappear into Pakistan, Afghanistan, or some other ‘Stan’ over there, and we’ll never see or hear from him again. Fuck!” Starks slammed his fist down again on the desktop, making his family photos wobble and fall over.
“Do you know how this makes me look? If this were to somehow leak to the press, I’d look like I was incompetent! You better keep a really tight lid on this. Just forget it ever happened. I won’t have the Israelis making me look bad. I can’t have it!” Starks finally stopped to breathe, though his narcissism was in its full glory.
“Maybe the CIA can get another lead on the guy, and we can send in the Navy SEALs to get him,” Combs suggested.
“Jason, first we have to get the assholes in charge of the damn country that we find him in to allow us to go in and get him. That’s a big problem with the damn Arabs. They claim their religion requires that no infidels touch their soil. What a crock of shit,” Starks bitterly explained the real problem of the host country protecting the terrorists.
“The CIA could always send in a covert hit squad,” Combs suggested.
“That’s against our laws, jackass!” Starks snapped at Combs.
“No, sir, it’s not a law. It’s an executive order which you can reverse if you choose to,” Combs explained.
“Well, if the chance comes up, I’ll consider that,” Starks replied in an almost civil tone. “What happened with the G7 today?” Starks asked, changing the subject out of the blue.
“They
took a vote. Four of the seven voted for combining all of the world’s currencies into one and using it to jump start the world economy. We abstained of course, as is the protocol, since it’s our currency that they’re voting on switching from. The thinking is that the world monetary funds are already combined, so why not do away with all but one currency,” Combs explained.
“Have Hobart tell those jackasses if they want one currency use the dollar, or we won’t play along. They need us far more than we need them. If they don’t like that, they need to make me an offer, something that will make it easier for me to sell the plan to the country. And I don’t mean some stupid trade deal or the lifting of some half-ass tariffs. I’m talking gold. Make it clear to them. It’s pay to play time, otherwise we’re going our own way and soon!” Starks emphasized his point by slamming his fist on the desk once again.
“I’ll let Hobart know that you’re looking for more trade incentives, and I’ll approach one of the G7 members through the back channels and let them know exactly what type of trade we’re going to need to go along,” Combs reiterated the order from the president in a sanitized manner in an effort to keep them both out of jail.
“The stock market took a sixteen percent drop yesterday,” Combs announced matter-of-factly. “It’s fallen to a level we haven’t seen since the Carter Administration. Do you want to address the nation and give them a pep talk?”
“No! Get the Fed Chair to do it, or better yet, have Hobart deliver a speech of some sort before he goes to the G7 again. Tell him to strike a positive posture and hint that we might need to think globally to solve our economic issues. That’ll get the markets ready for a global currency. That is, if they meet my trade requirements,” Starks ordered.
“What about Steven Howard? He’s still harping away on any television news station that’ll give him thirty seconds. It seems to be mostly Fox, though. He’s starting to make points in the polls,” Bascome mentioned. It was the first time he’d spoken since he had entered the office with the president.
Reprisal!- The Gauntlet Page 5
