Agent on a Mission

by Rose Fox

  Sharif did not know what was special about this man Hussein, who was being discussed, but understood that he would be replacing Sayid at the wheel. He didn’t feel comfortable with this because he found any change disturbing now. All at once, another voice spoke.

  “Look, she’s starting to wake up. Perhaps we should top up the sedation?” Someone got out of the car and, according to the movement; Sharif understood that the second one had sat down at the other end, behind him. A few seconds later he heard talking.

  “They say that in another few kilometers, the car will board the Kurdish train to Syria.”

  “Oh, really? That’s quite a serious change. Why did that happen?”

  “They said it would shorten the journey by quite a few hours. They want to try and reach the destination before daylight.”

  Sharif grew anxious at hearing this as he would not be able to report any change in the route. Suddenly the doors locked with a click and he breathed a sigh of relief. The engine came to life and he did not know that Sayid, the driver, had been replaced by Hussein.

  Adam began moving, emitting sounds and partial syllables. Sharif was concerned and surprised that nothing happened and could not believe the lack of response from the driver. He presumed that engine noise prevented him from hearing the loud mutterings of the hostage, which began to join into words and a few minutes later Abigail also began to groan.

  Sharif decided to take advantage of the fact that the driver didn’t hear them and glanced at them above the carpet. He made eye contact with Abigail and immediately raised his finger to his lips, as if to say ‘not a word’. She nodded her head; her eyes crinkled into a smile of joy and he told her soundlessly, just moving his lips,

  “If you don’t sleep, they’ll sedate you.”

  Abigail twisted her hand as if asking:

  “Where are we going?”

  “To a new place and we’re going to try to escape.” He covered himself then peered at her again.

  “Tell him when he wakes up,” he mouthed before disappearing beneath the plastic carpet.

  The car rocked and swayed for a long time and the three of them fell asleep.

  When all at once the car stopped, Sharif awakened, opened his eyes and listened. He could neither understand what was being said nor where they were but he kept still, afraid to check it out. After a while, he moved the carpet over him and sneaked a glance. A flashlight illuminated the area so Sharif silently pulled the carpet down and waited, realizing that some kind of inspection was being carried out.

  Sudden movement was felt as the car shifted, changed its angle and the engine stopped. Now, not a sound was heard yet they were not stationary. An unusual smell and heat spread through the air and Sharif sensed the absence of swaying and understood that they were not advancing on the wheels of the car they were in.

  He peeped out and caught Abigail’s eye and whispered to her soundlessly, “train, train” and she acknowledged him with a nod. They continued travelling for a long time, stopping once and continuing immediately.

  The train reached Latakia on the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea and from there they were supposed to continue driving, according to the original plan.

  Sharif was wakened by the noise and commotion. He heard the engine start and the car rolled backwards in its descent from the train and settled on the ground.

  Abigail was fully awake. She understood very well what was happening to her as well as what was about to take place very soon. A few minutes earlier she had looked into Adam’s eyes. He had gradually wakened from the sedation and she had whispered soundlessly to him,

  “They’re moving us to Lebanon. Sharif is hiding behind our heads. Prepare to escape. Maybe someone's waiting for us.”

  Adam understood and nodded but when he absorbed what she said a few seconds earlier, he turned his gaze to Abigail again. The little muscles in his face contracted into a broad smile that spread over his scarred face.

  An indistinct whirring was heard above their heads; Adam pointed upwards and whispered soundlessly to Abigail,

  “Helicopter, helicopter.”

  Sharif heard them whispering, raised the carpet with his elbow and crawled silently between them. He knew it was time to release them from the ropes that bound them.

  He recoiled as he knelt over Abigail’s legs. Large bloodstains that spread under her skin were visible under the rope and when Sharif merely touched the rope and pulled at it, her thin skin bled. The more he pulled the rope the more her legs were covered with the yellow discharge that oozed from her wounds.

  Sharif tried to work out how to open the tethers, but appeared to be at a loss for a solution. Adam sat up and tried to help him, but it seemed like an almost impossible task. Sharif tried to pull the rope again and blood ran down Abigail’s legs.

  Then he got a new idea; he would look for something to slip between the rope and her bruised and lacerated skin to separate them.

  Sharif cut a piece of the carpet and slipped it under the rope to protect her skin. Not a word passed between them.

  The car continued on its journey and the driver heard nothing of what was going on in its rear, behind the back seat.

  They spent a long time struggling with the knots. Abigail’s leg stained the light colored rope and the carpet beneath her but she didn’t feel it. She inserted her hand under the knot and succeeded in pushing her finger into the loop. In the space created, she slipped a rolled strip of the carpet. Sharif caught the ends of the rope with his teeth and pulled them with his nails and the first knot was untied. He unraveled the other ropes around her other leg in the same way and then turned to the ropes on Adam’s legs.

  The skin that had healed around the large scar was almost transparent and a network of capillaries was visible through it. In his attempts to pull and untie the knots, rivulets of blood also appeared along the length of his leg. His leg transmitted the message of the severe pain that had accompanied him for long months to his brain, and Adam clenched his teeth and groaned a little. The knots began loosening and coming undone, one by one.

  The droning aircraft never ceased and they understood that it was escorting their car and had no intention of disappearing. Sharif pointed upwards and touched his eyes, signaling that the helicopter was keeping an eye on them.

  Abigail whispered, “We should get out of the car when we pass a place that can offer us cover.”

  Adam nodded. His leg hurt and he massaged it with short regular strokes. Abigail also stroked her painful skin, bent and straightened her knees to get them moving again after so many months of having lain tied up with her legs straight out in front of her.

  Adam was very quiet and Abigail peeked at him. He was pale and a reddish pink rash was visible on his forehead and neck.

  The three of them lay quietly, each preoccupied with their own thoughts and withdrawn.

  When Adam attempted to stretch his injured leg, he could not straighten it out completely. He was concerned that he might not be able to walk more than a few steps, but he said nothing and prayed that this leg would not prevent their escape. It was actually the first time he had seen the scar left by his injury and he rubbed it back and forth all the time.

  Now Sharif considered when would be the best time to escape.

  According to the drone of the helicopter above them, he understood that they were close to their destination and he tried to calculate the right moment to open the doors.

  Chapter Thirty One

  It was 2:15 in the morning when the instruction to commence the operation was released from the ‘The Pit’ in Tel Aviv.

  Under cover of heavy darkness, IDF soldiers advanced. Their orders were clear. No cigarettes, no matches and no other sources of light. The Hostage Release Unit was moving at last.

  The soldiers were deployed in a fan formation facing the Lebanese border, separated from one another by a fixed distance and lying on their stomachs and holding their weapons.

  Twelve soldiers fanned out like that
in the first row, aiming their loaded rifles in readiness to fire. Not a sound was heard except for a lone cricket. The monotonous chirping had a calming effect on the tense soldiers.

  The second line of the formation consisted of twelve combat medics deployed ten meters behind the first line. They were also armed with rifles but beside each of them was a bag that contained all the necessary equipment to resuscitate the injured. They had been called up and briefed on this special operation only an hour earlier and were all amazed, unable to believe they had been selected for this mission.

  A military helicopter, camouflaged and concealed from view, stood fifty meters away from them on a helicopter launch pad. Two helicopter pilots were on board, Captain Modi Wiener and his navigator, Lieutenant Alon Dahan. The transparent cockpit roof was closed above them and their hands rested in readiness on the controls. They had been told to keep complete radio silence on the instruments in front of them.

  Modi embraced the shoulders of his navigator and Alon waved his fist as if to say “strength and courage.” There was no need to speak. Their excitement hovered in the air between them.

  The hum of a distant aircraft was heard and the soldiers tightened their grip on their weapons. Adrenaline flooded their young blood and boosted their energy. But no! The airplane went by and passed with excruciating slowness and some twenty six soldiers tracked it till it disappeared in flash of tiny colored lights.

  They lay like that for a long time and the tension began to take its toll. The hands grasping the rifles began to sweat and the elbows balanced on the sandy road began to ache.

  High up, on the horizon, an almost invisible shadow began crawling almost causing the darkness to hesitate, but it still ruled all around and the silence was absolute.

  Then a new command came.

  An advance unit of three men was to be sent forward and volunteers were called for. The three were Yuval, Ron and Shai.

  They snuck ahead, creeping slowly. Yuval’s muscles began trembling with the effort. Ron moved forward beside him and heard but could not see the dark-skinned Shai. Shai was a dark skinned Ethiopian and that served as camouflage now and gave him a wonderful advantage.

  It was clear to the three that they would serve as the immediate target to be discovered, though they also understood that time was running out to get as close as possible to the border. In another few minutes, when dawn would break, any movement or change in the field could prove to be disastrous to all of them.

  A pale light began to chase away the darkness and then a distant droning was heard. The clacking of the rotors on the roof of the helicopter was clearly heard as they sliced through the air at great speed. This was the moment they had all been waiting for and it relied on the sentence Sharif had hastily transmitted with shaking hands with his text message. At that time he had no idea that his message would jumpstart the country’s army.

  When dawn broke, the light of day illuminated everything, every fold in the ground and every bush, but no movement was visible and the area appeared deserted and uninhabited.

  Ron lay completely close to the ground, almost melding with it and thought about how this moment could not be more aptly described than by the phrase, ‘the quiet before the storm’. The buzzing of the helicopter above sounded like an angry wasp and it appeared suddenly, very small and high in the sky. It hovered in one place, observing what was going on below it.

  The three lay on the rocky terrain as though they were at one with it. They had found a fold in the ground and their uniforms matched the yellow-green of the leaves of the scraggly bushes around them. They kept completely still, as if they understood that any movement might reveal their presence to the pilot in the helicopter above and could undermine the whole operation.

  Suddenly a short burst of gunfire startled Lieutenant Eliram, but he immediately hushed everyone with a “Tztztzt”, saying “Hssss! Don’t respond!”

  He understood that on the other side of the Lebanese border someone just as tense as they were had lost control of his finger stuck to the trigger of his rifle. What happened at that moment was that if any of the twenty one soldiers had lapsed into indifference, then the round of shots returned them to the tension necessary to protect themselves. They all heard their commander’s response and understood that restraint and surprise would be the only correct way to respond in this situation.

  The hum of the car was heard and it emerged from the folds in the terrain and disappeared once more behind the rocks that lay around. Seconds later it was seen again, a large, mustard colored car. The car progressed along the winding road and the helicopter above was like a large bird of prey preparing to make its kill.

  All at once, one of the back doors of the large car opened as it disappeared behind a small hill. When it appeared again, the two doors were open and swung back and forth on their hinges like a pendulum.

  A tiny fragile figure of a woman jumped and ran ahead, her hair waving wildly. There was no one behind her and she suddenly fell on the sand. Now, the figure of a bearded man appeared behind her, limping and dragging one of his legs. He reached the spot where Abigail had fallen and kneeled beside her.

  Sharif stood up behind them and ran nimbly to join them, his body bent and straining forward. Short burst of shots stopped Sharif in his tracks. He swayed drunkenly and fell to the ground.

  The soldiers looked at where Sharif had fallen and noticed him crawling on his knees to the other two. The three of them were still on Lebanese soil, in rocky terrain with an overgrowth of thorny bushes.

  The helicopter began losing altitude as it made a fast descent. The figure of the pilot was clearly revealed through the helicopter’s transparent dome.

  The three soldiers in the forward position leapt towards the fugitives and at that same moment, all the soldiers on the Israeli side of the border rose and fired low to cover the six of them, the three soldiers and the three fugitives, who were still on Lebanese soil.

  Some distance from them, the mustard-colored car continued on its way without stopping and there was a great deal of commotion on the Lebanese side. There were a lot of noise and activity, but it was not clear what was happening.

  Sharif got up unsteadily on his feet. He straightened up and pulled Abigail with him. Adam stood and moved forward, dragging his leg. The three of them hurried, bent over, passing from hillock to hillock. Shots echoed all around from every direction.

  A sudden wild wind arose on the right when the IDF helicopter lifted off. The rotor blades on its roof dispersed shrubs and twigs in all directions.

  The pilot began gaining altitude and continued climbing higher and higher.

  On the Lebanese side another helicopter hovered at low altitude and three people could be seen inside. Rifle barrels protruded from two openings and spat sparks as they fired low. The Lebanese pilot watched and surveyed what was going on below. His lips moved and he commanded the two men with rifles at the openings on either side. They aimed well and their shots were low-slung and precise. One of the rifle barrels followed the figure of Sharif and then more shots were heard. Orange red glowed from the muzzle of the rifle. Sharif raised his arms and collapsed.

  Just then one of the soldiers turned to the helicopter from which Sharif had been fired at, aimed with precision at the pilot and fired. The pilot grabbed his shoulder and the helicopter started spinning, its tail alternately rising and falling. In the seconds that followed the helicopter's nose rose and its tail met the ground. Its single wing broke off and black smoke curled from the tongues of fire that licked it.

  The IDF helicopter took off, hovered thirty meters above the ground. A rope ladder was dropped out of it, hit the ground and dragged behind it on the sand.

  The three soldiers, who had volunteered for the forward position ran to the fugitives and pulled them after them. One of the soldiers lifted Sharif on his shoulders and ran ahead with giant strides to the rope ladder.

  Abigail climbed on the ladder first and almost reached the entrance to the hel
icopter. An arm was extended towards her from inside and pulled her in. Adam began climbing when a burst of fire hit his back. He plummeted to the ground from a height of ten meters and began convulsing in the sand. Abigail screamed and tried to get out of the helicopter to climb down to him but an arm restrained her.

  A soldier ran to Adam looked at him and gave him his hand. He got up slowly with the soldier’s help, his back full of blood and his shirt sticking to him. Step by step he climbed the ladder. Shots whistled round them and the air was ablaze.

  A new sound joined the barrage of fire. The frightening whistle of a shell being fired from the cannon barrel, answered by another one from the opposite direction, created a huge, deafening noise.

  Sharif was carried on board by a soldier who climbed up the ladder with him on his shoulder. Sharif’s arms were stretched out in front of him and his face touched the soldier’s back. The blood dripping out of his body fell in long drops along the length of the back of the soldier, who was carrying him and down onto the ground below, reddening and soaking the grains of sand. When he reached the entrance to the helicopter, the soldier laid Sharif down gently on the floor as he supported him with his other hand and Abigail leaned over him.

  Sharif was still breathing when Abigail kissed his lips warmly and lovingly. Adam, who was lying on the floor of the helicopter, rose on his elbow and stretched out his arm towards him as tears poured down his face.

  “I always knew I could rely on you, my Sharif. I knew that only you were capable of this. Our gratitude is due to you and you alone!”

  He wept and choked, his face flushed and wet.

  Abigail stroked Sharif’s hair and spoke to him tenderly. She tried to infuse him with strength because she felt that his life was draining away and his soul was moving towards oblivion. “Hey, Sharif, I want to stand beside you as you throw your arms up in victory, the arms of a real hero.”