Coup d’État

by Ben Coes

  Dewey stared at the terrorist. Youssef took a drag on the cigarette, shaking his head. His eyes revealed a small streak of fear.

  Dewey glanced from the terrorist’s eyes across the hold. The killer’s Glock sat on the canvas seat, the silencer pointing out. Dewey looked back up at the terrorist.

  Calmly, Dewey took his wrists and held them up toward the terrorist. The blade was now tucked between his wrists. He yanked and pulled the flex-cuffs apart. They dropped like ribbons to the ground.

  Youssef paused. He was momentarily confused. Then he lurched backward. But Dewey caught him with his leg, tripping the terrorist as he tried to run for his weapon. Youssef fell to the ground.

  Dewey stood. He was dizzy and weak. He stepped toward Youssef, who was desperately trying to stand up. Dewey caught him in the mouth with a hard kick from his steel-toed boot, shattering his jaw. A tooth fell to the steel floor. A piercing scream rose in the hold as Youssef tumbled sideways.

  In Dewey’s right hand, he held the combat knife. He pounced to Youssef’s chest, bringing the blade tip in a slashing motion down above the killer’s heart. He plunged it halfway in, pausing as the killer looked up at him. Dewey waited for the moment of recognition. He wanted to see the panic in the black eyes of the terrorist and the final understanding that he had been beaten. Blood flamed out from his nose, ears, and mouth.

  “That’s why the rules are so important, Youssef,” said Dewey as he stared into the terrorist’s eyes for a brief second, then thrust the razor-sharp blade through his heart.

  72

  THE WHITE HOUSE

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Jessica sprinted out of the Situation Room, past a pair of Secret Service officers stationed just outside the door. She took the flights of stairs two steps at a time. At the first floor, she slowed slightly, stepped through the office of Cecily Vincent, the president’s executive assistant, who looked up but did not try to stop the national security advisor, one of only two people allowed to walk into the Oval Office at any time, the other being Vincent herself.

  Jessica opened the door to the Oval Office and stepped inside. Inside the Oval Office, President Allaire was seated in a wing chair. On the chesterfield sofas in front of him sat half a dozen U.S. senators, one of whom, the senate majority leader from Texas, Senator Greer Callahan, was in midsentence.

  Jessica’s eyes immediately met the president’s.

  “Excuse me, Greer,” said the president, interrupting Callahan. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to have to reconvene.”

  “Jessica, should we be concerned by that look on your face?” asked one of the senators, Joe Sharp from Missouri, as he stood up to leave the Oval Office.

  “I apologize,” said Jessica, not answering Sharp’s question directly.

  Cecily Vincent shut the door as the last of the senators exited.

  “What is it?” asked the president.

  “Bolin,” said Jessica. “He double-crossed us.”

  “What do you mean?” asked the president.

  “Bolin sold Dewey to Aswan Fortuna. We believe Dewey’s on a plane right now, bound for Beirut. The rest of the coup team is either with Dewey or already dead.”

  The president stared at Jessica in disbelief. Anger crossed his face, then reddened his cheeks.

  “How do you know?” he asked, stepping behind his desk.

  “Video, cash transfers,” said Jessica. “I confronted him and he admitted to it.”

  “That son of a bitch,” said the president. He reached for the phone on the desk. “Ungrateful motherfucking bastard.”

  “Right now, Mr. President, we have to forget about what Bolin just did,” said Jessica. “We have at most four, maybe five, hours until that plane lands in Beirut.”

  “So let’s intercept the goddamn plane,” said President Allaire. “Scramble some F-18s.”

  “It’s too late,” said Jessica. “We weren’t tracking the flight path. We don’t even know if it’s going to land in Beirut. We’re guessing. But it’s all we have. We need to meet the plane.”

  “How?” asked President Allaire.

  “Israel,” said Jessica.

  * * *

  “Prime Minister Shalit,” said Allaire a few minutes later, clutching the phone to his ear as Jessica listened in on another handset. “I apologize for interrupting your vacation. I’m here with Jessica Tanzer.”

  “It’s quite all right,” said Shalit. “Gstaad will get along without me for a few hours.”

  “We need your help,” said the president. “We have a situation. I don’t have time to brief you fully on all of the details, but the bottom line is, there’s a plane bound for Beirut. On board is one and possibly several American GIs. They were kidnapped.”

  “Why Beirut?”

  “Aswan Fortuna,” said Jessica. “He paid handsomely for one of the men. When he receives possession of him, he’s going to torture and kill him. This man is very important to us. To America. To me personally. He saved our country when Alexander Fortuna attacked us.”

  “Benjamin, this is the team we sent in to remove Omar El-Khayab,” said Allaire.

  “So that was you,” said Shalit. “Thank God for that. What’s your soldier’s name?”

  “Andreas,” said the president. “Dewey Andreas.”

  “So Aswan paid for his revenge?” asked Shalit.

  “Yes,” said Jessica. “The CIA’s assumption is that Hezbollah will be waiting for the plane.”

  “I’m curious,” said Shalit. “How much did Fortuna pay?”

  “We believe the figure is two hundred and fifty million dollars,” said Jessica.

  “My God,” said Shalit, momentarily taken aback. “How much time do we have?”

  “Four, maybe five hours,” said Jessica. “Maybe less.”

  “Four hours?” asked Shalit. “That’s not a lot of time. Hold on the line. Let me get General Dayan.”

  “Menachem Dayan,” said Jessica to President Allaire, “the head of IDF.”

  The president put his hand over the receiver.

  “I know who the hell he is, Jess,” said Allaire.

  “Sorry. Habit.”

  “It’s okay. I’m not senile yet.” A slight grin came to his lips. “Israel.”

  It was all he said, but Jessica knew exactly what he meant. It was moments like this when you understood who your true allies were.

  The phone clicked again.

  “There we go,” said Shalit. “President Allaire, Jessica, I’m joined by General Menachem Dayan.”

  “Good evening,” said Dayan, his voice deep and gravelly, a heavy smoker, with a thick Israeli accent. “President Allaire, Ms. Tanzer. It sounds like we have a little bit of a predicament on our hands.”

  “Yes, General,” said Jessica. “Do we have enough time?”

  “It’ll be tight,” said Dayan. “We’ll try our best.”

  “Thank you,” said Jessica.

  “What I need right now are two things,” said Dayan. “First, I need to know what kind of plane the prisoners are on.”

  “C-130,” said Jessica. “It will be tan, desert camo. The colors of the Pakistan Air Force.”

  “Okay, that’s good,” said Dayan. “Second, I need photos of the prisoners. Immediately. Can you do that, Jessica?”

  “Yes,” said Jessica. “Give me sixty seconds.”

  Jessica typed furiously away on her BlackBerry.

  “Can you help us, General Dayan?” asked President Allaire.

  “I have already dispatched a squad from Shayetet Thirteen,” said Dayan, referring to Israel’s elite team of special forces commandos, their version of the Navy SEALs. “My best commander, a kid named Kohl Meir, will be running the recon. Fortunately, Rafic Hariri is near the sea. But there’s not a lot of time. We’ll do our best. Get me the photo. My Shayetet team will be doing a lot of killing tonight. I don’t want them to accidentally take down any of your team.”

  73

  IN THE AIR

 
Dewey sheathed the knife at his ankle and walked to the front of the cabin.

  A steel door led to the flight deck. He grabbed the door handle and moved it slowly down, but it was locked. The door was hermetically sealed; the edges of the door were seamless, steel on steel, no edge.

  He looked at the radio next to the door. He could pretend to be the terrorist in the hope of luring one of the pilots back. But if he failed, he would only be giving whoever was waiting on the ground more time to prepare. Dewey’s Arabic was nonexistent and as much as he wanted to risk it, he knew the odds were low. Right now, the element of surprise was his only asset. That, along with his trusty Gerber blade, and Youssef’s Glock no doubt reloaded, sitting on the canvas bench.

  Dewey stepped past the blood-soaked corpse of the terrorist. Near the rear of the plane, there was a small bathroom. He stepped inside and flipped the light switch on.

  Dewey looked in the mirror. From the nostrils down, his face, mustache, and beard were covered in blood and dried yellow vomit. Blood continued to drip from his nose. At the side of his face, the skin was broken where Bolin had kicked him; his boot had left a gash near Dewey’s ear that continued to bleed. The ear itself was caked in dried blood. He turned on the small faucet and splashed his face with water. The sink ran red with his washed-off blood and vomit.

  Dewey looked at himself in the mirror. He had to think. Killing the young, overconfident Youssef was easy. What happened to him now, upon landing, would be beyond his control. A heavily armed team of Fortuna’s men would be waiting for him at the airport. If they caught him, he knew his fate. The revenge of an angry father, a man who also happened to be one of the world’s foremost terrorists. Dewey knew it would be more pain, more torture than any amount of training had ever prepared him for. There was torture designed to elicit information. That was torture he’d been trained to survive. There’s an advantage when your abductor wants something—information, ransom, whatever—because they must at all times worry about keeping you alive. But what waited for him on the ground was something altogether different. It was the torture of vengeance; a father’s vengeance.

  He reached into his coat pocket. He felt the small white cyanide pill that he took off the terrorist in Cooktown. He removed it from his pocket. For several moments, he stared at the small white pill.

  Dewey looked in the mirror. He focused his eyes, his head still clouded in concussion. He stared into his bloodshot eyes. There, he found himself. He tossed the small pill into the sink and watched it go down the drain.

  If I die, it won’t be at my own hands, he thought.

  Dewey exited the bathroom. He searched the cargo hold for anything that might help him escape. A parachute would have been a godsend. On the right side of the hold were steel storage cabinets. Most were empty. One contained a first-aid kit. The last one held several round coils of wire.

  He searched the other side of the cabin. But there was nothing of any use. He ransacked the bathroom, the space beneath the orange canvas troop benches, everywhere. He searched frantically for a parachute. But he found nothing.

  Dewey had flown in so many Hercs in his life he’d lost count. During Ranger school, the interior of a C-130 became almost like a second home. This was an old one, but still, he couldn’t remember ever being in one and not being able to find a parachute. Above one of the troop benches, he found the switch box that raised and lowered the rear ramp. Dewey had run down enough Herc ramps to know exactly how these worked.

  The plane arced right, then began a lazy downward descent. The pilot had begun his approach into Beirut.

  If you have no options left, you must create opportunities.

  Dewey moved to the storage cabinet at the side of the cabin. He lifted the steel door. He reached in and removed more than a dozen heavy coils of thick steel wire. Beneath the wire, he found a toolbox. Inside the toolbox, he found a large socket wrench.

  Dewey moved to the middle of the cabin. A long, rectangular steel plate was bolted in place. He took the socket wrench and placed it on the nut, then, with all of his strength, turned the wrench. The bolt loosened and he removed it. He worked his way down the edge of the steel plate, removing bolts as quickly as he could. Sweat poured from his face and chest as he loosened the bolts. He removed eighteen bolts in all. He took his knife, pried it into the edge of the steel plate, then lifted it up, getting his fingertips beneath the small seam. He lifted the heavy plate and pushed it to the side.

  Beneath was a dark compartment, the opening approximately the size of a refrigerator. He reached down and felt the hard rubber of one of the Hercs big wheels.

  The plane dipped and lurched to the right.

  Dewey stood and ran to the small porthole window at the left side of the cabin. Through thick glass he could see the lights of buildings. They were still a few thousand feet in the air, but were descending quickly.

  Dewey ran back to the rectangular opening. Next to the opening was the round coil of wire he had found in the storage locker. He unfurled the wire. At one end was a round eyelet. Dewey took the eyelet and reached down into the wheel compartment. He threaded the eyelet through a hole in the steel hubcap at the center of the wheel. He pulled the eyelet through. The thick wire was now threaded through the center of the wheel.

  Dewey pulled the eyelet across the cargo hold. Protruding from the wall was a steel hook. He put the eyelet over the hook.

  The plane turned again, this time to the left.

  Dewey found the other end of the steel coil. He went to the other side of the cabin and wrapped it around a steel pipe along the wall until it was tight, then placed the other eyelet on a hook. The wire now ran from one side of the cabin to the other, through the hub of the wheel, taut as a guitar string. But would it hold? He’d find out soon enough.

  Dewey moved to the window. Beirut was lit up like a Christmas tree.

  From the canvas bench, Dewey grabbed the terrorist’s handgun. He checked the magazine, then tucked it into the back of his jeans. He sat down and strapped himself into a seat near the ramp. He reached up and opened the box containing the ramp controls.

  A green light flashed inside the cabin. A loud bell chimed three times.

  There was a loud cacophony as the landing gear hatches opened to the air. Wind abruptly blew into the hold from the one open compartment.

  Seize the opportunity.

  Dewey reached up and placed his hand on the ramp switch. He flipped the switch down. The ramp at the rear of the C-130 cracked open. Slowly, like an alligator’s mouth, the ramp opened wide to the Beirut sky. He felt the vacuum as his body was pulled toward the open air. But the seat belt held him to the canvas bench.

  As the landing gear descended, the steel wire he’d strung through the wheel went tight. The cabin was filled with a loud grinding noise as the wheel hydraulic fought against the coil. But it held.

  The C-130 struggled to maintain a steady landing course as the back of the huge plane lurched violently to the left.

  Youssef’s bloody corpse rolled, then bounced through the open hold.

  The seat belt was strapped across Dewey’s chest and he held it with both hands. It was the only thing preventing him from being blown out the back of the plane. He closed his eyes as dirt and debris blew through the furious hurricane of wind. The plane was nearly sideways, lurching nearly vertical as the pilot struggled to right the craft.

  Dewey braced himself. He had either just committed suicide, or he’d created an opportunity; the opportunity he would need to avoid the clutches of Fortuna, whose men, he knew, would be waiting on the ground below.

  74

  MEDITERRANEAN OCEAN

  OFF THE COAST OF LEBANON

  A mile from Beirut’s rocky coast, due east of the now empty public beach called Ramlet al-Baida, the black waters of the Mediterranean glimmered under the starlit sky.

  Moving across the water’s surface, four dull yellow embers of light coursed steadily toward the shore. Eight feet below the surface, four speci
alized delivery vehicles—SDVs—moved at a fast clip. These SDVs were bottle-shaped objects designed to deliver Israeli commandos as quietly, as invisibly, as quickly as they could to enemy shores.

  The front of each SDV was lit by a pair of powerful halogen lights. At the rear of the slender, six-foot-long units, water churned in a bubbleless, frenetic eddy.

  On the back of each SDV were two steel handles. Clinging to each handle was a frogman; two commandos per SDV, eight men in all. A squad from Shayetet 13—S’13—Israel’s elite special forces unit, their version of the U.S. Navy SEALs.

  Each frogman was as black as the ocean itself. Each man wore tactical combat wet suits, light-duty scuba packs, and carried airtight weapons caches. The commandos kicked their flippers in a steady rhythm, helping move the submersibles through the cold water toward Beirut’s heavily patrolled coast.

  They ranged in age from twenty-one to twenty-seven. They were young, but the men of S’13 were the most fearsome and the most fearless soldiers that Israel dispatched to the most dangerous of places. They were the cutting edge of a deadly conflict that had no end.

  The commandos swept into Ramlet al-Baida. The SDVs slowed, then shut off a hundred yards from the coastline.

  One of the commandos decoupled a coil of wire cable from his belt, then hooked it through the nose of his submersible. He passed the lead to the next diver. Soon, all four subs were linked by the cable. The first diver cinched the cable taut. He and another diver dove down beneath the water. They searched the murky seafloor with a small halogen flashlight for more than a minute. Finally, they found a small steel ring sticking up from the ocean floor, a red LED glimmering on its side. One of the frogmen clipped the end of the cable to the ring, then cinched down the other end until the four units were submerged and secure.

  They moved along the wave break to the far west side of the resort beach where an old pier still stood on barnacle-covered, withering timbers. The S’13 team knew the beach like the back of their hands. Infiltration of Beirut’s unfriendly shores was a core part of the frogman’s training and ongoing activity. Each commando removed his fins, then jogged up the wet sand to a dark break beneath the overhanging pier.