No Further

by Andy Maslen

  “Greetings. Welcome to Azerbaijan. I am Polkovnik-leytenant Kerem Mammadzi of the Pirekeshkul Army Corps. I am your liaison here in Baku. Welcome to my country. We are honoured to be assisting you.”

  “Thank you,” Gabriel said, before shaking hands.

  “Yes, thank you,” Eli echoed, offering her own hand.

  “When you are ready, please ride over to that helicopter,” he said, pointing at an ageing chopper parked on the concrete about two hundred yards from where they were standing.

  His face twitched as he said this, then he strode back to the Soviet-era 4x4 waiting for him with its engine running.

  Did he just wink?” Eli asked Gabriel, grinning.

  “Nah. Dust in his eye.”

  They walked to the bikes, mounted them and set them vertical before pushing the kickstands away with synchronised clunks .

  Gabriel thumbed the starter button and smiled as the engine caught before settling into a steady, if throaty idle. Beside him, Eli did the same. He looked right, nodded at her, then toed the gear selector into first and pulled away. It felt good to be back on a bike. He’d last ridden one in Cambodia, although that had been a dinky little machine compared to this 800cc monster.

  A few seconds later, he and Eli reached the helicopter and rode round to the ramp at the back. Gabriel went up first, giving the throttle a quick twist to generate enough speed before closing it off and braking the big bike to a stop. Eli roared up the ramp behind him. They spent a few minutes lashing the bikes to the cargo netting on each side of the fuselage before walking back down the ramp to meet Mammadzi.

  He looked almost apologetic. He waved a hand at the rotor blades.

  “It is not the most modern aircraft. A Soviet model. The Kamov Ka-27. You have studied it?” Gabriel and Eli shook their heads. “Well, no matter. It is reliable. What do you say, bulletproof?” He smiled. “Not literally,” he added, unnecessarily in Gabriel’s opinion. He thought a well-aimed slingshot would be enough to penetrate its outer skin.

  “What’s its top speed?” Eli asked.

  “Oh, about one hundred and thirty knots. The journey will take roughly two hours.”

  “And we’re sure the Iranians don’t monitor the Caspian Sea?” Gabriel asked.

  “I am assured at the highest level that our neighbours to the south have been told we are running a brief naval exercise purely to test airworthiness of some of our helicopters. If the Iranians do spot you before you are landed, they will not attack. I am sure of it.”

  With that reassuring speech to comfort them, Eli and Gabriel remounted the cargo ramp, found a couple of thinly padded seats and strapped themselves in. The interior of the helicopter smelled strongly of aviation fuel. Gabriel frowned.

  “Don’t strike any sparks. We’re flying in a fuel-air bomb.”

  Eli pointed at her Tiger.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be riding something much worse.”

  Five minutes later, the Kamov lifted off the apron with a jerk that set the two Tigers swaying in their harnesses. Gabriel and Eli exchanged a look. Hope we get there in one piece.

  As the Kamov wheeled away to the southeast, the IDF technicians were busy with electric tugs, unloading the sixty matte-grey containers that had been driven onto the Hercules back in Tel Aviv.

  Mammadzi had wanted to stay and observe, “purely out of academic interest, you understand.” But the ranking IDF officer insisted on the protocol agreed to over the phone between CIA Director Mackie and Director Hasanov of the State Security Service. Disappointed, yet unable to disobey, Mammadzi stalked back to his 4x4 – My shitty Soviet GAZ-67! – and ordered his driver, more harshly than he deserved, to drive away.

  Control Room

  TEL AVIV

  Ziff and Mizrahi had been joined by Director Peretz, in a dimly lit room the size of a suburban sitting room, two floors below ground level. Stacks of plain, black servers seemed to be communicating with each other, winking with rows of green and red LEDs. The computer hardware filled every available square foot of floorspace, apart from that occupied by two black, metal-and-plastic workstations and large, comfortable-looking chairs upholstered in black mesh. The workstations bore an array of monitors, displaying a variety of graphs, charts and outputs from digital still and video cameras. Wide, curved screens took up most of the central space, where the forward-facing area of the canopy would be if the workstations were actual aircraft.

  Sitting at the stations, wearing the beige uniform of the Israeli Air Force, were two drone operators, one male, one female. They wore headsets with small mics on black plastic wands that curved along their left cheeks. Their right hands rested on joystick-style controllers; their left hands on similar units to control the drones’ throttles. Keyboards occupied the spaces between the pairs of controllers.

  “Is this going to work?” Peretz asked, turning to Mizrahi.

  “It’s been tested with two hundred. The software has triple redundancy baked in.”

  “That’s not what I asked, Dinah.”

  “I know, Dani. I’m sorry. Yes, it’s going to work.”

  “It had better. For all our sakes.”

  Forty-five miles southeast of the control room where the three most senior Mossad directors watched the screens, Saul Ben Zacchai sat in a conference room beneath the Knesset in Jerusalem. The space was insulated and protected against electromagnetic, audio and visual surveillance, even by Mossad. He was not alone. Ranged around the table were the members of Va’adat HaSarim Le’Inyanei Bitahon : Israel’s security cabinet.

  These thirteen individuals constituted the political, military, intelligence and legal apparatus that would allow Israel to go to war. The prime minister himself, the ministers for defence, internal security, justice, finance, the interior, transport and intelligence, education, immigrant absorption, construction, energy and water resources, plus the attorney general and the chief of the National Security Council.

  The prime minister banged his fist down on the table.

  “I am not going to sit here on my arse waiting for the Iranians to launch a nuclear missile at Jerusalem! I said before, and I will say it again now, a pre-emptive nuclear strike at Vareshabad is the only way to save the city. To save Israel herself!” Another fist slammed down onto the table to emphasise the final word.

  The defence minister spoke.

  “Nobody round this table wants to sit on their arses. But launching a strike while our operation is still in progress? At least give them a chance.”

  The prime minister’s pale-grey eyes widened.

  “A chance? They already had a chance! And what happened? Our operator was almost killed, and the British agent was captured and tortured.”

  Nobody saw fit to remind the prime minister that “their” operator was now working for the British. They knew what he meant.

  “Are we sure the Iranians are ready?” asked the attorney general.

  “Believe me. I have satellite intelligence delivered to me personally by the president of the USA himself. The Iranians are maybe only days away from launching a strike against us.”

  “If I may, Prime Minister?” This was the minister for defence again.

  The prime minister nodded. He had two spots of colour high on his cheekbones. His ministers worried when these red bullseyes appeared. It usually meant trouble.

  “Go on, Ben, you know I value your counsel.”

  “Have the missile armed and put on standby. Initiate the targeting sequence. But please, wait until we hear from Peretz. It will all be over by tonight. One way or another.”

  The prime minister didn’t answer at once. He was weighing up his options.

  Strike now and destroy the Iranians’ nuclear weapons programme at the source. Save Jerusalem. But reveal to the world, incontrovertibly, that Israel did indeed possess theatre nuclear weapons.

  Or hold fire and trust Mossad to achieve the same ends by covert means. And risk their failing, and allowing a nuclear strike against Israel. Against wh
ich the country had anti-missile defences. Which themselves might fail.

  He looked around the table. At twelve expectant faces. Each one bearing a variation of the same expression: resolve, tempered with anxiety. Brows knitted together, eyes narrowed. Tongue tips occasionally flicking out to moisten dry lips. He’d known these men and women a long time. Had served with two of them. The preceding hour of discussion had been heading towards a majority in favour of staying his hand. Waiting it out.

  He shook his head. He’d reached his decision.

  The prime minister looked around the table. He made sure to lock his gaze onto each of the twelve pairs of eyes in turn. Then he spoke.

  Countdown

  “Prepare the strike.”

  Everyone started speaking at once. He patted the air for silence. It had no effect. He stood up, bolt upright and roared at them.

  “Be quiet! I will not go down in history as the man who let our people’s birthright be obliterated. You’ve all read the intelligence reports. They have the missiles. They are days away from arming them with nuclear warheads. They will strike. So we strike first.”

  He sat, breathing heavily, his face flushed red.

  “Saul, please think,” the attorney general said. Out of all of them, he had known their boss the longest. Since they were nineteen-year-olds doing military service together.

  “Do you want, then, to go down in history as the man who ignited a nuclear war in the Middle East? Please, let Peretz have the rest of the day. We promised him. If he reports that his people failed, then yes, we should strike.”

  The prime minister sat back in his chair and covered his face with his hands, scrubbing at his cheeks as if he would erase the high colour painted there.

  “Until four o’clock this afternoon, our time. That’s how long they have. After that, I want our Jericho in the air.”

  A Little Ride Through the Desert

  CHALUS, NORTHERN IRAN

  The chopper touched down in a bouncing landing that rattled Gabriel’s teeth in his jaw. He checked his watch: 2.00 p.m. local time. The rear ramp jerked downwards, admitting bright sunlight into the dim cargo hold. Donning wraparound sunglasses, he and Eli grabbed their rifles and slung them across their backs. They unstrapped the Tigers and wheeled them down the ramp and onto the hard-packed ground, Eli taking particular care with her bike and its innocuous-looking camouflaged Bergen. Gabriel ran round to the front of the chopper and waved at the pilot, who waved back before lifting off again and swinging the ageing machine due north, over the sea and towards home.

  Gabriel looked around. The pilot had picked a good spot. No signs of human habitation. Or animal, come to that. Just a flat, sandy plain sloping gently up and away from the sea, with a cracked and weedy strip of tarmac heading southeast towards Tehran. A few olive trees grew beside a clump of rocks, and their spindly branches waved in the breeze blowing off the sea. It smelled of salt, overlaid with the heady aroma of aviation fuel.

  “Ready?” he asked Eli, who was fastening a camouflage bandanna over her nose and mouth.

  She nodded.

  He adjusted his own bandanna, resettled his sunglasses on his nose and started his bike. Eli did the same.

  With a spurt of sand from his rear tyre, Gabriel moved off, bringing his boots up onto the footpegs and changing up through the gears.

  They crested the rise that led away from the sea and got their first decent look at the terrain. A hundred and twelve miles or so of scrubby desert, grassy plains and, in the far distance, snow-capped mountains, blue-grey in the haze. No roads. No settlements. Nothing. All to be covered as quickly as possible, without breaking the bikes or detonating the bomb nestled behind Eli’s right calf.

  As he reached sixty miles per hour, Gabriel changed up from third to fourth. He didn’t kick it into the highest gear, wanting a reserve of torque in case the bike hit a patch of soft sand. He heard Eli matching him, and they rode on at the agreed top speed, ten feet apart, leaning forwards a little to counter the wind. The two triple-cylinder engines generated a weird, thrumming beat as their thrashing pistons came into, and went out of, sync.

  The bikes’ already forgiving suspension had been specially tuned for desert riding, and although Gabriel could see the front forks dipping and rising almost to the full extent of their travel, the effect on his hips and spine were kept to an acceptable minimum. Even so, stretches of hard, bumpy ground had him standing up in a half-crouch to avoid the kidney-bruising jolts transmitted up into the seat.

  After an hour, they stopped for water. They’d covered fifty-four miles. Another fifty-eight to go. He checked his watch as they pulled away after the stop: 3.05 p.m. Should be there by four fifteen , he thought.

  Initiate Strike Sequence

  ISRAELI NUCLEAR INSTALLATION, CODENAME “JUDITH,” NEGEV DESERT

  LOCAL TIME 1.35 P.M. 2 HOURS AND 25 MINUTES TO LAUNCH

  While Gabriel and Eli were mounting their bikes for the second half of the ride to Vareshabad, Lieutenant Colonel Sara Moreno of the IDF leaned towards the desk-mounted mic in front of her and gave an order.

  “Strike Controller, Command. Initiate strike sequence, confirm.”

  “Copy, strike controller confirms. Initiating strike sequence.”

  She sat back and breathed out. What have I just done? she asked herself.

  All around her, technicians, engineers and some very senior military personnel were moving through a well-rehearsed set of activities. Half a mile to the west of her padded leather chair, and fifty-eight feet below ground, a Jericho ballistic missile armed with a one-megaton nuclear warhead woke up.

  Drone Swarm

  VARESHABAD

  Gabriel glanced sideways. Eli was looking straight ahead. She’d tied a second bandanna around her forehead and knotted it at the back. Her hair was pinned back in a bun, but a stray hank had come loose and was whipping around in the slipstream created by her head. She looked across the gap between them and nodded. He imagined her smiling behind the sand-crusted bandanna covering the lower half of her face.

  A wind-rippled sand dune rose before them. Standing on the footpegs and opening the throttle wide, Gabriel powered up the slope. At the top he gasped. Spread out before him like a multicoloured handkerchief was a vast field of roses. Squares of red, white, pink and apricot. He brought the bike to a stop and flipped the gear lever until the bike was in neutral. Then he sat back and pulled his bandanna down under his chin. He inhaled deeply through his nose. The wind was blowing towards him and on it rode the sweet, peach fragrance of the roses. Eli drew up alongside him and uncovered her own face.

  “Mmm,” she said. “Beautiful.”

  “Do you ever wish the people we go up against would just stick to flower farming, or hymn-singing, and not world domination?” Gabriel asked.

  “Yes. All the time. We could retire and have lots of babies. But until then, we have a bomb factory to disable. So come on. Stop daydreaming. We’ve another good hour’s riding before we get there. I just sent a message to Uri. I told him we’d be in position by four fifteen.”

  Skirting the rose fields, Gabriel and Eli rode on. They reached the point where they were to wait at 4.10 p.m. and dismounted. The rocky outcrop they’d spotted was no higher than fifty feet. But carved by wind, or possibly prehistoric peoples, a cave led downwards from the sandy surface at a shallow angle. They wheeled the bikes down a few yards then returned to the shade of the entrance. Eli sent a short, coded message to Ziff then turned to Gabriel.

  “Now we wait,” she said.

  “And watch,” Gabriel replied.

  He took a pair of Zeiss compact binoculars from a pocket and brought them up to his eyes, pushing the yellow-lensed sunglasses up onto his forehead first. The white construction-set buildings of the weapons factory at Verashabad stood out clearly against the sapphire-blue sky. Although heat haze rendered the point where the ground met the sky a fuzzy, blurred line, the outlines of the blocks, spheres and cylinders were sharp.

 
; He felt Eli’s arm round his waist and looked left. She was looking into his eyes. Her expression was serious.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Don’t let them capture me,” she said.

  “I won’t.”

  “I mean it. If it doesn’t go to plan, and you see them take me, I want you to shoot me.”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  “I’m not being stupid.”

  “You’d be worth more to them alive than dead. You know that. There’d be a prisoner exchange.”

  She shook her head.

  “You don’t know them like I do. You don’t know what they’re capable of.”

  Gabriel pulled off his left glove and held the back of his hand up to her face.

  “I think I do.”

  “I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant. But they’ll see me as a triple affront to their ideology. An enemy agent. An Israeli Jew. And a woman.”

  Gabriel pulled the glove back on. Leaned over. And kissed her.

  “It won’t come to that. Eli, I love you. And I’m not going to shoot you. I’m not going to see you hurt, either. We’re going to rock their world, kill Darbandi, then ride out of there waving our cowboy hats in the air, OK?”

  She smiled at him. Leaned forwards and kissed him fiercely on the mouth. When she pulled away, she swiped the back of her hand across her eyes.

  “You just said you love me.”

  “Did I? Fucking hell. I must be suffering from heatstroke!”

  She punched him on the bicep.

  “Did you mean it?”

  Gabriel looked her in the eye, marvelling at the way glints of gold interwoven among the grey-green strands of her iris blazed in the sun.