Trapping Zero

by Jack Mars

  “Then maybe we stopped this thing before it ever started,” Strickland offered hopefully.

  Reid didn’t add anything, but he shook his head. He had to think. Maria was, as usual, correct; they had ascertained the identity of the cybercriminal that had gotten the Brotherhood into the US embassy in Baghdad. What sort of plan would they have had to get into this one? If the insurgents were expecting a raid on their compound, they must have been equally expectant to lose their Tunisian accomplice.

  Tarek said the Israeli would get them to where they needed to be. The Brotherhood had bombed an American-owned site in Iraq in order to take out specific targets. While the Islamic group certainly had more than their fair share of disdain for the Israelis, what would be the purpose in taking out the embassy here? The only thing that came to mind was their mention of a “divine purpose,” which he had interpreted, along with the clue about Israel, to mean a strike against Jerusalem; yet the more he thought about it, the more he came to realize he may have drawn the wrong conclusion about the Brotherhood’s intent.

  “I think I know where I went wrong,” he told his two teammates. “The embassy in Baghdad wasn’t their actual target. The congressional delegation was.”

  Maria understood immediately. “Agent Mendel,” she said sharply.

  The Mossad agent appeared in the doorway to the van, one eyebrow arched questioningly. “Yes, Agent…?”

  “Johansson. Are there any scheduled visits from American heads of state to the embassy? Let’s say over the next four or five days.”

  Mendel narrowed her dark eyes. “I can make a call.”

  “Wait,” Strickland interjected. “That would mean the embassy here might not be the target at all. The venue wouldn’t matter; the target would.”

  Reid almost swore aloud at his overzealous guess. “It could be anywhere in the country.”

  He would be useful, to get them where they needed to go. Those were Tarek’s exact words. What if, he thought, their Israeli hostage was worth more than just getting them over the border into Israel?

  “The journalist, the one still remaining,” Reid said suddenly. “What’s his background?”

  Maria took out the tablet and scrolled through her case notes. “In the audio feed just before the bombing, Bachar said that his friend Avi Leon was ‘not so lucky.’ So I would assume the remaining journalist is Idan Mizrahi, the youngest of the three. Let’s see… he started out as a photographer, and later became a political photojournalist after he met Avi Leon, who was something of a mentor to him. The two did plenty of work together. I don’t see much else that’s noteworthy… uh, before all of that, it looks like he did a few years with the Israeli Navy—”

  Reid looked up sharply. “The Israeli Navy? Where was he stationed?”

  Maria scrolled further. “A few places. But he spent most of that time repairing ships in Haifa.”

  Reid frowned. He knew of Haifa as a culture-rich port city about eighty miles northwest of Jerusalem, but little else.

  Luckily, someone did. “I’ve been to Haifa,” Strickland said. “It’s the main port of call for the Sixth Fleet.” To Reid’s blank expression he added, “The primary presence of the US Navy in the Mediterranean and African coast.”

  “A ship,” Reid said slowly. He glanced up at Maria; judging by her expression, she was thinking the same as he was. “Just like…”

  “The USS Cole,” she finished.

  “Sorry?” said Strickland.

  “Before your time,” Maria replied by way of answer. “Back in 2000, an American destroyer was bombed in a harbor at Yemen. Seventeen sailors were killed.”

  “The terrorists used a small fiberglass boat loaded with C-4,” Reid added. The same MO as the embassy bombing. “Al-Qaeda later claimed responsibility…” He trailed off, putting things together in his mind. “What if Strickland is right and the Brotherhood has something to prove? They acquire drones where Hamas failed…”

  “And they sink an American ship where Al-Qaeda failed?” Maria said.

  Agent Talia Mendel cleared her throat loudly. The three CIA agents had nearly forgotten she was there. “Tell me, does the CIA always work on this sort of wild conjecture?”

  “It’s more or less how we got here,” Strickland admitted.

  “It’s worked out pretty well for us so far,” Maria said shortly.

  “We need to get a helicopter to Haifa,” Reid told the Mossad agent, ignoring the attitude. “Alert the port for suspicious activity, and find out if any American ships are docked there.”

  Mendel scoffed. “Do you truly think that this is the target?”

  “It’s our best ‘wild conjecture,’” Reid said challengingly. “Are you going to get us a chopper or not?”

  The agent chewed her lower lip for a moment. “Fine,” she said at last. “But I am coming with you. I’ll need to see this for myself.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  The rotors roared overhead as a CH-53 Sea Stallion, a US-produced and Israeli-owned helicopter, carried Reid and his team quickly through the night towards the port of Haifa. He did not like the way that Talia Mendel, seated across from him, stared straight ahead with a officious smirk. Lives were at stake, yet she seemed to have come along simply to see just how wrong Reid might be. He couldn’t help but wonder if all Mossad were as haughty.

  “Haifa is on lockdown,” Maria noted through the radio headset. “They’re searching every inch of the port for suspicious persons.”

  “And you were right,” Strickland added as a message came through to his phone. “There is an American destroyer at port in Haifa, an Arleigh-Burke class called the USS New York.”

  As much as Reid wanted to return Mendel’s condescending look, he couldn’t bring himself to under the circumstances. “I doubt we’re going to find our guys hanging out at the port,” he said into the radio. “Strickland, what sort of range would a military-grade UAV have?”

  He shook his head. “I couldn’t say without knowing more about what type of drone we’re dealing with. It couldn’t be anything quite as large as a Predator or a Reaper without being spotted. My best guess would be about three kilometers or less.”

  “That’s way too wide a net to cast,” Maria said. “They wouldn’t actually have to be at the port to attack the ship.”

  She was right; a three-kilometer radius was too big of an area to attempt to conduct a search for the Brotherhood. As he thought about options, he could have sworn he heard Mendel chuckle lightly in his headset.

  “Do you have anything meaningful to add, Agent Mendel?” he asked irritably.

  “Well, since you asked so nicely,” she said, “allow me to make a supposition of my own. If you are correct and the destroyer is bombed, much more than just the port would be locked down. Every exit in the city of Haifa would be barricaded in search of these men. Simply put, if it was me planning this raid, I wouldn’t be in the city at all.”

  “You’d be in the water,” Reid said grimly as he realized what Mendel was circuitously suggesting. He hated to admit that she was likely right; if he considered it, it’s what he would do as well. Circumvent any possibility of being captured at a border by already being out to sea. “What’s our ETA?”

  “Eleven minutes,” the pilot replied in the headset.

  “Strickland,” Reid asked, “you said the USS New York was an Arleigh-Burke class?”

  “I did.”

  “Then it would be equipped with a SPY-1D multifunction passive electronically scanned array radar,” he rattled off quickly.

  Maria stared at him blankly. “How on earth would you know that?”

  “It just comes to me.” Reid shrugged and pointed at his own head. At the mention of the Arleigh-Burke class destroyer, he simply and suddenly knew that the ship was most likely built in the early nineties, and among the first to utilize the Aegis Combat System of integrated naval weapons produced by Lockheed Martin. “My point is that they have an excellent radar system, but no reason to use it in p
ort. Let’s get that ship on the line and tell them to scan a three-kilometer radius for any suspicious activity in the water. But do not engage. We need to be right about this.”

  “They won’t anyway,” Strickland noted. “Rules of maritime engagement dictate we don’t fire unless fired upon.”

  Reid frowned. He was aware of the rule; it was, in large part, a reason for the tragedy aboard the USS Cole back in 2000. Sentries saw the small craft coming but were not allowed to fire on it.

  But we’re not expecting them to be fired upon. Another thought came to him, one that made him even more uneasy than the thought of the ship not being able to defend itself. “Even with all that tech, their radar won’t pick up on aerial drones if they’re small enough,” he said. “They’ll need physical sentries watching the skies.”

  Maria shook her head. “Those drones would have to be carrying a hell of a payload to sink a destroyer from above. What if we’re wrong about the weapon?”

  Reid swallowed the lump in his throat. “I suppose we’ll see for ourselves soon enough.”

  *

  The Sea Stallion chopper soared towards the port at Haifa. A glance out the window told Reid they were closing in; below them he could see the myriad bright lights of the port that ended abruptly into darkness at the edge of the Mediterranean Sea.

  “We’ve got a hit,” Strickland told them. “The New York picked up a signal on radar that appears to be two small crafts, one about seventy feet long and the other a little larger, about one and a half kilometers due west of the destroyer.”

  “Why is that out of the ordinary?” Maria asked.

  “They’re practically on top of each other,” Strickland replied. “As if they’re tethered together.”

  Two boats? Reid wondered. Why would the Brotherhood need two boats? Unless one of them is for a USS Cole-type suicide mission.

  Talia Mendel tugged a radio loose from her belt and spoke quickly into it in Hebrew. To Reid’s confused glance she said, “We’re dispatching IDF to the coordinates sent by the New York.”

  Reid nodded. “Good, we can use the backup. But we’ll get there faster. Pilot, take us out.”

  “Yes, sir.” The Sea Stallion did not slow as it flew over the port and out to sea.

  Mendel regarded him curiously. “You do not plan to wait for IDF?”

  Reid checked the clip on his Glock. “The Brotherhood will hear or see the boats coming. They’ll have time to prepare. They’ll hear us coming too, but we’ll be on them in seconds. We can try to get the drop while IDF is en route.”

  “So which is it, Agent Zero?” Mendel sounded amused. “You don’t like others doing your dirty work, or you enjoy being the hero?”

  A bit of both, he admitted internally. But to Mendel he replied, “I just hold myself responsible for my own ‘wild conjectures.’”

  She grinned as he tightened his tactical vest.

  “ETA less than one minute,” the pilot announced.

  “What if they have RPGs?” asked Maria.

  “We’ll have to fast-rope down,” said Strickland. He hefted the MP5 submachine gun. “I’ll provide cover fire for anyone on the deck while you three descend.”

  Reid couldn’t help himself; a knot of anxious excitement formed in his chest at the prospect of rappelling out of the chopper and onto a boat. He grabbed a looped handhold in the ceiling as Maria slid the door of the Sea Stallion open. The intense, chilled wind whipped around them immediately.

  “We don’t know what we’re going to find down there,” Reid shouted into the radio to combat the rushing wind. “So act with extreme caution!”

  Maria and Strickland nodded as Reid peered out through the open door. He squinted over the moonlit water as the helicopter soared closer, dipping in altitude at the same time. He spotted them; the naval ship had been right. There were two boats, still in the water, so close together they might have been connected at one side.

  As they descended further he could make out some features of the two ships. One was sleek, all-white, and looked like an expensive cross between a speedboat and a small yacht. The other was older, with a wide, black rounded hull.

  A tugboat, he realized. That’s why they needed Idan Mizrahi. Not just to gain access to the port—but because none of the Iraqi insurgents could pilot a boat.

  And the other, the sleek white ship, he could surmise the owner of it. If he was right and it belonged to the Libyan arms dealer, then he had been wrong in thinking that the weapon they were acquiring had to be small.

  But he had no time to relate all of this to his team. “We aim for the tug!” he shouted. “Mendel, have IDF go after the speedboat!”

  She nodded once and quickly relayed the message in radioed Hebrew as Reid tore the headset from over his ears. Strickland lowered a thick cable from over the open cabin as the helicopter turned ninety degrees, coming to a hovering stop over the tugboat.

  “Let’s go!” Reid shouted, but it was drowned out by the wind and powerful rotors. He drew his Glock and, holding it in his right hand, wrapped both legs and his left hand around the cable. With Strickland covering him with the MP5, he slid down the approximate forty feet to the tugboat below.

  He glanced down and saw two men on the deck, scrambling frantically at the sight of the approaching agents. They dashed towards the bow. He took aim and fired as he descended, clipping one of the pair in the leg. He fell, but his cohort vanished around the wheelhouse.

  Reid was more than two-thirds of the way down the line when a third man appeared, coming up from a compartment below deck. The bearded insurgent had something in his hands—something long, glinting in the moonlight, tapered at the end. He raised it to his shoulder.

  By the time Reid’s feet touched down on the deck, the Iraqi fired an RPG at the chopper.

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  The next several seconds were little more than a blur in Reid’s mind. He couldn’t even be sure the events unfolded in the way he thought they did as his body and instincts took control.

  His feet hit the deck of the tugboat as a shoulder-launched rocket-propelled grenade shot upward towards the chopper. Reid’s gun was up in an instant and he fired two rounds into the Iraqi, but the report of the shots was entirely lost in the explosion overhead.

  As the insurgent fell, Reid glanced over his shoulder to see an orange fireball erupt from the side of the Sea Stallion. Someone hit the deck beside him and rolled; it was the Mossad agent Talia Mendel.

  The helicopter careened sideways as it fell towards the sea. Strickland and Maria still clung to the rope as it lost slack. Maria fell first, landing on the deck—but the deck of the adjacent speedboat. Strickland, his arms flailing, splashed into the Mediterranean just before the Sea Stallion hit the water. Reid could only hope the pilot wasn’t hit and could make it out.

  “Strickland!” he heard himself shout hoarsely.

  “I’ll get him!” Maria insisted. She winced slightly; she must have hurt something in the fall, Reid realized. “We’ll clear this boat. Go!”

  Mendel nodded to him as she pulled her service pistol, an Israeli-made Jericho 941, a distant and smaller cousin of the American Desert Eagle.

  “I saw one go for the bow,” he said quietly. He took point, Mendel trailing right behind him as he knelt beside the terrorist he had shot from above, writhing and holding his wounded leg. Reid quickly checked him for weapons while Mendel bound him with a zip tie. Then the two of them edged around the dark cabin, atop of which was perched the wheelhouse, towards the bow.

  Reid heard the man before he saw him, grunting with the effort of some task. As the two agents rounded the corner of the cabin Reid raised his Glock—just in time to see the Iraqi, his back turned to them, heave something large off the bow. It splashed down into the water before either of them could see what it was.

  “Freeze!” Reid commanded in Arabic.

  The man did not. He scrambled for an automatic rifle resting on the gunwale.

  Before Reid could squ
eeze off a single shot, Agent Mendel fired twice. Both bullets found a new home in the insurgent, one-two in quick succession, one in the forehead and the second in the chest. The man jerked backwards, hips hitting the gunwale, and toppled overboard after his castaway object.

  Reid turned to her incredulously.

  She shrugged. “I am a very good shot.”

  Reid shook it off and ran to the bow, peering over the edge into the dark water, but he saw nothing but bubbles rising to the surface. “What do you think he tossed over the side?” he asked. “The weapon?”

  “Perhaps,” said Mendel. “If they did not want to be caught red-handed with it.”

  He shook his head. “They would know we could drag it back up…” He trailed off as the high-pitch whine of a strong engine started. It wasn’t the tugboat; the white speedboat had disconnected from them and was pulling away quickly.

  Reid ran to the port side and scanned the deck for Maria, but he did not see her. He hoped she was able to get Strickland out of the frigid Mediterranean in time.

  A second whine joined the first as a powerful spotlight came into view. Moments later, a second speedboat roared past, this one laden with IDF commandos as they gave chase.

  “I’d say they have that covered,” said Reid. “Let’s clear the rest of this boat and wait for them to come around to get us. I have a suspicion our missing Israeli journalist might be here somewhere.”

  Mendel nodded. She stepped cautiously up the stairs to the lofty wheelhouse, cleared it, and shook her head at Reid. There was no one up there.

  Reid led as they entered the dark, square cabin beneath the wheelhouse. It too was empty, but a narrow set of stairs led downward below deck, and from their vantage point they could see that a light was on. The stairs were too slender for them to take at the same time, so Reid adjusted the grip on his gun and headed down first, Mendel directly on his six.

  “Stop,” the voice told him in Arabic before he had even reached the bottom step. His Glock was up in an instant, pointed at the source of the sound—but Reid did not shoot.