Esther's Sling (33 page)

The pilot of the Chinook, looking at the mountainous terrain under him through a set of AN-AVS 6 night vision binoculars mated to his helmet, began a slow turn to the south and a faster descent down to an altitude only 100 feet above the undulating earth. The next quarter hour of flying was what he lived for and what distinguished him from the average helicopter jockey in the world. The cockpit of the advanced special operations helicopter had numerous flat panel displays that illuminated the earth ahead of them, including forward looking infrared and thermal imaging. But like most Night Stalker pilots, this man largely ignored these monitors and instead relied upon his helmet night vision system. In the cabin, the crew chief lifted his left hand and flashed a single finger immediately followed by all five fingers. He then dimmed the soft green glow of the combat lights in the cabin to the lowest setting. The Israeli team began their final preparations for insertion into hostile territory. Several team members had to nudge the man next to him awake.

At
10:42 p.m. Iraqi time, the Chinook helicopter descended slowly toward a high mountain valley. The elevation of the earth beneath them was 3,978 feet. Every man in Task Force Camel had his backpack, winter coat and gloves on, his AKM slung over his shoulder, a GPS device on his wrist and his patrol cap tucked firmly in his pocket. Finally, each man had put on head gear to mount the light weight AN/PVS-14 night vision monocle. The men were all cold but knew that they would soon be warmed by the exertion of hiking through the Zagros mountain range, not to mention the accelerated heart rhythm that would come from stepping foot on Iranian soil.

At the back of the twin engine helicopter the ramp was down and a pair of two inch thick ropes, each 40 feet long, hung from giant eye bolts attached to box beams at the top of the helicopter interior
. The ropes now hung in the black void. Every member of the helicopter’s crew was wearing night vision goggles. Two of the crew, following standard operating procedure for a fast rope insertion, were on each side of the ramp on one knee with one hand firmly gripping the interior frame of the helicopter and their upper bodies thrust into the clear mountain air. Each man, secured by a thin cable tether, looked forward toward the drop zone as the Chinook maneuvered into a slow forward hover for insertion. Their job was to spot any obstacle that might damage the helicopter as it moved to hover approximately 15 feet above the valley floor. The crew chief watched his two men on the ramp and waited for the signal.

The big chopper flared briefly to scrub off speed and then leveled in hover, maintaining very slow forward motion. The man on the starboard side of the ramp rotated his upper body and extended his right arm out. With his palm open and facing upward, he raised his forearm toward the ceiling by bending his arm at the elbow. The crew chief signaled for everyone on the Israeli team to exit and all stood and moved to the ropes
. Each man grabbed the rope and stepped off the platform into the Kurdish mountain blackness. The captain was the last, but took a moment to shake the hand of the crew chief and salute the CIA officer who had now succeeded in his part of this mission. It only took ten seconds for all twelve men of Task Force Camel to make it to the ground. Another thirty seconds later and the Chinook helicopter was already indistinguishable against the night sky, the sound of its counter-rotating blades fading rapidly into the dark as it headed for a reunion with its smaller partners and the long trip back to Kuwait.

The team had rehearsed this part of
its mission dozens of times. The men all removed their night vision monocles from their backpacks and mounted them to their head gear. Every man on the team save one took the opportunity to relieve his bladder. It had been a long flight. One man, Yosef Hisami, the member of the team who was born and raised until the age of eight in the Kurdish city of Erbil, headed out to take point. He was moving rapidly to the east, bounding uphill to gain the advantage of a ridgeline that was one mile away. Yosef had proven his mountaineering skills to the team over the prior two years and the relatively gradual slopes of this terrain were like a casual stroll for the Kurdish Jew. The men on the team jokingly called him the “mountain goat.” He was driven by his own paranoia – he hated being in a valley since he could never shake the feeling that he was being watched. At this moment, Yosef would not be comfortable until he could observe the valley on the other side of the ridge with his own eyes. Ben Zeev never let him see the screen of the TCU because he never wanted the mountain goat to relax. Yosef was the team’s human early warning system. If anyone or anything was out there, he would see it first. Since the team was radio silent, he carried a small pen light that emitted an infrared flash when he pressed a button on the back. He could signal the team from a long distance with this device.

The main body of men followed at a distance that was initially a hundred meters. They had learned that they could not keep up with Yosef when he was obsessed on attaining a certain point on the map. They all knew that the gap would continually widen between them and Yosef by the time the Kurd made it to the ridgeline. The captain checked his GPS device to make sure he agreed with the direction of movement. The team had a two mile trek to reach the Iranian border. But their instant motivation was to get as far away from the insertion point as rapidly as possible. The village of
Sargat was less than a mile to the north and no one wanted to run into a curious Kurd. Even worse, an Iraqi border post was only 4,000 feet away on the other side of the ridgeline that formed the southern edge of this valley that ran to the east toward Iran. However, Ben Zeev knew that since U.S. forces left this region during 2011, Iraqi border guards were never known to venture out of their posts at night. He prayed that tonight would not be a first.

Task Force Camel moved along the valley floor as quietly as possible. The terrain was barren and rocky with the exception of isolated wild pistachio trees that grew randomly throughout the valley along with patches of alpine
milkvetch plants. The team set a pace that reflected their youth, fitness and level of training, which had included several extended visits during the prior two years into Kurdistan, the northern part of Iraq controlled by the Kurds and run as an autonomous part of Iraq. It took slightly more than an hour to reach the border where the mountain goat paused as had been practiced so many times in the past. The captain gathered his men about a hundred yards in front of the invisible line that formed the Iranian border. They had climbed more than 2,000 feet from the insertion point to this point that passed between two rocky pinnacles looming above them on each side. As the men gained altitude, the vegetation had become more scarce with the trees disappearing completely.

The captain told his men to rest, drink water and eat.
Removing the TSU device from the backpack of the man standing next to him, the captain turned it on while two of his men used their open winter coats to ensure that no light emanating from the device gave their position away. The first thing the officer noticed was a dozen grouped blips in blue on the Iran-Iraq border. As he looked at his own men on the screen, Ben Zeev thought about how happy he was that the Iranians were not deploying this level of technology against him. Beyond that, the commander liked what he saw. The Iranian land in front of him was barren of human activity save for a lone border post over a mile away and in a direction that the team had no intention of heading. The absence of Iranians, Kurdish fighters, smugglers or the errant villager was the best possible outcome. The air was still, and the team was cognizant to the point of paranoia about how the sounds they made carried along the rocky valleys. Their isolation was welcome. No new messages from Olympus had been received so Ben Zeev shut down the device and placed it carefully back into the pack of his underling.

He called his point man over and together they discussed in hushed Farsi the path to Point Kabob II. They each set waypoints on their GPS units, making sure they stayed clear of the tiny Iranian village of Baharvas that lay in their path only a half mile ahead of them. The commander then synched up this set of waypoints with each man in the team. In case of separation in the darkness, each man now had the capability to navigate to Point Kabob II. Finally, Captain Yoni Ben Zeev motioned for all his men to gather together. He now did something that they had never rehearsed before. He spoke quietly in Hebrew. “This will be the last time any of us speaks or hears our language until this operation is complete. I ask you to bow your heads.” The
background of this team – reflecting the wide range of religious experience in Israel – varied greatly, but each man knew their leader was an observant Jew. And as all men do when combat was imminent, their hearts were open at this moment to their God. Six of the team bowed their heads. Four men continued to look at their leader. Yosef Hisami, suddenly nervous about the volume of his leader’s voice combined with the use of Hebrew, scanned the valley around them.

The captain continued. “
He who dwells in the covert of the Most High will lodge in the shadow of the Almighty.
I shall say of the Lord that He is my shelter and my fortress, my God in Whom I trust.
For He will save you from the snare that traps from the devastating pestilence.
With His wing He will cover you, and under His wings you will take refuge. His truth is an encompassing shield.
You will not fear the fright of night, the arrow that flies by day
, pestilence that prowls in darkness, destruction that ravages at noon.
A thousand will be stationed at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not approach you.
You will but gaze with your eyes and you will see the annihilation of the wicked.
For you have said, ‘The Lord is my refuge.’ The Most High you have made your dwelling.
No harm will befall you, nor will a plague draw near to your tent.
For He will command His angels on your behalf to guard you in all your ways. On hands they will bear you, lest your foot stumble on a stone.
On a young lion and a cobra you will tread and you will trample the young lion and the serpent.
For he yearns for Me, and I shall rescue him. I shall fortify him because he knows My name.
He will call Me and I shall answer him. I am with him in distress. I shall rescue him and I shall honor him.
With length of days I shall satiate him and I shall show him My salvation.”

Ben Zeev raised his head.
Each man had heard these words at some point in their lives. Several recognized Psalm Chapter 91. For each man, the words had more meaning at this moment than they thought possible. “For two years we have trained. From this point we do not return without achieving our mission. Our forefathers watch our every step. I know that none of you will hesitate in your duty.” Heads nodded in agreement.

The captain switched back to Farsi. “Now we go.”
The local time in Iran was now 11:57 p.m., 30 minutes ahead of Iraqi time – the difference the result of Iran maintaining its own time zone a half hour ahead of Iraq. The easy part of their journey was now behind them and what lay ahead was a drop into the valley just underneath Baharvas followed by a further climb in elevation of over 3,000 feet amid steeper mountains. They only had 2.4 miles to go as the crow flies, but their path would require them to climb a steep 2,500 feet over the last half mile, a portion of the western slope of Kuh-e Takht-e Uraman, one of the higher peaks in the area. Their destination, designated Point Kabob II, was a section of switchback on Road 15 that was only about four hundred feet below the point where the road passed its zenith over the mountain at just over 8,500 feet. Thankfully, they were still too early in the season for any significant snowfall. The captain worried about whether Arsadian had gotten the message on the change in rendezvous point. Only time would tell him for sure if the Armenian had succeeded in reaching Kabob II.

Ben Zeev took one more look at his watch, which had been on Iran time since given the mission go ahead earlier in the day. Midnight. He estimated
that they would not arrive at Point Kabob II before 3:00 am.

Task Force Camel crossed Road 15 on foot at 3:05 in the morning. The sun’s ascent was still three hours away and the only natural light on this moonless night was the cloud-like consistency of the Milky Way as it stretched from horizon to horizon. The temperature was just under freezing as Captain Ben Zeev crossed the two lane road and headed quickly up the rocky slope on the eastern side. At this altitude, the mountain was completely barren of vegetation, comprised only of rock and the sand created from eons of the actions and reactions of wind, water and temperature on that same rock. The sand and rock was the color of dark grayish tan, as if the hand of God had pushed these jagged mountain rocks upward through an ancient desert.

Climbing up the final 300 feet of his journey, the commander came upon his point man crouched behind a large boulder that stood alone and formed an intermediate crest. Yosef was quiet, one of his true gifts. He used hand signals to direct his commander’s vision. Fifty feet below them, on the other side, was a flat sandy area about fifty yards wide and at
points as much as twenty five yards deep. The pavement of Road 15 bent through the northern edge of the area like a snake, forming a 180 degree turn. To the east, or uphill side, the road followed the mountain contours and continued up to the next switchback about half a mile further along and 410 feet higher in elevation. On the western side, the road ran downhill slightly for only a hundred yards before it turned back on itself and headed back to the south, passing below the spot where Ben Zeev and Yosef now crouched. At the western edge of the flat parking area was a thatched hut that formed a makeshift Kurdish tea house. In the summer, local villagers sold tea to the many families and tourists who travelled this road to enjoy the spectacular mountain views.

Both men had the same first impression as they looked through their monocles at the parking area below. There was no truck parked there, only a single sedan. Ben Zeev signaled his man to continue to scan the area, looking for anything or anyone that could threaten the team. He then turned and walked back a small distance to join the rest of the team. Sending a man to keep his point man company at the observation rock, the captain pulled out the TSU device and turned it on for the first time since crossing into Iran. The team had not rested during the prior three hours. The plan called for them to be on board the truck and underway to their target before dawn. The timetable was in jeopardy. As the device powered up and established its satellite link, the yellow star indicating that a message was waiting immediately began blinking. The captain entered the proper commands to display two new messages.

Delayed. Close.

Confirmed 2002.

The messages had been sent a couple of hours earlier. Ben Zeev did not know what to make of the first message. But the second message confirmed that the mission was still green lighted and that the rendezvous was still Point Kabob II, located 50 feet below their current position. Ben Zeev shut down the unit. Following mission protocol, he sent no messages nor did any man on his team emit any radio wave transmissions. They wore no tracking devices and their authorization to broadcast from inside Iran was contingent upon emergency or absolute necessity.

The captain set up pickets and told his men who were not on watch to rest and sleep if possible. The lack of motion would quickly make them cold
, so each man removed a camouflaged blanket that he carried in his backpack, white on one side and on the other, the light gray digital pattern that had been perfected by the U.S. military in nearby Afghanistan. The blanket doubled as an infrared and thermal suppressor, making the men virtually invisible if necessary to hide from Iranian eyes. They had brought minimal supplies – just enough to either meet the truck or make it back across the border into Iraq. But the blanket was an item that they had learned was necessary during their first mission rehearsal in the Kurdish mountains 18 months earlier when Ben Zeev had cancelled the practice session early to save two of his men from the danger of frostbite.

An
hour later and seven and a half miles to the north in Dezli, Captain Javed Samadi of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard was gently nudged by his driver as he slept in the back seat of his sedan. “Sir, it is past zero four hundred. We have had no contact.”

The IRG captain shook his head to wake himself. He wiped the sleep from his eyes and straightened the cap on his head. “Nothing?” His voiced cracked in the dry air.

“No, sir.”

The captain was disappointed. He wondered why God would not bless him with glory. Had he not been faithful to Allah in his heart? Yet, it seemed that no matter where he took his unit, action was elsewhere. He had spent most of the overnight hours checking on his men who
lay in wait along the valley approaches just north of Dezli, the valleys that the locals swore to him were the favorite entry points for Kurdish rebels. Two hours earlier he had walked back to the sedan to warm up and rest, telling his driver to communicate contact status every hour. Now he opened the door and emerged from the car to stretch and let the cold air wake all of his senses.

Nearby a dozen of his trucks were parked – the vehicles that moved his unit around the mountains of western Iran. The truck closest to his sedan contained his radio communications unit. He walked over and the sergeant in charge stood to salute his officer, simultaneously kicking the man next to him awake. The officer spoke first. “Tell all units to abort operations and return. I want to be out of here by sunrise.”

“Yes, sir.” The sergeant saluted his commanding officer. He started to sit and then stopped and addressed the captain. “What about the roadblock?”

“Oh. Yes. Lift the roadblock.”

Five minutes later, the sound of starting car engines awakened Hamak Arsadian. He looked out his windshield and saw the straight truck that had been stuck in the line ahead of him moving forward. “Yes,” he stated loudly as he pumped his fist. He looked at the clock on his dashboard. It was 4:28 a.m. and the Armenian had about twelve miles of driving to reach the rendezvous point, the last five miles of which would be a treacherous climb up and over the snow capped peak of Kuh-e Takht-e Uraman. He swung his legs down and lowered himself into the driver’s seat. He was in a race against the dawn.

Forty
-six minutes later Yoni Ben Zeev heard the sound that made him smile for the first time since parting company with the Night Stalkers. The sound was the unmistakable rumble of a large diesel engine being used to help manage the downhill momentum of a truck. The noise travelled clearly in the pre-dawn darkness. The captain looked up the mountain and saw the artificial light of a pair of tractor headlights as they swept around a switchback. He alerted the man next to him and the team was awake with their blankets packed away within seconds, every man now like a racehorse with Ben Zeev the jockey. A minute later and the commander could finally confirm the shape of the tractor-trailer rig as it negotiated the last hair-pin turn half a mile up the road. He stood and walked to the rock that overlooked the parking area. He looked down to see that the single sedan was still parked in the same spot as when they had arrived. They only had about 45 minutes of darkness left.

Hamak Arsadian recognized Point Kabob II with no problem. He had stopped for tea twice before at this spot while driving Road 15. It was he who had suggested this location as a backup if needed. As the roadway started a sharp turn on itself to the right, he under steered his rig onto the flat sandy parking area. Swinging the truck to the right to park roughly parallel to the curved pavement, he came to a stop with his headlights shining into the parked sedan. “Shit,” said the Armenian, lamenting the further bad luck. He let his lights linger on the car, the interior now lit up as if an enemy plane caught
in a World War II searchlight.

On the rock above, Ben Zeev reached up with his right hand to turn off his night vision monocle and flip it upward, freeing his right eye to join his left in natural vision. He could clearly see that two men were sleeping in the front seats, which had been reclined. The captain was not sure, but the car looked like a mid-
90s vintage Toyota Corolla. As he thought about what to do, the man in the driver’s seat raised his head up, covering his eyes from the intense glare of the tractor headlights. He looked toward the source of the light, obviously hearing the diesel engine and correctly deciphering the source of this annoyance. Just as abruptly he put his head back down on the reclined seat and rolled onto to his right side to turn his eyes and head away.

In the cab, Arsadian did not know what to do. But he knew that Ben Zeev would handle the situation. He turned off his headlights and settled down to await the next event. Up on the rock, the captain tapped his point man on the shoulder and the pair headed back to the rest of the team. He pointed to
Manuchehr Moresadegh, who everyone on the team called Manu. “You and Yosef go down and get rid of them. Just tell them to move on. Tell them it’s not safe due to Kurdish rebel activity.” Manu shook his head in consent. “Leave your NVGs and backpacks here,” ordered the commander, referring to the night vision monocles each man wore. Both were happy to comply as the units had long since begun to irritate. For Manu the headgear that mounted the monocle was giving him a headache. For Yosef, it had been the plastic eye cup rubbing his skin as he walked. “Take your flashlights,” Ben Zeev commanded. “Go back down to the road there.” The commander was pointing toward the spot below them where the team first crossed Road 15 about two hours earlier, “and walk up the road to the car.” The two men understood their assignment.

Manu had lived in Tehran until his parents
immigrated to Israel when he was 10. His Farsi was flawless and, more importantly for this assignment, very authoritative. Ben Zeev could not imagine any civilian failing to obey him. But Manu was also critical to the success of the mission. Everyone on the team knew that. Obviously the captain assessed the two men in the sedan to be low risk. He was sending Yosef for two reasons. The first was that the men in the car likely were Kurds who may not speak Farsi. The second was revealed when Manu headed down the mountain. Ben Zeev grabbed Yosef by the arm and spoke quietly in his ear. “Don’t let anything happen to Manu.”

Yosef looked his commander in the eye. “No worries, boss.” The Israeli commando from Erbil turned and bounded down the mountain, catching up with his partner in seconds.

For the first time on this mission Yoni Ben Zeev pulled his AKM rifle off his shoulder, chambering a round in the process. He headed back to the rock to provide cover fire for his team mates if needed. It took three minutes for the pair of Israeli commandos to walk up the road, around the switchback that was just below Point Kabob II and up to the sedan. The small four-door Corolla was pointing away from them as they approached. Manu walked up the driver side of the car. The strap on his AKM rifle was slung over his left shoulder and across his back, allowing the weapon to hang conspicuously across the front of his body at waist level, his right hand holding the gun’s pistol grip tightly. In his left hand he held a small flashlight. He shined it into the back seat. It was full of junk, as far as Manu could tell, but no humans. He walked another step to the driver side window. On the other side of the car Yosef stood quietly, his SIG pistol drawn and cocked in his hand. He did not take his eyes off of the two occupants.

Manu Moresadegh tapped on the window with the muzzle of his assault rifle while he shined the flashlight at the back of the head of the man in the driver’s seat. “Open your window
,” he ordered. In the tractor parked only 30 feet away, Hamak Arsadian watched the men standing outside the sedan. He assumed they were part of Ben Zeev’s team, but he had never been told any specifics so could not be sure. He had not noticed their presence until Manu switched on his flashlight.

The man in the driver seat rolled over to look into the flashlight beam. He could see the muzzle of the AKM pointed at him on the other side of the glass, which Manu made sure he couldn’t miss. Manu repeated his command and the man reached down along his left side
and rolled down the window. Simultaneously he raised his upper body and reached back with his right hand to release the mechanism that allowed the reclined seat to snap upward into a normal driving position. “What are you doing here?” demanded the commando in perfect Farsi.

The man was scared, the inescapable reaction to having the business end of an assault rifle only a foot from your head. His partner in the passenger seat was now awake and could also make out the muzzle of the assault rifle and nothing more. The driver spoke. Manu recognized his words as Kurdish, but could not understand him. Manu spoke to both men. “Do you understand Persian?”

The driver continued to talk. The passenger was now wide awake but said nothing, the fear on his face being his only obvious commentary. Manu decided that he didn’t care what they had to say as long as they got on their way. “Leave. You must leave.” Again, the driver continued to talk, his voice now gaining in volume. Manu tried once more. “You need to leave the area. Drive on.” The native of Tehran took his right hand off his weapon and waved it in a motion that suggested departure while he shined his flashlight on his right arm.

The driver said more that Manu could not understand. This time the passenger added his voice. Suddenly Manu heard a voice coming from the behind the car. “He is saying that he is the owner of this tea hut.” Yosef was walking around the car to the driver side. “Perhaps we should switch sides.” Manu stepped toward the rear of the car as Yosef passed by, moving forward until his body was even with the side view mirror. Yosef turned and shined his flashlight into the car. The driver was speaking the Kermanshah dialect of Kurdish.
Yosef’s native Kurdish was the Kurmanji dialect. Communication would be difficult, but not impossible.