State of Attack (8 page)

Israel maintained the blockade on the basis of preventing rocket attacks and to curtail Hamas’s ability to obtain ordnance for skirmishes. Following international pressure the blockade had been lessened in 2010, with Israel allowing civilian goods into Gaza. But the damage had been done. The economy hadn’t recovered and unemployment was at forty per cent, with manufacturing decimated, and the restrictions on people entering and exiting the region continued unabated. The war that took place in the summer of 2014 had brought about such enmity between the two sides that a lasting solution appeared to be hopeless.

The naval blockade was secured by Israeli patrol boats that fired on Palestinian fishing vessels, which strayed beyond the designated three nautical miles’ demarcation line from the shore. Despite the Turkish Prime Minister threatening to use warships to protect aid reaching the Gaza Strip, the position remained fraught to say the least.

Still, Ibrahim knew that it was the only way in, apart from what was left of the tunnels that connected the Egyptian town of Rafah to the south with the Palestinian refugee camp of the same name. But the Palestinian border with Egypt, like that on the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, which together with Gaza made up the Palestinian territories, was heavily fortified, albeit lacking the West Bank’s high barrier. Besides he’d suffered from claustrophobia since childhood, and he knew many of the tunnels could be precarious, so it had been agreed that entry by sea was the only option.

The coast around Naqoura was rocky, the sea a tantalizing kaleidoscope of emerald, turquoise, silver and gold. The distance to the Gaza Strip was just over two hundred and twenty miles. After struggling into on a full-body wet suit, including a balaclava-type hood, both to keep the sun from his head and to add to his disguise, Ibrahim had been put aboard a sixty-foot luxury motor cruiser, with a gleaming white hull, the interior finished in pale oak and leather upholstery. The boat had been supplied by a Lebanese businessman who was sympathetic to the region-wide Sunni jihad.

Drinking a glass of fresh orange juice now, Ibrahim waited for the cruiser to head off and plough through the calm coastal waters of the Mediterranean at a rate of thirty knots. The plan was to cut the engines four nautical miles out from the shoreline of the Gaza Strip, and allow Ibrahim to swim to the demarcation line, whereupon he’d be picked up by a friendly Palestinian fishing boat out of Gaza City.

But a crew member came up to him as he was sitting cross-legged on the deck, feeling the salty sea spray on his face. Ibrahim thought the man looked about twenty, with sparse facial hair and bat-wing ears. He handed Ibrahim a secure satphone. Somewhat perturbed, he took the call. It was from a Turkish brother, who spoke fluent Arabic. It was bad news.

A flotilla of aid boats out of Bodrum, Turkey, was converging off the coast of the Gaza Strip. The Israeli Navy had sent all of its patrol boats in Squadron 915 out of Eilat, its southernmost city, together with Shayetet 13, an elite naval commando unit specializing in counterterrorism and boarding, and a couple of corvettes, to intervene.

As a result of this and what turned out to be empty threats by the Turkish Prime Minister, Ibrahim knew he could either wait until it was over, which could be a few days if there was a standoff, or go to Egypt. Due to the urgent need for his presence in Gaza City, the Turk stated that, if he was up for it, arrangements had been put in place for him enter the Gaza Strip via Egypt.

“Egypt it is then,” Ibrahim said.

The motor cruiser would not be wasted, he thought, and would be used to transport him out of eyeshot of the coast all the way to the northern Egyptian coast on the Mediterranean. But he shivered involuntarily, kidding himself that it was down to wind chill, even though the sun was high and white. Walking over to the sheltered cabin, he knew with a rising sense of unease, if not horror, that Egypt meant the tunnels.

Chapter 19

It was midmorning in Lafayette, Louisiana, and the Somali had to be taken alive. Dan Crane had flown down aboard one of the CIA jets that were on standby 24/7 for just that purpose. The FBI had informed him that they had intel that pointed to the Somali having links with Al-Shabaab, the militant jihadists in the Horn of Africa, who carried out major terrorist attacks in neighbouring Kenya. Crane was there because they also had evidence that he’d travelled both to Syria and Iraq.

But more importantly the man had been sleeping with a CIA woman, a PA, who had been caught downloading a file on the agency’s investigations on Ibrahim, and, as soon as she’d been taken into FBI custody, she’d wept and admitted her treason. Crane thought of her as a rather pathetic and flawed individual, a minor player to be sure, but he was hoping for more from the Somali. He hadn’t been in the field for years, but due to the calibre of the suspect, he’d wanted to make sure there were no fuckups when he was taken, and no hitches after it.

The detached bungalow was set back about twenty-five yards from the residential street. It was surrounded by a rusted mesh fence bisected by a small, wrought-iron gate. The bungalow was wooden, painted olive green. There was a large porch, with a roof, supported by pillars built from cement and inlaid with large smooth stones.

The bungalow had been under surveillance via satellite imagery for three days and nights. Two seasoned counterterrorism agents had spent alternate twelve-hour shifts checking it out on a computer screen in DC, monitoring the comings and goings. A physical stakeout had been put in place as soon as the man’s identity had been confirmed.

The front yard was unkempt. A mass of yellowing grass, clovers, dandelions and wild azaleas, as well as bunches of purple thistles and all manner of weeds. A large Ford pickup truck was parked on the uneven driveway to the right-hand side of the building. There was no garage. The truck was painted metallic red, with customized dragons breathing fire along the doors. The twin exhaust pipes gleamed in the humid heat of the day. Faint, intermittent laughter could be heard from the front room.

Despite Crane’s status and skills, the law stated that the CIA didn’t have jurisdiction in the homeland, something that was frequently ignored, especially when national security was threatened. He crouched now beside an FBI SUV, just far enough away to be outside of the peripheral vision of anyone within the bungalow.

Both ends of the street had been cordoned off by the local PD, with squad cars, rolls of yellow tape stating
POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS
, and half a dozen officers at either end. A black FBI SWAT truck was moving up the other side of the street to Crane, at about five miles an hour. It stopped and the helmeted, black-clad seven-man team disembarked, carrying bulletproof shields, pump shotguns and Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns. They hunched down, and followed the line of the adjacent property’s low brick wall, which abutted the sidewalk.

Crane noticed that the laughing had stopped, but it didn’t worry him. The intel had made it clear that the suspect could be armed, but unless he had a Gatling gun mounted on the windowsill, he didn’t stand a chance.

Once the team reached the end of the wall, they rushed forwards. The front man opened the gate and the team split apart, as they had rehearsed. Three headed for the front door, two covered the sides, while the remaining pair jogged to the rear.

Crane edged closer, positioning himself behind a parked sedan, within clear eyesight of the events that were unfolding.

Just as the ram man hit the door with the first strike, a chair crashed through the front window, clearly making everyone jittery. Shards of glass rained down on the grass. Then what looked like a grenade landed on the patio.

“Jesus,” Crane said.

Chapter 20

The long-range CIA CASA 212 jet had stopped off to refuel in an RAF base on the east coast of England, en route to central Turkey. It had landed at Ankara Güvercinlik Army Air Base located in the Etimesgut district six miles west of Ankara, home to the 1st Army Aviation Regiment. Tom was onboard, together with the CIA operatives and medical team. He’d seen a squadron of S-70A helicopters and a couple of transport planes gleaming on the tarmac as the jet had touched down, with a couple of bumps that had made his stomach flip. He hated flying.

Still feeling nauseous, he and the team were met by a couple of intelligence officers from MIT, who said that the general had been moved from the Gülhane Military Medical Academy in Ankara for security reasons. He was now being cared for at a secret military hospital near the outskirts of the capital that catered exclusively for MIT operatives and the Turkish military injured in targeted terrorist attacks. It wasn’t a glass haven like the GMMA, they explained, but it had the best doctors and most up-to-date equipment in Turkey, and was, of course, secure.

A minivan with tinted windows and two black SUVs, front and rear, appeared from behind a shimmering hangar housing Beriev amphibious aircraft, and Tom and the others were on the move again, pleased to be out of the crippling heat.

Thirty minutes later, after driving past acres of young spinach fields and a small village with an ancient minaret, the vehicles took a left onto a dirt track. The track passed through an arid plain, a pair of crumbling ancient Roman pillars the only visible landmarks. The driver of the van began radio contact with someone, so Tom figured they were getting close to their destination.

With that a military checkpoint came into view. An M113 was parked at the roadside, a tracked armoured personnel carrier, with its hallmark M2 Browning machine gun mounted on the front, its operator replete with steel helmet and dust googles. Apart from the two crew, and the gunner, another ten infantrymen were manning the checkpoint around a pole resting on two oil drums. Given the presence of the APC, Tom figured it was more symbolic than functional. But the convoy didn’t stop; the pole was removed and they were simply waved on.

As the minivan passed the soldiers, Tom noticed that one held a Dragunov sniper rifle, the others standard-issue M16A4 assault rifles.

“They all look young,” he said.

“Turkey’s still got the draft,” a guy called Gabriel said, sitting across from Tom.

Here, he was the lead CIA paramilitary operations officer of the agency’s National Clandestine Service, a Texan with an immaculate dark beard, close-cropped hair and shoulders as wide as a steer’s. Given the complexion of his skin and chestnut-coloured eyes, he could pass for a Turk.

“That so?” Tom said.

“Should bring it back stateside, you ask me,” another operative said.

That’s bullshit, Tom thought. The last thing the US military needed was a bunch of kids who didn’t want to be there. He didn’t like the idea of the hospital’s security being left to draftees, either.

Looking at the world outside now, muted by the blacked-out glass, Tom saw a small unmanned military vehicle dip down parallel to the van about thirty yards away.

“A Bayraktar UAV, “Gabriel said. He had Heckler & Koch HK416 assault rifle fitted with an EOTech day sight and camouflaged in desert-tan, barrel upright between his heavy thighs. “They can hand launch them same as a kid does a balsa-wood glider. It’s made of carbon fibre and Kevlar, in case you were wondering.”

From a distance, Tom thought that it did look like a kid’s glider, although in fact it had a wingspan of two yards. “What’s it driven by?” he asked Gabriel.

“An electric motor powered by battery. But don’t be fooled. It’s cute. Got a unique parachute system so it can land on a mountain top, no problem. Payload’s cute, too. Thermal imaging camera at night. Flown through an autopilot system equipped with advanced software algorithms. Reliable recon, which is exactly what the little bird is doing right now.”

The other operatives called Gabriel the Professor. After the lecture, Tom understood why. But it made him feel better about the level of security the Turks had put in place for the hospital. That and the fact that the van passed another two makeshift checkpoints manned by heavily-armed Turkish Marines, resilient and seasoned, by the looks of them.

Ten minutes later, Tom saw the checkpoint at the entrance to the hospital. There was a barrier painted a staggered red and white like a barber’s pole, a concrete pillbox to the left, a small sentry building to the right, with barred windows. Two guards were standing either side of the barrier, wearing white helmets. They had Belgium bullpup-designed FN P60 submachine guns slung over their shoulders and calf-high gaiters.

There was a twelve-foot-high fence surrounding the hospital complex, topped with concertina razor wire, and metal security bollards set at three-foot intervals before it. A couple of Cobra military attack helicopters, and the Turkish TOROS artillery rocket systems in disposable launcher pods, together with three more APCs, added muscle to the defence of the isolated hospital. What else was here, was anyone’s guess, Tom thought. But it was impressive enough as it was.

After the lead SUV had stopped for about thirty seconds at the barrier in front, the minivan pulled away a sedate pace. The buildings beyond were mostly single-storey, Tom noticed, punctuated by square lawns, the grass being kept green beneath the baking sun by sprinkler systems.

The vehicles followed a tarmac road that cut through the middle of the complex, other roads branching off at ninety-degree angles, the complex having a grid design. Nurses pushed men in wheelchairs, the odd doctor walked by in a white lab coat. Here, the only sign that this was a military hospital were the occasional Jeep Wranglers and military policemen, the Askeri İnzibat, with their white belts and red armbands.

The little convoy stopped outside a whitewashed building, with slatted blinds at the windows, and a shrub garden either side of the paved walkway.

“I’ll take a minute with my father, okay with you guys?” Tom said.

Some nodded. Gabriel said, “Sure thing.”

The minivan had AC, but when Tom stepped out into the dry late afternoon heat it hit the back of his throat as he inhaled and seemed to burn like acrid smoke. He thought he caught a whiff of chloroform above the scent of lavender coming from the shrubberies and ducked to avoid a huge hornet, black as hell, that buzzed by.