‘Only six?’
‘This must not be solely an Israeli operation. I contacted six others I knew on the West Bank… Palestinians who are as sickened by the Hamendis of this world as I am. Together we will form a unit, but it is still not enough. We need six others.’
‘From where?’
‘From the host Arab country that willingly, knowingly breaks the back of Abdel Hamendi. Can your sultan provide them from his personal guards?’
‘Most are his relatives, cousins, I think.’
‘That helps.’
The illegal purchase of armaments on the international market is a relatively simple procedure, which accounts for the fact that relatively simple people from Washington to Beirut can master it. There are basically three prerequisites. The first is immediate access to undisclosed and undisclosable funds. The second is the name of an intermediary, usually supplied over lunch—not over the telephone—by any senior executive of an arms-producing company or a bribable member of an intelligence organization. This intermediary must be capable of reaching the primary middleman, who will put the package together and co-ordinate the processing of end-user certificates. This aspect in the United States simply means that export licences are granted for armaments on their way to friendly nations; they are rerouted en route. The third prerequisite should be the easiest but is usually the most difficult because of the extraordinary variety and complexity of the merchandise. It is the preparation of the list of weapons and auxiliary equipment desired for purchase. Apparently no five buyers can agree on the lethal capabilities and effectiveness of an arms inventory, and not a few lives have been lost during heated debates over these decisions, the buyers frequently given to outbursts of hysteria.
Which was why young code Blue’s management talents were most welcome in terms of time and specificity. The Mossad’s agents in the Baaka Valley forwarded a list of the currently most favoured merchandise, including the usual crates of repeating weapons, hand grenades, time-fused explosives, black PVC landing craft, long-range underwater tank and demolition accoutrements and assorted training and assault equipment, such as grappling hooks, heavy ropes and rope ladders, infrared binoculars, electronic mortars, flamethrowers and anti-aircraft rocket missiles. It was an impressive inventory that chewed up approximately eighteen million of the estimated twenty-six millions’ worth one could buy from an arms merchant for fifty million American dollars—the fluctuating rates of exchange being always in favour of the merchant. Therefore, Blue added three small Chinese tanks under the technical umbrella of ‘location defence’ and the list was complete—not only complete but entirely believable.
The unknown, unrecorded, never-to-be-acknowledged agent of control, namely one Ben-Ami, now dressed in his favourite Ralph Lauren blue jeans, operated out of the Mossad safe house next to the Portuguese cemetery in the Jabal Sa’ali. To his fury, the intermediary for Abdel Hamendi was an Israeli in Bet Shemesh. He concealed his contempt and negotiated the huge purchase, knowing in the forefront of his mind that there would be a death in Bet Shemesh if and when they all survived.
The two units of six commandos arrived, one after another, at night in the desert of Jabal Sham above flares that directed the two helicopters into their thresholds. The sultan of Oman greeted the volunteers and introduced them to their comrades, six highly skilled personal guards from the Masqat garrison. Eighteen men—Palestinians, Israeli and Omani—gripped hands in their common objective. Death to the merchant of death.
The training began the next morning beyond the shoals of Al Ashkarah in the Arabian Sea.
Death to the merchant of death.
Adrienne Khalehla Rashad walked into Ahmat’s office cradling the infant named Khalehla in her arms. Beside her was the child’s mother, Roberta Yamenni, from New Bedford, Massachusetts, among the elite of Oman known as Bobbie. ‘She’s so beautiful!’ exclaimed the agent from Cairo.
‘She had to be,’ said the father behind the desk, Evan Kendrick in a chair beside him. ‘She has a name to live up to.’
‘Oh, nonsense.’
‘Not from where I’m sitting,’ said the American congressman.
‘You’re an oversexed bear.’
‘I’m also leaving tonight.’
‘And so am I,’ added the sultan of Oman.
‘You can’t—’
‘You can’t!’ The high female voices were in concert. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ yelled the sultan’s wife.
‘What I wish to do,’ replied Ahmat calmly. ‘In these areas of royal prerogative, I don’t have to consult anyone.’
‘That’s bullshit!’ cried the wife and mother.
‘I know, but it works.’
The training was over in seven days, and on the eighth day twenty-two passengers climbed into a trawler off the coast of Ra’s al Hadd, their equipment stowed below the gunwales. On the ninth day, at sundown in the Arabian Sea, the cargo ship from Bahrain was picked up on the radar. When darkness came the trawler headed south to the intercept-co-ordinates. Death to the merchant of death.
* * *
Chapter 46
The cargo ship was a bobbing hulk on the swells of the dark sea, its bow rising and falling like an angry predator intent on feeding. The trawler from Ra’s al Hadd stopped in the water half a mile to starboard of the approaching vessel. Two large PVC lifeboats were lowered over the side, the first holding twelve men, the other ten and one woman. Khalehla Rashad was between Evan Kendrick and the young sultan of Oman.
All were encased in tank suits, their darkened faces barely visible within the folds of the form-fitting black rubber. In addition to canvas knapsacks across their backs and the bound, waterproofed weapons clipped to their belts, each wore large, circular suction cups strapped to their knees and forearms. The two boats pitched and rolled beside each other in the dark sea as the cargo ship ploughed forward. Then, as the great black wall of the vessel rose above them, the lifeboats pulled alongside, their quiet motors drowned out by the slapping waves. One by one the ‘pirates’ clamped their cups on to the hull, each checking his companion on the left to make certain he was secure. All were.
Slowly, like a cluster of ants crawling up a filthy garbage can, the force from Oman made its way to the top of the hull, to the gunwales, where the suction cups were released and dropped back into the sea.
‘Are you all right?’ whispered Khalehla beside Evan.
‘All right?’ protested Kendrick. ‘My arms are killing me, and I think my legs are somewhere in the water down there, which I don’t intend to look at!’
‘Good, you’re all right.’
‘You do things like this for a living?’
‘Not very often,’ said the agent from Cairo. ‘On the other hand, I’ve done worse.’
‘You’re all maniacs.’
‘I didn’t go into a compound filled with terrorists. I mean, that’s crazy!’
‘Shhh!’ ordered Ahmat Yamenni, sultan of Oman, on Rashad’s right. ‘The teams are going over. Be quiet.’
The Palestinians took out the barely awake men on watch at the bow, midships and stern while the Israelis raced up the gangways to an upper deck and captured five seamen who were sitting against a bulkhead drinking wine. By design, as they were in the waters of the Gulf of Oman, the Omanis ran up to the bridge to formally instruct the captain that the ship was under their control by royal decree and that its present course was to be maintained. The crew was rounded up and checked for weapons, all their knives and guns removed. They were confined to quarters with an Omani, a Palestinian and an Israeli, in rotating units of three, standing guard. The captain, a gaunt fatalist with a stubble of a beard, accepted the circumstances with a shrug of his shoulders and offered neither resistance nor objection. He stayed at the wheel, asking only that his first and second mates relieve him at the proper times. The request was granted and his subsequent comment summed up his philosophical reaction.
‘Arabs and Jews together are now the pirates of the high seas. The world is a little madder than I thought.’
The radio man, however, was the most startling surprise. The communications room was approached cautiously, Khalehla leading two members of the Masada Brigade and Evan Kendrick. At her signal, the door was crashed open and their weapons levelled at the operator. The operator pulled a small Israeli flag out of his pocket and grinned. ‘How’s Manny Weingrass?’ he asked.
‘Good God!’ was the only response the congressman from Colorado could manage.
‘It was to be expected,’ said Khalehla.
For two days on the water approaching the port of Nishtun, the force from Oman worked in shifts around the clock in the hold of the cargo ship. They were thorough, as each man knew the merchandise he was dealing with, knew it and effectively destroyed it. Crates were resealed, leaving no marks of sabotage in evidence; there were only neatly repacked weapons and equipment precisely as if they had come off assembly lines all over the world and been gathered together by Abdel Hamendi, seller of death. At dawn on the third day, the ship sailed into the harbour of Nishtun, South Yemen. The ‘pirates’ from the West Bank, Oman and the Masada Brigade, as well as the female agent from Cairo and the American congressman, had all changed into the clothes packed in their knapsacks. Half Arab, half Western, they wore the dishevelled garments of erratically employed merchant seamen scratching for survival in an unfair world. Five Palestinians, posing as Bahrainian cargomen, stood by the gangplank that in moments would be lowered. The rest watched impassively from the lower deck as the crowds gathered at the one enormous pier in the centre of the harbour complex. Hysteria was in the air; it was everywhere. The ship was a symbol of deliverance, for rich and powerful people somewhere thought the proud, suffering fighters of South Yemen were important. It was a carnival of vengeance; over what they might not collectively agree upon, but wild mouths below wild eyes screamed screams of violence. The vessel docked and the frenzy on the pier was ear-shattering.