That there was a connection would seem to be irrefutable. And totally out of place!
As the three figures passed him, a perspiring Anthony MacDonald pushed himself off the ground, grunting as he got to his feet. Reluctantly—very reluctantly—considering that millions upon millions could depend on the next few hours, he reached a conclusion: the sudden enigma that was Khalehla had to be resolved and the answers he so desperately needed were inside the embassy. Not only could the millions be lost without those answers, but if the bitch-whore was pivotal to some hideous coup and he failed to stop her, it was entirely possible that Bahrain would order his execution. The Mahdi did not suffer failure.
He had to get inside the embassy and all the hell that it stood for.
The Lockheed C-130 Hercules with Israeli insignia cruised at 31,000 feet above the Saudi desert east of Al Ubaylah. The flight plan from Hebron was an evasive one: south across the Negev into the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red Sea, proceeding south again equidistant from the coasts of Egypt, Sudan and Saudi Arabia. At Hamdanah, the course change was north-northeast, splitting the radar grids between the airports in Mecca and Qal Bishah, then due east at Al Khurmah into the Rub al Khali desert in southern Arabia. The plane had been refuelled in mid-air by a tanker from Sudan west of Jiddah over the Red Sea; it would do so again on the return flight, without, however, its five passengers.
They sat in the cargo hold, five soldiers in coarse civilian clothes, each a volunteer from the little known elite Masada Brigade, a strike force specializing in interdiction, rescue, sabotage and assassination. None was over thirty-two years old and all were fluent in Hebrew, Yiddish, Arabic and English. They were superb physical specimens, deeply bronzed from their desert training, and imbued with a discipline that demanded split-second decisions based on instantaneous reactions; each had an intelligence quotient in the highest percentile, and all were motivated in the extreme for all had suffered in the extreme—either they themselves or their immediate families. Although they were capable of laughing, they were better at hating.
They sat, leaning forward, on a bench on the port side of the aircraft, absently fingering the straps of their parachutes, which had only recently been mounted on their backs. They talked quietly among themselves, that is to say four talked, one did not. The silent man was their leader; he was sitting in the forward position and stared blankly across at the opposite bulkhead. He was, perhaps, in his late twenties with hair and eyebrows bleached a yellowish-white by the unrelenting sun. His eyes were large and dark brown, his cheekbones high, fencing a sharp Semitic nose, his lips thin and firmly set. He was neither the oldest nor the youngest of the five men, but he was their leader; it was in his face, in his eyes.
Their assignment in Oman had been ordered by the highest councils of Israel’s Defence Ministry. Their chances of success were minimal, the possibility of failure and death far greater, but the attempt had to be made. For among the two hundred and thirty-six remaining hostages held inside the American Embassy in Masqat was a deep-cover field director of the Mossad, Israel’s unparalleled intelligence service. If he was discovered, he would be flown to any one of a dozen ‘medical clinics’ of both friendly and unfriendly governments where intravenous chemicals would be far more effective than torture. A thousand secrets could be learned, secrets that could imperil the state of Israel and emasculate the Mossad in the Middle East. The objective: Get him out if you can. Kill him if you cannot.
The leader of this team from the Masada Brigade was named Yaakov. The Mossad agent held hostage in Masqat was his father.
‘Adonim,’ said the voice in Hebrew over the aircraft’s loudspeaker—a calm and respectful voice addressing the passengers as Gentlemen. ‘We are starting our descent,’ he continued in Hebrew. ‘The target will be reached in six minutes thirty-four seconds unless we encounter unexpected head winds over the mountains which will extend our time to six minutes forty-eight seconds or perhaps fifty-five seconds, but then who’s counting?’ Four men laughed; Yaakov blinked, his eyes still on the opposite bulkhead. The pilot went on. ‘We will circle once over the target at eight thousand feet, so if you have to make any adjustments, mental or physical, with respect to those crazy bedsheets you’ve got on your dorsal fins, do so now. Personally, I do not care to go out and take a walk at eight thousand feet, but then I can read and write.’ Yaakov smiled; the others laughed louder than before. The voice again interrupted. ‘The hatch will be opened at eight thousand five hundred by our brother, Jonathan Levy, who, like all experienced doormen in Tel Aviv, will expect a generous tip from each of you for his service. lOUs are not acceptable. The flashing red light will mean you must depart this luxurious hotel in the sky; however, the boys in the parking lot below refuse to retrieve your automobiles under the circumstances. They, too, can read and write and have been judged mentally competent, as opposed to certain unnamed tourists on this airborne cruise.’ The laughter now echoed off the walls of the plane; Yaakov chuckled. The pilot once more broke in, his voice softer, the tone altered. ‘Our beloved Israel, may she exist through eternity through the courage of her sons and daughters. And may Almighty God go with you, my dear, dear friends. Out.’
One by one the parachutes cracked open in the night sky above the desert, and one by one the five commandos from the Masada Brigade landed within a hundred and fifty yards of the amber light shining up from the sands. Each man held a miniaturized radio that kept him in contact with the others in case of emergencies. Where each touched ground, each dug a hole and buried his chute, inserting the wide-bladed shovel down beside the fabric and the canvas. Then all converged on the light; it was extinguished, replaced by the single torch held by a man who had come from Masqat, a senior intelligence officer of the Mossad.
‘Let me look at you,’ he said, turning his beam on each soldier. ‘Not bad. You look like ruffians from the docks.’
‘Your instructions, I believe,’ said Yaakov.
‘They’re not always followed,’ replied the agent. ‘You must be—’
‘We have no names,’ interrupted Yaakov sharply.
‘I stand rebuked,’ said the man from the Mossad. ‘Truthfully, I know only yours, which I think is understandable.’
‘Put it out of your mind.’
‘What shall I call all of you?’
‘We are colours, only colours. From right to left they are Orange, Grey, Black and Red.’
‘A privilege to meet you,’ said the agent, shining his light on each man—from right to left. ‘And you?’ he asked, the beam on Yaakov.
‘I am Blue.’
‘Naturally. The flag.’
‘No,’ said the son of the hostage in Masqat. ‘Blue is the hottest fire, and that is all you have to understand.’
‘It is also in refraction the coldest ice, young man, but no matter. My vehicle is several hundred metres north. I’m afraid I must ask you to walk after your exhilarating glide in the sky.’
‘Try me,’ said Grey, stepping forward. ‘I hate those terrible jumps. A man could get hurt, you know what I mean?’
The vehicle was a Japanese version of a Land-Rover without the amenities and sufficiently bashed and scraped to be unobtrusive in an Arab country where speed was a relative abstraction and collisions frequent. The hour-plus drive into Masqat, however, was suddenly interrupted. A small amber light flashed repeatedly on the road several miles from the city.
‘It’s an emergency,’ said the Mossad agent to Yaakov who was beside him in the front seat. ‘I don’t like it. There were to be no stops whatsoever when we approached Masqat. The sultan has patrols everywhere. Draw your weapon, young man. One never knows who may have been broken.’
‘Who’s to break! asked Yaakov angrily, his gun instantly out of his jacket holster. ‘We’re in total security. Nobody knows about us—my own wife thinks I’m in the Negev on manoeuvres!’
‘Underground lines of communication have to be kept open, Blue. Sometimes our enemies dig too deeply into the earth… Instruct your comrades. Prepare to fire.’
Yaakov did so; weapons were drawn, each man at a window. The aggressive preparation, however, was unnecessary.
‘It is Ben-Ami!’ cried the man from the Mossad, stopping the van, the tyres screeching and hurtling over the crevices in the badly paved road. ‘Open the door!’
A small, slender man in blue jeans, a loose white cotton shirt and a ghotra over his head leaped inside, squeezing Yaakov into the seat. ‘Keep driving,’ he ordered. ‘Slowly. There are no patrols out here and we have at least ten minutes before we might be stopped. Do you have a torch?’ The Mossad driver reached down and brought up his flashlight. The intruder snapped it on, inspecting the human cargo behind and the one beside him. ‘Good!’ he exclaimed. ‘You look like scum from the waterfront. If we’re stopped, slur your Arabic and shout about your fornications, do you understand?’