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.
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.
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