The Last Days (33 page)

Galishnikov's ears perked up. He'd also wondered about the history of this “Gaza Station.” So had Sa'id, and the wheels began to turn.

Sa'id had always suspected the CIA was operating in Gaza, but he'd never known it for sure. Now he did. He'd been inside. He'd seen some of its layout. He knew its name. He knew who worked there, and some of their capabilities. That could prove to be valuable, could it not?

Yes, these men had saved his life. And yes, he still needed them to lead him out to safety. But the world had just changed. He wasn't simply a businessman caught in a cross fire. He was a prime minister. He was going to have to build strong ties not just with the Americans but with his own legislators, with other Arab leaders, with their generals and intelligence officials. It was a dangerous neighborhood he lived in, and would now have to govern. He had to work with the Americans, but he couldn't be their puppet. He needed them to take care of the Islamic militants, and to force—perhaps
persuade
was a better word—Doron to cut a deal. But there would come a day, no doubt sooner than he'd prefer, when he'd have to stand up to the Americans. Declare his independence. Show his people and the Arab world that Washington was doing
his
bidding, not the other way around. Kicking the CIA out of Palestine wouldn't be a bad first step.

Tariq knew that a significant portion of the $2 billion a year Washington gave to Egypt in foreign aid was to buy Cairo's continued silence about the facility's location and purpose. And he knew nearly every sordid detail of the bureaucratic tug of war inside the CIA that had prevented Gaza Station from coming on line for year after frustrating year. Besides the president, Jack Mitchell, Danny Tracker, and a handful of others on the National Security Council, only Jake Ziegler knew as much as he did about the origins and history of Gaza Station. But he didn't dare utter a word. Not with their lives in grave danger. Not with the new prime minister of Palestine just a few yards behind him.

Didn't Bennett get it? This was a world where every mistake could be your last.

“I'm sorry, sir,” Tariq finally said. “I'd tell you. But then I'd have to kill you.”

The strike force shot hard and fast into Gaza.

Twenty choppers. Almost 250 special ops forces. Orders to rescue the new Palestinian prime minister and the American “point man for peace.” Operation Briar Patch was under way.

“Br'er Rabbit, this is Br'er Fox,” said the pilot of the lead Super Cobra.

Commander Ramirez in the command-and-control helo, Storm One, adjusted his headset and opened his microphone.

“Go ahead, Br'er Fox. I read you five by five.”

“Roger that, Br'er Rabbit. I've got the Tar Baby in my sights and it's swarming with bandits. Please advise, over.”

“Are the bandits armed?”

The lead pilot scanned the situation on the ground. The rains were still torrential. And even though it was late morning, the sky remained as dark as night and visibility was minimal. Still, through night-vision goggles and the chopper's onboard thermal imaging, the pilot was learning all he needed to know to make an assessment.

“Armed and firing, Br'er Rabbit. I say again, armed and firing. There are several large flashes under way. They appear to be using explosives to penetrate the Tar Baby.”

“Roger that, Br'er Fox. Commence firing. I repeat, commence firing.”

The lead Super Cobra took one pass at less than five hundred feet, with two others right behind him. They cleared the target, banked right, then came back around and began unleashing their guns. Tracer bullets lit up the sky and the insurgents on the ground began dropping like flies.

Five blocks away, Storm Three now swooped in.

It took up a hovering position just a few feet over a six-story tenement building, the tallest in the squalid, crumbling neighborhood. Out of both sides of the chopper, ST-8's Red Team jumped out and moved like lightning. Each man knew his job. Each worked in rhythm with his teammates.

“Go, go, go,”
shouted their team leader, a thirty-one-year-old lieutenant from the Bronx, a graduate of Annapolis and the son of two career naval officers.

Three American snipers took up positions on the roof. Others cut power lines. They shot up the transformer box on the roof, shutting down all the power in the building. At the same time, a breacher smashed through the door to the stairwell, using a sledgehammer and just two swings. Six shooters and their leader—each clicking on their night-vision goggles—now raced inside, weapons up, safeties off.

The top floor was abandoned, as was the fifth floor below. Only the rats—their eyes glowing red in the flashlight beams of the commandos—counted the dark places home. The SEALs proceeded cautiously through the shadowy stairwells, littered with shards of broken glass, giving away their position with every step. Each man wished they'd had more time to prepare, to send in a recon team to find out just what they were up against, to get precise floor plans and map out every step. They were moving blind and even the Rangers and Deltas in Somalia were better prepared than they were.

Crunch, crunch.

Red Four and Red Five were on point, both just shy of their twenty-third birthdays. Their breathing was steady but their hands inside the Nomex gloves were damp with sweat. Moving in tandem—in radio silence, using only hand signals between them and to the men half a flight above them—they worked their way down the central stairwell inch by inch, shrouded in complete darkness. All the lightbulbs were smashed or nonexistent. There were no exit signs. No emergency power boxes. Just the eerie green imagery from their night-vision goggles.

As they slowly turned the corner, they could see the door to the fourth floor. It was closed. Just a thin slice of light seeped from the hallway. But from what? The building's power was out. The hallway had no windows. Where was the light coming from? The light moved. Just a little, but both men saw it and tensed.

Suddenly, two men kicked open the door and began shooting. Two more men popped up from the stairwell below and opened fire as well. Bursts of automatic machine-gun fire exploded around them. Concrete shrapnel was flying everywhere. The SEALs hit the deck and returned fire. Nonstop flashes erupted from the muzzles of their weapons as both sides fought viciously for control. Red Six pulled pins on two grenades and tossed them both—one at the door, one down the stairwell at the attackers below.

“Grenade,” he shouted, and the Americans stopped firing and took cover.

The explosions were nearly instantaneous, one after the other, and they achieved their intended effect. One of the Palestinian gunmen was killed instantly. Three of the four were screaming uncontrollably. Red Five lifted his head up and peered through the smoke and dust. He could see one gunman engulfed in flames. He fired off two rounds at the man's head and one at his chest. All three hit their mark and the man collapsed down the stairs onto the lifeless body of his comrade in arms.

“Let's go, let's go,” he yelled, grabbing Red Four and helping him to his feet.

They raced for the smoking hole in the wall where the fourth-floor door had been, and dived through, guns blazing. Red Six and Seven moved past them, down the stairs and burst onto the third floor. More gunfire erupted. Both floors were engaged now.

“Red Four, Red Four, talk to me—what've you got?”
the team leader shouted over his radio.

“Heavy resistance on the fourth floor. Shots coming from the corner apartments.”

“Red Four, can you take them on your own?”

A response came back, but it was almost impossible to hear with all the shooting in such tight quarters.

“Say again, Red Four, say again—can you take them on your own?”

A hiss of static. The words were garbled.

“…support, we ca—”

The whole building seemed to be exploding around them.

“Say again, Red Four—I can't hear you.”

“…we can't move, can't get a better position—need close air support into the corner apartments immediately.”

“Roger that, Red Four, and stand by one.”

“Red Leader, this is Red Six, we've got the same situation on the third floor. Request CAS into all four corner rooms. Over?”

“Got it, Red Six—stand by.”

The team leader turned to his radio operator, as both men remained hunkered down in the stairwell.

“Get me Storm One now.”

Ten seconds later, he was on the radio with Commander Ramirez.

“Br'er Rabbit, this is Red Leader, do you copy?”

“Roger that, Red Leader. This is Br'er Rabbit. Go.”

“Sir, we've got heavy resistance on the third and fourth floors here, from each of the corner apartments. Request immediate CAS, over.”

“Roger that, Red Leader. Close air support on the way.”

“Thank you, Br'er Rabbit,” the lieutenant acknowledged, then radioed the rest of his team. “OK, guys, hang in there—hold your ground—air support's on the way.”

Less than a minute later, four jet black Little Bird assault choppers took up positions off the four corners of the tenement. Using enhanced thermal imaging, they could see the shooters in each room, on each floor. They confirmed their targets and their orders with the C-2 bird, and got the clearance they wanted. Seconds later, all four began simultaneously unleashing their .50-caliber heavy machine guns through the windows and walls into all four rooms. The snipers never knew what was coming, and a moment later it was over. All was quiet in the smoky, shattered hallway.

Red Team was back on the move.

 

Across the street, Blue Team also fought its way down room by room.

Three Blue Team snipers hunkered down on the roof, picking off anyone stupid enough to fire a round at U.S. forces or aircraft descending into the neighborhood. Inside, resistance was heavier than expected, and Blue Leader worried the intense gun battle might be catching women and children in the cross fire. It was impossible to tell for sure. Most of the shooting was coming from small cracks in apartment doors, and his men had no choice but to punch back with overwhelming firepower, including grenades and the heavy machine guns on the Little Birds buzzing outside the windows.

It was a slow, nasty process. But it was critical. They were keeping the Islamic militants who'd taken over the building occupied, keeping their attention off the main event at the café across the street.

Storm Five circled off the coastline, waiting for their signal, while commandos of the Twenty-sixth MEU fast roped onto roofs and into streets in concentric circles around Alpha Zone, the extraction point chosen by Ziegler and Tariq less than half an hour before. They, too, were encountering heavy resistance from random snipers and bands of militants moving about in jeeps and small trucks, just now getting word of the U.S. action and eager to hunt the “Great Satan.”

Flashes of grenades and mortar rounds lit up the sky. Tracer rounds streaked back and forth and everyone's ears were filled with the roar of multiple explosions and staccato bursts of machine-gun fire. But the Americans' flood-the-zone strategy seemed to be working. One by one, enemy guns were falling silent, and hastily erected U.S. roadblocks at the major intersections were cutting off any hope of the radicals getting desperately needed reinforcements.

Twelve minutes later, Alpha Zone was secure. Storm Two—flanked by three Super Cobras on hair-trigger alert for any further signs of trouble—swooped in and hovered thirty feet over the street facing the café. The pilots scanned the surroundings, then gave the thumbs-up.

“All right, that's it—let's go, let's go!”
shouted Gold Leader.

One by one, his team fast roped to the street, taking up positions on each corner and surrounding the scorched timbers of the once quaint little watering hole.

A moment later, Gold Team was in place. All his men were in position, and Gold Leader slapped his pilots on the back as Storm Two ascended rapidly, out of sniper range and waited to be called back in.

 

Ziegler and Maroq were finished.

And they knew it. Together, they'd destroyed nearly all of their most sensitive equipment and papers. But there wasn't enough time to finish the job. They were being overrun. They'd picked off at least two dozen militants trying to enter the main control room. But they could hear more amassing in the hallways. It was only a matter of time.

Any moment, killers would storm through those doors. Both Americans shuddered at what their fates would be. They wouldn't simply be shot. They'd be drilled for information about U.S. intelligence operations in Gaza and the West Bank. No form of torture would be off limits.

Each man knew all too well the stories of Israeli operatives and informants who'd fallen into the hands of Islamic terrorist cells over the years. They could expect their fingers to be cut off—or shot off—one by one. They could expect electric cattle prods to be used on them for mock colonoscopies. If they didn't talk—or didn't tell their interrogators what they wanted to hear—their tongues would be cut out of their mouths while they writhed in unfathomable agony.

But agreeing to talk wouldn't save them. Eventually, one way or the other, their genitalia would be cut off and mailed to their relatives in sealed plastic bags.

It wasn't speculation. It was fact. If they were caught, they'd be shown no mercy. They were going to die one way or the other. Better it be fast, and for a purpose.

“Br'er Rabbit, this is Tar Baby,”
Ziegler radioed from inside Gaza Station, as Maroq fired another burst at both doors, hoping to buy a few more minutes.
“I repeat, Br'er Rabbit, this is Tar Baby. Come in, over.”

“Tar Baby, this is Br'er Rabbit. You guys ready for us?”

“It's too late. We're being overrun, sir. Equipment and papers at risk. Requesting immediate Samson strike on our location, sir.”

It was a chilling request.

Commander Ramirez was stunned. All the men in Storm One stopped what they were doing, though a dozen different requests were coming in from all sectors. Overall, the battle was going well. Operation Briar Patch would be over in less than fifteen minutes. What Ziegler was asking for seemed unthinkable. Ramirez looked at his men, then clicked his microphone back on.

“You sure you know what you're asking, son?”

But Ramirez could hear the gunfire and screams over the radio. He could hear the fear in Ziegler's voice. And then he heard the voice of resignation.

“Melt us down, sir. It's the only way.”

Ramirez closed his eyes. He wasn't required to send this one up the chain of command. He had the authority to approve all tactical operations, and he'd been given written orders, personally signed by General Mutschler himself, that Gaza Station not fall into enemy hands under
any
circumstances. He'd love to pass the buck on this one. But there wasn't time.

He knew what Ziegler was asking, and he knew why. He couldn't imagine being captured by these people. It was a fate worse than death, and that alone settled it for Ramirez. He couldn't let these brave Americans fall into such hands, not when they clearly knew the stakes and knew precisely what they were asking.