Acts of War

THIRTY-NINE

Falah had walked most of the night and slept briefly before the sun came up. The sun was his alarm clock and it had never failed him. And the darkness was his cloak. That had never failed him either.

Fortunately, Falah had never required a great deal of sleep. As a young boy growing up in Tel Aviv, he'd always felt that he was missing something if he slept. As a teenager, he'd known he was missing something when the sun went down. And as an adult, he had too much to do in the dark.

One day it will catch up to you, he thought as he made his way.

Equally fortunate, after being driven to the Lebanese border, Falah had been able to make most of the first leg of his journey before resting. It was a seventeen-mile trek to the mouth of the Bekaa, and he found an olive grove well away from the dirt road. Covered with fallen leaves for warmth and concealment, Falah had the Lebanese Mountains to the west and the foothills of the Anti-Lebanon range to the east. He made certain there was a break in the peaks where he rested. That would allow the rising sun to kiss him before it cleared the mountains and woke others in the valley.

Virtually every village in Syria and Lebanon has its own preferred style of dress and cloth. Wraps, robes, trousers, and skirts with distinctive patterns, colors, tassels, and accoutrements are more varied here than anywhere in the world. Some of the styles are based on tradition, others are based on function. Among the Kurds who had moved into the southern Bekaa, the only traditional article of clothing is the headdress. Before leaving Tel Nef, Falah had gone into the "closet," a well-stocked wardrobe room, to dress for his role as an itinerant farm worker. He'd selected a ratty black robe, black sandals, and a characteristic black, stiff, tasseled headdress. He'd also chosen heavy, black-framed sunglasses. Under the torn, loose-fitting robe, Falah wore a tight rubber belt strapped to his waist. Two waterproof pouches were attached to it. One, on his right hip, contained a fake Turkish passport with a Kurdish name and an address in a Kurdish village. He was Aram Tunas from Semdinli. The pouch also contained a small two-way radio.

The other pouch contained a.44 Magnum revolver which had been taken from a Kurdish prisoner. A coded map printed with food dye on dried lambskin was tucked into the pouch with the radio. If he were captured, Falah would eat the map. Falah was also given a password which would identify him to any of the American rescuers. It was a line Moses had uttered in The Ten Commandments: "I will dwell in this land." Bob Herbert had felt the password for the ROC's Middle East mission should be something holy, but not something from the Koran or the Bible that someone might say inadvertently. When challenged after giving the line, Falah was to say that his name was the Sheik of Midian. If he were captured and the password tortured or drugged from him, chances were good an imposter would not think to ask for the second part. The impersonator would then give himself away by answering with the name on Falah's passport.

The Israeli also carried a large cowskin water pouch over his left shoulder. Over his right shoulder was a duffel bag with a change of clothes, food, and an EAR — an Echelon Audio Receiver. The unit consisted of a small, collapsible parabolic dish, an audio receiver/transmitter, and a compact computer. The computer contained a digital recorder as well as a filter program which was based on principles of the Doppler effect. It allowed the user to choose sounds by echelon or layer. At the press of a button on the keypad, the audio which reached the listener first was eliminated to make way for that which came next. If the acoustics were good enough, the EAR could hear around corners. The audio data could also be stored for later transmission.

Less than five minutes after he woke, Falah was bent over a stream, sucking water through a minty reedstalk. As he savored the cool water his radio vibrated. With the throw of a switch, the radio could be made to beep. However, when he was working undercover or stalking an enemy who could be concealed anywhere, that was not something Falah desired.

Crouching, Falah chewed on the reed as he answered. He never sat down in the open. In an emergency, it took that much longer to get to his feet.

"Ana rahgil achmel muzehri," he answered in Arabic. "I am a farmer."

"Inta mineyn?" asked the caller. "Where are you from?"

Falah recognized the voice of Master Sergeant Vilnai, just as Vilnai had surely recognized his. For the sake of security, the two men went through the exchange of codes just the same.

"Ana min Beirut," Falah replied. " I am from Beirut." If he'd been injured he would have answered, "Ana min Hermil." If he'd been captured he would have said, "Ana min Tyre."

As soon as Falah had said that he was from Beirut, Master Sergeant Vilnai said, "Eight, six, six, ten, zero, seventeen."

Falah repeated the numbers. Then he pulled the map from the pouch. There was a drawing of the valley with a grid sketched on top of it. The first two numbers of the sequence directed Falah to a grid box. The second pair of numbers indicated an exact spot within the grid. The final two numbers referred to a vertical location. They meant that the cave he sought was situated point-seventeen miles up the side of a cliff, probably along a road.

"I see it," Falah said. Not only did he see it, but it was the perfect place for a military base. There was a gorge behind it which could easily accommodate helicopters and training facilities.

"Go there," Vilnai replied. "Reconnoiter and signal if affirmative. Then wait."

"Understood," the young man said. "Sahl."

"Sahl," Vilnai answered.

Sahl meant "easy" and it was Falah's individual sign-off. He had selected the word because it was ironic. Due to Falah's high success rate, his superiors had always chided him that he'd picked the word because it was true. As a result, they kept threatening to give him more dangerous assignments. Falah dared them to find more dangerous assignments.

After replacing the radio, Falah took a moment to study the map. He groaned. The cave he sought was nearly fourteen miles away. Given the incline of the hills and the rough terrain here, and allowing for a short rest, it would take him approximately five and a half hours to reach his destination. He also knew that as soon as he entered the valley his radio would be ineffective. In order to communicate with Tel Nef he'd have to use the EAR's uplink.

Spitting out the reed he'd been chewing, Falah pulled up a few more for later. He tucked them in the deep cuff of his robe and started out. As he walked, he ate the map for breakfast.

Falah was out of condition. When he reached the cave shortly after noon, his legs felt like sacks of sand and his once-tough feet were bleeding at the heels. There were large calluses on the balls of both feet and his skin was greasy with sweat. But the discomfort was forgotten as he arrived at his destination. Through the dense copse he saw rows of trees and a cave. Between the woods and the cave, on a sloping dirt road, was the white van. It was covered with a camouflage tarpaulin and was guarded by two men with semiautomatics. A quarter mile away was a road-cut which led behind the mountain.

Falah crouched behind a boulder some four hundred yards away. After unshouldering his duffel bag he dug a small hole. He carefully collected the dirt in a neat pile beside it. Then he looked around for a large clump of grass. Finding one, he removed it and set it on top of the mound of dirt.

Now that he was ready, Falah turned his attention to the cave. It was located roughly sixty feet up the side of a cliff, just above the tree line. It was accessible only by a sloping dirt road. He took a quick look at the ground-level terrain. He knew there would be land mines within and around the copse, though he would have no problem finding out just where those mines were. When Striker arrived, he would simply surrender to the Kurds. They would come and get him. Wherever they walked would be mine-free.

As he watched, Falah saw a man emerge from the cave. The man was dressed in a khaki shirt and shorts. He was followed by a man who held a gun to his back. Someone else was there, although he didn't come out of the cave. He stood in the shadows of the entrance, watching. The prisoner was led into the van.

Falah opened the duffel bag and withdrew the three parts of the EAR. The computer was slightly larger than an audio cassette. He set it on the rock. Then he withdrew the satellite dish. Folded, it was approximately the size and shape of a small umbrella. At the press of a button, the black dish fanned open like a small umbrella as well. He pressed a second button, and a tripod shot out from the other side. He stood it on the rock as well and plugged it into the computer. Then Falah fished out the earphones. He plugged them in, turned on the unit, and guessed the distance to the cave. After fine-tuning it to within a foot of the entranceway, he listened.

He heard Turkish being spoken in the front of the cave. He told the computer to go to the next layer. Someone was speaking Syrian.

"is the timetable?" a man asked.

"I don't know," said another man. "Soon. He has promised the leader to Ibrahim and the women to his lieutenants."

"Not to us?" another man grumbled.

There's evidence of the Turkish and Syrian Kurdish collaboration, Falah thought. He wasn't surprised, merely gratified. When he was finished, he'd transmit the recording to Tel Nef. From there it would be relayed to Washington. The American President would probably inform Damascus and Ankara. The conversation was also evidence of other captives being held at this location. Before contacting Tel Nef, Falah decided to probe deep into the cave.

He went ten feet at a time. He heard more Syrian, more Turkish, and finally English. It was muffled and difficult to understand. Knowing how the Kurds worked in the hills, the speakers were probably being kept in prison pits. He picked up only a few words.

"Treason sooner die."

"will."

He listened for a few moments longer, then programmed new coordinates into the computer. Sitting sturdily on its tripod, the dish began to turn. The Israeli communications satellite Falah needed to contact was in a geostationary orbit directly over Lebanon and eastern Syria.

As Falah waited for the dish to establish the uplink, one of the Arabs ran from the van. He hurried over to the dark figure standing in the cave entrance.

Falah pushed the "cancel" button on the uplink. Then he physically picked up the dish, turned it back toward the cave entrance, and entered the distance into the computer. He listened.

"turned on a computer inside," the man from the van was saying. "It told us there was a satellite dish out there."

The man in the shadows calmly asked where it was.

"To the southwest," the other man replied, "within five hundred yards—"

That was all Falah needed to hear. He knew there was no way he'd be able to outrun the Kurds and no way he could take them on. He had only one option. With an oath, he pressed a button to send a silent signal back to the base. Then he folded the satellite dish and tripod and swept the entire unit into the hole he'd dug. He reached into the pouch around his waist and dropped the radio in as well. Finally, he pulled off his sandals and dropped them in. He filled the hole with the dirt, then placed the sod on top of it. Unless someone was looking, they wouldn't see that the soil beneath the grass had been disturbed. Grabbing his duffel bag, Falah crept toward the northeast. As he headed toward the cave he saw over a dozen Kurdish soldiers run from the cave. They fanned out in columns of three, carefully avoiding the mines.

Falah crawled mostly on grass and stone so he would leave as few tracks as possible. When he was roughly one hundred yards from where he'd buried the dish and radio; the young Israeli lay the duffel bag on the ground beside him. He put on the other sandals so his footprints wouldn't match those around the rock. Then he scooped up his bag and ran off, reviewing again the details of the life of Aram Tunas from Semdinli.