Countdown to Midnight

Twenty-Three

Situated near the ruins of a Crusader castle originally built for the Knights Templar, Atlit was the headquarters for the Israel’s elite naval special forces unit, Shayatet 13, the 13th Flotilla. Widely considered to be at least the equal of the U.S. Navy’s SEALs, Shayatet 13’s force of highly trained frogmen and commandos carried out missions that might range from hostage rescues to the assassination of terrorist leaders to the capture of enemy ships in port or out on the high seas. First organized in 1949, at the very beginning of the modern State of Israel, even the fact of its existence was kept secret for nearly ten years. To this day, most of the details of its daring exploits were still shrouded in mystery and rumor.

Given that history, Flynn had been stunned when he realized where he and Gideon Ayish were being driven after arriving at Ben Gurion Airport aboard a night flight from Dubai. He’d expected Ayish to arrange a discreet briefing for a select few inside Israel’s military establishment — perhaps at the offices of his counterterrorism think tank, another Quartet Directorate front, in Jerusalem. Instead, they were met at the airline gate by a uniformed officer of Israel’s naval forces and taken straight to this closely guarded base on the coast just south of the port city of Haifa.

They’d been waved through the main gate and into the center of the compound. Steps next to a camouflaged bunker led down into a brightly lit underground command center. Wall screens showed detailed maps of the entire Middle East region, with icons showing the positions of major air, naval, and ground units belonging to different countries. Communications and computer consoles on an upper tier surrounded a central U-shaped conference table in the middle of the room, with seats for unit commanders and their top staff officers.

Several officers from Israel’s navy and air force were already seated, waiting for Ayish and Flynn. A middle-aged civilian with short-cropped, ash-gray hair and wire-rim glasses sat at the head of the table. According to the card at his place, his name was Avi Elazar. Although his precise title was never mentioned, it quickly became clear that he was a man to whom everyone else in the command center — including Ayish — very obviously deferred. Flynn bet that indicated this guy Elazar was either someone high up in the Mossad, or, more likely, a high-ranking member of the Israeli prime minister’s inner circle.

With a polite nod, Elazar waved them to the two empty chairs left at one end of the conference table. He acknowledged Ayish with a tight, humorless smile. “So, Gideon, I understand you’ve brought us news of more trouble on the horizon?”

“Not just on the horizon, “Ayish clarified quietly. “This trouble is already nearly at our door.”

Flynn hid his astonishment. It was now clear to him that the older man operated with far more freedom of maneuver in his nation’s military and political circles than did his American counterparts in the Quartet Directorate. They had to work almost entirely on their own — without the U.S. government’s sanction or even knowledge. Which raised another question. How much about Four did these Israeli soldiers and civilians really know? Had Gideon Ayish blown the Quartet Directorate’s cover to his own people? Because everything he’d been told in his training indicated secrecy was essential to the group’s continued survival and success. Its founders had known from the very beginning that the official intelligence organizations in their home countries would never tolerate the existence of even a friendly private ally.

Elazar turned his curious gaze on Flynn. “And this is your young friend, the one who first reached out to you?”

Ayish nodded. “Mr. Flynn works for a friendly intelligence service,” he said carefully. “He is one of their most talented field agents.”

“Another of your remarkable web of contacts and confidential sources? Of whom it occasionally seems there is no end, Gideon,” the gray-haired civilian commented wryly.

Ayish shrugged with a slight smile. “I talk to people here and there, Avi. Sometimes they confide in me. It’s a gift.” That drew a murmur of laughter from the officers around the conference table.

Flynn kept a tight rein on his own expression. Ayish’s careful circumlocution answered his earlier unspoken question. Somehow, the Israeli professor had kept the details of the Quartet Directorate’s existence and real history secret, while still managing to exert far more influence than his nominal role as a think tank academic would suggest. Instead, his countrymen seemed to credit Ayish with cultivating high-level connections to other official Western intelligence organizations, connections that had been very helpful in thwarting past terrorist actions aimed at Israel. And equally plainly, his country’s political and military leaders seemed willing to “let Gideon work his miracles” unhindered by inconvenient questions.

That was a remarkably pragmatic and unbureaucratic attitude, Flynn thought with a touch of envy. It was probably one fostered by Israel’s past vulnerability in the midst of a sea of potential enemies. The United States — geographically vast, populous, and, for so long, secure behind her twin ocean frontiers — had always been able to survive a degree of sluggishness and inefficiency in its national security machinery. The people of Israel, penned in a country barely ten miles wide at its narrowest point, could not afford the same luxury.

Elazar waited for the quiet amusement to fade. Then he turned toward Flynn. “Very well,” he said. “We are at your disposal. Please explain this danger that has Professor Ayish so worried.”

Flynn waited while Ayish handed over a USB drive containing the images they’d brought to back up his oral presentation. A junior officer fed the drive into a computer and pulled up the first photo in the series. It was a copy of Arif Khavari’s passport picture. “Our first inkling of trouble came in Austria, during a covert rendezvous with this man—” he began.

Over the next thirty minutes, he briefed them on what he and the other members of Four had managed to discover since that first, aborted contact with Khavari. His pictures of the missile convoy taken inside Iran generated intense interest — as did the revelation that Russia’s mercenary Raven Syndicate was working hand in glove with the Iranians to carry out the operation they’d code-named MIDNIGHT. Still, watching their reactions while he spoke, he judged his audience’s general mood to be focused and highly professional. While they were plainly intrigued by the intelligence he was sharing, it was also clear that none of them were especially worried by anything they’d heard so far. After all, Russian military cooperation with Tehran’s radical regime was nothing particularly new — although it was unusual to see the two countries collaborating so directly on a covert operation.

I bet that attitude changes completely in, oh, about thirty seconds, he thought calmly — as he steadily worked through the assumptions underlying the bombshell he was about to drop. Well, either that, Nick, or they’ll just decide you’re completely loco, he realized with an inward grin.

After he finished speaking, a shocked quiet descended on the command center. It lasted for what felt like an hour, but really couldn’t have been more than a few moments.

Elazar broke the silence. Carefully, he leaned forward. “Let me be sure that I understand you correctly, Mr. Flynn,” he said softly. “You believe this man Voronin has given Iran a nuclear weapon to use in MIDNIGHT? And that he has done so with permission from Piotr Zhdanov himself?”

“Yes, sir,” Flynn said firmly. “That’s correct.”

The other man digested that for several seconds before going on. “Judging by your accent, you are an American, not so?”

Flynn nodded again. “Yes, sir. I am.”

“Then may I ask what action your own government plans to take in this matter?” the Israeli civilian asked gently.

“None,” Flynn said bluntly, not bothering to hide his own anger and disgust. “Washington doesn’t want to rock the diplomatic boat with Tehran right now, especially since much of this is admittedly speculation.”

“Speculation which is also logical and quite reasonable, based on the available evidence,” Elazar interjected. “And not just some hardliner’s wild fantasy.”

“Yes, sir, that’s how I see it,” Flynn agreed. “Then again,” he admitted with a self-deprecating smile, “I may be a little biased, since this was basically my idea in the first place.”

Next to Elazar, Rafael Alon, the Israeli naval officer who commanded Shayatet 13, raised an eyebrow. Three gold stripes on his shoulder boards showed that he was a Sgan aluf, or deputy champion — the equivalent of a commander in the U.S. Navy. “And yet your superiors have approved your sharing this information with us?” he asked skeptically. “Despite their own reluctance to respond?”

“My immediate superiors did okay this meeting,” Flynn said carefully, sticking to the literal truth. Fox was his boss, after all. That much of what he said was accurate, even if it avoided the fact that neither of them actually served in the official U.S. intelligence community. “But under the circumstances, none of us saw much point in pushing things too far up the political food chain.”

Out the corner of his eye, he noticed Ayish manfully maintaining a very straight face at this bit of deliberate misdirection. Again, what Flynn had just said was also quite literally true. The only thing left out was that the Quartet Directorate avoided contact with U.S politicians under any circumstances — and not just in this special case.

Flynn noticed heads around the table nod in understanding. He hid a smile of his own. He suspected his hosts now viewed him as one of the Gentile equivalents of the sayanim, Jewish citizens of other countries who were willing to provide critical aid to Israel in times of need. Throughout its tumultuous history, Israel had good cause to be thankful for their support.

In the silence that followed, Elazar looked around the command center. “All right, since the Americans seem to have tied their own hands, what are our options to deal with this Iranian oil tanker and the nuclear missile it now carries?”

“We could sink the ship at anchor with an air strike,” one of the Israeli air force officers suggested. “Or out at sea once it sails.” He shrugged. “Such a mission would be difficult, especially given the strength of the surface-to-air missile and fighter interceptor units currently deployed around Bandar Abbas. It would certainly require the commitment of a large number of our best planes and pilots. But it could be done.”

“Unfortunately, sinking the tanker by air or missile attack is now out of the question,” Elazar said patiently. “Can you imagine the environmental damage and the resulting international outcry if we send a vessel loaded with hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude oil to the bottom of the sea?” He turned back to the head of Shayatet 13. “Can your commandos plant a limpet mine on the ship, Rafael? Something that would damage its engines and keep it in port without rupturing those oil-storage tanks? That, at least, would buy us additional time to organize a more permanent solution.”

Alon frowned. “That oil terminal at Bandar Abbas is a hard target,” he said. “Between the IRGC’s speedboat patrols and its own frogmen, the odds of carrying out a successful operation there would be very low — while the chances of incurring substantial casualties would be very high.”

“And once the Gulf Venture sails?” Elazar asked. “What about then?”

“It would be difficult,” Alon told him. “Planting a mine on a ship moving at fifteen to twenty knots would require the use of one of our Dolphin 2—class submarines carrying a force of divers and high-speed underwater sleds.” One of the command center’s digital maps zoomed in to show where Israel’s three Dolphin 2—class subs were currently stationed. They were all in the Mediterranean. “But it’ll take us at least five days to transfer the Drakon, the Rahav, or the Tanin through the Suez Canal and around into the Persian Gulf.”

“By which time that tanker will have vanished,” another officer commented sourly. “The sea is a big place.”

Flynn saw what they were driving at. A ship steaming at high speed could cover a couple thousand nautical miles in five days. Finding a needle in a haystack would be easy compared to pinpointing a ship somewhere in the vast expanses of the world’s oceans.

“We have a spy satellite in orbit,” Elazar pointed out.

The same officer shook his head regretfully. “I’m sorry, Avi,” he said. “The orbit of our OFEK-16 imaging satellite is optimized to keep watch on Iran’s nuclear facilities and its missile research centers. It’s not designed for ocean reconnaissance work.”

Flynn kept his mouth shut, listening while the discussion went on. Eventually, it became obvious that Alon and the other Israeli officers saw only one even remotely realistic option: A Shayatet 13–led helicopter boarding operation backed up by a support unit aboard fast boats.

Alon finished conferring with his colleagues and turned back to Elazar. “Given twenty-four hours, we can move two Eurocopter AS565 Panther helicopters and a couple of air-transportable Morena rigid hull, inflatable boats to a staging area in the UAE. Naturally, the helicopters will have to refuel on the way from one of our KC-130 air tankers.”

“Under the Abraham Accords, we only have commercial and diplomatic ties with the United Arab Emirates,” Elazar objected. “We are not military allies.”

Alon offered him a wolflike grin. “Officially, that’s true,” he agreed. He shrugged his shoulders. “But for years we’ve worked covertly against Iran with many of the Gulf States. If we’re quiet about this, they’ll gladly turn a blind eye.”

“Two helicopters? And a couple of small boats? With a couple of squads of commandos in the first wave?” another officer commented dryly. “That’s not exactly an overwhelming force, Rafael.”

Heads nodded throughout the command center. Previous Israeli seizures of Iranian shipping had often involved multiple surface warships, hundreds of soldiers and sailors, and large numbers of combat aircraft flying cover.

“What choice do we have?” Alon retorted. “Wait until the Iranians detonate this nuclear warhead the Russians have given them over Tel Aviv? Or one of our other cities?”

Elazar held up a hand, stifling the heated argument they could all see brewing. “As I see it, this decision comes down to the reliability of the intelligence we’ve been given by our American friend here. If what he says is true, we do not have any real choice except to gamble.” He turned to Flynn with a shrewd, calculating expression on his face. “So then, Mr. Flynn, just how confident are you that your assessment of this situation is correct — and that this Iranian missile is actually armed with a nuclear weapon?”

Aware that all the eyes in the room were fixed on him, Flynn knew he could not afford to hesitate. The slightest show of uncertainty would wreck any chance of stopping MIDNIGHT in time. “Confident enough to volunteer to join your boarding party,” he said coolly.

Beside him, Ayish nodded approvingly.

Elazar raised an eyebrow. “That is confidence indeed.” He glanced at Alon. “What do you think, Rafael?”

In answer, the Shayatet 13 commander looked hard at Flynn. “How often have you been in action?” he demanded.

“Four times,” Flynn replied simply.

“And were you frightened?” the Israeli officer probed.

Flynn smiled back at him with a quick flash of tightly bared teeth. “Afterward? Oh, hell, yeah.”

“But during the fighting?” Alon asked bluntly. “Were you scared then?”

Flynn shrugged. “I was too busy to think much about it,” he answered truthfully.

The Israeli commando officer matched his devil-may-care grin and turned back to Elazar. “This American’s totach, a stand-out guy,” he said simply. “We’ll take him.”

The gray-haired civilian nodded. “Excellent.” He looked around the conference table. “Very well, I’ll recommend to the Prime Minister that we proceed. In the meantime, prepare your forces for movement… and outfit Mr. Flynn with the equipment and weapons he’ll need.”

Later, in private with Ayish, Flynn shook his head in amazement. “I cannot believe that I just talked my way into going along on this raid. So much for the whole Four mantra about the need to keep a low profile.” His mouth turned down. “Man, Br’er Fox is not going to be happy about this.”

The older man chuckled quietly. “Oh, I doubt that, Nick,” he said sincerely. “You see, Fox and I had a wager as to whether you would find some way to join any attack force. And he just won that bet.”