Direct Action

2

15 OCTOBER 2003

9:52A.M.

EREZ CROSSING, GAZA

SASS RODRIGUEZ SHIFTED IN THE DRIVER’S SEATof the armored Chevy Suburban and panned his Oakleys through the thick, bulletproof windshield of the big silver FAV.³“Perfect day for the beach, huh, McGee?”

“You’re right, Sass-man. It’s beer weather.” Jim McGee was riding shotgun. His dark eyes flicked up toward the clear blue sky. He sighed, ran his fingers through close-cropped, prematurely gray hair, then rapped scarred knuckles on the thick glass of the permanently sealed, two-inch-thick side window. “All that draft Carlsberg and all that beautiful Israeli booty and we’ll be stuck in this sardine can all day.”

“You volunteered to waste your time, Jimbo,” Sass said. “Not my prob.”

“You’re right-stupid me.” McGee scanned the knot of vehicles in front of them as Sass eased forward past the first line of scarred concrete Jersey barriers leading to one of the checkpoint funnels. “Time to check in.” The FAV halted abruptly as a cluster of nervous-looking Israeli soldiers in full combat gear signaled Sass to stop. Then, using the muzzles of their rifles to give instructions, they shifted half a dozen cars aside, pulled a white Citroën with four young Arabs from the line, yanked the Palestinians out of the car, and proned them facedown in the dust.

McGee unlatched the microphone from the radio bolted to the console, pressed the transmit button, and said, “Tel Aviv Base, Lima-One. Pulling into Erez checkpoint.”

There was a six-second pause. Then the radio crackled: “Lima-One, Tel Aviv. Position confirmed.”

“What would we do without GPS?” Sass scratched his ear and swiveled toward the third man in the FAV. “Think we’ll get held up today, Skip?”

“Nah.” Skip O’Toole tapped his earpiece, squelched the volume on the walkie-talkie, held his hand over the microphone clipped to the collar of his 5.11 tactical vest, and leaned forward. “It’s been quiet since the holidays.” He pointed toward the Citroën. Two of the four passengers were being flexi-cuffed, arms pinioned tightly behind their backs, Israeli M-16s pointed at their heads. “See how mellow the Is are today? They ain’t kicking anybody. They ain’t shooting anybody. Just poking ’em a little-enough to rile ’em but not enough to set ’em off.” O’Toole was smaller framed than the other two-a wiry little red-haired bundle of energy who ate like a horse and ran marathons when he wasn’t chasing what he liked to call long-haired dictionaries.

But then O’Toole was a SEAL, a West Coaster out of SEAL Five who’d been forward-based in Guam. He was twenty-nine, and he’d loved the Teams. But even Froggish camaraderie wasn’t enough to prevent him from leaving the Navy after his third hitch to hire on at DynCorp. Hell, O’Toole had two ex-wives, three kids, and a Stateside girlfriend to support, something that was impossible to do on a petty officer second class’s salary. At DynCorp he brought down a hundred grand per year plus expenses, more than twice what he made in the Navy, and just about all of it tax-free.

Sass and McGee were older and both former Special Forces. Sass had retired as a sergeant first class out of Fort Campbell after twenty-five years of soldiering. McGee, who was the shift leader, was an E-7, too. But he’d spent nine years on the far side of the fence with Delta. Plus, he spoke three-minus Arabic and kitchen Pashto. Rumor had it McGee spent time in Afghanistan as a part of a hunter-killer element of combined CIA/Delta shooters. Gossip was he’d spent eight months pursuing UBL and the AQL, which was how Pentagon memo writers referred to Usama Bin Laden and the al-Qa’ida leadership.

Last time he was back in Virginia on a week’s home leave, Sass heard whispers that McGee’s final Delta assignment was a joint U.S./British op in Iraq: he’d been a squad leader for one of the Coalition’s preinvasion insertion groups-the sneak-and-peekers who spent two weeks clandestinely designating targets just prior to D-day. RUMINT, which is how they referred to urinal gossip at the DynCorp cafeteria, had it McGee’d spent nine days in Baghdad setting up phone taps and positioning laser target designators.

But that’s all it was-rumor. Because McGee never said anything about Afghanistan, or Iraq. He was pretty closemouthed. About himself in general, and about his time with the Unit, as he called it, in particular. “Been places and done things,” is all he’d ever say, in an accent that was tinged with North Carolina but originally could have been from just about anywhere between Miami and Detroit except New England.

Sass Rodriguez wasn’t closemouthed. He was a professional Texan from San Antonio-hence Sass, call-sign shorthand for Tex-sass. And he had an opinion about everything. Sometimes two or three opinions, all voiced in a lackadaisical Paul Rodriguez Tex-Mex drawl that McGee, O’Toole, and the rest of the DynCorp crew swore got thicker with the addition of any significant quantities of beer. Sass had been in Afghanistan, too. The big, barrel-chested blankethead worked the mountains with the Northern Alliance-Sheikh Massoud’s boys-on horseback and shot himself a lot of Taliban. The CENTCOM commander-General Tommy Franks himself-had pinned a Bronze Star with combat “V” on Sass’s blouse. Sass carried a picture of that event in his wallet.

O’Toole’s arm stretched between Sass and McGee. “There’s our escort,” he snorted derisively.

McGee shifted the M4’s collapsible stock, which was resting against the snuff can in the cargo pocket of his tan Royal Robbins trousers, and snugged it between the glove compartment and the door trim. He plucked the instant-focusing field glasses from the console and held them to his eyes. A hundred yards beyond the Israeli side of the crossing, two dirty, mud-encrusted black Subarus with dinged quarter panels, bald tires, and Palestinian Authority plates sat idling, thick, noxious-looking exhaust farting from the rusted tailpipes. Half a dozen sloppily uniformed Palestinian gunsels cradling banana-clipped AKs were leaning up against the cars, sandaled feet idly pawing at the dust.

McGee examined their faces up close and personal. Then he dropped the binocs back where they belonged, swiveled and glanced back through the Suburban’s rear clamshell doors to make sure the second embassy FAV, the one containing the junior-grade consular officer and driven by Jonny Kieffer, the fourth man in today’s detail, was positioned where it should be. Jonny caught McGee’s eye through the tinted glass and threw him an A-OK wave. McGee gave Jonny an upturned thumb.

It was a visual pun. In Arab culture, the upturned thumb wasn’t the good-to-go sign. It meant “up your ass.”

McGee turned back, shifting his body so the Sig-Sauer P-229 that rested just behind his right hip didn’t get between him and the seat back. Today was a milk run. They’d hightail past the Israeli-controlled industrial zone on the Gaza side of the checkpoint, then drive straight through Beit Hanoun to Gaza City.

McGee caught himself up. Driving straight through anywhere in Gaza was an oxymoron. The roads-and he used the term loosely-had been ruined by neglect and war. There were axle-snapping potholes and huge gouges made by tank and armored personnel carrier tracks. Palestinian drivers were worse than Beirutis-huge trucks belching black clouds of noxious fumes would cut through intersections without pausing for oncoming traffic. And there were other hazards, too: donkey carts, bicycles, and the deerlike Palestinian kids who paid no heed to the anarchic traffic but sprinted between cars willy-nilly and more than occasionally got themselves smacked like Bambi.

Well, they’d creep and crawl past Beit Hanoun, then weave their way off the garbage-strewn main road to a dusty municipal office next door to the crumbling Red Crescent headquarters on El-Nasser Street, where the consular kid was interviewing some Palestinian honor student about a Fulbright. The route was highlighted on the clear plastic cover of the map McGee’d tossed up on the dashboard.

It was all bullshit of course. Smoke and mirrors. Cover for action. The consular kid was a wet-behind-the-ears Agency case officer. And the honor student was some nineteen-year-old Fatah rock-chucker who was going to be cold-pitched. In English, of course, because the spook didn’t speak much Arabic pastmin fadlak andshukran. The whole episode was going to be an exercise in futility.

So the only real development to take place this morning was that another Tel Aviv CIA case officer’s identity was going to be blown to the Palestinian Authority-not that the PA had had any doubts in the first place about who was Agency and who wasn’t. It was laughable. No, it was pitiful. The whole goddamn situation was textbook absurdity.

And it wasn’t the people. There were a few good folks at CIA. Hard workers. Risk takers. McGee had operated with some of them in Afghanistan. But the leadership sucked. There was no leadership at CIA these days. CIA had devolved into a huge, unwieldy, risk-averse, molasses-slow bureaucracy. Just like McGee’s beloved Army, CIA was controlled by managers, apparatchiks, and bean counters. The Warriors all took early retirement.

That’s the way things went in Afghanistan back in 2001. For the first few weeks, the war was executed by black-ops Warriors and unconventional forces. Then Washington declared victory, the staff pukes took over, and the paper started flying. Among the first directives: all Special Forces were henceforth to reassume military grooming standards. That meant no more beards or native garb. It also meant that hundreds of SF personnel became obvious targets because they were no longer able to blend into the indigenous woodwork. The casualty rate went up. But the two-star who issued the order didn’t give a damn. He had an MA in public administration, he lived in Tampa, and by God, he was going to make those hairy-assed SF mavericks over there conform.

Same sort of numbskull thinking was going on at CIA these days. And the situation wasn’t going to change, either. Not in McGee’s lifetime. McGee plucked a Styrofoam cup from the dashboard cup holder, spat tobacco juice into it, then used the rim to wipe his lower lip. He cocked his head in the direction of the Palestinian escort. “Y’know, you can tell from how professional they look they were trained by da Company.”

“Nasty, nasty.” O’Toole stifled a giggle as McGee replaced the cup. But it was true. As a part of Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet’s plan for cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians, CIA had trained more than a thousand members of Yasser Arafat’s security forces in everything from sniping and close-quarters combat to bomb disposal, defensive driving, interrogation, threat assessment, and counterintelligence.

The two guys who headed what the Palestinians called their Preventive Security Services, Jabril Rajoub and Mohammad Dahlan, were even flown as honored guests to Langley, where they were ushered into the DCI’s seventh-floor private dining room. Rajoub and Dahlan ate lamb tenderloin,haricots verts, and garlic mashed potatoes on bone china emblazoned with the DCI’s seal. They toasted the latest road map to Middle East peace with Opus One drunk from Baccarat stemware. After the second of these lunches went right according to plan, Tenet even allowed a few of the PSS’s upper-echelon trainees to be brought to the holy of holies: Camp Peary, the Agency’s clandestine facility outside Williamsburg, Virginia, for a few hours of instruction.

Lesser mortals were flown to ISOLATION TROPIC, the huge CIA explosives-and-mayhem school at Harvey Point, North Carolina, or to clandestine sites in South Carolina, Georgia, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Florida, where they received training from retired case officers and paramilitary contract employees. Everyone from the senior instructors at the Farm to the grizzled ex-Special Forces sergeants in Ocala agreed the Palestinians were excellent students-and DCI Tenet issued commendations to all involved. Then, when those excellent students returned to the West Bank and Gaza, instead of using what they’d learned to muzzle Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the PSS officers promptly turned every bit of their new tradecraft skills against the Israelis.

Sass could see U.S.-financed Beretta pistols tucked ostentatiously into the Palestinians’ waistbands. The youngsters reminded him of the neighborhood gangbangers of his childhood. Out of habit he shook the M4 carbine in its custom roof rack to make sure it was properly secured. “This is a cluster fuck waiting to happen,” he said adamantly.

“Orders is orders,” O’Toole said. But Sass was right and everybody knew it. The embassy’s rules of engagement specified that all American diplomatic convoys had to provide twenty-four-hour notice of the precise time and specific route to the Palestinian Authority. Automatic weapons were to be unloaded and kept out of sight.

So far as Jim McGee’s DynCorp crew was concerned, the only thing the embassy was doing by giving out their route and insisting on dangerous ROEs was providing aid, comfort, and intelligence to the enemy. And diplomatic milk run or not, McGee insisted that all of his people maintain what he called Condition Orange. That meant weapons loaded, rounds chambered, safeties on, no matter what the State Department rules might be. If crap hit fan, it wasn’t going to be McGee’s people who came home in body bags.

It wasn’t that he’d taken sides, either. It was a matter of operational security pure and simple.

McGee’d been in Israel just over six months now. And being a former Delta trooper, he hadn’t needed more than a few days to evaluate the situation on the ground pretty damn thoroughly. But even a novice could have seen the Palestinian security apparatus was completely penetrated by the same terrorist elements the PA was pledged by treaty to eliminate.

Worse, the situation in Gaza was deteriorating by the day. Each of Gaza’s separate regions was under nominal control of one of the Palestinian Authority’s local Palestinian Resistance Committees. In point of fact, the entire Strip was run by a crime syndicate headed by a Bedouin clan led by one Jamal Semal-Duma, a fifty-year-old drug and weapons smuggler who lived in Rafah, the city that straddles the Gaza-Egypt border. Not that anyone at the embassy cared. The only thing the cookie pushers at the embassy seemed to care about was the process. The talking. The back-and-forth.

It didn’t take a genius to understand that the Palestinians were bringing more and more heavy weapons into Gaza. You didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to see that sooner or later they’d manage to smuggle a chemical or biological bomb-or worse, the makings of a dirty nuke-into the Territories, or into Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv, where the top-five list of targets included the U.S. embassy.

But those facts, inescapable to McGee, never seemed to cross the embassy’s radar. Nor did the nebulous but still unquestionable link between the Palestinian terror organizations and al-Qa’ida, or the similar liaison between the Palestinian militants and Hezbollah, which was a creation of Seppah-e Pasdaran, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Or the ultimate unthinkable: a marriage of convenience between Tehran and al-Qa’ida. But not according to AMEMBASSY Tel Aviv. The way McGee saw it, the first thing they handed out to new arrivals from Washington was a set of blinders. So far as McGee was concerned, the call letters for AMEMBASSY Tel Aviv should be SNE-for “see no evil.”

3

MCGEE’D SPENT HIS FIRST WEEKand a half in Israel reacquainting himself with the country. He called a few of his old contacts from an Israeli special forces unit with which he’d once cross-trained and listened to their assessments of the current situation. He sat in the security office and read a thick sheaf of reports. He listened as a political officer briefed him on the Embassy’s rules of engagement. And he spent five days traveling through the Gaza Strip with a PSS liaison security officer.

The Palestinian was careful to keep McGee away from the Palestinian Authority’s weapons factories and the arms caches run by Hamas and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, as well as the tunnels under Rafah through which the PA smuggled weapons, explosives, and drugs. But McGee had had enough intelligence training at Delta to be able to observe discreetly. And he knew what to look for. And although he’d betrayed no hint of it to the PSS liaison, he spoke Arabic well enough to understand that the PA officer was telling everyone they met to keep their mouths shut in front of the American.

And when he and his team assumed their duties, it didn’t take McGee long to realize American officials who traveled outside the Green Line⁴were being observed and targeted. Security vulnerabilities were being probed every time the embassy ran a convoy into Gaza or the Territories. And what with all the heavy weapons and who-knows-what-else being brought through the tunnels from Egypt, McGee was convinced it was only a matter of time until there was a significant attack on American diplomatic interests in the Jewish state.

McGee had gone to the embassy’s regional security officer to make his feelings known. The RSO, both a realist and a professional, agreed with everything McGee said. But the bottom line was that at embassies-especially at this particular embassy-political considerations just about always won out over security realities. It was, the RSO said ruefully, all about appearances.

Unlike those in Kabul and Baghdad, for example, Tel Aviv’s armored Suburbans were not equipped with the sorts of black-box variable-frequency oscillators that would remotely detonate roadside bombs at distances of 200 meters or more. The ambassador didn’t mind the VFOs masquerading as TV satellite dishes that were mounted on the embassy’s exterior. Approach within 250 meters of AMEMBASSY Tel Aviv with a remote-controlled car bomb in your car or on your body and you’d simply self-destruct long before you’d get anywhere near the building.

But he’d forbidden the RSO to equip any of the embassy security vehicles with similar devices. Forbade because it was ambassadorial doctrine that outfitting Tel Aviv’s FAVs with such markedly proactive devices might incense the Palestinian Authority. Not equipped, the RSO explained, because the ambassador said VFOs would indicate the United States believed the PA to be thoroughly riddled through with bomb-planting terrorists.

The fact that the Palestinian Authoritywas in point of fact thoroughly riddled through with bomb-planting terrorists didn’t seem to make a whit of difference. Frankly, McGee was dismayed at what passed for diplomacy these days.

But then, McGee didn’t get a vote. Because Sergeant First Class James Edward McGee, United States Army (Retired) was a civilian contractor. A hired gun. A merc. He was one of two shift leaders for a sixteen-man DynCorp detachment that worked out of the Tel Aviv embassy’s Regional Security Office. His formal job description entailed augmenting State’s overextended Diplomatic Security Service agents by providing protective details for diplomats as they pursued their jobs, and furnishing visiting VIPs with competent American watchdogs.

In fact, things went a lot further than that. Sure, McGee and his people were bodyguards and chauffeurs. But they were also occasional nurse-maids, part-time guardian angels, and sometimes even confidants. In return, DynCorp paid them $375 a day, seven days a week, plus generous per diem and living expenses.

In McGee’s case, there was also additional income from the Other Job. The job McGee could never talk about. Not to his DynCorp coworkers, not to the ex-wife back in North Carolina who received all of his Army pension and half his DynCorp salary, not even to anyone from the embassy. The spooky job, which was the real reason he’d elbowed his way onto this morning’s trip.

At eleven last night, he’d received a phone call on the special cell phone. To all appearances, it was a wrong number. Except it wasn’t a wrong number. It was a call-out signal from Shafiq Tubaisi, one of the Palestinian gunsels leaning on the dirty Subarus.

McGee’d spotted Tubaisi within his first couple of trips to Gaza. The kid wore American clothing-real Levi’s, which were prohibitively expensive in Gaza, and Ralph Lauren-branded shirts. Turned out they’d been sent by distant relatives living in Dearborn, Michigan. Just about the first words out of Shafiq’s mouth were that someday he wanted to visit the United States. It was an opening line McGee could have driven an Abrams tank through.

He asked about Shafiq’s family-and picked up on the fact that the kid’s father, a pharmacist, was sick and tired of paying kickbacks to the PA and Hamas. He asked his control officer to have the FBI check on Shafiq’s Michigan relatives and was encouraged to find out the Tubaisis were not on any of the homeland security watch lists. McGee began by giving Shafiq little presents. Books of photographs. CDs. DVDs. It took a couple of months, but he finally came over the border solo and pitched the kid.

Shafiq took the hook. McGee set it. He played the kid like a fish, reeled him in, and dropped him in the creel. One reason it went so smoothly, McGee believed, was that it wasn’t a one-way street. For example, the first thing McGee did after Shafiq proved his bona fides by supplying McGee with a list of all the cell-phone numbers and call signs used by the top leaders of Hamas and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, was to pull strings so the kid’s brother got a visa allowing him to visit the relatives in America, and a couple of hundred bucks from the black-ops slush fund to help with expenses.

Recruit the whole clan, not just one man-that was the couplet McGee’d learned in Afghanistan from his CIA paramilitary colleagues. Obviously, the same poetry worked in Gaza. So, McGee’s operational skills as a spy-albeit limited-were paying off. He was about to recruit his first unilateral agent in Gaza. Three weeks ago McGee had received POA-provisional operational authority-to take Shafiq to the next level. He was ordered to formalize the relationship-give the kid a wad of cash and schedule a polygraph so the agent recruitment process could be completed. And start to apply real pressure. McGee’s bosses wanted him to start developing actionable intelligence.

A Rome-based polygrapher was dispatched to flutter the kid just after Labor Day. But then things began to unravel. Shafiq missed the appointment for the polygraph-and the box man had scheduled only twenty-four hours on the ground. Christ, it would be a month, maybe more, before the test could be rescheduled. Shafiq blew off the next meeting and it was almost the end of the month before McGee saw him again.

Only to be disappointed: the kid came up dry on the al-Qa’ida front. There was no evidence of al-Qa’ida, he insisted. No foreigners in Gaza.

“What about Arabs?” McGee asked.

“There are always Arabs,” Shafiq answered. “Egyptians.Bedou. But none of the al-Qa’ida-the ones from Yemen or Saudi Arabia. I have not seen them.”

McGee began to think he was getting the runaround. But he pressed on, tasking Shafiq to track down the rumors about personnel from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Iran’s Seppah-e Pasdaran.

The subject was obviously touchy because Shafiq had gotten nervous the moment McGee said the magic words. Shafiq hemmed and hawed as only Palestinians under pressure can hem and haw. Finally, after an excruciating series of serpentine wavering, flip-flops, vacillations, and equivocations, he whispered that he thought yes, maybe, perhaps, it was possibly possible the Seppah might have a man in Gaza.

McGee’s antenna focused. “What makes you think that?”

“This one man, he came maybe two weeks ago or so, Mr. Jim.”

McGee nodded. Inside, he was seething. Why the blankety-blank had Shafiq waited so long to tell him. McGee controlled his emotions and his breathing. He waited for the Palestinian to continue.

Shafiq took his time. He lit a cigarette. Inhaled deeply. Blew smoke out through both nostrils and his mouth simultaneously. Finally, he took the cigarette out of his mouth. “This one man, he’s different. He moves around constantly. He has his own bodyguards-some are Lebanese from their accents; others speak in a dialect I do not know-and we’re not allowed to bring weapons into his compounds.”

“Compounds?”

“He moves every day and every night. Often twice. They say that sometimes he dresses as a woman.”

“Have you seen him like that with your own eyes?”

Shafiq’s own eyes focused on the ceiling.

“Shafiq-”

The Palestinian dropped his gaze to the floor of the dusty three-room flat just south of the Erez industrial zone McGee used as a safe house and drew a circle with the toe of his shoe. “I saw him only once, Mr. Jim. Only once.”

“Where?”

Shafiq flicked the half-smoked cigarette onto the floor, ground it out, pulled a pack of Marlboros and a Bic from his shirt pocket, lighted a new one, and exhaled noisily. “In Gaza City. Coming out of a house on Mustafa Hafez Street behind the Islamic University.” The Palestinian found something else on the floor to focus on. “I was assigned to guard the end of the street for three days,” he mumbled. “That’s why I couldn’t make the last meeting.”

McGee’s tone hardened. “You didn’t tell me.”

The kid’s eyes finally shifted past McGee’s face. “You didn’t ask.”

“All right, Shafiq,” McGee nodded. “Go on.”

“I saw him when he came through the gate and got into the car.”

“What does he look like?”

“It was dark. The windows of the car had curtains.”

“Then how do you know it was him?”

Shafiq shrugged. McGee edged his chair closer to Shafiq’s and stared coldly at the Palestinian. Quickly, Shafiq looked away. It was a cultural thing with Arabs. They detested being stared at; scrutinized. McGee knew it and was instinctively using body language to keep his agent off balance. It was, he’d discovered, an effective way of asserting control. McGee waited the kid out. Finally, Shafiq said, “I did see him, Mr. Jim.”

“Feyn-where?”

“On Mustafa Hafez Street when I was a part of the security detail. I did see him get into the car.”

“And?”

“He is shorter than you with dark hair.”

That wasn’t much help. “His face-round? Long? Square?”

Shafiq thought about it. “Round. But angular. A prominent nose, but not too big. Heavy eyebrows-like one big eyebrow.”

“Beard?” Most of the Seppah had facial hair.

“No.” Shafiq rubbed his index finger back and forth under his nose as if stifling a sneeze. “But a mustache like Saddam Hussein.”

“How did he dress?”

“Dark trousers, white shirt with no collar, I think. Dark leather jacket.”

The guy dressed more like a Hezbollah car bomber from Beirut’s southern suburbs than a Seppah operator. McGee mentally tagged him Mr. ML, for Mustached Lebanese.

“Was he armed?”

Shafiq shook his head. “I saw nothing.”

McGee scratched his chin. “And why do you think he isSeppah?”

“Because they treat him like a god, Mr. Jim.”

“They?”

“Everybody.”

McGee struggled for the correct Arabic words. They came out of his mouth distorted. “How does said treatment manifest itself?”

The Palestinian looked at McGee, confused.

McGee tried again. “How do you know they treat him like a god?”

Shafiq blew more smoke through his nostrils. “Because I heard when they took him to see the Sheikh Yassin, Yassin kissed both his hands and asked for his blessing.”

The self-proclaimed Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was the wheelchair-bound godfather of Hamas. In the past year, the sixtysomething quadriplegic son of a bitch had sent dozens of homicide bombers out to kill hundreds of Israeli women and children.

The guy with the big mustache had to be important. Very important. McGee had read the security files on Yassin and knew the bastard was no hand-kisser.

McGee said nothing, but his mind was working overtime. Immediately he sent a Steg-encrypted message to his boss in Paris about the hand-kissing incident and got a terse message back: Have your agent get us a picture.

McGee set up a clandestine meeting with Shafiq. Obviously, this was potentially a huge development. It was now just before the Jewish New Year-a little over two weeks to Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar and the thirtieth anniversary of the 1973 October War-exactly to the day, October 6.

If the Seppah was about to make a move in Gaza, that was significant. It confirmed McGee’s own suspicions that the reconciliation being backchanneled from Tehran was a diversion. It told him Iran was still attempting to destabilize the region by using terrorist surrogates like this Mr. Mustached Lebanese-and that they conceivably might act on October 6. The Iranians were already involved in Iraq: hundreds of Seppah had crossed the border to take charge of Iraq’s Shia majority. If McGee could confirm that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was simultaneously planning something in Gaza-supporting Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades’ operations during the Jews’ High Holidays-the consequences could be cosmic.

McGee pulled at his right ear. He wished he had the polygraph results so he’d have some indication of whether Shafiq was fabricating or not. But he didn’t. He was flying seat-of-the-pants now-hurtling blind through opaque clouds with no sense of up or down because the fucking artificial horizon wasn’t functioning. Damnit-he didn’t want to pull a John-John. He shot a quick glance at Shafiq, who was talking earnestly with one of the other gunsels. On the one hand, maybe he was being played. But on the other hand, maybe he wasn’t. Either way, the clock was ticking.

And Shafiq was coming up with good stuff again. Maybe they were over the hump, whatever the hump might have been.

McGee had war-gamed the session. He’d decided on a direct approach. So he didn’t mince words. “You must get me a photograph of this man, Shafiq.”

The Palestinian’s eyes went wide. “Mr. Jim, Mr. Jim, I cannot,” he stammered.

McGee understood the young man’s fear. But it didn’t matter. McGee needed hard evidence. Paris wanted paper. It was time for Shafiq to deliver.

Shafiq was balky, but McGee insisted. Wore the Palestinian down. He put it to the kid in no-shit Arabic. “I did favors for you-and you keep telling me how much your family owes me. But I ask for nothing. I do more. I pay you-I have your thumbprint on the receipts. And what do I get in return? I get bullshit stories from you about a man in a black leather jacket and a white shirt with no collar who has Lebanese bodyguards and moves around a lot. That’s not enough, Shafiq. It’s time for you to earn your keep. I don’t need rumors about a man from Seppah. I need a photograph. You will get it for me or there will be consequences. You have relatives in the United States. I have friends in high places.”

Shafiq hadn’t been able to look McGee in the face for the rest of the meeting. And then the kid just plain dropped out of sight. There’d been no contact for more than two weeks. The high holy days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur had come and gone without incident. There had been a few ripples-some overly ambitious amateur bomb makers had set their explosives off by accident down in southern Gaza. But no Israelis had been killed, there were no suicide attacks inside the Green Line, and-more to the point-the probes of American diplomatic targets seemed to have subsided.

Then the call last night. Today, McGee would get the photograph. Shafiq said so during that brief phone call. Spat out the three-word confirmation sequence twice before he’d hung up. That was why McGee’d pulled rank and assigned himself to the morning milk run.

4

9:56A.M. The butt of the damn 229 dug into McGee’s kidneys. McGee compensated by adjusting his own butt in the seat. Today he’d earn his salary-the contract that paid him six thousand dollars a month. The money was direct-deposited by a small engineering firm in Enid, Oklahoma, into an account in the Northwestern Federal Credit Union of Herndon, Virginia. The credit union in turn sent the funds directly into a bank account in the Cayman Islands.

Six grand a month wasn’t a lot of money for putting his life on the line. But then McGee’d never worked for money. The recruiters knew that about him when they’d pitched him to go undercover because they’d already done a psychological profile and they knew just which buttons to push.

Once he’d signed the papers, McGee referred to himself as an IC, or independent contractor. His status was known formally as an A-contract with a GS-12 pay grade. Although he didn’t know it, 4627 was charging CIA fifteen hundred a day for McGee’s services.

The recruiters showed up about ten days after he’d extracted from Baghdad. DO spooks. He knew they were for real because they’d been allowed inside the Delta compound, and because they were accompanied by a tall, thin, bearded guy Jim McGee knew as the Kraut.

The Kraut, whose real name was Bernie Kirchner, was one of the CIA paramilitaries with whom McGee had served in Afghanistan. The two of them had been through some tough times. “We shared a shitload of roasted horse in our three months together,” was the way the Kraut put it as they shook hands. Bernie was visual confirmation of the spooks’ bona fides.

Except they weren’t exactly from Langley. They said they were retired CIA and they worked for something called the 4627 Company, which was handling an Agency outsource contract. That’s when McGee understood this was all about wink-and-nod stuff. Hell, W &N was okay with him. He’d worked with a few CIA wink-and-nods in Afghanistan. Not a month ago, some big Washington risk-assessment firm had just sheep-dipped three of Delta’s most senior people to work on a cross-border program in Iran. Then there was the financial end. Wink-and-nod paid a lot better money than CIA, where you’d hire on as some GS-9 contractor. Besides, no one got into the Delta compound unless they were active. Ever since the Ed Wilson fiasco, there had been safeguards. So these guys could call themselves whatever they wanted to. McGee would play along.

The lead spook was a tough old bird who called himself Rudy. He was seventy if he was a day. Rudy told McGee he’d spent his entire career at CIA doing counterinsurgency. Said he’d started with the Cubans and finished with the Kurds. They played a short round of who-do-you-know, and Rudy knew them all.

Rudy was missing part of his left index finger. When McGee asked how it happened, Rudy’d deadpanned, “Moray eel had it for breakfast.” He paused. “I had him for lunch.”

McGee knew the real thing when he saw it, and Rudy was it.

The second spook was a thirtysomething youngster dressed in Eurochic and Levi’s who said his name was Tom. Tom had an engaging smile and a laid-back, surfer-dude attitude. But from the way he moved, the way he held himself, the way his eyes took everything in without appearing to even move, McGee understood Tom was a case officer-maybe even one of the few good ones.

Tom unzipped a black canvas briefcase, brought out a sealed brown envelope, and laid it on the table. Then he spoke to McGee in rapid, flawless Arabic. “Inside this envelope is a nondisclosure form. If you understand what I’m telling you, slide the envelope across the desk-don’t lift, just slide-open it, read the form, then sign. After you do, we can tell you why we’ve come to see you.”

“It is my pleasure to do so, sir,” McGee answered in Arabic. Then he dropped a big index finger atop the heavy brown paper, drew the envelope to his side of the table, slit the end with the thick sharp blade of his Emerson folder, read the one-page boilerplate agreement, and signed.

They’d wanted to see if he understood Arabic well enough to respond properly. He’d just shown them he did. It also meant the job-whatever it might be-was somewhere in the Middle East.

Well, McGee liked the Middle East, and working for a CIA front company was all right by him. He was thirty-nine, he’d had twenty-two years of Soldiering, and it was time for him to go. Time to make some money for his family. He had an ex-wife and two teenage boys to support, and he was dedicated to them.

Besides, it had been a long ride. He’d begun his Delta selection process just as the Unit was preparing to leave for Somalia. He’d finished his specialized schools-denied area operations, Arab language, State’s VIP protection course, safecracking, and other miscellaneous black arts-just as four of Delta’s Spanish-language specialists left for Colombia to help track down and kill El Doctor, the notorious Medellín drug cartel boss Pablo Escobar.

He’d spent most of 1994 and 1995 commuting between Jordan, where he instructed the Royal Jordanian Army’s elite Black Beret commandos in close-quarters combat and hostage rescue, and Israel, where he trained and then worked with Sayeret Duvdevan, Israel’s Special Forces counterterrorist unit.⁵He’d been posted to Beirut under State Department cover to help protect the ambassador right after the 1998 Africa embassy bombings. McGee’s time as a part of a Mistaravim, or undercover Arab-speaking Israeli unit, had given him the skills necessary to operate in Beirut’s southern suburbs observing Hezbollah, and in the Bekáa Valley, where he spied on Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps personnel headquartered in Baalbek.

McGee’s familiarity with the Middle East-especially Israel and Lebanon-was what the Langley guys were interested in. It was all very straightforward stuff, Rudy said. “We’re talking ‘Espionage 101’: you keep your eyes open and your mouth shut. Nothing more than you did in Lebanon-except this time you’re not reporting to ISA⁶but to us.”

Tom checked McGee’s signature on the nondis, then provided some background. There was, he said derisively, only one Arabic-speaking case officer currently assigned to Tel Aviv. She worked under embassy cover but her Agency affiliation was known to the Palestinians with whom she liaised. Moreover, the fact that she was a woman compromised her ability to work in Gaza even if her status hadn’t been acknowledged. From the way Tom described the situation, McGee understood that things at Tel Aviv station were FUBAR’d.

So, McGee asked, what’s the problem?

The problem? Rudy didn’t mince words. “CIA is effing eyeless in Gaza. The station chief refuses to recruit agents. That’s the problem. Full stop.”

The younger guy had shot Rudy a look. But when McGee pressed him, Tom had gone even further. CIA had no unilateral sources in the entire Gaza Strip. No access agents. No penetration agents. Not one single unilateral asset. CIA had trained more than twelve hundred Palestinian security personnel over the past half decade. But between bureaucratic infighting, blockheaded, risk-averse management, and just plain incompetence, Langley hadn’t managed to recruit a single one.

And therein lay the rub. All hell was breaking loose in Washington because CIA hadn’t had unilateral agents in Iraq before the war. There’d been satellite photos, of course. And signals intercepts by the thousands-so many that No Such Agency’s Arab-speaking translators were still working on material from 2001. But all of the human-source intelligence on which George W. Bush had based his decision to invade Iraq-all of it; every single report-had been supplied either by defectors provided by Iraqi resistance groups or through CIA’s liaison relationships with the Brits, the Germans, the Israelis, the Saudis, and the Jordanians.

That dependence on liaison, Tom growled, caused huge problems. When McGee asked how, Tom explained.

“Let’s say,” he said, “CIA gets a liaison report from MI6. The report says a trusted MI6 agent working in the Middle East has information that Saddam Hussein has developed mobile chemical weapons labs. The info-bit fits CIA’s preconceived picture about Saddam’s weapons-of-mass-destruction program. But it’s uncorroborated. Uncorroborated is unacceptable. But Langley doesn’t have any unilateral sources in Iraq. Instead, they e-mail the liaisons:Anybody out there hear anything about an Iraqi mobile weapons lab program?

“‘We did,’ Mossad answers. ‘Our military intelligence organization, AMAN, says it’s highly probable Saddam has mobile chemical/biological weapons labs moving around the country. We rate AMAN’s information source as highly credible.’

“Then CIA goes to the Iraqi defector groups. ‘You guys have anybody who knows about weapons laboratories built into tractor trailers?’ And the Iraqi National Congress or the Iraqi National Accord, figuring that CIA wants a positive response, tells CIA, ‘Sure, we hear about mobile chem/bio weapons labs all the time.’

“CIA says, ‘We want to interview a defector with firsthand knowledge.’ So INC flies a defector to Washington, where he’s interviewed and polygraphed. The defector’s polygraph, which shows no deception, is consistent with everything about mobile weapons labs CIA has learned so far.

“But the White House isn’t satisfied. The president says, ‘I won’t go to war unless we’ve nailed this down one hundred percent.’ So CIA goes to its pals in Berlin and asks about mobile weapons labs. BND, the German intelligence agency, tells CIA it interviewed an Iraqi defector pseudonymed CURVEBALL who confirmed that Saddam had mobile labs. He’d even worked on the program.

“Langley insists they want to talk to CURVEBALL. ‘Sorry,’ say the Krauts. ‘You know the rules: he is our unilateral source and we don’t compromise sources and methods.’

“No access is generally a no-no,” Tom continued. “But in this case, CIA shrugs its institutional shoulders because it doesn’t matter: the Agency now has multiple-source corroboration without talking to the BND’s source directly. Then Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet briefs the president again. And when Bush asks if Tenet is sure about his info, because the U.S. is going to war based on what CIA has uncovered, Georgie boy says, ‘Mr. President, this is a slam dunk.’ Three weeks later, a line about mobile biological weapons labs gets inserted into Secretary of State Colin Powell’s United Nations speech. When Powell asks Tenet if the information is solid, Tenet says something to the effect of not to worry, we got a triple confirmation. We’re talking twenty-four-karat.

“But what CIAdoesn’t know is that London got its information from a unilateral MI6 Israeli agent-a lieutenant colonel working for AMAN. And CIA has no idea that the Brits’ agent just happens to be the same guy at AMAN that CIA’s Mossad liaison queried. CIA doesn’t know because just like BND, MI6 doesn’t reveal its sources and methods to liaison agencies. CIA also doesn’t realize the defector INC flew to Washington is CURVEBALL-the same guy who told BND about mobile weapons labs.

“Worst of all,” Tom said, “CIA can’t confirm any of the information because it doesn’t have any fucking unilaterals in a position to know about mobile weapons laboratories. Not in Iraq. Not inside the INC. Not in AMAN or Mossad. Not a single fucking agent under unilateral American control anywhere.”

The unfortunate result: all of CIA’s allegedly high-grade information about weapons of mass destruction, mobile biological warfare laboratories, missiles with chemical warheads, and nuclear-bomb programs was currently unraveling day by day. None of it had been accurate in the first place. It was a colossal humiliation for CIA and DCI Tenet. Worse, the situation was going to become a huge embarrassment for the administration, which was heading into the 2004 election year with a number of independent watchdog commissions tearing chunks of political flesh out of the White House.

And now, Tom said, the same goddamn situation was developing in Gaza. There was huge pressure on the White House to reactivate its Road Map for Peace between the Palestinians and Israel before the 2004 elections. But once again, CIA had no unilateral sources on the ground. And even if they had, the ambassador in Tel Aviv didn’t allow CIA to recruit unilaterals from its Israeli and Palestinian liaison relationships.

But McGee, Tom said, could slip in under the radar. He wouldn’t come under the ambassador’s formal chain of command. He knew what to look for-and how to dig it out without being observed. He knew how to operate in a denied area-how to disappear in plain sight. He’d done it in Lebanon. He’d done it in Baghdad. And compared to Beirut and Baghdad, Gaza was a piece of cake.

McGee’d find a way to gather intelligence on the AQ terrorist cells-if there were in fact AQ terrorist cells. He’d seen how the Seppah operated in Lebanon. He’d be able to tell if they’d set up shop in Gaza. If things went well, he’d even be able to spot potential agents from among the mid- and high-level Palestinian security officials with whom he’d liaise during his official duties. He’d note their vulnerabilities, assess their potential, and pass their names on. After they’d been vetted, he’d recruit them-or pass them on to someone else who would get the job done.

When McGee asked about cover for status, Rudy explained he’d be hired as a part of a DynCorp security contingent for the Tel Aviv embassy. He’d work full-time for DynCorp. In fact, the salary, per diem, and bonuses were his to keep.

“You’ll report to me,” said Tom. “Encrypted e-mail using steaganography backed up by one-on-one meetings with a control officer. Like Rudy said, this is Espionage 101, Jim. Basic, keep-it-simple-stupid intelligence gathering.” He gave McGee an encouraging smile. “C’mon-even you Delta guys can do it.”

10:04A.M. McGee’s big Seiko told him they were behind schedule. He squirmed impatiently as a green-bereted Israeli border guard waved the two FAVs through the checkpoint. Sass threaded his way between the barriers, then pulled off to the side of the road behind the two filthy Subarus. As he stopped, McGee reached down, grabbed the M4, opened the door, slid out onto the dusty road, and approached the Palestinians, who were climbing into their cars. “Sabah il-kheer-good morning.”

The tallest of the six shifted the thin canvas strap on his AK and peered at McGee through brown-tinted aviator glasses. “Wenta bi-kheer-and to you, Mr. Jim.” The AK muzzle shifted and McGee moved out of its way. These idiots stood around with their fingers on the weapons’ triggers and McGee could see that the AK’s safety was in the off position. The Palestinian’s eyes noted McGee’s wariness and he arced the muzzle of his weapon away from the American’s feet. “You are going to the municipality, correct?”

“Yes, Mahmud. Next to the Red Crescent headquarters.” McGee’s gaze caught Shafiq as he climbed into the shotgun seat of the first Subaru. The Palestinian was working hard to keep from making eye contact. McGee said, “We’re late.”

The Palestinian officer slung his AK. “Yalla!Let’s go, then.”

McGee turned on his heel and walked back toward the FAVs. Jonny Kieffer had his door cracked. McGee cradled the M4 and put his foot on the running board. “No problems. I’ll follow him. You follow me. Let’s stay on the radio and keep our eyes open.”

“Roger that.” Kieffer snapped the door shut and disappeared behind the dark-tinted, inch-thick glass. McGee returned to the silver Suburban, climbed aboard, stowed the M4, fingered the radio earpiece, adjusted the squelch control, slapped the dash, and transmitted: “Hava na mova,gentlemen. Let’s get on with it.”

10:07A.M. The four-vehicle convoy cleared the industrial zone and headed south. To the east lay Beit Hanoun. Three miles south was Gaza City. The traffic thickened. Sass eased off, putting thirty yards of air between the heavy crash bumper and the Subaru. The dusty, potholed road widened, donkey carts and bicycles crowding the curb lane. Ahead, McGee could make out the first of the huge three-tiered pylons that ran power lines into Gaza City.

As the convoy passed the first of the pylons, the Subaru sped up, opening a hundred-yard space. “Goddamnit.” Sass shook his head. “What the hell’s he think he’s doing.” He tromped the accelerator, the big FAV’s engine growled, and the Suburban shot forward.

“Stay with him.”

Which is when a pair of kids in pajamas shot out from between a donkey cart and a delivery truck and dashed in front of the FAV. McGee shouted, “Holy shit, Sass.”

Sass smacked the brakes hard. The big Chevy’s nose swerved left as the heavy-duty pads caught the rotors. Then Sass brought the FAV under control. He braked and weaved as a taxi pulled in front of him to make a U-turn, pausing just long enough to shoot a glance back at the two teens who were waving and giving them the finger from the northbound side of the road. “Fucking kids.”

McGee tapped the windshield. “Pay attention, will ya?” The Subaru was now easily two hundred yards ahead and McGee was pissed. “C’mon, Sass, do your job-catch up.”

Sass started to talk, then caught McGee’s expression. McGee wasn’t himself this morning. He was testy. Impatient. Edgy. Sass decided not to probe. “Gotcha, boss.” Sass accelerated.

They were approaching the Beit Lahiya intersection now and Sass had managed to close the gap by half when something caught McGee’s eye. Maybe fifty, sixty yards ahead was a newly patched pothole. It was right in the middle of the southbound traffic lane. It got McGee’s attention because it was the only pothole patch he’d seen all day. And it stood out like a sore thumb. A four-by-four foot patch of black asphalt slopped messily into the brown dust of the road surface.

And then McGee saw something else. It was either a thick black wire or maybe a length of flexible electrical conduit that ran from the edge of the patch under a big lorry, across the curb, over the sidewalk, and disappeared under a two-meter-high corrugated metal fence.

The hair on McGee’s neck stood straight up. He shouted, “Lima-alert!” into the collar mike, snatched the field glasses, and scanned for threats. That was when McGee saw the mustached man. He was dressed in the same olive-drab shirt and trouser uniform as any minor PSS official. A red-and-white-checked kaffiyeh was draped around his neck, and an AK hung from his left shoulder. But there was something…different.

What drew McGee’s attention to him was that he was out of position for a security officer. The guy was perched three stories high on a construction scaffolding perhaps a hundred and fifty, two hundred yards down the road, just past the intersection, scanning the U.S. convoy through a pair of binoculars. He held a cell phone in his left hand. McGee focused on him. It was a flip phone and it was open. But the guy in olive drab wasn’t holding the phone to his ear: his arm was dangling at his side.

The son of a bitch is looking straight at me, McGee thought.

And then, never moving the binoculars, the man lifted the cell and used his thumb to press the control buttons. It was hard to do with one hand, but he never stopped looking through the field glasses, looking straight into McGee’s brain.

That was when McGee understood what was happening.

Oh Mother of God, oh Christ, oh holy shit. “Jam it, Sass-go left-go left-go left!” McGee dropped the binoculars and lunged for the wheel, fighting to get his leg over the console so he could stomp Sass’s foot and put pedal to metal.

Then suddenly his existence turned dreamlike and McGee realized that somehow he’d slipped into a parallel universe where everything happened in slow motion. And no matter how hard he tried, McGee just couldn’t…make…things…move…fast…enough.

Sass twisted his head in McGee’s direction, mouth wide, a primal scream building in his throat.

McGee never heard him. The Suburban was already disintegrating around the three of them. The worried, confused, childlike expression on the Texan’s round face was the last thing McGee saw before the big silver FAV exploded in a huge orange fireball.