25

Jack

 

 

Mossad Base, Ciudad Del Este, Paraguay

 

 

Jack and Ruth sat quietly in metal back chairs. Rivka was on the phone, obviously getting her ass chewed for failing to acquire Al Amman yesterday and deliver him to whoever up the food chain had called for his capture. Rivka Abelson was the head honcho running command and communications for the Mossad unit, situated in the center of what looked like an abandoned processing center behind high walls and metal gates. She was as hard core as Jack had ever seen. Her body was athletic and battle scarred, and there was a fierceness in her eyes that never left. He respected her from the moment they shook hands here at Mossad base this morning.

Rivka hung up the encrypted line and stared at the wall for a long moment. “Tatí Yupí is a problem,” Rivka stated the obvious. “This time of year in particular. The heat. . .The rains make tracking all but impossible – unless you’re so close that you can follow your mark before the next storm hits. It also makes survival tenuous.”

Jack took that information in before shifting his attention to Ezra who brought him a first aid kit and an icepack. “Your bleeding through,” he said.

Jack looked down and saw red seeping through the pale grey of his pants. Jack pulled his knife and slit the cloth of the second-hand trousers he found in a box in the corner of Mac’s place to expose the brace and reached to unfasten the straps. His knee was swollen and purple. The surgical site looked gruesome where his stitches had torn through the skin during yesterday’s shitstorm.

From the corner of his eye, he watched Ezra and Rivka catching each other’s gaze. It was the silent communication that could happen after enough life or death situations had been experienced as team members. Words weren’t really a requirement. Jack had it with Strike Force. But here, he was guessing at what they were telling each other – probably that Jack was a liability and should be benched for the game. That was unacceptable. With them – without them—Jack was going after Suz. He’d find her no matter what it took.

The day was passing, and Jack was antsy to get moving. The rains, though, beat down with such ferocity that visibility was a meter at best.

“We gathered a couple of nuggets from Al Amman before he was killed – so our efforts in securing him weren’t a total loss.” Rivka said. “We have Gregor Zoric’s name. What do you know about that, Jack?”

Jack paused for a moment while he bit a piece of tape to finish dressing his wound. He repeated the intel that Lynx had passed him. “The Zoric family is Slovakian and has been running several operations in America to earn money to send home to finance terrorist activity, including Hezbollah. The East Coast US Zoric group was gathered up in an FBI sting last Friday, the 11th. When the special agents were searching through the leader’s home, they came across intel that lead them to intercept the attack on St. Basil’s school, an elementary school outside of Washington DC. This was a cover for a political tiger kidnapping of the two Levinski boys. From there, a member of the family, Simon Zoric, using the name Samuel Jones travelled with Gillian Suzanne Molloy, Ari Levinski’s teacher, to Brazil where you picked up the trail.”

“The Americans think that Molloy is culpable in the kidnapping?”

Jack flinched. He hoped that wasn’t what anyone thought. As far as he knew, Suz’s movements were privy to him and Lynx. Right now, there was no connection between the boys and Suz. But once Lynx knew the connection between Zoric and Suz, she’d have to explain it to Finley and the FBI. What would that set in motion? “No, it is believed that Suz Molloy is acting other than her own will.”

“Other than her own will?” Rivka let those words roll out of her mouth. “Do you care to define that?”

“We’re trying to figure it out,” Jack knew that sounded lame. These people didn’t know Suz like he did. They had nothing to judge her by. An oatmeal chocolate chip cookie – Lynx’s description pretty much did Suz justice – but certainly wasn’t the whole story. She was a softy. A romantic. But there was the other side of Suz — clever, smart, adaptable, and absolutely tenaciously protective of those she cared about. If she could do anything to help the children, he had no doubt that she would do it. That’s what Jack’s gut said was at play here. She was trying to help the boys.

“We are familiar with the Zoric family’s connections and support systems,” Rivka said. “Gregor Zoric has been an enemy to Israel for over a decade now. That his people have hold of these boys, not knowing the trajectory of such a mission is concerning. That Al Amman indicated that a jihadist was sent to America to help remove the children, ties this all together in a way that increases my concerns. It was brazen and extreme to attack the school.” Rivka leaned her hips into the top of her desk and crossed her arms over her chest. “To explode St. Basil’s like the Hungarians did to St Moglia’s in World War II would have been a devastating loss of life. And while the number of students killed would not be comparable to the nine-eleven attacks in New York, it would be a historic attack. Unprecedented in the United States. Someone wanted to make a statement – to prove a point. And I believe that was Gregor – he is a megalomaniac and would like to be perceived as a world-class geo-political manipulator. To make his name recognizable to everyone in the world like Osama Bin Laden did. So,” she pushed off the desk and moved toward a screen with a satellite photo of South America. “We need to find the boys and return them to their family, take out a training cell, seize a couple of the militants for intel.” She stopped to smile at her group. “Looks like we have our work cut out for us.”

“And find Suz Molloy. Bring her back safe and sound.” Jack’s eyes were focused hard on the Mossad leader. Suz was not a big reward. She was an afterthought at best. Jack understood that. When a mission was coordinated there was a hierarchy of wants and that’s how Rivka had delivered the information to her unit. Number one, the boys home safe and sound. That would cut off whatever political bargaining chip or strategical maneuvering that Gregor had put in play. Second, the training cell. That had been the Mossad objective before Jack had shown up on the scene. Three, if possible, keeping a couple of the jihadists alive might lead the special ops unit to their next source of danger. But Suz? She had no overt benefit to them. She didn’t qualify as an important objective. Her name hadn’t even come up on the list.

Rivka considered him. “How’s your leg?”

“Fuck my leg, ma’am.”

She nodded.

Jack knew that working with the Mossad unit was his best chance of getting to Suz; but once he got to her, he was going to be on his own to safeguard her. The Mossad had no skin in that game.

A clatter at the door and David, the guy from his first-contact meeting, pushed his way in with a box of food for lunch. Jack took the opportunity to call Lynx.

 

“Jack, good, I was just going to try to get you. What were you doing? Someone died?”

Jack paused and scanned the room for watching eyes or listening ears. “You must have had another knowing. Cause yeah, that last one ‘I’ll not give my fiddle to any man alive’ was dead on.”

“No pun intended. Can you give me an idea what happened?”

“We were fishing for information, reeling a guy in. People tried to stop us. The guy with the information took a bullet to the back of his head and leaked what intel he had on to the floor. So what’s playing now on your psychic channel?” Jack scratched his fingers through the scruff of his beard.

“I’ll tell you in a second. The pressure is pretty substantial that we find and rescue the boys. I haven’t said anything, yet, about you and Suz. And I won’t until you identify the kids. I don’t want to reroute resources in the wrong direction. And quite frankly, if you’re already working with a team down there, more guys jumping in from different working groups all playing capture the flag is not in anyone’s best interest. Have you heard anything more?”

“More rattle about boys – but I can’t say what boys. Before the guy died, he said that a camp down here sent one of their jihadists to America. Take that for what you will; he was bleeding out when we were interrogated him. So nothing concrete.” Jack put his hand on the wall and peeked over his shoulder to make sure their conversation was still a private one. “Speaking of nothing concrete, Spill. What did your knowing say this time?”

Lynx paused overly long, and Jack felt fear crawl up his neck. Jack wasn’t a stranger to fear. He knew people didn’t think guys like him felt afraid. It wasn’t true. He felt fear a lot but had learned to push through it – to feel the fear and take a step anyway, and then another, and then another until the mission was complete. But this fear, Suz-fear, jeezus, this did things to his system that he needed to master. This kind of fear was debilitating. It felt like what Suz described to him after he had come to after being shot the last time. She said she lived in a cesspool of fear all the time. If this was what life was like for her. . . He closed his eyes. Jeezuschrist. He’d never ask someone he loved to walk through life feeling this way. It felt un-survivable.

“Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water,” Lynx whispered.

Jack pulled his brow together while he played that through his mind.

Lynx sniffed on the other end of the phone. Her voice sounded wobbly as she said, “Did you hear me?” She cleared her throat and repeated, “Jack and Jill went up the hill—”

“I heard you, Lynx. Why do you sound upset? That’s a good thing right? It means that I find Suz, and we’re working together.”

“Probably, but. . .”

“But?”

“The whole rhyme is—”

“You didn’t hear the whole rhyme, did you? Just the Jack and—”

“Yes, but—”

“I’m going to find Suz. And I’m going to see if I can locate the boys. And then we’ll move forward. One step at a time – no reason to fight a battle that may never come about.”

“Right.” She cleared her throat and her voice came back strong. “So I want you to keep me informed. Let me know what you need, and I’ll do my best to make it happen. Mossad are some of the finest special ops in the world, so I’m thinking you’re in good hands.” Lynx’s voice lifted away from the receiver. “Hey, Finley, the report you requested came in. It’s on the computer screen now, I was just looking it over.”

“Great, thanks.” Jack could hear Finley’s voice.

“That’s my cue to say good bye. Before you go, any other pings from the SAT phone?”

“Nada. Let’s check in later. Good luck.”

Jack held the phone in both his hands and leaned his head back onto the wall. Jack fell down and broke his crown, and Jill came tumbling after. Fuck.

 

Jack joined the others for something to eat. It seemed that lunch wasn’t the only thing Adam—the first Mossad operator that Jack interfaced with—had for them to chew on.

After they ate, Rivka, stood with her knuckles planted on the table. “Yesterday, our Alpha Team was in the city where they got a lukewarm verification from Al Amman that Hezbollah has a hidden cell in the forest. At the same time Beta Team was turning over stones, following up on the last known location of Molloy. Adam?”

Adam wiped his mouth on a napkin, threw it onto his paper plate, and moved to the computer bank. With a few taps, he pulled the satellite image of South America that was displayed on the screen into a tighter view. Now the screen was filled with tree tops, the entire area green. Toward the river, the trees seemed to make nice neat rows like soldiers on the parade grounds, then there was an open space and the tourism educational buildings. Adam used a computer tool to circle the camping facilities and dorms. “After meeting with Jack on Thursday, we sent a pair of native speakers in to stay at the facility and check it out. The couple was asking folks who had been there for a few days if they had seen their American friend with red hair. No one had. As a matter of fact, in this weather, they are not allowing for campers, they have a few guests in the dorms. There are very few people on the site at all. Hiking in this heat is discouraged, and the rain makes the rock formations slippery and treacherous. The Center is asking people to stay with the educational guides and register their path if they decide to explore on their own.”

“Did they check the paperwork for going to the dam?” Rivka asked.

“They did. The weather has been such that they have not offered dam tours since Wednesday, the 16th, the day before we had eyes on the POI in this area. So that isn’t a possible route for egress.”

“So nothing? She was let off by the taxi and that was the end of the story?” Ezra asked.

“No, not the end. Our eyes found where Suz Molloy signed in for an educational walk, the number in her party was marked as two. It was the last one offered on Thursday.” Adam typed and up came a photo of a registration sheet.

Jack looked at it and nodded. “That’s her signature, alright. Did they talk to the guide? Did she get back to the Center?”

“The guide said that her friend was overcome by the heat, and they decided to go back on their own,” Adam said. “It was a wide path, large enough for two horse carts to pass each other, and there was no concern that the two would have trouble returning to the bus and from there to the center. But the bus driver said that the two didn’t show up for a ride back.”

“Her friend?” Ezra asked.

“Male. Young. Dark. Non-English/non-Spanish speaking. No other description. The guide said the woman was wearing a heavy backpack, and the man had nothing with him. That’s the last we have on Molloy. We have nothing on the boys,” Adam said.

“Has the computer been able to weed through the satellite imagery?” Rivka asked.

Adam scratched at his cheek then clicked the keyboard. “Okay, here’s what we have. Clarity is compromised by the cloud cover and precipitation. This preserve is the remnants of the Atlantic Forest left after the man-made lake was formed with the dam project. It’s home to a variety of large constrictor snakes and wild cats as well as other concerning animals – spiders, mosquitoes, wild boar, and so forth. From the images taken Thursday, the computer generated five sites that our algorithms interpret as being deforested with a footprint large enough to allow for a training camp. We sent out a drone that night to try for heat signatures that might represent buildings and human activity.” Adam tapped on the keyboard and the images shifted.

“I think this one might be the cell’s location.” Using a laser pointer Adam indicated what he was seeing. “Let me take you step by step through our thought process. First, the cell needs a way to get supplies in. It can’t be that the jihadists are entering and exiting Yati Tupi through the front gates with those supplies. Here, just twenty kilometers to the north-west of the entrance is a farm that has a landing strip. I’ve watched three small planes come in on radar just today. It’s possible that this is the what Hezbollah uses as an airstrip. There are other airstrips, but they are much farther away. Hours by car. Next,” Adam pulled the view in even tighter.

“Wait,” Jack said. “Help me work this through. If the boys who you saw were the American boys who are missing, in order to make the time-frame work, they’d have to have flown in. Since there’s no border data on the boys, I’d say car, to plane off a private air strip or car, to boat, to plane from a foreign airstrip. If they were bringing the boys to the reserve, why didn’t they land them in the farmer’s field? Why’d they risk being spotted on the bridge?”

“Several things could have played into that choice.” Ezra said. “What kind of plane were they on? It wasn’t a legal flight — either commercial or supply plane. The boys would have needed proper documentation. They would have shown up on security cameras. The US intelligence would have that information as soon as it happened. No, they must have used a private airfield. Why not the Paraguayan landing strip? Could have been the time it touched down; there are no lights in the farmer’s field. Could have had more to do with the amount of rain we’ve been getting. The wheels on a dirt runway might be a safety hazard the pilot wasn’t willing to risk. They may have needed a paved surface.” Ezra flipped his pen into the air and caught it up again, then pointed it to Jack. “That’s my guess.”

Jack nodded. That all made perfect sense.

Rivka redirected the conversation. “Adam?”

“If you follow the road systems out away from the small airport you see that this one runs along, indeed makes a boundary for this section of the forest. Early this morning, Ruth and I took scooters along that piece of real estate. Ruth?”

“Adam and I found two trails directly off of the main road that are accessible by four- wheelers that would line up with the open space found with aerial intelligence. Adam, would you bring up the photos we took?”

“Roger that.” There was a shift on the screen.

“The first one only went about fifty meters in and looked like it was used for dumping garbage. But the second — See? Here are the tire track ruts for ATVs and trailers on this one like the first. Next photo, please. This is the path we followed back about four klicks. As you can see, the path seems well maintained, free of roots and debris, no overhanging limbs to hit people in the faces as they move through on open motorized vehicles. Definitely human activity not animal trails. That human activity is recent, too. Some areas appear freshly trimmed. This route could work for the cell’s supply route. We didn’t follow the path to the end.” Ruth concluded.

Adam nodded. “And while we can’t see it on satellite imaging because of tree cover, I can show you this.” The image then changed to a dark photo with an L shape of squares lit up with varying shades of orange to yellow. “These images were taken by the drone we sent in for thermal images of the area.”

“When was this?” Rivka asked.

“Around zero three hundred when we had a brief clearing from the rain. This time of night worked also because it allowed the forest to cool so we could see the demarcations. These images suggest buildings of some kind. Perhaps tents in that each gives off a different heat signature,” Ruth said.

Adam put his laser beam on the image. “In this scenario, if we believe this is the cell, then the tents of interest are this one, second from the north east corner; and this one, the front of the short line of the L, in the south west of the configuration. The heat signatures on these squares are much cooler than the others, suggesting that they are not housing as many bodies. From my experience, I would say the tents each have a centralized propane tent heater. I would guess that one distanced from the others might be that of the commander. And the POIs are sandwiched between two tents of soldiers.” Adam pointed at the yellow square with no orange or red glow.

Jack had been looking at imagery like this for years, and he was coming to the same conclusions as Adam was.

“This all seems reasonable.” Rivka paused. “I believe that when Al Amman was killed yesterday that that started a timer. I’m afraid that, if they think we have located them, they might dispose of the children as they flee. The boys will slow them down and make their movements more noticeable.” Rivka lifted her brow and scanned the faces of her unit members. “The window on finding and destroying the cell is slamming shut as we sit here and discuss. We need to put a mission together, suit up, and head in. We’ll reconnoiter and make a plan in the field. Time is of the essence. If this is the cell, we’ll go in once they’ve settled for the night.”

Rivka turned her gaze on Jack. “You may want to sit back and handle comms with Ruby,” she said.

Jack had noted all of the directional landmarks and coordinates. If Rivka thought he was going to sit back and let someone else go forward, especially knowing that Suz wasn’t on their radar, she had lost her mind.

“With all due respect, ma’am, I’m taking point on this mission.”

 

But that wasn’t how it had panned out. Not by a long shot. Saturday afternoon The Mossad unit and Jack had turned out in their jungle operational camouflage raring to go, but Rivka ordered them to stand down. The skies opened up, making the chance of friendly fire too great a risk. In fact, it would be all but impossible in this deluge to get their sights on a target or access their progress. She decided they’d use the extra time to gather more intelligence. She wanted verification that this was the cell they were looking for and not a bunch of drug squatters. She wasn’t risking Mossad lives over an opioid raid.

Intellectually and professionally, Jack agreed with the move. Emotionally, he wasn’t on board at all. Rivka knew that and even though Jack had volunteered to go on the intelligence run, Rivka declined. She was right. If he saw Suz in there with the jihadists, Jack wasn’t sure that his professionalism would win out over his desperation to get to her. Seeing her and walking away just wasn’t part of his DNA.

So, it was Adam and his Beta Team who had been sitting under the torrents, counting heads and making maps. Sunday night they had come in from the field, muddy and exhausted, to share their intel. The camp was twenty-two klicks back in the forest. They hadn’t seen any children. They had seen one person with a poncho that was unlike the others, moving freely during prayers. The group of thirty-seven men were all in Middle Eastern garb with beards, or attempts at beards. Some of them appeared to be barely out of pubescents. The camp was absolutely designed for cell training. At one point, Adam was able to run a wire into the eating tent. From this they discovered that while the rains pelted down, the men were learning the various combinations that could be used to make successful suicide vests. The Beta Team recorded a lecture from the leader about the glory of being a martyr. The men in the camp each took a turn pledging their lives to the cause.

“The commander lives in the tent we believed he did from the aerial pictures, and the poncho is in the tent we believe houses the POIs. Again, though, the boys were not spotted.”

“Did you position behind that tent?” Ezra asked.

“We did but there was a distance. The four-wheeler path goes all the way to the end of the fence line so another fifteen meters. With rain and distance, visual was difficult during the day. The last movements of the day that we saw from the poncho was during the last prayer. We were unable to run a wire that picked up voices from that tent. We did get an unusual heat signature when the poncho went into the latrines. If it’s Molloy, she might have had the boys under the poncho with her. That, or the children just aren’t there.”

“The poncho was only visible during prayers?” Rivka asked.

“Affirmative.”

“Well, our first objective is to take out the cell. Which we will do. As planned, we will take the commander. Alive, this time.” Rivka looked around the room her eyes seeking out and making contact with each of them to make her point. “Perhaps he has more to tell us. I’m sure those up the chain of command will want to find out who is sponsoring the cell and what their objectives are. We need to demolish the camp so others can’t move back in. And, of course, if we can free any hostages and bring them back to their homes, all the better. Let’s get to work. We need a plan.”