Prologue
February 2014
Golan Heights
Israeli-Syrian Border
The first bullet struck the truck’s windshield. The second ricocheted off a boulder a few meters to their left.
“Who the hell is it?” shouted Benny as bursts of gunfire lit up the horizon.
Ava pushed him flat against the ground. “Does it matter who it is? Keep your head down.”
“I’d like to know who’s trying to kill me,” said Benny.
“Them,” said Ava, gesturing with her Uzi. “That’s who. Them.”
“Some help you are,” said Benny.
They lay on the cold, hard earth of the easternmost Golan Heights, spitting distance from the Purple Line, the line of demarcation between Israel and Syria, fixed after Israel conquered the territory first in June 1967, and then again in October 1973. It was night, 3:00 a.m., frigid and windy, dense cloud obscuring the stars. The nearest village was Al Katzim, fifteen kilometers to the north.
“What do we do?” asked Jonny, official title Jonathan Oren, PhD, professor of nuclear physics, Cambridge University.
“We finish what we came here for,” said Ava.
“Aren’t you going to call in backup?”
“What do you have in mind?” asked Ava. “A couple of F-16s?”
“I wouldn’t say no,” said Jonny.
“Did you forget, Dr. Oren, that we are not here?” said Ava. “You can’t send backup to a team that doesn’t exist.”
“If we don’t exist, why are they firing at us?” asked Benny angrily.
“Because we’re Jews and they’re Arabs,” said Ava. “That’s what it usually comes down to.”
It was a flippant answer, but she refused to countenance the alternative. That “they,” the creeps blowing off their weapons four hundred meters across the border, knew why Ava, Benny, and Jonny were there and had come to take possession of what they’d been sent to collect.
Ava was Mossad via Shin Bet, trained in counterterrorism, and the leader of the small team. She was pushing forty, and at that moment, feeling every minute of it. A black knit beanie hid her hair. Camouflage face paint darkened her cheeks. Like all of them, she wore black utilities and boots.
Benny was with Unit 8200—army signals intelligence—just a kid, maybe twenty-five, a tech rock star. Benny was tasked with retrieving the transmitter. Jonny was the big dog, a physicist on temporary duty (very much against his wishes). It was Jonny’s job to make sure they didn’t blow themselves to kingdom come.
Ava pulled on her night vision glasses and scanned the horizon. She didn’t like what she saw. Silhouettes of a half dozen vehicles—jeeps, Hi-Lux pickups, sedans—and too many men to count. She had no idea who they were. Syrian regulars, rebels, ISIS. It didn’t really matter. There was a civil war going on. Each was as bad as the others.
“Get up,” she said. “We have a job to do.”
“But they’re firing at us,” said Benny.
“If any of them could shoot,” said Ava, “we’d be dead already.”
“Fire back,” said Benny. “You’re the one with the gun.”
“With this?” said Ava, tapping the Uzi submachine gun at her side. “I’d have a better chance slinging a rock at them. Now shut up and dig.”
Benny got to his knees and grabbed the shovel. It was a spading shovel—sharp at the nose, its blade forged from alloyed steel—but it barely dented the frozen ground. “Whose idea was it,” he asked, breathing heavily, “to send us out here in the middle of February?”
“Keep at it,” said Ava, patting his shoulder. “That’s a good boy.”
