You ready for this?” Nir asked Nicole, who was seated next to him. They were at a conference table in a room near the ramsad’s office. Seated to Nir’s left were Ehrlich and the other two Kidon team leaders, Neeman and Libai. Spaced between the men were three females, the head analysts for each team. Nir wasn’t sure of their names. Because of the size of the table, they were squeezed together enough so that Nir’s hip was uncomfortably pressed against Ehrlich’s head analyst—Hila or Hiba or Hili or something.
A stifled belch sounded from the other side of Nicole. It originated from the one other guest who had been invited to this meeting—Lahav Tabib.
“Excuse me,” he muttered. There was a sound of plastic crinkling, then hitting the floor.
At least the chips are gone before the bigwigs come out.
“Hey, Ehrlich,” Lahav said, causing a stab of dread in Nir’s gut. Nir could think of no scenario in which this turned out well. “Dude, you looked awesome zip-lining from my pole. Totally had the Mission Impossible thing going on.” Then he started humming the theme song from the movies.
Inside, Nir was torn between wanting Lahav to shut up and wanting him to keep on going. He had been at the meeting yesterday with the ramsad and some others when Ehrlich was chewed up and spat out for not recognizing the Lebanese warehouse was a trap. The whole mission was an incredibly sore spot for the man, and Lahav was unintentionally fanboying the scab right off the wound. Glancing to his left, Nir could see the other two team leaders had grins on their faces.
There was movement to his right, and he saw Nicole put her hand on Lahav’s forearm. “Maybe he doesn’t want to talk about it. It’s always a little nerve-wracking when you get shot at.”
“No doubt. I’ve been shot at. Hey, Nir, remember when I was shot at in Iran, then in Syria? But I’ll tell you what I haven’t done. I’ve never combat zip-lined over a building and landed on the roof of another. Hey, Ehrlich, was there any movement of the pole? I was sure my winch system would work.”
Without looking over, Ehrlich replied, “It worked fine. No movement. You did a good job. Now, let’s talk about something else.”
“Like what? I’ve got to set you up on some other stunts. Maybe you drive a motorcycle off a cliff and land on a train.”
Ehrlich’s hand slammed down on the table. But then he took a deep breath. “No thank you, Lahav. Now let’s talk about something else.”
Leaning toward Nir, Lahav whispered, “Who peed in his coffee?”
“Just let it go, Lahav.”
The door opened, and a line of people filed in, led by the prime minister. He was followed by Foreign Minister Arens, Minister of Defense Hurvitz, deputy director of Mossad Asher Porush, the assistant deputy director Karin Friedman, assistant deputy director of Caesarea Efraim Cohen, and finally, the ramsad. Nir noticed that the ramsad didn’t take his usual place at the center of the table, leaving that for the prime minister. Instead, he seated himself at the end, across from Lahav.
The prime minister’s voice was tight as he opened the meeting, as if he was struggling to keep his anger in check. “I have been on the phone all day yesterday and much of this morning apologizing and trying to explain away the Mossad’s failures. Your poor intelligence led to one of the biggest international public-relations disasters that our nation has ever experienced.”
“Excuse me, your highness.” It was Lahav, and once again, Nir was torn. On the one hand, whatever the analyst was about to say would not go over well. But on the other, Prime Minister Snir deserved it because he was totally wrong and was acting like a jerk. Lahav continued, “That intelligence wasn’t ours. Sure, we talked about it, but that information came from that guy’s intel department.” He pointed at Hurvitz, whose straight bearing became even more rigid at the accusation.
The prime minister wasn’t having it, though. “Excuse me, junior analyst whatever-your-name-is. Wasn’t it the Mossad who went into the building? Wasn’t it your people who misunderstood what was contained in the warehouse?”
“Sababa. You’re exactly right. Ehrlich botched that completely.” Ehrlich whipped his head toward Lahav but held his tongue. “But did you see him zip-line in? It was amazing! A work of art. And that pole was my invention. Perfection on a plate!”
“Who is this guy, and why is he in here?” Snir asked the ramsad.
The ramsad began tapping a pen on a notebook that was in front of him. It looked like he was holding back a smile, but Nir couldn’t be sure. “He is an analyst named Lahav Tabib. You may remember his work from years back when he shut down the power grid in Eilat just to prove a point.”
“That was him? I thought he was in prison.”
Nir spoke up. “He was, sir, but we brought him out. He’s now semi-rehabilitated and has a brilliant mind.”
“Thanks, Nir,” said Lahav, reaching his fist over for a bump. Nir ignored it.
“But not great manners. I apologize for him, sir. We brought him here today because he is the one who developed the Turkey theory.”
“Well, have him shut up until he’s asked a question. I don’t have much time here today,” the prime minister said, purposefully looking at his watch.
“Rude,” Lahav said quietly.
“Okay, so tell us about this theory,” said the prime minister.
“Tavor,” directed the ramsad.
“I want to start off by letting you know that all this information has been passed on to the other teams’ analysts, who pored over it. You all agree that it is a viable threat, correct?”
The analysts nodded, as did the team leaders—all except for Ehrlich, who was still stewing.
“In our workroom, I set two of our analysts on Iran, one on Russia, and Lahav on Turkey. We had been especially concerned about what Erdoğan would do with his continuous threats. Russia and Iran had a flurry of activity, as you know. Turkey seemed to fall asleep, just with a very loud snore. Lahav, however, was able to determine that their slumber was actually a ruse. They were working quietly, behind the scenes. Lahav, take it from here.”
The analyst proceeded to do an excellent job of laying out all the facts about Baykar, the Bayraktar TB2, the warehouses, the fuel trucks, and the heavy military guard that had just shown up yesterday. When he finished, Nicole stepped in. “Thank you, Lahav. Mr. Prime Minister, my job was to try to locate a paper trail, something in black and white that would show what was going on. The first item I found was a requisition for three hundred and fifty TB2 drones to be shipped down to İskenderun.”
Nir opened a folder and fanned out a stack of papers. Each person took one. Nicole continued, “As you can see, they could fulfill only two hundred and seventy-five out of their present stock. So their factory went into hyperdrive, and they’ve been working 24/7 since then to fulfill the order. Our estimates are that they should be done and ready to ship within the week.”
Foreign Minister Arens tapped the top of the paper with his finger. “There is no ‘ship to’ address on this requisition. How can you be sure that they are going to İskenderun?”
Nicole nodded even as he was still getting his words out. “Good question, sir, and it leads to one of our time concerns. Before, there had been a route whereby shipments would leave Baykar, unload at a humanitarian aid location, reload onto unmarked trucks, then travel the rest of the way to İskenderun. Two days ago, we saw the first trucks travel directly from Baykar to the warehouses for assembly. This tells us the timeline has been shortened.”
“There is one more requisition that Nicole uncovered that has us concerned.” Nir pulled another stack of papers out of the folder and spread them for everyone to take. “Nicole?”
Looking at the minister of defense, Nicole said, “Sir, you’ll recognize what this is.”
The man scanned the sheet. “I can’t read the language, but it looks like a requisition for munitions.”
“Exactly right. This is a request for fifteen hundred MAM-L bombs. You know what those are.”
Hurvitz sat back in his chair. “Mini Akıllı Mühimmat—smart micro munitions. They’re little bombs that pack an incredibly powerful punch.”
“Correct. Each of these three hundred and fifty drones can carry four of them, and they added an extra hundred on the order just in case.”
The defense minister swore. Then he turned to the prime minister. “Sir, this is a huge threat. We must act to neutralize it.”
“And how would you propose we do that?”
Without hesitation, the minister said, “We need to destroy this warehouse before they have a chance to launch those drones, sir.”
The prime minister spun on his chair until he was eye-to-eye with Hurvitz. “So, you want me to do exactly what we just did with the Russian warehouse? How do I know that it really isn’t humanitarian aid in those warehouses? How do I know that Turkey isn’t setting us up just like Russia did? How do I know that the two countries aren’t working together to bring us down?”
Neeman’s head analyst spoke up. “Sir, I think it’s likely they are working together. And I think you need to add Iran in too.”