The room exploded with cheers. Nicole saw that even the ramsad pumped his fist. On the screen in front of them, they had watched the signal from an F-16I as it dropped two SPICE-guided Mark 84 bombs onto a large fishing trawler. The SPICE guidance system—standing for Strategic, Precise Impact, Cost-Effective—allowed Israel’s Air Force to plug in the precise coordinates to ensure direct hits. The Mark 84 bombs were originally bound for a Hamas-controlled apartment building in Gaza, but after takeoff, the pilot of the F-16 was suddenly rerouted toward the blue waters of the Mediterranean to remove the laser-bearing ship from the playing field. After the first jet had dropped its bombs, the feed cut to one from a second jet flying behind “just in case.” It was from this plane that the analysts watched the boat disintegrate.
Nicole’s elation was cut short when she saw Lahav. He was taking no part in the celebration. Instead, he was typing away furiously at his keyboard while being watched intently by Chewie’s head, which now sat on the corner of his desk. She walked over to him and tried to discern what he was working on, but without context, his screens looked like gibberish. On one of his second-tier screens, above and to the left of his primary, was a frozen shot of a boat on the Mediterranean. Nicole recognized it as the one that just blew up.
“Talk to me, Lahav. What’s going on?”
“Go get me an apple juice,” he said without looking up.
In the typical hierarchical structure of the intelligence service, a lead being ordered to fetch a juice for an underling would be met with strong consequences. But CARL was far from typical. Nicole walked to the fridge and pulled out a juice. She checked the date and saw it was marked for the end of March.
Two weeks past? Close enough.
When she set it next to him, he spun around. “I think we’ve been duped again.”
“What are you talking about? We all saw the signal. We all watched the explosion.”
“Exactly. We did precisely what Erdoğan wanted us to do.”
The room had hushed when everyone else saw the two talking. The ramsad walked over. “Tell me what you’re thinking, son.”
“Okay. So, watch my screen up here.” The screen with the boat rewound, then began to play forward at four times the speed. “The boat pulls up and anchors. Then a second boat shows up and the dudes from the first one join them and they all sail off to grab a beer, leaving the boat unmanned. Job well done.”
Asher Porush, who had spoken only in whispers since he had arrived—and only to the ramsad—said, “But doesn’t that make sense? If it’s been rigged to be remotely controlled, then there’s no reason to leave anyone on board.”
“True. Hey, chips anyone?” Liora walked back to her desk and pulled a bag out of a drawer. Meanwhile, Lahav kept talking. “Of course, you’re right. It just seems to me like Turkey wouldn’t want to leave evidence behind of what they’d done. But who knows?”
Liora handed Lahav a bag of Doritos. His face lit up. “Taco flavored. Where’d you find these?”
“Is this all you have?” asked the ramsad.
“Heck no, your ramsadness. I just found that weird. What’s really got me bothered is that the signal that was being sent out wasn’t pinging.”
Again, Porush spoke. “Translate that for us.”
Taking four chips, Lahav stuffed them in his mouth. He began speaking through the crunch. “Okay, think of it this way. It’s like me getting a new phone, but not getting a carrier for it. Wait, bad example. I’d just connect it to a carrier and use their service for free. It’s like Yariv getting a new phone, but not getting a carrier for it. He could dial it all he wanted, but nothing would connect. It would just be sending out a random signal that no cell tower would recognize.”
Lahav twisted the cap off his juice and took a long swig. “So, what I’m saying is that it was a dummy.”
“I still don’t get it,” said Porush.
With a grin, Lahav looked at his team and whispered loudly, “Maybe it’s not the only—”
“Lahav. Explain it to us,” Nicole interrupted.
Lahav huffed. “What I’m telling you is that this boat sent out the signal to see if we were listening. Good grief, we’ve still got—what—an hour or so before the first wave needs to daisy-chain over? And I can promise you that they will wait until the very last second before they activate that laser. I mean, why send the signal now?”
“Running a test?” asked the deputy director of Mossad.
“Seriously, Porush? You’re going to go with that?”
The ramsad clamped his hand down on Lahav’s shoulder so hard that it made the analyst dip to the left. “Tabib, we are not running a daycare here. I am Ira Katz, not ‘your ramsadness.’ And this is my right-hand man, Mr. Porush. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” Lahav croaked out under the pressure of the old man’s grip. “Sorry, Mr. Katz. Mr. Porush.”
The ramsad lifted his hand, and a chastened Lahav muttered, “Cheese and crackers, people. We’re getting so serious all of a sudden. What I’m saying, sir, is that I think this was one more chance for Erdoğan to outsmart us. He wanted to know whether we were on to him. Now he knows.”
Looking at the ground, the ramsad mulled over the analyst’s words. “I think you’re probably right.”
Yariv said, “And before anyone asks, the reason the UAVs won’t crash when we destroy the warehouses is because the signal is being generated from on top of one of the city’s largest apartment buildings. They took a page from the Hamas playbook and are using their own people as human shields.”
“Speaking of…” said Dafna. She pointed to the room’s large screen. On it was a satellite feed of the four warehouses. A new wave of UAVs emerged and began flying.
“Hurry,” said Liora.
The screen flashed white. When the picture resolved, all four warehouses were cratered with bright white flames and dark black smoke rising up to the sky. This time, though, there were no cheers.
“Good work in helping us to get those warehouses. Now let’s find our relay station,” said the ramsad. Walking back to the conference table, he took his seat.