Nicole’s phone chimed. She ignored it as she scanned a grid of the Mediterranean designed to pick up any laser activity. It had been a while since the Red Alerts had stopped, but her silenced phone remained at the top corner of the desk. Her brain went through a moment of incongruity, until she realized the truth.
Nir!
Pulling her encrypted cell from her pocket, she read the one-word message.
safe
Quickly she thumbed back:
Thank God
getting updates from efraim. find that signal
Planning on it. Coffee when you’re back?
count on it. get back to work
Tears came to Nicole’s eyes as she slipped the phone back into her pocket. She grabbed a tissue and dabbed at her eyes. She felt such a huge sense of relief knowing that Nir was okay. No matter how much she concentrated on her work, she always wondered in the back of her mind, Will I ever see him again?
She had prayed that the answer to that question would be yes. They had unfinished business. Why couldn’t he see the truth? Hope, peace, and salvation were just a prayer away for him. He had come so far since she had first told him about her radical conversion. But that final hump was turning into a wall.
Lord, please let him see. Let him come to know You before it’s too late. Let him—
A sound from the conference table got her attention. It was the Red Alert app notification. Nicole picked up her phone and saw that silent banners were appearing on hers too. The first was followed by a second and a third. Soon, they were pinging in even greater numbers than before.
“Exactly what I would have done,” said the ramsad. Then calling out to the room, he said, “Get ready, the UAVs are almost here.”
On Nicole’s screen, an indicator lit up. “Got a hit! In the Med, east of Larnaca! Sending coordinates!”
Liora called out, “Hit! Just inland from the water at Ayia Napa! Sending—”
Yariv interrupted, “Hit! Roof of Lebanese International University in Sidon!”
As the others spoke, Nicole saw eight, then a dozen, then two dozen signatures pop up on her screen.
“What’s going on?” the ramsad thundered. “Somebody talk to me!”
“Ha’mefaked, they’re flooding us with signals.” She scrolled out the view on her screen so it wasn’t only covering the territory she had carved out. “We have…hang on…we have at least eighty signatures registering.”
“Tabib, are they pinging?”
“Every one of them, Mr. Katz. And they’re latching on. They went out with one source, but they’re daisy-chaining to multiple sources. I mean, they all are attaching to a single source. But they don’t all have the same source.”
Nicole looked down at her phone again. Well over 100 rockets had flown toward the border so far. The Iron Dome was doing its best, but some rockets appeared to be crossing into Israel.
When she turned back around, the ramsad was on his phone explaining to someone what was going on. After a pause, she heard him say, “What that means, Hurvitz, is that you need to have your air force scramble every plane to hunt these drones down. You also need to pull any Iron Dome resources available.” He paused. “Yes, I know they are protecting our northern border. That’s why I said any available. Whatever resources you have that you can shoot or scramble or laser beam, you get them to the Mediterranean. Destroy the sources. Take down the UAVs. We’ll send your people all the coordinates. By our count, there are one hundred and twenty drones flying south, and they’ll be hitting Leviathan and Tamar in about thirty minutes.” The ramsad ended the call and dropped his phone onto the table.
“Tabib, compile all the information we have as far as targets and get them to Defense.”
“Root.”
Less than ten minutes later, Nicole saw source indicators begin disappearing from her display. She typed in a quick code, and her computer monitor began mirroring on the main screen. It was a cluttered view, but the opposing enemies were evident.
Traveling south in a staggered formation were the drones, which showed up as red blips. On the water and near the coastlines were the daisy-chained laser sources, which were green. The planes of the Israeli Air Force were represented by blips colored blue. Both red and green indicators were sporadically disappearing as the jets either struck a signal source or shot down drones.
This was another one of those moments when Nicole felt completely helpless. She had done all she could in acquiring the targets. Now it was up to the IAF to destroy them.
Time passed, and more and more lights on the screen went out. But they weren’t disappearing fast enough. She wasn’t the only one to notice. The ramsad leaned over and said to Porush, “Make sure those men and women on the platforms are prepared for probable impact.”
Porush didn’t reply. Instead, he took his phone out of his pocket and dialed a number.
The IAF was putting on a valiant effort. Of the original 120 red blips on the screen, only 23 were left. But those 23 were getting closer and closer. A blue blip passed into a row of red blips. Four reds disappeared from the screen.
“That F-35 is using his 25mm guns to take down those UAVs. Incredible,” said the ramsad to Nicole. There was awe in his voice, like a man obsessed with airplanes but who never had the time to learn how to fly.
More red dots disappeared over the next minutes, but in the end, it wasn’t enough. The final eight UAVs disappeared from the screen, but they did so in the exact same locations as the Leviathan and Tamar gas production platforms.