61

SOUTHERN LEBANON—MAY 3

It was pitch-black when Amin al-Masri awoke with a start.

He grabbed the pistol from under his pillow and scanned the office that was doubling as his bedroom. He saw nothing amiss, so he got up and moved to the hole in the wall that was once a window. Peering into the moonlight, he saw no people, no movement, no obvious cause for alarm. Yet his instincts warned him something was wrong, so he stood there listening, straining to hear even the slightest sound beyond the waves and the gulls. The Egyptian waited for two minutes. Then five. After ten minutes had elapsed, he began to breathe easily again. He was not often wrong about these things. Maybe he was this time.

It was only 4:42 in the morning. The sun would not be up for another hour. But al-Masri could not sleep. He checked his satellite phone but found no text messages from his Kairos contact. He was awaiting instructions on when and how to transfer the prisoners, yet these had not yet come. Snagging one of the bottles of water on the floor beside him, he poured some into his hands to wash them and his face. Then he grabbed his backpack, pulled out an electric razor, and proceeded to shave his head. It was time to change his look.

When he was finished with the razor, he finally stripped off the filthy T-shirt, undershorts, and military fatigues he had been wearing since the raid and tossed them aside. Next he pulled a fresh shirt from his pack and put it on. No longer could he wear a pair of Hezbollah-issued fatigues. It was time to look like a civilian—a local, in fact—so he put on a pair of faded, ripped blue jeans instead. His watch, too, he removed and tossed onto the pile of other clothes. It had been a gift from the commander of the Radwan Unit and was engraved on the back with a verse from the Qur’an. It was not something any of the farmers who lived in Lebanon’s southern tier would own, much less wear. Like the rest of his past, it had to go.

Just before five, al-Masri reached into his backpack and took out the small, battery-operated transistor radio they had used the night before to listen to the Sheikh’s speech as well as the one a bit earlier by the Iranian president announcing the death of the Supreme Leader. Turning on the power but keeping the volume low, he tuned to Al-Nour, the official radio station of Hezbollah, broadcasting from Beirut. At the top of the hour, the newscaster went on at length about the dramatic capture of “three American spies,” giving their names and explaining their jobs with the Diplomatic Security Service and what the DSS was in the first place. Most of the details were completely made up, including biographical details of the three that al-Masri had never heard and was almost certain weren’t true. The rest of the newscast was also pure propaganda, denouncing the “criminal Zionists” in Israel and making it sound as if the Jews had started the war. The announcer provided a litany of quotes from foreign governments from Ramallah to Moscow and from Beijing to Tehran condemning Israel and calling for the U.N. Security Council to impose “the most punitive sanctions possible.”

There was no mention, of course, of the fact that the Sheikh had no idea where the three Americans were located. Nor, to al-Masri’s relief, was there any mention of a nationwide manhunt for rogue elements who had conducted the border raid without authorization. The reason was simple. The Sheikh wanted credit for the attack instead of looking like the feckless, cowardly moron that he really was. Yet al-Masri had no doubt: the manhunt was underway, and he had become Hezbollah’s highest-value target.

Al-Masri’s thoughts were suddenly interrupted by the roar of two approaching Israeli fighter jets. Grabbing his AK-47, al-Masri raced out of his office and into the courtyard, startling the men on the night watch. He leaped onto a table, then onto the roof of a storage shed, and looked over the stone wall surrounding the compound and out toward the sea. The sun was just coming up behind him. He saw nothing. Turning south, he saw nothing there either. They were F-35s, he concluded. They had to be. Stealth fighters. The most advanced aircraft in the Zionists’ arsenal.

Just then, a series of massive explosions erupted behind him. The ground shook. Night turned to day. Al-Masri whipped around as the rest of his men poured out of the bunks, weapons at the ready. The Egyptian stared north. His eyes narrowed as one fireball after another blazed across the horizon.

He knew instantly what the Zionists had hit. It was a fuel depot on the banks of the Litani River, not three kilometers away.