The Caliphate André Gallo (list of ebook readers TXT) 📖

wondered if the shot had been fired at random or at him when he surfaced.

     He changed direction and swam parallel to the beach before surfacing again. As soon as he came up, he felt the sting of a bullet hit him in the shoulder, above the left collarbone. He was running out of breath but submerged again and tried to swim a few yards before he was forced to come up for air. His left arm suddenly was useless. There was no more shooting. He looked toward the beach but could see nothing except the black outline of the ramparts. If his pursuer was on the beach, he couldn’t see him. Perhaps he was kneeling. He tried to swim again, realized he was going against a light current and turned on his back. He floated with the current toward the area of the digging.

45. Gaza

Rashid visited Karim in his make-do hangar, an old warehouse used by a grocery store chain in the days when the Israeli border was open. For several weeks, they had been assembling the UAVs that Hamas had brought from Egypt through the tunnels.

     Rashid’s message was simple.

     “Karim, I want the planes technically perfect by noon tomorrow and fueled by 4:00. We’ll be up most of tomorrow night, and the next morning it will be show time.”

     The next night, under orders from Hussein not to reveal the final details until the last possible moment, Rashid briefed Karim in the Gaza City apartment where they had been living.

     “We have two targets and separate takeoff points. The dispersal will increase our security. Everything has to be ready by 4:00 a.m. tomorrow. This is what we’ve been working for all these months.”

     There was knock on the door and a key turned in the lock. Mahmoud Salah walked in. He could see that Rashid had started to brief Karim.

     “Go ahead, go on,” he said, as he pulled up a chair to the table Rashid and Karim were using. Papers and maps were on the table, as well as cups, a teapot, and a plate of sugar-coated cookies.

     Rashid continued, “My target is Palmachim Air Base near Yavne, just thirty-four kilometers away. It is a base for helicopters, UAVs, and the Arrow anti-ballistic missile. Karim, my mission is to support your strike against the actual target, a secret defense installation south of Palmachim and close to the Nahal Soreq Nuclear Center. You will enable al Khalil’s fighters to take the objective. They plan their assault as soon as possible after sunrise to give you enough light to see. Tomorrow, sunrise will be at 06:20. I want you to be over your target as soon as possible after sunrise but no later than 06:40. Mahmoud has a sketch of the place.”

     Mahmoud pulled a hand-drawn sketch from a manila envelope when Karim interrupted him.

     “If you have the coordinates, why not look at the Google Earth satellite photo on the computer?”

     Mahmoud turned abruptly toward Karim.

     “I have better information right here. You can look at your damn computer later. Besides, I bet the Israelis would not allow their sensitive locations to appear on a publicly available system. The official front, the cover, for the installation is that it is an experimental agricultural development center. All this over here,” he said, pointing with a pencil, “is fields. They are growing everything from giant watermelons to giant carrots. This is the main road and this is the access road that goes directly to the gate and to the installation. Al Khalil’s commando force will be here,” and he pointed again. “They are known to show the place to foreign visitors, mostly from Africa, but once they brought Indians from America, to teach them about drip irrigation. Over here are the buildings for farm equipment. Do not waste time and ammunition on them. Here is the main building. Very large. Looks like a warehouse. Actually, nothing happens here, above the ground anyway. The real classified work takes place in underground spaces. We don’t know how many stories there are down there. Tariq and Hussein are going to find out tomorrow.”

     Turning toward Rashid, Karim asked, “What is your plan, where will your planes be when I come in from the sea?”

     “I will attack first because we want the Issies’ attention to be elsewhere than at the main location. Also I won’t need as much light and I assume Palmachim has security responsibilities for your target. We want them to be very busy when you attack the farm.”

     Mahmoud, holding a cookie in one hand, said, “At the same time, I have three suicide bombers attacking Israeli checkpoints and two mortars will be set up to fire at the air base just before your attack. It will cause casualties and distract the Israeli response.”

     He took a bite of the cookie. Sugar stuck to the bottom of his mustache.

     Karim picked up Mahmoud’s penciled sketch and studied it.

***

The sun was threatening to appear on the horizon, as Karim prepared to taxi a RUAG Ranger UAV down a field outside Jabaliya, in the Gaza Strip. It reminded him of Colonel Spaceck’s words during an early meeting in the El Djazair Hotel in Algiers:

     “The advantage of the Ranger over the Predator is first of all the price. Then, it’s going to be easier to transport. The Predator has a wingspan of fifty feet, as opposed to nineteen feet for the Ranger. Also the Predator is sold as an entire system of four platforms with a large ground command station. The Predator has a crew of fifty people, more than you can handle!”

     Rashid had asked about the craft’s armament—missiles.

     “Yes, that’s a problem,” Spaceck acknowledged. “The Ranger’s payload is fifty kilos and one Hellfire weighs forty-five kilos.”

    They had eventually settled