Trapping Zero (An Agent Zero Spy Thriller—Book #4)

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

The rotors roared overhead as a CH-53 Sea Stallion, a US-produced and Israeli-owned helicopter, carried Reid and his team quickly through the night towards the port of Haifa. He did not like the way that Talia Mendel, seated across from him, stared straight ahead with a officious smirk. Lives were at stake, yet she seemed to have come along simply to see just how wrong Reid might be. He couldn’t help but wonder if all Mossad were as haughty.

“Haifa is on lockdown,” Maria noted through the radio headset. “They’re searching every inch of the port for suspicious persons.”

“And you were right,” Strickland added as a message came through to his phone. “There is an American destroyer at port in Haifa, an Arleigh-Burke class called the USS New York.”

As much as Reid wanted to return Mendel’s condescending look, he couldn’t bring himself to under the circumstances. “I doubt we’re going to find our guys hanging out at the port,” he said into the radio. “Strickland, what sort of range would a military-grade UAV have?”

He shook his head. “I couldn’t say without knowing more about what type of drone we’re dealing with. It couldn’t be anything quite as large as a Predator or a Reaper without being spotted. My best guess would be about three kilometers or less.”

“That’s way too wide a net to cast,” Maria said. “They wouldn’t actually have to be at the port to attack the ship.”

She was right; a three-kilometer radius was too big of an area to attempt to conduct a search for the Brotherhood. As he thought about options, he could have sworn he heard Mendel chuckle lightly in his headset.

“Do you have anything meaningful to add, Agent Mendel?” he asked irritably.

“Well, since you asked so nicely,” she said, “allow me to make a supposition of my own. If you are correct and the destroyer is bombed, much more than just the port would be locked down. Every exit in the city of Haifa would be barricaded in search of these men. Simply put, if it was me planning this raid, I wouldn’t be in the city at all.”

“You’d be in the water,” Reid said grimly as he realized what Mendel was circuitously suggesting. He hated to admit that she was likely right; if he considered it, it’s what he would do as well. Circumvent any possibility of being captured at a border by already being out to sea. “What’s our ETA?”

“Eleven minutes,” the pilot replied in the headset.

“Strickland,” Reid asked, “you said the USS New York was an Arleigh-Burke class?”

“I did.”

“Then it would be equipped with a SPY-1D multifunction passive electronically scanned array radar,” he rattled off quickly.

Maria stared at him blankly. “How on earth would you know that?”

“It just comes to me.” Reid shrugged and pointed at his own head. At the mention of the Arleigh-Burke class destroyer, he simply and suddenly knew that the ship was most likely built in the early nineties, and among the first to utilize the Aegis Combat System of integrated naval weapons produced by Lockheed Martin. “My point is that they have an excellent radar system, but no reason to use it in port. Let’s get that ship on the line and tell them to scan a three-kilometer radius for any suspicious activity in the water. But do not engage. We need to be right about this.”

“They won’t anyway,” Strickland noted. “Rules of maritime engagement dictate we don’t fire unless fired upon.”

Reid frowned. He was aware of the rule; it was, in large part, a reason for the tragedy aboard the USS Cole back in 2000. Sentries saw the small craft coming but were not allowed to fire on it.

But we’re not expecting them to be fired upon. Another thought came to him, one that made him even more uneasy than the thought of the ship not being able to defend itself. “Even with all that tech, their radar won’t pick up on aerial drones if they’re small enough,” he said. “They’ll need physical sentries watching the skies.”

Maria shook her head. “Those drones would have to be carrying a hell of a payload to sink a destroyer from above. What if we’re wrong about the weapon?”

Reid swallowed the lump in his throat. “I suppose we’ll see for ourselves soon enough.”

*

The Sea Stallion chopper soared towards the port at Haifa. A glance out the window told Reid they were closing in; below them he could see the myriad bright lights of the port that ended abruptly into darkness at the edge of the Mediterranean Sea.

“We’ve got a hit,” Strickland told them. “The New York picked up a signal on radar that appears to be two small crafts, one about seventy feet long and the other a little larger, about one and a half kilometers due west of the destroyer.”

“Why is that out of the ordinary?” Maria asked.

“They’re practically on top of each other,” Strickland replied. “As if they’re tethered together.”

Two boats? Reid wondered. Why would the Brotherhood need two boats? Unless one of them is for a USS Cole-type suicide mission.

Talia Mendel tugged a radio loose from her belt and spoke quickly into it in Hebrew. To Reid’s confused glance she said, “We’re dispatching IDF to the coordinates sent by the New York.”

Reid nodded. “Good, we can use the backup. But we’ll get there faster. Pilot, take us out.”

“Yes, sir.” The Sea Stallion did not slow as it flew over the port and out to sea.

Mendel regarded him curiously. “You do not plan to wait for IDF?”

Reid checked the clip on his Glock. “The Brotherhood will hear or see the boats coming. They’ll have time to prepare. They’ll hear us coming too, but we’ll be on them in seconds. We can try to get the drop while IDF is en route.”

“So which is it, Agent Zero?” Mendel sounded amused. “You don’t like others doing your dirty work, or you enjoy being the hero?”

A bit of both, he admitted internally. But to Mendel he replied, “I just hold myself responsible for my own ‘wild conjectures.’”

She grinned as he tightened his tactical vest.

“ETA less than one minute,” the pilot announced.

“What if they have RPGs?” asked Maria.

“We’ll have to fast-rope down,” said Strickland. He hefted the MP5 submachine gun. “I’ll provide cover fire for anyone on the deck while you three descend.”

Reid couldn’t help himself; a knot of anxious excitement formed in his chest at the prospect of rappelling out of the chopper and onto a boat. He grabbed a looped handhold in the ceiling as Maria slid the door of the Sea Stallion open. The intense, chilled wind whipped around them immediately.

“We don’t know what we’re going to find down there,” Reid shouted into the radio to combat the rushing wind. “So act with extreme caution!”

Maria and Strickland nodded as Reid peered out through the open door. He squinted over the moonlit water as the helicopter soared closer, dipping in altitude at the same time. He spotted them; the naval ship had been right. There were two boats, still in the water, so close together they might have been connected at one side.

As they descended further he could make out some features of the two ships. One was sleek, all-white, and looked like an expensive cross between a speedboat and a small yacht. The other was older, with a wide, black rounded hull.

A tugboat, he realized. That’s why they needed Idan Mizrahi. Not just to gain access to the port—but because none of the Iraqi insurgents could pilot a boat.

And the other, the sleek white ship, he could surmise the owner of it. If he was right and it belonged to the Libyan arms dealer, then he had been wrong in thinking that the weapon they were acquiring had to be small.

But he had no time to relate all of this to his team. “We aim for the tug!” he shouted. “Mendel, have IDF go after the speedboat!”

She nodded once and quickly relayed the message in radioed Hebrew as Reid tore the headset from over his ears. Strickland lowered a thick cable from over the open cabin as the helicopter turned ninety degrees, coming to a hovering stop over the tugboat.

“Let’s go!” Reid shouted, but it was drowned out by the wind and powerful rotors. He drew his Glock and, holding it in his right hand, wrapped both legs and his left hand around the cable. With Strickland covering him with the MP5, he slid down the approximate forty feet to the tugboat below.

He glanced down and saw two men on the deck, scrambling frantically at the sight of the approaching agents. They dashed towards the bow. He took aim and fired as he descended, clipping one of the pair in the leg. He fell, but his cohort vanished around the wheelhouse.

Reid was more than two-thirds of the way down the line when a third man appeared, coming up from a compartment below deck. The bearded insurgent had something in his hands—something long, glinting in the moonlight, tapered at the end. He raised it to his shoulder.

By the time Reid’s feet touched down on the deck, the Iraqi fired an RPG at the chopper.