Murray McDonald - Critical Error

Sam spotted the Victor Annual in his backpack. Perfect, he needed something to occupy his mind. His mind ventured back almost 40 years as he read and followed the comic strips that told their stories of the British fighting the Germans. He smiled as one strip told the story of a spy caught behind enemy lines who managed to escape before he was interrogated and returned home. Nothing overly surprising other than the fact that the spy had a false tooth with a cyanide pill. He looked across at Rebecca to see if she was awake to tell her where Deif’s idea must have come from. She was sound asleep. He’d tell her later. The next strip featured a naval convoy taking vital supplies to the Russians who were valiantly fighting the Germans on the Eastern Front. It was real gung-ho stuff, thought Sam. The British ships fought the harshness of the seas before being set upon by German fighter bombers. Without an escort, all was lost but in good old Victor style, they pulled something out the hat and what a something, thought Sam. He stared at the little comic drawing and thought back to the false tooth. Jesus!

“Rebecca!” he shouted, no concerns if she were sleeping or not. “We need to get to my brother and the Secretary of Defense!” If Rebecca’s information was correct, they had three days to stop the bomb.

The Sheikh was enjoying the warmth of the Texan sun after the biting cold of Montana. The first rays of sun, even at that time of year, radiated a wonderful and welcome heat. Zak had been an extremely reluctant passenger as they travelled towards the scene of his atrocity some years earlier. But the Sheikh had assured him on many occasions that they would not be going beyond the security wall that now protected the Southern Texas border from the wasteland beyond.

As they drove towards the small town of Bishop, the wall came into view and Zak winced at his handiwork. The wall stretched off as far as the eye could see, blocking the devastation from view. The Sheikh pulled into a small diner and joined a throng of tourists who had rather bizarrely come to look at the wall. It seemed quite the tourist destination, badges mugs and t-shirts lined the walls, all emblazoned with a mushroom cloud visible above the wall that now protected every American from the land beyond.

The tourists provided perfect cover as they joined a large group on a guided tour of the new border. There was no border-crossing. The massive steel gates that briefly interrupted the wall were firmly closed and a radiation symbol clearly warned anyone from venturing beyond. To the left and right of the gates, two large areas had been cut into the wall and it was these that the Sheikh was most interested in. Two plaques were soon to be mounted and would be unveiled by the President himself. It was anticipated that most of the Cabinet and high ranking officials of government would be in attendance and it was for that very reason that the Sheikh required Zak’s assistance. On his own, he wouldn’t get within a mile of the location come Saturday. With Zak and his Defense Intelligence Agency ID, he’d be able to get up close and personal.

As the site became busier, Zak and the Sheikh walked back to the diner. They saw the first trucks arrive in preparation for Saturday’s event. They paused and watched as the trucks pulled off to the side and a small army of workers appeared and began unloading staging and folding chairs. If nothing else, it confirmed the event was definitely going ahead.

The Sheikh directed Zak back to their motel just twenty miles away in Corpus Christi. He excused himself and walked to the internet cafe and logged onto a non descript chatroom. He re-read the message a number of times. It wasn’t so much what it read, it was the hidden meaning. Things had obviously taken a significant change of direction and his task had just gotten a lot harder. Fortunately, it did not alter the location, it just increased the number of targets.

Ben listened as Rebecca relayed what they had discovered in the comic book. Initially, he had scoffed at the idea, it was utterly ridiculous. But the more he thought it, the more he couldn’t rule it out. He instructed his guys to widen the search. The ship did not necessarily have to be in port before midnight Yom Kippur. They could look at boats scheduled to arrive even a day later.

Ben had sat through his next meeting digesting everything Rebecca had told him over the last few days. None of it was good and more importantly, none of it was good for Israel. He excused himself from the meeting. There were less than 60 hours until midnight Yom Kippur and he had little time available. He looked at the clock, checking the time he already knew. He calculated the timings. It was quite simple. He didn’t have the time but more importantly, he didn’t have the time not to.

“David, what’s the quickest plane we’ve got to get me to America?” he asked the Defense Minister.

“I’ll call you straight back!”

Two minutes later, he called back. “Ben, normally one of our Gulfstreams would be as quick as we could do. Fighters just don’t have the range without numerous tanker stops and by the time we get that organized you’d have been half way there in the Gulfstream.”

“OK, that’s normal.” Ben didn’t have time for explanations or pre-amble.

“Well, it seems there’s an experimental American B1-R sitting at Nevatim. It’s undergoing trials for long distance speed runs. It arrived a couple of days ago after doing it in five hours, half the time of the Gulfstream.”

“And they’d let me hitch a ride?”

“They’re keen to test it and as they go supersonic, it has to fly over sea and not land. America to here gives them about as long a straight run as you get over sea. I just need to tell them when and you’re good to go.”

Ben thanked God something was going in their favor.

“Fantastic David, I’ll be there in four hours.” Or not all, he thought, as he hung up.

Before he went anywhere, he was about to undertake the riskiest mission of his life. The Shin Bet officer greeted him as he left his office and talked him through a number of key points. The most important was that Ben must stay in full sight at all times. If at any point they feared he would be taken and interrogated, well, quite simply they could not allow that to happen. Ben was assured that the snipers targeting him would ensure a quick and painless end. How thoughtful and comforting, he thought.

As the helicopter came into land, Ben’s nerves were beginning to get the better of him. It was quite the most ludicrous idea he had ever had but with less than three days to save his country, he would try anything and this was pretty much all that was left.

The small open-top jeep offered no protection. He climbed aboard and with the white flag in position, he drove towards the gates which opened as he approached them and then slammed shut behind him.

Ben Meir, for the first time in decades, was in Gaza where more than half the population would happily slit his throat and that was only because the rest were too young or too old. He drove forward and stood up for all to see the white flag fluttering behind him. Ben was hoping to meet just one person and prayed that the boldness of his arrival coming would afford him that meeting.

It didn’t take long before the first armed man approached and, if Ben’s contacts were correct, Ahmed Hameed would already know that Ben Meir was sitting in a jeep with a white flag.

“What do you want, old man?”

“To talk with Ahmed Hameed, in private.”

“I will take you to him!” he smiled in response.

Ben almost laughed at the transparency of the offer to slaughter him. “We must meet here, for reasons I’m sure Ahmed will appreciate!”