And then they saw Levine with a firearm in his hand, a serious breach of his right to possess one inside the facility. As Levine fell back out of sight, bullets stitched across the wall where he just been standing, decimating it.
He ran down the hallway as the Quds took the steps to the second tier, nearing.
More gunfire, the report of the assault weapons outmatching his firepower at an unimaginable scale, the bullets missing as he took a bend, the floor and the walls of where he had just been taking on additional damage, the air chalked with dust.
Levine could sense that the air was noticeably cooler, the door of the vault opening enough to allow the cold mountain air in, and an aperture of escape.
He ran.
At the end of the corridor he saw a glass partition that overlooked the first tier, a twenty-foot drop. Fifty meters beyond that was the Alborz region.
He lifted his pistol and shot the glass, the tempered chips falling like a cache of diamonds to the floor below. Standing along the edge of the upper tier, the floor below looked more like a hundred-foot drop rather than twenty, he gauged his landing.
More bullets passed around him in waspy zips, prompting him to take the leap.
Although he performed admirably by bending his knees and rolling with the motion of the flow upon landing, twenty feet was too much and the impact too great. Levine struck hard, rolled, the snap of his ankles sounding out like gunshots, the bones shattering to the degree that his feet hung at awkward angles.
Gritting his teeth in agonizing pain, Levine refused to cry out. His weapons skated across the floor beyond his reach.
At least, he thought, I gave a valiant effort. Long live Israel!
As he lay there shadows poured over him. When he looked up he noted multiple barrels of assault weapons directed at him.
Within moments al-Sherrod made his way until he stood over Levine.
For a long moment he looked at Levine with a searching and calculating look. “Who are you?” he asked. “Who are you really?”
Levine remained silent.
“You are not al-Qaeda, are you?”
More silence.
“It appears that al-Ghazi has made a grave misjudgment in your character.”
Levine lowered his head to the floor. His life was over and he knew it.
A Quds officer burst through the line. “Al-Sherrod, the techs in the Comm Center are dead. And it appears that a message was sent.”
“Find the point of contact,” he ordered.
“Yes, al-Sherrod.” The soldier was gone.
Al-Sherrod bent over Levine. “Umar is not your real name, is it?”
Levine wanted to spit in the man’s face.
“Are you Mossad?”
No reply.
“Is that what you did?” he asked. “Did you contact Mossad?”
Levine finally groaned, his nerves becoming a tabernacle of pain. Al-Sherrod smiled and then set a foot upon one of the operative’s broken ankle, causing Levine to bark out in exquisite pain. “I can do this all night,” he told him. He ground his foot and the injury, causing Levine to clench his jaw and tears to course from the corners of his eyes. “What did you send to Mossad?”
Levine’s breathing was becoming erratic, the man slipping into shock.
Al-Sherrod once again ground his foot against Levine’s injury, driving another cry from Levine. “What did you send to Mossad? I will not ask again.”
“Then don’t… ask. You’re just wasting … your time.”
Al-Sherrod sighed, and then looked at the man with contempt. “Your pathetic life is over. You know that, don’t you?” And then to his team: “Close the vault and secure the facility,” he said. And then he looked at the man’s broken ankles with a measure of admiration at the awkward way the feet were turned backwards. “Prepare the vacuum chamber and carry this man inside,” he ordered. “Let’s see firsthand how the good doctor’s discoveries work against the organic matter of a man’s flesh.”
Levine was lifted harshly off the floor, his seemingly boneless ankles flopping horribly against the tile as he was dragged away.
“Keep him alive for another day,” he said. “I may need to mine him for information.” The truth was, however, that he wanted Levine to suffer pain beyond endurance, beyond human comprehension, and then snuff out his life with a simple order.
Al-Sherrod, the Devil’s Companion, did all he could to suppress a smile of satisfaction.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Yitzhak Paled stood in the Comm Center watching the screen with his arms folded defensively across his chest. The large man, Benyamin Kastenbaum, stood beside him maintaining the same pose, his colossal frame dwarfing Paled’s.
The room was dark, their forms silhouetted before the high-definition screen as encrypted notes downloaded from coordinates in the Alborz Mountain region, specifically from Mount Damavand, an odd point since there had never been verification of activity there.
“Aryeh’s alive,” Benyamin commented.
“From Mount Damavand in northern Iran… Of all places.”
“What’s he doing there?”
“I guess we’re about to find out.”
They watched the screen load up with rune-like characters, letters, numbers and symbols, the techs playing the keyboards to decipher the codes. The data coming forward in five different segments:
2BEL4°69Zvwb45I1PyFVXr2nnebQliV53ZDboAv1Miat±Av%2Fy%2BFYQTxb9aonEsWDeRHwZBd73Jf%0AoCgOklgcitM90βM1iVifu%2Bftv≥€∞pJhQkVRRuLascUEzrgGz5F%2B34EibZQZUoUkfaVrmvcPcHIXbq12D%0ATrq5d6Wlµ
GQDPfLFnAzafwKeNI0Aixcn12twrk7baXja7dDEJpBO9tbsl2QI3b%0AtHbbABZgmRBBGk44an02VRlhcv%2FFWNg7jum1 %π%2BON2sERIyla55%2FVp%2BvH2VX368%2F7M5nf%0AGYQ3LnJAxdjLRp%2BEYSknuWFO£∑πα≠×ĂĂ¥ǚ
1pwyG%2Bj3D5uu69ee4QB0xAzdLQctkIf8X%0Aj4HZuiGuxrsn9CbliKMSOecwUEiNs5Z4pV4sM0%2Bk%2Bg%2Bt%2FaY3T5qc8%2FpaGPRitLV1QZFx4Bu5Ta4Z%0AjmYlUWQt2Sg8fGbMiB3Wu7aGS3MSnsCETQ1u6TkMfoWK2RN
%2FXPgm%0Ax50TAUhWpn4v3epCVw4jCMJcAu8yHsuRoJqaaAf1%2Bk2xGcQ72dpsLxvT2ForGKD6dJzT9QowA%0AhnumrRZUvy%2BLV1DjnylkV0vf7KCdPKwVtq5jsDmg7hHuBWZYcx4clAT%2B%2FNCpEJnWgNsAz6GL10qW%
2FpaGPRitLV1QZFx4Bu5Ta4Z%0AjmYlUWQt2Sg8fGbMiB3Wu7aGS3MSnsCETQ1u6TkMfoWK2RNybls232BXrLsmkKy%2BON2sERIyla55f48rgI%0APlwfdZTHQiWnWji1beBt18RiJYYJFdIRYg5%2FyETojJr33t%2FqkDMQbdUFZiJvE
The encryptions became clear, the markings and symbols conforming to Yiddish text. There was no doubt. Aryeh Levine was alive in a complex hidden deep within Iran’s Alborz region inside a covert facility near the base of Mount Damavand. The exact coordinates were given for a preemptive strike.
The second verse touched upon a technology more devastating than nuclear weaponry, a nano device capable of destroying organic material while leaving the infrastructure intact with no way to combat it. Israel was now within the crosshairs.
Other segments appeared scattered, the messages themselves needing to be determined as to what Levine was trying to express. Apparently the man was in a rush.
Inside the facility next to the lab lies the true Ark of the Covenant. What it was meant to be used for wasn’t quite clear, the codes indecipherable. But it was apparent that it had meaning in the scheme of things to come. What that was, however, would remain a mystery since some of the data was corrupted.
“It’s not uniform,” said Benyamin.
Paled had to agree. “That means Aryeh was pressed for time. Not a good sign, I’m afraid. As much as I want to hope for his safety, I believe that I may be hoping for too much.”
“The Alborz are cold at this time — too cold for any man to survive.”
“But he did what was required of him,” said Paled. The man bent over the console, the light of the monitor glowing against the sharp features of his face. He scrutinized the screen, the messages, and read into them. “Nanotechnology,” he said. “There’s a name attached to this: A Doctor Leonid Sakharov.” He turned to Benyamin. “Find out what you can about this man and get back to me. If Aryeh has requested an immediate and illegal incursion to these coordinates, then it is with good reason that we must take it seriously.”