Nick Carter
Thunderstrike in Syria
Dedicated to The Men of the Secret Services of the United States of America
Chapter One
July is always hot in Israel, and riding in a car that wasn't air-conditioned only made us more uncomfortable. My main concern was that the heat might cause the makeup on our faces to soften and wreck my scheme for catching off guard the SLA agents in the House of Medals. I wanted to take at least one SLA member alive, more if possible, and Leah Weizmann and I could hardly walk into the religious shop and pose as elderly tourists with greasepaint flowing down our faces. However, the Hamosad makeup experts had assured us that the cosmetics were impervious to heat and perspiration and could only be removed by a special solution of alcohol, glycerol and something called somandaline. Two bottles of the stuff were in the dashboard of the Volvo. The Hamosad makeup boys had been right: I could sweat through the cosmetics and even wipe my face without harming any of the tints or shades or "wrinkles."
I glanced at Leah who was sitting next to me in the back seat of the Volvo, and marvelled at how the Hamosad intelligence experts had transformed both her face and figure. Underneath all the war paint, Leah was a very attractive young woman, a Sabra, a native-born Israeli whose slim body was tanned and curved in all the right places. Her soft hair, as black as a raven's feathers, curled at the ends but otherwise fell straight and shiny around her face. Her face was beautifully shaped, her sable eyes made large and somewhat dolllike by the long dark lashes. Her mouth was a bit too large, but she had a wonderful smile with a dimple in the left corner. The rest of Leah was built to match — breasts that were full and round, that always seemed to be struggling for release; a slim waist; nicely rounded hips; long, deeply tanned legs that could almost squeeze a man to death in bed.
But now, Leah looked like a woman in hear early sixties, her skin wrinkled, her lips thin and pale, a gray wig covering her own dark hair. Her full breasts had been flattened, her figure padded in strategic places to make her look dumpy, a victim of middle-age spread.
The Israeli makeup experts had worked the same kind of magic on me, adding thirty years to my own face and placing a gray-white wig over my own brown hair. I was still luckier than Leah. I didn't have to be tortured by any padding under my summer-weight suit. I'm lean and well-muscled and that was enough. And who said that an "old man" has to be fat? As for height, by bending over slightly and using a cane, I could give the impression of not being too tall.
Feeling me watching her, Leah turned to me, her eyes questioning.
"Anything wrong, Nick? Don't you dare tell me my makeup is starting to run! Yours looks all right."
I reached down and squeezed her hand. "I was thinking that it's not going to be easy in the House of Medals," I said. "Since the clerks are members of the Syrian Liberation Army, they have to be first-class fanatics. People like that would rather die than admit defeat. You shouldn't be going in there with me."
Leah shook her head, pushed her knee against mine and looked deeply into my eyes. "We've been all through that, Nick," she said matter-of-factly. "We both know that our chances of pulling this off are better if we stick to the original plan. An elderly couple is not going to arouse suspicion. You know I'm right. So don't try to talk me out of it. And quit worrying."
I didn't try to dissuade Leah from going with me. Nor was I worried; I was concerned. The mission, only a month old, was stalled with dead ends and lack of any real progress. The raid on the religious shop, if successful, would change all the failure. If we could capture just one SLA agent and make him talk, we might be able to develop new leads.
"We're on the outskirts of Jerusalem," the Hamosad driver of the Volvo called back. "Another fifteen minutes and we should be there."
A short-haired man with a thick mustache, the driver was the same man who had contacted Leah and me a week ago. Then he had posed as a cab-driver.
I watched the traffic that was getting heavier from both directions, leaned back and relaxed, my thoughts backtracking to how the mission had begun. I had been enjoying a vacation on a lake in Maine, when a Control Agent had gotten word to me: Hawk wanted to see me in Washington — and fast. I had hurried back, going straight to DuPont Circle where AXE, the super-secret U.S. espionage agency, has its headquarters, under the cover of the Amalgamated Press and Wire Services.
David Hawk hadn't called me to D.C. to ask about my fishing. Apparently, AXE had learned that the Syrian Liberation Army, a deadly organization of Arab terrorists dedicated to killing every Israeli on the face of the earth, was planning to expand its murderous activities to the U.S. in an attempt to incite the American people enough so they would demand that the government stop giving military aid to Israel.
As Hawk had explained the SLA plan, a large part of it involved the planting of time bombs aboard a supertanker carrying liquefied natural gas from the Soviet Union to the United States. The bombs would be set to explode when the giant nine hundred-foot-long vessel entered New York City harbor and started on its way to a specially designed dock near the Arthur Kill, a channel separating Staten Island from New Jersey.
In his growl of a voice. Hawk had rattled off facts and figures, explaining that LNG is natural gas turned into liquid for shipment and storage, with its volume reduced six hundred times by bringing its temperature down to 260 degrees below zero. The liquid rapidly turns to gas when exposed to normal air or water temperatures. Should the tanks rupture in a supertanker, which carries about four million gallons of LNG, the gas would cover an area ten miles long. Normally odorless, colorless and tasteless, the Death Cloud, with a temperature of about one-hundred sixty degrees below zero at its center, would freeze enough water vapor to become visible — if the spill were over water. But should a single spark touch the cloud, it would explode into raging flames, incinerating everything beneath it. If the cloud did not explode, it would freeze anything that came in contact with it, or it would suffocate anyone who did not freeze first.
Then Hawk had given me the worst news of alclass="underline" Such a death cloud, whether it exploded or not, could kill as many as one million people!
My assignment was to find out the name of the supertanker, how the bombs, or bomb, were to be planted, and the names of the SLA agents who would plant them.
Where would I begin? Hawk had provided the answer before I could ask him. AXE had acquired the full cooperation of the Hamosad, the Israeli Intelligence Service. No, Hawk had explained, I wouldn't fly directly to Israel. Instead, I would go to London and there make contact with a woman operative of Hamosad. Posing as husband and wife, we'd use the cover that we were Britishers on a vacation to the Holy Land. And how would I find this Israeli Mata Hari in merry ole England? All I had to do. Hawk had said, was register as "Charles Heines" at the Mount Royal Hotel in the exclusive Mayfair district. In fact, an AXE agent in London had already made reservations for me.
Leah Weizmann had found me, the same day that I had registered.
Three days later, Leah and I had taken a BOAC flight to Israel and were in the Samuel Hotel in Tel Aviv, in a suite of rooms overlooking the sunny Mediterranean. Personally, it was an arrangement I enjoyed, especially since Leah's reasoning was as pragmatic as my own. We had registered at the Samuel as "Mr. and Mrs. Charles Heines"; our passports said we were "Mr. and Mrs. Charles Heines." Why not enjoy the arrangement? Besides, the bedroom of the suite had only one king-sized bed.
Leah and I were under cover in more ways than one. Under no circumstances were we to go to Hamosad headquarters in the Histadrut Building. Hamosad would contact us and had done so as Leah and I had toured Tel Aviv, or Tel Aviv Yafo as the Israelis call their main city. Often our contact had been another "tourist," or a «guide»; at other times, a "cabdriver."