The monitors in front of me blinked. Four thermal images were clustered together at the location of the transmission. These were the signatures of Taysir and another terrorist, plus Karni and Ronny. Two figures approached the cockpit. Those would be the terrorists. Karni and Ronny slipped out of the emergency exit onto the wing and from there down onto the waiting jeep.
“Abu Shahid is saying now that Karni and Ronny are to lead the bus.” We heard the voice of Lieutenant Hezi.
The top brass were completely paralyzed. They had a hard time catching up. The three monitors behind showed slides of Israeli landscapes, floods in Arkansas, and Channel One’s correspondent, who was still blabbering into the microphone against the background of the airport.
It seemed that everybody in the room was staring at the screens without really looking, trying to think of something. The CNN monitor showed the same boats making their way through Arkansas. The room was silent and suddenly it all burst out. Everyone was talking at once; Bus, plan, release, Metula.
* * *
Chapter 27
A purple-white bus was parked on the tarmac at the foot of the stairs leading up to the tactical headquarters.
“Can you get me Major Dana, at the Rosh Ha-Ayin MCB?” I asked Sergeant Shosh very gently and with much respect. She pushed herself on her secretary’s chair, pretended to fiddle with the phone, and looked at Hezi who nodded with an almost imperceptible gesture.
“Shira!” Dana sounded relaxed and friendlier than I had expected.
“Are you on top of things? Got the picture on what’s going on here?” I asked.
“As much as I could, given the pressure around here.”
“Were there any new transmissions?”
She hesitated. “We are on a red line.” I reminded her. “And you’ll release only whatever is relevant, or authorized or both.”
“Yes, right,” she agreed when we both knew that she had no time to start getting clearance to declassify sensitive information. I waited quietly and tensely for her to decide. “Alright, as someone cleared for this stuff, I can tell you about some imminent threats with no names.”
I remained silent, feeling tiny pricks in my wrists. A distant phone rang, and someone on the airport public address system asked for a cleanup at the arrivals hall.
“The last transmission between the plane and Geneva was about the hijackers being worried that their connection was cut off.”
“Oh yes?” Now I could hear the flies buzzing in the middle of all the noise.
“They mention a charge on the bus.”
“Charge?” I felt the blood drain from my face. My crew was about to board that bus and head out at least part of the way.
“Explosives,” Dana confirmed. The intention was unmistakable.
“And everyone who has to know about it here is ready for that?”
“More or less, I hope. I have to hang up”
“Wait a second,” I was screaming “How will the explosives reach the bus? I must know. I have my people there.”
“They will stop at the air force base’s ammunitions depot and will pick them up there.”
“The explosives?” I whispered again. “Does Harel know?”
“He sure does.”
“And who is the collaborator there? Who will help him locate the place? Get there? Load the explosives?” I couldn’t believe that such a thing was possible.
“That’s the one billion dollar question. He mentioned a ‘Chinaman’ that would keep on helping. I really must go.”
“‘Chinaman’?” I couldn’t care less about her other pressures. There was a long silence at the other end of the line. “Is it an actual Chinese man?” The silence continued. “Is it a code name or a nickname?” I tried.
“I think it’s a nickname,” she finally replied.
“Did he say Chinaman in English or in Arabic?”
“In Arabic, it’s the same word as in Hebrew.”
“Who the hell he was referring to? Do you have a clue?”
“Bye now.” She hung up.
One TV crew was placed on the roof of the bus. Another crew was on the tarmac and a third one was inside the bus, ready to board the plane and then get back into the bus and join the ride north to Marj az-Zahur. Uzi found his place in the tactical headquarters, and like always, sat down without bothering anyone.
“The Red Cross needs you urgently on the phone,” a soldier girl told him.
“And where is Micko?” he asked uneasily and took the handset.
Micko was on the verge of a breakdown. The rescue operation covered by CNN was about to get under way with no prior coordination with the Red Cross. I was loyal to my military job and tried my best to assist, but I knew that there was nothing much I could do.
Raus, head of the Red Cross office, had a direct line to Geneva and did all he could to get on board the plane but his efforts remained futile.
Harel told Raus that it was Abu Shahid who insisted that only Karni and Ronny would be on the bus. A phone call from the president of the Red Cross in Geneva to the prime minister ended with both of them slamming down the phones. Raus was destined to join the motorcade only once the bus was off the tarmac and on the road. The story of the explosive charge now changed my entire perspective on the picture. What kind of game was Raus playing here? Did he have any kind of Chinese connection?
Micko, who was listening to the plane’s transmissions at the tactical headquarters, brought up the news. “Taysir is complaining about the bus. It’s not a regular intercity bus but rather an airport terminal bus. He doesn’t believe that the bus can bring him all the way to his destination with the hostages.” He was tense and anxious. “This isn’t going to end well.”
The bus made a wide turn and disappeared behind a garage. All the journalists that were gathered along the fence would have lost sight of it. CNN was still transmitting. Micko stared at the monitors, transfixed, with the cell phone glued to his mouth and was reporting to someone in English.
“I just hope they don’t screw it all up now,” he kept mumbling.
And then, all transmission was cut.
“What’s happening?” Micko jumped up. “Are there problems?”
“A power outage,” said one of the technicians. “Someone is playing with the electric mains.”
“Where is Karni?” Uzi asked, having joined us and looking at the monitors.
“She is still on the bus. When the plane door opens, they will come in through the bus roof. You can relax.”
Micko was almost losing his mind. He paced the room talking to himself and occasionally bursting out with, “It can’t be. It just won’t work. I have some experience with this kind of thing. The big shots here are brewing another failed rescue operation just like they failed at Ma’alot. I don’t even understand who is running the show right now.”
Harel couldn’t ignore the provocation. From over sixty feet away, over the din of the radios and while ignoring the presence of his commanders, we heard his thick voice, “If the commander of the LUFF doesn’t get over his hysteria, slap him twice and kick him the hell out of here.”
Harel was right. Uzi Bar-Sela took over direct communication with the Red Cross and updated them with impressive efficiency. Standing in front of the monitors and talking on two phones at the same time, he was at his finest. Uzi, who had always been in the shadow of someone else, was shining without the foreign minister or someone else to guide him. He was enjoying every minute of it. I looked at him again; he was in full control of the situation, smiling charmingly at Harel, and exchanging a small compliment with Shoshi the sergeant. Despite his heavyset body, he was moving around the HQ with the impressive agility of a satisfied butterfly.
Micko, on the other hand, was on the verge of a breakdown. To be honest, so was I. I was anxious about the crew I was sending out. The spy, the Chinaman, as Abu Shahid called him, hadn’t been captured and the authorities didn’t seem to care much.
The purple and white airport
bus emerged again from behind the garage and went on its way. I followed it with horror.
In the control room, Harel was staring at the nine television monitors. The room was quiet. The intelligence and communications officers were staring at the monitors as well, waiting for the next move. In his calm commanding manner, Harel was in total control of the situation.
The prime minister and the chief of staff sat in the back of the room with only three assistants. All the others were ordered to clear the area. The medical corps, which had deployed a mobile intensive care unit outside the terminal, was back to full capacity in case something went wrong. And I, who still had the leading role in covering the biggest show in town, was still there.
In a room next to the control room, we set up our own CNN broadcast center. Within an hour and a half, we managed to set up a center that wouldn’t have embarrassed any mid-sized television network. The equipment came with five technicians, some of whom I knew, and a producer, so we could now broadcast directly from the airport, from the three locations. We could also mix, synchronize, and produce enhanced audio. All that was left for me to do was run the show with no major slip-ups.
But I already knew that I was going to lose. The jealousy of my dozens of competitors gathered downstairs was to be short-lived.
Our three cameras were filming continuously and in parallel. Martin was broadcasting next to us from the broadcast center with the already existing footage. He did it convincingly as if he were in the lead car with the wind in his hair and was about to rush up the stairs.
“What a drama!” he said in a voice that was awe-struck yet restrained. “In less than a minute, we will witness, live and on camera, the transfer of the hostages from the plane to the bus that will take them up north.”
The plane’s door opened, and as if in a dream taking place on numerous stages at the same time, I followed my cameras. I heard the audio coming from inside the plane and heard the orders being given inside the tactical headquarters. The camera on the tarmac was firmly trained on the plane’s door. The camera crew on the roof of the bus, wearing red caps and goggles, opened fire on the people at the door of the plane.
Loud screams in Arabic and Hebrew came from inside the plane.
The officer watching the monitor near me said, “Ahead of you and on the left; one more in the bathroom.” Someone at the tactical headquarters repeated the instructions into the earphones of the unit that stormed into the plane. “Charge number three neutralized,” said a new voice.
The roof of the bus slid backward. The last of the attack force disappeared inside the plane. A voice was heard through the loudspeakers at the tactical headquarters. “Go, go, go, move.” There were short bursts of gunfire and a muffled explosion, and then another one.
The camera on the tarmac showed the images of the attack force on the first monitor. Another monitor showed a freeze frame of the open door from a minute earlier.
The third monitor was showing the frozen frame that had been broadcast from Atlanta for the past ninety seconds to fifty million viewers worldwide.
“Lod, Ben Gurion, can you hear me?” I heard a voice from Atlanta in my earphone.
“The charges!” I screamed in horror. “They blew up the plane!”
Hezi stood beside me, his hands clasped across his chest, biting his lower lip and trying to concentrate on all the radio communications.
“They haven’t detonated any charge,” he said as if to himself. The sound technician who had boarded the plane for two minutes swore that the charges were dummies. “And besides,” he went on, “they can’t even move. The unit is using laser guns to blind them. It causes complete blindness for four hours to anyone without special goggles. That goes for the hijackers as well as for the hostages. There’s no other way. Only the attack force has eyes.”
“What about the shooting?”
“That was local cleansing,” he said. The hell with law and legalities, I thought to myself, I will reflect on it some other day.
The camera on the tarmac broadcast the images of the attack force on a split screen with the frozen picture of the plane door as transmitted to CNN and to the rest of the world. We had given up the first pictures of the assault in order not to harm the operation. The first critical seconds were now behind us.
“Lod, Ben Gurion, can you hear me?” The voice from Atlanta sounded in my earphone again.
“Shira! Haroush! Shira! Haroush!” The voice in the earphone was now furious. “We can hear action and shooting. Where are you?”
“We’re done with the diversions and simulations,” I barked into the microphone that was glued to my mouth, directing myself to Haroush who was one hundred feet away from me at the broadcast center that we had set up. “We are back to the real broadcast and we have a live rescue operation to cover.”
I threw down the earphones and ran into the tactical headquarters. The prime minister and the chief of staff were both on their feet and were staring at the screens. I couldn’t piece all the shapes and colors into a coherent picture. Harel spoke into his microphone again. “Status report, Ami.”
Only stifled screams and grunts could be heard on the loudspeaker. Three thermal images were moving steadily towards the back of the plane.
All of a sudden, a new and clear voice was heard on the radio. “Three soldiers injured. Twelve passengers injured. Two bodies, probably from earlier.”
“The terrorists?” Harel asked, his voice steady.
“Abu Shahid jumped with Taylor into the jeep and escaped.”
“And the others?”
“One dead, one alive.”
“Watch over the live one. We’re going to need him,” Harel ordered to my relief. The red light bulb that went on in my mind when Hezi had mentioned ‘cleansing’, now switched off.
“How did this asshole Taysir jump?” barked Harel.
“Out the emergency exit together with Taylor. He was waiting for us on the wing before we came in. He may have been warned. He is injured and so is Taylor.”
“Which jeep?”
“A yellow airport jeep.”
“Where is he now?”
“Not clear. He disappeared behind a hangar.”
“What happened to the security perimeter around the plane?” Harel’s voice was soaring.
“Are you shitting me or what?” Ami didn’t try to hide his contempt. “You know as well as I do that we never set up a perimeter security force around the plane.”
Such an obvious cover-up attempt wasn’t typical of Harel, and Ami clearly had no patience for it.
“Roger, out.” Harel cut off the communication. The prime minister and the chief of staff exchanged glances.
“Dagan!” Harel barked into the mic.
A deafening rumble was heard on the receiver.
“Dagan, do you copy?!” Harel tried again.
“I copy you, over.” Dagan sounded totally calm.
“Is the anti-tank squad ready at the ammo depot?”
“Positive,” Dagan replied.
“Put a complete closure of the airport right now. As soon as you spot the jeep or any other moving vehicle, you have the go-ahead to destroy.”
The rumble was heard again. Uzi, stone-faced, stared at the monitor. Micko turned his back to it and I stood there, frozen in horror.
“Dagan, do you copy?” Harel shouted.
“There is a hostage in the jeep,” Dagan half-said and half-asked.
“You have the go-ahead to destroy,” Harel repeated. “Do you copy?” Then he mumbled to those assembled around him, “He is heading for the base’s ammunition depot. It holds at least thirty bombs weighing half a ton each. It’s enough to blow the airport up into the sky three times over. I don’t mess around with something like that.”
“Copy, over!” Dagan confirmed.
“Very good. Now find the son of a bitch and rip him apart. Over and out.”
The radios chirped in the tumult as they all relayed the order to lock down the airport.
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“Here’s the jeep!” It was the voice of Amir, the operations sergeant, standing by the large windows and looking at the hangars and runways with his binoculars. The noise in the room calmed down immediately. The radios were silenced. Everyone was following the direction of Amir’s hand as he pointed east between two Israel Aircraft Industries buildings.
“I can’t see anything,” said the chief of staff.
“Here he is!” said Amir. It was then that we saw the yellow engine cover emerge from among the buildings. With an apparently momentary decision, the jeep rode onto the tarmac, accelerated and sped north towards a group of buildings near the base’s northern fence.
‘Jump, Danny, jump!’ I mumbled. ‘God, help him! Jump, Danny!’
A red spot appeared at a distance ahead of the jeep and seemed to waver as it approached the jeep. I wasn’t the only one who noticed it.
“An anti-tank missile has been fired,” Amir announced without taking his eyes off the binoculars.
‘Jump, Danny! Jump!’ I bit my lips and continued to follow the jeep on the tarmac. The jeep veered hard to the left towards the runways, and then one of its two passengers fell off. The jeep tried to veer back to the right and to stabilize itself as the red dot made contact with it and the anti-tank missile hit home. The jeep froze in place, turned over slowly and burst out in blinding orange flames.
“Call off the lockdown, head for the cars!” ordered the chief of staff.
I don’t know which car it was that took me to the burning jeep.
Not far from it, Danny was lying on a field stretcher. I knelt down towards him, feeling the heat of the burning jeep at my back. Danny's eyes were closed. He was covered with a sheet and his face looked like red pulp. A bloodied bandage emerged from beneath the sheet. An intravenous tube came out from under the sheet and up a pole next to the stretcher. It led to a bag full of dark blood that was hanging at the top of the pole. He looked at me with frightened eyes.