A SAMPLE CHAPTER

The Blackhawk hammers steadily due east, crosses the Armistice Line, veers into the Israeli Occupied Zone west of Syria, and flies southeast over Mezai, headed for the bleak southwest border area of Syria in Ash Shajarah, just north of Jordan.

By then, their course is obvious enough to confirm what Lieutenant Daniel Stern suspects.

“We’re not headed southwest, Major,” Stern states from the first seat behind David Haifitz. “This is the wrong way. Where are we going?”

That’s the sign.

In a coordinated movement, Haifitz and the pilot twist in their seats toward each other, raise small automatic pistols from their laps, and fire in a crisscross pattern at the six men seated behind them.

Haifitz puts one bullet each into the heads of the three Shin Bet officers behind the pilot. Three shots, three kills. Kevlar helmets stop the bullets from passing out the back of the victim’s heads and through the craft’s side.

The pilot does the same, firing behind Haifitz. But he only hits two of the officers in the head. The third round misses Stern’s head and rips through his lower left jaw. He reacts quickly enough to pull his handgun from his holster and raise it, ignoring the pain from the missing portion of his face.

But the pilot has already corrected and he gets his shot off faster.

Stern’s stunned eyes flutter shut as a gush of dark red blood bursts from his forehead and runs down his nose, cheek and chin. He now matches the five other members of his Shin Bet team. His fingers fall loose from the pistol and it clatters to the metal floor of the chopper.

Haifitz glances down at his brother on the stretcher behind him. Hoffman gives him a weak smile.

Haifitz lets out a long breath and continues his mental recitation of the seven-part plan as they fly over the southwest border of Syria in Ash Shajarah.

Four. Set down, and torch the chopper with gasoline and two bricks of Semtex 1A explosive. With the six bodies in it.

What better place to hide half a dozen dead Israeli Shin Bet officers than to dump their charred remains next door in Syria, a bitter enemy of the State of Israel? It’s perfect cover. Occasionally, in the world of off-the-books covert ops, operations fail and there are no survivors and no explanations. Sad and unfortunate accidents. Mossad isn’t perfect. Men sometimes die, assets are lost.

All very convenient.

Within minutes after they set down as planned, Hoffman is leaning weakly on Haifitz’s shoulder as they stand a hundred yards from the blazing Blackhawk helicopter behind them. Haifitz and the pilot watch as a battered beige Toyota pickup truck half a soccer field’s distance down the dusty road approaches with its front window reflecting the glare of the fire.

Five, Haifitz muses, watching the truck approach. He lights a cigarette for Aaron.

A favor had been called in to one of Haifitz’s counterparts in Syria’s Mukhabarat, the dangerously overworked military intelligence service in Damascus. Haifitz, Aaron, and the pilot are to be delivered across Syria’s southern border into Jordan. From there, another favor is to be collected in the form of a military flight from northern Jordan all the way to Tel Aviv.

The pilot turns away from the searing heat of the burning helicopter as the Toyota pulls to a stop next to the waiting men.

The driver, a short, wiry man with an unshaven face and a nose that gives him the appearance of a rat, gets out.

“You say two men,” the driver complains to Haifitz in Arabic. “Only two—can take no more!”

Haifitz replies calmly in Arabic, “It is only two of us, my friend,” as he slips his pistol from the back of his belt.

He turns to the pilot, says, “Six,” and fires-point blank into his temple from a distance of two meters.

A few minutes later, the Toyota is barreling away from the flaming chopper, headed south, toward seven, the final part of the plan, the border of Jordan and the flight home to Tel Aviv.

Worst-case scenario, Haifitz thinks as they bump along the road in the battered Toyota, it all falls apart and he’s suspected. So what? He’ll have nearly one hundred million American dollars in cash, in Swiss and Cayman Brac accounts, and he knows how to ghost. Hell, Mossad doesn’t even know his original birth surname isn’t Haifitz. He hopes.

He lights a cigarette, draws the smoke in deeply and exhales out the window of the truck.

“Did you know,” Haifitz says to nobody in particular, “the number seven is the Almighty’s number of completion?”

The driver looks at him and nods uncomprehendingly as he navigates his way southward.

“The menorah, seven sticks. Sevenfold sprinkling for atonement and purifying. Release from debts on the seventh year jubilee—we ignore that one now, of course, but still, seven. The Almighty even rested on the seventh day after finishing all of his work.”

He smiles.

Seven. Nice number. Biblical number.