CHAPTER 84

THOUGH AKRAM COULDN’T BE sure, he thought he heard gunfire outside. If true, that meant that local police had made a move toward the beach and Ziad had killed them with his AK. Well, maybe not all of them. Ziad was the youngest of the group, and he was nothing if not enthusiastic. In all likelihood, reinforcements were being called in, and soon Ziad would be dead. Martyred for the cause. He would hold them off and buy the team time to complete their mission. It was too late to stop them at this point. As the most senior member of the team, and with his years of experience in the Syrian Army and then the military side of the Mukhabarat, Akram was the only one who knew how to mix the binary compounds to create the Novichok nerve toxin.

His most recent posting had been to the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center in Masyaf. Located on the eastern side of the Jabal Ansariyah mountains in northwestern Syria, it had somehow managed to escape targeting by the latest round of attacks from the West; air strikes launched by the British, the French, and, of course, their American masters. It was not lost on Akram that it was in Masyaf that the Islamic sect known as assassins were formed in the eleventh century. General Yedid had paid him well, looked over him, and ensured his upward trajectory in the Mukhabarat. Now, just like the famous fida’i from centuries past, Akram was being passed the torch. The four other men and one woman who made up the team were there to get him to this point; they were there to protect him.

General Yedid did not give Akram the exact target but had said enough for him to believe it was someone important, perhaps even a leader from one of the countries responsible for the cowardly attacks on his country. He was to be the personal scepter of President Bashar al-Assad and strike back against the West. They had targeted his homeland with sanctions and the might of their military.

Unfortunately for them, they’ve missed the chemical research center built into the mountain that had been the birthplace of the assassins, he thought. Today they will reap what they’d sown.

Launched from hundreds of miles away, missiles could miss their targets. The white powder he had just mixed by combining the two Novichok binary compounds would not miss. This weapon did not need to be as precise as a rifle’s bullet or a smart bomb dropped from above—this was a weapon of terror. Unseen and unavoidable, it would not discriminate.

They had successfully tested it in a minute portion in the rebel town of Douma and seen its effectiveness firsthand. One touch of the toxin on the skin was enough to cause violent convulsions, followed by paralysis and then respiratory and cardiac arrest. Western intelligence agencies had misinterpreted it as a chlorine gas attack when it had in fact been a test of the Novichok that had been moved to Syria from Nukus, Uzbekistan, after the fall of the Soviet Union in advance of UN chemical weapons inspections. There, it had been studied and improved upon. Now it was ready. Safe in its binary components, the mixture of the two substances created the deadliest nerve toxin known to man. Most people had heard of sarin gas and had a healthy fear and understanding of its devastating power, but until recently Novichok had remained a mystery. While it was a similar class of toxin, Novichok was over a thousand times as potent as sarin, rendering any antidotes completely ineffective. A microgram of exposure was lethal and would, in the amount ready to be unleashed onto the streets of Odessa, render the entire area uninhabitable for generations. The perfect substance for terror’s lasting legacy. It would be the most severe blow to the West since the attacks of 9/11 and would be the revenge that President Assad had publicly promised his people. General Yedid had even passed along blessings from the president himself.

I will not fail.

It had taken some effort to carry the equipment into the tunnels, but they were able to do it, moving to their set point ahead of schedule. Faya and Tawfiq had taken care of the two men guarding the entrance without much trouble. That was the benefit of having a female on the team. It gave them the ability to close with an unsuspecting male target. It was rumored that President Assad had mandated the creation of the all-female commando battalions himself. These Lionesses of National Defense now made up a battalion of the elite Republican Guard. After five years as a Lioness, Faya had been recruited into the Mukhabarat following her performance on the front lines subduing insurgent forces in Damascus in 2015, and General Yedid had been paying her a retainer ever since. That she was also attractive didn’t hurt. In this case it allowed her to hold hands with Tawfiq as they walked the beach, stopping to ask the two local police officers guarding the catacombs what all the commotion was about in the streets above. Lovers looking to spend some time alone by the sea, oblivious to the world around them.

Their stab wounds were savage and lethal as the counterfeit lovers went right for the throats of the unsuspecting police officers just as they had been trained to do in service to their country. A whistle brought Akram and Hassan down from the trail above; Akram carrying the fan in a large backpack while Hassan carried the two small canisters that would forever change the world. Ziad was set up with his AK on the hillside with a clear view of the entrance to the tunnels.

Now, deep in the tunnel system, it was time. Condensation had built up inside the protective clothing and soaked Akram in a layer of sweat. He knew the others were in a similar condition, the thin plastic suits designed as airtight barriers against the evil they were unleashing. They had secured the cylindrical tube leading off the fan directly to the side shaft with a combination of tape and rubber cement, forming an airtight seal leading to the street above. Originally constructed and connected to the catacombs as drainage to allow water trapped in the colonnade to find its way to the ocean, it was now a conduit of death.

Each member of the team worked for the military side of Syria’s famed Mukhabarat, and each also worked for General Yedid. He had chosen to activate them for this mission because they all had extensive training in unconventional chemical munition delivery systems. The thin plastic suits would serve their purpose. All they needed to do was carefully pour the mixed compound into the yellow tube, then attach the fan and turn it on. So simple. So effective. There was no stopping them now.

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