“They’ve got to blow it,” Nir told him. “They carried charges with them in case there was a problem.”

“I was really hoping not to use those. Making that much noise is a huge risk.”

Tzadik was right, but it was a risk they had to take.

“Ha’mefaked,” the second operative said, “we could lose five or six vaults in the time it will take to torch open that door.”

Tzadik repeated his earlier curse. “Yeah, I know. Okay, apply the charges and send someone out to the front gate to check the road. He needs to give you an all clear before you blow the door.”

In a rush of activity, a couple of packs were opened and several lines of malleable explosive were attached to the door. Meanwhile, Nir watched one of the team sprint across the courtyard of the warehouse toward the gate.

When everything was ready and the man at the fence gave the all clear, the rest of the team tucked themselves away from the blast radius. Blinding light filled the screen, making Nir wish he’d thought to look away. Once he could see clearly again, the picture, now at a severe angle, showed an open path into the vault room.

Nir shifted his gaze to another camera view, and a light showing a long, tight room switched on. Against either wall was vault after vault—large, gray, Iranian-made, and each with a wide, black-numbered dial set into it.

It would take forever to try to crack the combinations, and they’d never had an ample supply of time. So they had decided to do away with subtle.

The team broke into seven pairs while, on Tzadik’s order, the man at the fence remained in his position. The same inside source who’d told them about the non-alarmed door had diagrammed which vaults contained the most valuable information.

Each pair moved to their designated target, fired up a torch, and flipped down the front of the welding helmets perched on their heads. Although the torches burned at 2,000 degrees Celsius, the doors were thick enough that they took a long time to cut through. The flares made the video feed difficult to watch, and Nir soon found his vision filled with blue dots of various sizes and intensity.

Walking away to give his eyes a break, he moved into the next room and gave his Kidon team a quick update. Then closing the door as he left, he decided to pour himself a cup of coffee. But the pot was empty, and the plate once filled with pastries now held only crumbs. Both thirsty and hungry, he returned to watch the monitors.

“We have headlights,” whispered a voice through the coms.

Nir quickly turned toward the screens.

“Everybody, stop your work,” Tzadik demanded.