At the time the analyst was recruited for Nir’s team, he was serving time for shutting down the power grid in Eilat. He’d warned his superiors it was vulnerable, and when they disagreed, he proved his point. Eilat got an upgrade to its power grid, and Lahav got five years at Maasiyahu Prison. Two years into his stay, the Mossad gave him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

Nir had been nervous having him along on the operation. He was weird, and Nir was concerned about how he would blend in with his ops guys. Could this strange young intellectual savant control his idiosyncrasies and act like a normal person for just a while? So far, the answer had been yes, and the guys actually seemed to accept him.

“Okay, we’re out in three,” Nir called.

“Root,” answered the ops guys as they gathered their things. Lahav, however, mumbled “Crap!” and scrambled to inspect the contents of his backpack one more time.

They were going in fully prepared for a gun battle. Nir didn’t expect one. He prayed they wouldn’t have one. But he also knew if they were discovered, they would survive only if they shot the bad guys before the bad guys shot them.

Each Kidon man wore full tactical gear and helmet. Strapped to their legs were IWI Jericho 941 9mm pistols with extended mags. And across their chests, each man had an IWI Galil MAR with 35 rounds of 5.56×45mm NATO cartridges in the box magazine and six more mags in their chest rigs. Dima also carried a Mossberg 500 Compact Cruiser AOW 12-gauge in his gear. Finally, each man had five M26 fragmentation grenades easily accessible.

Lahav also wore the camouflage, and Nir was thankful that he was in good enough shape to be able to function in the body armor. Back in Tel Aviv, he’d tested the analyst on the weapons and was only comfortable letting him carry the Jericho handgun. But that was okay. The team was there to protect him, not the other way around.

Checking his watch, he saw it was time.

“Let’s go,” he said, moving to the stairs that would lead them up to ground level. At the top was an Israeli Mossad agent who had her eyes up to a viewer. Just above her was a flat panel.

This subterranean Mossad outpost here in Erbil sat right in the middle of an upscale neighborhood not far from the U.S. consulate. While the mansions were going up all around, local Mossad agents were digging down, claiming they were creating an elaborate septic system worthy of the eliminations of those who could afford to live in the nearby manors. In fact, a Kurdish oil tycoon whose home was situated just 40 meters from the false cable box paid for much of the underground Israeli base thinking he now had something much greater to flush into than the oversized leach field he ended up with.