By then it was close to the hour that the Hezbollah chief left his house every day and got into his car. An unmanned aircraft flew overhead and provided grainy footage of what was happening on the ground, and at 6:20 the unit gathered around the display monitor and waited. There on the screen was the house they had left four hours before, dark and still. First it was 6:28, then 6:30, then 6:35, and nothing; 6:45, 7:00, 7:15, and still only that haunting stillness. “What the fuck?” someone said more than once, possibly many times. Intelligence had established that each day without fail, at 6:30 a.m. sharp, the Hezbollah chief stepped out of his house and got into his car. So what was going on? Seven thirty arrived, and still nothing. Rafi radioed to the general of the Northern Command. “Boxer to Kodkod North, over. What’s happening? Kodkod North to Boxer”—because Boxer was always the radio name of Rafi’s position, the officer of the antiterror unit—“Kodkod North to Boxer, stand by, over.” Then, just after 8:00, the door of the house opened, and the whole family stepped out.

Rafi, who was holding the monitor, felt himself grow cold. In the grainy picture, the father, the mother, and three children approached the car, opened the doors, and disappeared inside. The bomb was rigged such that turning the key in the ignition and engaging the engine activated it, but detonation occurred only at the first millimeter of movement on the gas pedal. At the first millimeter of movement, the car and all of its passengers would be blown to pieces. The doors of the car closed, and now there passed a moment of stillness before the key was turned and the engine came alive. “We have ignition,” came the confirmation over the radio.

“The seconds that followed, as I remember them now, were the longest of my life,” Rafi said. “I sat watching and waiting, in a state of complete and total horror. One second, two seconds, five. And then after ten seconds, the driver’s door opened, and the Hezbollah chief got out, bent over to look under the car, and pulled out a chicken.”

It must have been a family chicken, beloved enough that someone in the car would have asked about its whereabouts before they pulled away. Where is—whatever her name was—look, she’s not there with the others! Or, I just saw so-and-so run under the car, she hates it when we leave, she always does this. Or whatever one of the kids piled into the back seat said the moment before their father applied the first touch of pressure to the gas, which would have exploded them all in an instant.