ACK MARS
CHAPTER ONE
December 9th
11:45 p.m. Lebanon Time (4:45 p.m. Eastern Standard Time)
Southern Lebanon
“Praise God,” the young man said. “Praise Him. Praise Him.”
He took a long drag from his cigarette, his hand shaking as he reached to his mouth. He hadn’t eaten in twelve hours. For the past four hours, the world around him had been entirely black. He was a truck driver, skilled at driving the biggest rigs, and he had driven this one across the border from Syria, then through the hilly Lebanese countryside, moving slow on winding roads, lights off the entire way.
It was a dangerous drive. The sky was filled with drones, with helicopters, with spy planes, and with bombers – Russian, American, and Israeli. Any one of these could become interested in this truck. Any one of these could decide to destroy the truck, and do so effortlessly. He drove the entire way expecting that at any moment, a missile would hit him without warning, rendering him a flaming skeleton sitting inside a burned out steel relic.
Now he had just pulled the truck up a long, narrow path and parked it under an awning. The awning, held up with wooden legs, was made to look from the sky like typical forest cover – in fact, the top of it was covered with dense brush. Its location was right where they had said it would be.
He turned the truck off, the engine farting and belching, black smoke pouring from a stack on the driver’s side as the thing shut itself down. He opened the door to the cab and climbed down. As soon as he did so, a squad of heavily armed men materialized like ghosts, emerging from the surrounding woods.
“As salaam alaikum,” the young truck driver said as they approached.
“Wa alaikum salaam,” the militia leader said. He was tall and burly, with a thick black beard and dark eyes. His face was hard – there was no compassion in it. He gestured at the truck. “Is this it?”
The young man took another shaky drag from his cigarette. No, he almost said. Some other truck is it. This one is nothing.
“Yes,” he said instead.
“You’re late,” the militia leader said.
The young man shrugged. “You should have driven in that case.”
The leader stared at the truck. It looked like a typical tractor-trailer – perhaps something carrying lumber, or furniture, or foodstuffs. But it wasn’t. The militiamen went right to work on it, two climbing the back ladder to the top, two kneeling near the bottom. Each man had a battery-powered screwdriver.
Moving quickly, they removed the screws one by one that held the tractor-trailer fiction together. Within moments, they pulled a large piece of aluminum sheet metal off the side. A moment later, they pulled a narrower sheet off the back. Then they were working on the other side, where the driver could no longer see them.
He turned and looked out at the nighttime hillsides and forest. Across the darkness, he could see the lights of a village twinkling several miles away. Beautiful country. He was very glad to be here. His job was done. He was not a militiaman. He was a truck driver. They had paid him to go across the border and pick up this truck.
He was also not from this region – he lived far to the north. He had no idea what arrangements these men had made for his return home, but he didn’t care. Rid of the infernal machine he had just driven, he would gladly walk from here.
Headlights were coming up the narrow rutted road, a whole series of them. Seconds later, a line of three black Mercedes SUVs appeared. The doors opened in unison and gunmen poured from each car. Each man carried a heavy rifle or machine gun. The rear door of the middle car opened last.
A heavyset man with a salt-and-pepper beard and glasses pulled himself from the SUV. He leaned on a knobby wooden stick and walked with a pronounced limp – the residue of a car bomb attempt on the man’s life two years ago.
The young driver recognized the man instantly – he was certainly the most famous man in Lebanon, and well known throughout the world. His name was Abba Qassem, and he was the absolute leader of Hezbollah. His authority – in matters of military operations, social programs, relations with foreign governments, crime and punishment, life and death – was unquestioned.
His presence made the driver nervous. It came on suddenly, like a stomach sickness. There were the nerves that came with meeting any celebrity, yes. But there was more to it than that. Qassem being here meant that this truck – whatever it might be – was important. Much more important than the driver had realized.
Qassem hobbled to the truck driver, surrounded by his bodyguards, and gave him an awkward hug.
“My brother,” he said. “You are the driver?”
“Yes.”
“Allah will reward you.”
“Thank you, Sayyid,” the driver said, calling him by a title of honor, suggesting that Qassem was a direct descendent of Mohammed himself. The driver was hardly a devout Muslim, but people like Qassem seemed to enjoy that sort of thing.
They turned together. The men had already finished removing the sheet metal covering from the truck. Now the real truck was revealed. The front of it was much as it had appeared to be – the cab of a trailer truck, painted a deep green color. The long rear of the truck was a flat, two-cylinder missile launch platform. Resting inside each of the launch cylinders was a large silver missile, shiny and metallic.
The two parts of the truck were separate and independent of each other, but were attached by a hydraulic system in the middle, and steel chains on either side. That explained why the truck had been difficult to control – the rear section was not secured to the front as tightly as the driver might have chosen.
“A transporter-erector-launcher, they call it,” Qassem said, explaining to the driver what he had just driven here. “And just one of many the Perfect One has seen fit to bring us.”
“Yes?” the driver said.
Qassem nodded. “Oh yes.”
“And the missiles?”
Qassem smiled. It was beatific and calm, the smile of a saint. “Very advanced weaponry. Long distance. As accurate as anything in this world. More powerful than we have ever known before. God willing, we will use these weapons to bring our enemies to their knees.”
“Israel?” the driver said. He nearly choked on the word. The urge came upon him to start walking north right this moment.
Qassem put a hand on the driver’s shoulder. “God is great, my brother. God is great. Very soon, everyone will know exactly how great.”
He stepped away, limping toward the missile launcher. The driver watched him go. He took one last drag on his cigarette, which he had smoked down to the nub. He was feeling