building, I stayed with Mookie. His job, along with Yoni in his expanded team

building, I stayed with Mookie. His job, along with Yoni in his expanded team, was to deal with Abu Youssef, the Black September operations officer. The concierge must have been on a coffee break. The lobby was empty. The door was unlocked, so they sprinted toward the interior staircase and made their way up. Adwan, the Fatah military man, and Kamal Nasser lived next door. Adwan, Amitai’s target, was on the second floor. Nasser was on the third. As the teams raced into the other building, Amiram and I posted ourselves near one of the terrace pillars, occasionally exchanging a few words of what we hoped would pass as girl talk. The SEAL officer and Dr Katz were near the top end of the street as lookouts. We seemed seconds away from what had all the makings of the operation we’d rehearsed back in Tel Aviv. The one major problem I’d expected — security guards posted outside — hadn’t materialized. We’d been told by the Mossad to look out for a grey Mercedes, but it wasn’t there. The next stage was for each team leader to press the transmit button three times on his radio. When I’d heard from all of them, I would send a signal back. Then, at the count of five, each of them was supposed to start the attack. Mookie’s signal came first. Yet before either of the other two teams checked in, the trouble began. Suddenly, the door of a red Renault flew open almost directly across the street from where Amiram and I were standing. A tall, sturdy, dark- haired man climbed out. He looked across at us. He opened his leather jacket. He pulled out a pistol and started to approach us. “in breirah,” I whispered to Amiram. “No choice.” To this day, I remember the shock on the man’s face as he watched us — a pair of 30something women — open our jackets and pull out Uzis. Fortunately for him, we’d had to make allowances for concealment in choosing our weapons. We’d left the Uzis’ stabilizing shoulder braces behind. As our first shots hit, he had half-turned to run. Though wounded, he somehow got back in the car. We kept shooting but he managed to drag himself out of the far door and roll behind a waist-high wall on the other side of the street. One of our shots obviously hit the electrical innards of the Renault, because the car horn began blaring full-blast, as if someone had set off a modern-day car alarm. So much for the element of surprise. I saw three sets of lights suddenly come on in the otherwise dark apartment buildings. They were in the flats that Mossad had identified. At least that part of the plan was intact. These were the Palestinians we were after, and it seemed they were at home. Seconds later, I heard an explosion. It was from Abu 141 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011612