The industrial edge of Eilat was a skeleton of its former self, warehouses cracked open like broken shells, half-built storage hangars swallowed by desert wind.
The desalination plant loomed at the far end of the port road, past a burned-out checkpoint and a rusted sign that read “AUTHORIZED ENTRY ONLY” in Hebrew, Arabic, and English.
No one authorized came out here anymore.
Alon parked the car two blocks down and killed the lights. He and Nora slipped out without a word, their movements slow and deliberate, tuned to the rhythm of trained silence.
The heat was still thick, even after midnight. It clung to skin, crept into breath, wrapped around the body like a warning.
Nora set up her thermal scope from a crouch behind a low concrete barrier. The lens hummed softly as it scanned the building. Alon knelt beside her, eyes fixed on the structure’s main loading bay.
“Anything?” he asked.
She adjusted the dial, zoomed in. “Two heat signatures. One near the east wall, pacing. The other stationary in the central corridor. Could be standing guard. Could be bait.”
Alon pulled the slide on his Glock 19, checked the chamber, and tucked it back under his waistband.
“We go in clean,” he said. “No alarms, no blood unless we can’t avoid it.”
Nora nodded. “You take left. I take high ground.”
They moved, fluid and separate, like pieces of the same machine.
Alon climbed a chain-link fence and dropped into the overgrown lot behind the plant. The air smelled of salt, concrete, and something else… ozone, maybe. A sign of power, of interference.
He slipped through a broken maintenance door and entered the shadows.
Inside, the plant was quiet. The sound of dripping water echoed through the pipe-choked halls. Machinery stood like skeletons, inert and watching.
He moved slowly, past a toppled control panel, following the heat map etched into memory from Nora’s feed. Every step measured. Every breath accounted for.
Then, movement.
A figure, ahead and to the right. Military stance. Eyes scanning. Rifle held low but ready.
Alon froze behind a column.
The figure turned slightly. Female. Slim. Short black jacket. Tactical gear, but no insignia.
She looked… calm. Too calm.
And then she smiled, directly at him.
She knew he was there.
Before he could react, she threw something, a flash unit—and the corridor lit up with a blinding pulse.
Alon dove left, rolling behind a valve chamber. Shots rang out, tight, silenced, professional.
Return fire from the far side.
Nora.
She was already inside.
Alon emerged low and fired twice, controlled, center mass, but the woman was gone. Just a streak of motion through the corridor, boots slamming metal, out into the dark.
He ran.
Nora met him at the junction. A small cut bled down her temple, but her grip was steady on the rifle.
“She had backup,” Nora said. “Two shooters. Both flanked my entry. I got one.”
Alon pulled her behind a support beam as another round of suppressed fire cracked past them.
“We’re not here to win a fight,” he said. “We’re here to find out what’s being moved.”
He tossed a flashbang down the corridor. It exploded with a low thump and a hiss of powdered smoke.
Silence.
Then footsteps, fading. Retreating.
When they moved again, the plant was empty.
A single body lay slumped near the turbine shaft. Local mercenary, no ID, no gear worth tracing.
But something else caught Alon’s eye.
Taped to the underside of a nearby control panel was a flash drive. Black casing, unmarked.
He pocketed it without a word.
They made it to the safehouse, an empty holiday rental ten minutes outside city limits, just before dawn.
Alon peeled off his shirt, revealing a deep graze across his side, raw and angry.
“Sit,” Nora said. She tore open a field med kit and began cleaning the wound with the kind of detached professionalism only field operatives ever mastered.
Alon winced as the alcohol hit.
“You froze,” she said flatly.
“I recognized her,” he replied.
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
Nora looked at him. Really looked. “And?”
“And she wasn’t trying to kill us.”
“She shot at us.”
“She missed.”
Nora said nothing.
He handed her the flash drive.
“Run it.”
She slid it into a hardened laptop, the screen glowing pale blue. Lines of code blinked, unraveled, formed patterns.
Her eyes widened.
“It’s a partial bootloader,” she said. “For Barak Echo. But it’s been… rewritten. Modified to trigger remotely. This wasn’t built for defense. It’s a weapon now.”
Alon stood slowly, breathing shallow.
“And the activation point?”
Nora stared at the blinking coordinates.
“Tel Aviv,” she said.
They both sat in the silence that followed.
Alon’s mind returned to something Majid had said.
When ghosts return, they don’t come for answers.
They come to finish what they started.