Lion of God- The Complete Trilogy Read online

  10:03 A.M.

  Erez Crossing

  The Gaza Strip

  “You understand, of course. . .I have to have something I can give to the Israelis if this is to work,” Tenet said, glancing over at his counterpart as they walked between the concrete barriers and barbed wire. Soldiers in IDF uniforms standing watch only a few short meters away, loaded M-16s held at the ready. “Give and take—that’s what we need. It’s the whole reason I’m here.”

  “I grew up in the squalor of a refugee camp, Mr. Tenet, but this is something you would already know,” Mohammed Dahlan began in thickly-accented English, seeming to measure his words carefully, “I have been deported by the Israelis. I have been jailed by the Israelis—five times. What we need from them—all we need—is peace. If this cannot be obtained. . .they lose, we lose, and my people,” he said, waving his hand toward the Gaza Strip behind them, “will continue to suffer as they have for decades.”

  “And that’s what we’re hoping to avoid. I—” He stopped short as David Lay materialized at his side without warning.

  “There’s something that’s come up, director.” Tenet just stood there for a moment, waiting for him to go on, until the station chief glared pointedly at Dahlan.

  “Mr. Dahlan,” Tenet said, managing a tight smile, “would you give us a moment?”

  The Palestinian security commander glanced searchingly from Tenet to Lay and back again before nodding wordlessly and moving away a few steps toward his bodyguards.

  “Now what is this all about, David?” the CIA director demanded, his eyes flashing as he turned on his subordinate. “I was getting somewhere with him before you stepped in.”

  “I just received a call from Station Tel Aviv. . .one of our assets in the West Bank reached out—activating emergency protocols.”

  “And?”

  “A pair of Israelis—we think they’re IDF—were seized by Palestinian police entering Ramallah and taken to the police station.”

  Tenet murmured an obscenity beneath his breath, shaking his head. “What were they doing in Ramallah?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “So help me, if Prime Minister Barak decided to send one of Shin Bet’s undercover squads into the PA while all this is going on—Albright is going to lose it.” Tenet swore again, agitation distorting his face. “This could sabotage the entire peace process.”

  He paused. “This is an Israeli matter. . .why did our asset make contact?”

  “Because there’s a mob growing outside the police station,” Lay replied, casting a careful glance in Dahlan’s direction to ensure they were still speaking privately. “They’re calling for blood.”

  10:08 A.M.

  HaKirya

  Tel Aviv

  Vadim Novesche, Shaul Mofaz thought, staring down at the man’s picture. Thirty-three years of age, only married for a week. Yossi Avrahami. Thirty-eight, father of three.

  A toy salesman.

  The general’s body shuddered with emotion, his face hardening as he drew himself up, gaining the mastery of himself with an effort.

  He had been committing men to battle for over twenty years, ever-armed with the knowledge that they weren’t all going to be coming back. It came with the territory, the price of command.

  But this was different, somehow. These men weren’t Mossad, weren’t Shin Bet. They weren’t even battle-hardened veterans. They were reservists, family men.

  And now they were in trouble, as the last field report from Ramallah made all too clear. Their time was running out. “The Prime Minister?” he asked, glancing up from the jacket photos into his adjutant’s face. “Has he given his approval to the operation?”

  The younger man shook his head, his eyes dark and empty. The eyes of someone old before his time. “He’s still deliberating with his advisers. Sending a military force into the West Bank at this time is perceived as. . .problematic. The mob surrounding the police station is mostly young men, teenagers.”

  Kids. Nothing more than kids in the eyes of a naive Western media which had never grasped the reality of the Middle East.

  A place that made old men of them all.

  Mofaz placed both hands before him on his desk, swearing softly beneath his breath as he rose. “I’m going to go see the Prime Minister myself.”

  10:11 A.M.

  An undisclosed location

  The Negev

  “Upon reaching the room where your intelligence indicated the hostage was being held, you elected to stage a direct assault—without first mirroring the door.” The small man’s voice was soft like a woman’s—raised scarce above a whisper—but there was steel in his eyes as he lifted them to look over his glasses at Ariel. “Why did you make that decision?”

  There was no accusation in his voice, and Ariel knew better than to take it as one. The debriefing after every mission, every training exercise like this one, was the place where every sin was laid bare, every decision analyzed and re-analyzed through the prism of not just whether it had but how it could have gone wrong.

  In that respect, Mossad’s Kidon units differed little from his time in Sayeret Duvdevan, conducting undercover operations into the West Bank.

  He took a sip from the bottle of water at his side, considering his answer carefully.

  “Speed, surprise, violence of action,” he said, repeating the familiar litany of close-quarters battle. “Our briefing had indicated that the hostage could be executed at any moment. We needed to hit the room as quickly as possible. It was a calculated risk.”

  “A risk that could have gone very, very wrong indeed. The intel was not reliable. By choosing not to confirm its validity—”

  The small man looked up as the door opened, another Mossad officer standing there in the entrance, dressed in black jeans and a khaki polo shirt. “Whatever you need,” he began, clearing his throat, “it will have to wait. We’re still in the middle of the debrief.”

  The new arrival shook his head. “It’s not going to wait. Shoham’s requested his presence. Immediately.”

  10:15 A.M.

  The police station

  Ramallah, The West Bank

  “Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!”

  God is great. That much Arabic he knew very well. Collins felt a pair of young Palestinians push past him chanting the takbir, the mob growing ever more restless—crowding toward the door of the police station, their shouts drowning out the voices of the Palestinian policemen stationed there. Nur was long gone, joining the rest of his countrymen. There had to be at least a thousand of them now, maybe more, a sea of young men as far as he could see.

  All hell was going to break loose any moment, and he was going to be in the middle of it. He knew that, but found himself unable to pull away.

  This was a story. Feeling ever more exposed, he pushed his way through the crowd, catching sight of an older man standing near the edge, talking on a cellular phone as his eyes took in the scene. His bearing projecting the unmistakable air of command only solidified by his military uniform.

  It was an impulse, nothing more, but the Leica came up in Collins’ hand, snapping a couple of quick photos of the man, his face clearly framed in the lens. He wasn’t your average Palestinian soldier, he was someone of authority.

  Collins felt a hand on his shoulder and turned quickly, the camera dropping to hang from his neck as he raised his hands in a gesture of non-aggression. This mob was a powderkeg—all it would take is a single spark.

  Instead, it was the face of ABC News producer Nasser Atta that greeted him. “Simon—I thought I recognized you. It’s been a long time. . .Sudan, was it?

  Collins nodded, looking past Atta toward where he recognized the ABC News team setting up their cameras. “You’re getting this?”

  Atta nodded, his face grim. “You have to understand their anger—where they’re coming from after all the death of the last few weeks, but—”

  Whatever the ABC News producer might have said next, it was lost in that moment as a t
hroaty roar came from the front of the mob, a surge of bodies toward the police station.

  “My God,” Collins breathed, his voice nearly lost amongst the cacophony of angry shouts. “They’re in.”

  10:19 A.M.

  An undisclosed location

  The Negev

  This had nothing to do with the exercise. As realistic as Mossad tried to make their training, you could always tell the difference given enough experience, Ariel thought—reading the tension in the older officer’s body language as they moved down one of the long corridors of the facility.

  Reaching a room off to the side of the corridor, the officer stepped to one side and motioned him on in.

  Avi ben Shoham stood at the opposite end of the room looking at a gigantic map of Israel covering one wall—his back to Ariel as the Kidon officer entered, waiting for the older man to speak.

  “Ariel,” Shoham began, his voice seeming to fill the room with its resonance. “The Lion of God, eh?”

  “The codename was chosen for me,” he responded stiffly, his eyes meeting Shoham’s as the aluf turned from the map.

  The man was a legend, a hero of the Jewish state. He had been a young tank commander in 1973, one of the scant handful in the Golan when the Syrian Army came flooding into the heights.

  Five full divisions against a pair of armored brigades—desperately grim odds.

  But fight the Israeli tankers had, with Shoham personally destroying eighteen Syrian tanks until he was forced to bail out of his own burning Patton. His right forearm still bore the mark of the flames, a scar seared into his flesh as if with a brand.

  “You’re not a religious man?” Shoham asked, correctly judging the tone of his response.

  Ariel shook his head, stone-faced. “Not anymore.”

  “I want you to assemble your team. Get them ready for immediate deployment,” the older man said without further preamble. “The Prime Minister is monitoring a developing situation in the West Bank.”

  10:21 A.M.

  The police station

  Ramallah, The West Bank

  He had seen a man’s brains blown out right in front of him while reporting in the Zaire back in ’96—a government loyalist executed at point-blank range by one of Laurent-Désiré Kabila’s ADFL guerrillas.

  A life extinguished in the space of a single, brutal instant—just like that—no build-up, no warning. A pistol to the head, blood and brains spattered in the dust of the street.

  But even that. . .had been nothing like this, Collins thought as he pushed his way forward, moving through the crowd like a man caught in a dream.

  A nightmare.

  He could vaguely make out the forms of men in the open second-floor window of the police station, swinging viciously at something—or someone—beneath them. The sound drowned out by the jeering roar of the mob.

  Suddenly something toppled from the window, Collins’ breath catching in his throat as he saw the bloodied and mutilated body of a man in civilian clothes hit the shrubbery below, crushing branches and rolling into the street.

  My God.

  Even after all that he had seen, all the death and suffering he had born witness to over the decades—he felt physically ill, unable to turn, to look away as the mob descended upon the man like animals, on him almost before his body had touched the ground. Fists, sticks—the glint of a knife in the morning sun.

  A young Palestinian man standing in the open window above, blood covering his hands and forearms as he held them up for the crowd to see.

  He saw one man, at the forefront of the mob, wielding the remnants of a ripped-out window frame, raising it high above his head with a bestial shout of praise to God as he brought it smashing down into the bloody pulp of the Israeli’s face.

  Again. And again. And again. And again. “Allahu akbar!”

  Collins glanced back, his eyes searching as he tried to find Nasser Atta and his camera crew amidst the crush of rioters, but they were nowhere to be seen.

  Someone had to record this, the British journalist thought, only too conscious of his own danger as he reached for the Leica around his neck and brought it up to his eye—snapping a quick photo of the brutality unfolding before him as protesters began tearing at the still-living man, dragging him across the street.

  Another photo and another, the click of his shutter lost in the angry jubilation of the crowd. He felt rough hands grab at his shoulder, a man’s voice in his ear—screaming in broken English. “No picture! No pictures!”

  The impact of a blow in the ribs sent him reeling, another catching himself high on the cheek as he found himself turned about, face-to-face with a young Arab who couldn’t have been much out of his teens. His face distorted with the same hatred that he was seeing aimed at the Israeli soldier on the ground barely twenty feet away.

  His long, thin finger jabbing toward the camera in the journalist’s hand, the meaning all too clear. Hand it over.

  “All right, all right,” Collins gasped, struggling to catch his breath—his heart beating rapidly against his chest—his hand out, gesturing for the young man to calm down as he removed the camera from its lanyard around his neck.

  He made as if to extend the camera toward his attacker, then abruptly feinted, his free hand coming up—clenching into a fist just as it connected with the man’s throat in a devastating blow, sending him stumbling back.

  Run. And he ran—ran without looking back, without turning. Without even knowing where he was going. Or caring.

  Just get away.

  10:23 A.M.

  The Negev

  Ariel tore off a fresh strip of black electrical tape, winding it around the grip of the UZI submachine gun to fully depress the weapon’s ever-finicky grip safety. No sense in taking a chance on a malfunction in the field.

  He glanced up as Tzipporah entered the room, her IMI Galatz sniper rifle carried at the low ready, her long black hair tucked up under the American-style ball cap she wore. A more than competent assaulter, she came into her own on the long gun—a fact he knew so very well, from her past year as part of his team.

  “Ready?” he asked, adjusting the three-point sling that secured the UZI to his tactical vest and checking his spare mags.

  She merely nodded, her dark eyes betraying no emotion. They were flying blind here—it hadn’t even been established who was to execute the operation, a decision that would ultimately rest in the hands of the IDF’s General Staff.

  If he knew the alufim, they would most likely favor his old comrades at Duvdevan over Mossad, but that wasn’t going to stop Halevy from getting his people in place.

  Pre-positioning.

  He exchanged a last glance with the woman, pushing the door open and leading the way out into the courtyard of the training facility—toward the 125th Squadron Saifaneet light transport helicopter warming up on the helipad, its rotors whipping the dust and sand of the Negev into a blinding haze. Their roar making it almost impossible to hear without shouting.

  Sand and grit biting into his face, Ariel pulled open the door and threw himself inside, landing in the seat next to his second-in-command, a grim-faced older man he knew only by his codename “Ze’ev.” Himself a former member of Shayetet-13, the Israeli Navy’s special operations unit.

  He acknowledged Ariel with only a nod as the team’s sniper levered herself up into the seat behind them alongside the fourth and final man, Nadir, reaching back to close the helo’s door.

  Finishing the final check of his personal equipment, Ariel leaned forward, placing his hand on the pilot’s shoulder—his eyes conveying the unspoken message. Let’s get in the air.

  There was only one thing certain in all of this. The men in the West Bank were living on borrowed time.

  He felt the helicopter lurch into the air, the sickening feeling of the ground dropping away from them as the Saifaneet tilted forward—racing over the desert flats toward the dried out wadi to the north.

  They could be in the skies over Ramallah in just over
thirty minutes.

  Only a few moments had passed when the helicopter pulled up without warning, settling into a momentary hover before it banked left, describing an arc as it turned back toward the training facility.

  Ariel reached forward and grabbed one of the comms headsets, slipping it over his ears just in time to hear the repeated order, “. . .say again, RTB immediately.”

  Return to base.

  He exchanged a look with Ze’ev, the older man’s face expressionless—only his eyes betraying the emotions roiling within. They both knew all too well what this could mean.

  They came in hot, the Saifaneet flaring as it pulled into a hover above the courtyard.

  And that’s when Ariel saw him through the blinding whirlwind of sand—the figure of Avi ben Shoham standing there in front of the main building. Waiting for them.

  And he knew—without even getting out of the helicopter, without a word being spoken. The reality hitting him like a blow across the face.

  The soldiers they had been setting off to rescue. . .were dead.

  10:51 A.M.

  The highway

  Gaza City, Gaza Strip

  “I need to speak with Dahlan. Now!” Tenet’s eyes were flashing fire, his face distorted with anger as he advanced toward the lead SUV.

  “Easy there,” David Lay murmured, his eyes locking with those of Dahlan’s head of security, the man’s stance by the open driver’s side door betraying the tension in his body. Don’t do anything rash.

  It was a little late for that admonition, in reality. They shouldn’t have stopped here—practically in the middle of the highway—the convoy exposed to possible attack from any direction. But after the call from Station Tel Aviv, Tenet hadn’t been in a mood to listen.

  “Please, Mr. Tenet—we need you to return to your vehicle immediately, sir,” the young IDF segen serving as the officer in charge of their escort warned, advancing with his Galil assault rifle held at patrol ready, its buttstock tucked against his shoulder, his hand closed around the weapon’s pistol grip.