Lion of God- The Complete Trilogy Page 3

  Tenet shook his head, staring angrily at the Palestinian bodyguard in front of him. “Do I really have to repeat myself? I want to speak—”

  “Do we have a problem here?” Mohammed Dahlan asked calmly, buttoning his suit jacket as he emerged from the interior of the Mercedes.

  “We do,” the CIA director retorted, mastering himself with an effort. He took a step forward as Dahlan motioned his bodyguards to stand down, lowering his voice. “You know how delicate the peace process has been these last few weeks—but you know how close we are. This will set us back decades.”

  The Palestinian security chief shook his head. “I have no idea what you are talking about, Mr. Tenet. I—”

  “I am talking,” Tenet interrupted, jabbing a thick finger in Dahlan’s direction, “about the bodies of murdered Israelis being paraded through the streets of Ramallah. As we speak.”

  11:16 A.M.

  The training facility

  “. . .the bodies to al-Manarah Square, where an impromptu victory celebration appears to be taking place. One of the bodies appears to have been dragged behind a car through the streets of Ramallah.”

  There was no way they could have gotten to them in time, Avi ben Shoham told himself, staring grimly at the TV screen as the news host continued, his voice trembling as he narrated the carnage. No way anyone could have gotten to them.

  Staging a successful hostage rescue was something that took time, an abundance of it. And that was the one thing they hadn’t had.

  The one thing they never seemed to have. And good men died. As they ever had, a shadow passing across Shoham’s face as he remembered his brothers in the Golan.

  He’d managed to get clear of the tank before its fuel tanks cooked off. His loader hadn’t been so lucky. The memory burned forever in his memory—realizing that the man was no longer with them—turning back toward the Patton just as it exploded, the fireball washing over him. The screams.

  Weeks later, when they had pinned the Medal of Valor upon his chest. . .he had never felt less a hero in his life. It still sat in his desk drawer at his home in Galilee, its yellow ribbon a reminder of the Holocaust, the sword and olive branch forged into the plain metal Star of David, bearing stark witness. Never again.

  “What are we hearing from Jerusalem, Ayelet?” He asked, turning to the uniformed woman standing a few feet away.

  “Rumblings,” she responded, “nothing more certain. But retaliation is going to be swift—Barak has no other choice. The talk is of a strike at selected security targets in Ramallah and Gaza.”

  A show of force. That’s what this would be, he thought, glancing back toward the members of the Kidon team now filing into the communications center, their weapons stowed and tactical vests removed.

  Retaliation. Delivering a message.

  Finding the men actually responsible for the atrocity—that was going to take much longer.

  And when they did. . .

  Someone called out his name and Avi turned to see a young Mossad officer coming across the room toward him. “You have a call on the secure line,” he announced, lowering his voice as he moved closer, his hand grasping Shoham’s shoulder for a moment before he passed on. “It’s Efraim.”

  11:41 A.M.

  HaKirya

  Tel Aviv

  “Enough,” Shaul Mofaz spat, throwing the folder back on the table, the images still visible. Images of a police station turned into a charnel house, members of Arafat’s Tanzim militia posing for pictures, the fresh blood visible on the concrete walls. Smeared in bloody handprints. “Level the place.”

  “Shaul, I—” one of his fellow alufim began, but Mofaz cut him off angrily.

  “As long as that building stands, pictures like this one are going to spread all over the Arab world—celebrating the murder of Jews. We level it, leave it in rubble, remove the monument to their ‘victory.’ And we launch a strike on the Mukataa.”

  “Arafat’s headquarters?” The man shook his head. “If you attack him directly, this becomes war.”

  Mofaz reached forward, tapping one of the photos with a weathered forefinger. “This has already become war.”

  “The Prime Minister has already expressed his concern that warning be given to the Palestinian Authority in advance of the strikes—give them time to evacuate civilians from the area.” The general exchanged an uncomfortable glance with one of his fellows. “I don’t believe Barak will approve the kind of measures you’re suggesting.”

  And that was the way it always was. Missiles into empty buildings. A token retaliation, theater for the benefit of onlookers.

  Mofaz glared at both men for a long moment before turning away. “All right, then. But the police station stays on the strike list. Along with the marina in Gaza. And the broadcast center of the Voice of Palestine? Make sure they hear us.”

  12:35 P.M.

  Gaza City

  “The President will be furious,” George Tenet mused aloud, staring out the tinted windows of the armored Agency Suburban as their convoy moved deeper into Gaza City, twisting through the narrow streets as they made their way toward the Mediterranean and Arafat’s beachfront headquarters. “The political capital we’ve invested in bringing both sides to the table—in ensuring that the Palestinians had both the training and equipment for self-governance. And now this happens in the middle of an official visit. It’s nothing less than a slap in the face.”

  And that was the Middle East, Lay thought, maintaining a studiously neutral expression. If he had learned one thing in his years in the region, it was that the Arab street was a force to itself, unpredictable and volatile as the desert. If you thought you could bend it to your will, you were wrong.

  And likely to get kicked in the teeth as soon as you tried.

  That was what was happening to the efforts of Tenet and the State Department now—months of planning and negotiations kicked into dust by the actions of a mob. Spontaneous and uncontrollable. But that was a problem for the higher-ups. So far above his paygrade that even offering advice would be ill-considered.

  His only concern would be dealing with the chaos the peace-makers left in their wake when they returned stateside.

  The cellular phone in the inside jacket pocket of his suit began to ring as they turned into the Arafat compound, the jangle drawing an annoyed look from Tenet. “Make sure you have that thing turned off.”

  “It’s Langley,” Lay announced, heedless of Tenet’s words as he read the identifier code off the phone’s tiny screen. This was. . .irregular, to say the least. “McLaughlin.”

  He punched the button to Accept Call, raising the phone to his ear as the Suburban rolled to a stop, armed guards in the green uniforms of the Palestinian Security Force moving forward to secure the convoy. Dahlan’s people.

  “Deputy Director,” he began, “what can I do for you?”

  He listened for what had to be only a few minutes before the call ended, but it seemed like an eternity—the color draining from his face the longer the acting deputy director spoke.

  “What’s going on, David?” he heard Tenet’s voice ask as he returned the phone to his jacket, his hands moving sluggishly—as if in a dream.

  “An hour ago,” Lay said, a look of disbelief in his eyes as he glanced over at the DCI, “the USS Cole was bombed at harbor in Aden. More than twenty American sailors are believed dead.”

  1:17 P.M.

  The training facility

  The Negev

  No one longs for peace more than the soldier. For no one knows the horrors of the alternative more keenly.

  Ariel shook his head as the host on the television screen continued her newscast in Hebrew, her words playing over the looping images from Ramallah—each of them now as familiar as if he had been standing there.

  His face twitching in uncontrollable anger as the video once more showed the broken body of the reservist being hurled from the second-floor window of the police station to land at the feet of the mob below.

 
; The mutilated, barely recognizable bodies of Vadim Novesche and Yossi Avrahami had been returned to the custody of the IDF at the border of the West Bank an hour earlier. Once-bright hopes for peace shattered in the space of a morning.

  For peace. . .was not to be the lot of the Jew.

  He had been in the first year of his enlistment when a Palestinian traffic policeman from Khan Yunis named Ayman Radi had walked into a bus stop in Jerusalem, detonating his backpack full of explosives only meters from a bus filled with young Israeli soldiers returning to their bases from weekend leave.

  Holy war is our path, a note left behind by Radi for his family had read. My death will be martyrdom. I will knock on the gates of Paradise with the skulls of the sons of Zion.

  A harbinger of all that was to come.

  He heard the door of the small meeting room open and close behind him, half-turned to see Tzipporah standing there, his own helplessness mirrored in her dark eyes. “Today they dragged the body of our brother through the streets,” she began, looking past him to the television screen—her voice nearly choking with fury, “like that of a dog. How long until the Prime Minister allows us to respond?”

  There was nothing within himself that he could offer in answer to her anger, no words of calm. He moved past on her on his way out the door, his voice trembling with barely suppressed rage. “Not soon enough.”

  2:39 P.M.

  Arafat’s Headquarters

  Gaza City, Gaza Strip

  “. . .the casualty figures are still unclear, but the frigate HMS Marlborough has been diverted in answer to the Cole’s distress call and is under full steam for Aden, with a full complement of medical and damage control personnel aboard.”

  Thank God for the Brits, David Lay thought, gazing out the window of the second-floor office toward the Mediterranean. “How long until we have US personnel on-scene?”

  “Not long,” Daniel Vukovic responded. Lay’s second-in-command in Tel Aviv, he was now in charge of monitoring the situation. “There’s a Marine FAST team in-bound from Qatar. They’ll establish a secure perimeter as soon as they land.”

  “How bad are we talking?”

  “It’s bad, David—the photos look like someone placed a shaped charge against the hull and ripped it open, several hundred pounds of high explosive, minimum. The reports are all over the place—but near as we can assess at this time, a small boat was used as the delivery vehicle.”

  “Like the one back in January,” Lay observed, taking a deep breath. There had been an attempt on the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS The Sullivans in port at Aden on the third day of the new year—part of the foiled Millenium attack plot—but the boat used by the terrorists had been overloaded with explosives and sank before it could even reach the ship.

  “Right. This thing has al-Qaeda’s fingerprints all over it.”

  You always knew you couldn’t get lucky forever. And they only needed to get it right once.

  Lay looked up to see the young IDF officer in charge of their escort standing in the doorway of the office and responded, “I have to go here, Dan. Keep me apprised.”

  “Mr. Lay,” the officer began as he saw Lay return the phone to the pocket of his jacket, “my apologies, but I have to speak with your director.”

  Lay grimaced, gesturing back toward the closed door of the conference rooms behind him. “I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible. He’s meeting with President Arafat and they are not to be disturbed. Can I deliver a message to him?”

  The young lieutenant shook his head. “Both of you need to come with my men and me. At once.”

  There was an urgency there in the soldier’s words. Something he knew—wasn’t willing to say. At least not to him.

  “There’s not—” Lay began, his words cut off as the door opened, Tenet emerging from the conference room behind him. An expression of weary anger written on the DCI’s face.

  It was the look of a man who was spending too much of his time beating his head against the wall. “Wrapping up?” Lay asked as his boss came up.

  Tenet snorted. “We’ve barely even had time to begin—he’s tied up on the phone—his third call from Mubarak. And Terje Larsen’s due any minute.”

  The UN envoy. His head came up in that moment, noticing the Israeli officer. “What is he doing up here?”

  “He asked to speak with you—said it was important that we leave. Right away.”

  Tenet’s gaze shifted from Lay’s face to that of the lieutenant. “Why? We’re not done here.”

  “Sir,” the young man began, his eyes meeting the CIA director’s in an unflinching gaze. “I cannot order you to leave. But if you choose to stay, my men and I will no longer be able to protect you.”

  And there it was. “Are you saying—”

  The door behind them opened once more and Lay turned to see the figure of Yasser Arafat standing there in the entry, the characteristic black-and-white checkered keffiyeh covering his head—his small, dark eyes flashing as they darted from one man to the next.

  “Out,” he ordered, gesturing peremptorily to Tenet with an angry wave of his hand. “Get out, all of you—leave my office at once. We are about to be bombed by the Israelis.”

  2:51 P.M.

  A restaurant

  Ramallah, The West Bank

  Fear. Raw and visceral, eating away at him like a corrosive acid.

  Simon Collins slammed the door of the restroom shut behind him, closing off the nearly deserted restaurant without. His fingers trembling uncontrollably as he moved to the sink, turning the faucet on full blast and thrusting both hands under its stream—rubbing them together as if he could cleanse himself of the memory.

  The horror of what he had seen—of having come so close to death himself. The raw, barbaric hatred he had seen in the eyes of the young men in that crowd. In the words of a fifteen-year-old he had glimpsed later, bathing his hands in the blood of a slain soldier and chanting loudly, “This will teach the Jews to come to our land!” as the crowd cheered around him.

  It hadn’t ended when he had left the police station—making his way through the streets later, trying to sort out his next move, he had seen one of the bodies being dragged behind a car, the man’s entrails spilling out into the dust.

  Despite everything he had known—everything he had witnessed over the decades—he’d found himself nearly doubled over at the sight, convulsed in dry heaves.

  He had worked in the territories for years, walked these streets many times. Ramallah wasn’t a desolate backwater, but a bright, thriving city. A remarkably liberal place for the Middle East—a place where you could find Western restaurants like this one, clubs filled with young women in short cocktail dresses and high heels, rocking out to the latest Top 40 from the United States.

  The last place on earth he would have expected to explode into such a display of medieval savagery, butchery more reminiscent of Rwanda, of the Zaire—than the city he had known and loved. But he had seen it with his own eyes. Captured it with his own lens.

  He stood there for a long moment, his hands dripping with water as he gazed into the mirror above the sink—sunken, haunted eyes staring back at him.

  There were some things a man’s eyes were never meant to see. Some things which could never be unseen.

  It was as Collins was drying his hands that he heard a low, throbbing sound—seeming to vibrate through the very walls, growing louder by the moment.

  Building in intensity as he left the restroom, heading for the door leading out to the street. It was a sound he remembered well from Kosovo. A sound that had ever been accompanied by terror.

  Helicopters.

  2:55 P.M.

  Gaza City, The Gaza Strip

  You could feel the difference in the air as the three-vehicle convoy took a turn out the Arafat compound, the Agency Suburban in the middle as they headed back out toward Highway 4. A stillness, like the quiet before a summer thunderstorm.

  Tension. About to be sha
ttered.

  “Is that—?” Lay’s eyes followed the direction of Tenet’s finger as he pointed through the tinted windows of the speeding SUV toward the Mediterranean, out past the marina where the small boats making up the Palestinian Security Force’s “navy” rode at anchor.

  And there it was, an Israeli warship outlined against the horizon, the afternoon sun reflected off the waves. “It is,” Lay responded quietly, his eyes narrowing. “A Sa’ar 5-class corvette, from the looks of it.”

  The director shook his head, murmuring a curse as he glared out toward the vessel. “Everything we’ve done—everything we were trying to do to lay the groundwork for Sharm el-Sheikh next week. All of it gone. . .this is going to be war now, David. This—”

  Whatever Tenet might have been about to say was lost as one of the NSF boats in the marina suddenly exploded, both men flinching at the noise—a gout of flame shooting toward the sky.

  War. Lay glanced back in time to see a pair of AH-64 “Peten” gunships appear over the buildings behind them, pulling into a hover—weapons trained on the marina, smoke trails emerging in the sky as yet more rockets flashed from beneath the helicopters’ stubby pylons.

  He reached forward and gripped their driver firmly on the shoulder, squeezing hard as the man turned toward him. “Let’s get out of here pronto, shall we?”

  3:01 P.M.

  Ramallah, The West Bank

  Collins emerged from the entry of the restaurant into the streets of the city, hearing panicked shouts amidst the intensifying roar of helicopter rotors. A discarded bike lying by the side of the street. An abandoned bag of vegetables from a nearby market, strewn in the dust.

  A young Palestinian nearly colliding with him as he ran for cover. Chaos.

  Pandemonium everywhere.

  A loud boom resounded over the city, a sound like that of a giant clapping his hands together, and Collins glanced up to see the front of the police station enveloped in smoke—a pair of American-manufactured Bell Cobra gunships coming into view over the rooftops of Ramallah, just hanging there for a moment.