The Third Target: A J. B. Collins Novel

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  “And?”

  “He sent the choppers,” he replied, turning to his wife and son. “The first one is for you both, to get you to safety.”

  The queen and crown prince appeared too numb to speak.

  Then the king turned to Yael and me. “The other is to take Salim and Daniel to Jerusalem,” he told us. “You two will go with them. IDF medical crews are on standby. Daniel will go to Hadassah. Salim will be transferred to a hospital in Ramallah.”

  We watched as the two Black Hawks landed and teams of heavily armed soldiers in full protective suits poured out of both. The king held his wife briefly. Then he hugged his eldest son and walked them both to the first chopper. I watched as the door was shut and the Black Hawk lifted off while the king waved good-bye to his family.

  Then I realized there wasn’t a chopper for the monarch. I turned to him and asked, “But, sir, what about you?”

  “I’m not leaving,” the king said. “My brother is on his way. He’s bringing a team of specialists.”

  “You can’t stay here, Your Majesty,” I said. “We need to get you someplace secure.”

  “No,” he said. “I need to figure out exactly what happened here and why my men failed to stop it.”

  “And then?”

  “Then we’re going to unleash the wrath of Jordan on ISIS,” he told me.

  “But, sir, James is right—it’s not safe here,” Yael protested. “Please, we need to get you out of here.”

  “No,” the king said. “This is my home. And these are my people. We’re not going to surrender. We’re going to fight back. These demons are not going to win. I promise you that.”

  The king gave us no opportunity for rebuttal. He immediately opened the back of the SUV and with the help of his troops began carrying President Mansour to the second chopper. Yael and I worked with several other soldiers to get Prime Minister Lavi into the remaining Black Hawk as well.

  Just then the king’s satphone rang again. As he answered it, Yael climbed into the Black Hawk and sat next to her prime minister, checking his vital signs. I was about to get in myself when I saw a strange expression on the king’s face. It started off as bewilderment. It turned into horror.

  “What is it, Your Majesty?” I asked.

  “That was the Pentagon,” he said. “Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He wants to know where President Taylor is,” he replied.

  “He’s not on Air Force One?”

  “No.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Apparently, when the ISIS attack on the airport began, the president called the pilot of Air Force One and ordered him to get off the ground and into safe airspace until my forces retook the airport and it was safe to come back and get him.”

  I felt a pain growing in my stomach. “So where was he going to go in the meantime?”

  “He didn’t say,” the king replied. “He just said he and the agents with him would take shelter and hunker down until the coast was clear. Then he’d order Air Force One to come back for them all.”

  “And?”

  “They haven’t heard from him since. The chairman says they’ve been calling every number they have for the president and for every member of his detail. They can’t get through to any of them.”

  “So where is the president?”

  “I have no idea.”

  I just stared at the king. I had no clue what to say.

  Then Yael told me to get into the chopper. They needed to get off the ground and get Lavi and Mansour to safety right away. She was right, of course. But I couldn’t go.

  “Go without me,” I told her.

  “Are you crazy?” she shot back.

  “No, I’m staying.”

  “Oh no, you’re not. Come on.”

  “There’s no time to argue, Yael. Get this bird off the ground.”

  Shocked and angry, she turned to the king. “Your Majesty, order him to get on this chopper.”

  But I shook my head. “I’m staying with you, sir. This is my president. I need to follow this story, wherever it goes and whatever it takes.”

  The king looked into my eyes but didn’t say a word. Then he waved to the pilot, signaling for him to take off. Before Yael could respond, a soldier slammed the side door and the Black Hawk lifted off the ground. It quickly gained altitude and headed west toward Jerusalem with two fighter jets flying escort on either side.

  As I stood there and watched them fade into the distance, I became physically ill. I felt hot bile rising in my throat. My body was soaked with sweat. I was suffocating in this suit. The president was missing. Mansour and Lavi were critically injured. Jordan was in flames. ISIS was on the move. And for the life of me, I could see no way out.

  Then I remembered Jamal Ramzy’s cell phone. I ran back to the Suburban and grabbed it off the dashboard.

  “What’s this?” the king asked as I put it in his hand.

  “A lead, Your Majesty,” I replied. “Something you can use. It’s Jamal Ramzy’s phone.”

  Then a thought struck me.

  I pulled out my own phone and dialed Allen’s number in Washington. It rang twice before someone answered.

  It was not Allen.

  “Hello, Allen MacDonald’s office. Can I help you?”

  “Where’s Allen?” I demanded.

  “He’s out for the moment. Who’s calling, please?”

  “It’s J. B. Collins calling from Amman with an urgent exclusive. I need Allen right away.”

  “Hold, please.”

  The wait that followed felt like an eternity, and the longer it took, the more irritated I became. I was right in the middle of the story of the decade—maybe the century—and Allen was nowhere to be found.

  Finally I heard my editor’s voice on the line. “J. B., is that you? What on earth is going on over there?”

  “What’s going on is all hell is breaking loose. Prime Minister Lavi and President Mansour are injured and en route to hospitals via helicopter. The king is furious but resolute and is swearing vengeance against ISIS. But never mind that. Take this down and get it out on the wire, on Twitter, everywhere. The lead is—”

  “What?” he asked frantically. “Say again. I can hardly hear you.”

  “I said, take this down. The president of the United States . . . is missing.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Joel C. Rosenberg is a New York Times bestselling author with more than three million copies sold among his nine novels (including The Last Jihad, Damascus Countdown, and The Auschwitz Escape), four nonfiction books (including Epicenter and Inside the Revolution), and a digital short (Israel at War). A front-page Sunday New York Times profile called him a “force in the capital.” He has also been profiled by the Washington Times and the Jerusalem Post and has been interviewed on ABC’s Nightline, CNN Headline News, FOX News Channel, The History Channel, MSNBC, The Rush Limbaugh Show, and The Sean Hannity Show. You can follow him at www.joelrosenberg.com or on Twitter @joelcrosenberg.

  A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  When I started writing The Third Target, I had never heard of ISIS.

  I knew I wanted to write a series about the threat Radical Islam poses not only to the U.S., Israel, and the West but also to our moderate Arab/Muslim allies in the Middle East and to Arab Christians in the region. I knew I wanted my main character to be a New York Times foreign correspondent who sees a grave new threat coming up over the horizon. I also knew I wanted to write about a serious and believable enemy. I just didn’t know which one it should be.

  To determine that, as I began to sketch my outline in early 2013 I posed two sets of “What if?” questions.

  First: What if Radical Islamic extremists were able to seize control of a cache of chemical weapons in Syria that were overlooked or not reported to the U.N. disarmament teams? Which terrorist group would be in a position to do that? What would they do with such weapons of mass destruction once they grabbed hold of th
em? Who might they use such weapons against? And how might the powers in the region and the international community respond?

  Second: What if Radical Islamic extremists chose to target the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan? What if they tried to seize control of her territory and people to establish a violent caliphate on the East Bank of the Jordan River? What would be the implications for the rest of the Middle East? What would be the implications for America, Israel, Europe, and the rest of the world? And again, which Radical group might be inclined to launch such an attack and be in a position to do so?

  I knew going into this project that few Americans spend much time—if any—thinking about the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. But over the years I have come to regard Jordan as one of the most important Arab allies the West has in the epicenter.

  Since ascending to the throne in 1999, Jordan’s King Abdullah II has proven himself to be a moderate, peaceful, wise Reformer who has been a true friend of the United States, Great Britain, and NATO. He has also maintained the peace treaty with Israel and a healthy relationship with the Jewish State, a relationship that began with secret contacts between his father, the late King Hussein, and Israeli leaders as far back as the 1960s. The present king has been actively engaged in combatting the terrorist activity of Radicals via his military, police, and intelligence networks. He has also sought to combat the ideology of Radicals by building a global network of Islamic scholars and clerics who reject the takfiris, violent extremists, and heretics, and who are proactively trying to define Islam as a peaceful, tolerant religion. At the same time, he has worked hard to make Jordan a safe haven for both Muslims and Arab Christians fleeing from war and persecution in the region. What’s more, it has become increasingly clear that a safe, secure, and moderate Jordan is the absolutely essential cornerstone of any serious future comprehensive peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians.

  As I went down the list of Radical states and terrorist organizations in the region that might be able to gain control of WMD in Syria and might choose to attack Jordan, I conferred with a range of Middle East experts, current and former intelligence officials, and retired U.S. and Israeli diplomats and military leaders. I asked who they thought was the next big threat likely to rise in the region. Without exception, they all told me, “ISIS.”

  At the time, neither I nor my publisher, Tyndale House, had heard of this group. Yet the more I learned, the more convinced I became that in the following five years or so, ISIS could actually become a global threat and a household name. Indeed, the ISIS threat has metastasized even faster. Now the whole world has heard of ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham), which is also known as ISIL (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), or simply the Islamic State.

  Indeed, as I write this author’s note, events are moving quickly. The president of the United States has declared ISIS a threat to our national security. Several Sunni Muslim Arab countries have joined a military and political coalition to “degrade and defeat” ISIS. All eyes are now on the epicenter, but it remains unclear just how successful the strategies employed against ISIS by the U.S. and our allies will be. I pray the events I have written about here never take place. I fear, however, that some world leaders may still underestimate the threat. If so, the consequences could be devastating. I hope that those who are able to act will do so before it is too late.

  This book is obviously a work of fiction, but I tried to set the fictional events in as realistic a framework as possible. To that end, I included references to a number of real-life people and events. Journalist A. B. Collins is a figment of my imagination, but the assassination of King Abdullah I that he witnessed in Jerusalem in 1951 is a real, historical event. Abu Khalif is a fictional terrorist, but you may see some similarities to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the real-life head of ISIS. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the real-life leader of al-Qaeda, has not been assassinated by the U.S. government—yet—but the tension between his terrorist organization and ISIS is real.

  Of course, the most obvious real-life character in the book is King Abdullah II, Jordan’s current monarch. I considered fictionalizing him, as I did the leaders of the U.S., Israel, and the Palestinian Authority. After all, it is always sensitive to write about a current leader in dangerous times, and I certainly do not want to offend His Majesty or the Royal Court. But in the end I chose to include King Abdullah II as a character in this novel primarily because I thought it would not be as effective to write about the emerging threat to Jordan without including him directly. People need to understand who this king is, and why he is uniquely important in Jordan’s past, present, and future. I hope readers will come to appreciate just how dangerous the region and the world would be if this king is toppled or violently overthrown. To help in this process, several of the things the king says in chapter 50 of this book, for example, are actually direct quotes (or close adaptations) from King Abdullah’s excellent 2011 book, Our Last Best Chance: The Pursuit of Peace in a Time of Peril. I highly recommend that nonfiction work if you are interested in a true insider’s perspective on current events in the epicenter.

  Other books I used for research include:

  Uneasy Lies the Head: The Autobiography of His Majesty King Hussein I of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

  Fighting Terrorism: How Democracies Can Defeat Domestic and International Terrorists by Benjamin Netanyahu

  Hussein and Abdullah: Inside the Jordanian Royal Family by Randa Habib

  Lion of Jordan: The Life of King Hussein in War and Peace by Avi Shlaim

  King’s Counsel: A Memoir of War, Espionage, and Diplomacy in the Middle East by Jack O’Connell

  Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices by Mosab Hassan Yousef

  Once an Arafat Man: The True Story of How a PLO Sniper Found a New Life by Tass Saada

  The Second Arab Awakening and the Battle for Pluralism by Marwan Muasher

  Kill Khalid: The Failed Mossad Assassination of Khalid Mishal and the Rise of Hamas by Paul McGeough

  From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas L. Friedman

  The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror by Natan Sharansky and Ron Dermer

  The Fight for Jerusalem: Radical Islam, the West, and the Future of the Holy City by Dore Gold

  As part of the research process I undertook for this novel, I had the incredible opportunity to travel to Jordan in the spring of 2014 to meet with several senior officials. While I have traveled to Jordan numerous times over the years, this was a particularly special trip. I have a deep love and respect for the people of Jordan. This has only grown over time, but never more so than on that trip.

  Special thanks to everyone who made time for me and shared with me their perspective as I did research for this book, both on that research trip and others. Not everyone I met and spoke with will agree with what I have written here. Nevertheless, I am enormously grateful for their insights, wisdom, and kindness, and I hope the book is richer for what I learned from them. Among those to whom I would like to express my deep gratitude are:

  His Excellency Abdullah Ensour, Jordan’s prime minister

  His Royal Highness Prince Ghazi Bin Muhammad, senior advisor to His Majesty King Abdullah II

  H.E. Nasser Judeh, Jordan’s foreign minister

  H.E. Hussein Hazza’ Al-Majali, Jordan’s interior minister

  H.E. Nidal Qatamin, Jordan’s minister of labor and tourism

  H.E. Alia Bouran, Jordan’s ambassador to the United States

  James Woolsey, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency

  Porter Goss, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency

  Danny Yatom, former director of the Mossad

  Hon. Dore Gold, former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations and president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs

  Yechiel Horev, former Israeli director of security of the Defense Establishment

  Robert Satloff, executive director of
the Washington Institute for Near East Policy

  I’m also deeply grateful for the aides, advisors, and colleagues of those mentioned above who were so generous with their time and insights. There are others who were enormously helpful that I am not able to mention publicly. To them, as well, I say thank you.

  Writing and publishing a novel is a team effort, and I am so grateful for a number of people who have helped me on this project as with so many other books.

  Many thanks to:

  My wonderful literary agent and good friend, Scott Miller, and his team at Trident Media Group

  My first-rate publishing team at Tyndale House Publishers, including Mark Taylor, Jeff Johnson, Ron Beers, Karen Watson, Jan Stob, Cheryl Kerwin, Todd Starowitz, Dean Renninger, Caleb Sjogren, Erin Smith, Danika King, and the entire sales force—and special thanks to my editor, Jeremy Taylor, who has really done an outstanding job on this one

  My blessed parents, Leonard and Mary Rosenberg

  My excellent November Communications team, June Meyers and Nancy Pierce

  My four wonderful sons—Caleb, Jacob, Jonah, and Noah

  My dear, sweet, and amazing wife, Lynn, who has blessed me every moment of every day since we first met in college at Syracuse University and has continued to bless me beyond belief through twenty-five fantastic years of marriage! What an adventure we have been on, Lynnie—may it never end!

  Most of all, I am grateful to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who loves so deeply the people of Israel, and Jordan, and Iraq, and Syria, and all the people of the epicenter, and for some unfathomable reason loves me and my family, too.