Damascus Countdown

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  “No,” the watch commander said.

  “Then where’s it headed?” Shimon demanded, moving quickly to the watch commander’s side to get a closer view of the images on the laptop.

  “The computer says the second target is Dimona, sir—and now three more Shahabs have been fired and are heading toward Dimona as well.”

  “No—you can’t be . . . Are you positive?”

  “Computer puts it at a 97 percent confidence level, sir.”

  Shimon felt physically ill. This couldn’t be happening. Dimona was a desert town, not even a city. Thirty-some kilometers south of Beersheva, it certainly wasn’t a major population center. Only about 33,000 Israelis lived there—nothing like the three and a half million who lived in and around metropolitan Tel Aviv. But Dimona had something Tel Aviv didn’t—Israel’s only nuclear power plant. The Iranians were gunning for Dimona, and if they hit it with ballistic missiles as powerful as the Shahab . . .

  Shimon grabbed the orange phone on the console in front of him, chose a secure line, and hit number one on the speed dial.

  “Get me the prime minister.”

  HAMADAN, IRAN

  Dr. Alireza Birjandi was startled by loud knocking on his front door.

  He wasn’t expecting anyone. How could he be? He heard neither the sounds of cars on the streets nor the laughter of children in yards. He had, however, been woken up repeatedly by the sounds of fighter jets roaring overhead. He had heard explosions, one after another, and had felt the ground shake. The Israelis were here. They had bombed the nuclear facilities in the mountains just a few miles away. They had returned multiple times to make certain the job was finished. And from what he had heard on TV, before the networks were knocked off the air, a full-scale war of rockets and missiles had erupted.

  Who, then, would be crazy enough to be pounding at his door?

  The knocking grew louder and more insistent, but Birjandi would not be rushed. Now eighty-three, the internationally renowned theologian and scholar of Shia Islamic eschatology was in remarkably good health—aside from being blind—but he was growing slower in his old age and increasingly felt it every year. Groaning at the aches and pains in his knees and ankles and back and hips, he laboriously forced himself up from his recliner and, feeling for his cane and grabbing its handle tightly, slowly padded to the door as the knocking intensified still more.

  “Dr. Birjandi? Dr. Birjandi? Are you okay?”

  Birjandi smiled to himself as he reached the door and began to undo all the locks. He knew that voice and loved it dearly.

  “Ali!” he said warmly as he finally got the door open. “What a joy! But what are you doing here, my son? Do you want to get yourself killed?”

  “It’s not just me,” Ali replied. “Ibrahim is with me too. We wanted to make sure you were safe.”

  “Yes, I am safe. The Lord’s grace is sufficient. He is my Shepherd; what more could I want? Now, come in, come in, boys. What a joy to have you here.”

  Ali and Ibrahim, two young men in their early twenties, entered Dr. Birjandi’s small bungalow, gave him a hug, and kissed their mentor on both cheeks. They sat down on low, cushioned chairs, their regular seats during their beloved study sessions. Each of them gave Birjandi a quick update on how they and their families were doing—all safe, so far as they knew—but they also shared their deep and growing fears for the future of their country.

  “We could not wait for Wednesday,” Ali explained, referring to their usual meeting time. “We have a million questions, and you are the only one we know who has the answers. I hope it is okay that we came. With the phone lines down, we had no way of giving you advance notice.”

  “Yes, yes, of course it is okay,” Dr. Birjandi assured them. “Are the others all right?”

  “They are safe, praise God,” Ali said. “But they couldn’t come on such short notice.”

  “Well, I am honored that you both have come,” Birjandi said. “We have been through much in the past two months, but it was all a prelude to this moment. I have told you from the beginning: our Lord, in his great and unfathomable sovereignty, called you to himself for such a time as this. He has chosen each of you to know him and to make him known. The question is, are you ready to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength and to love your neighbors enough to tell them the truth, no matter what it may cost you?”

  “We are,” they insisted. “But we are scared.”

  “I understand,” Birjandi assured them. “But you needn’t be. Come, let us start on our knees with prayer.”

  9

  JERUSALEM, ISRAEL

  “All that to say, Mr. Prime Minister, it is time to stop this madness. It is time to accept President Jackson’s call for a cease-fire and end all hostilities with Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas—now, within the hour.”

  This meeting wasn’t going as planned. Sitting in a thick leather chair in his personal library, Prime Minister Asher Naphtali had listened carefully to the long-winded case being made by Daniel T. Montgomery, the American ambassador to Israel. But he wasn’t buying a word of it, and he was losing patience. What’s more, he was still in tremendous pain from the burns he had suffered in the Iranian terrorist attack at the Waldorf in New York, and soon it would be time for his nurses to change his bandages.

  “Dan, you and I have known each other a long time,” Naphtali said. “Yet with all due respect, I’ve sat here for the last half hour and listened to you lecture me about how my country is endangering the security of the Middle East and threatening the economy of the world by embarking on—in your words—‘a reckless military adventure.’”

  “They are the president’s words, not my own, I assure you,” Montgomery replied.

  “Nevertheless, now the president is warning me to stop defending my country from the threat of a second Holocaust, and that is completely unacceptable,” Naphtali countered. “We are under attack from a country that has built and tested nuclear weapons and has continually threatened to wipe my people off the face of the planet. At any moment, we could discover that one of the warheads that successfully penetrates our defenses is nuclear, chemical, or biological. At the same time, we’re under attack from Gaza by rockets and mortars fired by Hamas and Islamic Jihad. We’re under attack from the north by rockets and missiles fired by Hezbollah. The only sliver of good news, if you can really call it that, is that the Syrians have not unleashed the totality of their missile force—yet. For the life of me, I cannot figure out why. Apparently Gamal Mustafa is more concerned at the moment with killing his own people than killing us Jews. Yet I have no doubt the Syrians will strike soon and very likely with devastating effect. So where is the president of the United States, ostensibly our most trusted ally? He is warning us—Israel, the only real democracy in the entire Middle East—to stop defending ourselves or risk, what? A U.N. Security Council resolution condemning us? Then what? Economic sanctions on my country? Sanctions enforced by the American Navy and Air Force? A cessation of U.S. military aid? What exactly is the president saying here?”

  “Believe me, Mr. Prime Minister, President Jackson does not want it to go that far.”

  “But you’re certainly suggesting that if I don’t accept the president’s conditions, Israel is facing scenarios along these lines, correct?”

  “I’m not here to deal in hypotheticals.”

  “They’re not hypotheticals,” Naphtali said flatly. “The State of Israel will not accept the president’s terms. The Jewish people will not lay down our arms in the face of threatened annihilation, and furthermore, we won’t be intimidated into surrender by our most important ally.”

  Ambassador Montgomery shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “You are putting the president in a very awkward position,” he explained.

  At this, Naphtali laughed out loud. “Really? Are you kidding me?” Then he sighed and said, “I have to tell you, my friend, I don’t see it that way. And frankly the American people don’t see it that way either. T
he new CBS/New York Times poll shows 73 percent of your country siding with us, not Iran. The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll finds 69 percent of the American people saying the White House should do more to support us, while the new ABC/Washington Post poll out yesterday shows your president’s approval rating down nine points in three days, almost entirely because he’s not perceived as doing enough to stand with his most trusted ally in the Middle East.”

  Montgomery began to protest, but Naphtali raised a hand to cut him off.

  “No, no—look, Dan, I’m not interested in engaging in a Lincoln-Douglas debate on this. The facts speak for themselves. The American people—along with the vast majority of Congress—understand the magnitude of the threat we faced before the war. And they understand what we face now. They know how patient we were for the international community to act decisively to neutralize the Iranian nuclear threat. They know the president didn’t do enough. They know the U.N. didn’t do enough, that NATO didn’t do enough. They believe President Jackson badly miscalculated vis-à-vis Iran. He vowed never to let the mullahs get the Bomb, but they did. The president vowed to have our back, but now a lot of people believe he has turned his back on us.”

  “Is that how you see it?” the ambassador asked.

  “I’m saying that’s how a whole lot of Americans see it,” Naphtali replied, sidestepping the direct question. “The American people overwhelmingly support our right and our responsibility to protect our people from this apocalyptic, genocidal death cult that runs Iran. The president’s resistance to standing with us, to keeping his word, is costing him politically. It’s costing his party. The favorable rating for the Democratic Party is down sharply. Jewish giving to the party is down sharply. We read your papers. We see what’s happening. But look, the domestic politics of this battle inside your country are not my concern, and I’m not looking for a public dustup with President Jackson. To the contrary, we both need each other right now.”

  “What are you suggesting?” the ambassador asked.

  Naphtali didn’t hesitate. “Tell the president to change his tune—today. Tell him to back me and the State of Israel publicly, wholeheartedly, and without reservation. And then give us the tools to finish this job.”

  Naphtali paused to let his words sink in, but right then a military aide rushed into the room, cleared his throat, and handed the prime minister a phone.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt, sir. But you’ve got Defense Minister Shimon on line two, and it’s urgent.”

  HAMADAN, IRAN

  Birjandi felt a lump form in his throat.

  How he loved these two young men. He was amazed at how much and how quickly they had changed. Three months earlier, each of them had been a devout Shiite. Each of them came from a deeply religious family. Their parents were Twelvers, religious zealots fiercely committed to the Twelfth Imam and the establishment of the Caliphate.

  Yet both men had been watching Iranian Christian evangelists on satellite television. Both had begun reading the New Testament on the sly in hopes of refuting it. And both of them had had dreams and visions of Jesus. Within a few short weeks, each had become absolutely convinced that Jesus—not Muhammad and certainly not the Mahdi—was the Savior of mankind and Lord of the universe. Each of them secretly had, therefore, become a follower of Jesus, and the Lord had directed them to Birjandi.

  For the last nine weeks, Birjandi had met secretly with them for four to five hours every Wednesday to teach them the Holy Scriptures, starting with the Gospel according to John. He had taught them how to carefully observe, properly interpret, and faithfully apply every single verse they found in the Bible. He had answered their many questions—hundreds upon hundreds of them—and he had challenged them again and again to spend time in prayer. “We serve a prayer-hearing and a prayer-answering God, a wonder-working God!” he loved to say. “And answered prayer is one of the ways we experience him.”

  “So where do you want to begin?” Birjandi now asked them after they had thanked their Father in heaven and committed their time in the Word to him.

  Ali didn’t miss a beat. “With the prophets,” he said. “We want to understand the prophecies of the Scriptures. We want to know if the Bible speaks to the future of Iran. Does the Lord give us any clues as to what will happen to us? And if so, does it tell us what is going to happen with this war, how it will play out?”

  “You want to know if the Israelis are going to win or if the mullahs will?” Birjandi asked.

  “Yes.”

  The old man leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands. He seemed to ruminate over their request, but not for long.

  “Very well, gentlemen, the time has come for us to search out together some of the mysteries of the ancient prophets,” he said softly. “Understand that they did not speak about future events in all countries at all times, but they certainly spoke to the future of some countries in the last days of history before the return of Jesus Christ, and they most certainly spoke of the future of Iran. Now let’s put on some tea, and we will begin.”

  JERUSALEM, ISRAEL

  Prime Minister Naphtali grabbed the phone and took the line off hold.

  He was now on a secure line with Defense Minister Levi Shimon in the IDF war room deep below Tel Aviv.

  “Levi, it’s me. What is it? I’m in a meeting with Monty.”

  “Mr. Prime Minister, we have five Shahab-3 inbound from Iran. One is headed for Haifa, but four appear headed for Dimona.”

  Naphtali was stunned. “You’re sure?”

  “That’s what the computer track says.”

  “How long to impact?”

  “Three minutes, maybe less.”

  “Can you shoot them down?”

  “We’re trying—but it’s going to be close.”

  TIBERIAS, ISRAEL

  Lexi Vandermark kept tossing and turning. She didn’t want to disturb her husband, Chris, but nor did she have any idea how he could actually sleep at a moment like this. She finally lay on her back, nestled her body next to his, and stared up at the unmoving ceiling fan.

  The fan wasn’t moving because the hotel had no electricity. They had no electricity because a missile from Lebanon—or several, actually—had taken out the power station nearby. But Lexi refused to think about the war. She refused to look out the windows at the burning buildings in Tiberias and all the zigzagging contrails in the sky above the Sea of Galilee, some from the Israeli fighter jets that screamed by every few minutes, heading north, and some left behind by the rockets and missiles coming in from Lebanon and from Iran, heading south and west.

  She closed her eyes tightly and dialed back a few days to when all was quiet and peaceful, and she and Chris were enjoying the honeymoon they had always dreamed of. Ever since they had landed at Ben Gurion International Airport, Chris had been teasing her that she’d packed too much. But she knew he didn’t really mind lugging around her two suitcases in addition to his own. It made him happy to make her happy, and she hoped he planned to spend his life doing it.

  They had loved seeing Jaffa and the beaches of Tel Aviv and working their way up the coast to see the ruins at Caesarea and the church on top of Mount Carmel. Chris had been especially intrigued with Megiddo, where Lexi knew the Bible foretold a great battle—the battle of Armageddon—would one day take place. But coming to Galilee—especially by Chris’s side—had by far been her favorite part of the trip.

  As they’d checked in to the Leonardo Plaza Hotel, with a great view of the calm and gentle sea behind them, Lexi had sat on a plum-colored sofa in the lobby watching her new husband with shining eyes. Chris was all she had ever dreamed of. He was handsome, especially in his cargo shorts and gray T-shirt, but he was also hilarious, adventurous, and brilliant. Best of all, Chris loved God more than her, and that was exactly the type of man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. How had she gotten so lucky? It was God’s gift to her, and she hoped she’d never get over the amazement of it all.

  And now they were not
only in the Holy Land but looking out over the water upon which Jesus had walked, upon which Peter had fished.

  She and Chris had spent months planning every detail of this once-in-a-lifetime journey. They’d read dozens of books and commentaries and novels about events that happened on or around the Sea of Galilee. One of Lexi’s friends from church had made them matching personalized journals with biblical maps and many key Scriptures accompanying them, and they’d devoured it all. There were spaces for them to write their thoughts and paste in snapshots and brochures, and both journals were already full.

  They had begun on the north shore, in Capernaum, where Jesus had established his base camp for a ministry of teaching, healing, and discipleship. Then they’d gone to the museum that housed the “Jesus Boat”—a fishing boat dating back to the first century that was just like the kind the Messiah and his disciples used. Lexi had loved holding Chris’s hand as together they had watched a movie about the boat and learned about its discovery.

  Slowly but surely now her eyelids were beginning to get heavy. The more she savored the sweet memories they were making, the more peaceful she felt; and the more peaceful she became, the more she let herself drift away, just for a little while, a catnap to take the edge off, and then . . .

  At first she thought it was a dream or a nightmare, but suddenly Lexi realized the air-raid sirens were going off again. She was terrified. Rockets and missiles were inbound, and Lexi had no idea how many or where they would strike. Shot through with adrenaline, she jumped out of bed and shook Chris, shouting at him to get up and run with her to the bomb shelter. Though she tried to rush him, it took Chris a moment to get his bearings. Groggy and half-conscious, he wasn’t listening, wasn’t responding.

  “Honey, sweetheart, we have to move,” she shouted. “We have to go now!”

  They’d spent most of the last three days in the hotel’s bomb shelter. The war they’d never believed would really happen was happening indeed. The rocket barrage coming from southern Lebanon the first night had been so bad, they’d remained awake for nearly twenty-four hours as they heard one rocket after another hitting the seaside town of Tiberias and felt the ground shaking almost continuously from the impact. Then, to their surprise and relief, there had been a lull for the past several hours. Desperate for some sleep in a real bed, Chris had insisted they go back upstairs to their room on the ninth floor, with its king-size bed and gorgeous panoramic view. The hotel staff had begged them not to do it, but as Lexi was feeling increasingly claustrophobic herself, she had agreed. Now she realized they had both been terribly foolish.