He smiled again, a chill of happy memories slithering up his spine.
Years later, the valley of Gehenna had been abandoned, and then avoided, then turned into a burning garbage pit. For hundreds of years, the citizens of Jerusalem had thrown in their trash, adding fuel to the fire that always smoldered in the dell, a stinking, smoky fire that burned their wet garbage and waste.
What a fitting monument. The city had sacrificed their children, spilling their blood on the ground, then covered their remains with garbage and set fire to the place.
Fire and smoke. Heartbreak and pain. This place was steeped in dark memories that could not be erased.
Looking out on the little valley, he felt a swell in his chest. Would the good times come back? Almost certainly not. But the thing that was coming was even more grand—more compelling, more exciting, more intrusive and vast.
He raised his eyes to the great city and smiled once again.
The Arab fanatics who sought to destroy the Jews had a plan that would prove that Judaism was wrong. It was a simple plan, but brilliant, and, having contributed to its inception; Balaam couldn’t help but feel proud.
For more than four thousand years the Jews had believed that their Messiah would come to them in this great city. They had staked their future, their religion, on that desperate belief.
But Jehovah couldn’t appear to his children in Jerusalem if Jerusalem didn’t exist. If the city was destroyed, what would happen to their religion then? If the Islamists could destroy Jerusalem that would prove the Jewish prophecy was wrong, their core beliefs ridiculous, their faith utterly wasted on superstitions and lies. It would prove that Allah had prevailed.
Destroy their city, destroy their religion. It was as simple as that.
So Balaam looked out on the city in which he had spent so much time. He looked over the ancient buildings that he had watched the humans build. He looked over the temple, the mosques and the old city wall. He looked over it all, and then bid it good-bye.
Soon, the second sun would appear.
Weasel Four-One, Over the Gaza Strip
The Israeli pilot banked his aircraft to follow his lead. Their target was a group of four cement-and-brick buildings on the city square in Rafah, one of the depressing and squalid shanty towns that dotted most of the Gaza Strip. The buildings had been used for many years as a headquarters facility for Hezbollah, and because Hezbollah had been one of the first to claim responsibility for killing the Israeli prime minister, the Israelis were returning the favor by making their headquarters one of the first facilities to be destroyed.
The pilot went through his pre-bomb checklist for the third time, and then checked his targeting radar. The AN/AAQ-13 navigation and targeting pod combined a forward-looking infrared sensor with terrain-following radar to produce television images inside his cockpit, allowing him to fly at night as if it were day. The acquisition and targeting system maintained the white crosshairs on the southeast building, and then automatically slew to the left, confirming the coordinates for the southwest building as well before using the information to program the flight paths of the bombs. Cycling one last time, the computer confirmed the location of the southern buildings in the compound. His flight leader would take out the two buildings to the north. These two buildings were his.
The pilot took a quick look to his right. Five seconds before, the third and fourth aircrafts of the formation had split off and were already out of sight, their aircraft’s deep gray skin melting into the darkness. They would hit their targets in the southern edge of Rafah; then they would rejoin the formation for the short flight back to base.
The pilot nudged his sidearm controller, a barely perceptible movement of his right hand, and the fighter’s nose turned a little more than a single degree to the left.
He was alert, but not anxious, and certainly not scared. This mission was easy, and he felt in complete control. Flying above the Palestinians’ anti-aircraft guns, and out of range of their feeble surface-to-air missiles, a group of old and poorly maintained Russian SA-2s and SA-3s that would have trouble targeting a 747 unless it was on fire, the pilot knew he was not in any real danger of being shot down. In addition, the target was easily identifiable—the computer would command the bomb run and automatically release the weapons at the exact dropping point. No, this mission wasn’t particularly challenging, but still, he was glad to be in the air. The big party had started. Let’s do it! he thought.
Two minutes from the bomb release point, the pilot quickly glanced over his shoulder, checking the air behind him, and then turned forward again. He reached up and touched the instrument panel, gently stroking the jet. He loved the F-16 Fighting Falcon. It was a pure joy to fly. The bubble canopy gave him such an unobstructed view that it felt like he was riding on the tip of a spear. His seat reclined 30 degrees, and the fly-by-wire system provided the ability to exercise precise control of the aircraft during high G-force maneuvers. The warning system and countermeasure pods were exceptional at detecting and defeating airborne or surface electronic threats, and if everything else failed, the fiber-optic-towed decoy provided the aircraft with a final means of protection against modern radar-guided missiles.
But of course, he wouldn’t see any of those threats tonight.
Yes, an easy mission. Almost embarrassingly so.
“Weasel Two,” the captain heard over his secure radio.
“Go,” he shot back to his flight leader, speaking into the microphone in his oxygen mask.
“Confirm lock on buildings three and four.”
“Roger. Two is ready.”
“You see the vehicles outside building one?”
The pilot studied his air-to-ground mapping radar, which illuminated the target scene. He could see the headquarters complex, the vehicles, even the guards at the gate. His targeting crosshairs floated over building three. “Roger,” he replied after taking in the scene.
The flight leader hesitated, and then called back again. “Does that look like a school bus in the corner?” he asked.
The captain swallowed hard. He touched the pointer on his targeting radar, moving it fifty feet to the right. Then he saw it. A long vehicle. Could it really be a bus? He studied the image. It just wasn’t clear enough to know for certain, but this much he knew: it would follow with the terrorists’ rules of engagement to move a busload of children and park it at their headquarters in order to protect themselves. The captain swore in frustration, and then tightened the shot on his radar. The picture came in tighter but fuzzier and a little less clear. Then he saw the dual axles and a tractor on the back of the truck. He breathed a sigh of relief, pressing in his microphone switch. “Weasel, bogey looks to me to be a flatbed trailer. We’re still good to go.”
His flight leader hesitated, and then came back again. “Roger that. I confirm. Fifty seconds to release.”
“Two is ready.”
“We are clear.”
“Bombs in forty-five seconds now.”
Washington, D.C.
General Brighton stared silently at the monitor on the wall, watching the Israeli pilots fly toward their targets. There were only seconds to release point, and he swallowed painfully against the knot in his throat. Taking a step forward, he muttered under his breath. “No. Call them back. It’s not too late!” he said.
The National Security Adviser turned toward him. “What did you say?” he asked.
“Turn them back,” the general repeated, a look of dread on his face. But even as he said the words, he knew they didn’t make any sense.
“Turn who back? What are you talking about? What do you want us to do?” Grison shot back.
“Tell the Israeli pilots to turn around. This will be our last chance!”
“Turn them back? Are you crazy? Why would we ever do that? Our last chance to do what? What are you talking about?”
But it was too late, and Brighton knew it.
He heard the guttural laughing again.
Hezboll
ah Auxiliary Headquarters Building, Gaza Strip
The man wasn’t Palestinian, he was a Saudi; in fact, there were no Palestinians anywhere to be seen. The complex had already been abandoned, their leaders having warned them that the Israelis would attack. It hadn’t taken a genius to know this headquarters building would certainly be one of the first casualties. So the complex had been emptied but for a few men standing guard outside the wall and on the narrow streets to the north.
The Saudi sat alone in the corner, waiting for his death, which would come in an instant of fire and heat. He hunched in the corner, the electronic trigger sliding against his sweaty palm. He was mesmerized by the silver container that sat on a reinforced metal table in the middle of the room. He wanted to touch it, to feel it. He knew what was inside. He wanted to feel its heat, its power, and its magnificent strength. The Destroying Angel. The Prophet’s Horseman. The Tip of Allah’s Sword. It was their Avenger, their angel who had been sent to them from Allah. He started inching toward it, reaching out with his hand, then stopped and pulled back, suddenly afraid. Changing his mind, he scurried back to the corner and waited for death.
While he waited, the hissing and bitter voices that seemed to fill every space in the room starting chanting, “Kill them! Kill them all! That is what you must do! You are good. You are righteous! This is the right thing to do!”
He shook his head violently, and then rubbed his hands at his eyes. But the voices wouldn’t leave him. Indeed, they started screaming louder, the sound more shrill, and their chants more intense.
Balaam stood with the other dark angels, forming a circle around the shivering man. They glared and bared their teeth to each other as they concentrated their energy on the mortal who huddled in the corner.
It might be he couldn’t do it. He might back out of the plan!
They could see that he was weak and vulnerable. Even now, he could still reason. He could think! His judgment hadn’t been utterly clouded. He still understood right from wrong. What he was going to do was so evil; they could not give him time to think. So they kept up the constant noise and evil chants in his ears.
Although they could discern his thoughts only from the look on his face, they saw the hesitation and uncertainty, the concern for his brothers and the children that he knew. They saw the soft light of goodness, and they worked in a panic to crush it out. It was critical now to keep their Enemy and His bright soldiers at bay. He would certainly try to stop them, and they could not lose this man.
This was the moment they had been waiting for. This was the tipping point, the start of the Great War. So they had to keep this man panicked; they had to keep the hate and confusion in his head. They had to keep him from thinking of what he was about to do.
So they hissed and they danced and they cried in the air. They swooped and leaned toward him, swearing and lying in his head.
“Do it! It is good!” they lied in his ear. “It is right! God will reward you! Now go! Go and kill!”
Weasel Four-One, Over the Gaza Strip
The Israeli pilot had his head down in the cockpit, watching his targeting screen. The time-to-go display showed fifteen seconds to go. The crosshairs lay exactly over the targets. Altitude, twenty-four thousand feet. Airspeed, four-eighty. On time. On target. The time-to-go display now showed ten seconds to go.
He glanced up and checked his leader, who was half a mile ahead and twenty degrees to his right. He looked down and flipped the master arm switch, giving the final release command to his bombs. Seconds later, he felt a sudden snap as the pins fired and the two bombs dropped away. His aircraft bobbed up from the sudden reduction in weight, and he pushed the nose down. He banked the jet up and jammed the throttle up to military power, then watched over his shoulder, keeping the target in sight. He wanted to see the two explosions before he turned back to base.
* * *
The two bombs fell silently through the dark night. They separated gradually as they moved toward their targets, but always remained abeam from each other as they slipped through the thin atmosphere. Two hundred feet after dropping from the undercarriage of the F-16, the bombs had reached terminal velocity. Small propellers popped out from the cores, spinning in the wind to arm the warheads. Then the nose cones slowly dropped, the miniature steering fins at the back of the bombs guiding the weapons with adjustments that were too quick to see.
Fifteen thousand feet and falling. Twenty-one seconds to go.
* * *
Seven thousand feet below the bombs, the Saudi’s cell phone rang. Eyes wide in terror, he stared at it, and then shook his head.
So many voices.
So much confusion.
So many spinning thoughts inside his brain.
* * *
The air turned from crisp and cold to warm and wet as the bombs fell, the humidity and heat of the ocean warming the lower atmosphere. The bombs made no sound but a soft whoosh, like the wings of an angel that slipped through the dark night.
Eight thousand feet and falling.
Little more than ten seconds to go.
* * *
The Saudi’s telephone continued ringing, its high-pitched tone seeming to pierce the dark night like the cry of a child from some tin-covered pit. Moving slowly, he flipped the phone open and placed it at the side of his head. “NOW!” he heard his master’s voice scream in his ear.
The Saudi mumbled something, but he didn’t do anything.
“NOW!” he heard his master scream once again. Although thirty miles away, his voice was as clear as if he were standing right next to him. “Now! Hit the trigger! You know what to do!”
The Saudi took a breath and looked down at the trigger in his palm. He closed his eyes and pressed the button.
And that was all he knew.
* * *
The flash from the nuclear device illuminated the night, turning it into a brazen, white day. The light was unnaturally bright, like the surface of the sun, with tongues of white fire that flashed across the entire sky. Like a burst of stark lightning on the darkest night, the blazing strobe of nuclear power flashed, blinding and burning every eye that was unfortunate enough to see.
The Israeli pilot glanced over his shoulder as he banked his aircraft to the north, and though he didn’t see the flash, he felt the piercing heat penetrating his eyes, as if a white-hot, burning needle had been jammed in his skull. Immediately blinded, he cried out in pain.
Confused, terrified, he rubbed at his eyes. He heard his formation leader begin to call him, his panicked voice crying over the radio. Then the heat blast fell upon them, tearing their little fighters apart.
The shock wave moved across the ground at the speed of sound, a wall of heat and energy that burned up or exploded everything in its path. Then the awesome wind followed, blowing out everything before it in a powerful explosion of superheated air that suddenly reversed to fill the vacuum that was left from the nuclear fireball.
Across the ghettos and slums and neighborhoods of Gaza, there was fire and heat and nuclear radiation as the nuclear explosion destroyed everything in its path. There were crumbled buildings, burning rubble, and melted concrete and steel. Pain and death were everywhere.
From ground zero to four miles out from the core of the explosion, only a few were left alive. From four to seven miles out, most were burned or radiated beyond what they could survive. From eight miles out, the devastation was survivable, but one hundred twenty thousand were dead or dying inside the ring of fire.
The mushroom cloud rolled up into the night sky, an orange-and-red fireball that seemed to churn and boil and feed on itself, growing larger and more violent as it climbed into the upper atmosphere. The flash of white light and the burning fireball could be seen for hundreds of miles, each sign announcing the change of times to the world.
White House Situation Room, Washington, D.C.
The radar picture from the American AWACS circling over the Mediterranean Sea suddenly collapsed on itself, seeming to suck into
a small dot at the middle of the screen before it snapped and disappeared. The image was replaced by noisy static, and the members of the White House national security team seemed to pause and take a breath as one. A couple of them turned to each other and shrugged their shoulders. The watch supervisor sitting behind a glass-enclosed cubicle at the back of the room pressed a button under his desk, calling on the IT staff. The screen had lost connectivity, he figured, and he needed it fixed right now!
General Brighton stood without moving, staring at the blank screen, a sinking feeling in his gut.
The president turned to the vice president. “What happened to our picture?” he asked.
The vice president looked confused, and then reached for a button on the communications panel directly in front of him. But before he could do anything, the room was filled with a panicked voice that was filled with fear and cold dread. “Bull’s-eye, this is Falcon,” the pilot called before his voice was swallowed up in static.
“Who the devil is Falcon?” the president demanded.
The controller inside the glass cubical answered the question. “Falcon is the call sign for the AWACS reconnaissance aircraft flying over the Mediterranean Sea.”
“What does he—”
The president stopped talking when the AWACS pilot started broadcasting again. “Bull’s-eye, this is Falcon. We’ve got . . . fire . . . into the sky!”
The president hesitated. What was he talking about? He jammed his finger against the broadcast button on the communications pod. “Falcon, what are you saying?” he demanded in a sharp voice.
“Bull’s-eye. We’ve had . . . explosion over the Gaza Strip. Repeat, we’ve . . . nuclear fireball. It looks like . . . holy . . . .” The pilot’s voice trailed off, crackling with the static that was building from the electromagnetic disturbance in the upper atmosphere. “It looks like,” his voice came back after a moment of white noise, “it looks like the Israelis have just nuked all of Gaza and half of Egypt as well!”
Wrath & Righteousnes Episodes 01 to 05 Page 61