The Brotherhood Conspiracy

by Brennan, Terry

  “Browne, you have any clue how we’re supposed to find this needle in a haystack?”

  “Sweep the two roads, look for a brown Mazda running like a bat out of hell. Take the Ashdod Road, Pete. And no chatter unless it’s required.”

  Commander Counsil banked to the right and disappeared into the night.

  5:17 a.m., Jerusalem

  There was no preamble or salutation.

  “How many men do you have within arm’s reach that you can move right now?”

  “Fifty, well-trained, heavy arms,” Posner said to his commander, General Moishe Orhlon, Israel’s defense minister.

  “The Temple Mount is under attack . . . several hundred . . . Hezbollah and Martyrs’ Brigade we think. Send the men now. You too.”

  “But . . . I can’t raise Shomsky. He—”

  “Forget Shomsky for now. Move. Men are dying.”

  5:25 a.m., On the Ashkelon Road

  “I’ve been locked on for the last two minutes,” Commander Counsil said into the radio. “This is the one. Brown Mazda . . . we’ve got him. Back me up, Pete.”

  Counsil was flying his Comanche sideways at sixty miles an hour, keeping pace with the small brown sedan that was tearing down the Ashkelon Road, east of Kiyrat Gat. Counsil’s visor display showed him a small bridge coming up in a mile. He turned his nose west, goosed his fourteen hundred horsepower twin turbo shafts, and rocketed ahead.

  The Comanche, the Army’s latest development in the stealth arsenal of invisible power, was armed with fourteen Hellfire antitank missiles; fifty-six rockets; and a three-barreled, twenty millimeter, nose-mounted mini-gun that pumped out fifteen hundred rounds a minute. Browne Counsil had his pick of how to obliterate the bridge. He hovered, waiting, until the car rounded a distant curve. He set loose a “fire-and-forget” Hellfire missile, programmed to control its own flight to a target.

  The small bridge erupted, steel, wood, and concrete flung upward by a growing fireball.

  Commander Counsil watched the brown Mazda brake hard, skid sideways, and rumble onto the shoulder of the road, about twenty yards short of the smoking pile of rubble that once was a bridge.

  Bright orange flashed a false dawn over the low, brown hills, then died away into darkness once again. That was all it took. The Humvee was ripping down Thirty-Eight to Ashkelon at over eighty miles an hour and was already daring the law of gravity to keep its tires on the road.

  In the flash and the black, the driver was blinded. He remembered seeing a curve before the flash and, with his eyes useless, he willed himself to sense the road under his wheels, the curve in the asphalt, the shifting weight from whatever banking might be in the road surface. He failed.

  The Humvee bounced, slamming down hard on its springs. “Hold on!”

  In a ballet of high-speed slow motion, the left front of the truck began to fall away into some void. The left front fender caught the ground and dug into the earth, and the Humvee flipped. It wouldn’t have been so bad if they hadn’t been going so fast. Maybe we’ll just land on the roof. But the truck continued to rotate and hit the ground again with the front, right side of the cab, crushing the roof and doors into the passenger compartment with a force that buried the right side of the vehicle in two inches of brown dirt and clay. The Humvee sat, suspended, on its crushed right side, until the unseen hand of gravity or inertia continued its rotation and it slowly fell to its tires in an upright position.

  The driver looked at his hands—still gripping the steering wheel as if he could somehow still steer them out of this wreck. He knew his left wrist was broken from when the wheel snapped violently on the first crash. Other than that, he was in one piece, saved by the seat belt he habitually wrapped across his chest.

  He looked to his right. Sergeant Fischoff was lying drunkenly against the shattered remains of the right door and window. Glass shards protruded from his scalp, and an ugly gash, pulsing blood, ran down the left side of his neck.

  The driver unbuckled his seat belt, pried the fingers of his left hand off the steering wheel, rested his left wrist against his chest, and reached toward the sergeant with his right hand, grabbing the sergeant’s wrist. There was a pulse, but the sergeant was bleeding out. He wouldn’t live long like this.

  Twisting painfully further to his right, the driver looked into the back seat.

  Bohannon’s eyes were wide open . . . staring . . . in shock.

  “Listen, sir, we’ve got to get the sergeant out of the vehicle.”

  Bohannon didn’t move. Didn’t look like he was about to move. The right side of his forehead was already shading from scarlet to deep purple, surrounding a golf-ball-size lump. His right arm hung limp from his shoulder—but it was like that from the Citadel

  “Sir,” the driver said, pumping urgency into his voice. “Sir . . . you’ve got to help me get the sergeant out of the vehicle. I can’t do it by myself. And I can’t treat his wound in here. If we don’t get him outside now, he’s going to bleed out and die. Sir! Do you hear me?”

  Bohannon blinked.

  Thank, God.

  “Let’s go . . . grab hold of the sergeant’s shoulder and help me pull him out this side. C’mon . . . pull!”

  5:32 a.m., Tel Aviv

  “Send in the helicopters. Blow them to hell,” said Prime Minister Baruk.

  “We can’t do that, sir.” General Orhlon was on the other end of the telephone. “They’re too close. The Muslims and our men are fighting right on top of each other.”

  Baruk stood in the living room of his private residence. This night, he didn’t smell the brackishness of the sea or the sweet fragrance of the flowers outside the terrace. He smelled fear. His fear.

  “What about the reinforcements?”

  “Mr. Prime Minister, the reinforcements are on foot. They’re on their way, but our men who were stationed around the base of the Mount are also under attack. It appears Muslim fighters are pouring out of houses in the entire quarter. Looks like Hezbollah and the Martyrs’ Brigade, Elie.”

  Baruk knew what that meant . . . hardened fighters had infiltrated Jerusalem. This was a battle, not a skirmish.

  “The Tent?”

  “Still up, still protected,” said Orhlon, “but I don’t know for how long. Abner Katz is dead. Levin is in command, but I’ve been told he’s gravely wounded. Captain Theodore would be the next in command, but no one has found him yet.”

  “All right . . . I’m coming in,” said Baruk. “I’m going to the helipad now . . . be there in twenty minutes. And Moishe, find a way to protect that Tent.”

  Baruk cradled the telephone and was on his way to the door when his private cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He looked . . . it was Whitestone.

  “Yes, Mr. President?”

  “This doesn’t look good, Elie. There’s a helluva fight going on up there. We should call it off.”

  Baruk’s bodyguards were anxious, shuffling around, looking out the window. And they were within listening distance. Baruk would have no privacy now until he was safely installed in Central Command. “I’m afraid not, Mr. President. We must push forward with all our resources. The command has already been given, the action has already been launched.”

  There was a pause on the other end. Whitestone was measuring his words. This call was not secure.

  “You’ve got a battle raging in the center of Jerusalem,” said the president, his voice revealing the depth of his concern. “Isn’t that trouble enough?”

  “It’s our trouble, Jonathan. You know we always take care of our own trouble. We’ll deal with it.”

  5:33 a.m., On the Ashkelon Road

  It was cold. He didn’t expect the cold. He looked up. Stars were out. But it was cold. He didn’t expect the cold. He looked down. The stones on the ground were moving in circles. He looked to his right. A soldier was kneeling over the sergeant; bloody, seeping bandages pressed against the sergeant’s neck. The sergeant must be cold. He didn’t expect it to be cold. He looked around. Everythin
g seemed to be moving, but in slow motion. Must be the cold. Off to his left was a moldering, crimson horizon. Something happened there. What happened there—in the cold?

  His mind cleared. Annie was out there . . . there was an explosion . . . she’s out there. Then it fogged over once more.

  Bohannon thought he was running. That was the message he was sending to his legs. But, really, his movement was more like a stumbling rumble. A well-intentioned lurching that covered almost as much ground side-to-side as it did forward. But he kept moving, his eyes on the glow, and the smoke, ignoring the cold.

  5:34 a.m., Jerusalem

  The pole at his back and a soldier by his side held Levin in a sitting position at the corner of the Tent of Meeting. Over the cacophony of gunfire surrounding him, Levin detected the sound of additional gunfire in the distance. The reinforcements, fighting their own battle. They would be too late.

  He looked down at the hole in his right side, where his ribcage used to be. Too late. His men, what was left of them, were falling back, converging around the Tent. But there was no cover, no place to hide on the newly completed platform. And his men continued to die around him as the Muslim fighters kept coming, more of them, over the edge and out of the hole in the concrete.

  “How did you get there?” Sam Reynolds was so distraught that he sounded as if he was going to jump across the ocean. “Do you have any idea what’s going on?”

  Rodriguez moved the wristwatch away from his face . . . another of Sam’s gadgets . . . as the gun battle raged in front of him. It looked like the Israeli soldiers were falling back—forced toward the center of the platform by an ever-growing force of Muslim fighters. Rodriguez pressed the button on the side of the watch that activated the satellite phone.

  “Yeah . . . I know what’s going on here,” said Rodriguez. “The Israeli soldiers are getting hammered—Muslim soldiers have fought right through the Israeli positions and they are butchering every Jew on the Mount—soldiers, priests, rabbis, doesn’t matter. They are pressing in on the Tent. They’re going to get it, Sam. They’re going to get it. And . . . there’s a group skirting the fighting. They’re dragging a large sack—a huge sack—dragging it with them toward the Tent. This is not good.”

  “Joe . . . listen to me,” said Reynolds, a demanding urgency in his voice. “What I’ve got to tell you is not good, either.”

  Levin held an automatic pistol in his left hand, but didn’t have the strength to raise it. All he could do was sit and watch the carnage raging around him.

  He saw a group of Muslims, ten men, dragging some strange cargo across the face of the platform, an immense burlap bag. They seemed oblivious to the warfare around them.

  Bullets ripped through the hides hanging to his right, splitting open the enclosure wall around the inner sanctuary. The soldier next to him fell at his feet. Levin looked up as the Muslim fighters cleared a path through the few remaining Israeli soldiers. More fighters now joined the men pulling the burlap bag. They lifted it off the concrete. Levin believed he saw it move, but his attention was pulled away. There was no more shooting. A tall, fierce-looking Arab ran over to Levin and kicked the gun out of his hand. Levin thought he heard a squeal as the men passed him with the burlap bag and hurried to carry it inside the Tent.

  “We have a sacrifice for your altar, Jew. Something to celebrate the completion of your new tabernacle.” The Arab waved to some of his men. “Turn him around so he can watch the sacrifice . . . quickly.”

  Levin could hear the whomp of the helicopter blades coming close and knew the gunships would soon open fire when it was clear all of his men were dead. But above the noise of the oncoming choppers, Levin heard the squeal, louder, more frantic. Through the Tent’s shattered side, Levin could see the entry curtains to the Most Holy Place were thrown aside. The burlap bag was cut open, lying atop the altar.

  Trussed up, straining against its heavy rope bindings, a huge sow sprawled across the top of the altar and hung over each side. Several of the Muslim fighters pulled out knives. Some gutted the pig . . . some cut its main arteries. Blood and intestines and entrails defiled the golden altar and spread across the floor of the Most Holy Place, desecrating the sanctuary. One of the soldiers emptied an animal skin full of fluid over the pig’s body and another threw a flame into it. Pig, altar, and the coverings of the Most Holy Place were ignited instantly and the fire raced along the ancient, hanging hides on both sides of the Tent of Meeting.

  The Muslim leader moved in front of Levin, who was being held at the shoulders by two of his fighters. “Watch your blasphemy burn, Jew. There will never be a temple on the most holy Haram.” The leader hitched his thumb toward the growing conflagration. The two fighters grabbed Levin’s belt and shoulders and threw him into the raging flames.

  Ali Hassan waved the fighters of his Martyrs’ Brigade and those of Hezbollah toward the edges of the Temple Mount platform. Hassan and his aide ducked behind a sandbag wall, their backs to the burning Tent. “This victory will not last long.” Hassan pointed toward the west. “Israeli gunships kept their distance while the battle was close, but now they will come.”

  Torn between his fears for Kallie and Annie, his grief over Doc’s death, and the slaughter he was witnessing, Rodriguez’s mind was numb as Reynolds finished his demoralizing report. He gazed blankly across the platform, seeing but not registering the chaos. He didn’t know what to do next.

  “They set the Tent on fire,” Joe said, his voice as lifeless as the sprawled bodies littering the platform. “They hauled something into the Tent and then they set it on fire. Looks like all the Israeli soldiers are dead. I can hear the helicopters coming in now . . .”

  “Stay where you are!” Reynolds demanded. “Those gunships see any movement and they may not wait to check your ID.”

  “Where am I going to go?” he asked. He saw flames rise from the Tent, the fire growing more intense. But his emotions had no life.

  Two black gunships flashed overhead, from west to east, and immediately another pair came roaring out of the north. Hassan risked a look over the sandbag wall. Too many of his men were still in the open and they were shredded by the heavy cannon fire from the helicopters. Those who found refuge in the sandbag bunkers wrested from the Israeli machine gunners were blown out of their safety by one salvo of rocket fire after another.

  We won’t survive long.

  The hair on the back of Hassan’s head began to wilt, and he felt a sudden rush of heat against his back. He twisted his neck, expecting to see a crumbling mass of embers. Instead, the blaze that engulfed the Tent of Meeting appeared to be growing—broader, higher, and hotter.

  What did we put in there?

  A rippling stream of cannon fire flowed across the concrete toward Hassan, reaching for him with its promise of death. He looked once more at the burning Tent then dropped into the hole he had blown in the concrete slab less than an hour before.

  5:39 a.m., Tel Aviv

  “The Temple Mount is overrun . . . we have over one hundred dead, probably more.” General Orhlon’s voice wore the heavy mantle of grief and responsibility. “Major Levin, Major Katz are dead. Fighting is still heavy in the streets. The Arabs slaughtered a huge pig on the altar before they set the fire. The Tent is engulfed in flames, and the fire keeps growing. I don’t know what the Arabs threw on it.”

  “What are we doing, General?”

  Prime Minister Baruk tried to hold his fury in check.

  “Our gunships are pounding the Arabs now . . . they’re Hezbollah and Martyrs’ Brigade. I have no idea how so many Hezbollah fighters got so deep into Jerusalem.”

  Orhlon sounded as if he was talking to himself. “We’re massing our force for a counterattack on the Mount. Our military is on full alert. Half the air force is already in the air, more pilots are awaiting orders. Armor and artillery are moving to the borders. Our missile batteries are red. Tell me when . . . tell me who . . . and we will crush them.”

  “So where is Shomsky?�
�� said Baruk. “Tell him to get something ready for the press.”

  “I wanted to talk to you about Shomsky,” said General Orhlon, “but this is not the time. And I don’t know where he is.”

  “Find Shomsky,” Baruk exploded. “We can’t leave the situation like this. We must regain control of the Temple Mount. Make it happen.”

  5:41 a.m., Dayr al Qiddis Oasis, Egypt

  Two camels got into a loud disagreement, splitting the brittle quiet of the desert night on the plain of Wadi Gerifat along the flank of the Al-Qalzam Mountains of the eastern Sahara. A dog barked in the distance, and another replied from the opposite side of the tent encampment. The men of the Prophet’s Guard were home, safe, and slept with the soundness of the secure, including the two who were on guard—now huddled around a moldering fire. Had they been awake, they would not have seen the three black-clad men with the hoods over their heads. They moved like moon shadows on the sand as they closed on the tent in the center of the compound.

  The old man stirred in his tent—so little undisturbed rest, so few nights of real sleep for old men. He felt the pressure and knew he had to get up. His bones ached as he pushed off the heavy rug, and he swung his spindly legs off the sleeping platform. A shadow moved to his left.

  One of ours—? The question stalled in his mind, supplanted by the surprise of a gloved hand over his mouth, the pinch of a blade to his neck. Another shadow moved—floated to stand right in front of the old man, looking into his mismatched eyes—one brown, one yellow. This shadow pulled the hood from his head and pushed his face to within inches of the old man. The old man shivered in the night. He wasn’t cold.

  “I’m here to share with you a gift from my father.” The man cut the leather strip around the old man’s throat and lifted the amulet to his sight—a Coptic cross with the lightning bolt slashing through on the diagonal. “My father wishes you a long life,” said the young prince to the leader of the Prophet’s Guard, “a long life in hell.”