The old man’s spine stiffened as the knife at his neck opened his throat from ear to ear.
5:43 a.m., Jerusalem
“Joe . . . are you still there?”
Rodriguez didn’t know how much time had passed. He looked at his watch, talking to him from half the world away, and shook his head. Then he realized he was perspiring, heavily. He looked up at the fire on the Temple Mount. He lifted the watch to his mouth.
“Yeah, I’m here . . . I’m still here. Listen . . . the fire is getting awfully hot. And it’s spreading.”
“What do you mean?” asked Reynolds.
“Well . . . the Tent is still burning—incredibly hot. I can’t believe there’s enough stuff in there to be burning this hot for this long. But the really odd thing is that the fire is spreading. It looks like liquid fire, like it’s flowing out of the Tent and washing over the platform as it continues to burn.”
“But the platform is concrete.”
“I know,” said Joe, wiping the sleeve of his shirt over his sopping face. “But it’s burning. The concrete is burning. And it’s burning really hot. I feel like I’m getting scorched.”
“Look, Joe . . . if the gunships are . . .”
“Yeah, they are.” Rodriguez swallowed, trying to get some moisture in his mouth. “They are ripping up the Arab fighters still on the Mount. But there’s not many of them. The fire is spreading to the far end of the platform, too. Anybody who’s down there is going to get . . . wait . . . wait.”
Were it not for the incredible things he had experienced since the day Tom Bohannon first showed him the huge safe in the Bowery Mission, Joe would have questioned his own eyes. But not now. “Sam . . . it’s burning down.”
“What?”
“It’s burning down,” Rodriguez repeated. “The flames were burning up—from the Tent, from the platform, up into the sky. But now the flames are burning down. The fire is coming from the sky, down onto the Tent, and spreading across the platform.”
“Oh . . . my God.”
“Yeah, that’s right. And it’s getting even hotter. I can feel my skin blistering.”
“Get out of there, Joe.”
“Not on your life,” said Rodriguez. “This isn’t over. I want to see what happens next.”
10:44 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, Washington, DC
“Maybe we’ll get out of this—now that the Tent’s been destroyed.” The secretary of state sat in a corner of the sofa in the Oval Office, looking at President Whitestone like a man who had lost his last friend. All his work on the Bavarian Peace Treaty lay obliterated on the crest of the Temple Mount.
“Are you kidding, Ollie?” The secretary of defense snapped to the edge of his chair. “There is no way on this green earth that the Israelis will leave the Muslims in control of the Temple Mount. They’re going to hit ’em, and they’re going to hit ’em hard. They’re embarrassed. And by thunder they’re gonna make somebody pay. I wouldn’t want to be in their crosshairs right now.”
A knock on the door, and the president’s secretary stepped into the room. “Mr. President, the Israeli prime minister is on the line.”
Whitestone and Cartwright were seated across from each other. They passed a cautionary glance—the fate of the Middle East hung on these next few minutes. Perhaps all their fates. “Put him on the speaker.”
Silent thoughts and whispered prayers hovered along the curves of the Oval Office as the secretary returned to her desk. Soon the speakerphone in the center of the coffee table crackled to life.
“Mr. President?”
“Mr. Prime Minister,” said Whitestone, “I’m here with the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, and the CIA director.”
“And I’m here with myself,” said Baruk. “Orhlon doesn’t want me in the air and my security doesn’t want me to move from the house. I feel like a eunuch.”
“Mr. Prime Minister . . . Elie . . . I’m sorry for the men you’ve lost. And, forgive me if I’m being insensitive, but we’ve got to know what you’re planning now.”
“Planning? What would you think?” said Baruk, the sound of defiance accenting his words. “We’re going to retake the Temple Mount . . . at any cost. This is a terrorist act by those psychopaths in Lebanon. Do you think we will sit back and ponder?”
Cartwright moved closer to the phone. “Mr. Prime Minister, we have solid intel that there is more than Hezbollah behind this action. We think the Brotherhood is behind everything that is happening—including tonight. Are you going to take on every Muslim government in the entire region?”
He looked across the table to the president. No one in that room wanted to break the silence.
“Mr. Cartwright,” said the prime minister, “the blood of Israeli soldiers now stains the very place where Solomon’s Temple once stood. In thousands of years, nothing has changed. The Arab wants to annihilate the Jew.”
The grandfather clock was ticking along the north wall of the Oval Office, its beats measuring the future of peace.
“We will fight,” said Baruk, “with everything we have, to stay alive.”
“But, Elie, you know what that will mean,” said the president. “You need to show restraint, or—”
“Or the deserts will melt. I know,” said Baruk. “That is not my concern. My concern is to fight for life . . . even if that means death.”
The door pushed open as the president’s secretary rushed into the room and came to Whitestone’s side. “Mr. President,” she whispered, “please, excuse me, sir . . . but King Abbudin is on the phone. He wants to speak to you and the prime minister at the same time.”
Whitestone quickly weighed his options.
“Elie, King Abbudin is on the line . . . he wants to get on a conference call with both of us.”
The leaders of the most powerful nation on earth looked at each other with shock at the Saudi king’s call, and resignation that none of them knew which button to push.
“Carol . . . can you make that happen?”
The president’s secretary stepped around the sofas and approached the table. She pushed two buttons. “Mr. Prime Minister?”
“Yes.”
“Your Highness?”
“Yes.”
She turned to her boss. “You’re on,” and left the room.
10:47 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, Washington, DC
“It has been a conspiracy of the Muslim Brotherhood, orchestrated by this once-dead imam, Moussa al-Sadr—founding father of Hezbollah—for his own dreams of jihad, that has thrown the Arab world into chaotic revolution,” said King Abbudin, his voice from the speakerphone gritty through the combined connection. “We must not allow the radical Islamists and the Iranians to turn the Middle East into a radiation-poisoned wasteland.”
“And what can you do about that now?” snapped Baruk. “My men are already slaughtered on the Temple Mount.”
Whitestone knew the future of the world depended on the next answer.
“I will cut the head from the conspiracy,” Abbudin promised. “With the support of my brother in peace, President Baqir al-Musawi, I dispatched avengers to remove the threat to Islam—a black plague to wipe out our enemies.
“Yes, much blood has been shed tonight,” said the king, “and more will soon be shed to save us all. But, Mr. President . . . Mr. Prime Minister . . . we must not allow the maniacal plans of this man to succeed. It is up to us to keep the peace, to maintain order in the Middle East, throughout the world. I have ordered the soldiers of Hezbollah and the Martyrs’ Brigade to withdraw, to abandon their arms and leave Jerusalem. We can rescue peace. We can avoid the conflagration that would destroy us all. It is up to us.”
Whitestone and the men in the Oval Office held their breath. “Mr. Prime Minister?”
“Israel will retain sovereignty over the Temple Mount.”
“Agreed,” said King Abbudin.
Silence sharpened the edge of desperation in the room.
“All right. Perhaps we can st
ep back from the abyss,” said Baruk. “But our military will remain mobilized until we are certain that we are no longer under attack.”
“Very wise, Mr. Prime Minister,” said Abbudin. “Now I must go and ensure that my orders are carried out . . . immediately.”
One of the lights on the telephone console was extinguished.
“Thank you, Eliazar,” said President Whitestone. “You have saved your nation.”
“No, Jonathan . . . I have saved my revenge for the moment when it will do the greatest damage.”
5:45 a.m., Balata Camp, Nablus, West Bank
Sitting at the window, Moussa al-Sadr gazed at the glowing sky to the west. “Your men have done well, Youssef. The fire burns bright on the Temple Mount. We have destroyed the Israeli claim to sovereignty. Tomorrow we call on the world to condemn their arrogance, to isolate the Jews even more.”
Youssef came up behind his master and looked over his shoulder.
“The Tent has burned for a long time, Holy One.”
“Let it burn forever,” said al-Sadr.
Three black-clad, black-masked men moved like wraiths through the empty, dusty street.
On padded feet they approached the house, a stout, wooden door on the ground level, windows dark. But on the second floor, light burned in the room at the front of the building. Moving shadows, they climbed the outside staircase and stopped at the upper door. One bent, worked the lock, and edged the door ajar. The sound of voices came from the front room.
Four men occupied the lit room—a cleric in black robes, looking out through a far window, with a huge, muscled Arab at his side and two, large, armed men who looked and acted like bodyguards.
The masked men waited. Two of them had silenced automatics pointed into the room. When the cleric turned from the window, two muffled spits sliced through the room and each of the guards fell dead. A second pair of muffled shots and the massive Arab was driven back against the far wall. Shaking off the surprise on his face and the two mortal bullet wounds in his chest, Youssef managed one, stumbling step toward the assassins, then fell flat on his face, blood seeping from under his body.
Imam Moussa al-Sadr faced his assassins as the three black-clad men entered the room. He raised his arms, closed his eyes, and prepared to sing out god is good—Allahu Akbar!—when strong hands grabbed his arms and pinned them to his back and another set of hands grabbed the back of his head and forced a cloth into his mouth.
Al-Sadr opened his eyes. One man in black stood before him. With drama and grace he withdrew the hood. Crown Prince Faisal—eldest son of King Abbudin. Vengeance . . . Sunni vengeance.
Faisal moved so close to al-Sadr’s face, their noses almost touched. His breath smelled of chickpeas and garlic.
“You will bleed a drop for every insult,” said Prince Faisal.
Al-Sadr felt the knife enter his stomach.
“You will bleed a drop for every offense, every slur you heaped upon our father, our family.”
Faisal pulled the knife across al-Sadr’s midsection with the precision and purposefulness of a butcher slicing a filet, the hands confining al-Sadr’s arms behind his back holding the imam steady.
“You will bleed until you die. And we will sit here, and watch you die. And your last thought will be of the House of Saud.”
5:49 a.m., Tel Aviv
The reports from the Temple Mount were getting worse by the minute. Baruk and his bodyguards raced down the steps toward waiting cars.
Three black-clad men moved up along the edges of the driveway, remaining in the shadow of the high hedges. Behind them, the security gate to Baruk’s home was closed and disabled, the gate guards dead at their posts. They came to the first of the two turns in the driveway, just before the hedges gave way to open ground.
All three came to rest at the edge of the hedge. They heard the sounds from above . . . running feet . . . slamming car doors. They tensed, but not because they were about to strike. Instead, each man felt the stab of a thin, razor-sharp blade run through his throat, the honed-edge steel pulled across the back of his neck, severing his spinal cord.
Three other black-clad men now moved out of the hedges and away from the limp bodies. They advanced up the hill toward the house.
5:50 a.m., On the Ashkelon Road
Commander Browne Counsil swung his Comanche into a snap turn left, burped the accelerator, and jumped his helicopter to a position in front of, and above, the Mazda sedan as it continued its retreat back along the road. Counsil floated the Comanche down, a lethal feather, to fifty feet off the ground, and held her steady. He was directly over the road. This is where it gets tricky. Reveal himself to the kidnappers in the car and put the women at risk, or remain at height—at a distance—to watch and wait. The safety of the women was paramount. He eased the Comanche back up to one hundred feet. “Pete . . . copy?”
“Roger.”
“I’ve got ’em,” said Counsil. “Over on Route Thirty-Eight. I’m overhead, spy in the sky. They’ve turned around, heading back east on the road. Seems a bridge suddenly vaporized in front of them. Go back two clicks and land. I’ll materialize when we’re abreast of you and get their attention. You get the women.”
“Roger that.”
“You’ll need to be fast, Pete. No dawdling coming over that ridge. Get there and get the women out.”
“I’ll be there.”
Counsil tripped the turbo in the tail and the Comanche rotated toward the east without a sound. As the car passed underneath him, Counsil felt as if the helicopter was adrift on the night. Sixty miles an hour was like standing still. But he used the opportunity to scan the car with night-vision sensors and heat-seeking thermal imaging. Two bodies in the front; three in the back. From the size of the bodies in the back, the one in the middle was a man. But he didn’t like the looks of the thermal scans. In one of the women, life was fading. He was about to radio his wingman with the information when a strange sight came into view a hundred yards in front of the escaping Mazda.
It was a white man. He looked like he’d been hit by a train—his clothes were shredded, his body was bloodied, his right arm dangled at his side and swung at its own, incoherent rhythm, and he was lurching over a hillock next to the road. He stumbled onto the asphalt roadway, in front of the oncoming car, waving his left arm back and forth. He was trying to stop the Mazda.
Guy looks like a walking MASH unit.
The driver of the car apparently didn’t see this apparition until the last moment. The Mazda went into a skid, across the road, coming to rest straddling the berm on the left side of the road—the oncoming lane.
Mr. MASH Unit took two stumbling steps toward the car . . . and Captain Browne Counsil opened up. He threw on his three, one-kilowatt Xenon Arc floodlights, blinding everyone on the ground, toggled his twenty millimeter nose cannon, and tore up the earth around the front and left side of the car—away from Mr. MASH Unit—and put one, well-placed burst through the car’s engine block.
Counsil dropped the chopper. He figured his only hope was to ground the helicopter with all dispatch and try to reach the women before their captors recovered from the sound and fury of his onslaught.
But as those thoughts were flashing through his mind and the Comanche was speeding toward a hard landing, a black Humvee hurtled into the picture from the east, ripped into a controlled, high-speed skid, and slammed its rear quarter-panel into the smoking front end of the Mazda. Bedlam ensued as the two-hundred-million-dollar Comanche slammed into the ground and snapped Counsil’s body against his harness.
Without pause, two Israeli soldiers leapt out of the Humvee, Uzis leveled. Right on their heels came a dwarf, shooting an automatic pistol into the sky.
Mr. MASH Unit lurched up to the car, his good arm stretched out in front of him. The dwarf climbed onto the smoking hood of the car, holding the gun in front of him. Counsil could see him screaming at the men in the car. The soldiers ripped open the front doors, pulled two men out, and buried them in
the dust. But the women were still in the back seat.
Counsil aimed his spotlights right through the back window of the Mazda, lighting it up like a Hollywood premier. He painted a laser sight on the head of the man in the back seat. But before Counsil could engage a trigger, the man’s head exploded.
Arms through a hole in the car’s windshield, the dwarf held his smoking gun aimed at a point once occupied by the kidnapper’s head.
It was cold tonight. He was surprised about the cold, surprised that he remembered the cold. What was he doing?
He could hear the sirens in the distance better than he could hear the soldier talking to him.
And his arm didn’t work.
Funny. Annie was here. In her nightshirt. But the sleeves were ripped off.
Over there, Sammy Rizzo was kneeling in the dirt and hugging Kallie Nolan. Kinda cold for Kallie to be wearing a tee shirt. And with one of Annie’s sleeves, all gooey, wrapped around her neck. Funny about dreams. Kallie’s eyes were open, but she looked asleep.
Oh, and there was some science fiction flying machine. And it was cold.
But Annie was there. She was smiling at him—holding something up to his head—but tears were running down her cheeks. She said something.
It was cold. But it was all right. Thank God.
5:56 a.m., Saudi Arabia
Dry desert winds pushed against the silk curtains. The king of the Saudis sat cross-legged on the carpet, his back straight, ignoring the support of the large pillows stacked by his side, his eyes as hard as the steel in the dagger he pointed at the other men seated around the carpet.
“Islam is the power of the New World Order,” said Abbudin, “and we are the power of Islam. We have ripped control of the Muslim Brotherhood from the Shi’a heretics. Al-Sadr and the old man of the desert are dead. Our teams of black death will soon eliminate the leaders of the Great Satan. Israel will be crippled, ripe for attack. The United States will be leaderless and vulnerable.
The Brotherhood Conspiracy Page 40