by Larry Bond
Table of Contents
Title Page
PROLOGUE
ACT I
1 - JERUSALEM THREE DAYS LATER . . .
2 - JERUSALEM
3 - EVANSTON, ILLINOIS LATER IN THE DAY …
4 - CAIRO A DAY LATER …
ACT II
1 - CIA BUILDING 24-442, VIRGINIA
2 - CAIRO THE NEXT AFTERNOON …
3 - OVER SYRIA THREE NIGHTS LATER …
4 - SYRIA, ON THE BORDER WITH IRAQ THE NEXT NIGHT …
5 - EVANSTON, ILLINOIS
6 - EASTERN SYRIA
7 - OVER SYRIA
8 - EASTERN SYRIA
ACT III
1 - TEL AVIV THE NEXT MORNING …
2 - CIA BUILDING 24-442, VIRGINIA
3 - ISRAEL, NEAR GAZA
4 - INCIRLIK, TURKEY
5 - EASTERN SYRIA JUST BEFORE DAWN …
6 - EASTERN SYRIA THAT AFTERNOON …
7 - TRIPOLI (TARABULUS ESH SHAM). LEBANON THAT AFTERNOON …
8 - TEL AVIV THAT AFTERNOON …
9 - TRIPOLI, LEBANON
10 - EASTERN SYRIA THAT EVENING …
11 - BEIRUT, LEBANON THAT EVENING …
12 - EASTERN SYRIA
13 - TRIPOLI THAT EVENING …
14 - EASTERN SYRIA
15 - TRIPOLI THE NEXT DAY …
16 - EASTERN SYRIA
17 - TRIPOLI
18 - EASTERN SYRIA
19 - TRIPOLI
20 - EASTERN SYRIA
21 - TRIPOLI THAT EVENING …
22 - TRIPOLI THAT NIGHT …
ACT IV
1 - TRIPOLI
2 - CIA BUILDING 24-442, VIRGINIA
3 - TRIPOLI
4 - DAMASCUS
5 - LATAKIA
6 - NORTH OF LATAKIA SEVERAL HOURS LATER …
7 - NORTH OF LATAKIA TWO HOURS LATER …
8 - LATAKIA
9 - NORTH OF LATAKIA
10 - LATAKIA
11 - DAMASCUS THE NEXT MORNING …
12 - LATAKIA
13 - DAMASCUS
14 - LATAKIA
15 - LATAKIA
16 - LATAKIA SEVERAL HOURS LATER …
17 - LATAKIA A FEW HOURS LATER …
18 - LATAKIA
19 - TEL AVIV THE NEXT MORNING …
20 - LATAKIA SHORTLY BEFORE NOON …
21 - LATAKIA LATER THAT DAY …
22 - LATAKIA
23 - BAGHDAD
24 - LATAKIA
25 - LATAKIA
26 - LATAKIA AROUND FOUR A.M.
27 - INCIRLIK, TURKEY
28 - LATAKIA TWO P.M.
29 - BAGHDAD
30 - LATAKIA AROUND 2000 (EIGHT P.M., LOCAL) …
31 - CIA BUILDING 24-442, VIRGINIA
32 - LATAKIA
33 - BAGHDAD
34 - LATAKIA
ACT V
1 - BAGHDAD
2 - LATAKIA
3 - CIA BUILDING 24-442, VIRGINIA
4 - LATAKIA
5 - BAGHDAD
6 - LATAKIA
7 - CIA HEADQUARTERS, VIRGINIA
8 - LATAKIA
9 - APPROACHING CYPRUS
10 - CIA BUILDING 24-442, VIRGINIA
11 - LATAKIA
12 - CYPRUS
13 - LATAKIA
ACT VI
1 - BAGHDAD THE NEXT MORNING …
2 - OFF THE SYRIAN COAST, NEAR LATAKIA
3 - LATAKIA
4 - THE PERSIAN GULF, SOUTH OF IRAQ
5 - CYPRUS
6 - TEL AVIV THE NEXT MORNING …
7 - NEAR JERICHO, THE WEST BANK
8 - BAGHDAD THE NEXT MORNING …
9 - LATAKIA
10 - CIA BUILDING 24-442, VIRGINIA THREE HOURS LATER …
11 - LATAKIA
12 - BAGHDAD
13 - LATAKIA
14 - TAL ASHTAH NEW, IRAQ DAYBREAK …
15 - SOUTH OF LATAKIA, SYRIA
16 - NEAR AL FATTAH, IRAQ
17 - CYPRUS
18 - BAGHDAD LATER THAT NIGHT …
19 - TEL AVIV
20 - BALAD AFTER MIDNIGHT …
21 - TEL AVIV
22 - SOUTH OF THE SUEZ CANAL
23 - BAGHDAD EARLY MORNING …
24 - CIA BUILDING 24-442
25 - NORTH OF TIKRIT DAWN …
26 - BAGHDAD
27 - THE RED SEA
28 - NEAR AL FATTAH, IRAQ.
29 - THE RED SEA
30 - BAGHDAD
31 - NEAR AL FATTAH, IRAQ
32 - THE RED SEA
33 - NEAR AL FATTAH
ACT VII
1 - THE RED SEA
2 - BAGHDAD
3 - THE RED SEA
4 - THE RED SEA
EPILOGUE
Forge Books by Larry Bond and Jim Defelice
PRAISE FOR LARRY BONDS FIRST TEAM SERIES
LARRY BOND’S FIRST TEAM - FIRES OF WAR
Copyright Page
For the world’s real Father Tim Casey’s,
of all faiths and beliefs
PROLOGUE
And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels,
Go your ways, and pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth.
—Revelation 16:1 (King James Version)
SUBURBAN VIRGINIA
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been about ten years since my last confession.”
Father Tim Casey jerked upright in the confessional and turned toward the plastic window shielding the penitent’s face. The shadow was as recognizable as the voice. “Ah, faith, and it’s a wonder the good Lord himself doesn’t come down from the cross right now and strike you dead for yer sins, Ferg,” he said. “A true wonder.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be making the sign of the cross right about now?”
“Don’t be jokin’ about a thing like this. You’re a good Catholic lad now, or were, upon a time.”
“Never,” said Bob Ferguson, shifting his weight on the kneeler in the confessional. “But I did go to Catholic school. One of the priests there taught me a confession has to be heard.”
“Oh, all right then. Tell me your sins. Leave out the venial ones; I expect they’re legion.”
“Alphabetical order?”
“Here you have me believing you’re serious,” said the priest, “and then you’re committing sacrilege. There’ll be no mercy for you at St. Peter’s gate. He’ll be adding ten years to your stay in purgatory for riding me today.”
“I’m serious. What order do you want?”
“Any order will do.” The door on the other side of the confessional opened, and Father Casey recognized the faithful sighs of Mrs. DeGarmo, an eighty-two-year-old widow who came every Saturday to confess the misdeeds of her youth. The wooden walls of the confessional were thin, and Ferguson’s voice carried a good distance; Father Casey decided he would have to seek a change of venue. “I’ll tell you what now, Ferg, it might be better for you to hold your peace and wait for me until regular hours end. Then we can speak at our leisure, as seriously as you want.”
“How about Murph’s?”
“I was thinking about the side altar, lad.”
“I’m buyin’.”
“Faith, if temptation isn’t everywhere, even in the confessional,” said Father Casey.
“Not up to it?”
“I’ve the five o’clock this evening.”
“It’s only two.”
“All right then,” said the priest. “Given that I haven’t had lunch and you were a decent student once. A half hour.”
Casey started to close the window.
“Hang on,” said Ferguson. “What’s my penance?”
“I haven’t heard your confession yet.
Surely I taught you there’s no advance credit.”
“What if I die before you hear my confession?”
“Your time isn’t that short,” said the priest. “Ah, all right. Say three Our Fathers and Two Glory-Be’s, and we’ll consider it a down payment. May the Good Lord have mercy on your soul—and on mine.”
NEW MEXICO
When the phone rang, the man sitting on the couch waited until the seventh ring to answer, even though he had been waiting for the call all day.
“Yes,” he said, his tone flat, neither asking nor answering.
“When?” said the caller.
“Three days.”
“Too soon.”
“We cannot control the timing,” said the man, struggling to keep his tone neutral.
“Next week is not good.”
The man closed his eyes, conjuring the vision that reassured him: angels with golden trumpets raced above the clouds, light raining down on the earth. Fire burned in the sky, and from each corner of the earth came an angel.
“It is already in motion,” he said calmly.
“Very well.”
“Very well,” echoed the man, hanging up the phone.
CORSICA
There was no God.
Aaron Ravid stared at the folded photo of his wife and son, dead nearly eighteen months. They’d been on a bus in a Jerusalem suburb when an Islamic suicide bomber from the West Bank detonated herself, killing five and wounding eight others. Ironically, three of the dead had been Muslims, including Ravid’s wife.
For Ravid, the attack was the final sign that the faith he’d been born into was empty at its core, a tradition rather than a religion. God did not exist, for if He did, He would not take the lives of innocents. God could only be an invention of man: a way to justify murder, and wrath, and unspeakable crimes.
Ravid lay the photograph on the table and turned his attention back to the reason he had pulled it out from his wallet. At the lower right-hand corner of the page in the Sunday newspaper sat a small advertisement, boxed with a double rule. It asked an outrageous price for an old clunker of a car, and gave a number Ravid knew to be disconnected. Few people on the island would have use for the old VW featured in the ad, and most likely no one would bother to try the number. But that was all right; the ad’s real purpose was to summon Ravid to Tel Aviv, to meet with his Mossad control.
It had been more than a year since he had been in Israel, and longer than that since he had spoken to his superiors. Immediately after the attack, his supervisor had told him to rest, and until today he did not believe that he would ever be called back. A small but decent sum appeared in a bank account each month, providing for his simple needs.
Ravid reconsidered the meeting. He had not been told to rest. He had been told he was not needed and would not be needed.
“You will not be called upon,” Tischler said when they met in the secure room. He said it quietly and quickly, without even offering condolences as a prelude. No agent, especially one groomed to walk among the enemy as Ravid had been, could be relied on once his emotions were “exposed.”
A curious way to put it, Ravid thought then, especially as his cover as a Palestinian intellectual had been maintained. But it proved apt. The deaths of his family had torn the skin from his face, leaving his blood vessels and bones open to the air. The Mossad would not take chances unnecessarily, and a man who had suffered as Aaron Ravid had suffered was an unnecessary risk.
Ravid had been planted at great effort and expense in Syria, where at the time of his family’s murder he had a job as a university professor occasionally used by the Syrian government and the Palestinian Authority as a low-level diplomat. Ravid regularly met with members of the Syrian intelligence service and the so-called political arm of Hamas. (They were all murderers at heart, but Ravid brushed shoulders primarily with men who used their brains and mouths rather than their hands to kill.)
More to protect the people who had helped him than to maintain his cover, Ravid had returned to Syria after the meeting with his Mossad supervisors. There he finished out the semester, lecturing for several weeks on Islamic history, before applying for an unpaid sabbatical. This was readily granted; his colleagues at the school knew that he was a “committed Muslim” and would spend the time furthering the cause.
Such a man might have good reason to disappear for a year or even more, but the day Ravid left Syria he expected never to return. He believed his days as an undercover agent for Israel were over. The nerve that had once been a taut steel wire binding his chest had melted under the fire of his grief. His courage turned to liquid and evaporated.
He fled to Corsica, an island where he knew no one and no one knew him. For many months, he drank to survive. Now he simply drank: vodka in the morning, vodka in the afternoon, vodka in the evening.
Ravid stared at the advertisement. If they were calling him this way rather than simply dispatching a low-level messenger to Corsica, there could only be one reason: they needed him in Syria again. The message implicit in the ad was that he must assume the identity of Fazel al-Qiam once more.
Ravid began to laugh. The sound bounced off the stones of the eighteenth-century house, strange and foreign; it seemed to belong to someone else.
Yes, it must. Aaron Ravid was no longer capable of laughter.
If they wanted him back as Fazel al-Qiam, it would only be for something critically important. An assassination, perhaps, or something even greater.
Revenge?
Not for him. To avenge his wife’s death alone would take something colossal. And to avenge his son’s … there was no possibility. It could not be measured. Wipe out Mecca, destroy Medina, wipe Islam off the face of the earth. Would that suffice?
If he still believed in God, perhaps it would. But the belief now was as foreign as the sound of his laughter, still ringing in his ears.
Ravid reached for the vodka bottle on the table. As he did, the newspaper caught against his arm and pushed against the bottle, knocking it over. Vodka lapped out onto the floor. As he reached to right it, anger seized him and he took the bottle and threw it against the wall. The stench of alcohol stung the air.
“I will leave today,” Ravid said, rising, his mind already sorting through the arrangements he would need to make.
SUBURBAN VIRGINIA
Ferguson waved from his chair at the far end of the bar as Father Casey came in through the side door. The priest was not unknown here, especially on Saturday afternoon during the college football season, and it took him a few minutes to make it over to Ferg, who was about halfway through a Guinness. Casey’s collar, bald head, and priestly demeanor made him seem like sixty or older, but the priest was barely in his forties. He had been fresh from Ireland and the seminary when he met Ferguson at the Catholic prep school twelve years before. Casey had taught Ferguson about Plato and Aristotle, coached him in lacrosse, and shared a thought or two about the lamentable degradation of penmanship since the introduction of the computer; the most important lessons were of a deeper nature and were ongoing.
“Notre Dame is getting squashed,” Ferguson said, pointing at the television as the priest sat down. “Quarterback can’t throw to save his life.”
“Aye, and didn’t I tell you to go to the school? You would’ve had all the records. You’d be in the NFL by now.”
“And you’d be on the sideline, right?” Ferguson had sprouted a few more inches from the seventy he’d stood as the prep school’s quarterback, but his frame remained on the trim side, and he would have been small even for a college quarterback. More important, he would have been bored most of the week. “I ordered some chicken wings,” he told the priest. “Extra hot.”
“Ah, you know I can’t eat them, Ferg, much as I’d like.”
“Yeah, I know. I got you some bread and a beer.”
“Well, thank you for that.” Father Casey turned and nodded at the barmaid, who was pouring a Guinness for him.
“And a filler-upper for
me,” said Ferguson.
The priest said a quick prayer when the beer arrived, blessing himself before drinking.
“One of life’s small pleasures God gave man,” said Father Casey, sipping at the light head that topped the dark beer. He’d made the excuse before. “So how are you, Ferg?”
“Not bad today. Yourself?”
“Better than to be expected, thank the Lord.”
“Your hair’s growing back,” said Ferguson, gesturing at the priest’s head.
“Not so you’d notice.” Father Casey ran his hand over his bald pate. “I’m used to it now. I’ve been thinking on it. It’s not bad for a priest to lose his hair. It makes him look distinguished.”
“You were always distinguished.”
“Ah, as if it would’ve helped me with the likes of you and your friends. A hard crew you were, Ferguson. A hard crew: good boys all of you and pistol fast. Too much for me.”
“You were a good teacher. The students were the problem,” said Ferguson. But Casey was right about his teaching abilities, at least those required in high school. He’d seen the light after a few years and found a berth as a parish priest. Still, Ferguson and the other young men had found the young priest a relief from the Sisters of Charity and the ancient Jesuit priests who held most of the positions at the school.
“It’s the ladies I feel sorry for,” said Casey. “You see them with their kerchiefs. A hard thing, I think. Especially with the wee ones gaping at you all day. But we get through it. The good Lord tests us, but we get through it. You know how it goes.”
Ferguson did know. Both men had cancer, thyroid cancer in Ferguson’s case, which had metastasized beyond his thyroid and spread to his lymph nodes before being detected. The treatment of choice in his case was removal and radiation. He’d already done both, and in fact had reached the point where further radiation would have doubtful effect; the prognosis was hopeful or not, depending on which doctor was comparing his case history to which set of statistics.
Casey’s disease, pancreatic cancer, was much more virulent than Ferguson’s, and, unlike his, a death sentence without potential for remission. The priest would not be hearing earthly confessions six months from now.