Lion of God- The Complete Trilogy

by Stephen England

  A menacing presence.

  He saw soldiers and police spilling out the front door of the police station in a panic—members of Arafat’s Tanzim militia running for their lives.

  Not fast enough. A scant moment later, another three rockets launched from beneath the Cobras’ weapons pylons, screaming through the afternoon sky until they slammed into the police station—dust and debris billowing out into the streets as the building collapsed.

  Rubble covering the spot where the Israeli soldier had been thrown from the window, the place where his blood had soaked the ground.

  The gunships dipped forward, picking up airspeed as they emerged from the smoke, screaming past the rooftops over Collins’ head like massive insects of prey.

  Already stalking their next targets.

  “Simon!” He looked up at the sound of his name called out in accented English—catching sight of Nasser Atta crouched on the other side of the street, beckoning to him as he took shelter behind the door of his sedan.

  Collins sprinted across the street and dropped down on one knee beside the ABC News’ producer, glancing back toward the police station to see the smoke and dust slowly clearing away from above the rubble—the Palestinian flag which had hung over its entry now shredded and lying in the dirt. The moans of the injured—a man lying on his back, his leg mangled below the knee. Trying painfully to lift himself, to reach the Kalashnikov assault rifle which lay only a few feet away.

  “I knew there would be reprisals coming, I just didn’t expect. . .this,” Atta murmured, still seemingly shell-shocked as he stared toward the destruction, the throb of helicopter rotors still audible in the distance.

  They weren’t gone yet.

  “You’ll be safer with me,” he added after a long moment, seeming to collect himself. “You need to stay with someone local, a face people know.”

  Fair enough. After the events of the morning, though, the offer of protection rang hollow on Collins’ ears. Was anyone even capable of protecting any of them if something went wrong?

  “Who’s this?” The British journalist asked skeptically, watching a green Land Rover pull into the square before the rubble of the police station—a middle-aged man in military fatigues stepping out with a bullhorn in his hands, a maroon beret perched atop his head.

  “That’s Abu Awad,” Atta breathed, taking a careful look over the hood of the car. Collins grimaced in recognition, keeping his own head down.

  “Abu Awad”, the kunya of Mahmoud Damra. The commander of Arafat’s infamous Force 17 and one of the Palestinian president’s closest associates, Damra had made a name for himself in the heavy fighting against the Israelis during the siege of Beirut back in the early ‘80s.

  “Is this all the Jews can do?” Damra’s thick, guttural voice boomed out through the bullhorn, resounding off the surrounding buildings. “This was nothing more than a firecracker. We do not fear them—we will turn Ramallah into a cemetery for the occupiers.”

  A distant explosion served as grim punctuation to his words, the helicopters hitting targets deeper in the city.

  The sounds of war.

  9:54 A.M. Eastern Time

  The CNN Center

  Atlanta, Georgia

  “To the Middle East now,” Bill Hemmer announced, adjusting his glasses as he stared directly into the red eye of the CNN cameras. “A lot of the information we’re getting right now is still developing at this time—only about another hour of sunlight there in the Middle East. Again, the picture with the tank hunkered down is indeed in the West Bank, in the Palestinian town of Ramallah. Said to be just on the outskirts of that town. Daryn?”

  “That’s right, Bill,” His co-anchor began, clearing her throat. “There right within Ramallah, we have one of our CNN producers, Sausan Ghosheh. We’ve been talking to her by phone.”

  A picture of Ghosheh came up on-screen as Daryn Kagan continued, “Sausan, what’s the latest from where you are inside Ramallah?”

  There was a moment’s delay before the producer’s voice came back over the line. “Daryn, I’m standing outside of this police station that was just bombed by Israeli helicopter gunships a few minutes ago. The top floor of that—it’s a two-story building, and the top floor is completely destroyed. I am standing here with groups of people who walk by, hundreds of them, chanting—some of them carrying weapons—very angry, calling this a humiliation of Palestine.”

  Kagan nodded her understanding, momentarily consulting the notes before her on the desk. “So Sausan, the police station where you are standing—for our viewers who are just now joining our live coverage—please explain for us the significance of that particular building.”

  “Earlier today, according to the Palestinian officials, a Ford transit car carrying two Israeli undercover police agents came close to this police station. The police were suspicious of this car, and they tried to stop the car. The car wouldn't stop. So the police—” Ghosheh’s voice broke off for a moment, faint shouts sounding in the distance, the connection filling with static. “As I am talking to you right now, people are running. People are running, because they're hearing helicopters, and, they’re trying to find something to hide under, expecting the helicopters to attack.”

  “Sausan,” Hemmer interjected, taking a sip from the silver container of ice water he always kept on his desk, “are you all right? Are you in a safe place?”

  “All right,” she responded, ignoring his question, “now they stopped, they're looking—and they’re pointing up in the air. It was only a false alarm, but you can see how people are angry and very frightened here. They're terrified of another hit. They don't think this will be the end of it, and they are pointing toward the sky and calling for revenge against Israel.”

  The cycle of violence, the young CNN anchor mused, his brow furrowing. Never-ending in the Middle East.

  “As to your previous question, Daryn,” Ghosseh continued, sounding as though she was out of breath, “as I was saying, there was this Israeli transit car. They couldn't stop, they wouldn't stop—the people in the car. And the Palestinian youth, they surrounded the car. As I am talking now, there is a bomb. I heard the sound of a bomb, but I can’t see where it is.”

  Kagan looked across at him, her eyes betraying her concern. “Sausan, most importantly—are you in a place that’s safe for you to talk, or do we need to let you go so you can seek shelter?”

  “I’m running as I’m talking to you,” Ghosheh’s voice came back after a moment, speaking in short gasps, “it’s why I’m running out of breath.”

  “Okay, I think we’re going to let you get to a safe place and we’ll check back with you later on.” She looked up into the cameras, her face grave. “That is Sausan Ghosheh, reporting live from Ramallah—obviously a place that is filled with tension today as the Israelis take action which they say is not retaliation; but which does follow the death of two Israeli soldiers earlier this morning. Bill?”

  “And now, as we turn our attention to the Gulf of Aden, where fresh details are emerging regarding what the Pentagon is calling a terrorist attack on the USS Cole. . .”

  6:18 P.M.

  A residence

  Tel Aviv, Israel

  “I expect the civilized world to understand the difficult dilemma with which Israel is faced,” Shlomo Ben-Ami stated, staring unflinchingly into the battery of news cameras facing him—the flashbulbs going off in the face of the acting Foreign Minister clearly visible on the television screen. “The desire for peace, and peace as a national interest, cannot co-exist with violence of the kind that Arafat has initiated in the recent weeks.”

  He paused, appearing to consult the written statement before him for a moment before looking up. “There is no self-respecting sovereign state that can conduct a peace process, when its supposed partner deliberately releases known terrorists and breaks all the rules of political behavior. Israel believes that the current deterioration of the situation can be stopped, but only if the world will say clearly and unequ
ivocally to Arafat: ‘Enough is enough.’”

  And that would require a moral resolve that the world had never possessed, the old man thought—taking a sip of his whiskey as he stared at the television across the darkened room. They sat in their comfortable houses, paid token homage to the memory of the Holocaust and self-righteously assured themselves, “Never again.”

  But they did. . .nothing. That task had ever fallen to men like him, all the way back to the War of Independence—when the Jewish state had been born of fire and blood.

  “The Palestinians are responsible for their fate,” the Foreign Minister said, continuing to deliver his statement, “and they must therefore understand the full significance and implications—and especially the damage—which the continuation and escalation of the current situation will cause. Even at this difficult hour, we call upon the Palestinian people: Choose the course of peace, stop the firing and the riots, and return to the course of good neighborliness. Thank you.”

  The room exploded in a flurry of questions from the assembled members of the press, each of them drowning out the other until the old man saw Ben-Ami gesture to a Haaretz reporter near the front.

  “Are we now, by your definition,” the reporter asked, “in a state of war with the Palestinian Authority, and what will happen now? There were several waves of attacks in Ramallah and Gaza. Has the IDF now halted its fire and is waiting, or are we still in the midst of the attack?”

  “We have defined this operation as a limited action, designed to respond to the situation created by the Palestinian Authority, and to convey a sharp message that Israel, as a sovereign state, cannot and will not react with self-restraint in the face of such a blatant and humiliating act against its citizens and soldiers. At the same time, this is a localized message. We will of course be the first to rejoice if this will mark the end of the wave of bloodshed. However, we are still at the beginning of this crisis. We do not seek confrontation. But if confrontation is forced upon us, we will be forced to respond similarly.”

  To respond similarly. The old man drained the last of his whiskey and returned the tumbler to the small endtable beside his chair, a small ring in the wood marking where it had rested for years.

  Blood for blood, an eye for an eye. Ever the order of things in the Middle East, stretching back over the course of millennia.

  Men were fools to think they could change it now. He heard footsteps behind him, and knew without turning who had entered. “It was good of you to come, Avi. Please, sit down.”

  “I came as soon as I was able, Efraim,” Avi ben Shoham responded, moving across the room to take a seat opposite the Mossad director. “It’s been. . .a dark day.”

  Efraim Halevy merely nodded by way of reply, his index finger rubbing gently across his clean-shaven lip as he stared at the now-muted television. “You know that his wife heard it happening, don’t you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Halevy let out a deep, heavy sigh. “Yossi Avrahami’s wife Hani—she called his mobile phone to make sure he was safe. The voice that answered told her with a laugh, ‘We are now slaughtering your husband.’ And all she could hear was the screams.”

  Shoham flinched as if he had been slapped, his face tightening into a death mask, eyes burning with wrath. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out.

  “You and I, Avi,” the Mossad director began once more, “we are no longer young men. Our lives have been spent in defense of the Jewish state. And now, just as we might have thought ourselves on the very brink of securing peace for our children’s children. . .all we have worked for is torn away. Our brothers butchered, and us helpless to save them. Paralyzed.”

  “We will have our vengeance.”

  “And it’s not to be found by firing rockets into empty buildings,” Halevy said, lifting his head to look Shoham in the face, his eyes glittering cold as death in the dim light. “As much as Barak would like to tell himself otherwise. But by finding and hunting down those responsible for their murders. Those actually responsible—the men behind this. . .what is the word? ‘Lynching.’”

  Shoham nodded his understanding. There was no word in Hebrew for the kind of evil that had taken place in Ramallah, so a horrible new loan word from the English had entered the lexicons of them all this day to fill the gap.

  “We have known each other for decades, Avi,” Halevy continued, “and you have ever proven to be someone upon whom I could rely. Which is why I am entrusting you with the responsibility of carrying this out. Find those responsible, track them down wherever they hide—and kill them. That the world may know. . .murder a Jew and you can expect to die the death of a dog, wallowing in your own blood in the street.”

  “It will be done.”

  “You will report directly to Eli Gerstman for this one—he’s already been briefed and will be awaiting your contact. Anything you need will be provided.”

  “I will need a Kidon unit,” Shoham replied, seeming to consider his words for a moment. “The field team, their support personnel—everything.”

  “Is there someone you had in mind?” Halevy asked, gazing at him keenly.

  “There is, in fact. A young man who is known by the codename of ‘Ariel.’”

  “Ah, yes,” Halevy nodded, rising to his feet and moving to the sideboard to refill his drink. “The Lion of God. . .”

  Part Two

  “There's no difference between one's killing and making decisions that will send others to kill. It's exactly the same thing, or even worse.”—Golda Meir

  8:09 A.M. December 9th, 2000 (Two months later)

  Ben Gurion International Airport

  “There’ll be a car waiting for you at Dulles,” Daniel Vukovic instructed, handing over the briefcase. “You’re then to proceed straight to Langley for the debrief on RUMBLEWAY, where—”

  “I have done this before,” the dark-haired young man from the Operations Directorate smiled quietly, something of an edge glinting in his gunmetal-blue eyes. “A time or three.”

  Fair enough, Vukovic thought. The man couldn’t have been much past his early twenties, but word in the community had it that he was one of Pavitt’s rising stars in the DO’s Special Operations Group—hard as that was to imagine.

  Then again. . .it was the DO. Anything was possible over on that side of the house.

  “All right then,” he said finally, forcing a smile to his face as he turned to leave. “Enjoy the in-flight movie.”

  It would be about the only thing any of them enjoyed for some time to come, he thought, moving back through the terminal—in the wake of a field operation gone horribly wrong.

  Which they tended to do, more often than not. It was why, as a careerist in the Intelligence Directorate, he viewed field ops at an absolute last resort—an option to be utilized only when all other options had been thoroughly exhausted.

  Say what you would about photographic intelligence—and it was a means of intel-gathering not without its limitations—you’d never wake up one sunny morning to find that your spy satellite had been dropped off on your doorstep, genitals cut off and stuffed in its mouth.

  Like they’d found the asset they had so carefully recruited from the West Bank, thrown out of a speeding car in the front of the Embassy only a week earlier.

  His phone vibrated in the pocket of his light jacket as he left the concourse and he pulled it out, glancing momentarily at the screen before flipping it open. The station chief.

  The outgoing station chief, he reminded himself, raising the phone to his ear. Cometh the New Year, cometh the new management. Still no word on whom the benevolent gods of the seventh floor had designated as Lay’s replacement. If there was one good thing about a posting like Tel Aviv, it was that Langley generally gave it to an old hand.

  It was no place for someone just learning to fly.

  “Just saw Nichols off at the airport,” he began, glancing about him as he made his way out toward his car, the morning rays of sun washing in over the c
ity, through the palms off to the west. “On my way back. What do you need?”

  “Avi ben Shoham has made contact, requested a meet. Hatraklin, at noon.”

  11:56 A.M.

  Hatraklin

  Always show up early. That was the maxim of any spy—it gave time to familiarize yourself with your surroundings. Prepare the battlespace.

  It gave you an edge. Unless, of course, you were playing against another spy who was doing the same thing—on his home court.

  “Have a seat, David,” Avi ben Shoham advised in his thickly-accented English, the barest ghost of a smile playing around the Israeli’s grave countenance. “This luncheon, it is. . .how do you say it? ‘On me.’”

  That was hardly a good sign, Lay thought, feeling himself tense at the words. Indigestion was likely going to keep him from abusing Shoham’s. . .hospitality?

  “Take it as a token of my friendship, a gesture in honor of your soon departure from our country,” his counterpart continued as Lay pulled back the chair and sat down, glancing about the restaurant. “May your successor prove to be as reliable an ally.”

  “I’d drink to that,” Lay assented, reaching for his menu. “I’ve recommended Vukovic for the post, but it’s hard to say.”

  Shoham nodded. “Daniel is a good man—has excellent instincts for this work.”

  Vukovic was also a Jew—a Russian whose family had escaped to the States in the ‘50s—Lay thought, which was what made his appointment here in Tel Aviv unlikely. They couldn’t risk the appearance of partiality.

  A conflict of interest.

  “I trust you have been well, David,” the Israeli continued. “I heard about the. . .incident at your Embassy the other day.”