Lion of God- The Complete Trilogy

by Stephen England

  Two men dead, a third clinging to life—the Israeli team lead already loaded onto the Blackhawk, Air Force pararescue jumpers working to save him as he slipped in and out of a fevered delirium—the wound sending him into shock.

  The Israeli team effectively wiped out, in the space of a half hour. Less.

  You always knew it could happen, just always hoped it wouldn’t happen on your watch. And perhaps it was inevitable that it would, given enough time—the odds growing against you with every successive mission back out into the field.

  That one of these days it was going to be one of your people. That one of these days it was going to be. . .you.

  The pitcher that goes to the well. . .

  “Ready?” he asked, looking up into the eyes of the Israeli woman, his words nearly carried away by the sound of the rotors.

  She nodded wordlessly, moving to take her position at her fallen teammate’s feet as he zipped up the bag over the man’s face, pausing to grip his shoulder in one final gesture of comradeship. Brotherhood.

  Her face an impassive mask as they lifted the body together, staggering back over broken ground toward the waiting helo.

  Still in the fight. He had to hand it to her—she’d seen most of her fellow team members die in front of her and kept fighting, at his side until the guns at last fell silent, the F-15’s second attack run breaking the last vestiges of Iraqi resistance.

  Whatever she felt, it was locked away. Saved for later. After the mission. Like the professional she was.

  He lifted the man’s shoulders up onto the floor of the hovering helicopter as they reached the door, sliding him in alongside the body bag containing his fallen comrade.

  Taking a final look around him, his eyes scanning the barren wastes of the desert as the Israeli woman pulled herself up into the helicopter behind him—seeing the wrecks of the military trucks off in the distance, still smoldering in the night.

  Success? It seemed wrong, somehow. . .and yet they had done what they’d come here to do. No matter the cost.

  He shook his head, heaving himself up onto the floor of the helicopter, his AK-47 gripped in one hand—his legs still dangling from the door as he glanced back, signaling the pilot with his free hand. Take off.

  Time to go home.

  3:47 P.M. Israel Standard Time, January 22nd

  Mossad Headquarters

  Tel Aviv, Israel

  “. . .with the Israeli elections just two weeks away, the Israelis and Palestinians are debating a new peace accord which could weigh heavily on those elections. CNN’s Jerrold Kessel has this report.”

  Avi ben Shoham glanced up from his desk as the image on the screen of his television changed to show footage of a white-bearded Israeli journalist standing outside of Ehud Barak’s home, protesters visible in the background behind him.

  “That’s right, Andria,” Kessel said, leaning into his microphone as the shouting behind him grew louder, “We’re here outside the Israeli prime minister’s home, where Mr. Ehud Barak is convening his senior ministers as supporters and opponents demonstrate without. In just over two weeks, Mr. Barak faces the Israeli people at the polls. But the embattled Israeli leader is first engaging the Palestinians again, responding to Yasser Arafat’s proposal for a last ditch peace talks effort. . .”

  Doomed to failure like all the rest, the Mossad officer thought, muting the television with a click of his remote as he returned to his paperwork, shaking his head. There would be no peace, not this time—just like all the times before.

  An Israeli high school student had been murdered only five days before, lured into the Palestinian Authority by a young Arab woman he had met on the Internet, posing as an American tourist.

  He’d been found a day later, his bullet-riddled body stuffed in the trunk of an abandoned car on the outskirts of Ramallah.

  Ramallah. Where this had all begun, so many months before.

  This chain of events that had led his men from the streets of France to the islands of the Mediterranean to the deserts of Iraq. . .to their death, in the case of Ze’ev and Nadir.

  Two of their best. Sacrificed for peace, or at least averting a greater tragedy.

  As of last he had heard, Ariel was still in the hospital, recovering from his wounds. But he was recovering, and that was what mattered.

  The road back, however, would be a long one for the Kidon team lead—the second of the two rounds which had smashed into his arm penetrating further and breaking his shoulderblade.

  Putting him out of commission for the time being. Maybe longer.

  A knock on the open office door, and Shoham looked up to see Eli Gerstman enter, glancing briefly at the television as he closed the door behind him. “Taba?”

  Shoham grunted a “yes” by way of reply, scribbling his signature at the bottom of the cover sheet before opening the folder. “Is there something I can do for you, Eli?”

  “There is,” the senior officer responded, remaining on his feet even as Shoham gestured toward an available chair. “The presence of chemical weapons at the site of the operation—where are we at with obtaining confirmation?”

  Ah, yes. They needed proof, beyond the American communications intercepts—physical proof that the weapons had ever been there to begin with. The kind of proof the field team could never have obtained in the heat of the firefight.

  He rose from his chair, handing Gerstman the folder and indicating that he should open it. “Our people will cross the border tomorrow. An hour, two—should give them all the time they need to collect soil samples from the bomb craters and make it back into Jordan. Our asset there at Al-Karameh will ensure that they pass unchallenged.”

  At least that was the plan. No one knew better than they just how many things could go wrong, but he’d done his best to prepare for every eventuality. To the extent that you ever could.

  “Good,” Gerstman said finally, returning the folder with a nod as he turned to leave. “Let me know as soon as you have answers. And, Avi?”

  “Yes?” Shoham asked, looking up to see Gerstman standing there with his hand on the door.

  “What about General Siddiqi?”

  Siddiqi. The man who had set all of this in motion, from the very beginning. Been responsible for so many deaths, attempted to cause so many more. Shoham pursed his lips, his eyes betraying nothing as he met Gerstman’s gaze.

  “It’s being handled.”

  5:03 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, January 26th

  Fort Bragg, North Carolina

  Coming home. There was always something strange about it, as if something of himself had been left behind. Back there, in the desert sand. In the war, if that’s what you chose to call it.

  Black glanced out the open window of his rental car as it idled not twenty feet back from the gate of the military base, the chill air biting at his bearded face.

  It felt like snow, though he doubted they’d see any here at Bragg—cold air blowing down from the mountains to the west. Such a contrast with the desert. The world he’d left behind him. For the moment.

  The car in front of him pulled forward, driving on into the base and he looked up to see the uniformed MP waving him forward.

  “Your identification?” the soldier asked, a scowl passing across his face at the sight of Black’s civilian clothes—his long, non-regulation haircut and beard.

  So typical.

  He grinned, handing his military ID through the window to the MP, watching as the man scanned it, his expression changing as he did so.

  “All right,” he said, nodding as he gave the ID back, taking a step away from the vehicle, “you’re free to proceed, Sergeant Kranemeyer.”

  1:57 P.M., January 27th

  CIA Headquarters

  Langley, Virginia

  “. . . and has brought us to a stage where we can definitely say that we, Israelis and Palestinians, have never been closer to an agreement between ourselves than at this point. We have embarked on a technical and also principle-based dis
cussion. And certainly we can say that we have a basis for an agreement, which will be able to be implemented and achieved after the elections in Israel.”

  Now there’s the voice of optimism. David Lay shook his head, packing his personal effects once more into a cardboard box as he prepared to vacate the temporary office he had occupied since returning to Langley—the image of Shlomo Ben-Ami, the Israeli foreign minister, on-screen as he continued to speak.

  Announcing the conclusion of the Taba Summit, brought to an end without reaching an agreement. Just as Shoham had predicted.

  Just as he had known would be the case.

  Cynicism, never more useful than when speculating on outcomes in the Middle East. And he was going to have plenty of use for it over the next few years, Lay thought, a wry smile crossing his face as he picked up the picture of his ex-wife and daughter, gazing at it for a long moment before placing it in the box, on top of his papers. Time for another move—another one of so many they hadn’t known with him. Out of his life.

  And perhaps it was all for the best.

  Coming back from his three-year tour as Chief of Station in Tel Aviv, he had expected he would be receiving a promotion, most likely to SIS—the Senior Intelligence Service—making him roughly the equivalent of a flag officer in the military. The logical next step up the ladder of Agency bureaucracy, given his experience and the postings he’d known over the previous decade and a half.

  But there had been no victory lap to take upon his return stateside—the threat might have been defused in the end, but that didn’t make the seventh floor any happier about the way the decision to run Mustafa al-Shukeiri as an asset had blown up in their collective faces.

  A decision which hadn’t been his to make, but a chief of station made a convenient scapegoat in times like this, as the Agency scrambled to make the transition to a new administration. To smooth over mistakes, leave embarrassments in the past.

  So it was back to the Middle East for him—or more precisely, in charge of the DO’s activities in that region from here at Langley. “Chief of the Near East Division, Directorate of Operations”, as the nameplate on the door of his new office read.

  Not a promotion, more of a lateral move—back to something he’d done once before, before the Tel Aviv posting came his way. Shunted off to the side, out of the way.

  Out of trouble.

  He placed the lid on the box, covering his wife’s face as he prepared to leave. Leave all of this behind him

  Reaching over to grab the remote and turn off the television—the CNN anchor’s words arresting him in that moment.

  “. . .in other news from the Middle East, we have a report just today from Baghdad, where General Tahir Kamal Siddiqi has been announced executed for treason this morning. A member of President Hussein’s inner circle, Siddiqi had long been viewed as a rising. . .”

  Siddiqi. Lay stopped, staring open-mouthed at the television as the woman continued to speak, providing voice-over for video showing a man being led to the scaffold—a noose being placed around his neck.

  He shook his head in disbelief, knowing all too well what he was witnessing, whose hand was behind all of this. “Avi, you clever devil. . .”

  11:31 A.M. Israel Standard Time, January 29th

  Har HaMenuchot Cemetery

  Jerusalem, Israel

  A Star of David was freshly chiseled into the granite at the top of the new headstone, just above the name written there. Major Natan Tsukerman, Israeli Defense Force. March 29th, 1963—January 8th, 2001.

  Ze’ev, Ariel breathed, stooping down awkwardly—his left arm supported by a sling, his balance unsteady as he dropped to one knee in the soft earth, running his fingers over the letters.

  All the years they’d worked together, and he’d never known the man’s actual name. Until now.

  Now as he lay here, dead, on this hillside overlooking the city of Jerusalem. Of peace.

  Not so very far from his own grave, Ariel thought—the headstone his father had erected after disowning him for joining the military. The stone beneath which David Shafron was buried forever, the date of his enlistment listed as the date of his death.

  And perhaps it had been. The death of an old life, the birth of a new.

  But for Ze’ev, laying here now. . .there was no birth, only death. Hear, O Israel. . .

  Ariel shook his head, bitter remorse washing over him once more—pain shooting once more through his body as he jostled the arm, rising to his feet.

  He could still remember his old friend standing there in the safehouse in the Golan, planning the operation against Mustafa al-Shukeiri. Advocating for bringing the weapons in through the marina, like the Navy man he had always been.

  It seemed wrong, somehow, to think he had met his end in the desert—so far from his beloved sea.

  “Ariel,” he heard a familiar voice announce from behind him, turning to find Avi ben Shoham standing there just up the hill from the grave—the senior Mossad officer’s SUV visible on one of the access roads above them. “They told me I could find you here.”

  That was about right. He hadn’t been getting out much, still far too early in the recovery process for him to know much mobility. But he had asked to be brought here. To pay his respects.

  “He was a brave man,” Shoham said, joining him at the grave, his head bowed for a moment in silence. “And a good father.”

  Oh, yes. He remembered now, seeing the pictures.

  The one part of Ze’ev’s life he had opened up about, his twin stepdaughters. Couldn’t have been more than ten, and now without their father. Again.

  “A true loss. He and Nadir both.” The older man shook his head, straightening as he took a step back from the grave. “How’s the arm?”

  “Improving, day by day,” Ariel replied, gesturing with his good hand. “It’ll be a while before I can get back out in the field, but I’ll be there, with time. I—”

  He stopped short, seeing the look in the senior Mossad officer’s eyes. Sensing danger.

  “I had intended to wait for another time,” Shoham began, choosing his words slowly. “But perhaps it is all for the best. I’m pulling you out of the field, Ariel—for good.”

  No. It was everything he had done. . .for years. Ever since leaving Sayeret Duvdevan.

  “Why?” he asked, controlling his voice with an effort.

  “It’ll be a year before you’re combat-effective again,” the older man replied, his tone brooking no argument. Signalling that the decision had already been made, by others—somewhere else. That telling him in person was a courtesy. Nothing more.

  “Maybe longer, depending on just how well the arm mends,” Shoham went on, his voice softening as he continued, “And you lost over half your command out there, it would be unwise to underestimate the impact that will have upon you, upon your judgment in future such situations. Losing people. . .it changes a man.”

  The voice of experience. The Mossad officer had seen two full-scale wars, known decades in the defense of the Jewish state. “I understand you’ve refused to see the staff psychologist.”

  Ariel nodded, not even looking in Shoham’s direction—his face set in a bitter mask as he stared out over Jerusalem. Toward Mount Zion in the distance. He had.

  It was the last thing he needed, someone poking and prodding their way through his psyche—analyzing the grief, the loss. Placing it under a microscope.

  “I want to bring you back in, once you’ve recovered—put you in charge of training new operatives,” Shoham continued without waiting for a response. “Men and women like yourself, doing the job you’ve done these past few years. The knowledge you can impart to them on the basis of the operations you’ve run. . .it will be invaluable. Will you do it?”

  He turned then, looking the older man in the eye. “I don’t have a choice, do I?”

  A shake of the head, confirming what he already knew. Take it or leave.

  For good.

  “The chemical weapons,” Ariel b
egan, changing the subject. Moving on. “Have we been able to confirm that they were in the trucks we destroyed?”

  “They were in the trucks,” was the simple response—alarm bells going off in his brain, something in Shoham’s voice warning him there was something he wasn’t saying.

  “And?” he demanded, a fierce intensity creeping into his voice as he turned on Shoham.

  He saw the older man take a deep breath, still not looking at him. “And, based on heavy sarin residue collected in soil samples from the area surrounding the site. . .we believe the nerve agent had been rendered inert by age. Fifteen, twenty years since its original manufacture—that’s a very long time for sarin to retain its viability as a weapon. Siddiqi was selling the Palestinians a defective product. Worthless.”

  Then. . .that would mean—no. It wasn’t possible, it wasn’t real. That it had all been. . .

  “You knew, didn’t you?” He spat, suddenly identifying what was wrong. His dark eyes flashing fire. “You knew!”

  “We knew,” Shoham assented, sadness written across his face. “We knew, and couldn’t take the chance of being wrong. The stakes were simply far too high.”

  “The stakes?” Ariel shook his head, his voice carrying across the desolate Judean hillside—the repressed anger finally spilling over. Finding a target.

  “I can tell you about the stakes. I lost men out there in the desert that night—I lost a friend,” he said, his voice trembling with raw emotion as he gestured back toward Ze’ev’s grave. “And now you’re going to stand there and tell me that it was all for nothing. That he died for nothing.”

  It seemed an eternity before Shoham replied, his eyes never leaving Ariel’s face. “No, not for nothing.”

  “Then for what?”

  “Ze’ev, Nadir. . .they died as they had lived, in the service of their country. For Zion.”

  Zion. He turned away from Shoham wordlessly, standing there looking out over the hillside as the older man walked away, his footsteps against the grass fading into the distance, the sound of a vehicle starting up heralding his departure—the city of Jerusalem spread out below him. The city of peace, riven by violence for so many centuries. The city of. . .Zion.