The Last Days

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  TRAVEL PACKAGE ATTEMPTING TO EXECUTE ALPHA BRAVO EVAC PLAN…. BUT RESISTANCE HEAVY.

  MEDITERRANEAN CHOPPER EXTRACT IMPOSSIBLE DUE TO WEATHER…. NO U.S. GROUND FORCES AVAILABLE TO GO IN…. ISRAELI GROUND RESCUE PACKAGE AVAILABLE—BUT ADVISE CAUTION DUE TO POLITICAL RISKS…. REPEAT: ADVISE CAUTION DUE TO POLITICAL RISKS.

  MORE TK. JZ //GS-SC//

  To their left, every street was blocked by burning cars.

  So the motorcade kept zigzagging to the right. Word of the bombing was out. News of Arafat’s death spread through the city and refugee camps like wildfire. Angry crowds were pouring out of their homes. Teenagers were setting tires and Dumpsters on fire. Lake and the team worked their way toward the beach. It was simple, direct. It was a landmark they knew and could follow most of the way out of the city.

  They were driving through wretched, filthy slums, Bennett had never seen poverty like this. None of them had. Crumbling cinder-block tenement buildings. Bombed-out shops. The scorched remains of cars. Empty playgrounds. The stench of uncollected garbage. The farther they moved from center city, the farther they seemed to plunge into a wasteland of human misery.

  The road ahead would only get worse. They’d still have to make it through or around the Shati Refugee Camp—then through or around the Jabalya Refugee Camp—before racing north for the Erez Checkpoint and the relative safety of Israel. Both camps were Islamic strongholds. But there weren’t a whole lot of options. If they weren’t dead, they should be on Ahmed Orabi Street along the Med in less than ten minutes. Where they’d go after that, Bennett had no idea.

  Lake suddenly slammed on his brakes.

  But not in time.

  From out of nowhere, a massive green garbage track pulled out in front of the lead Suburban and cut it off. Lake’s team plowed into its side at almost forty miles an hour. The SUV burst into flames. Bennett turned the wheel hard to the left and skidded to a stop. All they could hear was the crash of metal and glass.

  Lake—not wearing a seat belt—smashed against the front windshield, then back against the driver’s side window. The air bags never fired. He was dead. The interior quickly filled with smoke. An engine fire engulfed them. Panicked, Lake’s team burst out the side doors, gasping for fresh clean air. They didn’t even see them.

  Two men, dressed as garbage collectors—except for the ski masks over their faces—pulled out AK-47s and opened fire. They emptied their entire clips into the bodies of Lake’s security detail.

  For a split second, no one in Bennett’s vehicle or Banacci’s could comprehend what was happening. It all seemed like slow motion. They saw the shooters. They saw Lake’s team fall. Then they saw a beat-up black Mercedes

  pull up to the scene and watched the two masked men toss their weapons and themselves inside and speed off. And then—their minds still trying to j process the hideous scene—they watched in horror as the garbage truck blew up right in front of them.

  The fireball engulfed the lead Suburban. There was nothing they could do. More of their team was dead, and their killers were gone.

  McCoy grabbed her satellite phone.

  She punched a button. The line crackled with static. Come on, come on, she silently screamed. A moment later, the garbled voice cleared up.

  “Prairie Ranch, go secure. “

  “Secure, go—it’s McCoy—who’s this?”

  “Erin, it’s Marsha.”

  “Paine’s dead—so is Arafat and Mazen.”

  “We know.”

  “We’re taking heavy fire. We’re in a convoy headed west to the water. Jon’s driving. We’ve got Galishnikov and Sa’id. We’ve just lost another team of DSS agents.”

  “We’ve got you on video from the Predator. …”

  Bennett swerved around a corner and hit his high beams. The rain was coming down so hard visibility was becoming a serious problem. Still, they could see a Jeep of some kind—fitted with a .50-caliber machine gun on top—racing toward them. It wasn’t firing yet, but Bennett kept glancing back through his rearview mirror, sure the Jeep saw them now.

  “Hold on!” Bennett screamed.

  McCoy dropped the phone and grabbed for something to hold on to as Bennett turned the wheel hard to the left, plowed through a chain-link fence and raced through an open-air vegetable market. No one was around, thank God, because of the storms. Bennett was leaving a trail of destruction in his wake. Weaving through row after row of wooden stalls, he smashed through most of them while making Snapshot a tough target to pin down. The .50-caliber was blasting away at them now, and as he came to the far end, Bennett

  slammed on the brakes and turned the wheel hard to the right, fishtailing into an alley draped with PLO flags and clotheslines.

  The limo felt like a tank. Its engine was powerful. Its body was almost indestructible. But their bulletproof windows were so badly splintered from multiple rounds of gunfire that Bennett wasn’t sure how much more they could take. Behind them, DSS agents opened the back windows of Banacci’s Suburban and started firing M-l6s at the Jeep bearing down on them. With so many curves and turns, it was tough for either side to get a clear shot.

  “Erin, Erin—you still there?”

  Again the voice was garbled. It was Kirkpatrick.

  “Yes, I’m still here,” said McCoy. “Can you hear me?”

  “Barely—listen—you ‘re about to spill out on the main beach highway.”

  “Right.”

  “When you get there, turn left, head south and floor it—got it?”

  “I got it.”

  The heavy machine gun behind them was red hot. Even amidst the raging storm, everyone in the car could hear the rounds striking Banacci’s Suburban behind them. McCoy covered the mouthpiece of the phone and relayed the instructions to Bennett.

  “South?” said Bennett, incredulous. “Is she crazy? We need to go north, back toward the Erez Checkpoint.”

  McCoy relayed Bennett’s concern.

  “Just tell Jon to trust me—I’m going to get this Jeep ojfyour tail, “Kirkpatrick shouted over the roar of the storm and the gunfire.

  Two minutes later, they broke out of the alleyway and were suddenly facing the violent, crashing waves of the Mediterranean. Bennett slammed on the breaks, spun out onto Ahmed Orabi Street, and broke left, headed south. He’d given Kirkpatrick the benefit of his many doubts. But they didn’t have any margin for error. Six seconds later, Banacci’s Suburban spun out on the main beach road and raced to catch up with them. A few moments later, the Jeep—guns still blazing—followed suit.

  Kirkpatrick had better be right.

  She punched the button marked “Langley.”

  Kirkpatrick’s eyes were glued to the images of the chase scene in Gaza, fed from Predator Six, the CIA’s unmanned aerial vehicle. The Jeep was gaining fast. Bennett and McCoy might make it, but she wasn’t so sure Banacci’s team would. Someone picked up on the first ring. She expected

  the watch officer in the Global Operations Center. She got CIA Director Jack Mitchell instead.

  “Mitchell, go.”

  “It’s Marsha—you guys ready?”

  “Almost, hold on.”

  “Come on, Jack.”

  “I know, I know—just tell Bennett and Banacci to floor it and hang on.”

  The dimly lit war room was high tech and state of the art.

  The whole place looked a bit like NASA’s Mission Control Center in Houston. But this was the CIA’s Global Operations Center. This was where the Agency’s secret war on terror was run—24/7/365—in a command post less than a hundred people in the world had ever seen. No press had ever been allowed in. No official photos had ever been let out. Entry required the highest possible security clearance, a retina scan, a voiceprint, and authorization from the director of Central Intelligence himself.

  Danny Tracker—the CIA’s deputy director for operations—was six foot three, 223 pounds, and forty-one years young. A former navy SEAL who’d fought in the ‘91 Gulf War, he’d specialized in blowing up Iraqi command-and-
control centers. Tracker’s father had been a top counterterrorism specialist who’d worked extensively throughout the Middle East. In 1968, during a two-year stint at the Pentagon, his father met and married a gorgeous coed from Beirut studying mechanical engineering at Georgetown University. Danny was born a year later—dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin—and grew up all over the world, learning army life and Arabic.

  By the post-Gulf War 1990s, Danny was not only one of the precious few Arab-language specialists in the operations division, he was the Agency’s most decorated field agent. And its most eligible bachelor. Twice voted by the women in the operations division as the guy they’d most like to do a “covert op” with, rumors about his love life were legendary. So were the rumors of his mission history. Hunting down Al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Assassinating an Iranian arms courier supplying Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Flipping a senior Saudi intelligence operative working at the Saudi embassy in Washington to work as a double agent for the CIA. Even—allegedly—bugging the Al Jazeera newsroom in Doha, Qatar.

  All anyone really knew for sure was that quiet but high-octane Danny Tracker had risen through the ranks faster than anyone else in the CIA’s history, and that those who worked with him and for him in the Operations

  Division not only loved him, they were willing to risk death to catch his attention and make him proud. Jack Mitchell now caught Tracker’s eye—this mission was a “go.”

  Gun it, Jonathan,” McCoy shouted.

  Sa’id crouched on the floor in the back of the limousine. He held his head

  his hands and kept praying to Allah. He was terrified for their lives, and filled with shame for what his fellow Palestinians were doing to the Americans, and to themselves.

  Galishnikov wasn’t nearly as scared. He’d grown up as a Jew in Stalin’s Siberia. As a child, he’d seen his father and his father’s two brothers, all prominent refuseniks, shot execution style in his parents’ living room. He’d seen his mother taken away that same night by the secret police, never to be heard from again. He himself had spent three years locked away in Lefortovo, the KGB interrogation prison in Moscow, where he’d survived on cock-roaches and rats. He’d seen evil firsthand and now he felt almost numb to its shock value. Fear wasn’t an emotion he readily identified with. But rage was.

  He was furious—furious at the Palestinians for this culture of barbarism— furious at himself for getting sucked into a business deal with a Palestinian. Oil for peace”? There wasn’t going to be any peace. This was war—pure and simple. The Americans had better get used to that. You couldn’t just swagger in like John Wayne and remake the modern Middle East. It didn’t work that way. There was too much hatred. The place was an endless cycle of vengeance and retribution. How could he have ever let himself believe for two seconds that Yasser Arafat and Abu Mazen could make peace? Or that the Muslims would let them? They were on a fool’s errand, trapped, and about to die.

  Galishnikov was glued to the back window. Amidst the driving rains and blinding flashes of lightning, he could see Banacci’s Suburban weaving back and forth across the street at forty, fifty, now sixty miles and hour. He could also see the much lighter Jeep picking up speed and closing the gap. Two hooded men were in the back of the Jeep now, soaked to the bone and trying to reload the .50-caliber machine gun. It wasn’t going to be easy, but Gal ishnikov could tell they were professionals. It wouldn’t take more than a few seconds. That’s all they had.

  Tracker barked orders to his team.

  They were doing all they could, but he wanted more. One of the CIA’s own was in a race for her life. They all knew the stakes, and they’d do anything to bring her home safely. But no one was more serious about that mission than Danny Tracker. He adjusted his headset and snapped a command at a specialist sitting just a few yards away.

  The biggest coup of Tracker’s impressive career was recruiting Erin McCoy into the CIA’s operations division. It was Tracker who’d first heard about a college-age daughter of the late Sean McCoy from MacPherson. It was Tracker who’d obtained access to Sean McCoy’s file and began poring over it. It was Tracker who’d cleared Erin to learn what her father had really done for all those years and why she’d rarely seen him. It was Tracker who helped her understand for the first time how her father had died, and why. And in time it was he who’d persuaded her to join his team, and eventually to infiltrate GSX and watch Jon Bennett’s back.

  McCoy’s foray into Global Strategix hadn’t gone precisely as Tracker had hoped. There’d been complications that he hadn’t foreseen. Still, he regarded it as a coup for many reasons, some professional, some personal. But now all of it was in jeopardy. McCoy’s life was on the line, and he wasn’t entirely sure their plan would really work.

  Galishnikov could see the Jeep catching up to them

  He knew they were running out of time. This wasn’t random. This was personal. They were coming after him—to kill him, to send a message to the president to stay out of their war with the Jews. Why weren’t the Americans and Israelis on offense? Why weren’t Bennett and McCoy calling in air strikes? Where was the IDF? Why weren’t they sending a strike force? This was out of control.

  If the Palestinians were going to start blowing up their own leaders, how could Israel ever make peace with them? Why should they? Maybe Ariel Sharon had been right. Jordan was Palestine. Sixty percent of the country of Jordan was Palestinian. Why did they need the West Bank and Gaza, too? All of the Palestinians should just be deported to Jordan, Galishnikov thought. Let King Abdullah take care of them. God had promised all this land to the Jews. They were willing to share some of it. He certainly had been. But enough was enough. No one could accuse him of being a hawk. He wasn’t an extremist. He wanted peace. He’d worked for peace. But a peace treaty without real security guarantees for Israel was a suicide pact and

  he wasn’t going to be part of that. Not anymore. Not after what he’d seen today.

  Galishnikov told Bennett to get off the road and find a way back. They needed to be heading north, not south. They needed to be getting out of Gaza, not going deeper into it. They were rapidly heading toward the Strip’s most dangerous stronghold, the Khan Yunis refugee camp where radical Is lamic forces were especially strong. What were they supposed to do then? How were they supposed to survive with no DSS agents to protect them, and no air support to extract them?

  “What the hell are you doing, Jonathan? Get us off this road now—now. “

  Snapshot blew down the straightaway so fast it was beginning to shake.

  The engine was heading into the red zone. Bennett was pushing this car beyond its limits, but the Jeep was still closing the gap. He couldn’t slow down now. He certainly couldn’t get off the road or turn around. At the rate they were going they’d just flip the car and roll until they blew up or the Jeep got a clear shot at their gas tank.

  Banacci continued to swerve back and forth across the road, trying des perately not to provide a clear shot, while two of his agents lay on their stomachs in the back, laying down M-16 fire, hoping to take out a tire, if not the driver behind them.

  Bennett’s eyes were locked on the road.

  McCoy tried to keep hers from locking on Bennett. She knew he loved his Porsche. She knew he loved flooring it on the open road. But she’d never seen him like this—in total command at a hundred miles an hour, bullets whizzing by their heads.

  Suddenly, both of them heard the .50-caliber machine gun unleash— again. Rounds began smashing all across the back of Banacci’s already badly damaged Suburban. Then, the unthinkable—two rounds penetrated just to the left of the license plate. They ripped their way forward, into a reserve fuel tank. The force of the explosion lifted Banacci’s Suburban into the air and flipped it two or three times before the flaming wreckage crashed to the pavement and skidded off the road onto the front steps of a rain-drenched apartment building.

  McCoy whipped around, trying to see exactly what was happening, then instinctively shielded her eyes
from the intensity of the blast and the heat, Bennett fought to keep control. The Jeep veered to the right to avoid a crash,

  smashing out onto the beach before the driver clawed his way back onto the main road and jammed the accelerator to the floor Banacci and his team were gone. The Palestinian gunner now had a clear shot at Snapshot. Bennett was out of options.

  EIGHT

  The Jeep was gaining on them.

  Mitchell and Tracker couldn’t believe what they were seeing. At these speeds, the slightest mistake by either driver would be fatal. They still had no way to get friendly forces to them. Whoever survived, if any of them did, might still fall into the hands of Islamic extremists, and then all bets were off. They might be executed on the spot. But that would be the most merciful scenario. More likely they’d be held hostage—tortured, brutalized, without mercy and without much hope of the U.S. or Israelis finding them, much less rescuing them.

  Bennett fought to maintain his composure.

  He didn’t want McCoy to know how he felt. How could she stay so calm under fire? Sure, she was trained. She did this for a living. But it was more than that. She didn’t seem scared. She didn’t seem to fear death—not like he did.

  Bennett’s shirt was soaked with sweat. He struggled to breathe normally. Adrenaline coursed through his veins. Fifty-caliber rounds sliced past their windows. Snapshot was moving now at well over 120 miles an hour. They were heading deeper and deeper into enemy territory, and he was scared.

  Terrified, actually—he was terrified of dying. So many people in his life had died violently. It wasn’t just now, or in Jerusalem a few weeks back. During the September 11 attacks, twenty-three people he’d known well had perished in the inferno. Several dozen more he knew in passing died as well. All of them were colleagues in one way or another. All of them worked in