Fuse of Armageddon (8 page)

It hadn’t taken long for the heifer to dirty the straw on the floor of the container, and Joe had found the reactions from the platoon amusing. Joe had not minded the smell of manure at all; in fact, he’d felt a degree of comfort with something so familiar from his boyhood days on the farm. Riding a shipping container with an illegal weapons cache with the purpose of entering the Gaza Strip seemed surreal.

More so now, in the first moments out of sleep. Through the small holes, Patterson saw that the shipping container was dangling from the crane high above the ship, swinging over the water to be loaded onto a truck. The heifer’s panic at this movement added extra movement to the container, and a couple of the other men inside were reacting with fear.

Enough sunlight filtered through the air holes for Joe to witness one soldier on the floor, groaning from the pain of where the hoof had struck him. Others tried to move in on the heifer, then scattered at its frantic movements. The animal weighed hundreds of pounds, and the stomping of its hooves on the floor was unnerving.

All of the soldiers knew what was at stake. If the heifer kept bucking, the workers on the ground would immediately notice the sound and the movement. If customs officials opened the container here, they all faced long terms in prison. Whatever their mission was, it would be ended before it had truly begun.

One of the soldiers had drawn a pistol and was trying to get a bead on the heifer’s skull.

Lieutenant Del Saxon stepped in and slapped the man’s forearm downward. “Idiot,” he snapped. “This animal is worth more alive than all of us put together!”

Joe was standing now, watching quietly.

“Patterson,” Saxon told him. “Do something! It can’t be injured!”

Joe calmly moved to the side of the container, then slid down the wall toward the ring. Unless the animal swung around completely, he was safe from the hooves.

The heifer saw him too late. It tried to kick but only managed to sandwich Joe between its ribs and the wall. Joe had seen it coming and braced for it. When the animal bounced away again, Joe slid further down the wall toward the rope and the ring.

Joe slid his hand down the rope toward the heifer’s face. Although the rest of its body was kicking high and hard, Joe was able to get his hand fully across the heifer’s nose.

Like gripping a two-holed bowling ball, Joe jabbed his thumb into one nostril and his forefinger into the heifer’s other nostril. He pinched hard, trying to connect thumb and forefinger.

The heifer reacted as if it had been hit across the head with a baseball bat. Instantly it stopped kicking, totally intent on the pain in its face.

“This ought to do it,” Joe said, keeping a good squeeze in place. How could this animal be worth more than all of the lives of the platoon? “Someone get a jacket we can throw over her head. Once she’s blind, there should be no more trouble here.”

CCTI Headquarters, Tel Aviv • 10:46 GMT


Except for the incredible view across Hayarkon Street from five stories up—the boardwalk with tourists, the wharves, the freight ships, the park to the northwest, and the shimmering aqua blue of the Mediterranean beyond—nothing about Rossett’s office suggested luxury. Spartan furniture starkly contrasted with his taste in clothing. There was nothing to indicate Rossett’s past as a decorated American war veteran, no clues to his rapid rise to the top of the CIA after his military career, nothing about the accolades that had followed him into retirement. The only testament to his accomplishments was the series of framed photographs of Rossett with each American president since Reagan and every Israeli prime minister over the last two decades. Even these were not meant as a display of ego; Rossett’s photographs served a purpose: to assure clients of the connections and clout they were buying with the fees paid to CCTI to provide protection for high-level executives working in the Middle East.

“How’s the hand?” Rossett asked from behind his desk. He was twenty-five years older than Quinn and repeatedly said the difference in age made for a good partnership. “Saw you on the monitor when the kid asked you for a pat down. Told you he was a good hire, didn’t I? Anyone else would have waved you through without checking under the gauze.”

Quinn kept a stone face.

Rossett pointed at Quinn’s bandaged hand. “Any more operations ahead?”

“The hand reminds me of Fawzi,” Quinn answered. “You might remember. Dead guy I dragged across the border a few months ago for the Mossad.”

“That hand should remind you that the wife and girl are safe and back in the United States. That’s why you went in. Remember?”

“Safady is why I almost didn’t come out. The surgeon is working on my hand this morning and all I can think about is your buddies at the Mossad. Happy to vacuum up every last scrap of intel from us, but a vacuum of silence when I ask for something.”

“How about some Starbucks?” Rossett asked, pointing at a cup on the corner of his desk. “No problem heating it up for you.” Rossett hated wasting the money it took to buy Starbucks, so he’d offer it to Quinn every time he brought it into the office, no matter how long the coffee had been sitting.

“Stay on track,” Quinn said. “It’s been two months. We’ve gotten nothing from the Mossad except a name.”

Rossett scowled—a sight, legend had it, which had once been able to stop tanks. Rossett’s face was unpleasant at the best of times, and his scowl now made it sheer ugly. He was built low and powerful with no neck, so that it seemed his bald head balanced on his shoulders. While hair had once been one of his two vanities, he had given up the fight years earlier and resigned himself to shaving it as needed. He clung to his second vanity, however, which was clothing, and today he wore an impeccably tailored navy blue Armani suit.

“Save the gorilla face for someone who’ll find it scary,” Quinn said. “You sell every client on our connections to the Mossad. So what’s the problem? Is your phone broken? Can’t make outgoing calls?”

“We also sell our CIA background. Maybe you should save your anger for your buddies there who haven’t brought you anything on Fawzi.”

“I didn’t deliver the body to CIA. They don’t have carte blanche to roam Palestinian territory and beat information out of anyone who knew Fawzi.”

“Seven dead already,” Rossett said. “Fawzi made eight. How many of Safady’s cell group have you taken down yourself? That’s not good enough?”

“I assume that’s rhetorical. Or the first symptoms of early onset dementia.”

“What can I do?” Rossett said. “We need the Mossad more than they need us.”

“Still,” Quinn said, “two months. Fawzi was probably as close as anyone to Safady. Two months to learn enough about Fawzi to give us something on Safady. Instead, we get Mossad silence. You of all people know how bad I want Safady.”

“I lost my family to Palestinian terrorists too,” Rossett said. “You’re not the only one burning to stop them.”

Quinn fell silent. Rossett’s first wife and their three children had died in the late eighties while Rossett was on a tour here. The same sad story, grief not diminished in the least by how common it was. Suicide bombers in a public place.

“I shouldn’t have thrown that at you,” Rossett said, easing the tension with a lopsided grin. “How about we kiss and make up.”

Quinn sat down. “The thought of kissing to make up makes my stomach turn. You looked in any mirrors lately? What you’d see is a bulldog sucking a lemon.”

“Glad we’re friends again.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that Safady is still a ghost to intel agencies. After five years of tracking him, still no one knows what he looks like. Fawzi did. That means people who knew Fawzi might be able to help. Even a scrap is better than what we have.”

Safady called himself the Black Prince in homage to Ali Hassan Salameh, the equally internationally notorious Palestinian terrorist who became known as the Red Prince for masterminding the murder of Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games in Munich. Salameh, a close friend of Arafat, had headed the Black September organization in the 1970s, until the Mossad finally assassinated him by car bomb in 1979.

Black September was gone, but Safady had effectively resurrected it, calling it Red September for blood and again to link it to its founder, still a hero among Palestinians.

“Someone’s going to find Safady,” Rossett said. “You. CIA. Mossad. He can’t stay hidden forever. Eventually he’s bound to make a mistake.” Rossett gave Quinn a direct stare. “But if nailing Safady means you’re going to retire from the business after you get him, I won’t have much incentive here to keep helping you look for him.”

“From the day I left the CIA, I’ve been in it for the money, Roz. You know that.”

“Right,” Rossett said, equally deadpan. “Glad we’re clear on that.” His expression softened with concern. “You go to Acco today, don’t you?”

Quinn nodded. They both knew why.

“You’re going to stick with procedure?”

Quinn nodded again. He now traveled with a bodyguard who also doubled as his driver.

“There is something,” Rossett said. “About Fawzi. It’s not much, but it could be important.”

Quinn waited.

“He’d been in Iran a couple times in the six months before. The Mossad’s got him linked to money from there. But Fawzi was low-level. Delivery boy.”

“So the money was going to Safady?”

“That’s our best conclusion so far. Iran would love to cause as much trouble as possible in Israel.”

“Yeah,” Quinn said. “Iran’s either got nuclear capacity already or they’re on the verge. Safady’s caused enough trouble with C-4. If he ever got his hands on any WMDs . . .”

Rossett rubbed his face. “I know.”

“When did you find out the Iranian connection?” Quinn asked.

“This morning. Why do you think I bought Starbucks?”

“You couldn’t tell me before my rant?”

“Had you opened with a question when you walked in and not a rant, maybe.” Rossett grinned.

“Bulldog ugly,” Quinn said, “bulldog mean.”

“Go,” Rossett said.

Quinn stood.

“I could wait until you get your hand on the doorknob,” Rossett said. “Make it look like the thought just occurred to me and I was trying to stop you just in time. Or I can ask right now, and you’ll know I do care.”

“About what?”

“Acco. How are you? Really.”

“I’ll be fine,” Quinn lied. Still, he was unable to push out of his mind the image of a blackened bus and the smoldering ruins around it. “But thanks for asking.”

Rossett grunted. “Make sure you wear Kevlar.”

Quinn didn’t need the reminder. It was no secret he’d spent five years on a personal mission chasing Safady. And after the knife incident in Gaza, it was now obvious that the Black Prince, Khaled Safady, was making it equally personal to hunt for Quinn.

5

Megiddo, Israel • 11:27 GMT


Khaled Safady was the one man among the busload of wealthy Holy Land tourists who knew that a sniper waited for the tourists to climb from their bus up the long, winding path to the hilltop ruins of Megiddo.

Whom will I choose for the bullet?
he wondered.
Who shall be the one to receive the touch of death?
The sense of power and the nearness to the moment that he’d planned for months gave him a giddiness that he warned himself to keep under control.

Safady had been born in a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, but the others in the group believed he was Dr. Joseph Marc, a physician on loan to the group, provided by the Israeli government. The real Dr. Joseph Marc had been killed the day before he was scheduled to join the tour; he’d made the mistake of believing the woman flirting with him at a beach was Israeli, not an Arab prostitute about to lure him to a hotel room where Safady was waiting in the closet with a garrote made of piano wire.

Safady was in his late twenties, clean shaven and handsome with dark hair and dark eyes. He easily fit the appearance of a Jewish physician. The irony that it was difficult to judge whether a man came from Arab or Jewish heritage was not lost on him. In fact, it made him perpetually angry. Carrying Palestinian identification papers made him a target of harassment and racism on the land that had belonged to his family for generations. By carrying a different piece of paper—a forged Israeli document—he was treated with deference and respect.

When the group reached the top of the hill, Safady pretended to share interest with those around him in the man striking a dramatic pose on a large rock of the ancient fortress.

“Armageddon!” Jonathan Silver thundered to the evangelicals from his position above the small crowd. “From Hebrew. It means ‘the mount of Megiddo.’ Right where we are standing! Look below you and see where Christ will soon defeat the armies of the Antichrist!”

From the hilltop ruins of the ancient fortress of Megiddo, his rapt listeners turned toward the panoramic view of the Valley of Jezreel. The faraway hills to the north held Nazareth. Mount Tabor stood northeast, a large, upside-down bowl of rounded land. Farther east they could see the Hill of Moreh. And Mount Gilboa in the southwest marked what was once the northern border of Samaria. The valley itself was a well-watered, fertile plain, a patchwork of gold wheat fields as harvest season approached.

“Armageddon!” Silver continued. “You and I have nothing to fear, for God will rapture away the righteous before the Tribulation begins. But those who have opposed us will suffer the horrible judgment they deserve! This Tribulation will give Jews another chance to finally acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah! Yes, those of us who believe today will be taken away from tomorrow’s torment, but those left behind will be gathered like grapes waiting for the harvest of wrath!”

The small crowd—mostly middle-aged couples who would have looked at home in any country club across the United States—responded with cries of “Amen!” and “Hallelujah!”

“Picture it,” Silver said, dropping his voice dramatically. “An army of two hundred million, gathered in this valley for the battle of Armageddon.”