Fuse of Armageddon (39 page)

“Get the pistol out of my neck,” the pilot grunted. “We’ve taken ground fire. I don’t need any distractions.”

Safady pressed harder.

“Unless you back off,” the pilot said, “I’m going to stand and turn around and punch you in the face. You’ll have to shoot me to stop me. Good luck keeping this thing in the air.”

All of this conversation was being transmitted to the land-based operations. Safady knew it. He also knew it would be leaked to the media almost immediately. The emergency needed to seem real.

Safady eased off. “Tell me your name.”

“Billy Orellana.”

“Very good. Billy. You will not land this in Israeli territory,” Safady said.

“If I don’t land it, it’s going down. Your only choice is whether it’s a controlled landing or a crash landing.”

“Turn this back to Gaza.”

“To get shot again? Not a chance.”

“You will not land this in Israeli territory.”

A radio voice broke into their conversation. “Orellana, this is Major General Jack Hamer. What’s the situation?”

“The starboard engine took a hit. I’ve put the fire out, but we’re crippled. At best, we can be in the air for twenty minutes.”

“Not in Israeli territory!” Safady screamed, very conscious of how the media would play this conversation again and again. “I know what you want—a place to surround us.”

Hamer’s voice remained calm. “Orellana, can you get the chopper to Jordan?”

“Not at this airspeed.”

The helicopter lurched.

“Let me revise my estimate,” Orellana said. “We might have fifteen minutes. I’m at thirty-five hundred feet and losing altitude at two hundred feet a minute.”

“Not in Israeli territory,” Safady repeated. “This is an Israeli plot to take us.”

“Where else?” Hamer asked. “You can’t make it to Jordan. Going back to Gaza is suicide.”

“Listen to me,” Safady said. “If your pilot doesn’t do as I say, I’m going to shoot hostages, one per minute.”

“I am listening,” Hamer said. “I just don’t see how to fix this. You can’t stay in the air.”

The helicopter lurched once more. Orellana fought the controls and managed to keep it upright.

“How far to Jerusalem?” Safady asked Orellana.

“Ten minutes. If we can keep this airspeed.”

“Jerusalem,” Safady told Hamer. “Both helicopters land. Together. In Jerusalem. Or there will be slaughter.”

“Jerusalem?” Hamer repeated. “That’s Israeli territory.”

“Not all of it.”

Radio silence. A long radio silence.

Safady broke it. “You understand, don’t you?”

“You can’t be serious,” Hamer said.

“Clear it,” Safady said. “It’s flat, under Palestinian control, heavily walled for our protection, and it’s the one spot you won’t dare try any military operation against us.”

“You
are
serious,” Hamer said.

“Clear the airspace for both choppers.” With media help, Safady was about to shock the world. “You know where I want us to land—the top of Mount Moriah.”

Khan Yunis, Gaza Strip • 17:50 GMT


Quinn moved down the steps slowly, knowing that he was framed by the light above him if anyone was in the darkness below. He didn’t know how far the darkness would extend but held his cell phone open in his left hand, intending to use its light for guidance if needed. In his other hand, he held the pistol taken from one of the agents.

At the bottom of the steps, there was enough light from the trapdoor opening for him to see several steps in all directions. He waited for his eyes to adjust, then moved deeper into the room.

Slowly he began to realize the complexity and size of the underground cavern.

Then he saw the row of men seated against the wall. They were alive and bound, their mouths sealed by duct tape. He did a quick count. Twenty-five. He stepped closer and saw the uniforms. Israeli military.

It was eerie—their silence, their eyes, all focused on his movements. Twenty-five men watching and waiting. Twenty-five men helpless if Quinn decided to hurt them.

Quinn squatted beside the nearest man and whispered in his ear, pointing down the dark corridor. “Help me here. Is there anyone farther down guarding you?”

The man shook his head.

Quinn pulled away the duct tape. “What happened?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

Another soldier farther down the line grunted from behind his duct tape.

“That’s my commanding officer,” this soldier explained. “I don’t have authorization to answer any questions.”

Quinn shuffled farther down and repeated the process with the commanding officer, a bulky man with short, thinning hair and two days’ worth of dark growth on his face.

“What’s going on?” Quinn asked, still in a low voice.

“Where’s your identification?” The man had an Israeli accent.

This question was a form of answer for Quinn. This was the Gaza Strip. If these were Israeli soldiers, they were on a covert mission. The question also told him that he wasn’t going to get any other answers unless he played this like a poker game.

“I’m IDF,” Quinn said. First bluff. If the two upstairs had already been down here, he’d have to come up with an excuse why he was now asking questions. But he was betting that if the two IDF men had already been here, the soldiers would no longer be bound and gagged.

“Identification,” the commander said.

Quinn shrugged. The light was bad—bad enough, he hoped, to run the bluff further. He took out the ID taken from the agent upstairs and used his cell phone to illuminate it but not too closely.

“What went wrong?” Quinn needed to play this as if he knew about the mission.

“This isn’t the time for a debriefing,” the CO said, looking away from the ID and back to Quinn, obviously satisfied by Quinn’s bluff. “You’ve got to call someone to stop the helicopters from getting to Jerusalem.”

Jerusalem?
Quinn’s mind raced over the possibilities. If this man knew about the helicopters and hostage transfer, then these soldiers were part of a rescue operation. Quinn would not have been surprised to find out that Hamer had kept the presence of soldiers secret from him. But how could the soldiers have been put into position so quickly? And who had captured them before they could begin the rescue attempt?

Much as he wanted these answers, he knew asking the questions would reveal too much ignorance.

“If I make a call,” Quinn said, “the person on the other end is going to need some answers before they stop the choppers. What went wrong?”

“Figure it out,” the CO snapped. “We’re not on the helicopters. Some other unit took our place. Americans is my guess by how they spoke. Disguised as Palestinians.”

“How? Why?”

“Look, the how of it doesn’t matter at this point. I think we were gassed, but I’m not sure. When the dust settles, I’m sure you guys will figure out who to blame for how the Americans knew how to find us. It was a well-planned op, and only a handful of people knew about it. I didn’t even tell my own men our purpose until we were in position here.”

If this was a rescue mission, why had Hamer agreed to the helicopters, Quinn wondered. At the least, Hamer would have negotiated a delay to give the soldiers time to move in on the Palestinians. Unless, of course, he expected these soldiers on the choppers. But how could Hamer expect that if Safady was the one who had made the demand for the helicopter transfer?

“You want me to get on the phone and say the wrong soldiers are on the helicopters?” Quinn said. “How long do you think we can keep that under wraps?”

“Listen.” The CO lowered his voice. Quinn leaned closer but kept out of range of a possible head butt. “I also had orders not to tell my men why we were going to land on the Temple Mount until we were there.”

“Land on the Temple Mount.”

“Yeah. There’s going to be ground fire around the helicopter. One engine’s been rigged for a small detonation charge. It’s supposed to look like an emergency landing for the Palestinian terrorists. Nobody would know we were on the helicopters instead. Those choppers need to be shot down, hostages or not. If this goes wrong, we’re talking World War III—Muslims against the West.”

The Temple Mount. Al-Aqsa. Where stood the Dome of the Rock. The third most holy place in Islam. It was inconceivable that IDF had intended to land there. Because the CO was right. If Mount Moriah was blasphemed in Muslim eyes, it would lead to a global war.

“I don’t have clearance on this,” Quinn said. His heart was racing. “But I’m not going to put my career on the line and make the call unless I know the importance of this.”

“It’s a national security issue. If you don’t have clearance—”

Quinn interrupted. “You want me responsible for ordering the hostages shot from the air based on your promise that it’s important enough to kill civilians. I don’t think so.”

“They had crates to load with them. Didn’t see what was inside. They had a small cow, too. Light was bad in here, but it looked red. Does that mean anything to you?”

“Small cow . . . a red heifer on the Temple Mount.” Quinn let out a deep breath. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“No. Shoot the choppers down. It doesn’t matter if the hostages die now. Not compared to that.”

“You guys get thrown together for a hostage rescue and somehow in less than forty-eight hours some other group gets here with a small, red cow?”

“This wasn’t thrown together; this was planned by IDF.” The CO blinked a few times, then stared thoughtfully at Quinn. “Let me see that identification again.”

Quinn had blown cover but still tried for more information. “This had been planned before the hostage taking?”

The CO just stared at him.

This was planned before the hostage taking?
The implications were staggering to Quinn. But he knew he wasn’t going to get any answers from this man. Maybe the answers were ahead. These soldiers wouldn’t be going anywhere, and he needed to know what else was down here.

He replaced the duct tape on the CO’s mouth. It struck Quinn that it might be helpful to have proof of this situation. He took a minute to pat the man down, hoping to find any kind of identification. He found none and assumed the rest of the men would be equally secure. It told him how extremely covert this mission was.

He left the men behind and took twenty slow steps toward the glow of a light. It was still silent. He was trying to hold his breath, tiptoeing and feeling slightly ridiculous about it. All of this was so perplexing; he wasn’t even going to try to come to a conclusion.

The light was coming from behind a closed door. Quinn opened it and found another large room, scattered with cots. But that wasn’t what drew his eyes. On the floor were the bodies of men. Another quick count totaled fifteen bodies. The clothing wasn’t military. These were Palestinians.

No conclusions. Only questions. Had the Palestinians been executed by the Israeli military? But if the men behind him were Israeli military, who had disarmed and bound them? If someone else had done this, why leave the Israelis alive but not the Palestinians?

Beyond the cots, Quinn saw another set of steps leading up with an open trapdoor similar to the one he had left behind. He knew he had no choice but to see where it led.

He was cautious going up the steps and grateful that the trapdoor was open. He would have dreaded the sitting-duck sensation of opening the door not knowing if the Palestinians’ executioners were nearby.

When he reached the top of the stairs, the mystery deepened. It took only a minute of exploration to realize he was in the orphanage across the street from the safe house.

He returned to the trapdoor in the orphanage atop the stairs that led to the tunnel.

He smelled something that should have made no sense to him, especially amid executed Palestinians and captive Israeli soldiers.

But when he looked closely, his eyes confirmed what his nostrils told him. And what the CO had told him too.

On the floor was fresh cow manure.

Still, he didn’t want to believe that a red heifer was on one of the helicopters. Not if the helicopter was on the way to the Temple Mount.

38

Somewhere over Israel • 18:06 GMT


The lights of the city appeared on the horizon, at first a glow, then the spots of white broken up by the dark folds of small hills.

“We’ve got five minutes max before the engine gives out completely,” Orellana told Safady. “We might not be able to make it to Mount Moriah. There are a handful of safe places to take this down. A few hospitals have landing pads. The rooftops of a couple of hotels . . .”

“And have the Israelis surround this chopper?” Safady said. “I don’t think so.”

“But . . . the Temple Mount?”

“Except for you and the hostages, all of us are Muslim,” Safady said. Again, he knew this conversation would be recorded and broadcast to the world. “We will be protected by our brothers.”

Khan Yunis, Gaza Strip • 18:08 GMT


“IDF and Israeli soldiers,” Kate said to Quinn. “I would not have believed it unless I’d seen it myself.”

They were back on the streets now.

After Quinn had returned to Kate in the safe house, leaving the men in Israeli uniforms in place, he’d taken her back down the tunnel, then spent a few unsuccessful minutes trying to get the two IDF agents to explain this bizarre situation. Kate had remained silent during Quinn’s quick interrogation. Then she’d helped him drag the IDF men down with the soldiers, and they’d left them there.

“Or IDF agents dressed as soldiers,” Quinn answered her. “Or anything else you’d like to guess. The only thing I know for sure is that whatever it is, we’re right in the middle of it. You saw the executed Palestinians.”

She looked at the car battery and wires and clips. “Maybe go back down there and start doing it the IDF way.”

“Aside from setting up dinner dates to arrest someone, are you any good at torturing men?”

Kate shook her head.

“Me either. Let’s go.”

“What about these guys?”